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+A vampire is a creature from folklore that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visited loved ones and caused mischief or deaths in the neighborhoods they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century.
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+Vampiric entities have been recorded in most cultures; the term vampire was popularized in Western Europe after reports of an 18th-century mass hysteria of a pre-existing folk belief in the Balkans and Eastern Europe that in some cases resulted in corpses being staked and people being accused of vampirism.[1] Local variants in Eastern Europe were also known by different names, such as shtriga in Albania, vrykolakas in Greece and strigoi in Romania.
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+In modern times, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures such as the chupacabra still persists in some cultures. Early folk belief in vampires has sometimes been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalize this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyria was linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited.[2][3]
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+The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of "The Vampyre" by the English writer John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century.[4] Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend, even though it was published after Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel Carmilla. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, television shows, and video games. The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre.
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+The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first appearance of the English word vampire (as vampyre) in English from 1734, in a travelogue titled Travels of Three English Gentlemen published in The Harleian Miscellany in 1745.[5] Vampires had already been discussed in French[6] and German literature.[7] After Austria gained control of northern Serbia and Oltenia with the Treaty of Passarowitz in 1718, officials noted the local practice of exhuming bodies and "killing vampires".[7] These reports, prepared between 1725 and 1732, received widespread publicity.[7] The English term was derived (possibly via French vampyre) from the German Vampir, in turn derived in the early 18th century from the Serbian vampir (Serbian Cyrillic: вампир).[8][9][10][11]
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+The Serbian form has parallels in virtually all Slavic languages: Bulgarian and Macedonian вампир (vampir), Bosnian: vampir/вампир, Croatian vampir, Czech and Slovak upír, Polish wąpierz, and (perhaps East Slavic-influenced) upiór, Ukrainian упир (upyr), Russian упырь (upyr'), Belarusian упыр (upyr), from Old East Slavic упирь (upir') (many of these languages have also borrowed forms such as "vampir/wampir" subsequently from the West; these are distinct from the original local words for the creature). The exact etymology is unclear.[12] Among the proposed proto-Slavic forms are *ǫpyrь and *ǫpirь.[13]
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+Another less widespread theory is that the Slavic languages have borrowed the word from a Turkic term for "witch" (e.g., Tatar ubyr).[13][14] Czech linguist Václav Machek proposes Slovak verb "vrepiť sa" (stick to, thrust into), or its hypothetical anagram "vperiť sa" (in Czech, the archaic verb "vpeřit" means "to thrust violently") as an etymological background, and thus translates "upír" as "someone who thrusts, bites".[15] An early use of the Old Russian word is in the anti-pagan treatise "Word of Saint Grigoriy" (Russian Слово святого Григория), dated variously to the 11th–13th centuries, where pagan worship of upyri is reported.[16][17]
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+The notion of vampirism has existed for millennia. Cultures such as the Mesopotamians, Hebrews, Ancient Greeks, Manipuri and Romans had tales of demons and spirits which are considered precursors to modern vampires. Despite the occurrence of vampiric creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe,[1] when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.[18]
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+It is difficult to make a single, definitive description of the folkloric vampire, though there are several elements common to many European legends. Vampires were usually reported as bloated in appearance, and ruddy, purplish, or dark in colour; these characteristics were often attributed to the recent drinking of blood. Blood was often seen seeping from the mouth and nose when one was seen in its shroud or coffin and its left eye was often open.[19] It would be clad in the linen shroud it was buried in, and its teeth, hair, and nails may have grown somewhat, though in general fangs were not a feature.[20] Although vampires were generally described as undead, some folk tales spoke of them as living beings.[21][22]
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+The causes of vampiric generation were many and varied in original folklore. In Slavic and Chinese traditions, any corpse that was jumped over by an animal, particularly a dog or a cat, was feared to become one of the undead.[23] A body with a wound that had not been treated with boiling water was also at risk. In Russian folklore, vampires were said to have once been witches or people who had rebelled against the Russian Orthodox Church while they were alive.[24]
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+Cultural practices often arose that were intended to prevent a recently deceased loved one from turning into an undead revenant. Burying a corpse upside-down was widespread, as was placing earthly objects, such as scythes or sickles,[25] near the grave to satisfy any demons entering the body or to appease the dead so that it would not wish to arise from its coffin. This method resembles the ancient Greek practice of placing an obolus in the corpse's mouth to pay the toll to cross the River Styx in the underworld. It has been argued that instead, the coin was intended to ward off any evil spirits from entering the body, and this may have influenced later vampire folklore. This tradition persisted in modern Greek folklore about the vrykolakas, in which a wax cross and piece of pottery with the inscription "Jesus Christ conquers" were placed on the corpse to prevent the body from becoming a vampire.[26]
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+Other methods commonly practised in Europe included severing the tendons at the knees or placing poppy seeds, millet, or sand on the ground at the grave site of a presumed vampire; this was intended to keep the vampire occupied all night by counting the fallen grains,[27] indicating an association of vampires with arithmomania. Similar Chinese narratives state that if a vampiric being came across a sack of rice, it would have to count every grain; this is a theme encountered in myths from the Indian subcontinent, as well as in South American tales of witches and other sorts of evil or mischievous spirits or beings.[28]
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+In Albanian folklore, the dhampir is the hybrid child of the karkanxholl (a lycanthropic creature with an iron mail shirt) or the lugat (a water-dwelling ghost or monster). The dhampir sprung of a karkanxholl has the unique ability to discern the karkanxholl; from this derives the expression the dhampir knows the lugat. The lugat cannot be seen, he can only be killed by the dhampir, who himself is usually the son of a lugat. In different regions, animals can be revenants as lugats; also, living people during their sleep. Dhampiraj is also an Albanian surname.[29]
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+Many rituals were used to identify a vampire. One method of finding a vampire's grave involved leading a virgin boy through a graveyard or church grounds on a virgin stallion—the horse would supposedly balk at the grave in question.[24] Generally a black horse was required, though in Albania it should be white.[30] Holes appearing in the earth over a grave were taken as a sign of vampirism.[31]
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+Corpses thought to be vampires were generally described as having a healthier appearance than expected, plump and showing little or no signs of decomposition.[32] In some cases, when suspected graves were opened, villagers even described the corpse as having fresh blood from a victim all over its face.[33] Evidence that a vampire was active in a given locality included death of cattle, sheep, relatives or neighbours. Folkloric vampires could also make their presence felt by engaging in minor poltergeist-styled activity, such as hurling stones on roofs or moving household objects,[34] and pressing on people in their sleep.[35]
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+Apotropaics—items able to ward off revenants—are common in vampire folklore. Garlic is a common example,[36] a branch of wild rose and hawthorn are said to harm vampires, and in Europe, sprinkling mustard seeds on the roof of a house was said to keep them away.[38] Other apotropaics include sacred items, for example a crucifix, rosary, or holy water. Vampires are said to be unable to walk on consecrated ground, such as that of churches or temples, or cross running water.[37]
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+Although not traditionally regarded as an apotropaic, mirrors have been used to ward off vampires when placed, facing outwards, on a door (in some cultures, vampires do not have a reflection and sometimes do not cast a shadow, perhaps as a manifestation of the vampire's lack of a soul).[39] This attribute is not universal (the Greek vrykolakas/tympanios was capable of both reflection and shadow), but was used by Bram Stoker in Dracula and has remained popular with subsequent authors and filmmakers.[40]
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+Some traditions also hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless invited by the owner; after the first invitation they can come and go as they please.[39] Though folkloric vampires were believed to be more active at night, they were not generally considered vulnerable to sunlight.[40]
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+Methods of destroying suspected vampires varied, with staking the most commonly cited method, particularly in southern Slavic cultures.[42] Ash was the preferred wood in Russia and the Baltic states,[43] or hawthorn in Serbia,[44] with a record of oak in Silesia.[45][46] Aspen was also used for stakes, as it was believed that Christ's cross was made from aspen (aspen branches on the graves of purported vampires were also believed to prevent their risings at night).[47] Potential vampires were most often staked through the heart, though the mouth was targeted in Russia and northern Germany[48][49] and the stomach in north-eastern Serbia.[50]
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+Piercing the skin of the chest was a way of "deflating" the bloated vampire. This is similar to a practice of "anti-vampire burial": burying sharp objects, such as sickles, with the corpse, so that they may penetrate the skin if the body bloats sufficiently while transforming into a revenant.[51]
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+Decapitation was the preferred method in German and western Slavic areas, with the head buried between the feet, behind the buttocks or away from the body.[42] This act was seen as a way of hastening the departure of the soul, which in some cultures, was said to linger in the corpse. The vampire's head, body, or clothes could also be spiked and pinned to the earth to prevent rising.[52]
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+Romani people drove steel or iron needles into a corpse's heart and placed bits of steel in the mouth, over the eyes, ears and between the fingers at the time of burial. They also placed hawthorn in the corpse's sock or drove a hawthorn stake through the legs. In a 16th-century burial near Venice, a brick forced into the mouth of a female corpse has been interpreted as a vampire-slaying ritual by the archaeologists who discovered it in 2006.[54] In Bulgaria, over 100 skeletons with metal objects, such as plough bits, embedded in the torso have been discovered.[53]
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+Further measures included pouring boiling water over the grave or complete incineration of the body. In the Balkans, a vampire could also be killed by being shot or drowned, by repeating the funeral service, by sprinkling holy water on the body, or by exorcism. In Romania, garlic could be placed in the mouth, and as recently as the 19th century, the precaution of shooting a bullet through the coffin was taken. For resistant cases, the body was dismembered and the pieces burned, mixed with water, and administered to family members as a cure. In Saxon regions of Germany, a lemon was placed in the mouth of suspected vampires.[55]
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+Tales of supernatural beings consuming the blood or flesh of the living have been found in nearly every culture around the world for many centuries.[56] The term vampire did not exist in ancient times. Blood drinking and similar activities were attributed to demons or spirits who would eat flesh and drink blood; even the devil was considered synonymous with the vampire.[57]
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+Almost every nation has associated blood drinking with some kind of revenant or demon, or in some cases a deity. In India, for example, tales of vetālas, ghoulish beings that inhabit corpses, have been compiled in the Baitāl Pacīsī; a prominent story in the Kathāsaritsāgara tells of King Vikramāditya and his nightly quests to capture an elusive one.[58] Piśāca, the returned spirits of evil-doers or those who died insane, also bear vampiric attributes.[59]
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+The Persians were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on excavated pottery shards.[60] Ancient Babylonia and Assyria had tales of the mythical Lilitu,[61] synonymous with and giving rise to Lilith (Hebrew לילית) and her daughters the Lilu from Hebrew demonology. Lilitu was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies,[61] and estries, female shapeshifting, blood-drinking demons, were said to roam the night among the population, seeking victims. According to Sefer Hasidim, estries were creatures created in the twilight hours before God rested. An injured estrie could be healed by eating bread and salt given to her by her attacker.[62]
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+Greco-Roman mythology described the Empusae,[63] the Lamia,[64] and the striges. Over time the first two terms became general words to describe witches and demons respectively. Empusa was the daughter of the goddess Hecate and was described as a demonic, bronze-footed creature. She feasted on blood by transforming into a young woman and seduced men as they slept before drinking their blood.[63] The Lamia preyed on young children in their beds at night, sucking their blood, as did the gelloudes or Gello.[64] Like the Lamia, the striges feasted on children, but also preyed on adults. They were described as having the bodies of crows or birds in general, and were later incorporated into Roman mythology as strix, a kind of nocturnal bird that fed on human flesh and blood.[65]
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+Many myths surrounding vampires originated during the medieval period. The 12th-century British historians and chroniclers Walter Map and William of Newburgh recorded accounts of revenants,[18][66] though records in English legends of vampiric beings after this date are scant.[67] The Old Norse draugr is another medieval example of an undead creature with similarities to vampires.[68] Vampiric beings were rarely written about in Jewish literature; the 16th-century rabbi David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra (Radbaz) wrote of an uncharitable old woman whose body was unguarded and unburied for three days after she died and rose as a vampiric entity, killing hundreds of people. He linked this event to the lack of a shmirah (guarding) after death as the corpse could be a vessel for evil spirits.[69]
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+Vampires properly originating in folklore were widely reported from Eastern Europe in the late 17th and 18th centuries. These tales formed the basis of the vampire legend that later entered Germany and England, where they were subsequently embellished and popularized. One of the earliest recordings of vampire activity came from the region of Istria in modern Croatia, in 1672.[70] Local reports cited the local vampire Jure Grando of the village Kringa as the cause of panic among the villagers.[71] A former peasant, Jure died in 1656. Local villagers claimed he returned from the dead and began drinking blood from the people and sexually harassing his widow. The village leader ordered a stake to be driven through his heart, but when the method failed to kill him, he was subsequently beheaded with better results.[72]
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+During the 18th century, there was a frenzy of vampire sightings in Eastern Europe, with frequent stakings and grave diggings to identify and kill the potential revenants. Even government officials engaged in the hunting and staking of vampires.[73] Despite being called the Age of Enlightenment, during which most folkloric legends were quelled, the belief in vampires increased dramatically, resulting in a mass hysteria throughout most of Europe.[18] The panic began with an outbreak of alleged vampire attacks in East Prussia in 1721 and in the Habsburg Monarchy from 1725 to 1734, which spread to other localities. Two infamous vampire cases, the first to be officially recorded, involved the corpses of Petar Blagojevich and Miloš Čečar from Serbia. Blagojevich was reported to have died at the age of 62, but allegedly returned after his death asking his son for food. When the son refused, he was found dead the following day. Blagojevich supposedly returned and attacked some neighbours who died from loss of blood.[73]
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+In the second case, Miloš, an ex-soldier-turned-farmer who allegedly was attacked by a vampire years before, died while haying. After his death, people began to die in the surrounding area and it was widely believed that Miloš had returned to prey on the neighbours.[74][75] Another infamous Serbian vampire legend recounts the story of a certain Sava Savanović, who lives in a watermill and kills and drinks blood from the millers. The character was later used in a story written by Serbian writer Milovan Glišić and in the Yugoslav 1973 horror film Leptirica inspired by the story.[76]
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+The two incidents were well-documented. Government officials examined the bodies, wrote case reports, and published books throughout Europe.[75] The hysteria, commonly referred to as the "18th-Century Vampire Controversy", raged for a generation. The problem was exacerbated by rural epidemics of so-called vampire attacks, undoubtedly caused by the higher amount of superstition that was present in village communities, with locals digging up bodies and in some cases, staking them.[77]
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+In 1597, King James wrote a dissertation on witchcraft titled Daemonologie in which he wrote the belief that demons could possess both the living and the dead. Within his classification of demons, he explained the concept through the notion that incubi and succubae could possess the corpse of the deceased and walk the earth. As a devil borrows a dead body, it would seem so visibly and naturally to any man who converses with them and that any substance within the body would remain intolerably cold to others which they abuse.[78]
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+In 1645 the Greek librarian of the Vatican, Leo Allatius, produced the first methodological description of the Balkan beliefs in vampires (Greek: vrykolakas) in his work De Graecorum hodie quorundam opinationibus ("On certain modern opinions among the Greeks").[79]
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+In 1652, the Wallachian Voivode Matei Basarab passed the first law that mentioned the belief in vampires (in Romanian "Strigoi"), called Îndreptarea legii (The right-making of the law). The paragraph contains the opinion and recommendation of the Patriarch Postnicul over "The deceased, which they will learn to be Strigoi, which is called vrykolakas, what needs to be done". The Patriarch proceeds in describing the belief:[80]
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+I've heard in many cities and towns, it's said, some dreadful things being done, which are below praise and great foolishness and lack of knowledge of people over the work of the devil. For that our enemy, the most unclean, the devil where he finds an empty place to dwell and do his will, there he indeed dwells and many times with deceiving apparitions towards lots of [bad] deeds he lures the people and leads them towards his will in order that every wretch people like them to sink and drown in the depth of the damnation of the eternal fire. There are some foolish people that say that many times when people die, they rise and become Strigoi and kill those alive, which death comes in a violent way and quick towards many people.
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+The patriarch describes the Strigoi sightings (especially the blood on a long time deceased body) as demonic deceiving and forbids anyone, especially the clergy,  from desecrating the graves or burning the bodies of the dead, calling it a sin for which they end up in Hell.
+Even though it wasn't permitted to desecrate the grave of the dead person in any way or to burn the dead body, the patriarch offers some remedies in then event of such demonic apparitions:
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+And then you must know if they will learn about such a [dead] body which is the work of the devil, call the priest to read the Paraklesis of the Theotokos and he shall perform the House blessing service, and shall perform liturgy and make Holy Water in aid of everyone and shall  also give Koliva as alms and thereafter he shall say the curse of the devil exorcism Exorcism of St. John Chrysostom. And the both exorcisms performed at Baptism you shall read towards those bones [of the dead]. And then the Holy Water from the House Blessing liturgy you shall splash the people which will happen to be there and then more Holy Water you shall pour over that dead body and with the gift of Christ, the devil shall perish.[81]
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+From 1679, Philippe Rohr devotes an essay to the dead who chew their shrouds in their graves, a subject resumed by Otto in 1732, and then by Michael Ranft in 1734. The subject was based on the observation that when digging up graves, it was discovered that some corpses had at some point either devoured the interior fabric of their coffin or their own limbs.[82] Ranft described in his treatise of a tradition in some parts of Germany, that to prevent the dead from masticating they placed a mound of dirt under their chin in the coffin, placed a piece of money and a stone in the mouth, or tied a handkerchief tightly around the throat.[83] In 1732 an anonymous writer writing as "the doctor Weimar" discusses the non-putrefaction of these creatures, from a theological point of view.[84] In 1733, Johann Christoph Harenberg wrote a general treatise on vampirism and the Marquis d'Argens cites local cases. Theologians and clergymen also address the topic.[85]
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+Some theological disputes arose. The non-decay of vampires' bodies could recall the incorruption of the bodies of the saints of the Catholic Church. A paragraph on vampires was included in the second edition (1749) of De servorum Dei beatificatione et sanctorum canonizatione, On the beatification of the servants of God and on canonization of the blessed, written by Prospero Lambertini (Pope Benedict XIV).[86] In his opinion, while the incorruption of the bodies of saints was the effect of a divine intervention, all the phenomena attributed to vampires were purely natural or the fruit of "imagination, terror and fear". In other words, vampires did not exist.[87]
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+Dom Augustine Calmet, a French theologian and scholar, published a comprehensive treatise in 1751 titled Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants which investigated the existence of vampires, demons, and spectres. Calmet conducted extensive research and amassed judicial reports of vampiric incidents and extensively researched theological and mythological accounts as well, using the scientific method in his analysis to come up with methods for determining the validity for cases of this nature. As he stated in his treatise:[88]
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+They see, it is said, men who have been dead for several months, come back to earth, talk, walk, infest villages, ill use both men and beasts, suck the blood of their near relations, make them ill, and finally cause their death; so that people can only save themselves from their dangerous visits and their hauntings by exhuming them, impaling them, cutting off their heads, tearing out the heart, or burning them. These revenants are called by the name of oupires or vampires, that is to say, leeches; and such particulars are related of them, so singular, so detailed, and invested with such probable circumstances and such judicial information, that one can hardly refuse to credit the belief which is held in those countries, that these revenants come out of their tombs and produce those effects which are proclaimed of them.
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+Calmet had numerous readers, including both a critical Voltaire and numerous supportive demonologists who interpreted the treatise as claiming that vampires existed.[77] In the Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire wrote:[89]
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+These vampires were corpses, who went out of their graves at night to suck the blood of the living, either at their throats or stomachs, after which they returned to their cemeteries. The persons so sucked waned, grew pale, and fell into consumption; while the sucking corpses grew fat, got rosy, and enjoyed an excellent appetite. It was in Poland, Hungary, Silesia, Moravia, Austria, and Lorraine, that the dead made this good cheer.
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+The controversy in Austria only ceased when Empress Maria Theresa of Austria sent her personal physician, Gerard van Swieten, to investigate the claims of vampiric entities. He concluded that vampires did not exist and the Empress passed laws prohibiting the opening of graves and desecration of bodies, sounding the end of the vampire epidemics. Other European countries followed suit. Despite this condemnation, the vampire lived on in artistic works and in local folklore.[77]
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+Beings having many of the attributes of European vampires appear in the folklore of Africa, Asia, North and South America, and India. Classified as vampires, all share the thirst for blood.[90]
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+Various regions of Africa have folktales featuring beings with vampiric abilities: in West Africa the Ashanti people tell of the iron-toothed and tree-dwelling asanbosam,[91] and the Ewe people of the adze, which can take the form of a firefly and hunts children.[92] The eastern Cape region has the impundulu, which can take the form of a large taloned bird and can summon thunder and lightning, and the Betsileo people of Madagascar tell of the ramanga, an outlaw or living vampire who drinks the blood and eats the nail clippings of nobles.[93]
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+The Loogaroo is an example of how a vampire belief can result from a combination of beliefs, here a mixture of French and African Vodu or voodoo. The term Loogaroo possibly comes from the French loup-garou (meaning "werewolf") and is common in the culture of Mauritius. The stories of the Loogaroo are widespread through the Caribbean Islands and Louisiana in the United States.[94] Similar female monsters are the Soucouyant of Trinidad, and the Tunda and Patasola of Colombian folklore, while the Mapuche of southern Chile have the bloodsucking snake known as the Peuchen.[95] Aloe vera hung backwards behind or near a door was thought to ward off vampiric beings in South American folklore.[28] Aztec mythology described tales of the Cihuateteo, skull-faced spirits of those who died in childbirth who stole children and entered into sexual liaisons with the living, driving them mad.[24]
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+During the late 18th and 19th centuries the belief in vampires was widespread in parts of New England, particularly in Rhode Island and eastern Connecticut. There are many documented cases of families disinterring loved ones and removing their hearts in the belief that the deceased was a vampire who was responsible for sickness and death in the family, although the term "vampire" was never used to describe the dead. The deadly disease tuberculosis, or "consumption" as it was known at the time, was believed to be caused by nightly visitations on the part of a dead family member who had died of consumption themselves.[96] The most famous, and most recently recorded, case of suspected vampirism is that of nineteen-year-old Mercy Brown, who died in Exeter, Rhode Island in 1892. Her father, assisted by the family physician, removed her from her tomb two months after her death, cut out her heart and burned it to ashes.[97]
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+Vampires have appeared in Japanese cinema since the late 1950s; the folklore behind it is western in origin.[98] The Nukekubi is a being whose head and neck detach from its body to fly about seeking human prey at night.[99] Legends of female vampiric beings who can detach parts of their upper body also occur in the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. There are two main vampiric creatures in the Philippines: the Tagalog Mandurugo ("blood-sucker") and the Visayan Manananggal ("self-segmenter"). The mandurugo is a variety of the aswang that takes the form of an attractive girl by day, and develops wings and a long, hollow, threadlike tongue by night. The tongue is used to suck up blood from a sleeping victim.[100] The manananggal is described as being an older, beautiful woman capable of severing its upper torso in order to fly into the night with huge batlike wings and prey on unsuspecting, sleeping pregnant women in their homes. They use an elongated proboscislike tongue to suck fetuses from these pregnant women. They also prefer to eat entrails (specifically the heart and the liver) and the phlegm of sick people.[100]
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+The Malaysian Penanggalan is a woman who obtained her beauty through the active use of black magic or other unnatural means, and is most commonly described in local folklore to be dark or demonic in nature. She is able to detach her fanged head which flies around in the night looking for blood, typically from pregnant women.[101] Malaysians hung jeruju (thistles) around the doors and windows of houses, hoping the Penanggalan would not enter for fear of catching its intestines on the thorns.[102] The Leyak is a similar being from Balinese folklore of Indonesia.[103] A Kuntilanak or Matianak in Indonesia,[104] or Pontianak or Langsuir in Malaysia,[105] is a woman who died during childbirth and became undead, seeking revenge and terrorising villages. She appeared as an attractive woman with long black hair that covered a hole in the back of her neck, with which she sucked the blood of children. Filling the hole with her hair would drive her off. Corpses had their mouths filled with glass beads, eggs under each armpit, and needles in their palms to prevent them from becoming langsuir. This description would also fit the Sundel Bolongs.[106]
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+Jiangshi, sometimes called "Chinese vampires" by Westerners, are reanimated corpses that hop around, killing living creatures to absorb life essence (qì) from their victims. They are said to be created when a person's soul (魄 pò) fails to leave the deceased's body.[107] Jiangshi are usually represented as mindless creatures with no independent thought.[108] This monster has greenish-white furry skin, perhaps derived from fungus or mould growing on corpses.[109] Jiangshi legends have inspired a genre of jiangshi films and literature in Hong Kong and East Asia. Films like Encounters of the Spooky Kind and Mr. Vampire were released during the jiangshi cinematic boom of the 1980s and 1990s.[110][111]
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+In modern fiction, the vampire tends to be depicted as a suave, charismatic villain.[20] Despite the general disbelief in vampiric entities, occasional sightings of vampires are reported. Vampire hunting societies still exist, but they are largely formed for social reasons.[18] Allegations of vampire attacks swept through Malawi during late 2002 and early 2003, with mobs stoning one person to death and attacking at least four others, including Governor Eric Chiwaya, based on the belief that the government was colluding with vampires.[112]
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+In early 1970 local press spread rumours that a vampire haunted Highgate Cemetery in London. Amateur vampire hunters flocked in large numbers to the cemetery. Several books have been written about the case, notably by Sean Manchester, a local man who was among the first to suggest the existence of the "Highgate Vampire" and who later claimed to have exorcised and destroyed a whole nest of vampires in the area.[113] In January 2005, rumours circulated that an attacker had bitten a number of people in Birmingham, England, fuelling concerns about a vampire roaming the streets. Local police stated that no such crime had been reported and that the case appears to be an urban legend.[114]
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+In 2006, a physics professor at the University of Central Florida wrote a paper arguing that it is mathematically impossible for vampires to exist, based on geometric progression. According to the paper, if the first vampire had appeared on 1 January 1600, if it fed once a month (which is less often than what is depicted in films and folklore), and if every victim turned into a vampire, then within two and a half years the entire human population of the time would have become vampires.[115]
+
+In one of the more notable cases of vampiric entities in the modern age, the chupacabra ("goat-sucker") of Puerto Rico and Mexico is said to be a creature that feeds upon the flesh or drinks the blood of domesticated animals, leading some to consider it a kind of vampire. The "chupacabra hysteria" was frequently associated with deep economic and political crises, particularly during the mid-1990s.[116]
+
+In Europe, where much of the vampire folklore originates, the vampire is usually considered a fictitious being; many communities may have embraced the revenant for economic purposes. In some cases, especially in small localities, beliefs are still rampant and sightings or claims of vampire attacks occur frequently. In Romania during February 2004, several relatives of Toma Petre feared that he had become a vampire. They dug up his corpse, tore out his heart, burned it, and mixed the ashes with water in order to drink it.[117]
+
+In September / October 2017, mob violence in Malawi related to a vampire scare killed about 6 people accused of being vampires.[118] A similar spate of vigilante violence linked to vampire rumours occurred there in 2002.[119]
+
+Vampirism and the vampire lifestyle also represent a relevant part of modern day's occultist movements.[120] The mythos of the vampire, his magickal qualities, allure, and predatory archetype express a strong symbolism that can be used in ritual, energy work, and magick, and can even be adopted as a spiritual system.[121] The vampire has been part of the occult society in Europe for centuries and has spread into the American subculture as well for more than a decade, being strongly influenced by and mixed with the neo gothic aesthetics.[122]
+
+"Coven" has been used as a collective noun for vampires, possibly based on the Wiccan usage. An alternative collective noun is a "house" of vampires.[123]
+
+Commentators have offered many theories for the origins of vampire beliefs and related mass hysteria. Everything ranging from premature burial to the early ignorance of the body's decomposition cycle after death has been cited as the cause for the belief in vampires.[124]
+
+Paul Barber in his book Vampires, Burial and Death has described that belief in vampires resulted from people of pre-industrial societies attempting to explain the natural, but to them inexplicable, process of death and decomposition.[124]
+
+People sometimes suspected vampirism when a cadaver did not look as they thought a normal corpse should when disinterred. Rates of decomposition vary depending on temperature and soil composition, and many of the signs are little known. This has led vampire hunters to mistakenly conclude that a dead body had not decomposed at all or, ironically, to interpret signs of decomposition as signs of continued life.[125]
+
+Corpses swell as gases from decomposition accumulate in the torso and the increased pressure forces blood to ooze from the nose and mouth. This causes the body to look "plump", "well-fed", and "ruddy"—changes that are all the more striking if the person was pale or thin in life. In the Arnold Paole case, an old woman's exhumed corpse was judged by her neighbours to look more plump and healthy than she had ever looked in life.[126] The exuding blood gave the impression that the corpse had recently been engaging in vampiric activity.[33]
+
+Darkening of the skin is also caused by decomposition.[127] The staking of a swollen, decomposing body could cause the body to bleed and force the accumulated gases to escape the body. This could produce a groan-like sound when the gases moved past the vocal cords, or a sound reminiscent of flatulence when they passed through the anus. The official reporting on the Petar Blagojevich case speaks of "other wild signs which I pass by out of high respect".[128]
+
+After death, the skin and gums lose fluids and contract, exposing the roots of the hair, nails, and teeth, even teeth that were concealed in the jaw. This can produce the illusion that the hair, nails, and teeth have grown. At a certain stage, the nails fall off and the skin peels away, as reported in the Blagojevich case—the dermis and nail beds emerging underneath were interpreted as "new skin" and "new nails".[128]
+
+It has also been hypothesized that vampire legends were influenced by individuals being buried alive because of shortcomings in the medical knowledge of the time. In some cases in which people reported sounds emanating from a specific coffin, it was later dug up and fingernail marks were discovered on the inside from the victim trying to escape. In other cases the person would hit their heads, noses or faces and it would appear that they had been "feeding".[129] A problem with this theory is the question of how people presumably buried alive managed to stay alive for any extended period without food, water or fresh air. An alternate explanation for noise is the bubbling of escaping gases from natural decomposition of bodies.[130] Another likely cause of disordered tombs is grave robbery.[131]
+
+Folkloric vampirism has been associated with clusters of deaths from unidentifiable or mysterious illnesses, usually within the same family or the same small community.[96] The epidemic allusion is obvious in the classical cases of Petar Blagojevich and Arnold Paole, and even more so in the case of Mercy Brown and in the vampire beliefs of New England generally, where a specific disease, tuberculosis, was associated with outbreaks of vampirism. As with the pneumonic form of bubonic plague, it was associated with breakdown of lung tissue which would cause blood to appear at the lips.[132]
+
+In 1985 biochemist David Dolphin proposed a link between the rare blood disorder porphyria and vampire folklore. Noting that the condition is treated by intravenous haem, he suggested that the consumption of large amounts of blood may result in haem being transported somehow across the stomach wall and into the bloodstream. Thus vampires were merely sufferers of porphyria seeking to replace haem and alleviate their symptoms.[133]
+
+The theory has been rebuffed medically as suggestions that porphyria sufferers crave the haem in human blood, or that the consumption of blood might ease the symptoms of porphyria, are based on a misunderstanding of the disease. Furthermore, Dolphin was noted to have confused fictional (bloodsucking) vampires with those of folklore, many of whom were not noted to drink blood.[134] Similarly, a parallel is made between sensitivity to sunlight by sufferers, yet this was associated with fictional and not folkloric vampires. In any case, Dolphin did not go on to publish his work more widely.[135] Despite being dismissed by experts, the link gained media attention[136] and entered popular modern folklore.[137]
+
+Rabies has been linked with vampire folklore. Dr Juan Gómez-Alonso, a neurologist at Xeral Hospital in Vigo, Spain, examined this possibility in a report in Neurology. The susceptibility to garlic and light could be due to hypersensitivity, which is a symptom of rabies. The disease can also affect portions of the brain that could lead to disturbance of normal sleep patterns (thus becoming nocturnal) and hypersexuality. Legend once said a man was not rabid if he could look at his own reflection (an allusion to the legend that vampires have no reflection). Wolves and bats, which are often associated with vampires, can be carriers of rabies. The disease can also lead to a drive to bite others and to a bloody frothing at the mouth.[138][139]
+
+In his 1931 treatise On the Nightmare, Welsh psychoanalyst Ernest Jones asserted that vampires are symbolic of several unconscious drives and defence mechanisms. Emotions such as love, guilt, and hate fuel the idea of the return of the dead to the grave. Desiring a reunion with loved ones, mourners may project the idea that the recently dead must in return yearn the same. From this arises the belief that folkloric vampires and revenants visit relatives, particularly their spouses, first.[140]
+
+In cases where there was unconscious guilt associated with the relationship, the wish for reunion may be subverted by anxiety. This may lead to repression, which Sigmund Freud had linked with the development of morbid dread.[141] Jones surmised in this case the original wish of a (sexual) reunion may be drastically changed: desire is replaced by fear; love is replaced by sadism, and the object or loved one is replaced by an unknown entity. The sexual aspect may or may not be present.[142] Some modern critics have proposed a simpler theory: People identify with immortal vampires because, by so doing, they overcome, or at least temporarily escape from, their fear of dying.[143]
+
+The innate sexuality of bloodsucking can be seen in its intrinsic connection with cannibalism and a folkloric one with incubus-like behaviour. Many legends report various beings draining other fluids from victims, an unconscious association with semen being obvious. Finally Jones notes that when more normal aspects of sexuality are repressed, regressed forms may be expressed, in particular sadism; he felt that oral sadism is integral in vampiric behaviour.[144]
+
+The reinvention of the vampire myth in the modern era is not without political overtones.[145] The aristocratic Count Dracula, alone in his castle apart from a few demented retainers, appearing only at night to feed on his peasantry, is symbolic of the parasitic ancien régime. In his entry for "Vampires" in the Dictionnaire philosophique (1764), Voltaire notices how the mid-18th century coincided with the decline of the folkloric belief in the existence of vampires but that now "there were stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight; but they were not dead, though corrupted. These true suckers lived not in cemeteries, but in very agreeable palaces".[146]
+
+Marx defined capital as "dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks".[147] Werner Herzog, in his Nosferatu the Vampyre, gives this political interpretation an extra ironic twist when protagonist Jonathon Harker, a middle-class solicitor, becomes the next vampire; in this way the capitalist bourgeois becomes the next parasitic class.[148]
+
+A number of murderers have performed seemingly vampiric rituals upon their victims. Serial killers Peter Kürten and Richard Trenton Chase were both called "vampires" in the tabloids after they were discovered drinking the blood of the people they murdered. Similarly, in 1932, an unsolved murder case in Stockholm, Sweden was nicknamed the "Vampire murder", because of the circumstances of the victim's death.[149] The late-16th-century Hungarian countess and mass murderess Elizabeth Báthory became particularly infamous in later centuries' works, which depicted her bathing in her victims' blood in order to retain beauty or youth.[150]
+
+Vampire lifestyle is a term for a contemporary subculture of people, largely within the Goth subculture, who consume the blood of others as a pastime; drawing from the rich recent history of popular culture related to cult symbolism, horror films, the fiction of Anne Rice, and the styles of Victorian England.[151] Active vampirism within the vampire subculture includes both blood-related vampirism, commonly referred to as sanguine vampirism, and psychic vampirism, or supposed feeding from pranic energy.[120][152]
+
+Although many cultures have stories about them, vampire bats have only recently become an integral part of the traditional vampire lore. Vampire bats were integrated into vampire folklore after they were discovered on the South American mainland in the 16th century.[153] There are no vampire bats in Europe, but bats and owls have long been associated with the supernatural and omens, mainly because of their nocturnal habits,[153][154] and in modern English heraldic tradition, a bat means "Awareness of the powers of darkness and chaos".[155]
+
+The three species of vampire bats are all endemic to Latin America, and there is no evidence to suggest that they had any Old World relatives within human memory. It is therefore impossible that the folkloric vampire represents a distorted presentation or memory of the vampire bat. The bats were named after the folkloric vampire rather than vice versa; the Oxford English Dictionary records their folkloric use in English from 1734 and the zoological not until 1774. The vampire bat's bite is usually not harmful to a person, but the bat has been known to actively feed on humans and large prey such as cattle and often leaves the trademark, two-prong bite mark on its victim's skin.[153]
+
+The literary Dracula transforms into a bat several times in the novel, and vampire bats themselves are mentioned twice in it. The 1927 stage production of Dracula followed the novel in having Dracula turn into a bat, as did the film, where Béla Lugosi would transform into a bat.[153] The bat transformation scene was used again by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1943's Son of Dracula.[156]
+
+The vampire is now a fixture in popular fiction. Such fiction began with 18th-century poetry and continued with 19th-century short stories, the first and most influential of which was John Polidori's "The Vampyre" (1819), featuring the vampire Lord Ruthven.[157] Lord Ruthven's exploits were further explored in a series of vampire plays in which he was the antihero. The vampire theme continued in penny dreadful serial publications such as Varney the Vampire (1847) and culminated in the pre-eminent vampire novel in history: Dracula by Bram Stoker, published in 1897.[158]
+
+Over time, some attributes now regarded as integral became incorporated into the vampire's profile: fangs and vulnerability to sunlight appeared over the course of the 19th century, with Varney the Vampire and Count Dracula both bearing protruding teeth,[159] and Murnau's Nosferatu (1922) fearing daylight.[160] The cloak appeared in stage productions of the 1920s, with a high collar introduced by playwright Hamilton Deane to help Dracula 'vanish' on stage.[161] Lord Ruthven and Varney were able to be healed by moonlight, although no account of this is known in traditional folklore.[162] Implied though not often explicitly documented in folklore, immortality is one attribute which features heavily in vampire film and literature. Much is made of the price of eternal life, namely the incessant need for blood of former equals.[163]
+
+The vampire or revenant first appeared in poems such as The Vampire (1748) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder, Lenore (1773) by Gottfried August Bürger, Die Braut von Corinth (The Bride of Corinth) (1797) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Robert Southey's Thalaba the Destroyer (1801), John Stagg's "The Vampyre" (1810), Percy Bysshe Shelley's "The Spectral Horseman" (1810) ("Nor a yelling vampire reeking with gore") and "Ballad" in St. Irvyne (1811) about a reanimated corpse, Sister Rosa, Samuel Taylor Coleridge's unfinished Christabel and Lord Byron's The Giaour.[164]
+
+Byron was also credited with the first prose fiction piece concerned with vampires: "The Vampyre" (1819). This was in reality authored by Byron's personal physician, John Polidori, who adapted an enigmatic fragmentary tale of his illustrious patient, "Fragment of a Novel" (1819), also known as "The Burial: A Fragment".[18][158] Byron's own dominating personality, mediated by his lover Lady Caroline Lamb in her unflattering roman-a-clef Glenarvon (a Gothic fantasia based on Byron's wild life), was used as a model for Polidori's undead protagonist Lord Ruthven. The Vampyre was highly successful and the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century.[165]
+
+Varney the Vampire was a popular landmark mid-Victorian era gothic horror story by James Malcolm Rymer and Thomas Peckett Prest, which first appeared from 1845 to 1847 in a series of pamphlets generally referred to as penny dreadfuls because of their inexpensive price and typically gruesome contents.[157] The story was published in book form in 1847 and runs to 868 double-columned pages. It has a distinctly suspenseful style, using vivid imagery to describe the horrifying exploits of Varney.[162] Another important addition to the genre was Sheridan Le Fanu's lesbian vampire story Carmilla (1871). Like Varney before her, the vampiress Carmilla is portrayed in a somewhat sympathetic light as the compulsion of her condition is highlighted.[166]
+
+No effort to depict vampires in popular fiction was as influential or as definitive as Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897).[167] Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease of contagious demonic possession, with its undertones of sex, blood and death, struck a chord in Victorian Europe where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. The vampiric traits described in Stoker's work merged with and dominated folkloric tradition, eventually evolving into the modern fictional vampire.[157]
+
+Drawing on past works such as The Vampyre and Carmilla, Stoker began to research his new book in the late 19th century, reading works such as The Land Beyond the Forest (1888) by Emily Gerard and other books about Transylvania and vampires. In London, a colleague mentioned to him the story of Vlad Ţepeş, the "real-life Dracula", and Stoker immediately incorporated this story into his book. The first chapter of the book was omitted when it was published in 1897, but it was released in 1914 as "Dracula's Guest".[168] Many experts believe, this deleted opening was based on the Austrian princess Eleonore von Schwarzenberg.[169]
+
+The latter part of the 20th century saw the rise of multi-volume vampire epics. The first of these was Gothic romance writer Marilyn Ross's Barnabas Collins series (1966–71), loosely based on the contemporary American TV series Dark Shadows. It also set the trend for seeing vampires as poetic tragic heroes rather than as the more traditional embodiment of evil. This formula was followed in novelist Anne Rice's highly popular and influential Vampire Chronicles (1976–2003).[170]
+
+The 21st century brought more examples of vampire fiction, such as J. R. Ward's Black Dagger Brotherhood series, and other highly popular vampire books which appeal to teenagers and young adults. Such vampiric paranormal romance novels and allied vampiric chick-lit and vampiric occult detective stories are a remarkably popular and ever-expanding contemporary publishing phenomenon.[171] L. A. Banks' The Vampire Huntress Legend Series, Laurell K. Hamilton's erotic Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter series, and Kim Harrison's The Hollows series, portray the vampire in a variety of new perspectives, some of them unrelated to the original legends. Vampires in the Twilight series (2005–2008) by Stephenie Meyer ignore the effects of garlic and crosses and are not harmed by sunlight, although it does reveal their supernatural status.[172] Richelle Mead further deviates from traditional vampires in her ''Vampire Academy'' series (2007–present), basing the novels on Romanian lore with two races of vampires, one good and one evil, as well as half-vampires.[173]
+
+Considered one of the preeminent figures of the classic horror film, the vampire has proven to be a rich subject for the film and gaming industries. Dracula is a major character in more films than any other but Sherlock Holmes, and many early films were either based on the novel Dracula or closely derived from it. These included the 1922 German silent film Nosferatu, directed by F. W. Murnau and featuring the first film portrayal of Dracula—although names and characters were intended to mimic Dracula's, Murnau could not obtain permission to do so from Stoker's widow, and had to alter many aspects of the story for the film. Universal's Dracula (1931), starring Béla Lugosi as the Count, was the first talking film to portray Dracula. The decade saw several more vampire films, most notably Dracula's Daughter in 1936.[174]
+
+The legend of the vampire continued through the film industry when Dracula was reincarnated in the pertinent Hammer Horror series of films, starring Christopher Lee as the Count. The successful 1958 Dracula starring Lee was followed by seven sequels. Lee returned as Dracula in all but two of these and became well known in the role.[175] By the 1970s, vampires in films had diversified with works such as Count Yorga, Vampire (1970), an African Count in 1972's Blacula, the BBC's Count Dracula featuring French actor Louis Jourdan as Dracula and Frank Finlay as Abraham Van Helsing, and a Nosferatu-like vampire in 1979's Salem's Lot, and a remake of Nosferatu itself, titled Nosferatu the Vampyre with Klaus Kinski the same year. Several films featured the characterization of a female, often lesbian, vampire such as Hammer Horror's The Vampire Lovers (1970), based on Carmilla, though the plotlines still revolved around a central evil vampire character.[175]
+
+The Gothic soap opera Dark Shadows, on American television from 1966 to 1971 and produced by Dan Curtis, featured the vampire character Barnabas Collins, portrayed by Canadian actor Jonathan Frid, which proved partly responsible for making the series one of the most popular of its type, amassing a total of 1,225 episodes in its nearly five-year run. The pilot for the later Dan Curtis 1972 television series Kolchak: The Night Stalker revolved around reporter Carl Kolchak hunting a vampire on the Las Vegas Strip. Later films showed more diversity in plotline, with some focusing on the vampire-hunter, such as Blade in the Marvel Comics' Blade films and the film Buffy the Vampire Slayer.[157] Buffy, released in 1992, foreshadowed a vampiric presence on television, with its adaptation to a long-running hit series of the same name and its spin-off Angel. Still others showed the vampire as a protagonist, such as 1983's The Hunger, 1994's Interview with the Vampire and its indirect sequel of sorts Queen of the Damned, and the 2007 series Moonlight. The 1992 film Bram Stoker's Dracula became the then-highest grossing vampire film ever.[176]
+
+In his documentary "Vampire Princess" (2007) the investigative Austrian author and director Klaus T. Steindl discovered in 2007 the historical inspiration for Bram Stoker's legendary Dracula character (see also Literature - Bram Stoker: Dracula's Guest[168]): "Many experts believe, the deleted opening was actually based on a woman. Archaeologists, historians, and forensic scientists revisit the days of vampire hysteria in the eighteenth-century Czech Republic and re-open the unholy grave of dark princess Eleonore von Schwarzenberg. They uncover her story, once buried and long forgotten, now raised from the dead."[169]
+
+This increase of interest in vampiric plotlines led to the vampire being depicted in films such as Underworld and Van Helsing, the Russian Night Watch and a TV miniseries remake of Salem's Lot, both from 2004. The series Blood Ties premiered on Lifetime Television in 2007, featuring a character portrayed as Henry Fitzroy, an illegitimate-son-of-Henry-VIII-of-England-turned-vampire, in modern-day Toronto, with a female former Toronto detective in the starring role. A 2008 series from HBO, entitled True Blood, gives a Southern Gothic take on the vampire theme.[172]
+
+In 2008 the BBC Three series Being Human became popular in Britain. It featured an unconventional trio of a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost who are sharing a flat in Bristol.[177][178] Another popular vampire-related show is CW's The Vampire Diaries. The continuing popularity of the vampire theme has been ascribed to a combination of two factors: the representation of sexuality and the perennial dread of mortality.[179]
+
+The role-playing game Vampire: The Masquerade has been influential upon modern vampire fiction and elements of its terminology, such as embrace and sire, appear in contemporary fiction.[157] Popular video games about vampires include Castlevania, which is an extension of the original Bram Stoker novel Dracula, and Legacy of Kain.[180] The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons features vampires.[181]
+
+Notes
+
+Bibliography

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+
+
+Vancouver (/vænˈkuːvər/ (listen)) is a major city in western Canada, located in the Lower Mainland region of British Columbia. As the most populous city in the province, the 2016 census recorded 631,486 people in the city, up from 603,502 in 2011. The Greater Vancouver area had a population of 2,463,431 in 2016, making it the third-largest metropolitan area in Canada. Vancouver has the highest population density in Canada, with over 5,400 people per square kilometre,[5][6] which makes it the fifth-most densely populated city with over 250,000 residents in North America, behind New York City, Guadalajara, San Francisco,[7] and Mexico City. Vancouver is one of the most ethnically and linguistically diverse cities in Canada: 52% of its residents are not native English speakers,[8][9] 48.9% are native speakers of neither English nor French, and 50.6% of residents belong to visible minority groups.[10]
+
+Vancouver is consistently named as one of the top five worldwide cities for livability and quality of life,[11][12][13] and the Economist Intelligence Unit acknowledged it as the first city ranked among the top ten of the world's most well-living cities[14] for ten consecutive years.[13] In 2011, the city planned to become the greenest city in the world by 2020. Vancouverism is the city's urban planning design philosophy.
+
+Vancouver was originally named Gastown and began as a settlement which grew around the site of a makeshift tavern on the western edges of Hastings Mill built on July 1, 1867, and owned by proprietor Gassy Jack. The original site is marked by the Gastown steam clock. Gastown then formally registered as a townsite dubbed Granville, Burrard Inlet. The city was renamed "Vancouver" in 1886, through a deal with the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR). The Canadian Pacific transcontinental railway was extended to the city by 1887. The city's large natural seaport on the Pacific Ocean became a vital link in the trade between Asia-Pacific, East Asia, Europe, and Eastern Canada.[15][16]
+
+Vancouver has hosted many international conferences and events, including the 1954 Commonwealth Games, UN Habitat I, Expo 86, APEC Canada 1997, the World Police and Fire Games in 1989 and 2009; several matches of 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup including the finals at BC Place in Downtown Vancouver,[17] and the 2010 Winter Olympics and Paralympics which were held in Vancouver and Whistler, a resort community 125 km (78 mi) north of the city.[18] In 1969, Greenpeace was founded in Vancouver. The city became the permanent home to TED conferences in 2014.
+
+As of 2016[update], Port Metro Vancouver is the fourth-largest port by tonnage in the Americas,[19] the busiest and largest in Canada, and the most diversified port in North America.[20] While forestry remains its largest industry, Vancouver is well known as an urban centre surrounded by nature, making tourism its second-largest industry.[21] Major film production studios in Vancouver and nearby Burnaby have turned Greater Vancouver and nearby areas into one of the largest film production centres in North America,[22][23] earning it the nickname "Hollywood North".[24][25][26]
+
+The city takes its name from George Vancouver, who explored the inner harbour of Burrard Inlet in 1792 and gave various places British names.[27] The family name "Vancouver" itself originates from the Dutch "Van Coevorden", denoting somebody from the city of Coevorden, Netherlands. The explorer's ancestors came to England "from Coevorden", which is the origin of the name that eventually became "Vancouver".[28][29]
+
+Archaeological records indicate that Aboriginal people were already living in the "Vancouver" area from 8,000 to 10,000 years ago.[30][31] The city is located in the traditional and presently unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh (Burrard) peoples of the Coast Salish group.[32] They had villages in various parts of present-day Vancouver, such as Stanley Park, False Creek, Kitsilano, Point Grey and near the mouth of the Fraser River.[31] The region where Vancouver is currently located was referred to in contemporary Halkomelem as Lhq’á:lets,[33][34] meaning "wide at the bottom/end".
+
+Europeans became acquainted with the area of the future Vancouver when José María Narváez of Spain explored the coast of present-day Point Grey and parts of Burrard Inlet in 1791—although one author contends that Francis Drake may have visited the area in 1579.[35]
+
+The explorer and North West Company trader Simon Fraser and his crew became the first-known Europeans to set foot on the site of the present-day city. In 1808, they travelled from the east down the Fraser River, perhaps as far as Point Grey.[36]
+
+The Fraser Gold Rush of 1858 brought over 25,000 men, mainly from California, to nearby New Westminster (founded February 14, 1859) on the Fraser River, on their way to the Fraser Canyon, bypassing what would become Vancouver.[37][38][39] Vancouver is among British Columbia's youngest cities;[40] the first European settlement in what is now Vancouver was not until 1862 at McCleery's Farm on the Fraser River, just east of the ancient village of Musqueam in what is now Marpole. A sawmill established at Moodyville (now the City of North Vancouver) in 1863, began the city's long relationship with logging. It was quickly followed by mills owned by Captain Edward Stamp on the south shore of the inlet. Stamp, who had begun logging in the Port Alberni area, first attempted to run a mill at Brockton Point, but difficult currents and reefs forced the relocation of the operation in 1867 to a point near the foot of Dunlevy Street. This mill, known as the Hastings Mill, became the nucleus around which Vancouver formed. The mill's central role in the city waned after the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR) in the 1880s. It nevertheless remained important to the local economy until it closed in the 1920s.[41] The settlement, which came to be called Gastown, grew quickly around the original makeshift tavern established by "Gassy" Jack Deighton in 1867 on the edge of the Hastings Mill property.[40][42]
+
+In 1870, the colonial government surveyed the settlement and laid out a townsite, renamed "Granville" in honour of the then-British Secretary of State for the Colonies, Lord Granville. This site, with its natural harbour, was selected in 1884[43] as the terminus for the Canadian Pacific Railway, to the disappointment of Port Moody, New Westminster and Victoria, all of which had vied to be the railhead. A railway was among the inducements for British Columbia to join the Confederation in 1871 but the Pacific Scandal and arguments over the use of Chinese labour delayed construction until the 1880s.[44]
+
+The City of Vancouver was incorporated on April 6, 1886, the same year that the first transcontinental train arrived. CPR president William Van Horne arrived in Port Moody to establish the CPR terminus recommended by Henry John Cambie, and gave the city its name in honour of George Vancouver.[40] The Great Vancouver Fire on June 13, 1886, razed the entire city. The Vancouver Fire Department was established that year and the city quickly rebuilt.[41] Vancouver's population grew from a settlement of 1,000 people in 1881 to over 20,000 by the turn of the century and 100,000 by 1911.[45]
+
+Vancouver merchants outfitted prospectors bound for the Klondike Gold Rush in 1898.[37] One of those merchants, Charles Woodward, had opened the first Woodward's store at Abbott and Cordova Streets in 1892 and, along with Spencer's and the Hudson's Bay department stores, formed the core of the city's retail sector for decades.[46]
+
+The economy of early Vancouver was dominated by large companies such as the CPR, which fuelled economic activity and led to the rapid development of the new city;[47] in fact, the CPR was the main real estate owner and housing developer in the city. While some manufacturing did develop, including the establishment of the British Columbia Sugar Refinery by Benjamin Tingley Rogers in 1890,[48] natural resources became the basis for Vancouver's economy. The resource sector was initially based on logging and later on exports moving through the seaport, where commercial traffic constituted the largest economic sector in Vancouver by the 1930s.[49]
+
+The dominance of the economy by big business was accompanied by an often militant labour movement. The first major sympathy strike was in 1903 when railway employees struck against the CPR for union recognition. Labour leader Frank Rogers was killed by CPR police while picketing at the docks, becoming the movement's first martyr in British Columbia.[50] The rise of industrial tensions throughout the province led to Canada's first general strike in 1918, at the Cumberland coal mines on Vancouver Island.[51] Following a lull in the 1920s, the strike wave peaked in 1935 when unemployed men flooded the city to protest conditions in the relief camps run by the military in remote areas throughout the province.[52][53] After two tense months of daily and disruptive protesting, the relief camp strikers decided to take their grievances to the federal government and embarked on the On-to-Ottawa Trek,[53] but their protest was put down by force. The workers were arrested near Mission and interned in work camps for the duration of the Depression.[54]
+
+Other social movements, such as the first-wave feminist, moral reform, and temperance movements were also instrumental in Vancouver's development. Mary Ellen Smith, a Vancouver suffragist and prohibitionist, became the first woman elected to a provincial legislature in Canada in 1918.[55] Alcohol prohibition began in the First World War and lasted until 1921, when the provincial government established control over alcohol sales, a practice still in place today.[56] Canada's first drug law came about following an inquiry conducted by the federal minister of Labour and future prime minister, William Lyon Mackenzie King. King was sent to investigate damages claims resulting from a riot when the Asiatic Exclusion League led a rampage through Chinatown and Japantown. Two of the claimants were opium manufacturers, and after further investigation, King found that white women were reportedly frequenting opium dens as well as Chinese men. A federal law banning the manufacture, sale, and importation of opium for non-medicinal purposes was soon passed based on these revelations.[57] These riots, and the formation of the Asiatic Exclusion League, also act as signs of a growing fear and mistrust towards the Japanese living in Vancouver and throughout BC. These fears were exacerbated by the attack on Pearl Harbor leading to the eventual internment or deportation of all Japanese-Canadians living in the city and the province.[58] After the war, these Japanese-Canadian men and women were not allowed to return to cities like Vancouver causing areas, like the aforementioned Japantown, to cease to be ethnically Japanese areas as the communities never revived.[59]
+
+Amalgamation with Point Grey and South Vancouver gave the city its final boundaries not long before it became the third-largest metropolis in the country. As of January 1, 1929, the population of the enlarged Vancouver was 228,193.[60]
+
+Located on the Burrard Peninsula, Vancouver lies between Burrard Inlet to the north and the Fraser River to the south. The Strait of Georgia, to the west, is shielded from the Pacific Ocean by Vancouver Island. The city has an area of 114 km2 (44 sq mi), including both flat and hilly ground and is in the Pacific Time Zone (UTC−8) and the Pacific Maritime Ecozone.[61]
+
+Until the city's naming in 1885, "Vancouver" referred to Vancouver Island and it remains a common misconception that the city is located on the island.[62][63] The island and the city are both named after Royal Navy Captain George Vancouver (as is the city of Vancouver, Washington, in the United States).
+
+Vancouver has one of the largest urban parks in North America, Stanley Park, which covers 404.9 ha (1,001 acres).[64] The North Shore Mountains dominate the cityscape, and on a clear day, scenic vistas include the snow-capped volcano Mount Baker in the state of Washington to the southeast, Vancouver Island across the Strait of Georgia to the west and southwest, and Bowen Island to the northwest.[65]
+
+The vegetation in the Vancouver area was originally temperate rain forest, consisting of conifers with scattered pockets of maple and alder and large areas of swampland (even in upland areas, due to poor drainage).[66] The conifers were a typical coastal British Columbia mix of Douglas fir, western red cedar and western hemlock.[67] The area is thought to have had the largest trees of these species on the British Columbia Coast. Only in Elliott Bay, Seattle, did the size of trees rival those of Burrard Inlet and English Bay. The largest trees in Vancouver's old-growth forest were in the Gastown area, where the first logging occurred and on the southern slopes of False Creek and English Bay, especially around Jericho Beach. The forest in Stanley Park was logged between the 1860s and 1880s and evidence of old-fashioned logging techniques such as springboard notches can still be seen there.[68]
+
+Many plants and trees growing throughout Vancouver and the Lower Mainland were imported from other parts of the continent and from points across the Pacific. Examples include the monkey puzzle tree, the Japanese maple and various flowering exotics, such as magnolias, azaleas  and rhododendrons. Some species imported from harsher climates in Eastern Canada or Europe have grown to immense sizes. The native Douglas maple can also attain a tremendous size. Many of the city's streets are lined with flowering varieties of Japanese cherry trees donated from the 1930s onward by the government of Japan. These flower for several weeks in early spring each year, an occasion celebrated by the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival. Other streets are lined with flowering chestnut, horse chestnut and other decorative shade trees.[69]
+
+Vancouver is one of Canada's warmest cities in the winter. Vancouver's climate is temperate by Canadian standards and is classified as oceanic or marine west coast, (Köppen climate classification Cfb) that borders on a warm-summer Mediterranean climate (Csb). While during summer months the inland temperatures are significantly higher, Vancouver has the coolest summer average high of all major Canadian metropolitan areas. The summer months are typically dry, with an average of only one in five days during July and August receiving precipitation. In contrast, there is some precipitation during nearly half the days from November through March.[70][contradictory]
+
+Vancouver is also one of the wettest Canadian cities. However, precipitation varies throughout the metropolitan area. Annual precipitation as measured at Vancouver International Airport in Richmond averages 1,189 mm (46.8 in), compared with 1,588 mm (62.5 in) in the downtown area and 2,044 mm (80.5 in) in North Vancouver.[71][72] The daily maximum averages 22 °C (72 °F) in July and August, with highs rarely reaching 30 °C (86 °F).[73]
+
+The highest temperature ever recorded at the airport was 34.4 °C (93.9 °F) set on July 30, 2009,[74] and the highest temperature ever recorded within the city of Vancouver was 35.0 °C (95.0 °F) occurring first on July 31, 1965,[75] again on August 8, 1981,[76] and finally on May 29, 1983.[77] The coldest temperature ever recorded in the city was −17.8 °C (0.0 °F) on January 14, 1950[78] and again on December 29, 1968.[79]
+
+On average, snow falls on nine days per year, with three days receiving 5 cm (2.0 in) or more. Average yearly snowfall is 38.1 cm (15.0 in) but typically does not remain on the ground for long.[73]
+
+Winters in Greater Vancouver are the fourth-mildest of Canadian cities after nearby Victoria, Nanaimo and Duncan, all on Vancouver Island.[80] Vancouver's growing season averages 237 days, from March 18 until November 10.[73] Vancouver's 1981–2010 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone ranges from 8A to 9A depending on elevation and proximity to water.[81]
+
+
+
+As of 2011[update], Vancouver is the most densely populated city in Canada.[7] Urban planning in Vancouver is characterized by high-rise residential and mixed-use development in urban centres, as an alternative to sprawl.[96] As part of the larger Metro Vancouver region, it is influenced by the policy direction of livability as illustrated in Metro Vancouver's Regional Growth Strategy.
+
+Vancouver has been ranked one of the most livable cities in the world for more than a decade.[13] As of 2019[update], Vancouver has been ranked as having the third-highest quality of living of any city on Earth.[13] In contrast, according to Forbes, Vancouver had the fourth-most expensive real estate market in the world in 2019.[97] Vancouver has also been ranked among Canada's most expensive cities in which to live. Sales in February 2016 were 56.3% higher than the 10-year average for the month.[98][99][100] Forbes also ranked Vancouver as the tenth-cleanest city in the world in 2007.[101]
+
+Vancouver's characteristic approach to urban planning originated in the late 1950s, when city planners began to encourage the building of high-rise residential towers in Vancouver's West End,[102] subject to strict requirements for setbacks and open space to protect sight lines and preserve green space. The success of these dense but liveable neighbourhoods led to the redevelopment of urban industrial sites, such as North False Creek and Coal Harbour, beginning in the mid-1980s. The result is a compact urban core that has gained international recognition for its "high amenity and 'livable' development".[103] In 2006, the city launched a planning initiative entitled EcoDensity, with the stated goal of exploring ways in which "density, design, and land use can contribute to environmental sustainability, affordability, and livability".[104]
+
+
+
+The Vancouver Art Gallery is housed downtown in the neoclassical former courthouse built in 1906. The courthouse building was designed by Francis Rattenbury, who also designed the British Columbia Parliament Buildings and the Empress Hotel in Victoria, and the lavishly decorated second Hotel Vancouver.[105] The 556-room Hotel Vancouver, opened in 1939 and the third by that name, is across the street with its copper roof. The Gothic-style Christ Church Cathedral, across from the hotel, opened in 1894 and was declared a heritage building in 1976.
+
+There are several modern buildings in the downtown area, including the Harbour Centre, the Vancouver Law Courts and surrounding plaza known as Robson Square (designed by Arthur Erickson) and the Vancouver Library Square (designed by Moshe Safdie and DA Architects), reminiscent of the Colosseum in Rome, and the recently completed Woodward's building Redevelopment (designed by Henriquez Partners Architects).
+
+The original BC Hydro headquarters building (designed by Ron Thom and Ned Pratt) at Nelson and Burrard Streets is a modernist high-rise, now converted into the Electra condominia.[106] Also notable is the "concrete waffle" of the MacMillan Bloedel building on the north-east corner of the Georgia and Thurlow intersection.
+
+A prominent addition to the city's landscape is the giant tent-frame Canada Place (designed by Zeidler Roberts Partnership Partnership, MCMP & DA Architects), the former Canada Pavilion from the 1986 World Exposition, which includes part of the Convention Centre, the Pan-Pacific Hotel, and a cruise ship terminal. Two modern buildings that define the southern skyline away from the downtown area are City Hall and the Centennial Pavilion of Vancouver General Hospital, both designed by Townley and Matheson in 1936 and 1958, respectively.[107][108]
+
+A collection of Edwardian buildings in the city's old downtown core were, in their day, the tallest commercial buildings in the British Empire. These were, in succession, the Carter-Cotton Building (former home of The Vancouver Province newspaper), the Dominion Building (1907) and the Sun Tower (1911), the former two at Cambie and Hastings Streets and the latter at Beatty and Pender Streets.
+
+The Sun Tower's cupola was finally exceeded as the Empire's tallest commercial building by the elaborate Art Deco Marine Building in the 1920s.[109] The Marine Building is known for its elaborate ceramic tile facings and brass-gilt doors and elevators, which make it a favourite location for movie shoots.[110] Topping the list of tallest buildings in Vancouver is Living Shangri-La at 201 m (659 ft)[111] and 62 storeys. The second-tallest building in Vancouver is the Trump International Hotel and Tower at 188 m (617 ft), followed by the Private Residences at Hotel Georgia, at 156 m (512 ft). The fourth-tallest is One Wall Centre at 150 m (490 ft)[112] and 48 storeys, followed closely by the Shaw Tower at 149 m (489 ft).[112]
+
+The 2016 census recorded more than 631,000 people in the city, making it the eighth-largest among Canadian cities. More specifically, Vancouver is the fourth-largest in Western Canada after Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg.[113] The metropolitan area referred to as Greater Vancouver, with more than 2.4 million residents, is the third-most populous metropolitan area in the country[113] and the most populous in Western Canada. The larger Lower Mainland-Southwest economic region (which includes also the Squamish-Lillooet, Fraser Valley, and Sunshine Coast Regional District) has a population of over 2.93 million.[114] With 5,249 people per square km (13,590 per sq mi), the City of Vancouver is the most densely populated of Canadian municipalities having more than 5,000 residents.[7] Approximately 74 percent of the people living in Metro Vancouver live outside the city.
+
+Vancouver has been called a "city of neighbourhoods". Each neighbourhood in Vancouver has a distinct character and ethnic mix.[115] People of English, Scottish, and Irish origins were historically the largest ethnic groups in the city,[116] and elements of British society and culture are still visible in some areas, particularly South Granville and Kerrisdale. Germans are the next-largest European ethnic group in Vancouver and were a leading force in the city's society and economy until the rise of anti-German sentiment with the outbreak of World War I in 1914.[16] Today the Chinese are the largest visible ethnic group in the city, with a diverse Chinese-speaking community, and several dialects, including Cantonese and Mandarin.[41][117] Neighbourhoods with distinct ethnic commercial areas include Chinatown, Punjabi Market, Little Italy, Greektown, and (formerly) Japantown.
+
+Since the 1980s, immigration increased substantially, making the city more ethnically and linguistically diverse; 53% of Vancouver's residents do not speak English as their first language.[118] Almost 30% of the city's inhabitants are of Chinese heritage.[119] In the 1980s, an influx of immigrants from Hong Kong in anticipation of the transfer of sovereignty from the United Kingdom to China, combined with an increase in immigrants from mainland China and previous immigrants from Taiwan, established in Vancouver one of the highest concentrations of ethnic Chinese residents in North America.[120] This arrival of Asian immigrants continued a tradition of immigration from around the world that had established Vancouver as the second-most popular destination for immigrants in Canada after Toronto.[121] Other significant Asian ethnic groups in Vancouver include South Asians (6.0%), Filipinos (5.9%), Japanese (1.7%), Korean (1.5%), West Asians (1.4%), as well as sizeable communities of Vietnamese, Indonesians, and Cambodians.[122] Despite increases in Latin American immigration to Vancouver in the 1980s and 1990s, recent immigration has been comparatively low, and African immigration has been similarly stagnant (3.6% and 3.3% of total immigrant population, respectively).[123] The black population of Vancouver is rather scant in comparison to other Canadian major cities, making up 0.9% of the city. Hogan's Alley, a small area adjacent to Chinatown, just off Main Street at Prior, was once home to a significant black community. The neighbourhood of Strathcona was the core of the city's Jewish community.[124][125] In 1981, less than 7% of the population belonged to a visible minority group.[126] By 2016, this proportion had grown to 52%.[127]
+
+Prior to the Hong Kong diaspora of the 1990s, the largest non-British ethnic groups in the city were Irish and German, followed by Scandinavian, Italian, Ukrainian and Chinese. From the mid-1950s until the 1980s, many Portuguese immigrants came to Vancouver and the city had the third-largest Portuguese population in Canada in 2001.[128] Eastern Europeans, including Russians, Czechs, Poles, Romanians and Hungarians began immigrating after the Soviet takeover of Eastern Europe after World War II.[16] Greek immigration increased in the late 1960s and early '70s, with most settling in the Kitsilano area. Vancouver also has a significant aboriginal community of about 11,000 people.[129]
+
+Vancouver has a large LGBT community,[130] with a recognized gay enclave focused in the West End neighbourhood of the downtown core, particularly along Davie Street, officially designated as Davie Village,[131] though the gay community is omnipresent throughout West End and Yaletown areas. Vancouver is host to one of the country's largest annual LGBT pride parades.[132]
+
+Pie chart of the ethnic breakdown of Vancouver from the 2016 census
+
+With its location on the Pacific Rim and at the western terminus of Canada's transcontinental highway and rail routes, Vancouver is one of the nation's largest industrial centres.[65] Port Metro Vancouver, Canada's largest and most diversified port, does more than C$172 billion in trade with over 160 different trading economies annually. Port activities generate $9.7 billion in gross domestic product and $20.3 billion in economic output.[136] Vancouver is also the headquarters of forest product and mining companies. In recent years, Vancouver has become a centre for software development, biotechnology, aerospace, video game development, animation studios and television production and film industry.[137] Vancouver hosts approximately 65 movies and 55 TV series annually and is the 3rd largest film & TV production centre in North America, supporting 20,000 jobs.[138] The city's strong focus on lifestyle and health culture also makes it a hub for many lifestyle brands with Lululemon, Arc'teryx, Kit and Ace, Mountain Equipment Co-op, Herschel Supply Co., Aritzia, Reigning Champ, and Nature's Path Foods all founded and headquartered in Vancouver. Vancouver was also the birthplace of 1-800-GOT-JUNK? and Western Canada's largest online-only publication, Daily Hive.[139]
+
+Vancouver's scenic location makes it a major tourist destination. Over 10.3 million people visited Vancouver in 2017. Annually, tourism contributes approximately $4.8 billion to the Metro Vancouver economy and supports over 70,000 jobs.[140] Many visit to see the city's gardens, Stanley Park, Queen Elizabeth Park, VanDusen Botanical Garden and the mountains, ocean, forest and parklands which surround the city. Each year over a million people pass through Vancouver on cruise ship vacations, often bound for Alaska.[137]
+
+Vancouver is the most stressed city in the spectrum of affordability of housing in Canada.[141] In 2012, Vancouver was ranked by Demographia as the second-most unaffordable city in the world, rated as even more severely unaffordable in 2012 than in 2011.[142][143][144][145] The city has adopted various strategies to reduce housing costs, including cooperative housing, legalized secondary suites, increased density and smart growth. As of April 2010, the average two-level home in Vancouver sold for a record high of $987,500, compared with the Canadian average of $365,141.[146] A factor explaining the high property prices may be policies by the Canadian government which permit snow washing, which allows foreigners to buy property in Canada while shielding their identities from tax authorities, making real estate transactions an effective way to conduct money laundering.[147]
+
+Since the 1990s, development of high-rise condominia in the downtown peninsula has been financed, in part, by an inflow of capital from Hong Kong immigrants due to the former colony's 1997 handover to China.[148] Such development has clustered in the Yaletown and Coal Harbour districts and around many of the SkyTrain stations to the east of the downtown.[137] The city's selection to co-host the 2010 Winter Olympics was also a major influence on economic development. Concern was expressed that Vancouver's increasing homelessness problem would be exacerbated by the Olympics because owners of single room occupancy hotels, which house many of the city's lowest income residents, converted their properties to attract higher income residents and tourists.[149] Another significant international event held in Vancouver, the 1986 World Exposition, received over 20 million visitors and added $3.7 billion to the Canadian economy.[150] Some still-standing Vancouver landmarks, including the SkyTrain public transit system and Canada Place, were built as part of the exposition.[150]
+
+Vancouver, unlike other British Columbia municipalities, is incorporated under the Vancouver Charter.[151] The legislation, passed in 1953, supersedes the Vancouver Incorporation Act, 1921 and grants the city more and different powers than other communities possess under BC's Municipalities Act.
+
+The civic government was dominated by the centre-right Non-Partisan Association (NPA) since World War II, albeit with some significant centre-left interludes until 2008.[41] The NPA fractured over the issue of drug policy in 2002, facilitating a landslide victory for the Coalition of Progressive Electors (COPE) on a harm reduction platform. Subsequently, North America's only legal safe injection site was opened for the significant number of intravenous heroin users in the city.[152]
+
+Vancouver is governed by the eleven-member Vancouver City Council, a nine-member School Board, and a seven-member Park Board, all of whom serve four-year terms. Unusually for a city of Vancouver's size, all municipal elections are on an at-large basis. Historically, in all levels of government, the more affluent west side of Vancouver has voted along conservative or liberal lines while the eastern side of the city has voted along left-wing lines.[153] This was reaffirmed with the results of the 2005 provincial election and the 2006 federal election.
+
+Though polarized, a political consensus has emerged in Vancouver around a number of issues. Protection of urban parks, a focus on the development of rapid transit as opposed to a freeway system, a harm-reduction approach to illegal drug use, and a general concern about community-based development are examples of policies that have come to have broad support across the political spectrum in Vancouver.[citation needed]
+
+In the 2008 Municipal Election campaign, NPA incumbent mayor Sam Sullivan was ousted as mayoral candidate by the party in a close vote, which instated Peter Ladner as the new mayoral candidate for the NPA. Gregor Robertson, a former MLA for Vancouver-Fairview and head of Happy Planet, was the mayoral candidate for Vision Vancouver, the other main contender. Vision Vancouver candidate Gregor Robertson defeated Ladner by a considerable margin, nearing 20,000 votes. The balance of power was significantly shifted to Vision Vancouver, which held seven of the 10 spots for councillor. Of the remaining three, COPE received two and the NPA one. For park commissioner, four spots went to Vision Vancouver, one to the Green Party, one to COPE, and one to NPA. For school trustee, there were four Vision Vancouver seats, three COPE seats, and two NPA seats.[154] In the 2018 Vancouver municipal election, independent Kennedy Stewart was elected mayor of Vancouver.[155]
+
+Vancouver's budget consists of a capital and an operating component. The 2017 operating budget was $1.323 billion, while the 2018 operating budget is $1.407 billion (a year over year increase of 6.4%). The capital budget for 2018 is unchanged from 2017 and stands at $426.4 million.[156] Budget increases are largely funded through increases in property taxes and community amenity contributions imposed in exchange for increases in allowable density as part of the construction permitting process. Utility fees and other user fees have also been increased, but represent a comparatively small portion of Vancouver's overall budget.
+
+Vancouver is a member municipality of Metro Vancouver, a regional government. In total there are 22 municipalities, one electoral area and one treaty First Nation comprising Metro Vancouver,[157] the regional government whose seat is in Burnaby. While each member of Metro Vancouver has its own separate local governing body, Metro Vancouver oversees common services and planning functions within the area such as providing drinking water; operating sewage and solid waste handling; maintaining regional parks; overseeing air quality, greenhouse gases and ecological health; and providing a strategy for regional growth and land use.
+
+In the Legislative Assembly of British Columbia, Vancouver is represented by 11 Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLAs). As of July 2017, there are three seats held by the BC Liberal Party and eight by the BC New Democratic Party.[158]
+
+In the House of Commons of Canada, Vancouver is represented by six members of Parliament. In the most recent 2015 federal election, the Liberals retained two (Vancouver Quadra and Vancouver Centre) seats and gained another two, while the NDP held on to the two seats (Vancouver East and Vancouver Kingsway), they held at dissolution while the Conservatives were shut out of the city. One current Cabinet minister hails from the city – Vancouver South MP Harjit Sajjan is Minister of National Defence.
+
+Vancouver operates the Vancouver Police Department, with 1,327 sworn members and an operating budget of $316.5 million in 2018.[159][160] Over 19% of the city's budget was spent on police protection in 2018.[160]
+
+The Vancouver Police Department's operational divisions include a bicycle squad, a marine squad, and a dog squad. It also has a mounted squad, used primarily to patrol Stanley Park and occasionally the Downtown Eastside and West End, as well as for crowd control.[161] The police work in conjunction with civilian and volunteer run Community Police Centres.[162] In 2006, the police department established its own Counter Terrorism Unit. In 2005, a new transit police force, the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority Police Service (now South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority Police Service), was established with full police powers.
+
+Before the legalization of marijuana, Vancouver police generally did not arrest people for possessing small amounts of marijuana.[163] In 2000 the Vancouver Police Department established a specialized drug squad, "Growbusters", to carry out an aggressive campaign against the city's estimated 4,000 hydroponic marijuana growing operations (or grow-ops) in residential areas.[164] As with other law enforcement campaigns targeting marijuana this initiative has been sharply criticized.[165]
+
+As of 2018[update], Vancouver had the ninth-highest crime rate, dropping 5 spots since 2005, among Canada's 35 census metropolitan areas.[166] However, as with other Canadian cities, the overall crime rate has been falling "dramatically".[167] The rate of firearm related violence dropped from 45.3 per 100,000 in 2006, the highest of any major metropolitan region in Canada at that time, to 16.2 in 2017.[168][169] A series of gang-related incidents in early 2009 escalated into what police have dubbed a gang war. Vancouver plays host to special events such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference, the Clinton-Yeltsin Summit, or the Symphony of Fire fireworks show that require significant policing. The 1994 Stanley Cup riot overwhelmed police and injured as many as 200 people.[170] A second riot took place following the 2011 Stanley Cup Finals.[171]
+
+Many streets in Downtown Vancouver are plagued with litter and discarded hypodermic needles from the city's homeless population, which in 2019 was estimated at 2,223.[172][173] To reduce the public health risk from discarded hypodermic needles, the city runs a continuous collection effort, recovering approximately 1000 needles per day from public spaces.[174] According to Vancouver Coastal Health, the regional health authority and a distributor of clean needles to intravenous drug users, there has never been a documented case of disease transmission from an accidental needlestick.[175]
+
+Jericho Beach in Vancouver is the location of the headquarters of 39 Canadian Brigade Group of the Canadian Army.[176] Local primary reserve units include The Seaforth Highlanders of Canada and The British Columbia Regiment (Duke of Connaught's Own), based at the Seaforth Armoury and the Beatty Street Drill Hall, respectively, and the 15th Field Regiment, Royal Canadian Artillery.[177] The Naval Reserve Unit HMCS Discovery is based on Deadman's Island in Stanley Park.[178] RCAF Station Jericho Beach, the first air base in Western Canada, was taken over by the Canadian Army in 1947 when sea planes were replaced by long-range aircraft. Most of the base facilities were transferred to the City of Vancouver in 1969 and the area renamed "Jericho Park".[179]
+
+The Vancouver School Board enrolls more than 110,000 students in its elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions, making it the second-largest school district in the province.[180][181] The district administers about 76 elementary schools, 17 elementary annexes, 18 secondary schools, 7 adult education centres, 2 Vancouver Learning Network schools,[182] which include 18 French immersion, a Mandarin bilingual, a fine arts, gifted, and Montessori schools.[180] The Conseil scolaire francophone de la Colombie-Britannique operates three Francophone schools in that city: the primary schools école Rose-des-vents and école Anne-Hébert as well as the école secondaire Jules-Verne.[183] More than 46 independent schools of a wide variety are also eligible for partial provincial funding and educate approximately 10% of pupils in the city.[184]
+
+There are five public universities in the Greater Vancouver area, the largest being the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Simon Fraser University (SFU), with a combined enrolment of more than 90,000 undergraduates, graduates, and professional students in 2008.[185][186] UBC often ranks among the 40 best universities in the world and is among the 20 best public universities.[187] SFU consistently ranks as the top comprehensive university in Canada and is among the 200 best universities in the world.[188] UBC's main campus is located on the tip of Burrard Peninsula, just west of the University Endowment Lands with the city-proper adjacent to the east. SFU's main campus is in Burnaby. Both also maintain campuses in Downtown Vancouver and Surrey.
+
+The other public universities in the metropolitan area around Vancouver are Capilano University in North Vancouver, Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and Kwantlen Polytechnic University whose four campuses are all outside the city proper. Six private institutions also operate in the region: Trinity Western University in Langley, UOPX Canada in Burnaby, and University Canada West, NYIT Canada, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Columbia College, and Sprott Shaw College, all in Vancouver.
+
+Vancouver Community College and Langara College are publicly funded college-level institutions in Vancouver, as is Douglas College with three campuses outside the city. The British Columbia Institute of Technology in Burnaby provides polytechnic education. These are augmented by private and vocational institutions and other colleges in the surrounding areas of Metro Vancouver that provide career, trade, and university-transfer programs, while the Vancouver Film School provides one-year programs in film production and video game design.[189][190]
+
+International students and English as a Second Language (ESL) students have been significant in the enrolment of these public and private institutions. For the 2008–2009 school year, 53% of Vancouver School Board's students spoke a language other than English at home.[181]
+
+Prominent theatre companies in Vancouver include the Arts Club Theatre Company on Granville Island, and Bard on the Beach. Smaller companies include Touchstone Theatre, and Studio 58. The Cultch, The Firehall Arts Centre, United Players, Pacific and Metro Theatres, all run continuous theatre seasons. Theatre Under the Stars produces shows in the summer at Malkin Bowl in Stanley Park. Annual festivals that are held in Vancouver include the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival in January and the Vancouver Fringe Festival in September.
+
+The Vancouver Playhouse Theatre Company operated for fifty years, ending in March 2012.[191]
+
+The Scotiabank Dance Centre, a converted bank building on the corner of Davie and Granville, functions as a gathering place and performance venue for Vancouver-based dancers and choreographers. Dances for a Small Stage is a semi-annual dance festival.
+
+The Vancouver International Film Festival, which runs for two weeks each September, shows over 350 films and is one of the larger film festivals in North America. The Vancouver International Film Centre venue, the Vancity Theatre, runs independent non-commercial films throughout the rest of the year, as do the Pacific Cinémathèque, and the Rio theatres.
+
+Vancouver has become a major film location,[192] known as Hollywood North, as it has stood in for several U.S. cities. However, it has started to appear as itself in several feature films. Among films set in the city and its surroundings are the 1994 US thriller Intersection, starring Richard Gere and Sharon Stone; the 2007 Canadian ghost thriller They Wait, starring Terry Chen and Jaime King; and the acclaimed Canadian 'mockumentary' Hard Core Logo, and was named the second-best Canadian film of the last 15 years, in a 2001 poll of 200 industry voters, performed by Playback. Genie Award-winning filmmaker Mina Shum has filmed and set several of her internationally released features in Vancouver, including the Sundance-screened Long Life, Happiness & Prosperity (2002).
+
+Many past and current TV shows have been filmed and set in Vancouver. The first Canadian prime time national series to be produced out of Vancouver was Cold Squad[193][194] and its storyline was also physically set in the city. Other series set in or around the city of Vancouver include Continuum, Da Vinci's Inquest, Danger Bay, Edgemont, Godiva's, Intelligence, Motive, Northwood, Primeval: New World, Robson Arms, The Romeo Section, Shattered, The Switch, and These Arms of Mine.
+
+Television shows produced[195] (but not set) in Vancouver (that have been produced by American and Canadian studios alike) include 21 Jump Street, The 100, The 4400, Airwolf, Almost Human, Arrow, Backstrom, Caprica, Cedar Cove, Chesapeake Shores, The Commish, Dark Angel, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, The Flash, The Good Doctor, Haters Back Off, Hellcats, Intelligence, iZombie, The Killing, The L Word, Life Unexpected, The Man in the High Castle, Once Upon a Time, Psych, Reaper, Riverdale, Rogue, Smallville, Stargate SG-1, Supergirl, Supernatural, The Tomorrow People, The Magicians, Tru Calling, Van Helsing, Witches of East End, and The X-Files.
+
+Libraries in Vancouver include the Vancouver Public Library with its main branch at Library Square, designed by Moshe Safdie. The central branch contains 1.5 million volumes. Altogether there are twenty-two branches containing 2.25 million volumes.[196] The Vancouver Tool Library is Canada's original tool lending library.
+
+The Vancouver Art Gallery has a permanent collection of nearly 10,000 items and is the home of a significant number of works by Emily Carr.[197] However, little or none of the permanent collection is ever on view. Downtown is also home to the Contemporary Art Gallery (Vancouver), which showcases temporary exhibitions by up-and-coming Vancouver artists. The Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery with a small collection of contemporary works is part of the University of British Columbia.
+
+In the Kitsilano district are the Vancouver Maritime Museum, the H. R. MacMillan Space Centre, and the Vancouver Museum, the largest civic museum in Canada. The Museum of Anthropology at UBC is a leading museum of Pacific Northwest Coast First Nations culture. A more interactive museum is Science World at the head of False Creek. The city also features a diverse collection of Public Art.
+
+The Vancouver School of conceptual[198] photography (often referred to as photoconceptualism)[199] is a term applied to a grouping of artists from Vancouver who achieved international recognition starting in the 1980s.[198] No formal "school" exists and the grouping remains both informal and often controversial[200] even among the artists themselves, who often resist the term.[200] Artists associated with the term include Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, Ken Lum, Roy Arden,[199] Stan Douglas and Rodney Graham.[201]
+
+Vancouver has a history of Aboriginal art. Examples of this can be seen at the Museum of Anthropology[202]
+
+Musical contributions from Vancouver include performers of classical, folk and popular music. The Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is the professional orchestra based in the city. The Vancouver Opera is a major opera company in the city, and City Opera of Vancouver is the city's professional chamber opera company. The city is home to a number of Canadian composers including Rodney Sharman, Jeffrey Ryan, and Jocelyn Morlock.
+
+The city produced a number of notable punk rock bands, including D.O.A. Other early Vancouver punk bands included the Subhumans, the Young Canadians, the Pointed Sticks, and U-J3RK5.[203] When alternative rock became popular in the 1990s, several Vancouver groups rose to prominence, including 54-40, Odds, Moist, the Matthew Good Band, Sons of Freedom and Econoline Crush. Recent successful Vancouver bands include Gob, Marianas Trench, Theory of a Deadman and Stabilo. Today, Vancouver is home to a number of popular independent bands such as The New Pornographers, Japandroids, Destroyer, In Medias Res, Tegan and Sara, and independent labels including Nettwerk and Mint. Vancouver also produced influential metal band Strapping Young Lad and pioneering electro-industrial bands Skinny Puppy, Numb and Front Line Assembly; the latter's Bill Leeb is better known for founding ambient pop super-group Delerium. Other popular musical artists who made their mark from Vancouver include Carly Rae Jepsen, Bryan Adams, Sarah McLachlan, Heart, Prism, Trooper, Chilliwack, Payolas, Moev, Images in Vogue, Michael Bublé, Stef Lang and Spirit of the West.[204]
+
+Larger musical performances are usually held at venues such as Rogers Arena, Queen Elizabeth Theatre, BC Place Stadium or the Pacific Coliseum, while smaller acts are held at places such as the Commodore Ballroom, the Orpheum Theatre and the Vogue Theatre. The Vancouver Folk Music Festival and the Vancouver International Jazz Festival showcase music in their respective genres from around the world. Vancouver's Hong Kong Chinese population has produced several Cantopop stars across the Hong Kong entertainment industry. Similarly, various Indo-Canadian artists and actors have a profile in Bollywood or other aspects of India's entertainment industry.
+
+Vancouver has a vibrant nightlife scene, whether it be food and dining, or bars and nightclubs. The Granville Entertainment District has the city's highest concentration of bars and nightclubs with closing times of 3 am, in addition to various after-hours clubs open until late morning on weekends. The street can attract large crowds on weekends and is closed to traffic on such nights. Gastown is also a popular area for nightlife with many upscale restaurants and nightclubs, as well as the Davie Village which is centre to the city's LGBT community.
+
+Vancouver is a centre for film and television production. Nicknamed Hollywood North, a distinction it shares with Toronto,[205][206][207] the city has been used as a film making location for nearly a century, beginning with the Edison Manufacturing Company.[208] In 2008 more than 260 productions were filmed in Vancouver.[non-primary source needed] In 2011 Vancouver slipped to fourth place overall at 1.19 billion, although the region still leads Canada in foreign production.[209][210]
+
+A wide mix of local, national, and international newspapers are distributed in the city. The two major English-language daily newspapers are The Vancouver Sun and The Province. Also, there are two national newspapers distributed in the city, including The Globe and Mail, which began publication of a "national edition" in BC in 1983 and recently expanded to include a three-page BC news section, and the National Post which centres on national news. Other local newspapers include 24H (a local free daily), the Vancouver franchise of the national free daily Metro, the twice-a-week Vancouver Courier, and the independent newspaper The Georgia Straight. Three Chinese-language daily newspapers, Ming Pao, Sing Tao and World Journal cater to the city's large Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking population. A number of other local and international papers serve other multicultural groups in the Lower Mainland.
+
+Some of the local television stations include CBC, Citytv, CTV and Global BC. OMNI British Columbia produces daily newscasts in Cantonese, Mandarin, Punjabi and Korean, and weekly newscasts in Tagalog, as well as programs aimed at other cultural groups. Fairchild Group also has two television stations: Fairchild TV and Talentvision, serving Cantonese- and Mandarin-speaking audiences, respectively.
+
+Radio stations with news departments include CBC Radio One, CKNW and News 1130. The Franco-Columbian community is served by Radio-Canada outlets CBUFT-DT channel 26 (Ici Radio-Canada Télé), CBUF-FM 97.7 (Première Chaîne) and CBUX-FM 90.9 (Espace musique). The multilingual South Asian community is served by Spice Radio on 1200 AM established in 2014.[211]
+
+Media dominance is a frequently discussed issue in Vancouver as newspapers The Vancouver Sun, The Province, the Vancouver Courier and other local newspapers such as the Surrey Now, the Burnaby Now and the Richmond News, are all owned by Postmedia Network.[212] The concentration of media ownership has spurred alternatives, making Vancouver a centre for independent online media including The Tyee, the Vancouver Observer, and NowPublic,[213] as well as hyperlocal online media, like Daily Hive and Vancouver Is Awesome,[214] which provide coverage of community events and local arts and culture.
+
+Vancouver's streetcar system began on June 28, 1890, and ran from the (first) Granville Street Bridge to Westminster Avenue (now Main Street and Kingsway). Less than a year later, the Westminster and Vancouver Tramway Company began operating Canada's first interurban line between the two cities (extended to Chilliwack in 1910). Another line (1902), the Vancouver and Lulu Island Railway, was leased by the Canadian Pacific Railway to the British Columbia Electric Railway in 1905 and ran from the Granville Street Bridge to Steveston via Kerrisdale, which encouraged residential neighbourhoods outside the central core to develop.[215] From 1897 the British Columbia Electric Railway (BCER) became the company that operated the urban and interurban rail system, until 1958, when its last vestiges were dismantled in favour of "trackless" trolley and gasoline/diesel buses;[216] in that same year the BCER became the core of the newly created, publicly owned BC Hydro.[citation needed] Vancouver currently has the second-largest trolleybus fleet in North America, after San Francisco.[217]
+
+Successive city councils in the 1970s and 1980s prohibited the construction of freeways as part of a long-term plan.[218] As a result, the only major freeway within city limits is Highway 1, which passes through the north-eastern corner of the city. While the number of cars in Vancouver proper has been steadily rising with population growth, the rate of car ownership and the average distance driven by daily commuters have fallen since the early 1990s.[219][220] Vancouver is the only major Canadian city with these trends. Despite the fact that the journey time per vehicle has increased by one-third and growing traffic mass, there are 7% fewer cars making trips into the downtown core.[219] In 2012, Vancouver had the worst traffic congestion in Canada and the second-highest in North America, behind Los Angeles.[221] As of 2013[update], Vancouver now has the worst traffic congestion in North America.[222] Residents have been more inclined to live in areas closer to their interests, or use more energy-efficient means of travel, such as mass transit and cycling. This is, in part, the result of a push by city planners for a solution to traffic problems and pro-environment campaigns. Transportation demand management policies have imposed restrictions on drivers making it more difficult and expensive to commute while introducing more benefits for non-drivers.[219]
+
+TransLink is responsible for roads and public transportation within Metro Vancouver (in succession to BC Transit, which had taken over the transit functions of BC Hydro). It provides bus service, including the RapidBus express service, a foot passenger and bicycle ferry service (known as SeaBus), an automated rapid transit service called SkyTrain, and West Coast Express commuter rail. Vancouver's SkyTrain system is currently running on three lines, the Millennium Line, the Expo Line and the Canada Line [223] with a total of 53 stations as of 2017. Only 20 of these stations are within the City of Vancouver borders, with the remainders in the adjacent suburbs. A number of city's biggest tourist attractions, such as English Bay/ Stanley Park, the Vancouver Aquarium, University of British Columbia with the Museum of Anthropology, and Kitsilano are not connected by this rapid transit system.
+
+Changes are being made to the regional transportation network as part of Translink's 10-Year Transportation Plan. The Canada Line, opened on August 17, 2009, connects Vancouver International Airport and the neighbouring city of Richmond with the existing SkyTrain system. The Evergreen Extension, which opened on December 2, 2016, links the cities of Coquitlam and Port Moody with the SkyTrain system.[224] As of January 2019, plans to extend the SkyTrain Millennium Line west to UBC as a subway under Broadway have been approved and there are plans for capacity upgrades and an extension to the Expo Line. Several road projects will be completed within the next few years, as part of the Provincial Government's Gateway Program.[223]
+
+Other modes of transport add to the diversity of options available in Vancouver. Inter-city passenger rail service is operated from Pacific Central Station by Via Rail to points east, Amtrak Cascades to Seattle and Portland, and Rocky Mountaineer rail tour routes. Small passenger ferries operating in False Creek provide commuter service to Granville Island, Downtown Vancouver and Kitsilano. Vancouver has a citywide network of bicycle lanes and routes, which supports an active population of cyclists year-round. Cycling has become Vancouver's fastest-growing mode of transportation.[225] The bicycle-sharing system Mobi was introduced to the city in June 2016.[226]
+
+Vancouver is served by Vancouver International Airport (YVR), located on Sea Island in the city of Richmond, immediately south of Vancouver. Vancouver's airport is Canada's second-busiest airport,[227] and the second-largest gateway on the west coast of North America for international passengers.[228] HeliJet and float plane companies operate scheduled air service from Vancouver harbour and YVR south terminal. The city is also served by two BC Ferry terminals. One is to the northwest at Horseshoe Bay (in West Vancouver), and the other is to the south, at Tsawwassen (in Delta).[229]
+
+The mild climate of the city and proximity to ocean, mountains, rivers and lakes make the area a popular destination for outdoor recreation. Vancouver has over 1,298 ha (3,210 acres) of parks, of which Stanley Park, at 404 ha (1,000 acres), is the largest.[230] The city has several large beaches, many adjacent to one another, extending from the shoreline of Stanley Park around False Creek to the south side of English Bay, from Kitsilano to the University Endowment Lands, (which also has beaches that are not part of the city proper). The 18 km (11 mi) of beaches include Second and Third Beaches in Stanley Park, English Bay (First Beach), Sunset, Kitsilano Beach, Jericho, Locarno, Spanish Banks, Spanish Banks Extension, Spanish Banks West, and Wreck Beach. There is also a freshwater beach at Trout Lake in John Hendry Park. The coastline provides for many types of water sport, and the city is a popular destination for boating enthusiasts.[231]
+
+Within a 20- to 30-minute drive from downtown Vancouver are the North Shore Mountains, with three ski areas: Cypress Mountain, Grouse Mountain, and Mount Seymour. Mountain bikers have created world-renowned trails across the North Shore. The Capilano River, Lynn Creek and Seymour River, also on the North Shore, provide opportunities to whitewater enthusiasts during periods of rain and spring melt, though the canyons of those rivers are more utilized for hiking and swimming than whitewater.[232]
+
+Running races include the Vancouver Sun Run (a 10-kilometre (6.2 mi) race) every April; the Vancouver Marathon, held every May; and the Scotiabank Vancouver Half-Marathon held every June. The Grouse Grind is a 2.9-kilometre (1.8 mi) climb up Grouse Mountain open throughout the summer and fall months, including the annual Grouse Grind Mountain Run. Hiking trails include the Baden-Powell Trail, an arduous 42-kilometre-long (26 mi) hike from West Vancouver's Horseshoe Bay to Deep Cove in the District of North Vancouver.[233]
+
+Vancouver is also home to notable cycling races. During most summers since 1973, the Global Relay Gastown Grand Prix has been held on the cobblestone streets of Gastown. This race and the UBC Grand Prix are part of BC Superweek, an annual series of professional cycling races in Metro Vancouver.
+
+The British Columbia Derby is a nine-furlong horse race held at the Hastings Racecourse in the third week of September.[234]
+
+In 2009, Metro Vancouver hosted the World Police and Fire Games. Swangard Stadium, in the neighbouring city of Burnaby, hosted games for the 2007 FIFA U-20 World Cup.[18][235]
+
+Vancouver, along with Whistler and Richmond, was the host city for the 2010 Winter Olympics and the 2010 Winter Paralympics. On June 12, 2010, it played host to Ultimate Fighting Championship 115 (UFC 115) which was the fourth UFC event to be held in Canada (and the first outside Montreal).
+
+In 2011, Vancouver hosted the Grey Cup, the Canadian Football League (CFL) championship game which is awarded every year to a different city which has a CFL team. The BC Titans of the International Basketball League played their inaugural season in 2009, with home games at the Langley Event Centre.[236] Vancouver is a centre for the fast-growing sport of ultimate. During the summer of 2008 Vancouver hosted the World Ultimate Championships.[237]
+
+The National Basketball Association (NBA) came to town in the form of the Vancouver Grizzlies in 1995. They played their games at Rogers Arena. After six years in Vancouver, the team relocated to Memphis, Tennessee, in 2001.
+
+In 2015, Vancouver was one of six venues for the 2015 FIFA Women's World Cup and hosted the Final game between the United States and Japan.
+
+Vancouver has an adult obesity rate of 12%, compared to the Canadian average of 23%. 51.8% of Vancouverites are overweight, making it the fourth-thinnest city in Canada after Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax.[238][239]
+
+The City of Vancouver has taken a number of steps to become a sustainable city. Electricity used in Vancouver is generated using sustainable resources such as hydroelectric power. The city benefits from being located close to the mountains as hydroelectric generating stations provide 93 percent of the electricity by using falling water without emitting any greenhouse gases or polluting the air. The city is also actively working towards becoming a greener city. The City of Vancouver has crafted an action plan of goals it has set to meet by 2020, including reducing greenhouse gas emissions, encouraging the growth of green jobs and businesses, requiring green construction, and reducing waste.[240]
+
+The Greenest City action plan (GCAP) is a City of Vancouver urban sustainability initiative. Its primary mission is to ensure that Vancouver becomes the greenest city in the world by the year 2020. The GCAP originated based on the 2009 work of the Greenest City Action Team, a committee co-chaired by Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson.[241] The GCAP was approved by Vancouver city council in July 2011.[242]
+
+In May 2018, the Zero Waste 2040 Strategy passed Vancouver's city council.[243] The city began work the same year on decreasing the amount of single-use items distributed in the city, and has stated its intention to ban these items in 2021 if businesses don't meet reduction targets. As part of the plan, a ban on plastic straws, polystyrene food packaging and free shopping bags will go into effect during mid-2019.[244]
+
+The City of Vancouver was one of the first cities in Canada to enter into an international sister cities arrangement.[245] Special arrangements for cultural, social and economic benefits have been created with these sister cities.[65][246][247]

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+Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsənt ˈʋɪləm vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] (listen);[note 1] 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He was not commercially successful, and his suicide at 37 came after years of mental illness, depression and poverty.
+
+Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.
+
+Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a Lefaucheux revolver.[6] He died from his injuries two days later.
+
+Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge".[7] His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.
+
+The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, are recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from 1872 until 1890.[8] Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene.[9]
+
+Theo kept all of Vincent's letters to him;[11] Vincent kept few of the letters he received. After both had died, Theo's widow Johanna arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913; the majority were published in 1914.[12][13] Vincent's letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a "diary-like intimacy",[9] and read in parts like autobiography.[9] The translator Arnold Pomerans wrote that their publication adds a "fresh dimension to the understanding of Van Gogh's artistic achievement, an understanding granted to us by virtually no other painter".[14]
+
+There are more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent. There are 22 to his sister Wil, 58 to the painter Anthon van Rappard, 22 to Émile Bernard as well as individual letters to Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin and the critic Albert Aurier. Some are illustrated with sketches.[9] Many are undated, but art historians have been able to place most in chronological order. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted from Arles. While there Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French and English.[15] There is a gap in the record when he lived in Paris as the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond.[16]
+
+Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 into a Dutch Reformed Church family in Groot-Zundert, in the predominantly Catholic province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.[17] He was the oldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather, and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth.[note 2] Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family: his grandfather, Vincent (1789–1874), who received a degree in theology at the University of Leiden in 1811, had six sons, three of whom became art dealers. This Vincent may have been named after his own great-uncle, a sculptor (1729–1802).[19]
+
+Van Gogh's mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague,[20] and his father was the youngest son of a minister.[21] The two met when Anna's younger sister, Cornelia, married Theodorus's older brother Vincent (Cent). Van Gogh's parents married in May 1851 and moved to Zundert.[22] His brother Theo was born on 1 May 1857. There was another brother, Cor, and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna, and Willemina (known as "Wil"). In later life Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo.[23] Van Gogh's mother was a rigid and religious woman who emphasised the importance of family to the point of claustrophobia for those around her.[24] Theodorus's salary was modest, but the Church supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse, and Anna instilled in the children a duty to uphold the family's high social position.[25]
+
+Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child.[26] He was taught at home by his mother and a governess, and in 1860 was sent to the village school. In 1864, he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen,[27] where he felt abandoned, and campaigned to come home. Instead, in 1866 his parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburg, where he was deeply unhappy.[28] His interest in art began at a young age. He was encouraged to draw as a child by his mother,[29] and his early drawings are expressive,[27] but do not approach the intensity of his later work.[30] Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, who had been a successful artist in Paris, taught the students at Tilburg. His philosophy was to reject technique in favour of capturing the impressions of things, particularly nature or common objects. Van Gogh's profound unhappiness seems to have overshadowed the lessons, which had little effect.[31] In March 1868, he abruptly returned home. He later wrote that his youth was "austere and cold, and sterile".[32]
+
+In July 1869 Van Gogh's uncle Cent obtained a position for him at the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague.[33] After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to Goupil's London branch on Southampton Street, and took lodgings at 87 Hackford Road, Stockwell.[34] This was a happy time for Van Gogh; he was successful at work, and at 20 was earning more than his father. Theo's wife later remarked that this was the best year of Vincent's life. He became infatuated with his landlady's daughter, Eugénie Loyer, but was rejected after confessing his feelings; she was secretly engaged to a former lodger. He grew more isolated, and religiously fervent. His father and uncle arranged a transfer to Paris in 1875, where he became resentful of issues such as the degree to which the firm commodified art, and was dismissed a year later.[35]
+
+In April 1876 he returned to England to take unpaid work as a supply teacher in a small boarding school in Ramsgate. When the proprietor moved to Isleworth in Middlesex, Van Gogh went with him.[36][37] The arrangement did not work out and he left to become a Methodist minister's assistant.[38] His parents had meanwhile moved to Etten;[39] in 1876 he returned home at Christmas for six months and took work at a bookshop in Dordrecht. He was unhappy in the position and spent his time doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French and German.[40] He immersed himself in religion, and became increasingly pious and monastic.[41] According to his flatmate of the time, Paulus van Görlitz, Van Gogh ate frugally, avoiding meat.[42]
+
+To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, in 1877 the family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian, in Amsterdam.[43] Van Gogh prepared for the University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination;[44] he failed the exam, and left his uncle's house in July 1878. He undertook, but also failed, a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school in Laken, near Brussels.[45]
+
+In January 1879 he took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes[46] in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person, and moved to a small hut where he slept on straw.[47] His squalid living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood". He then walked the 75 kilometres (47 mi) to Brussels,[48] returned briefly to Cuesmes in the Borinage, but gave in to pressure from his parents to return home to Etten. He stayed there until around March 1880,[note 3] which caused concern and frustration for his parents. His father was especially frustrated and advised that his son should be committed to the lunatic asylum at Geel.[50][51][note 4]
+
+Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in August 1880, where he lodged with a miner until October.[53] He became interested in the people and scenes around him, and recorded them in drawings after Theo's suggestion that he take up art in earnest. He travelled to Brussels later in the year, to follow Theo's recommendation that he study with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him – in spite of his dislike of formal schools of art – to attend the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He registered at the Académie in November 1880, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modelling and perspective.[54]
+
+Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 for an extended stay with his parents.[55] He continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia "Kee" Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother's older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived for a visit. He was thrilled and took long walks with her. Kee was seven years older than he was, and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone by declaring his love to her and proposing marriage.[56] She refused with the words "No, nay, never" ("nooit, neen, nimmer").[57] After Kee returned to Amsterdam, Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be.[58] Mauve invited him to return in a few months, and suggested he spend the intervening time working in charcoal and pastels; Van Gogh went back to Etten and followed this advice.[58]
+
+Late in November 1881, Van Gogh wrote a letter to Johannes Stricker, one which he described to Theo as an attack.[59] Within days he left for Amsterdam.[60] Kee would not meet him, and her parents wrote that his "persistence is disgusting".[61] In despair, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the words: "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame."[61][62] He did not recall the event well, but later assumed that his uncle had blown out the flame. Kee's father made it clear that her refusal should be heeded and that the two would not marry, largely because of Van Gogh's inability to support himself.[63]
+
+Mauve took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour, which he worked on for the next month before returning home for Christmas.[64] He quarrelled with his father, refusing to attend church, and left for The Hague.[note 5][65]  In January 1882, Mauve introduced him to painting in oil and lent him money to set up a studio.[66][67] Within a month Van Gogh and Mauve fell out, possibly over the viability of drawing from plaster casts.[68] Van Gogh could afford to hire only people from the street as models, a practice of which Mauve seems to have disapproved.[69] In June Van Gogh suffered a bout of gonorrhoea and spent three weeks in hospital.[70] Soon after, he first painted in oils,[71] bought with money borrowed from Theo. He liked the medium, and spread the paint liberally, scraping from the canvas and working back with the brush. He wrote that he was surprised at how good the results were.[72]
+
+By March 1882, Mauve appears to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and stopped replying to his letters.[73] He had learned of Van Gogh's new domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik (1850–1904), and her young daughter.[74] Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. She had previously borne two children who died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this;[75] On 2 July, she gave birth to a baby boy, Willem.[76] When Van Gogh's father discovered the details of their relationship, he put pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her two children. Vincent at first defied him,[77] and considered moving the family out of the city, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children.[78]
+
+Poverty may have pushed Sien back into prostitution; the home became less happy and Van Gogh may have felt family life was irreconcilable with his artistic development. Sien gave her daughter to her mother, and baby Willem to her brother.[79] Willem remembered visiting Rotterdam when he was about 12, when an uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry to legitimise the child.[80] He believed Van Gogh was his father, but the timing of his birth makes this unlikely.[81] Sien drowned herself in the River Scheldt in 1904.[82]
+
+In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the northern Netherlands. In December, driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in Nuenen, North Brabant.[82]
+
+In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages. Van Gogh also completed The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, which was stolen from the Singer Laren in March 2020.[83][84] From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour's daughter ten years his senior, joined him on his forays; she fell in love and he reciprocated, though less enthusiastically. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families were in favour. Margot was distraught and took an overdose of strychnine, but survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital.[76] On 26 March 1885, his father died of a heart attack.[85]
+
+Van Gogh painted several groups of still lifes in 1885.[86] During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours, and nearly 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguish his later work.[87]
+
+There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885.[88] Theo asked Vincent if he had paintings ready to exhibit.[89] In May, Van Gogh responded with his first major work, The Potato Eaters, and a series of "peasant character studies" which were the culmination of several years of work.[90] When he complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, his brother responded that they were too dark, and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism.[87] In August his work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague. One of his young peasant sitters became pregnant in September 1885; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.[91]
+
+Worn Out, pencil on watercolour paper, 1882. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam [92]
+
+Still Life with Open Bible, Extinguished Candle and Novel also Still Life with Bible, 1885. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette, 1885–86. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Peasant Woman Digging, or Woman with a Spade, Seen from Behind, 1885. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
+
+He moved to Antwerp that November, and rented a room above a paint dealer's shop in the rue des Images (Lange Beeldekensstraat).[93] He lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In February 1886, he wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful.[94] In Antwerp he applied himself to the study of colour theory and spent time in museums—particularly studying the work of Peter Paul Rubens—and broadened his palette to include carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. Van Gogh bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings.[95] He was drinking heavily again,[96] and was hospitalised between February and March 1886,[97] when he was possibly also treated for syphilis.[98][note 6]
+
+After his recovery, and despite his antipathy towards academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and in January 1886 matriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.[101] He started to attend drawing classes after plaster models at the Antwerp Academy on 18 January 1886. He quickly got into trouble with Charles Verlat, the director of the Academy and teacher of a painting class, because of his unconventional painting style. Van Gogh had also clashed with the instructor of the drawing class Franz Vinck. Van Gogh finally started to attend the drawing classes after antique plaster models given by Eugène Siberdt. Soon Siberdt and Van Gogh came into conflict when the latter did not comply with Siberdt's requirement that drawings express the contour and concentrate on the line. When Van Gogh was required to draw the Venus of Milo during a drawing class, he produced the limbless, naked torso of a Flemish peasant woman. Siberdt regarded this as defiance against his artistic guidance and made corrections to Van Gogh's drawing with his crayon so vigorously that he tore the paper. Van Gogh then flew into a violent rage and shouted at Siberdt: 'You clearly do not know what a young woman is like, God damn it! A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a baby!' According to some accounts this was the last time Van Gogh attended classes at the Academy and he left later for Paris.[102] On 31 March 1886, which was about a month after the confrontation with Siberdt, the teachers of the Academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat a year. The story that Van Gogh was expelled from the Academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.[103]
+
+Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo's rue Laval apartment in Montmartre, and studied at Fernand Cormon's studio. In June the brothers took a larger flat at 54 rue Lepic.[105] In Paris, Vincent painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still life paintings, views of Le Moulin de la Galette, scenes in Montmartre, Asnières and along the Seine. In 1885 in Antwerp he had become interested in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and had used them to decorate the walls of his studio; while in Paris he collected hundreds of them. He tried his hand at Japonaiserie, tracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustre, The Courtesan or Oiran (1887), after Keisai Eisen, which he then graphically enlarged in a painting.[106]
+
+After seeing the portrait of Adolphe Monticelli at the Galerie Delareybarette, Van Gogh adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, particularly in paintings such as his Seascape at Saintes-Maries (1888).[107][108] Two years later, Vincent and Theo paid for the publication of a book on Monticelli paintings, and Vincent bought some of Monticelli's works to add to his collection.[109]
+
+Van Gogh learned about Fernand Cormon's atelier from Theo.[110] He worked at the studio in April and May 1886,[111] where he frequented the circle of the Australian artist John Peter Russell, who painted his portrait in 1886.[112] Van Gogh also met fellow students Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – who painted a portrait of him in pastel. They met at Julien "Père" Tanguy's paint shop,[111] (which was, at that time, the only place where Paul Cézanne's paintings were displayed). In 1886, two large exhibitions were staged there, showing Pointillism and Neo-impressionism for the first time, and bringing attention to Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Theo kept a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery on boulevard Montmartre, but Van Gogh was slow to acknowledge the new developments in art.[113]
+
+Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of 1886 Theo found living with Vincent to be "almost unbearable".[111] By early 1887, they were again at peace, and Vincent had moved to Asnières, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where he got to know Signac. He adopted elements of Pointillism, a technique in which a multitude of small coloured dots are applied to the canvas so that when seen from a distance they create an optical blend of hues. The style stresses the ability of complementary colours – including blue and orange – to form vibrant contrasts.[89][111]
+
+Le Moulin de Blute-Fin (1886) from the Le Moulin de la Galette and Montmartre series'. Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo (F273)
+
+Courtesan (after Eisen), 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887. Musée Rodin, Paris
+
+Still Life with Glass of Absinthe and a Carafe, 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+While in Asnières Van Gogh painted parks, restaurants and the Seine, including Bridges across the Seine at Asnières. In November 1887, Theo and Vincent befriended Paul Gauguin who had just arrived in Paris.[114] Towards the end of the year, Vincent arranged an exhibition alongside Bernard, Anquetin, and probably Toulouse-Lautrec, at the Grand-Bouillon Restaurant du Chalet, 43 avenue de Clichy, Montmartre. In a contemporary account, Bernard wrote that the exhibition was ahead of anything else in Paris.[115] There, Bernard and Anquetin sold their first paintings, and Van Gogh exchanged work with Gauguin. Discussions on art, artists, and their social situations started during this exhibition, continued and expanded to include visitors to the show, like Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, Signac and Seurat. In February 1888, feeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than 200 paintings during his two years there. Hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his studio.[116]
+
+Ill from drink and suffering from smoker's cough, in February 1888 Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles.[15] He seems to have moved with thoughts of founding an art colony. The Danish artist Christian Mourier-Petersen became his companion for two months, and at first Arles appeared exotic. In a letter, he described it as a foreign country: "The Zouaves, the brothels, the adorable little Arlésienne going to her First Communion, the priest in his surplice, who looks like a dangerous rhinoceros, the people drinking absinthe, all seem to me creatures from another world."[117]
+
+The time in Arles became one of Van Gogh's more prolific periods: he completed 200 paintings, and more than 100 drawings and watercolours.[118] He was enchanted by the local countryside and light; his works from this period are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. His paintings include harvests, wheat fields and general rural landmarks from the area, including The Old Mill (1888), a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields.[119] This was one of seven canvases sent to Pont-Aven on 4 October 1888 in an exchange of works with Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Charles Laval and others.[119]
+
+The portrayals of Arles are informed by Van Gogh's Dutch upbringing; the patchworks of fields and avenues appear flat and lacking perspective, but excel in their use of colour.[120] His new-found appreciation is seen in the range and scope of his work. In March 1888 he painted landscapes using a gridded "perspective frame"; three of the works were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April, he was visited by the American artist Dodge MacKnight, who was living nearby at Fontvieille.[121][122] On 1 May 1888, for 15 francs per month, he signed a lease for the eastern wing of the Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine. The rooms were unfurnished and had been uninhabited for months.[123]
+
+On 7 May, Van Gogh moved from the Hôtel Carrel to the Café de la Gare,[124] having befriended the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. The Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, but he was able to use it as a studio.[125] He wanted a gallery to display his work, and started a series of paintings that eventually included Van Gogh's Chair (1888), Bedroom in Arles (1888), The Night Café (1888), Café Terrace at Night (September 1888), Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888), and Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers (1888), all intended for the decoration for the Yellow House.[126]
+
+Van Gogh wrote that with The Night Café he tried "to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime".[127] When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June, he gave lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant – Paul-Eugène Milliet[128] – and painted boats on the sea and the village.[129] MacKnight introduced Van Gogh to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter who sometimes stayed in Fontvieille, and the two exchanged visits in July.[128]
+
+The Sower with Setting Sun, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Bedroom in Arles, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+The Old Mill, 1888. Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
+
+Ploughman in the Fields near Arles (1888), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Van Gogh never ceased drawing during any period in his artistic life.
+
+When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship, and the realisation of his idea of an artists' collective. While waiting, in August he painted Sunflowers. When Boch visited again, Van Gogh painted a portrait of him, as well as the study The Poet Against a Starry Sky.[130][note 7]
+
+In preparation for Gauguin's visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station's postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted. On 17 September, he spent his first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House.[132] When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles with him, Van Gogh started to work on the Décoration for the Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook.[133] He completed two chair paintings: Van Gogh's Chair and Gauguin's Chair.[134]
+
+After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October, and in November the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of Sunflowers; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin's suggestion. Among these "imaginative" paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten.[135][note 8] Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the pendants Les Alyscamps.[136] The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers.[137]
+
+Van Gogh and Gauguin visited Montpellier in December 1888, where they saw works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée Fabre.[138] Their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh. They often quarrelled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation, which Van Gogh described as one of "excessive tension", rapidly headed towards crisis point.[139]
+
+The Night Café, 1888. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
+
+The Red Vineyard, November 1888. Pushkin Museum, Moscow. Sold to Anna Boch, 1890
+
+Van Gogh's Chair, 1888. National Gallery, London
+
+Paul Gauguin's Armchair, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+The exact sequence of events which led to Van Gogh's mutilation of his ear is not known. Gauguin stated, 15 years later, that the night followed several instances of physically threatening behaviour.[141] Their relationship was complex, and Theo may have owed money to Gauguin, who was suspicious that the brothers were exploiting him financially.[142] It seems likely that Van Gogh had realised that Gauguin was planning to leave.[142] The following days saw heavy rain, leading to the two men being shut in the Yellow House.[143] Gauguin reported that Van Gogh followed when Gauguin left the house for a walk, and "rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand".[143] This account is uncorroborated;[144] Gauguin was almost certainly absent from the Yellow House that night, most likely in a hotel.[143]
+
+After the altercation with Gauguin, Van Gogh returned to his room, where he was assaulted by voices and severed his left ear with a razor (either wholly or in part; accounts differ),[note 9] causing severe bleeding.[145] He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper, and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented.[145] Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital,[148][149] where Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training, treated him. The ear was delivered to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to reattach it as too much time had passed.[143]
+
+Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered an acute mental breakdown.[150] The hospital diagnosis was "acute mania with generalised delirium",[151] and within a few days the local police ordered that he be placed in hospital care.[152][153] Gauguin immediately notified Theo, who on 24 December had proposed marriage to his old friend Andries Bonger's sister Johanna.[154] That evening Theo rushed to the station to board a night train to Arles. He arrived on Christmas Day and comforted Vincent, who seemed to be semi-lucid. That evening he left Arles for the return trip to Paris.[155]
+
+During the first days of his treatment, Van Gogh repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked for Gauguin, who asked a policeman attending the case to "be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal for him."[156] Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Van Gogh again. They continued to correspond and in 1890 Gauguin proposed they form a studio in Antwerp. Meanwhile, other visitors to the hospital included Marie Ginoux and Roulin.[157]
+
+Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on 7 January 1889.[158] He spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions of poisoning.[159] In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople (including the Ginoux family) who described him as "le fou roux" (the redheaded madman);[152] Van Gogh returned to hospital. Paul Signac visited him twice in March;[160] in April Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Dr Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home.[161] Two months later, he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant."[162]
+
+Van Gogh gave his 1889 Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey to Dr Rey. The physician was not fond of the painting and used it to repair a chicken coop, then gave it away.[163] In 2016, the portrait was housed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and estimated to be worth over $50 million.[164]
+
+Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, 1889, private collection
+
+The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection "Am Römerholz", Winterthur, Switzerland
+
+Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
+
+Ward in the Hospital in Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection "Am Römerholz", Winterthur, Switzerland
+
+Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889, accompanied by his caregiver, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman. Saint-Paul was a former monastery in Saint-Rémy, located less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Arles, and was run by a former naval doctor, Théophile Peyron. Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio.[165] The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital's interiors, such as Vestibule of the Asylum and Saint-Rémy (September 1889). Some of his works from this time are characterised by swirls, such as The Starry Night. He was allowed short supervised walks, during which time he painted cypresses and olive trees, including Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889, Cypresses 1889, Cornfield with Cypresses (1889), Country road in Provence by Night (1890). In September 1889 he produced two further versions of Bedroom in Arles.[166]
+
+Limited access to life outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject matter. Van Gogh instead worked on interpretations of other artist's paintings, such as Millet's The Sower and Noonday Rest, and variations on his own earlier work. Van Gogh was an admirer of the Realism of Jules Breton, Gustave Courbet and Millet,[167] and he compared his copies to a musician's interpreting Beethoven.[168]
+
+His Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré) (1890) was painted after an engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883). Tralbaut suggests that the face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting looking towards the viewer is Van Gogh himself;[169] Jan Hulsker discounts this.[170]
+
+Between February and April 1890, Van Gogh suffered a severe relapse. Depressed and unable to bring himself to write, he was still able to paint and draw a little during this time,[171] and he later wrote to Theo that he had made a few small canvases "from memory ... reminisces of the North".[172] Among these was Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset. Hulsker believes that this small group of paintings formed the nucleus of many drawings and study sheets depicting landscapes and figures that Van Gogh worked on during this time. He comments that this short period was the only time that Van Gogh's illness had a significant effect on his work.[173] Van Gogh asked his mother and his brother to send him drawings and rough work he had done in the early 1880s so he could work on new paintings from his old sketches.[174] Belonging to this period is Sorrowing Old Man ("At Eternity's Gate"), a colour study Hulsker describes as "another unmistakable remembrance of times long past".[92][175] His late paintings show an artist at the height of his abilities, according to the art critic Robert Hughes, "longing for concision and grace".[117]
+
+Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré), 1890. Pushkin Museum, Moscow
+
+The Sower, (after Jean-François Millet), 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
+
+Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset, (after Jean-François Millet), 1890. Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection, Zurich, Switzerland
+
+Sorrowing Old Man ('At Eternity's Gate'), 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo [92]
+
+Albert Aurier praised his work in the Mercure de France in January 1890, and described him as "a genius".[176] In February, Van Gogh painted five versions of L'Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), based on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when she sat for both artists in November 1888.[177][note 10] Also in February, Van Gogh was invited by Les XX, a society of avant-garde painters in Brussels, to participate in their annual exhibition. At the opening dinner a Les XX member, Henry de Groux, insulted Van Gogh's work. Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh's honour if Lautrec surrendered. De Groux apologised for the slight and left the group. Later, while Van Gogh's exhibit was on display with the Artistes Indépendants in Paris, Claude Monet said that his work was the best in the show.[178] After the birth of his nephew, Van Gogh wrote, "I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky."[179]
+
+In May 1890, Van Gogh left the clinic in Saint-Rémy to move nearer to both Dr Paul Gachet in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise and to Theo. Gachet was an amateur painter and had treated several other artists – Camille Pissarro had recommended him. Van Gogh's first impression was that Gachet was "iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let's say just as much."[180]
+
+The painter Charles Daubigny moved to Auvers in 1861, and in turn drew other artists there, including Camille Corot and Honoré Daumier. In July 1890, Van Gogh completed two paintings of Daubigny's Garden, one of which is likely his final work.[181]
+
+During his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, his thoughts returned to "memories of the North",[172] and several of the approximately 70 oils, painted during as many days in Auvers-sur-Oise, are reminiscent of northern scenes.[182] In June 1890, he painted several portraits of his doctor, including Portrait of Dr Gachet, and his only etching. In each the emphasis is on Gachet's melancholic disposition.[183] There are other paintings which are probably unfinished, including Thatched Cottages by a Hill.[181]
+
+In July, Van Gogh wrote that he had become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow".[184] He had first become captivated by the fields in May, when the wheat was young and green. In July, he described to Theo "vast fields of wheat under turbulent skies".[185]
+
+He wrote that they represented his "sadness and extreme loneliness", and that the "canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside".[186] Wheatfield with Crows, although not his last oil work, is from July 1890 and Hulsker discusses it as being associated with "melancholy and extreme loneliness".[187] Hulsker identifies seven oil paintings from Auvers that follow the completion of Wheatfield with Crows.[188]
+
+On 27 July 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a 7mm Lefaucheux à broche revolver.[189][190] There were no witnesses and he died 30 hours after the incident.[163] The shooting may have taken place in the wheat field in which he had been painting, or a local barn.[191] The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs – probably stopped by his spine. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors, but without a surgeon present the bullet could not be removed. The doctors tended to him as best they could, then left him alone in his room, smoking his pipe. The following morning Theo rushed to his brother's side, finding him in good spirits. But within hours Vincent began to fail, suffering from an untreated infection resulting from the wound. He died in the early hours of 29 July. According to Theo, Vincent's last words were: "The sadness will last forever".[192][193][194][195]
+
+Van Gogh was buried on 30 July, in the municipal cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. The funeral was attended by Theo van Gogh, Andries Bonger, Charles Laval, Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy and Paul Gachet, among twenty family members, friends and locals. Theo had been ill, and his health began to decline further after his brother's death. Weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent's absence, he died on 25 January 1891 at Den Dolder, and was buried in Utrecht.[196] In 1914, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger had Theo's body exhumed and moved from Utrecht to be re-buried alongside Vincent's at Auvers-sur-Oise.[197]
+
+There have been numerous debates as to the nature of Van Gogh's illness and its effect on his work, and many retrospective diagnoses have been proposed. The consensus is that Van Gogh had an episodic condition with periods of normal functioning.[198] Perry was the first to suggest bipolar disorder in 1947,[199] and this has been supported by the psychiatrists Hemphill and Blumer.[200][201] Biochemist Wilfred Arnold has countered that the symptoms are more consistent with acute intermittent porphyria, noting that the popular link between bipolar disorder and creativity might be spurious.[198] Temporal lobe epilepsy with bouts of depression has also been suggested.[201] Whatever the diagnosis, his condition was likely worsened by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and alcohol.[201]
+
+The gun Van Gogh was reputed to have used was rediscovered in 1965 and was auctioned, on 19 June 2019, as "the most famous weapon in art history". The gun sold for €162,500 (£144,000; $182,000), almost three times more than expected.[202][203][204]
+
+Van Gogh drew, and painted with watercolours while at school, but only a few examples survive and the authorship of some has been challenged.[205] When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level. In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague. Van Gogh's work did not live up to expectations. Marinus offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but was again disappointed with the result. Van Gogh persevered; he experimented with lighting in his studio using variable shutters, and with different drawing materials. For more than a year he worked on single figures – highly elaborate studies in black and white,[note 11] which at the time gained him only criticism. Later, they were recognised as early masterpieces.[207]
+
+In August 1882 Theo gave Vincent money to buy materials for working en plein air. Vincent wrote that he could now "go on painting with new vigour".[208] From early 1883 he worked on multi-figure compositions. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and freshness, he destroyed them and turned to oil painting. Van Gogh turned to well-known Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and received technical advice from them, as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both of the Hague School's second generation.[209] When he moved to Nuenen after the period in Drenthe he began several large paintings but destroyed most of them. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces are the only ones to have survived.[209] Following a visit to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the Dutch Masters, especially Rembrandt and Frans Hals.[210][note 12] He was aware that many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise,[209] so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to learn and develop his skills.[211]
+
+Theo criticised The Potato Eaters for its dark palette, which he thought unsuitable for a modern style.[212] During Van Gogh's stay in Paris between 1886 and 1887, he tried to master a new, lighter palette. His Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) shows his success with the brighter palette, and is evidence of an evolving personal style.[213] Charles Blanc's treatise on colour interested him greatly, and led him to work with complementary colours. Van Gogh came to believe that the effect of colour went beyond the descriptive; he said that "colour expresses something in itself".[214][215] According to Hughes, Van Gogh perceived colour as having a "psychological and moral weight", as exemplified in the garish reds and greens of The Night Cafe, a work he wanted to "express the terrible passions of humanity".[216] Yellow meant the most to him, because it symbolised emotional truth. He used yellow as a symbol for sunlight, life, and God.[217]
+
+Van Gogh strove to be a painter of rural life and nature,[218] and during his first summer in Arles he used his new palette to paint landscapes and traditional rural life.[219] His belief that a power existed behind the natural led him to try to capture a sense of that power, or the essence of nature in his art, sometimes through the use of symbols.[220] His renditions of the sower, at first copied from Jean-François Millet, reflect Van Gogh's religious beliefs: the sower as Christ sowing life beneath the hot sun.[221] These were themes and motifs he returned to often to rework and develop.[222] His paintings of flowers are filled with symbolism, but rather than use traditional Christian iconography he made up his own, where life is lived under the sun and work is an allegory of life.[223] In Arles, having gained confidence after painting spring blossoms and learning to capture bright sunlight, he was ready to paint The Sower.[214]
+
+Van Gogh stayed within what he called the "guise of reality",[224] and was critical of overly stylised works.[225] He wrote afterwards that the abstraction of Starry Night had gone too far and that reality had "receded too far in the background".[225] Hughes describes it as a moment of extreme visionary ecstasy: the stars are in a great whirl, reminiscent of Hokusai's Great Wave, the movement in the heaven above is reflected by the movement of the cypress on the earth below, and the painter's vision is "translated into a thick, emphatic plasma of paint".[226]
+
+Between 1885 and his death in 1890, Van Gogh appears to have been building an oeuvre,[227] a collection that reflected his personal vision, and could be commercially successful. He was influenced by Blanc's definition of style, that a true painting required optimal use of colour, perspective and brushstrokes. Van Gogh applied the word "purposeful" to paintings he thought he had mastered, as opposed to those he thought of as studies.[228] He painted many series of studies;[224] most of which were still lifes, many executed as colour experiments or as gifts to friends.[229] The work in Arles contributed considerably to his oeuvre: those he thought the most important from that time were The Sower, Night Cafe, Memory of the Garden in Etten and Starry Night. With their broad brushstrokes, inventive perspectives, colours, contours and designs, these paintings represent the style he sought.[225]
+
+Van Gogh's stylistic developments are usually linked to the periods he spent living in different places across Europe. He was inclined to immerse himself in local cultures and lighting conditions, although he maintained a highly individual visual outlook throughout. His evolution as an artist was slow, and he was aware of his painterly limitations. He moved home often, perhaps to expose himself to new visual stimuli, and through exposure develop his technical skill.[230] Art historian Melissa McQuillan believes the moves also reflect later stylistic changes, and that Van Gogh used the moves to avoid conflict, and as a coping mechanism for when the idealistic artist was faced with the realities of his then current situation.[231]
+
+The portraits gave Van Gogh his best opportunity to earn. He believed they were "the only thing in painting that moves me deeply and that gives me a sense of the infinite."[229][232] He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism.[233] Those closest to Van Gogh are mostly absent from his portraits; he rarely painted Theo, Van Rappard or Bernard. The portraits of his mother were from photographs.[234]
+
+In December 1888 he painted La Berceuse – a figure that he thought as good as his sunflowers. It has a limited palette, varied brushstrokes and simple contours.[225] It appears to be a culmination of portraits of the Roulin family completed in Arles between November and December. The portraits show a shift in style from the fluid, restrained brushstrokes and even surface of Portrait of the Postman to the frenetic style, rough surface, broad brushstrokes and use of a palette knife in Madame Roulin with Baby.[235]
+
+Portrait of Artist's Mother, October 1888, Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California
+
+Eugène Boch, (The Poet Against a Starry Sky), 1888, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
+
+Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin (1841–1903) early August 1888, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
+
+La Berceuse (Augustine Roulin) 1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
+
+Van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits between 1885 and 1889.[236][note 13] They were usually completed in series, such as those painted in Paris in mid-1887, and continued until shortly before his death.[237] Generally the portraits were studies, created during introspective periods when he was reluctant to mix with others, or when he lacked models, and so painted himself.[229][238]
+
+The self-portraits reflect an unusually high degree of self-scrutiny.[239] Often they were intended to mark important periods in his life; for example, the mid-1887 Paris series were painted at the point where he became aware of Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Signac.[240] In Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, heavy strains of paint spread outwards across the canvas. It is one of his most renowned self-portraits of that period, "with its highly organized rhythmic brushstrokes, and the novel halo derived from the Neo-impressionist repertoire was what Van Gogh himself called a 'purposeful' canvas".[241]
+
+They contain a wide array of physiognomical representations.[236] Van Gogh's mental and physical condition is usually apparent; he may appear unkempt, unshaven or with a neglected beard, with deeply sunken eyes, a weak jaw, or having lost teeth. Some show him with full lips, a long face or prominent skull, or sharpened, alert features. His hair may be the usual red, or at times ash coloured.[236]
+
+Van Gogh's gaze is seldom directed at the viewer. The portraits vary in intensity and colour, and in those painted after December 1888 especially, the vivid colours highlight the haggard pallor of his skin.[238] Some depict the artist with a beard, others without. He can be seen with bandages in portraits executed just after he mutilated his ear. In only a few does he depict himself as a painter.[236] Those painted in Saint-Rémy show the head from the right, the side opposite his damaged ear, as he painted himself reflected in his mirror.[242][243]
+
+Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Winter 1887–88. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Paris, Winter 1887–88. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+Self-Portrait, 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His Saint-Rémy self-portraits show his side with the unmutilated ear, as he saw himself in the mirror
+
+Self-Portrait Without Beard, c. September 1889. This painting may have been Van Gogh's last self-portrait. He gave it to his mother as a birthday gift.[244][245]
+
+Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses, lilacs, irises, and sunflowers. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e.[246] There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887 and shows flowers lying on the ground. The second set was completed a year later in Arles and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light.[247] Both are built from thickly layered paintwork, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the "texture of the seed-heads".[248]
+
+In these series, Van Gogh was not preoccupied by his usual interest in filling his paintings with subjectivity and emotion; rather, the two series are intended to display his technical skill and working methods to Gauguin,[137] who was about to visit. The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Vincent wrote to Theo in August 1888: "I'm painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when it's a question of painting large sunflowers ... If I carry out this plan there'll be a dozen or so panels. The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow. I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it's a matter of doing the whole thing in one go."[249]
+
+The sunflowers were painted to decorate the walls in anticipation of Gauguin's visit, and Van Gogh placed individual works around the Yellow House's guest room in Arles. Gauguin was deeply impressed and later acquired two of the Paris versions.[137] After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions of the sunflowers as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and included them in his Les XX in Brussels exhibit. Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the colour yellow and its tie-in with the Yellow House, the expressionism of the brush strokes, and their contrast against often dark backgrounds.[250]
+
+Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, August 1888. Neue Pinakothek, Munich
+
+Irises, 1889. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
+
+Almond Blossom, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background, May 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam [251]
+
+Still Life: Pink Roses in a Vase, May 1890, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [251]
+
+Fifteen canvases depict cypresses, a tree he became fascinated with in Arles.[252] He brought life to the trees, which were traditionally seen as emblematic of death.[220] The series of cypresses he began in Arles featured the trees in the distance, as windbreaks in fields; when he was at Saint-Rémy he brought them to the foreground.[253] Vincent wrote to Theo in May 1889: "Cypresses still preoccupy me, I should like to do something with them like my canvases of sunflowers"; he went on to say, "They are beautiful in line and proportion like an Egyptian obelisk."[254]
+
+In mid-1889, and at his sister Wil's request, Van Gogh painted several smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses.[255] The works are characterised by swirls and densely painted impasto, and include The Starry Night, in which cypresses dominate the foreground.[252] In addition to this, other notable works on cypresses include Cypresses (1889), Cypresses with Two Figures (1889–90), and Road with Cypress and Star (1890).[256]
+
+During the last six or seven months of the year 1889, he had also created at least fifteen paintings of olive trees, a subject which he considered as demanding and compelling.[257] Among these works are Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (1889), about which in a letter to his brother Van Gogh wrote, "At last I have a landscape with olives".[256]While in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh spent time outside the asylum, where he painted trees in the olive groves. In these works, natural life is rendered as gnarled and arthritic as if a personification of the natural world, which are, according to Hughes, filled with "a continuous field of energy of which nature is a manifestation".[220]
+
+Cypresses in Starry Night, a reed pen drawing executed by Van Gogh after the painting in 1889.
+
+Cypresses and Two Women, 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
+
+Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+The Flowering Orchards (also the Orchards in Blossom) are among the first groups of work completed after Van Gogh's arrival in Arles in February 1888. The 14 paintings are optimistic, joyous and visually expressive of the burgeoning spring. They are delicately sensitive and unpopulated. He painted swiftly, and although he brought to this series a version of Impressionism, a strong sense of personal style began to emerge during this period. The transience of the blossoming trees, and the passing of the season, seemed to align with his sense of impermanence and belief in a new beginning in Arles. During the blossoming of the trees that spring, he found "a world of motifs that could not have been more Japanese".[258] Vincent wrote to Theo on 21 April 1888 that he had 10 orchards and "one big [painting] of a cherry tree, which I've spoiled".[259]
+
+During this period Van Gogh mastered the use of light by subjugating shadows and painting the trees as if they are the source of light – almost in a sacred manner.[258] Early the following year he painted another smaller group of orchards, including View of Arles, Flowering Orchards.[260] Van Gogh was enthralled by the landscape and vegetation of the south of France, and often visited the farm gardens near Arles. In the vivid light of the Mediterranean climate his palette significantly brightened.[261]
+
+Pink Peach Tree in Blossom (Reminiscence of Mauve), watercolour, March 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum
+
+The Pink Orchard also Orchard with Blossoming Apricot Trees, March 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Orchard in Blossom, Bordered by Cypresses, April 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
+
+View of Arles, Flowering Orchards, 1889. Neue Pinakothek, Munich
+
+Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the landscape around Arles. He made paintings of harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area, including The Old Mill (1888); a good example of a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond.[119] At various points, Van Gogh painted the view from his window – at The Hague, Antwerp, and Paris. These works culminated in The Wheat Field series, which depicted the view from his cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.[262]
+
+Many of the late paintings are sombre but essentially optimistic and, right up to the time of Van Gogh's death, reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns.[263][264] Writing in July 1890, from Auvers, Van Gogh said that he had become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow".[184]
+
+Van Gogh was captivated by the fields in May when the wheat was young and green. His Wheatfields at Auvers with White House shows a more subdued palette of yellows and blues, which creates a sense of idyllic harmony.[265]
+
+About 10 July 1890, Van Gogh wrote to Theo of "vast fields of wheat under troubled skies".[266] Wheatfield with Crows shows the artist's state of mind in his final days; Hulsker describes the work as a "doom-filled painting with threatening skies and ill-omened crows".[187] Its dark palette and heavy brushstrokes convey a sense of menace.[267]
+
+Enclosed Wheat Field with Rising Sun, May 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
+
+Rain or Enclosed Wheat Field in the Rain, November 1889, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
+
+Wheat Fields, early June 1889. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
+
+Wheat Field at Auvers with White House, June 1890, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
+
+After Van Gogh's first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors.[268] In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh's alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy.[269] In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by "fire, intensity, sunshine".[270] Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890.[271] French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh's work.[272]
+
+After Van Gogh's death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels.[271] In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh's suicide was an "infinitely sadder loss for art ... even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived."[269]
+
+Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent's most vocal and well-connected champion.[273] Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh.[268][note 14] Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting Van Gogh's reputation, and Johanna's brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work.[268] Aurier, one of Van Gogh's earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of twenty-seven.[275]
+
+In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of Van Gogh's paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his Van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from Van Gogh's estate.[275] In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany.[276][277] Russell had been a close friend of Van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman's work, and gave him a Van Gogh drawing. Influenced by Van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours.[277][278]
+
+In Paris in 1901, a large Van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism.[275] Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914.[279] Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about Van Gogh,[280] and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to Van Gogh's art; she became an avid collector of his work.[281] The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to Van Gogh's work.[282] Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose catalogue raisonné L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh appeared in 1928.[283][note 15]
+
+Van Gogh's fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I,[286] helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914.[287] His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind.[9] These began a compelling mythology of Van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young.[288] In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of Van Gogh's life titled Lust for Life, based on Van Gogh's letters to Theo.[289] This novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book.[290][291]
+
+In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War. Bacon was inspired by an image he described as "haunting", and regarded Van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with Van Gogh's theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo: "[R]eal painters do not paint things as they are ... [T]hey paint them as they themselves feel them to be."[292]
+
+Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today's equivalent) include Portrait of Dr Gachet,[293] Portrait of Joseph Roulin and Irises. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of Wheat Field with Cypresses in 1993 for US$57 million.[294] In 2015, L'Allée des Alyscamps sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby's, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million.[295]
+
+Van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978),[296] inherited the estate after his mother's death in 1925. During the early 1950s he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages. He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection.[297] Theo's son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions. The project began in 1963; architect Gerrit Rietveld was commissioned to design it, and after his death in 1964 Kisho Kurokawa took charge.[298] Work progressed throughout the 1960s, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening.[296]
+
+The Van Gogh Museum opened in the Museumplein in Amsterdam in 1973.[299] It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year. In 2015 it had a record 1.9 million.[300] Eighty-five percent of the visitors come from other countries.[301]
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+Vincent Willem van Gogh (Dutch: [ˈvɪnsənt ˈʋɪləm vɑŋ ˈɣɔx] (listen);[note 1] 30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch post-impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. He was not commercially successful, and his suicide at 37 came after years of mental illness, depression and poverty.
+
+Born into an upper-middle-class family, Van Gogh drew as a child and was serious, quiet, and thoughtful. As a young man he worked as an art dealer, often travelling, but became depressed after he was transferred to London. He turned to religion and spent time as a Protestant missionary in southern Belgium. He drifted in ill health and solitude before taking up painting in 1881, having moved back home with his parents. His younger brother Theo supported him financially, and the two kept a long correspondence by letter. His early works, mostly still lifes and depictions of peasant labourers, contain few signs of the vivid colour that distinguished his later work. In 1886, he moved to Paris, where he met members of the avant-garde, including Émile Bernard and Paul Gauguin, who were reacting against the Impressionist sensibility. As his work developed he created a new approach to still lifes and local landscapes. His paintings grew brighter in colour as he developed a style that became fully realised during his stay in Arles in the south of France in 1888. During this period he broadened his subject matter to include series of olive trees, wheat fields and sunflowers.
+
+Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions and though he worried about his mental stability, he often neglected his physical health, did not eat properly and drank heavily. His friendship with Gauguin ended after a confrontation with a razor when, in a rage, he severed part of his own left ear. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, including a period at Saint-Rémy. After he discharged himself and moved to the Auberge Ravoux in Auvers-sur-Oise near Paris, he came under the care of the homeopathic doctor Paul Gachet. His depression continued and on 27 July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a Lefaucheux revolver.[6] He died from his injuries two days later.
+
+Van Gogh was unsuccessful during his lifetime, and was considered a madman and a failure. He became famous after his suicide, and exists in the public imagination as the quintessential misunderstood genius, the artist "where discourses on madness and creativity converge".[7] His reputation began to grow in the early 20th century as elements of his painting style came to be incorporated by the Fauves and German Expressionists. He attained widespread critical, commercial and popular success over the ensuing decades, and is remembered as an important but tragic painter, whose troubled personality typifies the romantic ideal of the tortured artist. Today, Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings to have ever sold, and his legacy is honoured by a museum in his name, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which holds the world's largest collection of his paintings and drawings.
+
+The most comprehensive primary source on Van Gogh is the correspondence between him and his younger brother, Theo. Their lifelong friendship, and most of what is known of Vincent's thoughts and theories of art, are recorded in the hundreds of letters they exchanged from 1872 until 1890.[8] Theo van Gogh was an art dealer and provided his brother with financial and emotional support, and access to influential people on the contemporary art scene.[9]
+
+Theo kept all of Vincent's letters to him;[11] Vincent kept few of the letters he received. After both had died, Theo's widow Johanna arranged for the publication of some of their letters. A few appeared in 1906 and 1913; the majority were published in 1914.[12][13] Vincent's letters are eloquent and expressive and have been described as having a "diary-like intimacy",[9] and read in parts like autobiography.[9] The translator Arnold Pomerans wrote that their publication adds a "fresh dimension to the understanding of Van Gogh's artistic achievement, an understanding granted to us by virtually no other painter".[14]
+
+There are more than 600 letters from Vincent to Theo and around 40 from Theo to Vincent. There are 22 to his sister Wil, 58 to the painter Anthon van Rappard, 22 to Émile Bernard as well as individual letters to Paul Signac, Paul Gauguin and the critic Albert Aurier. Some are illustrated with sketches.[9] Many are undated, but art historians have been able to place most in chronological order. Problems in transcription and dating remain, mainly with those posted from Arles. While there Vincent wrote around 200 letters in Dutch, French and English.[15] There is a gap in the record when he lived in Paris as the brothers lived together and had no need to correspond.[16]
+
+Vincent Willem van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 into a Dutch Reformed Church family in Groot-Zundert, in the predominantly Catholic province of North Brabant in the Netherlands.[17] He was the oldest surviving child of Theodorus van Gogh, a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church, and Anna Cornelia Carbentus. Van Gogh was given the name of his grandfather, and of a brother stillborn exactly a year before his birth.[note 2] Vincent was a common name in the Van Gogh family: his grandfather, Vincent (1789–1874), who received a degree in theology at the University of Leiden in 1811, had six sons, three of whom became art dealers. This Vincent may have been named after his own great-uncle, a sculptor (1729–1802).[19]
+
+Van Gogh's mother came from a prosperous family in The Hague,[20] and his father was the youngest son of a minister.[21] The two met when Anna's younger sister, Cornelia, married Theodorus's older brother Vincent (Cent). Van Gogh's parents married in May 1851 and moved to Zundert.[22] His brother Theo was born on 1 May 1857. There was another brother, Cor, and three sisters: Elisabeth, Anna, and Willemina (known as "Wil"). In later life Van Gogh remained in touch only with Willemina and Theo.[23] Van Gogh's mother was a rigid and religious woman who emphasised the importance of family to the point of claustrophobia for those around her.[24] Theodorus's salary was modest, but the Church supplied the family with a house, a maid, two cooks, a gardener, a carriage and horse, and Anna instilled in the children a duty to uphold the family's high social position.[25]
+
+Van Gogh was a serious and thoughtful child.[26] He was taught at home by his mother and a governess, and in 1860 was sent to the village school. In 1864, he was placed in a boarding school at Zevenbergen,[27] where he felt abandoned, and campaigned to come home. Instead, in 1866 his parents sent him to the middle school in Tilburg, where he was deeply unhappy.[28] His interest in art began at a young age. He was encouraged to draw as a child by his mother,[29] and his early drawings are expressive,[27] but do not approach the intensity of his later work.[30] Constant Cornelis Huijsmans, who had been a successful artist in Paris, taught the students at Tilburg. His philosophy was to reject technique in favour of capturing the impressions of things, particularly nature or common objects. Van Gogh's profound unhappiness seems to have overshadowed the lessons, which had little effect.[31] In March 1868, he abruptly returned home. He later wrote that his youth was "austere and cold, and sterile".[32]
+
+In July 1869 Van Gogh's uncle Cent obtained a position for him at the art dealers Goupil & Cie in The Hague.[33] After completing his training in 1873, he was transferred to Goupil's London branch on Southampton Street, and took lodgings at 87 Hackford Road, Stockwell.[34] This was a happy time for Van Gogh; he was successful at work, and at 20 was earning more than his father. Theo's wife later remarked that this was the best year of Vincent's life. He became infatuated with his landlady's daughter, Eugénie Loyer, but was rejected after confessing his feelings; she was secretly engaged to a former lodger. He grew more isolated, and religiously fervent. His father and uncle arranged a transfer to Paris in 1875, where he became resentful of issues such as the degree to which the firm commodified art, and was dismissed a year later.[35]
+
+In April 1876 he returned to England to take unpaid work as a supply teacher in a small boarding school in Ramsgate. When the proprietor moved to Isleworth in Middlesex, Van Gogh went with him.[36][37] The arrangement did not work out and he left to become a Methodist minister's assistant.[38] His parents had meanwhile moved to Etten;[39] in 1876 he returned home at Christmas for six months and took work at a bookshop in Dordrecht. He was unhappy in the position and spent his time doodling or translating passages from the Bible into English, French and German.[40] He immersed himself in religion, and became increasingly pious and monastic.[41] According to his flatmate of the time, Paulus van Görlitz, Van Gogh ate frugally, avoiding meat.[42]
+
+To support his religious conviction and his desire to become a pastor, in 1877 the family sent him to live with his uncle Johannes Stricker, a respected theologian, in Amsterdam.[43] Van Gogh prepared for the University of Amsterdam theology entrance examination;[44] he failed the exam, and left his uncle's house in July 1878. He undertook, but also failed, a three-month course at a Protestant missionary school in Laken, near Brussels.[45]
+
+In January 1879 he took up a post as a missionary at Petit-Wasmes[46] in the coal-mining district of Borinage in Belgium. To show support for his impoverished congregation, he gave up his comfortable lodgings at a bakery to a homeless person, and moved to a small hut where he slept on straw.[47] His squalid living conditions did not endear him to church authorities, who dismissed him for "undermining the dignity of the priesthood". He then walked the 75 kilometres (47 mi) to Brussels,[48] returned briefly to Cuesmes in the Borinage, but gave in to pressure from his parents to return home to Etten. He stayed there until around March 1880,[note 3] which caused concern and frustration for his parents. His father was especially frustrated and advised that his son should be committed to the lunatic asylum at Geel.[50][51][note 4]
+
+Van Gogh returned to Cuesmes in August 1880, where he lodged with a miner until October.[53] He became interested in the people and scenes around him, and recorded them in drawings after Theo's suggestion that he take up art in earnest. He travelled to Brussels later in the year, to follow Theo's recommendation that he study with the Dutch artist Willem Roelofs, who persuaded him – in spite of his dislike of formal schools of art – to attend the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts. He registered at the Académie in November 1880, where he studied anatomy and the standard rules of modelling and perspective.[54]
+
+Van Gogh returned to Etten in April 1881 for an extended stay with his parents.[55] He continued to draw, often using his neighbours as subjects. In August 1881, his recently widowed cousin, Cornelia "Kee" Vos-Stricker, daughter of his mother's older sister Willemina and Johannes Stricker, arrived for a visit. He was thrilled and took long walks with her. Kee was seven years older than he was, and had an eight-year-old son. Van Gogh surprised everyone by declaring his love to her and proposing marriage.[56] She refused with the words "No, nay, never" ("nooit, neen, nimmer").[57] After Kee returned to Amsterdam, Van Gogh went to The Hague to try to sell paintings and to meet with his second cousin, Anton Mauve. Mauve was the successful artist Van Gogh longed to be.[58] Mauve invited him to return in a few months, and suggested he spend the intervening time working in charcoal and pastels; Van Gogh went back to Etten and followed this advice.[58]
+
+Late in November 1881, Van Gogh wrote a letter to Johannes Stricker, one which he described to Theo as an attack.[59] Within days he left for Amsterdam.[60] Kee would not meet him, and her parents wrote that his "persistence is disgusting".[61] In despair, he held his left hand in the flame of a lamp, with the words: "Let me see her for as long as I can keep my hand in the flame."[61][62] He did not recall the event well, but later assumed that his uncle had blown out the flame. Kee's father made it clear that her refusal should be heeded and that the two would not marry, largely because of Van Gogh's inability to support himself.[63]
+
+Mauve took Van Gogh on as a student and introduced him to watercolour, which he worked on for the next month before returning home for Christmas.[64] He quarrelled with his father, refusing to attend church, and left for The Hague.[note 5][65]  In January 1882, Mauve introduced him to painting in oil and lent him money to set up a studio.[66][67] Within a month Van Gogh and Mauve fell out, possibly over the viability of drawing from plaster casts.[68] Van Gogh could afford to hire only people from the street as models, a practice of which Mauve seems to have disapproved.[69] In June Van Gogh suffered a bout of gonorrhoea and spent three weeks in hospital.[70] Soon after, he first painted in oils,[71] bought with money borrowed from Theo. He liked the medium, and spread the paint liberally, scraping from the canvas and working back with the brush. He wrote that he was surprised at how good the results were.[72]
+
+By March 1882, Mauve appears to have gone cold towards Van Gogh, and stopped replying to his letters.[73] He had learned of Van Gogh's new domestic arrangement with an alcoholic prostitute, Clasina Maria "Sien" Hoornik (1850–1904), and her young daughter.[74] Van Gogh had met Sien towards the end of January 1882, when she had a five-year-old daughter and was pregnant. She had previously borne two children who died, but Van Gogh was unaware of this;[75] On 2 July, she gave birth to a baby boy, Willem.[76] When Van Gogh's father discovered the details of their relationship, he put pressure on his son to abandon Sien and her two children. Vincent at first defied him,[77] and considered moving the family out of the city, but in late 1883, he left Sien and the children.[78]
+
+Poverty may have pushed Sien back into prostitution; the home became less happy and Van Gogh may have felt family life was irreconcilable with his artistic development. Sien gave her daughter to her mother, and baby Willem to her brother.[79] Willem remembered visiting Rotterdam when he was about 12, when an uncle tried to persuade Sien to marry to legitimise the child.[80] He believed Van Gogh was his father, but the timing of his birth makes this unlikely.[81] Sien drowned herself in the River Scheldt in 1904.[82]
+
+In September 1883, Van Gogh moved to Drenthe in the northern Netherlands. In December, driven by loneliness, he went to live with his parents, then in Nuenen, North Brabant.[82]
+
+In Nuenen, Van Gogh focused on painting and drawing. Working outside and very quickly, he completed sketches and paintings of weavers and their cottages. Van Gogh also completed The Parsonage Garden at Nuenen, which was stolen from the Singer Laren in March 2020.[83][84] From August 1884, Margot Begemann, a neighbour's daughter ten years his senior, joined him on his forays; she fell in love and he reciprocated, though less enthusiastically. They wanted to marry, but neither side of their families were in favour. Margot was distraught and took an overdose of strychnine, but survived after Van Gogh rushed her to a nearby hospital.[76] On 26 March 1885, his father died of a heart attack.[85]
+
+Van Gogh painted several groups of still lifes in 1885.[86] During his two-year stay in Nuenen, he completed numerous drawings and watercolours, and nearly 200 oil paintings. His palette consisted mainly of sombre earth tones, particularly dark brown, and showed no sign of the vivid colours that distinguish his later work.[87]
+
+There was interest from a dealer in Paris early in 1885.[88] Theo asked Vincent if he had paintings ready to exhibit.[89] In May, Van Gogh responded with his first major work, The Potato Eaters, and a series of "peasant character studies" which were the culmination of several years of work.[90] When he complained that Theo was not making enough effort to sell his paintings in Paris, his brother responded that they were too dark, and not in keeping with the bright style of Impressionism.[87] In August his work was publicly exhibited for the first time, in the shop windows of the dealer Leurs in The Hague. One of his young peasant sitters became pregnant in September 1885; Van Gogh was accused of forcing himself upon her, and the village priest forbade parishioners to model for him.[91]
+
+Worn Out, pencil on watercolour paper, 1882. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam [92]
+
+Still Life with Open Bible, Extinguished Candle and Novel also Still Life with Bible, 1885. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Skull of a Skeleton with Burning Cigarette, 1885–86. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Peasant Woman Digging, or Woman with a Spade, Seen from Behind, 1885. Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto
+
+He moved to Antwerp that November, and rented a room above a paint dealer's shop in the rue des Images (Lange Beeldekensstraat).[93] He lived in poverty and ate poorly, preferring to spend the money Theo sent on painting materials and models. Bread, coffee and tobacco became his staple diet. In February 1886, he wrote to Theo that he could only remember eating six hot meals since the previous May. His teeth became loose and painful.[94] In Antwerp he applied himself to the study of colour theory and spent time in museums—particularly studying the work of Peter Paul Rubens—and broadened his palette to include carmine, cobalt blue and emerald green. Van Gogh bought Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts in the docklands, later incorporating elements of their style into the background of some of his paintings.[95] He was drinking heavily again,[96] and was hospitalised between February and March 1886,[97] when he was possibly also treated for syphilis.[98][note 6]
+
+After his recovery, and despite his antipathy towards academic teaching, he took the higher-level admission exams at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp, and in January 1886 matriculated in painting and drawing. He became ill and run down by overwork, poor diet and excessive smoking.[101] He started to attend drawing classes after plaster models at the Antwerp Academy on 18 January 1886. He quickly got into trouble with Charles Verlat, the director of the Academy and teacher of a painting class, because of his unconventional painting style. Van Gogh had also clashed with the instructor of the drawing class Franz Vinck. Van Gogh finally started to attend the drawing classes after antique plaster models given by Eugène Siberdt. Soon Siberdt and Van Gogh came into conflict when the latter did not comply with Siberdt's requirement that drawings express the contour and concentrate on the line. When Van Gogh was required to draw the Venus of Milo during a drawing class, he produced the limbless, naked torso of a Flemish peasant woman. Siberdt regarded this as defiance against his artistic guidance and made corrections to Van Gogh's drawing with his crayon so vigorously that he tore the paper. Van Gogh then flew into a violent rage and shouted at Siberdt: 'You clearly do not know what a young woman is like, God damn it! A woman must have hips, buttocks, a pelvis in which she can carry a baby!' According to some accounts this was the last time Van Gogh attended classes at the Academy and he left later for Paris.[102] On 31 March 1886, which was about a month after the confrontation with Siberdt, the teachers of the Academy decided that 17 students, including Van Gogh, had to repeat a year. The story that Van Gogh was expelled from the Academy by Siberdt is therefore unfounded.[103]
+
+Van Gogh moved to Paris in March 1886 where he shared Theo's rue Laval apartment in Montmartre, and studied at Fernand Cormon's studio. In June the brothers took a larger flat at 54 rue Lepic.[105] In Paris, Vincent painted portraits of friends and acquaintances, still life paintings, views of Le Moulin de la Galette, scenes in Montmartre, Asnières and along the Seine. In 1885 in Antwerp he had become interested in Japanese ukiyo-e woodblock prints, and had used them to decorate the walls of his studio; while in Paris he collected hundreds of them. He tried his hand at Japonaiserie, tracing a figure from a reproduction on the cover of the magazine Paris Illustre, The Courtesan or Oiran (1887), after Keisai Eisen, which he then graphically enlarged in a painting.[106]
+
+After seeing the portrait of Adolphe Monticelli at the Galerie Delareybarette, Van Gogh adopted a brighter palette and a bolder attack, particularly in paintings such as his Seascape at Saintes-Maries (1888).[107][108] Two years later, Vincent and Theo paid for the publication of a book on Monticelli paintings, and Vincent bought some of Monticelli's works to add to his collection.[109]
+
+Van Gogh learned about Fernand Cormon's atelier from Theo.[110] He worked at the studio in April and May 1886,[111] where he frequented the circle of the Australian artist John Peter Russell, who painted his portrait in 1886.[112] Van Gogh also met fellow students Émile Bernard, Louis Anquetin and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec – who painted a portrait of him in pastel. They met at Julien "Père" Tanguy's paint shop,[111] (which was, at that time, the only place where Paul Cézanne's paintings were displayed). In 1886, two large exhibitions were staged there, showing Pointillism and Neo-impressionism for the first time, and bringing attention to Georges Seurat and Paul Signac. Theo kept a stock of Impressionist paintings in his gallery on boulevard Montmartre, but Van Gogh was slow to acknowledge the new developments in art.[113]
+
+Conflicts arose between the brothers. At the end of 1886 Theo found living with Vincent to be "almost unbearable".[111] By early 1887, they were again at peace, and Vincent had moved to Asnières, a northwestern suburb of Paris, where he got to know Signac. He adopted elements of Pointillism, a technique in which a multitude of small coloured dots are applied to the canvas so that when seen from a distance they create an optical blend of hues. The style stresses the ability of complementary colours – including blue and orange – to form vibrant contrasts.[89][111]
+
+Le Moulin de Blute-Fin (1886) from the Le Moulin de la Galette and Montmartre series'. Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo (F273)
+
+Courtesan (after Eisen), 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Portrait of Père Tanguy, 1887. Musée Rodin, Paris
+
+Still Life with Glass of Absinthe and a Carafe, 1887. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+While in Asnières Van Gogh painted parks, restaurants and the Seine, including Bridges across the Seine at Asnières. In November 1887, Theo and Vincent befriended Paul Gauguin who had just arrived in Paris.[114] Towards the end of the year, Vincent arranged an exhibition alongside Bernard, Anquetin, and probably Toulouse-Lautrec, at the Grand-Bouillon Restaurant du Chalet, 43 avenue de Clichy, Montmartre. In a contemporary account, Bernard wrote that the exhibition was ahead of anything else in Paris.[115] There, Bernard and Anquetin sold their first paintings, and Van Gogh exchanged work with Gauguin. Discussions on art, artists, and their social situations started during this exhibition, continued and expanded to include visitors to the show, like Camille Pissarro and his son Lucien, Signac and Seurat. In February 1888, feeling worn out from life in Paris, Van Gogh left, having painted more than 200 paintings during his two years there. Hours before his departure, accompanied by Theo, he paid his first and only visit to Seurat in his studio.[116]
+
+Ill from drink and suffering from smoker's cough, in February 1888 Van Gogh sought refuge in Arles.[15] He seems to have moved with thoughts of founding an art colony. The Danish artist Christian Mourier-Petersen became his companion for two months, and at first Arles appeared exotic. In a letter, he described it as a foreign country: "The Zouaves, the brothels, the adorable little Arlésienne going to her First Communion, the priest in his surplice, who looks like a dangerous rhinoceros, the people drinking absinthe, all seem to me creatures from another world."[117]
+
+The time in Arles became one of Van Gogh's more prolific periods: he completed 200 paintings, and more than 100 drawings and watercolours.[118] He was enchanted by the local countryside and light; his works from this period are rich in yellow, ultramarine and mauve. His paintings include harvests, wheat fields and general rural landmarks from the area, including The Old Mill (1888), a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields.[119] This was one of seven canvases sent to Pont-Aven on 4 October 1888 in an exchange of works with Paul Gauguin, Émile Bernard, Charles Laval and others.[119]
+
+The portrayals of Arles are informed by Van Gogh's Dutch upbringing; the patchworks of fields and avenues appear flat and lacking perspective, but excel in their use of colour.[120] His new-found appreciation is seen in the range and scope of his work. In March 1888 he painted landscapes using a gridded "perspective frame"; three of the works were shown at the annual exhibition of the Société des Artistes Indépendants. In April, he was visited by the American artist Dodge MacKnight, who was living nearby at Fontvieille.[121][122] On 1 May 1888, for 15 francs per month, he signed a lease for the eastern wing of the Yellow House at 2 place Lamartine. The rooms were unfurnished and had been uninhabited for months.[123]
+
+On 7 May, Van Gogh moved from the Hôtel Carrel to the Café de la Gare,[124] having befriended the proprietors, Joseph and Marie Ginoux. The Yellow House had to be furnished before he could fully move in, but he was able to use it as a studio.[125] He wanted a gallery to display his work, and started a series of paintings that eventually included Van Gogh's Chair (1888), Bedroom in Arles (1888), The Night Café (1888), Café Terrace at Night (September 1888), Starry Night Over the Rhone (1888), and Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers (1888), all intended for the decoration for the Yellow House.[126]
+
+Van Gogh wrote that with The Night Café he tried "to express the idea that the café is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime".[127] When he visited Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer in June, he gave lessons to a Zouave second lieutenant – Paul-Eugène Milliet[128] – and painted boats on the sea and the village.[129] MacKnight introduced Van Gogh to Eugène Boch, a Belgian painter who sometimes stayed in Fontvieille, and the two exchanged visits in July.[128]
+
+The Sower with Setting Sun, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Fishing Boats on the Beach at Saintes-Maries, June 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Bedroom in Arles, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+The Old Mill, 1888. Albright–Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York
+
+Ploughman in the Fields near Arles (1888), National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. Van Gogh never ceased drawing during any period in his artistic life.
+
+When Gauguin agreed to visit Arles in 1888, Van Gogh hoped for friendship, and the realisation of his idea of an artists' collective. While waiting, in August he painted Sunflowers. When Boch visited again, Van Gogh painted a portrait of him, as well as the study The Poet Against a Starry Sky.[130][note 7]
+
+In preparation for Gauguin's visit, Van Gogh bought two beds on advice from the station's postal supervisor Joseph Roulin, whose portrait he painted. On 17 September, he spent his first night in the still sparsely furnished Yellow House.[132] When Gauguin consented to work and live in Arles with him, Van Gogh started to work on the Décoration for the Yellow House, probably the most ambitious effort he ever undertook.[133] He completed two chair paintings: Van Gogh's Chair and Gauguin's Chair.[134]
+
+After much pleading from Van Gogh, Gauguin arrived in Arles on 23 October, and in November the two painted together. Gauguin depicted Van Gogh in his The Painter of Sunflowers; Van Gogh painted pictures from memory, following Gauguin's suggestion. Among these "imaginative" paintings is Memory of the Garden at Etten.[135][note 8] Their first joint outdoor venture was at the Alyscamps, when they produced the pendants Les Alyscamps.[136] The single painting Gauguin completed during his visit was Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers.[137]
+
+Van Gogh and Gauguin visited Montpellier in December 1888, where they saw works by Courbet and Delacroix in the Musée Fabre.[138] Their relationship began to deteriorate; Van Gogh admired Gauguin and wanted to be treated as his equal, but Gauguin was arrogant and domineering, which frustrated Van Gogh. They often quarrelled; Van Gogh increasingly feared that Gauguin was going to desert him, and the situation, which Van Gogh described as one of "excessive tension", rapidly headed towards crisis point.[139]
+
+The Night Café, 1888. Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut
+
+The Red Vineyard, November 1888. Pushkin Museum, Moscow. Sold to Anna Boch, 1890
+
+Van Gogh's Chair, 1888. National Gallery, London
+
+Paul Gauguin's Armchair, 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+The exact sequence of events which led to Van Gogh's mutilation of his ear is not known. Gauguin stated, 15 years later, that the night followed several instances of physically threatening behaviour.[141] Their relationship was complex, and Theo may have owed money to Gauguin, who was suspicious that the brothers were exploiting him financially.[142] It seems likely that Van Gogh had realised that Gauguin was planning to leave.[142] The following days saw heavy rain, leading to the two men being shut in the Yellow House.[143] Gauguin reported that Van Gogh followed when Gauguin left the house for a walk, and "rushed towards me, an open razor in his hand".[143] This account is uncorroborated;[144] Gauguin was almost certainly absent from the Yellow House that night, most likely in a hotel.[143]
+
+After the altercation with Gauguin, Van Gogh returned to his room, where he was assaulted by voices and severed his left ear with a razor (either wholly or in part; accounts differ),[note 9] causing severe bleeding.[145] He bandaged the wound, wrapped the ear in paper, and delivered the package to a woman at a brothel Van Gogh and Gauguin both frequented.[145] Van Gogh was found unconscious the next morning by a policeman and taken to hospital,[148][149] where Félix Rey, a young doctor still in training, treated him. The ear was delivered to the hospital, but Rey did not attempt to reattach it as too much time had passed.[143]
+
+Van Gogh had no recollection of the event, suggesting that he may have suffered an acute mental breakdown.[150] The hospital diagnosis was "acute mania with generalised delirium",[151] and within a few days the local police ordered that he be placed in hospital care.[152][153] Gauguin immediately notified Theo, who on 24 December had proposed marriage to his old friend Andries Bonger's sister Johanna.[154] That evening Theo rushed to the station to board a night train to Arles. He arrived on Christmas Day and comforted Vincent, who seemed to be semi-lucid. That evening he left Arles for the return trip to Paris.[155]
+
+During the first days of his treatment, Van Gogh repeatedly and unsuccessfully asked for Gauguin, who asked a policeman attending the case to "be kind enough, Monsieur, to awaken this man with great care, and if he asks for me tell him I have left for Paris; the sight of me might prove fatal for him."[156] Gauguin fled Arles, never to see Van Gogh again. They continued to correspond and in 1890 Gauguin proposed they form a studio in Antwerp. Meanwhile, other visitors to the hospital included Marie Ginoux and Roulin.[157]
+
+Despite a pessimistic diagnosis, Van Gogh recovered and returned to the Yellow House on 7 January 1889.[158] He spent the following month between hospital and home, suffering from hallucinations and delusions of poisoning.[159] In March, the police closed his house after a petition by 30 townspeople (including the Ginoux family) who described him as "le fou roux" (the redheaded madman);[152] Van Gogh returned to hospital. Paul Signac visited him twice in March;[160] in April Van Gogh moved into rooms owned by Dr Rey after floods damaged paintings in his own home.[161] Two months later, he left Arles and voluntarily entered an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence. Around this time, he wrote, "Sometimes moods of indescribable anguish, sometimes moments when the veil of time and fatality of circumstances seemed to be torn apart for an instant."[162]
+
+Van Gogh gave his 1889 Portrait of Doctor Félix Rey to Dr Rey. The physician was not fond of the painting and used it to repair a chicken coop, then gave it away.[163] In 2016, the portrait was housed at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts and estimated to be worth over $50 million.[164]
+
+Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear and Pipe, 1889, private collection
+
+The Courtyard of the Hospital at Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection "Am Römerholz", Winterthur, Switzerland
+
+Self-portrait with Bandaged Ear, 1889, Courtauld Institute of Art, London
+
+Ward in the Hospital in Arles, 1889, Oskar Reinhart Collection "Am Römerholz", Winterthur, Switzerland
+
+Van Gogh entered the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum on 8 May 1889, accompanied by his caregiver, Frédéric Salles, a Protestant clergyman. Saint-Paul was a former monastery in Saint-Rémy, located less than 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Arles, and was run by a former naval doctor, Théophile Peyron. Van Gogh had two cells with barred windows, one of which he used as a studio.[165] The clinic and its garden became the main subjects of his paintings. He made several studies of the hospital's interiors, such as Vestibule of the Asylum and Saint-Rémy (September 1889). Some of his works from this time are characterised by swirls, such as The Starry Night. He was allowed short supervised walks, during which time he painted cypresses and olive trees, including Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background 1889, Cypresses 1889, Cornfield with Cypresses (1889), Country road in Provence by Night (1890). In September 1889 he produced two further versions of Bedroom in Arles.[166]
+
+Limited access to life outside the clinic resulted in a shortage of subject matter. Van Gogh instead worked on interpretations of other artist's paintings, such as Millet's The Sower and Noonday Rest, and variations on his own earlier work. Van Gogh was an admirer of the Realism of Jules Breton, Gustave Courbet and Millet,[167] and he compared his copies to a musician's interpreting Beethoven.[168]
+
+His Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré) (1890) was painted after an engraving by Gustave Doré (1832–1883). Tralbaut suggests that the face of the prisoner in the centre of the painting looking towards the viewer is Van Gogh himself;[169] Jan Hulsker discounts this.[170]
+
+Between February and April 1890, Van Gogh suffered a severe relapse. Depressed and unable to bring himself to write, he was still able to paint and draw a little during this time,[171] and he later wrote to Theo that he had made a few small canvases "from memory ... reminisces of the North".[172] Among these was Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset. Hulsker believes that this small group of paintings formed the nucleus of many drawings and study sheets depicting landscapes and figures that Van Gogh worked on during this time. He comments that this short period was the only time that Van Gogh's illness had a significant effect on his work.[173] Van Gogh asked his mother and his brother to send him drawings and rough work he had done in the early 1880s so he could work on new paintings from his old sketches.[174] Belonging to this period is Sorrowing Old Man ("At Eternity's Gate"), a colour study Hulsker describes as "another unmistakable remembrance of times long past".[92][175] His late paintings show an artist at the height of his abilities, according to the art critic Robert Hughes, "longing for concision and grace".[117]
+
+Prisoners' Round (after Gustave Doré), 1890. Pushkin Museum, Moscow
+
+The Sower, (after Jean-François Millet), 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
+
+Two Peasant Women Digging in a Snow-Covered Field at Sunset, (after Jean-François Millet), 1890. Foundation E.G. Bührle Collection, Zurich, Switzerland
+
+Sorrowing Old Man ('At Eternity's Gate'), 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo [92]
+
+Albert Aurier praised his work in the Mercure de France in January 1890, and described him as "a genius".[176] In February, Van Gogh painted five versions of L'Arlésienne (Madame Ginoux), based on a charcoal sketch Gauguin had produced when she sat for both artists in November 1888.[177][note 10] Also in February, Van Gogh was invited by Les XX, a society of avant-garde painters in Brussels, to participate in their annual exhibition. At the opening dinner a Les XX member, Henry de Groux, insulted Van Gogh's work. Toulouse-Lautrec demanded satisfaction, and Signac declared he would continue to fight for Van Gogh's honour if Lautrec surrendered. De Groux apologised for the slight and left the group. Later, while Van Gogh's exhibit was on display with the Artistes Indépendants in Paris, Claude Monet said that his work was the best in the show.[178] After the birth of his nephew, Van Gogh wrote, "I started right away to make a picture for him, to hang in their bedroom, branches of white almond blossom against a blue sky."[179]
+
+In May 1890, Van Gogh left the clinic in Saint-Rémy to move nearer to both Dr Paul Gachet in the Paris suburb of Auvers-sur-Oise and to Theo. Gachet was an amateur painter and had treated several other artists – Camille Pissarro had recommended him. Van Gogh's first impression was that Gachet was "iller than I am, it seemed to me, or let's say just as much."[180]
+
+The painter Charles Daubigny moved to Auvers in 1861, and in turn drew other artists there, including Camille Corot and Honoré Daumier. In July 1890, Van Gogh completed two paintings of Daubigny's Garden, one of which is likely his final work.[181]
+
+During his last weeks at Saint-Rémy, his thoughts returned to "memories of the North",[172] and several of the approximately 70 oils, painted during as many days in Auvers-sur-Oise, are reminiscent of northern scenes.[182] In June 1890, he painted several portraits of his doctor, including Portrait of Dr Gachet, and his only etching. In each the emphasis is on Gachet's melancholic disposition.[183] There are other paintings which are probably unfinished, including Thatched Cottages by a Hill.[181]
+
+In July, Van Gogh wrote that he had become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow".[184] He had first become captivated by the fields in May, when the wheat was young and green. In July, he described to Theo "vast fields of wheat under turbulent skies".[185]
+
+He wrote that they represented his "sadness and extreme loneliness", and that the "canvases will tell you what I cannot say in words, that is, how healthy and invigorating I find the countryside".[186] Wheatfield with Crows, although not his last oil work, is from July 1890 and Hulsker discusses it as being associated with "melancholy and extreme loneliness".[187] Hulsker identifies seven oil paintings from Auvers that follow the completion of Wheatfield with Crows.[188]
+
+On 27 July 1890, aged 37, Van Gogh shot himself in the chest with a 7mm Lefaucheux à broche revolver.[189][190] There were no witnesses and he died 30 hours after the incident.[163] The shooting may have taken place in the wheat field in which he had been painting, or a local barn.[191] The bullet was deflected by a rib and passed through his chest without doing apparent damage to internal organs – probably stopped by his spine. He was able to walk back to the Auberge Ravoux, where he was attended to by two doctors, but without a surgeon present the bullet could not be removed. The doctors tended to him as best they could, then left him alone in his room, smoking his pipe. The following morning Theo rushed to his brother's side, finding him in good spirits. But within hours Vincent began to fail, suffering from an untreated infection resulting from the wound. He died in the early hours of 29 July. According to Theo, Vincent's last words were: "The sadness will last forever".[192][193][194][195]
+
+Van Gogh was buried on 30 July, in the municipal cemetery of Auvers-sur-Oise. The funeral was attended by Theo van Gogh, Andries Bonger, Charles Laval, Lucien Pissarro, Émile Bernard, Julien Tanguy and Paul Gachet, among twenty family members, friends and locals. Theo had been ill, and his health began to decline further after his brother's death. Weak and unable to come to terms with Vincent's absence, he died on 25 January 1891 at Den Dolder, and was buried in Utrecht.[196] In 1914, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger had Theo's body exhumed and moved from Utrecht to be re-buried alongside Vincent's at Auvers-sur-Oise.[197]
+
+There have been numerous debates as to the nature of Van Gogh's illness and its effect on his work, and many retrospective diagnoses have been proposed. The consensus is that Van Gogh had an episodic condition with periods of normal functioning.[198] Perry was the first to suggest bipolar disorder in 1947,[199] and this has been supported by the psychiatrists Hemphill and Blumer.[200][201] Biochemist Wilfred Arnold has countered that the symptoms are more consistent with acute intermittent porphyria, noting that the popular link between bipolar disorder and creativity might be spurious.[198] Temporal lobe epilepsy with bouts of depression has also been suggested.[201] Whatever the diagnosis, his condition was likely worsened by malnutrition, overwork, insomnia and alcohol.[201]
+
+The gun Van Gogh was reputed to have used was rediscovered in 1965 and was auctioned, on 19 June 2019, as "the most famous weapon in art history". The gun sold for €162,500 (£144,000; $182,000), almost three times more than expected.[202][203][204]
+
+Van Gogh drew, and painted with watercolours while at school, but only a few examples survive and the authorship of some has been challenged.[205] When he took up art as an adult, he began at an elementary level. In early 1882, his uncle, Cornelis Marinus, owner of a well-known gallery of contemporary art in Amsterdam, asked for drawings of The Hague. Van Gogh's work did not live up to expectations. Marinus offered a second commission, specifying the subject matter in detail, but was again disappointed with the result. Van Gogh persevered; he experimented with lighting in his studio using variable shutters, and with different drawing materials. For more than a year he worked on single figures – highly elaborate studies in black and white,[note 11] which at the time gained him only criticism. Later, they were recognised as early masterpieces.[207]
+
+In August 1882 Theo gave Vincent money to buy materials for working en plein air. Vincent wrote that he could now "go on painting with new vigour".[208] From early 1883 he worked on multi-figure compositions. He had some of them photographed, but when his brother remarked that they lacked liveliness and freshness, he destroyed them and turned to oil painting. Van Gogh turned to well-known Hague School artists like Weissenbruch and Blommers, and received technical advice from them, as well as from painters like De Bock and Van der Weele, both of the Hague School's second generation.[209] When he moved to Nuenen after the period in Drenthe he began several large paintings but destroyed most of them. The Potato Eaters and its companion pieces are the only ones to have survived.[209] Following a visit to the Rijksmuseum, Van Gogh wrote of his admiration for the quick, economical brushwork of the Dutch Masters, especially Rembrandt and Frans Hals.[210][note 12] He was aware that many of his faults were due to lack of experience and technical expertise,[209] so in November 1885 he travelled to Antwerp and later Paris to learn and develop his skills.[211]
+
+Theo criticised The Potato Eaters for its dark palette, which he thought unsuitable for a modern style.[212] During Van Gogh's stay in Paris between 1886 and 1887, he tried to master a new, lighter palette. His Portrait of Père Tanguy (1887) shows his success with the brighter palette, and is evidence of an evolving personal style.[213] Charles Blanc's treatise on colour interested him greatly, and led him to work with complementary colours. Van Gogh came to believe that the effect of colour went beyond the descriptive; he said that "colour expresses something in itself".[214][215] According to Hughes, Van Gogh perceived colour as having a "psychological and moral weight", as exemplified in the garish reds and greens of The Night Cafe, a work he wanted to "express the terrible passions of humanity".[216] Yellow meant the most to him, because it symbolised emotional truth. He used yellow as a symbol for sunlight, life, and God.[217]
+
+Van Gogh strove to be a painter of rural life and nature,[218] and during his first summer in Arles he used his new palette to paint landscapes and traditional rural life.[219] His belief that a power existed behind the natural led him to try to capture a sense of that power, or the essence of nature in his art, sometimes through the use of symbols.[220] His renditions of the sower, at first copied from Jean-François Millet, reflect Van Gogh's religious beliefs: the sower as Christ sowing life beneath the hot sun.[221] These were themes and motifs he returned to often to rework and develop.[222] His paintings of flowers are filled with symbolism, but rather than use traditional Christian iconography he made up his own, where life is lived under the sun and work is an allegory of life.[223] In Arles, having gained confidence after painting spring blossoms and learning to capture bright sunlight, he was ready to paint The Sower.[214]
+
+Van Gogh stayed within what he called the "guise of reality",[224] and was critical of overly stylised works.[225] He wrote afterwards that the abstraction of Starry Night had gone too far and that reality had "receded too far in the background".[225] Hughes describes it as a moment of extreme visionary ecstasy: the stars are in a great whirl, reminiscent of Hokusai's Great Wave, the movement in the heaven above is reflected by the movement of the cypress on the earth below, and the painter's vision is "translated into a thick, emphatic plasma of paint".[226]
+
+Between 1885 and his death in 1890, Van Gogh appears to have been building an oeuvre,[227] a collection that reflected his personal vision, and could be commercially successful. He was influenced by Blanc's definition of style, that a true painting required optimal use of colour, perspective and brushstrokes. Van Gogh applied the word "purposeful" to paintings he thought he had mastered, as opposed to those he thought of as studies.[228] He painted many series of studies;[224] most of which were still lifes, many executed as colour experiments or as gifts to friends.[229] The work in Arles contributed considerably to his oeuvre: those he thought the most important from that time were The Sower, Night Cafe, Memory of the Garden in Etten and Starry Night. With their broad brushstrokes, inventive perspectives, colours, contours and designs, these paintings represent the style he sought.[225]
+
+Van Gogh's stylistic developments are usually linked to the periods he spent living in different places across Europe. He was inclined to immerse himself in local cultures and lighting conditions, although he maintained a highly individual visual outlook throughout. His evolution as an artist was slow, and he was aware of his painterly limitations. He moved home often, perhaps to expose himself to new visual stimuli, and through exposure develop his technical skill.[230] Art historian Melissa McQuillan believes the moves also reflect later stylistic changes, and that Van Gogh used the moves to avoid conflict, and as a coping mechanism for when the idealistic artist was faced with the realities of his then current situation.[231]
+
+The portraits gave Van Gogh his best opportunity to earn. He believed they were "the only thing in painting that moves me deeply and that gives me a sense of the infinite."[229][232] He wrote to his sister that he wished to paint portraits that would endure, and that he would use colour to capture their emotions and character rather than aiming for photographic realism.[233] Those closest to Van Gogh are mostly absent from his portraits; he rarely painted Theo, Van Rappard or Bernard. The portraits of his mother were from photographs.[234]
+
+In December 1888 he painted La Berceuse – a figure that he thought as good as his sunflowers. It has a limited palette, varied brushstrokes and simple contours.[225] It appears to be a culmination of portraits of the Roulin family completed in Arles between November and December. The portraits show a shift in style from the fluid, restrained brushstrokes and even surface of Portrait of the Postman to the frenetic style, rough surface, broad brushstrokes and use of a palette knife in Madame Roulin with Baby.[235]
+
+Portrait of Artist's Mother, October 1888, Norton Simon Museum of Art, Pasadena, California
+
+Eugène Boch, (The Poet Against a Starry Sky), 1888, Musée d'Orsay, Paris
+
+Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin (1841–1903) early August 1888, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
+
+La Berceuse (Augustine Roulin) 1889, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
+
+Van Gogh created more than 43 self-portraits between 1885 and 1889.[236][note 13] They were usually completed in series, such as those painted in Paris in mid-1887, and continued until shortly before his death.[237] Generally the portraits were studies, created during introspective periods when he was reluctant to mix with others, or when he lacked models, and so painted himself.[229][238]
+
+The self-portraits reflect an unusually high degree of self-scrutiny.[239] Often they were intended to mark important periods in his life; for example, the mid-1887 Paris series were painted at the point where he became aware of Claude Monet, Paul Cezanne and Signac.[240] In Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, heavy strains of paint spread outwards across the canvas. It is one of his most renowned self-portraits of that period, "with its highly organized rhythmic brushstrokes, and the novel halo derived from the Neo-impressionist repertoire was what Van Gogh himself called a 'purposeful' canvas".[241]
+
+They contain a wide array of physiognomical representations.[236] Van Gogh's mental and physical condition is usually apparent; he may appear unkempt, unshaven or with a neglected beard, with deeply sunken eyes, a weak jaw, or having lost teeth. Some show him with full lips, a long face or prominent skull, or sharpened, alert features. His hair may be the usual red, or at times ash coloured.[236]
+
+Van Gogh's gaze is seldom directed at the viewer. The portraits vary in intensity and colour, and in those painted after December 1888 especially, the vivid colours highlight the haggard pallor of his skin.[238] Some depict the artist with a beard, others without. He can be seen with bandages in portraits executed just after he mutilated his ear. In only a few does he depict himself as a painter.[236] Those painted in Saint-Rémy show the head from the right, the side opposite his damaged ear, as he painted himself reflected in his mirror.[242][243]
+
+Self-Portrait with Grey Felt Hat, Winter 1887–88. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Self-Portrait with Straw Hat, Paris, Winter 1887–88. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+Self-Portrait, 1889. National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. His Saint-Rémy self-portraits show his side with the unmutilated ear, as he saw himself in the mirror
+
+Self-Portrait Without Beard, c. September 1889. This painting may have been Van Gogh's last self-portrait. He gave it to his mother as a birthday gift.[244][245]
+
+Van Gogh painted several landscapes with flowers, including roses, lilacs, irises, and sunflowers. Some reflect his interests in the language of colour, and also in Japanese ukiyo-e.[246] There are two series of dying sunflowers. The first was painted in Paris in 1887 and shows flowers lying on the ground. The second set was completed a year later in Arles and is of bouquets in a vase positioned in early morning light.[247] Both are built from thickly layered paintwork, which, according to the London National Gallery, evoke the "texture of the seed-heads".[248]
+
+In these series, Van Gogh was not preoccupied by his usual interest in filling his paintings with subjectivity and emotion; rather, the two series are intended to display his technical skill and working methods to Gauguin,[137] who was about to visit. The 1888 paintings were created during a rare period of optimism for the artist. Vincent wrote to Theo in August 1888: "I'm painting with the gusto of a Marseillais eating bouillabaisse, which won't surprise you when it's a question of painting large sunflowers ... If I carry out this plan there'll be a dozen or so panels. The whole thing will therefore be a symphony in blue and yellow. I work on it all these mornings, from sunrise. Because the flowers wilt quickly and it's a matter of doing the whole thing in one go."[249]
+
+The sunflowers were painted to decorate the walls in anticipation of Gauguin's visit, and Van Gogh placed individual works around the Yellow House's guest room in Arles. Gauguin was deeply impressed and later acquired two of the Paris versions.[137] After Gauguin's departure, Van Gogh imagined the two major versions of the sunflowers as wings of the Berceuse Triptych, and included them in his Les XX in Brussels exhibit. Today the major pieces of the series are among his best known, celebrated for the sickly connotations of the colour yellow and its tie-in with the Yellow House, the expressionism of the brush strokes, and their contrast against often dark backgrounds.[250]
+
+Still Life: Vase with Twelve Sunflowers, August 1888. Neue Pinakothek, Munich
+
+Irises, 1889. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles
+
+Almond Blossom, 1890. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Still Life: Vase with Irises Against a Yellow Background, May 1890, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam [251]
+
+Still Life: Pink Roses in a Vase, May 1890, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York [251]
+
+Fifteen canvases depict cypresses, a tree he became fascinated with in Arles.[252] He brought life to the trees, which were traditionally seen as emblematic of death.[220] The series of cypresses he began in Arles featured the trees in the distance, as windbreaks in fields; when he was at Saint-Rémy he brought them to the foreground.[253] Vincent wrote to Theo in May 1889: "Cypresses still preoccupy me, I should like to do something with them like my canvases of sunflowers"; he went on to say, "They are beautiful in line and proportion like an Egyptian obelisk."[254]
+
+In mid-1889, and at his sister Wil's request, Van Gogh painted several smaller versions of Wheat Field with Cypresses.[255] The works are characterised by swirls and densely painted impasto, and include The Starry Night, in which cypresses dominate the foreground.[252] In addition to this, other notable works on cypresses include Cypresses (1889), Cypresses with Two Figures (1889–90), and Road with Cypress and Star (1890).[256]
+
+During the last six or seven months of the year 1889, he had also created at least fifteen paintings of olive trees, a subject which he considered as demanding and compelling.[257] Among these works are Olive Trees with the Alpilles in the Background (1889), about which in a letter to his brother Van Gogh wrote, "At last I have a landscape with olives".[256]While in Saint-Rémy, Van Gogh spent time outside the asylum, where he painted trees in the olive groves. In these works, natural life is rendered as gnarled and arthritic as if a personification of the natural world, which are, according to Hughes, filled with "a continuous field of energy of which nature is a manifestation".[220]
+
+Cypresses in Starry Night, a reed pen drawing executed by Van Gogh after the painting in 1889.
+
+Cypresses and Two Women, 1890. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
+
+Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+Cypresses, 1889. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
+
+The Flowering Orchards (also the Orchards in Blossom) are among the first groups of work completed after Van Gogh's arrival in Arles in February 1888. The 14 paintings are optimistic, joyous and visually expressive of the burgeoning spring. They are delicately sensitive and unpopulated. He painted swiftly, and although he brought to this series a version of Impressionism, a strong sense of personal style began to emerge during this period. The transience of the blossoming trees, and the passing of the season, seemed to align with his sense of impermanence and belief in a new beginning in Arles. During the blossoming of the trees that spring, he found "a world of motifs that could not have been more Japanese".[258] Vincent wrote to Theo on 21 April 1888 that he had 10 orchards and "one big [painting] of a cherry tree, which I've spoiled".[259]
+
+During this period Van Gogh mastered the use of light by subjugating shadows and painting the trees as if they are the source of light – almost in a sacred manner.[258] Early the following year he painted another smaller group of orchards, including View of Arles, Flowering Orchards.[260] Van Gogh was enthralled by the landscape and vegetation of the south of France, and often visited the farm gardens near Arles. In the vivid light of the Mediterranean climate his palette significantly brightened.[261]
+
+Pink Peach Tree in Blossom (Reminiscence of Mauve), watercolour, March 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum
+
+The Pink Orchard also Orchard with Blossoming Apricot Trees, March 1888. Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam
+
+Orchard in Blossom, Bordered by Cypresses, April 1888. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
+
+View of Arles, Flowering Orchards, 1889. Neue Pinakothek, Munich
+
+Van Gogh made several painting excursions during visits to the landscape around Arles. He made paintings of harvests, wheat fields and other rural landmarks of the area, including The Old Mill (1888); a good example of a picturesque structure bordering the wheat fields beyond.[119] At various points, Van Gogh painted the view from his window – at The Hague, Antwerp, and Paris. These works culminated in The Wheat Field series, which depicted the view from his cells in the asylum at Saint-Rémy.[262]
+
+Many of the late paintings are sombre but essentially optimistic and, right up to the time of Van Gogh's death, reflect his desire to return to lucid mental health. Yet some of his final works reflect his deepening concerns.[263][264] Writing in July 1890, from Auvers, Van Gogh said that he had become absorbed "in the immense plain against the hills, boundless as the sea, delicate yellow".[184]
+
+Van Gogh was captivated by the fields in May when the wheat was young and green. His Wheatfields at Auvers with White House shows a more subdued palette of yellows and blues, which creates a sense of idyllic harmony.[265]
+
+About 10 July 1890, Van Gogh wrote to Theo of "vast fields of wheat under troubled skies".[266] Wheatfield with Crows shows the artist's state of mind in his final days; Hulsker describes the work as a "doom-filled painting with threatening skies and ill-omened crows".[187] Its dark palette and heavy brushstrokes convey a sense of menace.[267]
+
+Enclosed Wheat Field with Rising Sun, May 1889, Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands
+
+Rain or Enclosed Wheat Field in the Rain, November 1889, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia
+
+Wheat Fields, early June 1889. Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo
+
+Wheat Field at Auvers with White House, June 1890, The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.
+
+After Van Gogh's first exhibitions in the late 1880s, his reputation grew steadily among artists, art critics, dealers and collectors.[268] In 1887, André Antoine hung Van Gogh's alongside works of Georges Seurat and Paul Signac, at the Théâtre Libre in Paris; some were acquired by Julien Tanguy.[269] In 1889, his work was described in the journal Le Moderniste Illustré by Albert Aurier as characterised by "fire, intensity, sunshine".[270] Ten paintings were shown at the Société des Artistes Indépendants, in Brussels in January 1890.[271] French president Marie François Sadi Carnot was said to have been impressed by Van Gogh's work.[272]
+
+After Van Gogh's death, memorial exhibitions were held in Brussels, Paris, The Hague and Antwerp. His work was shown in several high-profile exhibitions, including six works at Les XX; in 1891 there was a retrospective exhibition in Brussels.[271] In 1892, Octave Mirbeau wrote that Van Gogh's suicide was an "infinitely sadder loss for art ... even though the populace has not crowded to a magnificent funeral, and poor Vincent van Gogh, whose demise means the extinction of a beautiful flame of genius, has gone to his death as obscure and neglected as he lived."[269]
+
+Theo died in January 1891, removing Vincent's most vocal and well-connected champion.[273] Theo's widow Johanna van Gogh-Bonger was a Dutchwoman in her twenties who had not known either her husband or her brother-in-law very long and who suddenly had to take care of several hundreds of paintings, letters and drawings, as well as her infant son, Vincent Willem van Gogh.[268][note 14] Gauguin was not inclined to offer assistance in promoting Van Gogh's reputation, and Johanna's brother Andries Bonger also seemed lukewarm about his work.[268] Aurier, one of Van Gogh's earliest supporters among the critics, died of typhoid fever in 1892 at the age of twenty-seven.[275]
+
+In 1892, Émile Bernard organised a small solo show of Van Gogh's paintings in Paris, and Julien Tanguy exhibited his Van Gogh paintings with several consigned from Johanna van Gogh-Bonger. In April 1894, the Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris agreed to take 10 paintings on consignment from Van Gogh's estate.[275] In 1896, the Fauvist painter Henri Matisse, then an unknown art student, visited John Russell on Belle Île off Brittany.[276][277] Russell had been a close friend of Van Gogh; he introduced Matisse to the Dutchman's work, and gave him a Van Gogh drawing. Influenced by Van Gogh, Matisse abandoned his earth-coloured palette for bright colours.[277][278]
+
+In Paris in 1901, a large Van Gogh retrospective was held at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery, which excited André Derain and Maurice de Vlaminck, and contributed to the emergence of Fauvism.[275] Important group exhibitions took place with the Sonderbund artists in Cologne in 1912, the Armory Show, New York in 1913, and Berlin in 1914.[279] Henk Bremmer was instrumental in teaching and talking about Van Gogh,[280] and introduced Helene Kröller-Müller to Van Gogh's art; she became an avid collector of his work.[281] The early figures in German Expressionism such as Emil Nolde acknowledged a debt to Van Gogh's work.[282] Bremmer assisted Jacob Baart de la Faille, whose catalogue raisonné L'Oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh appeared in 1928.[283][note 15]
+
+Van Gogh's fame reached its first peak in Austria and Germany before World War I,[286] helped by the publication of his letters in three volumes in 1914.[287] His letters are expressive and literate, and have been described as among the foremost 19th-century writings of their kind.[9] These began a compelling mythology of Van Gogh as an intense and dedicated painter who suffered for his art and died young.[288] In 1934, the novelist Irving Stone wrote a biographical novel of Van Gogh's life titled Lust for Life, based on Van Gogh's letters to Theo.[289] This novel and the 1956 film further enhanced his fame, especially in the United States where Stone surmised only a few hundred people had heard of van Gogh prior to his surprise best-selling book.[290][291]
+
+In 1957, Francis Bacon based a series of paintings on reproductions of Van Gogh's The Painter on the Road to Tarascon, the original of which was destroyed during the Second World War. Bacon was inspired by an image he described as "haunting", and regarded Van Gogh as an alienated outsider, a position which resonated with him. Bacon identified with Van Gogh's theories of art and quoted lines written to Theo: "[R]eal painters do not paint things as they are ... [T]hey paint them as they themselves feel them to be."[292]
+
+Van Gogh's works are among the world's most expensive paintings. Those sold for over US$100 million (today's equivalent) include Portrait of Dr Gachet,[293] Portrait of Joseph Roulin and Irises. The Metropolitan Museum of Art acquired a copy of Wheat Field with Cypresses in 1993 for US$57 million.[294] In 2015, L'Allée des Alyscamps sold for US$66.3 million at Sotheby's, New York, exceeding its reserve of US$40 million.[295]
+
+Van Gogh's nephew and namesake, Vincent Willem van Gogh (1890–1978),[296] inherited the estate after his mother's death in 1925. During the early 1950s he arranged for the publication of a complete edition of the letters presented in four volumes and several languages. He then began negotiations with the Dutch government to subsidise a foundation to purchase and house the entire collection.[297] Theo's son participated in planning the project in the hope that the works would be exhibited under the best possible conditions. The project began in 1963; architect Gerrit Rietveld was commissioned to design it, and after his death in 1964 Kisho Kurokawa took charge.[298] Work progressed throughout the 1960s, with 1972 as the target for its grand opening.[296]
+
+The Van Gogh Museum opened in the Museumplein in Amsterdam in 1973.[299] It became the second most popular museum in the Netherlands, after the Rijksmuseum, regularly receiving more than 1.5 million visitors a year. In 2015 it had a record 1.9 million.[300] Eighty-five percent of the visitors come from other countries.[301]
+

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+The Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis), also known as the Komodo monitor, is a species of lizard found in the Indonesian islands of Komodo, Rinca, Flores, and Gili Motang. A member of the monitor lizard family Varanidae, it is the largest extant species of lizard, growing to a maximum length of 3 metres (10 ft) in rare cases and weighing up to approximately 70 kilograms (150 lb).
+
+As a result of their size, these lizards dominate the ecosystems in which they live. Komodo dragons hunt and ambush prey including invertebrates, birds, and mammals. It has been claimed that they have a venomous bite; there are two glands in the lower jaw which secrete several toxic proteins. The biological significance of these proteins is disputed, but the glands have been shown to secrete an anticoagulant. Komodo dragons' group behaviour in hunting is exceptional in the reptile world. The diet of big Komodo dragons mainly consists of Timor deer, though they also eat considerable amounts of carrion. Komodo dragons also occasionally attack humans.
+
+Mating begins between May and August, and the eggs are laid in September; as many as 20 eggs are deposited at a time in an abandoned megapode nest or in a self-dug nesting hole. The eggs are incubated for seven to eight months, hatching in April, when insects are most plentiful. Young Komodo dragons are vulnerable and therefore dwell in trees, safe from predators and cannibalistic adults. They take 8 to 9 years to mature, and are estimated to live up to 30 years.
+
+Komodo dragons were first recorded by Western scientists in 1910. Their large size and fearsome reputation make them popular zoo exhibits. In the wild, their range has contracted due to human activities, and they are listed as vulnerable by the IUCN. They are protected under Indonesian Law, and Komodo National Park was founded in 1980 to aid protection efforts.
+
+Komodo dragons were first documented by Europeans in 1910, when rumors of a "land crocodile" reached Lieutenant van Steyn van Hensbroek of the Dutch colonial administration.[4] Widespread notoriety came after 1912, when Peter Ouwens, the director of the Zoological Museum at Bogor, Java, published a paper on the topic after receiving a photo and a skin from the lieutenant, as well as two other specimens from a collector.[3]
+
+The first two live Komodo dragons to arrive in Europe were exhibited in the Reptile House at London Zoo when it opened in 1927.[5] Joan Beauchamp Procter made some of the earliest observations of these animals in captivity and she demonstrated their behaviour at a Scientific Meeting of the Zoological Society of London in 1928.[6]
+
+The Komodo dragon was the driving factor for an expedition to Komodo Island by W. Douglas Burden in 1926. After returning with 12 preserved specimens and two live ones, this expedition provided the inspiration for the 1933 movie King Kong.[7] It was also Burden who coined the common name "Komodo dragon".[8] Three of his specimens were stuffed and are still on display in the American Museum of Natural History.[9]
+
+The Dutch island administration, realizing the limited number of individuals in the wild, soon outlawed sport hunting and heavily limited the number of individuals taken for scientific study. Collecting expeditions ground to a halt with the occurrence of World War II, not resuming until the 1950s and 1960s, when studies examined the Komodo dragon's feeding behavior, reproduction, and body temperature. At around this time, an expedition was planned in which a long-term study of the Komodo dragon would be undertaken. This task was given to the Auffenberg family, who stayed on Komodo Island for 11 months in 1969. During their stay, Walter Auffenberg and his assistant Putra Sastrawan captured and tagged more than 50 Komodo dragons.[10]
+
+Research from the Auffenberg expedition proved to be enormously influential in raising Komodo dragons in captivity.[11] Research after that of the Auffenberg family has shed more light on the nature of the Komodo dragon, with biologists such as Claudio Ciofi continuing to study the creatures.[12]
+
+The Komodo dragon is also sometimes known as the Komodo monitor or the Komodo Island monitor in scientific literature,[13] although this name is uncommon. To the natives of Komodo Island, it is referred to as ora, buaya darat (‘land crocodile’), or biawak raksasa (‘giant monitor’).[14][4]
+
+The evolutionary development of the Komodo dragon started with the genus Varanus, which originated in Asia about 40 million years ago and migrated to Australia, where it evolved into giant forms (the largest of all being the recently extinct Megalania), helped by the absence of competing placental carnivorans. Around 15 million years ago, a collision between the continental landmasses of Australia and Southeast Asia allowed these larger varanids to move back into what is now the Indonesian archipelago, extending their range as far east as the island of Timor.
+
+The Komodo dragon is believed to have differentiated from its Australian ancestors about 4 million years ago. However, recent fossil evidence from Queensland suggests the Komodo dragon actually evolved in Australia, before spreading to Indonesia.[1][15]
+
+Dramatic lowering of sea level during the last glacial period uncovered extensive stretches of continental shelf that the Komodo dragon colonised, becoming isolated in their present island range as sea levels rose afterwards.[1][4] Fossils of extinct Pliocene species of similar size to the modern Komodo dragon, such as Varanus sivalensis, have been found in Eurasia as well, indicating that they fared well even in environments containing competition, such as mammalian carnivores, until the climate change and extinction events that marked the beginning of the Pleistocene.[16]
+
+Genetic analysis of mitochondrial DNA shows the Komodo dragon to be the closest relative (sister taxon) of the lace monitor (V. varius), with their common ancestor diverging from a lineage that gave rise to the crocodile monitor (Varanus salvadorii) of New Guinea.[17][18][19]
+
+In the wild, adult Komodo dragons usually weigh around 70 kg (150 lb), although captive specimens often weigh more.[20] According to Guinness World Records, an average adult male will weigh 79 to 91 kg (174 to 201 lb) and measure 2.59 m (8.5 ft), while an average female will weigh 68 to 73 kg (150 to 161 lb) and measure 2.29 m (7.5 ft).[21] The largest verified wild specimen was 3.13 m (10.3 ft) long and weighed 166 kg (366 lb), including its undigested food.[4]
+
+The Komodo dragon has a tail as long as its body, as well as about 60 frequently replaced, serrated teeth that can measure up to 2.5 cm (1 in) in length. Its saliva is frequently blood-tinged because its teeth are almost completely covered by gingival tissue that is naturally lacerated during feeding.[22] It also has a long, yellow, deeply forked tongue.[4] Komodo dragon skin is reinforced by armoured scales, which contain tiny bones called osteoderms that function as a sort of natural chain-mail.[23][24] The only areas lacking osteoderms on the head of the adult Komodo dragon were around the eyes, nostrils, mouth margins and pineal eye, a light-sensing organ on the top of the head. Where lizards typically have one or two varying patterns or shapes of osteoderms, komodo's have four: rosette, platy, dendritic, and vermiform.[25] This rugged hide makes Komodo dragon skin a poor source of leather. Additionally, these osteoderms become more extensive and variable in shape as the Komodo dragon ages, ossifying more extensively as the lizard grows. These osteoderms are absent in hatchlings and juveniles, indicating that the natural armor develops as a product of age and competition between adults for protection in intraspecific combat over food and mates.[26]
+
+As with other varanids, Komodo dragons have only a single ear bone, the stapes, for transferring vibrations from the tympanic membrane to the cochlea. This arrangement means they are likely restricted to sounds in the 400 to 2,000 hertz range, compared to humans who hear between 20 and 20,000 hertz.[4][27] They were formerly thought to be deaf when a study reported no agitation in wild Komodo dragons in response to whispers, raised voices, or shouts. This was disputed when London Zoological Garden employee Joan Procter trained a captive specimen to come out to feed at the sound of her voice, even when she could not be seen.[28]
+
+The Komodo dragon can see objects as far away as 300 m (980 ft), but because its retinas only contain cones, it is thought to have poor night vision. It can distinguish colours, but has poor visual discrimination of stationary objects.[29]
+
+As with many other reptiles, the Komodo dragon primarily relies on its tongue to detect, taste, and smell stimuli, with the vomeronasal sense using the Jacobson's organ, rather than using the nostrils.[30] With the help of a favorable wind and its habit of swinging its head from side to side as it walks, a Komodo dragon may be able to detect carrion from 4–9.5 km (2.5–5.9 mi) away.[29] It only has a few taste buds in the back of its throat.[30] Its scales, some of which are reinforced with bone, have sensory plaques connected to nerves to facilitate its sense of touch. The scales around the ears, lips, chin, and soles of the feet may have three or more sensory plaques.[22]
+
+The Komodo dragon prefers hot and dry places, and typically lives in dry, open grassland, savanna, and tropical forest at low elevations. As an ectotherm, it is most active in the day, although it exhibits some nocturnal activity. Komodo dragons are solitary, coming together only to breed and eat. They are capable of running rapidly in brief sprints up to 20 km/h (12 mph), diving up to 4.5 m (15 ft), and climbing trees proficiently when young through use of their strong claws.[20] To catch out-of-reach prey, the Komodo dragon may stand on its hind legs and use its tail as a support.[28] As it matures, its claws are used primarily as weapons, as its great size makes climbing impractical.[22]
+
+For shelter, the Komodo dragon digs holes that can measure from 1 to 3 m (3.3 to 9.8 ft) wide with its powerful forelimbs and claws.[31] Because of its large size and habit of sleeping in these burrows, it is able to conserve body heat throughout the night and minimise its basking period the morning after.[32] The Komodo dragon hunts in the afternoon, but stays in the shade during the hottest part of the day.[8] These special resting places, usually located on ridges with cool sea breezes, are marked with droppings and are cleared of vegetation. They serve as strategic locations from which to ambush deer.[33]
+
+As a result of their size, Komodo dragons dominate the ecosystems in which they live.[34] They are carnivores, although they have been considered as eating mostly carrion,[35] they will frequently ambush live prey with a stealthy approach. When suitable prey arrives near a dragon's ambush site, it will suddenly charge at the animal at high speeds and go for the underside or the throat.[22]
+
+Komodo dragons do not deliberately allow the prey to escape with fatal injuries, but try to kill prey outright using a combination of lacerating damage and blood loss. They have been recorded as killing wild pigs within seconds,[36] and observations of Komodo dragons tracking prey for long distances are likely misinterpreted cases of prey escaping an attack before succumbing to infection.[37] Komodo dragons have been observed knocking down large pigs and deer with their strong tails.[38][36] They are able to locate carcasses using their keen sense of smell, which can locate a dead or dying animal from a range of up to 9.5 km (5.9 mi).
+
+Komodo dragons eat by tearing large chunks of flesh and swallowing them whole while holding the carcass down with their forelegs. For smaller prey up to the size of a goat, their loosely articulated jaws, flexible skulls, and expandable stomachs allow them to swallow prey whole. The undigested vegetable contents of a prey animal's stomach and intestines are typically avoided.[33] Copious amounts of red saliva the Komodo dragons produce help to lubricate the food, but swallowing is still a long process (15–20 minutes to swallow a goat). A Komodo dragon may attempt to speed up the process by ramming the carcass against a tree to force it down its throat, sometimes ramming so forcefully, the tree is knocked down.[33] A small tube under the tongue that connects to the lungs allows it to breathe while swallowing.[22]
+
+After eating up to 80% of its body weight in one meal,[34] it drags itself to a sunny location to speed digestion, as the food could rot and poison the dragon if left undigested in its stomach for too long. Because of their slow metabolism, large dragons can survive on as few as 12 meals a year.[22] After digestion, the Komodo dragon regurgitates a mass of horns, hair, and teeth known as the gastric pellet, which is covered in malodorous mucus. After regurgitating the gastric pellet, it rubs its face in the dirt or on bushes to get rid of the mucus, suggesting it does not relish the scent of its own excretions.[22]
+
+The largest animals eat first, while the smaller ones follow a hierarchy. The largest male asserts his dominance and the smaller males show their submission by use of body language and rumbling hisses. Dragons of equal size may resort to "wrestling". Losers usually retreat, though they have been known to be killed and eaten by victors.[39][40]
+
+The Komodo dragon's diet is wide-ranging, and includes invertebrates, other reptiles (including smaller Komodo dragons), birds, bird eggs, small mammals, monkeys, wild boar, goats, deer, horses, and water buffalo.[41] Young Komodos will eat insects, eggs, geckos, and small mammals, while adults prefer to hunt large mammals.[35] Occasionally, they attack and bite humans. Sometimes they consume human corpses, digging up bodies from shallow graves.[28] This habit of raiding graves caused the villagers of Komodo to move their graves from sandy to clay ground, and pile rocks on top of them, to deter the lizards.[33] The Komodo dragon may have evolved to feed on the extinct dwarf elephant Stegodon that once lived on Flores, according to evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond.[42]
+
+The Komodo dragon drinks by sucking water into its mouth via buccal pumping (a process also used for respiration), lifting its head, and letting the water run down its throat.[36]
+
+Although previous studies proposed that Komodo dragon saliva contains a variety of highly septic bacteria that would help to bring down prey,[39][43] research in 2013 suggested that the bacteria in the mouths of Komodo dragons are ordinary and similar to those found in other carnivores. They actually have surprisingly good mouth hygiene. As Bryan Fry put it: "After they are done feeding, they will spend 10 to 15 minutes lip-licking and rubbing their head in the leaves to clean their mouth ... Unlike people have been led to believe, they do not have chunks of rotting flesh from their meals on their teeth, cultivating bacteria." Nor do Komodo dragons wait for prey to die and track it at a distance, as vipers do; observations of them hunting deer, boar and in some cases buffalo reveal that they kill prey in less than half an hour, using their dentition to cause shock and trauma.[37]
+
+The observation of prey dying of sepsis would then be explained by the natural instinct of water buffalos, who are not native to the islands where the Komodo dragon lives, to run into water after escaping an attack. The warm, faeces-filled water would then cause the infections.[37] The study used samples from 16 captive dragons (10 adults and six neonates) from three US zoos.[44]
+
+Researchers have isolated a powerful antibacterial peptide from the blood plasma of Komodo dragons, VK25. Based on their analysis of this peptide, they have synthesized a short peptide dubbed DRGN-1 and tested it against multidrug-resistant (MDR) pathogens. Preliminary results of these tests show that DRGN-1 is effective in killing drug-resistant bacterial strains and even some fungi. It has the added observed benefit of significantly promoting wound healing in both uninfected and mixed biofilm infected wounds.[45]
+
+In late 2005, researchers at the University of Melbourne speculated the perentie (Varanus giganteus), other species of monitors, and agamids may be somewhat venomous. The team believes the immediate effects of bites from these lizards were caused by mild envenomation. Bites on human digits by a lace monitor (V. varius), a Komodo dragon, and a spotted tree monitor (V. scalaris) all produced similar effects: rapid swelling, localised disruption of blood clotting, and shooting pain up to the elbow, with some symptoms lasting for several hours.[46]
+
+In 2009, the same researchers published further evidence demonstrating Komodo dragons possess a venomous bite. MRI scans of a preserved skull showed the presence of two glands in the lower jaw. The researchers extracted one of these glands from the head of a terminally ill dragon in the Singapore Zoological Gardens, and found it secreted several different toxic proteins. The known functions of these proteins include inhibition of blood clotting, lowering of blood pressure, muscle paralysis, and the induction of hypothermia, leading to shock and loss of consciousness in envenomated prey.[47][48] As a result of the discovery, the previous theory that bacteria were responsible for the deaths of Komodo victims was disputed.[49]
+
+Other scientists have stated that this allegation of venom glands "has had the effect of underestimating the variety of complex roles played by oral secretions in the biology of reptiles, produced a very narrow view of oral secretions and resulted in misinterpretation of reptilian evolution". According to these scientists "reptilian oral secretions contribute to many biological roles other than to quickly dispatch prey". These researchers concluded that, "Calling all in this clade venomous implies an overall potential danger that does not exist, misleads in the assessment of medical risks, and confuses the biological assessment of squamate biochemical systems".[50] Evolutionary biologist Schwenk says that even if the lizards have venom-like proteins in their mouths they may be using them for a different function, and he doubts venom is necessary to explain the effect of a Komodo dragon bite, arguing that shock and blood loss are the primary factors.[51][52]
+
+Mating occurs between May and August, with the eggs laid in September.[4][53]  During this period, males fight over females and territory by grappling with one another upon their hind legs, with the loser eventually being pinned to the ground. These males may vomit or defecate when preparing for the fight.[28] The winner of the fight will then flick his long tongue at the female to gain information about her receptivity.[34] Females are antagonistic and resist with their claws and teeth during the early phases of courtship. Therefore, the male must fully restrain the female during coitus to avoid being hurt. Other courtship displays include males rubbing their chins on the female, hard scratches to the back, and licking.[54] Copulation occurs when the male inserts one of his hemipenes into the female's cloaca.[29] Komodo dragons may be monogamous and form "pair bonds", a rare behavior for lizards.[28]
+
+Female Komodos lay their eggs from August to September and may use several types of locality; in one study, 60% laid their eggs in the nests of orange-footed scrubfowl (a moundbuilder or megapode), 20% on ground level and 20% in hilly areas.[55] The females make many camouflage nests/holes to prevent other dragons from eating the eggs.[56] Clutches contain an average of 20 eggs, which have an incubation period of 7–8 months.[28] Hatching is an exhausting effort for the neonates, which break out of their eggshells with an egg tooth that falls off before long. After cutting themselves out, the hatchlings may lie in their eggshells for hours before starting to dig out of the nest. They are born quite defenseless and are vulnerable to predation.[39] Sixteen youngsters from a single nest were on average 46.5 cm long and weighed 105.1 grams.[55]
+
+Young Komodo dragons spend much of their first few years in trees, where they are relatively safe from predators, including cannibalistic adults, as juvenile dragons make up 10% of their diets.[28] The habit of cannibalism may be advantageous in sustaining the large size of adults, as medium-sized prey on the islands is rare.[38] When the young approach a kill, they roll around in faecal matter and rest in the intestines of eviscerated animals to deter these hungry adults.[28] Komodo dragons take approximately 8 to 9 years to mature, and may live for up to 30 years.[53]
+
+A Komodo dragon at London Zoo named Sungai laid a clutch of eggs in late 2005 after being separated from male company for more than two years. Scientists initially assumed she had been able to store sperm from her earlier encounter with a male, an adaptation known as superfecundation.[57] On 20 December 2006, it was reported that Flora, a captive Komodo dragon living in the Chester Zoo in England, was the second known Komodo dragon to have laid unfertilised eggs: she laid 11 eggs, and seven of them hatched, all of them male.[58] Scientists at Liverpool University in England performed genetic tests on three eggs that collapsed after being moved to an incubator, and verified Flora had never been in physical contact with a male dragon. After Flora's eggs' condition had been discovered, testing showed Sungai's eggs were also produced without outside fertilization.[59] On 31 January 2008, the Sedgwick County Zoo in Wichita, Kansas, became the first zoo in the Americas to document parthenogenesis in Komodo dragons. The zoo has two adult female Komodo dragons, one of which laid about 17 eggs on 19–20 May 2007. Only two eggs were incubated and hatched due to space issues; the first hatched on 31 January 2008, while the second hatched on 1 February. Both hatchlings were males.[60][61]
+
+Komodo dragons have the ZW chromosomal sex-determination system, as opposed to the mammalian XY system. Male progeny prove Flora's unfertilised eggs were haploid (n) and doubled their chromosomes later to become diploid (2n) (by being fertilised by a polar body, or by chromosome duplication without cell division), rather than by her laying diploid eggs by one of the meiosis reduction-divisions in her ovaries failing. When a female Komodo dragon (with ZW sex chromosomes) reproduces in this manner, she provides her progeny with only one chromosome from each of her pairs of chromosomes, including only one of her two sex chromosomes. This single set of chromosomes is duplicated in the egg, which develops parthenogenetically. Eggs receiving a Z chromosome become ZZ (male); those receiving a W chromosome become WW and fail to develop,[62][63] meaning that only males are produced by parthenogenesis in this species.
+
+It has been hypothesised that this reproductive adaptation allows a single female to enter an isolated ecological niche (such as an island) and by parthenogenesis produce male offspring, thereby establishing a sexually reproducing population (via reproduction with her offspring that can result in both male and female young).[62] Despite the advantages of such an adaptation, zoos are cautioned that parthenogenesis may be detrimental to genetic diversity.[64]
+
+Attacks on humans are rare, but Komodo dragons have been responsible for several human fatalities, in both the wild and in captivity. According to data from Komodo National Park spanning a 38-year period between 1974 and 2012, there were 24 reported attacks on humans, five of them fatal. Most of the victims were local villagers living around the national park.[65] Reports of attacks include:[66]
+
+The Komodo dragon is classified by the IUCN as a vulnerable species and is listed on the IUCN Red List.[2] The species' sensitivity to natural and man-made threats has long been recognized by conservationists, zoological societies, and the Indonesian government. Komodo National Park was founded in 1980 to protect Komodo dragon populations on islands including Komodo, Rinca, and Padar.[71] Later, the Wae Wuul and Wolo Tado Reserves were opened on Flores to aid Komodo dragon conservation.[12]
+
+Komodo dragons generally avoid encounters with humans. Juveniles are very shy and will flee quickly into a hideout if a human comes closer than about 100 metres (330 ft). Older animals will also retreat from humans from a shorter distance away. If cornered, they may react aggressively by gaping their mouth, hissing, and swinging their tail. If they are disturbed further, they may attack and bite. Although there are anecdotes of unprovoked Komodo dragons attacking or preying on humans, most of these reports are either not reputable or have subsequently been interpreted as defensive bites. Only a very few cases are truly the result of unprovoked attacks by atypical individuals which lost their fear of humans.[39]
+
+Volcanic activity, earthquakes, loss of habitat, fire,[22][12] tourism, loss of prey due to poaching, and illegal poaching of the dragons themselves have all contributed to the vulnerable status of the Komodo dragon. Under Appendix I of CITES (the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species), commercial trade of Komodo dragon skins or specimens is illegal.[72][73] Despite this, there are occasional reports of illegal attempts to trade in live Komodo dragons. The most recent attempt was in March 2019, when Indonesian police in the East Java city of Surabaya reported that a criminal network had been caught trying to smuggle 41 young Komodo dragons out of Indonesia. The plan was said to include shipping the animals to several other countries in Southeast Asia through Singapore. It was hoped that the animals could be sold for up to 500 million rupiah (around US$35,000) each.[74] It was believed that the Komodo dragons had been smuggled out of East Nusa Tenggara province through the port at Ende in central Flores.[75]
+
+In 2013, the total population of Komodo dragons in the wild was assessed as 3,222 individuals, declining to 3,092 in 2014 and 3,014 in 2015. Populations remained relatively stable on the bigger islands (Komodo and Rinca), but decreased on smaller islands such as Nusa Kode and Gili Motang, likely due to diminishing prey availability.[76] On Padar, a former population of Komodo dragons has recently become extinct, of which the last individuals were seen in 1975.[77] It is widely assumed that the Komodo dragon died out on Padar following a major decline of populations of large ungulate prey, for which poaching was most likely responsible.[78]
+
+Komodo dragons have long been sought-after zoo attractions, where their size and reputation make them popular exhibits. They are, however, rare in zoos because they are susceptible to infection and parasitic disease if captured from the wild, and do not readily reproduce in captivity.[14] The first Komodo dragons were displayed at London Zoo in 1927. A Komodo dragon was exhibited in 1934 in the United States at the National Zoo in Washington, D.C., but it lived for only two years. More attempts to exhibit Komodo dragons were made, but the lifespan of the animals proved very short, averaging five years in the National Zoological Park. Studies done by Walter Auffenberg, which were documented in his book The Behavioral Ecology of the Komodo Monitor, eventually allowed for more successful management and breeding of the dragons in captivity.[11] As of May 2009, there were 35 North American, 13 European, one Singaporean, two African, and two Australian institutions which housed captive Komodo dragons.[79]
+
+A variety of behaviors have been observed from captive specimens. Most individuals become relatively tame within a short time,[80][81] and are capable of recognising individual humans and discriminating between familiar and unfamiliar keepers.[82] Komodo dragons have also been observed to engage in play with a variety of objects, including shovels, cans, plastic rings, and shoes. This behavior does not seem to be "food-motivated predatory behavior".[34][4][83]
+
+Even seemingly docile dragons may become unpredictably aggressive, especially when the animal's territory is invaded by someone unfamiliar. In June 2001, a Komodo dragon seriously injured Phil Bronstein, the then-husband of actress Sharon Stone, when he entered its enclosure at the Los Angeles Zoo after being invited in by its keeper. Bronstein was bitten on his bare foot, as the keeper had told him to take off his white shoes and socks, which the keeper stated could potentially excite the Komodo dragon as they were the same colour as the white rats the zoo fed the dragon.[84][85] Although he survived, Bronstein needed to have several tendons in his foot reattached surgically.[86]
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+Warsaw (/ˈwɔːrsɔː/ WOR-saw; Polish: Warszawa [varˈʂava] (listen); see also other names) is the capital and largest city of Poland. The metropolis stands on the Vistula River in east-central Poland and its population is officially estimated at 1.8 million residents within a greater metropolitan area of 3.1 million residents,[3] which makes Warsaw the 7th most-populous capital city in the European Union. The city limits cover 517.24 square kilometres (199.71 sq mi), while the metropolitan area covers 6,100.43 square kilometres (2,355.39 sq mi).[4] Warsaw is an alpha global city,[5] a major international tourist destination, and a significant cultural, political and economic hub. Its historical Old Town was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
+
+The city rose to prominence in the late 16th century, when Sigismund III decided to move the Polish capital and his royal court from Kraków. The elegant architecture, grandeur and extensive boulevards earned Warsaw the nickname Paris of the North prior to the Second World War. Bombed at the start of the German invasion in 1939, the city withstood a siege,[6][7][8] but was largely destroyed by the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943, the general Warsaw Uprising in 1944 and the systematic razing by the Germans in advance of the Vistula–Oder Offensive. Warsaw gained the new title of Phoenix City because of its complete reconstruction after the war, which had left over 85% of its buildings in ruins.[9][10]
+
+In 2012, the Economist Intelligence Unit ranked Warsaw as the 32nd most liveable city in the world.[11] In 2017, the city came 4th in the "Business-friendly", 8th in "Human capital and life style" and topped the quality of life rankings in the region.[12] The city is a significant centre of research and development, business process outsourcing and information technology outsourcing. The Warsaw Stock Exchange is the largest and most important in Central and Eastern Europe.[13][14] Frontex, the European Union agency for external border security as well as ODIHR, one of the principal institutions of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe have their headquarters in Warsaw. Jointly with Frankfurt and Paris, Warsaw features one of the highest number of skyscrapers in the European Union.[15]
+
+The city is the seat of the Polish Academy of Sciences, National Philharmonic Orchestra, University of Warsaw, the Warsaw University of Technology, the National Museum, Zachęta Art Gallery and the Warsaw Grand Theatre, the largest of its kind in the world.[16] The picturesque Old Town, which represents examples of nearly every European architectural style and historical period,[17] was listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1980. Other main architectural attractions include the Royal Castle and the iconic King Sigismund's Column, the Wilanów Palace, the Palace on the Isle, St. John's Cathedral, Main Market Square as well as numerous churches and mansions along the Royal Route. Warsaw is positioning itself as Central and Eastern Europe's chic cultural capital with thriving art or club scenes and restaurants,[18] with around a quarter of the city's area occupied by parks.[19]
+
+Warsaw's name in the Polish language is Warszawa. Other previous spellings of the name may have included Warszewa, Warszowa, Worszewa or Werszewa.[20][21] The exact origin of the name is uncertain and has not been fully determined.[22][23] Originally, Warszawa was the name of a small fishing settlement on the banks of the Vistula river. One theory states that Warszawa means "belonging to Warsz", Warsz being a shortened form of the masculine Old Polish name Warcisław, which etymologically is linked with Wrocław.[24] However the ending -awa is unusual for a large city; the names of Polish cities derived from personal names usually end in -ów/owo/ew/ewo (e.g. Piotrków, Adamów).
+
+Folk etymology attributes the city name to a fisherman, Wars, and his wife, Sawa. According to legend, Sawa was a mermaid living in the Vistula with whom Wars fell in love.[25] In actuality, Warsz was a 12th/13th-century nobleman who owned a village located at the modern-day site of the Mariensztat neighbourhood.[26] The official city name in full is miasto stołeczne Warszawa ("The Capital City of Warsaw").[27]
+
+Other names for Warsaw include Varsovia (Latin, Spanish) and Varsóvia (Portuguese), Varsovie (French), Varsavia (Italian), Warschau (German, Dutch), װאַרשע /Varshe (Yiddish), Варшава / Varšava (Russian), Varšuva (Lithuanian), Varsó (Hungarian), Varšava (Croatian), (Serbian), (Slovene) and (Czech).
+
+A native or resident of Warsaw is known as a Varsovian – in Polish warszawiak, warszawianin (male), warszawianka (female), warszawiacy, and warszawianie (plural).
+
+The first fortified settlements on the site of today's Warsaw were located in Bródno (9th/10th century) and Jazdów (12th/13th century).[28] After Jazdów was raided by nearby clans and dukes, a new fortified settlement was established on the site of a small fishing village called "Warszowa". The Prince of Płock, Bolesław II of Masovia, established the modern-day city in about 1300 and the first historical document attesting to the existence of a castellany dates to 1313.[29] With the completion of St John's Cathedral in 1390, Warsaw became one of the seats of the Dukes of Masovia and was granted official capital status of the Masovian Duchy in 1413.[28] The economy then predominantly rested on craftsmanship or trade, and the town housed approximately 4,500 people at the time.
+
+During the 15th century, the population migrated and spread beyond the northern city wall into a newly-formed self-governing precinct called New Town. The existing older settlement became eventually known as the Old Town. Both possessed their own town charter and independent councils. The aim of establishing a separate district was to accommodate new incomers or undesirables who were not permitted to settle in Old Town, particularly the Jews.[30] Social and financial disparities between the classes in the two precincts led to a minor revolt in 1525.[29] Following the sudden death of Janusz III and the extinction of the local ducal line, Masovia was incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland in 1526.[28] Bona Sforza, wife of Sigismund I of Poland, was widely accused of poisoning the duke to uphold Polish rule over Warsaw.[31][32]
+
+In 1529, Warsaw for the first time became the seat of a General Sejm, and held that privilege permanently from 1569.[28] The city's rising importance encouraged the construction of a new set of defenses, including the landmark Barbican. Renowned Italian architects were brought to Warsaw to reshape the Royal Castle, the streets and the marketplace, resulting in the Old Town's early Italianate appearance. In 1573, the city gave its name to the Warsaw Confederation which formally established religious freedom in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Due to its central location between the Commonwealth's two major cities of Kraków and Vilnius, Warsaw became the capital of the Commonwealth and the Polish Crown when Sigismund III Vasa transferred his royal court in 1596.[28] In the subsequent years the town significantly expanded to the south and westwards. Several private independent districts (jurydyka) were the property of aristocrats and the gentry, which they ruled by their own laws. Between 1655 and 1658 the city was besieged and pillaged by the Swedish, Brandenburgian and Transylvanian forces.[28][33] The conduct of the Great Northern War (1700–1721) also forced Warsaw to pay heavy tributes to the invading armies.[34]
+
+The reign of Augustus II and Augustus III was a time of great development for Warsaw, which turned into an early-capitalist city. The Saxon monarchs employed many German architects, sculptors and engineers, who rebuilt the city in a style similar to Dresden. The year 1727 marked the opening of the Saxon Garden in Warsaw, one of the first publicly accessible parks in the world.[35][36] The Załuski Library, the first Polish public library and the largest at the time, was founded in 1747.[37] Stanisław II Augustus, who remodelled the interior of the Royal Castle, also made Warsaw a centre of culture and the arts.[38][39] He extended the Royal Baths Park and ordered the construction or refurbishment of numerous palaces, mansions and richly-decorated tenements. This earned Warsaw the nickname Paris of the North.[40]
+
+Warsaw remained the capital of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth until 1795, when it was annexed by the Kingdom of Prussia in the third and final partition of Poland;[41] it subsequently became the capital of the province of South Prussia.
+
+Warsaw was made the capital of a newly created French client state, known as the Duchy of Warsaw, after a portion of Poland's territory was liberated from Prussia, Russia and Austria by Napoleon in 1806.[28] Following Napoleon's defeat and exile, the 1815 Congress of Vienna assigned Warsaw to Congress Poland, a constitutional monarchy within the easternmost sector (or partition) under a personal union with Imperial Russia.[28] The Royal University of Warsaw was established in 1816.
+
+With the violation of the Polish constitution, the 1830 November uprising broke out against foreign influence. The Polish-Russian war of 1831 ended in the uprising's defeat and in the curtailment of Congress Poland's autonomy.[28] On 27 February 1861, a Warsaw crowd protesting against Russian control over Congress Poland was fired upon by Russian troops.[42][43] Five people were killed. The Underground Polish National Government resided in Warsaw during the January Uprising in 1863–64.[43]
+
+Warsaw flourished in throughout the 19th century under Mayor Sokrates Starynkiewicz (1875–92), who was appointed by Alexander III. Under Starynkiewicz Warsaw saw its first water and sewer systems designed and built by the English engineer William Lindley and his son, William Heerlein Lindley, as well as the expansion and modernisation of trams, street lighting, and gas infrastructure.[28] Between 1850 and 1882, the population grew by 134% to 383,000 as a result of rapid urbanisation and industrialisation. Many migrated from surrounding rural Masovian towns and villages to the city for employment opportunities. The western borough of Wola was transformed from an agricultural periphery occupied mostly by small farms and windmills (mills being the namesake of Wola's central neighborhood Młynów) to an industrial and manufacturing centre.[44] Metallurgical, textile and glassware factories were commonplace, with chimneys dominating the westernmost skyline.[45]
+
+Similarly to London, Warsaw's population was subjected to income segmentation. Gentrification of inner suburbs forced poorer residents to move across the river into Praga or Powiśle districts, alike the East End of London and London Docklands.[46] Poorer religious and ethnic minorities such as the Jews settled in the crowded parts of northern Warsaw, in Muranów.[47] The Imperial Census of 1897 recorded 626,000 people living in Warsaw, making it the third-largest city of the Empire after St. Petersburg and Moscow as well as the largest city in the region.[48] Grand architectural complexes and structures were also erected in the city centre, including the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Church of the Holiest Saviour and tenements along Marszałkowska Street.
+
+During World War I, Warsaw was occupied by Germany from 4 August 1915 until November 1918. The Armistice of 11 November 1918 concluded that defeated Germany is to withdraw from all foreign areas, which included Warsaw.[49] Germany did so, and underground leader Józef Piłsudski returned to Warsaw on the same day which marked the beginning of the Second Polish Republic, the first truly sovereign Polish state after 1795. In the course of the Polish–Soviet War (1919–1921), the 1920 Battle of Warsaw was fought on the eastern outskirts of the city. Poland successfully defended the capital, stopped the brunt of the Bolshevik Red Army and temporarily halted the "export of the communist revolution" to other parts of Europe.[50]
+
+The interwar period (1918–1939) was a time of major development in the city's infrastructure. New modernist housing estates were built in Mokotów to de-clutter the densely populated inner suburbs. In 1921, Warsaw's total area was estimated at only 124.7 square kilometres with 1 million inhabitants–over 8,000 people per square kilometre made Warsaw more densely populated than contemporary London.[51] The Średnicowy Bridge was constructed for railway (1921–1931), connecting both parts of the city across the Vistula. Warszawa Główna railway station (1932–1939) was not completed due to the outbreak of the Second World War.
+
+Stefan Starzyński was the Mayor of Warsaw between 1934 and 1939.
+
+After the German Invasion of Poland on 1 September 1939 started the Second World War, Warsaw was defended until 27 September. Central Poland, including Warsaw, came under the rule of the General Government, a German Nazi colonial administration. All higher education institutions were immediately closed and Warsaw's entire Jewish population – several hundred thousand, some 30% of the city – were herded into the Warsaw Ghetto.[53] In July on 1942, the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began to be deported en masse to the Aktion Reinhard extermination camps, particularly Treblinka.[53] The city would become the centre of urban resistance to Nazi rule in occupied Europe.[54] When the order came to annihilate the ghetto as part of Hitler's "Final Solution" on 19 April 1943, Jewish fighters launched the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.[55] Despite being heavily outgunned and outnumbered, the Ghetto held out for almost a month.[55] When the fighting ended, almost all survivors were massacred, with only a few managing to escape or hide.[55][56]
+
+By July 1944, the Red Army was deep into Polish territory and pursuing the Nazis toward Warsaw.[58] Knowing that Stalin was hostile to the idea of an independent Poland, the Polish government-in-exile in London gave orders to the underground Home Army (AK) to try to seize control of Warsaw before the Red Army arrived. Thus, on 1 August 1944, as the Red Army was nearing the city, the Warsaw uprising began.[58] The armed struggle, planned to last 48 hours, was partially successful, however it went on for 63 days. Eventually the Home Army fighters and civilians assisting them were forced to capitulate.[58] They were transported to PoW camps in Germany, while the entire civilian population was expelled.[58] Polish civilian deaths are estimated at between 150,000 and 200,000.[59]
+
+Hitler, ignoring the agreed terms of the capitulation, ordered the entire city to be razed to the ground and the library and museum collections taken to Germany or burned.[58] Monuments and government buildings were blown up by special German troops known as Verbrennungs- und Vernichtungskommando ("Burning and Destruction Detachments").[58] About 85% of the city was destroyed, including the historic Old Town and the Royal Castle.[60]
+
+On 17 January 1945 – after the beginning of the Vistula–Oder Offensive of the Red Army – Soviet troops and Polish troops of the First Polish Army entered the ruins of Warsaw, and liberated Warsaw's suburbs from German occupation.[61] The city was swiftly taken by the Soviet Army, which rapidly advanced towards Łódź, as German forces regrouped at a more westward position.
+
+In 1945, after the bombings, revolts, fighting, and demolition had ended, most of Warsaw lay in ruins. The area of the former Warsaw Ghetto was razed to the ground, with only a sea of rubble remaining. However, the city officially resumed its role as the capital of Poland and the country's centre of political and economic life.
+
+After World War II, the "Bricks for Warsaw" campaign was initiated and large prefabricated housing projects were erected in Warsaw to address the major housing shortage. Plattenbau apartment blocks were a solution to avoid Warsaw's former density problem and to create more green spaces. Some of the buildings from the 19th century that have survived in a reasonably reconstructible form were nonetheless demolished in the 1950s and 1960s, like the Kronenberg Palace.[62][63] The Śródmieście (central) region's urban system was completely reshaped; former cobblestone streets were asphalted and significantly widened for traffic use. Many notable streets such as Gęsia, Nalewki and Wielka disappeared as a result of these changes and some were split in half due to the construction of Plac Defilad (Parade Square), one of the largest of its kind in Europe.[64]
+
+Much of the central district was also designated for future skyscrapers. The 237-metre Palace of Culture and Science resembling New York's Empire State Building was built as a gift from the Soviet Union.[65] Warsaw's urban landscape is one of modern and contemporary architecture.[66] Despite wartime destruction and post-war remodelling, many of the historic streets, buildings, and churches were restored to their original form. In 1980, Warsaw's historic Old Town was inscribed onto UNESCO's World Heritage list.[67]
+
+John Paul II's visits to his native country in 1979 and 1983 brought support to the budding "Solidarity" movement and encouraged the growing anti-communist fervor there.[68] In 1979, less than a year after becoming pope, John Paul celebrated Mass in Victory Square in Warsaw and ended his sermon with a call to "renew the face" of Poland.[68] These words were meaningful for Varsovians and Poles who understood them as the incentive for liberal-democratic reforms.[68]
+
+In 1995, the Warsaw Metro opened with a single line. A second line was opened in March 2015.[69] With the entry of Poland into the European Union in 2004, Warsaw is experiencing the largest economic boom of its history.[70] The opening fixture of UEFA Euro 2012 took place in Warsaw[71] and the city also hosted the 2013 United Nations Climate Change Conference and the 2016 NATO Summit.
+
+Warsaw lies in east-central Poland about 300 km (190 mi) from the Carpathian Mountains and about 260 km (160 mi) from the Baltic Sea, 523 km (325 mi) east of Berlin, Germany.[72] The city straddles the Vistula River. It is located in the heartland of the Masovian Plain, and its average elevation is 100 metres (330 ft) above sea level. The highest point on the left side of the city lies at a height of 115.7 metres (379.6 ft) ("Redutowa" bus depot, district of Wola), on the right side – 122.1 metres (400.6 ft) ("Groszówka" estate, district of Wesoła, by the eastern border). The lowest point lies at a height 75.6 metres (248.0 ft) (at the right bank of the Vistula, by the eastern border of Warsaw). There are some hills (mostly artificial) located within the confines of the city – e.g. Warsaw Uprising Hill (121 metres (397.0 ft)) and Szczęśliwice hill (138 metres (452.8 ft) – the highest point of Warsaw in general).
+
+Warsaw is located on two main geomorphologic formations: the plain moraine plateau and the Vistula Valley with its asymmetrical pattern of different terraces. The Vistula River is the specific axis of Warsaw, which divides the city into two parts, left and right. The left one is situated both on the moraine plateau (10 to 25 m (32.8 to 82.0 ft) above Vistula level) and on the Vistula terraces (max. 6.5 m (21.3 ft) above Vistula level). The significant element of the relief, in this part of Warsaw, is the edge of moraine plateau called Warsaw Escarpment. It is 20 to 25 m (65.6 to 82.0 ft) high in the Old Town and Central district and about 10 m (32.8 ft) in the north and south of Warsaw. It goes through the city and plays an important role as a landmark.
+
+The plain moraine plateau has only a few natural and artificial ponds and also groups of clay pits. The pattern of the Vistula terraces is asymmetrical. The left side consists mainly of two levels: the highest one contains former flooded terraces and the lowest one the flood plain terrace. The contemporary flooded terrace still has visible valleys and ground depressions with water systems coming from the old Vistula – riverbed. They consist of still quite natural streams and lakes as well as the pattern of drainage ditches. The right side of Warsaw has a different pattern of geomorphological forms. There are several levels of the Vistula plain terraces (flooded as well as formerly flooded), and only a small part is a not so visible moraine escarpment. Aeolian sand with a number of dunes parted by peat swamps or small ponds cover the highest terrace. These are mainly forested areas (pine forest).
+
+Officially, Warsaw experiences an oceanic climate, denoted by Cfb by Köppen's original classification.[73][74] But the city being in the midst of Siberian air mass and far from the coast has clear continental influences (Dfb), defined as such with old data.[75][76][77][78] By the Köppen-Geiger climate classification measure, Warsaw is defined as having a humid continental climate (Köppen climate classification Dfb), with long cold winters and short warm summers, though the urban heat island effect does make Warsaw's winters slightly less severe than in the surrounding rural areas.[79][80] However, by classification of the Wincenty Okołowicz, it has a warm-temperate climate in the center of continental Europe with the "fusion" of different features.[81]
+
+The city has cold, sometimes snowy, cloudy winters and warm, sunny, stormy summers. Spring and autumn can be unpredictable, highly prone to sudden weather changes; however, temperatures are usually mild and with low humidity, especially around May and September.[75] The average temperature ranges between −1.8 °C (29 °F) in January and 19.2 °C (66.6 °F) in July. The mean year temperature is 8.5 °C (47.3 °F). Temperatures may often reach 30 °C (86 °F) in the summer, although the effects of hot weather are usually offset by relatively low dew points and large diurnal temperature differences. Warsaw is Europe's sixth driest major city (third in Eastern Europe), with yearly rainfall averaging 529 millimetres (20.8 in), the wettest month being July.[82]
+
+Warsaw's long and eclectic history left a noticeable mark on its architecture and urban form. Unlike most Polish cities, Warsaw's cityscape is mostly contemporary – modern glass buildings are towering above older historical edifices which is a common feature of North American metropolises. A concentric zone pattern emerged within the last decades; the majority of Warsaw's residents live outside the commercial city centre and commute by metro, bus or tram.[88] Tenements and apartments in the central neighbourhoods are often reserved for commercial activity or temporary (tourist, student) accommodation. The nearest residential zones are predominantly located on the outskirts of the inner borough, in Ochota, Mokotów and Żoliborz or along the Vistula in Powiśle.[88]
+
+A seat of Polish monarchs since the end of the 16th century, Warsaw remained a small city with only privately-owned palaces, mansions, villas and several streets of townhouses. These displayed a richness of colour and architectonic details. The finest German, Italian and Dutch architects were employed, among them Tylman van Gameren, Andreas Schlüter, Jakub Fontana and Enrico Marconi.[89] The buildings situated in the vicinity of the Warsaw Old Town represent nearly every European architectural style and historical period. Warsaw has excellent examples of architecture from the Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassical periods, all of which are located within walking distance of the centre.
+
+Gothic architecture is represented in the majestic churches but also at the burgher houses and fortifications. The most significant buildings are St John's Cathedral (1390), a typical example of the so-called Masovian Brick Gothic style; St Mary's Church (1411); the Burbach townhouse (14th century);[90] Gunpowder Tower (after 1379); and Royal Castle's Curia Maior (1407–1410). The most notable examples of Renaissance architecture in the city are the house of the Baryczko merchant family (1562), a building called "The Negro" (early 17th century), and Salwator tenement (1632), all situated on the Old Market Place. The most interesting examples of Mannerist architecture are the Royal Castle (1596–1619) and the Jesuit Church (1609–1626). Among the first structures of the early Baroque, the most important are St. Hyacinth's Church (1603–1639) and Sigismund's Column (1644), the first secular monument in the form of a column in modern history.[91]
+
+Some of the best examples of palatial Baroque architecture are Krasiński Palace (1677–1683), Wilanów Palace (1677–1696) and St Kazimierz Church (1688–1692). The most impressive examples of rococo architecture are Czapski Palace (1712–1721), Palace of the Four Winds (1730s) and Visitationist Church (façade 1728–1761). The neoclassical architecture in Warsaw can be described by the simplicity of the geometrical forms teamed with a great inspiration from the Roman period. Some of the best examples of the neoclassical style are the Palace on the Isle (1775–1795), Królikarnia (1782–1786), Carmelite Church (façade 1761–1783) and the Holy Trinity Church (1777–1782). The neoclassical revival affected all aspects of architecture; the most notable examples are the Great Theater (1825–1833) and buildings located at Bank Square (1825–1828).
+
+Exceptional examples of the bourgeois architecture of the later periods were not restored by the communist authorities after the war or were remodelled into a socialist realist style (like Warsaw Philharmonic edifice originally inspired by Palais Garnier in Paris). Despite that, the Warsaw University of Technology (Polytechnic) building (1899–1902)[92] is the most interesting of the late 19th-century architecture. Some 19th-century industrial and brick workhouse buildings in the Praga district were restored, though many have been poorly maintained or demolished. Some of the important landmarks lost are the Saxon Palace and the Brühl Palace, the most distinctive buildings in prewar Warsaw.[93]
+
+Notable examples of post-war architecture include the Palace of Culture and Science (1952–1955), a soc-realist and art deco skyscraper based on the Empire State Building in New York. The Constitution Square with its monumental socialist realism architecture (MDM estate) was modelled on the grand squares of Paris, London, Moscow and Rome.[94] Italianate tuscan-styled colonnades based on those at Piazza della Repubblica in Rome were also erected on Saviour Square.[95]
+
+Contemporary architecture in Warsaw is represented by the Metropolitan Office Building at Pilsudski Square by Norman Foster,[96] Warsaw University Library (BUW) by Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski, featuring a garden on its roof and view of the Vistula River, Rondo 1 office building by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, Museum of the History of Polish Jews by Rainer Mahlamäki and Golden Terraces, consisting of seven overlapping domes retail and business centre. Jointly with Frankfurt, London, Paris and Rotterdam, Warsaw is one of the cities with the highest number of skyscrapers in Europe.[15][97]
+
+Although contemporary Warsaw is a fairly young city compared to other European capitals, it has numerous tourist attractions and architectural monuments dating back centuries. Apart from the Warsaw Old Town quarter, reconstructed after World War II, each borough has something to offer. Among the most notable landmarks of the Old Town are the Royal Castle, Sigismund's Column, Market Square, and the Barbican.
+
+Further south is the so-called Royal Route, with many historical churches, Baroque and Classicist palaces, most notably the Presidential Palace, and the University of Warsaw campus. The former royal residence of King John III Sobieski at Wilanów is notable for its Baroque architecture and eloquent palatial garden.[98]
+
+Powązki Cemetery is one of the oldest cemeteries in Europe,[99] featuring of sculptures, some of them by the most renowned Polish artists of the 19th and 20th centuries. Since it serves the religious communities of Warsaw such as Catholics, Jews, Orthodox Christians, Muslims or Protestants, it is often called a necropolis. Nearby is the Okopowa Street Jewish Cemetery, one of the largest Jewish cemeteries in Europe.
+
+In many places in the city the Jewish culture and history resonates down through time.[100] Among them the most notable are the Jewish theater, the Nożyk Synagogue, Janusz Korczak's Orphanage and the picturesque Próżna Street.[100] The tragic pages of Warsaw's history are commemorated in places such as the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes, the Umschlagplatz, fragments of the Ghetto wall on Sienna Street and a mound in memory of the Jewish Combat Organization.[100]
+
+There are also many places commemorating the heroic history of Warsaw.[101] Pawiak, an infamous German Gestapo prison now occupied by a Mausoleum of Memory of Martyrdom and the museum, is only the beginning of a walk in the traces of Heroic City.[101] The Warsaw Citadel, an impressive 19th-century fortification built after the defeat of the November uprising, was a place of martyrdom for the Poles.[101] Another important monument, the statue of Little Insurrectionist located at the ramparts of the Old Town, commemorates the children who served as messengers and frontline troops in the Warsaw Uprising, while the impressive Warsaw Uprising Monument by Wincenty Kućma was erected in memory of the largest insurrection of World War II.[101][102]
+
+In Warsaw there are many places connected with the life and work of Frédéric Chopin who was born near the city in Żelazowa Wola. The heart of the Polish composer is sealed inside Warsaw's Holy Cross Church.[103] During the summer time the Chopin Statue in Łazienki Park is a place where pianists give concerts to the park audience.[104]
+
+Also many references to Marie Curie, her work and her family can be found in Warsaw; Curie's birthplace at the Warsaw New Town, the working places where she did her first scientific works[105] and the Radium Institute at Wawelska Street for the research and the treatment of which she founded in 1925.[106]
+
+St. Anne's Church
+
+Holy Cross Church
+
+Carmelite Church has an original 18th-century façade
+
+Wilanów Palace, once a royal residence
+
+Belweder Palace, official seat of the President
+
+Castle Square with the Royal Castle and Sigismund's Column
+
+Krasiński Palace, a branch of the National Library
+
+Canon Square (Kanonia) with the narrowest townhouse in Europe
+
+St. Kazimierz Church at New Town Market Square
+
+Three Crosses Square marks the entry into Old Town
+
+Barbican, a remaining relic of historic fortifications.
+
+Green space covers almost a quarter of Warsaw's total area.[107] These range from small neighborhood parks and green spaces along streets or in courtyards, to tree-lined avenues, large historic parks, nature conservation areas and urban forests at the fringe of the city. There are as many as 82 parks in the city;[108] the oldest ones were once part of representative palaces and include the Saxon and Krasiński Gardens, Łazienki Park (Royal Baths Park) and Wilanów Palace Parkland.
+
+The Saxon Garden, covering an area of 15.5 ha, formally served as a royal garden to the now nonexistent Saxon Palace. In 1727, it was made into one of the world's first public parks and later remodelled in the forest-like English style. The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier is situated at the east end of the park near the central fountain, on Piłsudski Square. With its benches, flower carpets and a central pond, the Krasiński Palace Garden was once a notable strolling destination for most Varsovians. The Łazienki Park covers an area of 76 ha and its unique character and history is reflected in the landscape architecture (pavilions, sculptures, bridges, water cascades) and vegetation (domestic and foreign species of trees and shrubs). The presence of peacocks, pheasants and squirrels at Łazienki attracts tourists and locals. The Wilanów Palace Parkland on the outskirts of Warsaw traces it history to the second half of the 17th century and covers an area of 43 ha. Its French-styled alleys corresponds to the ancient, Baroque forms of the palace.
+
+The Botanical Garden and the University Library rooftop garden host an extensive collection of rare domestic and foreign plants, while a palm house in the New Orangery displays plants of subtropics from all over the world.[109] Mokotów Field (once a racetrack), Ujazdów Park and Skaryszewski Park are also located within the city borders. The oldest park in the Praga borough was established between 1865 and 1871.[110]
+
+The flora of Warsaw may be considered very rich in species on city standards. This is mainly due to the location of Warsaw within the border region of several big floral regions comprising substantial proportions of close-to-wilderness areas (natural forests, wetlands along the Vistula) as well as arable land, meadows and forests. The nearby Kampinos Nature Reserve is the last remaining part of the Masovian Primeval Forest and is protected by law.[111] The Kabaty Woods are by the southern city border and are visited by the residents of southern boroughs such as Ursynów. There are 13 natural reserves in the vicinity and just 15 kilometres (9 miles) from Warsaw, the environment features a perfectly preserved ecosystem with a habitat of animals like the otter, beavers and hundreds of bird species.[112] There are also several lakes in Warsaw – mainly the oxbow lakes at Czerniaków and Kamionek.
+
+The Warsaw Zoo covers an area of 40 hectares (99 acres).[113] There are about 5,000 animals representing nearly 500 species.[113] Although officially created in 1928,[113] it traces back its roots to 17th century private menageries, often open to the public.[114][115]
+
+Demographically, Warsaw was the most diverse city in Poland, with significant numbers of foreign-born residents.[116] In addition to the Polish majority, there was a large and thriving Jewish minority. According to the Imperial Census of 1897, out of the total population of 638,000, Jews constituted 219,000 (equivalent to 34%).[117] Prior to the Second World War, Warsaw hosted the world's second largest Jewish population after New York – approximately 30 percent of the city's total population in the late 1930s.[53] In 1933, 833,500 out of 1,178,914 people declared Polish as their mother tongue.[118] There was also a notable German community.[119] The ethnic composition of contemporary Warsaw is incomparable to the diversity that existed for nearly 300 years.[53] Most of the modern-day population growth is based on internal migration and urbanisation.
+
+In 1939, approximately 1,300,000 people resided in Warsaw;[123] by 1945 the population had dropped to 420,000. During the first years after the war, the population growth rate was high and the city soon began to suffer from the lack of flats and dwellings to house new incomers. The first remedial measure was the enlargement of Warsaw's total area (1951) – however the city authorities were still forced to introduce limitations; only the spouses and children of permanent residents as well as some persons of public importance (renowned specialists, artists, engineers) were permitted to stay. This negatively affected the image of an average Warsaw citizen, who was perceived as more privileged than those migrating from rural areas, towns or other cities. While all restrictions on residency registration were scrapped in 1990, the negative opinion of Varsovians in some form continues to this day.[124][125]
+
+Much like most capital cities in Europe, Warsaw boasts a foreign-born population that is significantly larger than in other cities, although not coming close to the figures representing the likes of Madrid or Rome. In 2019, it was estimated that 40,000 people living in Warsaw were born overseas, although it is suspected that the actual number could range between 60,000 and 150,000,[126] or 1.2~3.4% – 8.5% of all Varsovians. Of those, Ukrainians, Vietnamese, Belarusians, Russians and Indians were the most prominent groups.[127]
+
+Throughout its existence, Warsaw had been a multi-cultural and multi-religious city.[128] According to the 1901 census, out of 711,988 inhabitants 56.2% were Catholics, 35.7% Jews, 5% Greek Orthodox Christians and 2.8% Protestants.[129] Eight years later, in 1909, there were 281,754 Jews (36.9%), 18,189 Protestants (2.4%) and 2,818 Mariavites (0.4%).[130] This led to construction of hundreds of places of religious worship in all parts of the town. Most of them were destroyed in the aftermath of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. After the war, the new communist authorities of Poland discouraged church construction and only a small number were rebuilt.[131]
+
+The Archdiocese of Warsaw and the Diocese of Warsaw-Praga are the two ecclesiastical districts active in the city which serve the large Roman Catholic population of 1.4 million.[132] The Lutheran Diocese of Warsaw is one of six in Poland; its main temple is the Holy Trinity Church from 1782, one of Warsaw's most important and historic landmarks. The Evangelical Reformed Parish (Calvinist) is leading the Polish Reformed Church. The main tserkva of the Orthodox Christians is Praga's Cathedral of St. Mary Magdalene from 1869. The Jewish Commune of Warsaw (Gmina Wyznaniowa Żydowska) is one of eight in the country; Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich resides in the city. There are also 3 active synagogues, one of which is the pre-war Nożyk Synagogue designated for Orthodox Jews. A small mosque in Wilanów serves the Muslims.
+
+As the capital of Poland, Warsaw is the political centre of the country. All state agencies are located there, including the Polish Parliament, the Presidential Office and the Supreme Court. In the Polish parliament the city and the area are represented by 31 MPs (out of 460). Additionally, Warsaw elects two MEPs (Members of the European Parliament).
+
+The Sejm, the lower house of the Polish parliament, is situated in Warsaw on Wiejska Street. The Sejm is composed of 460 members (in Polish deputowany or poseł). It is elected by universal ballot and is presided over by a speaker called the Marshal of the Sejm (Marszałek Sejmu).
+
+The municipal government existed in Warsaw until World War II and was restored in 1990 (during the communist times, the National City Council – Miejska Rada Narodowa – governed in Warsaw). Since 1990, the system of city administration has been changed several times – also as the result of the reform which restored powiats, cancelled in 1975. Finally, according to the Warsaw Act, the city is divided into 18 districts and forms one city powiat with a unified municipal government.[133]
+
+The basic unit of territorial division in Poland is a commune (gmina).[134] A city is also a commune – but with a city charter.[134] Both cities and communes are governed by a mayor – but in the communes the mayor is vogt (wójt in Polish), however in the cities – burmistrz. Some bigger cities obtain the entitlements, i.e. tasks and privileges, which are possessed by the units of the second level of the territorial division – counties (powiaty in Polish). An example of such entitlement is a car registration: a gmina cannot register cars, this is a powiat's task (i.e. a registration number depends on what powiat a car had been registered in, not the gmina). In this case we say "city county" or powiat grodzki. Such cities are for example Lublin, Kraków, Gdańsk, and Poznań. In Warsaw, its districts additionally have some of a powiat's entitlements – like the already mentioned car registration. For example, the Wola district has its own evidence and the Ursynów district – its own (and the cars from Wola have another type of registration number than those from Ursynów). But for instance the districts in Kraków do not have the entitlements of a powiat, so the registration numbers in Kraków are of the same type for all districts.
+
+Legislative power in Warsaw is vested in a unicameral Warsaw City Council (Rada Miasta), which comprises 60 members.[133] Council members are elected directly every five years (since 2018 election). Like most legislative bodies, the city council divides itself into committees which have the oversight of various functions of the city government.[133] Bills passed by a simple majority are sent to the mayor (the President of Warsaw), who may sign them into law. If the mayor vetoes a bill, the Council has 30 days to override the veto by a two-thirds majority vote.
+
+Each of the 18 separate city districts has its own council (Rada dzielnicy).[133] Their duties are focused on aiding the President and the City Council, as well as supervising various municipal companies, city-owned property and schools. The head of each of the District Councils is named the Mayor (Burmistrz) and is elected by the local council from the candidates proposed by the President of Warsaw.
+
+The mayor of Warsaw is called President. Generally, in Poland, the mayors of bigger cities are called presidents – i.e. cities with over 100,000 people or that had a president before 1990. The first Warsaw President was Jan Andrzej Menich (1695–1696).[135] Between 1975 and 1990 the Warsaw presidents simultaneously led the Warsaw Voivode. Since 1990 the President of Warsaw had been elected by the city council.[136] In the years of 1994–1999 the mayor of the district Centrum automatically was designated as the President of Warsaw: the mayor of Centrum was elected by the district council of Centrum and the council was elected only by the Centrum residents. Since 2002 the President of Warsaw is elected by all of the citizens of Warsaw.[136]
+
+The President of Warsaw is Rafał Trzaskowski. The first president elected according these rules was Lech Kaczyński. When he was elected as the President of Polish Republic (December 2005) he resigned as mayor on the day before taking office.
+
+Poland's bicameral parliament, the Sejm and the Senate
+
+Chancellery of the Prime Minister
+
+The Presidential Palace, seat of the Polish president
+
+Supreme Court of Poland
+
+Supreme Administrative Court
+
+The seat of the administration of the Masovian Voivodeship
+
+Mostowski Palace, the seat of Warsaw's police headquarters
+
+The main gate of the Ministry of Health
+
+Ministry of Agriculture
+
+
+
+Until 1994, there were 7 districts in Warsaw: Śródmieście, Praga Północ, Praga Południe, Żoliborz, Wola, Ochota, and Mokotów. Between 1994 and 2002, there were 11 districts: Centrum, Białołęka, Targówek, Rembertów, Wawer, Wilanów, Ursynów, Włochy, Ursus, Bemowo, and Bielany. In 2002, the town Wesoła was incorporated and the territorial division of Warsaw was established as follows:
+
+Warsaw is a county (powiat), and is further divided into 18 districts (dzielnica),[138] each one with its own administrative body.[139] Each of the districts is customarily subdivided into several neighbourhoods which have no legal or administrative status. Warsaw has two historic neighbourhoods, called Old Town (Stare Miasto) and New Town (Nowe Miasto), in the borough of Śródmieście.[140]
+
+In 2011, Warsaw was ranked the world's 46th most expensive city to live in.[141] It was classified as an alpha world city (also known as a "major global city that links economic regions into the world economy") by the Globalization and World Cities (GaWC) Study Group and Network from Loughborough University, placing it on a par with cities such as Sydney, Istanbul, Amsterdam or Seoul.
+
+Warsaw, especially its city centre (Śródmieście), is home not only to many national institutions and government agencies, but also to many domestic and international companies. In 2006, 304,016 companies were registered in the city.[142] Warsaw's ever-growing business community has been noticed globally, regionally, and nationally. MasterCard Emerging Market Index has noted Warsaw's economic strength and commercial center. Warsaw was ranked as the seventh-greatest emerging market. Foreign investors' financial participation in the city's development was estimated in 2002 at over 650 million €.
+
+Warsaw produces 12% of Poland's national income,[143] which in 2008 was 305.1% of the Polish average per capita (or 160% of the European Union average). The Nominal GDP per capita in Warsaw amounted to 140,000 Polish Zloty in 2017 (c. €32,500 or around $80,000 in PPP[144]).[145] Warsaw leads East-Central Europe in foreign investment and in 2006, GDP growth met expectations with a level of 6.1%.[146] It also has one of the fastest growing economies, with GDP growth at 6.5 percent in 2007 and 6.1 percent in the first quarter of 2008.[147]
+
+At the same time the unemployment rate is one of the lowest in Poland, at around 4% in February 2015.[148] The city itself receives around 8,740,882,000 złotys in taxes and direct government grants.
+
+Warsaw's first stock exchange was established in 1817 and continued trading until World War II. It was re-established in April 1991, following the end of the post-war communist control of the country and the reintroduction of a free-market economy.[149] Today, the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) is, according to many indicators,[147] the largest market in the region, with 374 companies listed and total capitalisation of 162,584 mln EUR as of 31 August 2009.[150] From 1991 until 2000, the stock exchange was, ironically, located in the building previously used as the headquarters of the Polish United Workers' Party (PZPR).[151]
+
+During Warsaw's reconstruction after World War II, the communist authorities decided that the city would become a major industrial centre. As a result, numerous large factories were built in and around the city. The largest were the Huta Warszawa Steel Works, the FSO car factory and the "Ursus" tractor factory.
+
+As the communist economy deteriorated, these factories lost significance and most went bankrupt after 1989.[152][153] Today, the Arcelor Warszawa Steel mill (formerly Huta Warszawa) is the only major factory remaining.
+
+The FSO Car Factory was established in 1951. A number of vehicles have been assembled there over the decades, including the Warszawa, Syrena, Fiat 125p (under license from Fiat, later renamed FSO 125p when the license expired) and the Polonez. The last two models listed were also sent abroad and assembled in a number of other countries, including Egypt and Colombia. In 1995 the factory was purchased by the South Korean car manufacturer Daewoo, which assembled the Tico, Espero, Nubia, Tacuma, Leganza, Lanos and Matiz there for the European market. In 2005 the factory was sold to AvtoZAZ, a Ukrainian car manufacturer which assembled the Chevrolet Aveo there. The license for the production of the Aveo expired in February 2011 and has not been renewed since. The company is defunct.
+
+The "Ursus" factory opened in 1893 and is still in operation. Throughout its history various machinery was assembled there, including motorcycles, military vehicles, trucks and buses; but since World War II it has produced only tractors.
+
+The number of state-owned enterprises continues to decrease while the number of companies operating with foreign capital is on the rise, reflecting the continued shift towards a modern market-based economy.[152] The largest foreign investors are Coca-Cola Amatil and Metro AG.[152] Warsaw has the biggest concentration of electronics and high-tech industry in Poland, while the growing consumer market perfectly fosters the development of the food-processing industry.[152]
+
+Name and year established
+
+Warsaw holds some of the finest institutions of higher education in Poland. It is home to four major universities and over 62 smaller schools of higher education.[154] The overall number of students of all grades of education in Warsaw is almost 500,000 (29.2% of the city population; 2002). The number of university students is over 280,000.[155] Most of the reputable universities are public, but in recent years there has also been an upsurge in the number of private universities.
+
+The University of Warsaw was established in 1816, when the partitions of Poland separated Warsaw from the oldest and most influential Polish academic center, in Kraków.[156] Warsaw University of Technology is the second academic school of technology in the country, and one of the largest in East-Central Europe, employing 2,000 professors.[157] Other institutions for higher education include the Medical University of Warsaw, the largest medical school in Poland and one of the most prestigious; the National Defence University, highest military academic institution in Poland; the Fryderyk Chopin University of Music, the oldest and largest music school in Poland and one of the largest in Europe;[158] the Warsaw School of Economics, the oldest and most renowned economic university in the country;[159] the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, the largest agricultural university, founded in 1818;[160] and the University of Social Sciences and Humanities, the first private secular university in the country.
+
+Warsaw has numerous libraries, many of which contain vast collections of historic documents. The most important library in terms of historic document collections is the National Library of Poland. The library holds 8.2 million volumes in its collection.[161] Formed in 1928,[162] it sees itself as a successor to the Załuski Library, the biggest in Poland and one of the first and biggest libraries in the world.[162][163]
+
+Another important library – the University Library, founded in 1816,[164] is home to over two million items.[165] The building was designed by architects Marek Budzyński and Zbigniew Badowski and opened on 15 December 1999.[166] It is surrounded by green. The University Library garden, designed by Irena Bajerska, was opened on 12 June 2002. It is one of the largest and most beautiful roof gardens in Europe with an area of more than 10,000 m2 (110,000 sq ft), and plants covering 5,111 m2 (55,010 sq ft).[167] As the university garden it is open to the public every day.[167]
+
+Warsaw is a considerable transport hub linking Western, Central and Eastern Europe. The city has a good network of buses and a continuously expanding perpendicular metro running north to south and east to west. The tram system is one of the biggest in Europe, with a total length of 132 km (82 mi).[168] As a result of increased foreign investment, economic growth and EU funding, the city has undertaken the construction of new roads, flyovers and bridges.[169] The supervising body is the City Roads Authority (ZDM – Zarząd Dróg Miejskich).
+
+Warsaw lacks a complete ring road system and most traffic goes directly through the city centre, leading to the eleventh highest level of congestion in Europe.[170] The Warsaw ring road has been planned to consist of three express roads: S2 (south), S8 (north-west) and S17 (east). S8 and a part of S2 are open, with S2 to be finished by 2020.[171]
+
+The A2 motorway opened in June 2012, stretches west from Warsaw and is a direct motorway connection with Łódź, Poznań and ultimately with Berlin.
+
+The city has two international airports: Warsaw Chopin Airport, located just 10 kilometres (6.2 mi) from the city centre, and Warsaw-Modlin Airport, located 35 kilometres (22 mi) to the north, opened in July 2012. With around 100 international and domestic flights a day and with 15 500 000 passengers served in 2017, Warsaw Frédéric Chopin Airport is by far the biggest airport in Poland and in Central-Eastern Europe.[172] and it has also been called "the most important and largest airport in Central Europe".[173]
+
+Public transport also extends to light rail Warszawska Kolej Dojazdowa line, urban railway Szybka Kolej Miejska, regional rail Koleje Mazowieckie (Mazovian Railways),[174] and bicycle sharing systems (Veturilo). The buses, trams, urban railway and Metro are managed by Warszawski transport Publiczny (WTP, Warsaw Public Transpoert).
+
+The regional rail and light rail is operated by Polish State Railways (PKP). There are also some suburban bus lines run by private operators.[175] Bus service covers the entire city, with approximately 170 routes totalling about 2,603 kilometres (1,617 mi), and with some 1,600 vehicles.
+
+The first section of the Warsaw Metro was opened in 1995 initially with a total of 11 stations.[176] As of 2020, it has 34 stations running a distance of approximately 32 km (20 mi).[177]
+
+The main railway station is Warszawa Centralna serving both domestic traffic to almost every major city in Poland, and international connections. There are also five other major railway stations and a number of smaller suburban stations.
+
+Metro Line 2, Nowy Świat-Uniwersytet station
+
+Buses
+
+Tram car
+
+Pendolino high-speed trains at Warszawa Centralna
+
+Warsaw Suburban train
+
+Thanks to numerous musical venues, including the Teatr Wielki, the Polish National Opera, the Chamber Opera, the National Philharmonic Hall and the National Theatre, as well as the Roma and Buffo music theatres and the Congress Hall in the Palace of Culture and Science, Warsaw hosts many events and festivals. Among the events worth particular attention are: the International Frédéric Chopin Piano Competition, the International Contemporary Music Festival Warsaw Autumn, the Jazz Jamboree, Warsaw Summer Jazz Days, the International Stanisław Moniuszko Vocal Competition, the Mozart Festival, and the Festival of Old Music.[178]
+
+Warsaw is also considered as one of the European hubs of underground electronic music with a very attractive house and techno music scene.[179]
+
+Warsaw is home to over 30 major theatres spread throughout the city, including the National Theatre (founded in 1765) and the Grand Theatre (established 1778).[180]
+
+Warsaw also attracts many young and off-stream directors and performers who add to the city's theatrical culture. Their productions may be viewed mostly in smaller theatres and Houses of Culture (Domy Kultury), mostly outside Śródmieście (Central Warsaw). Warsaw hosts the International Theatrical Meetings.
+
+From 1833 to the outbreak of World War II, Plac Teatralny (Theatre Square) was the country's cultural hub and home to the various theatres.[181] Plac Teatralny and its environs was the venue for numerous parades, celebrations of state holidays, carnival balls and concerts.
+
+The main building housed the Great Theatre from 1833 to 1834, the Rozmaitości Theatre from 1836 to 1924 and then the National Theatre, the Reduta Theatre from 1919 to 1924, and from 1928 to 1939 – the Nowy Theatre, which staged productions of contemporary poetical drama, including those directed by Leon Schiller.[181]
+
+Nearby, in Ogród Saski (the Saxon Garden), the Summer Theatre was in operation from 1870 to 1939,[182] and in the inter-war period, the theatre complex also included Momus, Warsaw's first literary cabaret, and Leon Schiller's musical theatre Melodram. The Wojciech Bogusławski Theatre (1922–26) was the best example of "Polish monumental theatre". From the mid-1930s, the Great Theatre building housed the Upati Institute of Dramatic Arts – the first state-run academy of dramatic art, with an acting department and a stage directing department.[181]
+
+Several commemorative events take place every year. Gatherings of thousands of people on the banks of the Vistula on Midsummer's Night for a festival called Wianki (Polish for Wreaths) have become a tradition and a yearly event in the programme of cultural events in Warsaw.[183][184] The festival traces its roots to a peaceful pagan ritual where maidens would float their wreaths of herbs on the water to predict when they would be married, and to whom.[183] By the 19th century this tradition had become a festive event, and it continues today.[183] The city council organize concerts and other events.[184] Each Midsummer's Eve, apart from the official floating of wreaths, jumping over fires, and looking for the fern flower, there are musical performances, dignitaries' speeches, fairs and fireworks by the river bank.[184]
+
+Warsaw Multimedia Fountain Park is located in an enchanting place, near the Old Town and the Vistula. The ‘Water – Light – Sound’ multimedia shows take place each Friday and Saturday from May till September at 9.30 pm (May and – 9 October pm). On other weekdays, the shows do not include lasers and sound.
+
+The Warsaw Film festival, an annual festival that takes place every October.[185] Films are usually screened in their original language with Polish subtitles and participating cinemas include Kinoteka (Palace of Science and Culture), Multikino at Golden Terraces and Kultura. Over 100 films are shown throughout the festival, and awards are given to the best and most popular films.[185]
+
+The levelling of Warsaw during the war has left gaping holes in the city's historic collections.[186] Although a considerable number of treasures were spirited away to safety in 1939, a great number of collections from palaces and museums in the countryside were brought to Warsaw at that time as the capital was considered a safer place than some remote castle in the borderlands.[186] Thus losses were heavy.[186]
+
+As interesting examples of expositions the most notable are: the world's first Museum of Posters boasting one of the largest collections of art posters in the world,[187] the Museum of Hunting and Riding and the Railway Museum. From among Warsaw's 60 museums, the most prestigious ones are the National Museum with a collection of works whose origin ranges in time from antiquity till the present epoch as well as one of the best collections of paintings in the country including some paintings from Adolf Hitler's private collection,[188] and the Museum of the Polish Army whose set portrays the history of arms.
+
+The collections of Łazienki and Wilanów palaces focus on the paintings of the "old masters", as do those of the Royal Castle which displays the Lanckoroński Collection including two paintings by Rembrandt.[189] The Palace in Natolin, a former rural residence of Duke Czartoryski, is another venue with its interiors and park accessible to tourists.
+
+Holding Poland's largest private collection of art, the Carroll Porczyński Collection Museum[190] displays works from such varied artists as Paris Bordone, Cornelis van Haarlem, José de Ribera, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh[191] along with some copies of masterpieces of European painting.
+
+A fine tribute to the fall of Warsaw and history of Poland can be found in the Warsaw Uprising Museum and in the Katyń Museum which preserves the memory of that crime.[192] The Warsaw Uprising Museum also operates a rare preserved and operating historic stereoscopic theatre, the Warsaw Fotoplastikon. The Museum of Independence preserves patriotic and political objects connected with Poland's struggles for independence. Dating back to 1936 the Warsaw Historical Museum contains 60 rooms which host a permanent exhibition of the history of Warsaw from its origins until today.
+
+The 17th century Royal Ujazdów Castle houses the Centre for Contemporary Art, with some permanent and temporary exhibitions, concerts, shows and creative workshops. The Centre  realizes about 500 projects a year. The Zachęta National Gallery of Art, the oldest exhibition site in Warsaw, with a tradition stretching back to the mid-19th century organises exhibitions of modern art by Polish and International Artists and promotes art in many other ways. Since 2011, Warsaw Gallery Weekend is held on the last weekend of September.
+
+The city also possesses some oddities such as the Neon Museum, the Museum of Caricature,[193] the Museum of John Paul II and Primate Wyszyński, the Legia Warsaw Museum, and a Motorisation Museum in Otrębusy.[194]
+
+Warsaw is the media centre of Poland, and the location of the main headquarters of TVP and other numerous local and national TV and radio stations, such as Polskie Radio (Polish Radio), TVN, Polsat, TV4, TV Puls, Canal+ Poland, Cyfra+ and MTV Poland.[195]
+
+Since May 1661 the first Polish newspaper, the Polish Ordinary Mercury, was printed in Warsaw. The city is also the printing capital of Poland with a wide variety of domestic and foreign periodicals expressing diverse views, and domestic newspapers are extremely competitive. Rzeczpospolita, Gazeta Wyborcza and Dziennik Polska-Europa-Świat, Poland's large nationwide daily newspapers,[196] have their headquarters in Warsaw.
+
+Warsaw also has a sizable movie and television industry. The city houses several movie companies and studios. Among the movie companies are TOR, Czołówka, Zebra and Kadr which is behind several international movie productions.[197]
+
+Over the next few years the new Film City in Nowe Miasto, located a mere 80 km (50 mi) from Warsaw, will become the centre of Polish film production and international co-production.[197] It is to be the largest high-tech film studio in Europe.[197] The first projects filmed in the new Film City will be two films about the Warsaw uprising.[197] Two backlots will be constructed for these projects – a lot of pre-World War II Warsaw and city ruins.[197]
+
+Since World War II, Warsaw has been the most important centre of film production in Poland. It has also been featured in numerous movies, both Polish and foreign, for example: Kanał and Korczak by Andrzej Wajda and The Decalogue by Krzysztof Kieślowski, also including Oscar winner The Pianist by Roman Polański.[198]
+
+It is also home to the National Film Archive, which, since 1955, has been collecting and preserving Polish film culture.[199]
+
+On 9 April 2008 the President of Warsaw, Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, obtained from the mayor of Stuttgart Wolfgang Schuster a challenge award – a commemorative plaque awarded to Warsaw as the European capital of Sport in 2008.[200]
+
+The National Stadium, a 58,580-seat-capacity football (soccer) stadium, replaced Warsaw's recently demolished 10th-Anniversary Stadium.[201] The national stadium hosted the opening match, 2 group matches, a quarterfinal, and a semi-final of the UEFA Euro 2012 hosted jointly by Poland and Ukraine.[202]
+
+There are many sports centres in the city as well. Most of these facilities are swimming pools and sports halls, many of them built by the municipality in the past several years. The main indoor venue is Hala Torwar, used for all kinds of indoor sports (it was a venue for the 2009 EuroBasket[203] but it is also used as an indoor skating rink). There is also an open-air skating rink (Stegny) and a horse racetrack (Służewiec).
+
+The best of the city's swimming centres is at Wodny Park Warszawianka, 4 km (2 mi) south of the centre at Merliniego Street, where there's an Olympic-sized pool as well as water slides and children's areas.[204]
+
+From the Warsovian football teams, the most famous is Legia Warsaw – the army club with a nationwide following play at Polish Army Stadium, just southeast of the centre at Łazienkowska Street. Established in 1916, they have won the country's championship 13 times (most recently in 2018) and won the Polish Cup 19 times. In the Champions League season 1995/96 they reached the quarter-finals, where they lost to Panathinaikos Athens.
+
+Their local rivals, Polonia Warsaw, have significantly fewer supporters, yet they managed to win the country's championship two times (in 1946 and 2000) and won the cup twice as well. Polonia's home venue is located at Konwiktorska Street, a ten-minute walk north from the Old Town. Polonia was relegated from the country's top flight in 2013 because of their disastrous financial situation. They are now playing in the second league (3rd tier in Poland).
+
+Legia Warsaw's basketball team was one of the country's best teams in 50s and 60s. They are now participating in PLK, the highest-tier level of the Polish basketball.
+
+The mermaid (syrenka) is Warsaw's symbol[205] and can be found on statues throughout the city and on the city's coat of arms. This imagery has been in use since at least the mid-14th century.[206] The oldest existing armed seal of Warsaw is from the year 1390, consisting of a round seal bordered with the Latin inscription Sigilium Civitatis Varsoviensis (Seal of the city of Warsaw).[207] City records as far back as 1609 document the use of a crude form of a sea monster with a female upper body and holding a sword in its claws.[208] In 1653 the poet Zygmunt Laukowski asks the question:
+
+Warsaw of strong walls; why was the emblem Mermaid with sharp sword, given you by the kings?
+
+The Mermaid Statue stands in the very centre of Old Town Square, surrounded by a fountain. Due to vandalism, the original statue had been moved to the grounds of the Museum of Warsaw – the statue in the square is a copy.
+This is not the only mermaid in Warsaw. Another is located on the bank of the Vistula River near Świętokrzyski Bridge and another on Karowa Street.
+
+The origin of the legendary figure is not fully known. The best-known legend, by Artur Oppman, is that long ago two of Triton's daughters set out on a journey through the depths of the oceans and seas. One of them decided to stay on the coast of Denmark and can be seen sitting at the entrance to the port of Copenhagen. The second mermaid reached the mouth of the Vistula River and plunged into its waters. She stopped to rest on a sandy beach by the village of Warszowa, where fishermen came to admire her beauty and listen to her beautiful voice. A greedy merchant also heard her songs; he followed the fishermen and captured the mermaid.[210]
+
+Another legend says that a mermaid once swam to Warsaw from the Baltic Sea for the love of the Griffin, the ancient defender of the city, who was killed in a struggle against the Swedish invasions of the 17th century. The mermaid, wishing to avenge his death, took the position of defender of Warsaw, becoming the symbol of the city.[210]
+
+Every member of the Queen's Royal Hussars of the UK's light cavalry wears the Maid of Warsaw, the crest of the City of Warsaw, on the left sleeve of his No. 2 (Service) Dress.[211] Members of 651 Squadron Army Air Corps of the United Kingdom also wear the Maid of Warsaw on the left sleeve of their No. 2 (Service) Dress.[212]
+
+One of the most famous people born in Warsaw was Maria Skłodowska-Curie, who achieved international recognition for her research on radioactivity and was the first female recipient of the Nobel Prize.[213] Famous musicians include Władysław Szpilman and Frédéric Chopin. Though Chopin was born in the village of Żelazowa Wola, about 60 km (37 mi) from Warsaw, he moved to the city with his family when he was seven months old.[214] Casimir Pulaski, a Polish general and hero of the American Revolutionary War, was born here in 1745.[215]
+
+Tamara de Lempicka was a famous artist born in Warsaw.[216] She was born Maria Górska in Warsaw to wealthy parents and in 1916 married a Polish lawyer Tadeusz Łempicki.[217] Better than anyone else she represented the art deco style in painting and art.[216]
+Nathan Alterman, the Israeli poet, was born in Warsaw, as was Moshe Vilenski, the Israeli composer, lyricist, and pianist, who studied music at the Warsaw Conservatory.[218] Russian Jewish poet and essayist Osip Mandelstam, one of the foremost members of the Acmeist school of poetry was born in Warsaw while it was part of the Russian Empire. Other notables include Samuel Goldwyn, the founder of Goldwyn Pictures, mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, physicist Joseph Rotblat, biochemist Casimir Funk, and Moshe Prywes, an Israeli physician who was the first President of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Warsaw was the beloved city of Isaac Bashevis Singer, which he described in many of his novels:[219] "Warsaw has just now been destroyed. No one will ever see the Warsaw I knew. Let me just write about it. Let this Warsaw not disappear forever", he wrote.[220]
+
+Warsaw is twinned with:[221]

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+Batman is a fictional superhero appearing in American comic books published by DC Comics. The character was created by artist Bob Kane and writer Bill Finger,[2][3] and first appeared in Detective Comics #27 in 1939. Originally named the "Bat-Man," the character is also referred to by such epithets as the Caped Crusader, the Dark Knight, and the World's Greatest Detective.[6]
+
+Batman's secret identity is Bruce Wayne, a wealthy American playboy, philanthropist, and owner of Wayne Enterprises. Batman originated from an incident in Bruce's childhood; after witnessing the murder of his parents Dr. Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne, he swore vengeance against criminals, an oath tempered by a sense of justice. Bruce trains himself physically and intellectually and crafts a bat-inspired persona to fight crime.[7]
+
+Batman operates in the fictional Gotham City with assistance from various supporting characters, including his butler Alfred, police commissioner Jim Gordon, and vigilante allies such as Robin. Unlike most superheroes, Batman does not possess any inhuman superpowers. He does, however, possess a genius-level intellect and is a peerless martial artist, and his vast wealth affords him an extraordinary arsenal of weaponry and equipment. A large assortment of villains make up Batman's rogues gallery, including his nemesis, the Joker.
+
+The character became popular soon after his introduction in 1939 and gained his own comic book title, Batman, the following year. As the decades went on, different interpretations of the character emerged. The late 1960s Batman television series used a camp aesthetic, which continued to be associated with the character for years after the show ended. Various creators worked to return the character to his dark roots in 70s, culminating in 1986 with The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller. The success of Warner Bros. Pictures' live-action Batman feature films have helped maintain the character's prominence in mainstream culture.[8]
+
+Batman has been licensed and featured in various adaptations, from radio to television and film, and appears in merchandise sold around the world, such as apparel, toys, and video games. Kevin Conroy, Rino Romano, Anthony Ruivivar, Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood, Jason O'Mara, and Will Arnett, among others, have provided the character's voice for animated adaptations. Batman has been depicted in both film and television by Lewis Wilson, Robert Lowery, Adam West, Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Bruce Thomas, Christian Bale, Ben Affleck, David Mazouz, Iain Glen, Kevin Conroy, and Warren Christie. Robert Pattinson will portray the character in the upcoming 2021 film, The Batman.
+
+In early 1939, the success of Superman in Action Comics prompted editors at National Comics Publications (the future DC Comics) to request more superheroes for its titles. In response, Bob Kane created "the Bat-Man".[10] Collaborator Bill Finger recalled that "Kane had an idea for a character called 'Batman,' and he'd like me to see the drawings. I went over to Kane's, and he had drawn a character who looked very much like Superman with kind of ... reddish tights, I believe, with boots ... no gloves, no gauntlets ... with a small domino mask, swinging on a rope. He had two stiff wings that were sticking out, looking like bat wings. And under it was a big sign ... BATMAN".[11] The bat-wing-like cape was suggested by Bob Kane, inspired as a child by Leonardo Da Vinci's sketch of an ornithopter flying device.[12]
+
+Finger suggested giving the character a cowl instead of a simple domino mask, a cape instead of wings, and gloves; he also recommended removing the red sections from the original costume.[13][14][15][16] Finger said he devised the name Bruce Wayne for the character's secret identity: "Bruce Wayne's first name came from Robert Bruce, the Scottish patriot. Wayne, being a playboy, was a man of gentry. I searched for a name that would suggest colonialism. I tried Adams, Hancock ... then I thought of Mad Anthony Wayne."[17] He later said his suggestions were influenced by Lee Falk's popular The Phantom, a syndicated newspaper comic-strip character with which Kane was also familiar.[18]
+
+Kane and Finger drew upon contemporary 1930s popular culture for inspiration regarding much of the Bat-Man's look, personality, methods, and weaponry. Details find predecessors in pulp fiction, comic strips, newspaper headlines, and autobiographical details referring to Kane himself.[19] As an aristocratic hero with a double identity, Batman had predecessors in the Scarlet Pimpernel (created by Baroness Emmuska Orczy, 1903) and Zorro (created by Johnston McCulley, 1919). Like them, Batman performed his heroic deeds in secret, averted suspicion by playing aloof in public, and marked his work with a signature symbol. Kane noted the influence of the films The Mark of Zorro (1920) and The Bat Whispers (1930) in the creation of the character's iconography. Finger, drawing inspiration from pulp heroes like Doc Savage, The Shadow, Dick Tracy, and Sherlock Holmes, made the character a master sleuth.[20][21]
+
+In his 1989 autobiography, Kane detailed Finger's contributions to Batman's creation:
+
+One day I called Bill and said, 'I have a new character called the Bat-Man and I've made some crude, elementary sketches I'd like you to look at.' He came over and I showed him the drawings. At the time, I only had a small domino mask, like the one Robin later wore, on Batman's face. Bill said, 'Why not make him look more like a bat and put a hood on him, and take the eyeballs out and just put slits for eyes to make him look more mysterious?' At this point, the Bat-Man wore a red union suit; the wings, trunks, and mask were black. I thought that red and black would be a good combination. Bill said that the costume was too bright: 'Color it dark grey to make it look more ominous.' The cape looked like two stiff bat wings attached to his arms. As Bill and I talked, we realized that these wings would get cumbersome when Bat-Man was in action and changed them into a cape, scalloped to look like bat wings when he was fighting or swinging down on a rope. Also, he didn't have any gloves on, and we added them so that he wouldn't leave fingerprints.[18]
+
+Kane signed away ownership in the character in exchange for, among other compensation, a mandatory byline on all Batman comics. This byline did not originally say "Batman created by Bob Kane"; his name was simply written on the title page of each story. The name disappeared from the comic book in the mid-1960s, replaced by credits for each story's actual writer and artists. In the late 1970s, when Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster began receiving a "created by" credit on the Superman titles, along with William Moulton Marston being given the byline for creating Wonder Woman, Batman stories began saying "Created by Bob Kane" in addition to the other credits.
+
+Finger did not receive the same recognition. While he had received credit for other DC work since the 1940s, he began, in the 1960s, to receive limited acknowledgment for his Batman writing; in the letters page of Batman #169 (February 1965) for example, editor Julius Schwartz names him as the creator of the Riddler, one of Batman's recurring villains. However, Finger's contract left him only with his writing page rate and no byline. Kane wrote, "Bill was disheartened by the lack of major accomplishments in his career. He felt that he had not used his creative potential to its fullest and that success had passed him by."[17] At the time of Finger's death in 1974, DC had not officially credited Finger as Batman co-creator.
+
+Jerry Robinson, who also worked with Finger and Kane on the strip at this time, has criticized Kane for failing to share the credit. He recalled Finger resenting his position, stating in a 2005 interview with The Comics Journal:
+
+Bob made him more insecure, because while he slaved working on Batman, he wasn't sharing in any of the glory or the money that Bob began to make, which is why ... [he was] going to leave [Kane's employ]. ... [Kane] should have credited Bill as co-creator, because I know; I was there. ... That was one thing I would never forgive Bob for, was not to take care of Bill or recognize his vital role in the creation of Batman. As with Siegel and Shuster, it should have been the same, the same co-creator credit in the strip, writer, and artist.[22]
+
+Although Kane initially rebutted Finger's claims at having created the character, writing in a 1965 open letter to fans that "it seemed to me that Bill Finger has given out the impression that he and not myself created the ''Batman, t'  [sic] as well as Robin and all the other leading villains and characters. This statement is fraudulent and entirely untrue." Kane himself also commented on Finger's lack of credit. "The trouble with being a 'ghost' writer or artist is that you must remain rather anonymously without 'credit'. However, if one wants the 'credit', then one has to cease being a 'ghost' or follower and become a leader or innovator."[23]
+
+In 1989, Kane revisited Finger's situation, recalling in an interview:
+
+In those days it was like, one artist and he had his name over it [the comic strip] — the policy of DC in the comic books was, if you can't write it, obtain other writers, but their names would never appear on the comic book in the finished version. So Bill never asked me for it [the byline] and I never volunteered — I guess my ego at that time. And I felt badly, really, when he [Finger] died.[24]
+
+In September 2015, DC Entertainment revealed that Finger would be receiving credit for his role in Batman's creation on the 2016 superhero film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and the second season of Gotham after a deal was worked out between the Finger family and DC.[2] Finger received credit as a creator of Batman for the first time in a comic in October 2015 with Batman and Robin Eternal #3 and Batman: Arkham Knight Genesis #3. The updated acknowledgment for the character appeared as "Batman created by Bob Kane with Bill Finger".[3]
+
+The first Batman story, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate", was published in Detective Comics #27 (May 1939). Finger said, "Batman was originally written in the style of the pulps",[25] and this influence was evident with Batman showing little remorse over killing or maiming criminals. Batman proved a hit character, and he received his own solo title in 1940 while continuing to star in Detective Comics. By that time, Detective Comics was the top-selling and most influential publisher in the industry; Batman and the company's other major hero, Superman, were the cornerstones of the company's success.[26] The two characters were featured side-by-side as the stars of World's Finest Comics, which was originally titled World's Best Comics when it debuted in fall 1940. Creators including Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang also worked on the strips during this period.
+
+Over the course of the first few Batman strips elements were added to the character and the artistic depiction of Batman evolved. Kane noted that within six issues he drew the character's jawline more pronounced, and lengthened the ears on the costume. "About a year later he was almost the full figure, my mature Batman", Kane said.[27] Batman's characteristic utility belt was introduced in Detective Comics #29 (July 1939), followed by the boomerang-like batarang and the first bat-themed vehicle, the Batplane, in #31 (Sept. 1939). The character's origin was revealed in #33 (Nov. 1939), unfolding in a two-page story that establishes the brooding persona of Batman, a character driven by the death of his parents. Written by Finger, it depicts a young Bruce Wayne witnessing his parents' murder at the hands of a mugger. Days later, at their grave, the child vows that "by the spirits of my parents [I will] avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals".[28][29][30]
+
+The early, pulp-inflected portrayal of Batman started to soften in Detective Comics #38 (April 1940) with the introduction of Robin, Batman's junior counterpart.[31] Robin was introduced, based on Finger's suggestion, because Batman needed a "Watson" with whom Batman could talk.[32] Sales nearly doubled, despite Kane's preference for a solo Batman, and it sparked a proliferation of "kid sidekicks".[33] The first issue of the solo spin-off series Batman was notable not only for introducing two of his most persistent enemies, the Joker and Catwoman, but for a pre-Robin inventory story, originally meant for Detective Comics #38, in which Batman shoots some monstrous giants to death.[34][35] That story prompted editor Whitney Ellsworth to decree that the character could no longer kill or use a gun.[36]
+
+By 1942, the writers and artists behind the Batman comics had established most of the basic elements of the Batman mythos.[37] In the years following World War II, DC Comics "adopted a postwar editorial direction that increasingly de-emphasized social commentary in favor of lighthearted juvenile fantasy". The impact of this editorial approach was evident in Batman comics of the postwar period; removed from the "bleak and menacing world" of the strips of the early 1940s, Batman was instead portrayed as a respectable citizen and paternal figure that inhabited a "bright and colorful" environment.[38]
+
+Batman was one of the few superhero characters to be continuously published as interest in the genre waned during the 1950s. In the story "The Mightiest Team in the World" in Superman #76 (June 1952), Batman teams up with Superman for the first time and the pair discover each other's secret identity.[39] Following the success of this story, World's Finest Comics was revamped so it featured stories starring both heroes together, instead of the separate Batman and Superman features that had been running before.[40] The team-up of the characters was "a financial success in an era when those were few and far between";[41] this series of stories ran until the book's cancellation in 1986.
+
+Batman comics were among those criticized when the comic book industry came under scrutiny with the publication of psychologist Fredric Wertham's book Seduction of the Innocent in 1954. Wertham's thesis was that children imitated crimes committed in comic books, and that these works corrupted the morals of the youth. Wertham criticized Batman comics for their supposed homosexual overtones and argued that Batman and Robin were portrayed as lovers.[42] Wertham's criticisms raised a public outcry during the 1950s, eventually leading to the establishment of the Comics Code Authority, a code that is no longer in use by the comic book industry. The tendency towards a "sunnier Batman" in the postwar years intensified after the introduction of the Comics Code.[43] Scholars have suggested that the characters of Batwoman (in 1956) and the pre-Barbara Gordon Bat-Girl (in 1961) were introduced in part to refute the allegation that Batman and Robin were gay, and the stories took on a campier, lighter feel.[44]
+
+In the late 1950s, Batman stories gradually became more science fiction-oriented, an attempt at mimicking the success of other DC characters that had dabbled in the genre.[45] New characters such as Batwoman, the original Bat-Girl, Ace the Bat-Hound, and Bat-Mite were introduced. Batman's adventures often involved odd transformations or bizarre space aliens. In 1960, Batman debuted as a member of the Justice League of America in The Brave and the Bold #28 (Feb. 1960), and went on to appear in several Justice League comic book series starting later that same year.
+
+By 1964, sales of Batman titles had fallen drastically. Bob Kane noted that, as a result, DC was "planning to kill Batman off altogether".[46] In response to this, editor Julius Schwartz was assigned to the Batman titles. He presided over drastic changes, beginning with 1964's Detective Comics #327 (May 1964), which was cover-billed as the "New Look". Schwartz introduced changes designed to make Batman more contemporary, and to return him to more detective-oriented stories. He brought in artist Carmine Infantino to help overhaul the character. The Batmobile was redesigned, and Batman's costume was modified to incorporate a yellow ellipse behind the bat-insignia. The space aliens, time travel, and characters of the 1950s such as Batwoman, Ace, and Bat-Mite were retired. Bruce Wayne's butler Alfred was killed off (though his death was quickly reversed) while a new female relative for the Wayne family, Aunt Harriet, came to live with Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson.[47]
+
+The debut of the Batman television series in 1966 had a profound influence on the character. The success of the series increased sales throughout the comic book industry, and Batman reached a circulation of close to 900,000 copies.[48] Elements such as the character of Batgirl and the show's campy nature were introduced into the comics; the series also initiated the return of Alfred. Although both the comics and TV show were successful for a time, the camp approach eventually wore thin and the show was canceled in 1968. In the aftermath, the Batman comics themselves lost popularity once again. As Julius Schwartz noted, "When the television show was a success, I was asked to be campy, and of course when the show faded, so did the comic books."[49]
+
+Starting in 1969, writer Dennis O'Neil and artist Neal Adams made a deliberate effort to distance Batman from the campy portrayal of the 1960s TV series and to return the character to his roots as a "grim avenger of the night".[50] O'Neil said his idea was "simply to take it back to where it started. I went to the DC library and read some of the early stories. I tried to get a sense of what Kane and Finger were after."[51]
+
+O'Neil and Adams first collaborated on the story "The Secret of the Waiting Graves" in Detective Comics #395 (Jan. 1970). Few stories were true collaborations between O'Neil, Adams, Schwartz, and inker Dick Giordano, and in actuality these men were mixed and matched with various other creators during the 1970s; nevertheless the influence of their work was "tremendous".[52] Giordano said: "We went back to a grimmer, darker Batman, and I think that's why these stories did so well ..."[53] While the work of O'Neil and Adams was popular with fans, the acclaim did little to improve declining sales; the same held true with a similarly acclaimed run by writer Steve Englehart and penciler Marshall Rogers in Detective Comics #471–476 (Aug. 1977 – April 1978), which went on to influence the 1989 movie Batman and be adapted for Batman: The Animated Series, which debuted in 1992.[54] Regardless, circulation continued to drop through the 1970s and 1980s, hitting an all-time low in 1985.[55]
+
+Frank Miller's limited series The Dark Knight Returns (February–June 1986) returned the character to his darker roots, both in atmosphere and tone. The comic book, which tells the story of a 55-year-old Batman coming out of retirement in a possible future, reinvigorated interest in the character. The Dark Knight Returns was a financial success and has since become one of the medium's most noted touchstones.[56] The series also sparked a major resurgence in the character's popularity.[57]
+
+That year Dennis O'Neil took over as editor of the Batman titles and set the template for the portrayal of Batman following DC's status quo-altering miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths. O'Neil operated under the assumption that he was hired to revamp the character and as a result tried to instill a different tone in the books than had gone before.[58] One outcome of this new approach was the "Year One" storyline in Batman #404–407 (Feb.–May 1987), in which Frank Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli redefined the character's origins. Writer Alan Moore and artist Brian Bolland continued this dark trend with 1988's 48-page one-shot Batman: The Killing Joke, in which the Joker, attempting to drive Commissioner Gordon insane, cripples Gordon's daughter Barbara, and then kidnaps and tortures the commissioner, physically and psychologically.
+
+The Batman comics garnered major attention in 1988 when DC Comics created a 900 number for readers to call to vote on whether Jason Todd, the second Robin, lived or died. Voters decided in favor of Jason's death by a narrow margin of 28 votes (see Batman: A Death in the Family).[59]
+
+The 1993 "Knightfall" story arc introduced a new villain, Bane, who critically injures Batman after pushing him to the limits of his endurance. Jean-Paul Valley, known as Azrael, is called upon to wear the Batsuit during Bruce Wayne's convalescence. Writers Doug Moench, Chuck Dixon, and Alan Grant worked on the Batman titles during "Knightfall", and would also contribute to other Batman crossovers throughout the 1990s. 1998's "Cataclysm" storyline served as the precursor to 1999's "No Man's Land", a year-long storyline that ran through all the Batman-related titles dealing with the effects of an earthquake-ravaged Gotham City. At the conclusion of "No Man's Land", O'Neil stepped down as editor and was replaced by Bob Schreck.[60]
+
+Another writer who rose to prominence on the Batman comic series, was Jeph Loeb. Along with longtime collaborator Tim Sale, they wrote two miniseries (The Long Halloween and Dark Victory) that pit an early in his career version of Batman against his entire rogues gallery (including Two-Face, whose origin was re-envisioned by Loeb) while dealing with various mysteries involving serial killers Holiday and the Hangman. In 2003, Loeb teamed with artist Jim Lee to work on another mystery arc: "Batman: Hush" for the main Batman book. The 12–issue storyline has Batman and Catwoman teaming up against Batman's entire rogues gallery, including an apparently resurrected Jason Todd, while seeking to find the identity of the mysterious supervillain Hush.[61] While the character of Hush failed to catch on with readers, the arc was a sales success for DC. The series became #1 on the Diamond Comic Distributors sales chart for the first time since Batman #500 (Oct. 1993) and Todd's appearance laid the groundwork for writer Judd Winick's subsequent run as writer on Batman, with another multi-issue arc, "Under the Hood", which ran from Batman #637–650 (April 2005 – April 2006).
+
+In 2005, DC launched All-Star Batman and Robin, a stand-alone comic series set outside the main DC Universe continuity. Written by Frank Miller and drawn by Jim Lee, the series was a commercial success for DC Comics,[62][63] although it was widely panned by critics for its writing and strong depictions of violence.[64][65]
+
+Starting in 2006, Grant Morrison and Paul Dini were the regular writers of Batman and Detective Comics, with Morrison reincorporating controversial elements of Batman lore. Most notably of these elements were the science fiction themed storylines of the 1950s Batman comics, which Morrison revised as hallucinations Batman suffered under the influence of various mind-bending gases and extensive sensory deprivation training. Morrison's run climaxed with "Batman R.I.P.", which brought Batman up against the villainous "Black Glove" organization, which sought to drive Batman into madness. "Batman R.I.P." segued into Final Crisis (also written by Morrison), which saw the apparent death of Batman at the hands of Darkseid. In the 2009 miniseries Batman: Battle for the Cowl, Wayne's former protégé Dick Grayson becomes the new Batman, and Wayne's son Damian becomes the new Robin.[66][67] In June 2009, Judd Winick returned to writing Batman, while Grant Morrison was given his own series, titled Batman and Robin.[68]
+
+In 2010, the storyline Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne saw Bruce travel through history, eventually returning to the present day. Although he reclaimed the mantle of Batman, he also allowed Grayson to continue being Batman as well. Bruce decided to take his crime-fighting cause globally, which is the central focus of Batman Incorporated. DC Comics would later announce that Grayson would be the main character in Batman, Detective Comics, and Batman and Robin, while Wayne would be the main character in Batman Incorporated. Also, Bruce appeared in another ongoing series, Batman: The Dark Knight.
+
+In September 2011, DC Comics' entire line of superhero comic books, including its Batman franchise, were canceled and relaunched with new #1 issues as part of The New 52 reboot. Bruce Wayne is the only character to be identified as Batman and is featured in Batman, Detective Comics, Batman and Robin, and Batman: The Dark Knight. Dick Grayson returns to the mantle of Nightwing and appears in his own ongoing series. While many characters have their histories significantly altered to attract new readers, Batman's history remains mostly intact. Batman Incorporated was relaunched in 2012–2013 to complete the "Leviathan" storyline.
+
+With the beginning of The New 52, Scott Snyder was the writer of the Batman title. His first major story arc was "Night of the Owls", where Batman confronts the Court of Owls, a secret society that has controlled Gotham for centuries. The second story arc was "Death of the Family", where the Joker returns to Gotham and simultaneously attacks each member of the Batman family. The third story arc was "Batman: Zero Year", which redefined Batman's origin in The New 52. It followed Batman #0, published in June 2012, which explored the character's early years. The final storyline before the "Convergence" (2015) storyline was "Endgame", depicting the supposed final battle between Batman and the Joker when he unleashes the deadly Endgame virus onto Gotham City. The storyline ends with Batman and the Joker's supposed deaths.
+
+Starting with Batman (vol. 2) #41, Commissioner James Gordon takes over Bruce's mantle as a new, state-sanctioned, robotic-Batman, debuting in the Free Comic Book Day special comic Divergence. However, Bruce Wayne is soon revealed to be alive, albeit now suffering almost total amnesia of his life as Batman and only remembering his life as Bruce Wayne through what he has learned from Alfred. Bruce Wayne finds happiness and proposes to his girlfriend, Julie Madison, but Mr. Bloom heavily injures Jim Gordon and takes control of Gotham City and threatens to destroy the city by energizing a particle reactor to create a "strange star" to swallow the city. Bruce Wayne discovers the truth that he was Batman and after talking to a stranger who smiles a lot (it is heavily implied that this is the amnesic Joker) he forces Alfred to implant his memories as Batman, but at the cost of his memories as the reborn Bruce Wayne. He returns and helps Jim Gordon defeat Mr. Bloom and shut down the reactor. Gordon gets his job back as the commissioner, and the government Batman project is shut down.[69]
+
+In 2015, DC Comics released The Dark Knight III: The Master Race, the sequel to Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again.[70]
+
+In June 2016, the DC Rebirth event relaunched DC Comics' entire line of comic book titles. Batman was rebooted as starting with a one-shot issue entitled Batman: Rebirth #1 (Aug. 2016). The series then began shipping twice-monthly as a third volume, starting with Batman (vol. 3) #1 (Aug. 2016). The third volume of Batman was written by Tom King, and artwork was provided by David Finch and Mikel Janín. The Batman series introduced two vigilantes, Gotham and Gotham Girl. Detective Comics resumed its original numbering system starting with June 2016's #934, and the New 52 series was labeled as volume 2, with issues numbering from #1-52.[71] Similarly with the Batman title, the New 52 issues were labeled as volume 2 and encompassed issues #1-52. Writer James Tynion IV and artists Eddy Barrows and Alvaro Martinez worked on Detective Comics #934, and the series initially featured a team consisting of Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, Cassandra Cain, and Clayface, led by Batman and Batwoman.
+
+DC Comics ended the Rebirth branding in December 2017, opting to include everything under a larger "DC Universe" banner and naming. The continuity established by Rebirth continues across DC's comic book titles, including volume one of Detective Comics and volume three of Batman.[72][73]
+
+After the conclusion of Batman (vol. 3) #85[74] a new creative team consisting of James Tynion IV with art by Tony S. Daniel and Danny Miki replaced Tom King, David Finch and Mikel Janín.
+
+Batman's secret identity is Bruce Wayne, a wealthy American industrialist. As a child, Bruce witnessed the murder of his parents, Dr. Thomas Wayne and Martha Wayne, which ultimately led him to craft the Batman persona and seek justice against criminals. He resides on the outskirts of Gotham City in his personal residence, Wayne Manor. Wayne averts suspicion by acting the part of a superficial playboy idly living off his family's fortune and the profits of Wayne Enterprises, his inherited conglomerate.[75][76] He supports philanthropic causes through his nonprofit Wayne Foundation, but is more widely known as a celebrity socialite.[77] In public, he frequently appears in the company of high-status women, which encourages tabloid gossip. Although Bruce Wayne leads an active romantic life, his vigilante activities as Batman account for most of his time.[78]
+
+Various modern stories have portrayed the extravagant, playboy image of Bruce Wayne as a facade.[79] This is in contrast to the Post-Crisis Superman, whose Clark Kent persona is the true identity, while the Superman persona is the facade.[80][81] In Batman Unmasked, a television documentary about the psychology of the character, behavioral scientist Benjamin Karney notes that Batman's personality is driven by Bruce Wayne's inherent humanity; that "Batman, for all its benefits and for all of the time Bruce Wayne devotes to it, is ultimately a tool for Bruce Wayne's efforts to make the world better". Bruce Wayne's principles include the desire to prevent future harm and a vow not to kill. Bruce Wayne believes that our actions define us, we fail for a reason and anything is possible.[82]
+
+Writers of Batman and Superman stories have often compared and contrasted the two. Interpretations vary depending on the writer, the story, and the timing. Grant Morrison[83] notes that both heroes "believe in the same kind of things" despite the day/night contrast their heroic roles display. He notes an equally stark contrast in their real identities. Bruce Wayne and Clark Kent belong to different social classes: "Bruce has a butler, Clark has a boss." T. James Musler's book Unleashing the Superhero in Us All explores the extent to which Bruce Wayne's vast personal wealth is important in his life story, and the crucial role it plays in his efforts as Batman.[84]
+
+Will Brooker notes in his book Batman Unmasked that "the confirmation of the Batman's identity lies with the young audience ... he doesn't have to be Bruce Wayne; he just needs the suit and gadgets, the abilities, and most importantly the morality, the humanity. There's just a sense about him: 'they trust him ... and they're never wrong."[85]
+
+– Bruce Wayne – Detective Comics #33 (November 1939)[86]
+
+Batman's primary character traits can be summarized as "wealth; physical prowess; deductive abilities and obsession".[87] The details and tone of Batman comic books have varied over the years due to different creative teams. Dennis O'Neil noted that character consistency was not a major concern during early editorial regimes: "Julie Schwartz did a Batman in Batman and Detective and Murray Boltinoff did a Batman in the Brave and the Bold and apart from the costume they bore very little resemblance to each other. Julie and Murray did not want to coordinate their efforts, nor were they asked to do so. Continuity was not important in those days."[88]
+
+The driving force behind Bruce Wayne's character is his parents' murder and their absence. Bob Kane and Bill Finger discussed Batman's background and decided that "there's nothing more traumatic than having your parents murdered before your eyes".[89] Despite his trauma, he sets his mind on studying to become a scientist[90][91] and to train his body into physical perfection[90][91] to fight crime in Gotham City as Batman, an inspired idea from Wayne's insight into the criminal mind.[90][91]
+
+Another of Batman's characterizations is that of a vigilante; in order to stop evil that started with the death of his parents, he must sometimes break the law himself. Although manifested differently by being re-told by different artists, it is nevertheless that the details and the prime components of Batman's origin have never varied at all in the comic books, the "reiteration of the basic origin events holds together otherwise divergent expressions".[92] The origin is the source of the character's traits and attributes, which play out in many of the character's adventures.[87] He also speaks over 40 different languages.[93]
+
+Batman is often treated as a vigilante by other characters in his stories. Frank Miller views the character as "a dionysian figure, a force for anarchy that imposes an individual order".[94] Dressed as a bat, Batman deliberately cultivates a frightening persona in order to aid him in crime-fighting,[95] a fear that originates from the criminals' own guilty conscience.[96] Miller is often credited with reintroducing anti-heroic traits into Batman's characterization,[97] such as his brooding personality, willingness to use violence and torture, and increasingly alienated behavior. Batman, shortly a year after his debut and the introduction of Robin, was changed in 1940 after DC editor Whitney Ellsworth felt the character would be tainted by his lethal methods and DC established their own ethical code, subsequently he was retconned as having a stringent moral code.[36][98] Miller's Batman was closer to the original pre-Robin version, who was willing to kill criminals if necessary.[99]
+
+On several occasions former Robin Dick Grayson has served as Batman; most notably in 2009 while Wayne was believed dead, and served as a second Batman even after Wayne returned in 2010.[61] As part of DC's 2011 continuity relaunch, Grayson returned to being Nightwing following the Flashpoint crossover event.
+
+In an interview with IGN, Morrison detailed that having Dick Grayson as Batman and Damian Wayne as Robin represented a "reverse" of the normal dynamic between Batman and Robin, with, "a more light-hearted and spontaneous Batman and a scowling, badass Robin". Morrison explained his intentions for the new characterization of Batman: "Dick Grayson is kind of this consummate superhero. The guy has been Batman's partner since he was a kid, he's led the Teen Titans, and he's trained with everybody in the DC Universe. So he's a very different kind of Batman. He's a lot easier; He's a lot looser and more relaxed."[66]
+
+Over the years, there have been numerous others to assume the name of Batman, or to officially take over for Bruce during his leaves of absence. Jean Paul Valley, also known as Azrael, assumed the cowl after the events of the Knightfall saga.[61] James Gordon donned a mech-suit after the events of Batman: Endgame, and served as Batman in 2015 and 2016.
+
+Additionally, members of the group Batman, Incorporated, Bruce Wayne's experiment at franchising his brand of vigilantism, have at times stood in as the official Batman in cities around the world.[61] Various others have also taken up the role of Batman in stories set in alternative universes and possible futures, including, among them, various former proteges of Bruce Wayne.
+
+Batman's interactions with both villains and cohorts have, over time, developed a strong supporting cast of characters.[87]
+
+Batman faces a variety of foes ranging from common criminals to outlandish supervillains. Many of them mirror aspects of the Batman's character and development, often having tragic origin stories that lead them to a life of crime.[100] These foes are commonly referred to as Batman's rogues gallery. Batman's "most implacable foe" is the Joker, a homicidal maniac with a clown-like appearance. The Joker is considered by critics to be his perfect adversary, since he is the antithesis of Batman in personality and appearance; the Joker has a maniacal demeanor with a colorful appearance, while Batman has a serious and resolute demeanor with a dark appearance. As a "personification of the irrational", the Joker represents "everything Batman [opposes]".[37] Other long-time recurring foes that are part of Batman's rogues gallery include Catwoman (a cat burglar anti-heroine who is an occasional ally and romantic interest), the Penguin, Ra's al Ghul, Two-Face, the Riddler, the Scarecrow, Mr. Freeze, Poison Ivy, Harley Quinn, Bane, Clayface, and Killer Croc, among others. Many of Batman's adversaries are often psychiatric patients at Arkham Asylum.
+
+Batman's butler, Alfred Pennyworth, first appeared in Batman #16 (1943). He serves as Bruce Wayne's loyal father figure and is one of the few persons to know his secret identity. Alfred raised Bruce after his parents' death and knows him on a very personal level. He is sometimes portrayed as a sidekick to Batman and the only other resident of Wayne Manor aside from Bruce. The character "[lends] a homely touch to Batman's environs and [is] ever ready to provide a steadying and reassuring hand" to the hero and his sidekick.[100]
+
+The informal name "Batman family" is used for a group of characters closely allied with Batman, generally masked vigilantes who either have been trained by Batman or operate in Gotham City with his tacit approval. They include: Barbara Gordon, Commissioner Gordon's daughter, who has fought crime under the vigilante identity of Batgirl and, during a period in which she was confined to a wheelchair due to a gunshot wound inflicted by the Joker, the computer hacker Oracle; Helena Bertinelli, the sole surviving member of a mob family turned vigilante, who has worked with Batman on occasion, primarily as the Huntress and as Batgirl for a brief stint; Cassandra Cain, the daughter of professional assassins David Cain, and Lady Shiva, who succeeded Bertinelli as Batgirl.
+
+Lucius Fox, a technology specialist and Bruce Wayne's business manager who is well aware of his employer's clandestine vigilante activities; Dr. Leslie Thompkins, a family friend who like Alfred became a surrogate parental figure to Bruce Wayne after the deaths of his parents, and is also aware of his secret identity; Vicki Vale, an investigative journalist who often reports on Batman's activities for the Gotham Gazette; Ace the Bat-Hound, Batman's canine partner who was mainly active in the 1950s and 1960s;[101] and Bat-Mite, an extra-dimensional imp mostly active in the 1960s who idolizes Batman.[101]
+
+As Batman's ally in the Gotham City police, Commissioner James "Jim" Gordon debuted along with Batman in Detective Comics #27 and has been a consistent presence ever since. As a crime-fighting everyman, he shares Batman's goals while offering, much as the character of Watson does in Sherlock Holmes stories, a normal person's perspective on the work of Batman's extraordinary genius.
+
+Batman is at times a member of superhero teams such as the Justice League of America and the Outsiders. Batman has often been paired in adventures with his Justice League teammate Superman, notably as the co-stars of World's Finest and Superman/Batman series. In pre-Crisis continuity, the two are depicted as close friends; however, in current continuity, they are still close friends but an uneasy relationship, with an emphasis on their differing views on crime-fighting and justice. In Superman/Batman #3 (Dec. 2003), Superman observes, "Sometimes, I admit, I think of Bruce as a man in a costume. Then, with some gadget from his utility belt, he reminds me that he has an extraordinarily inventive mind. And how lucky I am to be able to call on him."[102]
+
+
+
+Robin, Batman's vigilante partner, has been a widely recognized supporting character for many years.[103] Bill Finger stated that he wanted to include Robin because "Batman didn't have anyone to talk to, and it got a little tiresome always having him thinking."[104] The first Robin, Dick Grayson, was introduced in 1940. In the 1970s he finally grew up, went off to college and became the hero Nightwing. A second Robin, Jason Todd, appeared in the 1980s. In the stories he was eventually badly beaten and then killed in an explosion set by the Joker, but was later revived. He used the Joker's old persona, the Red Hood, and became an antihero vigilante with no qualms about using firearms or deadly force. Carrie Kelley, the first female Robin to appear in Batman stories, was the final Robin in the continuity of Frank Miller's graphic novels The Dark Knight Returns and The Dark Knight Strikes Again, fighting alongside an aging Batman in stories set out of the mainstream continuity.
+
+The third Robin in the mainstream comics is Tim Drake, who first appeared in 1989. He went on to star in his own comic series, and currently goes by Red Robin, a variation on the traditional Robin persona. In the first decade of the new millennium, Stephanie Brown served as the fourth in-universe Robin between stints as her self-made vigilante identity the Spoiler, and later as Batgirl.[105] After Stephanie Brown's apparent death, Drake resumed the role of Robin for a time. The role eventually passed to Damian Wayne, the 10-year-old son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul, in the late 2000s.[106] Damian's tenure as du jour Robin ended when the character was killed off in the pages of Batman Incorporated in 2013.[107] Batman's next young sidekick is Harper Row, a streetwise young woman who avoids the name Robin but followed the ornithological theme nonetheless; she debuted the codename and identity of Bluebird in 2014. Unlike the Robins, Bluebird is willing and permitted to use a gun, albeit non-lethal; her weapon of choice is a modified rifle that fires taser rounds.[108] In 2015, a new series began titled We Are Robin, focused on a group of teenagers using the Robin persona to fight crime in Gotham City.
+
+Helena Wayne is the biological daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle of an alternate universe established in the early 1960s (Multiverse) where the Golden Age stories took place. Damian Wayne is the biological son of Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul,[66][109][110] and thus the grandson of Ra's al Ghul. Terry McGinnis is the biological son of Bruce Wayne in the DC animated universe, and has taken over the role as Batman when Bruce has become too old to do so.
+
+Writers have varied in the approach over the years to the "playboy" aspect of Bruce Wayne's persona. Some writers show his playboy reputation as a manufactured illusion to support his mission as Batman, while others have depicted Bruce Wayne as genuinely enjoying the benefits of being "Gotham's most eligible bachelor". Bruce Wayne has been portrayed as being romantically linked with many women throughout his various incarnations. The most significant relationships occurred with Selina Kyle, who is also Catwoman[111] and Talia al Ghul, as both women gave birth to his biological offsprings, Helena Wayne and Damian Wayne, respectively.
+
+Batman's first romantic interest was Julie Madison in Detective Comics #31 (Sept. 1939); however, their romance was short-lived. Some of Batman's romantic interests have been women with a respected status in society, such as Julie Madison, Vicki Vale, and Silver St. Cloud. Batman has also been romantically involved with allies, such as Kathy Kane (Batwoman), Sasha Bordeaux, and Wonder Woman, and with villains, such as Selina Kyle (Catwoman), Jezebel Jet, Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy), and Talia al Ghul.
+
+While most of Batman's romantic relationships tend to be short in duration, Catwoman has been his most enduring romance throughout the years.[112] The attraction between Batman and Catwoman, whose real name is Selina Kyle, is present in nearly every version and medium in which the characters appear, including a love story between their two secret identities as early as in the 1966 film Batman. Although Catwoman is typically portrayed as a villain, Batman and Catwoman have worked together in achieving common goals and are usually depicted as having a romantic connection.
+
+In an early 1980s storyline, Selina Kyle and Bruce Wayne develop a relationship, in which the closing panel of the final story shows her referring to Batman as "Bruce". However, a change in the editorial team brought a swift end to that storyline and, apparently, all that transpired during the story arc. Out of costume, Bruce and Selina develop a romantic relationship during The Long Halloween. The story shows Selina saving Bruce from Poison Ivy. However, the relationship ends when Bruce rejects her advances twice; once as Bruce and once as Batman. In Batman: Dark Victory, he stands her up on two holidays, causing her to leave him for good and to leave Gotham City for a while. When the two meet at an opera many years later, during the events of the 12-issue story arc called "Hush", Bruce comments that the two no longer have a relationship as Bruce and Selina. However, "Hush" sees Batman and Catwoman allied against the entire rogues gallery and rekindling their romantic relationship. In "'Hush", Batman reveals his true identity to Catwoman.
+
+The Earth-Two Batman, a character from a parallel world, partners with and marries the reformed Earth-Two Selina Kyle, as shown in Superman Family #211. They have a daughter named Helena Wayne, who becomes the Huntress. Along with Dick Grayson, the Earth-Two Robin, the Huntress takes the role as Gotham's protector once Bruce Wayne retires to become police commissioner, a position he occupies until he is killed during one final adventure as Batman.
+
+Batman and Catwoman are shown having a sexual encounter on the roof of a building in Catwoman (vol. 4) #1 (2011); the same issue implies that the two have an ongoing sexual relationship.[113] Following the 2016 DC Rebirth continuity reboot, the two once again have a sexual encounter on top of a building in Batman (vol. 3) #14 (2017).[114]
+
+Following the 2016 DC Rebirth continuity reboot, Batman and Catwoman work together in the third volume of Batman. The two also have a romantic relationship, in which they are shown having a sexual encounter on a rooftop and sleeping together.[114][115][116] Bruce proposes to Selina in Batman (vol. 3) #24 (2017),[117] and in issue #32, Selina asks Bruce to propose to her again. When he does so, she says, "Yes." [116]
+
+Batman Annual (vol. 3) #2 (Jan. 2018) centers on a romantic storyline between Batman and Catwoman. Towards the end, the story is flash-forwarded to the future, in which Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle are a married couple in their golden years. Bruce receives a terminal medical diagnosis, and Selina cares for him until his death.[116]
+
+Batman has no inherent superhuman powers; he relies on "his own scientific knowledge, detective skills, and athletic prowess".[31] Batman's inexhaustible wealth gives him access to advanced technologies, and as a proficient scientist, he is able to use and modify these technologies to his advantage. In the stories, Batman is regarded as one of the world's greatest detectives, if not the world's greatest crime solver.[118] Batman has been repeatedly described as having a genius-level intellect, being one of the greatest martial artists in the DC Universe, and having peak human physical conditioning.[119] As a polymath, his knowledge and expertise in countless disciplines is nearly unparalleled by any other character in the DC Universe.[120] He has traveled the world acquiring the skills needed to aid him in his endeavors as Batman. In the Superman: Doomed story arc, Superman considers Batman to be one of the most brilliant minds on the planet.[121]
+
+Batman has trained extensively in various different fighting styles, making him one of the best hand-to-hand fighters in the DC Universe. He has fully utilized his photographic memory to master a total of 127 different forms of martial arts.[122]  Superman describes Batman as "the most dangerous man on Earth", able to defeat an entire team of superpowered extraterrestrials by himself in order to rescue his imprisoned teammates in Grant Morrison's first storyline in JLA.
+
+Batman is strongly disciplined, and he has the ability to function under great physical pain and resist most forms of telepathy and mind control. He is a master of disguise, multilingual, and an expert in espionage, often gathering information under the identity of a notorious gangster named Matches Malone. Batman is highly skilled in stealth movement and escapology, which allows him to appear and disappear at will and to break free of nearly inescapable deathtraps with little to no harm.
+
+Batman is an expert in interrogation techniques and his intimidating and frightening appearance alone is often all that is needed in getting information from suspects. Despite having the potential to harm his enemies, Batman's most defining characteristic is his strong commitment to justice and his reluctance to take a life. This unyielding moral rectitude has earned him the respect of several heroes in the DC Universe, most notably that of Superman and Wonder Woman.
+
+Among physical and other crime fighting related training, he is also proficient at other types of skills. Some of these include being a licensed pilot (in order to operate the Batplane), as well as being able to operate other types of machinery. In some publications, he underwent some magician training.
+
+Batman is also frequently described as a "peak human,"[123][unreliable source?] and it has been revealed that he has (mostly unintentionally) bathed in Lazarus Pits in the past, which may or may not attribute some of his more meta-human feats.[124]
+
+Batman utilizes a vast arsenal of specialized, high-tech vehicles and gadgets in his war against crime, the designs of which usually share a bat motif. Batman historian Les Daniels credits Gardner Fox with creating the concept of Batman's arsenal with the introduction of the utility belt in Detective Comics #29 (July 1939) and the first bat-themed weapons the batarang and the "Batgyro" in Detective Comics #31 and #32 (Sept., Oct. 1939).[27]
+
+Batman's body armored costume incorporates the imagery of a bat in order to frighten criminals.[125] The details of the Batman costume change repeatedly through various decades, stories, media and artists' interpretations, but the most distinctive elements remain consistent: a scallop-hem cape; a cowl covering most of the face; a pair of bat-like ears; a stylized bat emblem on the chest; and the ever-present utility belt. Finger and Kane originally conceptualized Batman as having a black cape and cowl and grey suit, but conventions in coloring called for black to be highlighted with blue.[125] Hence, the costume's colors have appeared in the comics as dark blue and grey;[125] as well as black and grey. In the Tim Burton's Batman and Batman Returns films, Batman has been depicted as completely black with a bat in the middle surrounded by a yellow background. Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy depicted Batman wearing high-tech gear painted completely black with a black bat in the middle. Ben Affleck's Batman in the DC Extended Universe films wears a suit grey in color with a black cowl, cape, and bat symbol.
+
+Batman's batsuit aids in his combat against enemies, having the properties of both Kevlar and Nomex. It protects him from gunfire and other significant impacts. His gloves typically feature three scallops that protrude from long, gauntlet-like cuffs, although in his earliest appearances he wore short, plain gloves without the scallops.[126] The overall look of the character, particularly the length of the cowl's ears and of the cape, varies greatly depending on the artist. Dennis O'Neil said, "We now say that Batman has two hundred suits hanging in the Batcave so they don't have to look the same ... Everybody loves to draw Batman, and everybody wants to put their own spin on it."[127]
+
+Batman's primary vehicle is the Batmobile, which is usually depicted as an imposing black car, often with tailfins that suggest a bat's wings. Batman also has an aircraft called the Batplane (later called the "Batwing"), along with various other means of transportation. In proper practice, the "bat" prefix (as in Batmobile or batarang) is rarely used by Batman himself when referring to his equipment, particularly after some portrayals (primarily the 1960s Batman live-action television show and the Super Friends animated series) stretched the practice to campy proportions. For example, the 1960s television show depicted a Batboat, Bat-Sub, and Batcycle, among other bat-themed vehicles. The 1960s television series Batman has an arsenal that includes such "bat-" names as the Bat-computer, Bat-scanner, bat-radar, bat-cuffs, bat-pontoons, bat-drinking water dispenser, bat-camera with polarized bat-filter, bat-shark repellent bat-spray, and Bat-rope. The storyline "A Death in the Family" suggests that given Batman's grim nature, he is unlikely to have adopted the "bat" prefix on his own. In The Dark Knight Returns, Batman tells Carrie Kelley that the original Robin came up with the name "Batmobile" when he was young, since that is what a kid would call Batman's vehicle. The Batmobile was redesigned in 2011 when DC Comics relaunched its entire line of comic books, with the Batmobile being given heavier armor and new aesthetics.
+
+Batman keeps most of his field equipment in his utility belt. Over the years it has shown to contain an assortment of crime-fighting tools, weapons, and investigative and technological instruments. Different versions of the belt have these items stored in compartments, often as pouches or hard cylinders attached evenly around it. Batman is often depicted as carrying a projectile which shoots a retractable grappling hook attached to a cable. This allows him to attach to distant objects, be propelled into the air, and thus swing from the rooftops of Gotham City. An exception to the range of Batman's equipment are guns, which he refuses to use on principle, since a gun was used in his parents' murder.
+
+When Batman is needed, the Gotham City police activate a searchlight with a bat-shaped insignia over the lens called the Bat-Signal, which shines into the night sky, creating a bat-symbol on a passing cloud which can be seen from any point in Gotham. The origin of the signal varies, depending on the continuity and medium.
+
+In various incarnations, most notably the 1960s Batman TV series, Commissioner Gordon also has a dedicated phone line, dubbed the Bat-Phone, connected to a bright red telephone (in the TV series) which sits on a wooden base and has a transparent top. The line connects directly to Batman's residence, Wayne Manor, specifically both to a similar phone sitting on the desk in Bruce Wayne's study and the extension phone in the Batcave.
+
+The Batcave is Batman's secret headquarters, consisting of a series of caves beneath his mansion, Wayne Manor. As his command center, the Batcave serves multiple purposes; supercomputer, surveillance, redundant power-generators, forensics lab, medical infirmary, private study, training dojo, fabrication workshop, arsenal, hangar and garage. It houses the vehicles and equipment Batman uses in his campaign to fight crime. It is also a trophy room and storage facility for Batman's unique memorabilia collected over the years from various cases he has worked on. In both the comic Batman: Shadow of the Bat #45 and the 2005 film Batman Begins, the cave is said to have been part of the Underground Railroad.
+
+Batman's history has undergone many retroactive continuity revisions, both minor and major. Elements of the character's history have varied greatly. Scholars William Uricchio and Roberta E. Pearson noted in the early 1990s, "Unlike some fictional characters, the Batman has no primary urtext set in a specific period, but has rather existed in a plethora of equally valid texts constantly appearing over more than five decades."[128]
+
+The central fixed event in the Batman stories is the character's origin story.[87] As a young boy, Bruce Wayne was horrified and traumatized when he watched his parents, the physician Dr. Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha, murdered with a gun by a mugger named Joe Chill. Batman refuses to utilize any sort of gun on the principle that a gun was used to murder his parents. This event drove him to train his body to its peak condition and fight crime in Gotham City as Batman. Pearson and Uricchio also noted beyond the origin story and such events as the introduction of Robin, "Until recently, the fixed and accruing and hence, canonized, events have been few in number",[87] a situation altered by an increased effort by later Batman editors such as Dennis O'Neil to ensure consistency and continuity between stories.[129]
+
+In Batman's first appearance in Detective Comics #27, he is already operating as a crime-fighter.[130] Batman's origin is first presented in Detective Comics #33 (Nov. 1939) and is later expanded upon in Batman #47. As these comics state, Bruce Wayne is born to Dr. Thomas Wayne and his wife Martha, two very wealthy and charitable Gotham City socialites. Bruce is brought up in Wayne Manor, and leads a happy and privileged existence until the age of eight, when his parents are killed by a small-time criminal named Joe Chill while on their way home from a movie theater. That night, Bruce Wayne swears an oath to spend his life fighting crime. He engages in intense intellectual and physical training; however, he realizes that these skills alone would not be enough. "Criminals are a superstitious cowardly lot", Wayne remarks, "so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts. I must be a creature of the night, black, terrible ..." As if responding to his desires, a bat suddenly flies through the window, inspiring Bruce to craft the Batman persona.[131]
+
+In early strips, Batman's career as a vigilante earns him the ire of the police. During this period, Bruce Wayne has a fiancée named Julie Madison.[132] In Detective Comics #38, Wayne takes in an orphaned circus acrobat, Dick Grayson, who becomes his vigilante partner, Robin. Batman also becomes a founding member of the Justice Society of America,[133] although he, like Superman, is an honorary member,[134] and thus only participates occasionally. Batman's relationship with the law thaws quickly, and he is made an honorary member of Gotham City's police department.[135] During this time, Alfred Pennyworth arrives at Wayne Manor, and after deducing the Dynamic Duo's secret identities, joins their service as their butler.[136]
+
+The Silver Age of Comic Books in DC Comics is sometimes held to have begun in 1956 when the publisher introduced Barry Allen as a new, updated version of THE Flash. Batman is not significantly changed by the late 1950s for the continuity which would be later referred to as Earth-One. The lighter tone Batman had taken in the period between the Golden and Silver Ages led to the stories of the late 1950s and early 1960s that often feature many science-fiction elements, and Batman is not significantly updated in the manner of other characters until Detective Comics #327 (May 1964), in which Batman reverts to his detective roots, with most science-fiction elements jettisoned from the series.
+
+After the introduction of DC Comics' multiverse in the 1960s, DC established that stories from the Golden Age star the Earth-Two Batman, a character from a parallel world. This version of Batman partners with and marries the reformed Earth-Two Catwoman (Selina Kyle). The two have a daughter, Helena Wayne, who becomes the Huntress. She assumes the position as Gotham's protector along with Dick Grayson, the Earth-Two Robin, once Bruce Wayne retires to become police commissioner. Wayne holds the position of police commissioner until he is killed during one final adventure as Batman. Batman titles, however, often ignored that a distinction had been made between the pre-revamp and post-revamp Batmen (since unlike the Flash or Green Lantern, Batman comics had been published without interruption through the 1950s) and would occasionally make reference to stories from the Golden Age.[137] Nevertheless, details of Batman's history were altered or expanded upon through the decades. Additions include meetings with a future Superman during his youth, his upbringing by his uncle Philip Wayne (introduced in Batman #208 (Feb. 1969)) after his parents' death, and appearances of his father and himself as prototypical versions of Batman and Robin, respectively.[138][139] In 1980, then-editor Paul Levitz commissioned the Untold Legend of the Batman miniseries to thoroughly chronicle Batman's origin and history.
+
+Batman meets and regularly works with other heroes during the Silver Age, most notably Superman, whom he began regularly working alongside in a series of team-ups in World's Finest Comics, starting in 1954 and continuing through the series' cancellation in 1986. Batman and Superman are usually depicted as close friends. As a founding member of the Justice League of America, Batman appears in its first story, in 1960's The Brave and the Bold #28. In the 1970s and 1980s, The Brave and the Bold became a Batman title, in which Batman teams up with a different DC Universe superhero each month.
+
+In 1969, Dick Grayson attends college as part of DC Comics' effort to revise the Batman comics. Additionally, Batman also moves from his mansion, Wayne Manor into a penthouse apartment atop the Wayne Foundation building in downtown Gotham City, in order to be closer to Gotham City's crime. Batman spends the 1970s and early 1980s mainly working solo, with occasional team-ups with Robin and/or Batgirl. Batman's adventures also become somewhat darker and more grim during this period, depicting increasingly violent crimes, including the first appearance (since the early golden age) of the Joker as a homicidal psychopath, and the arrival of Ra's al Ghul, a centuries-old terrorist who knows Batman's secret identity. In the 1980s, Dick Grayson becomes Nightwing.[7]
+
+In the final issue of The Brave and the Bold in 1983, Batman quits the Justice League and forms a new group called the Outsiders. He serves as the team's leader until Batman and the Outsiders #32 (1986) and the comic subsequently changed its title.
+
+After the 12-issue miniseries Crisis on Infinite Earths, DC Comics retconned the histories of some major characters in an attempt at updating them for contemporary audiences. Frank Miller retold Batman's origin in the storyline "Year One" from Batman #404–407, which emphasizes a grittier tone in the character.[140] Though the Earth-Two Batman is erased from history, many stories of Batman's silver-age/Earth-One career (along with an amount of golden-age ones) remain canonical in the post-Crisis universe, with his origins remaining the same in essence, despite alteration. For example, Gotham's police are mostly corrupt, setting up further need for Batman's existence. The guardian Phillip Wayne is removed, leaving young Bruce to be raised by Alfred Pennyworth. Additionally, Batman is no longer a founding member of the Justice League of America, although he becomes leader for a short time of a new incarnation of the team launched in 1987. To help fill in the revised backstory for Batman following Crisis, DC launched a new Batman title called Legends of the Dark Knight in 1989 and has published various miniseries and one-shot stories since then that largely take place during the "Year One" period.
+
+Subsequently, Batman begins exhibiting an excessive, reckless approach to his crimefighting, a result of the pain of losing Jason Todd. Batman works solo until the decade's close, when Tim Drake becomes the new Robin.[141]
+
+Many of the major Batman storylines since the 1990s have been intertitle crossovers that run for a number of issues. In 1993, DC published "Knightfall". During the storyline's first phase, the new villain Bane paralyzes Batman, leading Wayne to ask Azrael to take on the role. After the end of "Knightfall", the storylines split in two directions, following both the Azrael-Batman's adventures, and Bruce Wayne's quest to become Batman once more. The story arcs realign in "KnightsEnd", as Azrael becomes increasingly violent and is defeated by a healed Bruce Wayne. Wayne hands the Batman mantle to Dick Grayson (then Nightwing) for an interim period, while Wayne trains for a return to the role.[142]
+
+The 1994 company-wide crossover storyline "Zero Hour: Crisis in Time" changes aspects of DC continuity again, including those of Batman. Noteworthy among these changes is that the general populace and the criminal element now considers Batman an urban legend rather than a known force.
+
+Batman once again becomes a member of the Justice League during Grant Morrison's 1996 relaunch of the series, titled JLA. During this time, Gotham City faces catastrophe in the decade's closing crossover arc. In 1998's "Cataclysm" storyline, Gotham City is devastated by an earthquake and ultimately cut off from the United States. Deprived of many of his technological resources, Batman fights to reclaim the city from legions of gangs during 1999's "No Man's Land".
+
+Meanwhile, Batman's relationship with the Gotham City Police Department changed for the worse with the events of "Batman: Officer Down" and "Batman: War Games/War Crimes"; Batman's long-time law enforcement allies Commissioner Gordon and Harvey Bullock are forced out of the police department in "Officer Down", while "War Games" and "War Crimes" saw Batman become a wanted fugitive after a contingency plan of his to neutralize Gotham City's criminal underworld is accidentally triggered, resulting in a massive gang war that ends with the sadistic Black Mask the undisputed ruler of the city's criminal gangs. Lex Luthor arranges for the murder of Batman's on-again, off-again love interest Vesper Lynd (introduced in the mid-1990s) during the "Bruce Wayne: Murderer?" and "Bruce Wayne: Fugitive" story arcs. Though Batman is able to clear his name, he loses another ally in the form of his new bodyguard Sasha, who is recruited into the organization known as "Checkmate" while stuck in prison due to her refusal to turn state's evidence against her employer. While he was unable to prove that Luthor was behind the murder of Vesper, Batman does get his revenge with help from Talia al Ghul in Superman/Batman #1–6.
+
+DC Comics' 2005 limited series Identity Crisis reveals that JLA member Zatanna had edited Batman's memories to prevent him from stopping the Justice League from lobotomizing Dr. Light after he raped Sue Dibny. Batman later creates the Brother I satellite surveillance system to watch over and, if necessary, kill the other heroes after he remembered. The revelation of Batman's creation and his tacit responsibility for the Blue Beetle's death becomes a driving force in the lead-up to the Infinite Crisis miniseries, which again restructures DC continuity. Batman and a team of superheroes destroy Brother Eye and the OMACs, though, at the very end, Batman reaches his apparent breaking point when Alexander Luthor Jr. seriously wounds Nightwing. Picking up a gun, Batman nearly shoots Luthor in order to avenge his former sidekick, until Wonder Woman convinces him to not pull the trigger.
+
+Following Infinite Crisis, Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson (having recovered from his wounds), and Tim Drake retrace the steps Bruce had taken when he originally left Gotham City, to "rebuild Batman".[143] In the Face the Face storyline, Batman and Robin return to Gotham City after their year-long absence. Part of this absence is captured during Week 30 of the 52 series, which shows Batman fighting his inner demons.[144] Later on in 52, Batman is shown undergoing an intense meditation ritual in Nanda Parbat. This becomes an important part of the regular Batman title, which reveals that Batman is reborn as a more effective crime fighter while undergoing this ritual, having "hunted down and ate" the last traces of fear in his mind.[145][146] At the end of the "Face the Face" story arc, Bruce officially adopts Tim (who had lost both of his parents at various points in the character's history) as his son.[147] The follow-up story arc in Batman, Batman and Son, introduces Damian Wayne, who is Batman's son with Talia al Ghul. Although originally, in Son of the Demon, Bruce's coupling with Talia was implied to be consensual, this arc retconned it into Talia forcing herself on Bruce.[148]
+
+Batman, along with Superman and Wonder Woman, reforms the Justice League in the new Justice League of America series,[149] and is leading the newest incarnation of the Outsiders.[150]
+
+Grant Morrison's 2008 storyline, "Batman R.I.P." featured Batman being physically and mentally broken by the enigmatic villain Doctor Hurt and attracted news coverage in advance of its highly promoted conclusion, which would speculated to feature the death of Bruce Wayne.[151] However, though Batman is shown to possibly perish at the end of the arc, the two-issue arc "Last Rites", which leads into the crossover storyline "Final Crisis", shows that Batman survives his helicopter crash into the Gotham City River and returns to the Batcave, only to be summoned to the Hall of Justice by the JLA to help investigate the New God Orion's death. The story ends with Batman retrieving the god-killing bullet used to kill Orion, setting up its use in "Final Crisis".[152] In the pages of Final Crisis Batman is reduced to a charred skeleton.[153] In Final Crisis #7, Wayne is shown witnessing the passing of the first man, Anthro.[154][155] Wayne's "death" sets up the three-issue Battle for the Cowl miniseries in which Wayne's ex-proteges compete for the "right" to assume the role of Batman, which concludes with Grayson becoming Batman,[156] while Tim Drake takes on the identity of the Red Robin.[157] Dick and Damian continue as Batman and Robin, and in the crossover storyline "Blackest Night", what appears to be Bruce's corpse is reanimated as a Black Lantern zombie,[158] but is later shown that Bruce's corpse is one of Darkseid's failed Batman clones. Dick and Batman's other friends conclude that Bruce is alive.[159][160]
+
+Bruce subsequently returned in Morrison's miniseries Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne, which depicted his travels through time from prehistory to present-day Gotham.[161][162][163] Bruce's return set up Batman Incorporated, an ongoing series which focused on Wayne franchising the Batman identity across the globe, allowing Dick and Damian to continue as Gotham's Dynamic Duo. Bruce publicly announced that Wayne Enterprises will aid Batman on his mission, known as "Batman, Incorporated". However, due to rebooted continuity that occurred as part of DC Comics' 2011 relaunch of all of its comic books, The New 52, Dick Grayson was restored as Nightwing with Wayne serving as the sole Batman once again. The relaunch also interrupted the publication of Batman, Incorporated, which resumed its story in 2012–2013 with changes to suit the new status quo.
+
+Batman has become a pop culture icon, recognized around the world. The character's presence has extended beyond his comic book origins; events such as the release of the 1989 Batman film and its accompanying merchandising "brought the Batman to the forefront of public consciousness".[164] In an article commemorating the sixtieth anniversary of the character, The Guardian wrote, "Batman is a figure blurred by the endless reinvention that is modern mass culture. He is at once an icon and a commodity: the perfect cultural artefact for the 21st century."[165]
+
+The character of Batman has appeared in various media aside from comic books, such as newspaper syndicated comic strips, books, radio dramas, television, a stage show, and several theatrical feature films. The first adaptation of Batman was as a daily newspaper comic strip which premiered on October 25, 1943.[166] That same year the character was adapted in the 15-part serial Batman, with Lewis Wilson becoming the first actor to portray Batman on screen. While Batman never had a radio series of his own, the character made occasional guest appearances in The Adventures of Superman starting in 1945 on occasions when Superman voice actor Bud Collyer needed time off.[167] A second movie serial, Batman and Robin, followed in 1949, with Robert Lowery taking over the role of Batman. The exposure provided by these adaptations during the 1940s "helped make [Batman] a household name for millions who never bought a comic book".[167]
+
+In the 1964 publication of Donald Barthelme's collection of short stories Come Back, Dr. Caligari, Barthelme wrote "The Joker's Greatest Triumph". Batman is portrayed for purposes of spoof as a pretentious French-speaking rich man.[168]
+
+The Batman television series, starring Adam West, premiered in January 1966 on the ABC television network. Inflected with a camp sense of humor, the show became a pop culture phenomenon. In his memoir, Back to the Batcave, West notes his dislike for the term 'camp' as it was applied to the 1960s series, opining that the show was instead a farce or lampoon, and a deliberate one, at that. The series ran for 120 episodes; ending in 1968. In between the first and second season of the Batman television series, the cast and crew made the theatrical film Batman (1966). The Who recorded the theme song from the Batman show for their 1966 EP Ready Steady Who, and The Kinks performed the theme song on their 1967 album Live at Kelvin Hall.
+
+The popularity of the Batman TV series also resulted in the first animated adaptation of Batman in The Batman/Superman Hour;[169] the Batman segments of the series were repackaged as The Adventures of Batman and Batman with Robin the Boy Wonder which produced thirty-three episodes between 1968 and 1977. From 1973 until 1986, Batman had a starring role in ABC's Super Friends series; which was animated by Hanna-Barbera. Olan Soule was the voice of Batman in all these shows, but was eventually replaced during Super Friends by Adam West, who also voiced the character in Filmation's 1977 series The New Adventures of Batman.
+
+In 1992, Batman: The Animated Series premiered on the Fox television network; produced by Warner Bros. Animation and featuring Kevin Conroy as the voice of Batman. The series received considerable acclaim for its darker tone, mature writing, stylistic design, and thematic complexity compared to previous superhero cartoons,[170][171] in addition to multiple Emmy Awards.[172][173] The series' success led to the theatrical film Batman: Mask of the Phantasm (1993),[174] as well as various spin-off TV series; including Superman: The Animated Series, The New Batman Adventures, Justice League and Justice League Unlimited (each of which also featured Conroy as Batman's voice). The futuristic series Batman Beyond also took place in this same animated continuity and featured a newer, younger Batman voiced by Will Friedle, with the elderly Bruce Wayne (again voiced by Conroy) as a mentor.
+
+In 2004, an unrelated animated series titled The Batman made its debut with Rino Romano voicing Batman. In 2008, this show was replaced by another animated series, Batman: The Brave and the Bold, featuring Diedrich Bader's voice as Batman. In 2013, a new CGI-animated series titled Beware the Batman made its debut, with Anthony Ruivivar voicing Batman.[175]
+
+In 2014, the live-action TV series Gotham premiered on the Fox network, featuring David Mazouz as a 12-year-old Bruce Wayne. In 2018, when the series was renewed for its fifth and final season it was announced that Batman would make an appearance in the show's series finale's flash-forward.
+
+Iain Glen portrays Bruce Wayne in the live-action series Titans, appearing in the show's second season in 2019.[176] Prior to Glen, Batman was played by stunt doubles Alain Moussi and Maxim Savarias in the first season.[177][178]
+
+To commemorate the 75th anniversary of the character, Warner Bros aired the television short film, Batman: Strange Days, that was also posted on DC's YouTube channel.
+
+In August 2019, it was announced that Kevin Conroy would make his live-action television debut as an older Bruce Wayne in the upcoming Arrowverse crossover, Crisis on Infinite Earths.[179] In the crossover, he portrayed a parallel universe iteration of Batman from Earth-99. In Batwoman, the Earth-Prime version of Bruce Wayne / Batman is portrayed by Warren Christie.[180]
+
+In 1989, twenty-three years after the aforementioned film based on the TV series starring Adam West, Warner Bros. released the live-action feature film Batman; directed by Tim Burton and starring Michael Keaton as the title character. The film was a huge success; not only was it the top-grossing film of the year, but at the time was the fifth highest-grossing film in history.[181] The film also won the Academy Award for Best Art Direction.[182] The film's success spawned three sequels: Batman Returns (1992), Batman Forever (1995) and Batman & Robin (1997); the latter two of which were directed by Joel Schumacher instead of Burton, and replaced Keaton as Batman with Val Kilmer and George Clooney, respectively. The second Schumacher film failed to outgross any of its predecessors and was critically panned; causing Warner Bros. to cancel the planned fourth sequel, Batman Unchained,[183] and end the initial film series.
+
+In 2005, Batman Begins was released by Warner Bros. as a reboot of the film series; directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Christian Bale as Batman. Its sequel, The Dark Knight (2008), set the record for the highest grossing opening weekend of all time in the U.S., earning approximately $158 million,[184] and became the fastest film to reach the $400 million mark in the history of American cinema (eighteenth day of release).[185] These record-breaking attendances saw The Dark Knight end its run as the second-highest domestic grossing film (at the time) with $533 million, bested then only by Titanic.[186] The film also won two Academy Awards, including Best Supporting Actor for the late Heath Ledger.[187] It was eventually followed by The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which served as a conclusion to Nolan's film series.
+
+Since 2008, Batman has also starred in various direct-to-video animated films under the DC Universe Animated Original Movies banner. Kevin Conroy has reprised his voice role of Batman for several of these films, while others have featured celebrity voice actors in the role; including Jeremy Sisto, William Baldwin, Bruce Greenwood, Ben McKenzie, and Peter Weller.[188] A Lego-themed version of Batman was also featured as one of the protagonists in the animated film The Lego Movie (2014), with Will Arnett providing the voice.[189] Arnett reprised the voice role for the spin-off film The Lego Batman Movie (2017).[190]
+
+In 2016, Ben Affleck began portraying Batman in the DC Extended Universe with the release of the film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, directed by Zack Snyder,[191] a younger child version of the character was played by Brandon Spink in the same film. Affleck also made a cameo appearance as Batman in David Ayer's film Suicide Squad (2016).[192] Affleck reprised the role in the 2017 film Justice League,[193][194] also set in the DC Extended Universe.[195][196][197]
+
+Dante Pereira-Olson portrays a young Bruce Wayne in the 2019 film Joker.[198][199]
+
+In 2019 Robert Pattinson was cast to play Batman in an upcoming reboot of the franchise, The Batman, releasing in 2021.[200]
+
+Starting with the Pop Art period, and on a continuing basis, since the 1960s, the character of Batman has been "appropriated" by multiple visual artists and incorporated into contemporary artwork,[201][202] most notably by Andy Warhol[203][204], Roy Lichtenstein[205], Mel Ramos[206][207], Dulce Pinzon[208], Mr. Brainwash[209], Raymond Pettibon[210], Peter Saul[211], and others.[212]
+
+Since 1986, Batman has starred in multiple video games, most of which were adaptations of the various cinematic or animated incarnations of the character. Among the most successful of these games is the Batman: Arkham series. The first installment, Batman: Arkham Asylum (2009), was released by Rocksteady Studios to critical acclaim; review aggregator Metacritic reports it as having received 92% positive reviews.[213] It was followed by the sequel Batman: Arkham City (2011), which also received widespread acclaim and holds a Metacritic ranking of 94%.[214] A prequel game titled Batman: Arkham Origins (2013) was later released by WB Games Montréal.[215] A fourth game titled Batman: Arkham Knight (2015) has also been released by Rocksteady.[216] As with most animated Batman productions, Kevin Conroy has provided the voice of the character for these games; excluding Arkham Origins, in which the younger Batman is voiced by Roger Craig Smith. In 2016, Telltale Games released Batman: The Telltale Series adventure game, which changed the Wayne Family's history as it is depicted in the Batman mythos.[217] A sequel, titled Batman: The Enemy Within, was released in 2017.[218]
+
+Mayfair Games published the DC Heroes role-playing game in 1985, then published the 80-page supplement Batman the following year, written by Mike Stackpole, with cover art by Ed Hannigan.[219]  In 1989, Mayfair Games published an updated 96-page softcover Batman Sourcebook, again written by Mike Stackpole, with additional material by J. Santana, Louis Prosperi, Jack Barker and Ray Winninger, with graphic design by Gregory Scott, and cover and interior art by DC Comics staff.[220]
+
+Mayfair released a simplified version of DC Heroes called The Batman Role-Playing Game in 1989 to coincide with the Batman film.[221]
+
+Gay interpretations of the character have been part of the academic study of Batman since psychologist Fredric Wertham asserted in Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 that "Batman stories are psychologically homosexual ... The Batman type of story may stimulate children to homosexual fantasies, of the nature of which they may be unconscious."[222] Andy Medhurst wrote in his 1991 essay "Batman, Deviance, and Camp" that Batman is interesting to gay audiences because "he was one of the first fictional characters to be attacked on the grounds of his presumed homosexuality".[223] Professor of film and cultural studies Will Brooker argues the validity of a queer reading of Batman, and that gay readers would naturally find themselves drawn to the lifestyle depicted within, whether the character of Bruce Wayne himself were explicitly gay or not. He also identifies a homophobic element to the vigor with which mainstream fandom rejects the possibility of a gay reading of the character.[224] In 2005, painter Mark Chamberlain displayed a number of watercolors depicting both Batman and Robin in suggestive and sexually explicit poses,[225] prompting DC to threaten legal action.[226]
+
+Creators associated with the character have expressed their own opinions. Writer Alan Grant has stated, "The Batman I wrote for 13 years isn't gay ... everybody's Batman all the way back to Bob Kane ... none of them wrote him as a gay character. Only Joel Schumacher might have had an opposing view."[227] Frank Miller views the character as sublimating his sexual urges into crimefighting so much so that he's "borderline pathological", concluding "He'd be much healthier if he were gay."[228] Grant Morrison said that "Gayness is built into Batman ... Obviously as a fictional character he's intended to be heterosexual, but the basis of the whole concept is utterly gay."[229]
+
+Batman has been the subject of psychological study for some time, and there have been a number of interpretations into the character's psyche.
+
+In Batman and Psychology: A Dark and Stormy Knight, Travis Langley argues that the concept of archetypes as described by psychologists Carl Jung and Joseph Campbell is present in the Batman mythos, such that the character represents the "shadow archetype". This archetype, according to Langley, represents a person's own dark side; it is not necessarily an evil one, but rather one that is hidden from the outside and concealed from both the world and oneself. Langley argues that Bruce Wayne confronts his own darkness early in life; he chooses to use it to instill fear in wrongdoers, with his bright and dark sides working together to fight evil. Langley uses the Jungian perspective to assert that Batman appeals to our own need to face our "shadow selves".[230][231] Dr. Travis Langley also taught a class called Batman, a title he was adamant about. "I could have called it something like the Psychology of Nocturnal Vigilantism, but no. I called it Batman," Langley says.[232]
+
+Several psychologists have explored Bruce Wayne/Batman's mental health. Robin. S. Rosenberg evaluated his actions and problems to determine if they reach the level of mental disorders. She examined the possibility of several mental health issues, including dissociative identity disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, and several others. She concluded that Bruce Wayne/Batman may have a disorder or a combination of disorders but due to his fictional nature, a definitive diagnosis will remain unknown.[233][234][235]
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+Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (UK: /ˌvæskoʊ də ˈɡɑːmə/, US: /ˌvɑːskoʊ də ˈɡæmə/,[1][2] European Portuguese: [ˈvaʃku ðɐ ˈɣɐ̃mɐ]; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea.
+
+His initial voyage to India (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and therefore, the West and the Orient. This is widely considered a milestone in world history, as it marked the beginning of a sea-based phase of global multiculturalism.[3] Da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India opened the way for an age of global imperialism and enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. Traveling the ocean route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Mediterranean and traversing the dangerous Arabian Peninsula. The sum of the distances covered in the outward and return voyages made this expedition the longest ocean voyage ever made until then, far longer than a full voyage around the world by way of the Equator.[4]
+
+After decades of sailors trying to reach the Indies, with thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks, da Gama landed in Calicut on 20 May 1498. Unopposed access to the Indian spice routes boosted the economy of the Portuguese Empire, which was previously based along northern and coastal West Africa. The main spices at first obtained from Southeast Asia were pepper and cinnamon, but soon included other products, all new to Europe. Portugal maintained a commercial monopoly of these commodities for several decades. It was not until a century later that other European powers, first the Dutch Republic and England, later France and Denmark, were able to challenge Portugal's monopoly and naval supremacy in the Cape Route.
+
+Da Gama led two of the Portuguese India Armadas, the first and the fourth. The latter was the largest and departed for India four years after his return from the first one. For his contributions, in 1524 da Gama was appointed Governor of India, with the title of Viceroy, and was ennobled as Count of Vidigueira in 1519.
+
+Vasco da Gama remains a leading figure in the history of exploration. Numerous homages worldwide have celebrated his explorations and accomplishments.  The Portuguese national epic poem, Os Lusíadas, was written in his honour by Luís de Camões.
+
+In March 2016 thousands of artifacts and nautical remains were recovered from the wreck of the ship Esmeralda, one of da Gama's armada, found off the coast of Oman.[5]
+
+Vasco da Gama was born in 1460 or 1469[6] in the town of Sines, one of the few seaports on the Alentejo coast, southwest  Portugal, probably in a house near the church of Nossa Senhora das Salas.
+
+Vasco da Gama's father was Estêvão da Gama, who had served in the 1460s as a knight of the household of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu.[7] He rose in the ranks of the military Order of Santiago. Estêvão da Gama was appointed alcaide-mór (civil governor) of Sines in the 1460s, a post he held until 1478; after that he continued as a receiver of taxes and holder of the Order's commendas in the region.
+
+Estêvão da Gama married Isabel Sodré, a daughter of João Sodré (also known as João de Resende), scion of a well-connected family of English origin.[8]  Her father and her brothers, Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré, had links to the household of Infante Diogo, Duke of Viseu, and were prominent figures in the military Order of Christ. Vasco da Gama was the third of five sons of Estêvão da Gama and Isabel Sodré – in (probable) order of age: Paulo da Gama, João Sodré, Vasco da Gama, Pedro da Gama and Aires da Gama. Vasco also had one known sister, Teresa da Gama (who married Lopo Mendes de Vasconcelos).[9]
+
+Little is known of da Gama's early life. The Portuguese historian Teixeira de Aragão suggests that he studied at the inland town of Évora, which is where he may have learned mathematics and navigation. It has been claimed that he studied under Abraham Zacuto, an astrologer and astronomer, but da Gama's biographer Subrahmanyam thinks this dubious.[10]
+
+Around 1480, da Gama followed his father (rather than the Sodrés) and joined the Order of Santiago.[11] The master of Santiago was Prince John, who ascended to the throne in 1481 as King John II of Portugal. John II doted on the Order, and the da Gamas' prospects rose accordingly.
+
+In 1492, John II dispatched da Gama on a mission to the port of Setúbal and to the Algarve to seize French ships in retaliation for peacetime depredations against Portuguese shipping – a task that da Gama rapidly and effectively performed.[12]
+
+From the earlier part of the 15th century, Portuguese expeditions organized by Prince Henry the Navigator had been reaching down the African coastline, principally in search of west African riches (notably, gold and slaves).[13]  They had greatly extended Portuguese maritime knowledge, but had little profit to show for the effort.  After Henry's death in 1460, the Portuguese Crown showed little interest in continuing this effort and, in 1469, licensed the neglected African enterprise to a private Lisbon merchant consortium led by Fernão Gomes. Within a few years, Gomes' captains expanded Portuguese knowledge across the Gulf of Guinea, doing business in gold dust, melegueta pepper, ivory and sub-Saharan slaves. When Gomes' charter came up for renewal in 1474, Prince John (future John II), asked his father Afonso V of Portugal to pass the African charter to him.[14]
+
+Upon becoming king in 1481, John II of Portugal set out on many long reforms. To break the monarch's dependence on the feudal nobility, John II needed to build up the royal treasury; he considered royal commerce to be the key to achieving that. Under John II's watch, the gold and slave trade in west Africa was greatly expanded. He was eager to break into the highly profitable spice trade between Europe and Asia, which was conducted chiefly by land. At the time, this was virtually monopolized by the Republic of Venice, who operated overland routes via Levantine and Egyptian ports, through the Red Sea across to the spice markets of India. John II set a new objective for his captains: to find a sea route to Asia by sailing around the African continent.[15]
+
+By the time Vasco da Gama was in his 20s, the king's plans were coming to fruition. In 1487, John II dispatched two spies, Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, overland via Egypt to East Africa and India, to scout the details of the spice markets and trade routes. The breakthrough came soon after, when John II's captain Bartolomeu Dias returned from rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, having explored as far as the Fish River (Rio do Infante) in modern-day South Africa and having verified that the unknown coast stretched away to the northeast.[16]
+
+An explorer was needed who could prove the link between the findings of Dias and those of da Covilhã and de Paiva, and connect these separate segments into a potentially lucrative trade route across the Indian Ocean.
+
+On 8 July 1497 Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. The distance traveled in the journey around Africa to India and back was greater than around the equator.[17][18] The navigators included Portugal's most experienced, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro Escobar, João de Coimbra, and Afonso Gonçalves. It is not known for certain how many people were in each ship's crew but approximately 55 returned, and two ships were lost.  Two of the vessels were carracks, newly built for the voyage; the others were a caravel and a supply boat.[17]
+
+The four ships were:
+
+The expedition set sail from Lisbon on 8 July 1497. It followed the route pioneered by earlier explorers along the coast of Africa via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands. After reaching the coast of present-day Sierra Leone, da Gama took a course south into the open ocean, crossing the Equator and seeking the South Atlantic westerlies that Bartolomeu Dias had discovered in 1487.[19] This course proved successful and on 4 November 1497, the expedition made landfall on the African coast. For over three months the ships had sailed more than 10,000 kilometres (6,000 mi) of open ocean, by far the longest journey out of sight of land made by that time.[17][20]
+
+By 16 December, the fleet had passed the Great Fish River (Eastern Cape, South Africa) – where Dias had anchored – and sailed into waters previously unknown to Europeans. With Christmas pending, da Gama and his crew gave the coast they were passing the name Natal, which carried the connotation of "birth of Christ" in Portuguese.
+
+Vasco da Gama spent 2 to 29 March 1498 in the vicinity of Mozambique Island. Arab-controlled territory on the East African coast was an integral part of the network of trade in the Indian Ocean. Fearing the local population would be hostile to Christians, da Gama impersonated a Muslim and gained audience with the Sultan of Mozambique. With the paltry trade goods he had to offer, the explorer was unable to provide a suitable gift to the ruler. Soon the local populace became suspicious of da Gama and his men. Forced by a hostile crowd to flee Mozambique, da Gama departed the harbor, firing his cannons into the city in retaliation.[21]
+
+In the vicinity of modern Kenya, the expedition resorted to piracy, looting Arab merchant ships that were generally unarmed trading vessels without heavy cannons. The Portuguese became the first known Europeans to visit the port of Mombasa from 7 to 13 April 1498, but were met with hostility and soon departed.
+
+Vasco da Gama continued north, arriving on 14 April 1498 at the friendlier port of Malindi, whose leaders were having a conflict with those of Mombasa. There the expedition first noted evidence of Indian traders. Da Gama and his crew contracted the services of a pilot who used his knowledge of the monsoon winds to guide the expedition the rest of the way to Calicut, located on the southwest coast of India. Sources differ over the identity of the pilot, calling him variously a Christian, a Muslim, and a Gujarati. One traditional story describes the pilot as the famous Arab navigator Ibn Majid, but other contemporaneous accounts place Majid elsewhere, and he could not have been near the vicinity at the time.[22]  None of the Portuguese historians of the time mentions Ibn Majid. Vasco da Gama left Malindi for India on 24 April 1498.
+
+The fleet arrived in Kappadu near Kozhikode (Calicut), in Malabar Coast (present day Kerala state of India), on 20 May 1498. The King of Calicut, the Samudiri (Zamorin), who was at that time staying in his second capital at Ponnani, returned to Calicut on hearing the news of the foreign fleet's arrival. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, including a grand procession of at least 3,000 armed Nairs, but an interview with the Zamorin failed to produce any concrete results. When local authorities asked da Gama's fleet, "What brought you hither?", they replied that they had come "in search of Christians and spices."[23] The presents that da Gama sent to the Zamorin as gifts from Dom Manuel – four cloaks of scarlet cloth, six hats, four branches of corals, twelve almasares, a box with seven brass vessels, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil and a cask of honey – were trivial, and failed to impress. While Zamorin's officials wondered at why there was no gold or silver, the Muslim merchants who considered da Gama their rival suggested that the latter was only an ordinary pirate and not a royal ambassador.[24] Vasco da Gama's request for permission to leave a factor behind him in charge of the merchandise he could not sell was turned down by the King, who insisted that da Gama pay customs duty – preferably in gold – like any other trader, which strained the relation between the two. Annoyed by this, da Gama carried a few Nairs and sixteen fishermen (mukkuva) off with him by force.[25]
+
+Vasco da Gama left Calicut on 29 August 1498. Eager to set sail for home, he ignored the local knowledge of monsoon wind patterns that were still blowing onshore.  The fleet initially inched north along the Indian coast, and then anchored in at Anjediva island for a spell. They finally struck out for their Indian Ocean crossing on 3 October 1498. But with the winter monsoon yet to set in, it was a harrowing journey.  On the outgoing journey, sailing with the summer monsoon wind, da Gama's fleet crossed the Indian Ocean in only 23 days; now, on the return trip, sailing against the wind, it took 132 days.
+
+Da Gama saw land again only on 2 January 1499, passing before the coastal Somali city of Mogadishu, then under the influence of the Ajuran Empire in the Horn of Africa. The fleet did not make a stop, but passing before Mogadishu, the anonymous diarist of the expedition noted that it was a large city with houses of four or five storeys high and big palaces in its center and many mosques with cylindrical minarets.[26]
+
+Da Gama's fleet finally arrived in Malindi on 7 January 1499, in a terrible state – approximately half of the crew had died during the crossing, and many of the rest were afflicted with scurvy. Not having enough crewmen left standing to manage three ships, da Gama ordered the São Rafael scuttled off the East African coast, and the crew re-distributed to the remaining two ships, the São Gabriel and the Berrio.  Thereafter, the sailing was smoother.  By early March, they had arrived in Mossel Bay, and crossed the Cape of Good Hope in the opposite direction on 20 March, reaching the west African coast by 25 April.
+
+The diary record of the expedition ends abruptly here. Reconstructing from other sources, it seems they continued to Cape Verde, where Nicolau Coelho's Berrio separated from Vasco da Gama's São Gabriel and sailed on by itself.[27] The Berrio arrived in Lisbon on 10 July 1499 and Nicolau Coelho personally delivered the news to King Manuel I and the royal court, then assembled in Sintra. In the meantime, back in Cape Verde, da Gama's brother, Paulo da Gama, had fallen grievously ill. Da Gama elected to stay by his side on Santiago island and handed the São Gabriel over to his clerk, João de Sá, to take home.  The São Gabriel under Sá arrived in Lisbon sometime in late July or early August. Da Gama and his sickly brother eventually hitched a ride with a Guinea caravel returning to Portugal, but Paulo da Gama died en route. Da Gama disembarked at the Azores to bury his brother at the monastery of São Francisco in Angra do Heroismo, and lingered there for a little while in mourning. He eventually took passage on an Azorean caravel and finally arrived in Lisbon on 29 August 1499 (according to Barros),[28] or early September (8th or 18th, according to other sources). Despite his melancholic mood, da Gama was given a hero's welcome and showered with honors, including a triumphal procession and public festivities. King Manuel wrote two letters in which he described da Gama's first voyage, in July and August 1499, soon after the return of the ships. Girolamo Sernigi also wrote three letters describing da Gama's first voyage soon after the return of the expedition.
+
+The expedition had exacted a large cost – two ships and over half the men had been lost. It had also failed in its principal mission of securing a commercial treaty with Calicut. Nonetheless, the small quantities of spices and other trade goods brought back on the remaining two ships demonstrated the potential of great profit for future trade.[29] Vasco da Gama was justly celebrated for opening a direct sea route to Asia. His path would be followed up thereafter by yearly Portuguese India Armadas.
+
+The spice trade would prove to be a major asset to the Portuguese royal treasury, and other consequences soon followed. For example, da Gama's voyage had made it clear that the east coast of Africa, the Contra Costa, was essential to Portuguese interests; its ports provided fresh water, provisions, timber, and harbors for repairs, and served as a refuge where ships could wait out unfavorable weather. One significant result was the colonization of Mozambique by the Portuguese Crown.
+
+In December 1499, King Manuel I of Portugal rewarded Vasco da Gama with the town of Sines as a hereditary fief (the town his father, Estêvão, had once held as a commenda). This turned out to be a complicated affair, for Sines still belonged to the Order of Santiago. The master of the Order, Jorge de Lencastre, might have endorsed the reward – after all, da Gama was a Santiago knight, one of their own, and a close associate of Lencastre himself. But the fact that Sines was awarded by the king provoked Lencastre to refuse out of principle, lest it encourage the king to make other donations of the Order's properties.[30] Da Gama would spend the next few years attempting to take hold of Sines, an effort that would estrange him from Lencastre and eventually prompt da Gama to abandon his beloved Order of Santiago, switching over to the rival Order of Christ in 1507.
+
+In the meantime, da Gama made do with a substantial hereditary royal pension of 300,000 reis. He was awarded the noble title of Dom (lord) in perpetuity for himself, his siblings and their descendants. On 30 January 1502, da Gama was awarded the title of Almirante dos mares de Arabia, Persia, India e de todo o Oriente ("Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia, India and all the Orient") – an overwrought title reminiscent of the ornate Castilian title borne by Christopher Columbus (evidently, Manuel must have reckoned that if Castile had an 'Admiral of the Ocean Seas', then surely Portugal should have one too).[31] Another royal letter, dated October 1501, gave da Gama the personal right to intervene and exercise a determining role on any future India-bound fleet.
+
+Around 1501, Vasco da Gama married Catarina de Ataíde, daughter of Álvaro de Ataíde, the alcaide-mór of Alvor (Algarve), and a prominent nobleman connected by kinship with the powerful Almeida family (Catarina was a first cousin of D. Francisco de Almeida).[32]
+
+The follow-up expedition, the Second India Armada, launched in 1500 under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral with the mission of making a treaty with the Zamorin of Calicut and setting up a Portuguese factory in the city. However, Pedro Cabral entered into a conflict with the local Arab merchant guilds, with the result that the Portuguese factory was overrun in a riot and up to 70 Portuguese were killed. Cabral blamed the Zamorin for the incident and bombarded the city. Thus war broke out between Portugal and Calicut.
+
+Vasco da Gama invoked his royal letter to take command of the 4th India Armada, scheduled to set out in 1502, with the explicit aim of taking revenge upon the Zamorin and force him to submit to Portuguese terms.  The heavily armed fleet of fifteen ships and eight hundred men left Lisbon on 12 February 1502.  It was followed in April by another squadron of five ships led by his cousin, Estêvão da Gama (the son of Aires da Gama), which caught up to them in the Indian Ocean.  The 4th Armada was a veritable da Gama family affair.  Two of his maternal uncles, Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré, were pre-designated to command an Indian Ocean naval patrol, while brothers-in-law Álvaro de Ataíde (brother of Vasco's wife Catarina) and Lopo Mendes de Vasconcelos (betrothed to Teresa da Gama, Vasco's sister) captained ships in the main fleet.
+
+On the outgoing voyage, da Gama's fleet opened contact with the East African gold trading port of Sofala and reduced the sultanate of Kilwa to tribute, extracting a substantial sum of gold. On reaching India in October 1502, da Gama's fleet set about capturing any Arab vessel he came across in Indian waters, most notoriously the Miri, a pilgrim ship from Mecca, whose passengers he massacred in open water.[33]  He then appeared before Calicut, demanding redress for the treatment of Cabral. While the Zamorin was willing to sign a new treaty,[34] da Gama made a call to the Hindu king to expel all Muslims from Calicut before beginning negotiations, which was turned down. The Portuguese fleet then bombarded the city for nearly two days from the sea shore, severely damaging the unfortified city. He also captured several rice vessels and cut off the crew's hands, ears and noses, dispatching them with an insulting note to the Zamorin.[35]
+
+The violent treatment meted out by da Gama quickly brought trade along the Malabar Coast of India, upon which Calicut depended, to a standstill.  But the Zamorin nonetheless refused to submit to Portuguese terms, and even ventured to hire a fleet of strong warships to challenge da Gama's armada (which da Gama managed to defeat in a naval battle before Calicut harbor). Da Gama loaded up with spices at Cochin and Cannanore, small nearby kingdoms, half-vassal and half-at-war with the Zamorin, whose alliances had been secured by prior Portuguese fleets. The 4th armada left India in early 1503. Da Gama left behind a small squadron of caravels under the command of his uncle, Vicente Sodré, to patrol the Indian coast, to continue harassing Calicut shipping, and to protect the Portuguese factories at Cochin and Cannanore from the Zamorin's inevitable reprisals.
+Vasco da Gama arrived back in Portugal in September 1503, effectively having failed in his mission to bring the Zamorin to submission. This failure, and the subsequent more galling failure of his uncle Vicente Sodré to protect the Portuguese factory in Cochin, probably counted against any further rewards. When the Portuguese king Manuel I of Portugal decided to appoint the first governor and viceroy of Portuguese India in 1505, da Gama was conspicuously overlooked, and the post given to Francisco de Almeida.
+
+On his second voyage, Vasco da Gama inflicted acts of cruelty upon competing traders and local inhabitants, which sealed his notoriety in India.[36][37] During his second voyage to Calicut, da Gama intercepted a ship of Muslim pilgrims at Madayi travelling from Calicut to Mecca. Described in detail by eyewitness Thomé Lopes and chronicler Gaspar Correia, da Gama looted the ship with over 400 pilgrims on board including 50 women, locked in the passengers, the owner and an ambassador from Egypt and burned them to death. They offered their wealth, which "could ransom all the Christian slaves in the Kingdom of Fez and much more" but were not spared. Da Gama looked on through the porthole and saw the women bringing up their gold and jewels and holding up their babies to beg for mercy.[38]
+
+After demanding the expulsion of Muslims from Calicut to the Hindu Zamorin, the latter sent the high priest Talappana Namboothiri (the very same person who conducted da Gama to the Zamorin's chamber during his much celebrated first visit to Calicut in May 1498) for talks. Da Gama called him a spy, ordered the priests' lips and ears to be cut off and after sewing a pair of dog's ears to his head, sent him away.[36]
+
+For the next two decades, Vasco da Gama lived out a quiet life, unwelcome in the royal court and sidelined from Indian affairs.  His attempts to return to the favor of Manuel I (including switching over to the Order of Christ in 1507), yielded little. Almeida, the larger-than-life Afonso de Albuquerque and, later on, Albergaria and Sequeira, were the king's preferred point men for India.
+
+After Ferdinand Magellan defected to the Crown of Castile in 1518, Vasco da Gama threatened to do the same, prompting the king to undertake steps to retain him in Portugal and avoid the embarrassment of losing his own "Admiral of the Indies" to Spain.[39] In 1519, after years of ignoring his petitions, King Manuel I finally hurried to give Vasco da Gama a feudal title, appointing him the first Count of Vidigueira, a count title created by a royal decree issued in Évora on 29 December, after a complicated agreement with Dom Jaime, Duke of Braganza, who ceded him on payment the towns of Vidigueira and Vila dos Frades. The decree granted Vasco da Gama and his heirs all the revenues and privileges related,[40] thus establishing da Gama as the first Portuguese count who was not born with royal blood.[41]
+
+After the death of King Manuel I in late 1521, his son and successor, King John III of Portugal set about reviewing the Portuguese government overseas. Turning away from the old Albuquerque clique (now represented by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira), John III looked for a fresh start. Vasco da Gama re-emerged from his political wilderness as an important adviser to the new king's appointments and strategy. Seeing the new Spanish threat to the Maluku Islands as the priority, Vasco da Gama advised against the obsession with Arabia that had pervaded much of the Manueline period, and continued to be the dominant concern of Duarte de Menezes, then-governor of Portuguese India. Menezes also turned out to be incompetent and corrupt, subject to numerous complaints.  As a result, John III decided to appoint Vasco da Gama himself to replace Menezes, confident that the magic of his name and memory of his deeds might better impress his authority on Portuguese India, and manage the transition to a new government and new strategy.
+
+By his appointment letter of February 1524, John III granted Vasco da Gama the privileged title of "Viceroy", being only the second Portuguese governor to enjoy that title (the first was Francisco de Almeida in 1505).[42] His second son, Estêvão da Gama was simultaneously appointed Capitão-mor do Mar da Índia ('Captain-major of the Indian Sea', commander of the Indian Ocean naval patrol fleet), to replace Duarte's brother, Luís de Menezes. As a final condition, Gama secured from John III of Portugal the commitment to appoint all his sons successively as Portuguese captains of Malacca.
+
+Setting out in April 1524, with a fleet of fourteen ships, Vasco da Gama took as his flagship the famous large carrack Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai on her last journey to India, along with two of his sons, Estêvão and Paulo.  After a troubled journey[clarification needed] (four or five of the ships were lost en route), he arrived in India in September.  Vasco da Gama immediately invoked his high viceregent powers to impose a new order in Portuguese India, replacing all the old officials with his own appointments. But Gama contracted malaria not long after arriving, and died in the city of Cochin on Christmas Eve in 1524, three months after his arrival.  As per royal instructions, da Gama was succeeded as governor of India by one the captains who had come with him, Henrique de Menezes (no relation to Duarte).  Da Gama's sons Estêvão and Paulo immediately lost their posts and joined the returning fleet of early 1525 (along with the dismissed Duarte de Menezes and Luís de Menezes).[43]
+
+Vasco da Gama's body was first buried at St. Francis Church, which was located at Fort Kochi in the city of Kochi, but his remains were returned to Portugal in 1539. The body of Vasco da Gama was re-interred in Vidigueira in a casket decorated with gold and jewels.
+
+The Monastery of the Hieronymites, in Belém, which would become the necropolis of the Portuguese royal dynasty of Aviz, was erected in the early 1500s near the launch point of Vasco da Gama's first journey, and its construction funded by a tax on the profits of the yearly Portuguese India Armadas.  In 1880, da Gama's remains and those of the poet Luís de Camões (who celebrated da Gama's first voyage in his 1572 epic poem, The Lusiad), were moved to new carved tombs in the nave of the monastery's church, only a few meters away from the tombs of the kings Manuel I and John III, whom da Gama had served.
+
+Vasco da Gama and his wife, Catarina de Ataíde, had six sons and one daughter:[44]
+
+His male line issue became extinct in 1747, though the title went through female line.[clarification needed]
+
+Over his numerous years serving the Portuguese crown, da Gama was rewarded with many different titles, distinctions, and offices:
+
+Vasco da Gama is one of the most famous and celebrated explorers from the Age of Discovery. As much as anyone after Henry the Navigator, he was responsible for Portugal's success as an early colonising power. Beside the fact of the first voyage itself, it was his astute mix of politics and war on the other side of the world that placed Portugal in a prominent position in Indian Ocean trade. Following da Gama's initial voyage, the Portuguese crown realized that securing outposts on the eastern coast of Africa would prove vital to maintaining national trade routes to the Far East.
+
+However, his fame is tempered by such incidents and attitudes as displayed in the notorious Pilgrim Ship Incident previously discussed.
+
+The Portuguese national epic, the Lusíadas of Luís Vaz de Camões, largely concerns Vasco da Gama's voyages.[45]
+
+The 1865 grand opera L'Africaine: Opéra en Cinq Actes, composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer from a libretto by Eugène Scribe, prominently includes the character of Vasco da Gama. The events depicted, however, are fictitious. Meyerbeer's working title for the opera was Vasco da Gama. A 1989 production of the opera by the San Francisco Opera featured noted tenor Plácido Domingo in the role of da Gama.[46] The 19th-century composer Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray composed an eponymous 1872 opera based on da Gama's life and exploits at sea.
+
+The port city of Vasco da Gama in Goa is named after him, as is the crater Vasco da Gama on the Moon. There are three football clubs in Brazil (including Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama) and Vasco Sports Club in Goa that were also named after him. There exists a church in Kochi, Kerala called Vasco da Gama Church, and a private residence on the island of Saint Helena. The suburb of Vasco in Cape Town also honours him.
+
+A few places in Lisbon's Parque das Nações are named after the explorer, such as the Vasco da Gama Bridge, Vasco da Gama Tower and the Centro Comercial Vasco da Gama shopping centre.[47] The Oceanário in the Parque das Nações has a mascot of a cartoon diver with the name of "Vasco", who is named after the explorer.[48]
+
+Vasco da Gama was the only explorer on the final pool of Os Grandes Portugueses. Although the final shortlist featured other Age of Discovery related people, they were not actually explorers nor navigators for any matter.
+
+The Portuguese Navy has a class of frigates named after him. There are three Vasco da Gama class frigates in total, of which the first one also bears his name.
+
+South African musician Hugh Masekela recorded an anti-colonialist song entitled "Colonial Man", which contains the lyrics "Vasco da Gama was no friend of mine", and another song entitled "Vasco da Gama (The Sailor Man)". Both songs were included in his 1976 album Colonial Man.
+
+Vasco da Gama appears as an antagonist in the Indian film Urumi. The film, directed by Santosh Sivan, depicts a failed assassination attempt on da Gama by an Indian.
+
+In March 2016, archaeologists working off the coast of Oman identified a shipwreck believed to be that of the Esmeralda from da Gama's 1502–1503 fleet. The wreck was initially discovered in 1998. Later underwater excavations took place between 2013 and 2015 through a partnership between the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Blue Water Recoveries Ltd., a shipwreck recovery company. The vessel was identified through such artifacts as a "Portuguese coin minted for trade with India (one of only two coins of this type known to exist) and stone cannonballs engraved with what appear to be the initials of Vincente Sodré, da Gama's maternal uncle and the commander of the Esmeralda."[49]

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+Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (UK: /ˌvæskoʊ də ˈɡɑːmə/, US: /ˌvɑːskoʊ də ˈɡæmə/,[1][2] European Portuguese: [ˈvaʃku ðɐ ˈɣɐ̃mɐ]; c. 1460s – 24 December 1524), was a Portuguese explorer and the first European to reach India by sea.
+
+His initial voyage to India (1497–1499) was the first to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and therefore, the West and the Orient. This is widely considered a milestone in world history, as it marked the beginning of a sea-based phase of global multiculturalism.[3] Da Gama's discovery of the sea route to India opened the way for an age of global imperialism and enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire in Asia. Traveling the ocean route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Mediterranean and traversing the dangerous Arabian Peninsula. The sum of the distances covered in the outward and return voyages made this expedition the longest ocean voyage ever made until then, far longer than a full voyage around the world by way of the Equator.[4]
+
+After decades of sailors trying to reach the Indies, with thousands of lives and dozens of vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks, da Gama landed in Calicut on 20 May 1498. Unopposed access to the Indian spice routes boosted the economy of the Portuguese Empire, which was previously based along northern and coastal West Africa. The main spices at first obtained from Southeast Asia were pepper and cinnamon, but soon included other products, all new to Europe. Portugal maintained a commercial monopoly of these commodities for several decades. It was not until a century later that other European powers, first the Dutch Republic and England, later France and Denmark, were able to challenge Portugal's monopoly and naval supremacy in the Cape Route.
+
+Da Gama led two of the Portuguese India Armadas, the first and the fourth. The latter was the largest and departed for India four years after his return from the first one. For his contributions, in 1524 da Gama was appointed Governor of India, with the title of Viceroy, and was ennobled as Count of Vidigueira in 1519.
+
+Vasco da Gama remains a leading figure in the history of exploration. Numerous homages worldwide have celebrated his explorations and accomplishments.  The Portuguese national epic poem, Os Lusíadas, was written in his honour by Luís de Camões.
+
+In March 2016 thousands of artifacts and nautical remains were recovered from the wreck of the ship Esmeralda, one of da Gama's armada, found off the coast of Oman.[5]
+
+Vasco da Gama was born in 1460 or 1469[6] in the town of Sines, one of the few seaports on the Alentejo coast, southwest  Portugal, probably in a house near the church of Nossa Senhora das Salas.
+
+Vasco da Gama's father was Estêvão da Gama, who had served in the 1460s as a knight of the household of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu.[7] He rose in the ranks of the military Order of Santiago. Estêvão da Gama was appointed alcaide-mór (civil governor) of Sines in the 1460s, a post he held until 1478; after that he continued as a receiver of taxes and holder of the Order's commendas in the region.
+
+Estêvão da Gama married Isabel Sodré, a daughter of João Sodré (also known as João de Resende), scion of a well-connected family of English origin.[8]  Her father and her brothers, Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré, had links to the household of Infante Diogo, Duke of Viseu, and were prominent figures in the military Order of Christ. Vasco da Gama was the third of five sons of Estêvão da Gama and Isabel Sodré – in (probable) order of age: Paulo da Gama, João Sodré, Vasco da Gama, Pedro da Gama and Aires da Gama. Vasco also had one known sister, Teresa da Gama (who married Lopo Mendes de Vasconcelos).[9]
+
+Little is known of da Gama's early life. The Portuguese historian Teixeira de Aragão suggests that he studied at the inland town of Évora, which is where he may have learned mathematics and navigation. It has been claimed that he studied under Abraham Zacuto, an astrologer and astronomer, but da Gama's biographer Subrahmanyam thinks this dubious.[10]
+
+Around 1480, da Gama followed his father (rather than the Sodrés) and joined the Order of Santiago.[11] The master of Santiago was Prince John, who ascended to the throne in 1481 as King John II of Portugal. John II doted on the Order, and the da Gamas' prospects rose accordingly.
+
+In 1492, John II dispatched da Gama on a mission to the port of Setúbal and to the Algarve to seize French ships in retaliation for peacetime depredations against Portuguese shipping – a task that da Gama rapidly and effectively performed.[12]
+
+From the earlier part of the 15th century, Portuguese expeditions organized by Prince Henry the Navigator had been reaching down the African coastline, principally in search of west African riches (notably, gold and slaves).[13]  They had greatly extended Portuguese maritime knowledge, but had little profit to show for the effort.  After Henry's death in 1460, the Portuguese Crown showed little interest in continuing this effort and, in 1469, licensed the neglected African enterprise to a private Lisbon merchant consortium led by Fernão Gomes. Within a few years, Gomes' captains expanded Portuguese knowledge across the Gulf of Guinea, doing business in gold dust, melegueta pepper, ivory and sub-Saharan slaves. When Gomes' charter came up for renewal in 1474, Prince John (future John II), asked his father Afonso V of Portugal to pass the African charter to him.[14]
+
+Upon becoming king in 1481, John II of Portugal set out on many long reforms. To break the monarch's dependence on the feudal nobility, John II needed to build up the royal treasury; he considered royal commerce to be the key to achieving that. Under John II's watch, the gold and slave trade in west Africa was greatly expanded. He was eager to break into the highly profitable spice trade between Europe and Asia, which was conducted chiefly by land. At the time, this was virtually monopolized by the Republic of Venice, who operated overland routes via Levantine and Egyptian ports, through the Red Sea across to the spice markets of India. John II set a new objective for his captains: to find a sea route to Asia by sailing around the African continent.[15]
+
+By the time Vasco da Gama was in his 20s, the king's plans were coming to fruition. In 1487, John II dispatched two spies, Pero da Covilhã and Afonso de Paiva, overland via Egypt to East Africa and India, to scout the details of the spice markets and trade routes. The breakthrough came soon after, when John II's captain Bartolomeu Dias returned from rounding the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, having explored as far as the Fish River (Rio do Infante) in modern-day South Africa and having verified that the unknown coast stretched away to the northeast.[16]
+
+An explorer was needed who could prove the link between the findings of Dias and those of da Covilhã and de Paiva, and connect these separate segments into a potentially lucrative trade route across the Indian Ocean.
+
+On 8 July 1497 Vasco da Gama led a fleet of four ships with a crew of 170 men from Lisbon. The distance traveled in the journey around Africa to India and back was greater than around the equator.[17][18] The navigators included Portugal's most experienced, Pero de Alenquer, Pedro Escobar, João de Coimbra, and Afonso Gonçalves. It is not known for certain how many people were in each ship's crew but approximately 55 returned, and two ships were lost.  Two of the vessels were carracks, newly built for the voyage; the others were a caravel and a supply boat.[17]
+
+The four ships were:
+
+The expedition set sail from Lisbon on 8 July 1497. It followed the route pioneered by earlier explorers along the coast of Africa via Tenerife and the Cape Verde Islands. After reaching the coast of present-day Sierra Leone, da Gama took a course south into the open ocean, crossing the Equator and seeking the South Atlantic westerlies that Bartolomeu Dias had discovered in 1487.[19] This course proved successful and on 4 November 1497, the expedition made landfall on the African coast. For over three months the ships had sailed more than 10,000 kilometres (6,000 mi) of open ocean, by far the longest journey out of sight of land made by that time.[17][20]
+
+By 16 December, the fleet had passed the Great Fish River (Eastern Cape, South Africa) – where Dias had anchored – and sailed into waters previously unknown to Europeans. With Christmas pending, da Gama and his crew gave the coast they were passing the name Natal, which carried the connotation of "birth of Christ" in Portuguese.
+
+Vasco da Gama spent 2 to 29 March 1498 in the vicinity of Mozambique Island. Arab-controlled territory on the East African coast was an integral part of the network of trade in the Indian Ocean. Fearing the local population would be hostile to Christians, da Gama impersonated a Muslim and gained audience with the Sultan of Mozambique. With the paltry trade goods he had to offer, the explorer was unable to provide a suitable gift to the ruler. Soon the local populace became suspicious of da Gama and his men. Forced by a hostile crowd to flee Mozambique, da Gama departed the harbor, firing his cannons into the city in retaliation.[21]
+
+In the vicinity of modern Kenya, the expedition resorted to piracy, looting Arab merchant ships that were generally unarmed trading vessels without heavy cannons. The Portuguese became the first known Europeans to visit the port of Mombasa from 7 to 13 April 1498, but were met with hostility and soon departed.
+
+Vasco da Gama continued north, arriving on 14 April 1498 at the friendlier port of Malindi, whose leaders were having a conflict with those of Mombasa. There the expedition first noted evidence of Indian traders. Da Gama and his crew contracted the services of a pilot who used his knowledge of the monsoon winds to guide the expedition the rest of the way to Calicut, located on the southwest coast of India. Sources differ over the identity of the pilot, calling him variously a Christian, a Muslim, and a Gujarati. One traditional story describes the pilot as the famous Arab navigator Ibn Majid, but other contemporaneous accounts place Majid elsewhere, and he could not have been near the vicinity at the time.[22]  None of the Portuguese historians of the time mentions Ibn Majid. Vasco da Gama left Malindi for India on 24 April 1498.
+
+The fleet arrived in Kappadu near Kozhikode (Calicut), in Malabar Coast (present day Kerala state of India), on 20 May 1498. The King of Calicut, the Samudiri (Zamorin), who was at that time staying in his second capital at Ponnani, returned to Calicut on hearing the news of the foreign fleet's arrival. The navigator was received with traditional hospitality, including a grand procession of at least 3,000 armed Nairs, but an interview with the Zamorin failed to produce any concrete results. When local authorities asked da Gama's fleet, "What brought you hither?", they replied that they had come "in search of Christians and spices."[23] The presents that da Gama sent to the Zamorin as gifts from Dom Manuel – four cloaks of scarlet cloth, six hats, four branches of corals, twelve almasares, a box with seven brass vessels, a chest of sugar, two barrels of oil and a cask of honey – were trivial, and failed to impress. While Zamorin's officials wondered at why there was no gold or silver, the Muslim merchants who considered da Gama their rival suggested that the latter was only an ordinary pirate and not a royal ambassador.[24] Vasco da Gama's request for permission to leave a factor behind him in charge of the merchandise he could not sell was turned down by the King, who insisted that da Gama pay customs duty – preferably in gold – like any other trader, which strained the relation between the two. Annoyed by this, da Gama carried a few Nairs and sixteen fishermen (mukkuva) off with him by force.[25]
+
+Vasco da Gama left Calicut on 29 August 1498. Eager to set sail for home, he ignored the local knowledge of monsoon wind patterns that were still blowing onshore.  The fleet initially inched north along the Indian coast, and then anchored in at Anjediva island for a spell. They finally struck out for their Indian Ocean crossing on 3 October 1498. But with the winter monsoon yet to set in, it was a harrowing journey.  On the outgoing journey, sailing with the summer monsoon wind, da Gama's fleet crossed the Indian Ocean in only 23 days; now, on the return trip, sailing against the wind, it took 132 days.
+
+Da Gama saw land again only on 2 January 1499, passing before the coastal Somali city of Mogadishu, then under the influence of the Ajuran Empire in the Horn of Africa. The fleet did not make a stop, but passing before Mogadishu, the anonymous diarist of the expedition noted that it was a large city with houses of four or five storeys high and big palaces in its center and many mosques with cylindrical minarets.[26]
+
+Da Gama's fleet finally arrived in Malindi on 7 January 1499, in a terrible state – approximately half of the crew had died during the crossing, and many of the rest were afflicted with scurvy. Not having enough crewmen left standing to manage three ships, da Gama ordered the São Rafael scuttled off the East African coast, and the crew re-distributed to the remaining two ships, the São Gabriel and the Berrio.  Thereafter, the sailing was smoother.  By early March, they had arrived in Mossel Bay, and crossed the Cape of Good Hope in the opposite direction on 20 March, reaching the west African coast by 25 April.
+
+The diary record of the expedition ends abruptly here. Reconstructing from other sources, it seems they continued to Cape Verde, where Nicolau Coelho's Berrio separated from Vasco da Gama's São Gabriel and sailed on by itself.[27] The Berrio arrived in Lisbon on 10 July 1499 and Nicolau Coelho personally delivered the news to King Manuel I and the royal court, then assembled in Sintra. In the meantime, back in Cape Verde, da Gama's brother, Paulo da Gama, had fallen grievously ill. Da Gama elected to stay by his side on Santiago island and handed the São Gabriel over to his clerk, João de Sá, to take home.  The São Gabriel under Sá arrived in Lisbon sometime in late July or early August. Da Gama and his sickly brother eventually hitched a ride with a Guinea caravel returning to Portugal, but Paulo da Gama died en route. Da Gama disembarked at the Azores to bury his brother at the monastery of São Francisco in Angra do Heroismo, and lingered there for a little while in mourning. He eventually took passage on an Azorean caravel and finally arrived in Lisbon on 29 August 1499 (according to Barros),[28] or early September (8th or 18th, according to other sources). Despite his melancholic mood, da Gama was given a hero's welcome and showered with honors, including a triumphal procession and public festivities. King Manuel wrote two letters in which he described da Gama's first voyage, in July and August 1499, soon after the return of the ships. Girolamo Sernigi also wrote three letters describing da Gama's first voyage soon after the return of the expedition.
+
+The expedition had exacted a large cost – two ships and over half the men had been lost. It had also failed in its principal mission of securing a commercial treaty with Calicut. Nonetheless, the small quantities of spices and other trade goods brought back on the remaining two ships demonstrated the potential of great profit for future trade.[29] Vasco da Gama was justly celebrated for opening a direct sea route to Asia. His path would be followed up thereafter by yearly Portuguese India Armadas.
+
+The spice trade would prove to be a major asset to the Portuguese royal treasury, and other consequences soon followed. For example, da Gama's voyage had made it clear that the east coast of Africa, the Contra Costa, was essential to Portuguese interests; its ports provided fresh water, provisions, timber, and harbors for repairs, and served as a refuge where ships could wait out unfavorable weather. One significant result was the colonization of Mozambique by the Portuguese Crown.
+
+In December 1499, King Manuel I of Portugal rewarded Vasco da Gama with the town of Sines as a hereditary fief (the town his father, Estêvão, had once held as a commenda). This turned out to be a complicated affair, for Sines still belonged to the Order of Santiago. The master of the Order, Jorge de Lencastre, might have endorsed the reward – after all, da Gama was a Santiago knight, one of their own, and a close associate of Lencastre himself. But the fact that Sines was awarded by the king provoked Lencastre to refuse out of principle, lest it encourage the king to make other donations of the Order's properties.[30] Da Gama would spend the next few years attempting to take hold of Sines, an effort that would estrange him from Lencastre and eventually prompt da Gama to abandon his beloved Order of Santiago, switching over to the rival Order of Christ in 1507.
+
+In the meantime, da Gama made do with a substantial hereditary royal pension of 300,000 reis. He was awarded the noble title of Dom (lord) in perpetuity for himself, his siblings and their descendants. On 30 January 1502, da Gama was awarded the title of Almirante dos mares de Arabia, Persia, India e de todo o Oriente ("Admiral of the Seas of Arabia, Persia, India and all the Orient") – an overwrought title reminiscent of the ornate Castilian title borne by Christopher Columbus (evidently, Manuel must have reckoned that if Castile had an 'Admiral of the Ocean Seas', then surely Portugal should have one too).[31] Another royal letter, dated October 1501, gave da Gama the personal right to intervene and exercise a determining role on any future India-bound fleet.
+
+Around 1501, Vasco da Gama married Catarina de Ataíde, daughter of Álvaro de Ataíde, the alcaide-mór of Alvor (Algarve), and a prominent nobleman connected by kinship with the powerful Almeida family (Catarina was a first cousin of D. Francisco de Almeida).[32]
+
+The follow-up expedition, the Second India Armada, launched in 1500 under the command of Pedro Álvares Cabral with the mission of making a treaty with the Zamorin of Calicut and setting up a Portuguese factory in the city. However, Pedro Cabral entered into a conflict with the local Arab merchant guilds, with the result that the Portuguese factory was overrun in a riot and up to 70 Portuguese were killed. Cabral blamed the Zamorin for the incident and bombarded the city. Thus war broke out between Portugal and Calicut.
+
+Vasco da Gama invoked his royal letter to take command of the 4th India Armada, scheduled to set out in 1502, with the explicit aim of taking revenge upon the Zamorin and force him to submit to Portuguese terms.  The heavily armed fleet of fifteen ships and eight hundred men left Lisbon on 12 February 1502.  It was followed in April by another squadron of five ships led by his cousin, Estêvão da Gama (the son of Aires da Gama), which caught up to them in the Indian Ocean.  The 4th Armada was a veritable da Gama family affair.  Two of his maternal uncles, Vicente Sodré and Brás Sodré, were pre-designated to command an Indian Ocean naval patrol, while brothers-in-law Álvaro de Ataíde (brother of Vasco's wife Catarina) and Lopo Mendes de Vasconcelos (betrothed to Teresa da Gama, Vasco's sister) captained ships in the main fleet.
+
+On the outgoing voyage, da Gama's fleet opened contact with the East African gold trading port of Sofala and reduced the sultanate of Kilwa to tribute, extracting a substantial sum of gold. On reaching India in October 1502, da Gama's fleet set about capturing any Arab vessel he came across in Indian waters, most notoriously the Miri, a pilgrim ship from Mecca, whose passengers he massacred in open water.[33]  He then appeared before Calicut, demanding redress for the treatment of Cabral. While the Zamorin was willing to sign a new treaty,[34] da Gama made a call to the Hindu king to expel all Muslims from Calicut before beginning negotiations, which was turned down. The Portuguese fleet then bombarded the city for nearly two days from the sea shore, severely damaging the unfortified city. He also captured several rice vessels and cut off the crew's hands, ears and noses, dispatching them with an insulting note to the Zamorin.[35]
+
+The violent treatment meted out by da Gama quickly brought trade along the Malabar Coast of India, upon which Calicut depended, to a standstill.  But the Zamorin nonetheless refused to submit to Portuguese terms, and even ventured to hire a fleet of strong warships to challenge da Gama's armada (which da Gama managed to defeat in a naval battle before Calicut harbor). Da Gama loaded up with spices at Cochin and Cannanore, small nearby kingdoms, half-vassal and half-at-war with the Zamorin, whose alliances had been secured by prior Portuguese fleets. The 4th armada left India in early 1503. Da Gama left behind a small squadron of caravels under the command of his uncle, Vicente Sodré, to patrol the Indian coast, to continue harassing Calicut shipping, and to protect the Portuguese factories at Cochin and Cannanore from the Zamorin's inevitable reprisals.
+Vasco da Gama arrived back in Portugal in September 1503, effectively having failed in his mission to bring the Zamorin to submission. This failure, and the subsequent more galling failure of his uncle Vicente Sodré to protect the Portuguese factory in Cochin, probably counted against any further rewards. When the Portuguese king Manuel I of Portugal decided to appoint the first governor and viceroy of Portuguese India in 1505, da Gama was conspicuously overlooked, and the post given to Francisco de Almeida.
+
+On his second voyage, Vasco da Gama inflicted acts of cruelty upon competing traders and local inhabitants, which sealed his notoriety in India.[36][37] During his second voyage to Calicut, da Gama intercepted a ship of Muslim pilgrims at Madayi travelling from Calicut to Mecca. Described in detail by eyewitness Thomé Lopes and chronicler Gaspar Correia, da Gama looted the ship with over 400 pilgrims on board including 50 women, locked in the passengers, the owner and an ambassador from Egypt and burned them to death. They offered their wealth, which "could ransom all the Christian slaves in the Kingdom of Fez and much more" but were not spared. Da Gama looked on through the porthole and saw the women bringing up their gold and jewels and holding up their babies to beg for mercy.[38]
+
+After demanding the expulsion of Muslims from Calicut to the Hindu Zamorin, the latter sent the high priest Talappana Namboothiri (the very same person who conducted da Gama to the Zamorin's chamber during his much celebrated first visit to Calicut in May 1498) for talks. Da Gama called him a spy, ordered the priests' lips and ears to be cut off and after sewing a pair of dog's ears to his head, sent him away.[36]
+
+For the next two decades, Vasco da Gama lived out a quiet life, unwelcome in the royal court and sidelined from Indian affairs.  His attempts to return to the favor of Manuel I (including switching over to the Order of Christ in 1507), yielded little. Almeida, the larger-than-life Afonso de Albuquerque and, later on, Albergaria and Sequeira, were the king's preferred point men for India.
+
+After Ferdinand Magellan defected to the Crown of Castile in 1518, Vasco da Gama threatened to do the same, prompting the king to undertake steps to retain him in Portugal and avoid the embarrassment of losing his own "Admiral of the Indies" to Spain.[39] In 1519, after years of ignoring his petitions, King Manuel I finally hurried to give Vasco da Gama a feudal title, appointing him the first Count of Vidigueira, a count title created by a royal decree issued in Évora on 29 December, after a complicated agreement with Dom Jaime, Duke of Braganza, who ceded him on payment the towns of Vidigueira and Vila dos Frades. The decree granted Vasco da Gama and his heirs all the revenues and privileges related,[40] thus establishing da Gama as the first Portuguese count who was not born with royal blood.[41]
+
+After the death of King Manuel I in late 1521, his son and successor, King John III of Portugal set about reviewing the Portuguese government overseas. Turning away from the old Albuquerque clique (now represented by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira), John III looked for a fresh start. Vasco da Gama re-emerged from his political wilderness as an important adviser to the new king's appointments and strategy. Seeing the new Spanish threat to the Maluku Islands as the priority, Vasco da Gama advised against the obsession with Arabia that had pervaded much of the Manueline period, and continued to be the dominant concern of Duarte de Menezes, then-governor of Portuguese India. Menezes also turned out to be incompetent and corrupt, subject to numerous complaints.  As a result, John III decided to appoint Vasco da Gama himself to replace Menezes, confident that the magic of his name and memory of his deeds might better impress his authority on Portuguese India, and manage the transition to a new government and new strategy.
+
+By his appointment letter of February 1524, John III granted Vasco da Gama the privileged title of "Viceroy", being only the second Portuguese governor to enjoy that title (the first was Francisco de Almeida in 1505).[42] His second son, Estêvão da Gama was simultaneously appointed Capitão-mor do Mar da Índia ('Captain-major of the Indian Sea', commander of the Indian Ocean naval patrol fleet), to replace Duarte's brother, Luís de Menezes. As a final condition, Gama secured from John III of Portugal the commitment to appoint all his sons successively as Portuguese captains of Malacca.
+
+Setting out in April 1524, with a fleet of fourteen ships, Vasco da Gama took as his flagship the famous large carrack Santa Catarina do Monte Sinai on her last journey to India, along with two of his sons, Estêvão and Paulo.  After a troubled journey[clarification needed] (four or five of the ships were lost en route), he arrived in India in September.  Vasco da Gama immediately invoked his high viceregent powers to impose a new order in Portuguese India, replacing all the old officials with his own appointments. But Gama contracted malaria not long after arriving, and died in the city of Cochin on Christmas Eve in 1524, three months after his arrival.  As per royal instructions, da Gama was succeeded as governor of India by one the captains who had come with him, Henrique de Menezes (no relation to Duarte).  Da Gama's sons Estêvão and Paulo immediately lost their posts and joined the returning fleet of early 1525 (along with the dismissed Duarte de Menezes and Luís de Menezes).[43]
+
+Vasco da Gama's body was first buried at St. Francis Church, which was located at Fort Kochi in the city of Kochi, but his remains were returned to Portugal in 1539. The body of Vasco da Gama was re-interred in Vidigueira in a casket decorated with gold and jewels.
+
+The Monastery of the Hieronymites, in Belém, which would become the necropolis of the Portuguese royal dynasty of Aviz, was erected in the early 1500s near the launch point of Vasco da Gama's first journey, and its construction funded by a tax on the profits of the yearly Portuguese India Armadas.  In 1880, da Gama's remains and those of the poet Luís de Camões (who celebrated da Gama's first voyage in his 1572 epic poem, The Lusiad), were moved to new carved tombs in the nave of the monastery's church, only a few meters away from the tombs of the kings Manuel I and John III, whom da Gama had served.
+
+Vasco da Gama and his wife, Catarina de Ataíde, had six sons and one daughter:[44]
+
+His male line issue became extinct in 1747, though the title went through female line.[clarification needed]
+
+Over his numerous years serving the Portuguese crown, da Gama was rewarded with many different titles, distinctions, and offices:
+
+Vasco da Gama is one of the most famous and celebrated explorers from the Age of Discovery. As much as anyone after Henry the Navigator, he was responsible for Portugal's success as an early colonising power. Beside the fact of the first voyage itself, it was his astute mix of politics and war on the other side of the world that placed Portugal in a prominent position in Indian Ocean trade. Following da Gama's initial voyage, the Portuguese crown realized that securing outposts on the eastern coast of Africa would prove vital to maintaining national trade routes to the Far East.
+
+However, his fame is tempered by such incidents and attitudes as displayed in the notorious Pilgrim Ship Incident previously discussed.
+
+The Portuguese national epic, the Lusíadas of Luís Vaz de Camões, largely concerns Vasco da Gama's voyages.[45]
+
+The 1865 grand opera L'Africaine: Opéra en Cinq Actes, composed by Giacomo Meyerbeer from a libretto by Eugène Scribe, prominently includes the character of Vasco da Gama. The events depicted, however, are fictitious. Meyerbeer's working title for the opera was Vasco da Gama. A 1989 production of the opera by the San Francisco Opera featured noted tenor Plácido Domingo in the role of da Gama.[46] The 19th-century composer Louis-Albert Bourgault-Ducoudray composed an eponymous 1872 opera based on da Gama's life and exploits at sea.
+
+The port city of Vasco da Gama in Goa is named after him, as is the crater Vasco da Gama on the Moon. There are three football clubs in Brazil (including Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama) and Vasco Sports Club in Goa that were also named after him. There exists a church in Kochi, Kerala called Vasco da Gama Church, and a private residence on the island of Saint Helena. The suburb of Vasco in Cape Town also honours him.
+
+A few places in Lisbon's Parque das Nações are named after the explorer, such as the Vasco da Gama Bridge, Vasco da Gama Tower and the Centro Comercial Vasco da Gama shopping centre.[47] The Oceanário in the Parque das Nações has a mascot of a cartoon diver with the name of "Vasco", who is named after the explorer.[48]
+
+Vasco da Gama was the only explorer on the final pool of Os Grandes Portugueses. Although the final shortlist featured other Age of Discovery related people, they were not actually explorers nor navigators for any matter.
+
+The Portuguese Navy has a class of frigates named after him. There are three Vasco da Gama class frigates in total, of which the first one also bears his name.
+
+South African musician Hugh Masekela recorded an anti-colonialist song entitled "Colonial Man", which contains the lyrics "Vasco da Gama was no friend of mine", and another song entitled "Vasco da Gama (The Sailor Man)". Both songs were included in his 1976 album Colonial Man.
+
+Vasco da Gama appears as an antagonist in the Indian film Urumi. The film, directed by Santosh Sivan, depicts a failed assassination attempt on da Gama by an Indian.
+
+In March 2016, archaeologists working off the coast of Oman identified a shipwreck believed to be that of the Esmeralda from da Gama's 1502–1503 fleet. The wreck was initially discovered in 1998. Later underwater excavations took place between 2013 and 2015 through a partnership between the Oman Ministry of Heritage and Culture and Blue Water Recoveries Ltd., a shipwreck recovery company. The vessel was identified through such artifacts as a "Portuguese coin minted for trade with India (one of only two coins of this type known to exist) and stone cannonballs engraved with what appear to be the initials of Vincente Sodré, da Gama's maternal uncle and the commander of the Esmeralda."[49]

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+Vaslav (or Vatslav) Nijinsky (/ˌvɑːtslɑːf nɪˈ(d)ʒɪnski/; Russian: Ва́цлав Фоми́ч Нижи́нский, tr. Václav Fomíč Nižínskij, IPA: [ˈvatsləf fɐˈmʲitɕ nʲɪˈʐɨnskʲɪj]; Polish: Wacław Niżyński, IPA: [ˈvatswaf ɲiˈʐɨj̃skʲi]; 12 March 1889[1][2]/1890[3] – 8 April 1950) was a Polish ballet dancer and choreographer cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century.[3] Born in Kiev to Polish parents, Nijinsky grew up in Imperial Russia but considered himself to be Polish.[4] He was celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could dance en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time[5] and was admired for his seemingly gravity-defying leaps.
+
+Nijinsky was introduced to dance by his parents, who were senior dancers with the travelling Setov opera company, and his early childhood was spent touring with the company. His older brother Stanislav and younger sister Bronislava "Bronia" Nijinska also became dancers; Bronia also became a choreographer, working closely with him for much of his career. At age nine Nijinsky was accepted at the Imperial Ballet School (now known as the Mariinsky School) in St. Petersburg, the pre-eminent ballet school in the world. In 1907, he graduated and became a member of the Imperial Ballet, starting at the rank of coryphée instead of in the corps de ballet, already taking starring roles.
+
+In 1909 he joined the Ballets Russes, a new ballet company started by Sergei Diaghilev. The impresario took the Russian ballets to Paris, where high-quality productions such as those of the Imperial Ballet were not known. Nijinsky became the company's star male dancer, causing an enormous stir amongst audiences whenever he performed. In ordinary life he appeared unremarkable and was withdrawn in conversation. Diaghilev and Nijinsky became lovers; the Ballets Russes gave Nijinsky the chance to expand his art and experiment with dance and choreography; he created new directions for male dancers while becoming internationally famous.
+
+In 1912 Nijinsky began choreographing original ballets, including L'après-midi d'un faune (1912) to music by Claude Debussy, Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) to music by Igor Stravinsky, Jeux (1913), and Till Eulenspiegel (1916).  Faune, considered one of the first modern ballets, caused controversy because of its sexually suggestive final scene. At the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps fights broke out in the audience between those who loved and hated this startling new style of ballet and music. Nijinsky originally conceived Jeux as a flirtatious interaction among three males, although Diaghilev insisted it be danced by one male and two females.
+
+In 1913, Nijinsky married Hungarian Romola de Pulszky while on tour with the company in South America. The marriage caused a break with Diaghilev, who soon dismissed Nijinsky from the company. The couple had two daughters together, Kyra and Tamara Nijinska.
+
+With no alternative employer available, Nijinsky tried to form his own company, but this was not a success. He was interned in Budapest, Hungary, during World War I, under house arrest until 1916. After intervention by Diaghilev and several international leaders, he was allowed to go to New York for an American tour with the Ballets Russes. Nijinsky became increasingly mentally unstable with the stresses of having to manage tours himself and deprived of opportunities to dance.[citation needed] After a tour of South America in 1917, and due to travel difficulties imposed by the war, the family settled in St. Moritz, Switzerland. His mental condition deteriorated; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919 and committed to a mental asylum. For the next 30 years he was in and out of institutions, never dancing in public again.
+
+Vaslav Nijinsky was born in 1889[1][2] or 1890[3] in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), as Wacław Niżyński, to ethnic Polish parents, touring dancers Tomasz Niżyński (b. 7 March 1862) and Eleonora Bereda (b. 28 December 1856). Nijinsky was christened in Warsaw. He identified himself as Polish although he grew up in the interior of Russia with his parents and he had difficulty speaking Polish.[6]
+
+Eleanora, along with her two brothers and two sisters, was orphaned while still a child. She started to earn a living as an extra in Warsaw's Grand Theatre Ballet (Polish: Teatr Wielki), becoming a full member of the company at age thirteen. In 1868 her talent was spotted and she moved to Kiev as a solo dancer. Tomasz Niżyński also attended the Wielki Theatre school, becoming a soloist there. At age 18 he accepted a soloist contract with the Odessa Theatre. The two met, married in May 1884 and settled into a career with the traveling Setov opera company. Tomasz was premier danseur, and Eleanora a soloist. Eleanora continued to tour and dance while having three children, sons Stanislav (b. 29 December 1886 in Tiflis) and Vaslav; and daughter Bronislava ('Bronia', b. 8 January 1891 in Minsk). She suffered from depression, which may have been a genetic vulnerability shared in a different form by her son Vaslav.[1] Both boys received training from their father and appeared in an amateur Hopak production in Odessa in 1894.[7]
+
+After Josef Setov died about 1894, the company disbanded. Thomas attempted to run his own company, but was not successful. He and his family became itinerant dancers, the children appearing in the Christmas show at Nizhny Novgorod. In 1897 Thomas and Eleanora separated after Thomas had fallen in love with another dancer, Rumiantseva, while touring in Finland. Eleanora moved to 20 Mokhovaya Street in St Petersburg with her children. She persuaded a friend from the Wielki Theatre, Victor Stanislas Gillert, who was at the time teaching at the Imperial Ballet School, to help get Vaslav into the school. He arranged for the noted teacher Enrico Cecchetti to sponsor the application. Bronia entered the school two years after Vaslav. Their older brother Stanislav had suffered a fall from a window when young and seemed to have suffered some brain damage. Vaslav and Bronia, just two years apart, became very close as they grew.[8] As he got older, Stanislav became increasingly mentally unstable and would have fierce tantrums. He was admitted to an asylum for the insane in 1902.[9]
+
+In 1900, Nijinsky joined the Imperial Ballet School, where he initially studied dance under Sergei Legat and his brother Nikolai. He studied mime under Pavel Gerdt; all three men were principal dancers at the Imperial Russian Ballet. At the end of the one year probationary period, his teachers agreed upon Nijinsky's exceptional dancing ability and he was confirmed as a boarder at the school. He appeared in supporting parts in classical ballets such as Faust, as a mouse in The Nutcracker, a page in Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, and won the Didelot scholarship. During his first year, his academic studies had covered work he had already done, so his relatively poor results had not been so much noted. He did well in subjects which interested him, but not otherwise.
+
+In 1902 he was warned that only the excellence of his dancing had prevented his expulsion from the school for poor results. This laxity was compounded through his school years by Nijinsky's frequently being chosen as an extra in various productions, forcing him to be away from classrooms for rehearsals and to spend nights at performances. He was teased for being Polish, and nicknamed "Japonczek" for his faintly Japanese looks at a time Russia was at war with Japan. Some classmates were envious and resented his outstanding dancing ability. In 1901 one of the class deliberately caused him to fall, leading to his suffering a concussion and being in a coma for four days.[10]
+
+Mikhail Oboukhov became his teacher in 1902, and awarded him the highest grade he had ever given to a student. He was given student parts in command performances in front of the Tsar of Paquita, The Nutcracker and The Little Humpbacked Horse. In music he studied piano, flute, balalaika and accordion, receiving good marks. He had a good ability to hear and play music on the piano, though his sight reading was relatively poor. Against this, his behaviour was sometimes boisterous and wild, resulting in his expulsion from the school in 1903 for an incident involving students shooting at the hats of passers-by with catapults while being driven to the Mariinsky Theatre in carriages. He was readmitted to the school as a non-resident after a sound beating and restored to his previous position after a month's probation.[11]
+
+In 1904, at the age of 14, Nijinsky was selected by the great choreographer Marius Petipa to dance a principal role in what proved to be the choreographer's last ballet, La Romance d'un Bouton de rose et d'un Papillon. The work was never performed due to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War.
+
+On Sunday, 9 January 1905, Nijinsky was caught in the Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg, where a group of petitioners led by Father Gapon attempted to present their petition to the Czar. Soldiers fired upon the crowd, leading to an estimated 1000 casualties. Nijinsky was caught in the crowd on Nevsky Prospect and propelled toward the Winter Palace. Imperial cavalry troops charged the crowd, leaving him with a head wound. The following day, he returned to the scene with a friend whose sister was missing. She was never found.[12]
+
+Nijinsky became calmer and more serious as he grew older, but continued to make few friends, which continued through his life[clarification needed]. His reserve and apparent dullness made him unappealing to others except when he danced.[13]
+
+The 1905 annual student show included a pas de deux from The Persian Market, danced by Nijinsky and Sofia Fedorova. Oboukhov amended the dance to show off Nijinsky's abilities, drawing gasps and then spontaneous applause in the middle of the performance with his first jump.
+
+In 1906, he danced in the Mariinsky production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, in a ballet sequence choreographed by Michel Fokine. He was congratulated by the director of the Imperial Ballet and offered a place in the company although he was a year from graduation. Nijinsky chose to continue his studies. He tried his hand at choreography, with a children's opera, Cinderella, with music by another student, Boris Asafyev. At Christmas, he played the King of the Mice in The Nutcracker. At his graduation performance in April 1907, he partnered Elizaveta Gerdt, in a pas de deux choreographed by Fokine. He was congratulated by prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska of the Imperial Ballet, who invited him to partner her. His future career with the Imperial Ballet was guaranteed to begin at the mid-rank level of coryphée, rather than in the corps de ballet. He graduated second in his class, with top marks in dancing, art and music.[15]
+
+Nijinsky spent his summer after graduation rehearsing and then performing at Krasnoe Selo in a makeshift theatre with an audience mainly of army officers. These performances frequently included members of the Imperial family and other nobility, whose support and interest were essential to a career. Each dancer who performed before the Tsar received a gold watch inscribed with the Imperial Eagle. Buoyed by Nijinsky's salary, his new earnings from giving dance classes, and his sister Bronia's employment with the ballet company, the family moved to a larger flat on Torgovaya Ulitsa. The new season at the Mariinsky theatre began in September 1907, with Nijinsky employed as coryphée on a salary of 780 roubles per year.[16]
+
+He appeared with Sedova, Lydia Kyasht and Karsavina. Kchessinska partnered him in La Fille Mal Gardée, where he succeeded in an atypical role for him involving humour and flirtation. Designer Alexandre Benois proposed a ballet based upon Le Pavillon d'Armide, choreographed by Fokine to music by Nikolai Tcherepnin. Nijinsky had a minor role, but it allowed him to show off his technical abilities with leaps and pirouettes. The partnership of Fokine, Benois and Nijinsky was repeated throughout his career. Shortly after, he upstaged his own performance, appearing in the Bluebird pas de deux from the Sleeping Beauty, partnering Lydia Kyasht. The Mariinsky audience was deeply familiar with the piece, but exploded with enthusiasm for his performance and his appearing to fly, an effect he continued to have on audiences with the piece during his career.[17]
+
+In subsequent years, Nijinsky was given several soloist roles at the Mariinsky. In 1910, Mathilde Kschessinska selected Nijinsky to dance in a revival of Petipa's Le Talisman. Nijinsky created a sensation in the role of the Wind God Vayou.
+
+A turning point for Nijinsky was his meeting the Russian Sergei Diaghilev, a celebrated and highly innovative producer of ballet and opera, as well as art exhibitions. He concentrated on promoting Russian visual and musical art abroad,[18] particularly in Paris. The 1908 season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success, leading him to plan a new tour for 1909 with a new name for his company, the now famous Ballets Russes. He worked closely with choreographer Michel Fokine and artist Léon Bakst, and later with other contemporary artists and composers. Nijinsky and Diaghilev became lovers for a time,[19][20] and Diaghilev was deeply involved in directing and managing Nijinsky's career.
+
+During the winter of 1908/9, Diaghilev started planning for the 1909 Paris tour of opera and ballet. He collected a team including designers Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst, painters Nicholas Roerich and Konstantin Korovin, composers Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Tcherepnin, regisseurs Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander Sanine and other ballet enthusiasts. As a friend and as a leading dancer, Nijinsky was part of the group. His sister wrote that he felt intimidated by the illustrious and aristocratic company. Fokine was asked to start rehearsals for the existing Le Pavillon d'Armide and for Les Sylphides, an expanded version of his Chopiniana. Fokine favoured expanding the existing Une Nuit d'Egypte for a ballet.
+
+Diaghilev accepted the idea of an Egyptian theme, but he required a comprehensive rewrite based on new music, by which Fokine created a new ballet Cléopâtre. To round out the program, they needed another ballet. Without sufficient time to compose a new work, they decided on a suite of popular dances, to be called Le Festin. Anna Pavlova, Karsavina and Nijinsky were chosen as principal dancers. Fokine insisted that Ida Rubenstein would appear as Cleopatra, and Nijinsky insisted that his sister should have a part. Fokine noted Nijinsky's great ability at learning a dance and precisely what a choreographer wanted. Diaghilev departed for Paris in early 1909 to make arrangements, which were immediately complicated on the day of his return, 22 February 1909, by the death of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch, who had sponsored an application by Diaghilev for an imperial subsidy of 100,000 roubles for the tour.[21]
+
+Rehearsals started on 2 April at the Hermitage Theatre, which the company had been granted special permission to use, along with loans of scenery. No sooner had rehearsals started that the permission was withdrawn, disappearing as had the imperial subsidy. Diaghilev managed to raise some money in Russia, but he had to rely significantly on Gabriel Astruc, who had been arranging theatres and publicity on behalf of the company in France, to also provide finance. Plans to include Opera had to be dropped because of the lack of finances, and logistical difficulties in obtaining necessary scenery at short notice and for free.[22]
+
+Diaghilev and Nijinsky travelled to Paris ahead of the rest of the company. Initially Nijinsky stayed at the Hôtel Daunou. He moved to the Hôtel de Hollande together with Diaghilev and his secretary, Alexis Mavrine, before the arrival of the others. Members of the company had noticed Diaghilev keeping a particularly proprietorial eye on Nijinsky during rehearsals in Russia. They took the travel arrangements and accommodation as confirmation of a relationship. Prince Lvov had visited Nijinsky's mother in St Petersburg, telling her tearfully that he would no longer be taking a special interest in her son, but he advanced a significant sum to Diaghilev towards the tour's expenses. Mavrine was known to have been Diaghilev's lover, but left the tour together with Olga Pedorova shortly after it had begun.[23]
+
+The season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success. The Paris seasons of the Ballets Russes were an artistic and social sensation; setting trends in art, dance, music and fashion for the next decade. Nijinsky's unique talent showed in Fokine's pieces such as Le Pavillon d'Armide (music by Nikolai Tcherepnin); Cleopatra (music by Anton Arensky and other Russian composers) and a divertissement La Fête. His expressive execution of a pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky) was a tremendous success.
+
+In 1910, he performed in Giselle, and Fokine's ballets Carnaval and Scheherazade (based on the orchestral suite by Rimsky-Korsakov). His portrayal of "Petrushka," the puppet with a soul, was a remarkable display of his expressive ability to portray characters. His partnership with Tamara Karsavina, also of the Mariinsky Theatre, was legendary, and they have been called the "most exemplary artists of the time".[24]
+
+In January 1911 he danced in Giselle at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg for the Imperial Ballet, with the Tsarina Maria Feodorovna in attendance. His costume, which had been designed by Benois and used in Paris before, caused a scandal, as he danced in tights without the then-common trousers. He refused to apologize and was dismissed from the Imperial Ballet. It is possible that he was not altogether unhappy about this development, as he was now free to concentrate on the Ballet Russes.[25]
+
+Nijinsky took the creative reins and choreographed ballets which pushed boundaries and stirred controversy. His ballets were L'après-midi d'un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun, based on Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune) (1912); Jeux (1913); and Till Eulenspiegel (1916). These introduced his audiences to the new direction of modern dance. As the title character in L'après-midi d'un faune, in the final tableau, he mimed masturbation with the scarf of a nymph, causing a scandal; he was defended by such artists as Auguste Rodin, Odilon Redon and Marcel Proust. Nijinsky's new trends in dance caused a riotous reaction at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées when they premiered in Paris.
+
+In The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), with music by Igor Stravinsky (1913), Nijinsky created choreography that exceeded the limits of traditional ballet and propriety. The radically angular movements expressed the heart of Stravinsky's radically modern score. Violence broke out in the audience as The Rite of Spring premiered. The theme of the ballet, based on pagan myths, was a young maiden who sacrificed herself by dancing until she died. The theme, the difficult and challenging music of Stravinsky, and Nijinsky's choreography, led to a violent uproar; Diaghilev was pleased with the notoriety.[26]
+
+Nijinsky's work in choreographing ballets had proved controversial. They were time-consuming to rehearse and badly received by critics. Diaghilev asked him to begin preparing a new ballet, La Légende de Joseph, based on the Bible. Aside from Nijinsky's difficulties, Diaghilev came under pressure from financial backers and theatre owners who wanted productions more in the style of previous successful work. Although Diaghilev had become unhappy with Fokine's work, thinking he had lost his originality, he returned to him for two new ballets, including Joseph. Relations between Diaghilev and Nijinsky had deteriorated under the stress of Nijinsky's becoming principal choreographer and his pivotal role in the company's financial success. Diaghilev could not face Nijinsky to tell him personally that he would no longer be choreographing the ballet Joseph, but instead asked his sister Bronia Nijinska to deliver the bad news.
+
+The company was to embark on a tour of South America in August 1913. Nijinska, who had always worked closely with her brother and supported him, could not accompany the tour because she had married in July 1912 and become pregnant. In October 1912 their father had died while on tour with his dance company, causing another stress for the siblings. Diaghilev did not accompany the South American tour, claiming he had been told that he would die on the ocean. Others have suggested the reason had more to do with wanting to spend time away from Nijinsky and enjoy a holiday in Venice, "where perhaps adventures with pretty dark-eyed boys awaited him".[27] Nijinsky set sail on a 21-day sea voyage in a state of turmoil and without the people who had been his closest advisers in recent years.[28]
+
+The tour party included Romola de Pulszky, whose father Count Charles Pulszky was a Hungarian politician, and mother Emilia Márkus was a noted actress. In March 1912 the recently engaged Romola was taken to see the Ballets Russes in Budapest by her prospective mother-in-law and was greatly impressed. Nijinsky had not been performing, but she returned the following day and saw him: "An electric shock passed through the entire audience. Intoxicated, entranced, gasping for breath, we followed this superhuman being... the power, the featherweight lightness, the steel-like strength, the suppleness of his movements.."[29] Romola broke off her engagement and began following the Ballets Russes across Europe, attending every performance she could. Nijinsky was difficult to approach, being always accompanied by a 'minder'. However, Romola befriended Adolf Bolm, who had previously visited her mother, thereby gaining access to the company and backstage. She and Nijinsky shared no common language; she spoke French but he knew only a little, so many of their early conversations involved an interpreter. When first introduced to her, he gained the impression she was a Hungarian prima ballerina and was friendly. Discovering his mistake, he ignored her thereafter.[30]
+
+Romola did not give up. She persuaded Diaghilev that her amorous interests lay with Bolm, that she was rich and interested in supporting ballet. He allowed her to take ballet lessons with Enrico Cecchetti, who accompanied the troupe coaching the dancers. Nijinsky objected to her taking class with the professionals. Cechetti warned her against becoming involved with Nijinsky (describing him as "like a sun that pours forth light but never warms"[31]), but Diaghilev's endorsement meant that Nijinsky paid her some attention. Romola took every opportunity to be near Nijinsky, booking train compartments or cabins close to his. She was likely warned that he was homosexual by Marie Rambert, whom Romola befriended and who was also in love with Nijinsky.[32] As a devout Catholic, she prayed for his conversion to heterosexuality.[33][34] She referred to him as Le Petit, and wanted to have his child.[33]
+
+On board ship, Romola had a cabin in first class, which allowed her to keep a watch on Nijinsky's door, while most of the company were exiled to second class. She befriended his masseur and was rewarded with a rundown on his musculature. Determined to take every opportunity, she succeeded in spending more and more time in his company. The unexpected friendliness was noticed by Baron de Gunsbourg, an investor in the Ballets Russes, who had been tasked with keeping an eye on the company. Instead of reporting to Diaghilev on what was occurring, Gunsbourg agreed to act on Nijinsky's behalf in presenting a proposal of marriage to Romola. Romola thought a cruel joke was being played on her, and ran off to her cabin crying. However, Nijinsky asked her again, in broken French and mime, and she accepted. Although Gunsbourg had a financial interest in Ballets Russes, he was also interested in forming his own company, and a split between Diaghilev and his star dancer might have presented him with an opportunity.[35]
+
+When the ship stopped at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the couple went straight to buy wedding rings. Adolph Bolm warned Romola against proceeding, saying "It will ruin your life".[36] Gunsbourg hurried to arrange the marriage, getting permission by telegram from Romola's mother. A quick wedding could take place once the ship arrived at Buenos Aires, Argentina; the couple were married on 10 September 1913 and the event was announced to the world's press. Back in Europe, Diaghilev "gave himself to a wild orgy of dissipation...Sobbing shamelessly in Russian despair, he bellowed accusations and recriminations; he cursed Nijinsky's ingratitude, Romola's treachery, and his own stupidity".[37]
+
+As the company was due to start performing immediately, the couple had no honeymoon. A few days after the marriage, Nijinsky tried to teach Romola some ballet, but she was not interested. "I asked her to learn dancing because for me dancing was the highest thing in the world", "I realized that I had made a mistake, but the mistake was irreparable. I had put myself in the hands of someone who did not love me."[38] Romola and Nijinsky did not share accommodations until after the season was safely underway, when she was eventually invited to join him in separate bedrooms in his hotel suite. She "almost cried with thankfulness" that he showed no interest in making love on their wedding night.[39]
+
+On returning to Paris, Nijinsky anticipated returning to work on new ballets, but Diaghilev did not meet him.  Eventually he sent a telegram to Nijinsky informing him that he was no longer employed by the Ballets Russes. Nijinsky had missed a performance in Rio when Romola was ill, and only in the case of a dancer's own illness, certified by a doctor, was the dancer allowed to miss a performance. Diaghilev also usually dismissed dancers who married. This was perhaps beside the point, since Nijinsky had never had a contract, nor wages, all his expenses having been paid by Diaghilev. His mother also received an allowance of 500 francs per month (other senior dancers had received 200,000 francs for a six-month season).[40] Fokine was re-employed by Diaghilev as choreographer and premier danseur, accepting on the condition that none of Nijinsky's ballets would be performed. Leonide Massine joined the company as the new attractive young lead for Joseph.[41]
+
+The Ballets Russes had lost its most famous and crowd-pulling dancer, but Nijinsky's position was even more difficult. He appears not to have appreciated that his marriage would result in a break with Diaghilev's company, although many others immediately expected this would be the result. The Ballets Russes and the Imperial Russian ballet were the pre-eminent ballet companies in the world and uniquely had permanent companies of dancers staging full-scale new productions. Nijinsky now was "an experimental artist. He needed roles that would extend his gifts, and above all, he needed to choreograph. For these things he did need the Ballets Russes, which at that time was the only forward-thinking ballet company in the world."[1]
+
+Not only had Nijinsky previously left the Imperial ballet on doubtful terms, but he had not been granted exemption from compulsory military service in Russia, something that was normally given to its dancers. He could find only two offers, one a position with the Paris Opera, which would not start for more than a year; the other to take a ballet company to London for eight weeks to perform as part of a mixed bill at the Palace Theatre. Anna Pavlova sent him a caustic telegram, reminding him that he had disapproved some years before when she had appeared there in vaudeville.[42] On another occasion, he had told a reporter, "One thing I am determined not to do, and that is to go on the music-hall stage".[43]
+
+Bronia was still in St Petersburg following the birth of her child, and Nijinsky asked her to be part of his new company. She was glad to do so, being concerned at how well he could cope without his customary supporters. When she arrived, there was friction between her and Romola: Bronia was critical that the new central figure in her brother's life showed so little organisational ability; Romola resented the closeness between brother and sister both in their shared language and in ability to work together in dance. The final company had only three experienced dancers: Nijinsky and Bronia plus her husband. Scenery was late, Fokine refused to allow the use of his ballets, there was inadequate time to rehearse, and Nijinsky became "more and more nervous and distraught".[44] Diaghilev came to the opening night in March 1914.[45]
+
+The audience divided between those who had never seen ballet, who objected to the delays necessary for scene changes, and those who had seen Nijinsky before, who generally felt something was lacking ("He no longer danced like a god"[46]). On another night, when the orchestra played music during the scene change so as to calm the audience, Nijinsky, having expressly banned this, flew into a rage and was discovered half dressed and screaming in his dressing room. He had to be calmed down enough to perform. He jumped on a stagehand who had flirted with Romola ("I had never seen Vaslav like that"[47]). A new program was to be performed for the third week, but a packed house had to be told that Nijinsky was ill with a high temperature and could not perform. He missed three days, and the management had had enough. The show was cancelled, and Nijinsky was left with a considerable financial loss. Newspapers reported a nervous breakdown.[48] His physical vulnerability had been aggravated by the great stress.[1]
+
+Romola was pregnant, so the couple returned to Budapest, Austro-Hungary, to his mother-in-law Emilia Markus' house. Their daughter Kyra was born on 19 June 1914. With the start of the Great War (World War I), Nijinsky was classified as an enemy Russian citizen. He was confined to house arrest in Budapest and could not leave the country. The war made problems for the Ballets Russes too; the company had difficulty recruiting dancers and Fokine returned to Russia.
+
+Diaghilev started negotiations in October 1914 for Nijinsky to work again for the company, but could not obtain release of the dancer until 1916. The complex negotiations included a prisoner exchange with the United States, and agreement that Nijinsky would dance and choreograph for the Ballets Russes' tour. King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Queen Alexandra of Denmark, Dowager Russian Empress Marie Feodorovna, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, Pope Benedict XV and President Wilson at the urging of Otto Kahn[49] all interceded on his behalf.[50]
+
+Nijinsky arrived in New York on 4 April 1916. The tour had already started in January with a number of problems: Faun was considered too sexually explicit and had to be amended; Scheherazade, including an orgy between blacks and whites, did not appeal to Americans; and ballet aficionados were calling for Nijinsky. Romola took over negotiations, demanding that Diaghilev pay Nijinsky for the years he had been unpaid by the Ballets Russes before he would dance in New York. This was settled after another week's delay by a downpayment of $13,000 against the $90,000 claimed, plus a fee of $1000 for each performance in America.[51]
+
+Negotiations with Otto Kahn of the New York Metropolitan Opera led to an additional tour of the US being agreed to for the autumn. Kahn did not get on with Diaghilev and insisted Nijinsky should manage the tour. Massine and Diaghilev returned to Europe, leaving Nijinsky to dance and manage a company of more than 100 for a salary of $60,000. Nijinsky was also to prepare two new ballets. Rehearsals for Till Eulenspiegel did not go well; Nijinsky's poor communication skills meant that he could not explain to dancers what he wanted. He would explode into rages. Pierre Monteux, the conductor, refused to take part in performances because he did not want to be associated with failure. Nijinsky twisted his ankle, postponing the season's opening for a week and his own appearance by two weeks. Rehearsals for Eulenspiegel had not been completed, and it had to be improvised during its first performance. It was still well received, and Nijinsky's performance in Faun  was considered better than Massine's. As the tour progressed, Nijinsky's performances received steady acclaim, although his management was haphazard and contributed to the tour's loss of $250,000.[52]
+
+His last public performance was during a South American tour, with pianist Arthur Rubinstein in a benefit in Montevideo for the Red Cross on 30 September 1917, at age twenty-eight. Rubinstein wept when he saw Nijinsky's confusion that night. It was around this time that signs of his schizophrenia had become apparent to members of the company, including Bourman.[53] Nijinsky and his wife moved to St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he tried to recover from the stresses of the tour.[1] Also in 1917, Bronia and Vaslav lost their older brother Stanislav, who died in a hospital in Petrograd. Accounts vary as to the cause of death. He had been institutionalized for many years.[52]
+
+Nijinsky's diary, which he wrote from January to early March 1919, expressed his great fear of hospitalization and confinement. He filled it with drawings of eyes, as he felt himself under scrutiny, by his wife, a young doctor Frenkel, and others. Finally Romola arranged a consultation in Zurich with the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1919, asking her mother and stepfather for help in getting Nijinsky there. His fears were realized; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to Burghölzli. After a few days, he was transferred to the Bellevue Sanatorium, "a luxurious and humane establishment directed at that time by Ludwig Binswanger."[1] In 1920, Nijinsky's second daughter Tamara was born. She never saw him dance in public.
+
+For the next 30 years, Nijinsky was in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. During 1945 after the end of the war, after Romola had moved with him to Vienna, he encountered a group of Russian soldiers in an encampment, playing traditional folk tunes on a balalaika and other instruments. Inspired by the music and hearing a language from his youth, he started dancing, astounding the men with his skills. Drinking and laughing with them helped him start to speak again. He had maintained long periods of almost absolute silence during his years of illness. His wife Romola had protected them by staying for a time at the border of Hungary and Austria, trying to keep out of major areas of fighting.[54]
+
+From 1947 Nijinsky lived in Surrey, England with his wife. He died from kidney failure at a clinic in London on 8 April 1950 and was buried in London.[55][56] In 1953 his body was moved to Montmartre Cemetery in Paris and reinterred beside the graves of Gaétan Vestris, Théophile Gautier, and Emma Livry.[57]
+
+Nijinsky's daughter Kyra married the Ukrainian conductor Igor Markevitch, and they had a son named Vaslav. The marriage ended in divorce.
+
+His second daughter Tamara Nijinsky grew up with her maternal grandmother, never getting to see her father dance. Later she served as Executive Director of the Vaslav & Romola Nijinsky Foundation, founded by her mother, to preserve art and writing associated with her parents, and her father's dances.
+
+Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks in 1919 he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum to Zurich. It reflected the decline of his household into chaos.[58] He elevated feeling and action in his writing. It combined elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate.
+Discovering the three notebooks of the diary years later, plus another with letters to a variety of people, his wife published a bowdlerized version of the diary in 1936, translated into English by Jennifer Mattingly.[1] She deleted about 40 per cent of the diary, especially references to bodily functions, sex, and homosexuality, recasting Nijinsky as an "involuntary homosexual." She also removed some of his more unflattering references to her and others close to their household. She moved sections around, obscuring the "march of events" obvious in the original version and toning down some of the odder portions, including trying to distinguish between sections in which he writes as God and others as himself (in the original all such sections are written the same.)[1]
+
+In 1995, the first unexpurgated edition of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky was published, edited by New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella and translated by Kyril FitzLyon.[58] Acocella notes that the diary displays three elements common to schizophrenia: "delusions, disorganized language, and disorganized behavior."[1] It also demonstrates that Nijinsky's thought was suffering from a "breakdown in selective attention;" his associations would connect in ever-widening circles.[1] A New York Times review said, "How ironic that in erasing the real ugliness of his insanity, the old version silenced not only Nijinsky's true voice but the magnificently gifted body from which it came. And how fortunate we are to have them both restored."[58]
+
+Nijinsky is immortalized in numerous still photographs, many of them by E. O. Hoppé, who photographed the Ballets Russes seasons in London extensively between 1909 and 1921. No film exists of Nijinsky dancing; Diaghilev never allowed the Ballets Russes to be filmed because he felt that the quality of film at the time could never capture the artistry of his dancers. He believed that the reputation of the company would suffer if people saw their performance only in the short jerky films of the period.[59]
+
+On 11 June 2011, Poland’s first sculpture of the Polish/Russian dancers, Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava Nijinska, was unveiled in the Teatr Wielki’s foyer. It portrays them in their roles as the Faun and the Nymph from the ballet L’après-midi d’un faune. Commissioned by the Polish National Ballet, the sculpture was made in bronze by the well-known Ukrainian sculptor Giennadij Jerszow. Nijinsky was also portrayed by Auguste Rodin. It was cast posthumously in 1912,

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+Vaslav (or Vatslav) Nijinsky (/ˌvɑːtslɑːf nɪˈ(d)ʒɪnski/; Russian: Ва́цлав Фоми́ч Нижи́нский, tr. Václav Fomíč Nižínskij, IPA: [ˈvatsləf fɐˈmʲitɕ nʲɪˈʐɨnskʲɪj]; Polish: Wacław Niżyński, IPA: [ˈvatswaf ɲiˈʐɨj̃skʲi]; 12 March 1889[1][2]/1890[3] – 8 April 1950) was a Polish ballet dancer and choreographer cited as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century.[3] Born in Kiev to Polish parents, Nijinsky grew up in Imperial Russia but considered himself to be Polish.[4] He was celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could dance en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time[5] and was admired for his seemingly gravity-defying leaps.
+
+Nijinsky was introduced to dance by his parents, who were senior dancers with the travelling Setov opera company, and his early childhood was spent touring with the company. His older brother Stanislav and younger sister Bronislava "Bronia" Nijinska also became dancers; Bronia also became a choreographer, working closely with him for much of his career. At age nine Nijinsky was accepted at the Imperial Ballet School (now known as the Mariinsky School) in St. Petersburg, the pre-eminent ballet school in the world. In 1907, he graduated and became a member of the Imperial Ballet, starting at the rank of coryphée instead of in the corps de ballet, already taking starring roles.
+
+In 1909 he joined the Ballets Russes, a new ballet company started by Sergei Diaghilev. The impresario took the Russian ballets to Paris, where high-quality productions such as those of the Imperial Ballet were not known. Nijinsky became the company's star male dancer, causing an enormous stir amongst audiences whenever he performed. In ordinary life he appeared unremarkable and was withdrawn in conversation. Diaghilev and Nijinsky became lovers; the Ballets Russes gave Nijinsky the chance to expand his art and experiment with dance and choreography; he created new directions for male dancers while becoming internationally famous.
+
+In 1912 Nijinsky began choreographing original ballets, including L'après-midi d'un faune (1912) to music by Claude Debussy, Le Sacre du Printemps (1913) to music by Igor Stravinsky, Jeux (1913), and Till Eulenspiegel (1916).  Faune, considered one of the first modern ballets, caused controversy because of its sexually suggestive final scene. At the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps fights broke out in the audience between those who loved and hated this startling new style of ballet and music. Nijinsky originally conceived Jeux as a flirtatious interaction among three males, although Diaghilev insisted it be danced by one male and two females.
+
+In 1913, Nijinsky married Hungarian Romola de Pulszky while on tour with the company in South America. The marriage caused a break with Diaghilev, who soon dismissed Nijinsky from the company. The couple had two daughters together, Kyra and Tamara Nijinska.
+
+With no alternative employer available, Nijinsky tried to form his own company, but this was not a success. He was interned in Budapest, Hungary, during World War I, under house arrest until 1916. After intervention by Diaghilev and several international leaders, he was allowed to go to New York for an American tour with the Ballets Russes. Nijinsky became increasingly mentally unstable with the stresses of having to manage tours himself and deprived of opportunities to dance.[citation needed] After a tour of South America in 1917, and due to travel difficulties imposed by the war, the family settled in St. Moritz, Switzerland. His mental condition deteriorated; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919 and committed to a mental asylum. For the next 30 years he was in and out of institutions, never dancing in public again.
+
+Vaslav Nijinsky was born in 1889[1][2] or 1890[3] in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), as Wacław Niżyński, to ethnic Polish parents, touring dancers Tomasz Niżyński (b. 7 March 1862) and Eleonora Bereda (b. 28 December 1856). Nijinsky was christened in Warsaw. He identified himself as Polish although he grew up in the interior of Russia with his parents and he had difficulty speaking Polish.[6]
+
+Eleanora, along with her two brothers and two sisters, was orphaned while still a child. She started to earn a living as an extra in Warsaw's Grand Theatre Ballet (Polish: Teatr Wielki), becoming a full member of the company at age thirteen. In 1868 her talent was spotted and she moved to Kiev as a solo dancer. Tomasz Niżyński also attended the Wielki Theatre school, becoming a soloist there. At age 18 he accepted a soloist contract with the Odessa Theatre. The two met, married in May 1884 and settled into a career with the traveling Setov opera company. Tomasz was premier danseur, and Eleanora a soloist. Eleanora continued to tour and dance while having three children, sons Stanislav (b. 29 December 1886 in Tiflis) and Vaslav; and daughter Bronislava ('Bronia', b. 8 January 1891 in Minsk). She suffered from depression, which may have been a genetic vulnerability shared in a different form by her son Vaslav.[1] Both boys received training from their father and appeared in an amateur Hopak production in Odessa in 1894.[7]
+
+After Josef Setov died about 1894, the company disbanded. Thomas attempted to run his own company, but was not successful. He and his family became itinerant dancers, the children appearing in the Christmas show at Nizhny Novgorod. In 1897 Thomas and Eleanora separated after Thomas had fallen in love with another dancer, Rumiantseva, while touring in Finland. Eleanora moved to 20 Mokhovaya Street in St Petersburg with her children. She persuaded a friend from the Wielki Theatre, Victor Stanislas Gillert, who was at the time teaching at the Imperial Ballet School, to help get Vaslav into the school. He arranged for the noted teacher Enrico Cecchetti to sponsor the application. Bronia entered the school two years after Vaslav. Their older brother Stanislav had suffered a fall from a window when young and seemed to have suffered some brain damage. Vaslav and Bronia, just two years apart, became very close as they grew.[8] As he got older, Stanislav became increasingly mentally unstable and would have fierce tantrums. He was admitted to an asylum for the insane in 1902.[9]
+
+In 1900, Nijinsky joined the Imperial Ballet School, where he initially studied dance under Sergei Legat and his brother Nikolai. He studied mime under Pavel Gerdt; all three men were principal dancers at the Imperial Russian Ballet. At the end of the one year probationary period, his teachers agreed upon Nijinsky's exceptional dancing ability and he was confirmed as a boarder at the school. He appeared in supporting parts in classical ballets such as Faust, as a mouse in The Nutcracker, a page in Sleeping Beauty and Swan Lake, and won the Didelot scholarship. During his first year, his academic studies had covered work he had already done, so his relatively poor results had not been so much noted. He did well in subjects which interested him, but not otherwise.
+
+In 1902 he was warned that only the excellence of his dancing had prevented his expulsion from the school for poor results. This laxity was compounded through his school years by Nijinsky's frequently being chosen as an extra in various productions, forcing him to be away from classrooms for rehearsals and to spend nights at performances. He was teased for being Polish, and nicknamed "Japonczek" for his faintly Japanese looks at a time Russia was at war with Japan. Some classmates were envious and resented his outstanding dancing ability. In 1901 one of the class deliberately caused him to fall, leading to his suffering a concussion and being in a coma for four days.[10]
+
+Mikhail Oboukhov became his teacher in 1902, and awarded him the highest grade he had ever given to a student. He was given student parts in command performances in front of the Tsar of Paquita, The Nutcracker and The Little Humpbacked Horse. In music he studied piano, flute, balalaika and accordion, receiving good marks. He had a good ability to hear and play music on the piano, though his sight reading was relatively poor. Against this, his behaviour was sometimes boisterous and wild, resulting in his expulsion from the school in 1903 for an incident involving students shooting at the hats of passers-by with catapults while being driven to the Mariinsky Theatre in carriages. He was readmitted to the school as a non-resident after a sound beating and restored to his previous position after a month's probation.[11]
+
+In 1904, at the age of 14, Nijinsky was selected by the great choreographer Marius Petipa to dance a principal role in what proved to be the choreographer's last ballet, La Romance d'un Bouton de rose et d'un Papillon. The work was never performed due to the outbreak of the Russo-Japanese War.
+
+On Sunday, 9 January 1905, Nijinsky was caught in the Bloody Sunday massacre in St. Petersburg, where a group of petitioners led by Father Gapon attempted to present their petition to the Czar. Soldiers fired upon the crowd, leading to an estimated 1000 casualties. Nijinsky was caught in the crowd on Nevsky Prospect and propelled toward the Winter Palace. Imperial cavalry troops charged the crowd, leaving him with a head wound. The following day, he returned to the scene with a friend whose sister was missing. She was never found.[12]
+
+Nijinsky became calmer and more serious as he grew older, but continued to make few friends, which continued through his life[clarification needed]. His reserve and apparent dullness made him unappealing to others except when he danced.[13]
+
+The 1905 annual student show included a pas de deux from The Persian Market, danced by Nijinsky and Sofia Fedorova. Oboukhov amended the dance to show off Nijinsky's abilities, drawing gasps and then spontaneous applause in the middle of the performance with his first jump.
+
+In 1906, he danced in the Mariinsky production of Mozart's Don Giovanni, in a ballet sequence choreographed by Michel Fokine. He was congratulated by the director of the Imperial Ballet and offered a place in the company although he was a year from graduation. Nijinsky chose to continue his studies. He tried his hand at choreography, with a children's opera, Cinderella, with music by another student, Boris Asafyev. At Christmas, he played the King of the Mice in The Nutcracker. At his graduation performance in April 1907, he partnered Elizaveta Gerdt, in a pas de deux choreographed by Fokine. He was congratulated by prima ballerina Mathilde Kschessinska of the Imperial Ballet, who invited him to partner her. His future career with the Imperial Ballet was guaranteed to begin at the mid-rank level of coryphée, rather than in the corps de ballet. He graduated second in his class, with top marks in dancing, art and music.[15]
+
+Nijinsky spent his summer after graduation rehearsing and then performing at Krasnoe Selo in a makeshift theatre with an audience mainly of army officers. These performances frequently included members of the Imperial family and other nobility, whose support and interest were essential to a career. Each dancer who performed before the Tsar received a gold watch inscribed with the Imperial Eagle. Buoyed by Nijinsky's salary, his new earnings from giving dance classes, and his sister Bronia's employment with the ballet company, the family moved to a larger flat on Torgovaya Ulitsa. The new season at the Mariinsky theatre began in September 1907, with Nijinsky employed as coryphée on a salary of 780 roubles per year.[16]
+
+He appeared with Sedova, Lydia Kyasht and Karsavina. Kchessinska partnered him in La Fille Mal Gardée, where he succeeded in an atypical role for him involving humour and flirtation. Designer Alexandre Benois proposed a ballet based upon Le Pavillon d'Armide, choreographed by Fokine to music by Nikolai Tcherepnin. Nijinsky had a minor role, but it allowed him to show off his technical abilities with leaps and pirouettes. The partnership of Fokine, Benois and Nijinsky was repeated throughout his career. Shortly after, he upstaged his own performance, appearing in the Bluebird pas de deux from the Sleeping Beauty, partnering Lydia Kyasht. The Mariinsky audience was deeply familiar with the piece, but exploded with enthusiasm for his performance and his appearing to fly, an effect he continued to have on audiences with the piece during his career.[17]
+
+In subsequent years, Nijinsky was given several soloist roles at the Mariinsky. In 1910, Mathilde Kschessinska selected Nijinsky to dance in a revival of Petipa's Le Talisman. Nijinsky created a sensation in the role of the Wind God Vayou.
+
+A turning point for Nijinsky was his meeting the Russian Sergei Diaghilev, a celebrated and highly innovative producer of ballet and opera, as well as art exhibitions. He concentrated on promoting Russian visual and musical art abroad,[18] particularly in Paris. The 1908 season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success, leading him to plan a new tour for 1909 with a new name for his company, the now famous Ballets Russes. He worked closely with choreographer Michel Fokine and artist Léon Bakst, and later with other contemporary artists and composers. Nijinsky and Diaghilev became lovers for a time,[19][20] and Diaghilev was deeply involved in directing and managing Nijinsky's career.
+
+During the winter of 1908/9, Diaghilev started planning for the 1909 Paris tour of opera and ballet. He collected a team including designers Alexandre Benois and Léon Bakst, painters Nicholas Roerich and Konstantin Korovin, composers Alexander Glazunov and Nikolai Tcherepnin, regisseurs Vsevolod Meyerhold and Alexander Sanine and other ballet enthusiasts. As a friend and as a leading dancer, Nijinsky was part of the group. His sister wrote that he felt intimidated by the illustrious and aristocratic company. Fokine was asked to start rehearsals for the existing Le Pavillon d'Armide and for Les Sylphides, an expanded version of his Chopiniana. Fokine favoured expanding the existing Une Nuit d'Egypte for a ballet.
+
+Diaghilev accepted the idea of an Egyptian theme, but he required a comprehensive rewrite based on new music, by which Fokine created a new ballet Cléopâtre. To round out the program, they needed another ballet. Without sufficient time to compose a new work, they decided on a suite of popular dances, to be called Le Festin. Anna Pavlova, Karsavina and Nijinsky were chosen as principal dancers. Fokine insisted that Ida Rubenstein would appear as Cleopatra, and Nijinsky insisted that his sister should have a part. Fokine noted Nijinsky's great ability at learning a dance and precisely what a choreographer wanted. Diaghilev departed for Paris in early 1909 to make arrangements, which were immediately complicated on the day of his return, 22 February 1909, by the death of Grand Duke Vladimir Alexandrovitch, who had sponsored an application by Diaghilev for an imperial subsidy of 100,000 roubles for the tour.[21]
+
+Rehearsals started on 2 April at the Hermitage Theatre, which the company had been granted special permission to use, along with loans of scenery. No sooner had rehearsals started that the permission was withdrawn, disappearing as had the imperial subsidy. Diaghilev managed to raise some money in Russia, but he had to rely significantly on Gabriel Astruc, who had been arranging theatres and publicity on behalf of the company in France, to also provide finance. Plans to include Opera had to be dropped because of the lack of finances, and logistical difficulties in obtaining necessary scenery at short notice and for free.[22]
+
+Diaghilev and Nijinsky travelled to Paris ahead of the rest of the company. Initially Nijinsky stayed at the Hôtel Daunou. He moved to the Hôtel de Hollande together with Diaghilev and his secretary, Alexis Mavrine, before the arrival of the others. Members of the company had noticed Diaghilev keeping a particularly proprietorial eye on Nijinsky during rehearsals in Russia. They took the travel arrangements and accommodation as confirmation of a relationship. Prince Lvov had visited Nijinsky's mother in St Petersburg, telling her tearfully that he would no longer be taking a special interest in her son, but he advanced a significant sum to Diaghilev towards the tour's expenses. Mavrine was known to have been Diaghilev's lover, but left the tour together with Olga Pedorova shortly after it had begun.[23]
+
+The season of colorful Russian ballets and operas, works mostly new to the West, was a great success. The Paris seasons of the Ballets Russes were an artistic and social sensation; setting trends in art, dance, music and fashion for the next decade. Nijinsky's unique talent showed in Fokine's pieces such as Le Pavillon d'Armide (music by Nikolai Tcherepnin); Cleopatra (music by Anton Arensky and other Russian composers) and a divertissement La Fête. His expressive execution of a pas de deux from The Sleeping Beauty (Tchaikovsky) was a tremendous success.
+
+In 1910, he performed in Giselle, and Fokine's ballets Carnaval and Scheherazade (based on the orchestral suite by Rimsky-Korsakov). His portrayal of "Petrushka," the puppet with a soul, was a remarkable display of his expressive ability to portray characters. His partnership with Tamara Karsavina, also of the Mariinsky Theatre, was legendary, and they have been called the "most exemplary artists of the time".[24]
+
+In January 1911 he danced in Giselle at the Mariinsky Theatre in St. Petersburg for the Imperial Ballet, with the Tsarina Maria Feodorovna in attendance. His costume, which had been designed by Benois and used in Paris before, caused a scandal, as he danced in tights without the then-common trousers. He refused to apologize and was dismissed from the Imperial Ballet. It is possible that he was not altogether unhappy about this development, as he was now free to concentrate on the Ballet Russes.[25]
+
+Nijinsky took the creative reins and choreographed ballets which pushed boundaries and stirred controversy. His ballets were L'après-midi d'un faune (The Afternoon of a Faun, based on Claude Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune) (1912); Jeux (1913); and Till Eulenspiegel (1916). These introduced his audiences to the new direction of modern dance. As the title character in L'après-midi d'un faune, in the final tableau, he mimed masturbation with the scarf of a nymph, causing a scandal; he was defended by such artists as Auguste Rodin, Odilon Redon and Marcel Proust. Nijinsky's new trends in dance caused a riotous reaction at the Théâtre de Champs-Élysées when they premiered in Paris.
+
+In The Rite of Spring (Le Sacre du Printemps), with music by Igor Stravinsky (1913), Nijinsky created choreography that exceeded the limits of traditional ballet and propriety. The radically angular movements expressed the heart of Stravinsky's radically modern score. Violence broke out in the audience as The Rite of Spring premiered. The theme of the ballet, based on pagan myths, was a young maiden who sacrificed herself by dancing until she died. The theme, the difficult and challenging music of Stravinsky, and Nijinsky's choreography, led to a violent uproar; Diaghilev was pleased with the notoriety.[26]
+
+Nijinsky's work in choreographing ballets had proved controversial. They were time-consuming to rehearse and badly received by critics. Diaghilev asked him to begin preparing a new ballet, La Légende de Joseph, based on the Bible. Aside from Nijinsky's difficulties, Diaghilev came under pressure from financial backers and theatre owners who wanted productions more in the style of previous successful work. Although Diaghilev had become unhappy with Fokine's work, thinking he had lost his originality, he returned to him for two new ballets, including Joseph. Relations between Diaghilev and Nijinsky had deteriorated under the stress of Nijinsky's becoming principal choreographer and his pivotal role in the company's financial success. Diaghilev could not face Nijinsky to tell him personally that he would no longer be choreographing the ballet Joseph, but instead asked his sister Bronia Nijinska to deliver the bad news.
+
+The company was to embark on a tour of South America in August 1913. Nijinska, who had always worked closely with her brother and supported him, could not accompany the tour because she had married in July 1912 and become pregnant. In October 1912 their father had died while on tour with his dance company, causing another stress for the siblings. Diaghilev did not accompany the South American tour, claiming he had been told that he would die on the ocean. Others have suggested the reason had more to do with wanting to spend time away from Nijinsky and enjoy a holiday in Venice, "where perhaps adventures with pretty dark-eyed boys awaited him".[27] Nijinsky set sail on a 21-day sea voyage in a state of turmoil and without the people who had been his closest advisers in recent years.[28]
+
+The tour party included Romola de Pulszky, whose father Count Charles Pulszky was a Hungarian politician, and mother Emilia Márkus was a noted actress. In March 1912 the recently engaged Romola was taken to see the Ballets Russes in Budapest by her prospective mother-in-law and was greatly impressed. Nijinsky had not been performing, but she returned the following day and saw him: "An electric shock passed through the entire audience. Intoxicated, entranced, gasping for breath, we followed this superhuman being... the power, the featherweight lightness, the steel-like strength, the suppleness of his movements.."[29] Romola broke off her engagement and began following the Ballets Russes across Europe, attending every performance she could. Nijinsky was difficult to approach, being always accompanied by a 'minder'. However, Romola befriended Adolf Bolm, who had previously visited her mother, thereby gaining access to the company and backstage. She and Nijinsky shared no common language; she spoke French but he knew only a little, so many of their early conversations involved an interpreter. When first introduced to her, he gained the impression she was a Hungarian prima ballerina and was friendly. Discovering his mistake, he ignored her thereafter.[30]
+
+Romola did not give up. She persuaded Diaghilev that her amorous interests lay with Bolm, that she was rich and interested in supporting ballet. He allowed her to take ballet lessons with Enrico Cecchetti, who accompanied the troupe coaching the dancers. Nijinsky objected to her taking class with the professionals. Cechetti warned her against becoming involved with Nijinsky (describing him as "like a sun that pours forth light but never warms"[31]), but Diaghilev's endorsement meant that Nijinsky paid her some attention. Romola took every opportunity to be near Nijinsky, booking train compartments or cabins close to his. She was likely warned that he was homosexual by Marie Rambert, whom Romola befriended and who was also in love with Nijinsky.[32] As a devout Catholic, she prayed for his conversion to heterosexuality.[33][34] She referred to him as Le Petit, and wanted to have his child.[33]
+
+On board ship, Romola had a cabin in first class, which allowed her to keep a watch on Nijinsky's door, while most of the company were exiled to second class. She befriended his masseur and was rewarded with a rundown on his musculature. Determined to take every opportunity, she succeeded in spending more and more time in his company. The unexpected friendliness was noticed by Baron de Gunsbourg, an investor in the Ballets Russes, who had been tasked with keeping an eye on the company. Instead of reporting to Diaghilev on what was occurring, Gunsbourg agreed to act on Nijinsky's behalf in presenting a proposal of marriage to Romola. Romola thought a cruel joke was being played on her, and ran off to her cabin crying. However, Nijinsky asked her again, in broken French and mime, and she accepted. Although Gunsbourg had a financial interest in Ballets Russes, he was also interested in forming his own company, and a split between Diaghilev and his star dancer might have presented him with an opportunity.[35]
+
+When the ship stopped at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the couple went straight to buy wedding rings. Adolph Bolm warned Romola against proceeding, saying "It will ruin your life".[36] Gunsbourg hurried to arrange the marriage, getting permission by telegram from Romola's mother. A quick wedding could take place once the ship arrived at Buenos Aires, Argentina; the couple were married on 10 September 1913 and the event was announced to the world's press. Back in Europe, Diaghilev "gave himself to a wild orgy of dissipation...Sobbing shamelessly in Russian despair, he bellowed accusations and recriminations; he cursed Nijinsky's ingratitude, Romola's treachery, and his own stupidity".[37]
+
+As the company was due to start performing immediately, the couple had no honeymoon. A few days after the marriage, Nijinsky tried to teach Romola some ballet, but she was not interested. "I asked her to learn dancing because for me dancing was the highest thing in the world", "I realized that I had made a mistake, but the mistake was irreparable. I had put myself in the hands of someone who did not love me."[38] Romola and Nijinsky did not share accommodations until after the season was safely underway, when she was eventually invited to join him in separate bedrooms in his hotel suite. She "almost cried with thankfulness" that he showed no interest in making love on their wedding night.[39]
+
+On returning to Paris, Nijinsky anticipated returning to work on new ballets, but Diaghilev did not meet him.  Eventually he sent a telegram to Nijinsky informing him that he was no longer employed by the Ballets Russes. Nijinsky had missed a performance in Rio when Romola was ill, and only in the case of a dancer's own illness, certified by a doctor, was the dancer allowed to miss a performance. Diaghilev also usually dismissed dancers who married. This was perhaps beside the point, since Nijinsky had never had a contract, nor wages, all his expenses having been paid by Diaghilev. His mother also received an allowance of 500 francs per month (other senior dancers had received 200,000 francs for a six-month season).[40] Fokine was re-employed by Diaghilev as choreographer and premier danseur, accepting on the condition that none of Nijinsky's ballets would be performed. Leonide Massine joined the company as the new attractive young lead for Joseph.[41]
+
+The Ballets Russes had lost its most famous and crowd-pulling dancer, but Nijinsky's position was even more difficult. He appears not to have appreciated that his marriage would result in a break with Diaghilev's company, although many others immediately expected this would be the result. The Ballets Russes and the Imperial Russian ballet were the pre-eminent ballet companies in the world and uniquely had permanent companies of dancers staging full-scale new productions. Nijinsky now was "an experimental artist. He needed roles that would extend his gifts, and above all, he needed to choreograph. For these things he did need the Ballets Russes, which at that time was the only forward-thinking ballet company in the world."[1]
+
+Not only had Nijinsky previously left the Imperial ballet on doubtful terms, but he had not been granted exemption from compulsory military service in Russia, something that was normally given to its dancers. He could find only two offers, one a position with the Paris Opera, which would not start for more than a year; the other to take a ballet company to London for eight weeks to perform as part of a mixed bill at the Palace Theatre. Anna Pavlova sent him a caustic telegram, reminding him that he had disapproved some years before when she had appeared there in vaudeville.[42] On another occasion, he had told a reporter, "One thing I am determined not to do, and that is to go on the music-hall stage".[43]
+
+Bronia was still in St Petersburg following the birth of her child, and Nijinsky asked her to be part of his new company. She was glad to do so, being concerned at how well he could cope without his customary supporters. When she arrived, there was friction between her and Romola: Bronia was critical that the new central figure in her brother's life showed so little organisational ability; Romola resented the closeness between brother and sister both in their shared language and in ability to work together in dance. The final company had only three experienced dancers: Nijinsky and Bronia plus her husband. Scenery was late, Fokine refused to allow the use of his ballets, there was inadequate time to rehearse, and Nijinsky became "more and more nervous and distraught".[44] Diaghilev came to the opening night in March 1914.[45]
+
+The audience divided between those who had never seen ballet, who objected to the delays necessary for scene changes, and those who had seen Nijinsky before, who generally felt something was lacking ("He no longer danced like a god"[46]). On another night, when the orchestra played music during the scene change so as to calm the audience, Nijinsky, having expressly banned this, flew into a rage and was discovered half dressed and screaming in his dressing room. He had to be calmed down enough to perform. He jumped on a stagehand who had flirted with Romola ("I had never seen Vaslav like that"[47]). A new program was to be performed for the third week, but a packed house had to be told that Nijinsky was ill with a high temperature and could not perform. He missed three days, and the management had had enough. The show was cancelled, and Nijinsky was left with a considerable financial loss. Newspapers reported a nervous breakdown.[48] His physical vulnerability had been aggravated by the great stress.[1]
+
+Romola was pregnant, so the couple returned to Budapest, Austro-Hungary, to his mother-in-law Emilia Markus' house. Their daughter Kyra was born on 19 June 1914. With the start of the Great War (World War I), Nijinsky was classified as an enemy Russian citizen. He was confined to house arrest in Budapest and could not leave the country. The war made problems for the Ballets Russes too; the company had difficulty recruiting dancers and Fokine returned to Russia.
+
+Diaghilev started negotiations in October 1914 for Nijinsky to work again for the company, but could not obtain release of the dancer until 1916. The complex negotiations included a prisoner exchange with the United States, and agreement that Nijinsky would dance and choreograph for the Ballets Russes' tour. King Alfonso XIII of Spain, Queen Alexandra of Denmark, Dowager Russian Empress Marie Feodorovna, Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria, Pope Benedict XV and President Wilson at the urging of Otto Kahn[49] all interceded on his behalf.[50]
+
+Nijinsky arrived in New York on 4 April 1916. The tour had already started in January with a number of problems: Faun was considered too sexually explicit and had to be amended; Scheherazade, including an orgy between blacks and whites, did not appeal to Americans; and ballet aficionados were calling for Nijinsky. Romola took over negotiations, demanding that Diaghilev pay Nijinsky for the years he had been unpaid by the Ballets Russes before he would dance in New York. This was settled after another week's delay by a downpayment of $13,000 against the $90,000 claimed, plus a fee of $1000 for each performance in America.[51]
+
+Negotiations with Otto Kahn of the New York Metropolitan Opera led to an additional tour of the US being agreed to for the autumn. Kahn did not get on with Diaghilev and insisted Nijinsky should manage the tour. Massine and Diaghilev returned to Europe, leaving Nijinsky to dance and manage a company of more than 100 for a salary of $60,000. Nijinsky was also to prepare two new ballets. Rehearsals for Till Eulenspiegel did not go well; Nijinsky's poor communication skills meant that he could not explain to dancers what he wanted. He would explode into rages. Pierre Monteux, the conductor, refused to take part in performances because he did not want to be associated with failure. Nijinsky twisted his ankle, postponing the season's opening for a week and his own appearance by two weeks. Rehearsals for Eulenspiegel had not been completed, and it had to be improvised during its first performance. It was still well received, and Nijinsky's performance in Faun  was considered better than Massine's. As the tour progressed, Nijinsky's performances received steady acclaim, although his management was haphazard and contributed to the tour's loss of $250,000.[52]
+
+His last public performance was during a South American tour, with pianist Arthur Rubinstein in a benefit in Montevideo for the Red Cross on 30 September 1917, at age twenty-eight. Rubinstein wept when he saw Nijinsky's confusion that night. It was around this time that signs of his schizophrenia had become apparent to members of the company, including Bourman.[53] Nijinsky and his wife moved to St. Moritz, Switzerland, where he tried to recover from the stresses of the tour.[1] Also in 1917, Bronia and Vaslav lost their older brother Stanislav, who died in a hospital in Petrograd. Accounts vary as to the cause of death. He had been institutionalized for many years.[52]
+
+Nijinsky's diary, which he wrote from January to early March 1919, expressed his great fear of hospitalization and confinement. He filled it with drawings of eyes, as he felt himself under scrutiny, by his wife, a young doctor Frenkel, and others. Finally Romola arranged a consultation in Zurich with the psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1919, asking her mother and stepfather for help in getting Nijinsky there. His fears were realized; he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to Burghölzli. After a few days, he was transferred to the Bellevue Sanatorium, "a luxurious and humane establishment directed at that time by Ludwig Binswanger."[1] In 1920, Nijinsky's second daughter Tamara was born. She never saw him dance in public.
+
+For the next 30 years, Nijinsky was in and out of psychiatric hospitals and asylums. During 1945 after the end of the war, after Romola had moved with him to Vienna, he encountered a group of Russian soldiers in an encampment, playing traditional folk tunes on a balalaika and other instruments. Inspired by the music and hearing a language from his youth, he started dancing, astounding the men with his skills. Drinking and laughing with them helped him start to speak again. He had maintained long periods of almost absolute silence during his years of illness. His wife Romola had protected them by staying for a time at the border of Hungary and Austria, trying to keep out of major areas of fighting.[54]
+
+From 1947 Nijinsky lived in Surrey, England with his wife. He died from kidney failure at a clinic in London on 8 April 1950 and was buried in London.[55][56] In 1953 his body was moved to Montmartre Cemetery in Paris and reinterred beside the graves of Gaétan Vestris, Théophile Gautier, and Emma Livry.[57]
+
+Nijinsky's daughter Kyra married the Ukrainian conductor Igor Markevitch, and they had a son named Vaslav. The marriage ended in divorce.
+
+His second daughter Tamara Nijinsky grew up with her maternal grandmother, never getting to see her father dance. Later she served as Executive Director of the Vaslav & Romola Nijinsky Foundation, founded by her mother, to preserve art and writing associated with her parents, and her father's dances.
+
+Nijinsky's Diary was written during the six weeks in 1919 he spent in Switzerland before being committed to the asylum to Zurich. It reflected the decline of his household into chaos.[58] He elevated feeling and action in his writing. It combined elements of autobiography with appeals for compassion toward the less fortunate.
+Discovering the three notebooks of the diary years later, plus another with letters to a variety of people, his wife published a bowdlerized version of the diary in 1936, translated into English by Jennifer Mattingly.[1] She deleted about 40 per cent of the diary, especially references to bodily functions, sex, and homosexuality, recasting Nijinsky as an "involuntary homosexual." She also removed some of his more unflattering references to her and others close to their household. She moved sections around, obscuring the "march of events" obvious in the original version and toning down some of the odder portions, including trying to distinguish between sections in which he writes as God and others as himself (in the original all such sections are written the same.)[1]
+
+In 1995, the first unexpurgated edition of The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky was published, edited by New Yorker dance critic Joan Acocella and translated by Kyril FitzLyon.[58] Acocella notes that the diary displays three elements common to schizophrenia: "delusions, disorganized language, and disorganized behavior."[1] It also demonstrates that Nijinsky's thought was suffering from a "breakdown in selective attention;" his associations would connect in ever-widening circles.[1] A New York Times review said, "How ironic that in erasing the real ugliness of his insanity, the old version silenced not only Nijinsky's true voice but the magnificently gifted body from which it came. And how fortunate we are to have them both restored."[58]
+
+Nijinsky is immortalized in numerous still photographs, many of them by E. O. Hoppé, who photographed the Ballets Russes seasons in London extensively between 1909 and 1921. No film exists of Nijinsky dancing; Diaghilev never allowed the Ballets Russes to be filmed because he felt that the quality of film at the time could never capture the artistry of his dancers. He believed that the reputation of the company would suffer if people saw their performance only in the short jerky films of the period.[59]
+
+On 11 June 2011, Poland’s first sculpture of the Polish/Russian dancers, Vaslav Nijinsky and his sister Bronislava Nijinska, was unveiled in the Teatr Wielki’s foyer. It portrays them in their roles as the Faun and the Nymph from the ballet L’après-midi d’un faune. Commissioned by the Polish National Ballet, the sculpture was made in bronze by the well-known Ukrainian sculptor Giennadij Jerszow. Nijinsky was also portrayed by Auguste Rodin. It was cast posthumously in 1912,

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+in Europe (dark grey)  –  [Legend]
+
+Vatican City /ˈvætɪkən/ (listen), officially the Vatican City State (Italian: Stato della Città del Vaticano;[g] Latin: Status Civitatis Vaticanae),[h][i] is the Holy See's independent city-state enclaved within Rome, Italy.[12] Vatican City became independent from Italy with the Lateran Treaty (1929), and it is a distinct territory under "full ownership, exclusive dominion, and sovereign authority and jurisdiction" of the Holy See, itself a sovereign entity of international law, which maintains the city state's temporal, diplomatic, and spiritual independence.[j][13] With an area of 49 hectares (121 acres)[b] and a population of about 805,[c] it is the smallest sovereign state in the world by both area and population.[14]
+
+As governed by the Holy See, the Vatican City is an ecclesiastical or sacerdotal-monarchical state (a type of theocracy) ruled by the pope who is the bishop of Rome and head of the Catholic Church.[3][15] The highest state functionaries are all Catholic clergy of various national origins. Except the Avignon Papacy (1309–1437), the popes have generally resided at the Apostolic Palace within what is now Vatican City, although at times residing instead in the Quirinal Palace in Rome or elsewhere.
+
+The Holy See dates back to Early Christianity and is the principal episcopal see of the Catholic Church, with approximately 1.313 billion baptised Catholic Christians in the world as of 2017[update] in the Latin Church and 23 Eastern Catholic Churches.[16] The independent Vatican City-state, on the other hand, came into existence on 11 February 1929 by the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and Italy, which spoke of it as a new creation,[17] not as a vestige of the much larger Papal States (756–1870), which had previously encompassed much of central Italy.
+
+Within the Vatican City are religious and cultural sites such as St. Peter's Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, and the Vatican Museums. They feature some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures. The unique economy of Vatican City is supported financially by the sale of postage stamps and souvenirs, fees for admission to museums, and sales of publications.
+
+The name Vatican City was first used in the Lateran Treaty, signed on 11 February 1929, which established the modern city-state named after Vatican Hill, the geographic location of the state. "Vatican" is derived from the name of an Etruscan settlement, Vatica or Vaticum located in the general area the Romans called Ager Vaticanus, "Vatican territory".[18]
+
+The official Italian name of the city is Città del Vaticano or, more formally, Stato della Città del Vaticano, meaning "Vatican City State". Although the Holy See (which is distinct from the Vatican City) and the Catholic Church use Ecclesiastical Latin in official documents, the Vatican City uses Italian.[citation needed] The Latin name is Status Civitatis Vaticanae;[19][20] this is used in official documents by the Holy See, the Church and the Pope.
+
+The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek.[21]
+
+Because of its vicinity to their arch-fiend, the Etruscan city of Veii (another naming for the Ager Vaticanus was Ripa Veientana or Ripa Etrusca) and for being subjected to the floods of the Tiber, the Romans considered this originally uninhabited part of Rome unsalubrious and ominous.[22]
+
+The particularly low quality of Vatican wine, even after the reclamation of the area, was commented on by the poet Martial (40 – between 102 and 104 AD).[23] Tacitus wrote, that in AD 69, the Year of the Four Emperors, when the northern army that brought Vitellius to power arrived in Rome, "a large proportion camped in the unhealthy districts of the Vatican, which resulted in many deaths among the common soldiery; and the Tiber being close by, the inability of the Gauls and Germans to bear the heat and the consequent greed with which they drank from the stream weakened their bodies, which were already an easy prey to disease".[24]
+
+The toponym Ager Vaticanus is attested until the 1st century AD: afterwards, another toponym appeared, Vaticanus, denoting an area much more restricted: the Vatican hill, today's St. Peter's Square, and possibly today's Via della Conciliazione.[21]
+
+Under the Roman Empire, many villas were constructed there, after Agrippina the Elder (14 BC–18 October AD 33) drained the area and laid out her gardens in the early 1st century AD. In AD 40, her son, Emperor Caligula (31 August AD 12–24 January AD 41; r. 37–41) built in her gardens a circus for charioteers (AD 40) that was later completed by Nero, the Circus Gaii et Neronis,[25] usually called, simply, the Circus of Nero.[26]
+
+The Vatican Obelisk was originally taken by Caligula from Heliopolis in Egypt to decorate the spina of his circus and is thus its last visible remnant.[27] This area became the site of martyrdom of many Christians after the Great Fire of Rome in AD 64. Ancient tradition holds that it was in this circus that Saint Peter was crucified upside-down.[28]
+
+Opposite the circus was a cemetery separated by the Via Cornelia. Funeral monuments and mausoleums, and small tombs, as well as altars to pagan gods of all kinds of polytheistic religions, were constructed lasting until before the construction of the Constantinian Basilica of St. Peter in the first half of the 4th century. A shrine dedicated to the Phrygian goddess Cybele and her consort Attis remained active long after the ancient Basilica of St. Peter was built nearby.[29]
+Remains of this ancient necropolis were brought to light sporadically during renovations by various popes throughout the centuries, increasing in frequency during the Renaissance until it was systematically excavated by orders of Pope Pius XII from 1939 to 1941. The Constantinian basilica was built in 326 over what was believed to be the tomb of Saint Peter, buried in that cemetery.[30]
+
+From then on, the area became more populated in connection with activity at the basilica. A palace was constructed nearby as early as the 5th century during the pontificate of Pope Symmachus (reigned 498–514).[31]
+
+Popes gradually came to have a secular role as governors of regions near Rome. They ruled the Papal States, which covered a large portion of the Italian peninsula, for more than a thousand years until the mid-19th century, when all the territory belonging to the papacy was seized by the newly created Kingdom of Italy.
+
+For most of this time the popes did not live at the Vatican. The Lateran Palace, on the opposite side of Rome, was their habitual residence for about a thousand years. From 1309 to 1377, they lived at Avignon in France. On their return to Rome they chose to live at the Vatican. They moved to the Quirinal Palace in 1583, after work on it was completed under Pope Paul V (1605–1621), but on the capture of Rome in 1870 retired to the Vatican, and what had been their residence became that of the King of Italy.
+
+In 1870, the Pope's holdings were left in an uncertain situation when Rome itself was annexed by the Piedmont-led forces which had united the rest of Italy, after a nominal resistance by the papal forces. Between 1861 and 1929 the status of the Pope was referred to as the "Roman Question".
+
+Italy made no attempt to interfere with the Holy See within the Vatican walls. However, it confiscated church property in many places. In 1871, the Quirinal Palace was confiscated by the King of Italy and became the royal palace. Thereafter, the popes resided undisturbed within the Vatican walls, and certain papal prerogatives were recognized by the Law of Guarantees, including the right to send and receive ambassadors. But the Popes did not recognise the Italian king's right to rule in Rome, and they refused to leave the Vatican compound until the dispute was resolved in 1929; Pope Pius IX (1846–1878), the last ruler of the Papal States, was referred to as a "prisoner in the Vatican". Forced to give up secular power, the popes focused on spiritual issues.[32]
+
+This situation was resolved on 11 February 1929, when the Lateran Treaty between the Holy See and the Kingdom of Italy was signed by Prime Minister and Head of Government Benito Mussolini on behalf of King Victor Emmanuel III and by Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Gasparri for Pope Pius XI.[17][13][33] The treaty, which became effective on 7 June 1929, established the independent state of Vatican City and reaffirmed the special status of Catholic Christianity in Italy.[34]
+
+The Holy See, which ruled Vatican City, pursued a policy of neutrality during World War II, under the leadership of Pope Pius XII. Although German troops occupied the city of Rome after the September 1943 Armistice of Cassibile, and the Allies from 1944, they respected Vatican City as neutral territory.[35] One of the main diplomatic priorities of the bishop of Rome was to prevent the bombing of the city; so sensitive was the pontiff that he protested even the British air dropping of pamphlets over Rome, claiming that the few landing within the city-state violated the Vatican's neutrality.[36] The British policy, as expressed in the minutes of a Cabinet meeting, was: "that we should on no account molest the Vatican City, but that our action as regards the rest of Rome would depend upon how far the Italian government observed the rules of war".[36]
+
+After the US entered into the war, the US opposed such a bombing, fearful of offending Catholic members of its military forces, but said that "they could not stop the British from bombing Rome if the British so decided". The US military even exempted Catholic pilots and crew from air raids on Rome and other Church holdings, unless voluntarily agreed upon. Notably, with the exception of Rome, and presumably the possibility of the Vatican, no Catholic US pilot or air crew refused a mission within German-held Italy. The British uncompromisingly said "they would bomb Rome whenever the needs of the war demanded".[37] In December 1942, the UK's envoy suggested to the Holy See that Rome be declared an "open city", a suggestion that the Holy See took more seriously than was probably meant by the UK, who did not want Rome to be an open city, but Mussolini rejected the suggestion when the Holy See put it to him. In connection with the Allied invasion of Sicily, 500 US aircraft bombed Rome on 19 July 1943, aiming particularly at the railway hub. Some 1,500 people were killed; Pius XII himself, who had been described in the previous month as "worried sick" about the possible bombing, viewed the aftermath. Another raid took place on 13 August 1943, after Mussolini had been ousted from power.[38] On the following day, the new government declared Rome an open city, after consulting the Holy See on the wording of the declaration, but the UK had decided that they would never recognize Rome as an open city.[39]
+
+Pius XII had refrained from creating cardinals during the war. By the end of World War II, there were several prominent vacancies: Cardinal Secretary of State, Camerlengo, Chancellor, and Prefect for the Congregation for the Religious among them.[40] Pius XII created 32 cardinals in early 1946, having announced his intentions to do so in his preceding Christmas message.
+
+The Pontifical Military Corps, except for the Swiss Guard, was disbanded by will of Paul VI, as expressed in a letter of 14 September 1970.[41] The Gendarmerie Corps was transformed into a civilian police and security force.
+
+In 1984, a new concordat between the Holy See and Italy modified certain provisions of the earlier treaty, including the position of Catholic Christianity as the Italian state religion, a position given to it by a statute of the Kingdom of Sardinia of 1848.[34]
+
+Construction in 1995 of a new guest house, Domus Sanctae Marthae, adjacent to St Peter's Basilica was criticized by Italian environmental groups, backed by Italian politicians. They claimed the new building would block views of the Basilica from nearby Italian apartments.[42] For a short while the plans strained the relations between the Vatican and the Italian government. The head of the Vatican's Department of Technical Services robustly rejected challenges to the Vatican State's right to build within its borders.[42]
+
+The name "Vatican" was already in use in the time of the Roman Republic for the Ager Vaticanus, a marshy area on the west bank of the Tiber across from the city of Rome, located between the Janiculum, the Vatican Hill and Monte Mario, down to the Aventine Hill and up to the confluence of the Cremera creek.[21] The territory of Vatican City is part of the Vatican Hill, and of the adjacent former Vatican Fields. It is in this territory that St. Peter's Basilica, the Apostolic Palace, the Sistine Chapel, and museums were built, along with various other buildings. The area was part of the Roman rione of Borgo until 1929. Being separated from the city, on the west bank of the river Tiber, the area was an outcrop of the city that was protected by being included within the walls of Leo IV (847–855), and later expanded by the current fortification walls, built under Paul III (1534–1549), Pius IV (1559–1565), and Urban VIII (1623–1644).
+
+When the Lateran Treaty of 1929 that gave the state its form was being prepared, the boundaries of the proposed territory were influenced by the fact that much of it was all but enclosed by this loop. For some tracts of the frontier, there was no wall, but the line of certain buildings supplied part of the boundary, and for a small part of the frontier a modern wall was constructed.
+
+The territory includes St. Peter's Square, distinguished from the territory of Italy only by a white line along the limit of the square, where it touches Piazza Pio XII. St. Peter's Square is reached through the Via della Conciliazione which runs from close to the Tiber to St. Peter's. This grand approach was constructed by Benito Mussolini after the conclusion of the Lateran Treaty.
+
+According to the Lateran Treaty, certain properties of the Holy See that are located in Italian territory, most notably the Papal Palace of Castel Gandolfo and the major basilicas, enjoy extraterritorial status similar to that of foreign embassies.[43][44] These properties, scattered all over Rome and Italy, house essential offices and institutions necessary to the character and mission of the Holy See.[44]
+
+Castel Gandolfo and the named basilicas are patrolled internally by police agents of Vatican City State and not by Italian police. According to the Lateran Treaty (Art. 3) St. Peter's Square, up to but not including the steps leading to the basilica, is normally patrolled by the Italian police.[43]
+
+There are no passport controls for visitors entering Vatican City from the surrounding Italian territory. There is free public access to Saint Peter's Square and Basilica and, on the occasion of papal general audiences, to the hall in which they are held. For these audiences and for major ceremonies in Saint Peter's Basilica and Square, tickets free of charge must be obtained beforehand. The Vatican Museums, incorporating the Sistine Chapel, usually charge an entrance fee. There is no general public access to the gardens, but guided tours for small groups can be arranged to the gardens and excavations under the basilica. Other places are open to only those individuals who have business to transact there.
+
+Vatican City's climate is the same as Rome's: a temperate, Mediterranean climate Csa with mild, rainy winters from October to mid-May and hot, dry summers from May to September. Some minor local features, principally mists and dews, are caused by the anomalous bulk of St Peter's Basilica, the elevation, the fountains, and the size of the large paved square.
+
+In July 2007, the Vatican accepted a proposal by two firms based respectively in San Francisco and Budapest,[47] whereby it would become the first carbon neutral state by offsetting its carbon dioxide emissions with the creation of a Vatican Climate Forest in Hungary,[48] as a purely symbolic gesture[49] to encourage Catholics to do more to safeguard the planet.[50] Nothing came of the project.[51][52]
+
+On 26 November 2008, the Vatican itself put into effect a plan announced in May 2007 to cover the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall with solar panels.[53][54]
+
+Within the territory of Vatican City are the Vatican Gardens (Italian: Giardini Vaticani),[55] which account for about half of this territory. The gardens, established during the Renaissance and Baroque era, are decorated with fountains and sculptures.
+
+The gardens cover approximately 23 hectares (57 acres). The highest point is 60 metres (197 ft) above mean sea level. Stone walls bound the area in the north, south and west.
+
+The gardens date back to medieval times when orchards and vineyards extended to the north of the Papal Apostolic Palace.[56] In 1279, Pope Nicholas III (Giovanni Gaetano Orsini, 1277–1280) moved his residence back to the Vatican from the Lateran Palace and enclosed this area with walls.[57] He planted an orchard (pomerium), a lawn (pratellum), and a garden (viridarium).[57]
+
+The politics of Vatican City takes place in an absolute elective monarchy, in which the head of the Catholic Church takes power. The pope exercises principal legislative, executive, and judicial power over the State of Vatican City (an entity distinct from the Holy See), which is a rare case of a non-hereditary monarchy.[58]
+
+Vatican City is one of the few widely recognized independent states that has not become a member of the United Nations.[59] The Holy See, which is distinct from Vatican City State, has permanent observer status with all the rights of a full member except for a vote in the UN General Assembly.
+
+The government of Vatican City has a unique structure. The pope is the sovereign of the state. Legislative authority is vested in the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, a body of cardinals appointed by the pope for five-year periods. Executive power is in the hands of the president of that commission, assisted by the general secretary and deputy general secretary. The state's foreign relations are entrusted to the Holy See's Secretariat of State and diplomatic service. Nevertheless, the pope has absolute power in the executive, legislative, and judicial branches over Vatican City. He is the only absolute monarch in Europe.
+
+There are departments that deal with health, security, telecommunications, etc.[60]
+
+The Cardinal Camerlengo presides over the Apostolic Camera to which is entrusted the administration of the property and protection of other papal temporal powers and rights of the Holy See during the period of the empty throne or sede vacante (papal vacancy). Those of the Vatican State remain under the control of the Pontifical Commission for the State of Vatican City. Acting with three other cardinals chosen by lot every three days, one from each order of cardinals (cardinal bishop, cardinal priest, and cardinal deacon), he in a sense performs during that period the functions of head of state of Vatican City.[citation needed] All the decisions these four cardinals take must be approved by the College of Cardinals as a whole.
+
+The nobility that was closely associated with the Holy See at the time of the Papal States continued to be associated with the Papal Court after the loss of these territories, generally with merely nominal duties (see Papal Master of the Horse, Prefecture of the Pontifical Household, Hereditary officers of the Roman Curia, Black Nobility). They also formed the ceremonial Noble Guard. In the first decades of the existence of the Vatican City State, executive functions were entrusted to some of them, including that of delegate for the State of Vatican City (now denominated president of the Commission for Vatican City). But with the motu proprio Pontificalis Domus of 28 March 1968,[61] Pope Paul VI abolished the honorary positions that had continued to exist until then, such as Quartermaster general and Master of the Horse.[62]
+
+Vatican City State, created in 1929 by the Lateran Pacts, provides the Holy See with a temporal jurisdiction and independence within a small territory. It is distinct from the Holy See. The state can thus be deemed a significant but not essential instrument of the Holy See. The Holy See itself has existed continuously as a juridical entity since Roman Imperial times and has been internationally recognized as a powerful and independent sovereign entity since Late Antiquity to the present, without interruption even at times when it was deprived of territory (e.g. 1870 to 1929). The Holy See has the oldest active continuous diplomatic service in the world, dating back to at least AD 325 with its legation to the Council of Nicea.[63]
+
+The Pope is ex officio head of state[64] of Vatican City since the 1860s, functions dependent on his primordial function as bishop of the diocese of Rome. The term "Holy See" refers not to the Vatican state but to the Pope's spiritual and pastoral governance, largely exercised through the Roman Curia.[65] His official title with regard to Vatican City is Sovereign of the State of the Vatican City.
+
+Pope Francis, born Jorge Mario Bergoglio in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was elected on 13 March 2013. His principal subordinate government official for Vatican City as well as the country's head of government is the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, who since 1952 exercises the functions previously belonging to the Governor of Vatican City. Since 2001, the president of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State also has the title of president of the Governorate of the State of Vatican City. The president is Italian Cardinal Giuseppe Bertello, who was appointed on 1 October 2011.
+
+Legislative functions are delegated to the unicameral Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State, led by the President of the Pontifical Commission for Vatican City State. Its seven members are cardinals appointed by the Pope for terms of five years. Acts of the commission must be approved by the Pope, through the Holy See's Secretariat of State, and before taking effect must be published in a special appendix of the Acta Apostolicae Sedis. Most of the content of this appendix consists of routine executive decrees, such as approval for a new set of postage stamps.
+
+Executive authority is delegated to the Governorate of Vatican City. The Governorate consists of the President of the Pontifical Commission—using the title "President of the Governorate of Vatican City"—a general secretary, and a Vice general secretary, each appointed by the Pope for five-year terms. Important actions of the Governorate must be confirmed by the Pontifical Commission and by the Pope through the Secretariat of State.
+
+The Governorate oversees the central governmental functions through several departments and offices. The directors and officials of these offices are appointed by the Pope for five-year terms. These organs concentrate on material questions concerning the state's territory, including local security, records, transportation, and finances. The Governorate oversees a modern security and police corps, the Corpo della Gendarmeria dello Stato della Città del Vaticano.
+
+Judicial functions are delegated to a supreme court, an appellate court, a tribunal (Tribunal of Vatican City State), and a trial judge. At the Vatican's request, sentences imposed can be served in Italy (see the section on crime, below).
+
+The international postal country code prefix is SCV, and the only postal code is 00120 – altogether SCV-00120.[66]
+
+As the Vatican City is an enclave within Italy, its military defence is provided by the Italian Armed Forces. However, there is no formal defence treaty with Italy, as the Vatican City is a neutral state. Vatican City has no armed forces of its own, although the Swiss Guard is a military corps of the Holy See responsible for the personal security of the Pope, and residents in the state. Soldiers of the Swiss Guard are entitled to hold Vatican City State passports and nationality. Swiss mercenaries were historically recruited by Popes as part of an army for the Papal States, and the Pontifical Swiss Guard was founded by Pope Julius II on 22 January 1506 as the pope's personal bodyguard and continues to fulfill that function. It is listed in the Annuario Pontificio under "Holy See", not under "State of Vatican City". At the end of 2005, the Guard had 134 members. Recruitment is arranged by a special agreement between the Holy See and Switzerland. All recruits must be Catholic, unmarried males with Swiss citizenship who have completed their basic training with the Swiss Armed Forces with certificates of good conduct, be between the ages of 19 and 30, and be at least 174 cm (5 ft 9 in) in height. Members are equipped with small arms and the traditional halberd (also called the Swiss voulge), and trained in bodyguarding tactics. The Palatine Guard and the Noble Guard, the last armed forces of the Vatican City State, were disbanded by Pope Paul VI in 1970.[41] As Vatican City has listed every building in its territory on the International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection, the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict theoretically renders it immune to armed attack.[67]
+
+Civil defence is the responsibility of the Corps of Firefighters of the Vatican City State, the national fire brigade. Dating its origins to the early nineteenth century, the Corps in its present form was established in 1941. It is responsible for fire fighting, as well as a range of civil defence scenarios including flood, natural disaster, and mass casualty management. The Corps is governmentally supervised through the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence, which is also responsible for the Gendarmerie (see below).
+
+The Gendarmerie Corps (Corpo della Gendarmeria) is the gendarmerie, or police and security force, of Vatican City and the extraterritorial properties of the Holy See.[68] The corps is responsible for security, public order, border control, traffic control, criminal investigation, and other general police duties in Vatican City including providing security for the Pope outside of Vatican City. The corps has 130 personnel and is a part of the Directorate for Security Services and Civil Defence (which also includes the Vatican Fire Brigade), an organ of the Governorate of Vatican City.[69][70]
+
+Vatican City State is a recognized national territory under international law, but it is the Holy See that conducts diplomatic relations on its behalf, in addition to the Holy See's own diplomacy, entering into international agreements in its regard. Vatican City thus has no diplomatic service of its own.
+
+Because of space limitations, Vatican City is one of the few countries in the world that is unable to host embassies. Foreign embassies to the Holy See are located in the city of Rome; only during the Second World War were the staff of some embassies accredited to the Holy See given what hospitality was possible within the narrow confines of Vatican City—embassies such as that of the United Kingdom while Rome was held by the Axis Powers and Germany's when the Allies controlled Rome.
+
+The size of Vatican City is thus unrelated to the large global reach exercised by the Holy See as an entity quite distinct from the state.[71]
+
+However, Vatican City State itself participates in some international organizations whose functions relate to the state as a geographical entity, distinct from the non-territorial legal persona of the Holy See. These organizations are much less numerous than those in which the Holy See participates either as a member or with observer status. They include the following eight, in each of which Vatican City State holds membership:[72][73]
+
+It also participates in:[72]
+
+The Vatican City State is not a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC). In Europe only Belarus is also a non-party, non-signatory state.
+
+Further, the Vatican City State is not a member of the European Court of Human Rights. Again, only Belarus is also not a member in Europe.
+
+The OECD's "Common Reporting Standard" (CRS) aiming at preventing tax evasion and money laundering has also not been signed.[75][76][77] The Vatican City State has been criticized for its money laundering practises in the past decades.[78][79][80] The only other country in Europe that has not agreed to sign the CRS is Belarus.
+
+The Vatican City State is also one of few countries in the world that does not provide any publicly available financial data to the IMF.[81]
+
+The Vatican City State budget includes the Vatican Museums and post office and is supported financially by the sale of stamps, coins, medals and tourist mementos; by fees for admission to museums; and by publications sales.[k] The incomes and living standards of lay workers are comparable to those of counterparts who work in the city of Rome.[82] Other industries include printing, the production of mosaics, and the manufacture of staff uniforms. There is a Vatican Pharmacy.
+
+The Institute for Works of Religion (IOR, Istituto per le Opere di Religione), also known as the Vatican Bank, is a financial agency situated in the Vatican that conducts worldwide financial activities. It has multilingual ATMs with instructions in Latin, possibly the only ATM in the world with this feature.[83]
+
+Vatican City issues its own coins and stamps. It has used the euro as its currency since 1 January 1999, owing to a special agreement with the European Union (council decision 1999/98). Euro coins and notes were introduced on 1 January 2002—the Vatican does not issue euro banknotes. Issuance of euro-denominated coins is strictly limited by treaty, though somewhat more than usual is allowed in a year in which there is a change in the papacy.[84] Because of their rarity, Vatican euro coins are highly sought by collectors.[85] Until the adoption of the Euro, Vatican coinage and stamps were denominated in their own Vatican lira currency, which was on par with the Italian lira.
+
+Vatican City State, which employs nearly 2,000 people, had a surplus of 6.7 million euros in 2007 but ran a deficit in 2008 of over 15 million euros.[86]
+
+In 2012, the US Department of State's International Narcotics Control Strategy Report listed Vatican City for the first time among the nations of concern for money-laundering, placing it in the middle category, which includes countries such as Ireland, but not among the most vulnerable countries, which include the United States itself, Germany, Italy, and Russia.[87]
+
+On 24 February 2014 the Vatican announced it was establishing a secretariat for the economy, to be responsible for all economic, financial and administrative activities of the Holy See and the Vatican City State, headed by Cardinal George Pell. This followed the charging of two senior clerics including a monsignor with money laundering offences. Pope Francis also appointed an auditor-general authorized to carry out random audits of any agency at any time, and engaged a US financial services company to review the Vatican's 19,000 accounts to ensure compliance with international money laundering practices. The pontiff also ordered that the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See would be the Vatican's central bank, with responsibilities similar to other central banks around the world.[88]
+
+As of 2019, Vatican City had a total population of 825, including 453 residents (regardless of citizenship) and 372 Vatican citizens residing elsewhere (diplomats of the Holy See to other countries and cardinals residing in Rome).[9][89] The population is composed of clergy, other religious members, and lay people serving the state (such as the Swiss Guard) and their family members.[90] All citizens, residents and places of worship in the city are Catholic. The city also receives thousands of tourists and workers every day.
+
+Vatican City has no formally enacted official language, but, unlike the Holy See which most often uses Latin for the authoritative version of its official documents, Vatican City uses only Italian in its legislation and official communications.[91] Italian is also the everyday language used by most of those who work in the state. In the Swiss Guard, Swiss German is the language used for giving commands, but the individual guards take their oath of loyalty in their own languages: German, French, Italian or Romansh. The official websites of the Holy See[92] and of Vatican City[93] are primarily in Italian, with versions of their pages in a large number of languages to varying extents.
+
+Unlike citizenship of other states, which is based either on jus sanguinis (birth from a citizen, even outside the state's territory) or on jus soli (birth within the territory of the state), citizenship of Vatican City is granted jus officii, namely on the grounds of appointment to work in a certain capacity in the service of the Holy See. It usually ceases upon cessation of the appointment. Citizenship is also extended to the spouse and children of a citizen, provided they are living together in the city.[89] Some individuals are also authorized to reside in the city but do not qualify or choose not to request citizenship.[89] Anyone who loses Vatican citizenship and does not possess other citizenship automatically becomes an Italian citizen as provided in the Lateran Treaty.[43]
+
+The Holy See, not being a country, issues only diplomatic and service passports, whereas Vatican City issues normal passports for its citizens.
+
+In statistics comparing countries in various per capita or per area metrics, the Vatican City is often an outlier—these can stem from the state's small size and ecclesiastical function.[94] For example, as most of the roles which would confer citizenship are reserved for men, the gender ratio of the citizenship is several men per woman.[95] Further oddities are petty crimes against tourists resulting in a very high per-capita crime rate,[96] and the city-state leading the world in per-capita wine consumption.[94] A jocular illustration of these anomalies is sometimes made by calculating a "Popes per km2" statistic, which is greater than two because the country is less than half a square kilometre in area.[97]
+
+Vatican City is home to some of the most famous art in the world. St. Peter's Basilica, whose successive architects include Bramante, Michelangelo, Giacomo della Porta, Maderno and Bernini, is a renowned work of Renaissance architecture. The Sistine Chapel is famous for its frescos, which include works by Perugino, Domenico Ghirlandaio and Botticelli as well as the ceiling and Last Judgment by Michelangelo. Artists who decorated the interiors of the Vatican include Raphael and Fra Angelico.
+
+The Vatican Apostolic Library and the collections of the Vatican Museums are of the highest historical, scientific and cultural importance. In 1984, the Vatican was added by UNESCO to the List of World Heritage Sites; it is the only one to consist of an entire state.[98] Furthermore, it is the only site to date registered with the UNESCO as a centre containing monuments in the "International Register of Cultural Property under Special Protection" according to the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Conflict.[98]
+
+Michelangelo's Pietà, in the Basilica, is one of the Vatican's best known artworks
+
+Michelangelo's frescos on the Sistine Chapel ceiling, "an artistic vision without precedent"[99]
+
+The elaborately decorated Sistine Hall in the Vatican Library
+
+Main courtyard of the Vatican Museums
+
+There is a football championship, called the Vatican City Championship, with eight teams, including, for example, the Swiss Guard's FC Guardia and police and museum guard teams.[100]
+
+Vatican City has a reasonably well-developed transport network considering its size (consisting mostly of a piazza and walkways). As a state that is 1.05 kilometres (0.65 miles) long and 0.85 kilometres (0.53 miles) wide,[101] it has a small transportation system with no airports or highways. The only aviation facility in Vatican City is the Vatican City Heliport. Vatican City is one of the few independent countries without an airport, and is served by the airports that serve the city of Rome, Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport and to a lesser extent Ciampino Airport.[102]
+
+There is a standard gauge railway, mainly used to transport freight, connected to Italy's network at Rome's Saint Peter's station by an 852-metre-long (932 yd) spur, 300 metres (330 yd) of which is within Vatican territory.[102] Pope John XXIII was the first Pope to make use of the railway; Pope John Paul II rarely used it.[102]
+
+The closest metro station is Ottaviano – San Pietro – Musei Vaticani.[103]
+
+The City is served by an independent, modern telephone system named the Vatican Telephone Service,[104] and a postal system (Poste Vaticane) that started operating on 13 February 1929. On 1 August, the state started to release its own postal stamps, under the authority of the Philatelic and Numismatic Office of the Vatican City State.[105] The City's postal service is sometimes said to be "the best in the world",[106] and faster than the postal service in Rome.[106]
+
+The Vatican also controls its own Internet top-level domain, which is registered as (.va). Broadband service is widely provided within Vatican City. Vatican City has also been given a radio ITU prefix, HV, and this is sometimes used by amateur radio operators.
+
+Vatican Radio, which was organized by Guglielmo Marconi, broadcasts on short-wave, medium-wave and FM frequencies and on the Internet.[107] Its main transmission antennae are located in Italian territory, and exceed Italian environmental protection levels of emission. For this reason, the Vatican Radio has been sued. Television services are provided through another entity, the Vatican Television Center.[108]
+
+L'Osservatore Romano is the multilingual semi-official newspaper of the Holy See. It is published by a private corporation under the direction of Catholic laymen, but reports on official information. However, the official texts of documents are in the Acta Apostolicae Sedis, the official gazette of the Holy See, which has an appendix for documents of the Vatican City State.
+
+Vatican Radio, the Vatican Television Center, and L'Osservatore Romano are organs not of the Vatican State but of the Holy See, and are listed as such in the Annuario Pontificio, which places them in the section "Institutions linked with the Holy See", ahead of the sections on the Holy See's diplomatic service abroad and the diplomatic corps accredited to the Holy See, after which is placed the section on the State of Vatican City.
+
+In 2008, the Vatican began an "ecological island" for renewable waste and has continued the initiative throughout the papacy of Francis. These innovations included, for example, the installation of a solar power system on the roof of the Paul VI Audience Hall. In July 2019, it was announced that Vatican City would ban the use and sale of single-use plastics as soon as its supply was depleted, well before the 2021 deadline established by the European Union. It is estimated that 50–55% of Vatican City's municipal solid waste is properly sorted and recycled, with the goal of reaching the EU standard of 70–75%[109]
+
+Crime in Vatican City consists largely of purse snatching, pickpocketing and shoplifting by outsiders.[110] The tourist foot-traffic in St. Peter's Square is one of the main locations for pickpockets in Vatican City.[111] If crimes are committed in Saint Peter's Square, the perpetrators may be arrested and tried by the Italian authorities, since that area is normally patrolled by Italian police.[112]
+
+Under the terms of article 22 of the Lateran Treaty,[113] Italy will, at the request of the Holy See, punish individuals for crimes committed within Vatican City and will itself proceed against the person who committed the offence, if that person takes refuge in Italian territory. Persons accused of crimes recognized as such both in Italy and in Vatican City that are committed in Italian territory will be handed over to the Italian authorities if they take refuge in Vatican City or in buildings that enjoy immunity under the treaty.[113][114]
+
+Vatican City has no prison system, apart from a few detention cells for pre-trial detention.[115] People convicted of committing crimes in the Vatican serve terms in Italian prisons (Polizia Penitenziaria), with costs covered by the Vatican.[116]

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+
+
+Cattle, or cows (female) and bulls (male), are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are a prominent modern member of the subfamily Bovinae, are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are most commonly classified collectively as Bos taurus.
+
+Cattle are commonly raised as livestock for meat (beef or veal, see beef cattle), for milk (see dairy cattle), and for hides, which are used to make leather. They are used as riding animals and draft animals (oxen or bullocks, which pull carts, plows and other implements). Another product of cattle is their dung, which can be used to create manure or fuel. In some regions, such as parts of India, cattle have significant religious meaning. Cattle, mostly small breeds such as the Miniature Zebu, are also kept as pets.
+
+Around 10,500 years ago, cattle were domesticated from as few as 80 progenitors in central Anatolia, the Levant and Western Iran.[1] According to an estimate from 2011, there are 1.4 billion cattle in the world.[2] In 2009, cattle became one of the first livestock animals to have a fully mapped genome.[3]
+
+Cattle were originally identified as three separate species: Bos taurus, the European or "taurine" cattle (including similar types from Africa and Asia); Bos indicus, the zebu; and the extinct Bos primigenius, the aurochs. The aurochs is ancestral to both zebu and taurine cattle.[4] These have been reclassified as one species, Bos taurus, with three subspecies: Bos taurus primigenius, Bos taurus indicus, and Bos taurus taurus.[5][6]
+
+Complicating the matter is the ability of cattle to interbreed with other closely related species. Hybrid individuals and even breeds exist, not only between taurine cattle and zebu (such as the sanga cattle, Bos taurus africanus), but also between one or both of these and some other members of the genus Bos – yaks (the dzo or yattle[7]), banteng, and gaur. Hybrids such as the beefalo breed can even occur between taurine cattle and either species of bison, leading some authors to consider them part of the genus Bos, as well.[8] The hybrid origin of some types may not be obvious – for example, genetic testing of the Dwarf Lulu breed, the only taurine-type cattle in Nepal, found them to be a mix of taurine cattle, zebu, and yak.[9] However, cattle cannot be successfully hybridized with more distantly related bovines such as water buffalo or African buffalo.
+
+The aurochs originally ranged throughout Europe, North Africa, and much of Asia. In historical times, its range became restricted to Europe, and the last known individual died in Mazovia, Poland, in about 1627.[10] Breeders have attempted to recreate cattle of similar appearance to aurochs by crossing traditional types of domesticated cattle, creating the Heck cattle breed.
+
+Cattle did not originate as the term for bovine animals. It was borrowed from Anglo-Norman catel, itself from medieval Latin capitale 'principal sum of money, capital', itself derived in turn from Latin caput 'head'. Cattle originally meant movable personal property, especially livestock of any kind, as opposed to real property (the land, which also included wild or small free-roaming animals such as chickens—they were sold as part of the land).[11] The word is a variant of chattel (a unit of personal property) and closely related to capital in the economic sense.[12] The term replaced earlier Old English feoh 'cattle, property', which survives today as fee (cf. German: Vieh, Dutch: vee, Gothic: faihu).
+
+The word "cow" came via Anglo-Saxon cū (plural cȳ), from Common Indo-European gʷōus (genitive gʷowés) = "a bovine animal", compare Persian: gâv, Sanskrit: go-, Welsh: buwch.[13] The plural cȳ became ki or kie in Middle English, and an additional plural ending was often added, giving kine, kien, but also kies, kuin and others. This is the origin of the now archaic English plural, "kine". The Scots language singular is coo or cou, and the plural is "kye".
+
+In older English sources such as the King James Version of the Bible, "cattle" refers to livestock, as opposed to "deer" which refers to wildlife.  "Wild cattle" may refer to feral cattle or to undomesticated species of the genus Bos.  Today, when used without any other qualifier, the modern meaning of "cattle" is usually restricted to domesticated bovines.[14]
+
+In general, the same words are used in different parts of the world, but with minor differences in the definitions.  The terminology described here contrasts the differences in definition between the United Kingdom and other British-influenced parts of the world such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland and the United States.[15]
+
+"Cattle" can only be used in the plural and not in the singular: it is a plurale tantum.[26] Thus one may refer to "three cattle" or "some cattle", but not "one cattle". "One head of cattle" is a valid though periphrastic way to refer to one animal of indeterminate or unknown age and sex; otherwise no universally used single-word singular form of cattle exists in modern English, other than the sex- and age-specific terms such as cow, bull, steer and heifer.  Historically, "ox" was not a sex-specific term for adult cattle, but generally this is now used only for working cattle, especially adult castrated males. The term is also incorporated into the names of other species, such as the musk ox and "grunting ox" (yak), and is used in some areas to describe certain cattle products such as ox-hide and oxtail.[27]
+
+Cow is in general use as a singular for the collective cattle. The word cow is easy to use when a singular is needed and the sex is unknown or irrelevant—when "there is a cow in the road", for example. Further, any herd of fully mature cattle in or near a pasture is statistically likely to consist mostly of cows, so the term is probably accurate even in the restrictive sense.  Other than the few bulls needed for breeding, the vast majority of male cattle are castrated as calves and are used as oxen or slaughtered for meat before the age of three years.  Thus, in a pastured herd, any calves or herd bulls usually are clearly distinguishable from the cows due to distinctively different sizes and clear anatomical differences. Merriam-Webster and Oxford Living Dictionaries recognize the sex-nonspecific use of cow as an alternate definition,[28][29] whereas Collins and the OED do not.
+
+Colloquially, more general nonspecific terms may denote cattle when a singular form is needed. Head of cattle is usually used only after a numeral. Australian, New Zealand and British farmers use the term beast or cattle beast. Bovine is also used in Britain. The term critter is common in the western United States and Canada, particularly when referring to young cattle.[30] In some areas of the American South (particularly the Appalachian region), where both dairy and beef cattle are present, an individual animal was once called a "beef critter", though that term is becoming archaic.
+
+Cattle raised for human consumption are called beef cattle. Within the beef cattle industry in parts of the United States, the term beef (plural beeves) is still used in its archaic sense to refer to an animal of either sex. Cows of certain breeds that are kept for the milk they give are called dairy cows or milking cows (formerly milch cows).  Most young male offspring of dairy cows are sold for veal, and may be referred to as veal calves.
+
+The term dogies is used to describe orphaned calves in the context of ranch work in the American West, as in "Keep them dogies moving".[31] In some places, a cow kept to provide milk for one family is called a "house cow".  Other obsolete terms for cattle include "neat" (this use survives in "neatsfoot oil", extracted from the feet and legs of cattle), and "beefing" (young animal fit for slaughter).
+
+An onomatopoeic term for one of the most common sounds made by cattle is moo (also called lowing). There are a number of other sounds made by cattle, including calves bawling, and bulls bellowing. Bawling is most common for cows after weaning of a calf. The bullroarer makes a sound similar to a bull's territorial call.[32]
+
+Cattle are large quadrupedal ungulate mammals with cloven hooves. Most breeds have horns, which can be as large as the Texas Longhorn or small like a scur. Careful genetic selection has allowed polled (hornless) cattle to become widespread.
+
+Cattle are ruminants, meaning their digestive system is highly specialized to allow the use of poorly digestible plants as food. Cattle have one stomach with four compartments, the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum, with the rumen being the largest compartment.
+The reticulum, the smallest compartment, is known as the "honeycomb". The omasum's main function is to absorb water and nutrients from the digestible feed. The omasum is known as the "many plies". The abomasum is like the human stomach; this is why it is known as the "true stomach".
+
+Cattle are known for regurgitating and re-chewing their food, known as cud chewing, like most ruminants.  While the animal is feeding, the food is swallowed without being chewed and goes into the rumen for storage until the animal can find a quiet place to continue the digestion process.  The food is regurgitated, a mouthful at a time, back up to the mouth, where the food, now called the cud, is chewed by the molars, grinding down the coarse vegetation to small particles.  The cud is then swallowed again and further digested by specialized microorganisms in the rumen. These microbes are primarily responsible for decomposing cellulose and other carbohydrates into volatile fatty acids cattle use as their primary metabolic fuel. The microbes inside the rumen also synthesize amino acids from non-protein nitrogenous sources, such as urea and ammonia. As these microbes reproduce in the rumen, older generations die and their cells continue on through the digestive tract. These cells are then partially digested in the small intestines, allowing cattle to gain a high-quality protein source. These features allow cattle to thrive on grasses and other tough vegetation.
+
+The gestation period for a cow is about nine months long. A newborn calf's size can vary among breeds, but a typical calf weighs 25 to 45 kg (55 to 99 lb). Adult size and weight vary significantly among breeds and sex. Steers are generally killed before reaching 750 kg (1,650 lb). Breeding stock may be allowed a longer lifespan, occasionally living as long as 25 years. The oldest recorded cow, Big Bertha, died at the age of 48 in 1993.
+
+On farms it is very common to use artificial insemination (AI),  a medically assisted reproduction technique consisting of the artificial deposition of semen in the female's genital tract.[33]  It is used in cases where the spermatozoa can not reach the fallopian tubes or simply by choice of the owner of the animal. It consists of transferring, to the uterine cavity, spermatozoa previously collected and processed, with the selection of morphologically more normal and mobile spermatozoa.
+
+A cow's udder contains two pairs of mammary glands, (commonly referred to as teats) creating four "quarters".[34] The front ones are referred to as fore quarters and the rear ones rear quarters.[35]
+
+Bulls become fertile at about seven months of age. Their fertility is closely related to the size of their testicles, and one simple test of fertility is to measure the circumference of the scrotum: a young bull is likely to be fertile once this reaches 28 centimetres (11 in); that of a fully adult bull may be over 40 centimetres (16 in).[36][37]
+
+A bull has a fibro-elastic penis. Given the small amount of erectile tissue, there is little enlargement after erection. The penis is quite rigid when non-erect, and becomes even more rigid during erection. Protrusion is not affected much by erection, but more by relaxation of the retractor penis muscle and straightening of the sigmoid flexure.[38][39][40] Induced ovulation can be manipulated to produce farming benefits. For example, to synchronise ovulation of the cattle to benefit dairy farming.
+
+The weight of adult cattle varies, depending on the breed. Smaller kinds, such as Dexter and Jersey adults, range between 272 to 454 kg (600 to 1,000 lb). Large Continental breeds, such as Charolais, Marchigiana, Belgian Blue and Chianina, adults range from 635 to 1,134 kg (1,400 to 2,500 lb). British breeds, such as Hereford, Angus, and Shorthorn, mature between 454 to 907 kg (1,000 to 2,000 lb), occasionally higher, particularly with Angus and Hereford.[41] Bulls are larger than cows of the same breed by up to a few hundred kilograms. Chianina bulls can weigh up to  1,500 kg (3,300 lb); British bulls, such as Angus and Hereford, can weigh as little as 907 kg (2,000 lb) to as much as 1,361 kg (3,000 lb).[citation needed]
+
+The world record for the heaviest bull was 1,740 kg (3,840 lb), a Chianina named Donetto, when he was exhibited at the Arezzo show in 1955.[42] The heaviest steer was eight-year-old 'Old Ben', a Shorthorn/Hereford cross weighing in at 2,140 kg (4,720 lb) in 1910.[43]
+
+In the United States, the average weight of beef cattle has steadily increased, especially since the 1970s, requiring the building of new slaughterhouses able to handle larger carcasses. New packing plants in the 1980s stimulated a large increase in cattle weights.[44] Before 1790 beef cattle averaged only 160 kg (350 lb) net; and thereafter weights climbed steadily.[45][46]
+
+In laboratory studies, young cattle are able to memorize the locations of several food sources and retain this memory for at least 8 hours, although this declined after 12 hours.[47]  Fifteen-month-old heifers learn more quickly than adult cows which have had either one or two calvings, but their longer-term memory is less stable.[48]  Mature cattle perform well in spatial learning tasks and have a good long-term memory in these tests.  Cattle tested in a radial arm maze are able to remember the locations of high-quality food for at least 30 days.  Although they initially learn to avoid low-quality food, this memory diminishes over the same duration.[49]  Under less artificial testing conditions, young cattle showed they were able to remember the location of feed for at least 48 days.[50]  Cattle can make an association between a visual stimulus and food within 1 day—memory of this association can be retained for 1 year, despite a slight decay.[51]
+
+Calves are capable of discrimination learning[52] and adult cattle compare favourably with small mammals in their learning ability in the Closed-field Test.[53]
+
+They are also able to discriminate between familiar individuals, and among humans.  Cattle can tell the difference between familiar and unfamiliar animals of the same species (conspecifics).  Studies show they behave less aggressively toward familiar individuals when they are forming a new group.[54]  Calves can also discriminate between humans based on previous experience, as shown by approaching those who handled them positively and avoiding those who handled them aversively.[55] Although cattle can discriminate between humans by their faces alone, they also use other cues such as the color of clothes when these are available.[56]
+
+In audio play-back studies, calves prefer their own mother's vocalizations compared to the vocalizations of an unfamiliar mother.[57]
+
+In laboratory studies using images, cattle can discriminate between images of the heads of cattle and other animal species.[58] They are also able to distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar conspecifics.  Furthermore, they are able to categorize images as familiar and unfamiliar individuals.[54]
+
+When mixed with other individuals, cloned calves from the same donor form subgroups, indicating that kin discrimination occurs and may be a basis of grouping behaviour.  It has also been shown using images of cattle that both artificially inseminated and cloned calves have similar cognitive capacities of kin and non-kin discrimination.[59]
+
+Cattle can recognize familiar individuals. Visual individual recognition is a more complex mental process than visual discrimination.  It requires the recollection of the learned idiosyncratic identity of an individual that has been previously encountered and the formation of a mental representation.[60] By using 2-dimensional images of the heads of one cow (face, profiles, ​3⁄4 views), all the tested heifers showed individual recognition of familiar and unfamiliar individuals from their own breed.   Furthermore, almost all the heifers recognized unknown individuals from different breeds, although this was achieved with greater difficulty.  Individual recognition was most difficult when the visual features of the breed being tested were quite different from the breed in the image, for example, the breed being tested had no spots whereas the image was of a spotted breed.[61]
+
+Cattle use visual/brain lateralisation in their visual scanning of novel and familiar stimuli.[62]  Domestic cattle prefer to view novel stimuli with the left eye, i.e. using the right brain hemisphere (similar to horses, Australian  magpies, chicks, toads and fish) but use the right eye, i.e. using the left hemisphere, for viewing familiar stimuli.[63]
+
+In cattle, temperament can affect production traits such as carcass and meat quality or milk yield as well as affecting the animal's overall health and reproduction. Cattle temperament is defined as "the consistent behavioral and physiological difference observed between individuals in response to a stressor or environmental challenge and is used to describe the relatively stable difference in the behavioral predisposition of an animal, which can be related to psychobiological mechanisms".[65] Generally, cattle temperament is assumed to be multidimensional. Five underlying categories of temperament traits have been proposed:[66]
+
+In a study on Holstein–Friesian heifers learning to press a panel to open a gate for access to a food reward, the researchers also recorded the heart rate and behavior of the heifers when moving along the race towards the food. When the heifers made clear improvements in learning, they had higher heart rates and tended to move more vigorously along the race. The researchers concluded this was an indication that cattle may react emotionally to their own learning improvement.[67]
+
+Negative emotional states are associated with a bias toward negative responses towards ambiguous cues in judgement tasks.  After separation from their mothers, Holstein calves showed such a cognitive bias indicative of low mood.[68]  A similar study showed that after hot-iron disbudding (dehorning), calves had a similar negative bias indicating that post-operative pain following this routine procedure results in a negative change in emotional state.[69]
+
+In studies of visual discrimination, the position of the ears has been used as an indicator of emotional state.[54] When cattle are stressed other cattle can tell by the chemicals released in their urine.[70]
+
+Cattle are very gregarious and even short-term isolation is considered to cause severe psychological stress.  When Aubrac and Friesian heifers are isolated, they increase their vocalizations and experience increased heart rate and plasma cortisol concentrations.  These physiological changes are greater in Aubracs.  When visual contact is re-instated, vocalizations rapidly decline, regardless of the familiarity of the returning cattle, however, heart rate decreases are greater if the returning cattle are familiar to the previously-isolated individual.[71]  Mirrors have been used to reduce stress in isolated cattle.[72]
+
+Cattle use all of the five widely recognized sensory modalities.  These can assist in some complex behavioural patterns, for example, in grazing behaviour.  Cattle eat mixed diets, but when given the opportunity, show a partial preference of approximately 70% clover and 30% grass. This preference has a diurnal pattern, with a stronger preference for clover in the morning, and the proportion of grass increasing towards the evening.[73]
+
+Vision is the dominant sense in cattle and they obtain almost 50% of their information visually.
+[74]
+
+Cattle are a prey animal and to assist predator detection, their eyes are located on the sides of their head rather than the front.  This gives them a wide field of view of 330° but limits binocular vision (and therefore stereopsis) to 30° to 50° compared to 140° in humans.[54][75]  This means they have a blind spot directly behind them.  Cattle have good visual acuity,[54] but compared to humans, their visual accommodation is poor.[clarification needed][74]
+
+Cattle have two kinds of color receptors in the cone cells of their retinas.   This means that cattle are dichromatic, as are most other non-primate land mammals.[76][77] There are two to three rods per cone in the fovea centralis but five to six near the optic papilla.[75] Cattle can distinguish long wavelength colors (yellow, orange and red) much better than the shorter wavelengths (blue, grey and green). Calves are able to discriminate between long (red) and short (blue) or medium (green) wavelengths, but have limited ability to discriminate between the short and medium.  They also approach handlers more quickly under red light.[78] Whilst having good color sensitivity, it is not as good as humans or sheep.[54]
+
+A common misconception about cattle (particularly bulls) is that they are enraged by the color red (something provocative is often said to be "like a red flag to a bull"). This is a myth. In bullfighting, it is the movement of the red flag or cape that irritates the bull and incites it to charge.[79]
+
+Cattle have a well-developed sense of taste and can distinguish the four primary tastes (sweet, salty, bitter and sour). They possess around 20,000 taste buds. The strength of taste perception depends on the individual's current food requirements. They avoid bitter-tasting foods (potentially toxic) and have a marked preference for sweet (high calorific value) and salty foods (electrolyte balance).  Their sensitivity to sour-tasting foods helps them to maintain optimal ruminal pH.[74]
+
+Plants have low levels of sodium and cattle have developed the capacity of seeking salt by taste and smell.  If cattle become depleted of sodium salts, they show increased locomotion directed to searching for these.  To assist in their search, the olfactory and gustatory receptors able to detect minute amounts of sodium salts increase their sensitivity as biochemical disruption develops with sodium salt depletion.[80][81]
+
+Cattle hearing ranges from 23 Hz to 35 kHz.  Their frequency of best sensitivity is 8 kHz and they have a lowest threshold of −21 db (re 20 μN/m−2), which means their hearing is more acute than horses (lowest threshold of 7 db).[82] Sound localization acuity thresholds are an average of 30°.  This means that cattle are less able to localise sounds compared to goats (18°), dogs (8°) and humans (0.8°).[83]  Because cattle have a broad foveal fields of view covering almost the entire horizon, they may not need very accurate locus information from their auditory systems to direct their gaze to a sound source.
+
+Vocalizations are an important mode of communication amongst cattle and can provide information on the age, sex, dominance status and reproductive status of the caller. Calves can recognize their mothers using vocalizations; vocal behaviour may play a role by indicating estrus and competitive display by bulls.[84]
+
+Cattle have a range of odiferous glands over their body including interdigital, infraorbital, inguinal and sebaceous glands, indicating that olfaction probably plays a large role in their social life.  Both the primary olfactory system using the olfactory bulbs, and the secondary olfactory system using the vomeronasal organ are used.[85]  This latter olfactory system is used in the flehmen response.  There is evidence that when cattle are stressed, this can be recognised by other cattle and this is communicated by alarm substances in the urine.[70]  The odour of dog faeces induces behavioural changes prior to cattle feeding, whereas the odours of urine from either stressed or non-stressed conspecifics and blood have no effect.[86]
+
+In the laboratory, cattle can be trained to recognise conspecific individuals using olfaction only.[85]
+
+In general, cattle use their sense of smell to "expand" on information detected by other sensory modalities.  However, in the case of social and reproductive behaviours, olfaction is a key source of information.[74]
+
+Cattle have tactile sensations detected mainly by mechanoreceptors, thermoreceptors and nociceptors in the skin and muzzle.  These are used most frequently when cattle explore their environment.[74]
+
+There is conflicting evidence for magnetoreception in cattle. One study reported that resting and grazing cattle tend to align their body axes in the geomagnetic north–south (N-S) direction.[87]  In a follow-up study, cattle exposed to various magnetic fields directly beneath or in the vicinity of power lines trending in various magnetic directions exhibited distinct patterns of alignment.[88] However, in 2011, a group of Czech researchers reported their failed attempt to replicate the finding using Google Earth images.[89]
+
+Under natural conditions, calves stay with their mother until weaning at 8 to 11 months.  Heifer and bull calves are equally attached to their mothers in the first few months of life.[90]  Cattle are considered to be "hider" type animals,[clarification needed] but in the artificial environment of small calving pens, close proximity between cow and calf is maintained by the mother at the first three calvings but this changes to being mediated by the calf after these.  Primiparous dams show a higher incidence of abnormal maternal behavior.[91]
+
+Beef-calves reared on the range suckle an average of 5.0 times every 24 hours with an average total time of 46 min spent suckling. There is a diurnal rhythm in suckling activity with peaks between 05:00–07:00, 10:00–13:00 and 17:00–21:00.[92]
+
+Studies on the natural weaning of zebu cattle (Bos indicus) have shown that the cow weans her calves over a 2-week period, but after that, she continues to show strong affiliatory behavior with her offspring and preferentially chooses them for grooming and as grazing partners for at least 4–5 years.[93]
+
+Semi-wild Highland cattle heifers first give birth at 2 or 3 years of age, and the timing of birth is synchronized with increases in natural food quality. Average calving interval is 391 days, and calving mortality within the first year of life is 5%.[94]
+
+One study showed that over a 4-year period, dominance relationships within a herd of semi-wild highland cattle were very firm. There were few overt aggressive conflicts and the majority of disputes were settled by agonistic (non-aggressive, competitive) behaviors that involved no physical contact between opponents (e.g. threatening and spontaneous withdrawing).  Such agonistic behavior reduces the risk of injury. Dominance status depended on age and sex, with older animals generally being dominant to young ones and males dominant to females. Young bulls gained superior dominance status over adult cows when they reached about 2 years of age.[94]
+
+As with many animal dominance hierarchies, dominance-associated aggressiveness does not correlate with rank position, but is closely related to rank distance between individuals.[94]
+
+Dominance is maintained in several ways.  Cattle often engage in mock fights where they test each other's strength in a non-aggressive way.  Licking is primarily performed by subordinates and received by dominant animals.  Mounting is a playful behavior shown by calves of both sexes and by bulls and sometimes by cows in estrus,[95] however, this is not a dominance related behavior as has been found in other species.[94]
+
+The horns of cattle are "honest signals" used in mate selection.  Furthermore, horned cattle attempt to keep greater distances between themselves and have fewer physical interactions than hornless cattle.  This leads to more stable social relationships.[96]
+
+In calves, the frequency of agonistic behavior decreases as space allowance increases, but this does not occur for changes in group size. However, in adult cattle, the number of agonistic encounters increases as the group size increases.[97]
+
+When grazing, cattle vary several aspects of their bite, i.e. tongue and jaw movements, depending on characteristics of the plant they are eating.  Bite area decreases with the density of the plants but increases with their height.  Bite area is determined by the sweep of the tongue; in one study observing 750-kilogram (1,650 lb) steers, bite area reached a maximum of approximately 170 cm2 (30 sq in).  Bite depth increases with the height of the plants.  By adjusting their behavior, cattle obtain heavier bites in swards that are tall and sparse compared with short, dense swards of equal mass/area.[98]  Cattle adjust other aspects of their grazing behavior in relation to the available food; foraging velocity decreases and intake rate increases in areas of abundant palatable forage.[99]
+
+Cattle avoid grazing areas contaminated by the faeces of other cattle more strongly than they avoid areas contaminated by sheep,[100] but they do not avoid pasture contaminated by rabbit faeces.[101]
+
+In 24 April 2009, edition of the journal Science, a team of researchers led by the National Institutes of Health and the US Department of Agriculture reported having mapped the bovine genome.[102]  The scientists found cattle have about 22,000 genes, and 80% of their genes are shared with humans, and they share about 1000 genes with dogs and rodents, but are not found in humans. Using this bovine "HapMap", researchers can track the differences between the breeds that affect the quality of meat and milk yields.[103]
+
+Behavioral traits of cattle can be as heritable as some production traits, and often, the two can be related.[104] The heritability of fear varies markedly in cattle from low (0.1) to high (0.53); such high variation is also found in pigs and sheep,  probably due to differences in the methods used.[105]  The heritability of temperament (response to isolation during handling) has been calculated as 0.36 and 0.46 for habituation to handling.[106]  Rangeland assessments show that the heritability of aggressiveness in cattle is around 0.36.[107]
+
+Quantitative trait loci (QTLs) have been found for a range of production and behavioral characteristics for both dairy and beef cattle.[108]
+
+Cattle occupy a unique role in human history, having been domesticated since at least the early neolithic age.
+
+Archeozoological and genetic data indicate that cattle were first domesticated from wild aurochs (Bos primigenius) approximately 10,500 years ago. There were two major areas of domestication: one in the Near East (specifically central Anatolia, the Levant and Western Iran), giving rise to the taurine line, and a second in the area that is now Pakistan, resulting in the indicine line.[109]  Modern mitochondrial DNA variation indicates the taurine line may have arisen from as few as 80 aurochs tamed in the upper reaches of Mesopotamia near the villages of Çayönü Tepesi in what is now southeastern Turkey and Dja'de el-Mughara in what is now northern Iraq.[1]
+
+Although European cattle are largely descended from the taurine lineage, gene flow from African cattle (partially of indicine origin) contributed substantial genomic components to both southern European cattle breeds and their New World descendants.[109]  A study on 134 breeds showed that modern taurine cattle originated from Africa, Asia, North and South America, Australia, and Europe.[110]  Some researchers have suggested that African taurine cattle are derived from a third independent domestication from North African aurochsen.[109]
+
+As early as 9000 BC both grain and cattle were used as money or as barter (the first grain remains found, considered to be evidence of pre-agricultural practice date to 17,000 BC).[111][112][113] Some evidence also exists to suggest that other animals, such as camels and goats, may have been used as currency in some parts of the world.[114] One of the advantages of using cattle as currency is that it allows the seller to set a fixed price. It even created the standard pricing. For example, two chickens were traded for one cow as cows were deemed to be more valuable than chickens.[112]
+
+Cattle are often raised by allowing herds to graze on the grasses of large tracts of rangeland. Raising cattle in this manner allows the use of land that might be unsuitable for growing crops. The most common interactions with cattle involve daily feeding, cleaning and milking. Many routine husbandry practices involve ear tagging, dehorning, loading, medical operations, vaccinations and hoof care, as well as training for agricultural shows and preparations. Also, some cultural differences occur in working with cattle; the cattle husbandry of Fulani men rests on behavioural techniques, whereas in Europe, cattle are controlled primarily by physical means, such as fences.[115]  Breeders use cattle husbandry to reduce M. bovis infection susceptibility by selective breeding and maintaining herd health to avoid concurrent disease.[116]
+
+Cattle are farmed for beef, veal, dairy, and leather. They are less commonly used for conservation grazing, or simply to maintain grassland for wildlife, such as in Epping Forest, England. They are often used in some of the most wild places for livestock. Depending on the breed, cattle can survive on hill grazing, heaths, marshes, moors and semidesert. Modern cattle are more commercial than older breeds and, having become more specialized, are less versatile. For this reason, many smaller farmers still favor old breeds, such as the Jersey dairy breed.
+In Portugal, Spain, southern France and some Latin American countries, bulls are used in the activity of bullfighting;  Jallikattu in India is a bull taming sport radically different from European bullfighting, humans are unarmed and bulls are not killed. In many other countries bullfighting is illegal. Other activities such as bull riding are seen as part of a rodeo, especially in North America. Bull-leaping, a central ritual in Bronze Age Minoan culture (see Sacred Bull), still exists in southwestern France.  In modern times, cattle are also entered into agricultural competitions. These competitions can involve live cattle or cattle carcases in hoof and hook events.
+
+In terms of food intake by humans, consumption of cattle is less efficient than of grain or vegetables with regard to land use, and hence cattle grazing consumes more area than such other agricultural production when raised on grains.[117] Nonetheless, cattle and other forms of domesticated animals can sometimes help to use plant resources in areas not easily amenable to other forms of agriculture. Bulls are sometimes used as guard animals.[118][119]
+
+The average sleep time of a domestic cow is about 4 hours a day.[120]  Cattle do have a stay apparatus,[121] but do not sleep standing up,[122] they lie down to sleep deeply.[123]  In spite of the urban legend, cows cannot be tipped over by people pushing on them.[124]
+
+The meat of adult cattle is known as beef, and that of calves is veal.  Other animal parts are also used as food products, including blood, liver, kidney, heart and oxtail.  Cattle also produce milk, and dairy cattle are specifically bred to produce the large quantities of milk processed and sold for human consumption. Cattle today are the basis of a multibillion-dollar industry worldwide. The international trade in beef for 2000 was over $30 billion and represented only 23% of world beef production.[125] Approximately 300 million cattle, including dairy cattle, are slaughtered each year for food.[126] The production of milk, which is also made into cheese, butter, yogurt, and other dairy products, is comparable in economic size to beef production, and provides an important part of the food supply for many of the world's people. Cattle hides, used for leather to make shoes, couches and clothing, are another widespread product.  Cattle remain broadly used as draft animals in many developing countries, such as India. Cattle are also used in some sporting games, including rodeo and bullfighting.
+
+Source: Helgi Library,[127] World Bank, FAOSTAT
+
+About half the world's meat comes from cattle.[128]
+
+Certain breeds of cattle, such as the Holstein-Friesian, are used to produce milk,[129][130] which can be processed into dairy products such as milk, cheese or yogurt. Dairy cattle are usually kept on specialized dairy farms designed for milk production. Most cows are milked twice per day, with milk processed at a dairy, which may be onsite at the farm or the milk may be shipped to a dairy plant for eventual sale of a dairy product.[131] For dairy cattle to continue producing milk, they must give birth to one calf per year. If the calf is male, it generally is slaughtered at a young age to produce veal.[132] They will continue to produce milk until three weeks before birth.[130] Over the last fifty years, dairy farming has become more intensive to increase the yield of milk produced by each cow. The Holstein-Friesian is the breed of dairy cow most common in the UK, Europe and the United States. It has been bred selectively to produce the highest yields of milk of any cow. Around 22 litres per day is average in the UK.[129][130]
+
+Most cattle are not kept solely for hides, which are usually a by-product of beef production. Hides are most commonly used for leather, which can be made into a variety of product, including shoes. In 2012 India was the world's largest producer of cattle hides.[133]
+
+Feral cattle are defined as being 'cattle that are not domesticated or cultivated'.[134] Populations of feral cattle are known to come from and exist in: Australia, United States of America,[135] Colombia, Argentina, Spain, France and many islands, including New Guinea, Hawaii, Galapagos, Juan Fernández Islands, Hispaniola (Dominican Republic and Haiti), Tristan da Cunha and Île Amsterdam,[136]  two islands of Kuchinoshima[137] and Kazura Island next to Naru Island in Japan.[138][139] Chillingham cattle is sometimes regarded as a feral breed.[140] Aleutian wild cattles can be found on Aleutian Islands.[141] The "Kinmen cattle" which is dominantly found on Kinmen Island, Taiwan is mostly domesticated while smaller portion of the population is believed to live in the wild due to accidental releases.[142]
+
+Other notable examples include cattle in the vicinity of Hong Kong (in the Shing Mun Country Park,[143] among Sai Kung District[144] and Lantau Island[145] and on Grass Island[146]), and semi-feral animals in Yangmingshan, Taiwan.[147]
+
+(2003)
+
+& Hoekstra
+
+(2003)
+
+(2003)
+
+Gut flora in cattle include methanogens that produce methane as a byproduct of enteric fermentation, which cattle belch out. The same volume of atmospheric methane has a higher global warming potential than atmospheric carbon dioxide.[151][152] Methane belching from cattle can be reduced with genetic selection, immunization, rumen defaunation, diet modification, decreased antibiotic use, and grazing management, among others.[153][154][155][156]
+
+A report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that the livestock sector is "responsible for 18% of greenhouse gas emissions".[157] The IPCC estimates that cattle and other livestock emit about 80 to 93 Megatonnes of methane per year,[158] accounting for an estimated 37% of anthropogenic methane emissions,[157] and additional methane is produced by anaerobic fermentation of manure in manure lagoons and other manure storage structures.[159] The net change in atmospheric methane content was recently about 1 Megatonne per year,[160]  and in some recent years there has been no increase in atmospheric methane content.[161]  While cattle fed forage actually produce more methane than grain-fed cattle, the increase may be offset by the increased carbon recapture of pastures, which recapture three times the CO2 of cropland used for grain.[162]
+
+One of the cited changes suggested to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is intensification of the livestock industry, since intensification leads to less land for a given level of production. This assertion is supported by studies of the US beef production system, suggesting practices prevailing in 2007 involved 8.6% less fossil fuel use, 16.3% less greenhouse gas emissions, 12.1% less water use, and 33.0% less land use, per unit mass of beef produced, than those used in 1977.[163]  The analysis took into account not only practices in feedlots, but also feed production (with less feed needed in more intensive production systems), forage-based cow-calf operations and back-grounding before cattle enter a feedlot (with more beef produced per head of cattle from those sources, in more intensive systems), and beef from animals derived from the dairy industry.
+
+The number of American cattle kept in confined feedlot conditions fluctuates. From 1 January 2002 through 1 January 2012, there was no significant overall upward or downward trend in the number of US cattle on feed for slaughter, which averaged about 14.046 million head over that period.[164][165]  Previously, the number had increased; it was 12.453 million in 1985.[166] Cattle on feed (for slaughter) numbered about 14.121 million on 1 January 2012, i.e. about 15.5% of the estimated inventory of 90.8 million US cattle (including calves) on that date.  Of the 14.121 million, US cattle on feed (for slaughter) in operations with 1000 head or more were estimated to number 11.9 million.[165] Cattle feedlots in this size category correspond to the regulatory definition of "large" concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) for cattle other than mature dairy cows or veal calves.[167]  Significant numbers of dairy, as well as beef cattle, are confined in CAFOs, defined as "new and existing operations which stable or confine and feed or maintain for a total of 45 days or more in any 12-month period more than the number of animals specified"[168] where "[c]rops, vegetation, forage growth, or post-harvest residues are not sustained in the normal growing season over any portion of the lot or facility."[169]  They may be designated as small, medium and large. Such designation of cattle CAFOs is according to cattle type (mature dairy cows, veal calves or other) and cattle numbers, but medium CAFOs are so designated only if they meet certain discharge criteria, and small CAFOs are designated only on a case-by-case basis.[170]
+
+A CAFO that discharges pollutants is required to obtain a permit, which requires a plan to manage nutrient runoff, manure, chemicals, contaminants, and other wastewater pursuant to the US Clean Water Act.[171] The regulations involving CAFO permitting have been extensively litigated.[172]
+Commonly, CAFO wastewater and manure nutrients are applied to land at agronomic rates for use by forages or crops, and it is often assumed that various constituents of wastewater and manure, e.g. organic contaminants and pathogens, will be retained, inactivated or degraded on the land with application at such rates; however, additional evidence is needed to test reliability of such assumptions
+.[173]  Concerns raised by opponents of CAFOs have included risks of contaminated water due to feedlot runoff,[174] soil erosion, human and animal exposure to toxic chemicals, development of antibiotic resistant bacteria and an increase in E. coli contamination.[175]  While research suggests some of these impacts can be mitigated by developing wastewater treatment systems[174] and planting cover crops in larger setback zones,[176] the Union of Concerned Scientists released a report in 2008 concluding that CAFOs are generally unsustainable and externalize costs.[162]
+
+An estimated 935,000 cattle operations were operating in the US in 2010.[177] In 2001, the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tallied 5,990 cattle CAFOs then regulated, consisting of beef (2,200), dairy (3,150), heifer (620) and veal operations (20).[178] Since that time, the EPA has established CAFOs as an enforcement priority.  EPA enforcement highlights for fiscal year 2010 indicated enforcement actions against 12 cattle CAFOs for violations that included failures to obtain a permit, failures to meet the terms of a permit, and discharges of contaminated water.[179]
+
+Another concern is manure, which if not well-managed, can lead to adverse environmental consequences. However, manure also is a valuable source of nutrients and organic matter when used as a fertilizer.[180]  Manure was used as a fertilizer on about 6,400,000 hectares (15.8 million acres) of US cropland in 2006, with manure from cattle accounting for nearly 70% of manure applications to soybeans and about 80% or more of manure applications to corn, wheat, barley, oats and sorghum.[181]  Substitution of manure for synthetic fertilizers in crop production can be environmentally significant, as between 43 and 88 megajoules of fossil fuel energy would be used per kg of nitrogen in manufacture of synthetic nitrogenous fertilizers.[182]
+
+Grazing by cattle at low intensities can create a favourable environment for native herbs and forbs by mimicking the native grazers who they displaced; in many world regions, though, cattle are reducing biodiversity due to overgrazing.[183]  A survey of refuge managers on 123 National Wildlife Refuges in the US tallied 86 species of wildlife considered positively affected and 82 considered negatively affected by refuge cattle grazing or haying.[184] Proper management of pastures, notably managed intensive rotational grazing and grazing at low intensities can lead to less use of fossil fuel energy, increased recapture of carbon dioxide, fewer ammonia emissions into the atmosphere, reduced soil erosion, better air quality, and less water pollution.[162]
+
+The veterinary discipline dealing with cattle and cattle diseases (bovine veterinary) is called buiatrics.[185] Veterinarians and professionals working on cattle health issues are pooled in the World Association for Buiatrics, founded in 1960.[186] National associations and affiliates also exist.[187]
+
+Cattle diseases were in the center of attention in the 1980s and 1990s when the Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), also known as mad cow disease, was of concern.  Cattle might catch and develop various other diseases, like blackleg, bluetongue, foot rot too.[188][189][190]
+
+In most states, as cattle health is not only a veterinarian issue, but also a public health issue, public health and food safety standards and farming regulations directly affect the daily work of farmers who keep cattle.[191] However, said rules change frequently and are often debated. For instance, in the U.K., it was proposed in 2011 that milk from tuberculosis-infected cattle should be allowed to enter the food chain.[192] Internal food safety regulations might affect a country's trade policy as well. For example, the United States has just reviewed its beef import rules according to the "mad cow standards"; while Mexico forbids the entry of cattle who are older than 30 months.[193]
+
+Cow urine is commonly used in India for internal medical purposes.[194][195]  It is distilled and then consumed by patients seeking treatment for a wide variety of illnesses.[196] At present, no conclusive medical evidence shows this has any effect.[197] However, an Indian medicine containing cow urine has already obtained U.S. patents.[198]
+
+Digital dermatitis is caused by the bacteria from the genus Treponema. It differs from foot rot and can appear under unsanitary conditions such as poor hygiene or inadequate hoof trimming, among other causes. It primarily affects dairy cattle and has been known to lower the quantity of milk produced, however the milk quality remains unaffected. Cattle are also susceptible to ringworm caused by the fungus, Trichophyton verrucosum, a contagious skin disease which may be transferred to humans exposed to infected cows.[199]
+
+Stocking density refers to the number of animals within a specified area. When stocking density reaches high levels, the behavioural needs of the animals may not be met.  This can negatively influence health, welfare and production performance.[200]
+
+The effect of overstocking in cows can have a negative effect on milk production and reproduction rates which are two very important traits for dairy farmers. Overcrowding of cows in barns has been found to reduced feeding, resting and rumination.[200] Although they consume the same amount of dry matter within the span of a day, they consume the food at a much more rapid rate, and this behaviour in cows can lead to further complications.[201] The feeding behaviour of cows during their post-milking period is very important as it has been proven that the longer animals can eat after milking, the longer they will be standing up and therefore causing less contamination to the teat ends.[202] This is necessary to reduce the risk of mastitis as infection has been shown to increase the chances of embryonic loss.[203] Sufficient rest is important for dairy cows because it is during this period that their resting blood flow increases up to 50%, this is directly proportionate to milk production.[202] Each additional hour of rest can be seen to translate to 2 to 3.5 more pounds of milk per cow daily. Stocking densities of anything over 120% have been shown to decrease the amount of time cows spend lying down.[204]
+
+Cortisol is an important stress hormone; its plasma concentrations increase greatly when subjected to high levels of stress.[205]  Increased concentration levels of cortisol have been associated with significant increases in gonadotrophin levels and lowered progestin levels. Reduction of stress is important in the reproductive state of cows as an increase in gonadotrophin and lowered progesterone levels may impinge on the ovulatory and lutenization process and to reduce the chances of successful implantation.[206] A high cortisol level will also stimulate the degradation of fats and proteins which may make it difficult for the animal to sustain its pregnancy if implanted successfully.[205]
+
+Animal rights activists have criticized the treatment of cattle, claiming that common practices in cattle husbandry, slaughter, and entertainment unnecessarily cause cattle fear, stress, and pain. They advocate for abstaining from the consumption of cattle-related animal products (such as beef, cow's milk, veal, and leather) and cattle-based entertainment (such as rodeos and bullfighting) in order to end one's participation in the cruelty, claiming that the animals are only treated this way due to market forces and popular demand.
+
+The following practices have been criticized by animal welfare and animal rights groups:[207] branding,[208] castration,[209] dehorning,[210] ear tagging,[211] nose ringing,[212] restraint,[213] tail docking,[214] the use of veal crates,[215] and cattle prods.[216] Further, the stress induced by high stocking density (such as in feedlots, auctions, and during transport) is known to negatively affect the health of cattle,[217][218] and has also been criticized.[219][220]
+
+While the treatment of dairy cows is similar to that of beef cattle, especially towards the end of their life, it has faced additional criticism.[221] To produce milk from dairy cattle, most calves are separated from their mothers soon after birth and fed milk replacement in order to retain the cows' milk for human consumption.[222] Animal welfare advocates point out that this breaks the natural bond between the mother and her calf.[222] Unwanted male calves are either slaughtered at birth or sent for veal production.[222] To prolong lactation, dairy cows are almost permanently kept pregnant through artificial insemination.[222] Because of this, some feminists state that dairy production is based on the sexual exploitation of cows.[223][224] Although cows' natural life expectancy is about twenty years,[225] after about five years the cows' milk production has dropped; they are then considered "spent" and are sent to slaughter, which is considered cruel by some.[226][227]
+
+While leather is often a by-product of slaughter, in some countries, such as India and Bangladesh, cows are raised primarily for their leather. These leather industries often make their cows walk long distances across borders to be killed in neighboring provinces and countries where cattle slaughter is legal. Some cows die along the long journey, and exhausted animals are often beaten and have chili and tobacco rubbed into their eyes to make them keep walking.[228] These practices have faced backlash from various animal rights groups.[229][230]
+
+There has been a long history of protests against rodeos,[231]  with the opposition saying that rodeos are unnecessary and cause stress, injury, and death to the animals.[232][233]
+
+The running of the bulls faces opposition due to the stress and injuries incurred by the bulls during the event.[234]
+
+Bullfighting is considered by many people, including animal rights and animal welfare advocates, to be a cruel, barbaric blood sport in which bulls are forced to suffer severe stress and a slow, torturous death.[235] A number of animal rights and animal welfare groups are involved in anti-bullfighting activities.[236]
+
+Oxen (singular ox) are cattle trained as draft animals. Often they are adult, castrated males of larger breeds, although females and bulls are also used in some areas. Usually, an ox is over four years old due to the need for training and to allow it to grow to full size. Oxen are used for plowing, transport, hauling cargo, grain-grinding by trampling or by powering machines, irrigation by powering pumps, and wagon drawing. Oxen were commonly used to skid logs in forests, and sometimes still are, in low-impact, select-cut logging. Oxen are most often used in teams of two, paired, for light work such as carting, with additional pairs added when more power is required, sometimes up to a total of 20 or more.
+
+Oxen can be trained to respond to a teamster's signals. These signals are given by verbal commands or by noise (whip cracks). Verbal commands vary according to dialect and local tradition. Oxen can pull harder and longer than horses. Though not as fast as horses, they are less prone to injury because they are more sure-footed.
+
+Many oxen are used worldwide, especially in developing countries.  About 11.3 million draft oxen are used in sub-Saharan Africa.[237]  In India, the number of draft cattle in 1998 was estimated at 65.7 million head.[238] About half the world's crop production is thought to depend on land preparation (such as plowing) made possible by animal traction.[239]
+
+The cow is mentioned often in the Quran.  The second and longest surah of the Quran is named Al-Baqara ("The Cow"). Out of the 286 verses of the surah, seven mention cows (Al Baqarah 67–73).[240][241] The name of the surah derives from this passage in which Moses orders his people to sacrifice a cow in order to resurrect a man murdered by an unknown person.[242]
+
+Cattle are venerated within the Hindu religion of India. In the Vedic period they were a symbol of plenty [243]:130 and were frequently slaughtered. In later times they gradually acquired their present status. According to the Mahabharata, they are to be treated with the same respect 'as one's mother'.[244] In the middle of the first millennium, the consumption of beef began to be disfavoured by lawgivers.[243]:144 Although there has never been any cow-goddesses or temples dedicated to them,[243]:146 cows appear in numerous stories from the Vedas and Puranas. The deity Krishna was brought up in a family of cowherders, and given the name Govinda (protector of the cows). Also, Shiva is traditionally said to ride on the back of a bull named Nandi.
+
+Milk and milk products were used in Vedic rituals.[243]:130 In the postvedic period products of the cow—milk, curd, ghee, but also cow dung and urine (gomutra), or the combination of these five (panchagavya)—began to assume an increasingly important role in ritual purification and expiation.[243]:130–131
+
+Veneration of the cow has become a symbol of the identity of Hindus as a community,[243]:20 especially since the end of the 19th century. Slaughter of cows (including oxen, bulls and calves) is forbidden by law in several states of the Indian Union. McDonald's outlets in India do not serve any beef burgers. In Maharaja Ranjit Singh's empire of the early 19th century, the killing of a cow was punishable by death.[245]
+
+Cattle are typically represented in heraldry by the bull.
+
+Arms of the Azores
+
+Arms of Mecklenburg region, Germany
+
+Arms of Turin, Italy
+
+Arms of Kaunas, Lithuania
+
+Arms of Bielsk Podlaski, Poland
+
+Arms of Ciołek, Poland
+
+Arms of Turek, Poland
+
+For 2013, the FAO estimated global cattle numbers at 1.47 billion.[249] Regionally, the FAO estimate for 2013 includes: Asia 497 million; South America 350 million; Africa 307 million; Europe 122 million; North America 102 million; Central America 47 million; Oceania 40 million; and Caribbean 9 million.
+
+Didactic model of Bovine
+
+Bovine anatomical model
+
+Didactic model of a bovine muscular system
+

en/5916.html.txt

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+
+
+Refer to the article's text about the interrelationships among the phocid subfamilies.
+
+The  earless seals, phocids or true seals are one of the three main groups of mammals within the seal lineage, Pinnipedia. All true seals are members of the family Phocidae /ˈfoʊsɪdiː/. They are sometimes called crawling seals to distinguish them from the fur seals and sea lions of the family Otariidae. Seals live in the oceans of both hemispheres and, with the exception of the more tropical monk seals, are mostly confined to polar, subpolar, and temperate climates.  The Baikal seal is the only species of exclusively freshwater seal.
+
+The earliest known fossil earless seal is Noriphoca gaudini from the late Oligocene or earliest Miocene (Aquitanian) of Italy.[1] Other early fossil phocids date from the mid-Miocene, 15 million years ago in the north Atlantic.[1][3] Until recently, many researchers believed that phocids evolved separately from otariids and odobenids; and that they evolved from otter-like animals, such as Potamotherium, which inhabited European freshwater lakes. Recent evidence strongly suggests a monophyletic origin for all pinnipeds from a single ancestor, possibly Enaliarctos, most closely related to the mustelids and bears.[4]
+
+Monk seals and elephant seals are believed to have first entered the Pacific through the open straits between North and South America, which only closed in the Pliocene.[5] The various Antarctic species may have either used the same route, or traveled down the west coast of Africa.[6]
+
+In the 1980s and 1990s, morphological phylogenetic analysis of the phocids led to new conclusions about the interrelatedness of the various genera. More recent molecular phylogenetic analyses have confirmed the monophyly of the two phocid subfamilies (Phocinae and Monachinae).[7][8][9][5] The Monachinae (known as the "southern" seals), is composed of three tribes; the Lobodontini, Miroungini, and Monachini. The four Antarctic genera Hydrurga, Leptonychotes, Lobodon, and Ommatophoca are part of the tribe Lobodontini. Tribe Miroungini is composed of the elephant seals. The Monk seals (Monachus and Neomonachus) are all part of the tribe Monachini.[10] Likewise, subfamily Phocinae (the "northern" seals) also includes three tribes; Erignathini (Erignathus), Cystophorini (Cystophora), and Phocini (all other phocines). More recently, five species have been split off from Phoca, forming three additional genera.[11]
+
+Alternatively the three monachine tribes have been evaluated to familiar status, which elephant seals and the Antarctic seals are more closely related to the phocines.[12]
+
+ringed seal
+
+Baikal seal
+
+Caspian seal
+
+spotted seal
+
+harbor seal
+
+grey seal
+
+ribbon seal
+
+harp seal
+
+hooded seal
+
+bearded seal
+
+Weddell seal
+
+leopard seal
+
+crabeater seal
+
+Ross seal
+
+southern elephant seal
+
+northern elephant seal
+
+Mediterranean monk seal
+
+Hawaiian monk seal
+
+Adult phocids vary from 1.17 m (3.8 ft) in length and 45 kg (99 lb) in weight in the ringed seal to 4.9 m (16 ft) and 2,400 kg (5,300 lb) in land-based members of the Carnivora, although they retain powerful canines. Some species lack molars altogether. The dental formula is:
+2–3.1.4.0–21–2.1.4.0–2
+
+While otariids are known for speed and maneuverability, phocids are known for efficient, economical movement. This allows most phocids to forage far from land to exploit prey resources, while otariids are tied to rich upwelling zones close to breeding sites. Phocids swim by sideways movements of their bodies, using their hind flippers to fullest effect.[14] Their fore flippers are used primarily for steering, while their hind flippers are bound to the pelvis in such a way that they cannot bring them under their bodies to walk on them. They are more streamlined than fur seals and sea lions, so they can swim more effectively over long distances. However, because they cannot turn their hind flippers downward, they are very clumsy on land, having to wriggle with their front flippers and abdominal muscles.
+
+Phocid respiratory and circulatory systems are adapted to allow diving to considerable depths, and they can spend a long time underwater between breaths. Air is forced from the lungs during a dive and into the upper respiratory passages, where gases cannot easily be absorbed into the bloodstream. This helps protect the seal from the bends. The middle ear is also lined with blood sinuses that inflate during diving, helping to maintain a constant pressure.[14]
+
+Phocids are more specialized for aquatic life than otariids. They lack external ears and have sleek, streamlined bodies. Retractable nipples, internal testicles,[15] and an internal penile sheath provide further streamlining. A smooth layer of blubber lies underneath the skin. Phocids are able to divert blood flow to this layer to help control their temperatures.[citation needed]
+
+Unlike otariids, true seals do not communicate by 'barking'. Instead, they communicate by slapping the water and grunting.
+
+Phocids spend most of their time at sea, although they return to land or pack ice to breed and give birth. Pregnant females spend long periods foraging at sea, building up fat reserves, and then return to the breeding site to use their stored energy to nurse pups. However, the common seal displays a reproductive strategy similar to that used by otariids, in which the mother makes short foraging trips between nursing bouts.
+
+Because a phocid mother's feeding grounds are often hundreds of kilometers from the breeding site, she must fast while lactating. This combination of fasting with lactation requires the mother to provide large amounts of energy to her pup at a time when she is not eating (and often, not drinking). Mothers must supply their own metabolic needs while nursing. This is a miniature version of the humpback whales' strategy, which involves fasting during their months-long migration from arctic feeding areas to tropical breeding/nursing areas and back.
+
+Phocids produce thick, fat-rich milk that allows them to provide their pups with large amounts of energy in a short period. This allows the mother to return to the sea in time to replenish her reserves. Lactation ranges from five to seven weeks in the monk seal to just three to five days in the hooded seal. The mother ends nursing by leaving her pup at the breeding site to search for food (pups continue to nurse if given the opportunity). "Milk stealers" that suckle from unrelated, sleeping females are not uncommon; this often results in the death of the mother's pup, since a female can only feed one pup.
+
+The pup's diet is so high in calories, it builds up a fat store. Before the pup is ready to forage, the mother abandons it, and the pup consumes its own fat for weeks or even months while it matures. Seals, like all marine mammals, need time to develop the oxygen stores, swimming muscles, and neural pathways necessary for effective diving and foraging. Seal pups typically eat no food and drink no water during the period, although some polar species eat snow. The postweaning fast ranges from two weeks in the hooded seal to 9–12 weeks in the northern elephant seal.[16] The physiological and behavioral adaptations that allow phocid pups to endure these remarkable fasts, which are among the longest for any mammal, remain an area of active study and research.
+
+Phocids make use of at least four different feeding strategies: suction feeding, grip, and tear feeding, filter feeding, and pierce feeding. Each of these feeding strategies is aided by a specialized skull, mandible, and tooth morphology. However, despite morphological specialization, most phocids are opportunistic and employ multiple strategies to capture and eat prey. For example, the leopard seal, Hydrurga leptonyx, uses grip and tear feeding to prey on penguins, suction feeding to consume small fish, and filter feeding to catch krill.[17]

en/5917.html.txt

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+
+
+
+
+Plants are mainly multicellular organisms, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, plants were treated as one of two kingdoms including all living things that were not animals, and all algae and fungi were treated as plants. However, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes (the archaea and bacteria). By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin name for "green plants"), a group that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and their allies, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae, but excludes the red and brown algae.
+
+Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is also common.
+
+There are about 320,000 species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, produce seeds.[5] Green plants provide a substantial proportion of the world's molecular oxygen,[6] and are the basis of most of Earth's ecosystems. Plants that produce grain, fruit and vegetables also form basic human foods and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants have many cultural and other uses, as ornaments, building materials, writing material and, in great variety, they have been the source of medicines and psychoactive drugs. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology.
+
+All living things were traditionally placed into one of two groups, plants and animals. This classification may date from Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), who made the distinction between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus (1707–1778) created the basis of the modern system of scientific classification, these two groups became the kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Metaphyta or Plantae) and Animalia (also called Metazoa). Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts.[citation needed]
+
+The term "plant" generally implies the possession of the following traits: multicellularity, possession of cell walls containing cellulose, and the ability to carry out photosynthesis with primary chloroplasts.[7][8]
+
+When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a specific group of organisms or taxon, it usually refers to one of four concepts. From least to most inclusive, these four groupings are:
+
+Another way of looking at the relationships between the different groups that have been called "plants" is through a cladogram, which shows their evolutionary relationships. These are not yet completely settled, but one accepted relationship between the three groups described above is shown below[clarification needed].[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Those which have been called "plants" are in bold (some minor groups have been omitted).
+
+Rhodophyta (red algae)
+
+Rhodelphidia (predatorial)
+
+Picozoa
+
+Glaucophyta (glaucophyte algae)
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Chlorophyta
+
+Charales (stoneworts)
+
+land plants or embryophytes
+
+Cryptista
+
+The way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors.
+
+Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce food by photosynthesis and thus have traditionally been included in the plant kingdom. The seaweeds range from large multicellular algae to single-celled organisms and are classified into three groups, the green algae, red algae and brown algae. There is good evidence that the brown algae evolved independently from the others, from non-photosynthetic ancestors that formed endosymbiotic relationships with red algae rather than from cyanobacteria, and they are no longer classified as plants as defined here.[23][24]
+
+The Viridiplantae, the green plants – green algae and land plants – form a clade, a group consisting of all the descendants of a common ancestor. With a few exceptions, the green plants have the following features in common; primary chloroplasts derived from cyanobacteria containing chlorophylls a and b, cell walls containing cellulose, and food stores in the form of starch contained within the plastids. They undergo closed mitosis without centrioles, and typically have mitochondria with flat cristae. The chloroplasts of green plants are surrounded by two membranes, suggesting they originated directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria.
+
+Two additional groups, the Rhodophyta (red algae) and Glaucophyta (glaucophyte algae), also have primary chloroplasts that appear to be derived directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, although they differ from Viridiplantae in the pigments which are used in photosynthesis and so are different in colour. These groups also differ from green plants in that the storage polysaccharide is floridean starch and is stored in the cytoplasm rather than in the plastids. They appear to have had a common origin with Viridiplantae and the three groups form the clade Archaeplastida, whose name implies that their chloroplasts were derived from a single ancient endosymbiotic event. This is the broadest modern definition of the term 'plant'.
+
+In contrast, most other algae (e.g. brown algae/diatoms, haptophytes, dinoflagellates, and euglenids) not only have different pigments but also have chloroplasts with three or four surrounding membranes. They are not close relatives of the Archaeplastida, presumably having acquired chloroplasts separately from ingested or symbiotic green and red algae. They are thus not included in even the broadest modern definition of the plant kingdom, although they were in the past.
+
+The green plants or Viridiplantae were traditionally divided into the green algae (including the stoneworts) and the land plants. However, it is now known that the land plants evolved from within a group of green algae, so that the green algae by themselves are a paraphyletic group, i.e. a group that excludes some of the descendants of a common ancestor. Paraphyletic groups are generally avoided in modern classifications, so that in recent treatments the Viridiplantae have been divided into two clades, the Chlorophyta and the Streptophyta (including the land plants and Charophyta).[25][26]
+
+The Chlorophyta (a name that has also been used for all green algae) are the sister group to the Charophytes, from which the land plants evolved. There are about 4,300 species,[27] mainly unicellular or multicellular marine organisms such as the sea lettuce, Ulva.
+
+The other group within the Viridiplantae are the mainly freshwater or terrestrial Streptophyta, which consists of the land plants together with the Charophyta, itself consisting of several groups of green algae such as the desmids and stoneworts. Streptophyte algae are either unicellular or form multicellular filaments, branched or unbranched.[26] The genus Spirogyra is a filamentous streptophyte alga familiar to many, as it is often used in teaching and is one of the organisms responsible for the algal "scum" on ponds. The freshwater stoneworts strongly resemble land plants and are believed to be their closest relatives.[citation needed] Growing immersed in fresh water, they consist of a central stalk with whorls of branchlets.
+
+Linnaeus' original classification placed the fungi within the Plantae, since they were unquestionably neither animals or minerals and these were the only other alternatives. With 19th century developments in microbiology, Ernst Haeckel introduced the new kingdom Protista in addition to Plantae and Animalia, but whether fungi were best placed in the Plantae or should be reclassified as protists remained controversial.  In 1969, Robert Whittaker proposed the creation of the kingdom Fungi. Molecular evidence has since shown that the most recent common ancestor (concestor), of the Fungi was probably more similar to that of the Animalia than to that of Plantae or any other kingdom.[28]
+
+Whittaker's original reclassification was based on the fundamental difference in nutrition between the Fungi and the Plantae. Unlike plants, which generally gain carbon through photosynthesis, and so are called autotrophs, fungi do not possess chloroplasts and generally obtain carbon by breaking down and absorbing surrounding materials, and so are called heterotrophic saprotrophs. In addition, the substructure of multicellular fungi is different from that of plants, taking the form of many chitinous microscopic strands called hyphae, which may be further subdivided into cells or may form a syncytium containing many eukaryotic nuclei. Fruiting bodies, of which mushrooms are the most familiar example, are the reproductive structures of fungi, and are unlike any structures produced by plants.[citation needed]
+
+The table below shows some species count estimates of different green plant (Viridiplantae) divisions. It suggests there are about 300,000 species of living Viridiplantae, of which 85–90% are flowering plants. (Note: as these are from different sources and different dates, they are not necessarily comparable, and like all species counts, are subject to a degree of uncertainty in some cases.)
+
+(6,600–10,300)
+
+(18,100–20,200)
+
+(12,200)
+
+(259,511)
+
+The naming of plants is governed by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants and International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (see cultivated plant taxonomy).
+
+The evolution of plants has resulted in increasing levels of complexity, from the earliest algal mats, through bryophytes, lycopods, ferns to the complex gymnosperms and angiosperms of today. Plants in all of these groups continue to thrive, especially in the environments in which they evolved.
+
+An algal scum formed on the land 1,200 million years ago, but it was not until the Ordovician Period, around 450 million years ago, that land plants appeared.[39] However, new evidence from the study of carbon isotope ratios in Precambrian rocks has suggested that complex photosynthetic plants developed on the earth over 1000 m.y.a.[40] For more than a century it has been assumed that the ancestors of land plants evolved in aquatic environments and then adapted to a life on land, an idea usually credited to botanist Frederick Orpen Bower in his 1908 book The Origin of a Land Flora. A recent alternative view, supported by genetic evidence, is that they evolved from terrestrial single-celled algae,[41] and that even the common ancestor of red and green algae, and the unicellular freshwater algae glaucophytes, originated in a terrestrial environment in freshwater biofilms or microbial mats.[42] Primitive land plants began to diversify in the late Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago, and the results of their diversification are displayed in remarkable detail in an early Devonian fossil assemblage from the Rhynie chert. This chert preserved early plants in cellular detail, petrified in volcanic springs. By the middle of the Devonian Period most of the features recognised in plants today are present, including roots, leaves and secondary wood, and by late Devonian times seeds had evolved.[43] Late Devonian plants had thereby reached a degree of sophistication that allowed them to form forests of tall trees. Evolutionary innovation continued in the Carboniferous and later geological periods and is ongoing today. Most plant groups were relatively unscathed by the Permo-Triassic extinction event, although the structures of communities changed. This may have set the scene for the evolution of flowering plants in the Triassic (~200 million years ago), which exploded in the Cretaceous and Tertiary. The latest major group of plants to evolve were the grasses, which became important in the mid Tertiary, from around 40 million years ago. The grasses, as well as many other groups, evolved new mechanisms of metabolism to survive the low CO2 and warm, dry conditions of the tropics over the last 10 million years.
+
+A 1997 proposed phylogenetic tree of Plantae, after Kenrick and Crane,[44] is as follows, with modification to the Pteridophyta from Smith et al.[45] The Prasinophyceae are a paraphyletic assemblage of early diverging green algal lineages, but are treated as a group outside the Chlorophyta:[46] later authors have not followed this suggestion.
+
+Prasinophyceae (micromonads)
+
+Spermatophytes (seed plants)
+
+Progymnospermophyta †
+
+Pteridopsida (true ferns)
+
+Marattiopsida
+
+Equisetopsida (horsetails)
+
+Psilotopsida (whisk ferns & adders'-tongues)
+
+Cladoxylopsida †
+
+Lycopodiophyta
+
+Zosterophyllophyta †
+
+Rhyniophyta †
+
+Aglaophyton †
+
+Horneophytopsida †
+
+Bryophyta (mosses)
+
+Anthocerotophyta (hornworts)
+
+Marchantiophyta (liverworts)
+
+Charophyta
+
+Trebouxiophyceae (Pleurastrophyceae)
+
+Chlorophyceae
+
+Ulvophyceae
+
+A newer proposed classification follows Leliaert et al. 2011[47] and modified with Silar 2016[20][21][48][49] for the green algae clades and Novíkov & Barabaš-Krasni 2015[50] for the land plants clade. Notice that the Prasinophyceae are here placed inside the Chlorophyta.
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Chlorophyta inc. Prasinophyceae
+
+Streptofilum
+
+Klebsormidiophyta
+
+Charophyta Rabenhorst 1863 emend. Lewis & McCourt 2004 (Stoneworts)
+
+Coleochaetophyta
+
+Zygnematophyta
+
+Marchantiophyta (Liverworts)
+
+Bryophyta (True mosses)
+
+Anthocerotophyta (Non-flowering hornworts)
+
+†Horneophyta
+
+†Aglaophyta
+
+Tracheophyta (Vascular Plants)
+
+Later, a phylogeny based on genomes and transcriptomes from 1,153 plant species was proposed.[51] The placing of algal groups is supported by phylogenies based on genomes from the Mesostigmatophyceae and Chlorokybophyceae that have since been sequenced.[52][53] The classification of Bryophyta is supported both by Puttick et al. 2018,[54] and by phylogenies involving the hornwort genomes that have also since been sequenced.[55][56]
+
+Rhodophyta
+
+Glaucophyta
+
+Chlorophyta
+
+Prasinococcales
+
+
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Klebsormidiales
+
+Chara
+
+Coleochaetales
+
+Zygnematophyceae
+
+Hornworts
+
+Liverworts
+
+Mosses
+
+Lycophytes
+
+Ferns
+
+Gymnosperms
+
+Angiosperms
+
+The plants that are likely most familiar to us are the multicellular land plants, called embryophytes. Embryophytes include the vascular plants, such as ferns, conifers and flowering plants. They also include the bryophytes, of which mosses and liverworts are the most common.
+
+All of these plants have eukaryotic cells with cell walls composed of cellulose, and most obtain their energy through photosynthesis, using light, water and carbon dioxide to synthesize food. About three hundred plant species do not photosynthesize but are parasites on other species of photosynthetic plants. Embryophytes are distinguished from green algae, which represent a mode of photosynthetic life similar to the kind modern plants are believed to have evolved from, by having specialized reproductive organs protected by non-reproductive tissues.
+
+Bryophytes first appeared during the early Paleozoic. They mainly live in habitats where moisture is available for significant periods, although some species, such as Targionia, are desiccation-tolerant. Most species of bryophytes remain small throughout their life-cycle. This involves an alternation between two generations: a haploid stage, called the gametophyte, and a diploid stage, called the sporophyte. In bryophytes, the sporophyte is always unbranched and remains nutritionally dependent on its parent gametophyte. The embryophytes have the ability to secrete a cuticle on their outer surface, a waxy layer that confers resistant to desiccation. In the mosses and hornworts a cuticle is usually only produced on the sporophyte. Stomata are absent from liverworts, but occur on the sporangia of mosses and hornworts, allowing gas exchange.
+
+Vascular plants first appeared during the Silurian period, and by the Devonian had diversified and spread into many different terrestrial environments. They developed a number of adaptations that allowed them to spread into increasingly more arid places, notably the vascular tissues xylem and phloem, that transport water and food throughout the organism. Root systems capable of obtaining soil water and nutrients also evolved during the Devonian. In modern vascular plants, the sporophyte is typically large, branched, nutritionally independent and long-lived, but there is increasing evidence that Paleozoic gametophytes were just as complex as the sporophytes. The gametophytes of all vascular plant groups evolved to become reduced in size and prominence in the life cycle.
+
+In seed plants, the microgametophyte is reduced from a multicellular free-living organism to a few cells in a pollen grain and the miniaturised megagametophyte remains inside the megasporangium, attached to and dependent on the parent plant. A megasporangium enclosed in a protective layer called an integument is known as an ovule. After fertilisation by means of sperm produced by pollen grains, an embryo sporophyte develops inside the ovule. The integument becomes a seed coat, and the ovule develops into a seed. Seed plants can survive and reproduce in extremely arid conditions, because they are not dependent on free water for the movement of sperm, or the development of free living gametophytes.
+
+The first seed plants, pteridosperms (seed ferns), now extinct, appeared in the Devonian and diversified through the Carboniferous. They were the ancestors of modern gymnosperms, of which four surviving groups are widespread today, particularly the conifers, which are dominant trees in several biomes. The name gymnosperm comes from the Greek composite word γυμνόσπερμος (γυμνός gymnos, "naked" and σπέρμα sperma, "seed"), as the ovules and subsequent seeds are not enclosed in a protective structure (carpels or fruit), but are borne naked, typically on cone scales.
+
+Plant fossils include roots, wood, leaves, seeds, fruit, pollen, spores, phytoliths, and amber (the fossilized resin produced by some plants). Fossil land plants are recorded in terrestrial, lacustrine, fluvial and nearshore marine sediments. Pollen, spores and algae (dinoflagellates and acritarchs) are used for dating sedimentary rock sequences. The remains of fossil plants are not as common as fossil animals, although plant fossils are locally abundant in many regions worldwide.
+
+The earliest fossils clearly assignable to Kingdom Plantae are fossil green algae from the Cambrian. These fossils resemble calcified multicellular members of the Dasycladales. Earlier Precambrian fossils are known that resemble single-cell green algae, but definitive identity with that group of algae is uncertain.
+
+The earliest fossils attributed to green algae date from the Precambrian (ca. 1200 mya).[57][58] The resistant outer walls of prasinophyte cysts (known as phycomata) are well preserved in fossil deposits of the Paleozoic (ca. 250–540 mya). A filamentous fossil (Proterocladus) from middle Neoproterozoic deposits (ca. 750 mya) has been attributed to the Cladophorales, while the oldest reliable records of the Bryopsidales, Dasycladales) and stoneworts are from the Paleozoic.[46][59]
+
+The oldest known fossils of embryophytes date from the Ordovician, though such fossils are fragmentary. By the Silurian, fossils of whole plants are preserved, including the simple vascular plant Cooksonia in mid-Silurian and the much larger and more complex lycophyte Baragwanathia longifolia in late Silurian. From the early Devonian Rhynie chert, detailed fossils of lycophytes and rhyniophytes have been found that show details of the individual cells within the plant organs and the symbiotic association of these plants with fungi of the order Glomales. The Devonian period also saw the evolution of leaves and roots, and the first modern tree, Archaeopteris. This tree with fern-like foliage and a trunk with conifer-like wood was heterosporous producing spores of two different sizes, an early step in the evolution of seeds.[60]
+
+The Coal measures are a major source of Paleozoic plant fossils, with many groups of plants in existence at this time. The spoil heaps of coal mines are the best places to collect; coal itself is the remains of fossilised plants, though structural detail of the plant fossils is rarely visible in coal. In the Fossil Grove at Victoria Park in Glasgow, Scotland, the stumps of Lepidodendron trees are found in their original growth positions.
+
+The fossilized remains of conifer and angiosperm roots, stems and branches may be locally abundant in lake and inshore sedimentary rocks from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Sequoia and its allies, magnolia, oak, and palms are often found.
+
+Petrified wood is common in some parts of the world, and is most frequently found in arid or desert areas where it is more readily exposed by erosion. Petrified wood is often heavily silicified (the organic material replaced by silicon dioxide), and the impregnated tissue is often preserved in fine detail. Such specimens may be cut and polished using lapidary equipment. Fossil forests of petrified wood have been found in all continents.
+
+Fossils of seed ferns such as Glossopteris are widely distributed throughout several continents of the Southern Hemisphere, a fact that gave support to Alfred Wegener's early ideas regarding Continental drift theory.
+
+Most of the solid material in a plant is taken from the atmosphere. Through the process of photosynthesis, most plants use the energy in sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, plus water, into simple sugars. These sugars are then used as building blocks and form the main structural component of the plant. Chlorophyll, a green-colored, magnesium-containing pigment is essential to this process; it is generally present in plant leaves, and often in other plant parts as well. Parasitic plants, on the other hand, use the resources of their host to provide the materials needed for metabolism and growth.
+
+Plants usually rely on soil primarily for support and water (in quantitative terms), but they also obtain compounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and other elemental nutrients from the soil. Epiphytic and lithophytic plants depend on air and nearby debris for nutrients, and carnivorous plants supplement their nutrient requirements, particularly for nitrogen and phosphorus, with insect prey that they capture. For the majority of plants to grow successfully they also require oxygen in the atmosphere and around their roots (soil gas) for respiration. Plants use oxygen and glucose (which may be produced from stored starch) to provide energy.[61] Some plants grow as submerged aquatics, using oxygen dissolved in the surrounding water, and a few specialized vascular plants, such as mangroves and reed (Phragmites australis),[62] can grow with their roots in anoxic conditions.
+
+The genome of a plant controls its growth. For example, selected varieties or genotypes of wheat grow rapidly, maturing within 110 days, whereas others, in the same environmental conditions, grow more slowly and mature within 155 days.[63]
+
+Growth is also determined by environmental factors, such as temperature, available water, available light, carbon dioxide and available nutrients in the soil. Any change in the availability of these external conditions will be reflected in the plant's growth and the timing of its development.[citation needed]
+
+Biotic factors also affect plant growth. Plants can be so crowded that no single individual produces normal growth, causing etiolation and chlorosis. Optimal plant growth can be hampered by grazing animals, suboptimal soil composition, lack of mycorrhizal fungi, and attacks by insects or plant diseases, including those caused by bacteria, fungi, viruses, and nematodes.[63]
+
+Simple plants like algae may have short life spans as individuals, but their populations are commonly seasonal. Annual plants grow and reproduce within one growing season, biennial plants grow for two growing seasons and usually reproduce in second year, and perennial plants live for many growing seasons and once mature will often reproduce annually. These designations often depend on climate and other environmental factors. Plants that are annual in alpine or temperate regions can be biennial or perennial in warmer climates. Among the vascular plants, perennials include both evergreens that keep their leaves the entire year, and deciduous plants that lose their leaves for some part of it. In temperate and boreal climates, they generally lose their leaves during the winter; many tropical plants lose their leaves during the dry season.[citation needed]
+
+The growth rate of plants is extremely variable. Some mosses grow less than 0.001 millimeters per hour (mm/h), while most trees grow 0.025–0.250 mm/h. Some climbing species, such as kudzu, which do not need to produce thick supportive tissue, may grow up to 12.5 mm/h.[citation needed]
+
+Plants protect themselves from frost and dehydration stress with antifreeze proteins, heat-shock proteins and sugars (sucrose is common). LEA (Late Embryogenesis Abundant) protein expression is induced by stresses and protects other proteins from aggregation as a result of desiccation and freezing.[64]
+
+When water freezes in plants, the consequences for the plant depend very much on whether the freezing occurs within cells (intracellularly) or outside cells in intercellular spaces.[65] Intracellular freezing, which usually kills the cell[66] regardless of the hardiness of the plant and its tissues, seldom occurs in nature because rates of cooling are rarely high enough to support it. Rates of cooling of several degrees Celsius per minute are typically needed to cause intracellular formation of ice.[67] At rates of cooling of a few degrees Celsius per hour, segregation of ice occurs in intercellular spaces.[68] This may or may not be lethal, depending on the hardiness of the tissue. At freezing temperatures, water in the intercellular spaces of plant tissue freezes first, though the water may remain unfrozen until temperatures drop below −7 °C (19 °F).[65] After the initial formation of intercellular ice, the cells shrink as water is lost to the segregated ice, and the cells undergo freeze-drying. This dehydration is now considered the fundamental cause of freezing injury.
+
+Plants are continuously exposed to a range of biotic and abiotic stresses.  These stresses often cause DNA damage directly, or indirectly via the generation of reactive oxygen species.[69] Plants are capable of a DNA damage response that is a critical mechanism for maintaining genome stability.[70] The DNA damage response is particularly important during seed germination, since seed quality tends to deteriorate with age in association with DNA damage accumulation.[71] During germination repair processes are activated to deal with this accumulated DNA damage.[72] In particular, single- and double-strand breaks in DNA can be repaired.[73] The DNA checkpoint kinase ATM has a key role in integrating progression through germination with repair responses to the DNA damages accumulated by the aged seed.[74]
+
+Plant cells are typically distinguished by their large water-filled central vacuole, chloroplasts, and rigid cell walls that are made up of cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin. Cell division is also characterized by the development of a phragmoplast for the construction of a cell plate in the late stages of cytokinesis. Just as in animals, plant cells differentiate and develop into multiple cell types. Totipotent meristematic cells can differentiate into vascular, storage, protective (e.g. epidermal layer), or reproductive tissues, with more primitive plants lacking some tissue types.[75]
+
+Plants are photosynthetic, which means that they manufacture their own food molecules using energy obtained from light. The primary mechanism plants have for capturing light energy is the pigment chlorophyll. All green plants contain two forms of chlorophyll, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. The latter of these pigments is not found in red or brown algae.
+The simple equation of photosynthesis is as follows:
+
+By means of cells that behave like nerves, plants receive and distribute within their systems information about incident light intensity and quality. Incident light that stimulates a chemical reaction in one leaf, will cause a chain reaction of signals to the entire plant via a type of cell termed a bundle sheath cell. Researchers, from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, found that plants have a specific memory for varying light conditions, which prepares their immune systems against seasonal pathogens.[76] Plants use pattern-recognition receptors to recognize conserved microbial signatures. This recognition triggers an immune response. The first plant receptors of conserved microbial signatures were identified in rice (XA21, 1995)[77] and in Arabidopsis thaliana (FLS2, 2000).[78] Plants also carry immune receptors that recognize highly variable pathogen effectors. These include the NBS-LRR class of proteins.
+
+Vascular plants differ from other plants in that nutrients are transported between their different parts through specialized structures, called xylem and phloem. They also have roots for taking up water and minerals. The xylem moves water and minerals from the root to the rest of the plant, and the phloem provides the roots with sugars and other nutrient produced by the leaves.[75]
+
+Plants have some of the largest genomes among all organisms.[79] The largest plant genome (in terms of gene number) is that of wheat (Triticum asestivum), predicted to encode ≈94,000 genes[80] and thus almost 5 times as many as the human genome. The first plant genome sequenced was that of Arabidopsis thaliana which encodes about 25,500 genes.[81] In terms of sheer DNA sequence, the smallest published genome is that of the carnivorous bladderwort (Utricularia gibba) at 82 Mb (although it still encodes 28,500 genes)[82] while the largest, from the Norway Spruce (Picea abies), extends over 19,600 Mb (encoding about 28,300 genes).[83]
+
+The photosynthesis conducted by land plants and algae is the ultimate source of energy and organic material in nearly all ecosystems. Photosynthesis, at first by cyanobacteria and later by photosynthetic eukaryotes, radically changed the composition of the early Earth's anoxic atmosphere, which as a result is now 21% oxygen. Animals and most other organisms are aerobic, relying on oxygen; those that do not are confined to relatively rare anaerobic environments. Plants are the primary producers in most terrestrial ecosystems and form the basis of the food web in those ecosystems. Many animals rely on plants for shelter as well as oxygen and food.[citation needed]
+
+Land plants are key components of the water cycle and several other biogeochemical cycles. Some plants have coevolved with nitrogen fixing bacteria, making plants an important part of the nitrogen cycle. Plant roots play an essential role in soil development and the prevention of soil erosion.[citation needed]
+
+Plants are distributed almost worldwide. While they inhabit a multitude of biomes and ecoregions, few can be found beyond the tundras at the northernmost regions of continental shelves. At the southern extremes, plants of the Antarctic flora have adapted tenaciously to the prevailing conditions.[citation needed]
+
+Plants are often the dominant physical and structural component of habitats where they occur. Many of the Earth's biomes are named for the type of vegetation because plants are the dominant organisms in those biomes, such as grasslands, taiga and tropical rainforest.[citation needed]
+
+Numerous animals have coevolved with plants. Many animals pollinate flowers in exchange for food in the form of pollen or nectar. Many animals disperse seeds, often by eating fruit and passing the seeds in their feces. Myrmecophytes are plants that have coevolved with ants. The plant provides a home, and sometimes food, for the ants. In exchange, the ants defend the plant from herbivores and sometimes competing plants. Ant wastes provide organic fertilizer.
+
+The majority of plant species have various kinds of fungi associated with their root systems in a kind of mutualistic symbiosis known as mycorrhiza. The fungi help the plants gain water and mineral nutrients from the soil, while the plant gives the fungi carbohydrates manufactured in photosynthesis. Some plants serve as homes for endophytic fungi that protect the plant from herbivores by producing toxins. The fungal endophyte, Neotyphodium coenophialum, in tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) does tremendous economic damage to the cattle industry in the U.S.
+
+Various forms of parasitism are also fairly common among plants, from the semi-parasitic mistletoe that merely takes some nutrients from its host, but still has photosynthetic leaves, to the fully parasitic broomrape and toothwort that acquire all their nutrients through connections to the roots of other plants, and so have no chlorophyll. Some plants, known as myco-heterotrophs, parasitize mycorrhizal fungi, and hence act as epiparasites on other plants.
+
+Many plants are epiphytes, meaning they grow on other plants, usually trees, without parasitizing them. Epiphytes may indirectly harm their host plant by intercepting mineral nutrients and light that the host would otherwise receive. The weight of large numbers of epiphytes may break tree limbs. Hemiepiphytes like the strangler fig begin as epiphytes but eventually set their own roots and overpower and kill their host. Many orchids, bromeliads, ferns and mosses often grow as epiphytes. Bromeliad epiphytes accumulate water in leaf axils to form phytotelmata that may contain complex aquatic food webs.[84]
+
+Approximately 630 plants are carnivorous, such as the Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and sundew (Drosera species). They trap small animals and digest them to obtain mineral nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus.[85]
+
+The study of plant uses by people is called economic botany or ethnobotany.[86] Human cultivation of plants is part of agriculture, which is the basis of human civilization.[87] Plant agriculture is subdivided into agronomy, horticulture and forestry.[88]
+
+Humans depend on plants for food, either directly or as feed for domestic animals. Agriculture deals with the production of food crops, and has played a key role in the history of world civilizations. Agriculture includes agronomy for arable crops, horticulture for vegetables and fruit, and forestry for timber.[89] About 7,000 species of plant have been used for food, though most of today's food is derived from only 30 species. The major staples include cereals such as rice and wheat, starchy roots and tubers such as cassava and potato, and legumes such as peas and beans. Vegetable oils such as olive oil provide lipids, while fruit and vegetables contribute vitamins and minerals to the diet.[90]
+
+Medicinal plants are a primary source of organic compounds, both for their medicinal and physiological effects, and for the industrial synthesis of a vast array of organic chemicals.[91] Many hundreds of medicines are derived from plants, both traditional medicines used in herbalism[92][93] and chemical substances purified from plants or first identified in them, sometimes by ethnobotanical search, and then synthesised for use in modern medicine. Modern medicines derived from plants include aspirin, taxol, morphine, quinine, reserpine, colchicine, digitalis and vincristine. Plants used in herbalism include ginkgo, echinacea, feverfew, and Saint John's wort. The pharmacopoeia of Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, describing some 600 medicinal plants, was written between 50 and 70 AD and remained in use in Europe and the Middle East until around 1600 AD; it was the precursor of all modern pharmacopoeias.[94][95][96]
+
+Plants grown as industrial crops are the source of a wide range of products used in manufacturing, sometimes so intensively as to risk harm to the environment.[97] Nonfood products include essential oils, natural dyes, pigments, waxes, resins, tannins, alkaloids, amber and cork. Products derived from plants include soaps, shampoos, perfumes, cosmetics, paint, varnish, turpentine, rubber, latex, lubricants, linoleum, plastics, inks, and gums. Renewable fuels from plants include firewood, peat and other biofuels.[98][99] The fossil fuels coal, petroleum and natural gas are derived from the remains of aquatic organisms including phytoplankton in geological time.[100]
+
+Structural resources and fibres from plants are used to construct dwellings and to manufacture clothing. Wood is used not only for buildings, boats, and furniture, but also for smaller items such as musical instruments and sports equipment. Wood is pulped to make paper and cardboard.[101] Cloth is often made from cotton, flax, ramie or synthetic fibres such as rayon and acetate derived from plant cellulose. Thread used to sew cloth likewise comes in large part from cotton.[102]
+
+Thousands of plant species are cultivated for aesthetic purposes as well as to provide shade, modify temperatures, reduce wind, abate noise, provide privacy, and prevent soil erosion. Plants are the basis of a multibillion-dollar per year tourism industry, which includes travel to historic gardens, national parks, rainforests, forests with colorful autumn leaves, and festivals such as Japan's[103] and America's cherry blossom festivals.[104]
+
+While some gardens are planted with food crops, many are planted for aesthetic, ornamental, or conservation purposes. Arboretums and botanical gardens are public collections of living plants. In private outdoor gardens, lawn grasses, shade trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous perennials and bedding plants are used. Gardens may cultivate the plants in a naturalistic state, or may sculpture their growth, as with topiary or espalier. Gardening is the most popular leisure activity in the U.S., and working with plants or horticulture therapy is beneficial for rehabilitating people with disabilities.[citation needed]
+
+Plants may also be grown or kept indoors as houseplants, or in specialized buildings such as greenhouses that are designed for the care and cultivation of living plants. Venus Flytrap, sensitive plant and resurrection plant are examples of plants sold as novelties. There are also art forms specializing in the arrangement of cut or living plant, such as bonsai, ikebana, and the arrangement of cut or dried flowers. Ornamental plants have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulipomania.[105]
+
+Architectural designs resembling plants appear in the capitals of Ancient Egyptian columns, which were carved to resemble either the Egyptian white lotus or the papyrus.[106] Images of plants are often used in painting and photography, as well as on textiles, money, stamps, flags and coats of arms.[citation needed]
+
+Basic biological research has often been done with plants. In genetics, the breeding of pea plants allowed Gregor Mendel to derive the basic laws governing inheritance,[107] and examination of chromosomes in maize allowed Barbara McClintock to demonstrate their connection to inherited traits.[108] The plant Arabidopsis thaliana is used in laboratories as a model organism to understand how genes control the growth and development of plant structures.[109] NASA predicts that space stations or space colonies will one day rely on plants for life support.[110]
+
+Ancient trees are revered and many are famous. Tree rings themselves are an important method of dating in archeology, and serve as a record of past climates.[citation needed]
+
+Plants figure prominently in mythology, religion and literature. They are used as national and state emblems, including state trees and state flowers. Plants are often used as memorials, gifts and to mark special occasions such as births, deaths, weddings and holidays. The arrangement of flowers may be used to send hidden messages.[citation needed]
+
+Weeds are unwanted plants growing in managed environments such as farms, urban areas, gardens, lawns, and parks. People have spread plants beyond their native ranges and some of these introduced plants become invasive, damaging existing ecosystems by displacing native species, and sometimes becoming serious weeds of cultivation.[citation needed]
+
+Plants may cause harm to animals, including people. Plants that produce windblown pollen invoke allergic reactions in people who suffer from hay fever. A wide variety of plants are poisonous. Toxalbumins are plant poisons fatal to most mammals and act as a serious deterrent to consumption. Several plants cause skin irritations when touched, such as poison ivy. Certain plants contain psychotropic chemicals, which are extracted and ingested or smoked, including nicotine from tobacco, cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa, cocaine from Erythroxylon coca and opium from opium poppy. Smoking causes damage to health or even death, while some drugs may also be harmful or fatal to people.[111][112] Both illegal and legal drugs derived from plants may have negative effects on the economy, affecting worker productivity and law enforcement costs.[113][114]

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+
+
+A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material.
+
+A large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora that help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey.[1] This flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria.[2]
+
+Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, herbivora, cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 Principles of Geology.[3] Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons.[3] Herbivora is derived from the Latin herba meaning a small plant or herb,[4] and vora, from vorare, to eat or devour.[5]
+
+Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs[6] such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria.  More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in general are known as primary consumers.
+Herbivory is usually limited to animals that eat plants. Fungi, bacteria, and protists that feed on living plants are usually termed plant pathogens (plant diseases), while fungi and microbes that feed on dead plants are described as saprotrophs. Flowering plants that obtain nutrition from other living plants are usually termed parasitic plants. There is, however, no single exclusive and definitive ecological classification of consumption patterns; each textbook has its own variations on the theme.[7][8][9]
+
+The understanding of herbivory in geological time comes from three sources: fossilized plants, which may preserve evidence of defence (such as spines), or herbivory-related damage; the observation of plant debris in fossilised animal faeces; and the construction of herbivore mouthparts.[10]
+
+Although herbivory was long thought to be a Mesozoic phenomenon, fossils have shown that within less than 20 million years after the first land plants evolved, plants were being consumed by arthropods.[11] Insects fed on the spores of early Devonian plants, and the Rhynie chert also provides evidence that organisms fed on plants using a "pierce and suck" technique.[10]
+
+During the next 75 million years[citation needed], plants evolved a range of more complex organs, such as roots and seeds. There is no evidence of any organism being fed upon until the middle-late Mississippian, 330.9 million years ago. There was a gap of 50 to 100 million years between the time each organ evolved and the time organisms evolved to feed upon them; this may be due to the low levels of oxygen during this period, which may have suppressed evolution.[11] Further than their arthropod status, the identity of these early herbivores is uncertain.[11]
+Hole feeding and skeletonization are recorded in the early Permian, with surface fluid feeding evolving by the end of that period.[10]
+
+Herbivory among four-limbed terrestrial vertebrates, the tetrapods developed in the Late Carboniferous (307 – 299 million years ago).[12] Early tetrapods were large amphibious piscivores. While amphibians continued to feed on fish and insects, some reptiles began exploring two new food types, tetrapods (carnivory) and plants (herbivory). The entire dinosaur order ornithischia was composed with herbivores dinosaurs.[12] Carnivory was a natural transition from insectivory for medium and large tetrapods, requiring minimal adaptation. In contrast, a complex set of adaptations was necessary for feeding on highly fibrous plant materials.[12]
+
+Arthropods evolved herbivory in four phases, changing their approach to it in response to changing plant communities.[13]
+Tetrapod herbivores made their first appearance in the fossil record of their jaws near the Permio-Carboniferous boundary, approximately 300 million years ago.  The earliest evidence of their herbivory has been attributed to dental occlusion, the process in which teeth from the upper jaw come in contact with teeth in the lower jaw is present. The evolution of dental occlusion led to a drastic increase in plant food processing and provides evidence about feeding strategies based on tooth wear patterns. Examination of phylogenetic frameworks of tooth and jaw morphologes has revealed that dental occlusion developed independently in several lineages tetrapod herbivores. This suggests that evolution and spread occurred simultaneously within various lineages.[14]
+
+Herbivores form an important link in the food chain because they consume plants to digest the carbohydrates photosynthetically produced by a plant. Carnivores in turn consume herbivores for the same reason, while omnivores can obtain their nutrients from either plants or animals.  Due to a herbivore's ability to survive solely on tough and fibrous plant matter, they are termed the primary consumers in the food cycle (chain).  Herbivory, carnivory, and omnivory can be regarded as special cases of consumer–resource interactions.[15]
+
+Two herbivore feeding strategies are grazing (e.g. cows) and browsing (herbivory) (e.g. moose). For a terrestrial mammal to be called a grazer, at least 90% of the forage has to be grass, and for a browser at least 90% tree leaves and/or twigs. An intermediate feeding strategy is called "mixed-feeding".[16] In their daily need to take up energy from forage, herbivores of different body mass may be selective in choosing their food.[17]  "Selective" means that herbivores may choose their forage source depending on, e.g., season or food availability, but also that they may choose high quality (and consequently highly nutritious) forage before lower quality. The latter especially is determined by the body mass of the herbivore, with small herbivores selecting for high-quality forage, and with increasing body mass animals are less selective.[17] Several theories attempt to explain and quantify the relationship between animals and their food, such as Kleiber's law, Holling's disk equation and the marginal value theorem (see below).
+
+Kleiber's law describes the relationship between an animal's size and its feeding strategy, saying that larger animals need to eat less food per unit weight than smaller animals.[18] Kleiber's law states that the metabolic rate (q0) of an animal is the mass of the animal (M) raised to the 3/4 power: q0=M3/4
+Therefore, the mass of the animal increases at a faster rate than the metabolic rate.[19]
+
+Herbivores employ numerous types of feeding strategies. Many herbivores do not fall into one specific feeding strategy, but employ several strategies and eat a variety of plant parts.
+
+Optimal Foraging Theory is a model for predicting animal behavior while looking for food or other resources, such as shelter or water.  This model assesses both individual movement, such as animal behavior while looking for food, and distribution within a habitat, such as dynamics at the population and community level.  For example, the model would be used to look at the browsing behavior of a deer while looking for food, as well as that deer's specific location and movement within the forested habitat and its interaction with other deer while in that habitat.[20]
+
+This model has been criticized as circular and untestable. Critics have pointed out that its proponents use examples that fit the theory, but do not use the model when it does not fit the reality.[21][22] Other critics point out that animals do not have the ability to assess and maximize their potential gains, therefore the optimal foraging theory is irrelevant and derived to explain trends that do not exist in nature.[23][24]
+
+Holling's disk equation models the efficiency at which predators consume prey. The model predicts that as the number of prey increases, the amount of time predators spend handling prey also increases, and therefore the efficiency of the predator decreases.[25][page needed] In 1959, S. Holling proposed an equation to model the rate of return for an optimal diet: Rate (R )=Energy gained in foraging (Ef)/(time searching (Ts) + time handling (Th))
+
+
+
+
+R
+=
+E
+f
+
+/
+
+(
+T
+s
++
+T
+h
+)
+
+
+{\displaystyle R=Ef/(Ts+Th)}
+
+
+Where s=cost of search per unit time f=rate of encounter with items, h=handling time, e=energy gained per encounter
+In effect, this would indicate that a herbivore in a dense forest would spend more time handling (eating) the vegetation because there was so much vegetation around than a herbivore in a sparse forest, who could easily browse through the forest vegetation. According to the Holling's disk equation, a herbivore in the sparse forest would be more efficient at eating than the herbivore in the dense forest.
+
+The marginal value theorem describes the balance between eating all the food in a patch for immediate energy, or moving to a new patch and leaving the plants in the first patch to regenerate for future use. The theory predicts that absent complicating factors, an animal should leave a resource patch when the rate of payoff (amount of food) falls below the average rate of payoff for the entire area.[26] According to this theory, locus should move to a new patch of food when the patch they are currently feeding on requires more energy to obtain food than an average patch. Within this theory, two subsequent parameters emerge, the Giving Up Density (GUD) and the Giving Up Time (GUT).  The Giving Up Density (GUD) quantifies the amount of food that remains in a patch when a forager moves to a new patch.[27] The Giving Up Time (GUT) is used when an animal continuously assesses the patch quality.[28]
+
+The myriad defenses displayed by plants means that their herbivores need a variety of skills to overcome these defenses and obtain food. These allow herbivores to increase their feeding and use of a host plant. Herbivores have three primary strategies for dealing with plant defenses: choice, herbivore modification, and plant modification.
+
+Feeding choice involves which plants a herbivore chooses to consume. It has been suggested that many herbivores feed on a variety of plants to balance their nutrient uptake and to avoid consuming too much of any one type of defensive chemical. This involves a tradeoff however, between foraging on many plant species to avoid toxins or specializing on one type of plant that can be detoxified.[29]
+
+Herbivore modification is when various adaptations to body or digestive systems of the herbivore allow them to overcome plant defenses. This might include detoxifying secondary metabolites,[30] sequestering toxins unaltered,[31] or avoiding toxins, such as through the production of large amounts of saliva to reduce effectiveness of defenses. Herbivores may also utilize symbionts to evade plant defences. For example, some aphids use bacteria in their gut to provide essential amino acids lacking in their sap diet.[32]
+
+Plant modification occurs when herbivores manipulate their plant prey to increase feeding. For example, some caterpillars roll leaves to reduce the effectiveness of plant defenses activated by sunlight.[33]
+
+A plant defense is a trait that increases plant fitness when faced with herbivory. This is measured relative to another plant that lacks the defensive trait. Plant defenses increase survival and/or reproduction (fitness) of plants under pressure of predation from herbivores.[citation needed]
+
+Defense can be divided into two main categories, tolerance and resistance. Tolerance is the ability of a plant to withstand damage without a reduction in fitness.[34] This can occur by diverting herbivory to non-essential plant parts, resource allocation, compensatory growth, or by rapid regrowth and recovery from herbivory.[35] Resistance refers to the ability of a plant to reduce the amount of damage it receives from herbivores.[34] This can occur via avoidance in space or time,[36] physical defenses, or chemical defenses. Defenses can either be constitutive, always present in the plant, or induced, produced or translocated by the plant following damage or stress.[37]
+
+Physical, or mechanical, defenses are barriers or structures designed to deter herbivores or reduce intake rates, lowering overall herbivory. Thorns such as those found on roses or acacia trees are one example, as are the spines on a cactus. Smaller hairs known as trichomes may cover leaves or stems and are especially effective against invertebrate herbivores.[38] In addition, some plants have waxes or resins that alter their texture, making them difficult to eat. Also the incorporation of silica into cell walls is analogous to that of the role of lignin in that it is a compression-resistant structural component of cell walls; so that plants with their cell walls impregnated with silica are thereby afforded a measure of protection against herbivory.[39]
+
+Chemical defenses are secondary metabolites produced by the plant that deter herbivory. There are a wide variety of these in nature and a single plant can have hundreds of different chemical defenses. Chemical defenses can be divided into two main groups, carbon-based defenses and nitrogen-based defenses.[40]
+
+Plants have also changed features that enhance the probability of attracting natural enemies to herbivores. Some emit semiochemicals, odors that attract natural enemies, while others provide food and housing to maintain the natural enemies' presence, e.g. ants that reduce herbivory.[42]
+A given plant species often has many types of defensive mechanisms, mechanical or chemical, constitutive or induced, which allow it to escape from herbivores.[citation needed]
+
+According to the theory of predator–prey interactions, the relationship between herbivores and plants is cyclic.[43] When prey (plants) are numerous their predators (herbivores) increase in numbers, reducing the prey population, which in turn causes predator number to decline.[44] The prey population eventually recovers, starting a new cycle.  This suggests that the population of the herbivore fluctuates around the carrying capacity of the food source, in this case, the plant.
+
+Several factors play into these fluctuating populations and help stabilize predator-prey dynamics. For example, spatial heterogeneity is maintained, which means there will always be pockets of plants not found by herbivores. This stabilizing dynamic plays an especially important role for specialist herbivores that feed on one species of plant and prevents these specialists from wiping out their food source.[45] Prey defenses also help stabilize predator-prey dynamics, and for more information on these relationships see the section on Plant Defenses.  Eating a second prey type helps herbivores' populations stabilize.[46] Alternating between two or more plant types provides population stability for the herbivore, while the populations of the plants oscillate.[47] This plays an important role for generalist herbivores that eat a variety of plants.  Keystone herbivores keep vegetation populations in check and allow for a greater diversity of both herbivores and plants.[46] When an invasive herbivore or plant enters the system, the balance is thrown off and the diversity can collapse to a monotaxon system.[46]
+
+The back and forth relationship of plant defense and herbivore offense drives coevolution between plants and herbivores, resulting in a "coevolutionary arms race".[30][48] The escape and radiation mechanisms for coevolution, presents the idea that adaptations in herbivores and their host plants, has been the driving force behind speciation.[49][50]
+
+While much of the interaction of herbivory and plant defense is negative, with one individual reducing the fitness of the other, some is beneficial. This beneficial herbivory takes the form of mutualisms in which both partners benefit in some way from the interaction. Seed dispersal by herbivores and pollination are two forms of mutualistic herbivory in which the herbivore receives a food resource and the plant is aided in reproduction.[51]
+
+Herbivorous fish and marine animals are indispensable parts of the coral reef ecosystem. Since algae and seaweeds grow much faster than corals, they can occupy spaces where corals could have settled. They can outgrow and thus outcompete corals on bare surfaces. In the absence of plant-eating fish, seaweeds deprive corals of sunlight.[52]
+
+Herbivory can have impacts on both economics and ecology. For example, environmental degradation from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the US alone has the potential to both change vegetative communities[53] through over-browsing and cost forest restoration projects upwards of $750 million annually.  Agricultural crop damage by the same species totals approximately $100 million every year. Insect crop damages also contribute largely to annual crop losses in the U.S.[54]
+Herbivores affect economics through the revenue generated by hunting and ecotourism.  For example, the hunting of herbivorous game species such as white-tailed deer, cottontail rabbits, antelope, and elk in the U.S. contributes greatly to the billion-dollar annually, hunting industry.[citation needed] Ecotourism is a major source of revenue, particularly in Africa, where many large mammalian herbivores such as elephants, zebras, and giraffes help to bring in the equivalent of millions of US dollars to various nations annually.[citation needed]
+

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+
+
+A herbivore is an animal anatomically and physiologically adapted to eating plant material, for example foliage or marine algae, for the main component of its diet. As a result of their plant diet, herbivorous animals typically have mouthparts adapted to rasping or grinding. Horses and other herbivores have wide flat teeth that are adapted to grinding grass, tree bark, and other tough plant material.
+
+A large percentage of herbivores have mutualistic gut flora that help them digest plant matter, which is more difficult to digest than animal prey.[1] This flora is made up of cellulose-digesting protozoans or bacteria.[2]
+
+Herbivore is the anglicized form of a modern Latin coinage, herbivora, cited in Charles Lyell's 1830 Principles of Geology.[3] Richard Owen employed the anglicized term in an 1854 work on fossil teeth and skeletons.[3] Herbivora is derived from the Latin herba meaning a small plant or herb,[4] and vora, from vorare, to eat or devour.[5]
+
+Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs[6] such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria.  More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in general are known as primary consumers.
+Herbivory is usually limited to animals that eat plants. Fungi, bacteria, and protists that feed on living plants are usually termed plant pathogens (plant diseases), while fungi and microbes that feed on dead plants are described as saprotrophs. Flowering plants that obtain nutrition from other living plants are usually termed parasitic plants. There is, however, no single exclusive and definitive ecological classification of consumption patterns; each textbook has its own variations on the theme.[7][8][9]
+
+The understanding of herbivory in geological time comes from three sources: fossilized plants, which may preserve evidence of defence (such as spines), or herbivory-related damage; the observation of plant debris in fossilised animal faeces; and the construction of herbivore mouthparts.[10]
+
+Although herbivory was long thought to be a Mesozoic phenomenon, fossils have shown that within less than 20 million years after the first land plants evolved, plants were being consumed by arthropods.[11] Insects fed on the spores of early Devonian plants, and the Rhynie chert also provides evidence that organisms fed on plants using a "pierce and suck" technique.[10]
+
+During the next 75 million years[citation needed], plants evolved a range of more complex organs, such as roots and seeds. There is no evidence of any organism being fed upon until the middle-late Mississippian, 330.9 million years ago. There was a gap of 50 to 100 million years between the time each organ evolved and the time organisms evolved to feed upon them; this may be due to the low levels of oxygen during this period, which may have suppressed evolution.[11] Further than their arthropod status, the identity of these early herbivores is uncertain.[11]
+Hole feeding and skeletonization are recorded in the early Permian, with surface fluid feeding evolving by the end of that period.[10]
+
+Herbivory among four-limbed terrestrial vertebrates, the tetrapods developed in the Late Carboniferous (307 – 299 million years ago).[12] Early tetrapods were large amphibious piscivores. While amphibians continued to feed on fish and insects, some reptiles began exploring two new food types, tetrapods (carnivory) and plants (herbivory). The entire dinosaur order ornithischia was composed with herbivores dinosaurs.[12] Carnivory was a natural transition from insectivory for medium and large tetrapods, requiring minimal adaptation. In contrast, a complex set of adaptations was necessary for feeding on highly fibrous plant materials.[12]
+
+Arthropods evolved herbivory in four phases, changing their approach to it in response to changing plant communities.[13]
+Tetrapod herbivores made their first appearance in the fossil record of their jaws near the Permio-Carboniferous boundary, approximately 300 million years ago.  The earliest evidence of their herbivory has been attributed to dental occlusion, the process in which teeth from the upper jaw come in contact with teeth in the lower jaw is present. The evolution of dental occlusion led to a drastic increase in plant food processing and provides evidence about feeding strategies based on tooth wear patterns. Examination of phylogenetic frameworks of tooth and jaw morphologes has revealed that dental occlusion developed independently in several lineages tetrapod herbivores. This suggests that evolution and spread occurred simultaneously within various lineages.[14]
+
+Herbivores form an important link in the food chain because they consume plants to digest the carbohydrates photosynthetically produced by a plant. Carnivores in turn consume herbivores for the same reason, while omnivores can obtain their nutrients from either plants or animals.  Due to a herbivore's ability to survive solely on tough and fibrous plant matter, they are termed the primary consumers in the food cycle (chain).  Herbivory, carnivory, and omnivory can be regarded as special cases of consumer–resource interactions.[15]
+
+Two herbivore feeding strategies are grazing (e.g. cows) and browsing (herbivory) (e.g. moose). For a terrestrial mammal to be called a grazer, at least 90% of the forage has to be grass, and for a browser at least 90% tree leaves and/or twigs. An intermediate feeding strategy is called "mixed-feeding".[16] In their daily need to take up energy from forage, herbivores of different body mass may be selective in choosing their food.[17]  "Selective" means that herbivores may choose their forage source depending on, e.g., season or food availability, but also that they may choose high quality (and consequently highly nutritious) forage before lower quality. The latter especially is determined by the body mass of the herbivore, with small herbivores selecting for high-quality forage, and with increasing body mass animals are less selective.[17] Several theories attempt to explain and quantify the relationship between animals and their food, such as Kleiber's law, Holling's disk equation and the marginal value theorem (see below).
+
+Kleiber's law describes the relationship between an animal's size and its feeding strategy, saying that larger animals need to eat less food per unit weight than smaller animals.[18] Kleiber's law states that the metabolic rate (q0) of an animal is the mass of the animal (M) raised to the 3/4 power: q0=M3/4
+Therefore, the mass of the animal increases at a faster rate than the metabolic rate.[19]
+
+Herbivores employ numerous types of feeding strategies. Many herbivores do not fall into one specific feeding strategy, but employ several strategies and eat a variety of plant parts.
+
+Optimal Foraging Theory is a model for predicting animal behavior while looking for food or other resources, such as shelter or water.  This model assesses both individual movement, such as animal behavior while looking for food, and distribution within a habitat, such as dynamics at the population and community level.  For example, the model would be used to look at the browsing behavior of a deer while looking for food, as well as that deer's specific location and movement within the forested habitat and its interaction with other deer while in that habitat.[20]
+
+This model has been criticized as circular and untestable. Critics have pointed out that its proponents use examples that fit the theory, but do not use the model when it does not fit the reality.[21][22] Other critics point out that animals do not have the ability to assess and maximize their potential gains, therefore the optimal foraging theory is irrelevant and derived to explain trends that do not exist in nature.[23][24]
+
+Holling's disk equation models the efficiency at which predators consume prey. The model predicts that as the number of prey increases, the amount of time predators spend handling prey also increases, and therefore the efficiency of the predator decreases.[25][page needed] In 1959, S. Holling proposed an equation to model the rate of return for an optimal diet: Rate (R )=Energy gained in foraging (Ef)/(time searching (Ts) + time handling (Th))
+
+
+
+
+R
+=
+E
+f
+
+/
+
+(
+T
+s
++
+T
+h
+)
+
+
+{\displaystyle R=Ef/(Ts+Th)}
+
+
+Where s=cost of search per unit time f=rate of encounter with items, h=handling time, e=energy gained per encounter
+In effect, this would indicate that a herbivore in a dense forest would spend more time handling (eating) the vegetation because there was so much vegetation around than a herbivore in a sparse forest, who could easily browse through the forest vegetation. According to the Holling's disk equation, a herbivore in the sparse forest would be more efficient at eating than the herbivore in the dense forest.
+
+The marginal value theorem describes the balance between eating all the food in a patch for immediate energy, or moving to a new patch and leaving the plants in the first patch to regenerate for future use. The theory predicts that absent complicating factors, an animal should leave a resource patch when the rate of payoff (amount of food) falls below the average rate of payoff for the entire area.[26] According to this theory, locus should move to a new patch of food when the patch they are currently feeding on requires more energy to obtain food than an average patch. Within this theory, two subsequent parameters emerge, the Giving Up Density (GUD) and the Giving Up Time (GUT).  The Giving Up Density (GUD) quantifies the amount of food that remains in a patch when a forager moves to a new patch.[27] The Giving Up Time (GUT) is used when an animal continuously assesses the patch quality.[28]
+
+The myriad defenses displayed by plants means that their herbivores need a variety of skills to overcome these defenses and obtain food. These allow herbivores to increase their feeding and use of a host plant. Herbivores have three primary strategies for dealing with plant defenses: choice, herbivore modification, and plant modification.
+
+Feeding choice involves which plants a herbivore chooses to consume. It has been suggested that many herbivores feed on a variety of plants to balance their nutrient uptake and to avoid consuming too much of any one type of defensive chemical. This involves a tradeoff however, between foraging on many plant species to avoid toxins or specializing on one type of plant that can be detoxified.[29]
+
+Herbivore modification is when various adaptations to body or digestive systems of the herbivore allow them to overcome plant defenses. This might include detoxifying secondary metabolites,[30] sequestering toxins unaltered,[31] or avoiding toxins, such as through the production of large amounts of saliva to reduce effectiveness of defenses. Herbivores may also utilize symbionts to evade plant defences. For example, some aphids use bacteria in their gut to provide essential amino acids lacking in their sap diet.[32]
+
+Plant modification occurs when herbivores manipulate their plant prey to increase feeding. For example, some caterpillars roll leaves to reduce the effectiveness of plant defenses activated by sunlight.[33]
+
+A plant defense is a trait that increases plant fitness when faced with herbivory. This is measured relative to another plant that lacks the defensive trait. Plant defenses increase survival and/or reproduction (fitness) of plants under pressure of predation from herbivores.[citation needed]
+
+Defense can be divided into two main categories, tolerance and resistance. Tolerance is the ability of a plant to withstand damage without a reduction in fitness.[34] This can occur by diverting herbivory to non-essential plant parts, resource allocation, compensatory growth, or by rapid regrowth and recovery from herbivory.[35] Resistance refers to the ability of a plant to reduce the amount of damage it receives from herbivores.[34] This can occur via avoidance in space or time,[36] physical defenses, or chemical defenses. Defenses can either be constitutive, always present in the plant, or induced, produced or translocated by the plant following damage or stress.[37]
+
+Physical, or mechanical, defenses are barriers or structures designed to deter herbivores or reduce intake rates, lowering overall herbivory. Thorns such as those found on roses or acacia trees are one example, as are the spines on a cactus. Smaller hairs known as trichomes may cover leaves or stems and are especially effective against invertebrate herbivores.[38] In addition, some plants have waxes or resins that alter their texture, making them difficult to eat. Also the incorporation of silica into cell walls is analogous to that of the role of lignin in that it is a compression-resistant structural component of cell walls; so that plants with their cell walls impregnated with silica are thereby afforded a measure of protection against herbivory.[39]
+
+Chemical defenses are secondary metabolites produced by the plant that deter herbivory. There are a wide variety of these in nature and a single plant can have hundreds of different chemical defenses. Chemical defenses can be divided into two main groups, carbon-based defenses and nitrogen-based defenses.[40]
+
+Plants have also changed features that enhance the probability of attracting natural enemies to herbivores. Some emit semiochemicals, odors that attract natural enemies, while others provide food and housing to maintain the natural enemies' presence, e.g. ants that reduce herbivory.[42]
+A given plant species often has many types of defensive mechanisms, mechanical or chemical, constitutive or induced, which allow it to escape from herbivores.[citation needed]
+
+According to the theory of predator–prey interactions, the relationship between herbivores and plants is cyclic.[43] When prey (plants) are numerous their predators (herbivores) increase in numbers, reducing the prey population, which in turn causes predator number to decline.[44] The prey population eventually recovers, starting a new cycle.  This suggests that the population of the herbivore fluctuates around the carrying capacity of the food source, in this case, the plant.
+
+Several factors play into these fluctuating populations and help stabilize predator-prey dynamics. For example, spatial heterogeneity is maintained, which means there will always be pockets of plants not found by herbivores. This stabilizing dynamic plays an especially important role for specialist herbivores that feed on one species of plant and prevents these specialists from wiping out their food source.[45] Prey defenses also help stabilize predator-prey dynamics, and for more information on these relationships see the section on Plant Defenses.  Eating a second prey type helps herbivores' populations stabilize.[46] Alternating between two or more plant types provides population stability for the herbivore, while the populations of the plants oscillate.[47] This plays an important role for generalist herbivores that eat a variety of plants.  Keystone herbivores keep vegetation populations in check and allow for a greater diversity of both herbivores and plants.[46] When an invasive herbivore or plant enters the system, the balance is thrown off and the diversity can collapse to a monotaxon system.[46]
+
+The back and forth relationship of plant defense and herbivore offense drives coevolution between plants and herbivores, resulting in a "coevolutionary arms race".[30][48] The escape and radiation mechanisms for coevolution, presents the idea that adaptations in herbivores and their host plants, has been the driving force behind speciation.[49][50]
+
+While much of the interaction of herbivory and plant defense is negative, with one individual reducing the fitness of the other, some is beneficial. This beneficial herbivory takes the form of mutualisms in which both partners benefit in some way from the interaction. Seed dispersal by herbivores and pollination are two forms of mutualistic herbivory in which the herbivore receives a food resource and the plant is aided in reproduction.[51]
+
+Herbivorous fish and marine animals are indispensable parts of the coral reef ecosystem. Since algae and seaweeds grow much faster than corals, they can occupy spaces where corals could have settled. They can outgrow and thus outcompete corals on bare surfaces. In the absence of plant-eating fish, seaweeds deprive corals of sunlight.[52]
+
+Herbivory can have impacts on both economics and ecology. For example, environmental degradation from white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the US alone has the potential to both change vegetative communities[53] through over-browsing and cost forest restoration projects upwards of $750 million annually.  Agricultural crop damage by the same species totals approximately $100 million every year. Insect crop damages also contribute largely to annual crop losses in the U.S.[54]
+Herbivores affect economics through the revenue generated by hunting and ecotourism.  For example, the hunting of herbivorous game species such as white-tailed deer, cottontail rabbits, antelope, and elk in the U.S. contributes greatly to the billion-dollar annually, hunting industry.[citation needed] Ecotourism is a major source of revenue, particularly in Africa, where many large mammalian herbivores such as elephants, zebras, and giraffes help to bring in the equivalent of millions of US dollars to various nations annually.[citation needed]
+

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+Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. Modern amphibians are all Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.
+
+The young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes and do not require water bodies in which to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often ecological indicators; in recent decades there has been a dramatic decline in amphibian populations for many species around the globe.
+
+The earliest amphibians evolved in the Devonian period from sarcopterygian fish with lungs and bony-limbed fins, features that were helpful in adapting to dry land. They diversified and became dominant during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, but were later displaced by reptiles and other vertebrates. Over time, amphibians shrank in size and decreased in diversity, leaving only the modern subclass Lissamphibia.
+
+The three modern orders of amphibians are Anura (the frogs and toads), Urodela (the salamanders), and Apoda (the caecilians). The number of known amphibian species is approximately 8,000, of which nearly 90% are frogs. The smallest amphibian (and vertebrate) in the world is a frog from New Guinea (Paedophryne amauensis) with a length of just 7.7 mm (0.30 in). The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) South China giant salamander (Andrias sligoi), but this is dwarfed by the extinct 9 m (30 ft) Prionosuchus from the middle Permian of Brazil. The study of amphibians is called batrachology, while the study of both reptiles and amphibians is called herpetology.
+
+The word "amphibian" is derived from the Ancient Greek term ἀμφίβιος (amphíbios), which means "both kinds of life", ἀμφί meaning "of both kinds" and βιος meaning "life". The term was initially used as a general adjective for animals that could live on land or in water, including seals and otters.[2] Traditionally, the class Amphibia includes all tetrapod vertebrates that are not amniotes. Amphibia in its widest sense (sensu lato) was divided into three subclasses, two of which are extinct:[3]
+
+The actual number of species in each group depends on the taxonomic classification followed. The two most common systems are the classification adopted by the website AmphibiaWeb, University of California, Berkeley and the classification by herpetologist Darrel Frost and the American Museum of Natural History, available as the online reference database "Amphibian Species of the World".[4] The numbers of species cited above follows Frost and the total number of known amphibian species as of March 31, 2019 is exactly 8,000,[5] of which nearly 90% are frogs.[6]
+
+With the phylogenetic classification, the taxon Labyrinthodontia has been discarded as it is a polyparaphyletic group without unique defining features apart from shared primitive characteristics. Classification varies according to the preferred phylogeny of the author and whether they use a stem-based or a node-based classification. Traditionally, amphibians as a class are defined as all tetrapods with a larval stage, while the group that includes the common ancestors of all living amphibians (frogs, salamanders and caecilians) and all their descendants is called Lissamphibia. The phylogeny of Paleozoic amphibians is uncertain, and Lissamphibia may possibly fall within extinct groups, like the Temnospondyli (traditionally placed in the subclass Labyrinthodontia) or the Lepospondyli, and in some analyses even in the amniotes. This means that advocates of phylogenetic nomenclature have removed a large number of basal Devonian and Carboniferous amphibian-type tetrapod groups that were formerly placed in Amphibia in Linnaean taxonomy, and included them elsewhere under cladistic taxonomy.[1] If the common ancestor of amphibians and amniotes is included in Amphibia, it becomes a paraphyletic group.[7]
+
+All modern amphibians are included in the subclass Lissamphibia, which is usually considered a clade, a group of species that have evolved from a common ancestor. The three modern orders are Anura (the frogs and toads), Caudata (or Urodela, the salamanders), and Gymnophiona (or Apoda, the caecilians).[8] It has been suggested that salamanders arose separately from a Temnospondyl-like ancestor, and even that caecilians are the sister group of the advanced reptiliomorph amphibians, and thus of amniotes.[9] Although the fossils of several older proto-frogs with primitive characteristics are known, the oldest "true frog" is Prosalirus bitis, from the Early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of Arizona. It is anatomically very similar to modern frogs.[10] The oldest known caecilian is another Early Jurassic species, Eocaecilia micropodia, also from Arizona.[11] The earliest salamander is Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis from the Late Jurassic of northeastern China.[12]
+
+Authorities disagree as to whether Salientia is a superorder that includes the order Anura, or whether Anura is a sub-order of the order Salientia. The Lissamphibia are traditionally divided into three orders, but an extinct salamander-like family, the Albanerpetontidae, is now considered part of Lissamphibia alongside the superorder Salientia. Furthermore, Salientia includes all three recent orders plus the Triassic proto-frog, Triadobatrachus.[13]
+
+The first major groups of amphibians developed in the Devonian period, around 370 million years ago, from lobe-finned fish which were similar to the modern coelacanth and lungfish.[14] These ancient lobe-finned fish had evolved multi-jointed leg-like fins with digits that enabled them to crawl along the sea bottom. Some fish had developed primitive lungs that help them breathe air when the stagnant pools of the Devonian swamps were low in oxygen. They could also use their strong fins to hoist themselves out of the water and onto dry land if circumstances so required. Eventually, their bony fins would evolve into limbs and they would become the ancestors to all tetrapods, including modern amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Despite being able to crawl on land, many of these prehistoric tetrapodomorph fish still spent most of their time in the water. They had started to develop lungs, but still breathed predominantly with gills.[15]
+
+Many examples of species showing transitional features have been discovered. Ichthyostega was one of the first primitive amphibians, with nostrils and more efficient lungs. It had four sturdy limbs, a neck, a tail with fins and a skull very similar to that of the lobe-finned fish, Eusthenopteron.[14] Amphibians evolved adaptations that allowed them to stay out of the water for longer periods. Their lungs improved and their skeletons became heavier and stronger, better able to support the weight of their bodies on land. They developed "hands" and "feet" with five or more digits;[16] the skin became more capable of retaining body fluids and resisting desiccation.[15] The fish's hyomandibula bone in the hyoid region behind the gills diminished in size and became the stapes of the amphibian ear, an adaptation necessary for hearing on dry land.[17] An affinity between the amphibians and the teleost fish is the multi-folded structure of the teeth and the paired supra-occipital bones at the back of the head, neither of these features being found elsewhere in the animal kingdom.[18]
+
+At the end of the Devonian period (360 million years ago), the seas, rivers and lakes were teeming with life while the land was the realm of early plants and devoid of vertebrates,[18] though some, such as Ichthyostega, may have sometimes hauled themselves out of the water. It is thought they may have propelled themselves with their forelimbs, dragging their hindquarters in a similar manner to that used by the elephant seal.[16] In the early Carboniferous (360 to 345 million years ago), the climate became wet and warm. Extensive swamps developed with mosses, ferns, horsetails and calamites. Air-breathing arthropods evolved and invaded the land where they provided food for the carnivorous amphibians that began to adapt to the terrestrial environment. There were no other tetrapods on the land and the amphibians were at the top of the food chain, occupying the ecological position currently held by the crocodile. Though equipped with limbs and the ability to breathe air, most still had a long tapering body and strong tail.[18] They were the top land predators, sometimes reaching several metres in length, preying on the large insects of the period and the many types of fish in the water. They still needed to return to water to lay their shell-less eggs, and even most modern amphibians have a fully aquatic larval stage with gills like their fish ancestors. It was the development of the amniotic egg, which prevents the developing embryo from drying out, that enabled the reptiles to reproduce on land and which led to their dominance in the period that followed.[14]
+
+After the Carboniferous rainforest collapse amphibian dominance gave way to reptiles,[19] and amphibians were further devastated by the Permian–Triassic extinction event.[20] During the Triassic Period (250 to 200 million years ago), the reptiles continued to out-compete the amphibians, leading to a reduction in both the amphibians' size and their importance in the biosphere. According to the fossil record, Lissamphibia, which includes all modern amphibians and is the only surviving lineage, may have branched off from the extinct groups Temnospondyli and Lepospondyli at some period between the Late Carboniferous and the Early Triassic. The relative scarcity of fossil evidence precludes precise dating,[15] but the most recent molecular study, based on multilocus sequence typing, suggests a Late Carboniferous/Early Permian origin for extant amphibians.[21]
+
+The origins and evolutionary relationships between the three main groups of amphibians is a matter of debate. A 2005 molecular phylogeny, based on rDNA analysis, suggests that salamanders and caecilians are more closely related to each other than they are to frogs. It also appears that the divergence of the three groups took place in the Paleozoic or early Mesozoic (around 250 million years ago), before the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea and soon after their divergence from the lobe-finned fish. The briefness of this period, and the swiftness with which radiation took place, would help account for the relative scarcity of primitive amphibian fossils.[22] There are large gaps in the fossil record, but the discovery of a Gerobatrachus hottoni from the Early Permian in Texas in 2008 provided a missing link with many of the characteristics of modern frogs.[9] Molecular analysis suggests that the frog–salamander divergence took place considerably earlier than the palaeontological evidence indicates.[9] Newer research indicates that the common ancestor of all Lissamphibians lived about 315 million years ago, and that stereospondyls are the closest relatives to the caecilians.[23]
+
+As they evolved from lunged fish, amphibians had to make certain adaptations for living on land, including the need to develop new means of locomotion. In the water, the sideways thrusts of their tails had propelled them forward, but on land, quite different mechanisms were required. Their vertebral columns, limbs, limb girdles and musculature needed to be strong enough to raise them off the ground for locomotion and feeding. Terrestrial adults discarded their lateral line systems and adapted their sensory systems to receive stimuli via the medium of the air. They needed to develop new methods to regulate their body heat to cope with fluctuations in ambient temperature. They developed behaviours suitable for reproduction in a terrestrial environment. Their skins were exposed to harmful ultraviolet rays that had previously been absorbed by the water. The skin changed to become more protective and prevent excessive water loss.[24]
+
+The superclass Tetrapoda is divided into four classes of vertebrate animals with four limbs.[25] Reptiles, birds and mammals are amniotes, the eggs of which are either laid or carried by the female and are surrounded by several membranes, some of which are impervious.[26] Lacking these membranes, amphibians require water bodies for reproduction, although some species have developed various strategies for protecting or bypassing the vulnerable aquatic larval stage.[24] They are not found in the sea with the exception of one or two frogs that live in brackish water in mangrove swamps;[27] the Anderson's salamander meanwhile occurs in brackish or salt water lakes.[28] On land, amphibians are restricted to moist habitats because of the need to keep their skin damp.[24]
+
+Modern amphibians have a simplified anatomy compared to their ancestors due to paedomorphosis, caused by two evolutionary trends: miniaturization and an unusually large genome, which result in a slower growth and development rate compared to other vertebrates.[29][30] Another reason for their size is associated with their rapid metamorphosis, which seems to have evolved only in the ancestors of lissamphibia; in all other known lines the development was much more gradual. Because a remodeling of the feeding apparatus means they don't eat during the metamorphosis, the metamorphosis has to go faster the smaller the individual is, so it happens at an early stage when the larvae are still small. (The largest species of salamanders don't go through a metamorphosis.)[31] Amphibians that lay eggs on land often go through the whole metamorphosis inside the egg. An anamniotic terrestrial egg is less than 1 cm in diameter due to diffusion problems, a size which puts a limit on the amount of posthatching growth.[32]
+
+The smallest amphibian (and vertebrate) in the world is a microhylid frog from New Guinea (Paedophryne amauensis) first discovered in 2012. It has an average length of 7.7 mm (0.30 in) and is part of a genus that contains four of the world's ten smallest frog species.[33] The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus)[34] but this is a great deal smaller than the largest amphibian that ever existed—the extinct 9 m (30 ft) Prionosuchus, a crocodile-like temnospondyl dating to 270 million years ago from the middle Permian of Brazil.[35] The largest frog is the African Goliath frog (Conraua goliath), which can reach 32 cm (13 in) and weigh 3 kg (6.6 lb).[34]
+
+Amphibians are ectothermic (cold-blooded) vertebrates that do not maintain their body temperature through internal physiological processes. Their metabolic rate is low and as a result, their food and energy requirements are limited. In the adult state, they have tear ducts and movable eyelids, and most species have ears that can detect airborne or ground vibrations. They have muscular tongues, which in many species can be protruded. Modern amphibians have fully ossified vertebrae with articular processes. Their ribs are usually short and may be fused to the vertebrae. Their skulls are mostly broad and short, and are often incompletely ossified. Their skin contains little keratin and lacks scales, apart from a few fish-like scales in certain caecilians. The skin contains many mucous glands and in some species, poison glands (a type of granular gland). The hearts of amphibians have three chambers, two atria and one ventricle. They have a urinary bladder and nitrogenous waste products are excreted primarily as urea. Most amphibians lay their eggs in water and have aquatic larvae that undergo metamorphosis to become terrestrial adults. Amphibians breathe by means of a pump action in which air is first drawn into the buccopharyngeal region through the nostrils. These are then closed and the air is forced into the lungs by contraction of the throat.[36] They supplement this with gas exchange through the skin.[24]
+
+The order Anura (from the Ancient Greek a(n)- meaning "without" and oura meaning "tail") comprises the frogs and toads. They usually have long hind limbs that fold underneath them, shorter forelimbs, webbed toes with no claws, no tails, large eyes and glandular moist skin.[8] Members of this order with smooth skins are commonly referred to as frogs, while those with warty skins are known as toads. The difference is not a formal one taxonomically and there are numerous exceptions to this rule. Members of the family Bufonidae are known as the "true toads".[37] Frogs range in size from the 30-centimetre (12 in) Goliath frog (Conraua goliath) of West Africa[38] to the 7.7-millimetre (0.30 in) Paedophryne amauensis, first described in Papua New Guinea in 2012, which is also the smallest known vertebrate.[39] Although most species are associated with water and damp habitats, some are specialised to live in trees or in deserts. They are found worldwide except for polar areas.[40]
+
+Anura is divided into three suborders that are broadly accepted by the scientific community, but the relationships between some families remain unclear. Future molecular studies should provide further insights into their evolutionary relationships.[41] The suborder Archaeobatrachia contains four families of primitive frogs. These are Ascaphidae, Bombinatoridae, Discoglossidae and Leiopelmatidae which have few derived features and are probably paraphyletic with regard to other frog lineages.[42] The six families in the more evolutionarily advanced suborder Mesobatrachia are the fossorial Megophryidae, Pelobatidae, Pelodytidae, Scaphiopodidae and Rhinophrynidae and the obligatorily aquatic Pipidae. These have certain characteristics that are intermediate between the two other suborders.[42] Neobatrachia is by far the largest suborder and includes the remaining families of modern frogs, including most common species. Ninety-six percent of the over 5,000 extant species of frog are neobatrachians.[43]
+
+The order Caudata (from the Latin cauda meaning "tail") consists of the salamanders—elongated, low-slung animals that mostly resemble lizards in form. This is a symplesiomorphic trait and they are no more closely related to lizards than they are to mammals.[44] Salamanders lack claws, have scale-free skins, either smooth or covered with tubercles, and tails that are usually flattened from side to side and often finned. They range in size from the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), which has been reported to grow to a length of 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in),[45] to the diminutive Thorius pennatulus from Mexico which seldom exceeds 20 mm (0.8 in) in length.[46] Salamanders have a mostly Laurasian distribution, being present in much of the Holarctic region of the northern hemisphere. The family Plethodontidae is also found in Central America and South America north of the Amazon basin;[40] South America was apparently invaded from Central America by about the start of the Miocene, 23 million years ago.[47] Urodela is a name sometimes used for all the extant species of salamanders.[48] Members of several salamander families have become paedomorphic and either fail to complete their metamorphosis or retain some larval characteristics as adults.[49] Most salamanders are under 15 cm (6 in) long. They may be terrestrial or aquatic and many spend part of the year in each habitat. When on land, they mostly spend the day hidden under stones or logs or in dense vegetation, emerging in the evening and night to forage for worms, insects and other invertebrates.[40]
+
+The suborder Cryptobranchoidea contains the primitive salamanders. A number of fossil cryptobranchids have been found, but there are only three living species, the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) and the hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) from North America. These large amphibians retain several larval characteristics in their adult state; gills slits are present and the eyes are unlidded. A unique feature is their ability to feed by suction, depressing either the left side of their lower jaw or the right.[50] The males excavate nests, persuade females to lay their egg strings inside them, and guard them. As well as breathing with lungs, they respire through the many folds in their thin skin, which has capillaries close to the surface.[51]
+
+The suborder Salamandroidea contains the advanced salamanders. They differ from the cryptobranchids by having fused prearticular bones in the lower jaw, and by using internal fertilisation. In salamandrids, the male deposits a bundle of sperm, the spermatophore, and the female picks it up and inserts it into her cloaca where the sperm is stored until the eggs are laid.[52] The largest family in this group is Plethodontidae, the lungless salamanders, which includes 60% of all salamander species. The family Salamandridae includes the true salamanders and the name "newt" is given to members of its subfamily Pleurodelinae.[8]
+
+The third suborder, Sirenoidea, contains the four species of sirens, which are in a single family, Sirenidae. Members of this order are eel-like aquatic salamanders with much reduced forelimbs and no hind limbs. Some of their features are primitive while others are derived.[53] Fertilisation is likely to be external as sirenids lack the cloacal glands used by male salamandrids to produce spermatophores and the females lack spermathecae for sperm storage. Despite this, the eggs are laid singly, a behaviour not conducive for external fertilisation.[52]
+
+The order Gymnophiona (from the Greek gymnos meaning "naked" and ophis meaning "serpent") or Apoda comprises the caecilians. These are long, cylindrical, limbless animals with a snake- or worm-like form. The adults vary in length from 8 to 75 centimetres (3 to 30 inches) with the exception of Thomson's caecilian (Caecilia thompsoni), which can reach 150 centimetres (4.9 feet). A caecilian's skin has a large number of transverse folds and in some species contains tiny embedded dermal scales. It has rudimentary eyes covered in skin, which are probably limited to discerning differences in light intensity. It also has a pair of short tentacles near the eye that can be extended and which have tactile and olfactory functions. Most caecilians live underground in burrows in damp soil, in rotten wood and under plant debris, but some are aquatic.[54] Most species lay their eggs underground and when the larvae hatch, they make their way to adjacent bodies of water. Others brood their eggs and the larvae undergo metamorphosis before the eggs hatch. A few species give birth to live young, nourishing them with glandular secretions while they are in the oviduct.[55] Caecilians have a mostly Gondwanan distribution, being found in tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Central and South America.[56]
+
+The integumentary structure contains some typical characteristics common to terrestrial vertebrates, such as the presence of highly cornified outer layers, renewed periodically through a moulting process controlled by the pituitary and thyroid glands. Local thickenings (often called warts) are common, such as those found on toads. The outside of the skin is shed periodically mostly in one piece, in contrast to mammals and birds where it is shed in flakes. Amphibians often eat the sloughed skin.[40] Caecilians are unique among amphibians in having mineralized dermal scales embedded in the dermis between the furrows in the skin. The similarity of these to the scales of bony fish is largely superficial. Lizards and some frogs have somewhat similar osteoderms forming bony deposits in the dermis, but this is an example of convergent evolution with similar structures having arisen independently in diverse vertebrate lineages.[57]
+
+Amphibian skin is permeable to water. Gas exchange can take place through the skin (cutaneous respiration) and this allows adult amphibians to respire without rising to the surface of water and to hibernate at the bottom of ponds.[40] To compensate for their thin and delicate skin, amphibians have evolved mucous glands, principally on their heads, backs and tails. The secretions produced by these help keep the skin moist. In addition, most species of amphibian have granular glands that secrete distasteful or poisonous substances. Some amphibian toxins can be lethal to humans while others have little effect.[58] The main poison-producing glands, the parotoids, produce the neurotoxin bufotoxin and are located behind the ears of toads, along the backs of frogs, behind the eyes of salamanders and on the upper surface of caecilians.[59]
+
+The skin colour of amphibians is produced by three layers of pigment cells called chromatophores. These three cell layers consist of the melanophores (occupying the deepest layer), the guanophores (forming an intermediate layer and containing many granules, producing a blue-green colour) and the lipophores (yellow, the most superficial layer). The colour change displayed by many species is initiated by hormones secreted by the pituitary gland. Unlike bony fish, there is no direct control of the pigment cells by the nervous system, and this results in the colour change taking place more slowly than happens in fish. A vividly coloured skin usually indicates that the species is toxic and is a warning sign to predators.[60]
+
+Amphibians have a skeletal system that is structurally homologous to other tetrapods, though with a number of variations. They all have four limbs except for the legless caecilians and a few species of salamander with reduced or no limbs. The bones are hollow and lightweight. The musculoskeletal system is strong to enable it to support the head and body. The bones are fully ossified and the vertebrae interlock with each other by means of overlapping processes. The pectoral girdle is supported by muscle, and the well-developed pelvic girdle is attached to the backbone by a pair of sacral ribs. The ilium slopes forward and the body is held closer to the ground than is the case in mammals.[61]
+
+In most amphibians, there are four digits on the fore foot and five on the hind foot, but no claws on either. Some salamanders have fewer digits and the amphiumas are eel-like in appearance with tiny, stubby legs. The sirens are aquatic salamanders with stumpy forelimbs and no hind limbs. The caecilians are limbless. They burrow in the manner of earthworms with zones of muscle contractions moving along the body. On the surface of the ground or in water they move by undulating their body from side to side.[62]
+
+In frogs, the hind legs are larger than the fore legs, especially so in those species that principally move by jumping or swimming. In the walkers and runners the hind limbs are not so large, and the burrowers mostly have short limbs and broad bodies. The feet have adaptations for the way of life, with webbing between the toes for swimming, broad adhesive toe pads for climbing, and keratinised tubercles on the hind feet for digging (frogs usually dig backwards into the soil). In most salamanders, the limbs are short and more or less the same length and project at right angles from the body. Locomotion on land is by walking and the tail often swings from side to side or is used as a prop, particularly when climbing. In their normal gait, only one leg is advanced at a time in the manner adopted by their ancestors, the lobe-finned fish.[61] Some salamanders in the genus Aneides and certain plethodontids climb trees and have long limbs, large toepads and prehensile tails.[52] In aquatic salamanders and in frog tadpoles, the tail has dorsal and ventral fins and is moved from side to side as a means of propulsion. Adult frogs do not have tails and caecilians have only very short ones.[62]
+
+Salamanders use their tails in defence and some are prepared to jettison them to save their lives in a process known as autotomy. Certain species in the Plethodontidae have a weak zone at the base of the tail and use this strategy readily. The tail often continues to twitch after separation which may distract the attacker and allow the salamander to escape. Both tails and limbs can be regenerated.[63] Adult frogs are unable to regrow limbs but tadpoles can do so.[62]
+
+Amphibians have a juvenile stage and an adult stage, and the circulatory systems of the two are distinct. In the juvenile (or tadpole) stage, the circulation is similar to that of a fish; the two-chambered heart pumps the blood through the gills where it is oxygenated, and is spread around the body and back to the heart in a single loop. In the adult stage, amphibians (especially frogs) lose their gills and develop lungs. They have a heart that consists of a single ventricle and two atria. When the ventricle starts contracting, deoxygenated blood is pumped through the pulmonary artery to the lungs. Continued contraction then pumps oxygenated blood around the rest of the body. Mixing of the two bloodstreams is minimized by the anatomy of the chambers.[64]
+
+The nervous system is basically the same as in other vertebrates, with a central brain, a spinal cord, and nerves throughout the body. The amphibian brain is less well developed than that of reptiles, birds and mammals but is similar in morphology and function to that of a fish. It is believed amphibians are capable of perceiving pain.  The brain consists of equal parts, cerebrum, midbrain and cerebellum. Various parts of the cerebrum process sensory input, such as smell in the olfactory lobe and sight in the optic lobe, and it is additionally the centre of behaviour and learning. The cerebellum is the center of muscular coordination and the medulla oblongata controls some organ functions including heartbeat and respiration. The brain sends signals through the spinal cord and nerves to regulate activity in the rest of the body. The pineal body, known to regulate sleep patterns in humans, is thought to produce the hormones involved in hibernation and aestivation in amphibians.[65]
+
+Tadpoles retain the lateral line system of their ancestral fishes, but this is lost in terrestrial adult amphibians. Some caecilians possess electroreceptors that allow them to locate objects around them when submerged in water. The ears are well developed in frogs. There is no external ear, but the large circular eardrum lies on the surface of the head just behind the eye. This vibrates and sound is transmitted through a single bone, the stapes, to the inner ear. Only high-frequency sounds like mating calls are heard in this way, but low-frequency noises can be detected through another mechanism.[61] There is a patch of specialized haircells, called papilla amphibiorum, in the inner ear capable of detecting deeper sounds. Another feature, unique to frogs and salamanders, is the columella-operculum complex adjoining the auditory capsule which is involved in the transmission of both airborne and seismic signals.[66] The ears of salamanders and caecilians are less highly developed than those of frogs as they do not normally communicate with each other through the medium of sound.[67]
+
+The eyes of tadpoles lack lids, but at metamorphosis, the cornea becomes more dome-shaped, the lens becomes flatter, and eyelids and associated glands and ducts develop.[61] The adult eyes are an improvement on invertebrate eyes and were a first step in the development of more advanced vertebrate eyes. They allow colour vision and depth of focus. In the retinas are green rods, which are receptive to a wide range of wavelengths.[67]
+
+Many amphibians catch their prey by flicking out an elongated tongue with a sticky tip and drawing it back into the mouth before seizing the item with their jaws. Some use inertial feeding to help them swallow the prey, repeatedly thrusting their head forward sharply causing the food to move backwards in their mouth by inertia. Most amphibians swallow their prey whole without much chewing so they possess voluminous stomachs. The short oesophagus is lined with cilia that help to move the food to the stomach and mucus produced by glands in the mouth and pharynx eases its passage. The enzyme chitinase produced in the stomach helps digest the chitinous cuticle of arthropod prey.[68]
+
+Amphibians possess a pancreas, liver and gall bladder. The liver is usually large with two lobes. Its size is determined by its function as a glycogen and fat storage unit, and may change with the seasons as these reserves are built or used up. Adipose tissue is another important means of storing energy and this occurs in the abdomen (in internal structures called fat bodies), under the skin and, in some salamanders, in the tail.[69]
+
+There are two kidneys located dorsally, near the roof of the body cavity. Their job is to filter the blood of metabolic waste and transport the urine via ureters to the urinary bladder where it is stored before being passed out periodically through the cloacal vent. Larvae and most aquatic adult amphibians excrete the nitrogen as ammonia in large quantities of dilute urine, while terrestrial species, with a greater need to conserve water, excrete the less toxic product urea. Some tree frogs with limited access to water excrete most of their metabolic waste as uric acid.[70]
+
+The lungs in amphibians are primitive compared to those of amniotes, possessing few internal septa and large alveoli, and consequently having a comparatively slow diffusion rate for oxygen entering the blood. Ventilation is accomplished by buccal pumping.[71] Most amphibians, however, are able to exchange gases with the water or air via their skin. To enable sufficient cutaneous respiration, the surface of their highly vascularised skin must remain moist to allow the oxygen to diffuse at a sufficiently high rate.[68] Because oxygen concentration in the water increases at both low temperatures and high flow rates, aquatic amphibians in these situations can rely primarily on cutaneous respiration, as in the Titicaca water frog and the hellbender salamander. In air, where oxygen is more concentrated, some small species can rely solely on cutaneous gas exchange, most famously the plethodontid salamanders, which have neither lungs nor gills. Many aquatic salamanders and all tadpoles have gills in their larval stage, with some (such as the axolotl) retaining gills as aquatic adults.[68]
+
+For the purpose of reproduction most amphibians require fresh water although some lay their eggs on land and have developed various means of keeping them moist. A few (e.g. Fejervarya raja) can inhabit brackish water, but there are no true marine amphibians.[72] There are reports, however, of particular amphibian populations unexpectedly invading marine waters. Such was the case with the Black Sea invasion of the natural hybrid Pelophylax esculentus reported in 2010.[73]
+
+Several hundred frog species in adaptive radiations (e.g., Eleutherodactylus, the Pacific Platymantis, the Australo-Papuan microhylids, and many other tropical frogs), however, do not need any water for breeding in the wild. They reproduce via direct development, an ecological and evolutionary adaptation that has allowed them to be completely independent from free-standing water. Almost all of these frogs live in wet tropical rainforests and their eggs hatch directly into miniature versions of the adult, passing through the tadpole stage within the egg. Reproductive success of many amphibians is dependent not only on the quantity of rainfall, but the seasonal timing.[74]
+
+In the tropics, many amphibians breed continuously or at any time of year. In temperate regions, breeding is mostly seasonal, usually in the spring, and is triggered by increasing day length, rising temperatures or rainfall. Experiments have shown the importance of temperature, but the trigger event, especially in arid regions, is often a storm. In anurans, males usually arrive at the breeding sites before females and the vocal chorus they produce may stimulate ovulation in females and the endocrine activity of males that are not yet reproductively active.[75]
+
+In caecilians, fertilisation is internal, the male extruding an intromittent organ, the phallodeum, and inserting it into the female cloaca. The paired Müllerian glands inside the male cloaca secrete a fluid which resembles that produced by mammalian prostate glands and which may transport and nourish the sperm. Fertilisation probably takes place in the oviduct.[76]
+
+The majority of salamanders also engage in internal fertilisation. In most of these, the male deposits a spermatophore, a small packet of sperm on top of a gelatinous cone, on the substrate either on land or in the water. The female takes up the sperm packet by grasping it with the lips of the cloaca and pushing it into the vent. The spermatozoa move to the spermatheca in the roof of the cloaca where they remain until ovulation which may be many months later. Courtship rituals and methods of transfer of the spermatophore vary between species. In some, the spermatophore may be placed directly into the female cloaca while in others, the female may be guided to the spermatophore or restrained with an embrace called amplexus. Certain primitive salamanders in the families Sirenidae, Hynobiidae and Cryptobranchidae practice external fertilisation in a similar manner to frogs, with the female laying the eggs in water and the male releasing sperm onto the egg mass.[76]
+
+With a few exceptions, frogs use external fertilisation. The male grasps the female tightly with his forelimbs either behind the arms or in front of the back legs, or in the case of Epipedobates tricolor, around the neck. They remain in amplexus with their cloacae positioned close together while the female lays the eggs and the male covers them with sperm. Roughened nuptial pads on the male's hands aid in retaining grip. Often the male collects and retains the egg mass, forming a sort of basket with the hind feet. An exception is the granular poison frog (Oophaga granulifera) where the male and female place their cloacae in close proximity while facing in opposite directions and then release eggs and sperm simultaneously. The tailed frog (Ascaphus truei) exhibits internal fertilisation. The "tail" is only possessed by the male and is an extension of the cloaca and used to inseminate the female. This frog lives in fast-flowing streams and internal fertilisation prevents the sperm from being washed away before fertilisation occurs.[77] The sperm may be retained in storage tubes attached to the oviduct until the following spring.[78]
+
+Most frogs can be classified as either prolonged or explosive breeders. Typically, prolonged breeders congregate at a breeding site, the males usually arriving first, calling and setting up territories. Other satellite males remain quietly nearby, waiting for their opportunity to take over a territory. The females arrive sporadically, mate selection takes place and eggs are laid. The females depart and territories may change hands. More females appear and in due course, the breeding season comes to an end. Explosive breeders on the other hand are found where temporary pools appear in dry regions after rainfall. These frogs are typically fossorial species that emerge after heavy rains and congregate at a breeding site. They are attracted there by the calling of the first male to find a suitable place, perhaps a pool that forms in the same place each rainy season. The assembled frogs may call in unison and frenzied activity ensues, the males scrambling to mate with the usually smaller number of females.[77]
+
+There is a direct competition between males to win the attention of the females in salamanders and newts, with elaborate courtship displays to keep the female's attention long enough to get her interested in choosing him to mate with.[79] Some species store sperm through long breeding seasons, as the extra time may allow for interactions with rival sperm.[80]
+
+Most amphibians go through metamorphosis, a process of significant morphological change after birth. In typical amphibian development, eggs are laid in water and larvae are adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. Frogs, toads and salamanders all hatch from the egg as larvae with external gills. Metamorphosis in amphibians is regulated by thyroxine concentration in the blood, which stimulates metamorphosis, and prolactin, which counteracts thyroxine's effect. Specific events are dependent on threshold values for different tissues.[81] Because most embryonic development is outside the parental body, it is subject to many adaptations due to specific environmental circumstances. For this reason tadpoles can have horny ridges instead of teeth, whisker-like skin extensions or fins. They also make use of a sensory lateral line organ similar to that of fish. After metamorphosis, these organs become redundant and will be reabsorbed by controlled cell death, called apoptosis. The variety of adaptations to specific environmental circumstances among amphibians is wide, with many discoveries still being made.[82]
+
+The egg of an amphibian is typically surrounded by a transparent gelatinous covering secreted by the oviducts and containing mucoproteins and mucopolysaccharides. This capsule is permeable to water and gases, and swells considerably as it absorbs water. The ovum is at first rigidly held, but in fertilised eggs the innermost layer liquefies and allows the embryo to move freely. This also happens in salamander eggs, even when they are unfertilised. Eggs of some salamanders and frogs contain unicellular green algae. These penetrate the jelly envelope after the eggs are laid and may increase the supply of oxygen to the embryo through photosynthesis. They seem to both speed up the development of the larvae and reduce mortality.[83] Most eggs contain the pigment melanin which raises their temperature through the absorption of light and also protects them against ultraviolet radiation. Caecilians, some plethodontid salamanders and certain frogs lay eggs underground that are unpigmented. In the wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the interior of the globular egg cluster has been found to be up to 6 °C (11 °F) warmer than its surroundings, which is an advantage in its cool northern habitat.[84]
+
+The eggs may be deposited singly or in small groups, or may take the form of spherical egg masses, rafts or long strings. In terrestrial caecilians, the eggs are laid in grape-like clusters in burrows near streams. The amphibious salamander Ensatina attaches its similar clusters by stalks to underwater stems and roots. The greenhouse frog (Eleutherodactylus planirostris) lays eggs in small groups in the soil where they develop in about two weeks directly into juvenile frogs without an intervening larval stage.[85] The tungara frog (Physalaemus pustulosus) builds a floating nest from foam to protect its eggs. First a raft is built, then eggs are laid in the centre, and finally a foam cap is overlaid. The foam has anti-microbial properties. It contains no detergents but is created by whipping up proteins and lectins secreted by the female.[86][87]
+
+The eggs of amphibians are typically laid in water and hatch into free-living larvae that complete their development in water and later transform into either aquatic or terrestrial adults. In many species of frog and in most lungless salamanders (Plethodontidae), direct development takes place, the larvae growing within the eggs and emerging as miniature adults. Many caecilians and some other amphibians lay their eggs on land, and the newly hatched larvae wriggle or are transported to water bodies. Some caecilians, the alpine salamander (Salamandra atra) and some of the African live-bearing toads (Nectophrynoides spp.) are viviparous. Their larvae feed on glandular secretions and develop within the female's oviduct, often for long periods. Other amphibians, but not caecilians, are ovoviviparous. The eggs are retained in or on the parent's body, but the larvae subsist on the yolks of their eggs and receive no nourishment from the adult. The larvae emerge at varying stages of their growth, either before or after metamorphosis, according to their species.[88] The toad genus Nectophrynoides exhibits all of these developmental patterns among its dozen or so members.[6]
+
+Frog larvae are known as tadpoles and typically have oval bodies and long, vertically flattened tails with fins. The free-living larvae are normally fully aquatic, but the tadpoles of some species (such as Nannophrys ceylonensis) are semi-terrestrial and live among wet rocks.[89] Tadpoles have cartilaginous skeletons, gills for respiration (external gills at first, internal gills later), lateral line systems and large tails that they use for swimming.[90] Newly hatched tadpoles soon develop gill pouches that cover the gills. The lungs develop early and are used as accessory breathing organs, the tadpoles rising to the water surface to gulp air. Some species complete their development inside the egg and hatch directly into small frogs. These larvae do not have gills but instead have specialised areas of skin through which respiration takes place. While tadpoles do not have true teeth, in most species, the jaws have long, parallel rows of small keratinized structures called keradonts surrounded by a horny beak.[91] Front legs are formed under the gill sac and hind legs become visible a few days later.
+
+Iodine and T4 (over stimulate the spectacular apoptosis [programmed cell death] of the cells of the larval gills, tail and fins) also stimulate the evolution of nervous systems transforming the aquatic, vegetarian tadpole into the terrestrial, carnivorous frog with better neurological, visuospatial, olfactory and cognitive abilities for hunting.[92][93]
+
+In fact, tadpoles developing in ponds and streams are typically herbivorous. Pond tadpoles tend to have deep bodies, large caudal fins and small mouths; they swim in the quiet waters feeding on growing or loose fragments of vegetation. Stream dwellers mostly have larger mouths, shallow bodies and caudal fins; they attach themselves to plants and stones and feed on the surface films of algae and bacteria.[94] They also feed on diatoms, filtered from the water through the gills, and stir up the sediment at bottom of the pond, ingesting edible fragments. They have a relatively long, spiral-shaped gut to enable them to digest this diet.[94] Some species are carnivorous at the tadpole stage, eating insects, smaller tadpoles and fish. Young of the Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) can occasionally be cannibalistic, the younger tadpoles attacking a larger, more developed tadpole when it is undergoing metamorphosis.[95]
+
+At metamorphosis, rapid changes in the body take place as the lifestyle of the frog changes completely. The spiral‐shaped mouth with horny tooth ridges is reabsorbed together with the spiral gut. The animal develops a large jaw, and its gills disappear along with its gill sac. Eyes and legs grow quickly, and a tongue is formed. There are associated changes in the neural networks such as development of stereoscopic vision and loss of the lateral line system. All this can happen in about a day. A few days later, the tail is reabsorbed, due to the higher thyroxine concentration required for this to take place.[94]
+
+At hatching, a typical salamander larva has eyes without lids, teeth in both upper and lower jaws, three pairs of feathery external gills, a somewhat laterally flattened body and a long tail with dorsal and ventral fins. The forelimbs may be partially developed and the hind limbs are rudimentary in pond-living species but may be rather more developed in species that reproduce in moving water. Pond-type larvae often have a pair of balancers, rod-like structures on either side of the head that may prevent the gills from becoming clogged up with sediment. Some members of the genera Ambystoma and Dicamptodon have larvae that never fully develop into the adult form, but this varies with species and with populations. The northwestern salamander (Ambystoma gracile) is one of these and, depending on environmental factors, either remains permanently in the larval state, a condition known as neoteny, or transforms into an adult.[96] Both of these are able to breed.[97] Neoteny occurs when the animal's growth rate is very low and is usually linked to adverse conditions such as low water temperatures that may change the response of the tissues to the hormone thyroxine.[98] Other factors that may inhibit metamorphosis include lack of food, lack of trace elements and competition from conspecifics. The tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) also sometimes behaves in this way and may grow particularly large in the process. The adult tiger salamander is terrestrial, but the larva is aquatic and able to breed while still in the larval state. When conditions are particularly inhospitable on land, larval breeding may allow continuation of a population that would otherwise die out. There are fifteen species of obligate neotenic salamanders, including species of Necturus, Proteus and Amphiuma, and many examples of facultative ones that adopt this strategy under appropriate environmental circumstances.[99]
+
+Lungless salamanders in the family Plethodontidae are terrestrial and lay a small number of unpigmented eggs in a cluster among damp leaf litter. Each egg has a large yolk sac and the larva feeds on this while it develops inside the egg, emerging fully formed as a juvenile salamander. The female salamander often broods the eggs. In the genus Ensatinas, the female has been observed to coil around them and press her throat area against them, effectively massaging them with a mucous secretion.[100]
+
+In newts and salamanders, metamorphosis is less dramatic than in frogs. This is because the larvae are already carnivorous and continue to feed as predators when they are adults so few changes are needed to their digestive systems. Their lungs are functional early, but the larvae do not make as much use of them as do tadpoles. Their gills are never covered by gill sacs and are reabsorbed just before the animals leave the water. Other changes include the reduction in size or loss of tail fins, the closure of gill slits, thickening of the skin, the development of eyelids, and certain changes in dentition and tongue structure. Salamanders are at their most vulnerable at metamorphosis as swimming speeds are reduced and transforming tails are encumbrances on land.[101] Adult salamanders often have an aquatic phase in spring and summer, and a land phase in winter. For adaptation to a water phase, prolactin is the required hormone, and for adaptation to the land phase, thyroxine. External gills do not return in subsequent aquatic phases because these are completely absorbed upon leaving the water for the first time.[102]
+
+Most terrestrial caecilians that lay eggs do so in burrows or moist places on land near bodies of water. The development of the young of Ichthyophis glutinosus, a species from Sri Lanka, has been much studied. The eel-like larvae hatch out of the eggs and make their way to water. They have three pairs of external red feathery gills, a blunt head with two rudimentary eyes, a lateral line system and a short tail with fins. They swim by undulating their body from side to side. They are mostly active at night, soon lose their gills and make sorties onto land. Metamorphosis is gradual. By the age of about ten months they have developed a pointed head with sensory tentacles near the mouth and lost their eyes, lateral line systems and tails. The skin thickens, embedded scales develop and the body divides into segments. By this time, the caecilian has constructed a burrow and is living on land.[103]
+
+In the majority of species of caecilians, the young are produced by viviparity. Typhlonectes compressicauda, a species from South America, is typical of these. Up to nine larvae can develop in the oviduct at any one time. They are elongated and have paired sac-like gills, small eyes and specialised scraping teeth. At first, they feed on the yolks of the eggs, but as this source of nourishment declines they begin to rasp at the ciliated epithelial cells that line the oviduct. This stimulates the secretion of fluids rich in lipids and mucoproteins on which they feed along with scrapings from the oviduct wall. They may increase their length sixfold and be two-fifths as long as their mother before being born. By this time they have undergone metamorphosis, lost their eyes and gills, developed a thicker skin and mouth tentacles, and reabsorbed their teeth. A permanent set of teeth grow through soon after birth.[104][105]
+
+The ringed caecilian (Siphonops annulatus) has developed a unique adaptation for the purposes of reproduction. The progeny feed on a skin layer that is specially developed by the adult in a phenomenon known as maternal dermatophagy. The brood feed as a batch for about seven minutes at intervals of approximately three days which gives the skin an opportunity to regenerate. Meanwhile, they have been observed to ingest fluid exuded from the maternal cloaca.[106]
+
+The care of offspring among amphibians has been little studied but, in general, the larger the number of eggs in a batch, the less likely it is that any degree of parental care takes place. Nevertheless, it is estimated that in up to 20% of amphibian species, one or both adults play some role in the care of the young.[107] Those species that breed in smaller water bodies or other specialised habitats tend to have complex patterns of behaviour in the care of their young.[108]
+
+Many woodland salamanders lay clutches of eggs under dead logs or stones on land. The black mountain salamander (Desmognathus welteri) does this, the mother brooding the eggs and guarding them from predation as the embryos feed on the yolks of their eggs. When fully developed, they break their way out of the egg capsules and disperse as juvenile salamanders.[109] The male hellbender, a primitive salamander, excavates an underwater nest and encourages females to lay there. The male then guards the site for the two or three months before the eggs hatch, using body undulations to fan the eggs and increase their supply of oxygen.[51]
+
+The male Colostethus subpunctatus, a tiny frog, protects the egg cluster which is hidden under a stone or log. When the eggs hatch, the male transports the tadpoles on his back, stuck there by a mucous secretion, to a temporary pool where he dips himself into the water and the tadpoles drop off.[110] The male midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans) winds egg strings round his thighs and carries the eggs around for up to eight weeks. He keeps them moist and when they are ready to hatch, he visits a pond or ditch and releases the tadpoles.[111] The female gastric-brooding frog (Rheobatrachus spp.) reared larvae in her stomach after swallowing either the eggs or hatchlings; however, this stage was never observed before the species became extinct. The tadpoles secrete a hormone that inhibits digestion in the mother whilst they develop by consuming their very large yolk supply.[112] The pouched frog (Assa darlingtoni) lays eggs on the ground. When they hatch, the male carries the tadpoles around in brood pouches on his hind legs.[113] The aquatic Surinam toad (Pipa pipa) raises its young in pores on its back where they remain until metamorphosis.[114] The granular poison frog (Oophaga granulifera) is typical of a number of tree frogs in the poison dart frog family Dendrobatidae. Its eggs are laid on the forest floor and when they hatch, the tadpoles are carried one by one on the back of an adult to a suitable water-filled crevice such as the axil of a leaf or the rosette of a bromeliad. The female visits the nursery sites regularly and deposits unfertilised eggs in the water and these are consumed by the tadpoles.[115]
+
+With a few exceptions, adult amphibians are predators, feeding on virtually anything that moves that they can swallow. The diet mostly consists of small prey that do not move too fast such as beetles, caterpillars, earthworms and spiders. The sirens (Siren spp.) often ingest aquatic plant material with the invertebrates on which they feed[116] and a Brazilian tree frog (Xenohyla truncata) includes a large quantity of fruit in its diet.[117] The Mexican burrowing toad (Rhinophrynus dorsalis) has a specially adapted tongue for picking up ants and termites. It projects it with the tip foremost whereas other frogs flick out the rear part first, their tongues being hinged at the front.[118]
+
+Food is mostly selected by sight, even in conditions of dim light. Movement of the prey triggers a feeding response. Frogs have been caught on fish hooks baited with red flannel and green frogs (Rana clamitans) have been found with stomachs full of elm seeds that they had seen floating past.[119] Toads, salamanders and caecilians also use smell to detect prey. This response is mostly secondary because salamanders have been observed to remain stationary near odoriferous prey but only feed if it moves. Cave-dwelling amphibians normally hunt by smell. Some salamanders seem to have learned to recognize immobile prey when it has no smell, even in complete darkness.[120]
+
+Amphibians usually swallow food whole but may chew it lightly first to subdue it.[40] They typically have small hinged pedicellate teeth, a feature unique to amphibians. The base and crown of these are composed of dentine separated by an uncalcified layer and they are replaced at intervals. Salamanders, caecilians and some frogs have one or two rows of teeth in both jaws, but some frogs (Rana spp.) lack teeth in the lower jaw, and toads (Bufo spp.) have no teeth. In many amphibians there are also vomerine teeth attached to a facial bone in the roof of the mouth.[121]
+
+The tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) is typical of the frogs and salamanders that hide under cover ready to ambush unwary invertebrates. Others amphibians, such as the Bufo spp. toads, actively search for prey, while the Argentine horned frog (Ceratophrys ornata) lures inquisitive prey closer by raising its hind feet over its back and vibrating its yellow toes.[122] Among leaf litter frogs in Panama, frogs that actively hunt prey have narrow mouths and are slim, often brightly coloured and toxic, while ambushers have wide mouths and are broad and well-camouflaged.[123] Caecilians do not flick their tongues, but catch their prey by grabbing it with their slightly backward-pointing teeth. The struggles of the prey and further jaw movements work it inwards and the caecilian usually retreats into its burrow. The subdued prey is gulped down whole.[124]
+
+When they are newly hatched, frog larvae feed on the yolk of the egg. When this is exhausted some move on to feed on bacteria, algal crusts, detritus and raspings from submerged plants. Water is drawn in through their mouths, which are usually at the bottom of their heads, and passes through branchial food traps between their mouths and their gills where fine particles are trapped in mucus and filtered out. Others have specialised mouthparts consisting of a horny beak edged by several rows of labial teeth. They scrape and bite food of many kinds as well as stirring up the bottom sediment, filtering out larger particles with the papillae around their mouths. Some, such as the spadefoot toads, have strong biting jaws and are carnivorous or even cannibalistic.[125]
+
+The calls made by caecilians and salamanders are limited to occasional soft squeaks, grunts or hisses and have not been much studied. A clicking sound sometimes produced by caecilians may be a means of orientation, as in bats, or a form of communication. Most salamanders are considered voiceless, but the California giant salamander (Dicamptodon ensatus) has vocal cords and can produce a rattling or barking sound. Some species of salamander emit a quiet squeak or yelp if attacked.[126]
+
+Frogs are much more vocal, especially during the breeding season when they use their voices to attract mates. The presence of a particular species in an area may be more easily discerned by its characteristic call than by a fleeting glimpse of the animal itself. In most species, the sound is produced by expelling air from the lungs over the vocal cords into an air sac or sacs in the throat or at the corner of the mouth. This may distend like a balloon and acts as a resonator, helping to transfer the sound to the atmosphere, or the water at times when the animal is submerged.[126] The main vocalisation is the male's loud advertisement call which seeks to both encourage a female to approach and discourage other males from intruding on its territory. This call is modified to a quieter courtship call on the approach of a female or to a more aggressive version if a male intruder draws near. Calling carries the risk of attracting predators and involves the expenditure of much energy.[127] Other calls include those given by a female in response to the advertisement call and a release call given by a male or female during unwanted attempts at amplexus. When a frog is attacked, a distress or fright call is emitted, often resembling a scream.[128] The usually nocturnal Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) produces a rain call when there is rainfall during daylight hours.[129]
+
+Little is known of the territorial behaviour of caecilians, but some frogs and salamanders defend home ranges. These are usually feeding, breeding or sheltering sites. Males normally exhibit such behaviour though in some species, females and even juveniles are also involved. Although in many frog species, females are larger than males, this is not the case in most species where males are actively involved in territorial defence. Some of these have specific adaptations such as enlarged teeth for biting or spines on the chest, arms or thumbs.[130]
+
+In salamanders, defence of a territory involves adopting an aggressive posture and if necessary attacking the intruder. This may involve snapping, chasing and sometimes biting, occasionally causing the loss of a tail. The behaviour of red back salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) has been much studied. 91% of marked individuals that were later recaptured were within a metre (yard) of their original daytime retreat under a log or rock.[131] A similar proportion, when moved experimentally a distance of 30 metres (98 ft), found their way back to their home base.[131] The salamanders left odour marks around their territories which averaged 0.16 to 0.33 square metres (1.7 to 3.6 sq ft) in size and were sometimes inhabited by a male and female pair.[132] These deterred the intrusion of others and delineated the boundaries between neighbouring areas. Much of their behaviour seemed stereotyped and did not involve any actual contact between individuals. An aggressive posture involved raising the body off the ground and glaring at the opponent who often turned away submissively. If the intruder persisted, a biting lunge was usually launched at either the tail region or the naso-labial grooves. Damage to either of these areas can reduce the fitness of the rival, either because of the need to regenerate tissue or because it impairs its ability to detect food.[131]
+
+In frogs, male territorial behaviour is often observed at breeding locations; calling is both an announcement of ownership of part of this resource and an advertisement call to potential mates. In general, a deeper voice represents a heavier and more powerful individual, and this may be sufficient to prevent intrusion by smaller males. Much energy is used in the vocalization and it takes a toll on the territory holder who may be displaced by a fitter rival if he tires. There is a tendency for males to tolerate the holders of neighbouring territories while vigorously attacking unknown intruders. Holders of territories have a "home advantage" and usually come off better in an encounter between two similar-sized frogs. If threats are insufficient, chest to chest tussles may take place. Fighting methods include pushing and shoving, deflating the opponent's vocal sac, seizing him by the head, jumping on his back, biting, chasing, splashing, and ducking him under the water.[133]
+
+Amphibians have soft bodies with thin skins, and lack claws, defensive armour, or spines. Nevertheless, they have evolved various defence mechanisms to keep themselves alive. The first line of defence in salamanders and frogs is the mucous secretion that they produce. This keeps their skin moist and makes them slippery and difficult to grip. The secretion is often sticky and distasteful or toxic.[134] Snakes have been observed yawning and gaping when trying to swallow African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis), which gives the frogs an opportunity to escape.[134][135] Caecilians have been little studied in this respect, but the Cayenne caecilian (Typhlonectes compressicauda) produces toxic mucus that has killed predatory fish in a feeding experiment in Brazil.[136] In some salamanders, the skin is poisonous. The rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) from North America and other members of its genus contain the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin (TTX), the most toxic non-protein substance known and almost identical to that produced by pufferfish. Handling the newts does not cause harm, but ingestion of even the most minute amounts of the skin is deadly. In feeding trials, fish, frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals were all found to be susceptible.[137][138] The only predators with some tolerance to the poison are certain populations of common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis).
+In locations where both snake and salamander co-exist, the snakes have developed immunity through genetic changes and they feed on the amphibians with impunity.[139] Coevolution occurs with the newt increasing its toxic capabilities at the same rate as the snake further develops its immunity.[138] Some frogs and toads are toxic, the main poison glands being at the side of the neck and under the warts on the back. These regions are presented to the attacking animal and their secretions may be foul-tasting or cause various physical or neurological symptoms. Altogether, over 200 toxins have been isolated from the limited number of amphibian species that have been investigated.[140]
+
+Poisonous species often use bright colouring to warn potential predators of their toxicity. These warning colours tend to be red or yellow combined with black, with the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) being an example. Once a predator has sampled one of these, it is likely to remember the colouration next time it encounters a similar animal. In some species, such as the fire-bellied toad (Bombina spp.), the warning colouration is on the belly and these animals adopt a defensive pose when attacked, exhibiting their bright colours to the predator. The frog Allobates zaparo is not poisonous, but mimics the appearance of other toxic species in its locality, a strategy that may deceive predators.[142]
+
+Many amphibians are nocturnal and hide during the day, thereby avoiding diurnal predators that hunt by sight. Other amphibians use camouflage to avoid being detected. They have various colourings such as mottled browns, greys and olives to blend into the background. Some salamanders adopt defensive poses when faced by a potential predator such as the North American northern short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda). Their bodies writhe and they raise and lash their tails which makes it difficult for the predator to avoid contact with their poison-producing granular glands.[143] A few salamanders will autotomise their tails when attacked, sacrificing this part of their anatomy to enable them to escape. The tail may have a constriction at its base to allow it to be easily detached. The tail is regenerated later, but the energy cost to the animal of replacing it is significant.[63]
+Some frogs and toads inflate themselves to make themselves look large and fierce, and some spadefoot toads (Pelobates spp) scream and leap towards the attacker.[40] Giant salamanders of the genus Andrias, as well as Ceratophrine and Pyxicephalus frogs possess sharp teeth and are capable of drawing blood with a defensive bite. The blackbelly salamander (Desmognathus quadramaculatus) can bite an attacking common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) two or three times its size on the head and often manages to escape.[144]
+
+In amphibians, there is evidence of habituation, associative learning through both classical and instrumental learning, and discrimination abilities.[145]
+
+In one experiment, when offered live fruit flies (Drosophila virilis), salamanders chose the larger of 1 vs 2 and 2 vs 3. Frogs can distinguish between low numbers (1 vs 2, 2 vs 3, but not 3 vs 4) and large numbers (3 vs 6, 4 vs 8, but not 4 vs 6) of prey. This is irrespective of other characteristics, i.e. surface area, volume, weight and movement, although discrimination among large numbers may be based on surface area.[146]
+
+Dramatic declines in amphibian populations, including population crashes and mass localized extinction, have been noted since the late 1980s from locations all over the world, and amphibian declines are thus perceived to be one of the most critical threats to global biodiversity.[147] In 2004, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported stating that currently birds,[148] mammals, and amphibians extinction rates were at minimum 48 times greater than natural extinction rates—possibly 1,024 times higher.
+In 2006 there were believed to be 4,035 species of amphibians that depended on water at some stage during their life cycle. Of these, 1,356 (33.6%) were considered to be threatened and this figure is likely to be an underestimate because it excludes 1,427 species for which there was insufficient data to assess their status.[149] A number of causes are believed to be involved, including habitat destruction and modification, over-exploitation, pollution, introduced species, global warming, endocrine-disrupting pollutants, destruction of the ozone layer (ultraviolet radiation has shown to be especially damaging to the skin, eyes, and eggs of amphibians), and diseases like chytridiomycosis. However, many of the causes of amphibian declines are still poorly understood, and are a topic of ongoing discussion.[150]
+
+With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often considered to be ecological indicators.[151] In many terrestrial ecosystems, they constitute one of the largest parts of the vertebrate biomass. Any decline in amphibian numbers will affect the patterns of predation. The loss of carnivorous species near the top of the food chain will upset the delicate ecosystem balance and may cause dramatic increases in opportunistic species. In the Middle East, a growing appetite for eating frog legs and the consequent gathering of them for food was linked to an increase in mosquitoes.[152] Predators that feed on amphibians are affected by their decline. The western terrestrial garter snake (Thamnophis elegans) in California is largely aquatic and depends heavily on two species of frog that are decreasing in numbers, the Yosemite toad (Bufo canorus) and the mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa), putting the snake's future at risk. If the snake were to become scarce, this would affect birds of prey and other predators that feed on it.[153] Meanwhile, in the ponds and lakes, fewer frogs means fewer tadpoles. These normally play an important role in controlling the growth of algae and also forage on detritus that accumulates as sediment on the bottom. A reduction in the number of tadpoles may lead to an overgrowth of algae, resulting in depletion of oxygen in the water when the algae later die and decompose. Aquatic invertebrates and fish might then die and there would be unpredictable ecological consequences.[154]
+
+A global strategy to stem the crisis was released in 2005 in the form of the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan. Developed by over eighty leading experts in the field, this call to action details what would be required to curtail amphibian declines and extinctions over the following five years and how much this would cost. The Amphibian Specialist Group of the IUCN is spearheading efforts to implement a comprehensive global strategy for amphibian conservation.[155] Amphibian Ark is an organization that was formed to implement the ex-situ conservation recommendations of this plan, and they have been working with zoos and aquaria around the world, encouraging them to create assurance colonies of threatened amphibians.[155] One such project is the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project that built on existing conservation efforts in Panama to create a country-wide response to the threat of chytridiomycosis.[156]
+

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+
+
+
+Plants are mainly multicellular organisms, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, plants were treated as one of two kingdoms including all living things that were not animals, and all algae and fungi were treated as plants. However, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes (the archaea and bacteria). By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin name for "green plants"), a group that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and their allies, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae, but excludes the red and brown algae.
+
+Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is also common.
+
+There are about 320,000 species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, produce seeds.[5] Green plants provide a substantial proportion of the world's molecular oxygen,[6] and are the basis of most of Earth's ecosystems. Plants that produce grain, fruit and vegetables also form basic human foods and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants have many cultural and other uses, as ornaments, building materials, writing material and, in great variety, they have been the source of medicines and psychoactive drugs. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology.
+
+All living things were traditionally placed into one of two groups, plants and animals. This classification may date from Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), who made the distinction between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus (1707–1778) created the basis of the modern system of scientific classification, these two groups became the kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Metaphyta or Plantae) and Animalia (also called Metazoa). Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts.[citation needed]
+
+The term "plant" generally implies the possession of the following traits: multicellularity, possession of cell walls containing cellulose, and the ability to carry out photosynthesis with primary chloroplasts.[7][8]
+
+When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a specific group of organisms or taxon, it usually refers to one of four concepts. From least to most inclusive, these four groupings are:
+
+Another way of looking at the relationships between the different groups that have been called "plants" is through a cladogram, which shows their evolutionary relationships. These are not yet completely settled, but one accepted relationship between the three groups described above is shown below[clarification needed].[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Those which have been called "plants" are in bold (some minor groups have been omitted).
+
+Rhodophyta (red algae)
+
+Rhodelphidia (predatorial)
+
+Picozoa
+
+Glaucophyta (glaucophyte algae)
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Chlorophyta
+
+Charales (stoneworts)
+
+land plants or embryophytes
+
+Cryptista
+
+The way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors.
+
+Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce food by photosynthesis and thus have traditionally been included in the plant kingdom. The seaweeds range from large multicellular algae to single-celled organisms and are classified into three groups, the green algae, red algae and brown algae. There is good evidence that the brown algae evolved independently from the others, from non-photosynthetic ancestors that formed endosymbiotic relationships with red algae rather than from cyanobacteria, and they are no longer classified as plants as defined here.[23][24]
+
+The Viridiplantae, the green plants – green algae and land plants – form a clade, a group consisting of all the descendants of a common ancestor. With a few exceptions, the green plants have the following features in common; primary chloroplasts derived from cyanobacteria containing chlorophylls a and b, cell walls containing cellulose, and food stores in the form of starch contained within the plastids. They undergo closed mitosis without centrioles, and typically have mitochondria with flat cristae. The chloroplasts of green plants are surrounded by two membranes, suggesting they originated directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria.
+
+Two additional groups, the Rhodophyta (red algae) and Glaucophyta (glaucophyte algae), also have primary chloroplasts that appear to be derived directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, although they differ from Viridiplantae in the pigments which are used in photosynthesis and so are different in colour. These groups also differ from green plants in that the storage polysaccharide is floridean starch and is stored in the cytoplasm rather than in the plastids. They appear to have had a common origin with Viridiplantae and the three groups form the clade Archaeplastida, whose name implies that their chloroplasts were derived from a single ancient endosymbiotic event. This is the broadest modern definition of the term 'plant'.
+
+In contrast, most other algae (e.g. brown algae/diatoms, haptophytes, dinoflagellates, and euglenids) not only have different pigments but also have chloroplasts with three or four surrounding membranes. They are not close relatives of the Archaeplastida, presumably having acquired chloroplasts separately from ingested or symbiotic green and red algae. They are thus not included in even the broadest modern definition of the plant kingdom, although they were in the past.
+
+The green plants or Viridiplantae were traditionally divided into the green algae (including the stoneworts) and the land plants. However, it is now known that the land plants evolved from within a group of green algae, so that the green algae by themselves are a paraphyletic group, i.e. a group that excludes some of the descendants of a common ancestor. Paraphyletic groups are generally avoided in modern classifications, so that in recent treatments the Viridiplantae have been divided into two clades, the Chlorophyta and the Streptophyta (including the land plants and Charophyta).[25][26]
+
+The Chlorophyta (a name that has also been used for all green algae) are the sister group to the Charophytes, from which the land plants evolved. There are about 4,300 species,[27] mainly unicellular or multicellular marine organisms such as the sea lettuce, Ulva.
+
+The other group within the Viridiplantae are the mainly freshwater or terrestrial Streptophyta, which consists of the land plants together with the Charophyta, itself consisting of several groups of green algae such as the desmids and stoneworts. Streptophyte algae are either unicellular or form multicellular filaments, branched or unbranched.[26] The genus Spirogyra is a filamentous streptophyte alga familiar to many, as it is often used in teaching and is one of the organisms responsible for the algal "scum" on ponds. The freshwater stoneworts strongly resemble land plants and are believed to be their closest relatives.[citation needed] Growing immersed in fresh water, they consist of a central stalk with whorls of branchlets.
+
+Linnaeus' original classification placed the fungi within the Plantae, since they were unquestionably neither animals or minerals and these were the only other alternatives. With 19th century developments in microbiology, Ernst Haeckel introduced the new kingdom Protista in addition to Plantae and Animalia, but whether fungi were best placed in the Plantae or should be reclassified as protists remained controversial.  In 1969, Robert Whittaker proposed the creation of the kingdom Fungi. Molecular evidence has since shown that the most recent common ancestor (concestor), of the Fungi was probably more similar to that of the Animalia than to that of Plantae or any other kingdom.[28]
+
+Whittaker's original reclassification was based on the fundamental difference in nutrition between the Fungi and the Plantae. Unlike plants, which generally gain carbon through photosynthesis, and so are called autotrophs, fungi do not possess chloroplasts and generally obtain carbon by breaking down and absorbing surrounding materials, and so are called heterotrophic saprotrophs. In addition, the substructure of multicellular fungi is different from that of plants, taking the form of many chitinous microscopic strands called hyphae, which may be further subdivided into cells or may form a syncytium containing many eukaryotic nuclei. Fruiting bodies, of which mushrooms are the most familiar example, are the reproductive structures of fungi, and are unlike any structures produced by plants.[citation needed]
+
+The table below shows some species count estimates of different green plant (Viridiplantae) divisions. It suggests there are about 300,000 species of living Viridiplantae, of which 85–90% are flowering plants. (Note: as these are from different sources and different dates, they are not necessarily comparable, and like all species counts, are subject to a degree of uncertainty in some cases.)
+
+(6,600–10,300)
+
+(18,100–20,200)
+
+(12,200)
+
+(259,511)
+
+The naming of plants is governed by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants and International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (see cultivated plant taxonomy).
+
+The evolution of plants has resulted in increasing levels of complexity, from the earliest algal mats, through bryophytes, lycopods, ferns to the complex gymnosperms and angiosperms of today. Plants in all of these groups continue to thrive, especially in the environments in which they evolved.
+
+An algal scum formed on the land 1,200 million years ago, but it was not until the Ordovician Period, around 450 million years ago, that land plants appeared.[39] However, new evidence from the study of carbon isotope ratios in Precambrian rocks has suggested that complex photosynthetic plants developed on the earth over 1000 m.y.a.[40] For more than a century it has been assumed that the ancestors of land plants evolved in aquatic environments and then adapted to a life on land, an idea usually credited to botanist Frederick Orpen Bower in his 1908 book The Origin of a Land Flora. A recent alternative view, supported by genetic evidence, is that they evolved from terrestrial single-celled algae,[41] and that even the common ancestor of red and green algae, and the unicellular freshwater algae glaucophytes, originated in a terrestrial environment in freshwater biofilms or microbial mats.[42] Primitive land plants began to diversify in the late Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago, and the results of their diversification are displayed in remarkable detail in an early Devonian fossil assemblage from the Rhynie chert. This chert preserved early plants in cellular detail, petrified in volcanic springs. By the middle of the Devonian Period most of the features recognised in plants today are present, including roots, leaves and secondary wood, and by late Devonian times seeds had evolved.[43] Late Devonian plants had thereby reached a degree of sophistication that allowed them to form forests of tall trees. Evolutionary innovation continued in the Carboniferous and later geological periods and is ongoing today. Most plant groups were relatively unscathed by the Permo-Triassic extinction event, although the structures of communities changed. This may have set the scene for the evolution of flowering plants in the Triassic (~200 million years ago), which exploded in the Cretaceous and Tertiary. The latest major group of plants to evolve were the grasses, which became important in the mid Tertiary, from around 40 million years ago. The grasses, as well as many other groups, evolved new mechanisms of metabolism to survive the low CO2 and warm, dry conditions of the tropics over the last 10 million years.
+
+A 1997 proposed phylogenetic tree of Plantae, after Kenrick and Crane,[44] is as follows, with modification to the Pteridophyta from Smith et al.[45] The Prasinophyceae are a paraphyletic assemblage of early diverging green algal lineages, but are treated as a group outside the Chlorophyta:[46] later authors have not followed this suggestion.
+
+Prasinophyceae (micromonads)
+
+Spermatophytes (seed plants)
+
+Progymnospermophyta †
+
+Pteridopsida (true ferns)
+
+Marattiopsida
+
+Equisetopsida (horsetails)
+
+Psilotopsida (whisk ferns & adders'-tongues)
+
+Cladoxylopsida †
+
+Lycopodiophyta
+
+Zosterophyllophyta †
+
+Rhyniophyta †
+
+Aglaophyton †
+
+Horneophytopsida †
+
+Bryophyta (mosses)
+
+Anthocerotophyta (hornworts)
+
+Marchantiophyta (liverworts)
+
+Charophyta
+
+Trebouxiophyceae (Pleurastrophyceae)
+
+Chlorophyceae
+
+Ulvophyceae
+
+A newer proposed classification follows Leliaert et al. 2011[47] and modified with Silar 2016[20][21][48][49] for the green algae clades and Novíkov & Barabaš-Krasni 2015[50] for the land plants clade. Notice that the Prasinophyceae are here placed inside the Chlorophyta.
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Chlorophyta inc. Prasinophyceae
+
+Streptofilum
+
+Klebsormidiophyta
+
+Charophyta Rabenhorst 1863 emend. Lewis & McCourt 2004 (Stoneworts)
+
+Coleochaetophyta
+
+Zygnematophyta
+
+Marchantiophyta (Liverworts)
+
+Bryophyta (True mosses)
+
+Anthocerotophyta (Non-flowering hornworts)
+
+†Horneophyta
+
+†Aglaophyta
+
+Tracheophyta (Vascular Plants)
+
+Later, a phylogeny based on genomes and transcriptomes from 1,153 plant species was proposed.[51] The placing of algal groups is supported by phylogenies based on genomes from the Mesostigmatophyceae and Chlorokybophyceae that have since been sequenced.[52][53] The classification of Bryophyta is supported both by Puttick et al. 2018,[54] and by phylogenies involving the hornwort genomes that have also since been sequenced.[55][56]
+
+Rhodophyta
+
+Glaucophyta
+
+Chlorophyta
+
+Prasinococcales
+
+
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Klebsormidiales
+
+Chara
+
+Coleochaetales
+
+Zygnematophyceae
+
+Hornworts
+
+Liverworts
+
+Mosses
+
+Lycophytes
+
+Ferns
+
+Gymnosperms
+
+Angiosperms
+
+The plants that are likely most familiar to us are the multicellular land plants, called embryophytes. Embryophytes include the vascular plants, such as ferns, conifers and flowering plants. They also include the bryophytes, of which mosses and liverworts are the most common.
+
+All of these plants have eukaryotic cells with cell walls composed of cellulose, and most obtain their energy through photosynthesis, using light, water and carbon dioxide to synthesize food. About three hundred plant species do not photosynthesize but are parasites on other species of photosynthetic plants. Embryophytes are distinguished from green algae, which represent a mode of photosynthetic life similar to the kind modern plants are believed to have evolved from, by having specialized reproductive organs protected by non-reproductive tissues.
+
+Bryophytes first appeared during the early Paleozoic. They mainly live in habitats where moisture is available for significant periods, although some species, such as Targionia, are desiccation-tolerant. Most species of bryophytes remain small throughout their life-cycle. This involves an alternation between two generations: a haploid stage, called the gametophyte, and a diploid stage, called the sporophyte. In bryophytes, the sporophyte is always unbranched and remains nutritionally dependent on its parent gametophyte. The embryophytes have the ability to secrete a cuticle on their outer surface, a waxy layer that confers resistant to desiccation. In the mosses and hornworts a cuticle is usually only produced on the sporophyte. Stomata are absent from liverworts, but occur on the sporangia of mosses and hornworts, allowing gas exchange.
+
+Vascular plants first appeared during the Silurian period, and by the Devonian had diversified and spread into many different terrestrial environments. They developed a number of adaptations that allowed them to spread into increasingly more arid places, notably the vascular tissues xylem and phloem, that transport water and food throughout the organism. Root systems capable of obtaining soil water and nutrients also evolved during the Devonian. In modern vascular plants, the sporophyte is typically large, branched, nutritionally independent and long-lived, but there is increasing evidence that Paleozoic gametophytes were just as complex as the sporophytes. The gametophytes of all vascular plant groups evolved to become reduced in size and prominence in the life cycle.
+
+In seed plants, the microgametophyte is reduced from a multicellular free-living organism to a few cells in a pollen grain and the miniaturised megagametophyte remains inside the megasporangium, attached to and dependent on the parent plant. A megasporangium enclosed in a protective layer called an integument is known as an ovule. After fertilisation by means of sperm produced by pollen grains, an embryo sporophyte develops inside the ovule. The integument becomes a seed coat, and the ovule develops into a seed. Seed plants can survive and reproduce in extremely arid conditions, because they are not dependent on free water for the movement of sperm, or the development of free living gametophytes.
+
+The first seed plants, pteridosperms (seed ferns), now extinct, appeared in the Devonian and diversified through the Carboniferous. They were the ancestors of modern gymnosperms, of which four surviving groups are widespread today, particularly the conifers, which are dominant trees in several biomes. The name gymnosperm comes from the Greek composite word γυμνόσπερμος (γυμνός gymnos, "naked" and σπέρμα sperma, "seed"), as the ovules and subsequent seeds are not enclosed in a protective structure (carpels or fruit), but are borne naked, typically on cone scales.
+
+Plant fossils include roots, wood, leaves, seeds, fruit, pollen, spores, phytoliths, and amber (the fossilized resin produced by some plants). Fossil land plants are recorded in terrestrial, lacustrine, fluvial and nearshore marine sediments. Pollen, spores and algae (dinoflagellates and acritarchs) are used for dating sedimentary rock sequences. The remains of fossil plants are not as common as fossil animals, although plant fossils are locally abundant in many regions worldwide.
+
+The earliest fossils clearly assignable to Kingdom Plantae are fossil green algae from the Cambrian. These fossils resemble calcified multicellular members of the Dasycladales. Earlier Precambrian fossils are known that resemble single-cell green algae, but definitive identity with that group of algae is uncertain.
+
+The earliest fossils attributed to green algae date from the Precambrian (ca. 1200 mya).[57][58] The resistant outer walls of prasinophyte cysts (known as phycomata) are well preserved in fossil deposits of the Paleozoic (ca. 250–540 mya). A filamentous fossil (Proterocladus) from middle Neoproterozoic deposits (ca. 750 mya) has been attributed to the Cladophorales, while the oldest reliable records of the Bryopsidales, Dasycladales) and stoneworts are from the Paleozoic.[46][59]
+
+The oldest known fossils of embryophytes date from the Ordovician, though such fossils are fragmentary. By the Silurian, fossils of whole plants are preserved, including the simple vascular plant Cooksonia in mid-Silurian and the much larger and more complex lycophyte Baragwanathia longifolia in late Silurian. From the early Devonian Rhynie chert, detailed fossils of lycophytes and rhyniophytes have been found that show details of the individual cells within the plant organs and the symbiotic association of these plants with fungi of the order Glomales. The Devonian period also saw the evolution of leaves and roots, and the first modern tree, Archaeopteris. This tree with fern-like foliage and a trunk with conifer-like wood was heterosporous producing spores of two different sizes, an early step in the evolution of seeds.[60]
+
+The Coal measures are a major source of Paleozoic plant fossils, with many groups of plants in existence at this time. The spoil heaps of coal mines are the best places to collect; coal itself is the remains of fossilised plants, though structural detail of the plant fossils is rarely visible in coal. In the Fossil Grove at Victoria Park in Glasgow, Scotland, the stumps of Lepidodendron trees are found in their original growth positions.
+
+The fossilized remains of conifer and angiosperm roots, stems and branches may be locally abundant in lake and inshore sedimentary rocks from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Sequoia and its allies, magnolia, oak, and palms are often found.
+
+Petrified wood is common in some parts of the world, and is most frequently found in arid or desert areas where it is more readily exposed by erosion. Petrified wood is often heavily silicified (the organic material replaced by silicon dioxide), and the impregnated tissue is often preserved in fine detail. Such specimens may be cut and polished using lapidary equipment. Fossil forests of petrified wood have been found in all continents.
+
+Fossils of seed ferns such as Glossopteris are widely distributed throughout several continents of the Southern Hemisphere, a fact that gave support to Alfred Wegener's early ideas regarding Continental drift theory.
+
+Most of the solid material in a plant is taken from the atmosphere. Through the process of photosynthesis, most plants use the energy in sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, plus water, into simple sugars. These sugars are then used as building blocks and form the main structural component of the plant. Chlorophyll, a green-colored, magnesium-containing pigment is essential to this process; it is generally present in plant leaves, and often in other plant parts as well. Parasitic plants, on the other hand, use the resources of their host to provide the materials needed for metabolism and growth.
+
+Plants usually rely on soil primarily for support and water (in quantitative terms), but they also obtain compounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and other elemental nutrients from the soil. Epiphytic and lithophytic plants depend on air and nearby debris for nutrients, and carnivorous plants supplement their nutrient requirements, particularly for nitrogen and phosphorus, with insect prey that they capture. For the majority of plants to grow successfully they also require oxygen in the atmosphere and around their roots (soil gas) for respiration. Plants use oxygen and glucose (which may be produced from stored starch) to provide energy.[61] Some plants grow as submerged aquatics, using oxygen dissolved in the surrounding water, and a few specialized vascular plants, such as mangroves and reed (Phragmites australis),[62] can grow with their roots in anoxic conditions.
+
+The genome of a plant controls its growth. For example, selected varieties or genotypes of wheat grow rapidly, maturing within 110 days, whereas others, in the same environmental conditions, grow more slowly and mature within 155 days.[63]
+
+Growth is also determined by environmental factors, such as temperature, available water, available light, carbon dioxide and available nutrients in the soil. Any change in the availability of these external conditions will be reflected in the plant's growth and the timing of its development.[citation needed]
+
+Biotic factors also affect plant growth. Plants can be so crowded that no single individual produces normal growth, causing etiolation and chlorosis. Optimal plant growth can be hampered by grazing animals, suboptimal soil composition, lack of mycorrhizal fungi, and attacks by insects or plant diseases, including those caused by bacteria, fungi, viruses, and nematodes.[63]
+
+Simple plants like algae may have short life spans as individuals, but their populations are commonly seasonal. Annual plants grow and reproduce within one growing season, biennial plants grow for two growing seasons and usually reproduce in second year, and perennial plants live for many growing seasons and once mature will often reproduce annually. These designations often depend on climate and other environmental factors. Plants that are annual in alpine or temperate regions can be biennial or perennial in warmer climates. Among the vascular plants, perennials include both evergreens that keep their leaves the entire year, and deciduous plants that lose their leaves for some part of it. In temperate and boreal climates, they generally lose their leaves during the winter; many tropical plants lose their leaves during the dry season.[citation needed]
+
+The growth rate of plants is extremely variable. Some mosses grow less than 0.001 millimeters per hour (mm/h), while most trees grow 0.025–0.250 mm/h. Some climbing species, such as kudzu, which do not need to produce thick supportive tissue, may grow up to 12.5 mm/h.[citation needed]
+
+Plants protect themselves from frost and dehydration stress with antifreeze proteins, heat-shock proteins and sugars (sucrose is common). LEA (Late Embryogenesis Abundant) protein expression is induced by stresses and protects other proteins from aggregation as a result of desiccation and freezing.[64]
+
+When water freezes in plants, the consequences for the plant depend very much on whether the freezing occurs within cells (intracellularly) or outside cells in intercellular spaces.[65] Intracellular freezing, which usually kills the cell[66] regardless of the hardiness of the plant and its tissues, seldom occurs in nature because rates of cooling are rarely high enough to support it. Rates of cooling of several degrees Celsius per minute are typically needed to cause intracellular formation of ice.[67] At rates of cooling of a few degrees Celsius per hour, segregation of ice occurs in intercellular spaces.[68] This may or may not be lethal, depending on the hardiness of the tissue. At freezing temperatures, water in the intercellular spaces of plant tissue freezes first, though the water may remain unfrozen until temperatures drop below −7 °C (19 °F).[65] After the initial formation of intercellular ice, the cells shrink as water is lost to the segregated ice, and the cells undergo freeze-drying. This dehydration is now considered the fundamental cause of freezing injury.
+
+Plants are continuously exposed to a range of biotic and abiotic stresses.  These stresses often cause DNA damage directly, or indirectly via the generation of reactive oxygen species.[69] Plants are capable of a DNA damage response that is a critical mechanism for maintaining genome stability.[70] The DNA damage response is particularly important during seed germination, since seed quality tends to deteriorate with age in association with DNA damage accumulation.[71] During germination repair processes are activated to deal with this accumulated DNA damage.[72] In particular, single- and double-strand breaks in DNA can be repaired.[73] The DNA checkpoint kinase ATM has a key role in integrating progression through germination with repair responses to the DNA damages accumulated by the aged seed.[74]
+
+Plant cells are typically distinguished by their large water-filled central vacuole, chloroplasts, and rigid cell walls that are made up of cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin. Cell division is also characterized by the development of a phragmoplast for the construction of a cell plate in the late stages of cytokinesis. Just as in animals, plant cells differentiate and develop into multiple cell types. Totipotent meristematic cells can differentiate into vascular, storage, protective (e.g. epidermal layer), or reproductive tissues, with more primitive plants lacking some tissue types.[75]
+
+Plants are photosynthetic, which means that they manufacture their own food molecules using energy obtained from light. The primary mechanism plants have for capturing light energy is the pigment chlorophyll. All green plants contain two forms of chlorophyll, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. The latter of these pigments is not found in red or brown algae.
+The simple equation of photosynthesis is as follows:
+
+By means of cells that behave like nerves, plants receive and distribute within their systems information about incident light intensity and quality. Incident light that stimulates a chemical reaction in one leaf, will cause a chain reaction of signals to the entire plant via a type of cell termed a bundle sheath cell. Researchers, from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, found that plants have a specific memory for varying light conditions, which prepares their immune systems against seasonal pathogens.[76] Plants use pattern-recognition receptors to recognize conserved microbial signatures. This recognition triggers an immune response. The first plant receptors of conserved microbial signatures were identified in rice (XA21, 1995)[77] and in Arabidopsis thaliana (FLS2, 2000).[78] Plants also carry immune receptors that recognize highly variable pathogen effectors. These include the NBS-LRR class of proteins.
+
+Vascular plants differ from other plants in that nutrients are transported between their different parts through specialized structures, called xylem and phloem. They also have roots for taking up water and minerals. The xylem moves water and minerals from the root to the rest of the plant, and the phloem provides the roots with sugars and other nutrient produced by the leaves.[75]
+
+Plants have some of the largest genomes among all organisms.[79] The largest plant genome (in terms of gene number) is that of wheat (Triticum asestivum), predicted to encode ≈94,000 genes[80] and thus almost 5 times as many as the human genome. The first plant genome sequenced was that of Arabidopsis thaliana which encodes about 25,500 genes.[81] In terms of sheer DNA sequence, the smallest published genome is that of the carnivorous bladderwort (Utricularia gibba) at 82 Mb (although it still encodes 28,500 genes)[82] while the largest, from the Norway Spruce (Picea abies), extends over 19,600 Mb (encoding about 28,300 genes).[83]
+
+The photosynthesis conducted by land plants and algae is the ultimate source of energy and organic material in nearly all ecosystems. Photosynthesis, at first by cyanobacteria and later by photosynthetic eukaryotes, radically changed the composition of the early Earth's anoxic atmosphere, which as a result is now 21% oxygen. Animals and most other organisms are aerobic, relying on oxygen; those that do not are confined to relatively rare anaerobic environments. Plants are the primary producers in most terrestrial ecosystems and form the basis of the food web in those ecosystems. Many animals rely on plants for shelter as well as oxygen and food.[citation needed]
+
+Land plants are key components of the water cycle and several other biogeochemical cycles. Some plants have coevolved with nitrogen fixing bacteria, making plants an important part of the nitrogen cycle. Plant roots play an essential role in soil development and the prevention of soil erosion.[citation needed]
+
+Plants are distributed almost worldwide. While they inhabit a multitude of biomes and ecoregions, few can be found beyond the tundras at the northernmost regions of continental shelves. At the southern extremes, plants of the Antarctic flora have adapted tenaciously to the prevailing conditions.[citation needed]
+
+Plants are often the dominant physical and structural component of habitats where they occur. Many of the Earth's biomes are named for the type of vegetation because plants are the dominant organisms in those biomes, such as grasslands, taiga and tropical rainforest.[citation needed]
+
+Numerous animals have coevolved with plants. Many animals pollinate flowers in exchange for food in the form of pollen or nectar. Many animals disperse seeds, often by eating fruit and passing the seeds in their feces. Myrmecophytes are plants that have coevolved with ants. The plant provides a home, and sometimes food, for the ants. In exchange, the ants defend the plant from herbivores and sometimes competing plants. Ant wastes provide organic fertilizer.
+
+The majority of plant species have various kinds of fungi associated with their root systems in a kind of mutualistic symbiosis known as mycorrhiza. The fungi help the plants gain water and mineral nutrients from the soil, while the plant gives the fungi carbohydrates manufactured in photosynthesis. Some plants serve as homes for endophytic fungi that protect the plant from herbivores by producing toxins. The fungal endophyte, Neotyphodium coenophialum, in tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) does tremendous economic damage to the cattle industry in the U.S.
+
+Various forms of parasitism are also fairly common among plants, from the semi-parasitic mistletoe that merely takes some nutrients from its host, but still has photosynthetic leaves, to the fully parasitic broomrape and toothwort that acquire all their nutrients through connections to the roots of other plants, and so have no chlorophyll. Some plants, known as myco-heterotrophs, parasitize mycorrhizal fungi, and hence act as epiparasites on other plants.
+
+Many plants are epiphytes, meaning they grow on other plants, usually trees, without parasitizing them. Epiphytes may indirectly harm their host plant by intercepting mineral nutrients and light that the host would otherwise receive. The weight of large numbers of epiphytes may break tree limbs. Hemiepiphytes like the strangler fig begin as epiphytes but eventually set their own roots and overpower and kill their host. Many orchids, bromeliads, ferns and mosses often grow as epiphytes. Bromeliad epiphytes accumulate water in leaf axils to form phytotelmata that may contain complex aquatic food webs.[84]
+
+Approximately 630 plants are carnivorous, such as the Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and sundew (Drosera species). They trap small animals and digest them to obtain mineral nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus.[85]
+
+The study of plant uses by people is called economic botany or ethnobotany.[86] Human cultivation of plants is part of agriculture, which is the basis of human civilization.[87] Plant agriculture is subdivided into agronomy, horticulture and forestry.[88]
+
+Humans depend on plants for food, either directly or as feed for domestic animals. Agriculture deals with the production of food crops, and has played a key role in the history of world civilizations. Agriculture includes agronomy for arable crops, horticulture for vegetables and fruit, and forestry for timber.[89] About 7,000 species of plant have been used for food, though most of today's food is derived from only 30 species. The major staples include cereals such as rice and wheat, starchy roots and tubers such as cassava and potato, and legumes such as peas and beans. Vegetable oils such as olive oil provide lipids, while fruit and vegetables contribute vitamins and minerals to the diet.[90]
+
+Medicinal plants are a primary source of organic compounds, both for their medicinal and physiological effects, and for the industrial synthesis of a vast array of organic chemicals.[91] Many hundreds of medicines are derived from plants, both traditional medicines used in herbalism[92][93] and chemical substances purified from plants or first identified in them, sometimes by ethnobotanical search, and then synthesised for use in modern medicine. Modern medicines derived from plants include aspirin, taxol, morphine, quinine, reserpine, colchicine, digitalis and vincristine. Plants used in herbalism include ginkgo, echinacea, feverfew, and Saint John's wort. The pharmacopoeia of Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, describing some 600 medicinal plants, was written between 50 and 70 AD and remained in use in Europe and the Middle East until around 1600 AD; it was the precursor of all modern pharmacopoeias.[94][95][96]
+
+Plants grown as industrial crops are the source of a wide range of products used in manufacturing, sometimes so intensively as to risk harm to the environment.[97] Nonfood products include essential oils, natural dyes, pigments, waxes, resins, tannins, alkaloids, amber and cork. Products derived from plants include soaps, shampoos, perfumes, cosmetics, paint, varnish, turpentine, rubber, latex, lubricants, linoleum, plastics, inks, and gums. Renewable fuels from plants include firewood, peat and other biofuels.[98][99] The fossil fuels coal, petroleum and natural gas are derived from the remains of aquatic organisms including phytoplankton in geological time.[100]
+
+Structural resources and fibres from plants are used to construct dwellings and to manufacture clothing. Wood is used not only for buildings, boats, and furniture, but also for smaller items such as musical instruments and sports equipment. Wood is pulped to make paper and cardboard.[101] Cloth is often made from cotton, flax, ramie or synthetic fibres such as rayon and acetate derived from plant cellulose. Thread used to sew cloth likewise comes in large part from cotton.[102]
+
+Thousands of plant species are cultivated for aesthetic purposes as well as to provide shade, modify temperatures, reduce wind, abate noise, provide privacy, and prevent soil erosion. Plants are the basis of a multibillion-dollar per year tourism industry, which includes travel to historic gardens, national parks, rainforests, forests with colorful autumn leaves, and festivals such as Japan's[103] and America's cherry blossom festivals.[104]
+
+While some gardens are planted with food crops, many are planted for aesthetic, ornamental, or conservation purposes. Arboretums and botanical gardens are public collections of living plants. In private outdoor gardens, lawn grasses, shade trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous perennials and bedding plants are used. Gardens may cultivate the plants in a naturalistic state, or may sculpture their growth, as with topiary or espalier. Gardening is the most popular leisure activity in the U.S., and working with plants or horticulture therapy is beneficial for rehabilitating people with disabilities.[citation needed]
+
+Plants may also be grown or kept indoors as houseplants, or in specialized buildings such as greenhouses that are designed for the care and cultivation of living plants. Venus Flytrap, sensitive plant and resurrection plant are examples of plants sold as novelties. There are also art forms specializing in the arrangement of cut or living plant, such as bonsai, ikebana, and the arrangement of cut or dried flowers. Ornamental plants have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulipomania.[105]
+
+Architectural designs resembling plants appear in the capitals of Ancient Egyptian columns, which were carved to resemble either the Egyptian white lotus or the papyrus.[106] Images of plants are often used in painting and photography, as well as on textiles, money, stamps, flags and coats of arms.[citation needed]
+
+Basic biological research has often been done with plants. In genetics, the breeding of pea plants allowed Gregor Mendel to derive the basic laws governing inheritance,[107] and examination of chromosomes in maize allowed Barbara McClintock to demonstrate their connection to inherited traits.[108] The plant Arabidopsis thaliana is used in laboratories as a model organism to understand how genes control the growth and development of plant structures.[109] NASA predicts that space stations or space colonies will one day rely on plants for life support.[110]
+
+Ancient trees are revered and many are famous. Tree rings themselves are an important method of dating in archeology, and serve as a record of past climates.[citation needed]
+
+Plants figure prominently in mythology, religion and literature. They are used as national and state emblems, including state trees and state flowers. Plants are often used as memorials, gifts and to mark special occasions such as births, deaths, weddings and holidays. The arrangement of flowers may be used to send hidden messages.[citation needed]
+
+Weeds are unwanted plants growing in managed environments such as farms, urban areas, gardens, lawns, and parks. People have spread plants beyond their native ranges and some of these introduced plants become invasive, damaging existing ecosystems by displacing native species, and sometimes becoming serious weeds of cultivation.[citation needed]
+
+Plants may cause harm to animals, including people. Plants that produce windblown pollen invoke allergic reactions in people who suffer from hay fever. A wide variety of plants are poisonous. Toxalbumins are plant poisons fatal to most mammals and act as a serious deterrent to consumption. Several plants cause skin irritations when touched, such as poison ivy. Certain plants contain psychotropic chemicals, which are extracted and ingested or smoked, including nicotine from tobacco, cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa, cocaine from Erythroxylon coca and opium from opium poppy. Smoking causes damage to health or even death, while some drugs may also be harmful or fatal to people.[111][112] Both illegal and legal drugs derived from plants may have negative effects on the economy, affecting worker productivity and law enforcement costs.[113][114]

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+
+
+Plants are mainly multicellular organisms, predominantly photosynthetic eukaryotes of the kingdom Plantae. Historically, plants were treated as one of two kingdoms including all living things that were not animals, and all algae and fungi were treated as plants. However, all current definitions of Plantae exclude the fungi and some algae, as well as the prokaryotes (the archaea and bacteria). By one definition, plants form the clade Viridiplantae (Latin name for "green plants"), a group that includes the flowering plants, conifers and other gymnosperms, ferns and their allies, hornworts, liverworts, mosses and the green algae, but excludes the red and brown algae.
+
+Green plants obtain most of their energy from sunlight via photosynthesis by primary chloroplasts that are derived from endosymbiosis with cyanobacteria. Their chloroplasts contain chlorophylls a and b, which gives them their green color. Some plants are parasitic or mycotrophic and have lost the ability to produce normal amounts of chlorophyll or to photosynthesize. Plants are characterized by sexual reproduction and alternation of generations, although asexual reproduction is also common.
+
+There are about 320,000 species of plants, of which the great majority, some 260–290 thousand, produce seeds.[5] Green plants provide a substantial proportion of the world's molecular oxygen,[6] and are the basis of most of Earth's ecosystems. Plants that produce grain, fruit and vegetables also form basic human foods and have been domesticated for millennia. Plants have many cultural and other uses, as ornaments, building materials, writing material and, in great variety, they have been the source of medicines and psychoactive drugs. The scientific study of plants is known as botany, a branch of biology.
+
+All living things were traditionally placed into one of two groups, plants and animals. This classification may date from Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC), who made the distinction between plants, which generally do not move, and animals, which often are mobile to catch their food. Much later, when Linnaeus (1707–1778) created the basis of the modern system of scientific classification, these two groups became the kingdoms Vegetabilia (later Metaphyta or Plantae) and Animalia (also called Metazoa). Since then, it has become clear that the plant kingdom as originally defined included several unrelated groups, and the fungi and several groups of algae were removed to new kingdoms. However, these organisms are still often considered plants, particularly in popular contexts.[citation needed]
+
+The term "plant" generally implies the possession of the following traits: multicellularity, possession of cell walls containing cellulose, and the ability to carry out photosynthesis with primary chloroplasts.[7][8]
+
+When the name Plantae or plant is applied to a specific group of organisms or taxon, it usually refers to one of four concepts. From least to most inclusive, these four groupings are:
+
+Another way of looking at the relationships between the different groups that have been called "plants" is through a cladogram, which shows their evolutionary relationships. These are not yet completely settled, but one accepted relationship between the three groups described above is shown below[clarification needed].[16][17][18][19][20][21][22] Those which have been called "plants" are in bold (some minor groups have been omitted).
+
+Rhodophyta (red algae)
+
+Rhodelphidia (predatorial)
+
+Picozoa
+
+Glaucophyta (glaucophyte algae)
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Chlorophyta
+
+Charales (stoneworts)
+
+land plants or embryophytes
+
+Cryptista
+
+The way in which the groups of green algae are combined and named varies considerably between authors.
+
+Algae comprise several different groups of organisms which produce food by photosynthesis and thus have traditionally been included in the plant kingdom. The seaweeds range from large multicellular algae to single-celled organisms and are classified into three groups, the green algae, red algae and brown algae. There is good evidence that the brown algae evolved independently from the others, from non-photosynthetic ancestors that formed endosymbiotic relationships with red algae rather than from cyanobacteria, and they are no longer classified as plants as defined here.[23][24]
+
+The Viridiplantae, the green plants – green algae and land plants – form a clade, a group consisting of all the descendants of a common ancestor. With a few exceptions, the green plants have the following features in common; primary chloroplasts derived from cyanobacteria containing chlorophylls a and b, cell walls containing cellulose, and food stores in the form of starch contained within the plastids. They undergo closed mitosis without centrioles, and typically have mitochondria with flat cristae. The chloroplasts of green plants are surrounded by two membranes, suggesting they originated directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria.
+
+Two additional groups, the Rhodophyta (red algae) and Glaucophyta (glaucophyte algae), also have primary chloroplasts that appear to be derived directly from endosymbiotic cyanobacteria, although they differ from Viridiplantae in the pigments which are used in photosynthesis and so are different in colour. These groups also differ from green plants in that the storage polysaccharide is floridean starch and is stored in the cytoplasm rather than in the plastids. They appear to have had a common origin with Viridiplantae and the three groups form the clade Archaeplastida, whose name implies that their chloroplasts were derived from a single ancient endosymbiotic event. This is the broadest modern definition of the term 'plant'.
+
+In contrast, most other algae (e.g. brown algae/diatoms, haptophytes, dinoflagellates, and euglenids) not only have different pigments but also have chloroplasts with three or four surrounding membranes. They are not close relatives of the Archaeplastida, presumably having acquired chloroplasts separately from ingested or symbiotic green and red algae. They are thus not included in even the broadest modern definition of the plant kingdom, although they were in the past.
+
+The green plants or Viridiplantae were traditionally divided into the green algae (including the stoneworts) and the land plants. However, it is now known that the land plants evolved from within a group of green algae, so that the green algae by themselves are a paraphyletic group, i.e. a group that excludes some of the descendants of a common ancestor. Paraphyletic groups are generally avoided in modern classifications, so that in recent treatments the Viridiplantae have been divided into two clades, the Chlorophyta and the Streptophyta (including the land plants and Charophyta).[25][26]
+
+The Chlorophyta (a name that has also been used for all green algae) are the sister group to the Charophytes, from which the land plants evolved. There are about 4,300 species,[27] mainly unicellular or multicellular marine organisms such as the sea lettuce, Ulva.
+
+The other group within the Viridiplantae are the mainly freshwater or terrestrial Streptophyta, which consists of the land plants together with the Charophyta, itself consisting of several groups of green algae such as the desmids and stoneworts. Streptophyte algae are either unicellular or form multicellular filaments, branched or unbranched.[26] The genus Spirogyra is a filamentous streptophyte alga familiar to many, as it is often used in teaching and is one of the organisms responsible for the algal "scum" on ponds. The freshwater stoneworts strongly resemble land plants and are believed to be their closest relatives.[citation needed] Growing immersed in fresh water, they consist of a central stalk with whorls of branchlets.
+
+Linnaeus' original classification placed the fungi within the Plantae, since they were unquestionably neither animals or minerals and these were the only other alternatives. With 19th century developments in microbiology, Ernst Haeckel introduced the new kingdom Protista in addition to Plantae and Animalia, but whether fungi were best placed in the Plantae or should be reclassified as protists remained controversial.  In 1969, Robert Whittaker proposed the creation of the kingdom Fungi. Molecular evidence has since shown that the most recent common ancestor (concestor), of the Fungi was probably more similar to that of the Animalia than to that of Plantae or any other kingdom.[28]
+
+Whittaker's original reclassification was based on the fundamental difference in nutrition between the Fungi and the Plantae. Unlike plants, which generally gain carbon through photosynthesis, and so are called autotrophs, fungi do not possess chloroplasts and generally obtain carbon by breaking down and absorbing surrounding materials, and so are called heterotrophic saprotrophs. In addition, the substructure of multicellular fungi is different from that of plants, taking the form of many chitinous microscopic strands called hyphae, which may be further subdivided into cells or may form a syncytium containing many eukaryotic nuclei. Fruiting bodies, of which mushrooms are the most familiar example, are the reproductive structures of fungi, and are unlike any structures produced by plants.[citation needed]
+
+The table below shows some species count estimates of different green plant (Viridiplantae) divisions. It suggests there are about 300,000 species of living Viridiplantae, of which 85–90% are flowering plants. (Note: as these are from different sources and different dates, they are not necessarily comparable, and like all species counts, are subject to a degree of uncertainty in some cases.)
+
+(6,600–10,300)
+
+(18,100–20,200)
+
+(12,200)
+
+(259,511)
+
+The naming of plants is governed by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants and International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (see cultivated plant taxonomy).
+
+The evolution of plants has resulted in increasing levels of complexity, from the earliest algal mats, through bryophytes, lycopods, ferns to the complex gymnosperms and angiosperms of today. Plants in all of these groups continue to thrive, especially in the environments in which they evolved.
+
+An algal scum formed on the land 1,200 million years ago, but it was not until the Ordovician Period, around 450 million years ago, that land plants appeared.[39] However, new evidence from the study of carbon isotope ratios in Precambrian rocks has suggested that complex photosynthetic plants developed on the earth over 1000 m.y.a.[40] For more than a century it has been assumed that the ancestors of land plants evolved in aquatic environments and then adapted to a life on land, an idea usually credited to botanist Frederick Orpen Bower in his 1908 book The Origin of a Land Flora. A recent alternative view, supported by genetic evidence, is that they evolved from terrestrial single-celled algae,[41] and that even the common ancestor of red and green algae, and the unicellular freshwater algae glaucophytes, originated in a terrestrial environment in freshwater biofilms or microbial mats.[42] Primitive land plants began to diversify in the late Silurian Period, around 420 million years ago, and the results of their diversification are displayed in remarkable detail in an early Devonian fossil assemblage from the Rhynie chert. This chert preserved early plants in cellular detail, petrified in volcanic springs. By the middle of the Devonian Period most of the features recognised in plants today are present, including roots, leaves and secondary wood, and by late Devonian times seeds had evolved.[43] Late Devonian plants had thereby reached a degree of sophistication that allowed them to form forests of tall trees. Evolutionary innovation continued in the Carboniferous and later geological periods and is ongoing today. Most plant groups were relatively unscathed by the Permo-Triassic extinction event, although the structures of communities changed. This may have set the scene for the evolution of flowering plants in the Triassic (~200 million years ago), which exploded in the Cretaceous and Tertiary. The latest major group of plants to evolve were the grasses, which became important in the mid Tertiary, from around 40 million years ago. The grasses, as well as many other groups, evolved new mechanisms of metabolism to survive the low CO2 and warm, dry conditions of the tropics over the last 10 million years.
+
+A 1997 proposed phylogenetic tree of Plantae, after Kenrick and Crane,[44] is as follows, with modification to the Pteridophyta from Smith et al.[45] The Prasinophyceae are a paraphyletic assemblage of early diverging green algal lineages, but are treated as a group outside the Chlorophyta:[46] later authors have not followed this suggestion.
+
+Prasinophyceae (micromonads)
+
+Spermatophytes (seed plants)
+
+Progymnospermophyta †
+
+Pteridopsida (true ferns)
+
+Marattiopsida
+
+Equisetopsida (horsetails)
+
+Psilotopsida (whisk ferns & adders'-tongues)
+
+Cladoxylopsida †
+
+Lycopodiophyta
+
+Zosterophyllophyta †
+
+Rhyniophyta †
+
+Aglaophyton †
+
+Horneophytopsida †
+
+Bryophyta (mosses)
+
+Anthocerotophyta (hornworts)
+
+Marchantiophyta (liverworts)
+
+Charophyta
+
+Trebouxiophyceae (Pleurastrophyceae)
+
+Chlorophyceae
+
+Ulvophyceae
+
+A newer proposed classification follows Leliaert et al. 2011[47] and modified with Silar 2016[20][21][48][49] for the green algae clades and Novíkov & Barabaš-Krasni 2015[50] for the land plants clade. Notice that the Prasinophyceae are here placed inside the Chlorophyta.
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Chlorophyta inc. Prasinophyceae
+
+Streptofilum
+
+Klebsormidiophyta
+
+Charophyta Rabenhorst 1863 emend. Lewis & McCourt 2004 (Stoneworts)
+
+Coleochaetophyta
+
+Zygnematophyta
+
+Marchantiophyta (Liverworts)
+
+Bryophyta (True mosses)
+
+Anthocerotophyta (Non-flowering hornworts)
+
+†Horneophyta
+
+†Aglaophyta
+
+Tracheophyta (Vascular Plants)
+
+Later, a phylogeny based on genomes and transcriptomes from 1,153 plant species was proposed.[51] The placing of algal groups is supported by phylogenies based on genomes from the Mesostigmatophyceae and Chlorokybophyceae that have since been sequenced.[52][53] The classification of Bryophyta is supported both by Puttick et al. 2018,[54] and by phylogenies involving the hornwort genomes that have also since been sequenced.[55][56]
+
+Rhodophyta
+
+Glaucophyta
+
+Chlorophyta
+
+Prasinococcales
+
+
+
+Mesostigmatophyceae
+
+Chlorokybophyceae
+
+Spirotaenia
+
+Klebsormidiales
+
+Chara
+
+Coleochaetales
+
+Zygnematophyceae
+
+Hornworts
+
+Liverworts
+
+Mosses
+
+Lycophytes
+
+Ferns
+
+Gymnosperms
+
+Angiosperms
+
+The plants that are likely most familiar to us are the multicellular land plants, called embryophytes. Embryophytes include the vascular plants, such as ferns, conifers and flowering plants. They also include the bryophytes, of which mosses and liverworts are the most common.
+
+All of these plants have eukaryotic cells with cell walls composed of cellulose, and most obtain their energy through photosynthesis, using light, water and carbon dioxide to synthesize food. About three hundred plant species do not photosynthesize but are parasites on other species of photosynthetic plants. Embryophytes are distinguished from green algae, which represent a mode of photosynthetic life similar to the kind modern plants are believed to have evolved from, by having specialized reproductive organs protected by non-reproductive tissues.
+
+Bryophytes first appeared during the early Paleozoic. They mainly live in habitats where moisture is available for significant periods, although some species, such as Targionia, are desiccation-tolerant. Most species of bryophytes remain small throughout their life-cycle. This involves an alternation between two generations: a haploid stage, called the gametophyte, and a diploid stage, called the sporophyte. In bryophytes, the sporophyte is always unbranched and remains nutritionally dependent on its parent gametophyte. The embryophytes have the ability to secrete a cuticle on their outer surface, a waxy layer that confers resistant to desiccation. In the mosses and hornworts a cuticle is usually only produced on the sporophyte. Stomata are absent from liverworts, but occur on the sporangia of mosses and hornworts, allowing gas exchange.
+
+Vascular plants first appeared during the Silurian period, and by the Devonian had diversified and spread into many different terrestrial environments. They developed a number of adaptations that allowed them to spread into increasingly more arid places, notably the vascular tissues xylem and phloem, that transport water and food throughout the organism. Root systems capable of obtaining soil water and nutrients also evolved during the Devonian. In modern vascular plants, the sporophyte is typically large, branched, nutritionally independent and long-lived, but there is increasing evidence that Paleozoic gametophytes were just as complex as the sporophytes. The gametophytes of all vascular plant groups evolved to become reduced in size and prominence in the life cycle.
+
+In seed plants, the microgametophyte is reduced from a multicellular free-living organism to a few cells in a pollen grain and the miniaturised megagametophyte remains inside the megasporangium, attached to and dependent on the parent plant. A megasporangium enclosed in a protective layer called an integument is known as an ovule. After fertilisation by means of sperm produced by pollen grains, an embryo sporophyte develops inside the ovule. The integument becomes a seed coat, and the ovule develops into a seed. Seed plants can survive and reproduce in extremely arid conditions, because they are not dependent on free water for the movement of sperm, or the development of free living gametophytes.
+
+The first seed plants, pteridosperms (seed ferns), now extinct, appeared in the Devonian and diversified through the Carboniferous. They were the ancestors of modern gymnosperms, of which four surviving groups are widespread today, particularly the conifers, which are dominant trees in several biomes. The name gymnosperm comes from the Greek composite word γυμνόσπερμος (γυμνός gymnos, "naked" and σπέρμα sperma, "seed"), as the ovules and subsequent seeds are not enclosed in a protective structure (carpels or fruit), but are borne naked, typically on cone scales.
+
+Plant fossils include roots, wood, leaves, seeds, fruit, pollen, spores, phytoliths, and amber (the fossilized resin produced by some plants). Fossil land plants are recorded in terrestrial, lacustrine, fluvial and nearshore marine sediments. Pollen, spores and algae (dinoflagellates and acritarchs) are used for dating sedimentary rock sequences. The remains of fossil plants are not as common as fossil animals, although plant fossils are locally abundant in many regions worldwide.
+
+The earliest fossils clearly assignable to Kingdom Plantae are fossil green algae from the Cambrian. These fossils resemble calcified multicellular members of the Dasycladales. Earlier Precambrian fossils are known that resemble single-cell green algae, but definitive identity with that group of algae is uncertain.
+
+The earliest fossils attributed to green algae date from the Precambrian (ca. 1200 mya).[57][58] The resistant outer walls of prasinophyte cysts (known as phycomata) are well preserved in fossil deposits of the Paleozoic (ca. 250–540 mya). A filamentous fossil (Proterocladus) from middle Neoproterozoic deposits (ca. 750 mya) has been attributed to the Cladophorales, while the oldest reliable records of the Bryopsidales, Dasycladales) and stoneworts are from the Paleozoic.[46][59]
+
+The oldest known fossils of embryophytes date from the Ordovician, though such fossils are fragmentary. By the Silurian, fossils of whole plants are preserved, including the simple vascular plant Cooksonia in mid-Silurian and the much larger and more complex lycophyte Baragwanathia longifolia in late Silurian. From the early Devonian Rhynie chert, detailed fossils of lycophytes and rhyniophytes have been found that show details of the individual cells within the plant organs and the symbiotic association of these plants with fungi of the order Glomales. The Devonian period also saw the evolution of leaves and roots, and the first modern tree, Archaeopteris. This tree with fern-like foliage and a trunk with conifer-like wood was heterosporous producing spores of two different sizes, an early step in the evolution of seeds.[60]
+
+The Coal measures are a major source of Paleozoic plant fossils, with many groups of plants in existence at this time. The spoil heaps of coal mines are the best places to collect; coal itself is the remains of fossilised plants, though structural detail of the plant fossils is rarely visible in coal. In the Fossil Grove at Victoria Park in Glasgow, Scotland, the stumps of Lepidodendron trees are found in their original growth positions.
+
+The fossilized remains of conifer and angiosperm roots, stems and branches may be locally abundant in lake and inshore sedimentary rocks from the Mesozoic and Cenozoic eras. Sequoia and its allies, magnolia, oak, and palms are often found.
+
+Petrified wood is common in some parts of the world, and is most frequently found in arid or desert areas where it is more readily exposed by erosion. Petrified wood is often heavily silicified (the organic material replaced by silicon dioxide), and the impregnated tissue is often preserved in fine detail. Such specimens may be cut and polished using lapidary equipment. Fossil forests of petrified wood have been found in all continents.
+
+Fossils of seed ferns such as Glossopteris are widely distributed throughout several continents of the Southern Hemisphere, a fact that gave support to Alfred Wegener's early ideas regarding Continental drift theory.
+
+Most of the solid material in a plant is taken from the atmosphere. Through the process of photosynthesis, most plants use the energy in sunlight to convert carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, plus water, into simple sugars. These sugars are then used as building blocks and form the main structural component of the plant. Chlorophyll, a green-colored, magnesium-containing pigment is essential to this process; it is generally present in plant leaves, and often in other plant parts as well. Parasitic plants, on the other hand, use the resources of their host to provide the materials needed for metabolism and growth.
+
+Plants usually rely on soil primarily for support and water (in quantitative terms), but they also obtain compounds of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium and other elemental nutrients from the soil. Epiphytic and lithophytic plants depend on air and nearby debris for nutrients, and carnivorous plants supplement their nutrient requirements, particularly for nitrogen and phosphorus, with insect prey that they capture. For the majority of plants to grow successfully they also require oxygen in the atmosphere and around their roots (soil gas) for respiration. Plants use oxygen and glucose (which may be produced from stored starch) to provide energy.[61] Some plants grow as submerged aquatics, using oxygen dissolved in the surrounding water, and a few specialized vascular plants, such as mangroves and reed (Phragmites australis),[62] can grow with their roots in anoxic conditions.
+
+The genome of a plant controls its growth. For example, selected varieties or genotypes of wheat grow rapidly, maturing within 110 days, whereas others, in the same environmental conditions, grow more slowly and mature within 155 days.[63]
+
+Growth is also determined by environmental factors, such as temperature, available water, available light, carbon dioxide and available nutrients in the soil. Any change in the availability of these external conditions will be reflected in the plant's growth and the timing of its development.[citation needed]
+
+Biotic factors also affect plant growth. Plants can be so crowded that no single individual produces normal growth, causing etiolation and chlorosis. Optimal plant growth can be hampered by grazing animals, suboptimal soil composition, lack of mycorrhizal fungi, and attacks by insects or plant diseases, including those caused by bacteria, fungi, viruses, and nematodes.[63]
+
+Simple plants like algae may have short life spans as individuals, but their populations are commonly seasonal. Annual plants grow and reproduce within one growing season, biennial plants grow for two growing seasons and usually reproduce in second year, and perennial plants live for many growing seasons and once mature will often reproduce annually. These designations often depend on climate and other environmental factors. Plants that are annual in alpine or temperate regions can be biennial or perennial in warmer climates. Among the vascular plants, perennials include both evergreens that keep their leaves the entire year, and deciduous plants that lose their leaves for some part of it. In temperate and boreal climates, they generally lose their leaves during the winter; many tropical plants lose their leaves during the dry season.[citation needed]
+
+The growth rate of plants is extremely variable. Some mosses grow less than 0.001 millimeters per hour (mm/h), while most trees grow 0.025–0.250 mm/h. Some climbing species, such as kudzu, which do not need to produce thick supportive tissue, may grow up to 12.5 mm/h.[citation needed]
+
+Plants protect themselves from frost and dehydration stress with antifreeze proteins, heat-shock proteins and sugars (sucrose is common). LEA (Late Embryogenesis Abundant) protein expression is induced by stresses and protects other proteins from aggregation as a result of desiccation and freezing.[64]
+
+When water freezes in plants, the consequences for the plant depend very much on whether the freezing occurs within cells (intracellularly) or outside cells in intercellular spaces.[65] Intracellular freezing, which usually kills the cell[66] regardless of the hardiness of the plant and its tissues, seldom occurs in nature because rates of cooling are rarely high enough to support it. Rates of cooling of several degrees Celsius per minute are typically needed to cause intracellular formation of ice.[67] At rates of cooling of a few degrees Celsius per hour, segregation of ice occurs in intercellular spaces.[68] This may or may not be lethal, depending on the hardiness of the tissue. At freezing temperatures, water in the intercellular spaces of plant tissue freezes first, though the water may remain unfrozen until temperatures drop below −7 °C (19 °F).[65] After the initial formation of intercellular ice, the cells shrink as water is lost to the segregated ice, and the cells undergo freeze-drying. This dehydration is now considered the fundamental cause of freezing injury.
+
+Plants are continuously exposed to a range of biotic and abiotic stresses.  These stresses often cause DNA damage directly, or indirectly via the generation of reactive oxygen species.[69] Plants are capable of a DNA damage response that is a critical mechanism for maintaining genome stability.[70] The DNA damage response is particularly important during seed germination, since seed quality tends to deteriorate with age in association with DNA damage accumulation.[71] During germination repair processes are activated to deal with this accumulated DNA damage.[72] In particular, single- and double-strand breaks in DNA can be repaired.[73] The DNA checkpoint kinase ATM has a key role in integrating progression through germination with repair responses to the DNA damages accumulated by the aged seed.[74]
+
+Plant cells are typically distinguished by their large water-filled central vacuole, chloroplasts, and rigid cell walls that are made up of cellulose, hemicellulose, and pectin. Cell division is also characterized by the development of a phragmoplast for the construction of a cell plate in the late stages of cytokinesis. Just as in animals, plant cells differentiate and develop into multiple cell types. Totipotent meristematic cells can differentiate into vascular, storage, protective (e.g. epidermal layer), or reproductive tissues, with more primitive plants lacking some tissue types.[75]
+
+Plants are photosynthetic, which means that they manufacture their own food molecules using energy obtained from light. The primary mechanism plants have for capturing light energy is the pigment chlorophyll. All green plants contain two forms of chlorophyll, chlorophyll a and chlorophyll b. The latter of these pigments is not found in red or brown algae.
+The simple equation of photosynthesis is as follows:
+
+By means of cells that behave like nerves, plants receive and distribute within their systems information about incident light intensity and quality. Incident light that stimulates a chemical reaction in one leaf, will cause a chain reaction of signals to the entire plant via a type of cell termed a bundle sheath cell. Researchers, from the Warsaw University of Life Sciences in Poland, found that plants have a specific memory for varying light conditions, which prepares their immune systems against seasonal pathogens.[76] Plants use pattern-recognition receptors to recognize conserved microbial signatures. This recognition triggers an immune response. The first plant receptors of conserved microbial signatures were identified in rice (XA21, 1995)[77] and in Arabidopsis thaliana (FLS2, 2000).[78] Plants also carry immune receptors that recognize highly variable pathogen effectors. These include the NBS-LRR class of proteins.
+
+Vascular plants differ from other plants in that nutrients are transported between their different parts through specialized structures, called xylem and phloem. They also have roots for taking up water and minerals. The xylem moves water and minerals from the root to the rest of the plant, and the phloem provides the roots with sugars and other nutrient produced by the leaves.[75]
+
+Plants have some of the largest genomes among all organisms.[79] The largest plant genome (in terms of gene number) is that of wheat (Triticum asestivum), predicted to encode ≈94,000 genes[80] and thus almost 5 times as many as the human genome. The first plant genome sequenced was that of Arabidopsis thaliana which encodes about 25,500 genes.[81] In terms of sheer DNA sequence, the smallest published genome is that of the carnivorous bladderwort (Utricularia gibba) at 82 Mb (although it still encodes 28,500 genes)[82] while the largest, from the Norway Spruce (Picea abies), extends over 19,600 Mb (encoding about 28,300 genes).[83]
+
+The photosynthesis conducted by land plants and algae is the ultimate source of energy and organic material in nearly all ecosystems. Photosynthesis, at first by cyanobacteria and later by photosynthetic eukaryotes, radically changed the composition of the early Earth's anoxic atmosphere, which as a result is now 21% oxygen. Animals and most other organisms are aerobic, relying on oxygen; those that do not are confined to relatively rare anaerobic environments. Plants are the primary producers in most terrestrial ecosystems and form the basis of the food web in those ecosystems. Many animals rely on plants for shelter as well as oxygen and food.[citation needed]
+
+Land plants are key components of the water cycle and several other biogeochemical cycles. Some plants have coevolved with nitrogen fixing bacteria, making plants an important part of the nitrogen cycle. Plant roots play an essential role in soil development and the prevention of soil erosion.[citation needed]
+
+Plants are distributed almost worldwide. While they inhabit a multitude of biomes and ecoregions, few can be found beyond the tundras at the northernmost regions of continental shelves. At the southern extremes, plants of the Antarctic flora have adapted tenaciously to the prevailing conditions.[citation needed]
+
+Plants are often the dominant physical and structural component of habitats where they occur. Many of the Earth's biomes are named for the type of vegetation because plants are the dominant organisms in those biomes, such as grasslands, taiga and tropical rainforest.[citation needed]
+
+Numerous animals have coevolved with plants. Many animals pollinate flowers in exchange for food in the form of pollen or nectar. Many animals disperse seeds, often by eating fruit and passing the seeds in their feces. Myrmecophytes are plants that have coevolved with ants. The plant provides a home, and sometimes food, for the ants. In exchange, the ants defend the plant from herbivores and sometimes competing plants. Ant wastes provide organic fertilizer.
+
+The majority of plant species have various kinds of fungi associated with their root systems in a kind of mutualistic symbiosis known as mycorrhiza. The fungi help the plants gain water and mineral nutrients from the soil, while the plant gives the fungi carbohydrates manufactured in photosynthesis. Some plants serve as homes for endophytic fungi that protect the plant from herbivores by producing toxins. The fungal endophyte, Neotyphodium coenophialum, in tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) does tremendous economic damage to the cattle industry in the U.S.
+
+Various forms of parasitism are also fairly common among plants, from the semi-parasitic mistletoe that merely takes some nutrients from its host, but still has photosynthetic leaves, to the fully parasitic broomrape and toothwort that acquire all their nutrients through connections to the roots of other plants, and so have no chlorophyll. Some plants, known as myco-heterotrophs, parasitize mycorrhizal fungi, and hence act as epiparasites on other plants.
+
+Many plants are epiphytes, meaning they grow on other plants, usually trees, without parasitizing them. Epiphytes may indirectly harm their host plant by intercepting mineral nutrients and light that the host would otherwise receive. The weight of large numbers of epiphytes may break tree limbs. Hemiepiphytes like the strangler fig begin as epiphytes but eventually set their own roots and overpower and kill their host. Many orchids, bromeliads, ferns and mosses often grow as epiphytes. Bromeliad epiphytes accumulate water in leaf axils to form phytotelmata that may contain complex aquatic food webs.[84]
+
+Approximately 630 plants are carnivorous, such as the Venus Flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) and sundew (Drosera species). They trap small animals and digest them to obtain mineral nutrients, especially nitrogen and phosphorus.[85]
+
+The study of plant uses by people is called economic botany or ethnobotany.[86] Human cultivation of plants is part of agriculture, which is the basis of human civilization.[87] Plant agriculture is subdivided into agronomy, horticulture and forestry.[88]
+
+Humans depend on plants for food, either directly or as feed for domestic animals. Agriculture deals with the production of food crops, and has played a key role in the history of world civilizations. Agriculture includes agronomy for arable crops, horticulture for vegetables and fruit, and forestry for timber.[89] About 7,000 species of plant have been used for food, though most of today's food is derived from only 30 species. The major staples include cereals such as rice and wheat, starchy roots and tubers such as cassava and potato, and legumes such as peas and beans. Vegetable oils such as olive oil provide lipids, while fruit and vegetables contribute vitamins and minerals to the diet.[90]
+
+Medicinal plants are a primary source of organic compounds, both for their medicinal and physiological effects, and for the industrial synthesis of a vast array of organic chemicals.[91] Many hundreds of medicines are derived from plants, both traditional medicines used in herbalism[92][93] and chemical substances purified from plants or first identified in them, sometimes by ethnobotanical search, and then synthesised for use in modern medicine. Modern medicines derived from plants include aspirin, taxol, morphine, quinine, reserpine, colchicine, digitalis and vincristine. Plants used in herbalism include ginkgo, echinacea, feverfew, and Saint John's wort. The pharmacopoeia of Dioscorides, De Materia Medica, describing some 600 medicinal plants, was written between 50 and 70 AD and remained in use in Europe and the Middle East until around 1600 AD; it was the precursor of all modern pharmacopoeias.[94][95][96]
+
+Plants grown as industrial crops are the source of a wide range of products used in manufacturing, sometimes so intensively as to risk harm to the environment.[97] Nonfood products include essential oils, natural dyes, pigments, waxes, resins, tannins, alkaloids, amber and cork. Products derived from plants include soaps, shampoos, perfumes, cosmetics, paint, varnish, turpentine, rubber, latex, lubricants, linoleum, plastics, inks, and gums. Renewable fuels from plants include firewood, peat and other biofuels.[98][99] The fossil fuels coal, petroleum and natural gas are derived from the remains of aquatic organisms including phytoplankton in geological time.[100]
+
+Structural resources and fibres from plants are used to construct dwellings and to manufacture clothing. Wood is used not only for buildings, boats, and furniture, but also for smaller items such as musical instruments and sports equipment. Wood is pulped to make paper and cardboard.[101] Cloth is often made from cotton, flax, ramie or synthetic fibres such as rayon and acetate derived from plant cellulose. Thread used to sew cloth likewise comes in large part from cotton.[102]
+
+Thousands of plant species are cultivated for aesthetic purposes as well as to provide shade, modify temperatures, reduce wind, abate noise, provide privacy, and prevent soil erosion. Plants are the basis of a multibillion-dollar per year tourism industry, which includes travel to historic gardens, national parks, rainforests, forests with colorful autumn leaves, and festivals such as Japan's[103] and America's cherry blossom festivals.[104]
+
+While some gardens are planted with food crops, many are planted for aesthetic, ornamental, or conservation purposes. Arboretums and botanical gardens are public collections of living plants. In private outdoor gardens, lawn grasses, shade trees, ornamental trees, shrubs, vines, herbaceous perennials and bedding plants are used. Gardens may cultivate the plants in a naturalistic state, or may sculpture their growth, as with topiary or espalier. Gardening is the most popular leisure activity in the U.S., and working with plants or horticulture therapy is beneficial for rehabilitating people with disabilities.[citation needed]
+
+Plants may also be grown or kept indoors as houseplants, or in specialized buildings such as greenhouses that are designed for the care and cultivation of living plants. Venus Flytrap, sensitive plant and resurrection plant are examples of plants sold as novelties. There are also art forms specializing in the arrangement of cut or living plant, such as bonsai, ikebana, and the arrangement of cut or dried flowers. Ornamental plants have sometimes changed the course of history, as in tulipomania.[105]
+
+Architectural designs resembling plants appear in the capitals of Ancient Egyptian columns, which were carved to resemble either the Egyptian white lotus or the papyrus.[106] Images of plants are often used in painting and photography, as well as on textiles, money, stamps, flags and coats of arms.[citation needed]
+
+Basic biological research has often been done with plants. In genetics, the breeding of pea plants allowed Gregor Mendel to derive the basic laws governing inheritance,[107] and examination of chromosomes in maize allowed Barbara McClintock to demonstrate their connection to inherited traits.[108] The plant Arabidopsis thaliana is used in laboratories as a model organism to understand how genes control the growth and development of plant structures.[109] NASA predicts that space stations or space colonies will one day rely on plants for life support.[110]
+
+Ancient trees are revered and many are famous. Tree rings themselves are an important method of dating in archeology, and serve as a record of past climates.[citation needed]
+
+Plants figure prominently in mythology, religion and literature. They are used as national and state emblems, including state trees and state flowers. Plants are often used as memorials, gifts and to mark special occasions such as births, deaths, weddings and holidays. The arrangement of flowers may be used to send hidden messages.[citation needed]
+
+Weeds are unwanted plants growing in managed environments such as farms, urban areas, gardens, lawns, and parks. People have spread plants beyond their native ranges and some of these introduced plants become invasive, damaging existing ecosystems by displacing native species, and sometimes becoming serious weeds of cultivation.[citation needed]
+
+Plants may cause harm to animals, including people. Plants that produce windblown pollen invoke allergic reactions in people who suffer from hay fever. A wide variety of plants are poisonous. Toxalbumins are plant poisons fatal to most mammals and act as a serious deterrent to consumption. Several plants cause skin irritations when touched, such as poison ivy. Certain plants contain psychotropic chemicals, which are extracted and ingested or smoked, including nicotine from tobacco, cannabinoids from Cannabis sativa, cocaine from Erythroxylon coca and opium from opium poppy. Smoking causes damage to health or even death, while some drugs may also be harmful or fatal to people.[111][112] Both illegal and legal drugs derived from plants may have negative effects on the economy, affecting worker productivity and law enforcement costs.[113][114]

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+
+
+A vehicle (from Latin: vehiculum[1]) is a machine that transports people or cargo.  Vehicles include wagons, bicycles, motor vehicles (motorcycles, cars, trucks, buses), railed vehicles (trains, trams), watercraft (ships, boats), amphibious vehicles (screw-propelled vehicle, hovercraft),  aircraft (airplanes, helicopters) and spacecraft.[2]
+
+Land vehicles are classified broadly by what is used to apply steering and drive forces against the ground: wheeled, tracked, railed or skied. ISO 3833-1977 is the standard, also internationally used in legislation, for road vehicles types, terms and definitions.[3]
+
+There are over 1 billion bicycles in use worldwide.[23] In 2002 there were an estimated 590 million cars and 205 million motorcycles in service in the world.[24][25] At least 500 million Chinese Flying Pigeon bicycles have been made, more than any other single model of vehicle.[26][27] The most-produced model of motor vehicle is the Honda Super Cub motorcycle, having passed 60 million units in 2008.[28][29] The most-produced car model is the Toyota Corolla, with at least 35 million made by 2010.[30][31] The most common fixed-wing airplane is the Cessna 172, with about 44,000 having been made as of 2017.[32][33] The Soviet Mil Mi-8, at 17,000, is the most-produced helicopter.[34] The top commercial jet airliner is the Boeing 737, at about 10,000 in 2018.[35][36][37]
+
+Locomotion consists of a means that allows displacement with little opposition, a power source to provide the required kinetic energy and a means to control the motion, such as a brake and steering system. By far, most vehicles use wheels which employ the principle of rolling to enable displacement with very little rolling friction.
+
+It is essential that a vehicle have a source of energy to drive it. Energy can be extracted from external sources, as in the cases of a sailboat, a solar-powered car, or an electric streetcar that uses overhead lines. Energy can also be stored, provided it can be converted on demand and the storing medium's energy density and power density are sufficient to meet the vehicle's needs.
+
+Human power is a simple source of energy that requires nothing more than humans. Despite the fact that humans cannot exceed 500 W (0.67 hp) for meaningful amounts of time,[38] the land speed record for human-powered vehicles (unpaced) is 133 km/h (83 mph), as of 2009 on a recumbent bicycle.[39]
+
+The most common type of energy source is fuel. External combustion engines can use almost anything that burns as fuel, whilst internal combustion engines and rocket engines are designed to burn a specific fuel, typically gasoline, diesel or ethanol.
+
+Another common medium for storing energy is batteries, which have the advantages of being responsive, useful in a wide range of power levels, environmentally friendly, efficient, simple to install, and easy to maintain. Batteries also facilitate the use of electric motors, which have their own advantages. On the other hand, batteries have low energy densities, short service life, poor performance at extreme temperatures, long charging times, and difficulties with disposal (although they can usually be recycled). Like fuel, batteries store chemical energy and can cause burns and poisoning in event of an accident.[40] Batteries also lose effectiveness with time.[41] The issue of charge time can be resolved by swapping discharged batteries with charged ones;[42] however, this incurs additional hardware costs and may be impractical for larger batteries. Moreover, there must be standard batteries for battery swapping to work at a gas station. Fuel cells are similar to batteries in that they convert from chemical to electrical energy, but have their own advantages and disadvantages.
+
+Electrified rails and overhead cables are a common source of electrical energy on subways, railways, trams, and trolleybuses.
+Solar energy is a more modern development, and several solar vehicles have been successfully built and tested, including Helios, a solar-powered aircraft.
+
+Nuclear power is a more exclusive form of energy storage, currently limited to large ships and submarines, mostly military. Nuclear energy can be released by a nuclear reactor, nuclear battery, or repeatedly detonating nuclear bombs. There have been two experiments with nuclear-powered aircraft, the Tupolev Tu-119 and the Convair X-6.
+
+Mechanical strain is another method of storing energy, whereby an elastic band or metal spring is deformed and releases energy as it is allowed to return to its ground state. Systems employing elastic materials suffer from hysteresis, and metal springs are too dense to be useful in many cases.[clarification needed]
+
+Flywheels store energy in a spinning mass. Because a light and fast rotor is energetically favorable, flywheels can pose a significant safety hazard. Moreover, flywheels leak energy fairly quickly and affect a vehicle's steering through the gyroscopic effect. They have been used experimentally in gyrobuses.
+
+Wind energy is used by sailboats and land yachts as the primary source of energy. It is very cheap and fairly easy to use, the main issues being dependence on weather and upwind performance. Balloons also rely on the wind to move horizontally. Aircraft flying in the jet stream may get a boost from high altitude winds.
+
+Compressed gas is currently an experimental method of storing energy. In this case, compressed gas is simply stored in a tank and released when necessary. Like elastics, they have hysteresis losses when gas heats up during compression.
+
+Gravitational potential energy is a form of energy used in gliders, skis, bobsleds and numerous other vehicles that go down hill. Regenerative braking is an example of capturing kinetic energy where the brakes of a vehicle are augmented with a generator or other means of extracting energy.[43]
+
+When needed, the energy is taken from the source and consumed by one or more motors or engines. Sometimes there is an intermediate medium, such as the batteries of a diesel submarine.[44]
+
+Most motor vehicles have internal combustion engines. They are fairly cheap, easy to maintain, reliable, safe and small. Since these engines burn fuel, they have long ranges but pollute the environment. A related engine is the external combustion engine. An example of this is the steam engine. Aside from fuel, steam engines also need water, making them impractical for some purposes. Steam engines also need time to warm up, whereas IC engines can usually run right after being started, although this may not be recommended in cold conditions. Steam engines burning coal release sulfur into the air, causing harmful acid rain.[45]
+
+While intermittent internal combustion engines were once the primary means of aircraft propulsion, they have been largely superseded by continuous internal combustion engines: gas turbines. Turbine engines are light and, particularly when used on aircraft, efficient.[citation needed] On the other hand, they cost more and require careful maintenance. They can also be damaged by ingesting foreign objects, and they produce a hot exhaust. Trains using turbines are called gas turbine-electric locomotives. Examples of surface vehicles using turbines are M1 Abrams, MTT Turbine SUPERBIKE and the Millennium. Pulse jet engines are similar in many ways to turbojets, but have almost no moving parts. For this reason, they were very appealing to vehicle designers in the past; however their noise, heat and inefficiency has led to their abandonment. A historical example of the use of a pulse jet was the V-1 flying bomb. Pulse jets are still occasionally used in amateur experiments. With the advent of modern technology, the pulse detonation engine has become practical and was successfully tested on a Rutan VariEze. While the pulse detonation engine is much more efficient than the pulse jet and even turbine engines, it still suffers from extreme noise and vibration levels. Ramjets also have few moving parts, but they only work at high speed, so that their use is restricted to tip jet helicopters and high speed aircraft such as the Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird.[46][47]
+
+Rocket engines are primarily used on rockets, rocket sleds and experimental aircraft. Rocket engines are extremely powerful. The heaviest vehicle ever to leave the ground, the Saturn V rocket, was powered by five F-1 rocket engines generating a combined 180 million horsepower[48] (134.2 gigawatt). Rocket engines also have no need to "push off" anything, a fact that the New York Times denied in error. Rocket engines can be particularly simple, sometimes consisting of nothing more than a catalyst, as in the case of a hydrogen peroxide rocket.[49] This makes them an attractive option for vehicles such as jet packs. Despite their simplicity, rocket engines are often dangerous and susceptible to explosions. The fuel they run off may be flammable, poisonous, corrosive or cryogenic. They also suffer from poor efficiency. For these reasons, rocket engines are only used when absolutely necessary.[citation needed]
+
+Electric motors are used in electric vehicles such as electric bicycles, electric scooters, small boats, subways, trains, trolleybuses, trams and experimental aircraft. Electric motors can be very efficient: over 90% efficiency is common.[50] Electric motors can also be built to be powerful, reliable, low-maintenance and of any size. Electric motors can deliver a range of speeds and torques without necessarily using a gearbox (although it may be more economical to use one). Electric motors are limited in their use chiefly by the difficulty of supplying electricity.[citation needed]
+
+Compressed gas motors have been used on some vehicles experimentally. They are simple, efficient, safe, cheap, reliable and operate in a variety of conditions. One of the difficulties met when using gas motors is the cooling effect of expanding gas. These engines are limited by how quickly they absorb heat from their surroundings.[51] The cooling effect can, however, double as air conditioning. Compressed gas motors also lose effectiveness with falling gas pressure.[52]
+
+Ion thrusters are used on some satellites and spacecraft. They are only effective in a vacuum, which limits their use to spaceborne vehicles. Ion thrusters run primarily off electricity, but they also need a propellant such as caesium, or more recently xenon.[53][54] Ion thrusters can achieve extremely high speeds and use little propellant; however they are power-hungry.[55]
+
+The mechanical energy that motors and engines produce must be converted to work by wheels, propellers, nozzles, or similar means.
+Aside from converting mechanical energy into motion, wheels allow a vehicle to roll along a surface and, with the exception of railed vehicles, to be steered.[56] Wheels are ancient technology, with specimens being discovered from over 5000 years ago.[57] Wheels are used in a plethora of vehicles, including motor vehicles, armoured personnel carriers, amphibious vehicles, airplanes, trains, skateboards and wheelbarrows.
+
+Nozzles are used in conjunction with almost all reaction engines.[58] Vehicles using nozzles include jet aircraft, rockets and personal watercraft.  While most nozzles take the shape of a cone or bell,[58] some unorthodox designs have been created such as the aerospike. Some nozzles are intangible, such as the electromagnetic field nozzle of a vectored ion thruster.[59]
+
+Continuous track is sometimes used instead of wheels to power land vehicles. Continuous track has the advantages of a larger contact area, easy repairs on small damage, and high maneuverability.[60] Examples of vehicles using continuous track are tanks, snowmobiles and excavators. Two continuous tracks used together allow for steering. The largest vehicle in the world,[61] the Bagger 288, is propelled by continuous tracks.
+
+Propellers (as well as screws, fans and rotors) are used to move through a fluid. Propellers have been used as toys since ancient times, however it was Leonardo da Vinci who devised what was one of the earliest propeller driven vehicles, the "aerial-screw".[62] In 1661, Toogood & Hays adopted the screw for use as a ship propeller.[63] Since then, the propeller has been tested on many terrestrial vehicles, including the Schienenzeppelin train and numerous cars.[64] In modern times, propellers are most prevalent on watercraft and aircraft, as well as some amphibious vehicles such as hovercraft and ground-effect vehicles. Intuitively, propellers cannot work in space as there is no working fluid, however some sources have suggested that since space is never empty, a propeller could be made to work in space.[65]
+
+Similarly to propeller vehicles, some vehicles use wings for propulsion. Sailboats and sailplanes are propelled by the forward component of lift generated by their sails/wings.[66][67] Ornithopters also produce thrust aerodynamically. Ornithopters with large rounded leading edges produce lift by leading-edge suction forces.[68]
+
+Paddle wheels are used on some older watercraft and their reconstructions. These ships were known as paddle steamers. Because paddle wheels simply push against the water, their design and construction is very simple. The oldest such ship in scheduled service is the Skibladner.[69] Many pedalo boats also use paddle wheels for propulsion.
+
+Screw-propelled vehicles are propelled by auger-like cylinders fitted with helical flanges. Because they can produce thrust on both land and water, they are commonly used on all-terrain vehicles. The ZiL-2906 was a Soviet-designed screw-propelled vehicle designed to retrieve cosmonauts from the Siberian wilderness.[70]
+
+All or almost all of the useful energy produced by the engine is usually dissipated as friction; so minimising frictional losses is very important in many vehicles. The main sources of friction are rolling friction and fluid drag (air drag or water drag).
+
+Wheels have low bearing friction and pneumatic tyres give low rolling friction. Steel wheels on steel tracks are lower still.[71]
+
+Aerodynamic drag can be reduced by streamlined design features.
+
+Friction is desirable and important in supplying traction to facilitate motion on land. Most land vehicles rely on friction for accelerating, decelerating and changing direction. Sudden reductions in traction can cause loss of control and accidents.
+
+Most vehicles, with the notable exception of railed vehicles, have at least one steering mechanism. Wheeled vehicles steer by angling their front[56] or rear[72] wheels. The B-52 Stratofortress has a special arrangement in which all four main wheels can be angled.[73] Skids can also be used to steer by angling them, as in the case of a snowmobile. Ships, boats, submarines, dirigibles and aeroplanes usually have a rudder for steering. On an airplane, ailerons are used to bank the airplane for directional control, sometimes assisted by the rudder.
+
+With no power applied, most vehicles come to a stop due to friction. But it is often required to stop a vehicle faster than by friction alone: so almost all vehicles are equipped with a braking system. Wheeled vehicles are typically equipped with friction brakes, which use the friction between brake pads (stators) and brake rotors to slow the vehicle.[43] Many airplanes have high performance versions of the same system in their landing gear for use on the ground. A Boeing 757 brake, for example, has 3 stators and 4 rotors.[74] The Space Shuttle also uses frictional brakes on its wheels.[75] As well as frictional brakes, hybrid/electric cars, trolleybuses and electric bicycles can also use regenerative brakes to recycle some of the vehicle's potential energy.[43] High-speed trains sometimes use frictionless Eddy-current brakes; however widespread application of the technology has been limited by overheating and interference issues.[76]
+
+Aside from landing gear brakes, most large aircraft have other ways of decelerating. In aircraft, air brakes are aerodynamic surfaces that create friction, with the air flow causing the vehicle to slow. These are usually implemented as flaps that oppose air flow when extended and are flush with aircraft when retracted. Reverse thrust is also used in many aeroplane engines. Propeller aircraft achieve reverse thrust by reversing the pitch of the propellers, while jet aircraft do so by redirecting their engine exhaust forwards.[77] On aircraft carriers, arresting gears are used to stop an aircraft. Pilots may even apply full forward throttle on touchdown, in case the arresting gear does not catch and a go around is needed.[78]
+
+Parachutes are used to slow down vehicles travelling very fast. Parachutes have been used in land, air and space vehicles such as the ThrustSSC, Eurofighter Typhoon and Apollo Command Module. Some older Soviet passenger jets had braking parachutes for emergency landings.[79] Boats use similar devices called sea anchors to maintain stability in rough seas.
+
+To further increase the rate of deceleration or where the brakes have failed, several mechanisms can be used to stop a vehicle. Cars and rolling stock usually have hand brakes that, while designed to secure an already parked vehicle, can provide limited braking should the primary brakes fail. A secondary procedure called forward-slip is sometimes used to slow airplanes by flying at an angle, causing more drag.
+
+Motor vehicle and trailer categories are defined according to the following international classification:[80]
+
+In the European Union the classifications for vehicle types are defined by:[81]
+
+European Community, is based on the Community's WVTA (whole vehicle type-approval) system. Under this system, manufacturers can obtain certification for a vehicle type in one Member State if it meets the EC technical requirements and then market it EU-wide with no need for further tests. Total technical harmonization already has been achieved in three vehicle categories (passenger cars, motorcycles, and tractors) and soon will extend to other vehicle categories (coaches and utility vehicles). It is essential that European car manufacturers be ensured access to as large a market as possible.
+
+While the Community type-approval system allows manufacturers to benefit fully from internal market opportunities, worldwide technical harmonization in the context of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) offers a market beyond European borders.
+
+In many cases, it is unlawful to operate a vehicle without a license or certification. The least strict form of regulation usually limits what passengers the driver may carry or prohibits them completely (e.g., a Canadian ultra-light license without endorsements).[84] The next level of licensing may allow passengers, but without any form of compensation or payment. A private driver's license usually has these conditions. Commercial licenses that allow the transport of passengers and cargo are more tightly regulated. The most strict form of licensing is generally reserved for school buses, hazardous materials transports and emergency vehicles.
+
+The driver of a motor vehicle is typically required to hold a valid driver's license while driving on public lands, whereas the pilot of an aircraft must have a license at all times, regardless of where in the jurisdiction the aircraft is flying.
+
+Vehicles are often required to be registered. Registration may be for purely legal reasons, for insurance reasons or to help law enforcement recover stolen vehicles. Toronto Police Service, for example, offers free and optional bicycle registration online.[85] On motor vehicles, registration often takes the form of a vehicle registration plate, which makes it easy to identify a vehicle. In Russia, trucks and buses have their licence plate numbers repeated in large black letters on the back.[citation needed] On aircraft, a similar system is used where a tail number is painted on various surfaces. Like motor vehicles and aircraft, watercraft also have registration numbers in most jurisdictions, however the vessel name is still the primary means of identification  as has been the case since ancient times. For this reason, duplicate registration names are generally rejected. In Canada, boats with an engine power of 10 hp (7.5 kW) or greater require registration,[86] leading to the ubiquitous "9.9 hp (7.4 kW)" engine.
+
+Registration may be conditional on the vehicle being approved for use on public highways, as in the case of the UK[87] and Ontario.[88] Many US states also have requirements for vehicles operating on public highways.[89] Aircraft have more stringent requirements, as they pose a high risk of damage to people and property in event of an accident. In the US, the FAA requires aircraft to have an airworthiness certificate.[90][91] Because US aircraft must be flown for some time before they are certified,[92] there is a provision for an experimental airworthiness certificate.[93] FAA experimental aircraft are restricted in operation, including no overflights of populated areas, in busy airspace or with unessential passengers.[92] Materials and parts used in FAA certified aircraft must meet the criteria set forth by the technical standard orders.[94]
+
+In many jurisdictions, the operator of a vehicle is legally obligated to carry safety equipment with or on them. Common examples include seat belts in cars, helmets on motorcycles and bicycles, fire extinguishers on boats, buses and airplanes and life jackets on boats and commercial aircraft. Passenger aircraft carry a great deal of safety equipment including inflatable slides are rafts, oxygen masks, oxygen tanks, life jackets, satellite beacons and first aid kits. Some equipment such as life jackets has led to debate regarding their usefulness. In the case of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 961, the life jackets saved many people but also led to many deaths when passengers inflated their vests prematurely.
+
+There are specific real-estate arrangements made to allow vehicles to travel from one place to another. The most common such arrangements are public highways, where appropriately licensed vehicles can navigate without hindrance. These highways are on public land and are maintained by the government. Similarly, toll routes are open to the public after paying a toll. These routes and the land they rest on may be government or privately owned or a combination of both. Some routes are privately owned but grant access to the public. These routes often have a warning sign stating that the government does not maintain the way. An example of this are byways in England and Wales. In Scotland, land is open to un-motorised vehicles if the land meets certain criteria. Public land is sometimes open to use by off-road vehicles. On US public land, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) decides where vehicles may be used. Railways often pass over land not owned by the railway company. The right to this land is granted to the railway company through mechanisms such as easement. Watercraft are generally allowed to navigate public waters without restriction as long as they do not cause a disturbance. Passing through a lock, however, may require paying a toll. Despite the common law tradition Cuius est solum, eius est usque ad coelum et ad inferos of owning all the air above one's property, the US Supreme Court ruled that aircraft in the US have the right to use air above someone else's property without their consent. While the same rule generally applies in all jurisdictions, some countries such as Cuba and Russia have taken advantage of air rights on a national level to earn money.[95] There are some areas that aircraft are barred from overflying. This is called prohibited airspace. Prohibited airspace is usually strictly enforced due to potential damage from espionage or attack. In the case of Korean Air Lines Flight 007, the airliner entered prohibited airspace over Soviet territory and was shot down as it was leaving.[citation needed]
+
+For a comparison of transportation fatality rates, see: Air safety statistics.
+
+Several different metrics used to compare and evaluate the safety of different vehicles. The main three are deaths per billion passenger-journeys, deaths per billion passenger-hours and deaths per billion passenger-kilometers.

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+Veins are blood vessels that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are the pulmonary and umbilical veins, both of which carry oxygenated blood to the heart. In contrast to veins, arteries carry blood away from the heart.
+
+Veins are less muscular than arteries and are often closer to the skin. There are valves in most veins to prevent backflow.
+
+Veins are present throughout the body as tubes that carry blood back to the heart. Veins are classified in a number of ways, including superficial vs. deep, pulmonary vs. systemic, and large vs. small.
+
+Most veins are equipped with one-way valves, similar to a Duckbill valve, to prevent blood flowing in the reverse direction.
+
+Veins are translucent, so the color a vein appears from an organism's exterior is determined in large part by the color of venous blood, which is usually dark red as a result of its low oxygen content. Veins appear blue because the subcutaneous fat absorbs low-frequency light, permitting only the highly energetic blue wavelengths to penetrate through to the dark vein and reflect back to the viewer. The colour of a vein can be affected by the characteristics of a person's skin, how much oxygen is being carried in the blood, and how big and deep the vessels are.[2] When a vein is drained of blood and removed from an organism, it appears grey-white.[citation needed]
+
+The largest veins in the human body are the venae cavae. These are two large veins which enter the right atrium of the heart from above and below. The superior vena cava carries blood from the arms and head to the right atrium of the heart, while the inferior vena cava carries blood from the legs and abdomen to the heart. The inferior vena cava is retroperitoneal and runs to the right and roughly parallel to the abdominal aorta along the spine. Large veins feed into these two veins, and smaller veins into these. Together this forms the venous system.
+
+Whilst the main veins hold a relatively constant position, the position of veins person to person can display quite a lot of variation.[citation needed]
+
+The pulmonary veins carry relatively oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart. The superior and inferior venae cavae carry relatively deoxygenated blood from the upper and lower systemic circulations, respectively.
+
+The portal venous system is a series of veins or venules that directly connect two capillary beds. Examples of such systems include the hepatic portal vein and hypophyseal portal system.
+
+The peripheral veins carry blood from the limbs and hands and feet.
+
+Microscopically, veins have a thick outer layer made of connective tissue, called the tunica externa or tunica adventitia. During procedures requiring venous access such as venipuncture, one may notice a subtle "pop" as the needle penetrates this layer. The middle layer of bands of smooth muscle are called tunica media and are, in general, much thinner than those of arteries, as veins do not function primarily in a contractile manner and are not subject to the high pressures of systole, as arteries are. The interior is lined with endothelial cells called tunica intima. The precise location of veins varies much more from person to person than that of arteries.[3]
+
+Veins serve to return blood from organs to the heart. Veins are also called "capacitance vessels" because most of the blood volume (60%) is contained within veins.  In systemic circulation oxygenated blood is pumped by the left ventricle through the arteries to the muscles and organs of the body, where its nutrients and gases are exchanged at capillaries.  After taking up cellular waste and carbon dioxide in capillaries, blood is channeled through vessels that converge with one another to form venules, which continue to converge and form the larger veins.  The de-oxygenated blood is taken by veins to the right atrium of the heart, which transfers the blood to the right ventricle, where it is then pumped through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs.  In pulmonary circulation the pulmonary veins return oxygenated blood from the lungs to the left atrium, which empties into the left ventricle, completing the cycle of blood circulation.
+
+The return of blood to the heart is assisted by the action of the muscle pump, and by the thoracic pump action of breathing during respiration.  Standing or sitting for a prolonged period of time can cause low venous return from venous pooling (vascular) shock. Fainting can occur but usually baroreceptors within the aortic sinuses initiate a baroreflex such that angiotensin II and norepinephrine stimulate vasoconstriction and heart rate increases to return blood flow. Neurogenic and hypovolaemic shock can also cause fainting.  In these cases, the smooth muscles surrounding the veins become slack and the veins fill with the majority of the blood in the body, keeping blood away from the brain and causing unconsciousness. Jet pilots wear pressurized suits to help maintain their venous return and blood pressure.
+
+The arteries are perceived as carrying oxygenated blood to the tissues, while veins carry deoxygenated blood back to the heart. This is true of the systemic circulation, by far the larger of the two circuits of blood in the body, which transports oxygen from the heart to the tissues of the body.  However, in pulmonary circulation, the arteries carry deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs, and veins return blood from the lungs to the heart.  The difference between veins and arteries is their direction of flow (out of the heart by arteries, returning to the heart for veins), not their oxygen content.  In addition, deoxygenated blood that is carried from the tissues back to the heart for reoxygenation in the systemic circulation still carries some oxygen, though it is considerably less than that carried by the systemic arteries or pulmonary veins.
+
+Although most veins take blood back to the heart, there is an exception. Portal veins carry blood between capillary beds. For example, the hepatic portal vein takes blood from the capillary beds in the digestive tract and transports it to the capillary beds in the liver. The blood is then drained in the gastrointestinal tract and spleen, where it is taken up by the hepatic veins, and blood is taken back into the heart. Since this is an important function in mammals, damage to the hepatic portal vein can be dangerous. Blood clotting in the hepatic portal vein can cause portal hypertension, which results in a decrease of blood fluid to the liver.
+
+The vessels that remove the deoxygenated blood from the heart muscle are known as cardiac veins. These include the great cardiac vein, the middle cardiac vein, the small cardiac vein, the smallest cardiac veins, and the anterior cardiac veins. Coronary veins carry blood with a poor level of oxygen, from the myocardium to the right atrium. Most of the blood of the coronary veins returns through the coronary sinus. The anatomy of the veins of the heart is very variable, but generally it is formed by the following veins: heart veins that go into the coronary sinus: the great cardiac vein, the middle cardiac vein, the small cardiac vein, the posterior vein of the left ventricle, and the vein of Marshall. Heart veins that go directly to the right atrium: the anterior cardiac veins, the smallest cardiac veins (Thebesian veins).[4]
+
+Venous insufficiency is the most common disorder of the venous system, and is usually manifested as spider veins or varicose veins. Several varieties of treatments are used, depending on the patient's particular type and pattern of veins and on the physician's preferences.  Treatment can include Endovenous Thermal Ablation using radiofrequency or laser energy, vein stripping, ambulatory phlebectomy, foam sclerotherapy, lasers, or compression.
+
+Postphlebitic syndrome is venous insufficiency that develops following deep vein thrombosis.[5]
+
+Deep vein thrombosis is a condition in which a blood clot forms in a deep vein. This is usually the veins of the legs, although it can also occur in the veins of the arms. Immobility, active cancer, obesity, traumatic damage and congenital disorders that make clots more likely are all risk factors for deep vein thrombosis. It can cause the affected limb to swell, and cause pain and an overlying skin rash. In the worst case, a deep vein thrombosis can extend, or a part of a clot can break off and land in the lungs, called pulmonary embolism.
+
+The decision to treat deep vein thrombosis depends on its size, a person's symptoms, and their risk factors. It generally involves anticoagulation to prevents clots or to reduce the size of the clot.
+
+The portal veins are found within the abdomen and carry blood through to the liver. Portal hypertension is associated with cirrhosis or disease of the liver, or other conditions such as an obstructing clot (Budd Chiari syndrome) or compression from tumours or tuberculosis lesions. When the pressure increases in the portal veins, a collateral circulation develops, causing visible veins such as oesophageal varices.
+
+Thrombophlebitis is an inflammatory condition of the veins related to blood clots.
+
+Ultrasound, particularly duplex ultrasound, is a common way that veins can be seen.
+
+The Batson Venous plexus, or simply Batson's Plexus, runs through the inner vertebral column connecting the thoracic and pelvic veins.  These veins get their notoriety from the fact that they are valveless, which is believed to be the reason for metastasis of certain cancers.
+
+The great saphenous vein is the most important superficial vein of the lower limb. First described by the Persian physician Avicenna, this vein derives its name from the word safina, meaning "hidden". This vein is "hidden" in its own fascial compartment in the thigh and exits the fascia only near the knee. Incompetence of this vein is an important cause of varicose veins of lower limbs.
+
+The Thebesian veins within the myocardium of the heart are valveless veins that drain directly into the chambers of the heart. The coronary veins all empty into the coronary sinus which empties into the right atrium.
+
+The dural venous sinuses within the dura mater surrounding the brain receive blood from the brain and also are a point of entry of cerebrospinal fluid from arachnoid villi absorption. Blood eventually enters the internal jugular vein.
+
+Phlebology is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis and treatment of venous disorders.  A medical specialist in phlebology is termed a phlebologist. A related image is called a phlebograph.
+
+The American Medical Association added phlebology to their list of self-designated practice specialties in 2005.  In 2007 the American Board of Phlebology (ABPh), subsequently known as the American Board of Venous & Lymphatic Medicine (ABVLM), was established to improve the standards of phlebologists and the quality of their patient care by establishing a certification examination, as well as requiring maintenance of certification. Although As of 2017[update] not a Member Board of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the American Board of Venous & Lymphatic Medicine uses a certification exam based on ABMS standards.
+
+The American Vein and Lymphatic Society (AVLS), formerly the American College of Phlebology (ACP) one of the largest medical societies in the world for physicians and allied health professionals working in the field of phlebology, has 2000 members.  The AVLS encourages education and training to improve the standards of medical practitioners and the quality of patient care.
+
+The American Venous Forum (AVF) is a medical society for physicians and allied health professionals dedicated to improving the care of patients with venous and lymphatic disease.  The majority of its members manage the entire spectrum of venous and lymphatic diseases – from varicose veins to congenital abnormalities to deep vein thrombosis to chronic venous diseases.  Founded in 1987, the AVF encourages research, clinical innovation, hands-on education, data collection and patient outreach.
+
+The earliest known writings on the circulatory system are found in the Ebers Papyrus (16th century BCE), an ancient Egyptian medical papyrus containing over 700 prescriptions and remedies, both physical and spiritual. In the papyrus, it acknowledges the connection of the heart to the arteries. The Egyptians thought air came in through the mouth and into the lungs and heart. From the heart, the air travelled to every member through the arteries. Although this concept of the circulatory system is only partially correct, it represents one of the earliest accounts of scientific thought.
+
+In the 6th century BCE, the knowledge of circulation of vital fluids through the body was known to the Ayurvedic physician Sushruta in ancient India.[6] He also seems to have possessed knowledge of the arteries, described as 'channels' by Dwivedi & Dwivedi (2007).[6] The valves of the heart were discovered by a physician of the Hippocratean school around the 4th century BCE. However their function was not properly understood then. Because blood pools in the veins after death, arteries look empty. Ancient anatomists assumed they were filled with air and that they were for transport of air.
+
+The Greek physician Herophilus distinguished veins from arteries but thought that the pulse was a property of arteries themselves. Greek anatomist Erasistratus observed that arteries that were cut during life bleed. He ascribed the fact to the phenomenon that air escaping from an artery is replaced with blood that entered by very small vessels between veins and arteries. Thus he apparently postulated capillaries but with reversed flow of blood.[7]
+
+In 2nd century AD Rome, the Greek physician Galen knew that blood vessels carried blood and identified venous (dark red) and arterial (brighter and thinner) blood, each with distinct and separate functions. Growth and energy were derived from venous blood created in the liver from chyle, while arterial blood gave vitality by containing pneuma (air) and originated in the heart. Blood flowed from both creating organs to all parts of the body where it was consumed and there was no return of blood to the heart or liver. The heart did not pump blood around, the heart's motion sucked blood in during diastole and the blood moved by the pulsation of the arteries themselves.
+
+Galen believed that the arterial blood was created by venous blood passing from the left ventricle to the right by passing through 'pores' in the interventricular septum, air passed from the lungs via the pulmonary artery to the left side of the heart. As the arterial blood was created 'sooty' vapors were created and passed to the lungs also via the pulmonary artery to be exhaled.
+
+In 1025, The Canon of Medicine by the Persian physician Avicenna "erroneously accepted the Greek notion regarding the existence of a hole in the ventricular septum by which the blood traveled between the ventricles." While also refining Galen's erroneous theory of the pulse, Avicenna provided the first correct explanation of pulsation: "Every beat of the pulse comprises two movements and two pauses. Thus, expansion : pause : contraction : pause. [...] The pulse is a movement in the heart and arteries ... which takes the form of alternate expansion and contraction."[8]
+
+In 1242, the Arabian physician Ibn al-Nafis became the first person to accurately describe the process of pulmonary circulation,[9] for which he has been described as the Arab Father of Circulation.[10] Ibn al-Nafis stated in his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon:
+
+"...the blood from the right chamber of the heart must arrive at the left chamber but there is no direct pathway between them. The thick septum of the heart is not perforated and does not have visible pores as some people thought or invisible pores as Galen thought. The blood from the right chamber must flow through the vena arteriosa (pulmonary artery) to the lungs, spread through its substances, be mingled there with air, pass through the arteria venosa (pulmonary vein) to reach the left chamber of the heart and there form the vital spirit..."
+
+In addition, Ibn al-Nafis had an insight into what would become a larger theory of the capillary circulation. He stated that "there must be small communications or pores (manafidh in Arabic) between the pulmonary artery and vein," a prediction that preceded the discovery of the capillary system by more than 400 years.[11] Ibn al-Nafis' theory, however, was confined to blood transit in the lungs and did not extend to the entire body.
+
+Michael Servetus was the first European to describe the function of pulmonary circulation, although his achievement was not widely recognized at the time, for a few reasons. He firstly described it in the "Manuscript of Paris"[12][13] (near 1546), but this work was never published. And later he published  this description, but in a theological treatise, Christianismi Restitutio, not in a book on medicine. Only three copies of the book survived but these remained hidden for decades, the rest were burned  shortly after its publication in 1553 because of persecution of Servetus by religious authorities.
+
+Better known discovery of pulmonary circulation was by Vesalius's successor at Padua, Realdo Colombo, in 1559.
+
+Finally, William Harvey, a pupil of Hieronymus Fabricius (who had earlier described the valves of the veins without recognizing their function), performed a sequence of experiments, and published Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus in 1628, which "demonstrated that there had to be a direct connection between the venous and arterial systems throughout the body, and not just the lungs. Most importantly, he argued that the beat of the heart produced a continuous circulation of blood through minute connections at the extremities of the body. This is a conceptual leap that was quite different from Ibn al-Nafis' refinement of the anatomy and bloodflow in the heart and lungs."[14] This work, with its essentially correct exposition, slowly convinced the medical world. However, Harvey was not able to identify the capillary system connecting arteries and veins; these were later discovered by Marcello Malpighi in 1661.
+
+In 1956, André Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann and Dickinson W. Richards were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine "for their discoveries concerning heart catheterization and pathological changes in the circulatory system."[15]
+In his Nobel lecture, Forssmann credits Harvey as birthing cardiology with the publication of his book in 1628.[16]
+
+In the 1970s, Diana McSherry developed computer-based systems to create images of the circulatory system and heart without the need for surgery.[17]
+

en/5924.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,91 @@
+Veins are blood vessels that carry blood towards the heart. Most veins carry deoxygenated blood from the tissues back to the heart; exceptions are the pulmonary and umbilical veins, both of which carry oxygenated blood to the heart. In contrast to veins, arteries carry blood away from the heart.
+
+Veins are less muscular than arteries and are often closer to the skin. There are valves in most veins to prevent backflow.
+
+Veins are present throughout the body as tubes that carry blood back to the heart. Veins are classified in a number of ways, including superficial vs. deep, pulmonary vs. systemic, and large vs. small.
+
+Most veins are equipped with one-way valves, similar to a Duckbill valve, to prevent blood flowing in the reverse direction.
+
+Veins are translucent, so the color a vein appears from an organism's exterior is determined in large part by the color of venous blood, which is usually dark red as a result of its low oxygen content. Veins appear blue because the subcutaneous fat absorbs low-frequency light, permitting only the highly energetic blue wavelengths to penetrate through to the dark vein and reflect back to the viewer. The colour of a vein can be affected by the characteristics of a person's skin, how much oxygen is being carried in the blood, and how big and deep the vessels are.[2] When a vein is drained of blood and removed from an organism, it appears grey-white.[citation needed]
+
+The largest veins in the human body are the venae cavae. These are two large veins which enter the right atrium of the heart from above and below. The superior vena cava carries blood from the arms and head to the right atrium of the heart, while the inferior vena cava carries blood from the legs and abdomen to the heart. The inferior vena cava is retroperitoneal and runs to the right and roughly parallel to the abdominal aorta along the spine. Large veins feed into these two veins, and smaller veins into these. Together this forms the venous system.
+
+Whilst the main veins hold a relatively constant position, the position of veins person to person can display quite a lot of variation.[citation needed]
+
+The pulmonary veins carry relatively oxygenated blood from the lungs to the heart. The superior and inferior venae cavae carry relatively deoxygenated blood from the upper and lower systemic circulations, respectively.
+
+The portal venous system is a series of veins or venules that directly connect two capillary beds. Examples of such systems include the hepatic portal vein and hypophyseal portal system.
+
+The peripheral veins carry blood from the limbs and hands and feet.
+
+Microscopically, veins have a thick outer layer made of connective tissue, called the tunica externa or tunica adventitia. During procedures requiring venous access such as venipuncture, one may notice a subtle "pop" as the needle penetrates this layer. The middle layer of bands of smooth muscle are called tunica media and are, in general, much thinner than those of arteries, as veins do not function primarily in a contractile manner and are not subject to the high pressures of systole, as arteries are. The interior is lined with endothelial cells called tunica intima. The precise location of veins varies much more from person to person than that of arteries.[3]
+
+Veins serve to return blood from organs to the heart. Veins are also called "capacitance vessels" because most of the blood volume (60%) is contained within veins.  In systemic circulation oxygenated blood is pumped by the left ventricle through the arteries to the muscles and organs of the body, where its nutrients and gases are exchanged at capillaries.  After taking up cellular waste and carbon dioxide in capillaries, blood is channeled through vessels that converge with one another to form venules, which continue to converge and form the larger veins.  The de-oxygenated blood is taken by veins to the right atrium of the heart, which transfers the blood to the right ventricle, where it is then pumped through the pulmonary arteries to the lungs.  In pulmonary circulation the pulmonary veins return oxygenated blood from the lungs to the left atrium, which empties into the left ventricle, completing the cycle of blood circulation.
+
+The return of blood to the heart is assisted by the action of the muscle pump, and by the thoracic pump action of breathing during respiration.  Standing or sitting for a prolonged period of time can cause low venous return from venous pooling (vascular) shock. Fainting can occur but usually baroreceptors within the aortic sinuses initiate a baroreflex such that angiotensin II and norepinephrine stimulate vasoconstriction and heart rate increases to return blood flow. Neurogenic and hypovolaemic shock can also cause fainting.  In these cases, the smooth muscles surrounding the veins become slack and the veins fill with the majority of the blood in the body, keeping blood away from the brain and causing unconsciousness. Jet pilots wear pressurized suits to help maintain their venous return and blood pressure.
+
+The arteries are perceived as carrying oxygenated blood to the tissues, while veins carry deoxygenated blood back to the heart. This is true of the systemic circulation, by far the larger of the two circuits of blood in the body, which transports oxygen from the heart to the tissues of the body.  However, in pulmonary circulation, the arteries carry deoxygenated blood from the heart to the lungs, and veins return blood from the lungs to the heart.  The difference between veins and arteries is their direction of flow (out of the heart by arteries, returning to the heart for veins), not their oxygen content.  In addition, deoxygenated blood that is carried from the tissues back to the heart for reoxygenation in the systemic circulation still carries some oxygen, though it is considerably less than that carried by the systemic arteries or pulmonary veins.
+
+Although most veins take blood back to the heart, there is an exception. Portal veins carry blood between capillary beds. For example, the hepatic portal vein takes blood from the capillary beds in the digestive tract and transports it to the capillary beds in the liver. The blood is then drained in the gastrointestinal tract and spleen, where it is taken up by the hepatic veins, and blood is taken back into the heart. Since this is an important function in mammals, damage to the hepatic portal vein can be dangerous. Blood clotting in the hepatic portal vein can cause portal hypertension, which results in a decrease of blood fluid to the liver.
+
+The vessels that remove the deoxygenated blood from the heart muscle are known as cardiac veins. These include the great cardiac vein, the middle cardiac vein, the small cardiac vein, the smallest cardiac veins, and the anterior cardiac veins. Coronary veins carry blood with a poor level of oxygen, from the myocardium to the right atrium. Most of the blood of the coronary veins returns through the coronary sinus. The anatomy of the veins of the heart is very variable, but generally it is formed by the following veins: heart veins that go into the coronary sinus: the great cardiac vein, the middle cardiac vein, the small cardiac vein, the posterior vein of the left ventricle, and the vein of Marshall. Heart veins that go directly to the right atrium: the anterior cardiac veins, the smallest cardiac veins (Thebesian veins).[4]
+
+Venous insufficiency is the most common disorder of the venous system, and is usually manifested as spider veins or varicose veins. Several varieties of treatments are used, depending on the patient's particular type and pattern of veins and on the physician's preferences.  Treatment can include Endovenous Thermal Ablation using radiofrequency or laser energy, vein stripping, ambulatory phlebectomy, foam sclerotherapy, lasers, or compression.
+
+Postphlebitic syndrome is venous insufficiency that develops following deep vein thrombosis.[5]
+
+Deep vein thrombosis is a condition in which a blood clot forms in a deep vein. This is usually the veins of the legs, although it can also occur in the veins of the arms. Immobility, active cancer, obesity, traumatic damage and congenital disorders that make clots more likely are all risk factors for deep vein thrombosis. It can cause the affected limb to swell, and cause pain and an overlying skin rash. In the worst case, a deep vein thrombosis can extend, or a part of a clot can break off and land in the lungs, called pulmonary embolism.
+
+The decision to treat deep vein thrombosis depends on its size, a person's symptoms, and their risk factors. It generally involves anticoagulation to prevents clots or to reduce the size of the clot.
+
+The portal veins are found within the abdomen and carry blood through to the liver. Portal hypertension is associated with cirrhosis or disease of the liver, or other conditions such as an obstructing clot (Budd Chiari syndrome) or compression from tumours or tuberculosis lesions. When the pressure increases in the portal veins, a collateral circulation develops, causing visible veins such as oesophageal varices.
+
+Thrombophlebitis is an inflammatory condition of the veins related to blood clots.
+
+Ultrasound, particularly duplex ultrasound, is a common way that veins can be seen.
+
+The Batson Venous plexus, or simply Batson's Plexus, runs through the inner vertebral column connecting the thoracic and pelvic veins.  These veins get their notoriety from the fact that they are valveless, which is believed to be the reason for metastasis of certain cancers.
+
+The great saphenous vein is the most important superficial vein of the lower limb. First described by the Persian physician Avicenna, this vein derives its name from the word safina, meaning "hidden". This vein is "hidden" in its own fascial compartment in the thigh and exits the fascia only near the knee. Incompetence of this vein is an important cause of varicose veins of lower limbs.
+
+The Thebesian veins within the myocardium of the heart are valveless veins that drain directly into the chambers of the heart. The coronary veins all empty into the coronary sinus which empties into the right atrium.
+
+The dural venous sinuses within the dura mater surrounding the brain receive blood from the brain and also are a point of entry of cerebrospinal fluid from arachnoid villi absorption. Blood eventually enters the internal jugular vein.
+
+Phlebology is the medical specialty devoted to the diagnosis and treatment of venous disorders.  A medical specialist in phlebology is termed a phlebologist. A related image is called a phlebograph.
+
+The American Medical Association added phlebology to their list of self-designated practice specialties in 2005.  In 2007 the American Board of Phlebology (ABPh), subsequently known as the American Board of Venous & Lymphatic Medicine (ABVLM), was established to improve the standards of phlebologists and the quality of their patient care by establishing a certification examination, as well as requiring maintenance of certification. Although As of 2017[update] not a Member Board of the American Board of Medical Specialties (ABMS), the American Board of Venous & Lymphatic Medicine uses a certification exam based on ABMS standards.
+
+The American Vein and Lymphatic Society (AVLS), formerly the American College of Phlebology (ACP) one of the largest medical societies in the world for physicians and allied health professionals working in the field of phlebology, has 2000 members.  The AVLS encourages education and training to improve the standards of medical practitioners and the quality of patient care.
+
+The American Venous Forum (AVF) is a medical society for physicians and allied health professionals dedicated to improving the care of patients with venous and lymphatic disease.  The majority of its members manage the entire spectrum of venous and lymphatic diseases – from varicose veins to congenital abnormalities to deep vein thrombosis to chronic venous diseases.  Founded in 1987, the AVF encourages research, clinical innovation, hands-on education, data collection and patient outreach.
+
+The earliest known writings on the circulatory system are found in the Ebers Papyrus (16th century BCE), an ancient Egyptian medical papyrus containing over 700 prescriptions and remedies, both physical and spiritual. In the papyrus, it acknowledges the connection of the heart to the arteries. The Egyptians thought air came in through the mouth and into the lungs and heart. From the heart, the air travelled to every member through the arteries. Although this concept of the circulatory system is only partially correct, it represents one of the earliest accounts of scientific thought.
+
+In the 6th century BCE, the knowledge of circulation of vital fluids through the body was known to the Ayurvedic physician Sushruta in ancient India.[6] He also seems to have possessed knowledge of the arteries, described as 'channels' by Dwivedi & Dwivedi (2007).[6] The valves of the heart were discovered by a physician of the Hippocratean school around the 4th century BCE. However their function was not properly understood then. Because blood pools in the veins after death, arteries look empty. Ancient anatomists assumed they were filled with air and that they were for transport of air.
+
+The Greek physician Herophilus distinguished veins from arteries but thought that the pulse was a property of arteries themselves. Greek anatomist Erasistratus observed that arteries that were cut during life bleed. He ascribed the fact to the phenomenon that air escaping from an artery is replaced with blood that entered by very small vessels between veins and arteries. Thus he apparently postulated capillaries but with reversed flow of blood.[7]
+
+In 2nd century AD Rome, the Greek physician Galen knew that blood vessels carried blood and identified venous (dark red) and arterial (brighter and thinner) blood, each with distinct and separate functions. Growth and energy were derived from venous blood created in the liver from chyle, while arterial blood gave vitality by containing pneuma (air) and originated in the heart. Blood flowed from both creating organs to all parts of the body where it was consumed and there was no return of blood to the heart or liver. The heart did not pump blood around, the heart's motion sucked blood in during diastole and the blood moved by the pulsation of the arteries themselves.
+
+Galen believed that the arterial blood was created by venous blood passing from the left ventricle to the right by passing through 'pores' in the interventricular septum, air passed from the lungs via the pulmonary artery to the left side of the heart. As the arterial blood was created 'sooty' vapors were created and passed to the lungs also via the pulmonary artery to be exhaled.
+
+In 1025, The Canon of Medicine by the Persian physician Avicenna "erroneously accepted the Greek notion regarding the existence of a hole in the ventricular septum by which the blood traveled between the ventricles." While also refining Galen's erroneous theory of the pulse, Avicenna provided the first correct explanation of pulsation: "Every beat of the pulse comprises two movements and two pauses. Thus, expansion : pause : contraction : pause. [...] The pulse is a movement in the heart and arteries ... which takes the form of alternate expansion and contraction."[8]
+
+In 1242, the Arabian physician Ibn al-Nafis became the first person to accurately describe the process of pulmonary circulation,[9] for which he has been described as the Arab Father of Circulation.[10] Ibn al-Nafis stated in his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon:
+
+"...the blood from the right chamber of the heart must arrive at the left chamber but there is no direct pathway between them. The thick septum of the heart is not perforated and does not have visible pores as some people thought or invisible pores as Galen thought. The blood from the right chamber must flow through the vena arteriosa (pulmonary artery) to the lungs, spread through its substances, be mingled there with air, pass through the arteria venosa (pulmonary vein) to reach the left chamber of the heart and there form the vital spirit..."
+
+In addition, Ibn al-Nafis had an insight into what would become a larger theory of the capillary circulation. He stated that "there must be small communications or pores (manafidh in Arabic) between the pulmonary artery and vein," a prediction that preceded the discovery of the capillary system by more than 400 years.[11] Ibn al-Nafis' theory, however, was confined to blood transit in the lungs and did not extend to the entire body.
+
+Michael Servetus was the first European to describe the function of pulmonary circulation, although his achievement was not widely recognized at the time, for a few reasons. He firstly described it in the "Manuscript of Paris"[12][13] (near 1546), but this work was never published. And later he published  this description, but in a theological treatise, Christianismi Restitutio, not in a book on medicine. Only three copies of the book survived but these remained hidden for decades, the rest were burned  shortly after its publication in 1553 because of persecution of Servetus by religious authorities.
+
+Better known discovery of pulmonary circulation was by Vesalius's successor at Padua, Realdo Colombo, in 1559.
+
+Finally, William Harvey, a pupil of Hieronymus Fabricius (who had earlier described the valves of the veins without recognizing their function), performed a sequence of experiments, and published Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus in 1628, which "demonstrated that there had to be a direct connection between the venous and arterial systems throughout the body, and not just the lungs. Most importantly, he argued that the beat of the heart produced a continuous circulation of blood through minute connections at the extremities of the body. This is a conceptual leap that was quite different from Ibn al-Nafis' refinement of the anatomy and bloodflow in the heart and lungs."[14] This work, with its essentially correct exposition, slowly convinced the medical world. However, Harvey was not able to identify the capillary system connecting arteries and veins; these were later discovered by Marcello Malpighi in 1661.
+
+In 1956, André Frédéric Cournand, Werner Forssmann and Dickinson W. Richards were awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine "for their discoveries concerning heart catheterization and pathological changes in the circulatory system."[15]
+In his Nobel lecture, Forssmann credits Harvey as birthing cardiology with the publication of his book in 1628.[16]
+
+In the 1970s, Diana McSherry developed computer-based systems to create images of the circulatory system and heart without the need for surgery.[17]
+

en/5925.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,208 @@
+
+
+A bicycle, also called a bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
+
+Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century in Europe, and by the early 21st century, more than 1 billion were in existence at a given time.[1][2][3] These numbers far exceed the number of cars, both in total and ranked by the number of individual models produced.[4][5][6]
+They are the principal means of transportation in many regions. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use as children's toys, general fitness, military and police applications, courier services, bicycle racing, and bicycle stunts.
+
+The basic shape and configuration of a typical upright or "safety bicycle", has changed little since the first chain-driven model was developed around 1885.[7][8][9] However, many details have been improved, especially since the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design. These have allowed for a proliferation of specialized designs for many types of cycling.
+
+The bicycle's invention has had an enormous effect on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that eventually played a key role in the development of the automobile were initially invented for use in the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets and tension-spoked wheels.[10]
+
+The word bicycle first appeared in English print in The Daily News in 1868, to describe "Bysicles and trysicles" on the "Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne".[11] The word was first used in 1847 in a French publication to describe an unidentified two-wheeled vehicle, possibly a carriage.[11] The design of the bicycle was an advance on the velocipede, although the words were used with some degree of overlap for a time.[11][12]
+
+Other words for bicycle include "bike",[13] "pushbike",[14] "pedal cycle",[15] or "cycle".[16] In Unicode, the code point for "bicycle" is 0x1F6B2. The entity 🚲 in HTML produces 🚲.[17]
+
+The "dandy horse", also called Draisienne or Laufmaschine, was the first human means of transport to use only two wheels in tandem and was invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais. It is regarded as the first bicycle, but it did not have pedals;[18][19][20][21] Drais introduced it to the public in Mannheim in 1817 and in Paris in 1818.[22][23] Its rider sat astride a wooden frame supported by two in-line wheels and pushed the vehicle along with his or her feet while steering the front wheel.[22]
+
+The first mechanically-propelled, two-wheeled vehicle may have been built by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839, although the claim is often disputed.[24] He is also associated with the first recorded instance of a cycling traffic offense, when a Glasgow newspaper in 1842 reported an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a little girl in Glasgow and was fined five shillings.[25]
+
+In the early 1860s, Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement took bicycle design in a new direction by adding a mechanical crank drive with pedals on an enlarged front wheel (the velocipede). This was the first in mass production. Another French inventor named Douglas Grasso had a failed prototype of Pierre Lallement's bicycle several years earlier. Several inventions followed using rear-wheel drive, the best known being the rod-driven velocipede by Scotsman Thomas McCall in 1869. In that same year, bicycle wheels with wire spokes were patented by Eugène Meyer of Paris.[26] The French vélocipède, made of iron and wood, developed into the "penny-farthing" (historically known as an "ordinary bicycle", a retronym, since there was then no other kind).[27] It featured a tubular steel frame on which were mounted wire-spoked wheels with solid rubber tires. These bicycles were difficult to ride due to their high seat and poor weight distribution. In 1868 Rowley Turner, a sales agent of the Coventry Sewing Machine Company (which soon became the Coventry Machinists Company), brought a Michaux cycle to Coventry, England. His uncle, Josiah Turner, and business partner James Starley, used this as a basis for the 'Coventry Model' in what became Britain's first cycle factory.[28]
+
+The dwarf ordinary addressed some of these faults by reducing the front wheel diameter and setting the seat further back. This, in turn, required gearing—effected in a variety of ways—to efficiently use pedal power. Having to both pedal and steer via the front wheel remained a problem. Englishman J.K. Starley (nephew of James Starley), J.H. Lawson, and Shergold solved this problem by introducing the chain drive (originated by the unsuccessful "bicyclette" of Englishman Henry Lawson),[29] connecting the frame-mounted cranks to the rear wheel. These models were known as safety bicycles, dwarf safeties, or upright bicycles for their lower seat height and better weight distribution, although without pneumatic tires the ride of the smaller-wheeled bicycle would be much rougher than that of the larger-wheeled variety. Starley's 1885 Rover, manufactured in Coventry[30] is usually described as the first recognizably modern bicycle.[31] Soon the seat tube was added, creating the modern bike's double-triangle diamond frame.
+
+Further innovations increased comfort and ushered in a second bicycle craze, the 1890s Golden Age of Bicycles. In 1888, Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop introduced the first practical pneumatic tire, which soon became universal. Willie Hume demonstrated the supremacy of Dunlop's tyres in 1889, winning the tyre's first-ever races in Ireland and then England.[32][33] Soon after, the rear freewheel was developed, enabling the rider to coast. This refinement led to the 1890s invention[34] of coaster brakes. Dérailleur gears and hand-operated Bowden cable-pull brakes were also developed during these years, but were only slowly adopted by casual riders.
+
+The Svea Velocipede with vertical pedal arrangement and locking hubs was introduced in 1892 by the Swedish engineers Fredrik Ljungström and Birger Ljungström. It attracted attention at the World Fair and was produced in a few thousand units.
+
+In the 1870s many cycling clubs flourished. They were popular in a time when there were not cars on the market and the principal mode of transportation was horse-drawn vehicles, such the horse and buggy or the horsecar. Among the earliest clubs was The Bicycle Touring Club, which has operated since 1878.
+By the turn of the century, cycling clubs flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, and touring and racing became widely popular. The Raleigh Bicycle Company was founded in Nottingham, England in 1888. It became the biggest bicycle manufacturing company in the world, making over two million bikes per year.[35]
+
+Bicycles and horse buggies were the two mainstays of private transportation just prior to the automobile, and the grading of smooth roads in the late 19th century was stimulated by the widespread advertising, production, and use of these devices.[9] More than 1 billion bicycles have been manufactured worldwide as of the early 21st century.[1][2][3] Bicycles are the most common vehicle of any kind in the world, and the most numerous model of any kind of vehicle, whether human-powered or motor vehicle, is the Chinese Flying Pigeon, with numbers exceeding 500 million.[1] The next most numerous vehicle, the Honda Super Cub motorcycle, has more than 60 million units made, while most produced car, the Toyota Corolla, has reached 35 million and counting.[4][5][6][36]
+
+Women on bicycles on unpaved road, USA, late 19th Century
+
+A penny-farthing or ordinary bicycle photographed in the Škoda Auto museum in the Czech Republic
+
+The Svea Velocipede by Fredrik Ljungström and Birger Ljungström, exhibitioned at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology
+
+Bicycle in Plymouth, England at the start of the 20th century
+
+From the beginning and still today, bicycles have been and are employed for many uses. In a utilitarian way, bicycles are used for transportation, bicycle commuting, and utility cycling. It can be used as a 'work horse', used by mail carriers, paramedics, police, messengers, and general delivery services. Military uses of bicycles include communications, reconnaissance, troop movement, supply of provisions, and patrol. See also: bicycle infantry.
+
+The bicycle is also used for recreational purposes, such as bicycle touring, mountain biking, physical fitness, and play. Bicycle competition includes racing, BMX racing, track racing, criterium, roller racing, sportives and time trials. Major multi-stage professional events are the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, the Tour de Pologne, and the Volta a Portugal.
+
+Bikes can be used for entertainment and pleasure, such as in organised mass rides, artistic cycling and freestyle BMX.
+
+The bicycle has undergone continual adaptation and improvement since its inception. These innovations have continued with the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design, allowing for a proliferation of specialized bicycle types, improved bicycle safety, and riding comfort.
+
+Bicycles can be categorized in many different ways: by function, by number of riders, by general construction, by gearing or by means of propulsion. The more common types include utility bicycles, mountain bicycles, racing bicycles, touring bicycles, hybrid bicycles, cruiser bicycles, and BMX bikes. Less common are tandems, low riders, tall bikes, fixed gear, folding models, amphibious bicycles, freight bicycles, recumbents and electric bicycles.
+
+Unicycles, tricycles and quadracycles are not strictly bicycles, as they have respectively one, three and four wheels, but are often referred to informally as "bikes" or "cycles".
+
+A bicycle stays upright while moving forward by being steered so as to keep its center of mass over the wheels.[37] This steering is usually provided by the rider, but under certain conditions may be provided by the bicycle itself.[38]
+
+The combined center of mass of a bicycle and its rider must lean into a turn to successfully navigate it. This lean is induced by a method known as countersteering, which can be performed by the rider turning the handlebars directly with the hands[39] or indirectly by leaning the bicycle.[40]
+
+Short-wheelbase or tall bicycles, when braking, can generate enough stopping force at the front wheel to flip longitudinally.[41] The act of purposefully using this force to lift the rear wheel and balance on the front without tipping over is a trick known as a stoppie, endo, or front wheelie.
+
+The bicycle is extraordinarily efficient in both biological and mechanical terms. The bicycle is the most efficient human-powered means of transportation in terms of energy a person must expend to travel a given distance.[42] From a mechanical viewpoint, up to 99% of the energy delivered by the rider into the pedals is transmitted to the wheels, although the use of gearing mechanisms may reduce this by 10–15%.[43][44]
+In terms of the ratio of cargo weight a bicycle can carry to total weight, it is also an efficient means of cargo transportation.
+
+A human traveling on a bicycle at low to medium speeds of around 16–24 km/h (10–15 mph) uses only the power required to walk. Air drag, which is proportional to the square of speed, requires dramatically higher power outputs as speeds increase. If the rider is sitting upright, the rider's body creates about 75% of the total drag of the bicycle/rider combination. Drag can be reduced by seating the rider in a more aerodynamically streamlined position. Drag can also be reduced by covering the bicycle with an aerodynamic fairing. The fastest recorded unpaced speed on a flat surface is 144.18 km/h (89.59 mph)[45]
+
+In addition, the carbon dioxide generated in the production and transportation of the food required by the bicyclist, per mile traveled, is less than 1/10 that generated by energy efficient motorcars.[46]
+
+The great majority of modern bicycles have a frame with upright seating that looks much like the first chain-driven bike.[7][8][9] These upright bicycles almost always feature the diamond frame, a truss consisting of two triangles: the front triangle and the rear triangle. The front triangle consists of the head tube, top tube, down tube, and seat tube. The head tube contains the headset, the set of bearings that allows the fork to turn smoothly for steering and balance. The top tube connects the head tube to the seat tube at the top, and the down tube connects the head tube to the bottom bracket. The rear triangle consists of the seat tube and paired chain stays and seat stays. The chain stays run parallel to the chain, connecting the bottom bracket to the rear dropout, where the axle for the rear wheel is held. The seat stays connect the top of the seat tube (at or near the same point as the top tube) to the rear fork ends.
+
+Historically, women's bicycle frames had a top tube that connected in the middle of the seat tube instead of the top, resulting in a lower standover height at the expense of compromised structural integrity, since this places a strong bending load in the seat tube, and bicycle frame members are typically weak in bending. This design, referred to as a step-through frame or as an open frame, allows the rider to mount and dismount in a dignified way while wearing a skirt or dress. While some women's bicycles continue to use this frame style, there is also a variation, the mixte, which splits the top tube laterally into two thinner top tubes that bypass the seat tube on each side and connect to the rear fork ends. The ease of stepping through is also appreciated by those with limited flexibility or other joint problems. Because of its persistent image as a "women's" bicycle, step-through frames are not common for larger frames.
+
+Step-throughs were popular partly for practical reasons and partly for social mores of the day. For most of the history of bicycles' popularity women have worn long skirts, and the lower frame accommodated these better than the top-tube. Furthermore, it was considered "unladylike" for women to open their legs to mount and dismount—in more conservative times women who rode bicycles at all were vilified as immoral or immodest. These practices were akin to the older practice of riding horse sidesaddle.[citation needed]
+
+Another style is the recumbent bicycle. These are inherently more aerodynamic than upright versions, as the rider may lean back onto a support and operate pedals that are on about the same level as the seat. The world's fastest bicycle is a recumbent bicycle but this type was banned from competition in 1934 by the Union Cycliste Internationale.[47]
+
+Historically, materials used in bicycles have followed a similar pattern as in aircraft, the goal being high strength and low weight. Since the late 1930s alloy steels have been used for frame and fork tubes in higher quality machines. By the 1980s aluminum welding techniques had improved to the point that aluminum tube could safely be used in place of steel. Since then aluminum alloy frames and other components have become popular due to their light weight, and most mid-range bikes are now principally aluminum alloy of some kind.[where?] More expensive bikes use carbon fibre due to its significantly lighter weight and profiling ability, allowing designers to make a bike both stiff and compliant by manipulating the lay-up. Virtually all professional racing bicycles now use carbon fibre frames, as they have the best strength to weight ratio. A typical modern carbon fiber frame can weighs less than 1 kilogram (2.2 lb).
+
+Other exotic frame materials include titanium and advanced alloys. Bamboo, a natural composite material with high strength-to-weight ratio and stiffness[48] has been used for bicycles since 1894.[49] Recent versions use bamboo for the primary frame with glued metal connections and parts, priced as exotic models.[49][50]
+[51]
+
+The drivetrain begins with pedals which rotate the cranks, which are held in axis by the bottom bracket. Most bicycles use a chain to transmit power to the rear wheel. A very small number of bicycles use a shaft drive to transmit power, or special belts. Hydraulic bicycle transmissions have been built, but they are currently inefficient and complex.
+
+Since cyclists' legs are most efficient over a narrow range of pedaling speeds, or cadence, a variable gear ratio helps a cyclist to maintain an optimum pedalling speed while covering varied terrain. Some, mainly utility, bicycles use hub gears with between 3 and 14 ratios, but most use the generally more efficient dérailleur system, by which the chain is moved between different cogs called chainrings and sprockets in order to select a ratio. A dérailleur system normally has two dérailleurs, or mechs, one at the front to select the chainring and another at the back to select the sprocket. Most bikes have two or three chainrings, and from 5 to 11 sprockets on the back, with the number of theoretical gears calculated by multiplying front by back. In reality, many gears overlap or require the chain to run diagonally, so the number of usable gears is fewer.
+
+An alternative to chaindrive is to use a synchronous belt. These are toothed and work much the same as a chain—popular with commuters and long distance cyclists they require little maintenance. They can't be shifted across a cassette of sprockets, and are used either as single speed or with a hub gear.
+
+Different gears and ranges of gears are appropriate for different people and styles of cycling. Multi-speed bicycles allow gear selection to suit the circumstances: a cyclist could use a high gear when cycling downhill, a medium gear when cycling on a flat road, and a low gear when cycling uphill. In a lower gear every turn of the pedals leads to fewer rotations of the rear wheel. This allows the energy required to move the same distance to be distributed over more pedal turns, reducing fatigue when riding uphill, with a heavy load, or against strong winds. A higher gear allows a cyclist to make fewer pedal turns to maintain a given speed, but with more effort per turn of the pedals.
+
+With a chain drive transmission, a chainring attached to a crank drives the chain, which in turn rotates the rear wheel via the rear sprocket(s) (cassette or freewheel). There are four gearing options: two-speed hub gear integrated with chain ring, up to 3 chain rings, up to 11 sprockets, hub gear built into rear wheel (3-speed to 14-speed). The most common options are either a rear hub or multiple chain rings combined with multiple sprockets (other combinations of options are possible but less common).
+
+The handlebars connect to the stem that connects to the fork that connects to the front wheel, and the whole assembly connects to the bike and rotates about the steering axis via the headset bearings. Three styles of handlebar are common. Upright handlebars, the norm in Europe and elsewhere until the 1970s, curve gently back toward the rider, offering a natural grip and comfortable upright position. Drop handlebars "drop" as they curve forward and down, offering the cyclist best braking power from a more aerodynamic "crouched" position, as well as more upright positions in which the hands grip the brake lever mounts, the forward curves, or the upper flat sections for increasingly upright postures. Mountain bikes generally feature a 'straight handlebar' or 'riser bar' with varying degrees of sweep backwards and centimeters rise upwards, as well as wider widths which can provide better handling due to increased leverage against the wheel.
+
+Saddles also vary with rider preference, from the cushioned ones favored by short-distance riders to narrower saddles which allow more room for leg swings. Comfort depends on riding position. With comfort bikes and hybrids, cyclists sit high over the seat, their weight directed down onto the saddle, such that a wider and more cushioned saddle is preferable. For racing bikes where the rider is bent over, weight is more evenly distributed between the handlebars and saddle, the hips are flexed, and a narrower and harder saddle is more efficient. Differing saddle designs exist for male and female cyclists, accommodating the genders' differing anatomies and sit bone width measurements, although bikes typically are sold with saddles most appropriate for men. Suspension seat posts and seat springs provide comfort by absorbing shock but can add to the overall weight of the bicycle.
+
+A recumbent bicycle has a reclined chair-like seat that some riders find more comfortable than a saddle, especially riders who suffer from certain types of seat, back, neck, shoulder, or wrist pain. Recumbent bicycles may have either under-seat or over-seat steering.
+
+Bicycle brakes may be rim brakes, in which friction pads are compressed against the wheel rims; hub brakes, where the mechanism is contained within the wheel hub, or disc brakes, where pads act on a rotor attached to the hub. Most road bicycles use rim brakes, but some use disk brakes.[53] Disc brakes are more common for mountain bikes, tandems and recumbent bicycles than on other types of bicycles, due to their increased power, coupled with an increased weight and complexity.[54]
+
+With hand-operated brakes, force is applied to brake levers mounted on the handlebars and transmitted via Bowden cables or hydraulic lines to the friction pads, which apply pressure to the braking surface, causing friction which slows the bicycle down. A rear hub brake may be either hand-operated or pedal-actuated, as in the back pedal coaster brakes which were popular in North America until the 1960s.
+
+Track bicycles do not have brakes, because all riders ride in the same direction around a track which does not necessitate sharp deceleration. Track riders are still able to slow down because all track bicycles are fixed-gear, meaning that there is no freewheel. Without a freewheel, coasting is impossible, so when the rear wheel is moving, the cranks are moving. To slow down, the rider applies resistance to the pedals, acting as a braking system which can be as effective as a conventional rear wheel brake, but not as effective as a front wheel brake.[55]
+
+Bicycle suspension refers to the system or systems used to suspend the rider and all or part of the bicycle. This serves two purposes: to keep the wheels in continuous contact with the ground, improving control, and to isolate the rider and luggage from jarring due to rough surfaces, improving comfort.
+
+Bicycle suspensions are used primarily on mountain bicycles, but are also common on hybrid bicycles, as they can help deal with problematic vibration from poor surfaces. Suspension is especially important on recumbent bicycles, since while an upright bicycle rider can stand on the pedals to achieve some of the benefits of suspension, a recumbent rider cannot.
+
+Basic mountain bicycles and hybrids usually have front suspension only, whilst more sophisticated ones also have rear suspension. Road bicycles tend to have no suspension.
+
+The wheel axle fits into fork ends in the frame and fork. A pair of wheels may be called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready-built "off the shelf", performance-oriented wheels.
+
+Tires vary enormously depending on their intended purpose. Road bicycles use tires 18 to 25 millimeters wide, most often completely smooth, or slick, and inflated to high pressure in order to roll fast on smooth surfaces. Off-road tires are usually between 38 and 64 mm (1.5 and 2.5 in) wide, and have treads for gripping in muddy conditions or metal studs for ice.
+
+Some components, which are often optional accessories on sports bicycles, are standard features on utility bicycles to enhance their usefulness, comfort, safety and visibility. Mudguards, or fenders, protect the cyclist and moving parts from spray when riding through wet areas and chainguards protect clothes from oil on the chain while preventing clothing from being caught between the chain and crankset teeth. Kick stands keep bicycles upright when parked, and bike locks deter theft. Front-mounted baskets, front or rear luggage carriers or racks, and panniers mounted above either or both wheels can be used to carry equipment or cargo. Pegs can be fastened to one, or both of the wheel hubs to either help the rider perform certain tricks, or allow a place for extra riders to stand, or rest.[citation needed] Parents sometimes add rear-mounted child seats, an auxiliary saddle fitted to the crossbar, or both to transport children. Bicycles can also be fitted with a hitch to tow a trailer for carrying cargo, a child, or both.
+
+Toe-clips and toestraps and clipless pedals help keep the foot locked in the proper pedal position and enable cyclists to pull and push the pedals. Technical accessories include cyclocomputers for measuring speed, distance, heart rate, GPS data etc. Other accessories include lights, reflectors, mirrors, racks, trailers, bags, water bottles and cages, and bell.[56] Bicycle lights, reflectors, and helmets are required by law in some geographic regions depending on the legal code. It is more common to see bicycles with bottle generators, dynamos, lights, fenders, racks and bells in Europe. Bicyclists also have specialized form fitting and high visibility clothing.
+
+Children's bicycles may be outfitted with cosmetic enhancements such as bike horns, streamers, and spoke beads.[57] Training wheels are sometimes used when learning to ride.
+
+Bicycle helmets can reduce injury in the event of a collision or accident, and a suitable helmet is legally required of riders in many jurisdictions. Helmets may be classified as an accessory[56] or as an item of clothing.[58]
+
+Bike trainers are used to enable cyclists to cycle while the bike remains stationary. They are frequently used to warm up before races or indoors when riding conditions are unfavorable.[59]
+
+A number of formal and industry standards exist for bicycle components to help make spare parts exchangeable and to maintain a minimum product safety.
+
+The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has a special technical committee for cycles, TC149, that has the scope of "Standardization in the field of cycles, their components and accessories with particular reference to terminology, testing methods and requirements for performance and safety, and interchangeability".
+
+The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) also has a specific Technical Committee, TC333, that defines European standards for cycles. Their mandate states that EN cycle standards shall harmonize with ISO standards. Some CEN cycle standards were developed before ISO published their standards, leading to strong European influences in this area. European cycle standards tend to describe minimum safety requirements, while ISO standards have historically harmonized parts geometry.[60]
+
+Like all devices with mechanical moving parts, bicycles do require a certain amount of regular maintenance and replacement of worn parts. A bicycle is relatively simple compared with a car, so some cyclists choose to do at least part of the maintenance themselves. Some components are easy to handle using relatively simple tools, while other components may require specialist manufacturer-dependent tools.
+
+Many bicycle components are available at several different price/quality points; manufacturers generally try to keep all components on any particular bike at about the same quality level, though at the very cheap end of the market there may be some skimping on less obvious components (e.g. bottom bracket).
+
+The most basic maintenance item is keeping the tires correctly inflated; this can make a noticeable difference as to how the bike feels to ride. Bicycle tires usually have a marking on the side wall indicating the pressure appropriate for that tire. Note that bicycles use much higher pressures than cars: car tires are normally in the range 30 to 40 pounds per square inch while bicycle tires are normally in the range 60 to 100 pounds per square inch.
+
+Another basic maintenance item is regular lubrication of the chain and pivot points for derailleurs and brakes. Most of the bearings on a modern bike are sealed and grease-filled and require little or no attention; such bearings will usually last for 10,000 miles or more.
+
+The chain and the brake blocks are the components which wear out most quickly, so these need to be checked from time to time (typically every 500 miles or so). Most local bike shops will do such checks for free. Note that when a chain becomes badly worn it will also wear out the rear cogs/cassette and eventually the chain ring(s), so replacing a chain when only moderately worn will prolong the life of other components.
+
+Over the longer term, tires do wear out (2000 to 5000 miles); a rash of punctures is often the most visible sign of a worn tire.
+
+Very few bicycle components can actually be repaired; replacement of the failing component is the normal practice.
+
+The most common roadside problem is a puncture. After removing the offending nail/tack/thorn/glass shard/etc. there are two approaches: either mend the puncture by the roadside, or replace the inner tube and then mend the puncture in the comfort of home. Some brands of tires are much more puncture resistant than others, often incorporating one or more layers of Kevlar; the downside of such tires is that they may be heavier and/or more difficult to fit and remove.
+
+There are specialized bicycle tools for use both in the shop and on the road. Many cyclists carry tool kits. These may include a tire patch kit (which, in turn, may contain any combination of a hand pump or CO2 Pump, tire levers, spare tubes, self-adhesive patches, or tube-patching material, an adhesive, a piece of sandpaper or a metal grater (for roughing the tube surface to be patched), Special, thin wrenches are often required for maintaining various screw fastened parts, specifically, the frequently lubricated ball-bearing "cones".[62][63] and sometimes even a block of French chalk.), wrenches, hex keys, screwdrivers, and a chain tool. There are also cycling specific multi-tools that combine many of these implements into a single compact device. More specialized bicycle components may require more complex tools, including proprietary tools specific for a given manufacturer.
+
+The bicycle has had a considerable effect on human society, in both the cultural and industrial realms.
+
+Around the turn of the 20th century, bicycles reduced crowding in inner-city tenements by allowing workers to commute from more spacious dwellings in the suburbs. They also reduced dependence on horses. Bicycles allowed people to travel for leisure into the country, since bicycles were three times as energy efficient as walking and three to four times as fast.
+
+In built up cities around the world, urban planning uses cycling infrastructure like bikeways to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.[64] A number of cities around the world have implemented schemes known as bicycle sharing systems or community bicycle programs.[65][66] The first of these was the White Bicycle plan in Amsterdam in 1965. It was followed by yellow bicycles in La Rochelle and green bicycles in Cambridge. These initiatives complement public transport systems and offer an alternative to motorized traffic to help reduce congestion and pollution.[67] In Europe, especially in the Netherlands and parts of Germany and Denmark, bicycle commuting is common. In Copenhagen, a cyclists' organization runs a Cycling Embassy that promotes biking for commuting and sightseeing. The United Kingdom has a tax break scheme (IR 176) that allows employees to buy a new bicycle tax free to use for commuting.[68]
+
+In the Netherlands all train stations offer free bicycle parking, or a more secure parking place for a small fee, with the larger stations also offering bicycle repair shops. Cycling is so popular that the parking capacity may be exceeded, while in some places such as Delft the capacity is usually exceeded.[69] In Trondheim in Norway, the Trampe bicycle lift has been developed to encourage cyclists by giving assistance on a steep hill. Buses in many cities have bicycle carriers mounted on the front.
+
+There are towns in some countries where bicycle culture has been an integral part of the landscape for generations, even without much official support. That is the case of Ílhavo, in Portugal.
+
+In cities where bicycles are not integrated into the public transportation system, commuters often use bicycles as elements of a mixed-mode commute, where the bike is used to travel to and from train stations or other forms of rapid transit. Some students who commute several miles drive a car from home to a campus parking lot, then ride a bicycle to class. Folding bicycles are useful in these scenarios, as they are less cumbersome when carried aboard. Los Angeles removed a small amount of seating on some trains to make more room for bicycles and wheel chairs.[70]
+
+Some US companies, notably in the tech sector, are developing both innovative cycle designs and cycle-friendliness in the workplace. Foursquare, whose CEO Dennis Crowley "pedaled to pitch meetings ... [when he] was raising money from venture capitalists" on a two-wheeler, chose a new location for its New York headquarters "based on where biking would be easy". Parking in the office was also integral to HQ planning. Mitchell Moss, who runs the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management at New York University, said in 2012: "Biking has become the mode of choice for the educated high tech worker".[71]
+
+Bicycles offer an important mode of transport in many developing countries. Until recently, bicycles have been a staple of everyday life throughout Asian countries. They are the most frequently used method of transport for commuting to work, school, shopping, and life in general. In Europe, bicycles are commonly used.[72] They also offer a degree of exercise to keep individuals healthy.[73]
+
+Bicycles are also celebrated in the visual arts. An example of this is the Bicycle Film Festival, a film festival hosted all around the world.
+
+Experiments done in Uganda, Tanzania, and Sri Lanka on hundreds of households have shown that a bicycle can increase a poor family's income as much as 35%.[74][better source needed][75][76] Transport, if analyzed for the cost-benefit analysis for rural poverty alleviation, has given one of the best returns in this regard. For example, road investments in India were a staggering 3–10 times more effective than almost all other investments and subsidies in rural economy in the decade of the 1990s. What a road does at a macro level to increase transport, the bicycle supports at the micro level. The bicycle, in that sense, can be an important poverty-eradication tool in poor nations.
+
+The safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their emancipation in Western nations. As bicycles became safer and cheaper, more women had access to the personal freedom that bicycles embodied, and so the bicycle came to symbolize the New Woman of the late 19th century, especially in Britain and the United States.[8][78] The bicycle craze in the 1890s also led to a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other restrictive garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers.[8]
+
+The bicycle was recognized by 19th-century feminists and suffragists as a "freedom machine" for women. American Susan B. Anthony said in a New York World interview on February 2, 1896:
+"I think it has done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood."[79]:859 In 1895 Frances Willard, the tightly laced president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, wrote A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, with Some Reflections by the Way, a 75-page illustrated memoir praising "Gladys", her bicycle, for its "gladdening effect" on her health and political optimism.[77] Willard used a cycling metaphor to urge other suffragists to action.[77]
+
+In 1985, Georgena Terry started the first women-specific bicycle company. Her designs featured frame geometry and wheel sizes chosen to better fit women, with shorter top tubes and more suitable reach.[1]
+
+Bicycle manufacturing proved to be a training ground for other industries and led to the development of advanced metalworking techniques, both for the frames themselves and for special components such as ball bearings, washers, and sprockets. These techniques later enabled skilled metalworkers and mechanics to develop the components used in early automobiles and aircraft.
+
+Wilbur and Orville Wright, a pair of businessmen, ran the Wright Cycle Company which designed, manufactured and sold their bicycles during the bike boom of the 1890s.[80]
+
+They also served to teach the industrial models later adopted, including mechanization and mass production (later copied and adopted by Ford and General Motors),[81][82][83] vertical integration[82] (also later copied and adopted by Ford), aggressive advertising[84] (as much as 10% of all advertising in U.S. periodicals in 1898 was by bicycle makers),[85] lobbying for better roads (which had the side benefit of acting as advertising, and of improving sales by providing more places to ride),[83] all first practiced by Pope.[83] In addition, bicycle makers adopted the annual model change[81][86] (later derided as planned obsolescence, and usually credited to General Motors), which proved very successful.[87]
+
+Early bicycles were an example of conspicuous consumption, being adopted by the fashionable elites.[88][89][90][81][91][92][93][94] In addition, by serving as a platform for accessories, which could ultimately cost more than the bicycle itself, it paved the way for the likes of the Barbie doll.[81][95][96]
+
+Bicycles helped create, or enhance, new kinds of businesses, such as bicycle messengers,[97] traveling seamstresses,[98] riding academies,[99] and racing rinks.[100][99] Their board tracks were later adapted to early motorcycle and automobile racing. There were a variety of new inventions, such as spoke tighteners,[101] and specialized lights,[96][101] socks and shoes,[102] and even cameras, such as the Eastman Company's Poco.[103] Probably the best known and most widely used of these inventions, adopted well beyond cycling, is Charles Bennett's Bike Web, which came to be called the jock strap.[104]
+
+They also presaged a move away from public transit[105] that would explode with the introduction of the automobile.
+
+J. K. Starley's company became the Rover Cycle Company Ltd. in the late 1890s, and then simply the Rover Company when it started making cars. Morris Motors Limited (in Oxford) and Škoda also began in the bicycle business, as did the Wright brothers.[106] Alistair Craig, whose company eventually emerged to become the engine manufacturers Ailsa Craig, also started from manufacturing bicycles, in Glasgow in March 1885.
+
+In general, U.S. and European cycle manufacturers used to assemble cycles from their own frames and components made by other companies, although very large companies (such as Raleigh) used to make almost every part of a bicycle (including bottom brackets, axles, etc.) In recent years, those bicycle makers have greatly changed their methods of production. Now, almost none of them produce their own frames.
+
+Many newer or smaller companies only design and market their products; the actual production is done by Asian companies. For example, some 60% of the world's bicycles are now being made in China. Despite this shift in production, as nations such as China and India become more wealthy, their own use of bicycles has declined due to the increasing affordability of cars and motorcycles.[107]
+One of the major reasons for the proliferation of Chinese-made bicycles in foreign markets is the lower cost of labor in China.[108]
+
+In line with the European financial crisis, in Italy in 2011 the number of bicycle sales (1.75 million) just passed the number of new car sales.[109]
+
+One of the profound economic implications of bicycle use is that it liberates the user from oil consumption.(Ballantine, 1972) The bicycle is an inexpensive, fast, healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transport. Ivan Illich stated that bicycle use extended the usable physical environment for people, while alternatives such as cars and motorways degraded and confined people's environment and mobility.[110]
+Currently, two billion bicycles are in use around the world. Children, students, professionals, laborers, civil servants and seniors are pedaling around their communities. They all experience the freedom and the natural opportunity for exercise that the bicycle easily provides. Bicycle also has lowest carbon intensity of travel.[111]
+
+The proper Islamic bicycle for the Iranian women is a topic of heated discussion in both Sunni and Shia Islam.[112][113][114]
+
+The global bicycle market is $61 billion in 2011.[115] As of 2009[update] 130 million bicycles were sold every year globally and 66% of them were made in China.[116]
+
+Early in its development, as with automobiles, there were restrictions on the operation of bicycles. Along with advertising, and to gain free publicity, Albert A. Pope litigated on behalf of cyclists.[83]
+
+The 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic of the United Nations considers a bicycle to be a vehicle, and a person controlling a bicycle (whether actually riding or not) is considered an operator. The traffic codes of many countries reflect these definitions and demand that a bicycle satisfy certain legal requirements before it can be used on public roads. In many jurisdictions, it is an offense to use a bicycle that is not in a roadworthy condition.[citation needed]
+
+In most jurisdictions, bicycles must have functioning front and rear lights when ridden after dark. As some generator or dynamo-driven lamps operate only while moving, rear reflectors are frequently also mandatory. Since a moving bicycle makes little noise, some countries insist that bicycles have a warning bell for use when approaching pedestrians, equestrians, and other cyclists, though sometimes a car horn can be used when a 12 volt battery is available.[citation needed]
+
+Some countries require child and/or adult cyclists to wear helmets, as this may protect riders from head trauma. Countries which require adult cyclists to wear helmets include Spain, New Zealand and Australia. Mandatory helmet wearing is one of the most controversial topics in the cycling world, with proponents arguing that it reduces head injuries and thus is an acceptable requirement, while opponents argue that by making cycling seem more dangerous and cumbersome, it reduces cyclist numbers on the streets, creating an overall negative health effect (fewer people cycling for their own health, and the remaining cyclists being more exposed through a reversed safety in numbers effect).[citation needed]
+
+Bicycles are popular targets for theft, due to their value and ease of resale.[118] The number of bicycles stolen annually is difficult to quantify as a large number of crimes are not reported.[119] Around 50% of the participants in the Montreal International Journal of Sustainable Transportation survey were subjected to a bicycle theft in their lifetime as active cyclists.[120] Most bicycles have serial numbers that can be recorded to verify identity in case of theft.[121]

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+
+A bicycle, also called a bike or cycle, is a human-powered or motor-powered, pedal-driven, single-track vehicle, having two wheels attached to a frame, one behind the other. A bicycle rider is called a cyclist, or bicyclist.
+
+Bicycles were introduced in the 19th century in Europe, and by the early 21st century, more than 1 billion were in existence at a given time.[1][2][3] These numbers far exceed the number of cars, both in total and ranked by the number of individual models produced.[4][5][6]
+They are the principal means of transportation in many regions. They also provide a popular form of recreation, and have been adapted for use as children's toys, general fitness, military and police applications, courier services, bicycle racing, and bicycle stunts.
+
+The basic shape and configuration of a typical upright or "safety bicycle", has changed little since the first chain-driven model was developed around 1885.[7][8][9] However, many details have been improved, especially since the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design. These have allowed for a proliferation of specialized designs for many types of cycling.
+
+The bicycle's invention has had an enormous effect on society, both in terms of culture and of advancing modern industrial methods. Several components that eventually played a key role in the development of the automobile were initially invented for use in the bicycle, including ball bearings, pneumatic tires, chain-driven sprockets and tension-spoked wheels.[10]
+
+The word bicycle first appeared in English print in The Daily News in 1868, to describe "Bysicles and trysicles" on the "Champs Elysées and Bois de Boulogne".[11] The word was first used in 1847 in a French publication to describe an unidentified two-wheeled vehicle, possibly a carriage.[11] The design of the bicycle was an advance on the velocipede, although the words were used with some degree of overlap for a time.[11][12]
+
+Other words for bicycle include "bike",[13] "pushbike",[14] "pedal cycle",[15] or "cycle".[16] In Unicode, the code point for "bicycle" is 0x1F6B2. The entity 🚲 in HTML produces 🚲.[17]
+
+The "dandy horse", also called Draisienne or Laufmaschine, was the first human means of transport to use only two wheels in tandem and was invented by the German Baron Karl von Drais. It is regarded as the first bicycle, but it did not have pedals;[18][19][20][21] Drais introduced it to the public in Mannheim in 1817 and in Paris in 1818.[22][23] Its rider sat astride a wooden frame supported by two in-line wheels and pushed the vehicle along with his or her feet while steering the front wheel.[22]
+
+The first mechanically-propelled, two-wheeled vehicle may have been built by Kirkpatrick MacMillan, a Scottish blacksmith, in 1839, although the claim is often disputed.[24] He is also associated with the first recorded instance of a cycling traffic offense, when a Glasgow newspaper in 1842 reported an accident in which an anonymous "gentleman from Dumfries-shire... bestride a velocipede... of ingenious design" knocked over a little girl in Glasgow and was fined five shillings.[25]
+
+In the early 1860s, Frenchmen Pierre Michaux and Pierre Lallement took bicycle design in a new direction by adding a mechanical crank drive with pedals on an enlarged front wheel (the velocipede). This was the first in mass production. Another French inventor named Douglas Grasso had a failed prototype of Pierre Lallement's bicycle several years earlier. Several inventions followed using rear-wheel drive, the best known being the rod-driven velocipede by Scotsman Thomas McCall in 1869. In that same year, bicycle wheels with wire spokes were patented by Eugène Meyer of Paris.[26] The French vélocipède, made of iron and wood, developed into the "penny-farthing" (historically known as an "ordinary bicycle", a retronym, since there was then no other kind).[27] It featured a tubular steel frame on which were mounted wire-spoked wheels with solid rubber tires. These bicycles were difficult to ride due to their high seat and poor weight distribution. In 1868 Rowley Turner, a sales agent of the Coventry Sewing Machine Company (which soon became the Coventry Machinists Company), brought a Michaux cycle to Coventry, England. His uncle, Josiah Turner, and business partner James Starley, used this as a basis for the 'Coventry Model' in what became Britain's first cycle factory.[28]
+
+The dwarf ordinary addressed some of these faults by reducing the front wheel diameter and setting the seat further back. This, in turn, required gearing—effected in a variety of ways—to efficiently use pedal power. Having to both pedal and steer via the front wheel remained a problem. Englishman J.K. Starley (nephew of James Starley), J.H. Lawson, and Shergold solved this problem by introducing the chain drive (originated by the unsuccessful "bicyclette" of Englishman Henry Lawson),[29] connecting the frame-mounted cranks to the rear wheel. These models were known as safety bicycles, dwarf safeties, or upright bicycles for their lower seat height and better weight distribution, although without pneumatic tires the ride of the smaller-wheeled bicycle would be much rougher than that of the larger-wheeled variety. Starley's 1885 Rover, manufactured in Coventry[30] is usually described as the first recognizably modern bicycle.[31] Soon the seat tube was added, creating the modern bike's double-triangle diamond frame.
+
+Further innovations increased comfort and ushered in a second bicycle craze, the 1890s Golden Age of Bicycles. In 1888, Scotsman John Boyd Dunlop introduced the first practical pneumatic tire, which soon became universal. Willie Hume demonstrated the supremacy of Dunlop's tyres in 1889, winning the tyre's first-ever races in Ireland and then England.[32][33] Soon after, the rear freewheel was developed, enabling the rider to coast. This refinement led to the 1890s invention[34] of coaster brakes. Dérailleur gears and hand-operated Bowden cable-pull brakes were also developed during these years, but were only slowly adopted by casual riders.
+
+The Svea Velocipede with vertical pedal arrangement and locking hubs was introduced in 1892 by the Swedish engineers Fredrik Ljungström and Birger Ljungström. It attracted attention at the World Fair and was produced in a few thousand units.
+
+In the 1870s many cycling clubs flourished. They were popular in a time when there were not cars on the market and the principal mode of transportation was horse-drawn vehicles, such the horse and buggy or the horsecar. Among the earliest clubs was The Bicycle Touring Club, which has operated since 1878.
+By the turn of the century, cycling clubs flourished on both sides of the Atlantic, and touring and racing became widely popular. The Raleigh Bicycle Company was founded in Nottingham, England in 1888. It became the biggest bicycle manufacturing company in the world, making over two million bikes per year.[35]
+
+Bicycles and horse buggies were the two mainstays of private transportation just prior to the automobile, and the grading of smooth roads in the late 19th century was stimulated by the widespread advertising, production, and use of these devices.[9] More than 1 billion bicycles have been manufactured worldwide as of the early 21st century.[1][2][3] Bicycles are the most common vehicle of any kind in the world, and the most numerous model of any kind of vehicle, whether human-powered or motor vehicle, is the Chinese Flying Pigeon, with numbers exceeding 500 million.[1] The next most numerous vehicle, the Honda Super Cub motorcycle, has more than 60 million units made, while most produced car, the Toyota Corolla, has reached 35 million and counting.[4][5][6][36]
+
+Women on bicycles on unpaved road, USA, late 19th Century
+
+A penny-farthing or ordinary bicycle photographed in the Škoda Auto museum in the Czech Republic
+
+The Svea Velocipede by Fredrik Ljungström and Birger Ljungström, exhibitioned at the Swedish National Museum of Science and Technology
+
+Bicycle in Plymouth, England at the start of the 20th century
+
+From the beginning and still today, bicycles have been and are employed for many uses. In a utilitarian way, bicycles are used for transportation, bicycle commuting, and utility cycling. It can be used as a 'work horse', used by mail carriers, paramedics, police, messengers, and general delivery services. Military uses of bicycles include communications, reconnaissance, troop movement, supply of provisions, and patrol. See also: bicycle infantry.
+
+The bicycle is also used for recreational purposes, such as bicycle touring, mountain biking, physical fitness, and play. Bicycle competition includes racing, BMX racing, track racing, criterium, roller racing, sportives and time trials. Major multi-stage professional events are the Giro d'Italia, the Tour de France, the Vuelta a España, the Tour de Pologne, and the Volta a Portugal.
+
+Bikes can be used for entertainment and pleasure, such as in organised mass rides, artistic cycling and freestyle BMX.
+
+The bicycle has undergone continual adaptation and improvement since its inception. These innovations have continued with the advent of modern materials and computer-aided design, allowing for a proliferation of specialized bicycle types, improved bicycle safety, and riding comfort.
+
+Bicycles can be categorized in many different ways: by function, by number of riders, by general construction, by gearing or by means of propulsion. The more common types include utility bicycles, mountain bicycles, racing bicycles, touring bicycles, hybrid bicycles, cruiser bicycles, and BMX bikes. Less common are tandems, low riders, tall bikes, fixed gear, folding models, amphibious bicycles, freight bicycles, recumbents and electric bicycles.
+
+Unicycles, tricycles and quadracycles are not strictly bicycles, as they have respectively one, three and four wheels, but are often referred to informally as "bikes" or "cycles".
+
+A bicycle stays upright while moving forward by being steered so as to keep its center of mass over the wheels.[37] This steering is usually provided by the rider, but under certain conditions may be provided by the bicycle itself.[38]
+
+The combined center of mass of a bicycle and its rider must lean into a turn to successfully navigate it. This lean is induced by a method known as countersteering, which can be performed by the rider turning the handlebars directly with the hands[39] or indirectly by leaning the bicycle.[40]
+
+Short-wheelbase or tall bicycles, when braking, can generate enough stopping force at the front wheel to flip longitudinally.[41] The act of purposefully using this force to lift the rear wheel and balance on the front without tipping over is a trick known as a stoppie, endo, or front wheelie.
+
+The bicycle is extraordinarily efficient in both biological and mechanical terms. The bicycle is the most efficient human-powered means of transportation in terms of energy a person must expend to travel a given distance.[42] From a mechanical viewpoint, up to 99% of the energy delivered by the rider into the pedals is transmitted to the wheels, although the use of gearing mechanisms may reduce this by 10–15%.[43][44]
+In terms of the ratio of cargo weight a bicycle can carry to total weight, it is also an efficient means of cargo transportation.
+
+A human traveling on a bicycle at low to medium speeds of around 16–24 km/h (10–15 mph) uses only the power required to walk. Air drag, which is proportional to the square of speed, requires dramatically higher power outputs as speeds increase. If the rider is sitting upright, the rider's body creates about 75% of the total drag of the bicycle/rider combination. Drag can be reduced by seating the rider in a more aerodynamically streamlined position. Drag can also be reduced by covering the bicycle with an aerodynamic fairing. The fastest recorded unpaced speed on a flat surface is 144.18 km/h (89.59 mph)[45]
+
+In addition, the carbon dioxide generated in the production and transportation of the food required by the bicyclist, per mile traveled, is less than 1/10 that generated by energy efficient motorcars.[46]
+
+The great majority of modern bicycles have a frame with upright seating that looks much like the first chain-driven bike.[7][8][9] These upright bicycles almost always feature the diamond frame, a truss consisting of two triangles: the front triangle and the rear triangle. The front triangle consists of the head tube, top tube, down tube, and seat tube. The head tube contains the headset, the set of bearings that allows the fork to turn smoothly for steering and balance. The top tube connects the head tube to the seat tube at the top, and the down tube connects the head tube to the bottom bracket. The rear triangle consists of the seat tube and paired chain stays and seat stays. The chain stays run parallel to the chain, connecting the bottom bracket to the rear dropout, where the axle for the rear wheel is held. The seat stays connect the top of the seat tube (at or near the same point as the top tube) to the rear fork ends.
+
+Historically, women's bicycle frames had a top tube that connected in the middle of the seat tube instead of the top, resulting in a lower standover height at the expense of compromised structural integrity, since this places a strong bending load in the seat tube, and bicycle frame members are typically weak in bending. This design, referred to as a step-through frame or as an open frame, allows the rider to mount and dismount in a dignified way while wearing a skirt or dress. While some women's bicycles continue to use this frame style, there is also a variation, the mixte, which splits the top tube laterally into two thinner top tubes that bypass the seat tube on each side and connect to the rear fork ends. The ease of stepping through is also appreciated by those with limited flexibility or other joint problems. Because of its persistent image as a "women's" bicycle, step-through frames are not common for larger frames.
+
+Step-throughs were popular partly for practical reasons and partly for social mores of the day. For most of the history of bicycles' popularity women have worn long skirts, and the lower frame accommodated these better than the top-tube. Furthermore, it was considered "unladylike" for women to open their legs to mount and dismount—in more conservative times women who rode bicycles at all were vilified as immoral or immodest. These practices were akin to the older practice of riding horse sidesaddle.[citation needed]
+
+Another style is the recumbent bicycle. These are inherently more aerodynamic than upright versions, as the rider may lean back onto a support and operate pedals that are on about the same level as the seat. The world's fastest bicycle is a recumbent bicycle but this type was banned from competition in 1934 by the Union Cycliste Internationale.[47]
+
+Historically, materials used in bicycles have followed a similar pattern as in aircraft, the goal being high strength and low weight. Since the late 1930s alloy steels have been used for frame and fork tubes in higher quality machines. By the 1980s aluminum welding techniques had improved to the point that aluminum tube could safely be used in place of steel. Since then aluminum alloy frames and other components have become popular due to their light weight, and most mid-range bikes are now principally aluminum alloy of some kind.[where?] More expensive bikes use carbon fibre due to its significantly lighter weight and profiling ability, allowing designers to make a bike both stiff and compliant by manipulating the lay-up. Virtually all professional racing bicycles now use carbon fibre frames, as they have the best strength to weight ratio. A typical modern carbon fiber frame can weighs less than 1 kilogram (2.2 lb).
+
+Other exotic frame materials include titanium and advanced alloys. Bamboo, a natural composite material with high strength-to-weight ratio and stiffness[48] has been used for bicycles since 1894.[49] Recent versions use bamboo for the primary frame with glued metal connections and parts, priced as exotic models.[49][50]
+[51]
+
+The drivetrain begins with pedals which rotate the cranks, which are held in axis by the bottom bracket. Most bicycles use a chain to transmit power to the rear wheel. A very small number of bicycles use a shaft drive to transmit power, or special belts. Hydraulic bicycle transmissions have been built, but they are currently inefficient and complex.
+
+Since cyclists' legs are most efficient over a narrow range of pedaling speeds, or cadence, a variable gear ratio helps a cyclist to maintain an optimum pedalling speed while covering varied terrain. Some, mainly utility, bicycles use hub gears with between 3 and 14 ratios, but most use the generally more efficient dérailleur system, by which the chain is moved between different cogs called chainrings and sprockets in order to select a ratio. A dérailleur system normally has two dérailleurs, or mechs, one at the front to select the chainring and another at the back to select the sprocket. Most bikes have two or three chainrings, and from 5 to 11 sprockets on the back, with the number of theoretical gears calculated by multiplying front by back. In reality, many gears overlap or require the chain to run diagonally, so the number of usable gears is fewer.
+
+An alternative to chaindrive is to use a synchronous belt. These are toothed and work much the same as a chain—popular with commuters and long distance cyclists they require little maintenance. They can't be shifted across a cassette of sprockets, and are used either as single speed or with a hub gear.
+
+Different gears and ranges of gears are appropriate for different people and styles of cycling. Multi-speed bicycles allow gear selection to suit the circumstances: a cyclist could use a high gear when cycling downhill, a medium gear when cycling on a flat road, and a low gear when cycling uphill. In a lower gear every turn of the pedals leads to fewer rotations of the rear wheel. This allows the energy required to move the same distance to be distributed over more pedal turns, reducing fatigue when riding uphill, with a heavy load, or against strong winds. A higher gear allows a cyclist to make fewer pedal turns to maintain a given speed, but with more effort per turn of the pedals.
+
+With a chain drive transmission, a chainring attached to a crank drives the chain, which in turn rotates the rear wheel via the rear sprocket(s) (cassette or freewheel). There are four gearing options: two-speed hub gear integrated with chain ring, up to 3 chain rings, up to 11 sprockets, hub gear built into rear wheel (3-speed to 14-speed). The most common options are either a rear hub or multiple chain rings combined with multiple sprockets (other combinations of options are possible but less common).
+
+The handlebars connect to the stem that connects to the fork that connects to the front wheel, and the whole assembly connects to the bike and rotates about the steering axis via the headset bearings. Three styles of handlebar are common. Upright handlebars, the norm in Europe and elsewhere until the 1970s, curve gently back toward the rider, offering a natural grip and comfortable upright position. Drop handlebars "drop" as they curve forward and down, offering the cyclist best braking power from a more aerodynamic "crouched" position, as well as more upright positions in which the hands grip the brake lever mounts, the forward curves, or the upper flat sections for increasingly upright postures. Mountain bikes generally feature a 'straight handlebar' or 'riser bar' with varying degrees of sweep backwards and centimeters rise upwards, as well as wider widths which can provide better handling due to increased leverage against the wheel.
+
+Saddles also vary with rider preference, from the cushioned ones favored by short-distance riders to narrower saddles which allow more room for leg swings. Comfort depends on riding position. With comfort bikes and hybrids, cyclists sit high over the seat, their weight directed down onto the saddle, such that a wider and more cushioned saddle is preferable. For racing bikes where the rider is bent over, weight is more evenly distributed between the handlebars and saddle, the hips are flexed, and a narrower and harder saddle is more efficient. Differing saddle designs exist for male and female cyclists, accommodating the genders' differing anatomies and sit bone width measurements, although bikes typically are sold with saddles most appropriate for men. Suspension seat posts and seat springs provide comfort by absorbing shock but can add to the overall weight of the bicycle.
+
+A recumbent bicycle has a reclined chair-like seat that some riders find more comfortable than a saddle, especially riders who suffer from certain types of seat, back, neck, shoulder, or wrist pain. Recumbent bicycles may have either under-seat or over-seat steering.
+
+Bicycle brakes may be rim brakes, in which friction pads are compressed against the wheel rims; hub brakes, where the mechanism is contained within the wheel hub, or disc brakes, where pads act on a rotor attached to the hub. Most road bicycles use rim brakes, but some use disk brakes.[53] Disc brakes are more common for mountain bikes, tandems and recumbent bicycles than on other types of bicycles, due to their increased power, coupled with an increased weight and complexity.[54]
+
+With hand-operated brakes, force is applied to brake levers mounted on the handlebars and transmitted via Bowden cables or hydraulic lines to the friction pads, which apply pressure to the braking surface, causing friction which slows the bicycle down. A rear hub brake may be either hand-operated or pedal-actuated, as in the back pedal coaster brakes which were popular in North America until the 1960s.
+
+Track bicycles do not have brakes, because all riders ride in the same direction around a track which does not necessitate sharp deceleration. Track riders are still able to slow down because all track bicycles are fixed-gear, meaning that there is no freewheel. Without a freewheel, coasting is impossible, so when the rear wheel is moving, the cranks are moving. To slow down, the rider applies resistance to the pedals, acting as a braking system which can be as effective as a conventional rear wheel brake, but not as effective as a front wheel brake.[55]
+
+Bicycle suspension refers to the system or systems used to suspend the rider and all or part of the bicycle. This serves two purposes: to keep the wheels in continuous contact with the ground, improving control, and to isolate the rider and luggage from jarring due to rough surfaces, improving comfort.
+
+Bicycle suspensions are used primarily on mountain bicycles, but are also common on hybrid bicycles, as they can help deal with problematic vibration from poor surfaces. Suspension is especially important on recumbent bicycles, since while an upright bicycle rider can stand on the pedals to achieve some of the benefits of suspension, a recumbent rider cannot.
+
+Basic mountain bicycles and hybrids usually have front suspension only, whilst more sophisticated ones also have rear suspension. Road bicycles tend to have no suspension.
+
+The wheel axle fits into fork ends in the frame and fork. A pair of wheels may be called a wheelset, especially in the context of ready-built "off the shelf", performance-oriented wheels.
+
+Tires vary enormously depending on their intended purpose. Road bicycles use tires 18 to 25 millimeters wide, most often completely smooth, or slick, and inflated to high pressure in order to roll fast on smooth surfaces. Off-road tires are usually between 38 and 64 mm (1.5 and 2.5 in) wide, and have treads for gripping in muddy conditions or metal studs for ice.
+
+Some components, which are often optional accessories on sports bicycles, are standard features on utility bicycles to enhance their usefulness, comfort, safety and visibility. Mudguards, or fenders, protect the cyclist and moving parts from spray when riding through wet areas and chainguards protect clothes from oil on the chain while preventing clothing from being caught between the chain and crankset teeth. Kick stands keep bicycles upright when parked, and bike locks deter theft. Front-mounted baskets, front or rear luggage carriers or racks, and panniers mounted above either or both wheels can be used to carry equipment or cargo. Pegs can be fastened to one, or both of the wheel hubs to either help the rider perform certain tricks, or allow a place for extra riders to stand, or rest.[citation needed] Parents sometimes add rear-mounted child seats, an auxiliary saddle fitted to the crossbar, or both to transport children. Bicycles can also be fitted with a hitch to tow a trailer for carrying cargo, a child, or both.
+
+Toe-clips and toestraps and clipless pedals help keep the foot locked in the proper pedal position and enable cyclists to pull and push the pedals. Technical accessories include cyclocomputers for measuring speed, distance, heart rate, GPS data etc. Other accessories include lights, reflectors, mirrors, racks, trailers, bags, water bottles and cages, and bell.[56] Bicycle lights, reflectors, and helmets are required by law in some geographic regions depending on the legal code. It is more common to see bicycles with bottle generators, dynamos, lights, fenders, racks and bells in Europe. Bicyclists also have specialized form fitting and high visibility clothing.
+
+Children's bicycles may be outfitted with cosmetic enhancements such as bike horns, streamers, and spoke beads.[57] Training wheels are sometimes used when learning to ride.
+
+Bicycle helmets can reduce injury in the event of a collision or accident, and a suitable helmet is legally required of riders in many jurisdictions. Helmets may be classified as an accessory[56] or as an item of clothing.[58]
+
+Bike trainers are used to enable cyclists to cycle while the bike remains stationary. They are frequently used to warm up before races or indoors when riding conditions are unfavorable.[59]
+
+A number of formal and industry standards exist for bicycle components to help make spare parts exchangeable and to maintain a minimum product safety.
+
+The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) has a special technical committee for cycles, TC149, that has the scope of "Standardization in the field of cycles, their components and accessories with particular reference to terminology, testing methods and requirements for performance and safety, and interchangeability".
+
+The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) also has a specific Technical Committee, TC333, that defines European standards for cycles. Their mandate states that EN cycle standards shall harmonize with ISO standards. Some CEN cycle standards were developed before ISO published their standards, leading to strong European influences in this area. European cycle standards tend to describe minimum safety requirements, while ISO standards have historically harmonized parts geometry.[60]
+
+Like all devices with mechanical moving parts, bicycles do require a certain amount of regular maintenance and replacement of worn parts. A bicycle is relatively simple compared with a car, so some cyclists choose to do at least part of the maintenance themselves. Some components are easy to handle using relatively simple tools, while other components may require specialist manufacturer-dependent tools.
+
+Many bicycle components are available at several different price/quality points; manufacturers generally try to keep all components on any particular bike at about the same quality level, though at the very cheap end of the market there may be some skimping on less obvious components (e.g. bottom bracket).
+
+The most basic maintenance item is keeping the tires correctly inflated; this can make a noticeable difference as to how the bike feels to ride. Bicycle tires usually have a marking on the side wall indicating the pressure appropriate for that tire. Note that bicycles use much higher pressures than cars: car tires are normally in the range 30 to 40 pounds per square inch while bicycle tires are normally in the range 60 to 100 pounds per square inch.
+
+Another basic maintenance item is regular lubrication of the chain and pivot points for derailleurs and brakes. Most of the bearings on a modern bike are sealed and grease-filled and require little or no attention; such bearings will usually last for 10,000 miles or more.
+
+The chain and the brake blocks are the components which wear out most quickly, so these need to be checked from time to time (typically every 500 miles or so). Most local bike shops will do such checks for free. Note that when a chain becomes badly worn it will also wear out the rear cogs/cassette and eventually the chain ring(s), so replacing a chain when only moderately worn will prolong the life of other components.
+
+Over the longer term, tires do wear out (2000 to 5000 miles); a rash of punctures is often the most visible sign of a worn tire.
+
+Very few bicycle components can actually be repaired; replacement of the failing component is the normal practice.
+
+The most common roadside problem is a puncture. After removing the offending nail/tack/thorn/glass shard/etc. there are two approaches: either mend the puncture by the roadside, or replace the inner tube and then mend the puncture in the comfort of home. Some brands of tires are much more puncture resistant than others, often incorporating one or more layers of Kevlar; the downside of such tires is that they may be heavier and/or more difficult to fit and remove.
+
+There are specialized bicycle tools for use both in the shop and on the road. Many cyclists carry tool kits. These may include a tire patch kit (which, in turn, may contain any combination of a hand pump or CO2 Pump, tire levers, spare tubes, self-adhesive patches, or tube-patching material, an adhesive, a piece of sandpaper or a metal grater (for roughing the tube surface to be patched), Special, thin wrenches are often required for maintaining various screw fastened parts, specifically, the frequently lubricated ball-bearing "cones".[62][63] and sometimes even a block of French chalk.), wrenches, hex keys, screwdrivers, and a chain tool. There are also cycling specific multi-tools that combine many of these implements into a single compact device. More specialized bicycle components may require more complex tools, including proprietary tools specific for a given manufacturer.
+
+The bicycle has had a considerable effect on human society, in both the cultural and industrial realms.
+
+Around the turn of the 20th century, bicycles reduced crowding in inner-city tenements by allowing workers to commute from more spacious dwellings in the suburbs. They also reduced dependence on horses. Bicycles allowed people to travel for leisure into the country, since bicycles were three times as energy efficient as walking and three to four times as fast.
+
+In built up cities around the world, urban planning uses cycling infrastructure like bikeways to reduce traffic congestion and air pollution.[64] A number of cities around the world have implemented schemes known as bicycle sharing systems or community bicycle programs.[65][66] The first of these was the White Bicycle plan in Amsterdam in 1965. It was followed by yellow bicycles in La Rochelle and green bicycles in Cambridge. These initiatives complement public transport systems and offer an alternative to motorized traffic to help reduce congestion and pollution.[67] In Europe, especially in the Netherlands and parts of Germany and Denmark, bicycle commuting is common. In Copenhagen, a cyclists' organization runs a Cycling Embassy that promotes biking for commuting and sightseeing. The United Kingdom has a tax break scheme (IR 176) that allows employees to buy a new bicycle tax free to use for commuting.[68]
+
+In the Netherlands all train stations offer free bicycle parking, or a more secure parking place for a small fee, with the larger stations also offering bicycle repair shops. Cycling is so popular that the parking capacity may be exceeded, while in some places such as Delft the capacity is usually exceeded.[69] In Trondheim in Norway, the Trampe bicycle lift has been developed to encourage cyclists by giving assistance on a steep hill. Buses in many cities have bicycle carriers mounted on the front.
+
+There are towns in some countries where bicycle culture has been an integral part of the landscape for generations, even without much official support. That is the case of Ílhavo, in Portugal.
+
+In cities where bicycles are not integrated into the public transportation system, commuters often use bicycles as elements of a mixed-mode commute, where the bike is used to travel to and from train stations or other forms of rapid transit. Some students who commute several miles drive a car from home to a campus parking lot, then ride a bicycle to class. Folding bicycles are useful in these scenarios, as they are less cumbersome when carried aboard. Los Angeles removed a small amount of seating on some trains to make more room for bicycles and wheel chairs.[70]
+
+Some US companies, notably in the tech sector, are developing both innovative cycle designs and cycle-friendliness in the workplace. Foursquare, whose CEO Dennis Crowley "pedaled to pitch meetings ... [when he] was raising money from venture capitalists" on a two-wheeler, chose a new location for its New York headquarters "based on where biking would be easy". Parking in the office was also integral to HQ planning. Mitchell Moss, who runs the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy & Management at New York University, said in 2012: "Biking has become the mode of choice for the educated high tech worker".[71]
+
+Bicycles offer an important mode of transport in many developing countries. Until recently, bicycles have been a staple of everyday life throughout Asian countries. They are the most frequently used method of transport for commuting to work, school, shopping, and life in general. In Europe, bicycles are commonly used.[72] They also offer a degree of exercise to keep individuals healthy.[73]
+
+Bicycles are also celebrated in the visual arts. An example of this is the Bicycle Film Festival, a film festival hosted all around the world.
+
+Experiments done in Uganda, Tanzania, and Sri Lanka on hundreds of households have shown that a bicycle can increase a poor family's income as much as 35%.[74][better source needed][75][76] Transport, if analyzed for the cost-benefit analysis for rural poverty alleviation, has given one of the best returns in this regard. For example, road investments in India were a staggering 3–10 times more effective than almost all other investments and subsidies in rural economy in the decade of the 1990s. What a road does at a macro level to increase transport, the bicycle supports at the micro level. The bicycle, in that sense, can be an important poverty-eradication tool in poor nations.
+
+The safety bicycle gave women unprecedented mobility, contributing to their emancipation in Western nations. As bicycles became safer and cheaper, more women had access to the personal freedom that bicycles embodied, and so the bicycle came to symbolize the New Woman of the late 19th century, especially in Britain and the United States.[8][78] The bicycle craze in the 1890s also led to a movement for so-called rational dress, which helped liberate women from corsets and ankle-length skirts and other restrictive garments, substituting the then-shocking bloomers.[8]
+
+The bicycle was recognized by 19th-century feminists and suffragists as a "freedom machine" for women. American Susan B. Anthony said in a New York World interview on February 2, 1896:
+"I think it has done more to emancipate woman than any one thing in the world. I rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. It gives her a feeling of self-reliance and independence the moment she takes her seat; and away she goes, the picture of untrammelled womanhood."[79]:859 In 1895 Frances Willard, the tightly laced president of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union, wrote A Wheel Within a Wheel: How I Learned to Ride the Bicycle, with Some Reflections by the Way, a 75-page illustrated memoir praising "Gladys", her bicycle, for its "gladdening effect" on her health and political optimism.[77] Willard used a cycling metaphor to urge other suffragists to action.[77]
+
+In 1985, Georgena Terry started the first women-specific bicycle company. Her designs featured frame geometry and wheel sizes chosen to better fit women, with shorter top tubes and more suitable reach.[1]
+
+Bicycle manufacturing proved to be a training ground for other industries and led to the development of advanced metalworking techniques, both for the frames themselves and for special components such as ball bearings, washers, and sprockets. These techniques later enabled skilled metalworkers and mechanics to develop the components used in early automobiles and aircraft.
+
+Wilbur and Orville Wright, a pair of businessmen, ran the Wright Cycle Company which designed, manufactured and sold their bicycles during the bike boom of the 1890s.[80]
+
+They also served to teach the industrial models later adopted, including mechanization and mass production (later copied and adopted by Ford and General Motors),[81][82][83] vertical integration[82] (also later copied and adopted by Ford), aggressive advertising[84] (as much as 10% of all advertising in U.S. periodicals in 1898 was by bicycle makers),[85] lobbying for better roads (which had the side benefit of acting as advertising, and of improving sales by providing more places to ride),[83] all first practiced by Pope.[83] In addition, bicycle makers adopted the annual model change[81][86] (later derided as planned obsolescence, and usually credited to General Motors), which proved very successful.[87]
+
+Early bicycles were an example of conspicuous consumption, being adopted by the fashionable elites.[88][89][90][81][91][92][93][94] In addition, by serving as a platform for accessories, which could ultimately cost more than the bicycle itself, it paved the way for the likes of the Barbie doll.[81][95][96]
+
+Bicycles helped create, or enhance, new kinds of businesses, such as bicycle messengers,[97] traveling seamstresses,[98] riding academies,[99] and racing rinks.[100][99] Their board tracks were later adapted to early motorcycle and automobile racing. There were a variety of new inventions, such as spoke tighteners,[101] and specialized lights,[96][101] socks and shoes,[102] and even cameras, such as the Eastman Company's Poco.[103] Probably the best known and most widely used of these inventions, adopted well beyond cycling, is Charles Bennett's Bike Web, which came to be called the jock strap.[104]
+
+They also presaged a move away from public transit[105] that would explode with the introduction of the automobile.
+
+J. K. Starley's company became the Rover Cycle Company Ltd. in the late 1890s, and then simply the Rover Company when it started making cars. Morris Motors Limited (in Oxford) and Škoda also began in the bicycle business, as did the Wright brothers.[106] Alistair Craig, whose company eventually emerged to become the engine manufacturers Ailsa Craig, also started from manufacturing bicycles, in Glasgow in March 1885.
+
+In general, U.S. and European cycle manufacturers used to assemble cycles from their own frames and components made by other companies, although very large companies (such as Raleigh) used to make almost every part of a bicycle (including bottom brackets, axles, etc.) In recent years, those bicycle makers have greatly changed their methods of production. Now, almost none of them produce their own frames.
+
+Many newer or smaller companies only design and market their products; the actual production is done by Asian companies. For example, some 60% of the world's bicycles are now being made in China. Despite this shift in production, as nations such as China and India become more wealthy, their own use of bicycles has declined due to the increasing affordability of cars and motorcycles.[107]
+One of the major reasons for the proliferation of Chinese-made bicycles in foreign markets is the lower cost of labor in China.[108]
+
+In line with the European financial crisis, in Italy in 2011 the number of bicycle sales (1.75 million) just passed the number of new car sales.[109]
+
+One of the profound economic implications of bicycle use is that it liberates the user from oil consumption.(Ballantine, 1972) The bicycle is an inexpensive, fast, healthy and environmentally friendly mode of transport. Ivan Illich stated that bicycle use extended the usable physical environment for people, while alternatives such as cars and motorways degraded and confined people's environment and mobility.[110]
+Currently, two billion bicycles are in use around the world. Children, students, professionals, laborers, civil servants and seniors are pedaling around their communities. They all experience the freedom and the natural opportunity for exercise that the bicycle easily provides. Bicycle also has lowest carbon intensity of travel.[111]
+
+The proper Islamic bicycle for the Iranian women is a topic of heated discussion in both Sunni and Shia Islam.[112][113][114]
+
+The global bicycle market is $61 billion in 2011.[115] As of 2009[update] 130 million bicycles were sold every year globally and 66% of them were made in China.[116]
+
+Early in its development, as with automobiles, there were restrictions on the operation of bicycles. Along with advertising, and to gain free publicity, Albert A. Pope litigated on behalf of cyclists.[83]
+
+The 1968 Vienna Convention on Road Traffic of the United Nations considers a bicycle to be a vehicle, and a person controlling a bicycle (whether actually riding or not) is considered an operator. The traffic codes of many countries reflect these definitions and demand that a bicycle satisfy certain legal requirements before it can be used on public roads. In many jurisdictions, it is an offense to use a bicycle that is not in a roadworthy condition.[citation needed]
+
+In most jurisdictions, bicycles must have functioning front and rear lights when ridden after dark. As some generator or dynamo-driven lamps operate only while moving, rear reflectors are frequently also mandatory. Since a moving bicycle makes little noise, some countries insist that bicycles have a warning bell for use when approaching pedestrians, equestrians, and other cyclists, though sometimes a car horn can be used when a 12 volt battery is available.[citation needed]
+
+Some countries require child and/or adult cyclists to wear helmets, as this may protect riders from head trauma. Countries which require adult cyclists to wear helmets include Spain, New Zealand and Australia. Mandatory helmet wearing is one of the most controversial topics in the cycling world, with proponents arguing that it reduces head injuries and thus is an acceptable requirement, while opponents argue that by making cycling seem more dangerous and cumbersome, it reduces cyclist numbers on the streets, creating an overall negative health effect (fewer people cycling for their own health, and the remaining cyclists being more exposed through a reversed safety in numbers effect).[citation needed]
+
+Bicycles are popular targets for theft, due to their value and ease of resale.[118] The number of bicycles stolen annually is difficult to quantify as a large number of crimes are not reported.[119] Around 50% of the participants in the Montreal International Journal of Sustainable Transportation survey were subjected to a bicycle theft in their lifetime as active cyclists.[120] Most bicycles have serial numbers that can be recorded to verify identity in case of theft.[121]

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+Friday is the day of the week between Thursday and Saturday. In countries adopting the "Monday-first" convention it is the fifth day of the week. In countries that adopt the "Sunday-first" convention, it is the sixth and penultimate day of the week.
+
+In most Western countries, Friday is the fifth and final day of the working week. In some other countries, for example the Maldives, Friday is the first day of the weekend, with Saturday the second. In Iran, Friday is the last day of the weekend, with Saturday as the first day of the working week. Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia and Kuwait also followed this convention until they changed to a Friday–Saturday weekend on 1 September 2006 in Bahrain and the UAE,[1] and a year later in Kuwait.[2] In Iran, Thursday and Friday are weekend days.
+
+The name Friday comes from the Old English Frīġedæġ, meaning the "day of Frige", a result of an old convention associating the Germanic goddess Frigg with the Roman goddess Venus, with whom the day is associated in many different cultures. The same holds for Frīatag in Old High German, Freitag in Modern German, and vrijdag in Dutch.
+
+The expected cognate name in Old Norse would be friggjar-dagr. The name of Friday in Old Norse is frjá-dagr instead, indicating a loan of the week-day names from Low German,[3] however the modern Faroese name is fríggjadagur. The modern Scandinavian form is fredag in Swedish, Norwegian, and Danish, meaning Freyja's day. The distinction between Freyja and Frigg in some Germanic mythologies is contested.
+
+The word for Friday in most Romance languages is derived from Latin dies Veneris or "day of Venus" (a translation of Greek Aphrodī́tēs hēméra, Ἀφροδῑ́της Ἡμέρα), such as vendredi in French, venres in Galician, divendres in Catalan, vennari in Corsican, venerdì in Italian, vineri in Romanian, and viernes in Spanish and influencing the Filipino biyernes or byernes, and the Chamorro betnes. This is also reflected in the p-Celtic Welsh language as Gwener.
+
+An exception is Portuguese, also a Romance language, which uses the word sexta-feira, meaning "sixth day of liturgical celebration", derived from the Latin feria sexta used in religious texts where it was not allowed to consecrate days to pagan gods.
+
+In Sardinian, the word chenàpura also figures as an exception among all the other Romance languages, since it is derived from Latin cena pura. This name had been given by the Jewish community exiled to the island in order to designate the food specifically prepared for Shabbat eve.[4]
+
+In Arabic, Friday is الجمعة al-jumʿah, from a root meaning "congregation/gathering." In languages of Islamic countries outside the Arab world, the word for Friday is commonly a derivation of this: (Malay Jumaat (Malaysia) or  Jumat (Indonesian), Turkish cuma, Persian/Urdu جمعه, jumʿa).
+
+In modern Greek, four of the words for the week-days are derived from ordinals. However, the Greek word for Friday is Paraskevi (Παρασκευή) and is derived from a word meaning "to prepare" (παρασκευάζω). Like Saturday (Savvato, Σάββατο) and Sunday (Kyriaki, Κυριακή), Friday is named for its liturgical significance as the day of preparation before Sabbath, which was inherited by Greek Christian Orthodox culture from Jewish practices.
+
+Friday was formerly a Christian fast day; this is the origin of the Irish Dé hAoine, Scottish Gaelic Di-Haoine, Manx Jeheiney and Icelandic föstudagur, all meaning "fast day".
+
+In both biblical and modern Hebrew, Friday is יום שישי Yom Shishi meaning "the sixth day."
+
+In most Indian languages, Friday is Shukravāra, named for Shukra, the planet Venus. In Bengali শুক্রবার or Shukrobar is the 6th day in the Bengali week of Bengali Calendar and is the beginning of the weekend is Bangladesh.
+
+In Japanese, 金曜日 (きんようび, kinyōbi) is formed from the words 金星 (きんせい, kinsei) meaning Venus (lit. gold + planet) and 曜日 (ようび, yōbi) meaning day (of the week).
+
+In the Korean language, it is 금요일 in Korean Hangul writing (Romanization: geumyoil), and is the pronounced form of the written word 金曜日 in Chinese characters, as in Japanese.
+
+In the Nahuatl language, Friday is quetzalcōātōnal ([ket͡saɬkoːaːˈtoːnaɬ]) meaning "day of Quetzalcoatl".
+
+Most Slavic languages call Friday the "fifth (day)": Belarusian пятніца – pyatnitsa, Bulgarian петък – petŭk, Croatian petak, Czech pátek, Polish piątek, Russian пятница – pyatnitsa, Serbian петак – petak, Slovak piatok, Slovene petek, and Ukrainian п'ятниця – p'yatnitsya. The Hungarian word péntek is a loan from Pannonian dialect of Slavic language. The n in péntek suggests an early adoption from Slavic, when many Slavic dialects still had nasal vowels. In modern Slavic languages only Polish retained nasal vowels.[5]
+
+Friday is considered unlucky in some cultures.  This is particularly so in maritime circles; perhaps the most enduring sailing superstition is that it is unlucky to begin a voyage on a Friday.[6][7]  In the 19th century, Admiral William Henry Smyth described Friday in his nautical lexicon The Sailor's Word-Book as:
+
+The Dies Infaustus, on which old seamen were desirous of not getting under weigh, as ill-omened.[8]
+
+(Dies Infaustus means "unlucky day".[9])  This superstition is the root of the well-known urban legend of HMS Friday.
+
+In modern times, Friday the 13th is considered to be especially unlucky, due to the conjunction of Friday with the unlucky number thirteen. Such a Friday may be called a "Black Friday".
+
+However, this superstition is not universal, notably in Scottish Gaelic culture:
+
+Though Friday has always been held an unlucky day in many Christian countries, still in the Hebrides it is supposed that it is a lucky day for sowing the seed. Good Friday in particular is a favourite day for potato planting—even strict Roman Catholics make a point of planting a bucketful on that day. Probably the idea is that as the Resurrection followed the Crucifixion, and Burial so too in the case of the seed, and after death will come life?[10]
+
+In astrology, Friday is connected with the planet Venus and is symbolized by that planet's symbol ♀. Friday is also associated with the astrological signs Libra and Taurus.
+
+In Christianity, Good Friday is the Friday before Easter. It commemorates the crucifixion of Jesus.
+
+Traditionally, Roman Catholics were obliged to refrain from eating the meat of warm-blooded animals[11] on Fridays, although fish was allowed.  The Filet-O-Fish was invented in 1962 by Lou Groen, a McDonald's franchise owner in Cincinnati, Ohio,[11][12] in response to falling hamburger sales on Fridays resulting from the Roman Catholic practice of abstaining from meat on Fridays.[13]
+
+In the present day, episcopal conferences are now authorized to allow some other form of penance to replace abstinence from meat. The 1983 Code of Canon Law states:
+
+Some Anglicans (particularly Anglo-Catholics) also practice abstinence from meat either on all Fridays or on Fridays in Lent. More generally, traditional Anglican Prayer Books prescribe weekly Friday abstinence for all Anglicans.[15][16]
+
+The Eastern Orthodox Church continues to observe Fridays (as well as Wednesdays) as fast days throughout the year (with the exception of several fast-free periods during the year). Fasting on Fridays entails abstinence from meat or meat products (i.e., quadrupeds), poultry, and dairy products (as well as fish). Unless a feast day occurs on a Friday, the Orthodox also abstain from using oil in their cooking and from alcoholic beverages (there is some debate over whether abstention from oil involves all cooking oil or only olive oil). On particularly important feast days, fish may also be permitted. For the Orthodox, Fridays throughout the year commemorate the Crucifixion of Christ and the Theotokos (Mother of God), especially as she stood by the foot of the cross.  There are hymns in the Octoekhos which reflect this liturgically.  These include Theotokia (hymns to the Mother of God) which are chanted on Wednesdays and Fridays called Stavrotheotokia ("Cross-Theotokia"). The dismissal at the end of services on Fridays begins with the words: "May Christ our true God, through the power of the precious and life-giving cross...."
+
+Quakers traditionally referred to Friday as "Sixth Day," eschewing the pagan origins of the name.[17] In Slavic countries, it is called "Fifth Day" (Polish: piątek, Russian: пятница, pyatnitsa).
+
+In Dravidian folk religion, special observances are practiced for mother goddesses on Friday. In Hinduism Fridays are important for married ladies of Hinduism. They worship God on that day.
+
+In Islam, Friday (from sun-down Thursday to sun-down Friday, simpler than midnight to midnight in a pre-clock age) corresponds as a holy day to Sunday in Christianity and Saturday (Friday evening to Saturday evening) in Judaism and Sabbatarian Christianity. Friday observance includes attendance at a mosque for congregation prayer or Salat AlJumu'ah. It is considered a day of peace and mercy (see Jumu'ah) as well as a day of rest.[citation needed]
+
+According to some Islamic traditions, the day is stated to be the original holy day ordained by God, but that now Jews and Christians recognize the days after.[18][19] In some Islamic countries, the week begins on Sunday and ends on Saturday, just like the Jewish week and the week in some Christian countries. The week begins on Saturday and ends on Friday in most other Islamic countries, such as Somalia, and Iran. Friday is also the day of rest in the Bahá'í Faith.[20] In some Malaysian states, Friday is the first week-end day, with Saturday the second, to allow Muslims to perform their religious obligations on Friday.[21] Sunday is the first working day of the week for governmental organisations.
+
+Muslims are recommended not to fast on a Friday by itself (makruh, recommended against, but not haram, religiously forbidden), unless it is accompanied with fasting the day before (Thursday) or day after (Saturday), or it corresponds with days usually considered good for fasting (i.e. Day of Arafah or Ashura), or it falls within one's usual religious fasting habits (i.e. fasting every other day), then it's completely permissible.[22]
+Muslims believe Friday as "Syed-ul-Ayyam" meaning King of days. A narration in Sahih Muslim describes the importance of Friday as follows.
+
+"Abu Huraira reported the Messenger of Allah (PBUH) as saying: The best day on which the sun has risen is Friday; on it, Adam was created. on it he was made to enter Paradise, on it he was expelled from it. And the last hour will take place on no day other than Friday. 
+[Sahih Muslim Book 7, Hadith 27]”
+
+Jewish Sabbath begins at sunset on Friday and lasts until nightfall on Saturday. There is a Jewish custom to fast on the Friday of the week of Chukat.
+
+In Thailand, the color associated with Friday is blue (see Thai calendar).[citation needed]

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+
+
+Veneto (US: /ˈvɛnətoʊ, ˈveɪn-, -neɪt-, ˈvɛnɛtoʊ/,[4][5][6] Italian: [ˈvɛːneto];[7] Venetian: Vèneto [ˈvɛneto]) or Venetia[7] is one of the 20 regions of Italy. Its population is about five million, ranking fifth in Italy. The region's capital is Venice.
+
+Veneto was part of the Roman Empire until the 5th century AD. Later, after a feudal period, it was part of the Republic of Venice until 1797. Venice ruled for centuries over one of the largest and richest maritime republics and trade empires in the world. After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Republic was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it was merged with the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence.
+
+Besides Italian, most inhabitants also speak Venetian[citation needed] which is divided into five varieties.
+
+Since 1971 the Statute of Veneto has referred to the region's citizens as "the Venetian people".[8][9] Article 1 defines Veneto as an "autonomous Region", "constituted by the Venetian people and the lands of the provinces of Belluno, Padua, Rovigo, Treviso, Venice, Verona and Vicenza", while maintaining "bonds with Venetians in the world". Article 2 sets forth the principle of the "self-government of the Venetian people" and mandates the Region to "promote the historical identity of the Venetian people and civilisation". Despite these affirmations, approved by the Italian Parliament, Veneto is not among the autonomous regions with special statute, differently from its north-eastern and north-western neighbours, Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol respectively.
+
+Veneto is home to a notable nationalist movement, known as Venetian nationalism or Venetism. The region's largest party is the Liga Veneta, a founding component of the Lega Nord. The current President of Veneto is Luca Zaia (Liga Veneta–Lega Nord), re-elected in 2015 with 50.1% of the vote. Zaia II Government includes also Forza Italia and is externally supported by Independence We Veneto and the Brothers of Italy. An autonomy referendum took place in 2017: 57.2% of Venetians turned out, 98.1% voting "yes" to "further forms and special conditions of autonomy".
+
+Having been for a long period in history a land of mass emigration, Veneto is today one of the greatest immigrant-receiving regions in the country, with 487,493 foreigners (9.9% of the regional population; January 2018), notably including Romanians (25.2%), Moroccans (9.3%), Chinese (7.1%),  Moldovans (7.0%) and Albanians (6.9%).[10][11][11]
+
+Veneto is the 8th largest region in Italy, with a total area of 18,398.9 km2 (7,103.9 sq mi). It is located in the north-eastern part of Italy and is bordered to the east by Friuli-Venezia Giulia, to the south by Emilia-Romagna, to the west by Lombardy and to the north by Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol. In its northernmost corner it also borders Austria.
+
+The north–south extension of Veneto is 210 km (130 mi) from the Austrian border to the mouth of the River Po. By area, 29% of its surface is mountainous (Carnic Alps, eastern Dolomites and Venetian Prealps). The highest massif in the Dolomites is the Marmolada-massif at 3,342 m (10,965 ft). Other dolomitic peaks are the Tre Cime di Lavaredo and the Pale di San Martino. The Venetian Prealps are not as high and range between 700 m (2,300 ft) and 2,200 m (7,200 ft). A distinctive characteristic of the Pre-alps are the cave formations, including chasms and sink holes; the Spluga della Preta, situated in the Monte Lessini chain in the province of Verona, has an explored depth of 985 m (3,232 ft), being the deepest cave in Italy. Fossil deposits are also abundant there.
+
+The Po Valley, covering 57% of Veneto, extends from the mountains to the Adriatic sea, broken only by some low hills: Euganean Hills, Berici Hills Colli Asolani and Montello, which constitute the remaining 14% of the territory. The plain itself is subdivided into the higher plain (gravel-strewn and not very fertile) and the lower plain (rich in water sources and arable terrain). The lower plain is both a mainstay of agricultural production and the most populated part of the region.
+
+Several rivers flow through the region: the Po, Adige, Brenta, Bacchiglione, Livenza, Piave, and Tagliamento. The eastern shore of the largest lake in Italy, Lake Garda, belongs to Veneto. The coastline covers approximately 200 km (120 mi), of which 100 km (62 mi) are beaches.
+
+The coasts of the Adriatic Sea are characterised by the Venetian Lagoon, a flat terrain with ponds, marshes and islands. The Po Delta to the south features sandbars and dunes along the coastline. The inland portion contains cultivable land recently reclaimed by a system of canals and dykes. Fish ponds have been created there as well. The delta and the lagoon are a stopping-point for migratory birds.
+
+Veneto's morphology is characterised by its:[12]
+
+The climate changes significantly from one area to another: while it is continental on the plains, it is milder along the Adriatic coast; around the Lake Garda and in the hilly areas. The lowlands are often covered by thick fog; precipitations that are scarce – 750 mm per year – close to the river Po, but are more abundant – from 750 to 1100 mm per year – at higher altitudes; the highest values – up to 3200 mm per year – are recorded in the Bellunese Prealps, near Mount Pasubio and on the Asiago plateau.
+
+Between the 2nd and 1st millennium BC, the region was inhabited by the Euganei. According to ancient historians, who perhaps wanted to link Venetic origins to legend of Roman origins in Troy, the Veneti (often called the Palaeoveneti) came from Paphlagonia in Anatolia at the time of the Fall of Troy (12th century BC), led by prince Antenor, a comrade of Aeneas. Other historians link Venetic origins with Celts.
+
+In the 7th–6th centuries BC the local populations of Veneto entered into contact with the Etruscans and the Greeks. Venetic culture reached a high point during the 4th century BC. These ancient Veneti spoke Venetic, an Indo-European language akin to, but distinct from Latin and the other Italic languages. Meanwhile, the Veneti prospered through their trade in amber and breeding of horses. Este, Padua, Oderzo, Adria, Vicenza, Verona, and Altino became centres of Venetic culture. Over time, the Veneti began to adopt the dress and certain other customs of their Celtic neighbours.
+
+During the 3rd century BC, the Veneti, together with the Cenomani Celts on their western border, sided with the Romans, as Rome expanded and struggled against the Insubres and Boii (Celts). During the Second Punic War (218 – 202 BC), the Veneti even sent a contingent of soldiers to fight alongside the Romans against Hannibal and the invading Carthaginians.  These Venetians were among those slaughtered at the Battle of Cannae (216 BC).
+
+In 181 BC a Roman triumvirate of Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, Caius Flaminius, and Lucius Manlius Acidinus founded a Latin colony at Aquileia as a base to protect the territory of the Veneti from incursions of the hostile Carni and Histri. From then on, Roman influence over the area increased. In 169 BC 1,500 more colonising families were sent by Rome to Aquileia. In 148 BC the Via Postumia was completed connecting Aquileia to Genoa. In 131 BC, the Via Annia joined Adria to Patavium (modern Padua) to Altinum to Concordia to Aquileia.
+
+The Roman Republic gradually transformed its alliance with the Veneti into a relationship of dominance. After the 91 BC Italic rebellion, the cities of the Veneti, together with the rest of Transpadania, were granted partial rights of Roman citizenship according to the Lex Pompeia de Transpadanis. Later in 49 BC, by the Lex Roscia granted full Roman citizenship to the Veneti. The Via Claudia would be completed in AD 46 to connected Altinum, Tarvisium (modern Treviso), Feltria (modern Feltre), and Tridentum (modern Trento).  From Tridentum it continued northwards to Pons Drusus and further to Augusta Vindelicorum (modern Augsburg), and southwards from Trento to Verona and Mutina (modern Modena).
+
+After the Battle of Philippi (42 BC) ended the Roman Civil War, the lands of the Veneti, together with the rest of Cisalpine Gaul, ceased to be a province. Between 8 and 6 BC, Augustus reorganized Italia into 11 regions. The territory of modern Veneto along with Istria, modern Friuli and Trentino-Alto Adige and eastern Lombardy (including its cities of Mantua, Cremona, Brescia, and Sondrio) became Region X (Venetia et Histria).  Aquileia, although not officially the capital was the chief municipium of the region.[13]  Meanwhile, under the Pax Romana, Patavium developed into one of the most important cities of northern Italy. Other Venetic cities such as Opitergium (modern Oderzo), Tarvisium, Feltria, Vicetia (modern Vicenza), Ateste (modern Este), and Altinum (modern Altino) adopted the Latin language and the culture of Rome. By the end of the 1st century AD Latin had displaced the original Venetic language.
+
+In 166 AD the Quadi and Marcomanni invaded Venetia. It was the beginning of many barbarian invasions. Marcus Aurelius retaining the regions of Italia, superimposed another layer of administration by ascribing Regions X and XI to the district of Transpadana under a iuridicus.  The end of the 3rd c. brought further administrative changes when Diocletian abolished the regions and districts and established provinciae.  Thus, Region X (Venetia et Histria) became Province VIII (Venetia et Histria), being enlarged in the west up to the Adda River governed by a corrector until 363 and from 368 to 373 by a consularius seated at Aquileia. Venetia et Histria remained one of the 16 Provinces of Italy in the 5th century when both Alaric the Goth and then Attila and the Huns devastated the area. Attila laid siege to Aquileia and turned it into a ruin in 452 AD. Many of the mainland inhabitants sought protection in the nearby lagoons which would become Grado in the east and Venice more to the west. On the heels of the Huns came the Ostrogoths who not only invaded, but also settled down in the region, especially near Treviso where the penultimate king Totila was born.[14]
+
+During the mid-6th century, Justinian reconquered Venetia for the Eastern Roman Empire. An Exarch was established at Ravenna while a military tribune was set up in Oderzo. Greek-Byzantine rule did not last long. Starting in 568 AD, the Lombards crossed the Julian Alps. These invaders subdivided the territory of Venetia into numerous feuds ruled by Germanic dukes and counts, essentially creating the division of Veneto from Friuli.
+
+The invasion provoked another wave of migration from the mainland to the Byzantine controlled coast and islands. In 643 AD the Lombards conquered the Byzantine base at Oderzo and took possession of practically all of Veneto (and Friuli) except for Venice and Grado. The 36 Lombard duchies included the Venetian cities of Ceneda, Treviso, Verona, and Vicenza. A reminder of Lombard rule can be seen in the place names beginning with the word Farra.
+
+By the middle of the 8th century, the Franks had assumed political control of the region and the mainland of Veneto became part of the Carolingian Empire. Though politically dominant, these Germanic invaders were gradually absorbed into the Venetian population over the centuries.
+In the late 9th century, Berengar, Margrave of the March of Friuli was elected king of Italy. Under his tumultuous reign, the March of Friuli was absorbed into the March of Verona so that Verona's territory contained a large portion of Roman Venetia.
+
+In the 10th century, the mainland of Veneto, after suffering raids from the Magyars and the Slavs, was incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire. Gradually, the communes of the mainland grew in power and wealth. In 1167 an alliance (called the Lombard League) was formed among the Venetian cities such as Venice, Padua, Treviso, Vicenza, and Verona with other cities of Northern Italy to assert their rights against the Holy Roman Emperor.
+
+The Second Treaty of Constance in 1183 confirmed the Peace of Venice of 1177 in which the cities agreed to remain part of the Empire as long as their jurisdiction over their own territories was not infringed upon. The league was dissolved at the death of Emperor Frederick II in 1250. This period also witnessed the founding of the second oldest university in Italy, the University of Padua founded in 1222. Around this time, Padua also served as home to St. Anthony, the beloved Saint called simply "il Santo" ("the Saint") by the inhabitants of the town.
+
+As the barbarians were interested in the wealth of the mainland, part of the Venetian population sought refuge on some of the isolated and unoccupied islands in the lagoon, from which the city of Venetiae or Venice was born. After a period of Byzantine domination in 8th century, Venice became an independent maritime Republic ruled by its elected doge.
+
+The Republic became a commercial superpower and its influence lasted through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. In fact, the Venetian Republic enjoyed 1100 years of uninterrupted influence throughout the Mediterranean. By the 16th century, the Venetian Republic dominated Veneto, Friuli, parts of Lombardy and Romagna, Istria, Dalmatia, the Ionian Islands of Corfu, Cefalonia, Ithaca and Zante. From the 13th to 17th centuries, it held the island of Crete and from the mid-15th to mid-16th century, the island of Cyprus.
+
+Venetian mainland holdings led to Venetian involvement in European and in particular, Italian politics. Cities had to be fortified, two impressive examples are Nafplio in Peloponese and Palmanova in Friuli. The wise rule and prosperity brought by the "Serenissima" (most serene republic) made the cities of the terra firma willing subjects. Eastern Islands served as useful ports for Venetian shipping. However, as the Ottoman Empire grew more powerful and aggressive, Venice was often put on the defensive. Ottoman control of the eastern Mediterranean and the discoveries of sea routes to Asia around Africa and of the Americas had a debilitating effect on the Venetian economy.
+
+In 1797, Napoleon invaded the territory of the Venetian Republic. Overwhelmed by more powerful forces, Doge Ludovico Manin resigned and retired to his villa at Passariano in Friuli and the thousand year old Republic disappeared as an independent state. This proved very unpopular in the mainland cities where sympathies were strong with the Republic of Venice. By the Treaty of Campoformio signed on 17 October 1797, part of the Venetian mainland was handed over to Francis II of the Holy Roman Empire and a western part was annexed to the French backed Cisalpine Republic. The territory soon reverted to Napoleon in 1801.
+
+Then in 1805–1806, it was conquered by Napoleon's armies and included in the Kingdom of Italy. During 1809, the region revolted against the French-Italian rule,[15] supporting the advancing Austrian troops during the War of the Fifth Coalition. It was mainly a peasant revolt, less organised than the nearby Andreas Hofer's revolt, while urban national guard troops fought on the French-Italian side. After the Congress of Vienna, 1814–1815, Venetia was the eastern half of the Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia, a separate kingdom of the Austrian Empire.
+
+During the 1848 First Italian War of Independence, Venetia rose against the central Austrian government, forming the Republic of San Marco, which lasted 17 months. It asked to be annexed to the Kingdom of Sardinia to form an Italian confederation against Austria, then using the Italian tricolour in its flag, but, after the other Italian states left the war (May 1848) and Sardinia surrendered (August 1848, then March 1849), Venetia stood alone. It surrendered on 24 August 1849, when the Siege of Venice ended.[16]
+
+The Austrian imperial government was unpopular among upper and middle classes because of Metternich's anti-liberal politics, turned by Emperor Franz Joseph into neo-absolutism after 1848, and for not granting Lombardo–Venetia any real autonomy (it was considered less than a puppet state). At the same time, it was appreciated for the efficient and honest administration, especially among lower classes, and long-standing strong cultural ties linked Venetia and Austria even after it was ceded to Italy. Despite this, after 1848–1849 there was no revolt against the Austrian rule.
+
+Venetia remained under Austrian control until the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, when the Kingdom of Italy joined on the Prussian side and was promised Venetia in exchange for its assistance. Austria offered to sell Venetia to Italy, but the Italians refused, seeing it as a dishonourable act. This caused another southern front for Austria, the Third Italian War of Independence.
+
+Once the wars ended, the Treaty of Vienna ceded the region to neutral France, but left the fortresses under Austrian control for a time. Following protests, the Austrians left and the French ceded it to Italy on 20 October. A referendum – where only 30% of the adult population voted as was custom in the period, and did so under government pressure[17] there was a 99.99% majority for Italy[18][19][20] – was held on 21–22 October and ratified the handover. During the fascist era, due to the nationalist policy the Venetian language, as other local languages, was banned in public spaces.[21]
+
+Due to uneven economic development reducing many to poverty, the 19th century and the first half of the 20th became a period of emigration. Millions of Venetians left their homes and their native land to seek opportunities in other parts of the world. Many settled down in South America, especially in Brazil; others in Australia, Canada, and the United States of America. After the Second World War, many Venetians emigrated to Western European countries. In many of these places, their descendants have maintained the use of their ancestral Venetian dialects.
+
+Those who remained in Veneto would experience the turmoil of two World Wars. In 1915, Italy entered the First World War on the side of the France and the United Kingdom, after extricating itself from its alliance with Germany and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Veneto became a major battlefront. After the Italians suffered an enormous defeat at Caporetto in November 1917, the combined Austro-Hungarian and German forces advanced almost unhindered through Veneto towards Venice until reaching the Piave River. The Battle of the Piave River prevented their troops from advancing further and was celebrated in La Leggenda del Piave. Between 24 October and 3 November 1918, Italy launched the decisive Battle of Vittorio Veneto. The battle's outcome assured Italy's victory. The Armistice of Villa Giusti which ended warfare between Italy and Austria-Hungary in World War I, was signed at Villa Giusti near Padua.
+
+Between 1943 and 1945, Veneto belonged to the Italian Social Republic, while the province of Belluno was part of the Prealpine Operations Zone. Many towns in the region were bombed by the Allies during the Second World War. The most hit were Treviso and Vicenza, as well as the industrial area around Marghera.
+
+Veneto is a semi-presidential representative democracy. The President of the Region, colloquially nicknamed Governor or even Doge in remembrance of Venice's traditional head of state, is also the head of the Regional Government. Legislative power is exerted by the Regional Council, the local parliament. The Statute (i.e. the law establishing and regulating the regional institution, which was first promulgated on 22 May 1971), uses the term "people" for Venetians, but, like in the case of Sardinians, this is not a legal recognition of any differences from other Italian citizens. Moreover, the region is not granted a form of autonomy comparable to that of neighbouring Friuli-Venezia Giulia and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol.[22] This is the reason why many municipalities have held referendums in order to be united to these regions.
+
+Traditionally a very Catholic region, Veneto was once the heartland of Christian Democracy, which won a record 60.5% of the vote in the 1948 general election, polled above 50% in each and every general and regional election until 1983 and governed the region since its establishment in 1970 to 1994. After that, Veneto has been a stronghold of the centre-right coalition, which has governed the region since 1995, first under President Giancarlo Galan (Forza Italia/The People of Freedom) and, since 2010, Luca Zaia (Liga Veneta–Lega Nord). In the 2015 regional election Liga Veneta–Lega Nord won a combined 40.9% of the vote (sum of party list and Zaia's personal list), followed by the three main Italian parties of the time, the Democratic Party (16.7%), the Five Star Movement (10.4%) and Forza Italia (6.0%).
+
+According to Robert D. Putnam, the "institutional performance" of Veneto's regional government is higher than average in Italy and Veneto belongs to the "civic North".[23]
+
+Venetian nationalism is a regionalist/nationalist political movement which gained prominence in Veneto during the 1970s and 1980s, demanding more autonomy, a special statute or even independence, and promoting Venetian culture, language and history. This is the political background in which the Liga Veneta was launched in 1980. Other regionalist/nationalist groupings, including Liga Veneta Repubblica, North-East Project and the avowed separatist Veneto State, Venetian Independence and Plebiscito.eu, emerged but they have never touched the popularity of Liga Veneta, which was a founding member of Lega Nord in 1991.
+
+Venetian Independence and other alike groups have been long proposing a referendum on the independence of Veneto from Italy. After the Regional Council approved a resolution on self-determination (with an explicit reference to a referendum) in November 2012,[24][25] a referendum bill was proposed in April 2013.[26]
+
+Plebiscite 2013 organised an online referendum, with no official recognition, for 16–21 March 2014.[27][28][29] According to organisers, turnout was 63.2% (2.36 million voters) and 89.1% of participants (56.6 of all eligible voters) voted yes.[30][31] Several news sources, however, contested these results, saying that participants were at most 135,000 (3.6% of eligible voters) based on public independent web traffic statistics.[32][33][34]
+
+On 22 October 2017 an official autonomy referendum took place in Veneto: 57.2% of Venetians participated and 98.1% voted "yes".
+
+Veneto is divided into the Metropolitan City of Venice and 6 provinces and also divided in 581 municipalities.[12][35] Of the seven provinces of the region, the Province of Padua is the most populous and has the greatest density, with 424. 81 persons per km2, reaching 2268. 58 in the city of Padua. In contrast the capital city, Venice, has a moderate density of 646. 71.[35] The province of least density is Belluno (58. 08), which is the largest in area and the most mountainous.
+
+The region has about 4.8 million inhabitants, ranking Veneto as the fifth most populated region in Italy. Veneto has one of the highest population densities among the Italian regions (265 inhabitants per km2 in 2008). This is particularly true in the provinces of Padua, Venice and Treviso, where the inhabitants per km2 are above 300. Belluno is the least densely populated province, with 57 inhabitants per km2.
+
+Like the other regions of Northern Italy and Central Italy, though with a certain time lag, Veneto has been experiencing a phase of very slow population growth caused by the dramatic fall in fertility. The overall population has so far been increasing – though only slightly – due to the net immigration started at the end of the 1980s, after more than 20 years of massive exodus from the poorer areas of the region.
+
+Nearly 3 million Venetians were forced to leave their country between 1861 and 1961 to escape poverty.[36] Many emigrated to Brazil and Argentina. After World War II, they moved to other European countries. In 2008, there were 260,849 Venetian citizens living outside of Italy (5.4% of the region's population), the largest number was found in Brazil, with 57,052 Venetians, followed by Switzerland, with 38,320, and Argentina, with 31,823. There are several million people of Venetian descent around the world, particularly in Brazil, in the states of Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina and Paraná. Local names in Southern Brazil such as Nova Schio, Nova Bassano, Nova Bréscia, Nova Treviso, Nova Veneza, Nova Pádua and Monteberico indicate the Venetian origin of their inhabitants.[37] In recent years, people of Venetian descent from Brazil and Argentina have been migrating to Italy.[38]
+
+Due to the impressive economic growth of the last two decades, Veneto has turned into a land of immigration and has been attracting more and more immigrants since the 1990s. In 2008, the Italian national institute of statistics ISTAT estimated that 403,985 foreign-born immigrants live in Veneto, equal to 8.3% of the total regional population.[39]
+
+Veneto converted to Christianity during Roman rule. The region venerates as its patrons the 2nd-century bishop St. Hermagoras and his deacon St. Fortunatus, both of Aquileia and both martyrs. Aquileia became the metropolitan see of Venetia. Aquileia had its own liturgical rites which were used throughout the dioceses of Veneto until the later Middle Ages when the Roman Rite replaced the Aquileian Rite. By the 6th century the bishop of Aquileia claimed the title of patriarch. Rejection of the Second Council of Constantinople (553) led to a schism wherein the bishops of Aquileia, Liguria, Aemilia, Milan and of the Istrian peninsula all refused to condemn the Three Chapters leading to the churches of Veneto to break communion with the Church of Rome.[40] The invasion of the non-Catholic Lombards in 568 only served to prolong the schism until 606 and then finally 699 when the Synod of Pavia definitively ended the schism.[41]
+
+In 2004, over 95% of the population claimed to be Roman Catholic. The region of Veneto along with the regions of Friuli and Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol form the ecclesiastical region of Triveneto under the Patriarchate of Venice. The Patriarchate of Venice is an archdiocese and metropolitan see of an ecclesiastical region which includes suffragan episcopal sees of Adria-Rovigo, Belluno-Feltre, Chioggia, Concordia-Pordenone, Padua, Treviso, Verona, Vicenza, and Vittorio Veneto.[42]
+
+The Archdiocese of Venice was elevated to an honorary Patriarchate by the pope on 8 October 1457 when the Patriarchate of Grado, a successor to the Patriarchate of Aquileia, was suppressed. The first patriarch of Venice was St. Laurence, a nobleman of the Giustiniani family.
+
+During the 20th century the patriarchs were usually appointed cardinal, and three cardinal patriarchs, Giuseppe Sarto, Angelo Roncalli, and Albino Luciani, were elected pope: Pius X, John XXIII, and John Paul I, respectively. The Patriarchate of Venice claims St. Mark the Evangelist as its patron. The same saint, symbolised by a winged lion, had become the typical symbol of the Venetian Republic and is still represented on many civic symbols.
+
+Under Austrian rule, Veneto's agriculturally based economy suffered, which later led to mass emigration. But, since the 1970s it has seen impressive development, thanks to the so-called "Veneto development model" that is characterised by strong export-oriented entrepreneurship in traditional economic sectors (€64.47 billion of exports in 2019 [43]) and close social cohesion[44] – making it actually the third richest region in terms of total GDP (€166.4 billion) after Lombardy and Lazio.[45][46]
+
+Geography and historical events have determined the present social and economic structure of the region, centred on a broad belt running from east to west. The plain and the Alpine foothills are the most developed areas in contrast to the Po delta and the mountainous areas, with the exception of the surroundings of Belluno. This is why the Alps and the province of Rovigo are suffering more than other areas, from a trend of declining and ageing population.
+
+Though its importance has been decreasing for the past 20–30 years, agriculture continues to play a significant role in the regional economy. The agricultural sector of Veneto is among the most productive in Italy. However, it is still characterised by an intensive use of labour rather than capital, due to the specialisation in market gardening, fruit-growing and vine-growing throughout the plain and the foothills, requiring very much handicraft. In the south and in the extreme east of the region, grain crops are more common and land holdings are larger than in the rest of the region; mechanisation is more advanced here. The cattle stock, although declining, still represented 15% of the national stock.[47] Fishing is also still important in coastal areas.
+
+The main agricultural products include maize, green peas, vegetables, apples, cherries, sugar beets, forage, tobacco, hemp. Moreover, Veneto is one of Italy's most important wine-growing areas, producing wines, such as Prosecco, Valpolicella, and Soave. Overall, Veneto produces more bottles of DOC wine than any other area in Italy. The Amarone della Valpolicella, a wine from the hills around Verona, is made with high-selected grapes and is among the more expensive red wines in the world.
+
+In the last 30–40 years industrialisation transformed the appearance of the landscape, especially in the plains.
+
+The regional industry is especially made of small and medium-sized businesses, which are active in several sectors: food products, wood and furniture, leather and footwear, textiles and clothing, gold jewelry, but also chemistry, metal-mechanics and electronics. This has led to the establishment of a strongly export-orientated system of industries.
+
+Typical of Veneto is the partition of the territory into industrial districts, which means that each area tends to specialise in a specific sector. The province of Venice hosts large metallurgical and chemical plants in Marghera and Mestre, but is also specialised in glass handicraft (Murano).
+The province of Belluno hosts the so-called eyeglasses district, being the largest world manufacturer Luxottica a firm domiciled at Agordo. Other important firms are Safilo, De Rigo, Marcolin.
+
+Fashion industry is extremely strong all over the region: Benetton, Bottega Veneta, Geox, Diesel, Calzedonia, Pal Zileri, Dainese, Lotto, Marzotto are all Venetian brands.
+
+During the last 20 years, a large number of Venetian companies relocated their plants (especially the most dangerous and polluting productions) in Eastern Europe, especially Romania. The Romanian city of Timișoara is also called "the newest Venetian province".[48]
+
+Although being a heavily industrialised region, tourism is one of its main economic resources; one-fifth of Italy's foreign tourism gravitates towards Veneto, which is the first region in Italy in terms of tourist presence, attracting over 60 million visitors every year, second after Emilia-Romagna in terms of hotel industry structures; the business volume of tourism in Veneto is estimated to be in the vicinity of 12 billion Euros.[49]
+
+A table which shows Veneto's GDP growth:[50]
+
+The main sectors in the economy of Veneto are:
+
+The unemployment rate stood at 6.4% in 2018 and was lower than the national average. However, Veneto was along with Liguria the only northern region where the unemployment rate increased between 2017 and 2018.[51][52]
+
+The Middle Ages stimulated the creation of monumental works such as the complex of churches on the island of Torcello, in the Venetian lagoon, with the Cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta founded in 639, its bell tower erected in the 11th century and the adjacent Martyrium of Santa Fosca built around the 1100, notable for the mosaics.
+They saw the construction of the Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore in Verona, which was Veneto's main centre for that esthetic movement and we note, by the mixture of styles that Verona was an important crossroads to the north of Europe.
+Examples of Gothic art, in addition to the Venetian church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and that of Santi Giovanni e Paolo, are the Scaliger Tombs in the historical centre of Verona.
+
+While in Veneto Byzantine art was important, an element of innovation was brought to Padua by Giotto, bearer of a new pictorial tradition: that of Tuscany. Towards the 1302 he was commissioned by Enrico Scrovegni to paint the family chapel, now known just by the name of Scrovegni Chapel, one of the most important artistic monuments of Padua and Veneto. The influences of the contribution of Giotto were felt immediately, as in the frescoes of Giusto de' Menabuoi in the Baptistry near the Cathedral of Padua and those of Altichiero in the Basilica of Saint Anthony.
+
+After a phase of development of Gothic art, with the creation of important works including the Ca' d'Oro and the Doge's Palace in Venice, and the churches of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari and of Saints John and Paul in Venice, the influence of the Renaissance ushered in a new era. In addition to Donatello, an important Venetian Renaissance artist was Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506), whose most important work in Veneto is perhaps the San Zeno Altarpiece, found in Verona. With the mainland expansion of the Venetian Republic and the consolidation of its institutions, there was also an artistic development of exceptional stature: Mantegna, Vittore Carpaccio, Giovanni Bellini, Cima da Conegliano, Pordenone laid the foundations for what would be the age of Venetian painting.
+
+Padua was a cradle of the Venetian Renaissance, Where influences from Tuscany and Umbria filtered north. Amongst the Renaissance artists who worked there were Donatello, who worked on an altar of the Basilica of Saint Anthony, and Pisanello, whose works are mainly in Verona, for example, the fresco of Saint George in the Church of St. Anastasia.
+
+In the first phase with Carpaccio and Bellini, the influences of international painting were still evident and the references to Flemish art were numerous. Artists of the successive phase included Giorgione, Titian, Sebastiano del Piombo and Lorenzo Lotto. Giorgione and Titian developed an original and innovative style, which characterised the painters of the Venetian school rather than other traditions. Giorgione's enigmatic style infused his work with allegory, and he created his paintings with less reliance on a preparatory drawing than previous painters. This innovation was looking for the imitation of natural phenomena by creating atmospheres with the colours and shifting the emphasis from the pursuit of artistic perfection. The storm (1506–1508), now in the Accademia in Venice, is an example of this use of colour, where the mixture colour and texture continue indefinitely without preparatory drawing for the painting work gives a special atmosphere.
+
+Titian, born in Belluno Pieve di Cadore, brought forward the use of this technique without pictorial design, creating masterpieces such as the Assumption of the Virgin (1516–1518),[53] an altar made by imposing visible sizes on the main altar of the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari in Venice, a work whose suggestion is due to the use of colour. At the end of his long life, he had acquired fame and commissions across the continent.
+
+Tintoretto (1518–1594) recast Roman Mannerism in a Venetian style, less linear, and with more use of colour to distinguish forms, highlighting the bright prospects for its operations, giving unusual deformations of perspective, to increase the sense of tension in the work.[54] His studio was prolific. Palaces and churches of Venice abound with his paintings. The Scuola Grande di San Rocco alone sports 66 paintings by this painter. The San Giorgio Maggiore houses a huge canvas by him depicting the Last Supper.
+
+Paolo Veronese (1528–1588) was about as prolific as Tintoretto, with works that celebrated the Venetian state,[55] as well as decorating houses of Venetian nobles. He decorated large portions of the Palazzo Ducale and the decoration of many villas Palladian, including Villa Barbaro.
+
+Jacopo Bassano (1517–1592) and Lorenzo Lotto were active in the mainland, and reflected some of the influences of Milanese painters with the introduction of images taken from real life, enriched by a touch of drama.
+
+In architecture, Andrea Palladio (1508–1580), born in Padua, completed some highly influential works, including Villas in the mainland, in Vicenza, Padua and Treviso. In Venice, he designed the Basilica of San Giorgio Maggiore, the Il Redentore, and Zitelle on the island of Giudecca. Palladian Villa architecture, in masterpieces such as Villa Emo, Villa Barbaro, Villa Capra, and Villa Foscari, evoked the imagined grandeur of antique classical Roman villas. This aesthetic, through his publications, proved very popular and underwent a revival in the neoclassical period. In his villas, the owner shall permit the control over production activities of the surrounding countryside by structuring the functional parts, such as porch, close to the central body. In the case of Villa Badoer, the open barn, formed by a large circular colonnade, enclosing the front yard in front of the villa allows you to create a space that recalls the ancient idea of the Forum Romanum, and bringing all campaign activities to gravitate in front of the villa itself.
+
+The research style of Palladio has created an architectural movement called Palladianism, which has had strong following in the next three centuries, inspiring architects, some of them his direct students, including Vincenzo Scamozzi, after the death of the teacher who completed several works, including the first Teatro Olimpico in Vicenza.
+
+The 18th-century Venetian school comprises many artists. Important painters include Giambattista Tiepolo, his son Giandomenico, Giambattista Piazzetta, Niccolò Bambini, Pietro Longhi, Marco and Sebastiano Ricci, Sebastiano Bombelli, Gianantonio Fumiani, Gaspare Diziani, Rosalba Carriera, and the architect/painter Girolamo Mengozzi Colonna.
+
+Sculptors include Morlaiter, Filippo Parodi, Bernard Torretti and his nephew Giuseppe Torretti, and at the end of the republic Antonio Canova. Some other important artists are the architects Girolamo Frigimelica, Giorgio Massari, Scalfarotto, and Tommaso Temanza; the carver Andrea Brustolon; playwrights Carlo Goldoni and Gaspare Gozzi; the poets Alessandro Labia and George Whisker; and composers Benedetto Marcello and Antonio Vivaldi.
+
+Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), described as "the greatest decorative painter of eighteenth-century Europe, as well as its most able craftsman."[56] was a painter and printmaker, who together with Giambattista Pittoni, Canaletto, Giovan Battista Piazzetta, Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Francesco Guardi formed the ultimate group of traditional great Venetian old master painters of that period. Perspective played a central role in Tiepolo's representations, and was forced beyond the usual limits in his ceiling decorations depicting levitating figures viewed from below.
+
+Another characteristic feature of Venetian art is landscape painting, which sees in Canaletto (1697–1768) and Francesco Guardi (1712–1793) the two leading figures. Canaletto's rigorous perspective studies make for an almost "photographic" reality, in contrast to Guardi's more subjective capriccios.
+
+Antonio Canova (1757–1822), born in Possagno, was the greatest of the neoclassical artists.[57] The Temple of Possagno, which he designed, financed, and partly-built himself,[58] is among landmarks of neo-classical architecture. His most important works include Psyche Revived by Love's Kiss and The Three Graces.
+
+After the fall of the Republic of Venice in 1796, every city in Veneto created its own form of art. Important was, however, the role of Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice, who was able to attract many young artists from the surrounding territory.
+
+Among the many artists which were important in modern ages were Guglielmo Ciardi, who incorporated the experience of macchiaioli movement, uniting the typical colour of the classic Venetian school, and yet bringing out from his paintings a chromatic essence, Giacomo Favretto, who too as Ciardi, enhanced the colour, which was sometimes very pronounced, painter Frederick Zandomeneghi, who deviates from the tradition of Venetian colouring to venture in a style similar to French impressionism, and finally Luigi Nono, whose works feel realistic, even if, in addition to painting genre scenes, includes portraits of finity for psychological enhancement.
+
+Veneto hosts one of the oldest universities in the world, the University of Padua, founded in 1222. OECD investigations[59] show that school education achievements in North-Eastern Italy (whose population comes mainly from Veneto) are the highest in Italy. In 2003 the university had approximately 65,000 students.
+
+Most of the people of Veneto speak Italian along with widespread usage of local varieties of the Venetian language. Within Venetian there are distinct sub-groups centered on the major cities, and distinctions are also found between rural and urban  dialects and those spoken in northern mountainous areas and on the plain.[60]
+
+Venetian dialects are classified as Western Romance. Linguists identify five major types of Venetian: an Eastern or Coastal (Venice) group, a Central (Padua, Vicenza, Polesine) group, a Western (Verona) group, a North-Central (Treviso) group, and a Northern (Belluno, Feltre, Agordo, Cadore, Zoldo Alto) group of dialects. All dialects are mutually intelligible to varying degrees, are descended from Vulgar Latin and influenced to varying degrees by the Italian language. Venetian is attested as a written language in the 13th century.
+
+The language of Venice enjoyed substantial prestige in the days of the Venetian Republic, when it attained the status of a lingua franca in the Mediterranean. Notable Venetian-language authors include the playwrights Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793) and Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806), while Ruzante (1502–1542) is best known for his rustic comedies "cast in mainland peasant Pavan 'Paduan'".[61]
+
+Ladin, also Romance, is spoken in parts of the province of Belluno, especially in the municipalities of Cortina d'Ampezzo, Livinallongo del Col di Lana and Colle Santa Lucia, while Cimbrian (Germanic) is spoken in two villages (Roana and Giazza respectively) of the Seven Communities and the Thirteen Communities. These are two historical groups of villages of Cimbric origin, which for a long time formed two distinct "commonwealths" under the rule of the Republic of Venice, among others. Furthermore, in the area around Portogruaro people speak Furlan.
+
+As the region does not enjoy a special status of autonomy, minority languages are not granted any form of official recognition. A motion to recognise Venetian as an official regional language has been approved by the regional Parliament.[62]
+
+Venetian literature is the corpus of literature in Venetian, the vernacular language of the region which roughly corresponding to Venice from the 12th century. The Venetian literature, after an initial period of splendour in the 16th century with the success of artists such as Ruzante, reaches its maximum zenith in the 18th century, thanks to its maximum exponent, dramatist Carlo Goldoni. Subsequently, the literary production in Venetian undergoes a period of decline following the collapse of the Republic of Venice, succeeding anyway during the 20th century to reach peaks with wonderful lyrical poets such as Biagio Marin of Grado.
+
+Cuisine is an important part of the culture of Veneto, and the region is home to some of the most recognisable dishes, desserts and wines in Italian, European and worldwide cuisine.
+
+Veneto is an important wine-growing area producing: Soave, Bardolino, Recioto, Amarone, Torcolato, Prosecco, Tocai Rosso, Garganega, Valpolicella, Verduzzo, Raboso, Moscato, Cabernet Franc, Pinot Nero, Pinot Grigio, and Merlot. Homemade wine making is widespread. After making wine, the alcohol of the pressed grapes is distilled to produce grappa or graspa, as it is called in the local language.
+
+Prosecco is a dry sparkling wine.[63][64] It is made from the glera grape, a white grape formerly known as Prosecco,[65] which is traditionally grown in an area near Conegliano and Valdobbiadene, in the hills north of Treviso.[63] The name of Prosecco is derived from the northern Italian village of Prosecco (Trieste), where this grape variety is believed to have originated.[64][66]
+
+Spritz, in the Venetian language also called "spriss" or "spriseto" depending on the area, usually consists of ⅓ sparkling wine and ⅔ Aperol. Campari or gin may also be used.
+
+Cheeses of Veneto include: Asiago (PDO), Piave (PDO), Monte Veronese (PDO), Morlacco, Grana Padano (PDO).
+
+The sopressa vicentina (PDO) is an aged salami, cylindrical in shape and prepared with raw, quality pork meat. It may or may not include garlic in its ingredients and comes in medium and large sizes. Prosciutto Veneto Berico-Euganeo (PDO) is obtained from the fresh meat of a top breed of adult hogs. The aroma is delicate, sweet and fragrant.
+
+Radicchio rosso di Treviso (PGI) is a peculiar vegetable with a faintly bitter taste and a crunchy texture. The production area encompasses many town districts in the provinces of Treviso, Padua and Venice. The radicchio Variegato di Castelfranco (PGI) has a delicate and slightly sweet taste and a crunchy texture. Veronese Vialone Nano Rice from Verona (PGI) is a type of rice with short, plump grains, which have a creamy consistency when cooked. They are commonly used in risotto dishes and have a high starch content. The Bean of Lamon (PGI) is particularly prized for its delicate flavour and extremely tender skin. The White Asparagus of Cimadolmo (PGI) has a characteristic scent and a very delicate taste. The White Asparagus of Bassano is a typical product of the northern part of the province of Vicenza. The San Zeno di Montagna (Verona) chestnut has Protected Geographical Status.
+
+Tiramisù (a dessert made from mascarpone, coffee, Marsala wine, savoiardi and chocolate) originates from Veneto.[67][68][69]
+
+Each town, often every quarter, has its patron saint whose feast day is solemnly celebrated. Many other festivals are closely linked to the religious calendar. Among these:
+
+Veneto, and in particular Venice and Verona, are important Italian musical centres, home to a vibrant musical life.
+
+The city of Venice in Italy has played an important role in the development of the music of Italy. The Venetian state—i.e. the medieval Maritime Republic of Venice—was often popularly called the "Republic of Music", and an anonymous Frenchman of the 17th century is said to have remarked that "In every home, someone is playing a musical instrument or singing. There is music everywhere."[70]
+
+In Padova, musical ensembles such as the Amici della Musica di Padova, the Solisti Veneti and the Padova-Veneto Symphony are found. Concerts are often held in the historic Loggia Comaro, built in 1524. As well, the city is the site of the Teatro delle Maddalene, the Teatro delle Grazie, the Giuseppe Verdi Theater, and the Cesare Pollini music conservatory.
+
+Rovigo is the site of the Teatro Sociale, built in 1819. In the 20th century it was the venue for the career beginnings of Tullio Serafin, Beniamino Gigli and Renata Tebaldi. The town of Rovigo is also the site of the Francesco Vanezza music conservatory.
+
+The city of Verona is the site of the Roman amphitheater known as the "Arena" which has been hosting musical events since the 16th century, but more recently the spectacular outdoor staging of Verdi's Aida, an event staged for the first time in 1913. The city also has the Felice Evaristo Dall'Abaco music conservatory;
+
+See also
+
+Inserted by UNESCO in 1997. It is the world's oldest academic botanical garden that is still in its original location. (Officially, the oldest university botanical garden is the Orto botanico di Pisa, which was founded in 1544; however, that garden was relocated twice and has only occupied its current, and now-permanent, location since 1591.) It is located in Padua, Italy and was founded in 1545. The garden, affiliated with the University of Padua, currently covers roughly 22,000 square metres (240,000 square feet) and has special collections.
+
+Verona was inscribed in the year 2000. One of the seven provincial capitals in the region. It is one of the main tourist destinations in north-eastern Italy, thanks to its artistic heritage, several annual fairs, shows and operas, such as the lyrical season in the Arena, the ancient amphitheatre built by the Romans.
+
+The city of Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of Veneto were inscribed in 1994 (extended in 1996).[72] Vicenza is a thriving and cosmopolitan city, with a rich history and culture, and many museums, art galleries, piazzas, villas, churches and elegant, Renaissance palazzi. The Palladian Villas of Veneto, in the surrounding area, and the renowned Teatro Olimpico (Olympic Theatre) have both been enlisted as UNESCO World Heritage Sites since 1994 (extended in 1996).[73]
+
+The city and its lagoon were inscribed in 1987. With a population of 271,367 (census estimate 1 January 2004). Together with Padua, the city is included in the Padua-Venice Metropolitan Area (population 1,600,000). The city historically was the capital of an independent nation. Venice has been known as the "La Dominante", "Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Bridges", "City of Canals" and "The City of Light". Luigi Barzini, writing in The New York Times, described it as "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man".[74] Venice has also been described by the Times Online as being one of Europe's most romantic cities.[75]
+
+They were inscribed in 2009. They are located for the most part in the province of Belluno, the rest in South Tyrol and Trentino (all in north-eastern Italy). Conventionally they extend from the Adige river in the west to the Piave valley (Pieve di Cadore) in the east. The northern and southern borders are defined by the Puster Valley and the Sugana Valley (Val Sugana). But the Dolomites spread also over the Piave river (Dolomiti d'Oltrepiave) to the east; and far away over the Adige river to the west is the Brenta Group (Western Dolomites); there is also another smaller group called Piccole Dolomiti (Small Dolomites) located between the Provinces of Trento and Vicenza (see the map).
+
+The town is encircled by massive Venetian defensive systems that are a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 9 July 2017.[76]
+
+Vicenza and the Palladian Villas of Veneto are a number of beautiful Palladian villas which are World Heritage Sites. UNESCO inscribed the site on the World Heritage List in 1994.[77] At first the site was called "Vicenza, City of Palladio" and only buildings in the immediate area of Vicenza were included. Various types of buildings were represented including the Teatro Olimpico, palazzi and a few villas. Most of Palladio's surviving villas lay outside the site. However, in 1996 the number of Palladian villas included in the site was expanded to include those in other parts of Veneto. The site was given its present name.
+
+The term villa was used to describe a country house. Often rich families in Veneto also had a house in town called a palazzo. In most cases the owners named their palazzi and villas with the family surname, hence there is both a Palazzo Chiericati in Vicenza and a Villa Chiericati in the countryside, similarly there is a Palazzo Foscari in Venice and a Villa Foscari in the countryside. Somewhat confusingly there are multiple Villas Pisani, including two by Palladio.
+
+There are these sorts of villas all over the Venetian plain, but especially in the provinces of Treviso, Padua, Vicenza and Venice. The date of construction of these villas ranges from the 15th to the 19th century. There are approximately five thousand Ville Venete, of which 1,400 are declared of historical and monumental interest.
+
+Apart from the numerous Palladian villas, of which 24 are protected by UNESCO, there are many beautiful villas spread across Veneto, mainly from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Many of them are museums, public institutions or private residences.
+The 24 Palladian villas which are part of UNESCO:
+
+Amongst these, Villa Trissino (Cricoli) is not regarded a Palladian villa, but is also an important country house.
+
+The area of Lake Garda is a major tourist destination. Various towns along the lake, such as Lazise, Cisano, Bardolino, Garda (VR), Torri del Benaco and Malcesine, are resorts.
+
+Cortina d'Ampezzo, it is situated in the province of Belluno and is one of the most exclusive mountain locations in Europe together with Kitzbühel in Austria and St. Moritz in Switzerland. It was scene of the 1956 Winter Olympics and will host once again in 2026 alongside Milan. To the north there are the Tre Cime di Lavaredo, said to be a symbol of the Italian Dolomites.
+
+Arabba lies between the Sella group and the Marmolada.
+
+Auronzo is in the upper Cadore.
+
+Other carateristical places are:
+
+The thermal baths of Abano Terme are an important tourist attraction. Montegrotto Terme and Recoaro Terme are other resorts.
+
+Venice's Lido is an 11-kilometre long sandbar, visited by many tourists every summer.
+
+Jesolo is one of the most important seaside resorts on the Adriatic coast, just a few kilometres far from Venice. Every year Jesolo gives accommodation to over 4.5 million tourists.
+
+Caorle has often received awards for one of the cleanest beaches in Italy. Bibione, Eraclea and Sottomarina are resorts too. Albarella island is a private island on the Lido. Alberoni Beach is set in a nature reserve.
+
+Coordinates: 45°44′00″N 11°51′00″E / 45.73333°N 11.85000°E / 45.73333; 11.85000

en/5929.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,328 @@
+
+
+Coordinates: 7°N 65°W / 7°N 65°W / 7; -65
+
+Venezuela (/ˌvɛnəˈzweɪlə/; American Spanish: [beneˈswela] (listen)), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela),[11] is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many small islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It has a territorial extension of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi) and the population of Venezuela was estimated at 28 million in 2019.[6] The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas.
+
+The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south, Trinidad and Tobago to the north-east and on the east by Guyana. The Venezuelan government maintains a claim against Guyana to Guayana Esequiba.[12] Venezuela is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District and federal dependencies covering Venezuela's offshore islands. Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America;[13][14] the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north and in the capital.
+
+The territory of Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence from the Spanish as a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia. It gained full sovereignty as a country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional military dictators until the mid-20th century. Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments. Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to major political crises and widespread social unrest, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993.
+
+A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution. The revolution began with a 1999 Constituent Assembly, where a new Constitution of Venezuela was imposed. This new constitution officially changed the name of the country to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Chávez established populist social welfare policies bolstered by soaring oil prices,[15] increasing social spending, temporarily[16] and reducing economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the regime.[21] In 2013, Chávez died and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro, who was elected by a narrow majority in a widely disputed election. Maduro continued the populist policies, but with disastrous economic results which triggered another nationwide crisis that continues to this day.[22]
+
+Venezuela is a developing country and ranks 96th on the Human Development Index. It has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The excesses and poor policies of the incumbent government led to the collapse of Venezuela's entire economy.[23][24] The country struggles with record hyperinflation,[25][26] shortages of basic goods,[27] unemployment,[28] poverty,[29] disease, high child mortality, malnutrition, severe crime and corruption. These factors have precipitated the Venezuelan migrant crisis where more than three million people have fled the country.[30] By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies.[31][32]  The crisis in Venezuela has contributed to a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation, including increased abuses such as torture, arbitrary imprisonment, extrajudicial killings and attacks on human rights advocates, while Maduro has become increasingly described as an autocratic and dictatorial leader by foreign observers.
+Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, OAS, UNASUR, ALBA, Mercosur, LAIA and OEI.
+
+According to the most popular and accepted version, in 1499, an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda visited the Venezuelan coast. The stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, Italy, so he named the region Veneziola, or "Little Venice".[33] The Spanish version of Veneziola is Venezuela.[34]
+
+Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew, gave a different account. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that the crew found indigenous people who called themselves the Veneciuela. Thus, the name "Venezuela" may have evolved from the native word.[35]
+
+Previously, the official name was Estado de Venezuela (1830–1856), República de Venezuela (1856–1864), Estados Unidos de Venezuela (1864–1953), and again República de Venezuela (1953–1999).
+
+Evidence exists of human habitation in the area now known as Venezuela from about 15,000 years ago. Leaf-shaped tools from this period, together with chopping and plano-convex scraping implements, have been found exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Rio Pedregal in western Venezuela.[36] Late Pleistocene hunting artifacts, including spear tips, have been found at a similar series of sites in northwestern Venezuela known as "El Jobo"; according to radiocarbon dating, these date from 13,000 to 7,000 BC.[37]
+
+It is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish conquest; it has been estimated at around one million.[38] In addition to indigenous peoples known today, the population included historical groups such as the Kalina (Caribs), Auaké, Caquetio, Mariche, and Timoto–Cuicas. The Timoto–Cuica culture was the most complex society in Pre-Columbian Venezuela, with pre-planned permanent villages, surrounded by irrigated, terraced fields. They also stored water in tanks.[39] Their houses were made primarily of stone and wood with thatched roofs. They were peaceful, for the most part, and depended on growing crops. Regional crops included potatoes and ullucos.[40] They left behind works of art, particularly anthropomorphic ceramics, but no major monuments. They spun vegetable fibers to weave into textiles and mats for housing. They are credited with having invented the arepa, a staple in Venezuelan cuisine.[41]
+
+After the conquest, the population dropped markedly, mainly through the spread of new infectious diseases from Europe.[38] Two main north–south axes of pre-Columbian population were present, who cultivated maize in the west and manioc in the east.[38] Large parts of the llanos were cultivated through a combination of slash and burn and permanent settled agriculture.[38]
+
+In 1498, during his third voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus sailed near the Orinoco Delta and landed in the Gulf of Paria.[42] Amazed by the great offshore current of freshwater which deflected his course eastward, Columbus expressed in a letter to Isabella and Ferdinand that he must have reached Heaven on Earth (terrestrial paradise):
+
+Great signs are these of the Terrestrial Paradise, for the site conforms to the opinion of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned. And likewise, the [other] signs conform very well, for I have never read or heard of such a large quantity of fresh water being inside and in such close proximity to salt water; the very mild temperateness also corroborates this; and if the water of which I speak does not proceed from Paradise then it is an even greater marvel, because I do not believe such a large and deep river has ever been known to exist in this world.[43]
+
+Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1522, establishing its first permanent South American settlement in the present-day[update] city of Cumaná. In the 16th century, Venezuela was contracted as a concession by the King of Spain to the German Welser banking family (Klein-Venedig, 1528–1546). Native caciques (leaders) such as Guaicaipuro (c. 1530–1568) and Tamanaco (died 1573) attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them; Tamanaco was put to death by order of Caracas' founder, Diego de Losada.[44]
+
+In the 16th century, during the Spanish colonization, indigenous peoples such as many of the Mariches, themselves descendants of the Kalina, converted to Roman Catholicism. Some of the resisting tribes or leaders are commemorated in place names, including Caracas, Chacao and Los Teques. The early colonial settlements focused on the northern coast,[38] but in the mid-18th century, the Spanish pushed farther inland along the Orinoco River. Here, the Ye'kuana (then known as the Makiritare) organized serious resistance in 1775 and 1776.[45]
+
+Spain's eastern Venezuelan settlements were incorporated into New Andalusia Province. Administered by the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo from the early 16th century, most of Venezuela became part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the early 18th century, and was then reorganized as an autonomous Captaincy General starting in 1777. The town of Caracas, founded in the central coastal region in 1567, was well-placed to become a key location, being near the coastal port of La Guaira whilst itself being located in a valley in a mountain range, providing defensive strength against pirates and a more fertile and healthy climate.[46]
+
+After a series of unsuccessful uprisings, Venezuela, under the leadership of Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan marshal who had fought in the American Revolution and the French Revolution, declared independence as the First Republic of Venezuela on 5 July 1811.[47] This began the Venezuelan War of Independence. A devastating earthquake that struck Caracas in 1812, together with the rebellion of the Venezuelan llaneros, helped bring down the republic.[48] Simón Bolívar, new leader of the independentist forces, launched his Admirable Campaign in 1813 from New Granada, retaking most of the territory and being proclaimed as El Libertador ("The Liberator"). A second Venezuelan republic was proclaimed on 7 August 1813, but lasted only a few months before being crushed at the hands of royalist caudillo José Tomás Boves and his personal army of llaneros.[49]
+
+The end of the French invasion of homeland Spain in 1814 allowed the preparation of a large expeditionary force to the American provinces under general Pablo Morillo, with the goal to regain the lost territory in Venezuela and New Granada. As the war reached a stalemate on 1817, Bolívar reestablished the Third Republic of Venezuela on the territory still controlled by the patriots, mainly in the Guayana and Los Llanos regions. This republic was short-lived as only two years later, during the Congress of Angostura of 1819, the union of Venezuela with New Granada was decreed to form the Republic of Gran Colombia. The war continued for some years, until full victory and sovereignty was attained after Bolívar, aided by José Antonio Páez and Antonio José de Sucre, won the Battle of Carabobo on 24 June 1821.[50] On 24 July 1823, José Prudencio Padilla and Rafael Urdaneta helped seal Venezuelan independence with their victory in the Battle of Lake Maracaibo.[51] New Granada's congress gave Bolívar control of the Granadian army; leading it, he liberated several countries and founded Gran Colombia.[50]
+
+Sucre, who won many battles for Bolívar, went on to liberate Ecuador and later become the second president of Bolivia. Venezuela remained part of Gran Colombia until 1830, when a rebellion led by Páez allowed the proclamation of a newly independent Venezuela; Páez became the first president of the new State of Venezuela.[52] Between one-quarter and one-third of Venezuela's population was lost during these two decades of warfare (including perhaps one-half of the white population),[53] which by 1830, was estimated at about 800,000.[54]
+
+The colors of the Venezuelan flag are yellow, blue, and red: the yellow stands for land wealth, the blue for the sea that separates Venezuela from Spain, and the red for the blood shed by the heroes of independence.[55]
+
+Slavery in Venezuela was abolished in 1854.[54] Much of Venezuela's 19th-century history was characterized by political turmoil and dictatorial rule, including the Independence leader José Antonio Páez, who gained the presidency three times and served a total of 11 years between 1830 and 1863. This culminated in the Federal War (1859–1863), a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died in a country with a population of not much more than a million people. In the latter half of the century, Antonio Guzmán Blanco, another caudillo, served a total of 13 years between 1870 and 1887, with three other presidents interspersed.
+
+In 1895, a longstanding dispute with Great Britain about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory, erupted into the Venezuela Crisis of 1895. The dispute became a diplomatic crisis when Venezuela's lobbyist, William L. Scruggs, sought to argue that British behavior over the issue violated the United States' Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and used his influence in Washington, D.C., to pursue the matter. Then, U.S. president Grover Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies, but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.[56] Britain ultimately accepted arbitration, but in negotiations over its terms was able to persuade the U.S. on many of the details. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the issue and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.[57]
+
+In 1899, Cipriano Castro, assisted by his friend Juan Vicente Gómez, seized power in Caracas, marching an army from his base in the Andean state of Táchira. Castro defaulted on Venezuela's considerable foreign debts and declined to pay compensation to foreigners caught up in Venezuela's civil wars. This led to the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903, in which Britain, Germany and Italy imposed a naval blockade of several months before international arbitration at the new Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague was agreed. In 1908, another dispute broke out with the Netherlands, which was resolved when Castro left for medical treatment in Germany and was promptly overthrown by Juan Vicente Gómez (1908–1935).
+
+The discovery of massive oil deposits in Lake Maracaibo during World War I[58] proved to be pivotal for Venezuela and transformed the basis of its economy from a heavy dependence on agricultural exports. It prompted an economic boom that lasted into the 1980s; by 1935, Venezuela's per capita gross domestic product was Latin America's highest.[59] Gómez benefited handsomely from this, as corruption thrived, but at the same time, the new source of income helped him centralize the Venezuelan state and develop its authority.
+
+He remained the most powerful man in Venezuela until his death in 1935, although at times he ceded the presidency to others. The gomecista dictatorship (1935–1945) system largely continued under Eleazar López Contreras, but from 1941, under Isaías Medina Angarita, was relaxed.  Angarita granted a range of reforms, including the legalization of all political parties. After World War II, immigration from Southern Europe (mainly from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France) and poorer Latin American countries markedly diversified Venezuelan society.
+
+In 1945, a civilian-military coup overthrew Medina Angarita and ushered in a three-year period of democratic rule (1945–1948) under the mass membership party Democratic Action, initially under Rómulo Betancourt, until Rómulo Gallegos won the 1947 Venezuelan presidential election (generally believed to be the first free and fair elections in Venezuela). Gallegos governed until overthrown by a military junta led by the triumvirate Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and Gallegos' Defense Minister, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état.
+
+The most powerful man in the military junta (1948–1958) was Pérez Jiménez (though Chalbaud was its titular president) and was suspected of being behind the death in office of Chalbaud, who died in a bungled kidnapping in 1950. When the junta unexpectedly lost the election it held in 1952, it ignored the results and Pérez Jiménez was installed as president, where he remained until 1958. The expansion of the Venezuelan economy in this period was based on the indebtedness of the Venezuelan nation and that was one of the causes of the economic crisis in Venezuela in the 1960s,[60] in which important projects such as the Urban Center El Recreo de Marcel Brauer on Avenida Casanova in Sabana Grande district were paralyzed.[61]
+
+During the years of Pérez Jiménez's administration, the State intervened in areas of the economy that were traditionally carried out by private companies. The Pérez Jiménez government was characterized by its state capitalism and not by liberal capitalism. It was an antecedent of the populist and paternalistic economic regime of the later democratic regimes.[62] The national private entrepreneurship increasingly had less space to grow and prosper. The State was the great capitalist in the Venezuela of Pérez Jiménez and was the largest national shareholder of major hotel chains such as Sheraton.[63]
+
+In the government of Pérez Jiménez, Venezuela's debt grew more than 25 times and went from 175 million to more than 4,500 million bolivares in just 5 years (approximately 15 billion dollars in 2018). The malaise over the debts of Venezuela reached the barracks and the national business. Pérez Jiménez responded that: "there is no debt, but commitments". The Finance Minister failed to convince Pérez Jiménez to order the cancellation of debts.[64] As of 14 January 1958, the Venezuelan business community decided to divorce itself completely from the regime, nine days before the collapse of the government.[60] The military dictator Pérez Jiménez was forced out on 23 January 1958.[65] In an effort to consolidate a young democracy, the three major political parties (Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), with the notable exception of the Communist Party of Venezuela) signed the Puntofijo Pact power-sharing agreement. The two first parties would dominate the political landscape for four decades.
+
+During the presidencies of Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (1959–1964, his second time) and Raúl Leoni Otero (1964–1969) in the 1960s, substantial guerilla movements occurred, including the Armed Forces of National Liberation and the Revolutionary Left Movement, which had split from AD in 1960. Most of these movements laid down their arms under Rafael Caldera's first presidency (1969–1974); Caldera had won the 1968 election for COPEI, being the first time a party other than Democratic Action took the presidency through a democratic election. The new democratic order had its antagonists. Betancourt suffered an attack planned by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1960, and the leftists excluded from the Pact initiated an armed insurgency by organizing themselves in the Armed Forces of National Liberation, sponsored by the Communist Party and Fidel Castro. In 1962 they tried to destabilize the military corps, with failed revolts in Carúpano and Puerto Cabello. At the same time, Betancourt promoted an international doctrine in which he only recognized elected governments by popular vote.[need quotation to verify]
+
+As a result of the debt that Marcos Pérez Jiménez had left, an economic adjustment program was necessary in Venezuela. The Economic Recovery Plan of 1960 was formulated by Tomás Enrique Carrillo Batalla. The construction industry was revitalized through the "rediscount" of the Central Bank of Venezuela. The Economic Recovery Plan fulfilled its objectives and in 1964, Venezuela was able to return to an anchored exchange rate, with free purchase and sale of foreign currency. This system lasted until the Venezuelan Black Friday of 1983, although the model was already running out at the end of the seventies.[66] The consolidation of the democratic system and the dissipation of fears of political radicalization of the country contributed to normalize the demand for foreign currency, stabilizing the parallel exchange rate.
+
+For much of the period between 1950 and 1973, the Venezuelan economy was characterized by its stability and sustained strength, factors that contributed decisively to being able to maintain a fixed exchange rate without major inconveniences. In the period of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979, his first time as president), as a result of the Arab-Israeli war (the Yom Kippur war), the average price of a barrel of oil went from 3.71 to 10.53 dollars and continued to rise to exceed 29 dollars in 1981.[66] The income of the public sector went from 18,960 million bolivars in 1973 to 45.564 million in 1974. The economic bonanza also had the characteristics of an economic bubble, but Venezuelans remember the "Ta barato, dame dos".[67][68] The increased inflow of funds to savings and loan entities and mortgage banks allowed an increase in the mortgage loan portfolio, which also tripled. In general, Venezuela was a prosperous country in the governments of Rómulo Betancourt (1945 – c. 1948; 1959–1964), Rafael Caldera (1969–1974; 1994 – c. 1999) and Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979; 1989 – c. 1993)[citation needed]. In 1975 the iron industry was nationalized and the following year the oil industry, creating Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Both Caldera and Pérez partially broke with the Betancourt Doctrine.
+
+The election in 1973 of Carlos Andrés Pérez coincided with an oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability.[69]
+
+During the presidency of Luis Herrera Campins (1979–1984), important infrastructure works were completed, such as the Parque Central Complex (which became the largest housing complex and the tallest towers in Latin America), Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex (the largest cultural center in South America at that time), the Brígido Iriarte Stadium and the United Nations Park. Most of these works had been previously planned.[67] Until the mid-eighties, the Venezuelan economy showed a very positive behavior, characterized by the absence of internal or external imbalances, high economic growth, largely due to the sustained and very high gross fixed investment of those years, 10 under unemployment and great price stability. This translated into sustained increases in the average real wage and an improvement in the condition of life.[66]
+
+The bolivar was devalued in February 1983, unleashing a strong economic crisis, which hit investments in the most important financial centers of the Venezuelan capital, such as Sabana Grande. In the government of Jaime Lusinchi (1984–1989), an attempt was made to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the measures failed. After a long period of accelerated economic expansion that lasts for six decades (value of the stock of homes by families), an extreme higher value is reached towards 1982. From this historical value begins then a systematic fall that mounts to 26 hundred up to 2006, and that configures a genuine unique experience in contemporary economic life.[70] However, the economic deactivation of the country had begun to show its first signs in 1978.[71]
+
+In the 1980s, the Presidential Commission for State Reform (COPRE) emerged as a mechanism of political innovation. Venezuela was preparing for the decentralization of its political system and the diversification of its economy, reducing the large size of the State. The COPRE operated as an innovation mechanism, also by incorporating issues into the political agenda that were generally excluded from public deliberation by the main actors of the Venezuelan democratic system. The most discussed topics were incorporated into the public agenda: decentralization, political participation, municipalization, judicial oder reforms and the role of the State in a new economic strategy. Unfortunately, the social reality of the country made the changes difficult to apply.[71]
+
+Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis in which hundreds died in the Caracazo riots of 1989 during the presidency of Carlos Andres Pérez (1989–1993, his second time), two attempted coups d'état in 1992 (February and November) by Hugo Chávez,[72] and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez (re-elected in 1988) for corruption in 1993 and the interim presidency of Ramón José Velásquez (1993–1994). Coup leader Hugo Chávez was pardoned in March 1994 by president Rafael Caldera (1994–1999, his second time), with a clean slate and his political rights reinstated. This let him later get the presidency continuously from 1999 until his death in 2013, winning the elections of 1998, 2000, 2006 and 2012 and the presidential referendum of 2004, with the only exception in 2002 of Pedro Carmona Estanga as a two-day de facto government and Diosdado Cabello Rondón as a few-hours interim president.
+
+The Bolivarian Revolution refers to a left-wing populism social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who founded the Fifth Republic Movement in 1997 and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in 2007. The "Bolivarian Revolution" is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the "Bolivarian Revolution" seeks to build a mass movement to implement Bolivarianism—popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption—in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar's ideas from a populist perspective, using socialist rhetoric.
+
+A collapse in confidence in the existing parties led to Chávez being elected president in 1998 and the subsequent launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela. Chávez also initiated Bolivarian missions, programs aimed at helping the poor.[73]
+
+In April 2002, Chávez was briefly ousted from power in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt following popular demonstrations by his opponents,[74] but he returned to power after two days as a result of demonstrations by poor Chávez supporters in Caracas and actions by the military.[75][76]
+
+Chávez also remained in power after an all-out national strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003, including a strike/lockout in the state oil company PDVSA.[77] The strike produced severe economic dislocation, with the country's GDP falling 27% during the first four months of 2003, and costing the oil industry $13.3 billion.[78] Capital flight before and during the strike led to the reimposition of currency controls (which had been abolished in 1989), managed by the CADIVI agency. In the subsequent decade, the government was forced into several currency devaluations.[79][80][81][82][83] These devaluations have done little to improve the situation of the Venezuelan people who rely on imported products or locally produced products that depend on imported inputs while dollar-denominated oil sales account for the vast majority of Venezuela's exports.[84] According to Sebastian Boyd writing at Bloomberg News, the profits of the oil industry have been lost to "social engineering" and corruption, instead of investments needed to maintain oil production.[85]
+
+Chávez survived several further political tests, including an August 2004 recall referendum. He was elected for another term in December 2006 and re-elected for a third term in October 2012. However, he was never sworn in for his third period, due to medical complications. Chávez died on 5 March 2013 after a nearly two-year fight with cancer.[86] The presidential election that took place on Sunday, 14 April 2013, was the first since Chávez took office in 1999 in which his name did not appear on the ballot.[87]
+
+Poverty and inflation began to increase into the 2010s.[88] Nicolás Maduro was elected in 2013 after the death of Chavez. Chavez picked Maduro as his successor and appointed him vice president in 2013. Maduro was elected president in a shortened election in 2013 following Chavez's death.[82][89][90]
+
+Nicolás Maduro has been the president of Venezuela since 14 April 2013, after winning the second presidential election after Chávez's death, with 50.61% of the votes against the opposition's candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski who had 49.12% of the votes. The Democratic Unity Roundtable contested his election as fraud and as a violation of the constitution. An audit of 56% of the vote showed no discrepancies,[91] and the Supreme Court of Venezuela ruled that under Venezuela's Constitution, Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president and was invested as such by the Venezuelan National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional).[92][93][94] Opposition leaders and some international media consider the government of Maduro to be a dictatorship.[95][96][97][98] Beginning in February 2014, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have protested over high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods due to policies of the federal government.[99][100][101][102][103] Demonstrations and riots have left over 40 fatalities in the unrest between both Chavistas and opposition protesters,[104] and has led to the arrest of opposition leaders including Leopoldo López[104][105] and Antonio Ledezma.[106][107][108][109] Human rights groups have strongly condemned the arrest of Leopoldo López.[110]
+
+In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, the opposition gained a majority.[111]
+
+Venezuela devalued its currency in February 2013 due to the rising shortages in the country,[83][112] which included those of milk, flour, and other necessities. This led to an increase in malnutrition, especially among children.[113][114] Venezuela's economy had become strongly dependent on the exportation of oil with Crude accounting for 86% of exports,[115] and a high price per barrel to support social programs. Beginning in 2014 the price of oil plummeted from over $100/bbl to $40/bbl a year and a half later, this placed great pressure on the Venezuelan economy, which was no longer able to afford vast social programs. To counter the decrease in oil prices, the Venezuelan Government began taking more money from PDVSA, the state oil company, to meet budgets resulting in a lack of reinvestment in fields and employees. This has seen Venezuela's oil production decrease from its height of nearly 3 to 1 million barrels (480 to 160 thousand cubic metres) per day.[116][117][118][119] In 2014, Venezuela entered an economic recession.[120] In 2015, Venezuela had the world's highest inflation rate with the rate surpassing 100%, becoming the highest in the country's history.[121] In 2017, Donald Trump's administration imposed more economic sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA and Venezuelan officials.[122][123][124] Economic problems, as well as crime and corruption, were some of the main causes of the 2014–present Venezuelan protests.[125][126] Since 2015 nearly 2 million people have fled Venezuela.[127]
+
+In January 2016, President Maduro decreed an "economic emergency" revealing the extent of the crisis and expanding his powers.[128] In July 2016, Colombian border crossings were temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household and health items in Colombia.[129] In September 2016, a study published in the Spanish-language Diario Las Américas[130] indicated that 15% of Venezuelans are eating "food waste discarded by commercial establishments".
+
+Close to 200 riots had occurred in Venezuelan prisons by October 2016, according to Una Ventana a la Libertad, an advocacy group for better prison conditions. The father of an inmate at Táchira Detention Center in Caracas alleged that his son was cannibalized by other inmates during a month-long riot, a claim corroborated by an anonymous police source but denied by the Minister of Correctional Affairs.[131]
+
+In 2017, Venezuela experienced a constitutional crisis in the country. In March 2017, opposition leaders branded President Nicolas Maduro a dictator after the Maduro-aligned Supreme Tribunal, which had been overturning most National Assembly decisions since the opposition took control of the body, took over the functions of the assembly, pushing a lengthy political standoff to new heights.[95] However, the Supreme Court quickly backed down and reversed its decision on 1 April 2017. A month later, President Maduro announced the 2017 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election and on 30 August 2017, the 2017 Constituent National Assembly was elected into office and quickly stripped the National Assembly of its powers.
+
+In December 2017, President Maduro declared that leading opposition parties will be barred from taking part in next year's presidential vote after they boycotted mayoral polls.[132]
+
+Maduro won the 2018 election with 67.8% of the vote. The result was challenged by countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, France and the United States who deemed it fraudulent and moved to recognize Juan Guaidó as president.[133][134][135][136] Other countries including Cuba, China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran have continued to recognize Maduro as president,[137][138] although China, facing financial pressure over its position, has reportedly begun hedging its position by decreasing loans given, cancelling joint ventures, and signaling willingness to work with all parties.[139] A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman denied the reports, describing them as "false information".[140]
+
+In January 2019 the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution "to not recognize the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro's new term as of the 10th of January of 2019,"[141] while the United Nations General Assembly formally recognized the Maduro government as the only legitimate representative of Venezuela at the United Nations[142] and in October 2019, Venezuela was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council.[143]
+
+In August 2019, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose a total economic embargo against Venezuela.[144] Later, in March 2020, the Trump administration indicted Maduro and several Venezuelan officials with drug trafficking.[145]
+
+In June 2020, a detailed report by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights documented enforced disappearances in Venezuela, specifically those that occurred during the years 2018 and 2019. During the period, around 724 enforced disappearances of political detainees were reported. Venezuelan security forces have disappeared their victims, subjecting them to illegal interrogation processes accompanied by torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. Venezuela’s Bolivarian regime has strategically used enforced disappearances to silence political opponents and other critical voices it deems a threat.[146][147]
+
+Venezuela is located in the north of South America; geologically, its mainland rests on the South American Plate. It has a total area of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi) and a land area of 882,050 km2 (340,560 sq mi), making Venezuela the 33rd largest country in the world. The territory it controls lies between latitudes 0° and 13°N and longitudes 59° and 74°W.
+
+Shaped roughly like a triangle, the country has a 2,800 km (1,700 mi) coastline in the north, which includes numerous islands in the Caribbean and the northeast borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Most observers describe Venezuela in terms of four fairly well defined topographical regions: the Maracaibo lowlands in the northwest, the northern mountains extending in a broad east–west arc from the Colombian border along the northern Caribbean coast, the wide plains in central Venezuela, and the Guiana Highlands in the southeast.
+
+The northern mountains are the extreme northeastern extensions of South America's Andes mountain range. Pico Bolívar, the nation's highest point at 4,979 m (16,335 ft), lies in this region. To the south, the dissected Guiana Highlands contain the northern fringes of the Amazon Basin and Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, as well as tepuis, large table-like mountains. The country's center is characterized by the llanos, which are extensive plains that stretch from the Colombian border in the far west to the Orinoco River delta in the east. The Orinoco, with its rich alluvial soils, binds the largest and most important river system of the country; it originates in one of the largest watersheds in Latin America. The Caroní and the Apure are other major rivers.
+
+Venezuela borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Aruba, and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela has territorial disputes with Guyana, formerly United Kingdom, largely concerning the Essequibo area and with Colombia concerning the Gulf of Venezuela. In 1895, after years of diplomatic attempts to solve the border dispute, the dispute over the Essequibo River border flared up. It was submitted to a "neutral" commission (composed of British, American, and Russian representatives and without a direct Venezuelan representative), which in 1899 decided mostly against Venezuela's claim.[148]
+
+Venezuela's most significant natural resources are petroleum and natural gas, iron ore, gold, and other minerals. It also has large areas of arable land and water.
+
+Venezuela is entirely located in the tropics over the Equator to around 12° N. Its climate varies from humid low-elevation plains, where average annual temperatures range as high as 35 °C (95.0 °F), to glaciers and highlands (the páramos) with an average yearly temperature of 8 °C (46.4 °F). Annual rainfall varies from 430 mm (16.9 in) in the semiarid portions of the northwest to over 1,000 mm (39.4 in) in the Orinoco Delta of the far east and the Amazonian Jungle in the south. The precipitation level is lower in the period from August through April. These periods are referred to as hot-humid and cold-dry seasons. Another characteristic of the climate is this variation throughout the country by the existence of a mountain range called "Cordillera de la Costa" which crosses the country from east to west. The majority of the population lives in these mountains.[150]
+
+The country falls into four horizontal temperature zones based primarily on elevation, having tropical, dry, temperate with dry winters, and polar (alpine tundra) climates, amongst others.[151][152][153] In the tropical zone—below 800 m (2,625 ft)—temperatures are hot, with yearly averages ranging between 26 and 28 °C (78.8 and 82.4 °F). The temperate zone ranges between 800 and 2,000 m (2,625 and 6,562 ft) with averages from 12 to 25 °C (53.6 to 77.0 °F); many of Venezuela's cities, including the capital, lie in this region. Colder conditions with temperatures from 9 to 11 °C (48.2 to 51.8 °F) are found in the cool zone between 2,000 and 3,000 m (6,562 and 9,843 ft), especially in the Venezuelan Andes, where pastureland and permanent snowfield with yearly averages below 8 °C (46 °F) cover land above 3,000 meters (9,843 ft) in the páramos.
+
+The highest temperature recorded was 42 °C (108 °F) in Machiques,[154] and the lowest temperature recorded was −11 °C (12 °F), it has been reported from an uninhabited high altitude at Páramo de Piedras Blancas (Mérida state),[155] even though no official reports exist, lower temperatures in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Mérida are known.
+
+Venezuela lies within the Neotropical realm; large portions of the country were originally covered by moist broadleaf forests. One of 17 megadiverse countries,[156] Venezuela's habitats range from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. They include xeric scrublands in the extreme northwest and coastal mangrove forests in the northeast.[150] Its cloud forests and lowland rainforests are particularly rich.[157]
+
+Animals of Venezuela are diverse and include manatees, three-toed sloth, two-toed sloth, Amazon river dolphins, and Orinoco crocodiles, which have been reported to reach up to 6.6 m (22 ft) in length. Venezuela hosts a total of 1,417 bird species, 48 of which are endemic.[158] Important birds include ibises, ospreys, kingfishers,[157] and the yellow-orange Venezuelan troupial, the national bird. Notable mammals include the giant anteater, jaguar, and the capybara, the world's largest rodent. More than half of Venezuelan avian and mammalian species are found in the Amazonian forests south of the Orinoco.[159]
+
+For the fungi, an account was provided by R.W.G. Dennis[160] which has been digitized and the records made available on-line as part of the Cybertruffle Robigalia database.[161] That database includes nearly 3,900 species of fungi recorded from Venezuela, but is far from complete, and the true total number of fungal species already known from Venezuela is likely higher, given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered.[162]
+
+Among plants of Venezuela, over 25,000 species of orchids are found in the country's cloud forest and lowland rainforest ecosystems.[157] These include the flor de mayo orchid (Cattleya mossiae), the national flower. Venezuela's national tree is the araguaney, whose characteristic lushness after the rainy season led novelist Rómulo Gallegos to name it "[l]a primavera de oro de los araguaneyes" (the golden spring of the araguaneyes). The tops of the tepuis are also home to several carnivorous plants including the marsh pitcher plant, Heliamphora, and the insectivorous bromeliad, Brocchinia reducta.
+
+Venezuela is among the top 20 countries in terms of endemism.[163] Among its animals, 23% of reptilian and 50% of amphibian species are endemic.[163] Although the available information is still very small, a first effort has been made to estimate the number of fungal species endemic to Venezuela: 1334 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the country.[164] Some 38% of the over 21,000 plant species known from Venezuela are unique to the country.[163]
+
+Venezuela is one of the 10 most biodiverse countries on the planet, yet it is one of the leaders of deforestation due to economic and political factors. Each year, roughly 287,600 hectares of forest are permanently destroyed and other areas are degraded by mining, oil extraction, and logging. Between 1990 and 2005, Venezuela officially lost 8.3% of its forest cover, which is about 4.3 million ha. In response, federal protections for critical habitat were implemented; for example, 20% to 33% of forested land is protected.[159]  The country's biosphere reserve is part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; five wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention.[167] In 2003, 70% of the nation's land was under conservation management in over 200 protected areas, including 43 national parks.[168] Venezuela's 43 national parks include Canaima National Park, Morrocoy National Park, and Mochima National Park. In the far south is a reserve for the country's Yanomami tribes. Covering 32,000 square miles (82,880 square kilometres), the area is off-limits to farmers, miners, and all non-Yanomami settlers.
+
+Venezuela was one of the few countries that did not enter an INDC at COP21.[169][170] Many terrestrial ecosystems are considered endangered, specially the dry forest in the northern regions of the country and the coral reefs in the Caribbean coast.[165][171][172]
+
+Following the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, Venezuelan politics were dominated by the Third Way Christian democratic COPEI and the center-left social democratic Democratic Action (AD) parties; this two-party system was formalized by the puntofijismo arrangement. Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which resulted in hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who had led the first of the 1992 coup attempts, and the launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.
+
+The opposition's attempts to unseat Chávez included the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, and the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004, all of which failed. Chávez was re-elected in December 2006 but suffered a significant defeat in 2007 with the narrow rejection of the 2007 Venezuelan constitutional referendum, which had offered two packages of constitutional reforms aimed at deepening the Bolivarian Revolution.
+
+Two major blocs of political parties are in Venezuela: the incumbent leftist bloc United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), its major allies Fatherland for All (PPT) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), and the opposition bloc grouped into the electoral coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática. This includes A New Era (UNT) together with allied parties Project Venezuela, Justice First, Movement for Socialism (MAS) and others. Hugo Chávez, the central figure of the Venezuelan political landscape since his election to the presidency in 1998 as a political outsider, died in office in early 2013, and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro (initially as interim president, before narrowly winning the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election).
+
+The Venezuelan president is elected by a vote, with direct and universal suffrage, and is both head of state and head of government. The term of office is six years, and (as of 15 February 2009) a president may be re-elected an unlimited number of times. The president appoints the vice president and decides the size and composition of the cabinet and makes appointments to it with the involvement of the legislature. The president can ask the legislature to reconsider portions of laws he finds objectionable, but a simple parliamentary majority can override these objections.
+
+The president may ask the National Assembly to pass an enabling act granting the ability to rule by decree in specified policy areas; this requires a two-thirds majority in the Assembly. Since 1959, six Venezuelan presidents have been granted such powers.
+
+The unicameral Venezuelan parliament is the Asamblea Nacional ("National Assembly"). The number of members is variable – each state and the Capital district elect three representatives plus the result of dividing the state population by 1.1% of the total population of the country.[173] Three seats are reserved for representatives of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. For the 2011–2016 period the number of seats is 165.[174] All deputies serve five-year terms.
+
+The voting age in Venezuela is 18 and older. Voting is not compulsory.[175]
+
+The legal system of Venezuela belongs to the Continental Law tradition. The highest judicial body is the Supreme Tribunal of Justice or Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, whose magistrates are elected by parliament for a single two-year term. The National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, or CNE) is in charge of electoral processes; it is formed by five main directors elected by the National Assembly. Supreme Court president Luisa Estela Morales said in December 2009 that Venezuela had moved away from "a rigid division of powers" toward a system characterized by "intense coordination" between the branches of government. Morales clarified that each power must be independent adding that "one thing is separation of powers and another one is division".[176]
+
+The 2015 parliamentary elections were held on 6 December 2015 to elect the 164 deputies and three indigenous representatives of the National Assembly. In 2014, a series of protest and demonstrations began in Venezuela, attributed[by whom?] to inflation, violence and shortages in Venezuela. The government has accused the protest of being motivated by fascists, opposition leaders, capitalism and foreign influence,[177] despite being largely peaceful.[178]
+
+President Maduro acknowledged PSUV defeat, but attributed the opposition's victory to an intensification of an economic war. Despite this, Maduro said "I will stop by hook or by crook the opposition coming to power, whatever the costs, in any way".[179] In the following months, Maduro fulfilled his promise of preventing the democratically  and constitutionally elected National Assembly from legislating. The first steps taken by PSUV and government were the substitution of the entire Supreme Court a day after the Parliamentary Elections[180] contrary to the Constitution of Venezuela, acclaimed as a fraud by the majority of the Venezuelan and international press.[181][182][183][184] The Financial Times described the function of the Supreme Court in Venezuela as "rubber stamping executive whims and vetoing legislation".[185] The PSUV government used this violation to suspend several elected opponents,[186] ignoring again the Constitution of Venezuela. Maduro said that "the Amnesty law (approved by the Parliament) will not be executed" and asked the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional before the law was known.[187]
+
+On 16 January 2016, Maduro approved an unconstitutional economic emergency decree,[188] relegating to his own figure the legislative and executive powers, while also holding judiciary power through the fraudulent designation of judges the day after the election on 6 December 2015.[180][181][182][183][184] From these events, Maduro effectively controls all three branches of government. On 14 May 2016, constitutional guarantees were in fact suspended when Maduro decreed the extension of the economic emergency decree for another 60 days and declared a State of Emergency,[189] which is a clear violation of the Constitution of Venezuela[190] in the Article 338th: "The approval of the extension of States of emergency corresponds to the National Assembly." Thus, constitutional rights in Venezuela are considered suspended in fact by many publications[191][192][193] and public figures.[194][195][196]
+
+On 14 May 2016, the Organization of American States was considering the application of the Inter-American Democratic Charter[197] sanctions for non-compliance to its own constitution.
+
+In March 2017, the Venezuelan Supreme Court took over law making powers from the National Assembly[198] but reversed its decision the following day.[199]
+
+Throughout most of the 20th century, Venezuela maintained friendly relations with most Latin American and Western nations. Relations between Venezuela and the United States government worsened in 2002, after the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt during which the U.S. government recognized the short-lived interim presidency of Pedro Carmona. In 2015, Venezuela was declared a national security threat by U.S. president Barack Obama.[200][201][202] Correspondingly, ties to various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries not allied to the U.S. have strengthened. For example, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki declared in 2015 that Venezuela was his country's "most important ally".[203]
+
+Venezuela seeks alternative hemispheric integration via such proposals as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade proposal and the newly launched Latin American television network teleSUR. Venezuela is one of five nations in the world—along with Russia, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria—to have recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Venezuela was a proponent of OAS's decision to adopt its Anti-Corruption Convention[204] and is actively working in the Mercosur trade bloc to push increased trade and energy integration. Globally, it seeks a "multi-polar" world based on strengthened ties among undeveloped countries.
+
+On 26 April 2017, Venezuela announced its intention to withdraw from the OAS.[205] Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez said that President Nicolás Maduro plans to publicly renounce Venezuela's membership on 27 April 2017. It will take two years for the country to formally leave. During this period, the country does not plan on participating in the OAS.[206]
+
+Venezuela is involved in a long-standing disagreement about the control of the Guayana Esequiba area.
+
+Venezuela may suffer a deterioration of its power in international affairs if the global transition to renewable energy is completed. It is ranked 151 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition (GeGaLo).[207]
+
+The Bolivarian National Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana, FANB) are the overall unified military forces of Venezuela. It includes over 320,150 men and women, under Article 328 of the Constitution, in 5 components of Ground, Sea and Air. The components of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces are: the Venezuelan Army, the Venezuelan Navy, the Venezuelan Air Force, the Venezuelan National Guard, and the Venezuelan National Militia.
+
+As of 2008[update], a further 600,000 soldiers were incorporated into a new branch, known as the Armed Reserve. The president of Venezuela is the commander-in-chief of the national armed forces. The main roles of the armed forces are to defend the sovereign national territory of Venezuela, airspace, and islands, fight against drug trafficking, to search and rescue and, in the case of a natural disaster, civil protection. All male citizens of Venezuela have a constitutional duty to register for the military service at the age of 18, which is the age of majority in Venezuela.
+
+In Venezuela, a person is murdered every 21 minutes.[216] Violent crimes have been so prevalent in Venezuela that the government no longer produces the crime data.[217] In 2013, the homicide rate was approximately 79 per 100,000, one of the world's highest, having quadrupled in the past 15 years with over 200,000 people murdered.[218] By 2015, it had risen to 90 per 100,000.[219] The country's body count of the previous decade mimics that of the Iraq War and in some instances had more civilian deaths even though the country is at peacetime.[220] The capital Caracas has one of the greatest homicide rates of any large city in the world, with 122 homicides per 100,000 residents.[221] In 2008, polls indicated that crime was the number one concern of voters.[222] Attempts at fighting crime such as Operation Liberation of the People were implemented to crack down on gang-controlled areas[223] but, of reported criminal acts, less than 2% are prosecuted.[224] In 2017, the Financial Times noted that some of the arms procured by the government over the previous two decades had been diverted to paramilitary civilian groups and criminal syndicates.[185]
+
+Venezuela is especially dangerous toward foreign travelers and investors who are visiting. The United States Department of State and the Government of Canada have warned foreign visitors that they may be subjected to robbery, kidnapping for a ransom or sale to terrorist organizations[225] and murder, and that their own diplomatic travelers are required to travel in armored vehicles.[226][227] The United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office has advised against all travel to Venezuela.[228]  Visitors have been murdered during robberies and criminals do not discriminate among their victims. Former Miss Venezuela 2004 winner Mónica Spear and her ex-husband were murdered and their 5-year-old daughter was shot while vacationing in Venezuela, and an elderly German tourist was murdered only a few weeks later.[229][230]
+
+There are approximately 33 prisons holding about 50,000 inmates.[231] They include; El Rodeo outside of Caracas, Yare Prison in the northern state of Miranda, and several others. Venezuela's prison system is heavily overcrowded; its facilities have capacity for only 14,000 prisoners.[232]
+
+Corruption in Venezuela is high by world standards and was so for much of the 20th century. The discovery of oil had worsened political corruption,[233] and by the late 1970s, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso's description of oil as "the Devil's excrement" had become a common expression in Venezuela.[234] Venezuela has been ranked one of the most corrupt countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index since the survey started in 1995. The 2010 ranking placed Venezuela at number 164, out of 178 ranked countries in government transparency.[235] By 2016, the rank had increased to 166 out of 178.[236] Similarly, the World Justice Project ranked Venezuela 99th out of 99 countries surveyed in its 2014 Rule of Law Index.[237]
+
+This corruption is shown with Venezuela's significant involvement in drug trafficking, with Colombian cocaine and other drugs transiting Venezuela towards the United States and Europe. In the period 2003 - 2008 Venezuelan authorities seized the fifth largest total quantity of cocaine in the world, behind Colombia, the United States, Spain and Panama.[238] In 2006, the government's agency for combating illegal drug trade in Venezuela, ONA, was incorporated into the office of the vice-president of the country. However, many major government and military officials have been known for their involvement with drug trafficking; especially with the October 2013 incident of men from the Venezuelan National Guard placing 1.3 tons of cocaine on a Paris flight knowing they will not face charges.[239]
+
+Venezuela is divided into 23 states (estados), a capital district (distrito capital) corresponding to the city of Caracas, and the Federal Dependencies (Dependencias Federales, a special territory). Venezuela is further subdivided into 335 municipalities (municipios); these are subdivided into over one thousand parishes (parroquias). The states are grouped into nine administrative regions (regiones administrativas), which were established in 1969 by presidential decree.
+
+The country can be further divided into ten geographical areas, some corresponding to climatic and biogeographical regions. In the north are the Venezuelan Andes and the Coro region, a mountainous tract in the northwest, holds several sierras and valleys. East of it are lowlands abutting Lake Maracaibo and the Gulf of Venezuela.
+
+The Central Range runs parallel to the coast and includes the hills surrounding Caracas; the Eastern Range, separated from the Central Range by the Gulf of Cariaco, covers all of Sucre and northern Monagas. The Insular Region includes all of Venezuela's island possessions: Nueva Esparta and the various Federal Dependencies. The Orinoco Delta, which forms a triangle covering Delta Amacuro, projects northeast into the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Venezuela has a market-based mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector,[241][242] which accounts for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports, and more than half of government revenues. Per capita GDP for 2016 was estimated to be US$15,100, ranking 109th in the world.[65] Venezuela has the least expensive petrol in the world because the consumer price of petrol is heavily subsidized. The private sector controls two-thirds of Venezuela's economy.[243]
+
+The Central Bank of Venezuela is responsible for developing monetary policy for the Venezuelan bolívar which is used as currency. The president of the Central Bank of Venezuela serves as the country's representative in the International Monetary Fund.  The U.S.-based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, cited in The Wall Street Journal, claims Venezuela has the weakest property rights in the world, scoring only 5.0 on a scale of 100; expropriation without compensation is not uncommon.
+
+As of 2011, more than 60% of Venezuela's international reserves was in gold, eight times more than the average for the region. Most of Venezuela's gold held abroad was located in London. On 25 November 2011, the first of US$11 billion of repatriated gold bullion arrived in Caracas; Chávez called the repatriation of gold a "sovereign" step that will help protect the country's foreign reserves from the turmoil in the U.S. and Europe.[244] However government policies quickly spent down this returned gold and in 2013 the government was forced to add the dollar reserves of state owned companies to those of the national bank to reassure the international bond market.[245]
+
+Manufacturing contributed 17% of GDP in 2006. Venezuela manufactures and exports heavy industry products such as steel, aluminium and cement, with production concentrated around Ciudad Guayana, near the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world and the provider of about three-quarters of Venezuela's electricity. Other notable manufacturing includes electronics and automobiles, as well as beverages, and foodstuffs. Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 3% of GDP, 10% of the labor force, and at least a quarter of Venezuela's land area. The country is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture. In 2012, total food consumption was over 26 million metric tonnes, a 94.8% increase from 2003.[248]
+
+Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil, and it is a founding member of OPEC. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995[249] as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak.[250] The 1990s also saw Venezuela experience a major banking crisis in 1994.
+
+The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending. With social programs such as the Bolivarian Missions, Venezuela initially made progress in social development in the 2000s, particularly in areas such as health, education, and poverty. Many of the social policies pursued by Chávez and his administration were jump-started by the Millennium Development Goals, eight goals that Venezuela and 188 other nations agreed to in September 2000.[251] The sustainability of the Bolivarian Missions has been questioned due to the Bolivarian state's overspending on public works and because the Chávez government did not save funds for future economic hardships like other OPEC nations; with economic issues and poverty rising as a result of their policies in the 2010s.[24][252][253] In 2003 the government of Hugo Chávez implemented currency controls after capital flight led to a devaluation of the currency. This led to the development of a parallel market of dollars in the subsequent years. The fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis saw a renewed economic downturn. Despite controversial data shared by the Venezuelan government showing that the country had halved malnutrition following one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals,[114][254] shortages of staple goods began to occur in Venezuela and malnutrition began to increase.[114]
+
+In early 2013, Venezuela devalued its currency due to growing shortages in the country.[255][256][257]  The shortages included, and still include, necessities such as toilet paper, milk, and flour.[258] Fears rose so high due to the toilet paper shortage that the government occupied a toilet paper factory, and continued further plans to nationalize other industrial aspects like food distribution.[259][260] Venezuela's bond ratings have also decreased multiple times in 2013 due to decisions by the president Nicolás Maduro. One of his decisions was to force stores and their warehouses to sell all of their products, which led to even more shortages in the future.[261] In 2016, consumer prices in Venezuela increased 800% and the economy declined by 18.6%, entering an economic depression.[262][263] Venezuela's outlook was deemed negative by most bond-rating services in 2017.[264][265] For 2018 an inflation rate of 1,000,000 percent was projected, putting Venezuela in a similar situation to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s.[266]
+
+Tourism has been developed considerably in recent decades, particularly because of its favorable geographical position, the variety of landscapes, the richness of plant and wildlife, the artistic expressions and the privileged tropical climate of the country, which affords each region (especially the beaches) throughout the year.
+
+Margarita Island is one of the top tourist destinations for enjoyment and relaxation. It is an island with a modern infrastructure, bordered by beautiful beaches suitable for extreme sports, and features castles, fortresses and churches of great cultural value.
+
+Shortages in Venezuela have been prevalent following the enactment of price controls and other policies during the economic policy of the Hugo Chávez government.[267][268] Under the economic policy of the Nicolás Maduro government, greater shortages occurred due to the Venezuelan government's policy of withholding United States dollars from importers with price controls.[269]
+
+Shortages occur in regulated products, such as milk, various types of meat, coffee, rice, oil, flour, butter, and other goods including basic necessities like toilet paper, personal hygiene products, and even medicine.[267][270][271] As a result of the shortages, Venezuelans must search for food, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products.[272][273] Maduro's government has blamed the shortages on "bourgeois criminals" hoarding goods.[274]
+
+A drought, combined with a lack of planning and maintenance, has caused a hydroelectricity shortage.  To deal with lack of power supply, in April 2016 the Maduro government announced rolling blackouts[275] and reduced the government workweek to only Monday and Tuesday.[276] A multi-university study found that, in 2016 alone, about 75% of Venezuelans lost weight due to hunger, with the average losing about 8.6 kg (19 lbs) due to the lack of food.[277]
+
+By late-2016 and into 2017, Venezuelans had to search for food on a daily basis, occasionally resorting to eating wild fruit or garbage, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products.[278][273][279][280][281] By early 2017, priests began telling Venezuelans to label their garbage so needy individuals could feed on their refuse.[282] In March 2017, Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the world, began having shortages of gasoline in some regions with reports that fuel imports had begun.[283]
+
+Venezuela has the largest oil reserves, and the eighth largest natural gas reserves in the world.[284] Compared to the preceding year another 40.4% in crude oil reserves were proven in 2010, allowing Venezuela to surpass Saudi Arabia as the country with the largest reserves of this type.[285] The country's main petroleum deposits are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo, the Gulf of Venezuela (both in Zulia), and in the Orinoco River basin (eastern Venezuela), where the country's largest reserve is located. Besides the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere,[286] Venezuela has non-conventional oil deposits (extra-heavy crude oil, bitumen and tar sands) approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil.[287] The electricity sector in Venezuela is one of the few to rely primarily on hydropower, and includes the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world.
+
+In the first half of the 20th century, U.S. oil companies were heavily involved in Venezuela, initially interested only in purchasing concessions.[288] In 1943 a new government introduced a 50/50 split in profits between the government and the oil industry. In 1960, with a newly installed democratic government, Hydrocarbons Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the creation of OPEC, the consortium of oil-producing countries aiming to support the price of oil.[289]
+
+In 1973, Venezuela voted to nationalize its oil industry outright, effective 1 January 1976, with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) taking over and presiding over a number of holding companies; in subsequent years, Venezuela built a vast refining and marketing system in the U.S. and Europe.[290] In the 1990s PDVSA became more independent from the government and presided over an apertura (opening) in which it invited in foreign investment. Under Hugo Chávez a 2001 law placed limits on foreign investment.
+
+The state oil company PDVSA played a key role in the December 2002 – February 2003 national strike which sought President Chávez' resignation. Managers and skilled highly paid technicians of PDVSA shut down the plants and left their posts, and by some reports sabotaged equipment, and petroleum production and refining by PDVSA almost ceased. Activities eventually were slowly restarted by returning and substitute oil workers. As a result of the strike, around 40% of the company's workforce (around 18,000 workers) were dismissed for "dereliction of duty" during the strike.[291][292]
+
+Venezuela is connected to the world primarily via air (Venezuela's airports include the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, near Caracas and La Chinita International Airport near Maracaibo) and sea (with major sea ports at La Guaira, Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello). In the south and east the Amazon rainforest region has limited cross-border transport; in the west, there is a mountainous border of over 2,213 kilometres (1,375 mi) shared with Colombia. The Orinoco River is navigable by oceangoing vessels up to 400 kilometres (250 mi) inland, and connects the major industrial city of Ciudad Guayana to the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Venezuela has a limited national railway system, which has no active rail connections to other countries. The government of Hugo Chávez tried to invest in expanding it, but Venezuela's rail project is on hold due to Venezuela not being able to pay the $7.5 billion[clarification needed] and owing China Railway nearly $500 million.[293]
+Several major cities have metro systems; the Caracas Metro has been operating since 1983. The Maracaibo Metro and Valencia Metro were opened more recently.
+Venezuela has a road network of nearly 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi) in length, placing the country around 45th in the world;[294] around a third of roads are paved.
+
+Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America;[13][14] the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital Caracas, which is also the largest city. About 93% of the population lives in urban areas in northern Venezuela; 73% live less than 100 kilometres (62 mi) from the coastline.[297] Though almost half of Venezuela's land area lies south of the Orinoco, only 5% of Venezuelans live there. The largest and most important city south of the Orinoco is Ciudad Guayana, which is the sixth most populous conurbation.[298] Other major cities include Barquisimeto, Valencia, Maracay, Maracaibo, Barcelona-Puerto La Cruz, Mérida and San Cristóbal.
+
+According to a 2014 study by sociologists of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.5 million Venezuelans, or about 4% to 6% of the country's population, have left Venezuela since 1999 following the Bolivarian Revolution.[299][300]
+
+The people of Venezuela come from a variety of ancestries. It is estimated that the majority of the population is of mestizo, or mixed, ethnic ancestry.
+Nevertheless, in the 2011 census, which Venezuelans were asked to identify themselves according to their customs and ancestry, the term mestizo was excluded from the answers. The majority claimed to be mestizo or white—51.6% and 43.6%, respectively.[1] Practically half of the population claimed to be moreno, a term used throughout Ibero-America that in this case means "dark-skinned" or "brown-skinned", as opposed to having a lighter skin (this term connotes skin color or tone, rather than facial features or descent).
+
+Ethnic minorities in Venezuela consist of groups that descend mainly from African or indigenous peoples; 2.8% identified themselves as "black" and 0.7% as afrodescendiente (Afro-descendant), 2.6% claimed to belong to indigenous peoples, and 1.2% answered "other races".[1][1]
+
+Among indigenous people, 58% were Wayúu, 7% Warao, 5% Kariña, 4% Pemón, 3% Piaroa, 3% Jivi, 3% Añu, 3% Cumanágoto, 2% Yukpa, 2% Chaima and 1% Yanomami; the remaining 9% consisted of other indigenous nations.[301]
+
+According to an autosomal DNA genetic study conducted in 2008 by the University of Brasília (UNB), the composition of Venezuela's population is 60.60% of European contribution, 23% of indigenous contribution, and 16.30% of African contribution.[302]
+
+During the colonial period and until after the Second World War, many of the European immigrants to Venezuela came from the Canary Islands,[303] which had a significant cultural impact on the cuisine and customs of Venezuela.[304][305][306] These influences on Venezuela have led to the nation being called the 8th island of the Canaries.[307][308] With the start of oil exploitation in the early 20th century, companies from the United States began establishing operations in Venezuela, bringing with them U.S. citizens. Later, during and after the war, new waves of immigrants from other parts of Europe, the Middle East, and China began; many were encouraged by government-established immigration programs and lenient immigration policies.[309] During the 20th century, Venezuela, along with the rest of Latin America, received millions of immigrants from Europe.[310][311] This was especially true post-World War II, as a consequence of war-ridden Europe.[310][311][312] During the 1970s, while experiencing an oil-export boom, Venezuela received millions of immigrants from Ecuador, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.[312] Due to the belief that this immigration influx depressed wages, some Venezuelans opposed European immigration.[312] The Venezuelan government, however, were actively recruiting immigrants from Eastern Europe to fill a need for engineers.[310] Millions of Colombians, as well as Middle Eastern and Haitian populations would continue immigrating to Venezuela into the early 21st century.[309]
+
+According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Venezuela hosted a population of refugee and asylum seekers from Colombia numbering 252,200 in 2007, and 10,600 new asylum seekers entered Venezuela in 2007.[313] Between 500,000 and one million illegal immigrants are estimated to be living in the country.[314]
+
+The total indigenous population of the country is estimated at about 500 thousand people (2.8% of the total), distributed among 40 indigenous peoples.[315] There are three uncontacted tribes living in Venezuela. The Constitution recognizes the multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, and multilingual character of the country and includes a chapter devoted to indigenous peoples' rights, which opened up spaces for their political inclusion at national and local level in 1999.
+Most indigenous peoples are concentrated in eight states along Venezuela's borders with Brazil, Guyana, and Colombia, and the majority groups are the Wayuu (west), the Warao (east), the Yanomami (south), and the Pemon (southeast).
+
+Although most residents are monolingual Spanish speakers, many languages are spoken in Venezuela. In addition to Spanish, the Constitution recognizes more than thirty indigenous languages, including Wayuu, Warao, Pemón, and many others for the official use of the indigenous peoples, mostly with few speakers – less than 1% of the total population. Wayuu is the most spoken indigenous language with 170,000 speakers.[316]
+
+Immigrants, in addition to Spanish, speak their own languages. Chinese (400,000), Portuguese (254,000),[316] and Italian (200,000)[317] are the most spoken languages in Venezuela after the official language of Spanish. Arabic is spoken by Lebanese and Syrian colonies on Isla de Margarita, Maracaibo, Punto Fijo, Puerto la Cruz, El Tigre, Maracay, and Caracas. Portuguese is spoken not only by the Portuguese community in Santa Elena de Uairén but also by much of the population due to its proximity to Brazil.[318] The German community speaks their native language, while the people of Colonia Tovar speak mostly an Alemannic dialect of German called alemán coloniero.
+
+English is the most widely used foreign language in demand and is spoken by many professionals, academics, and members of the upper and middle classes as a result of the oil exploration done by foreign companies, in addition to its acceptance as a lingua franca. Culturally, English is common in southern towns like El Callao, and the native English-speaking influence is evident in folk and calypso songs from the region. English was brought to Venezuela by Trinidadian and other British West Indies immigrants.[319]  A variety of Antillean Creole is spoken by a small community in El Callao and Paria.[320] Italian language teaching is guaranteed by the presence of a consistent number of private Venezuelan schools and institutions, where Italian language courses and Italian literature are active. Other languages spoken by large communities in the country are Basque and Galician, among others.
+
+Religion in Venezuela (2011)[2]
+
+According to a 2011 poll (GIS XXI), 88% of the population is Christian, primarily Roman Catholic (71%), and the remaining 17% Protestant, primarily Evangelicals (in Latin America Protestants are usually called "evangelicos"). 8% of Venezuelans are irreligious (atheist 2% and agnostic and 6% indifferent). Almost 3% of the population follow another religion (1% of these people practice Santería).[2]
+
+There are small but influential Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish communities. The Muslim community of more than 100,000 is concentrated among persons of Lebanese and Syrian descent living in Nueva Esparta State, Punto Fijo and the Caracas area. Buddhism in Venezuela is practiced by over 52,000 people. The Buddhist community is made up mainly of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people. There are Buddhist centers in Caracas, Maracay, Mérida, Puerto Ordáz, San Felipe, and Valencia.
+
+The Jewish community has shrunk in recent years due to rising antisemitism in Venezuela,[321][322][323][324][325] with the population declining from 22,000 in 1999[326] to less than 7,000 in 2015.[327]
+
+The culture of Venezuela is a melting pot made up of three main groups: The Indigenous Venezuelans, the Africans, and the Spanish. The first two cultures were in turn differentiated according to their tribes. Acculturation and assimilation, typical of a cultural syncretism, led to the Venezuelan culture of the present day, which is similar in many ways to the culture of the rest of Latin America, but still has its own unique characteristics.
+
+The indigenous and African influence is limited to a few words, food names, and place names. However, the Africans also brought in many musical influences, especially introduction of the drum. The Spanish influence predominantes due to the colonization process and the socioeconomic structure it created, and in particular came from the regions of Andalusia and Extremadura (the places of origin of most of the settlers in the Caribbean during the colonial era). Spanish influences can be seen in the country's architecture, music, religion, and language.
+
+Spanish influences can also be seen in the bullfights that take place in Venezuela, and in certain gastronomical features. Venezuela was also enriched by immigration streams of Indian and European origin in the 19th century, especially from France. Most recently, immigration from the United States, Spain, Italy, and Portugal has further enriched the already complex cultural mosaic (especially in large oil-producing cities).
+
+Carlos Raúl Villanueva was the most important Venezuelan architect of the modern era; he designed the Central University of Venezuela, (a World Heritage Site) and its Aula Magna. Other notable architectural works include the Capitolio, the Baralt Theatre, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex, and the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge.
+
+Venezuelan art was initially dominated by religious motifs. However, in the late 19th century, artists began emphasizing historical and heroic representations of the country's struggle for independence.[328][329] This move was led by Martín Tovar y Tovar.[329][330] Modernism took over in the 20th century.[330] Notable Venezuelan artists include Arturo Michelena, Cristóbal Rojas, Armando Reverón, Manuel Cabré; the kinetic artists Jesús Soto, Gego and Carlos Cruz-Diez;[330] and contemporary artists such as Marisol and Yucef Merhi.[331][332]
+
+Venezuelan literature originated soon after the Spanish conquest of the mostly pre-literate indigenous societies.[333] It was originally dominated by Spanish influences.  Following the rise of political literature during the Venezuelan War of Independence, Venezuelan Romanticism, notably expounded by Juan Vicente González, emerged as the first important genre in the region. Although mainly focused on narrative writing, Venezuelan literature was advanced by poets such as Andrés Eloy Blanco and Fermín Toro.
+
+Major writers and novelists include Rómulo Gallegos, Teresa de la Parra, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Adriano González León, Miguel Otero Silva, and Mariano Picón Salas. The great poet and humanist Andrés Bello was also an educator and intellectual (He was also a childhood tutor and mentor of Simón Bolívar). Others, such as Laureano Vallenilla Lanz and José Gil Fortoul, contributed to Venezuelan Positivism.
+
+The indigenous musical styles of Venezuela are exemplified by groups like Un Sólo Pueblo and Serenata Guayanesa. The national musical instrument is the cuatro. Traditional musical styles and songs mainly emerged in and around the llanos region, including, "Alma llanera" (by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez and Rafael Bolívar Coronado), "Florentino y el diablo" (by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba), "Concierto en la llanura" by Juan Vicente Torrealba, and "Caballo viejo" (by Simón Díaz).
+
+The Zulian gaita is also a very popular genre, generally performed during Christmas. The national dance is the joropo.[334] Venezuela has always been a melting pot of cultures and this can be seen in the richness and variety of its musical styles and dances: calipso, bambuco, fulía, cantos de pilado de maíz, cantos de lavanderas, sebucán, and maremare.[335] Teresa Carreño was a world-famous 19th century piano virtuoso. Recently, great classical music performances have come out of Venezuela. The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, under the leadership of its principal conductor Gustavo Dudamel and José Antonio Abreu, has hosted a number of excellent concerts in many European concert halls, most notably at the 2007 London Proms, and has received several honors. The orchestra is the pinnacle of El Sistema, a publicly financed, voluntary music education program now being emulated in other countries.
+
+In the early 21st century, a movement known as "Movida Acústica Urbana" featured musicians trying to save some national traditions, creating their own original songs but using traditional instruments.[336][337]  Some groups following this movement are Tambor Urbano,[338] Los Sinverguenzas, C4Trío, and Orozco Jam.[339]
+
+Afro-Venezuelan musical traditions are most intimately related to the festivals of the "black folk saints" San Juan and St. Benedict the Moor. Specific songs are related to the different stages of their festivals and processions, when the saints start their yearly "paseo" – stroll – through the community to dance with their people.
+
+The origins of baseball in Venezuela are unclear, although it is known that the sport was being played in the country by the late 19th century.[340] In the early 20th century, North American immigrants who came to Venezuela to work in the nation's oil industry helped to popularize the sport in Venezuela.[341] During the 1930s, baseball's popularity continued to rise in the country, leading to the foundation of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVBP) in 1945, and the sport would soon become the nation's most popular.[342][343]
+
+The immense popularity of baseball in the country makes Venezuela a rarity among its South American neighbors—association football is the dominant sport in the continent.[341][343][344] However, football, as well as basketball, are among the more popular sports played in Venezuela.[345] Venezuela hosted the 2012 Basketball World Olympic Qualifying Tournament and the 2013 FIBA Basketball Americas Championship, which took place in the Poliedro de Caracas.
+
+Although not as popular in Venezuela as the rest of South America, football, spearheaded by the Venezuela national football team is gaining popularity as well. The sport is also noted for having an increased focus during the World Cup.[345] According to the CONMEBOL alphabetical rotation policy established in 2011, Venezuela is scheduled to host the Copa América every 40 years.[346]
+
+Venezuela is also home to former Formula 1 driver, Pastor Maldonado.[347] At the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, he claimed his first pole and victory, and became the first and only Venezuelan to have done so in Formula 1 history.[347] Maldonado has increased the reception of Formula 1 in Venezuela, helping to popularize the sport in the country.[348]
+
+In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Venezuelan Rubén Limardo won a gold medal in fencing.[349]
+
+The Venezuelan cuisine reflects the climatic contrasts and cultures that coexist in Venezuela. Among Venezuela's dishes are the hallaca, pabellón criollo, arepas, empanadas, pisca andina, tarkarí de chivo, jalea de mango, patacones, and fried camiguanas.
+
+The literacy rate of the adult population was already at 91.1% by 1998.[350] In 2008, 95.2% of the adult population was literate.[351] The net primary school enrollment rate was at 91% and the net secondary school enrollment rate was at 63% in 2005.[351] Venezuela has a number of universities, of which the most prestigious are the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) founded in Caracas in 1721, the University of Zulia (LUZ) founded in 1891, the University of the Andes (ULA) founded in Mérida State in 1810, the Simón Bolívar University (USB) founded in Miranda State in 1967, and the University of the East (UDO) founded in Sucre State in 1958.
+
+Currently, many Venezuelan graduates seek a future abroad because of the country's troubled economy and heavy crime rate. In a study titled "Venezolana Community Abroad: A New Method of Exile" by Thomas Páez, Mercedes Vivas, and Juan Rafael Pulido of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.35 million Venezuelan college graduates have left the country since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution.[299][300] It is believed that nearly 12% of Venezuelans live abroad, with Ireland becoming a popular destination for students.[355] According to Claudio Bifano, president of the Venezuelan Academy of Physical, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, more than half of all medical graduates had left Venezuela in 2013.[356]
+
+By 2018, over half of all Venezuelan children had dropped out of school, with 58% of students quitting nationwide while areas near bordering countries saw more than 80% of their students leave.[357][358] Nationwide, about 93% of schools do not meet the minimum requirements to operate and 77% do not have utilities such as food, water or electricity.[358]
+
+Venezuela has a national universal health care system. The current government has created a program to expand access to health care known as Misión Barrio Adentro,[360][361] although its efficiency and work conditions have been criticized.[362][363][364] It has been reported that many Misión Barrio Adentro clinics have been closed, and (as of December 2014) it is estimated that 80% of Barrio Adentro establishments in Venezuela are abandoned.[365][366]
+
+Infant mortality in Venezuela was 19 deaths per 1,000 births for 2014 which was lower than the South American average (To compare: The U.S. figure was 6 deaths per 1,000 births in 2013 and the Canadian figure was 4.5 deaths per 1,000 live births).[367] Child malnutrition (defined as stunting or wasting in children under the age of five) was 17%. Delta Amacuro and Amazonas had the nation's highest rates.[368] According to the United Nations, 32% of Venezuelans lacked adequate sanitation, primarily those living in rural areas.[369] Diseases ranging from diphtheria, plague, malaria,[224] typhoid fever, yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis D were present in the country.[370] Obesity was prevalent in approximately 30% of the adult population in Venezuela.[367]
+
+Venezuela had a total of 150 sewage treatment plants; however, 13% of the population lacked access to drinking water, but this number had been dropping.[371]
+
+During the economic crisis observed under President Maduro's presidency, medical professionals were forced to perform outdated treatments on patients.[372]
+
+• Gillespie, Patrick (12 April 2016). "Venezuela: the land of 500% inflation". CNNMoney. Retrieved 17 January 2017. • Rosati, Andrew (11 January 2017). "Venezuela's Economy Was the Worst Performing of 2016, IMF Estimates". Bloomberg. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
+
+Articles
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+Books
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+Talks and interviews

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+Amphibians are ectothermic, tetrapod vertebrates of the class Amphibia. Modern amphibians are all Lissamphibia. They inhabit a wide variety of habitats, with most species living within terrestrial, fossorial, arboreal or freshwater aquatic ecosystems. Thus amphibians typically start out as larvae living in water, but some species have developed behavioural adaptations to bypass this.
+
+The young generally undergo metamorphosis from larva with gills to an adult air-breathing form with lungs. Amphibians use their skin as a secondary respiratory surface and some small terrestrial salamanders and frogs lack lungs and rely entirely on their skin. They are superficially similar to lizards but, along with mammals and birds, reptiles are amniotes and do not require water bodies in which to breed. With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often ecological indicators; in recent decades there has been a dramatic decline in amphibian populations for many species around the globe.
+
+The earliest amphibians evolved in the Devonian period from sarcopterygian fish with lungs and bony-limbed fins, features that were helpful in adapting to dry land. They diversified and became dominant during the Carboniferous and Permian periods, but were later displaced by reptiles and other vertebrates. Over time, amphibians shrank in size and decreased in diversity, leaving only the modern subclass Lissamphibia.
+
+The three modern orders of amphibians are Anura (the frogs and toads), Urodela (the salamanders), and Apoda (the caecilians). The number of known amphibian species is approximately 8,000, of which nearly 90% are frogs. The smallest amphibian (and vertebrate) in the world is a frog from New Guinea (Paedophryne amauensis) with a length of just 7.7 mm (0.30 in). The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) South China giant salamander (Andrias sligoi), but this is dwarfed by the extinct 9 m (30 ft) Prionosuchus from the middle Permian of Brazil. The study of amphibians is called batrachology, while the study of both reptiles and amphibians is called herpetology.
+
+The word "amphibian" is derived from the Ancient Greek term ἀμφίβιος (amphíbios), which means "both kinds of life", ἀμφί meaning "of both kinds" and βιος meaning "life". The term was initially used as a general adjective for animals that could live on land or in water, including seals and otters.[2] Traditionally, the class Amphibia includes all tetrapod vertebrates that are not amniotes. Amphibia in its widest sense (sensu lato) was divided into three subclasses, two of which are extinct:[3]
+
+The actual number of species in each group depends on the taxonomic classification followed. The two most common systems are the classification adopted by the website AmphibiaWeb, University of California, Berkeley and the classification by herpetologist Darrel Frost and the American Museum of Natural History, available as the online reference database "Amphibian Species of the World".[4] The numbers of species cited above follows Frost and the total number of known amphibian species as of March 31, 2019 is exactly 8,000,[5] of which nearly 90% are frogs.[6]
+
+With the phylogenetic classification, the taxon Labyrinthodontia has been discarded as it is a polyparaphyletic group without unique defining features apart from shared primitive characteristics. Classification varies according to the preferred phylogeny of the author and whether they use a stem-based or a node-based classification. Traditionally, amphibians as a class are defined as all tetrapods with a larval stage, while the group that includes the common ancestors of all living amphibians (frogs, salamanders and caecilians) and all their descendants is called Lissamphibia. The phylogeny of Paleozoic amphibians is uncertain, and Lissamphibia may possibly fall within extinct groups, like the Temnospondyli (traditionally placed in the subclass Labyrinthodontia) or the Lepospondyli, and in some analyses even in the amniotes. This means that advocates of phylogenetic nomenclature have removed a large number of basal Devonian and Carboniferous amphibian-type tetrapod groups that were formerly placed in Amphibia in Linnaean taxonomy, and included them elsewhere under cladistic taxonomy.[1] If the common ancestor of amphibians and amniotes is included in Amphibia, it becomes a paraphyletic group.[7]
+
+All modern amphibians are included in the subclass Lissamphibia, which is usually considered a clade, a group of species that have evolved from a common ancestor. The three modern orders are Anura (the frogs and toads), Caudata (or Urodela, the salamanders), and Gymnophiona (or Apoda, the caecilians).[8] It has been suggested that salamanders arose separately from a Temnospondyl-like ancestor, and even that caecilians are the sister group of the advanced reptiliomorph amphibians, and thus of amniotes.[9] Although the fossils of several older proto-frogs with primitive characteristics are known, the oldest "true frog" is Prosalirus bitis, from the Early Jurassic Kayenta Formation of Arizona. It is anatomically very similar to modern frogs.[10] The oldest known caecilian is another Early Jurassic species, Eocaecilia micropodia, also from Arizona.[11] The earliest salamander is Beiyanerpeton jianpingensis from the Late Jurassic of northeastern China.[12]
+
+Authorities disagree as to whether Salientia is a superorder that includes the order Anura, or whether Anura is a sub-order of the order Salientia. The Lissamphibia are traditionally divided into three orders, but an extinct salamander-like family, the Albanerpetontidae, is now considered part of Lissamphibia alongside the superorder Salientia. Furthermore, Salientia includes all three recent orders plus the Triassic proto-frog, Triadobatrachus.[13]
+
+The first major groups of amphibians developed in the Devonian period, around 370 million years ago, from lobe-finned fish which were similar to the modern coelacanth and lungfish.[14] These ancient lobe-finned fish had evolved multi-jointed leg-like fins with digits that enabled them to crawl along the sea bottom. Some fish had developed primitive lungs that help them breathe air when the stagnant pools of the Devonian swamps were low in oxygen. They could also use their strong fins to hoist themselves out of the water and onto dry land if circumstances so required. Eventually, their bony fins would evolve into limbs and they would become the ancestors to all tetrapods, including modern amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals. Despite being able to crawl on land, many of these prehistoric tetrapodomorph fish still spent most of their time in the water. They had started to develop lungs, but still breathed predominantly with gills.[15]
+
+Many examples of species showing transitional features have been discovered. Ichthyostega was one of the first primitive amphibians, with nostrils and more efficient lungs. It had four sturdy limbs, a neck, a tail with fins and a skull very similar to that of the lobe-finned fish, Eusthenopteron.[14] Amphibians evolved adaptations that allowed them to stay out of the water for longer periods. Their lungs improved and their skeletons became heavier and stronger, better able to support the weight of their bodies on land. They developed "hands" and "feet" with five or more digits;[16] the skin became more capable of retaining body fluids and resisting desiccation.[15] The fish's hyomandibula bone in the hyoid region behind the gills diminished in size and became the stapes of the amphibian ear, an adaptation necessary for hearing on dry land.[17] An affinity between the amphibians and the teleost fish is the multi-folded structure of the teeth and the paired supra-occipital bones at the back of the head, neither of these features being found elsewhere in the animal kingdom.[18]
+
+At the end of the Devonian period (360 million years ago), the seas, rivers and lakes were teeming with life while the land was the realm of early plants and devoid of vertebrates,[18] though some, such as Ichthyostega, may have sometimes hauled themselves out of the water. It is thought they may have propelled themselves with their forelimbs, dragging their hindquarters in a similar manner to that used by the elephant seal.[16] In the early Carboniferous (360 to 345 million years ago), the climate became wet and warm. Extensive swamps developed with mosses, ferns, horsetails and calamites. Air-breathing arthropods evolved and invaded the land where they provided food for the carnivorous amphibians that began to adapt to the terrestrial environment. There were no other tetrapods on the land and the amphibians were at the top of the food chain, occupying the ecological position currently held by the crocodile. Though equipped with limbs and the ability to breathe air, most still had a long tapering body and strong tail.[18] They were the top land predators, sometimes reaching several metres in length, preying on the large insects of the period and the many types of fish in the water. They still needed to return to water to lay their shell-less eggs, and even most modern amphibians have a fully aquatic larval stage with gills like their fish ancestors. It was the development of the amniotic egg, which prevents the developing embryo from drying out, that enabled the reptiles to reproduce on land and which led to their dominance in the period that followed.[14]
+
+After the Carboniferous rainforest collapse amphibian dominance gave way to reptiles,[19] and amphibians were further devastated by the Permian–Triassic extinction event.[20] During the Triassic Period (250 to 200 million years ago), the reptiles continued to out-compete the amphibians, leading to a reduction in both the amphibians' size and their importance in the biosphere. According to the fossil record, Lissamphibia, which includes all modern amphibians and is the only surviving lineage, may have branched off from the extinct groups Temnospondyli and Lepospondyli at some period between the Late Carboniferous and the Early Triassic. The relative scarcity of fossil evidence precludes precise dating,[15] but the most recent molecular study, based on multilocus sequence typing, suggests a Late Carboniferous/Early Permian origin for extant amphibians.[21]
+
+The origins and evolutionary relationships between the three main groups of amphibians is a matter of debate. A 2005 molecular phylogeny, based on rDNA analysis, suggests that salamanders and caecilians are more closely related to each other than they are to frogs. It also appears that the divergence of the three groups took place in the Paleozoic or early Mesozoic (around 250 million years ago), before the breakup of the supercontinent Pangaea and soon after their divergence from the lobe-finned fish. The briefness of this period, and the swiftness with which radiation took place, would help account for the relative scarcity of primitive amphibian fossils.[22] There are large gaps in the fossil record, but the discovery of a Gerobatrachus hottoni from the Early Permian in Texas in 2008 provided a missing link with many of the characteristics of modern frogs.[9] Molecular analysis suggests that the frog–salamander divergence took place considerably earlier than the palaeontological evidence indicates.[9] Newer research indicates that the common ancestor of all Lissamphibians lived about 315 million years ago, and that stereospondyls are the closest relatives to the caecilians.[23]
+
+As they evolved from lunged fish, amphibians had to make certain adaptations for living on land, including the need to develop new means of locomotion. In the water, the sideways thrusts of their tails had propelled them forward, but on land, quite different mechanisms were required. Their vertebral columns, limbs, limb girdles and musculature needed to be strong enough to raise them off the ground for locomotion and feeding. Terrestrial adults discarded their lateral line systems and adapted their sensory systems to receive stimuli via the medium of the air. They needed to develop new methods to regulate their body heat to cope with fluctuations in ambient temperature. They developed behaviours suitable for reproduction in a terrestrial environment. Their skins were exposed to harmful ultraviolet rays that had previously been absorbed by the water. The skin changed to become more protective and prevent excessive water loss.[24]
+
+The superclass Tetrapoda is divided into four classes of vertebrate animals with four limbs.[25] Reptiles, birds and mammals are amniotes, the eggs of which are either laid or carried by the female and are surrounded by several membranes, some of which are impervious.[26] Lacking these membranes, amphibians require water bodies for reproduction, although some species have developed various strategies for protecting or bypassing the vulnerable aquatic larval stage.[24] They are not found in the sea with the exception of one or two frogs that live in brackish water in mangrove swamps;[27] the Anderson's salamander meanwhile occurs in brackish or salt water lakes.[28] On land, amphibians are restricted to moist habitats because of the need to keep their skin damp.[24]
+
+Modern amphibians have a simplified anatomy compared to their ancestors due to paedomorphosis, caused by two evolutionary trends: miniaturization and an unusually large genome, which result in a slower growth and development rate compared to other vertebrates.[29][30] Another reason for their size is associated with their rapid metamorphosis, which seems to have evolved only in the ancestors of lissamphibia; in all other known lines the development was much more gradual. Because a remodeling of the feeding apparatus means they don't eat during the metamorphosis, the metamorphosis has to go faster the smaller the individual is, so it happens at an early stage when the larvae are still small. (The largest species of salamanders don't go through a metamorphosis.)[31] Amphibians that lay eggs on land often go through the whole metamorphosis inside the egg. An anamniotic terrestrial egg is less than 1 cm in diameter due to diffusion problems, a size which puts a limit on the amount of posthatching growth.[32]
+
+The smallest amphibian (and vertebrate) in the world is a microhylid frog from New Guinea (Paedophryne amauensis) first discovered in 2012. It has an average length of 7.7 mm (0.30 in) and is part of a genus that contains four of the world's ten smallest frog species.[33] The largest living amphibian is the 1.8 m (5 ft 11 in) Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus)[34] but this is a great deal smaller than the largest amphibian that ever existed—the extinct 9 m (30 ft) Prionosuchus, a crocodile-like temnospondyl dating to 270 million years ago from the middle Permian of Brazil.[35] The largest frog is the African Goliath frog (Conraua goliath), which can reach 32 cm (13 in) and weigh 3 kg (6.6 lb).[34]
+
+Amphibians are ectothermic (cold-blooded) vertebrates that do not maintain their body temperature through internal physiological processes. Their metabolic rate is low and as a result, their food and energy requirements are limited. In the adult state, they have tear ducts and movable eyelids, and most species have ears that can detect airborne or ground vibrations. They have muscular tongues, which in many species can be protruded. Modern amphibians have fully ossified vertebrae with articular processes. Their ribs are usually short and may be fused to the vertebrae. Their skulls are mostly broad and short, and are often incompletely ossified. Their skin contains little keratin and lacks scales, apart from a few fish-like scales in certain caecilians. The skin contains many mucous glands and in some species, poison glands (a type of granular gland). The hearts of amphibians have three chambers, two atria and one ventricle. They have a urinary bladder and nitrogenous waste products are excreted primarily as urea. Most amphibians lay their eggs in water and have aquatic larvae that undergo metamorphosis to become terrestrial adults. Amphibians breathe by means of a pump action in which air is first drawn into the buccopharyngeal region through the nostrils. These are then closed and the air is forced into the lungs by contraction of the throat.[36] They supplement this with gas exchange through the skin.[24]
+
+The order Anura (from the Ancient Greek a(n)- meaning "without" and oura meaning "tail") comprises the frogs and toads. They usually have long hind limbs that fold underneath them, shorter forelimbs, webbed toes with no claws, no tails, large eyes and glandular moist skin.[8] Members of this order with smooth skins are commonly referred to as frogs, while those with warty skins are known as toads. The difference is not a formal one taxonomically and there are numerous exceptions to this rule. Members of the family Bufonidae are known as the "true toads".[37] Frogs range in size from the 30-centimetre (12 in) Goliath frog (Conraua goliath) of West Africa[38] to the 7.7-millimetre (0.30 in) Paedophryne amauensis, first described in Papua New Guinea in 2012, which is also the smallest known vertebrate.[39] Although most species are associated with water and damp habitats, some are specialised to live in trees or in deserts. They are found worldwide except for polar areas.[40]
+
+Anura is divided into three suborders that are broadly accepted by the scientific community, but the relationships between some families remain unclear. Future molecular studies should provide further insights into their evolutionary relationships.[41] The suborder Archaeobatrachia contains four families of primitive frogs. These are Ascaphidae, Bombinatoridae, Discoglossidae and Leiopelmatidae which have few derived features and are probably paraphyletic with regard to other frog lineages.[42] The six families in the more evolutionarily advanced suborder Mesobatrachia are the fossorial Megophryidae, Pelobatidae, Pelodytidae, Scaphiopodidae and Rhinophrynidae and the obligatorily aquatic Pipidae. These have certain characteristics that are intermediate between the two other suborders.[42] Neobatrachia is by far the largest suborder and includes the remaining families of modern frogs, including most common species. Ninety-six percent of the over 5,000 extant species of frog are neobatrachians.[43]
+
+The order Caudata (from the Latin cauda meaning "tail") consists of the salamanders—elongated, low-slung animals that mostly resemble lizards in form. This is a symplesiomorphic trait and they are no more closely related to lizards than they are to mammals.[44] Salamanders lack claws, have scale-free skins, either smooth or covered with tubercles, and tails that are usually flattened from side to side and often finned. They range in size from the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), which has been reported to grow to a length of 1.8 metres (5 ft 11 in),[45] to the diminutive Thorius pennatulus from Mexico which seldom exceeds 20 mm (0.8 in) in length.[46] Salamanders have a mostly Laurasian distribution, being present in much of the Holarctic region of the northern hemisphere. The family Plethodontidae is also found in Central America and South America north of the Amazon basin;[40] South America was apparently invaded from Central America by about the start of the Miocene, 23 million years ago.[47] Urodela is a name sometimes used for all the extant species of salamanders.[48] Members of several salamander families have become paedomorphic and either fail to complete their metamorphosis or retain some larval characteristics as adults.[49] Most salamanders are under 15 cm (6 in) long. They may be terrestrial or aquatic and many spend part of the year in each habitat. When on land, they mostly spend the day hidden under stones or logs or in dense vegetation, emerging in the evening and night to forage for worms, insects and other invertebrates.[40]
+
+The suborder Cryptobranchoidea contains the primitive salamanders. A number of fossil cryptobranchids have been found, but there are only three living species, the Chinese giant salamander (Andrias davidianus), the Japanese giant salamander (Andrias japonicus) and the hellbender (Cryptobranchus alleganiensis) from North America. These large amphibians retain several larval characteristics in their adult state; gills slits are present and the eyes are unlidded. A unique feature is their ability to feed by suction, depressing either the left side of their lower jaw or the right.[50] The males excavate nests, persuade females to lay their egg strings inside them, and guard them. As well as breathing with lungs, they respire through the many folds in their thin skin, which has capillaries close to the surface.[51]
+
+The suborder Salamandroidea contains the advanced salamanders. They differ from the cryptobranchids by having fused prearticular bones in the lower jaw, and by using internal fertilisation. In salamandrids, the male deposits a bundle of sperm, the spermatophore, and the female picks it up and inserts it into her cloaca where the sperm is stored until the eggs are laid.[52] The largest family in this group is Plethodontidae, the lungless salamanders, which includes 60% of all salamander species. The family Salamandridae includes the true salamanders and the name "newt" is given to members of its subfamily Pleurodelinae.[8]
+
+The third suborder, Sirenoidea, contains the four species of sirens, which are in a single family, Sirenidae. Members of this order are eel-like aquatic salamanders with much reduced forelimbs and no hind limbs. Some of their features are primitive while others are derived.[53] Fertilisation is likely to be external as sirenids lack the cloacal glands used by male salamandrids to produce spermatophores and the females lack spermathecae for sperm storage. Despite this, the eggs are laid singly, a behaviour not conducive for external fertilisation.[52]
+
+The order Gymnophiona (from the Greek gymnos meaning "naked" and ophis meaning "serpent") or Apoda comprises the caecilians. These are long, cylindrical, limbless animals with a snake- or worm-like form. The adults vary in length from 8 to 75 centimetres (3 to 30 inches) with the exception of Thomson's caecilian (Caecilia thompsoni), which can reach 150 centimetres (4.9 feet). A caecilian's skin has a large number of transverse folds and in some species contains tiny embedded dermal scales. It has rudimentary eyes covered in skin, which are probably limited to discerning differences in light intensity. It also has a pair of short tentacles near the eye that can be extended and which have tactile and olfactory functions. Most caecilians live underground in burrows in damp soil, in rotten wood and under plant debris, but some are aquatic.[54] Most species lay their eggs underground and when the larvae hatch, they make their way to adjacent bodies of water. Others brood their eggs and the larvae undergo metamorphosis before the eggs hatch. A few species give birth to live young, nourishing them with glandular secretions while they are in the oviduct.[55] Caecilians have a mostly Gondwanan distribution, being found in tropical regions of Africa, Asia and Central and South America.[56]
+
+The integumentary structure contains some typical characteristics common to terrestrial vertebrates, such as the presence of highly cornified outer layers, renewed periodically through a moulting process controlled by the pituitary and thyroid glands. Local thickenings (often called warts) are common, such as those found on toads. The outside of the skin is shed periodically mostly in one piece, in contrast to mammals and birds where it is shed in flakes. Amphibians often eat the sloughed skin.[40] Caecilians are unique among amphibians in having mineralized dermal scales embedded in the dermis between the furrows in the skin. The similarity of these to the scales of bony fish is largely superficial. Lizards and some frogs have somewhat similar osteoderms forming bony deposits in the dermis, but this is an example of convergent evolution with similar structures having arisen independently in diverse vertebrate lineages.[57]
+
+Amphibian skin is permeable to water. Gas exchange can take place through the skin (cutaneous respiration) and this allows adult amphibians to respire without rising to the surface of water and to hibernate at the bottom of ponds.[40] To compensate for their thin and delicate skin, amphibians have evolved mucous glands, principally on their heads, backs and tails. The secretions produced by these help keep the skin moist. In addition, most species of amphibian have granular glands that secrete distasteful or poisonous substances. Some amphibian toxins can be lethal to humans while others have little effect.[58] The main poison-producing glands, the parotoids, produce the neurotoxin bufotoxin and are located behind the ears of toads, along the backs of frogs, behind the eyes of salamanders and on the upper surface of caecilians.[59]
+
+The skin colour of amphibians is produced by three layers of pigment cells called chromatophores. These three cell layers consist of the melanophores (occupying the deepest layer), the guanophores (forming an intermediate layer and containing many granules, producing a blue-green colour) and the lipophores (yellow, the most superficial layer). The colour change displayed by many species is initiated by hormones secreted by the pituitary gland. Unlike bony fish, there is no direct control of the pigment cells by the nervous system, and this results in the colour change taking place more slowly than happens in fish. A vividly coloured skin usually indicates that the species is toxic and is a warning sign to predators.[60]
+
+Amphibians have a skeletal system that is structurally homologous to other tetrapods, though with a number of variations. They all have four limbs except for the legless caecilians and a few species of salamander with reduced or no limbs. The bones are hollow and lightweight. The musculoskeletal system is strong to enable it to support the head and body. The bones are fully ossified and the vertebrae interlock with each other by means of overlapping processes. The pectoral girdle is supported by muscle, and the well-developed pelvic girdle is attached to the backbone by a pair of sacral ribs. The ilium slopes forward and the body is held closer to the ground than is the case in mammals.[61]
+
+In most amphibians, there are four digits on the fore foot and five on the hind foot, but no claws on either. Some salamanders have fewer digits and the amphiumas are eel-like in appearance with tiny, stubby legs. The sirens are aquatic salamanders with stumpy forelimbs and no hind limbs. The caecilians are limbless. They burrow in the manner of earthworms with zones of muscle contractions moving along the body. On the surface of the ground or in water they move by undulating their body from side to side.[62]
+
+In frogs, the hind legs are larger than the fore legs, especially so in those species that principally move by jumping or swimming. In the walkers and runners the hind limbs are not so large, and the burrowers mostly have short limbs and broad bodies. The feet have adaptations for the way of life, with webbing between the toes for swimming, broad adhesive toe pads for climbing, and keratinised tubercles on the hind feet for digging (frogs usually dig backwards into the soil). In most salamanders, the limbs are short and more or less the same length and project at right angles from the body. Locomotion on land is by walking and the tail often swings from side to side or is used as a prop, particularly when climbing. In their normal gait, only one leg is advanced at a time in the manner adopted by their ancestors, the lobe-finned fish.[61] Some salamanders in the genus Aneides and certain plethodontids climb trees and have long limbs, large toepads and prehensile tails.[52] In aquatic salamanders and in frog tadpoles, the tail has dorsal and ventral fins and is moved from side to side as a means of propulsion. Adult frogs do not have tails and caecilians have only very short ones.[62]
+
+Salamanders use their tails in defence and some are prepared to jettison them to save their lives in a process known as autotomy. Certain species in the Plethodontidae have a weak zone at the base of the tail and use this strategy readily. The tail often continues to twitch after separation which may distract the attacker and allow the salamander to escape. Both tails and limbs can be regenerated.[63] Adult frogs are unable to regrow limbs but tadpoles can do so.[62]
+
+Amphibians have a juvenile stage and an adult stage, and the circulatory systems of the two are distinct. In the juvenile (or tadpole) stage, the circulation is similar to that of a fish; the two-chambered heart pumps the blood through the gills where it is oxygenated, and is spread around the body and back to the heart in a single loop. In the adult stage, amphibians (especially frogs) lose their gills and develop lungs. They have a heart that consists of a single ventricle and two atria. When the ventricle starts contracting, deoxygenated blood is pumped through the pulmonary artery to the lungs. Continued contraction then pumps oxygenated blood around the rest of the body. Mixing of the two bloodstreams is minimized by the anatomy of the chambers.[64]
+
+The nervous system is basically the same as in other vertebrates, with a central brain, a spinal cord, and nerves throughout the body. The amphibian brain is less well developed than that of reptiles, birds and mammals but is similar in morphology and function to that of a fish. It is believed amphibians are capable of perceiving pain.  The brain consists of equal parts, cerebrum, midbrain and cerebellum. Various parts of the cerebrum process sensory input, such as smell in the olfactory lobe and sight in the optic lobe, and it is additionally the centre of behaviour and learning. The cerebellum is the center of muscular coordination and the medulla oblongata controls some organ functions including heartbeat and respiration. The brain sends signals through the spinal cord and nerves to regulate activity in the rest of the body. The pineal body, known to regulate sleep patterns in humans, is thought to produce the hormones involved in hibernation and aestivation in amphibians.[65]
+
+Tadpoles retain the lateral line system of their ancestral fishes, but this is lost in terrestrial adult amphibians. Some caecilians possess electroreceptors that allow them to locate objects around them when submerged in water. The ears are well developed in frogs. There is no external ear, but the large circular eardrum lies on the surface of the head just behind the eye. This vibrates and sound is transmitted through a single bone, the stapes, to the inner ear. Only high-frequency sounds like mating calls are heard in this way, but low-frequency noises can be detected through another mechanism.[61] There is a patch of specialized haircells, called papilla amphibiorum, in the inner ear capable of detecting deeper sounds. Another feature, unique to frogs and salamanders, is the columella-operculum complex adjoining the auditory capsule which is involved in the transmission of both airborne and seismic signals.[66] The ears of salamanders and caecilians are less highly developed than those of frogs as they do not normally communicate with each other through the medium of sound.[67]
+
+The eyes of tadpoles lack lids, but at metamorphosis, the cornea becomes more dome-shaped, the lens becomes flatter, and eyelids and associated glands and ducts develop.[61] The adult eyes are an improvement on invertebrate eyes and were a first step in the development of more advanced vertebrate eyes. They allow colour vision and depth of focus. In the retinas are green rods, which are receptive to a wide range of wavelengths.[67]
+
+Many amphibians catch their prey by flicking out an elongated tongue with a sticky tip and drawing it back into the mouth before seizing the item with their jaws. Some use inertial feeding to help them swallow the prey, repeatedly thrusting their head forward sharply causing the food to move backwards in their mouth by inertia. Most amphibians swallow their prey whole without much chewing so they possess voluminous stomachs. The short oesophagus is lined with cilia that help to move the food to the stomach and mucus produced by glands in the mouth and pharynx eases its passage. The enzyme chitinase produced in the stomach helps digest the chitinous cuticle of arthropod prey.[68]
+
+Amphibians possess a pancreas, liver and gall bladder. The liver is usually large with two lobes. Its size is determined by its function as a glycogen and fat storage unit, and may change with the seasons as these reserves are built or used up. Adipose tissue is another important means of storing energy and this occurs in the abdomen (in internal structures called fat bodies), under the skin and, in some salamanders, in the tail.[69]
+
+There are two kidneys located dorsally, near the roof of the body cavity. Their job is to filter the blood of metabolic waste and transport the urine via ureters to the urinary bladder where it is stored before being passed out periodically through the cloacal vent. Larvae and most aquatic adult amphibians excrete the nitrogen as ammonia in large quantities of dilute urine, while terrestrial species, with a greater need to conserve water, excrete the less toxic product urea. Some tree frogs with limited access to water excrete most of their metabolic waste as uric acid.[70]
+
+The lungs in amphibians are primitive compared to those of amniotes, possessing few internal septa and large alveoli, and consequently having a comparatively slow diffusion rate for oxygen entering the blood. Ventilation is accomplished by buccal pumping.[71] Most amphibians, however, are able to exchange gases with the water or air via their skin. To enable sufficient cutaneous respiration, the surface of their highly vascularised skin must remain moist to allow the oxygen to diffuse at a sufficiently high rate.[68] Because oxygen concentration in the water increases at both low temperatures and high flow rates, aquatic amphibians in these situations can rely primarily on cutaneous respiration, as in the Titicaca water frog and the hellbender salamander. In air, where oxygen is more concentrated, some small species can rely solely on cutaneous gas exchange, most famously the plethodontid salamanders, which have neither lungs nor gills. Many aquatic salamanders and all tadpoles have gills in their larval stage, with some (such as the axolotl) retaining gills as aquatic adults.[68]
+
+For the purpose of reproduction most amphibians require fresh water although some lay their eggs on land and have developed various means of keeping them moist. A few (e.g. Fejervarya raja) can inhabit brackish water, but there are no true marine amphibians.[72] There are reports, however, of particular amphibian populations unexpectedly invading marine waters. Such was the case with the Black Sea invasion of the natural hybrid Pelophylax esculentus reported in 2010.[73]
+
+Several hundred frog species in adaptive radiations (e.g., Eleutherodactylus, the Pacific Platymantis, the Australo-Papuan microhylids, and many other tropical frogs), however, do not need any water for breeding in the wild. They reproduce via direct development, an ecological and evolutionary adaptation that has allowed them to be completely independent from free-standing water. Almost all of these frogs live in wet tropical rainforests and their eggs hatch directly into miniature versions of the adult, passing through the tadpole stage within the egg. Reproductive success of many amphibians is dependent not only on the quantity of rainfall, but the seasonal timing.[74]
+
+In the tropics, many amphibians breed continuously or at any time of year. In temperate regions, breeding is mostly seasonal, usually in the spring, and is triggered by increasing day length, rising temperatures or rainfall. Experiments have shown the importance of temperature, but the trigger event, especially in arid regions, is often a storm. In anurans, males usually arrive at the breeding sites before females and the vocal chorus they produce may stimulate ovulation in females and the endocrine activity of males that are not yet reproductively active.[75]
+
+In caecilians, fertilisation is internal, the male extruding an intromittent organ, the phallodeum, and inserting it into the female cloaca. The paired Müllerian glands inside the male cloaca secrete a fluid which resembles that produced by mammalian prostate glands and which may transport and nourish the sperm. Fertilisation probably takes place in the oviduct.[76]
+
+The majority of salamanders also engage in internal fertilisation. In most of these, the male deposits a spermatophore, a small packet of sperm on top of a gelatinous cone, on the substrate either on land or in the water. The female takes up the sperm packet by grasping it with the lips of the cloaca and pushing it into the vent. The spermatozoa move to the spermatheca in the roof of the cloaca where they remain until ovulation which may be many months later. Courtship rituals and methods of transfer of the spermatophore vary between species. In some, the spermatophore may be placed directly into the female cloaca while in others, the female may be guided to the spermatophore or restrained with an embrace called amplexus. Certain primitive salamanders in the families Sirenidae, Hynobiidae and Cryptobranchidae practice external fertilisation in a similar manner to frogs, with the female laying the eggs in water and the male releasing sperm onto the egg mass.[76]
+
+With a few exceptions, frogs use external fertilisation. The male grasps the female tightly with his forelimbs either behind the arms or in front of the back legs, or in the case of Epipedobates tricolor, around the neck. They remain in amplexus with their cloacae positioned close together while the female lays the eggs and the male covers them with sperm. Roughened nuptial pads on the male's hands aid in retaining grip. Often the male collects and retains the egg mass, forming a sort of basket with the hind feet. An exception is the granular poison frog (Oophaga granulifera) where the male and female place their cloacae in close proximity while facing in opposite directions and then release eggs and sperm simultaneously. The tailed frog (Ascaphus truei) exhibits internal fertilisation. The "tail" is only possessed by the male and is an extension of the cloaca and used to inseminate the female. This frog lives in fast-flowing streams and internal fertilisation prevents the sperm from being washed away before fertilisation occurs.[77] The sperm may be retained in storage tubes attached to the oviduct until the following spring.[78]
+
+Most frogs can be classified as either prolonged or explosive breeders. Typically, prolonged breeders congregate at a breeding site, the males usually arriving first, calling and setting up territories. Other satellite males remain quietly nearby, waiting for their opportunity to take over a territory. The females arrive sporadically, mate selection takes place and eggs are laid. The females depart and territories may change hands. More females appear and in due course, the breeding season comes to an end. Explosive breeders on the other hand are found where temporary pools appear in dry regions after rainfall. These frogs are typically fossorial species that emerge after heavy rains and congregate at a breeding site. They are attracted there by the calling of the first male to find a suitable place, perhaps a pool that forms in the same place each rainy season. The assembled frogs may call in unison and frenzied activity ensues, the males scrambling to mate with the usually smaller number of females.[77]
+
+There is a direct competition between males to win the attention of the females in salamanders and newts, with elaborate courtship displays to keep the female's attention long enough to get her interested in choosing him to mate with.[79] Some species store sperm through long breeding seasons, as the extra time may allow for interactions with rival sperm.[80]
+
+Most amphibians go through metamorphosis, a process of significant morphological change after birth. In typical amphibian development, eggs are laid in water and larvae are adapted to an aquatic lifestyle. Frogs, toads and salamanders all hatch from the egg as larvae with external gills. Metamorphosis in amphibians is regulated by thyroxine concentration in the blood, which stimulates metamorphosis, and prolactin, which counteracts thyroxine's effect. Specific events are dependent on threshold values for different tissues.[81] Because most embryonic development is outside the parental body, it is subject to many adaptations due to specific environmental circumstances. For this reason tadpoles can have horny ridges instead of teeth, whisker-like skin extensions or fins. They also make use of a sensory lateral line organ similar to that of fish. After metamorphosis, these organs become redundant and will be reabsorbed by controlled cell death, called apoptosis. The variety of adaptations to specific environmental circumstances among amphibians is wide, with many discoveries still being made.[82]
+
+The egg of an amphibian is typically surrounded by a transparent gelatinous covering secreted by the oviducts and containing mucoproteins and mucopolysaccharides. This capsule is permeable to water and gases, and swells considerably as it absorbs water. The ovum is at first rigidly held, but in fertilised eggs the innermost layer liquefies and allows the embryo to move freely. This also happens in salamander eggs, even when they are unfertilised. Eggs of some salamanders and frogs contain unicellular green algae. These penetrate the jelly envelope after the eggs are laid and may increase the supply of oxygen to the embryo through photosynthesis. They seem to both speed up the development of the larvae and reduce mortality.[83] Most eggs contain the pigment melanin which raises their temperature through the absorption of light and also protects them against ultraviolet radiation. Caecilians, some plethodontid salamanders and certain frogs lay eggs underground that are unpigmented. In the wood frog (Rana sylvatica), the interior of the globular egg cluster has been found to be up to 6 °C (11 °F) warmer than its surroundings, which is an advantage in its cool northern habitat.[84]
+
+The eggs may be deposited singly or in small groups, or may take the form of spherical egg masses, rafts or long strings. In terrestrial caecilians, the eggs are laid in grape-like clusters in burrows near streams. The amphibious salamander Ensatina attaches its similar clusters by stalks to underwater stems and roots. The greenhouse frog (Eleutherodactylus planirostris) lays eggs in small groups in the soil where they develop in about two weeks directly into juvenile frogs without an intervening larval stage.[85] The tungara frog (Physalaemus pustulosus) builds a floating nest from foam to protect its eggs. First a raft is built, then eggs are laid in the centre, and finally a foam cap is overlaid. The foam has anti-microbial properties. It contains no detergents but is created by whipping up proteins and lectins secreted by the female.[86][87]
+
+The eggs of amphibians are typically laid in water and hatch into free-living larvae that complete their development in water and later transform into either aquatic or terrestrial adults. In many species of frog and in most lungless salamanders (Plethodontidae), direct development takes place, the larvae growing within the eggs and emerging as miniature adults. Many caecilians and some other amphibians lay their eggs on land, and the newly hatched larvae wriggle or are transported to water bodies. Some caecilians, the alpine salamander (Salamandra atra) and some of the African live-bearing toads (Nectophrynoides spp.) are viviparous. Their larvae feed on glandular secretions and develop within the female's oviduct, often for long periods. Other amphibians, but not caecilians, are ovoviviparous. The eggs are retained in or on the parent's body, but the larvae subsist on the yolks of their eggs and receive no nourishment from the adult. The larvae emerge at varying stages of their growth, either before or after metamorphosis, according to their species.[88] The toad genus Nectophrynoides exhibits all of these developmental patterns among its dozen or so members.[6]
+
+Frog larvae are known as tadpoles and typically have oval bodies and long, vertically flattened tails with fins. The free-living larvae are normally fully aquatic, but the tadpoles of some species (such as Nannophrys ceylonensis) are semi-terrestrial and live among wet rocks.[89] Tadpoles have cartilaginous skeletons, gills for respiration (external gills at first, internal gills later), lateral line systems and large tails that they use for swimming.[90] Newly hatched tadpoles soon develop gill pouches that cover the gills. The lungs develop early and are used as accessory breathing organs, the tadpoles rising to the water surface to gulp air. Some species complete their development inside the egg and hatch directly into small frogs. These larvae do not have gills but instead have specialised areas of skin through which respiration takes place. While tadpoles do not have true teeth, in most species, the jaws have long, parallel rows of small keratinized structures called keradonts surrounded by a horny beak.[91] Front legs are formed under the gill sac and hind legs become visible a few days later.
+
+Iodine and T4 (over stimulate the spectacular apoptosis [programmed cell death] of the cells of the larval gills, tail and fins) also stimulate the evolution of nervous systems transforming the aquatic, vegetarian tadpole into the terrestrial, carnivorous frog with better neurological, visuospatial, olfactory and cognitive abilities for hunting.[92][93]
+
+In fact, tadpoles developing in ponds and streams are typically herbivorous. Pond tadpoles tend to have deep bodies, large caudal fins and small mouths; they swim in the quiet waters feeding on growing or loose fragments of vegetation. Stream dwellers mostly have larger mouths, shallow bodies and caudal fins; they attach themselves to plants and stones and feed on the surface films of algae and bacteria.[94] They also feed on diatoms, filtered from the water through the gills, and stir up the sediment at bottom of the pond, ingesting edible fragments. They have a relatively long, spiral-shaped gut to enable them to digest this diet.[94] Some species are carnivorous at the tadpole stage, eating insects, smaller tadpoles and fish. Young of the Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) can occasionally be cannibalistic, the younger tadpoles attacking a larger, more developed tadpole when it is undergoing metamorphosis.[95]
+
+At metamorphosis, rapid changes in the body take place as the lifestyle of the frog changes completely. The spiral‐shaped mouth with horny tooth ridges is reabsorbed together with the spiral gut. The animal develops a large jaw, and its gills disappear along with its gill sac. Eyes and legs grow quickly, and a tongue is formed. There are associated changes in the neural networks such as development of stereoscopic vision and loss of the lateral line system. All this can happen in about a day. A few days later, the tail is reabsorbed, due to the higher thyroxine concentration required for this to take place.[94]
+
+At hatching, a typical salamander larva has eyes without lids, teeth in both upper and lower jaws, three pairs of feathery external gills, a somewhat laterally flattened body and a long tail with dorsal and ventral fins. The forelimbs may be partially developed and the hind limbs are rudimentary in pond-living species but may be rather more developed in species that reproduce in moving water. Pond-type larvae often have a pair of balancers, rod-like structures on either side of the head that may prevent the gills from becoming clogged up with sediment. Some members of the genera Ambystoma and Dicamptodon have larvae that never fully develop into the adult form, but this varies with species and with populations. The northwestern salamander (Ambystoma gracile) is one of these and, depending on environmental factors, either remains permanently in the larval state, a condition known as neoteny, or transforms into an adult.[96] Both of these are able to breed.[97] Neoteny occurs when the animal's growth rate is very low and is usually linked to adverse conditions such as low water temperatures that may change the response of the tissues to the hormone thyroxine.[98] Other factors that may inhibit metamorphosis include lack of food, lack of trace elements and competition from conspecifics. The tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) also sometimes behaves in this way and may grow particularly large in the process. The adult tiger salamander is terrestrial, but the larva is aquatic and able to breed while still in the larval state. When conditions are particularly inhospitable on land, larval breeding may allow continuation of a population that would otherwise die out. There are fifteen species of obligate neotenic salamanders, including species of Necturus, Proteus and Amphiuma, and many examples of facultative ones that adopt this strategy under appropriate environmental circumstances.[99]
+
+Lungless salamanders in the family Plethodontidae are terrestrial and lay a small number of unpigmented eggs in a cluster among damp leaf litter. Each egg has a large yolk sac and the larva feeds on this while it develops inside the egg, emerging fully formed as a juvenile salamander. The female salamander often broods the eggs. In the genus Ensatinas, the female has been observed to coil around them and press her throat area against them, effectively massaging them with a mucous secretion.[100]
+
+In newts and salamanders, metamorphosis is less dramatic than in frogs. This is because the larvae are already carnivorous and continue to feed as predators when they are adults so few changes are needed to their digestive systems. Their lungs are functional early, but the larvae do not make as much use of them as do tadpoles. Their gills are never covered by gill sacs and are reabsorbed just before the animals leave the water. Other changes include the reduction in size or loss of tail fins, the closure of gill slits, thickening of the skin, the development of eyelids, and certain changes in dentition and tongue structure. Salamanders are at their most vulnerable at metamorphosis as swimming speeds are reduced and transforming tails are encumbrances on land.[101] Adult salamanders often have an aquatic phase in spring and summer, and a land phase in winter. For adaptation to a water phase, prolactin is the required hormone, and for adaptation to the land phase, thyroxine. External gills do not return in subsequent aquatic phases because these are completely absorbed upon leaving the water for the first time.[102]
+
+Most terrestrial caecilians that lay eggs do so in burrows or moist places on land near bodies of water. The development of the young of Ichthyophis glutinosus, a species from Sri Lanka, has been much studied. The eel-like larvae hatch out of the eggs and make their way to water. They have three pairs of external red feathery gills, a blunt head with two rudimentary eyes, a lateral line system and a short tail with fins. They swim by undulating their body from side to side. They are mostly active at night, soon lose their gills and make sorties onto land. Metamorphosis is gradual. By the age of about ten months they have developed a pointed head with sensory tentacles near the mouth and lost their eyes, lateral line systems and tails. The skin thickens, embedded scales develop and the body divides into segments. By this time, the caecilian has constructed a burrow and is living on land.[103]
+
+In the majority of species of caecilians, the young are produced by viviparity. Typhlonectes compressicauda, a species from South America, is typical of these. Up to nine larvae can develop in the oviduct at any one time. They are elongated and have paired sac-like gills, small eyes and specialised scraping teeth. At first, they feed on the yolks of the eggs, but as this source of nourishment declines they begin to rasp at the ciliated epithelial cells that line the oviduct. This stimulates the secretion of fluids rich in lipids and mucoproteins on which they feed along with scrapings from the oviduct wall. They may increase their length sixfold and be two-fifths as long as their mother before being born. By this time they have undergone metamorphosis, lost their eyes and gills, developed a thicker skin and mouth tentacles, and reabsorbed their teeth. A permanent set of teeth grow through soon after birth.[104][105]
+
+The ringed caecilian (Siphonops annulatus) has developed a unique adaptation for the purposes of reproduction. The progeny feed on a skin layer that is specially developed by the adult in a phenomenon known as maternal dermatophagy. The brood feed as a batch for about seven minutes at intervals of approximately three days which gives the skin an opportunity to regenerate. Meanwhile, they have been observed to ingest fluid exuded from the maternal cloaca.[106]
+
+The care of offspring among amphibians has been little studied but, in general, the larger the number of eggs in a batch, the less likely it is that any degree of parental care takes place. Nevertheless, it is estimated that in up to 20% of amphibian species, one or both adults play some role in the care of the young.[107] Those species that breed in smaller water bodies or other specialised habitats tend to have complex patterns of behaviour in the care of their young.[108]
+
+Many woodland salamanders lay clutches of eggs under dead logs or stones on land. The black mountain salamander (Desmognathus welteri) does this, the mother brooding the eggs and guarding them from predation as the embryos feed on the yolks of their eggs. When fully developed, they break their way out of the egg capsules and disperse as juvenile salamanders.[109] The male hellbender, a primitive salamander, excavates an underwater nest and encourages females to lay there. The male then guards the site for the two or three months before the eggs hatch, using body undulations to fan the eggs and increase their supply of oxygen.[51]
+
+The male Colostethus subpunctatus, a tiny frog, protects the egg cluster which is hidden under a stone or log. When the eggs hatch, the male transports the tadpoles on his back, stuck there by a mucous secretion, to a temporary pool where he dips himself into the water and the tadpoles drop off.[110] The male midwife toad (Alytes obstetricans) winds egg strings round his thighs and carries the eggs around for up to eight weeks. He keeps them moist and when they are ready to hatch, he visits a pond or ditch and releases the tadpoles.[111] The female gastric-brooding frog (Rheobatrachus spp.) reared larvae in her stomach after swallowing either the eggs or hatchlings; however, this stage was never observed before the species became extinct. The tadpoles secrete a hormone that inhibits digestion in the mother whilst they develop by consuming their very large yolk supply.[112] The pouched frog (Assa darlingtoni) lays eggs on the ground. When they hatch, the male carries the tadpoles around in brood pouches on his hind legs.[113] The aquatic Surinam toad (Pipa pipa) raises its young in pores on its back where they remain until metamorphosis.[114] The granular poison frog (Oophaga granulifera) is typical of a number of tree frogs in the poison dart frog family Dendrobatidae. Its eggs are laid on the forest floor and when they hatch, the tadpoles are carried one by one on the back of an adult to a suitable water-filled crevice such as the axil of a leaf or the rosette of a bromeliad. The female visits the nursery sites regularly and deposits unfertilised eggs in the water and these are consumed by the tadpoles.[115]
+
+With a few exceptions, adult amphibians are predators, feeding on virtually anything that moves that they can swallow. The diet mostly consists of small prey that do not move too fast such as beetles, caterpillars, earthworms and spiders. The sirens (Siren spp.) often ingest aquatic plant material with the invertebrates on which they feed[116] and a Brazilian tree frog (Xenohyla truncata) includes a large quantity of fruit in its diet.[117] The Mexican burrowing toad (Rhinophrynus dorsalis) has a specially adapted tongue for picking up ants and termites. It projects it with the tip foremost whereas other frogs flick out the rear part first, their tongues being hinged at the front.[118]
+
+Food is mostly selected by sight, even in conditions of dim light. Movement of the prey triggers a feeding response. Frogs have been caught on fish hooks baited with red flannel and green frogs (Rana clamitans) have been found with stomachs full of elm seeds that they had seen floating past.[119] Toads, salamanders and caecilians also use smell to detect prey. This response is mostly secondary because salamanders have been observed to remain stationary near odoriferous prey but only feed if it moves. Cave-dwelling amphibians normally hunt by smell. Some salamanders seem to have learned to recognize immobile prey when it has no smell, even in complete darkness.[120]
+
+Amphibians usually swallow food whole but may chew it lightly first to subdue it.[40] They typically have small hinged pedicellate teeth, a feature unique to amphibians. The base and crown of these are composed of dentine separated by an uncalcified layer and they are replaced at intervals. Salamanders, caecilians and some frogs have one or two rows of teeth in both jaws, but some frogs (Rana spp.) lack teeth in the lower jaw, and toads (Bufo spp.) have no teeth. In many amphibians there are also vomerine teeth attached to a facial bone in the roof of the mouth.[121]
+
+The tiger salamander (Ambystoma tigrinum) is typical of the frogs and salamanders that hide under cover ready to ambush unwary invertebrates. Others amphibians, such as the Bufo spp. toads, actively search for prey, while the Argentine horned frog (Ceratophrys ornata) lures inquisitive prey closer by raising its hind feet over its back and vibrating its yellow toes.[122] Among leaf litter frogs in Panama, frogs that actively hunt prey have narrow mouths and are slim, often brightly coloured and toxic, while ambushers have wide mouths and are broad and well-camouflaged.[123] Caecilians do not flick their tongues, but catch their prey by grabbing it with their slightly backward-pointing teeth. The struggles of the prey and further jaw movements work it inwards and the caecilian usually retreats into its burrow. The subdued prey is gulped down whole.[124]
+
+When they are newly hatched, frog larvae feed on the yolk of the egg. When this is exhausted some move on to feed on bacteria, algal crusts, detritus and raspings from submerged plants. Water is drawn in through their mouths, which are usually at the bottom of their heads, and passes through branchial food traps between their mouths and their gills where fine particles are trapped in mucus and filtered out. Others have specialised mouthparts consisting of a horny beak edged by several rows of labial teeth. They scrape and bite food of many kinds as well as stirring up the bottom sediment, filtering out larger particles with the papillae around their mouths. Some, such as the spadefoot toads, have strong biting jaws and are carnivorous or even cannibalistic.[125]
+
+The calls made by caecilians and salamanders are limited to occasional soft squeaks, grunts or hisses and have not been much studied. A clicking sound sometimes produced by caecilians may be a means of orientation, as in bats, or a form of communication. Most salamanders are considered voiceless, but the California giant salamander (Dicamptodon ensatus) has vocal cords and can produce a rattling or barking sound. Some species of salamander emit a quiet squeak or yelp if attacked.[126]
+
+Frogs are much more vocal, especially during the breeding season when they use their voices to attract mates. The presence of a particular species in an area may be more easily discerned by its characteristic call than by a fleeting glimpse of the animal itself. In most species, the sound is produced by expelling air from the lungs over the vocal cords into an air sac or sacs in the throat or at the corner of the mouth. This may distend like a balloon and acts as a resonator, helping to transfer the sound to the atmosphere, or the water at times when the animal is submerged.[126] The main vocalisation is the male's loud advertisement call which seeks to both encourage a female to approach and discourage other males from intruding on its territory. This call is modified to a quieter courtship call on the approach of a female or to a more aggressive version if a male intruder draws near. Calling carries the risk of attracting predators and involves the expenditure of much energy.[127] Other calls include those given by a female in response to the advertisement call and a release call given by a male or female during unwanted attempts at amplexus. When a frog is attacked, a distress or fright call is emitted, often resembling a scream.[128] The usually nocturnal Cuban tree frog (Osteopilus septentrionalis) produces a rain call when there is rainfall during daylight hours.[129]
+
+Little is known of the territorial behaviour of caecilians, but some frogs and salamanders defend home ranges. These are usually feeding, breeding or sheltering sites. Males normally exhibit such behaviour though in some species, females and even juveniles are also involved. Although in many frog species, females are larger than males, this is not the case in most species where males are actively involved in territorial defence. Some of these have specific adaptations such as enlarged teeth for biting or spines on the chest, arms or thumbs.[130]
+
+In salamanders, defence of a territory involves adopting an aggressive posture and if necessary attacking the intruder. This may involve snapping, chasing and sometimes biting, occasionally causing the loss of a tail. The behaviour of red back salamanders (Plethodon cinereus) has been much studied. 91% of marked individuals that were later recaptured were within a metre (yard) of their original daytime retreat under a log or rock.[131] A similar proportion, when moved experimentally a distance of 30 metres (98 ft), found their way back to their home base.[131] The salamanders left odour marks around their territories which averaged 0.16 to 0.33 square metres (1.7 to 3.6 sq ft) in size and were sometimes inhabited by a male and female pair.[132] These deterred the intrusion of others and delineated the boundaries between neighbouring areas. Much of their behaviour seemed stereotyped and did not involve any actual contact between individuals. An aggressive posture involved raising the body off the ground and glaring at the opponent who often turned away submissively. If the intruder persisted, a biting lunge was usually launched at either the tail region or the naso-labial grooves. Damage to either of these areas can reduce the fitness of the rival, either because of the need to regenerate tissue or because it impairs its ability to detect food.[131]
+
+In frogs, male territorial behaviour is often observed at breeding locations; calling is both an announcement of ownership of part of this resource and an advertisement call to potential mates. In general, a deeper voice represents a heavier and more powerful individual, and this may be sufficient to prevent intrusion by smaller males. Much energy is used in the vocalization and it takes a toll on the territory holder who may be displaced by a fitter rival if he tires. There is a tendency for males to tolerate the holders of neighbouring territories while vigorously attacking unknown intruders. Holders of territories have a "home advantage" and usually come off better in an encounter between two similar-sized frogs. If threats are insufficient, chest to chest tussles may take place. Fighting methods include pushing and shoving, deflating the opponent's vocal sac, seizing him by the head, jumping on his back, biting, chasing, splashing, and ducking him under the water.[133]
+
+Amphibians have soft bodies with thin skins, and lack claws, defensive armour, or spines. Nevertheless, they have evolved various defence mechanisms to keep themselves alive. The first line of defence in salamanders and frogs is the mucous secretion that they produce. This keeps their skin moist and makes them slippery and difficult to grip. The secretion is often sticky and distasteful or toxic.[134] Snakes have been observed yawning and gaping when trying to swallow African clawed frogs (Xenopus laevis), which gives the frogs an opportunity to escape.[134][135] Caecilians have been little studied in this respect, but the Cayenne caecilian (Typhlonectes compressicauda) produces toxic mucus that has killed predatory fish in a feeding experiment in Brazil.[136] In some salamanders, the skin is poisonous. The rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) from North America and other members of its genus contain the neurotoxin tetrodotoxin (TTX), the most toxic non-protein substance known and almost identical to that produced by pufferfish. Handling the newts does not cause harm, but ingestion of even the most minute amounts of the skin is deadly. In feeding trials, fish, frogs, reptiles, birds and mammals were all found to be susceptible.[137][138] The only predators with some tolerance to the poison are certain populations of common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis).
+In locations where both snake and salamander co-exist, the snakes have developed immunity through genetic changes and they feed on the amphibians with impunity.[139] Coevolution occurs with the newt increasing its toxic capabilities at the same rate as the snake further develops its immunity.[138] Some frogs and toads are toxic, the main poison glands being at the side of the neck and under the warts on the back. These regions are presented to the attacking animal and their secretions may be foul-tasting or cause various physical or neurological symptoms. Altogether, over 200 toxins have been isolated from the limited number of amphibian species that have been investigated.[140]
+
+Poisonous species often use bright colouring to warn potential predators of their toxicity. These warning colours tend to be red or yellow combined with black, with the fire salamander (Salamandra salamandra) being an example. Once a predator has sampled one of these, it is likely to remember the colouration next time it encounters a similar animal. In some species, such as the fire-bellied toad (Bombina spp.), the warning colouration is on the belly and these animals adopt a defensive pose when attacked, exhibiting their bright colours to the predator. The frog Allobates zaparo is not poisonous, but mimics the appearance of other toxic species in its locality, a strategy that may deceive predators.[142]
+
+Many amphibians are nocturnal and hide during the day, thereby avoiding diurnal predators that hunt by sight. Other amphibians use camouflage to avoid being detected. They have various colourings such as mottled browns, greys and olives to blend into the background. Some salamanders adopt defensive poses when faced by a potential predator such as the North American northern short-tailed shrew (Blarina brevicauda). Their bodies writhe and they raise and lash their tails which makes it difficult for the predator to avoid contact with their poison-producing granular glands.[143] A few salamanders will autotomise their tails when attacked, sacrificing this part of their anatomy to enable them to escape. The tail may have a constriction at its base to allow it to be easily detached. The tail is regenerated later, but the energy cost to the animal of replacing it is significant.[63]
+Some frogs and toads inflate themselves to make themselves look large and fierce, and some spadefoot toads (Pelobates spp) scream and leap towards the attacker.[40] Giant salamanders of the genus Andrias, as well as Ceratophrine and Pyxicephalus frogs possess sharp teeth and are capable of drawing blood with a defensive bite. The blackbelly salamander (Desmognathus quadramaculatus) can bite an attacking common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis) two or three times its size on the head and often manages to escape.[144]
+
+In amphibians, there is evidence of habituation, associative learning through both classical and instrumental learning, and discrimination abilities.[145]
+
+In one experiment, when offered live fruit flies (Drosophila virilis), salamanders chose the larger of 1 vs 2 and 2 vs 3. Frogs can distinguish between low numbers (1 vs 2, 2 vs 3, but not 3 vs 4) and large numbers (3 vs 6, 4 vs 8, but not 4 vs 6) of prey. This is irrespective of other characteristics, i.e. surface area, volume, weight and movement, although discrimination among large numbers may be based on surface area.[146]
+
+Dramatic declines in amphibian populations, including population crashes and mass localized extinction, have been noted since the late 1980s from locations all over the world, and amphibian declines are thus perceived to be one of the most critical threats to global biodiversity.[147] In 2004, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) reported stating that currently birds,[148] mammals, and amphibians extinction rates were at minimum 48 times greater than natural extinction rates—possibly 1,024 times higher.
+In 2006 there were believed to be 4,035 species of amphibians that depended on water at some stage during their life cycle. Of these, 1,356 (33.6%) were considered to be threatened and this figure is likely to be an underestimate because it excludes 1,427 species for which there was insufficient data to assess their status.[149] A number of causes are believed to be involved, including habitat destruction and modification, over-exploitation, pollution, introduced species, global warming, endocrine-disrupting pollutants, destruction of the ozone layer (ultraviolet radiation has shown to be especially damaging to the skin, eyes, and eggs of amphibians), and diseases like chytridiomycosis. However, many of the causes of amphibian declines are still poorly understood, and are a topic of ongoing discussion.[150]
+
+With their complex reproductive needs and permeable skins, amphibians are often considered to be ecological indicators.[151] In many terrestrial ecosystems, they constitute one of the largest parts of the vertebrate biomass. Any decline in amphibian numbers will affect the patterns of predation. The loss of carnivorous species near the top of the food chain will upset the delicate ecosystem balance and may cause dramatic increases in opportunistic species. In the Middle East, a growing appetite for eating frog legs and the consequent gathering of them for food was linked to an increase in mosquitoes.[152] Predators that feed on amphibians are affected by their decline. The western terrestrial garter snake (Thamnophis elegans) in California is largely aquatic and depends heavily on two species of frog that are decreasing in numbers, the Yosemite toad (Bufo canorus) and the mountain yellow-legged frog (Rana muscosa), putting the snake's future at risk. If the snake were to become scarce, this would affect birds of prey and other predators that feed on it.[153] Meanwhile, in the ponds and lakes, fewer frogs means fewer tadpoles. These normally play an important role in controlling the growth of algae and also forage on detritus that accumulates as sediment on the bottom. A reduction in the number of tadpoles may lead to an overgrowth of algae, resulting in depletion of oxygen in the water when the algae later die and decompose. Aquatic invertebrates and fish might then die and there would be unpredictable ecological consequences.[154]
+
+A global strategy to stem the crisis was released in 2005 in the form of the Amphibian Conservation Action Plan. Developed by over eighty leading experts in the field, this call to action details what would be required to curtail amphibian declines and extinctions over the following five years and how much this would cost. The Amphibian Specialist Group of the IUCN is spearheading efforts to implement a comprehensive global strategy for amphibian conservation.[155] Amphibian Ark is an organization that was formed to implement the ex-situ conservation recommendations of this plan, and they have been working with zoos and aquaria around the world, encouraging them to create assurance colonies of threatened amphibians.[155] One such project is the Panama Amphibian Rescue and Conservation Project that built on existing conservation efforts in Panama to create a country-wide response to the threat of chytridiomycosis.[156]
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+Coordinates: 7°N 65°W / 7°N 65°W / 7; -65
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+Venezuela (/ˌvɛnəˈzweɪlə/; American Spanish: [beneˈswela] (listen)), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela),[11] is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many small islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It has a territorial extension of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi) and the population of Venezuela was estimated at 28 million in 2019.[6] The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas.
+
+The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south, Trinidad and Tobago to the north-east and on the east by Guyana. The Venezuelan government maintains a claim against Guyana to Guayana Esequiba.[12] Venezuela is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District and federal dependencies covering Venezuela's offshore islands. Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America;[13][14] the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north and in the capital.
+
+The territory of Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence from the Spanish as a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia. It gained full sovereignty as a country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional military dictators until the mid-20th century. Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments. Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to major political crises and widespread social unrest, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993.
+
+A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution. The revolution began with a 1999 Constituent Assembly, where a new Constitution of Venezuela was imposed. This new constitution officially changed the name of the country to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Chávez established populist social welfare policies bolstered by soaring oil prices,[15] increasing social spending, temporarily[16] and reducing economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the regime.[21] In 2013, Chávez died and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro, who was elected by a narrow majority in a widely disputed election. Maduro continued the populist policies, but with disastrous economic results which triggered another nationwide crisis that continues to this day.[22]
+
+Venezuela is a developing country and ranks 96th on the Human Development Index. It has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The excesses and poor policies of the incumbent government led to the collapse of Venezuela's entire economy.[23][24] The country struggles with record hyperinflation,[25][26] shortages of basic goods,[27] unemployment,[28] poverty,[29] disease, high child mortality, malnutrition, severe crime and corruption. These factors have precipitated the Venezuelan migrant crisis where more than three million people have fled the country.[30] By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies.[31][32]  The crisis in Venezuela has contributed to a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation, including increased abuses such as torture, arbitrary imprisonment, extrajudicial killings and attacks on human rights advocates, while Maduro has become increasingly described as an autocratic and dictatorial leader by foreign observers.
+Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, OAS, UNASUR, ALBA, Mercosur, LAIA and OEI.
+
+According to the most popular and accepted version, in 1499, an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda visited the Venezuelan coast. The stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, Italy, so he named the region Veneziola, or "Little Venice".[33] The Spanish version of Veneziola is Venezuela.[34]
+
+Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew, gave a different account. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that the crew found indigenous people who called themselves the Veneciuela. Thus, the name "Venezuela" may have evolved from the native word.[35]
+
+Previously, the official name was Estado de Venezuela (1830–1856), República de Venezuela (1856–1864), Estados Unidos de Venezuela (1864–1953), and again República de Venezuela (1953–1999).
+
+Evidence exists of human habitation in the area now known as Venezuela from about 15,000 years ago. Leaf-shaped tools from this period, together with chopping and plano-convex scraping implements, have been found exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Rio Pedregal in western Venezuela.[36] Late Pleistocene hunting artifacts, including spear tips, have been found at a similar series of sites in northwestern Venezuela known as "El Jobo"; according to radiocarbon dating, these date from 13,000 to 7,000 BC.[37]
+
+It is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish conquest; it has been estimated at around one million.[38] In addition to indigenous peoples known today, the population included historical groups such as the Kalina (Caribs), Auaké, Caquetio, Mariche, and Timoto–Cuicas. The Timoto–Cuica culture was the most complex society in Pre-Columbian Venezuela, with pre-planned permanent villages, surrounded by irrigated, terraced fields. They also stored water in tanks.[39] Their houses were made primarily of stone and wood with thatched roofs. They were peaceful, for the most part, and depended on growing crops. Regional crops included potatoes and ullucos.[40] They left behind works of art, particularly anthropomorphic ceramics, but no major monuments. They spun vegetable fibers to weave into textiles and mats for housing. They are credited with having invented the arepa, a staple in Venezuelan cuisine.[41]
+
+After the conquest, the population dropped markedly, mainly through the spread of new infectious diseases from Europe.[38] Two main north–south axes of pre-Columbian population were present, who cultivated maize in the west and manioc in the east.[38] Large parts of the llanos were cultivated through a combination of slash and burn and permanent settled agriculture.[38]
+
+In 1498, during his third voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus sailed near the Orinoco Delta and landed in the Gulf of Paria.[42] Amazed by the great offshore current of freshwater which deflected his course eastward, Columbus expressed in a letter to Isabella and Ferdinand that he must have reached Heaven on Earth (terrestrial paradise):
+
+Great signs are these of the Terrestrial Paradise, for the site conforms to the opinion of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned. And likewise, the [other] signs conform very well, for I have never read or heard of such a large quantity of fresh water being inside and in such close proximity to salt water; the very mild temperateness also corroborates this; and if the water of which I speak does not proceed from Paradise then it is an even greater marvel, because I do not believe such a large and deep river has ever been known to exist in this world.[43]
+
+Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1522, establishing its first permanent South American settlement in the present-day[update] city of Cumaná. In the 16th century, Venezuela was contracted as a concession by the King of Spain to the German Welser banking family (Klein-Venedig, 1528–1546). Native caciques (leaders) such as Guaicaipuro (c. 1530–1568) and Tamanaco (died 1573) attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them; Tamanaco was put to death by order of Caracas' founder, Diego de Losada.[44]
+
+In the 16th century, during the Spanish colonization, indigenous peoples such as many of the Mariches, themselves descendants of the Kalina, converted to Roman Catholicism. Some of the resisting tribes or leaders are commemorated in place names, including Caracas, Chacao and Los Teques. The early colonial settlements focused on the northern coast,[38] but in the mid-18th century, the Spanish pushed farther inland along the Orinoco River. Here, the Ye'kuana (then known as the Makiritare) organized serious resistance in 1775 and 1776.[45]
+
+Spain's eastern Venezuelan settlements were incorporated into New Andalusia Province. Administered by the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo from the early 16th century, most of Venezuela became part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the early 18th century, and was then reorganized as an autonomous Captaincy General starting in 1777. The town of Caracas, founded in the central coastal region in 1567, was well-placed to become a key location, being near the coastal port of La Guaira whilst itself being located in a valley in a mountain range, providing defensive strength against pirates and a more fertile and healthy climate.[46]
+
+After a series of unsuccessful uprisings, Venezuela, under the leadership of Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan marshal who had fought in the American Revolution and the French Revolution, declared independence as the First Republic of Venezuela on 5 July 1811.[47] This began the Venezuelan War of Independence. A devastating earthquake that struck Caracas in 1812, together with the rebellion of the Venezuelan llaneros, helped bring down the republic.[48] Simón Bolívar, new leader of the independentist forces, launched his Admirable Campaign in 1813 from New Granada, retaking most of the territory and being proclaimed as El Libertador ("The Liberator"). A second Venezuelan republic was proclaimed on 7 August 1813, but lasted only a few months before being crushed at the hands of royalist caudillo José Tomás Boves and his personal army of llaneros.[49]
+
+The end of the French invasion of homeland Spain in 1814 allowed the preparation of a large expeditionary force to the American provinces under general Pablo Morillo, with the goal to regain the lost territory in Venezuela and New Granada. As the war reached a stalemate on 1817, Bolívar reestablished the Third Republic of Venezuela on the territory still controlled by the patriots, mainly in the Guayana and Los Llanos regions. This republic was short-lived as only two years later, during the Congress of Angostura of 1819, the union of Venezuela with New Granada was decreed to form the Republic of Gran Colombia. The war continued for some years, until full victory and sovereignty was attained after Bolívar, aided by José Antonio Páez and Antonio José de Sucre, won the Battle of Carabobo on 24 June 1821.[50] On 24 July 1823, José Prudencio Padilla and Rafael Urdaneta helped seal Venezuelan independence with their victory in the Battle of Lake Maracaibo.[51] New Granada's congress gave Bolívar control of the Granadian army; leading it, he liberated several countries and founded Gran Colombia.[50]
+
+Sucre, who won many battles for Bolívar, went on to liberate Ecuador and later become the second president of Bolivia. Venezuela remained part of Gran Colombia until 1830, when a rebellion led by Páez allowed the proclamation of a newly independent Venezuela; Páez became the first president of the new State of Venezuela.[52] Between one-quarter and one-third of Venezuela's population was lost during these two decades of warfare (including perhaps one-half of the white population),[53] which by 1830, was estimated at about 800,000.[54]
+
+The colors of the Venezuelan flag are yellow, blue, and red: the yellow stands for land wealth, the blue for the sea that separates Venezuela from Spain, and the red for the blood shed by the heroes of independence.[55]
+
+Slavery in Venezuela was abolished in 1854.[54] Much of Venezuela's 19th-century history was characterized by political turmoil and dictatorial rule, including the Independence leader José Antonio Páez, who gained the presidency three times and served a total of 11 years between 1830 and 1863. This culminated in the Federal War (1859–1863), a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died in a country with a population of not much more than a million people. In the latter half of the century, Antonio Guzmán Blanco, another caudillo, served a total of 13 years between 1870 and 1887, with three other presidents interspersed.
+
+In 1895, a longstanding dispute with Great Britain about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory, erupted into the Venezuela Crisis of 1895. The dispute became a diplomatic crisis when Venezuela's lobbyist, William L. Scruggs, sought to argue that British behavior over the issue violated the United States' Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and used his influence in Washington, D.C., to pursue the matter. Then, U.S. president Grover Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies, but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.[56] Britain ultimately accepted arbitration, but in negotiations over its terms was able to persuade the U.S. on many of the details. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the issue and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.[57]
+
+In 1899, Cipriano Castro, assisted by his friend Juan Vicente Gómez, seized power in Caracas, marching an army from his base in the Andean state of Táchira. Castro defaulted on Venezuela's considerable foreign debts and declined to pay compensation to foreigners caught up in Venezuela's civil wars. This led to the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903, in which Britain, Germany and Italy imposed a naval blockade of several months before international arbitration at the new Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague was agreed. In 1908, another dispute broke out with the Netherlands, which was resolved when Castro left for medical treatment in Germany and was promptly overthrown by Juan Vicente Gómez (1908–1935).
+
+The discovery of massive oil deposits in Lake Maracaibo during World War I[58] proved to be pivotal for Venezuela and transformed the basis of its economy from a heavy dependence on agricultural exports. It prompted an economic boom that lasted into the 1980s; by 1935, Venezuela's per capita gross domestic product was Latin America's highest.[59] Gómez benefited handsomely from this, as corruption thrived, but at the same time, the new source of income helped him centralize the Venezuelan state and develop its authority.
+
+He remained the most powerful man in Venezuela until his death in 1935, although at times he ceded the presidency to others. The gomecista dictatorship (1935–1945) system largely continued under Eleazar López Contreras, but from 1941, under Isaías Medina Angarita, was relaxed.  Angarita granted a range of reforms, including the legalization of all political parties. After World War II, immigration from Southern Europe (mainly from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France) and poorer Latin American countries markedly diversified Venezuelan society.
+
+In 1945, a civilian-military coup overthrew Medina Angarita and ushered in a three-year period of democratic rule (1945–1948) under the mass membership party Democratic Action, initially under Rómulo Betancourt, until Rómulo Gallegos won the 1947 Venezuelan presidential election (generally believed to be the first free and fair elections in Venezuela). Gallegos governed until overthrown by a military junta led by the triumvirate Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and Gallegos' Defense Minister, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état.
+
+The most powerful man in the military junta (1948–1958) was Pérez Jiménez (though Chalbaud was its titular president) and was suspected of being behind the death in office of Chalbaud, who died in a bungled kidnapping in 1950. When the junta unexpectedly lost the election it held in 1952, it ignored the results and Pérez Jiménez was installed as president, where he remained until 1958. The expansion of the Venezuelan economy in this period was based on the indebtedness of the Venezuelan nation and that was one of the causes of the economic crisis in Venezuela in the 1960s,[60] in which important projects such as the Urban Center El Recreo de Marcel Brauer on Avenida Casanova in Sabana Grande district were paralyzed.[61]
+
+During the years of Pérez Jiménez's administration, the State intervened in areas of the economy that were traditionally carried out by private companies. The Pérez Jiménez government was characterized by its state capitalism and not by liberal capitalism. It was an antecedent of the populist and paternalistic economic regime of the later democratic regimes.[62] The national private entrepreneurship increasingly had less space to grow and prosper. The State was the great capitalist in the Venezuela of Pérez Jiménez and was the largest national shareholder of major hotel chains such as Sheraton.[63]
+
+In the government of Pérez Jiménez, Venezuela's debt grew more than 25 times and went from 175 million to more than 4,500 million bolivares in just 5 years (approximately 15 billion dollars in 2018). The malaise over the debts of Venezuela reached the barracks and the national business. Pérez Jiménez responded that: "there is no debt, but commitments". The Finance Minister failed to convince Pérez Jiménez to order the cancellation of debts.[64] As of 14 January 1958, the Venezuelan business community decided to divorce itself completely from the regime, nine days before the collapse of the government.[60] The military dictator Pérez Jiménez was forced out on 23 January 1958.[65] In an effort to consolidate a young democracy, the three major political parties (Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), with the notable exception of the Communist Party of Venezuela) signed the Puntofijo Pact power-sharing agreement. The two first parties would dominate the political landscape for four decades.
+
+During the presidencies of Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (1959–1964, his second time) and Raúl Leoni Otero (1964–1969) in the 1960s, substantial guerilla movements occurred, including the Armed Forces of National Liberation and the Revolutionary Left Movement, which had split from AD in 1960. Most of these movements laid down their arms under Rafael Caldera's first presidency (1969–1974); Caldera had won the 1968 election for COPEI, being the first time a party other than Democratic Action took the presidency through a democratic election. The new democratic order had its antagonists. Betancourt suffered an attack planned by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1960, and the leftists excluded from the Pact initiated an armed insurgency by organizing themselves in the Armed Forces of National Liberation, sponsored by the Communist Party and Fidel Castro. In 1962 they tried to destabilize the military corps, with failed revolts in Carúpano and Puerto Cabello. At the same time, Betancourt promoted an international doctrine in which he only recognized elected governments by popular vote.[need quotation to verify]
+
+As a result of the debt that Marcos Pérez Jiménez had left, an economic adjustment program was necessary in Venezuela. The Economic Recovery Plan of 1960 was formulated by Tomás Enrique Carrillo Batalla. The construction industry was revitalized through the "rediscount" of the Central Bank of Venezuela. The Economic Recovery Plan fulfilled its objectives and in 1964, Venezuela was able to return to an anchored exchange rate, with free purchase and sale of foreign currency. This system lasted until the Venezuelan Black Friday of 1983, although the model was already running out at the end of the seventies.[66] The consolidation of the democratic system and the dissipation of fears of political radicalization of the country contributed to normalize the demand for foreign currency, stabilizing the parallel exchange rate.
+
+For much of the period between 1950 and 1973, the Venezuelan economy was characterized by its stability and sustained strength, factors that contributed decisively to being able to maintain a fixed exchange rate without major inconveniences. In the period of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979, his first time as president), as a result of the Arab-Israeli war (the Yom Kippur war), the average price of a barrel of oil went from 3.71 to 10.53 dollars and continued to rise to exceed 29 dollars in 1981.[66] The income of the public sector went from 18,960 million bolivars in 1973 to 45.564 million in 1974. The economic bonanza also had the characteristics of an economic bubble, but Venezuelans remember the "Ta barato, dame dos".[67][68] The increased inflow of funds to savings and loan entities and mortgage banks allowed an increase in the mortgage loan portfolio, which also tripled. In general, Venezuela was a prosperous country in the governments of Rómulo Betancourt (1945 – c. 1948; 1959–1964), Rafael Caldera (1969–1974; 1994 – c. 1999) and Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979; 1989 – c. 1993)[citation needed]. In 1975 the iron industry was nationalized and the following year the oil industry, creating Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Both Caldera and Pérez partially broke with the Betancourt Doctrine.
+
+The election in 1973 of Carlos Andrés Pérez coincided with an oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability.[69]
+
+During the presidency of Luis Herrera Campins (1979–1984), important infrastructure works were completed, such as the Parque Central Complex (which became the largest housing complex and the tallest towers in Latin America), Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex (the largest cultural center in South America at that time), the Brígido Iriarte Stadium and the United Nations Park. Most of these works had been previously planned.[67] Until the mid-eighties, the Venezuelan economy showed a very positive behavior, characterized by the absence of internal or external imbalances, high economic growth, largely due to the sustained and very high gross fixed investment of those years, 10 under unemployment and great price stability. This translated into sustained increases in the average real wage and an improvement in the condition of life.[66]
+
+The bolivar was devalued in February 1983, unleashing a strong economic crisis, which hit investments in the most important financial centers of the Venezuelan capital, such as Sabana Grande. In the government of Jaime Lusinchi (1984–1989), an attempt was made to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the measures failed. After a long period of accelerated economic expansion that lasts for six decades (value of the stock of homes by families), an extreme higher value is reached towards 1982. From this historical value begins then a systematic fall that mounts to 26 hundred up to 2006, and that configures a genuine unique experience in contemporary economic life.[70] However, the economic deactivation of the country had begun to show its first signs in 1978.[71]
+
+In the 1980s, the Presidential Commission for State Reform (COPRE) emerged as a mechanism of political innovation. Venezuela was preparing for the decentralization of its political system and the diversification of its economy, reducing the large size of the State. The COPRE operated as an innovation mechanism, also by incorporating issues into the political agenda that were generally excluded from public deliberation by the main actors of the Venezuelan democratic system. The most discussed topics were incorporated into the public agenda: decentralization, political participation, municipalization, judicial oder reforms and the role of the State in a new economic strategy. Unfortunately, the social reality of the country made the changes difficult to apply.[71]
+
+Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis in which hundreds died in the Caracazo riots of 1989 during the presidency of Carlos Andres Pérez (1989–1993, his second time), two attempted coups d'état in 1992 (February and November) by Hugo Chávez,[72] and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez (re-elected in 1988) for corruption in 1993 and the interim presidency of Ramón José Velásquez (1993–1994). Coup leader Hugo Chávez was pardoned in March 1994 by president Rafael Caldera (1994–1999, his second time), with a clean slate and his political rights reinstated. This let him later get the presidency continuously from 1999 until his death in 2013, winning the elections of 1998, 2000, 2006 and 2012 and the presidential referendum of 2004, with the only exception in 2002 of Pedro Carmona Estanga as a two-day de facto government and Diosdado Cabello Rondón as a few-hours interim president.
+
+The Bolivarian Revolution refers to a left-wing populism social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who founded the Fifth Republic Movement in 1997 and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in 2007. The "Bolivarian Revolution" is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the "Bolivarian Revolution" seeks to build a mass movement to implement Bolivarianism—popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption—in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar's ideas from a populist perspective, using socialist rhetoric.
+
+A collapse in confidence in the existing parties led to Chávez being elected president in 1998 and the subsequent launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela. Chávez also initiated Bolivarian missions, programs aimed at helping the poor.[73]
+
+In April 2002, Chávez was briefly ousted from power in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt following popular demonstrations by his opponents,[74] but he returned to power after two days as a result of demonstrations by poor Chávez supporters in Caracas and actions by the military.[75][76]
+
+Chávez also remained in power after an all-out national strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003, including a strike/lockout in the state oil company PDVSA.[77] The strike produced severe economic dislocation, with the country's GDP falling 27% during the first four months of 2003, and costing the oil industry $13.3 billion.[78] Capital flight before and during the strike led to the reimposition of currency controls (which had been abolished in 1989), managed by the CADIVI agency. In the subsequent decade, the government was forced into several currency devaluations.[79][80][81][82][83] These devaluations have done little to improve the situation of the Venezuelan people who rely on imported products or locally produced products that depend on imported inputs while dollar-denominated oil sales account for the vast majority of Venezuela's exports.[84] According to Sebastian Boyd writing at Bloomberg News, the profits of the oil industry have been lost to "social engineering" and corruption, instead of investments needed to maintain oil production.[85]
+
+Chávez survived several further political tests, including an August 2004 recall referendum. He was elected for another term in December 2006 and re-elected for a third term in October 2012. However, he was never sworn in for his third period, due to medical complications. Chávez died on 5 March 2013 after a nearly two-year fight with cancer.[86] The presidential election that took place on Sunday, 14 April 2013, was the first since Chávez took office in 1999 in which his name did not appear on the ballot.[87]
+
+Poverty and inflation began to increase into the 2010s.[88] Nicolás Maduro was elected in 2013 after the death of Chavez. Chavez picked Maduro as his successor and appointed him vice president in 2013. Maduro was elected president in a shortened election in 2013 following Chavez's death.[82][89][90]
+
+Nicolás Maduro has been the president of Venezuela since 14 April 2013, after winning the second presidential election after Chávez's death, with 50.61% of the votes against the opposition's candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski who had 49.12% of the votes. The Democratic Unity Roundtable contested his election as fraud and as a violation of the constitution. An audit of 56% of the vote showed no discrepancies,[91] and the Supreme Court of Venezuela ruled that under Venezuela's Constitution, Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president and was invested as such by the Venezuelan National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional).[92][93][94] Opposition leaders and some international media consider the government of Maduro to be a dictatorship.[95][96][97][98] Beginning in February 2014, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have protested over high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods due to policies of the federal government.[99][100][101][102][103] Demonstrations and riots have left over 40 fatalities in the unrest between both Chavistas and opposition protesters,[104] and has led to the arrest of opposition leaders including Leopoldo López[104][105] and Antonio Ledezma.[106][107][108][109] Human rights groups have strongly condemned the arrest of Leopoldo López.[110]
+
+In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, the opposition gained a majority.[111]
+
+Venezuela devalued its currency in February 2013 due to the rising shortages in the country,[83][112] which included those of milk, flour, and other necessities. This led to an increase in malnutrition, especially among children.[113][114] Venezuela's economy had become strongly dependent on the exportation of oil with Crude accounting for 86% of exports,[115] and a high price per barrel to support social programs. Beginning in 2014 the price of oil plummeted from over $100/bbl to $40/bbl a year and a half later, this placed great pressure on the Venezuelan economy, which was no longer able to afford vast social programs. To counter the decrease in oil prices, the Venezuelan Government began taking more money from PDVSA, the state oil company, to meet budgets resulting in a lack of reinvestment in fields and employees. This has seen Venezuela's oil production decrease from its height of nearly 3 to 1 million barrels (480 to 160 thousand cubic metres) per day.[116][117][118][119] In 2014, Venezuela entered an economic recession.[120] In 2015, Venezuela had the world's highest inflation rate with the rate surpassing 100%, becoming the highest in the country's history.[121] In 2017, Donald Trump's administration imposed more economic sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA and Venezuelan officials.[122][123][124] Economic problems, as well as crime and corruption, were some of the main causes of the 2014–present Venezuelan protests.[125][126] Since 2015 nearly 2 million people have fled Venezuela.[127]
+
+In January 2016, President Maduro decreed an "economic emergency" revealing the extent of the crisis and expanding his powers.[128] In July 2016, Colombian border crossings were temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household and health items in Colombia.[129] In September 2016, a study published in the Spanish-language Diario Las Américas[130] indicated that 15% of Venezuelans are eating "food waste discarded by commercial establishments".
+
+Close to 200 riots had occurred in Venezuelan prisons by October 2016, according to Una Ventana a la Libertad, an advocacy group for better prison conditions. The father of an inmate at Táchira Detention Center in Caracas alleged that his son was cannibalized by other inmates during a month-long riot, a claim corroborated by an anonymous police source but denied by the Minister of Correctional Affairs.[131]
+
+In 2017, Venezuela experienced a constitutional crisis in the country. In March 2017, opposition leaders branded President Nicolas Maduro a dictator after the Maduro-aligned Supreme Tribunal, which had been overturning most National Assembly decisions since the opposition took control of the body, took over the functions of the assembly, pushing a lengthy political standoff to new heights.[95] However, the Supreme Court quickly backed down and reversed its decision on 1 April 2017. A month later, President Maduro announced the 2017 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election and on 30 August 2017, the 2017 Constituent National Assembly was elected into office and quickly stripped the National Assembly of its powers.
+
+In December 2017, President Maduro declared that leading opposition parties will be barred from taking part in next year's presidential vote after they boycotted mayoral polls.[132]
+
+Maduro won the 2018 election with 67.8% of the vote. The result was challenged by countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, France and the United States who deemed it fraudulent and moved to recognize Juan Guaidó as president.[133][134][135][136] Other countries including Cuba, China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran have continued to recognize Maduro as president,[137][138] although China, facing financial pressure over its position, has reportedly begun hedging its position by decreasing loans given, cancelling joint ventures, and signaling willingness to work with all parties.[139] A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman denied the reports, describing them as "false information".[140]
+
+In January 2019 the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution "to not recognize the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro's new term as of the 10th of January of 2019,"[141] while the United Nations General Assembly formally recognized the Maduro government as the only legitimate representative of Venezuela at the United Nations[142] and in October 2019, Venezuela was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council.[143]
+
+In August 2019, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose a total economic embargo against Venezuela.[144] Later, in March 2020, the Trump administration indicted Maduro and several Venezuelan officials with drug trafficking.[145]
+
+In June 2020, a detailed report by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights documented enforced disappearances in Venezuela, specifically those that occurred during the years 2018 and 2019. During the period, around 724 enforced disappearances of political detainees were reported. Venezuelan security forces have disappeared their victims, subjecting them to illegal interrogation processes accompanied by torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. Venezuela’s Bolivarian regime has strategically used enforced disappearances to silence political opponents and other critical voices it deems a threat.[146][147]
+
+Venezuela is located in the north of South America; geologically, its mainland rests on the South American Plate. It has a total area of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi) and a land area of 882,050 km2 (340,560 sq mi), making Venezuela the 33rd largest country in the world. The territory it controls lies between latitudes 0° and 13°N and longitudes 59° and 74°W.
+
+Shaped roughly like a triangle, the country has a 2,800 km (1,700 mi) coastline in the north, which includes numerous islands in the Caribbean and the northeast borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Most observers describe Venezuela in terms of four fairly well defined topographical regions: the Maracaibo lowlands in the northwest, the northern mountains extending in a broad east–west arc from the Colombian border along the northern Caribbean coast, the wide plains in central Venezuela, and the Guiana Highlands in the southeast.
+
+The northern mountains are the extreme northeastern extensions of South America's Andes mountain range. Pico Bolívar, the nation's highest point at 4,979 m (16,335 ft), lies in this region. To the south, the dissected Guiana Highlands contain the northern fringes of the Amazon Basin and Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, as well as tepuis, large table-like mountains. The country's center is characterized by the llanos, which are extensive plains that stretch from the Colombian border in the far west to the Orinoco River delta in the east. The Orinoco, with its rich alluvial soils, binds the largest and most important river system of the country; it originates in one of the largest watersheds in Latin America. The Caroní and the Apure are other major rivers.
+
+Venezuela borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Aruba, and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela has territorial disputes with Guyana, formerly United Kingdom, largely concerning the Essequibo area and with Colombia concerning the Gulf of Venezuela. In 1895, after years of diplomatic attempts to solve the border dispute, the dispute over the Essequibo River border flared up. It was submitted to a "neutral" commission (composed of British, American, and Russian representatives and without a direct Venezuelan representative), which in 1899 decided mostly against Venezuela's claim.[148]
+
+Venezuela's most significant natural resources are petroleum and natural gas, iron ore, gold, and other minerals. It also has large areas of arable land and water.
+
+Venezuela is entirely located in the tropics over the Equator to around 12° N. Its climate varies from humid low-elevation plains, where average annual temperatures range as high as 35 °C (95.0 °F), to glaciers and highlands (the páramos) with an average yearly temperature of 8 °C (46.4 °F). Annual rainfall varies from 430 mm (16.9 in) in the semiarid portions of the northwest to over 1,000 mm (39.4 in) in the Orinoco Delta of the far east and the Amazonian Jungle in the south. The precipitation level is lower in the period from August through April. These periods are referred to as hot-humid and cold-dry seasons. Another characteristic of the climate is this variation throughout the country by the existence of a mountain range called "Cordillera de la Costa" which crosses the country from east to west. The majority of the population lives in these mountains.[150]
+
+The country falls into four horizontal temperature zones based primarily on elevation, having tropical, dry, temperate with dry winters, and polar (alpine tundra) climates, amongst others.[151][152][153] In the tropical zone—below 800 m (2,625 ft)—temperatures are hot, with yearly averages ranging between 26 and 28 °C (78.8 and 82.4 °F). The temperate zone ranges between 800 and 2,000 m (2,625 and 6,562 ft) with averages from 12 to 25 °C (53.6 to 77.0 °F); many of Venezuela's cities, including the capital, lie in this region. Colder conditions with temperatures from 9 to 11 °C (48.2 to 51.8 °F) are found in the cool zone between 2,000 and 3,000 m (6,562 and 9,843 ft), especially in the Venezuelan Andes, where pastureland and permanent snowfield with yearly averages below 8 °C (46 °F) cover land above 3,000 meters (9,843 ft) in the páramos.
+
+The highest temperature recorded was 42 °C (108 °F) in Machiques,[154] and the lowest temperature recorded was −11 °C (12 °F), it has been reported from an uninhabited high altitude at Páramo de Piedras Blancas (Mérida state),[155] even though no official reports exist, lower temperatures in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Mérida are known.
+
+Venezuela lies within the Neotropical realm; large portions of the country were originally covered by moist broadleaf forests. One of 17 megadiverse countries,[156] Venezuela's habitats range from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. They include xeric scrublands in the extreme northwest and coastal mangrove forests in the northeast.[150] Its cloud forests and lowland rainforests are particularly rich.[157]
+
+Animals of Venezuela are diverse and include manatees, three-toed sloth, two-toed sloth, Amazon river dolphins, and Orinoco crocodiles, which have been reported to reach up to 6.6 m (22 ft) in length. Venezuela hosts a total of 1,417 bird species, 48 of which are endemic.[158] Important birds include ibises, ospreys, kingfishers,[157] and the yellow-orange Venezuelan troupial, the national bird. Notable mammals include the giant anteater, jaguar, and the capybara, the world's largest rodent. More than half of Venezuelan avian and mammalian species are found in the Amazonian forests south of the Orinoco.[159]
+
+For the fungi, an account was provided by R.W.G. Dennis[160] which has been digitized and the records made available on-line as part of the Cybertruffle Robigalia database.[161] That database includes nearly 3,900 species of fungi recorded from Venezuela, but is far from complete, and the true total number of fungal species already known from Venezuela is likely higher, given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered.[162]
+
+Among plants of Venezuela, over 25,000 species of orchids are found in the country's cloud forest and lowland rainforest ecosystems.[157] These include the flor de mayo orchid (Cattleya mossiae), the national flower. Venezuela's national tree is the araguaney, whose characteristic lushness after the rainy season led novelist Rómulo Gallegos to name it "[l]a primavera de oro de los araguaneyes" (the golden spring of the araguaneyes). The tops of the tepuis are also home to several carnivorous plants including the marsh pitcher plant, Heliamphora, and the insectivorous bromeliad, Brocchinia reducta.
+
+Venezuela is among the top 20 countries in terms of endemism.[163] Among its animals, 23% of reptilian and 50% of amphibian species are endemic.[163] Although the available information is still very small, a first effort has been made to estimate the number of fungal species endemic to Venezuela: 1334 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the country.[164] Some 38% of the over 21,000 plant species known from Venezuela are unique to the country.[163]
+
+Venezuela is one of the 10 most biodiverse countries on the planet, yet it is one of the leaders of deforestation due to economic and political factors. Each year, roughly 287,600 hectares of forest are permanently destroyed and other areas are degraded by mining, oil extraction, and logging. Between 1990 and 2005, Venezuela officially lost 8.3% of its forest cover, which is about 4.3 million ha. In response, federal protections for critical habitat were implemented; for example, 20% to 33% of forested land is protected.[159]  The country's biosphere reserve is part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; five wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention.[167] In 2003, 70% of the nation's land was under conservation management in over 200 protected areas, including 43 national parks.[168] Venezuela's 43 national parks include Canaima National Park, Morrocoy National Park, and Mochima National Park. In the far south is a reserve for the country's Yanomami tribes. Covering 32,000 square miles (82,880 square kilometres), the area is off-limits to farmers, miners, and all non-Yanomami settlers.
+
+Venezuela was one of the few countries that did not enter an INDC at COP21.[169][170] Many terrestrial ecosystems are considered endangered, specially the dry forest in the northern regions of the country and the coral reefs in the Caribbean coast.[165][171][172]
+
+Following the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, Venezuelan politics were dominated by the Third Way Christian democratic COPEI and the center-left social democratic Democratic Action (AD) parties; this two-party system was formalized by the puntofijismo arrangement. Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which resulted in hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who had led the first of the 1992 coup attempts, and the launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.
+
+The opposition's attempts to unseat Chávez included the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, and the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004, all of which failed. Chávez was re-elected in December 2006 but suffered a significant defeat in 2007 with the narrow rejection of the 2007 Venezuelan constitutional referendum, which had offered two packages of constitutional reforms aimed at deepening the Bolivarian Revolution.
+
+Two major blocs of political parties are in Venezuela: the incumbent leftist bloc United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), its major allies Fatherland for All (PPT) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), and the opposition bloc grouped into the electoral coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática. This includes A New Era (UNT) together with allied parties Project Venezuela, Justice First, Movement for Socialism (MAS) and others. Hugo Chávez, the central figure of the Venezuelan political landscape since his election to the presidency in 1998 as a political outsider, died in office in early 2013, and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro (initially as interim president, before narrowly winning the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election).
+
+The Venezuelan president is elected by a vote, with direct and universal suffrage, and is both head of state and head of government. The term of office is six years, and (as of 15 February 2009) a president may be re-elected an unlimited number of times. The president appoints the vice president and decides the size and composition of the cabinet and makes appointments to it with the involvement of the legislature. The president can ask the legislature to reconsider portions of laws he finds objectionable, but a simple parliamentary majority can override these objections.
+
+The president may ask the National Assembly to pass an enabling act granting the ability to rule by decree in specified policy areas; this requires a two-thirds majority in the Assembly. Since 1959, six Venezuelan presidents have been granted such powers.
+
+The unicameral Venezuelan parliament is the Asamblea Nacional ("National Assembly"). The number of members is variable – each state and the Capital district elect three representatives plus the result of dividing the state population by 1.1% of the total population of the country.[173] Three seats are reserved for representatives of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. For the 2011–2016 period the number of seats is 165.[174] All deputies serve five-year terms.
+
+The voting age in Venezuela is 18 and older. Voting is not compulsory.[175]
+
+The legal system of Venezuela belongs to the Continental Law tradition. The highest judicial body is the Supreme Tribunal of Justice or Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, whose magistrates are elected by parliament for a single two-year term. The National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, or CNE) is in charge of electoral processes; it is formed by five main directors elected by the National Assembly. Supreme Court president Luisa Estela Morales said in December 2009 that Venezuela had moved away from "a rigid division of powers" toward a system characterized by "intense coordination" between the branches of government. Morales clarified that each power must be independent adding that "one thing is separation of powers and another one is division".[176]
+
+The 2015 parliamentary elections were held on 6 December 2015 to elect the 164 deputies and three indigenous representatives of the National Assembly. In 2014, a series of protest and demonstrations began in Venezuela, attributed[by whom?] to inflation, violence and shortages in Venezuela. The government has accused the protest of being motivated by fascists, opposition leaders, capitalism and foreign influence,[177] despite being largely peaceful.[178]
+
+President Maduro acknowledged PSUV defeat, but attributed the opposition's victory to an intensification of an economic war. Despite this, Maduro said "I will stop by hook or by crook the opposition coming to power, whatever the costs, in any way".[179] In the following months, Maduro fulfilled his promise of preventing the democratically  and constitutionally elected National Assembly from legislating. The first steps taken by PSUV and government were the substitution of the entire Supreme Court a day after the Parliamentary Elections[180] contrary to the Constitution of Venezuela, acclaimed as a fraud by the majority of the Venezuelan and international press.[181][182][183][184] The Financial Times described the function of the Supreme Court in Venezuela as "rubber stamping executive whims and vetoing legislation".[185] The PSUV government used this violation to suspend several elected opponents,[186] ignoring again the Constitution of Venezuela. Maduro said that "the Amnesty law (approved by the Parliament) will not be executed" and asked the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional before the law was known.[187]
+
+On 16 January 2016, Maduro approved an unconstitutional economic emergency decree,[188] relegating to his own figure the legislative and executive powers, while also holding judiciary power through the fraudulent designation of judges the day after the election on 6 December 2015.[180][181][182][183][184] From these events, Maduro effectively controls all three branches of government. On 14 May 2016, constitutional guarantees were in fact suspended when Maduro decreed the extension of the economic emergency decree for another 60 days and declared a State of Emergency,[189] which is a clear violation of the Constitution of Venezuela[190] in the Article 338th: "The approval of the extension of States of emergency corresponds to the National Assembly." Thus, constitutional rights in Venezuela are considered suspended in fact by many publications[191][192][193] and public figures.[194][195][196]
+
+On 14 May 2016, the Organization of American States was considering the application of the Inter-American Democratic Charter[197] sanctions for non-compliance to its own constitution.
+
+In March 2017, the Venezuelan Supreme Court took over law making powers from the National Assembly[198] but reversed its decision the following day.[199]
+
+Throughout most of the 20th century, Venezuela maintained friendly relations with most Latin American and Western nations. Relations between Venezuela and the United States government worsened in 2002, after the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt during which the U.S. government recognized the short-lived interim presidency of Pedro Carmona. In 2015, Venezuela was declared a national security threat by U.S. president Barack Obama.[200][201][202] Correspondingly, ties to various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries not allied to the U.S. have strengthened. For example, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki declared in 2015 that Venezuela was his country's "most important ally".[203]
+
+Venezuela seeks alternative hemispheric integration via such proposals as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade proposal and the newly launched Latin American television network teleSUR. Venezuela is one of five nations in the world—along with Russia, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria—to have recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Venezuela was a proponent of OAS's decision to adopt its Anti-Corruption Convention[204] and is actively working in the Mercosur trade bloc to push increased trade and energy integration. Globally, it seeks a "multi-polar" world based on strengthened ties among undeveloped countries.
+
+On 26 April 2017, Venezuela announced its intention to withdraw from the OAS.[205] Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez said that President Nicolás Maduro plans to publicly renounce Venezuela's membership on 27 April 2017. It will take two years for the country to formally leave. During this period, the country does not plan on participating in the OAS.[206]
+
+Venezuela is involved in a long-standing disagreement about the control of the Guayana Esequiba area.
+
+Venezuela may suffer a deterioration of its power in international affairs if the global transition to renewable energy is completed. It is ranked 151 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition (GeGaLo).[207]
+
+The Bolivarian National Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana, FANB) are the overall unified military forces of Venezuela. It includes over 320,150 men and women, under Article 328 of the Constitution, in 5 components of Ground, Sea and Air. The components of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces are: the Venezuelan Army, the Venezuelan Navy, the Venezuelan Air Force, the Venezuelan National Guard, and the Venezuelan National Militia.
+
+As of 2008[update], a further 600,000 soldiers were incorporated into a new branch, known as the Armed Reserve. The president of Venezuela is the commander-in-chief of the national armed forces. The main roles of the armed forces are to defend the sovereign national territory of Venezuela, airspace, and islands, fight against drug trafficking, to search and rescue and, in the case of a natural disaster, civil protection. All male citizens of Venezuela have a constitutional duty to register for the military service at the age of 18, which is the age of majority in Venezuela.
+
+In Venezuela, a person is murdered every 21 minutes.[216] Violent crimes have been so prevalent in Venezuela that the government no longer produces the crime data.[217] In 2013, the homicide rate was approximately 79 per 100,000, one of the world's highest, having quadrupled in the past 15 years with over 200,000 people murdered.[218] By 2015, it had risen to 90 per 100,000.[219] The country's body count of the previous decade mimics that of the Iraq War and in some instances had more civilian deaths even though the country is at peacetime.[220] The capital Caracas has one of the greatest homicide rates of any large city in the world, with 122 homicides per 100,000 residents.[221] In 2008, polls indicated that crime was the number one concern of voters.[222] Attempts at fighting crime such as Operation Liberation of the People were implemented to crack down on gang-controlled areas[223] but, of reported criminal acts, less than 2% are prosecuted.[224] In 2017, the Financial Times noted that some of the arms procured by the government over the previous two decades had been diverted to paramilitary civilian groups and criminal syndicates.[185]
+
+Venezuela is especially dangerous toward foreign travelers and investors who are visiting. The United States Department of State and the Government of Canada have warned foreign visitors that they may be subjected to robbery, kidnapping for a ransom or sale to terrorist organizations[225] and murder, and that their own diplomatic travelers are required to travel in armored vehicles.[226][227] The United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office has advised against all travel to Venezuela.[228]  Visitors have been murdered during robberies and criminals do not discriminate among their victims. Former Miss Venezuela 2004 winner Mónica Spear and her ex-husband were murdered and their 5-year-old daughter was shot while vacationing in Venezuela, and an elderly German tourist was murdered only a few weeks later.[229][230]
+
+There are approximately 33 prisons holding about 50,000 inmates.[231] They include; El Rodeo outside of Caracas, Yare Prison in the northern state of Miranda, and several others. Venezuela's prison system is heavily overcrowded; its facilities have capacity for only 14,000 prisoners.[232]
+
+Corruption in Venezuela is high by world standards and was so for much of the 20th century. The discovery of oil had worsened political corruption,[233] and by the late 1970s, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso's description of oil as "the Devil's excrement" had become a common expression in Venezuela.[234] Venezuela has been ranked one of the most corrupt countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index since the survey started in 1995. The 2010 ranking placed Venezuela at number 164, out of 178 ranked countries in government transparency.[235] By 2016, the rank had increased to 166 out of 178.[236] Similarly, the World Justice Project ranked Venezuela 99th out of 99 countries surveyed in its 2014 Rule of Law Index.[237]
+
+This corruption is shown with Venezuela's significant involvement in drug trafficking, with Colombian cocaine and other drugs transiting Venezuela towards the United States and Europe. In the period 2003 - 2008 Venezuelan authorities seized the fifth largest total quantity of cocaine in the world, behind Colombia, the United States, Spain and Panama.[238] In 2006, the government's agency for combating illegal drug trade in Venezuela, ONA, was incorporated into the office of the vice-president of the country. However, many major government and military officials have been known for their involvement with drug trafficking; especially with the October 2013 incident of men from the Venezuelan National Guard placing 1.3 tons of cocaine on a Paris flight knowing they will not face charges.[239]
+
+Venezuela is divided into 23 states (estados), a capital district (distrito capital) corresponding to the city of Caracas, and the Federal Dependencies (Dependencias Federales, a special territory). Venezuela is further subdivided into 335 municipalities (municipios); these are subdivided into over one thousand parishes (parroquias). The states are grouped into nine administrative regions (regiones administrativas), which were established in 1969 by presidential decree.
+
+The country can be further divided into ten geographical areas, some corresponding to climatic and biogeographical regions. In the north are the Venezuelan Andes and the Coro region, a mountainous tract in the northwest, holds several sierras and valleys. East of it are lowlands abutting Lake Maracaibo and the Gulf of Venezuela.
+
+The Central Range runs parallel to the coast and includes the hills surrounding Caracas; the Eastern Range, separated from the Central Range by the Gulf of Cariaco, covers all of Sucre and northern Monagas. The Insular Region includes all of Venezuela's island possessions: Nueva Esparta and the various Federal Dependencies. The Orinoco Delta, which forms a triangle covering Delta Amacuro, projects northeast into the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Venezuela has a market-based mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector,[241][242] which accounts for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports, and more than half of government revenues. Per capita GDP for 2016 was estimated to be US$15,100, ranking 109th in the world.[65] Venezuela has the least expensive petrol in the world because the consumer price of petrol is heavily subsidized. The private sector controls two-thirds of Venezuela's economy.[243]
+
+The Central Bank of Venezuela is responsible for developing monetary policy for the Venezuelan bolívar which is used as currency. The president of the Central Bank of Venezuela serves as the country's representative in the International Monetary Fund.  The U.S.-based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, cited in The Wall Street Journal, claims Venezuela has the weakest property rights in the world, scoring only 5.0 on a scale of 100; expropriation without compensation is not uncommon.
+
+As of 2011, more than 60% of Venezuela's international reserves was in gold, eight times more than the average for the region. Most of Venezuela's gold held abroad was located in London. On 25 November 2011, the first of US$11 billion of repatriated gold bullion arrived in Caracas; Chávez called the repatriation of gold a "sovereign" step that will help protect the country's foreign reserves from the turmoil in the U.S. and Europe.[244] However government policies quickly spent down this returned gold and in 2013 the government was forced to add the dollar reserves of state owned companies to those of the national bank to reassure the international bond market.[245]
+
+Manufacturing contributed 17% of GDP in 2006. Venezuela manufactures and exports heavy industry products such as steel, aluminium and cement, with production concentrated around Ciudad Guayana, near the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world and the provider of about three-quarters of Venezuela's electricity. Other notable manufacturing includes electronics and automobiles, as well as beverages, and foodstuffs. Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 3% of GDP, 10% of the labor force, and at least a quarter of Venezuela's land area. The country is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture. In 2012, total food consumption was over 26 million metric tonnes, a 94.8% increase from 2003.[248]
+
+Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil, and it is a founding member of OPEC. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995[249] as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak.[250] The 1990s also saw Venezuela experience a major banking crisis in 1994.
+
+The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending. With social programs such as the Bolivarian Missions, Venezuela initially made progress in social development in the 2000s, particularly in areas such as health, education, and poverty. Many of the social policies pursued by Chávez and his administration were jump-started by the Millennium Development Goals, eight goals that Venezuela and 188 other nations agreed to in September 2000.[251] The sustainability of the Bolivarian Missions has been questioned due to the Bolivarian state's overspending on public works and because the Chávez government did not save funds for future economic hardships like other OPEC nations; with economic issues and poverty rising as a result of their policies in the 2010s.[24][252][253] In 2003 the government of Hugo Chávez implemented currency controls after capital flight led to a devaluation of the currency. This led to the development of a parallel market of dollars in the subsequent years. The fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis saw a renewed economic downturn. Despite controversial data shared by the Venezuelan government showing that the country had halved malnutrition following one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals,[114][254] shortages of staple goods began to occur in Venezuela and malnutrition began to increase.[114]
+
+In early 2013, Venezuela devalued its currency due to growing shortages in the country.[255][256][257]  The shortages included, and still include, necessities such as toilet paper, milk, and flour.[258] Fears rose so high due to the toilet paper shortage that the government occupied a toilet paper factory, and continued further plans to nationalize other industrial aspects like food distribution.[259][260] Venezuela's bond ratings have also decreased multiple times in 2013 due to decisions by the president Nicolás Maduro. One of his decisions was to force stores and their warehouses to sell all of their products, which led to even more shortages in the future.[261] In 2016, consumer prices in Venezuela increased 800% and the economy declined by 18.6%, entering an economic depression.[262][263] Venezuela's outlook was deemed negative by most bond-rating services in 2017.[264][265] For 2018 an inflation rate of 1,000,000 percent was projected, putting Venezuela in a similar situation to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s.[266]
+
+Tourism has been developed considerably in recent decades, particularly because of its favorable geographical position, the variety of landscapes, the richness of plant and wildlife, the artistic expressions and the privileged tropical climate of the country, which affords each region (especially the beaches) throughout the year.
+
+Margarita Island is one of the top tourist destinations for enjoyment and relaxation. It is an island with a modern infrastructure, bordered by beautiful beaches suitable for extreme sports, and features castles, fortresses and churches of great cultural value.
+
+Shortages in Venezuela have been prevalent following the enactment of price controls and other policies during the economic policy of the Hugo Chávez government.[267][268] Under the economic policy of the Nicolás Maduro government, greater shortages occurred due to the Venezuelan government's policy of withholding United States dollars from importers with price controls.[269]
+
+Shortages occur in regulated products, such as milk, various types of meat, coffee, rice, oil, flour, butter, and other goods including basic necessities like toilet paper, personal hygiene products, and even medicine.[267][270][271] As a result of the shortages, Venezuelans must search for food, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products.[272][273] Maduro's government has blamed the shortages on "bourgeois criminals" hoarding goods.[274]
+
+A drought, combined with a lack of planning and maintenance, has caused a hydroelectricity shortage.  To deal with lack of power supply, in April 2016 the Maduro government announced rolling blackouts[275] and reduced the government workweek to only Monday and Tuesday.[276] A multi-university study found that, in 2016 alone, about 75% of Venezuelans lost weight due to hunger, with the average losing about 8.6 kg (19 lbs) due to the lack of food.[277]
+
+By late-2016 and into 2017, Venezuelans had to search for food on a daily basis, occasionally resorting to eating wild fruit or garbage, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products.[278][273][279][280][281] By early 2017, priests began telling Venezuelans to label their garbage so needy individuals could feed on their refuse.[282] In March 2017, Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the world, began having shortages of gasoline in some regions with reports that fuel imports had begun.[283]
+
+Venezuela has the largest oil reserves, and the eighth largest natural gas reserves in the world.[284] Compared to the preceding year another 40.4% in crude oil reserves were proven in 2010, allowing Venezuela to surpass Saudi Arabia as the country with the largest reserves of this type.[285] The country's main petroleum deposits are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo, the Gulf of Venezuela (both in Zulia), and in the Orinoco River basin (eastern Venezuela), where the country's largest reserve is located. Besides the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere,[286] Venezuela has non-conventional oil deposits (extra-heavy crude oil, bitumen and tar sands) approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil.[287] The electricity sector in Venezuela is one of the few to rely primarily on hydropower, and includes the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world.
+
+In the first half of the 20th century, U.S. oil companies were heavily involved in Venezuela, initially interested only in purchasing concessions.[288] In 1943 a new government introduced a 50/50 split in profits between the government and the oil industry. In 1960, with a newly installed democratic government, Hydrocarbons Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the creation of OPEC, the consortium of oil-producing countries aiming to support the price of oil.[289]
+
+In 1973, Venezuela voted to nationalize its oil industry outright, effective 1 January 1976, with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) taking over and presiding over a number of holding companies; in subsequent years, Venezuela built a vast refining and marketing system in the U.S. and Europe.[290] In the 1990s PDVSA became more independent from the government and presided over an apertura (opening) in which it invited in foreign investment. Under Hugo Chávez a 2001 law placed limits on foreign investment.
+
+The state oil company PDVSA played a key role in the December 2002 – February 2003 national strike which sought President Chávez' resignation. Managers and skilled highly paid technicians of PDVSA shut down the plants and left their posts, and by some reports sabotaged equipment, and petroleum production and refining by PDVSA almost ceased. Activities eventually were slowly restarted by returning and substitute oil workers. As a result of the strike, around 40% of the company's workforce (around 18,000 workers) were dismissed for "dereliction of duty" during the strike.[291][292]
+
+Venezuela is connected to the world primarily via air (Venezuela's airports include the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, near Caracas and La Chinita International Airport near Maracaibo) and sea (with major sea ports at La Guaira, Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello). In the south and east the Amazon rainforest region has limited cross-border transport; in the west, there is a mountainous border of over 2,213 kilometres (1,375 mi) shared with Colombia. The Orinoco River is navigable by oceangoing vessels up to 400 kilometres (250 mi) inland, and connects the major industrial city of Ciudad Guayana to the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Venezuela has a limited national railway system, which has no active rail connections to other countries. The government of Hugo Chávez tried to invest in expanding it, but Venezuela's rail project is on hold due to Venezuela not being able to pay the $7.5 billion[clarification needed] and owing China Railway nearly $500 million.[293]
+Several major cities have metro systems; the Caracas Metro has been operating since 1983. The Maracaibo Metro and Valencia Metro were opened more recently.
+Venezuela has a road network of nearly 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi) in length, placing the country around 45th in the world;[294] around a third of roads are paved.
+
+Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America;[13][14] the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital Caracas, which is also the largest city. About 93% of the population lives in urban areas in northern Venezuela; 73% live less than 100 kilometres (62 mi) from the coastline.[297] Though almost half of Venezuela's land area lies south of the Orinoco, only 5% of Venezuelans live there. The largest and most important city south of the Orinoco is Ciudad Guayana, which is the sixth most populous conurbation.[298] Other major cities include Barquisimeto, Valencia, Maracay, Maracaibo, Barcelona-Puerto La Cruz, Mérida and San Cristóbal.
+
+According to a 2014 study by sociologists of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.5 million Venezuelans, or about 4% to 6% of the country's population, have left Venezuela since 1999 following the Bolivarian Revolution.[299][300]
+
+The people of Venezuela come from a variety of ancestries. It is estimated that the majority of the population is of mestizo, or mixed, ethnic ancestry.
+Nevertheless, in the 2011 census, which Venezuelans were asked to identify themselves according to their customs and ancestry, the term mestizo was excluded from the answers. The majority claimed to be mestizo or white—51.6% and 43.6%, respectively.[1] Practically half of the population claimed to be moreno, a term used throughout Ibero-America that in this case means "dark-skinned" or "brown-skinned", as opposed to having a lighter skin (this term connotes skin color or tone, rather than facial features or descent).
+
+Ethnic minorities in Venezuela consist of groups that descend mainly from African or indigenous peoples; 2.8% identified themselves as "black" and 0.7% as afrodescendiente (Afro-descendant), 2.6% claimed to belong to indigenous peoples, and 1.2% answered "other races".[1][1]
+
+Among indigenous people, 58% were Wayúu, 7% Warao, 5% Kariña, 4% Pemón, 3% Piaroa, 3% Jivi, 3% Añu, 3% Cumanágoto, 2% Yukpa, 2% Chaima and 1% Yanomami; the remaining 9% consisted of other indigenous nations.[301]
+
+According to an autosomal DNA genetic study conducted in 2008 by the University of Brasília (UNB), the composition of Venezuela's population is 60.60% of European contribution, 23% of indigenous contribution, and 16.30% of African contribution.[302]
+
+During the colonial period and until after the Second World War, many of the European immigrants to Venezuela came from the Canary Islands,[303] which had a significant cultural impact on the cuisine and customs of Venezuela.[304][305][306] These influences on Venezuela have led to the nation being called the 8th island of the Canaries.[307][308] With the start of oil exploitation in the early 20th century, companies from the United States began establishing operations in Venezuela, bringing with them U.S. citizens. Later, during and after the war, new waves of immigrants from other parts of Europe, the Middle East, and China began; many were encouraged by government-established immigration programs and lenient immigration policies.[309] During the 20th century, Venezuela, along with the rest of Latin America, received millions of immigrants from Europe.[310][311] This was especially true post-World War II, as a consequence of war-ridden Europe.[310][311][312] During the 1970s, while experiencing an oil-export boom, Venezuela received millions of immigrants from Ecuador, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.[312] Due to the belief that this immigration influx depressed wages, some Venezuelans opposed European immigration.[312] The Venezuelan government, however, were actively recruiting immigrants from Eastern Europe to fill a need for engineers.[310] Millions of Colombians, as well as Middle Eastern and Haitian populations would continue immigrating to Venezuela into the early 21st century.[309]
+
+According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Venezuela hosted a population of refugee and asylum seekers from Colombia numbering 252,200 in 2007, and 10,600 new asylum seekers entered Venezuela in 2007.[313] Between 500,000 and one million illegal immigrants are estimated to be living in the country.[314]
+
+The total indigenous population of the country is estimated at about 500 thousand people (2.8% of the total), distributed among 40 indigenous peoples.[315] There are three uncontacted tribes living in Venezuela. The Constitution recognizes the multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, and multilingual character of the country and includes a chapter devoted to indigenous peoples' rights, which opened up spaces for their political inclusion at national and local level in 1999.
+Most indigenous peoples are concentrated in eight states along Venezuela's borders with Brazil, Guyana, and Colombia, and the majority groups are the Wayuu (west), the Warao (east), the Yanomami (south), and the Pemon (southeast).
+
+Although most residents are monolingual Spanish speakers, many languages are spoken in Venezuela. In addition to Spanish, the Constitution recognizes more than thirty indigenous languages, including Wayuu, Warao, Pemón, and many others for the official use of the indigenous peoples, mostly with few speakers – less than 1% of the total population. Wayuu is the most spoken indigenous language with 170,000 speakers.[316]
+
+Immigrants, in addition to Spanish, speak their own languages. Chinese (400,000), Portuguese (254,000),[316] and Italian (200,000)[317] are the most spoken languages in Venezuela after the official language of Spanish. Arabic is spoken by Lebanese and Syrian colonies on Isla de Margarita, Maracaibo, Punto Fijo, Puerto la Cruz, El Tigre, Maracay, and Caracas. Portuguese is spoken not only by the Portuguese community in Santa Elena de Uairén but also by much of the population due to its proximity to Brazil.[318] The German community speaks their native language, while the people of Colonia Tovar speak mostly an Alemannic dialect of German called alemán coloniero.
+
+English is the most widely used foreign language in demand and is spoken by many professionals, academics, and members of the upper and middle classes as a result of the oil exploration done by foreign companies, in addition to its acceptance as a lingua franca. Culturally, English is common in southern towns like El Callao, and the native English-speaking influence is evident in folk and calypso songs from the region. English was brought to Venezuela by Trinidadian and other British West Indies immigrants.[319]  A variety of Antillean Creole is spoken by a small community in El Callao and Paria.[320] Italian language teaching is guaranteed by the presence of a consistent number of private Venezuelan schools and institutions, where Italian language courses and Italian literature are active. Other languages spoken by large communities in the country are Basque and Galician, among others.
+
+Religion in Venezuela (2011)[2]
+
+According to a 2011 poll (GIS XXI), 88% of the population is Christian, primarily Roman Catholic (71%), and the remaining 17% Protestant, primarily Evangelicals (in Latin America Protestants are usually called "evangelicos"). 8% of Venezuelans are irreligious (atheist 2% and agnostic and 6% indifferent). Almost 3% of the population follow another religion (1% of these people practice Santería).[2]
+
+There are small but influential Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish communities. The Muslim community of more than 100,000 is concentrated among persons of Lebanese and Syrian descent living in Nueva Esparta State, Punto Fijo and the Caracas area. Buddhism in Venezuela is practiced by over 52,000 people. The Buddhist community is made up mainly of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people. There are Buddhist centers in Caracas, Maracay, Mérida, Puerto Ordáz, San Felipe, and Valencia.
+
+The Jewish community has shrunk in recent years due to rising antisemitism in Venezuela,[321][322][323][324][325] with the population declining from 22,000 in 1999[326] to less than 7,000 in 2015.[327]
+
+The culture of Venezuela is a melting pot made up of three main groups: The Indigenous Venezuelans, the Africans, and the Spanish. The first two cultures were in turn differentiated according to their tribes. Acculturation and assimilation, typical of a cultural syncretism, led to the Venezuelan culture of the present day, which is similar in many ways to the culture of the rest of Latin America, but still has its own unique characteristics.
+
+The indigenous and African influence is limited to a few words, food names, and place names. However, the Africans also brought in many musical influences, especially introduction of the drum. The Spanish influence predominantes due to the colonization process and the socioeconomic structure it created, and in particular came from the regions of Andalusia and Extremadura (the places of origin of most of the settlers in the Caribbean during the colonial era). Spanish influences can be seen in the country's architecture, music, religion, and language.
+
+Spanish influences can also be seen in the bullfights that take place in Venezuela, and in certain gastronomical features. Venezuela was also enriched by immigration streams of Indian and European origin in the 19th century, especially from France. Most recently, immigration from the United States, Spain, Italy, and Portugal has further enriched the already complex cultural mosaic (especially in large oil-producing cities).
+
+Carlos Raúl Villanueva was the most important Venezuelan architect of the modern era; he designed the Central University of Venezuela, (a World Heritage Site) and its Aula Magna. Other notable architectural works include the Capitolio, the Baralt Theatre, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex, and the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge.
+
+Venezuelan art was initially dominated by religious motifs. However, in the late 19th century, artists began emphasizing historical and heroic representations of the country's struggle for independence.[328][329] This move was led by Martín Tovar y Tovar.[329][330] Modernism took over in the 20th century.[330] Notable Venezuelan artists include Arturo Michelena, Cristóbal Rojas, Armando Reverón, Manuel Cabré; the kinetic artists Jesús Soto, Gego and Carlos Cruz-Diez;[330] and contemporary artists such as Marisol and Yucef Merhi.[331][332]
+
+Venezuelan literature originated soon after the Spanish conquest of the mostly pre-literate indigenous societies.[333] It was originally dominated by Spanish influences.  Following the rise of political literature during the Venezuelan War of Independence, Venezuelan Romanticism, notably expounded by Juan Vicente González, emerged as the first important genre in the region. Although mainly focused on narrative writing, Venezuelan literature was advanced by poets such as Andrés Eloy Blanco and Fermín Toro.
+
+Major writers and novelists include Rómulo Gallegos, Teresa de la Parra, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Adriano González León, Miguel Otero Silva, and Mariano Picón Salas. The great poet and humanist Andrés Bello was also an educator and intellectual (He was also a childhood tutor and mentor of Simón Bolívar). Others, such as Laureano Vallenilla Lanz and José Gil Fortoul, contributed to Venezuelan Positivism.
+
+The indigenous musical styles of Venezuela are exemplified by groups like Un Sólo Pueblo and Serenata Guayanesa. The national musical instrument is the cuatro. Traditional musical styles and songs mainly emerged in and around the llanos region, including, "Alma llanera" (by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez and Rafael Bolívar Coronado), "Florentino y el diablo" (by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba), "Concierto en la llanura" by Juan Vicente Torrealba, and "Caballo viejo" (by Simón Díaz).
+
+The Zulian gaita is also a very popular genre, generally performed during Christmas. The national dance is the joropo.[334] Venezuela has always been a melting pot of cultures and this can be seen in the richness and variety of its musical styles and dances: calipso, bambuco, fulía, cantos de pilado de maíz, cantos de lavanderas, sebucán, and maremare.[335] Teresa Carreño was a world-famous 19th century piano virtuoso. Recently, great classical music performances have come out of Venezuela. The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, under the leadership of its principal conductor Gustavo Dudamel and José Antonio Abreu, has hosted a number of excellent concerts in many European concert halls, most notably at the 2007 London Proms, and has received several honors. The orchestra is the pinnacle of El Sistema, a publicly financed, voluntary music education program now being emulated in other countries.
+
+In the early 21st century, a movement known as "Movida Acústica Urbana" featured musicians trying to save some national traditions, creating their own original songs but using traditional instruments.[336][337]  Some groups following this movement are Tambor Urbano,[338] Los Sinverguenzas, C4Trío, and Orozco Jam.[339]
+
+Afro-Venezuelan musical traditions are most intimately related to the festivals of the "black folk saints" San Juan and St. Benedict the Moor. Specific songs are related to the different stages of their festivals and processions, when the saints start their yearly "paseo" – stroll – through the community to dance with their people.
+
+The origins of baseball in Venezuela are unclear, although it is known that the sport was being played in the country by the late 19th century.[340] In the early 20th century, North American immigrants who came to Venezuela to work in the nation's oil industry helped to popularize the sport in Venezuela.[341] During the 1930s, baseball's popularity continued to rise in the country, leading to the foundation of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVBP) in 1945, and the sport would soon become the nation's most popular.[342][343]
+
+The immense popularity of baseball in the country makes Venezuela a rarity among its South American neighbors—association football is the dominant sport in the continent.[341][343][344] However, football, as well as basketball, are among the more popular sports played in Venezuela.[345] Venezuela hosted the 2012 Basketball World Olympic Qualifying Tournament and the 2013 FIBA Basketball Americas Championship, which took place in the Poliedro de Caracas.
+
+Although not as popular in Venezuela as the rest of South America, football, spearheaded by the Venezuela national football team is gaining popularity as well. The sport is also noted for having an increased focus during the World Cup.[345] According to the CONMEBOL alphabetical rotation policy established in 2011, Venezuela is scheduled to host the Copa América every 40 years.[346]
+
+Venezuela is also home to former Formula 1 driver, Pastor Maldonado.[347] At the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, he claimed his first pole and victory, and became the first and only Venezuelan to have done so in Formula 1 history.[347] Maldonado has increased the reception of Formula 1 in Venezuela, helping to popularize the sport in the country.[348]
+
+In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Venezuelan Rubén Limardo won a gold medal in fencing.[349]
+
+The Venezuelan cuisine reflects the climatic contrasts and cultures that coexist in Venezuela. Among Venezuela's dishes are the hallaca, pabellón criollo, arepas, empanadas, pisca andina, tarkarí de chivo, jalea de mango, patacones, and fried camiguanas.
+
+The literacy rate of the adult population was already at 91.1% by 1998.[350] In 2008, 95.2% of the adult population was literate.[351] The net primary school enrollment rate was at 91% and the net secondary school enrollment rate was at 63% in 2005.[351] Venezuela has a number of universities, of which the most prestigious are the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) founded in Caracas in 1721, the University of Zulia (LUZ) founded in 1891, the University of the Andes (ULA) founded in Mérida State in 1810, the Simón Bolívar University (USB) founded in Miranda State in 1967, and the University of the East (UDO) founded in Sucre State in 1958.
+
+Currently, many Venezuelan graduates seek a future abroad because of the country's troubled economy and heavy crime rate. In a study titled "Venezolana Community Abroad: A New Method of Exile" by Thomas Páez, Mercedes Vivas, and Juan Rafael Pulido of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.35 million Venezuelan college graduates have left the country since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution.[299][300] It is believed that nearly 12% of Venezuelans live abroad, with Ireland becoming a popular destination for students.[355] According to Claudio Bifano, president of the Venezuelan Academy of Physical, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, more than half of all medical graduates had left Venezuela in 2013.[356]
+
+By 2018, over half of all Venezuelan children had dropped out of school, with 58% of students quitting nationwide while areas near bordering countries saw more than 80% of their students leave.[357][358] Nationwide, about 93% of schools do not meet the minimum requirements to operate and 77% do not have utilities such as food, water or electricity.[358]
+
+Venezuela has a national universal health care system. The current government has created a program to expand access to health care known as Misión Barrio Adentro,[360][361] although its efficiency and work conditions have been criticized.[362][363][364] It has been reported that many Misión Barrio Adentro clinics have been closed, and (as of December 2014) it is estimated that 80% of Barrio Adentro establishments in Venezuela are abandoned.[365][366]
+
+Infant mortality in Venezuela was 19 deaths per 1,000 births for 2014 which was lower than the South American average (To compare: The U.S. figure was 6 deaths per 1,000 births in 2013 and the Canadian figure was 4.5 deaths per 1,000 live births).[367] Child malnutrition (defined as stunting or wasting in children under the age of five) was 17%. Delta Amacuro and Amazonas had the nation's highest rates.[368] According to the United Nations, 32% of Venezuelans lacked adequate sanitation, primarily those living in rural areas.[369] Diseases ranging from diphtheria, plague, malaria,[224] typhoid fever, yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis D were present in the country.[370] Obesity was prevalent in approximately 30% of the adult population in Venezuela.[367]
+
+Venezuela had a total of 150 sewage treatment plants; however, 13% of the population lacked access to drinking water, but this number had been dropping.[371]
+
+During the economic crisis observed under President Maduro's presidency, medical professionals were forced to perform outdated treatments on patients.[372]
+
+• Gillespie, Patrick (12 April 2016). "Venezuela: the land of 500% inflation". CNNMoney. Retrieved 17 January 2017. • Rosati, Andrew (11 January 2017). "Venezuela's Economy Was the Worst Performing of 2016, IMF Estimates". Bloomberg. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
+
+Articles
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+Books
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+Talks and interviews

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+Coordinates: 7°N 65°W / 7°N 65°W / 7; -65
+
+Venezuela (/ˌvɛnəˈzweɪlə/; American Spanish: [beneˈswela] (listen)), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Spanish: República Bolivariana de Venezuela),[11] is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many small islands and islets in the Caribbean Sea. It has a territorial extension of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi) and the population of Venezuela was estimated at 28 million in 2019.[6] The capital and largest urban agglomeration is the city of Caracas.
+
+The continental territory is bordered on the north by the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Colombia, Brazil on the south, Trinidad and Tobago to the north-east and on the east by Guyana. The Venezuelan government maintains a claim against Guyana to Guayana Esequiba.[12] Venezuela is a federal presidential republic consisting of 23 states, the Capital District and federal dependencies covering Venezuela's offshore islands. Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America;[13][14] the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north and in the capital.
+
+The territory of Venezuela was colonized by Spain in 1522 amid resistance from indigenous peoples. In 1811, it became one of the first Spanish-American territories to declare independence from the Spanish as a department of the federal republic of Gran Colombia. It gained full sovereignty as a country in 1830. During the 19th century, Venezuela suffered political turmoil and autocracy, remaining dominated by regional military dictators until the mid-20th century. Since 1958, the country has had a series of democratic governments. Economic shocks in the 1980s and 1990s led to major political crises and widespread social unrest, including the deadly Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for embezzlement of public funds in 1993.
+
+A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of former coup-involved career officer Hugo Chávez and the launch of the Bolivarian Revolution. The revolution began with a 1999 Constituent Assembly, where a new Constitution of Venezuela was imposed. This new constitution officially changed the name of the country to Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Chávez established populist social welfare policies bolstered by soaring oil prices,[15] increasing social spending, temporarily[16] and reducing economic inequality and poverty in the early years of the regime.[21] In 2013, Chávez died and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro, who was elected by a narrow majority in a widely disputed election. Maduro continued the populist policies, but with disastrous economic results which triggered another nationwide crisis that continues to this day.[22]
+
+Venezuela is a developing country and ranks 96th on the Human Development Index. It has the world's largest known oil reserves and has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil. Previously, the country was an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, but oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The excesses and poor policies of the incumbent government led to the collapse of Venezuela's entire economy.[23][24] The country struggles with record hyperinflation,[25][26] shortages of basic goods,[27] unemployment,[28] poverty,[29] disease, high child mortality, malnutrition, severe crime and corruption. These factors have precipitated the Venezuelan migrant crisis where more than three million people have fled the country.[30] By 2017, Venezuela was declared to be in default regarding debt payments by credit rating agencies.[31][32]  The crisis in Venezuela has contributed to a rapidly deteriorating human rights situation, including increased abuses such as torture, arbitrary imprisonment, extrajudicial killings and attacks on human rights advocates, while Maduro has become increasingly described as an autocratic and dictatorial leader by foreign observers.
+Venezuela is a charter member of the UN, OAS, UNASUR, ALBA, Mercosur, LAIA and OEI.
+
+According to the most popular and accepted version, in 1499, an expedition led by Alonso de Ojeda visited the Venezuelan coast. The stilt houses in the area of Lake Maracaibo reminded the Italian navigator, Amerigo Vespucci, of the city of Venice, Italy, so he named the region Veneziola, or "Little Venice".[33] The Spanish version of Veneziola is Venezuela.[34]
+
+Martín Fernández de Enciso, a member of the Vespucci and Ojeda crew, gave a different account. In his work Summa de geografía, he states that the crew found indigenous people who called themselves the Veneciuela. Thus, the name "Venezuela" may have evolved from the native word.[35]
+
+Previously, the official name was Estado de Venezuela (1830–1856), República de Venezuela (1856–1864), Estados Unidos de Venezuela (1864–1953), and again República de Venezuela (1953–1999).
+
+Evidence exists of human habitation in the area now known as Venezuela from about 15,000 years ago. Leaf-shaped tools from this period, together with chopping and plano-convex scraping implements, have been found exposed on the high riverine terraces of the Rio Pedregal in western Venezuela.[36] Late Pleistocene hunting artifacts, including spear tips, have been found at a similar series of sites in northwestern Venezuela known as "El Jobo"; according to radiocarbon dating, these date from 13,000 to 7,000 BC.[37]
+
+It is not known how many people lived in Venezuela before the Spanish conquest; it has been estimated at around one million.[38] In addition to indigenous peoples known today, the population included historical groups such as the Kalina (Caribs), Auaké, Caquetio, Mariche, and Timoto–Cuicas. The Timoto–Cuica culture was the most complex society in Pre-Columbian Venezuela, with pre-planned permanent villages, surrounded by irrigated, terraced fields. They also stored water in tanks.[39] Their houses were made primarily of stone and wood with thatched roofs. They were peaceful, for the most part, and depended on growing crops. Regional crops included potatoes and ullucos.[40] They left behind works of art, particularly anthropomorphic ceramics, but no major monuments. They spun vegetable fibers to weave into textiles and mats for housing. They are credited with having invented the arepa, a staple in Venezuelan cuisine.[41]
+
+After the conquest, the population dropped markedly, mainly through the spread of new infectious diseases from Europe.[38] Two main north–south axes of pre-Columbian population were present, who cultivated maize in the west and manioc in the east.[38] Large parts of the llanos were cultivated through a combination of slash and burn and permanent settled agriculture.[38]
+
+In 1498, during his third voyage to the Americas, Christopher Columbus sailed near the Orinoco Delta and landed in the Gulf of Paria.[42] Amazed by the great offshore current of freshwater which deflected his course eastward, Columbus expressed in a letter to Isabella and Ferdinand that he must have reached Heaven on Earth (terrestrial paradise):
+
+Great signs are these of the Terrestrial Paradise, for the site conforms to the opinion of the holy and wise theologians whom I have mentioned. And likewise, the [other] signs conform very well, for I have never read or heard of such a large quantity of fresh water being inside and in such close proximity to salt water; the very mild temperateness also corroborates this; and if the water of which I speak does not proceed from Paradise then it is an even greater marvel, because I do not believe such a large and deep river has ever been known to exist in this world.[43]
+
+Spain's colonization of mainland Venezuela started in 1522, establishing its first permanent South American settlement in the present-day[update] city of Cumaná. In the 16th century, Venezuela was contracted as a concession by the King of Spain to the German Welser banking family (Klein-Venedig, 1528–1546). Native caciques (leaders) such as Guaicaipuro (c. 1530–1568) and Tamanaco (died 1573) attempted to resist Spanish incursions, but the newcomers ultimately subdued them; Tamanaco was put to death by order of Caracas' founder, Diego de Losada.[44]
+
+In the 16th century, during the Spanish colonization, indigenous peoples such as many of the Mariches, themselves descendants of the Kalina, converted to Roman Catholicism. Some of the resisting tribes or leaders are commemorated in place names, including Caracas, Chacao and Los Teques. The early colonial settlements focused on the northern coast,[38] but in the mid-18th century, the Spanish pushed farther inland along the Orinoco River. Here, the Ye'kuana (then known as the Makiritare) organized serious resistance in 1775 and 1776.[45]
+
+Spain's eastern Venezuelan settlements were incorporated into New Andalusia Province. Administered by the Royal Audiencia of Santo Domingo from the early 16th century, most of Venezuela became part of the Viceroyalty of New Granada in the early 18th century, and was then reorganized as an autonomous Captaincy General starting in 1777. The town of Caracas, founded in the central coastal region in 1567, was well-placed to become a key location, being near the coastal port of La Guaira whilst itself being located in a valley in a mountain range, providing defensive strength against pirates and a more fertile and healthy climate.[46]
+
+After a series of unsuccessful uprisings, Venezuela, under the leadership of Francisco de Miranda, a Venezuelan marshal who had fought in the American Revolution and the French Revolution, declared independence as the First Republic of Venezuela on 5 July 1811.[47] This began the Venezuelan War of Independence. A devastating earthquake that struck Caracas in 1812, together with the rebellion of the Venezuelan llaneros, helped bring down the republic.[48] Simón Bolívar, new leader of the independentist forces, launched his Admirable Campaign in 1813 from New Granada, retaking most of the territory and being proclaimed as El Libertador ("The Liberator"). A second Venezuelan republic was proclaimed on 7 August 1813, but lasted only a few months before being crushed at the hands of royalist caudillo José Tomás Boves and his personal army of llaneros.[49]
+
+The end of the French invasion of homeland Spain in 1814 allowed the preparation of a large expeditionary force to the American provinces under general Pablo Morillo, with the goal to regain the lost territory in Venezuela and New Granada. As the war reached a stalemate on 1817, Bolívar reestablished the Third Republic of Venezuela on the territory still controlled by the patriots, mainly in the Guayana and Los Llanos regions. This republic was short-lived as only two years later, during the Congress of Angostura of 1819, the union of Venezuela with New Granada was decreed to form the Republic of Gran Colombia. The war continued for some years, until full victory and sovereignty was attained after Bolívar, aided by José Antonio Páez and Antonio José de Sucre, won the Battle of Carabobo on 24 June 1821.[50] On 24 July 1823, José Prudencio Padilla and Rafael Urdaneta helped seal Venezuelan independence with their victory in the Battle of Lake Maracaibo.[51] New Granada's congress gave Bolívar control of the Granadian army; leading it, he liberated several countries and founded Gran Colombia.[50]
+
+Sucre, who won many battles for Bolívar, went on to liberate Ecuador and later become the second president of Bolivia. Venezuela remained part of Gran Colombia until 1830, when a rebellion led by Páez allowed the proclamation of a newly independent Venezuela; Páez became the first president of the new State of Venezuela.[52] Between one-quarter and one-third of Venezuela's population was lost during these two decades of warfare (including perhaps one-half of the white population),[53] which by 1830, was estimated at about 800,000.[54]
+
+The colors of the Venezuelan flag are yellow, blue, and red: the yellow stands for land wealth, the blue for the sea that separates Venezuela from Spain, and the red for the blood shed by the heroes of independence.[55]
+
+Slavery in Venezuela was abolished in 1854.[54] Much of Venezuela's 19th-century history was characterized by political turmoil and dictatorial rule, including the Independence leader José Antonio Páez, who gained the presidency three times and served a total of 11 years between 1830 and 1863. This culminated in the Federal War (1859–1863), a civil war in which hundreds of thousands died in a country with a population of not much more than a million people. In the latter half of the century, Antonio Guzmán Blanco, another caudillo, served a total of 13 years between 1870 and 1887, with three other presidents interspersed.
+
+In 1895, a longstanding dispute with Great Britain about the territory of Guayana Esequiba, which Britain claimed as part of British Guiana and Venezuela saw as Venezuelan territory, erupted into the Venezuela Crisis of 1895. The dispute became a diplomatic crisis when Venezuela's lobbyist, William L. Scruggs, sought to argue that British behavior over the issue violated the United States' Monroe Doctrine of 1823, and used his influence in Washington, D.C., to pursue the matter. Then, U.S. president Grover Cleveland adopted a broad interpretation of the doctrine that did not just simply forbid new European colonies, but declared an American interest in any matter within the hemisphere.[56] Britain ultimately accepted arbitration, but in negotiations over its terms was able to persuade the U.S. on many of the details. A tribunal convened in Paris in 1898 to decide the issue and in 1899 awarded the bulk of the disputed territory to British Guiana.[57]
+
+In 1899, Cipriano Castro, assisted by his friend Juan Vicente Gómez, seized power in Caracas, marching an army from his base in the Andean state of Táchira. Castro defaulted on Venezuela's considerable foreign debts and declined to pay compensation to foreigners caught up in Venezuela's civil wars. This led to the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903, in which Britain, Germany and Italy imposed a naval blockade of several months before international arbitration at the new Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague was agreed. In 1908, another dispute broke out with the Netherlands, which was resolved when Castro left for medical treatment in Germany and was promptly overthrown by Juan Vicente Gómez (1908–1935).
+
+The discovery of massive oil deposits in Lake Maracaibo during World War I[58] proved to be pivotal for Venezuela and transformed the basis of its economy from a heavy dependence on agricultural exports. It prompted an economic boom that lasted into the 1980s; by 1935, Venezuela's per capita gross domestic product was Latin America's highest.[59] Gómez benefited handsomely from this, as corruption thrived, but at the same time, the new source of income helped him centralize the Venezuelan state and develop its authority.
+
+He remained the most powerful man in Venezuela until his death in 1935, although at times he ceded the presidency to others. The gomecista dictatorship (1935–1945) system largely continued under Eleazar López Contreras, but from 1941, under Isaías Medina Angarita, was relaxed.  Angarita granted a range of reforms, including the legalization of all political parties. After World War II, immigration from Southern Europe (mainly from Spain, Italy, Portugal, and France) and poorer Latin American countries markedly diversified Venezuelan society.
+
+In 1945, a civilian-military coup overthrew Medina Angarita and ushered in a three-year period of democratic rule (1945–1948) under the mass membership party Democratic Action, initially under Rómulo Betancourt, until Rómulo Gallegos won the 1947 Venezuelan presidential election (generally believed to be the first free and fair elections in Venezuela). Gallegos governed until overthrown by a military junta led by the triumvirate Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, Marcos Pérez Jiménez, and Gallegos' Defense Minister, Carlos Delgado Chalbaud, in the 1948 Venezuelan coup d'état.
+
+The most powerful man in the military junta (1948–1958) was Pérez Jiménez (though Chalbaud was its titular president) and was suspected of being behind the death in office of Chalbaud, who died in a bungled kidnapping in 1950. When the junta unexpectedly lost the election it held in 1952, it ignored the results and Pérez Jiménez was installed as president, where he remained until 1958. The expansion of the Venezuelan economy in this period was based on the indebtedness of the Venezuelan nation and that was one of the causes of the economic crisis in Venezuela in the 1960s,[60] in which important projects such as the Urban Center El Recreo de Marcel Brauer on Avenida Casanova in Sabana Grande district were paralyzed.[61]
+
+During the years of Pérez Jiménez's administration, the State intervened in areas of the economy that were traditionally carried out by private companies. The Pérez Jiménez government was characterized by its state capitalism and not by liberal capitalism. It was an antecedent of the populist and paternalistic economic regime of the later democratic regimes.[62] The national private entrepreneurship increasingly had less space to grow and prosper. The State was the great capitalist in the Venezuela of Pérez Jiménez and was the largest national shareholder of major hotel chains such as Sheraton.[63]
+
+In the government of Pérez Jiménez, Venezuela's debt grew more than 25 times and went from 175 million to more than 4,500 million bolivares in just 5 years (approximately 15 billion dollars in 2018). The malaise over the debts of Venezuela reached the barracks and the national business. Pérez Jiménez responded that: "there is no debt, but commitments". The Finance Minister failed to convince Pérez Jiménez to order the cancellation of debts.[64] As of 14 January 1958, the Venezuelan business community decided to divorce itself completely from the regime, nine days before the collapse of the government.[60] The military dictator Pérez Jiménez was forced out on 23 January 1958.[65] In an effort to consolidate a young democracy, the three major political parties (Acción Democrática (AD), COPEI and Unión Republicana Democrática (URD), with the notable exception of the Communist Party of Venezuela) signed the Puntofijo Pact power-sharing agreement. The two first parties would dominate the political landscape for four decades.
+
+During the presidencies of Rómulo Ernesto Betancourt Bello (1959–1964, his second time) and Raúl Leoni Otero (1964–1969) in the 1960s, substantial guerilla movements occurred, including the Armed Forces of National Liberation and the Revolutionary Left Movement, which had split from AD in 1960. Most of these movements laid down their arms under Rafael Caldera's first presidency (1969–1974); Caldera had won the 1968 election for COPEI, being the first time a party other than Democratic Action took the presidency through a democratic election. The new democratic order had its antagonists. Betancourt suffered an attack planned by the Dominican dictator Rafael Trujillo in 1960, and the leftists excluded from the Pact initiated an armed insurgency by organizing themselves in the Armed Forces of National Liberation, sponsored by the Communist Party and Fidel Castro. In 1962 they tried to destabilize the military corps, with failed revolts in Carúpano and Puerto Cabello. At the same time, Betancourt promoted an international doctrine in which he only recognized elected governments by popular vote.[need quotation to verify]
+
+As a result of the debt that Marcos Pérez Jiménez had left, an economic adjustment program was necessary in Venezuela. The Economic Recovery Plan of 1960 was formulated by Tomás Enrique Carrillo Batalla. The construction industry was revitalized through the "rediscount" of the Central Bank of Venezuela. The Economic Recovery Plan fulfilled its objectives and in 1964, Venezuela was able to return to an anchored exchange rate, with free purchase and sale of foreign currency. This system lasted until the Venezuelan Black Friday of 1983, although the model was already running out at the end of the seventies.[66] The consolidation of the democratic system and the dissipation of fears of political radicalization of the country contributed to normalize the demand for foreign currency, stabilizing the parallel exchange rate.
+
+For much of the period between 1950 and 1973, the Venezuelan economy was characterized by its stability and sustained strength, factors that contributed decisively to being able to maintain a fixed exchange rate without major inconveniences. In the period of Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979, his first time as president), as a result of the Arab-Israeli war (the Yom Kippur war), the average price of a barrel of oil went from 3.71 to 10.53 dollars and continued to rise to exceed 29 dollars in 1981.[66] The income of the public sector went from 18,960 million bolivars in 1973 to 45.564 million in 1974. The economic bonanza also had the characteristics of an economic bubble, but Venezuelans remember the "Ta barato, dame dos".[67][68] The increased inflow of funds to savings and loan entities and mortgage banks allowed an increase in the mortgage loan portfolio, which also tripled. In general, Venezuela was a prosperous country in the governments of Rómulo Betancourt (1945 – c. 1948; 1959–1964), Rafael Caldera (1969–1974; 1994 – c. 1999) and Carlos Andrés Pérez (1974–1979; 1989 – c. 1993)[citation needed]. In 1975 the iron industry was nationalized and the following year the oil industry, creating Petróleos de Venezuela, S.A. (PDVSA). Both Caldera and Pérez partially broke with the Betancourt Doctrine.
+
+The election in 1973 of Carlos Andrés Pérez coincided with an oil crisis, in which Venezuela's income exploded as oil prices soared; oil industries were nationalized in 1976. This led to massive increases in public spending, but also increases in external debts, which continued into the 1980s when the collapse of oil prices during the 1980s crippled the Venezuelan economy. As the government started to devalue the currency in February 1983 to face its financial obligations, Venezuelans' real standards of living fell dramatically. A number of failed economic policies and increasing corruption in government led to rising poverty and crime, worsening social indicators, and increased political instability.[69]
+
+During the presidency of Luis Herrera Campins (1979–1984), important infrastructure works were completed, such as the Parque Central Complex (which became the largest housing complex and the tallest towers in Latin America), Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex (the largest cultural center in South America at that time), the Brígido Iriarte Stadium and the United Nations Park. Most of these works had been previously planned.[67] Until the mid-eighties, the Venezuelan economy showed a very positive behavior, characterized by the absence of internal or external imbalances, high economic growth, largely due to the sustained and very high gross fixed investment of those years, 10 under unemployment and great price stability. This translated into sustained increases in the average real wage and an improvement in the condition of life.[66]
+
+The bolivar was devalued in February 1983, unleashing a strong economic crisis, which hit investments in the most important financial centers of the Venezuelan capital, such as Sabana Grande. In the government of Jaime Lusinchi (1984–1989), an attempt was made to solve the problem. Unfortunately, the measures failed. After a long period of accelerated economic expansion that lasts for six decades (value of the stock of homes by families), an extreme higher value is reached towards 1982. From this historical value begins then a systematic fall that mounts to 26 hundred up to 2006, and that configures a genuine unique experience in contemporary economic life.[70] However, the economic deactivation of the country had begun to show its first signs in 1978.[71]
+
+In the 1980s, the Presidential Commission for State Reform (COPRE) emerged as a mechanism of political innovation. Venezuela was preparing for the decentralization of its political system and the diversification of its economy, reducing the large size of the State. The COPRE operated as an innovation mechanism, also by incorporating issues into the political agenda that were generally excluded from public deliberation by the main actors of the Venezuelan democratic system. The most discussed topics were incorporated into the public agenda: decentralization, political participation, municipalization, judicial oder reforms and the role of the State in a new economic strategy. Unfortunately, the social reality of the country made the changes difficult to apply.[71]
+
+Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis in which hundreds died in the Caracazo riots of 1989 during the presidency of Carlos Andres Pérez (1989–1993, his second time), two attempted coups d'état in 1992 (February and November) by Hugo Chávez,[72] and the impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez (re-elected in 1988) for corruption in 1993 and the interim presidency of Ramón José Velásquez (1993–1994). Coup leader Hugo Chávez was pardoned in March 1994 by president Rafael Caldera (1994–1999, his second time), with a clean slate and his political rights reinstated. This let him later get the presidency continuously from 1999 until his death in 2013, winning the elections of 1998, 2000, 2006 and 2012 and the presidential referendum of 2004, with the only exception in 2002 of Pedro Carmona Estanga as a two-day de facto government and Diosdado Cabello Rondón as a few-hours interim president.
+
+The Bolivarian Revolution refers to a left-wing populism social movement and political process in Venezuela led by Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez, who founded the Fifth Republic Movement in 1997 and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela in 2007. The "Bolivarian Revolution" is named after Simón Bolívar, an early 19th-century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader, prominent in the Spanish American wars of independence in achieving the independence of most of northern South America from Spanish rule. According to Chávez and other supporters, the "Bolivarian Revolution" seeks to build a mass movement to implement Bolivarianism—popular democracy, economic independence, equitable distribution of revenues, and an end to political corruption—in Venezuela. They interpret Bolívar's ideas from a populist perspective, using socialist rhetoric.
+
+A collapse in confidence in the existing parties led to Chávez being elected president in 1998 and the subsequent launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela. Chávez also initiated Bolivarian missions, programs aimed at helping the poor.[73]
+
+In April 2002, Chávez was briefly ousted from power in the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt following popular demonstrations by his opponents,[74] but he returned to power after two days as a result of demonstrations by poor Chávez supporters in Caracas and actions by the military.[75][76]
+
+Chávez also remained in power after an all-out national strike that lasted from December 2002 to February 2003, including a strike/lockout in the state oil company PDVSA.[77] The strike produced severe economic dislocation, with the country's GDP falling 27% during the first four months of 2003, and costing the oil industry $13.3 billion.[78] Capital flight before and during the strike led to the reimposition of currency controls (which had been abolished in 1989), managed by the CADIVI agency. In the subsequent decade, the government was forced into several currency devaluations.[79][80][81][82][83] These devaluations have done little to improve the situation of the Venezuelan people who rely on imported products or locally produced products that depend on imported inputs while dollar-denominated oil sales account for the vast majority of Venezuela's exports.[84] According to Sebastian Boyd writing at Bloomberg News, the profits of the oil industry have been lost to "social engineering" and corruption, instead of investments needed to maintain oil production.[85]
+
+Chávez survived several further political tests, including an August 2004 recall referendum. He was elected for another term in December 2006 and re-elected for a third term in October 2012. However, he was never sworn in for his third period, due to medical complications. Chávez died on 5 March 2013 after a nearly two-year fight with cancer.[86] The presidential election that took place on Sunday, 14 April 2013, was the first since Chávez took office in 1999 in which his name did not appear on the ballot.[87]
+
+Poverty and inflation began to increase into the 2010s.[88] Nicolás Maduro was elected in 2013 after the death of Chavez. Chavez picked Maduro as his successor and appointed him vice president in 2013. Maduro was elected president in a shortened election in 2013 following Chavez's death.[82][89][90]
+
+Nicolás Maduro has been the president of Venezuela since 14 April 2013, after winning the second presidential election after Chávez's death, with 50.61% of the votes against the opposition's candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski who had 49.12% of the votes. The Democratic Unity Roundtable contested his election as fraud and as a violation of the constitution. An audit of 56% of the vote showed no discrepancies,[91] and the Supreme Court of Venezuela ruled that under Venezuela's Constitution, Nicolás Maduro is the legitimate president and was invested as such by the Venezuelan National Assembly (Asamblea Nacional).[92][93][94] Opposition leaders and some international media consider the government of Maduro to be a dictatorship.[95][96][97][98] Beginning in February 2014, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have protested over high levels of criminal violence, corruption, hyperinflation, and chronic scarcity of basic goods due to policies of the federal government.[99][100][101][102][103] Demonstrations and riots have left over 40 fatalities in the unrest between both Chavistas and opposition protesters,[104] and has led to the arrest of opposition leaders including Leopoldo López[104][105] and Antonio Ledezma.[106][107][108][109] Human rights groups have strongly condemned the arrest of Leopoldo López.[110]
+
+In the 2015 Venezuelan parliamentary election, the opposition gained a majority.[111]
+
+Venezuela devalued its currency in February 2013 due to the rising shortages in the country,[83][112] which included those of milk, flour, and other necessities. This led to an increase in malnutrition, especially among children.[113][114] Venezuela's economy had become strongly dependent on the exportation of oil with Crude accounting for 86% of exports,[115] and a high price per barrel to support social programs. Beginning in 2014 the price of oil plummeted from over $100/bbl to $40/bbl a year and a half later, this placed great pressure on the Venezuelan economy, which was no longer able to afford vast social programs. To counter the decrease in oil prices, the Venezuelan Government began taking more money from PDVSA, the state oil company, to meet budgets resulting in a lack of reinvestment in fields and employees. This has seen Venezuela's oil production decrease from its height of nearly 3 to 1 million barrels (480 to 160 thousand cubic metres) per day.[116][117][118][119] In 2014, Venezuela entered an economic recession.[120] In 2015, Venezuela had the world's highest inflation rate with the rate surpassing 100%, becoming the highest in the country's history.[121] In 2017, Donald Trump's administration imposed more economic sanctions against Venezuela's state-owned oil company PDVSA and Venezuelan officials.[122][123][124] Economic problems, as well as crime and corruption, were some of the main causes of the 2014–present Venezuelan protests.[125][126] Since 2015 nearly 2 million people have fled Venezuela.[127]
+
+In January 2016, President Maduro decreed an "economic emergency" revealing the extent of the crisis and expanding his powers.[128] In July 2016, Colombian border crossings were temporarily opened to allow Venezuelans to purchase food and basic household and health items in Colombia.[129] In September 2016, a study published in the Spanish-language Diario Las Américas[130] indicated that 15% of Venezuelans are eating "food waste discarded by commercial establishments".
+
+Close to 200 riots had occurred in Venezuelan prisons by October 2016, according to Una Ventana a la Libertad, an advocacy group for better prison conditions. The father of an inmate at Táchira Detention Center in Caracas alleged that his son was cannibalized by other inmates during a month-long riot, a claim corroborated by an anonymous police source but denied by the Minister of Correctional Affairs.[131]
+
+In 2017, Venezuela experienced a constitutional crisis in the country. In March 2017, opposition leaders branded President Nicolas Maduro a dictator after the Maduro-aligned Supreme Tribunal, which had been overturning most National Assembly decisions since the opposition took control of the body, took over the functions of the assembly, pushing a lengthy political standoff to new heights.[95] However, the Supreme Court quickly backed down and reversed its decision on 1 April 2017. A month later, President Maduro announced the 2017 Venezuelan Constituent Assembly election and on 30 August 2017, the 2017 Constituent National Assembly was elected into office and quickly stripped the National Assembly of its powers.
+
+In December 2017, President Maduro declared that leading opposition parties will be barred from taking part in next year's presidential vote after they boycotted mayoral polls.[132]
+
+Maduro won the 2018 election with 67.8% of the vote. The result was challenged by countries including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, France and the United States who deemed it fraudulent and moved to recognize Juan Guaidó as president.[133][134][135][136] Other countries including Cuba, China, Russia, Turkey, and Iran have continued to recognize Maduro as president,[137][138] although China, facing financial pressure over its position, has reportedly begun hedging its position by decreasing loans given, cancelling joint ventures, and signaling willingness to work with all parties.[139] A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman denied the reports, describing them as "false information".[140]
+
+In January 2019 the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) approved a resolution "to not recognize the legitimacy of Nicolas Maduro's new term as of the 10th of January of 2019,"[141] while the United Nations General Assembly formally recognized the Maduro government as the only legitimate representative of Venezuela at the United Nations[142] and in October 2019, Venezuela was elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council.[143]
+
+In August 2019, United States President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose a total economic embargo against Venezuela.[144] Later, in March 2020, the Trump administration indicted Maduro and several Venezuelan officials with drug trafficking.[145]
+
+In June 2020, a detailed report by Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights documented enforced disappearances in Venezuela, specifically those that occurred during the years 2018 and 2019. During the period, around 724 enforced disappearances of political detainees were reported. Venezuelan security forces have disappeared their victims, subjecting them to illegal interrogation processes accompanied by torture and cruel or inhuman treatment. Venezuela’s Bolivarian regime has strategically used enforced disappearances to silence political opponents and other critical voices it deems a threat.[146][147]
+
+Venezuela is located in the north of South America; geologically, its mainland rests on the South American Plate. It has a total area of 916,445 km2 (353,841 sq mi) and a land area of 882,050 km2 (340,560 sq mi), making Venezuela the 33rd largest country in the world. The territory it controls lies between latitudes 0° and 13°N and longitudes 59° and 74°W.
+
+Shaped roughly like a triangle, the country has a 2,800 km (1,700 mi) coastline in the north, which includes numerous islands in the Caribbean and the northeast borders the northern Atlantic Ocean. Most observers describe Venezuela in terms of four fairly well defined topographical regions: the Maracaibo lowlands in the northwest, the northern mountains extending in a broad east–west arc from the Colombian border along the northern Caribbean coast, the wide plains in central Venezuela, and the Guiana Highlands in the southeast.
+
+The northern mountains are the extreme northeastern extensions of South America's Andes mountain range. Pico Bolívar, the nation's highest point at 4,979 m (16,335 ft), lies in this region. To the south, the dissected Guiana Highlands contain the northern fringes of the Amazon Basin and Angel Falls, the world's highest waterfall, as well as tepuis, large table-like mountains. The country's center is characterized by the llanos, which are extensive plains that stretch from the Colombian border in the far west to the Orinoco River delta in the east. The Orinoco, with its rich alluvial soils, binds the largest and most important river system of the country; it originates in one of the largest watersheds in Latin America. The Caroní and the Apure are other major rivers.
+
+Venezuela borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south. Caribbean islands such as Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada, Curaçao, Aruba, and the Leeward Antilles lie near the Venezuelan coast. Venezuela has territorial disputes with Guyana, formerly United Kingdom, largely concerning the Essequibo area and with Colombia concerning the Gulf of Venezuela. In 1895, after years of diplomatic attempts to solve the border dispute, the dispute over the Essequibo River border flared up. It was submitted to a "neutral" commission (composed of British, American, and Russian representatives and without a direct Venezuelan representative), which in 1899 decided mostly against Venezuela's claim.[148]
+
+Venezuela's most significant natural resources are petroleum and natural gas, iron ore, gold, and other minerals. It also has large areas of arable land and water.
+
+Venezuela is entirely located in the tropics over the Equator to around 12° N. Its climate varies from humid low-elevation plains, where average annual temperatures range as high as 35 °C (95.0 °F), to glaciers and highlands (the páramos) with an average yearly temperature of 8 °C (46.4 °F). Annual rainfall varies from 430 mm (16.9 in) in the semiarid portions of the northwest to over 1,000 mm (39.4 in) in the Orinoco Delta of the far east and the Amazonian Jungle in the south. The precipitation level is lower in the period from August through April. These periods are referred to as hot-humid and cold-dry seasons. Another characteristic of the climate is this variation throughout the country by the existence of a mountain range called "Cordillera de la Costa" which crosses the country from east to west. The majority of the population lives in these mountains.[150]
+
+The country falls into four horizontal temperature zones based primarily on elevation, having tropical, dry, temperate with dry winters, and polar (alpine tundra) climates, amongst others.[151][152][153] In the tropical zone—below 800 m (2,625 ft)—temperatures are hot, with yearly averages ranging between 26 and 28 °C (78.8 and 82.4 °F). The temperate zone ranges between 800 and 2,000 m (2,625 and 6,562 ft) with averages from 12 to 25 °C (53.6 to 77.0 °F); many of Venezuela's cities, including the capital, lie in this region. Colder conditions with temperatures from 9 to 11 °C (48.2 to 51.8 °F) are found in the cool zone between 2,000 and 3,000 m (6,562 and 9,843 ft), especially in the Venezuelan Andes, where pastureland and permanent snowfield with yearly averages below 8 °C (46 °F) cover land above 3,000 meters (9,843 ft) in the páramos.
+
+The highest temperature recorded was 42 °C (108 °F) in Machiques,[154] and the lowest temperature recorded was −11 °C (12 °F), it has been reported from an uninhabited high altitude at Páramo de Piedras Blancas (Mérida state),[155] even though no official reports exist, lower temperatures in the mountains of the Sierra Nevada de Mérida are known.
+
+Venezuela lies within the Neotropical realm; large portions of the country were originally covered by moist broadleaf forests. One of 17 megadiverse countries,[156] Venezuela's habitats range from the Andes Mountains in the west to the Amazon Basin rainforest in the south, via extensive llanos plains and Caribbean coast in the center and the Orinoco River Delta in the east. They include xeric scrublands in the extreme northwest and coastal mangrove forests in the northeast.[150] Its cloud forests and lowland rainforests are particularly rich.[157]
+
+Animals of Venezuela are diverse and include manatees, three-toed sloth, two-toed sloth, Amazon river dolphins, and Orinoco crocodiles, which have been reported to reach up to 6.6 m (22 ft) in length. Venezuela hosts a total of 1,417 bird species, 48 of which are endemic.[158] Important birds include ibises, ospreys, kingfishers,[157] and the yellow-orange Venezuelan troupial, the national bird. Notable mammals include the giant anteater, jaguar, and the capybara, the world's largest rodent. More than half of Venezuelan avian and mammalian species are found in the Amazonian forests south of the Orinoco.[159]
+
+For the fungi, an account was provided by R.W.G. Dennis[160] which has been digitized and the records made available on-line as part of the Cybertruffle Robigalia database.[161] That database includes nearly 3,900 species of fungi recorded from Venezuela, but is far from complete, and the true total number of fungal species already known from Venezuela is likely higher, given the generally accepted estimate that only about 7% of all fungi worldwide have so far been discovered.[162]
+
+Among plants of Venezuela, over 25,000 species of orchids are found in the country's cloud forest and lowland rainforest ecosystems.[157] These include the flor de mayo orchid (Cattleya mossiae), the national flower. Venezuela's national tree is the araguaney, whose characteristic lushness after the rainy season led novelist Rómulo Gallegos to name it "[l]a primavera de oro de los araguaneyes" (the golden spring of the araguaneyes). The tops of the tepuis are also home to several carnivorous plants including the marsh pitcher plant, Heliamphora, and the insectivorous bromeliad, Brocchinia reducta.
+
+Venezuela is among the top 20 countries in terms of endemism.[163] Among its animals, 23% of reptilian and 50% of amphibian species are endemic.[163] Although the available information is still very small, a first effort has been made to estimate the number of fungal species endemic to Venezuela: 1334 species of fungi have been tentatively identified as possible endemics of the country.[164] Some 38% of the over 21,000 plant species known from Venezuela are unique to the country.[163]
+
+Venezuela is one of the 10 most biodiverse countries on the planet, yet it is one of the leaders of deforestation due to economic and political factors. Each year, roughly 287,600 hectares of forest are permanently destroyed and other areas are degraded by mining, oil extraction, and logging. Between 1990 and 2005, Venezuela officially lost 8.3% of its forest cover, which is about 4.3 million ha. In response, federal protections for critical habitat were implemented; for example, 20% to 33% of forested land is protected.[159]  The country's biosphere reserve is part of the World Network of Biosphere Reserves; five wetlands are registered under the Ramsar Convention.[167] In 2003, 70% of the nation's land was under conservation management in over 200 protected areas, including 43 national parks.[168] Venezuela's 43 national parks include Canaima National Park, Morrocoy National Park, and Mochima National Park. In the far south is a reserve for the country's Yanomami tribes. Covering 32,000 square miles (82,880 square kilometres), the area is off-limits to farmers, miners, and all non-Yanomami settlers.
+
+Venezuela was one of the few countries that did not enter an INDC at COP21.[169][170] Many terrestrial ecosystems are considered endangered, specially the dry forest in the northern regions of the country and the coral reefs in the Caribbean coast.[165][171][172]
+
+Following the fall of Marcos Pérez Jiménez in 1958, Venezuelan politics were dominated by the Third Way Christian democratic COPEI and the center-left social democratic Democratic Action (AD) parties; this two-party system was formalized by the puntofijismo arrangement. Economic crises in the 1980s and 1990s led to a political crisis which resulted in hundreds dead in the Caracazo riots of 1989, two attempted coups in 1992, and impeachment of President Carlos Andrés Pérez for corruption in 1993. A collapse in confidence in the existing parties saw the 1998 election of Hugo Chávez, who had led the first of the 1992 coup attempts, and the launch of a "Bolivarian Revolution", beginning with a 1999 Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution of Venezuela.
+
+The opposition's attempts to unseat Chávez included the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt, the Venezuelan general strike of 2002–2003, and the Venezuelan recall referendum, 2004, all of which failed. Chávez was re-elected in December 2006 but suffered a significant defeat in 2007 with the narrow rejection of the 2007 Venezuelan constitutional referendum, which had offered two packages of constitutional reforms aimed at deepening the Bolivarian Revolution.
+
+Two major blocs of political parties are in Venezuela: the incumbent leftist bloc United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), its major allies Fatherland for All (PPT) and the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), and the opposition bloc grouped into the electoral coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática. This includes A New Era (UNT) together with allied parties Project Venezuela, Justice First, Movement for Socialism (MAS) and others. Hugo Chávez, the central figure of the Venezuelan political landscape since his election to the presidency in 1998 as a political outsider, died in office in early 2013, and was succeeded by Nicolás Maduro (initially as interim president, before narrowly winning the 2013 Venezuelan presidential election).
+
+The Venezuelan president is elected by a vote, with direct and universal suffrage, and is both head of state and head of government. The term of office is six years, and (as of 15 February 2009) a president may be re-elected an unlimited number of times. The president appoints the vice president and decides the size and composition of the cabinet and makes appointments to it with the involvement of the legislature. The president can ask the legislature to reconsider portions of laws he finds objectionable, but a simple parliamentary majority can override these objections.
+
+The president may ask the National Assembly to pass an enabling act granting the ability to rule by decree in specified policy areas; this requires a two-thirds majority in the Assembly. Since 1959, six Venezuelan presidents have been granted such powers.
+
+The unicameral Venezuelan parliament is the Asamblea Nacional ("National Assembly"). The number of members is variable – each state and the Capital district elect three representatives plus the result of dividing the state population by 1.1% of the total population of the country.[173] Three seats are reserved for representatives of Venezuela's indigenous peoples. For the 2011–2016 period the number of seats is 165.[174] All deputies serve five-year terms.
+
+The voting age in Venezuela is 18 and older. Voting is not compulsory.[175]
+
+The legal system of Venezuela belongs to the Continental Law tradition. The highest judicial body is the Supreme Tribunal of Justice or Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, whose magistrates are elected by parliament for a single two-year term. The National Electoral Council (Consejo Nacional Electoral, or CNE) is in charge of electoral processes; it is formed by five main directors elected by the National Assembly. Supreme Court president Luisa Estela Morales said in December 2009 that Venezuela had moved away from "a rigid division of powers" toward a system characterized by "intense coordination" between the branches of government. Morales clarified that each power must be independent adding that "one thing is separation of powers and another one is division".[176]
+
+The 2015 parliamentary elections were held on 6 December 2015 to elect the 164 deputies and three indigenous representatives of the National Assembly. In 2014, a series of protest and demonstrations began in Venezuela, attributed[by whom?] to inflation, violence and shortages in Venezuela. The government has accused the protest of being motivated by fascists, opposition leaders, capitalism and foreign influence,[177] despite being largely peaceful.[178]
+
+President Maduro acknowledged PSUV defeat, but attributed the opposition's victory to an intensification of an economic war. Despite this, Maduro said "I will stop by hook or by crook the opposition coming to power, whatever the costs, in any way".[179] In the following months, Maduro fulfilled his promise of preventing the democratically  and constitutionally elected National Assembly from legislating. The first steps taken by PSUV and government were the substitution of the entire Supreme Court a day after the Parliamentary Elections[180] contrary to the Constitution of Venezuela, acclaimed as a fraud by the majority of the Venezuelan and international press.[181][182][183][184] The Financial Times described the function of the Supreme Court in Venezuela as "rubber stamping executive whims and vetoing legislation".[185] The PSUV government used this violation to suspend several elected opponents,[186] ignoring again the Constitution of Venezuela. Maduro said that "the Amnesty law (approved by the Parliament) will not be executed" and asked the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional before the law was known.[187]
+
+On 16 January 2016, Maduro approved an unconstitutional economic emergency decree,[188] relegating to his own figure the legislative and executive powers, while also holding judiciary power through the fraudulent designation of judges the day after the election on 6 December 2015.[180][181][182][183][184] From these events, Maduro effectively controls all three branches of government. On 14 May 2016, constitutional guarantees were in fact suspended when Maduro decreed the extension of the economic emergency decree for another 60 days and declared a State of Emergency,[189] which is a clear violation of the Constitution of Venezuela[190] in the Article 338th: "The approval of the extension of States of emergency corresponds to the National Assembly." Thus, constitutional rights in Venezuela are considered suspended in fact by many publications[191][192][193] and public figures.[194][195][196]
+
+On 14 May 2016, the Organization of American States was considering the application of the Inter-American Democratic Charter[197] sanctions for non-compliance to its own constitution.
+
+In March 2017, the Venezuelan Supreme Court took over law making powers from the National Assembly[198] but reversed its decision the following day.[199]
+
+Throughout most of the 20th century, Venezuela maintained friendly relations with most Latin American and Western nations. Relations between Venezuela and the United States government worsened in 2002, after the 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt during which the U.S. government recognized the short-lived interim presidency of Pedro Carmona. In 2015, Venezuela was declared a national security threat by U.S. president Barack Obama.[200][201][202] Correspondingly, ties to various Latin American and Middle Eastern countries not allied to the U.S. have strengthened. For example, Palestinian foreign minister Riyad al-Maliki declared in 2015 that Venezuela was his country's "most important ally".[203]
+
+Venezuela seeks alternative hemispheric integration via such proposals as the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas trade proposal and the newly launched Latin American television network teleSUR. Venezuela is one of five nations in the world—along with Russia, Nicaragua, Nauru, and Syria—to have recognized the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Venezuela was a proponent of OAS's decision to adopt its Anti-Corruption Convention[204] and is actively working in the Mercosur trade bloc to push increased trade and energy integration. Globally, it seeks a "multi-polar" world based on strengthened ties among undeveloped countries.
+
+On 26 April 2017, Venezuela announced its intention to withdraw from the OAS.[205] Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodríguez said that President Nicolás Maduro plans to publicly renounce Venezuela's membership on 27 April 2017. It will take two years for the country to formally leave. During this period, the country does not plan on participating in the OAS.[206]
+
+Venezuela is involved in a long-standing disagreement about the control of the Guayana Esequiba area.
+
+Venezuela may suffer a deterioration of its power in international affairs if the global transition to renewable energy is completed. It is ranked 151 out of 156 countries in the index of Geopolitical Gains and Losses after energy transition (GeGaLo).[207]
+
+The Bolivarian National Armed Forces of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana, FANB) are the overall unified military forces of Venezuela. It includes over 320,150 men and women, under Article 328 of the Constitution, in 5 components of Ground, Sea and Air. The components of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces are: the Venezuelan Army, the Venezuelan Navy, the Venezuelan Air Force, the Venezuelan National Guard, and the Venezuelan National Militia.
+
+As of 2008[update], a further 600,000 soldiers were incorporated into a new branch, known as the Armed Reserve. The president of Venezuela is the commander-in-chief of the national armed forces. The main roles of the armed forces are to defend the sovereign national territory of Venezuela, airspace, and islands, fight against drug trafficking, to search and rescue and, in the case of a natural disaster, civil protection. All male citizens of Venezuela have a constitutional duty to register for the military service at the age of 18, which is the age of majority in Venezuela.
+
+In Venezuela, a person is murdered every 21 minutes.[216] Violent crimes have been so prevalent in Venezuela that the government no longer produces the crime data.[217] In 2013, the homicide rate was approximately 79 per 100,000, one of the world's highest, having quadrupled in the past 15 years with over 200,000 people murdered.[218] By 2015, it had risen to 90 per 100,000.[219] The country's body count of the previous decade mimics that of the Iraq War and in some instances had more civilian deaths even though the country is at peacetime.[220] The capital Caracas has one of the greatest homicide rates of any large city in the world, with 122 homicides per 100,000 residents.[221] In 2008, polls indicated that crime was the number one concern of voters.[222] Attempts at fighting crime such as Operation Liberation of the People were implemented to crack down on gang-controlled areas[223] but, of reported criminal acts, less than 2% are prosecuted.[224] In 2017, the Financial Times noted that some of the arms procured by the government over the previous two decades had been diverted to paramilitary civilian groups and criminal syndicates.[185]
+
+Venezuela is especially dangerous toward foreign travelers and investors who are visiting. The United States Department of State and the Government of Canada have warned foreign visitors that they may be subjected to robbery, kidnapping for a ransom or sale to terrorist organizations[225] and murder, and that their own diplomatic travelers are required to travel in armored vehicles.[226][227] The United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office has advised against all travel to Venezuela.[228]  Visitors have been murdered during robberies and criminals do not discriminate among their victims. Former Miss Venezuela 2004 winner Mónica Spear and her ex-husband were murdered and their 5-year-old daughter was shot while vacationing in Venezuela, and an elderly German tourist was murdered only a few weeks later.[229][230]
+
+There are approximately 33 prisons holding about 50,000 inmates.[231] They include; El Rodeo outside of Caracas, Yare Prison in the northern state of Miranda, and several others. Venezuela's prison system is heavily overcrowded; its facilities have capacity for only 14,000 prisoners.[232]
+
+Corruption in Venezuela is high by world standards and was so for much of the 20th century. The discovery of oil had worsened political corruption,[233] and by the late 1970s, Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso's description of oil as "the Devil's excrement" had become a common expression in Venezuela.[234] Venezuela has been ranked one of the most corrupt countries on the Corruption Perceptions Index since the survey started in 1995. The 2010 ranking placed Venezuela at number 164, out of 178 ranked countries in government transparency.[235] By 2016, the rank had increased to 166 out of 178.[236] Similarly, the World Justice Project ranked Venezuela 99th out of 99 countries surveyed in its 2014 Rule of Law Index.[237]
+
+This corruption is shown with Venezuela's significant involvement in drug trafficking, with Colombian cocaine and other drugs transiting Venezuela towards the United States and Europe. In the period 2003 - 2008 Venezuelan authorities seized the fifth largest total quantity of cocaine in the world, behind Colombia, the United States, Spain and Panama.[238] In 2006, the government's agency for combating illegal drug trade in Venezuela, ONA, was incorporated into the office of the vice-president of the country. However, many major government and military officials have been known for their involvement with drug trafficking; especially with the October 2013 incident of men from the Venezuelan National Guard placing 1.3 tons of cocaine on a Paris flight knowing they will not face charges.[239]
+
+Venezuela is divided into 23 states (estados), a capital district (distrito capital) corresponding to the city of Caracas, and the Federal Dependencies (Dependencias Federales, a special territory). Venezuela is further subdivided into 335 municipalities (municipios); these are subdivided into over one thousand parishes (parroquias). The states are grouped into nine administrative regions (regiones administrativas), which were established in 1969 by presidential decree.
+
+The country can be further divided into ten geographical areas, some corresponding to climatic and biogeographical regions. In the north are the Venezuelan Andes and the Coro region, a mountainous tract in the northwest, holds several sierras and valleys. East of it are lowlands abutting Lake Maracaibo and the Gulf of Venezuela.
+
+The Central Range runs parallel to the coast and includes the hills surrounding Caracas; the Eastern Range, separated from the Central Range by the Gulf of Cariaco, covers all of Sucre and northern Monagas. The Insular Region includes all of Venezuela's island possessions: Nueva Esparta and the various Federal Dependencies. The Orinoco Delta, which forms a triangle covering Delta Amacuro, projects northeast into the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Venezuela has a market-based mixed economy dominated by the petroleum sector,[241][242] which accounts for roughly a third of GDP, around 80% of exports, and more than half of government revenues. Per capita GDP for 2016 was estimated to be US$15,100, ranking 109th in the world.[65] Venezuela has the least expensive petrol in the world because the consumer price of petrol is heavily subsidized. The private sector controls two-thirds of Venezuela's economy.[243]
+
+The Central Bank of Venezuela is responsible for developing monetary policy for the Venezuelan bolívar which is used as currency. The president of the Central Bank of Venezuela serves as the country's representative in the International Monetary Fund.  The U.S.-based conservative think tank The Heritage Foundation, cited in The Wall Street Journal, claims Venezuela has the weakest property rights in the world, scoring only 5.0 on a scale of 100; expropriation without compensation is not uncommon.
+
+As of 2011, more than 60% of Venezuela's international reserves was in gold, eight times more than the average for the region. Most of Venezuela's gold held abroad was located in London. On 25 November 2011, the first of US$11 billion of repatriated gold bullion arrived in Caracas; Chávez called the repatriation of gold a "sovereign" step that will help protect the country's foreign reserves from the turmoil in the U.S. and Europe.[244] However government policies quickly spent down this returned gold and in 2013 the government was forced to add the dollar reserves of state owned companies to those of the national bank to reassure the international bond market.[245]
+
+Manufacturing contributed 17% of GDP in 2006. Venezuela manufactures and exports heavy industry products such as steel, aluminium and cement, with production concentrated around Ciudad Guayana, near the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world and the provider of about three-quarters of Venezuela's electricity. Other notable manufacturing includes electronics and automobiles, as well as beverages, and foodstuffs. Agriculture in Venezuela accounts for approximately 3% of GDP, 10% of the labor force, and at least a quarter of Venezuela's land area. The country is not self-sufficient in most areas of agriculture. In 2012, total food consumption was over 26 million metric tonnes, a 94.8% increase from 2003.[248]
+
+Since the discovery of oil in the early 20th century, Venezuela has been one of the world's leading exporters of oil, and it is a founding member of OPEC. Previously an underdeveloped exporter of agricultural commodities such as coffee and cocoa, oil quickly came to dominate exports and government revenues. The 1980s oil glut led to an external debt crisis and a long-running economic crisis, which saw inflation peak at 100% in 1996 and poverty rates rise to 66% in 1995[249] as (by 1998) per capita GDP fell to the same level as 1963, down a third from its 1978 peak.[250] The 1990s also saw Venezuela experience a major banking crisis in 1994.
+
+The recovery of oil prices after 2001 boosted the Venezuelan economy and facilitated social spending. With social programs such as the Bolivarian Missions, Venezuela initially made progress in social development in the 2000s, particularly in areas such as health, education, and poverty. Many of the social policies pursued by Chávez and his administration were jump-started by the Millennium Development Goals, eight goals that Venezuela and 188 other nations agreed to in September 2000.[251] The sustainability of the Bolivarian Missions has been questioned due to the Bolivarian state's overspending on public works and because the Chávez government did not save funds for future economic hardships like other OPEC nations; with economic issues and poverty rising as a result of their policies in the 2010s.[24][252][253] In 2003 the government of Hugo Chávez implemented currency controls after capital flight led to a devaluation of the currency. This led to the development of a parallel market of dollars in the subsequent years. The fallout of the 2008 global financial crisis saw a renewed economic downturn. Despite controversial data shared by the Venezuelan government showing that the country had halved malnutrition following one of the UN's Millennium Development Goals,[114][254] shortages of staple goods began to occur in Venezuela and malnutrition began to increase.[114]
+
+In early 2013, Venezuela devalued its currency due to growing shortages in the country.[255][256][257]  The shortages included, and still include, necessities such as toilet paper, milk, and flour.[258] Fears rose so high due to the toilet paper shortage that the government occupied a toilet paper factory, and continued further plans to nationalize other industrial aspects like food distribution.[259][260] Venezuela's bond ratings have also decreased multiple times in 2013 due to decisions by the president Nicolás Maduro. One of his decisions was to force stores and their warehouses to sell all of their products, which led to even more shortages in the future.[261] In 2016, consumer prices in Venezuela increased 800% and the economy declined by 18.6%, entering an economic depression.[262][263] Venezuela's outlook was deemed negative by most bond-rating services in 2017.[264][265] For 2018 an inflation rate of 1,000,000 percent was projected, putting Venezuela in a similar situation to that in Germany in 1923 or Zimbabwe in the late 2000s.[266]
+
+Tourism has been developed considerably in recent decades, particularly because of its favorable geographical position, the variety of landscapes, the richness of plant and wildlife, the artistic expressions and the privileged tropical climate of the country, which affords each region (especially the beaches) throughout the year.
+
+Margarita Island is one of the top tourist destinations for enjoyment and relaxation. It is an island with a modern infrastructure, bordered by beautiful beaches suitable for extreme sports, and features castles, fortresses and churches of great cultural value.
+
+Shortages in Venezuela have been prevalent following the enactment of price controls and other policies during the economic policy of the Hugo Chávez government.[267][268] Under the economic policy of the Nicolás Maduro government, greater shortages occurred due to the Venezuelan government's policy of withholding United States dollars from importers with price controls.[269]
+
+Shortages occur in regulated products, such as milk, various types of meat, coffee, rice, oil, flour, butter, and other goods including basic necessities like toilet paper, personal hygiene products, and even medicine.[267][270][271] As a result of the shortages, Venezuelans must search for food, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products.[272][273] Maduro's government has blamed the shortages on "bourgeois criminals" hoarding goods.[274]
+
+A drought, combined with a lack of planning and maintenance, has caused a hydroelectricity shortage.  To deal with lack of power supply, in April 2016 the Maduro government announced rolling blackouts[275] and reduced the government workweek to only Monday and Tuesday.[276] A multi-university study found that, in 2016 alone, about 75% of Venezuelans lost weight due to hunger, with the average losing about 8.6 kg (19 lbs) due to the lack of food.[277]
+
+By late-2016 and into 2017, Venezuelans had to search for food on a daily basis, occasionally resorting to eating wild fruit or garbage, wait in lines for hours and sometimes settle without having certain products.[278][273][279][280][281] By early 2017, priests began telling Venezuelans to label their garbage so needy individuals could feed on their refuse.[282] In March 2017, Venezuela, with the largest oil reserves in the world, began having shortages of gasoline in some regions with reports that fuel imports had begun.[283]
+
+Venezuela has the largest oil reserves, and the eighth largest natural gas reserves in the world.[284] Compared to the preceding year another 40.4% in crude oil reserves were proven in 2010, allowing Venezuela to surpass Saudi Arabia as the country with the largest reserves of this type.[285] The country's main petroleum deposits are located around and beneath Lake Maracaibo, the Gulf of Venezuela (both in Zulia), and in the Orinoco River basin (eastern Venezuela), where the country's largest reserve is located. Besides the largest conventional oil reserves and the second-largest natural gas reserves in the Western Hemisphere,[286] Venezuela has non-conventional oil deposits (extra-heavy crude oil, bitumen and tar sands) approximately equal to the world's reserves of conventional oil.[287] The electricity sector in Venezuela is one of the few to rely primarily on hydropower, and includes the Guri Dam, one of the largest in the world.
+
+In the first half of the 20th century, U.S. oil companies were heavily involved in Venezuela, initially interested only in purchasing concessions.[288] In 1943 a new government introduced a 50/50 split in profits between the government and the oil industry. In 1960, with a newly installed democratic government, Hydrocarbons Minister Juan Pablo Pérez Alfonso led the creation of OPEC, the consortium of oil-producing countries aiming to support the price of oil.[289]
+
+In 1973, Venezuela voted to nationalize its oil industry outright, effective 1 January 1976, with Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) taking over and presiding over a number of holding companies; in subsequent years, Venezuela built a vast refining and marketing system in the U.S. and Europe.[290] In the 1990s PDVSA became more independent from the government and presided over an apertura (opening) in which it invited in foreign investment. Under Hugo Chávez a 2001 law placed limits on foreign investment.
+
+The state oil company PDVSA played a key role in the December 2002 – February 2003 national strike which sought President Chávez' resignation. Managers and skilled highly paid technicians of PDVSA shut down the plants and left their posts, and by some reports sabotaged equipment, and petroleum production and refining by PDVSA almost ceased. Activities eventually were slowly restarted by returning and substitute oil workers. As a result of the strike, around 40% of the company's workforce (around 18,000 workers) were dismissed for "dereliction of duty" during the strike.[291][292]
+
+Venezuela is connected to the world primarily via air (Venezuela's airports include the Simón Bolívar International Airport in Maiquetía, near Caracas and La Chinita International Airport near Maracaibo) and sea (with major sea ports at La Guaira, Maracaibo and Puerto Cabello). In the south and east the Amazon rainforest region has limited cross-border transport; in the west, there is a mountainous border of over 2,213 kilometres (1,375 mi) shared with Colombia. The Orinoco River is navigable by oceangoing vessels up to 400 kilometres (250 mi) inland, and connects the major industrial city of Ciudad Guayana to the Atlantic Ocean.
+
+Venezuela has a limited national railway system, which has no active rail connections to other countries. The government of Hugo Chávez tried to invest in expanding it, but Venezuela's rail project is on hold due to Venezuela not being able to pay the $7.5 billion[clarification needed] and owing China Railway nearly $500 million.[293]
+Several major cities have metro systems; the Caracas Metro has been operating since 1983. The Maracaibo Metro and Valencia Metro were opened more recently.
+Venezuela has a road network of nearly 100,000 kilometres (62,000 mi) in length, placing the country around 45th in the world;[294] around a third of roads are paved.
+
+Venezuela is among the most urbanized countries in Latin America;[13][14] the vast majority of Venezuelans live in the cities of the north, especially in the capital Caracas, which is also the largest city. About 93% of the population lives in urban areas in northern Venezuela; 73% live less than 100 kilometres (62 mi) from the coastline.[297] Though almost half of Venezuela's land area lies south of the Orinoco, only 5% of Venezuelans live there. The largest and most important city south of the Orinoco is Ciudad Guayana, which is the sixth most populous conurbation.[298] Other major cities include Barquisimeto, Valencia, Maracay, Maracaibo, Barcelona-Puerto La Cruz, Mérida and San Cristóbal.
+
+According to a 2014 study by sociologists of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.5 million Venezuelans, or about 4% to 6% of the country's population, have left Venezuela since 1999 following the Bolivarian Revolution.[299][300]
+
+The people of Venezuela come from a variety of ancestries. It is estimated that the majority of the population is of mestizo, or mixed, ethnic ancestry.
+Nevertheless, in the 2011 census, which Venezuelans were asked to identify themselves according to their customs and ancestry, the term mestizo was excluded from the answers. The majority claimed to be mestizo or white—51.6% and 43.6%, respectively.[1] Practically half of the population claimed to be moreno, a term used throughout Ibero-America that in this case means "dark-skinned" or "brown-skinned", as opposed to having a lighter skin (this term connotes skin color or tone, rather than facial features or descent).
+
+Ethnic minorities in Venezuela consist of groups that descend mainly from African or indigenous peoples; 2.8% identified themselves as "black" and 0.7% as afrodescendiente (Afro-descendant), 2.6% claimed to belong to indigenous peoples, and 1.2% answered "other races".[1][1]
+
+Among indigenous people, 58% were Wayúu, 7% Warao, 5% Kariña, 4% Pemón, 3% Piaroa, 3% Jivi, 3% Añu, 3% Cumanágoto, 2% Yukpa, 2% Chaima and 1% Yanomami; the remaining 9% consisted of other indigenous nations.[301]
+
+According to an autosomal DNA genetic study conducted in 2008 by the University of Brasília (UNB), the composition of Venezuela's population is 60.60% of European contribution, 23% of indigenous contribution, and 16.30% of African contribution.[302]
+
+During the colonial period and until after the Second World War, many of the European immigrants to Venezuela came from the Canary Islands,[303] which had a significant cultural impact on the cuisine and customs of Venezuela.[304][305][306] These influences on Venezuela have led to the nation being called the 8th island of the Canaries.[307][308] With the start of oil exploitation in the early 20th century, companies from the United States began establishing operations in Venezuela, bringing with them U.S. citizens. Later, during and after the war, new waves of immigrants from other parts of Europe, the Middle East, and China began; many were encouraged by government-established immigration programs and lenient immigration policies.[309] During the 20th century, Venezuela, along with the rest of Latin America, received millions of immigrants from Europe.[310][311] This was especially true post-World War II, as a consequence of war-ridden Europe.[310][311][312] During the 1970s, while experiencing an oil-export boom, Venezuela received millions of immigrants from Ecuador, Colombia, and the Dominican Republic.[312] Due to the belief that this immigration influx depressed wages, some Venezuelans opposed European immigration.[312] The Venezuelan government, however, were actively recruiting immigrants from Eastern Europe to fill a need for engineers.[310] Millions of Colombians, as well as Middle Eastern and Haitian populations would continue immigrating to Venezuela into the early 21st century.[309]
+
+According to the World Refugee Survey 2008, published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Venezuela hosted a population of refugee and asylum seekers from Colombia numbering 252,200 in 2007, and 10,600 new asylum seekers entered Venezuela in 2007.[313] Between 500,000 and one million illegal immigrants are estimated to be living in the country.[314]
+
+The total indigenous population of the country is estimated at about 500 thousand people (2.8% of the total), distributed among 40 indigenous peoples.[315] There are three uncontacted tribes living in Venezuela. The Constitution recognizes the multi-ethnic, pluri-cultural, and multilingual character of the country and includes a chapter devoted to indigenous peoples' rights, which opened up spaces for their political inclusion at national and local level in 1999.
+Most indigenous peoples are concentrated in eight states along Venezuela's borders with Brazil, Guyana, and Colombia, and the majority groups are the Wayuu (west), the Warao (east), the Yanomami (south), and the Pemon (southeast).
+
+Although most residents are monolingual Spanish speakers, many languages are spoken in Venezuela. In addition to Spanish, the Constitution recognizes more than thirty indigenous languages, including Wayuu, Warao, Pemón, and many others for the official use of the indigenous peoples, mostly with few speakers – less than 1% of the total population. Wayuu is the most spoken indigenous language with 170,000 speakers.[316]
+
+Immigrants, in addition to Spanish, speak their own languages. Chinese (400,000), Portuguese (254,000),[316] and Italian (200,000)[317] are the most spoken languages in Venezuela after the official language of Spanish. Arabic is spoken by Lebanese and Syrian colonies on Isla de Margarita, Maracaibo, Punto Fijo, Puerto la Cruz, El Tigre, Maracay, and Caracas. Portuguese is spoken not only by the Portuguese community in Santa Elena de Uairén but also by much of the population due to its proximity to Brazil.[318] The German community speaks their native language, while the people of Colonia Tovar speak mostly an Alemannic dialect of German called alemán coloniero.
+
+English is the most widely used foreign language in demand and is spoken by many professionals, academics, and members of the upper and middle classes as a result of the oil exploration done by foreign companies, in addition to its acceptance as a lingua franca. Culturally, English is common in southern towns like El Callao, and the native English-speaking influence is evident in folk and calypso songs from the region. English was brought to Venezuela by Trinidadian and other British West Indies immigrants.[319]  A variety of Antillean Creole is spoken by a small community in El Callao and Paria.[320] Italian language teaching is guaranteed by the presence of a consistent number of private Venezuelan schools and institutions, where Italian language courses and Italian literature are active. Other languages spoken by large communities in the country are Basque and Galician, among others.
+
+Religion in Venezuela (2011)[2]
+
+According to a 2011 poll (GIS XXI), 88% of the population is Christian, primarily Roman Catholic (71%), and the remaining 17% Protestant, primarily Evangelicals (in Latin America Protestants are usually called "evangelicos"). 8% of Venezuelans are irreligious (atheist 2% and agnostic and 6% indifferent). Almost 3% of the population follow another religion (1% of these people practice Santería).[2]
+
+There are small but influential Muslim, Buddhist, and Jewish communities. The Muslim community of more than 100,000 is concentrated among persons of Lebanese and Syrian descent living in Nueva Esparta State, Punto Fijo and the Caracas area. Buddhism in Venezuela is practiced by over 52,000 people. The Buddhist community is made up mainly of Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people. There are Buddhist centers in Caracas, Maracay, Mérida, Puerto Ordáz, San Felipe, and Valencia.
+
+The Jewish community has shrunk in recent years due to rising antisemitism in Venezuela,[321][322][323][324][325] with the population declining from 22,000 in 1999[326] to less than 7,000 in 2015.[327]
+
+The culture of Venezuela is a melting pot made up of three main groups: The Indigenous Venezuelans, the Africans, and the Spanish. The first two cultures were in turn differentiated according to their tribes. Acculturation and assimilation, typical of a cultural syncretism, led to the Venezuelan culture of the present day, which is similar in many ways to the culture of the rest of Latin America, but still has its own unique characteristics.
+
+The indigenous and African influence is limited to a few words, food names, and place names. However, the Africans also brought in many musical influences, especially introduction of the drum. The Spanish influence predominantes due to the colonization process and the socioeconomic structure it created, and in particular came from the regions of Andalusia and Extremadura (the places of origin of most of the settlers in the Caribbean during the colonial era). Spanish influences can be seen in the country's architecture, music, religion, and language.
+
+Spanish influences can also be seen in the bullfights that take place in Venezuela, and in certain gastronomical features. Venezuela was also enriched by immigration streams of Indian and European origin in the 19th century, especially from France. Most recently, immigration from the United States, Spain, Italy, and Portugal has further enriched the already complex cultural mosaic (especially in large oil-producing cities).
+
+Carlos Raúl Villanueva was the most important Venezuelan architect of the modern era; he designed the Central University of Venezuela, (a World Heritage Site) and its Aula Magna. Other notable architectural works include the Capitolio, the Baralt Theatre, the Teresa Carreño Cultural Complex, and the General Rafael Urdaneta Bridge.
+
+Venezuelan art was initially dominated by religious motifs. However, in the late 19th century, artists began emphasizing historical and heroic representations of the country's struggle for independence.[328][329] This move was led by Martín Tovar y Tovar.[329][330] Modernism took over in the 20th century.[330] Notable Venezuelan artists include Arturo Michelena, Cristóbal Rojas, Armando Reverón, Manuel Cabré; the kinetic artists Jesús Soto, Gego and Carlos Cruz-Diez;[330] and contemporary artists such as Marisol and Yucef Merhi.[331][332]
+
+Venezuelan literature originated soon after the Spanish conquest of the mostly pre-literate indigenous societies.[333] It was originally dominated by Spanish influences.  Following the rise of political literature during the Venezuelan War of Independence, Venezuelan Romanticism, notably expounded by Juan Vicente González, emerged as the first important genre in the region. Although mainly focused on narrative writing, Venezuelan literature was advanced by poets such as Andrés Eloy Blanco and Fermín Toro.
+
+Major writers and novelists include Rómulo Gallegos, Teresa de la Parra, Arturo Uslar Pietri, Adriano González León, Miguel Otero Silva, and Mariano Picón Salas. The great poet and humanist Andrés Bello was also an educator and intellectual (He was also a childhood tutor and mentor of Simón Bolívar). Others, such as Laureano Vallenilla Lanz and José Gil Fortoul, contributed to Venezuelan Positivism.
+
+The indigenous musical styles of Venezuela are exemplified by groups like Un Sólo Pueblo and Serenata Guayanesa. The national musical instrument is the cuatro. Traditional musical styles and songs mainly emerged in and around the llanos region, including, "Alma llanera" (by Pedro Elías Gutiérrez and Rafael Bolívar Coronado), "Florentino y el diablo" (by Alberto Arvelo Torrealba), "Concierto en la llanura" by Juan Vicente Torrealba, and "Caballo viejo" (by Simón Díaz).
+
+The Zulian gaita is also a very popular genre, generally performed during Christmas. The national dance is the joropo.[334] Venezuela has always been a melting pot of cultures and this can be seen in the richness and variety of its musical styles and dances: calipso, bambuco, fulía, cantos de pilado de maíz, cantos de lavanderas, sebucán, and maremare.[335] Teresa Carreño was a world-famous 19th century piano virtuoso. Recently, great classical music performances have come out of Venezuela. The Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, under the leadership of its principal conductor Gustavo Dudamel and José Antonio Abreu, has hosted a number of excellent concerts in many European concert halls, most notably at the 2007 London Proms, and has received several honors. The orchestra is the pinnacle of El Sistema, a publicly financed, voluntary music education program now being emulated in other countries.
+
+In the early 21st century, a movement known as "Movida Acústica Urbana" featured musicians trying to save some national traditions, creating their own original songs but using traditional instruments.[336][337]  Some groups following this movement are Tambor Urbano,[338] Los Sinverguenzas, C4Trío, and Orozco Jam.[339]
+
+Afro-Venezuelan musical traditions are most intimately related to the festivals of the "black folk saints" San Juan and St. Benedict the Moor. Specific songs are related to the different stages of their festivals and processions, when the saints start their yearly "paseo" – stroll – through the community to dance with their people.
+
+The origins of baseball in Venezuela are unclear, although it is known that the sport was being played in the country by the late 19th century.[340] In the early 20th century, North American immigrants who came to Venezuela to work in the nation's oil industry helped to popularize the sport in Venezuela.[341] During the 1930s, baseball's popularity continued to rise in the country, leading to the foundation of the Venezuelan Professional Baseball League (LVBP) in 1945, and the sport would soon become the nation's most popular.[342][343]
+
+The immense popularity of baseball in the country makes Venezuela a rarity among its South American neighbors—association football is the dominant sport in the continent.[341][343][344] However, football, as well as basketball, are among the more popular sports played in Venezuela.[345] Venezuela hosted the 2012 Basketball World Olympic Qualifying Tournament and the 2013 FIBA Basketball Americas Championship, which took place in the Poliedro de Caracas.
+
+Although not as popular in Venezuela as the rest of South America, football, spearheaded by the Venezuela national football team is gaining popularity as well. The sport is also noted for having an increased focus during the World Cup.[345] According to the CONMEBOL alphabetical rotation policy established in 2011, Venezuela is scheduled to host the Copa América every 40 years.[346]
+
+Venezuela is also home to former Formula 1 driver, Pastor Maldonado.[347] At the 2012 Spanish Grand Prix, he claimed his first pole and victory, and became the first and only Venezuelan to have done so in Formula 1 history.[347] Maldonado has increased the reception of Formula 1 in Venezuela, helping to popularize the sport in the country.[348]
+
+In the 2012 Summer Olympics, Venezuelan Rubén Limardo won a gold medal in fencing.[349]
+
+The Venezuelan cuisine reflects the climatic contrasts and cultures that coexist in Venezuela. Among Venezuela's dishes are the hallaca, pabellón criollo, arepas, empanadas, pisca andina, tarkarí de chivo, jalea de mango, patacones, and fried camiguanas.
+
+The literacy rate of the adult population was already at 91.1% by 1998.[350] In 2008, 95.2% of the adult population was literate.[351] The net primary school enrollment rate was at 91% and the net secondary school enrollment rate was at 63% in 2005.[351] Venezuela has a number of universities, of which the most prestigious are the Central University of Venezuela (UCV) founded in Caracas in 1721, the University of Zulia (LUZ) founded in 1891, the University of the Andes (ULA) founded in Mérida State in 1810, the Simón Bolívar University (USB) founded in Miranda State in 1967, and the University of the East (UDO) founded in Sucre State in 1958.
+
+Currently, many Venezuelan graduates seek a future abroad because of the country's troubled economy and heavy crime rate. In a study titled "Venezolana Community Abroad: A New Method of Exile" by Thomas Páez, Mercedes Vivas, and Juan Rafael Pulido of the Central University of Venezuela, over 1.35 million Venezuelan college graduates have left the country since the beginning of the Bolivarian Revolution.[299][300] It is believed that nearly 12% of Venezuelans live abroad, with Ireland becoming a popular destination for students.[355] According to Claudio Bifano, president of the Venezuelan Academy of Physical, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences, more than half of all medical graduates had left Venezuela in 2013.[356]
+
+By 2018, over half of all Venezuelan children had dropped out of school, with 58% of students quitting nationwide while areas near bordering countries saw more than 80% of their students leave.[357][358] Nationwide, about 93% of schools do not meet the minimum requirements to operate and 77% do not have utilities such as food, water or electricity.[358]
+
+Venezuela has a national universal health care system. The current government has created a program to expand access to health care known as Misión Barrio Adentro,[360][361] although its efficiency and work conditions have been criticized.[362][363][364] It has been reported that many Misión Barrio Adentro clinics have been closed, and (as of December 2014) it is estimated that 80% of Barrio Adentro establishments in Venezuela are abandoned.[365][366]
+
+Infant mortality in Venezuela was 19 deaths per 1,000 births for 2014 which was lower than the South American average (To compare: The U.S. figure was 6 deaths per 1,000 births in 2013 and the Canadian figure was 4.5 deaths per 1,000 live births).[367] Child malnutrition (defined as stunting or wasting in children under the age of five) was 17%. Delta Amacuro and Amazonas had the nation's highest rates.[368] According to the United Nations, 32% of Venezuelans lacked adequate sanitation, primarily those living in rural areas.[369] Diseases ranging from diphtheria, plague, malaria,[224] typhoid fever, yellow fever, cholera, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, and hepatitis D were present in the country.[370] Obesity was prevalent in approximately 30% of the adult population in Venezuela.[367]
+
+Venezuela had a total of 150 sewage treatment plants; however, 13% of the population lacked access to drinking water, but this number had been dropping.[371]
+
+During the economic crisis observed under President Maduro's presidency, medical professionals were forced to perform outdated treatments on patients.[372]
+
+• Gillespie, Patrick (12 April 2016). "Venezuela: the land of 500% inflation". CNNMoney. Retrieved 17 January 2017. • Rosati, Andrew (11 January 2017). "Venezuela's Economy Was the Worst Performing of 2016, IMF Estimates". Bloomberg. Retrieved 17 January 2017.
+
+Articles
+
+Books
+
+Talks and interviews

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+Venice (/ˈvɛnɪs/; Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] (listen); Venetian: Venesia or Venexia [veˈnɛsja]) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is situated on a group of 118 small islands[3] that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges.[3][4] The islands are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile). In 2018, 260,897 people resided in the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical city of Venice (centro storico). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.[5]
+
+The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC.[6][7] The city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice for a millennium and more, from 697 to 1797. It was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as an important center of commerce—especially silk, grain, and spice, and of art from the 13th century to the end of the 17th. The city-state of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center, emerging in the 9th century and reaching its greatest prominence in the 14th century.[8] This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history.[9] After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Republic was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, following a referendum held as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence.
+
+Venice has been known as "La Dominante", "La Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", and "City of Canals". The lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture, and artwork.[3] Venice is known for several important artistic movements—especially during the Renaissance period—has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi.[10]
+
+Although the city is facing some challenges (including an excessive number of tourists and problems caused by pollution, tide peaks and cruise ships sailing too close to buildings),[11][12][13] Venice remains a very popular tourist destination, a major cultural centre, and has been ranked many times the most beautiful city in the world.[14][15] It has been described by the Times Online as one of Europe's most romantic cities[16] and by The New York Times as "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man".[17]
+
+The name of the city, deriving from Latin forms Venetia and Venetiae, is most likely taken from "Venetia et Histria", the Roman name of Regio X of Roman Italy, but applied to the coastal part of the region that remained under Roman Empire outside of Gothic, Lombard, and Frankish control. The name Venetia, however, derives from the Roman name for the people known as the Veneti, and called by the Greeks Enetoi (Ἐνετοί). The meaning of the word is uncertain, although there are other Indo-European tribes with similar-sounding names, such as the Celtic Veneti and the Slavic Vistula Veneti. Linguists suggest that the name is based on an Indo-European root *wen ("love"), so that *wenetoi would mean "beloved", "lovable", or "friendly". A connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning the color 'sea-blue', is also possible.
+Supposed connections of Venetia with the Latin verb venire (to come), such as Marin Sanudo's veni etiam ("Yet, I have come!"), the supposed cry of the first refugees to the Venetian lagoon from the mainland, or even with venia ("forgiveness") are fanciful. The alternative obsolete form is Vinegia [viˈnɛːdʒa];[18] (Venetian: Venèxia [veˈnɛzja]; Latin: Venetiae; Slovene: Benetke; Croatian: Venecija).
+
+Kingdom of Odoacer 476–493 
+Ostrogothic Kingdom 493–553 
+Eastern Roman Empire 553–584 
+Exarchate of Ravenna 584–697 
+Republic of Venice 697–1797 
+Habsburg Monarchy 1797–1805 
+Kingdom of Italy 1805–1815
+Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia 1815–1848 
+Republic of San Marco 1848–1849 
+Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia 1849–1866 
+Kingdom of Italy 1866–1946
+
+Although no surviving historical records deal directly with the founding of Venice,[19] tradition and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees—from nearby Roman cities such as Padua, Aquileia, Treviso, Altino, and Concordia (modern Portogruaro), as well as from the undefended countryside—who were fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions.[20] This is further supported by the documentation on the so-called "apostolic families", the twelve founding families of Venice who elected the first doge, who in most cases trace their lineage back to Roman families.[21][22] Some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen, on the islands in the original marshy lagoons, who were referred to as incolae lacunae ("lagoon dwellers"). The traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giacomo on the islet of Rialto (Rivoalto, "High Shore")—said to have taken place at the stroke of noon on 25 March 421 (the Feast of the Annunciation).[23][24]
+
+Beginning as early as AD 166–168, the Quadi and Marcomanni destroyed the main Roman town in the area, present-day Oderzo. This part of Roman Italy was again overrun in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and, some 50 years later, by the Huns led by Attila. The last and most enduring immigration into the north of the Italian peninsula, that of the Lombards in 568, left the Eastern Roman Empire only a small strip of coastline in the current Veneto, including Venice. The Roman/Byzantine territory was organized as the Exarchate of Ravenna, administered from that ancient port and overseen by a viceroy (the Exarch) appointed by the Emperor in Constantinople. Ravenna and Venice were connected only by sea routes, and with the Venetians' isolation came increasing autonomy. New ports were built, including those at Malamocco and Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. The tribuni maiores formed the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the lagoon, dating from c. 568.[25]
+
+The traditional first doge of Venice, Paolo Lucio Anafesto (Anafestus Paulicius), was elected in 697, as written in the oldest chronicle by John, deacon of Venice c. 1008. Some modern historians claim Paolo Lucio Anafesto was actually the Exarch Paul, and Paul's successor, Marcello Tegalliano, was Paul's magister militum (or "general"), literally "master of soldiers". In 726 the soldiers and citizens of the exarchate rose in a rebellion over the iconoclastic controversy, at the urging of Pope Gregory II. The exarch, held responsible for the acts of his master, Byzantine Emperor Leo III, was murdered, and many officials were put to flight in the chaos. At about this time, the people of the lagoon elected their own independent leader for the first time, although the relationship of this to the uprisings is not clear. Ursus was the first of 117 "doges" (doge is the Venetian dialectal equivalent of the Latin dux ("leader"); the corresponding word in English is duke, in standard Italian duca.  (See also "duce".) Whatever his original views, Ursus supported Emperor Leo III's successful military expedition to recover Ravenna, sending both men and ships. In recognition of this, Venice was "granted numerous privileges and concessions" and Ursus, who had personally taken the field, was confirmed by Leo as dux.[26] and given the added title of hypatus (from the Greek for "consul").[27]
+
+In 751, the Lombard King Aistulf conquered most of the Exarchate of Ravenna, leaving Venice a lonely and increasingly autonomous Byzantine outpost. During this period, the seat of the local Byzantine governor (the "duke/dux", later "doge"), was at Malamocco. Settlement on the islands in the lagoon probably increased with the Lombard conquest of other Byzantine territories, as refugees sought asylum in the area. In 775/6, the episcopal seat of Olivolo (San Pietro di Castello, namely Helipolis[citation needed]) was created. During the reign of duke Agnello Particiaco (811–827) the ducal seat moved from Malamocco to the more protected Rialto, within present-day Venice. The monastery of St. Zachary and the first ducal palace and basilica of St. Mark, as well as a walled defense (civitatis murus) between Olivolo and Rialto, were subsequently built here.
+
+Charlemagne sought to subdue the city to his rule. He ordered the pope to expel the Venetians from the Pentapolis along the Adriatic coast;[28] Charlemagne's own son Pepin of Italy, king of the Lombards, under the authority of his father, embarked on a siege of Venice itself. This, however, proved a costly failure. The siege lasted six months, with Pepin's army ravaged by the diseases of the local swamps and eventually forced to withdraw in 810. A few months later, Pepin himself died, apparently as a result of a disease contracted there. In the aftermath, an agreement between Charlemagne and the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus in 814 recognized Venice as Byzantine territory, and granted the city trading rights along the Adriatic coast.
+
+In 828 the new city's prestige increased with the acquisition, from Alexandria, of relics claimed to be of St Mark the Evangelist; these were placed in the new basilica. Winged lions—visible throughout Venice—are the emblem of St Mark.  The patriarchal seat was also moved to Rialto. As the community continued to develop, and as Byzantine power waned, its own autonomy grew, leading to eventual independence.[29]
+
+From the 9th to the 12th century, Venice developed into a city state (an Italian thalassocracy or repubblica marinara; there  were three others:  Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi). Its own strategic position at the head of the Adriatic made Venetian naval and commercial power almost invulnerable.[30] With the elimination of pirates along the Dalmatian coast, the city became a flourishing trade center between Western Europe and the rest of the world—especially with the Byzantine Empire and Asia), where its navy protected sea routes against piracy.[31]
+
+The Republic of Venice seized a number of places on the eastern shores of the Adriatic before 1200, mostly for commercial reasons, because pirates based there were a menace to trade. The doge already possessed the titles of Duke of Dalmatia and Duke of Istria. Later mainland possessions, which extended across Lake Garda as far west as the Adda River, were known as the Terraferma; they were acquired partly as a buffer against belligerent neighbours, partly to guarantee Alpine trade routes, and partly to ensure the supply of mainland wheat (on which the city depended). In building its maritime commercial empire, Venice 
+dominated the trade in salt,[32] 
+acquired control of most of the islands in the Aegean, including Crete, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and 
+became a major power-broker in the Near East. By the standards of the time, Venice's stewardship of its mainland territories was relatively enlightened and the citizens of such towns as Bergamo, Brescia, and Verona rallied to the defence of Venetian sovereignty when it was threatened by invaders.
+
+Venice remained closely associated with Constantinople, being twice granted trading privileges in the Eastern Roman Empire, through the so-called golden bulls or "chrysobulls", in return for aiding the Eastern Empire to resist Norman and Turkish incursions. In the first chrysobull, Venice acknowledged its homage to the empire; but not in the second, reflecting the decline of Byzantium and the rise of Venice's power.[33][34]
+
+Venice became an imperial power following the Fourth Crusade, which, having veered off course, culminated in 1204 by capturing and sacking Constantinople and establishing the Latin Empire. As a result of this conquest, considerable Byzantine plunder was brought back to Venice. This plunder included the gilt bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople, which were originally placed above the entrance to the cathedral of Venice, St Mark's Basilica (The originals have been replaced with replicas, and are now stored within the basilica.)  After the fall of Constantinople, the former Eastern Roman Empire was partitioned among the Latin crusaders and the Venetians. Venice subsequently carved out a sphere of influence in the Mediterranean known as the Duchy of the Archipelago, and captured Crete.[35]
+
+The seizure of Constantinople proved as decisive a factor in ending the Byzantine Empire as the loss of the Anatolian themes, after Manzikert. Although the Byzantines recovered control of the ravaged city a half-century later, the Byzantine Empire was terminally weakened, and existed as a ghost of its old self, until Sultan Mehmet The Conqueror took the city in 1453.
+
+Situated on the Adriatic Sea, Venice had always traded extensively with the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. By the late 13th century, Venice was the most prosperous city in all of Europe. At the peak of its power and wealth, it had 36,000 sailors operating 3,300 ships, dominating Mediterranean commerce. Venice's leading families vied with each other to build the grandest palaces and to support the work of the greatest and most talented artists. The city was governed by the Great Council, which was made up of members of the noble families of Venice. The Great Council appointed all public officials, and elected a Senate of 200 to 300 individuals. Since this group was too large for efficient administration, a Council of Ten (also called the Ducal Council, or the Signoria), controlled much of the administration of the city. One member of the great council was elected "doge", or duke, to be the chief executive; he would usually hold the title until his death, although several Doges were forced, by pressure from their oligarchical peers, to resign and retire into monastic seclusion, when they were felt to have been discredited by political failure.
+
+The Venetian governmental structure was similar in some ways to the republican system of ancient Rome, with an elected chief executive (the doge), a senator-like assembly of nobles, and the general citizenry with limited political power, who originally had the power to grant or withhold their approval of each newly elected doge. 
+Church and various private properties were tied to military service, although there was no knight tenure within the city itself. 
+The Cavalieri di San Marco was the only order of chivalry ever instituted in Venice, and no citizen could accept or join a foreign order without the government's consent. 
+Venice remained a republic throughout its independent period, 
+and politics and the military were kept separate, 
+except when on occasion the Doge personally headed the military. 
+War was regarded as a continuation of commerce by other means 
+(whence, 
+the city's early employment of large numbers of mercenaries for service elsewhere, and 
+later its reliance on foreign mercenaries when the ruling class was preoccupied with commerce
+).
+
+Although the people of Venice generally remained orthodox Roman Catholics, 
+the state of Venice was notable for its freedom from religious fanaticism, 
+and executed nobody for religious heresy during the Counter-Reformation. 
+This apparent lack of zeal contributed to Venice's frequent conflicts with the papacy. 
+In this context, the writings of the Anglican divine William Bedell are particularly illuminating. 
+Venice was threatened with the interdict on a number of occasions 
+and twice suffered its imposition. 
+The second, most noted, occasion was in 1606, by order of Pope Paul V.
+
+The newly invented German printing press spread rapidly throughout Europe in the 15th century, and Venice was quick to adopt it. 
+By 1482, Venice was the printing capital of the world; 
+the leading printer was Aldus Manutius, who invented paperback books that could be carried in a saddlebag.
+
+His Aldine Editions included translations of nearly all the known Greek manuscripts of the 
+era.[36]
+
+Venice's long decline started in the 15th century, when it first made an unsuccessful attempt to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans when they started to attack (1423–1430). It also sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the besieging Turks (1453). After Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmed II, he declared the first of a series of Ottoman-Venetian wars that cost Venice much of its eastern Mediterranean possessions. Even more decisive than the Columbian exchange and the beginning of Atlantic trade following Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492 was Vasco da Gama's first voyage of 1497–99, which opened a sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope and destroyed Venice's monopoly. France, England, and the Dutch Republic quickly followed Spain and Portugal, but Venice's oared galleys were at a disadvantage when it came to traversing the great oceans, and therefore Venice was left behind in the race for colonies.
+
+The Black Death devastated Venice in 1348, and once again between 1575 and 1577.[37] In three years, the plague killed some 50,000 people.[38] In 1630, the Italian plague of 1629–31 killed a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens.[39] Venice began to lose its position as a center of international trade during the later part of the Renaissance as Portugal became Europe's principal intermediary in the trade with the East, striking at the very foundation of Venice's great wealth; while France and Spain fought for hegemony over Italy in the Italian Wars, marginalising its political influence. However, the Venetian empire remained a major exporter of agricultural products, and until the mid-18th century, a significant manufacturing center.
+
+During the 18th century, Venice became perhaps the most elegant and refined city in Europe, greatly influencing art, architecture, and literature. But the Republic lost its independence when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Venice on 12 May 1797 during the War of the First Coalition. Napoleon was seen as something of a liberator by the city's Jewish population. He removed the gates of the Ghetto and ended the restrictions on when and where Jews could live and travel in the city.
+
+Venice became Austrian territory when Napoleon signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 12 October 1797. The Austrians took control of the city on 18 January 1798. Venice was taken from Austria by the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805 and became part of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy. It was returned to Austria following Napoleon's defeat in 1814, when it became part of the Austrian-held Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. In 1848 a revolt briefly re-established the Venetian republic under Daniele Manin, but this was crushed in 1849. In 1866, after the Third Italian War of Independence, Venice, along with the rest of the Veneto, became part of the newly created Kingdom of Italy.
+
+During the Second World War, the historic city was largely free from attack, the only aggressive effort of note being Operation Bowler, a successful Royal Air Force precision strike on the German naval operations in the city in March 1945. The targets were destroyed with virtually no architectural damage inflicted on the city itself.[40] However, the industrial areas in Mestre and Marghera and the railway lines to Padua, Trieste, and Trento were repeatedly bombed.[41] On 29 April 1945, a force of British and New Zealand troops of the British Eighth Army, under Lieutenant General Freyberg, liberated Venice, which had been a hotbed of anti-Mussolini Italian partisan activity.[42][43]
+
+Venice sits atop alluvial silt washed into the sea by the rivers flowing eastward from the alps across the Veneto plain, with the silt being stretched into long banks, or lidi, by the action of the current flowing around the head of the Adriatic Sea from east to west.[44]
+
+Subsidence, the gradual lowering of the surface of Venice, has led to the seasonal Acqua alta ("high water") when much of the city's surface is occasionally covered at high tide.
+
+
+
+Those fleeing Barbarian invasions who found refuge on the sandy islands of Torcello, Iesolo, and Malamocco, in this coastal lagoon, learned to build by driving closely spaced piles consisting of the trunks of alder trees, a wood noted for its water resistance, into the mud and sand,[45][46] until they reached a much harder layer of compressed clay. Building foundations rested on plates of Istrian limestone placed on top of the piles.[47].
+
+Between autumn and early spring, the city is often threatened by flood tides pushing in from the Adriatic. Six hundred years ago, Venetians protected themselves from land-based attacks by diverting all the major rivers flowing into the lagoon and thus preventing sediment from filling the area around the city.[48] This created an ever-deeper lagoon environment.
+
+In 1604, to defray the cost of flood relief, Venice introduced what could be considered the first example of a "stamp tax".[citation needed] When the revenue fell short of expectations in 1608, Venice introduced paper, with the superscription "AQ" and imprinted instructions, which was to be used for "letters to officials". At first, this was to be a temporary tax, but it remained in effect until the fall of the Republic in 1797. Shortly after the introduction of the tax, Spain produced similar paper for general taxation purposes, and the practice spread to other countries.
+
+During the 20th century, when many artesian wells were sunk into the periphery of the lagoon to draw water for local industry, Venice began to subside. It was realized that extraction of water from the aquifer was the cause. The sinking has slowed markedly since artesian wells were banned in the 1960s. However, the city is still threatened by more frequent low-level floods—the Acqua alta, that rise to a height of several centimetres over its quays—regularly following certain tides. In many old houses, staircases once used to unload goods are now flooded, rendering the former ground floor uninhabitable.[citation needed]
+
+Studies indicate that the city continues sinking at a relatively slow rate of 1–2 mm per annum;[49][50] therefore, the state of alert has not been revoked.
+
+In May 2003, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated the MOSE Project (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico), an experimental model for evaluating the performance of hollow floatable gates; the idea is to fix a series of 78 hollow pontoons to the sea bed across the three entrances to the lagoon. When tides are predicted to rise above 110 cm, the pontoons will be filled with air, causing them to float and block the incoming water from the Adriatic Sea.[51] This engineering work was due to be completed by 2018.[52]A Reuters report stated that the MOSE Project attributed the delay to "corruption scandals".[53] The project is not guaranteed to be successful and the cost has been very high, with as much as approximately €2 billion of the cost lost to corruption.[11]
+
+According to a spokesman for the FAI:
+
+Mose is a pharaonic project that should have cost €800m [£675m] but will cost at least €7bn [£6bn]. If the barriers are closed at only 90 cm of high water, most of St Mark's will be flooded anyway; but if closed at very high levels only, then people will wonder at the logic of spending such sums on something that didn't solve the problem. And pressure will come from the cruise ships to keep the gates open.[54]
+
+On 13 November 2019, Venice was flooded when waters peaked at 1.87 m (6 ft), the highest tide since 1966 (1.94 m).[55] More than 80% of the city was covered by water, which damaged cultural heritage sites, including more than 50 churches, leading to tourists cancelling their visits.[56] [57] The planned flood barrier would have prevented this incident according to various sources, including Marco Piana, the head of conservation at St Mark's Basilica.[58] The mayor promised that work on the flood barrier would continue,[59][58] and the Prime Minister announced that the government would be accelerating the project.[56]
+
+The city's mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, blamed the floods on climate change. The chambers of the Regional Council of Veneto began to be flooded around 10 pm, two minutes after the council rejected a plan to combat global warming.[60] One of the effects of climate change is sea level rise which causes an increase in frequency and magnitude of floodings in the city.[61][62] A Washington Post report provided a more thorough analysis:[63]
+
+"The sea level has been rising even more rapidly in Venice than in other parts of the world. At the same time, the city is sinking, the result of tectonic plates shifting below the Italian coast. Those factors together, along with the more frequent extreme weather events associated with climate change, contribute to floods."
+
+Henk Ovink, an expert on flooding, told CNN that, while environmental factors are part of the problem, "historic floods in Venice are not only a result of the climate crisis but poor infrastructure and mismanagement".[64]
+
+The government of Italy committed to providing 20 million euros in funding to help the city repair the most urgent aspects although Brugnaro's estimate of the total damage was "hundreds of millions"[65] to at least 1 billion euros.[66]
+
+According to the Köppen climate classification, Venice has a mid-latitude, four season humid subtropical climate (Cfa), with cool winters and hot, humid summers. The 24-hour average temperature in January is 3.3 °C (37.9 °F), and for July this figure is 23.0 °C (73.4 °F). Precipitation is spread relatively evenly throughout the year, and averages 748 millimetres (29.4 in); snow isn't a rarity between late November and early March. During the most severe winters, the canals and parts of the lagoon can freeze, but with the warming trend of the past 30-40 years, the occurrence has become rarer.[67]
+
+The city was one of the largest in Europe in the High Middle Ages, with a population of 60,000 in AD 1000; 80,000 in 1200; and rising up to 110,000–180,000 in 1300. In the mid 1500s the city's population was 170,000, and by 1600 almost 200,000.[72][73][74][75][76]
+
+In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in the Comune of Venice (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes around 60,000 in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico), 176,000 in Terraferma (the mainland); and 31,000 on other islands in the lagoon); 47.4% were male and 52.6% were female. Minors (ages 18 and younger) were 14.36% of the population compared to pensioners who numbered 25.7%. This compared with the Italian average of 18.06% and 19.94%, respectively. The average age of Venice residents was 46 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Venice declined by 0.2%, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.85%.[77] The population in the historic old city declined much faster: from about 120,000 in 1980 to about 60,000 in 2009,[78] and to below 55,000 in 2016.[79]
+
+As of 2018[update], 86% of the population was Italian. The largest immigrant groups include:  5,934 (2.3%) Bangladeshis, 5,578 (2.1%) Romanians, 4,460 (1.7%) Moldovans, 3,351 (1.3%) Chinese, and 2,511 (1%) Ukrainians.[80]
+
+Venice is predominantly Roman Catholic (85.0% of the resident population in the area of the Patriarchate of Venice in 2018[81]), but because of the long-standing relationship with Constantinople, there is also a noticeable Orthodox presence; and as a result of immigration, there is now a large Muslim community (about 25,000 or 9.5% of city population in 2018[82]) and some Hindu, and Buddhist inhabitants.
+
+Since 1991, the Church of San Giorgio dei Greci in Venice has become the see of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Malta and Exarchate of Southern Europe, a Byzantine-rite diocese under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.[83]
+
+There is also a historic Jewish community in Venice. The Venetian Ghetto was the area in which Jews were compelled to live under the Venetian Republic. The word ghetto, originally Venetian, is now found in many languages. Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, written in the late 16th century, features Shylock, a Venetian Jew. The first complete and uncensored printed edition of the Talmud was printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg in 1523. During World War II, Jews were rounded up in Venice and deported to extermination camps. Since the end of the war, the Jewish population of Venice has declined from 1500 to about 500.[84] Only around 30 Jews live in the former ghetto which houses the city's major Jewish institutions.[85] In modern times, Venice has an eruv,[86] used by the Jewish community.
+
+The whole pensolon (municipality) is divided into 6 boroughs. 
+One of these (the historic city) is in turn divided into six areas called sestieri:
+
+Each sestiere was administered by a procurator and his staff. 
+Now, each sestiere is a statistical and historical area without any degree of autonomy. 
+The six fingers or phalanges of the ferro on the bow of a gondola represent the six sestieri.
+
+The sestieri are divided into parishes – initially 70 in 1033, but reduced under Napoleon, and now numbering just 38. These parishes predate the sestieri, which were created in about 1170. Each parish exhibited unique characteristics but also belonged to an integrated network. Each community chose its own patron saint, staged its own festivals, congregated around its own market center, constructed its own bell towers, and developed its own customs.[87]
+
+Other islands of the Venetian Lagoon do not form part of any of the sestieri, having historically enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.
+
+Each sestiere has its own house numbering system. Each house has a unique number in the district, from one to several thousand, generally numbered from one corner of the area to another, but not usually in a readily understandable manner.
+
+The 6 boroughs of the whole comune of Venice
+
+The whole comune (red) in the Metropolitan City of Venice
+
+Ca' Loredan, Venice's City Hall
+
+The legislative body of the Comune is the Consiglio Comunale ("city council"), which is composed of 45 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually[clarification needed] to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee (Giunta Comunale), composed of 12 assessors nominated and presided over by a directly elected Mayor.
+
+Venice was governed by center-left parties from the 1990s until the 2010s, when the mayor started to be elected directly. Its region, Veneto, has long been a conservative stronghold, with the coalition between the regionalist Lega Nord and the center-right Forza Italia winning absolute majorities of the electorate in many elections at communal, national, and regional levels.
+
+In June 2015, after a corruption scandal that forced the center-left mayor Giorgio Orsoni to resign, Venice elected for the first time a conservative directly-elected mayor: the center-right businessman Luigi Brugnaro won the election in the second round of voting, with 53% of the votes against the leftist magistrate, and member of the Italian Senate, Felice Casson, who led in the first round with 38% of the votes.[88]
+
+The municipality of Venice is subdivided into six administrative boroughs (municipalità). Each borough is governed by a council (Consiglio) and a president, elected contextually[clarification needed] to the city Mayor. The urban organisation is dictated by Article 114 of the Italian constitution. The boroughs have the power to advise the mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the city council; in addition, they are supplied with autonomous funding to finance local activities. The boroughs are:
+
+Lagoon area:
+
+Mainland (terraferma), annexed with a Royal Decree, in 1926, to the municipality of Venezia:
+
+After the 2015 elections, five of the six boroughs are governed by the Democratic Party and its allies, and one by the center-right mayoral majority:
+
+Venice's economy has changed throughout history. Although there is little specific information about the earliest years, it is likely that an important source of the city's prosperity was the trade in slaves, captured in central Europe and sold to North Africa and the Levant. Venice's location at the head of the Adriatic, and directly south of the terminus of the Brenner Pass over the Alps, would have given it a distinct advantage as a middleman in this important trade. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice was a major center for commerce and trade, as it controlled a vast sea-empire, and became an extremely wealthy European city and a leader in political and economic affairs,.[89] From the 11th century until the 15th century, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were offered in Venice. Other ports such as Genoa, Pisa, Marseille, Ancona, and Dubrovnik were hardly able to compete with the well organized transportation of pilgrims from Venice.[90][91]
+
+This all changed by the 17th century, when Venice's trade empire was taken over by countries such as Portugal, and its importance as a naval power was reduced. In the 18th century, then, it became a major agricultural and industrial exporter. The 18th century's biggest industrial complex was the Venice Arsenal, and the Italian Army still uses it today (even though some space has been used for major theatrical and cultural productions, and as spaces for art).[92] Since World War II, many Venetians have moved to the neighboring cities of Mestre and Porto Marghera, seeking employment as well as affordable housing.[93]
+
+Today, Venice's economy is mainly based on tourism, shipbuilding (mainly in Mestre and Porto Marghera), services, trade, and industrial exports.[89] Murano glass production in Murano and lace production in Burano are also highly important to the economy.[89]
+
+The city is facing financial challenges. In late 2016, it had a major deficit in its budget and debts in excess of  €400 million. "In effect, the place is bankrupt", according to a report by The Guardian.[94] Many locals are leaving the historic center due to rapidly increasing rents. The declining native population affects the character of the city, as an October 2016 National Geographic article pointed out in its subtitle: "Residents are abandoning the city, which is in danger of becoming an overpriced theme park".[11] The city is also facing other challenges, including erosion, pollution, subsidence, an excessive number of tourists in peak periods, and problems caused by oversized cruise ships sailing close to the banks of the historical city.[11]
+
+In June 2017, Italy was required to bail out two Venetian banks—the Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca—to prevent their bankruptcies.[95] Both banks would be wound down and their assets that have value taken over by another Italian bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, which would receive €5.2 billion as compensation. The Italian government would be responsible for losses from any uncollectible loans from the closed banks. The cost would be €5.2 billion, with further guarantees to cover bad loans totaling €12 billion.[96]
+
+Venice is an important destination for tourists who want to see its celebrated art and architecture.[97] The city hosts up to 60,000 tourists per day (2017 estimate). Estimates of the annual number of tourists vary from 22 million to 30 million.[98][99][100] This "overtourism" creates overcrowding and environmental problems for Venice's ecosystem. By 2017, UNESCO was considering the addition of Venice to its "In-Danger" list, which includes historical ruins in war-torn countries. To reduce the number of visitors, who are causing irreversible changes in Venice, the agency supports limiting the number of cruise ships[101][102] as well as implementing a strategy for more sustainable tourism.[103]
+
+Tourism has been a major part of the Venetian economy since the 18th century, when Venice—with its beautiful cityscape, uniqueness, and rich musical and artistic cultural heritage—was a stop on the Grand Tour. In the 19th century, Venice became a fashionable centre for the "rich and famous", who often stayed and dined at luxury establishments such as the Danieli Hotel and the Caffè Florian, and continued to be a fashionable city into the early 20th century.[97] In the 1980s, the Carnival of Venice was revived; and the city has become a major centre of international conferences and festivals, such as the prestigious Venice Biennale and the Venice Film Festival, which attract visitors from all over the world for their theatrical, cultural, cinematic, artistic, and musical productions.[97]
+
+Today, there are numerous attractions in Venice, such as St Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace, the Grand Canal, and the Piazza San Marco. The Lido di Venezia is also a popular international luxury destination, attracting thousands of actors, critics, celebrities, and others in the cinematic industry. The city also relies heavily on the cruise business.[97] The Cruise Venice Committee has estimated that cruise ship passengers spend more than 150 million euros (US$193 million) annually in the city, according to a 2015 report.[104] Other reports, however, point out that such day-trippers spend relatively little in the few hours of their visits to the city.[94]
+
+Venice is regarded by some as a tourist trap, and by others as a "living museum".[97] Unlike most other places in Western Europe, and the world, Venice has become widely known for its element of elegant decay. The competition for foreigners to buy homes in Venice has made prices rise so high that numerous inhabitants are forced to move to more affordable areas of Veneto and Italy.
+
+The need to protect the city's historic environment and fragile canals, in the face of a possible loss of jobs produced by cruise tourism, has seen the Italian Transport Ministry attempt to introduce a ban on large cruise ships visiting the city. A 2013 ban would have allowed only cruise ships smaller than 40,000-gross tons to enter the Giudecca Canal and St Mark's basin.[105] In January, a regional court scrapped the ban, but some global cruise lines indicated that they would continue to respect it until a long-term solution for the protection of Venice is found.[106]
+
+For example, P&O Cruises removed Venice from its summer schedule, Holland America moved one of its ships from this area to Alaska, and Cunard is reducing (in 2017 and further in 2018) the number of visits by its ships. As a result, the Venice Port Authority estimated an 11.4 per cent drop in cruise ships arriving in 2017 versus 2016, leading to a similar reduction in income for Venice.[107]
+
+Having failed in its 2013 bid to ban oversized cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal, the city switched to a new strategy in mid-2017, banning the creation of any additional hotels. Currently, there are over 24,000 hotel rooms. The ban does not affect short-term rentals in the historic center which are causing an increase in the cost of living for the native residents of Venice.[94] The city had already banned any additional fast food "take-away" outlets, to retain the historic character of the city, which was another reason for freezing the number of hotel rooms.[108] Fewer than half of the millions of annual visitors stay overnight, however.[98][99]
+
+The city also considered a ban on wheeled suitcases, but settled for banning hard plastic wheels for transporting cargo from May 2015.[109]
+
+In addition to accelerating erosion of the ancient city's foundations and creating some pollution in the lagoon,[11][110] cruise ships dropping an excessive number of day trippers can make St. Marks Square and other popular attractions too crowded to walk through during the peak season. Government officials see little value to the economy from the "eat and flee" tourists who stay for less than a day, which is typical of those from cruise ships.[111]
+
+Some locals continued to aggressively lobby for new methods that would reduce the number of cruise ship passengers; their estimate indicated that there are up to 30,000 such sightseers per day at peak periods,[100] while others concentrate their effort on promoting a more responsible way of visiting the city.[112] An unofficial referendum to ban large cruise ships was held in June 2017. More than 18,000 people voted at 60 polling booths set up by activists, and 17,874 favored banning large ships from the lagoon. The population of Venice at the time was about 50,000.[111] The organizers of the referendum backed a plan to build a new cruise ship terminal at one of the three entrances to the Venetian Lagoon. Passengers would be transferred to the historic area in smaller boats.[113][114]
+
+On 28 February 2019, the Venice City Council voted in favour of a new municipal regulation requiring day-trippers visiting the historic centre, and the islands in the lagoon, to pay a new access fee. The extra revenue from the fee would be used for cleaning, maintaining security, reducing the financial burden on residents of Venice, and to "allow Venetians to live with more decorum". The new tax would be between €3 and €10 per person, depending on the expected tourist flow into the old city. The fee could be waived for certain types of travelers: including students, children under the age of 6, voluntary workers, residents of the Veneto region, and participants in sporting events.[115] Overnight visitors, who already pay a "stay" tax and account for around 40% of Venice's yearly total of 28 million visitors,[116] would also be exempted. The access fee was expected to come into effect in September 2019 but has been postponed until 1 January 2020.[117]
+
+Having failed in its 2013 bid to ban oversized cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal, the Italian inter-ministerial Comitatone overseeing Venice's lagoon released an official directive in November 2017 to keep the largest cruise ships away from the Piazza San Marco and the entrance to the Grand Canal.[118][119][120] Ships over 55,000 tons will be required to follow a specific route through the Vittorio Emmanuele III Canal to reach Marghera, an industrial area of the mainland, where a passenger terminal would be built.[121]
+
+In 2014, the United Nations warned the city that it may be placed on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger sites unless cruise ships are banned from the canals near the historic centre.[122]
+
+According to the officials, the plan to create an alternate route for ships would require extensive dredging of the canal and the building of a new port, which would take four years, in total, to complete. However, the activist group No Grandi Navi (No big Ships), argued that the effects of pollution caused by the ships would not be diminished by the re-routing plan.[123][124]
+
+On 2 June 2019, the cruise ship MSC Opera rammed a tourist riverboat, the River Countess, which was docked on the Giudecca Canal, injuring five people, in addition to causing property damage. The incident immediately led to renewed demands to ban large cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal,[125] including a Twitter message to that effect posted by the environment minister. The city's mayor urged authorities to accelerate the steps required for cruise ships to begin using the alternate Vittorio Emanuele canal.[126] Italy's transport minister spoke of a "solution to protect both the lagoon and tourism ... after many years of inertia" but specifics were not reported.[127][128] As of June 2019[update], the 2017 plan to establish an alternative route for large ships, preventing them from coming near the historic area of the city, has not yet been approved.[124]
+
+Nonetheless, the Italian government released an announcement on 7 August 2019 that it would begin rerouting cruise ships larger than 1000 tonnes away from the historic city's Giudecca Canal. For the last four months of 2019, all heavy vessels will dock at the Fusina and Lombardia terminals which are still on the lagoon but away from the central islands. By 2020, one-third of all cruise ships will be rerouted, according to Danilo Toninelli, the minister for Venice. Preparation work for the Vittorio Emanuele Canal needed to begin soon for a long-term solution, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.[129][130] In the long-term, space for ships would be provided at new terminals, perhaps at Chioggia or Lido San Nicolo. That plan was not imminent however, since public consultations had not yet begun. Over 1.5 million people per year arrive in Venice on cruise ships.[131]
+
+Venice is built on an archipelago of 118 islands[3] in a shallow, 550 km2 (212 sq mi) lagoon,[132] connected by 400 bridges[133] over 177 canals. In the 19th century, a causeway to the mainland brought the railroad to Venice. The adjoining Ponte della Libertà road causeway and terminal parking facilities in Tronchetto island and Piazzale Roma were built during the 20th century. Beyond these rail and road terminals on the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city's historic centre remains, as it was in centuries past, entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban car-free area and is unique in Europe in having remained a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.
+
+The classic Venetian boat is the gondola (plural: gondole), although it is now mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies, or as traghetti (sing.: traghetto) to cross the Grand Canal in lieu of a nearby bridge. The traghetti are operated by two oarsmen. For some years there were seven such boats; but by 2017, only three remained.[134]
+
+There are approximately 400 licensed gondoliers in Venice, in their distinctive livery, and a similar number of boats, down from 10,000 two centuries ago.[135][136] Many gondolas are lushly appointed with crushed velvet seats and Persian rugs. At the front of each gondola that works in the city, there is a large piece of metal called the fèro (iron). Its shape has evolved through the centuries, as documented in many well-known paintings. Its form, topped by a likeness of the Doge's hat, became gradually standardized, and was then fixed by local law. It consists of six bars pointing forward representing the sestieri of the city, and one that points backwards representing the Giudecca.[136][137] A lesser-known boat is the smaller, simpler, but similar, sandolo.
+
+Venice's small islands were enhanced during the Middle Ages by the dredging of soil to raise the marshy ground above the tides. The resulting canals encouraged the flourishing of a nautical culture which proved central to the economy of the city. Today those canals still provide the means for transport of goods and people within the city.
+
+The maze of canals threading through the city requires more than 400 bridges to permit the flow of foot traffic. In 2011, the city opened the Ponte della Costituzione, the fourth bridge across the Grand Canal, which connects the Piazzale Roma bus-terminal area with the Venezia Santa Lucia railway station. The other bridges are the original Ponte di Rialto, the Ponte dell'Accademia, and the Ponte degli Scalzi.
+
+Azienda del Consorzio Trasporti Veneziano (ACTV) is a public company responsible for public transportation in Venice.
+
+The main means of public transportation consists of motorised waterbuses (vaporetti) which ply regular routes along the Grand Canal and between the city's islands. Private motorised water taxis are also active. The only gondole still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points where there are no convenient bridges. Other gondole are rented by tourists on an hourly basis.[136]
+
+The Venice People Mover is an elevated shuttle train public transit system connecting Tronchetto island with its car parking facility with Piazzale Roma where visitors arrive in the city by bus, taxi, or automobile. The train makes a stop at the Marittima cruise terminal at the Port of Venice.[138]
+
+Lido and Pellestrina are two islands forming a barrier between the southern Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea. On those islands, road traffic, including bus service, is allowed. Vaporetti link them with other islands (Venice, Murano, Burano) and with the peninsula of Cavallino-Treporti.
+
+The mainland of Venice is composed of 5 boroughs: Mestre-Carpenedo, Marghera, Chirignago-Zelarino, and Favaro Veneto. Mestre is the center and the most populous urban area of the mainland. There are several bus routes and two Translohr tramway lines. Several bus routes and one of the tramway lines link the mainland with Piazzale Roma, the main bus station in Venice, via Ponte della Libertà, the road bridge connecting the mainland with the group of islands that comprise the historic center of Venice.
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Venice, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 52 min. Only 12.2% of public transit riders ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 10 min, while 17.6% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 7 kilometres (4.3 mi), while 12% travel for over 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) in a single direction.[139]
+
+People Mover in Venice
+
+A map of the waterbus routes in Venezia
+
+Bus in Mestre
+
+Tram in Venice leaving Piazzale Roma
+
+Venice is serviced by regional and national trains, including trains to Florence (1h53), Milan (2h13), Turin (3h10), Rome (3h33), and Naples (4h50). In addition there are international day trains to Zurich, Innsbruck, Munich, and Vienna, plus overnight sleeper services, to Paris and Dijon on Thello trains, and to Munich and Vienna via ÖBB.
+
+Both stations are managed by Grandi Stazioni; they are linked by the Ponte della Libertà (Liberty Bridge) between the mainland and the city center.
+
+Other stations in the municipality are Venezia Porto Marghera, Venezia Carpenedo, Venezia Mestre Ospedale, and Venezia Mestre Porta Ovest.
+
+The Port of Venice (Italian: Porto di Venezia) is the eighth-busiest commercial port in Italy and is a major hub for the cruise sector in the Mediterranean. It is one of the major Italian ports and is included in the list of the leading European ports which are located on the strategic nodes of trans-European networks. In 2002, the port handled 262,337 containers. In 2006, 30,936,931 tonnes passed through the port, of which 14,541,961 was commercial traffic, and saw 1,453,513 passengers.[140]
+
+Venice is served by the Marco Polo International Airport (Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo), named in honor of its noted citizen. The airport is on the mainland and was rebuilt away from the coast. Public transport from the airport takes one to:
+
+Some airlines market Treviso Airport in Treviso, 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Venice, as a Venice gateway. Some simply advertise flights to "Venice", while naming the actual airport only in small print.[144] There are public buses from this airport to Venice.
+
+Venezia-Lido "Giovanni Nicelli",[145] a public airport suitable for smaller aircraft, is at the NE end of Lido di Venezia. It has a 994-metre (3,261 ft) grass runway.
+
+The most Venetian sport is probably Voga alla Veneta [it] ("Venetian-style rowing"), also commonly called voga veneta. A technique invented in the Venetian Lagoon, Venetian rowing is unusual in that the rower(s), one or more, row standing, looking forward. Today, Voga alla Veneta is not only the way the gondoliers row tourists around Venice but also the way Venetians row for pleasure and sport. Many races called regata(e) happen throughout the year.[146] The culminating event of the rowing season is the day of the "Regata Storica", which occurs on the first Sunday of September each year.[147]
+
+The main football club in the city is Venezia F.C., founded in 1907, which currently plays in the Serie B. Their ground, the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo, situated in Sant'Elena, is one of the oldest venues in Italy.
+
+The local basketball club is Reyer Venezia, founded in 1872 as the gymnastics club Società Sportiva Costantino Reyer, and in 1907 as the basketball club. Reyer currently plays in the Lega Basket Serie A. The men's team were the Italian champions in 1942, 1943, and 2017. Their arena is the Palasport Giuseppe Taliercio, situated in Mestre. Luigi Brugnaro is both the president of the club and the mayor of the city.
+
+Venice is a major international centre for higher education. The city hosts the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, founded in 1868;[148] the Università Iuav di Venezia, founded in 1926;[149] Venice International University, an international research center, founded in 1995 and located on the island of San Servolo;[150] and the EIUC-European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation, located on the island of Lido di Venezia.[151]
+
+Other Venetian institutions of higher education are: the Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts), established in 1750, whose first chairman was Giovanni Battista Piazzetta;[152] and the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Music, which was first established in 1876 as a high school and musical society, later (1915) became Liceo Musicale, and finally (1940), when its director was Gian Francesco Malipiero, the State Conservatory of Music.[153]
+
+Venice has long been a source of inspiration for authors, playwrights, and poets, and at the forefront of the technological development of printing and publishing.
+
+Two of the most noted Venetian writers were Marco Polo in the Middle Ages and, later, Giacomo Casanova. Polo (1254–1324) was a merchant who voyaged to the Orient. His series of books, co-written with Rustichello da Pisa and titled Il Milione provided important knowledge of the lands east of Europe, from the Middle East to China, Japan, and Russia. Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was a prolific writer and adventurer best remembered for his autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie (Story of My Life), which links his colourful lifestyle to the city of Venice.
+
+Venetian playwrights followed the old Italian theatre tradition of Commedia dell'arte. Ruzante (1502–1542), Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793), and Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) used the Venetian dialect extensively in their comedies.
+
+Venice has also inspired writers from abroad. Shakespeare set Othello and The Merchant of Venice in the city, as did Thomas Mann his novel, Death in Venice (1912). The French writer Philippe Sollers spent most of his life in Venice and published  A Dictionary For Lovers of Venice in 2004.
+
+The city features prominently in Henry James's The Aspern Papers and The Wings of the Dove. It is also visited in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Perhaps the best-known children's book set in Venice is The Thief Lord, written by the German author Cornelia Funke.
+
+The poet Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), born in Zante, an island that at the time belonged to the Republic of Venice, was also a revolutionary who wanted to see a free republic established in Venice following its fall to Napoleon.
+
+Venice also inspired the poetry of Ezra Pound, who wrote his first literary work in the city. Pound died in 1972, and his remains are buried in Venice's cemetery island of San Michele.
+
+Venice is also linked to the technological aspects of writing. The city was the location of one of Italy's earliest printing presses called Aldine Press, established by Aldus Manutius in 1494.[154] From this beginning Venice developed as an important typographic center. Around fifteen percent of all printing of the fifteenth century came from Venice,[155] and even as late as the 18th century was responsible for printing half of Italy's published books.[citation needed]
+
+The city is a particularly popular setting for essays, novels, and other works of fictional or non-fictional literature. Examples of these include:
+
+Additionally, Thomas Mann's novella, Death in Venice (1912), was the basis for Benjamin Britten's eponymous opera (1973).
+
+Some words with a Venetian etymology include arsenal, ciao, ghetto, gondola, imbroglio, lagoon, lazaret, lido, Montenegro, and regatta.[156]
+
+By the end of the 15th century, Venice had become the European capital of printing, having 417 printers by 1500, and being one of the first cities in Italy (after Subiaco and Rome) to have a printing press, after those established in Germany. The most important printing office was the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius; which in 1497 issued the first printed work of Aristotle; in 1499 printed the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, considered the most beautiful book of the Renaissance; and established modern punctuation, page format, and italic type.
+
+Venice, especially during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Baroque periods, was a major centre of art and developed a unique style known as the Venetian School. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice, along with Florence and Rome, became one of the most important centres of art in Europe, and numerous wealthy Venetians became patrons of the arts. Venice at the time was a rich and prosperous Maritime Republic, which controlled a vast sea and trade empire.[157]
+
+In the 16th century, Venetian painting was developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina, who introduced the oil painting technique of the Van Eyck brothers. It is signified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour. Early masters were the Bellini and Vivarini families, followed by Giorgione and Titian, then Tintoretto and Veronese. In the early 16th century, there was rivalry in Venetian painting between the disegno and colorito techniques.[158]
+
+Canvases (the common painting surface) originated in Venice during the early Renaissance. These early canvases were generally rough.
+
+In the 18th century, Venetian painting had a revival with Tiepolo's decorative painting and Canaletto's and Guardi's panoramic views.
+
+Venice is built on unstable mud-banks, and had a very crowded city centre by the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the city was largely safe from riot, civil feuds, and invasion much earlier than most European cities. These factors, with the canals and the great wealth of the city, made for unique building styles.
+
+Venice has a rich and diverse architectural style, the most prominent of which is the Gothic style. Venetian Gothic architecture is a term given to a Venetian building style combining the use of the Gothic lancet arch with the curved ogee arch, due to Byzantine and Ottoman influences. The style originated in 14th-century Venice, with a confluence of Byzantine style from Constantinople, Islamic influences from Spain and Venice's eastern trading partners, and early Gothic forms from mainland Italy.[citation needed] Chief examples of the style are the Doge's Palace and the Ca' d'Oro in the city. The city also has several Renaissance and Baroque buildings, including the Ca' Pesaro and the Ca' Rezzonico.
+
+Venetian taste was conservative and Renaissance architecture only really became popular in buildings from about the 1470s.  More than in the rest of Italy, it kept much of the typical form of the Gothic palazzi, which had evolved to suit Venetian conditions. In turn the transition to Baroque architecture was also fairly gentle. This gives the crowded buildings on the Grand Canal and elsewhere an essential harmony, even where buildings from very different periods sit together. For example, round-topped arches are far more common in Renaissance buildings than elsewhere.
+
+It can be argued that Venice produced the best and most refined Rococo designs. At the time, the Venitian economy was in decline.  It had lost most of its maritime power, was lagging behind its rivals in political importance, and its society had become decadent, with tourism increasingly the mainstay of the economy. But Venice remained a centre of fashion.[159] Venetian rococo was well known as rich and luxurious, with usually very extravagant designs. Unique Venetian furniture types included the divani da portego, and long rococo couches and pozzetti, objects meant to be placed against the wall. Bedrooms of rich Venetians were usually sumptuous and grand, with rich damask, velvet, and silk drapery and curtains, and beautifully carved rococo beds with statues of putti, flowers, and angels.[159] Venice was especially known for its beautiful girandole mirrors, which remained among, if not the, finest in Europe. Chandeliers were usually very colourful, using Murano glass to make them look more vibrant and stand out from others; and precious stones and materials from abroad were used, since Venice still held a vast trade empire. Lacquer was very common, and many items of furniture were covered with it, the most noted being lacca povera (poor lacquer), in which allegories and images of social life were painted. Lacquerwork and Chinoiserie were particularly common in bureau cabinets.[160]
+
+Venice is known for its ornate glass-work, known as Venetian glass, which is world-renowned for being colourful, elaborate, and skilfully made.
+
+Many of the important characteristics of these objects had been developed by the 13th century. Toward the end of that century, the center of the Venetian glass industry moved to Murano, an offshore island in Venice. The glass made there is known as Murano glass.
+
+Byzantine craftsmen played an important role in the development of Venetian glass. When Constantinople was sacked in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, some fleeing artisans came to Venice. This happened again when the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, supplying Venice with still more glassworkers. By the 16th century, Venetian artisans had gained even greater control over the color and transparency of their glass, and had mastered a variety of decorative techniques.
+
+Despite efforts to keep Venetian glassmaking techniques within Venice, they became known elsewhere, and Venetian-style glassware was produced in other Italian cities and other countries of Europe.
+
+Some of the most important brands of glass in the world today are still produced in the historical glass factories on Murano. They are: Venini, Barovier & Toso, Pauly, Millevetri, and Seguso.[161] Barovier & Toso is considered one of the 100 oldest companies in the world, formed in 1295.
+
+The Carnival of Venice is held annually in the city, It lasts for around two weeks and ends on Shrove Tuesday. Venetian masks are worn.
+
+The Venice Biennale is one of the most important events in the arts calendar. In 1895 an Esposizione biennale artistica nazionale (biennial exhibition of Italian art) was inaugurated.[162] In September 1942, the activities of the Biennale were interrupted by the war, but resumed in 1948.[163]
+
+The Festa del Redentore is held in mid-July. It began as a feast to give thanks for the end of the plague of 1576. A bridge of barges is built connecting Giudecca to the rest of Venice, and fireworks play an important role.
+
+The Venice Film Festival (Italian Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia) is the oldest film festival in the world.[164] Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata in 1932 as the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the Lido. Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi. It is one of the world's most prestigious film festivals and is part of the Venice Biennale.
+
+The city of Venice in Italy has played an important role in the development of the music of Italy. The Venetian state – i.e., the medieval Republic of Venice – was often popularly called the "Republic of Music", and an anonymous Frenchman of the 17th century is said to have remarked that "In every home, someone is playing a musical instrument or singing. There is music everywhere."[165]
+
+During the 16th century, Venice became one of the most important musical centers of Europe, marked by a characteristic style of composition (the Venetian school) and the development of the Venetian polychoral style under composers such as Adrian Willaert, who worked at St Mark's Basilica. Venice was the early center of music printing; Ottaviano Petrucci began publishing music almost as soon as this technology was available, and his publishing enterprise helped to attract composers from all over Europe, especially from France and Flanders. By the end of the century, Venice was known for the splendor of its music, as exemplified in the "colossal style" of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, which used multiple choruses and instrumental groups. Venice was also the home of many noted composers during the baroque period, such as Antonio Vivaldi, Ippolito Ciera, Giovanni Picchi, and Girolamo Dalla Casa, to name but a few.
+
+Venice is the home of numerous symphony orchestras such as, the Orchestra della Fenice, Rondò Veneziano, Interpreti Veneziani, and Venice Baroque Orchestra.
+
+Venice has been the setting or chosen location of numerous films, games, works of fine art and literature (including essays, fiction, non-fiction, and poems), music videos, television shows, and other cultural references.
+
+Examples of films set or at least partially filmed in Venice include:[168]
+
+The city has been the setting for music videos of such songs as Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Dear Prudence"  in 1983 and Madonna's "Like a Virgin" in 1984.
+
+The city is the setting for parts of such video games as Assassin's Creed II[170] and Tomb Raider II.[171] It has also served as inspiration for the fictional city of Altissia, in Final Fantasy XV.[172] The city also serves as a setting for The House of the Dead 2. The city appears as the first main level in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. It is also featured in Valve's first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as the inspiration for the multiplayer map "Canals".
+
+Venice was the base theme for Soleanna, one of the hub worlds in Sonic the Hedgehog. One of the nine playable characters, Silver the Hedgehog, was once a mink named "Venice" during development. The idea was ultimately scrapped.
+
+In April 2018, Overwatch released the map Rialto, based on the city center.
+
+Its splendid architecture, artworks, landscapes, gondolas, the alternance of high and low tides, the reflections of light and colors, and the unusual daily scenes in a city living on water, make of Venice and its islands a paradise for photographers both professional and amateur. Fulvio Roiter has probably been the pioneer in artistic photography in Venice,[173] followed by a number of photographers whose works are often reproduced on postcards, thus reaching a widest international popular exposure.
+
+Venetian cuisine is characterized by seafood, but also includes garden products from the islands of the lagoon, rice from the mainland, game, and polenta. Venice is not known for a peculiar cuisine of its own: it combines local traditions with influences stemming from age-old contacts with distant countries.[clarification needed] These include sarde in saór (sardines marinated to preserve them for long voyages); bacalà mantecato (a recipe based on Norwegian stockfish and extra-virgin olive oil); bisàto (marinated eel); risi e bisi – rice, peas and (unsmoked) bacon;[174] fegato alla veneziana, Venetian-style veal liver; risòto col néro de sépe (risotto with cuttlefish, blackened by their own ink); cichéti, refined and delicious tidbits (akin to tapas); antipasti (appetizers); and prosecco, an effervescent, mildly sweet wine.
+
+In addition, Venice is known for the golden, oval-shaped cookies called baìcoli, and for other types of sweets, such as: pan del pescaór (bread of the fisherman); cookies with almonds and pistachio nuts; cookies with fried Venetian cream, or the bussolài (butter biscuits and shortbread made in the shape of a ring or an "S") from the island of Burano; the galàni or cróstoli (angel wings);[175] the frìtole (fried spherical doughnuts); the fregolòtta (a crumbly cake with almonds); a milk pudding called rosàda; and cookies called zaléti, whose ingredients include yellow maize flour.[176]
+
+The dessert tiramisù is generally thought to have been invented in Treviso in the 1970s,[177] and is popular in the Veneto area.
+
+In the 14th century, many young Venetian men began wearing tight-fitting multicoloured hose, the designs on which indicated the Compagnie della Calza ("Trouser Club") to which they belonged. The Venetian Senate passed sumptuary laws, but these merely resulted in changes in fashion in order to circumvent the law. Dull garments were worn over colourful ones, which then were cut to show the hidden colours resulting in the spread of men's "slashed" fashions in the 15th century.
+
+Today, Venice is a major fashion and shopping centre; not as important as Milan, Florence, and Rome, but on a par with Verona, Turin, Vicenza, Naples, and Genoa. Roberta di Camerino is the only major Italian fashion brand to be based in Venice.[178] Founded in 1945, it is renowned for its innovative handbags featuring hardware[clarification needed] by Venetian artisans and often covered in locally woven velvet, and has been credited with creating the concept of the easily recognisable status bag.[178] Many of the fashion boutiques and jewelry shops in the city are located on or near the Rialto Bridge and in the Piazza San Marco.
+
+In January 2000, the City of Venice and the Central Association of Cities and Communities of Greece (KEDKE) established, in pursuance to EC Regulation No. 2137/85, the Marco Polo System European Economic Interest Grouping (E.E.I.G.), to promote and realise European projects within transnational cultural and tourist fields, particularly in reference to the preservation and safeguarding of artistic and architectural heritage.
+
+Venice is twinned with:[179]
+
+In 2013, Venice announced that it wants to end the sister city relationship with St. Petersburg in opposition to laws Russia had passed against homosexuals and those who support gay rights.[180] However, as of 2020, the cities are still twinned.
+
+Venice has cooperation agreements with:[179]
+
+The name "Venezuela" is a Spanish diminutive of Venice (Veneziola).[181]Many additional places around the world are named after Venice: e.g.
+
+Others closely associated with the city include:
+
+L'Aquila, AbruzzoAosta, Aosta ValleyBari, ApuliaPotenza, Basilicata
+
+Catanzaro, CalabriaNaples, CampaniaBologna, Emilia-RomagnaTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
+
+Rome, LazioGenoa, LiguriaMilan, LombardyAncona, Marche
+
+Campobasso, MoliseTurin, PiedmontCagliari, SardiniaPalermo, Sicily
+
+Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolFlorence, TuscanyPerugia, UmbriaVenice, Veneto
+

en/5933.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,373 @@
+Venice (/ˈvɛnɪs/; Italian: Venezia [veˈnɛttsja] (listen); Venetian: Venesia or Venexia [veˈnɛsja]) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is situated on a group of 118 small islands[3] that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges.[3][4] The islands are located in the shallow Venetian Lagoon, an enclosed bay that lies between the mouths of the Po and the Piave rivers (more exactly between the Brenta and the Sile). In 2018, 260,897 people resided in the Comune di Venezia, of whom around 55,000 live in the historical city of Venice (centro storico). Together with Padua and Treviso, the city is included in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area (PATREVE), which is considered a statistical metropolitan area, with a total population of 2.6 million.[5]
+
+The name is derived from the ancient Veneti people who inhabited the region by the 10th century BC.[6][7] The city was historically the capital of the Republic of Venice for a millennium and more, from 697 to 1797. It was a major financial and maritime power during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, and a staging area for the Crusades and the Battle of Lepanto, as well as an important center of commerce—especially silk, grain, and spice, and of art from the 13th century to the end of the 17th. The city-state of Venice is considered to have been the first real international financial center, emerging in the 9th century and reaching its greatest prominence in the 14th century.[8] This made Venice a wealthy city throughout most of its history.[9] After the Napoleonic Wars and the Congress of Vienna, the Republic was annexed by the Austrian Empire, until it became part of the Kingdom of Italy in 1866, following a referendum held as a result of the Third Italian War of Independence.
+
+Venice has been known as "La Dominante", "La Serenissima", "Queen of the Adriatic", "City of Water", "City of Masks", "City of Bridges", "The Floating City", and "City of Canals". The lagoon and a part of the city are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Parts of Venice are renowned for the beauty of their settings, their architecture, and artwork.[3] Venice is known for several important artistic movements—especially during the Renaissance period—has played an important role in the history of symphonic and operatic music, and is the birthplace of Antonio Vivaldi.[10]
+
+Although the city is facing some challenges (including an excessive number of tourists and problems caused by pollution, tide peaks and cruise ships sailing too close to buildings),[11][12][13] Venice remains a very popular tourist destination, a major cultural centre, and has been ranked many times the most beautiful city in the world.[14][15] It has been described by the Times Online as one of Europe's most romantic cities[16] and by The New York Times as "undoubtedly the most beautiful city built by man".[17]
+
+The name of the city, deriving from Latin forms Venetia and Venetiae, is most likely taken from "Venetia et Histria", the Roman name of Regio X of Roman Italy, but applied to the coastal part of the region that remained under Roman Empire outside of Gothic, Lombard, and Frankish control. The name Venetia, however, derives from the Roman name for the people known as the Veneti, and called by the Greeks Enetoi (Ἐνετοί). The meaning of the word is uncertain, although there are other Indo-European tribes with similar-sounding names, such as the Celtic Veneti and the Slavic Vistula Veneti. Linguists suggest that the name is based on an Indo-European root *wen ("love"), so that *wenetoi would mean "beloved", "lovable", or "friendly". A connection with the Latin word venetus, meaning the color 'sea-blue', is also possible.
+Supposed connections of Venetia with the Latin verb venire (to come), such as Marin Sanudo's veni etiam ("Yet, I have come!"), the supposed cry of the first refugees to the Venetian lagoon from the mainland, or even with venia ("forgiveness") are fanciful. The alternative obsolete form is Vinegia [viˈnɛːdʒa];[18] (Venetian: Venèxia [veˈnɛzja]; Latin: Venetiae; Slovene: Benetke; Croatian: Venecija).
+
+Kingdom of Odoacer 476–493 
+Ostrogothic Kingdom 493–553 
+Eastern Roman Empire 553–584 
+Exarchate of Ravenna 584–697 
+Republic of Venice 697–1797 
+Habsburg Monarchy 1797–1805 
+Kingdom of Italy 1805–1815
+Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia 1815–1848 
+Republic of San Marco 1848–1849 
+Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia 1849–1866 
+Kingdom of Italy 1866–1946
+
+Although no surviving historical records deal directly with the founding of Venice,[19] tradition and the available evidence have led several historians to agree that the original population of Venice consisted of refugees—from nearby Roman cities such as Padua, Aquileia, Treviso, Altino, and Concordia (modern Portogruaro), as well as from the undefended countryside—who were fleeing successive waves of Germanic and Hun invasions.[20] This is further supported by the documentation on the so-called "apostolic families", the twelve founding families of Venice who elected the first doge, who in most cases trace their lineage back to Roman families.[21][22] Some late Roman sources reveal the existence of fishermen, on the islands in the original marshy lagoons, who were referred to as incolae lacunae ("lagoon dwellers"). The traditional founding is identified with the dedication of the first church, that of San Giacomo on the islet of Rialto (Rivoalto, "High Shore")—said to have taken place at the stroke of noon on 25 March 421 (the Feast of the Annunciation).[23][24]
+
+Beginning as early as AD 166–168, the Quadi and Marcomanni destroyed the main Roman town in the area, present-day Oderzo. This part of Roman Italy was again overrun in the early 5th century by the Visigoths and, some 50 years later, by the Huns led by Attila. The last and most enduring immigration into the north of the Italian peninsula, that of the Lombards in 568, left the Eastern Roman Empire only a small strip of coastline in the current Veneto, including Venice. The Roman/Byzantine territory was organized as the Exarchate of Ravenna, administered from that ancient port and overseen by a viceroy (the Exarch) appointed by the Emperor in Constantinople. Ravenna and Venice were connected only by sea routes, and with the Venetians' isolation came increasing autonomy. New ports were built, including those at Malamocco and Torcello in the Venetian lagoon. The tribuni maiores formed the earliest central standing governing committee of the islands in the lagoon, dating from c. 568.[25]
+
+The traditional first doge of Venice, Paolo Lucio Anafesto (Anafestus Paulicius), was elected in 697, as written in the oldest chronicle by John, deacon of Venice c. 1008. Some modern historians claim Paolo Lucio Anafesto was actually the Exarch Paul, and Paul's successor, Marcello Tegalliano, was Paul's magister militum (or "general"), literally "master of soldiers". In 726 the soldiers and citizens of the exarchate rose in a rebellion over the iconoclastic controversy, at the urging of Pope Gregory II. The exarch, held responsible for the acts of his master, Byzantine Emperor Leo III, was murdered, and many officials were put to flight in the chaos. At about this time, the people of the lagoon elected their own independent leader for the first time, although the relationship of this to the uprisings is not clear. Ursus was the first of 117 "doges" (doge is the Venetian dialectal equivalent of the Latin dux ("leader"); the corresponding word in English is duke, in standard Italian duca.  (See also "duce".) Whatever his original views, Ursus supported Emperor Leo III's successful military expedition to recover Ravenna, sending both men and ships. In recognition of this, Venice was "granted numerous privileges and concessions" and Ursus, who had personally taken the field, was confirmed by Leo as dux.[26] and given the added title of hypatus (from the Greek for "consul").[27]
+
+In 751, the Lombard King Aistulf conquered most of the Exarchate of Ravenna, leaving Venice a lonely and increasingly autonomous Byzantine outpost. During this period, the seat of the local Byzantine governor (the "duke/dux", later "doge"), was at Malamocco. Settlement on the islands in the lagoon probably increased with the Lombard conquest of other Byzantine territories, as refugees sought asylum in the area. In 775/6, the episcopal seat of Olivolo (San Pietro di Castello, namely Helipolis[citation needed]) was created. During the reign of duke Agnello Particiaco (811–827) the ducal seat moved from Malamocco to the more protected Rialto, within present-day Venice. The monastery of St. Zachary and the first ducal palace and basilica of St. Mark, as well as a walled defense (civitatis murus) between Olivolo and Rialto, were subsequently built here.
+
+Charlemagne sought to subdue the city to his rule. He ordered the pope to expel the Venetians from the Pentapolis along the Adriatic coast;[28] Charlemagne's own son Pepin of Italy, king of the Lombards, under the authority of his father, embarked on a siege of Venice itself. This, however, proved a costly failure. The siege lasted six months, with Pepin's army ravaged by the diseases of the local swamps and eventually forced to withdraw in 810. A few months later, Pepin himself died, apparently as a result of a disease contracted there. In the aftermath, an agreement between Charlemagne and the Byzantine Emperor Nicephorus in 814 recognized Venice as Byzantine territory, and granted the city trading rights along the Adriatic coast.
+
+In 828 the new city's prestige increased with the acquisition, from Alexandria, of relics claimed to be of St Mark the Evangelist; these were placed in the new basilica. Winged lions—visible throughout Venice—are the emblem of St Mark.  The patriarchal seat was also moved to Rialto. As the community continued to develop, and as Byzantine power waned, its own autonomy grew, leading to eventual independence.[29]
+
+From the 9th to the 12th century, Venice developed into a city state (an Italian thalassocracy or repubblica marinara; there  were three others:  Genoa, Pisa, and Amalfi). Its own strategic position at the head of the Adriatic made Venetian naval and commercial power almost invulnerable.[30] With the elimination of pirates along the Dalmatian coast, the city became a flourishing trade center between Western Europe and the rest of the world—especially with the Byzantine Empire and Asia), where its navy protected sea routes against piracy.[31]
+
+The Republic of Venice seized a number of places on the eastern shores of the Adriatic before 1200, mostly for commercial reasons, because pirates based there were a menace to trade. The doge already possessed the titles of Duke of Dalmatia and Duke of Istria. Later mainland possessions, which extended across Lake Garda as far west as the Adda River, were known as the Terraferma; they were acquired partly as a buffer against belligerent neighbours, partly to guarantee Alpine trade routes, and partly to ensure the supply of mainland wheat (on which the city depended). In building its maritime commercial empire, Venice 
+dominated the trade in salt,[32] 
+acquired control of most of the islands in the Aegean, including Crete, and Cyprus in the Mediterranean, and 
+became a major power-broker in the Near East. By the standards of the time, Venice's stewardship of its mainland territories was relatively enlightened and the citizens of such towns as Bergamo, Brescia, and Verona rallied to the defence of Venetian sovereignty when it was threatened by invaders.
+
+Venice remained closely associated with Constantinople, being twice granted trading privileges in the Eastern Roman Empire, through the so-called golden bulls or "chrysobulls", in return for aiding the Eastern Empire to resist Norman and Turkish incursions. In the first chrysobull, Venice acknowledged its homage to the empire; but not in the second, reflecting the decline of Byzantium and the rise of Venice's power.[33][34]
+
+Venice became an imperial power following the Fourth Crusade, which, having veered off course, culminated in 1204 by capturing and sacking Constantinople and establishing the Latin Empire. As a result of this conquest, considerable Byzantine plunder was brought back to Venice. This plunder included the gilt bronze horses from the Hippodrome of Constantinople, which were originally placed above the entrance to the cathedral of Venice, St Mark's Basilica (The originals have been replaced with replicas, and are now stored within the basilica.)  After the fall of Constantinople, the former Eastern Roman Empire was partitioned among the Latin crusaders and the Venetians. Venice subsequently carved out a sphere of influence in the Mediterranean known as the Duchy of the Archipelago, and captured Crete.[35]
+
+The seizure of Constantinople proved as decisive a factor in ending the Byzantine Empire as the loss of the Anatolian themes, after Manzikert. Although the Byzantines recovered control of the ravaged city a half-century later, the Byzantine Empire was terminally weakened, and existed as a ghost of its old self, until Sultan Mehmet The Conqueror took the city in 1453.
+
+Situated on the Adriatic Sea, Venice had always traded extensively with the Byzantine Empire and the Muslim world. By the late 13th century, Venice was the most prosperous city in all of Europe. At the peak of its power and wealth, it had 36,000 sailors operating 3,300 ships, dominating Mediterranean commerce. Venice's leading families vied with each other to build the grandest palaces and to support the work of the greatest and most talented artists. The city was governed by the Great Council, which was made up of members of the noble families of Venice. The Great Council appointed all public officials, and elected a Senate of 200 to 300 individuals. Since this group was too large for efficient administration, a Council of Ten (also called the Ducal Council, or the Signoria), controlled much of the administration of the city. One member of the great council was elected "doge", or duke, to be the chief executive; he would usually hold the title until his death, although several Doges were forced, by pressure from their oligarchical peers, to resign and retire into monastic seclusion, when they were felt to have been discredited by political failure.
+
+The Venetian governmental structure was similar in some ways to the republican system of ancient Rome, with an elected chief executive (the doge), a senator-like assembly of nobles, and the general citizenry with limited political power, who originally had the power to grant or withhold their approval of each newly elected doge. 
+Church and various private properties were tied to military service, although there was no knight tenure within the city itself. 
+The Cavalieri di San Marco was the only order of chivalry ever instituted in Venice, and no citizen could accept or join a foreign order without the government's consent. 
+Venice remained a republic throughout its independent period, 
+and politics and the military were kept separate, 
+except when on occasion the Doge personally headed the military. 
+War was regarded as a continuation of commerce by other means 
+(whence, 
+the city's early employment of large numbers of mercenaries for service elsewhere, and 
+later its reliance on foreign mercenaries when the ruling class was preoccupied with commerce
+).
+
+Although the people of Venice generally remained orthodox Roman Catholics, 
+the state of Venice was notable for its freedom from religious fanaticism, 
+and executed nobody for religious heresy during the Counter-Reformation. 
+This apparent lack of zeal contributed to Venice's frequent conflicts with the papacy. 
+In this context, the writings of the Anglican divine William Bedell are particularly illuminating. 
+Venice was threatened with the interdict on a number of occasions 
+and twice suffered its imposition. 
+The second, most noted, occasion was in 1606, by order of Pope Paul V.
+
+The newly invented German printing press spread rapidly throughout Europe in the 15th century, and Venice was quick to adopt it. 
+By 1482, Venice was the printing capital of the world; 
+the leading printer was Aldus Manutius, who invented paperback books that could be carried in a saddlebag.
+
+His Aldine Editions included translations of nearly all the known Greek manuscripts of the 
+era.[36]
+
+Venice's long decline started in the 15th century, when it first made an unsuccessful attempt to hold Thessalonica against the Ottomans when they started to attack (1423–1430). It also sent ships to help defend Constantinople against the besieging Turks (1453). After Constantinople fell to Sultan Mehmed II, he declared the first of a series of Ottoman-Venetian wars that cost Venice much of its eastern Mediterranean possessions. Even more decisive than the Columbian exchange and the beginning of Atlantic trade following Christopher Columbus's voyage of 1492 was Vasco da Gama's first voyage of 1497–99, which opened a sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope and destroyed Venice's monopoly. France, England, and the Dutch Republic quickly followed Spain and Portugal, but Venice's oared galleys were at a disadvantage when it came to traversing the great oceans, and therefore Venice was left behind in the race for colonies.
+
+The Black Death devastated Venice in 1348, and once again between 1575 and 1577.[37] In three years, the plague killed some 50,000 people.[38] In 1630, the Italian plague of 1629–31 killed a third of Venice's 150,000 citizens.[39] Venice began to lose its position as a center of international trade during the later part of the Renaissance as Portugal became Europe's principal intermediary in the trade with the East, striking at the very foundation of Venice's great wealth; while France and Spain fought for hegemony over Italy in the Italian Wars, marginalising its political influence. However, the Venetian empire remained a major exporter of agricultural products, and until the mid-18th century, a significant manufacturing center.
+
+During the 18th century, Venice became perhaps the most elegant and refined city in Europe, greatly influencing art, architecture, and literature. But the Republic lost its independence when Napoleon Bonaparte conquered Venice on 12 May 1797 during the War of the First Coalition. Napoleon was seen as something of a liberator by the city's Jewish population. He removed the gates of the Ghetto and ended the restrictions on when and where Jews could live and travel in the city.
+
+Venice became Austrian territory when Napoleon signed the Treaty of Campo Formio on 12 October 1797. The Austrians took control of the city on 18 January 1798. Venice was taken from Austria by the Treaty of Pressburg in 1805 and became part of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy. It was returned to Austria following Napoleon's defeat in 1814, when it became part of the Austrian-held Kingdom of Lombardy-Venetia. In 1848 a revolt briefly re-established the Venetian republic under Daniele Manin, but this was crushed in 1849. In 1866, after the Third Italian War of Independence, Venice, along with the rest of the Veneto, became part of the newly created Kingdom of Italy.
+
+During the Second World War, the historic city was largely free from attack, the only aggressive effort of note being Operation Bowler, a successful Royal Air Force precision strike on the German naval operations in the city in March 1945. The targets were destroyed with virtually no architectural damage inflicted on the city itself.[40] However, the industrial areas in Mestre and Marghera and the railway lines to Padua, Trieste, and Trento were repeatedly bombed.[41] On 29 April 1945, a force of British and New Zealand troops of the British Eighth Army, under Lieutenant General Freyberg, liberated Venice, which had been a hotbed of anti-Mussolini Italian partisan activity.[42][43]
+
+Venice sits atop alluvial silt washed into the sea by the rivers flowing eastward from the alps across the Veneto plain, with the silt being stretched into long banks, or lidi, by the action of the current flowing around the head of the Adriatic Sea from east to west.[44]
+
+Subsidence, the gradual lowering of the surface of Venice, has led to the seasonal Acqua alta ("high water") when much of the city's surface is occasionally covered at high tide.
+
+
+
+Those fleeing Barbarian invasions who found refuge on the sandy islands of Torcello, Iesolo, and Malamocco, in this coastal lagoon, learned to build by driving closely spaced piles consisting of the trunks of alder trees, a wood noted for its water resistance, into the mud and sand,[45][46] until they reached a much harder layer of compressed clay. Building foundations rested on plates of Istrian limestone placed on top of the piles.[47].
+
+Between autumn and early spring, the city is often threatened by flood tides pushing in from the Adriatic. Six hundred years ago, Venetians protected themselves from land-based attacks by diverting all the major rivers flowing into the lagoon and thus preventing sediment from filling the area around the city.[48] This created an ever-deeper lagoon environment.
+
+In 1604, to defray the cost of flood relief, Venice introduced what could be considered the first example of a "stamp tax".[citation needed] When the revenue fell short of expectations in 1608, Venice introduced paper, with the superscription "AQ" and imprinted instructions, which was to be used for "letters to officials". At first, this was to be a temporary tax, but it remained in effect until the fall of the Republic in 1797. Shortly after the introduction of the tax, Spain produced similar paper for general taxation purposes, and the practice spread to other countries.
+
+During the 20th century, when many artesian wells were sunk into the periphery of the lagoon to draw water for local industry, Venice began to subside. It was realized that extraction of water from the aquifer was the cause. The sinking has slowed markedly since artesian wells were banned in the 1960s. However, the city is still threatened by more frequent low-level floods—the Acqua alta, that rise to a height of several centimetres over its quays—regularly following certain tides. In many old houses, staircases once used to unload goods are now flooded, rendering the former ground floor uninhabitable.[citation needed]
+
+Studies indicate that the city continues sinking at a relatively slow rate of 1–2 mm per annum;[49][50] therefore, the state of alert has not been revoked.
+
+In May 2003, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi inaugurated the MOSE Project (Modulo Sperimentale Elettromeccanico), an experimental model for evaluating the performance of hollow floatable gates; the idea is to fix a series of 78 hollow pontoons to the sea bed across the three entrances to the lagoon. When tides are predicted to rise above 110 cm, the pontoons will be filled with air, causing them to float and block the incoming water from the Adriatic Sea.[51] This engineering work was due to be completed by 2018.[52]A Reuters report stated that the MOSE Project attributed the delay to "corruption scandals".[53] The project is not guaranteed to be successful and the cost has been very high, with as much as approximately €2 billion of the cost lost to corruption.[11]
+
+According to a spokesman for the FAI:
+
+Mose is a pharaonic project that should have cost €800m [£675m] but will cost at least €7bn [£6bn]. If the barriers are closed at only 90 cm of high water, most of St Mark's will be flooded anyway; but if closed at very high levels only, then people will wonder at the logic of spending such sums on something that didn't solve the problem. And pressure will come from the cruise ships to keep the gates open.[54]
+
+On 13 November 2019, Venice was flooded when waters peaked at 1.87 m (6 ft), the highest tide since 1966 (1.94 m).[55] More than 80% of the city was covered by water, which damaged cultural heritage sites, including more than 50 churches, leading to tourists cancelling their visits.[56] [57] The planned flood barrier would have prevented this incident according to various sources, including Marco Piana, the head of conservation at St Mark's Basilica.[58] The mayor promised that work on the flood barrier would continue,[59][58] and the Prime Minister announced that the government would be accelerating the project.[56]
+
+The city's mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, blamed the floods on climate change. The chambers of the Regional Council of Veneto began to be flooded around 10 pm, two minutes after the council rejected a plan to combat global warming.[60] One of the effects of climate change is sea level rise which causes an increase in frequency and magnitude of floodings in the city.[61][62] A Washington Post report provided a more thorough analysis:[63]
+
+"The sea level has been rising even more rapidly in Venice than in other parts of the world. At the same time, the city is sinking, the result of tectonic plates shifting below the Italian coast. Those factors together, along with the more frequent extreme weather events associated with climate change, contribute to floods."
+
+Henk Ovink, an expert on flooding, told CNN that, while environmental factors are part of the problem, "historic floods in Venice are not only a result of the climate crisis but poor infrastructure and mismanagement".[64]
+
+The government of Italy committed to providing 20 million euros in funding to help the city repair the most urgent aspects although Brugnaro's estimate of the total damage was "hundreds of millions"[65] to at least 1 billion euros.[66]
+
+According to the Köppen climate classification, Venice has a mid-latitude, four season humid subtropical climate (Cfa), with cool winters and hot, humid summers. The 24-hour average temperature in January is 3.3 °C (37.9 °F), and for July this figure is 23.0 °C (73.4 °F). Precipitation is spread relatively evenly throughout the year, and averages 748 millimetres (29.4 in); snow isn't a rarity between late November and early March. During the most severe winters, the canals and parts of the lagoon can freeze, but with the warming trend of the past 30-40 years, the occurrence has become rarer.[67]
+
+The city was one of the largest in Europe in the High Middle Ages, with a population of 60,000 in AD 1000; 80,000 in 1200; and rising up to 110,000–180,000 in 1300. In the mid 1500s the city's population was 170,000, and by 1600 almost 200,000.[72][73][74][75][76]
+
+In 2009, there were 270,098 people residing in the Comune of Venice (the population estimate of 272,000 inhabitants includes around 60,000 in the historic city of Venice (Centro storico), 176,000 in Terraferma (the mainland); and 31,000 on other islands in the lagoon); 47.4% were male and 52.6% were female. Minors (ages 18 and younger) were 14.36% of the population compared to pensioners who numbered 25.7%. This compared with the Italian average of 18.06% and 19.94%, respectively. The average age of Venice residents was 46 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Venice declined by 0.2%, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.85%.[77] The population in the historic old city declined much faster: from about 120,000 in 1980 to about 60,000 in 2009,[78] and to below 55,000 in 2016.[79]
+
+As of 2018[update], 86% of the population was Italian. The largest immigrant groups include:  5,934 (2.3%) Bangladeshis, 5,578 (2.1%) Romanians, 4,460 (1.7%) Moldovans, 3,351 (1.3%) Chinese, and 2,511 (1%) Ukrainians.[80]
+
+Venice is predominantly Roman Catholic (85.0% of the resident population in the area of the Patriarchate of Venice in 2018[81]), but because of the long-standing relationship with Constantinople, there is also a noticeable Orthodox presence; and as a result of immigration, there is now a large Muslim community (about 25,000 or 9.5% of city population in 2018[82]) and some Hindu, and Buddhist inhabitants.
+
+Since 1991, the Church of San Giorgio dei Greci in Venice has become the see of the Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of Italy and Malta and Exarchate of Southern Europe, a Byzantine-rite diocese under the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.[83]
+
+There is also a historic Jewish community in Venice. The Venetian Ghetto was the area in which Jews were compelled to live under the Venetian Republic. The word ghetto, originally Venetian, is now found in many languages. Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, written in the late 16th century, features Shylock, a Venetian Jew. The first complete and uncensored printed edition of the Talmud was printed in Venice by Daniel Bomberg in 1523. During World War II, Jews were rounded up in Venice and deported to extermination camps. Since the end of the war, the Jewish population of Venice has declined from 1500 to about 500.[84] Only around 30 Jews live in the former ghetto which houses the city's major Jewish institutions.[85] In modern times, Venice has an eruv,[86] used by the Jewish community.
+
+The whole pensolon (municipality) is divided into 6 boroughs. 
+One of these (the historic city) is in turn divided into six areas called sestieri:
+
+Each sestiere was administered by a procurator and his staff. 
+Now, each sestiere is a statistical and historical area without any degree of autonomy. 
+The six fingers or phalanges of the ferro on the bow of a gondola represent the six sestieri.
+
+The sestieri are divided into parishes – initially 70 in 1033, but reduced under Napoleon, and now numbering just 38. These parishes predate the sestieri, which were created in about 1170. Each parish exhibited unique characteristics but also belonged to an integrated network. Each community chose its own patron saint, staged its own festivals, congregated around its own market center, constructed its own bell towers, and developed its own customs.[87]
+
+Other islands of the Venetian Lagoon do not form part of any of the sestieri, having historically enjoyed a considerable degree of autonomy.
+
+Each sestiere has its own house numbering system. Each house has a unique number in the district, from one to several thousand, generally numbered from one corner of the area to another, but not usually in a readily understandable manner.
+
+The 6 boroughs of the whole comune of Venice
+
+The whole comune (red) in the Metropolitan City of Venice
+
+Ca' Loredan, Venice's City Hall
+
+The legislative body of the Comune is the Consiglio Comunale ("city council"), which is composed of 45 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually[clarification needed] to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee (Giunta Comunale), composed of 12 assessors nominated and presided over by a directly elected Mayor.
+
+Venice was governed by center-left parties from the 1990s until the 2010s, when the mayor started to be elected directly. Its region, Veneto, has long been a conservative stronghold, with the coalition between the regionalist Lega Nord and the center-right Forza Italia winning absolute majorities of the electorate in many elections at communal, national, and regional levels.
+
+In June 2015, after a corruption scandal that forced the center-left mayor Giorgio Orsoni to resign, Venice elected for the first time a conservative directly-elected mayor: the center-right businessman Luigi Brugnaro won the election in the second round of voting, with 53% of the votes against the leftist magistrate, and member of the Italian Senate, Felice Casson, who led in the first round with 38% of the votes.[88]
+
+The municipality of Venice is subdivided into six administrative boroughs (municipalità). Each borough is governed by a council (Consiglio) and a president, elected contextually[clarification needed] to the city Mayor. The urban organisation is dictated by Article 114 of the Italian constitution. The boroughs have the power to advise the mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the city council; in addition, they are supplied with autonomous funding to finance local activities. The boroughs are:
+
+Lagoon area:
+
+Mainland (terraferma), annexed with a Royal Decree, in 1926, to the municipality of Venezia:
+
+After the 2015 elections, five of the six boroughs are governed by the Democratic Party and its allies, and one by the center-right mayoral majority:
+
+Venice's economy has changed throughout history. Although there is little specific information about the earliest years, it is likely that an important source of the city's prosperity was the trade in slaves, captured in central Europe and sold to North Africa and the Levant. Venice's location at the head of the Adriatic, and directly south of the terminus of the Brenner Pass over the Alps, would have given it a distinct advantage as a middleman in this important trade. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice was a major center for commerce and trade, as it controlled a vast sea-empire, and became an extremely wealthy European city and a leader in political and economic affairs,.[89] From the 11th century until the 15th century, pilgrimages to the Holy Land were offered in Venice. Other ports such as Genoa, Pisa, Marseille, Ancona, and Dubrovnik were hardly able to compete with the well organized transportation of pilgrims from Venice.[90][91]
+
+This all changed by the 17th century, when Venice's trade empire was taken over by countries such as Portugal, and its importance as a naval power was reduced. In the 18th century, then, it became a major agricultural and industrial exporter. The 18th century's biggest industrial complex was the Venice Arsenal, and the Italian Army still uses it today (even though some space has been used for major theatrical and cultural productions, and as spaces for art).[92] Since World War II, many Venetians have moved to the neighboring cities of Mestre and Porto Marghera, seeking employment as well as affordable housing.[93]
+
+Today, Venice's economy is mainly based on tourism, shipbuilding (mainly in Mestre and Porto Marghera), services, trade, and industrial exports.[89] Murano glass production in Murano and lace production in Burano are also highly important to the economy.[89]
+
+The city is facing financial challenges. In late 2016, it had a major deficit in its budget and debts in excess of  €400 million. "In effect, the place is bankrupt", according to a report by The Guardian.[94] Many locals are leaving the historic center due to rapidly increasing rents. The declining native population affects the character of the city, as an October 2016 National Geographic article pointed out in its subtitle: "Residents are abandoning the city, which is in danger of becoming an overpriced theme park".[11] The city is also facing other challenges, including erosion, pollution, subsidence, an excessive number of tourists in peak periods, and problems caused by oversized cruise ships sailing close to the banks of the historical city.[11]
+
+In June 2017, Italy was required to bail out two Venetian banks—the Banca Popolare di Vicenza and Veneto Banca—to prevent their bankruptcies.[95] Both banks would be wound down and their assets that have value taken over by another Italian bank, Intesa Sanpaolo, which would receive €5.2 billion as compensation. The Italian government would be responsible for losses from any uncollectible loans from the closed banks. The cost would be €5.2 billion, with further guarantees to cover bad loans totaling €12 billion.[96]
+
+Venice is an important destination for tourists who want to see its celebrated art and architecture.[97] The city hosts up to 60,000 tourists per day (2017 estimate). Estimates of the annual number of tourists vary from 22 million to 30 million.[98][99][100] This "overtourism" creates overcrowding and environmental problems for Venice's ecosystem. By 2017, UNESCO was considering the addition of Venice to its "In-Danger" list, which includes historical ruins in war-torn countries. To reduce the number of visitors, who are causing irreversible changes in Venice, the agency supports limiting the number of cruise ships[101][102] as well as implementing a strategy for more sustainable tourism.[103]
+
+Tourism has been a major part of the Venetian economy since the 18th century, when Venice—with its beautiful cityscape, uniqueness, and rich musical and artistic cultural heritage—was a stop on the Grand Tour. In the 19th century, Venice became a fashionable centre for the "rich and famous", who often stayed and dined at luxury establishments such as the Danieli Hotel and the Caffè Florian, and continued to be a fashionable city into the early 20th century.[97] In the 1980s, the Carnival of Venice was revived; and the city has become a major centre of international conferences and festivals, such as the prestigious Venice Biennale and the Venice Film Festival, which attract visitors from all over the world for their theatrical, cultural, cinematic, artistic, and musical productions.[97]
+
+Today, there are numerous attractions in Venice, such as St Mark's Basilica, the Doge's Palace, the Grand Canal, and the Piazza San Marco. The Lido di Venezia is also a popular international luxury destination, attracting thousands of actors, critics, celebrities, and others in the cinematic industry. The city also relies heavily on the cruise business.[97] The Cruise Venice Committee has estimated that cruise ship passengers spend more than 150 million euros (US$193 million) annually in the city, according to a 2015 report.[104] Other reports, however, point out that such day-trippers spend relatively little in the few hours of their visits to the city.[94]
+
+Venice is regarded by some as a tourist trap, and by others as a "living museum".[97] Unlike most other places in Western Europe, and the world, Venice has become widely known for its element of elegant decay. The competition for foreigners to buy homes in Venice has made prices rise so high that numerous inhabitants are forced to move to more affordable areas of Veneto and Italy.
+
+The need to protect the city's historic environment and fragile canals, in the face of a possible loss of jobs produced by cruise tourism, has seen the Italian Transport Ministry attempt to introduce a ban on large cruise ships visiting the city. A 2013 ban would have allowed only cruise ships smaller than 40,000-gross tons to enter the Giudecca Canal and St Mark's basin.[105] In January, a regional court scrapped the ban, but some global cruise lines indicated that they would continue to respect it until a long-term solution for the protection of Venice is found.[106]
+
+For example, P&O Cruises removed Venice from its summer schedule, Holland America moved one of its ships from this area to Alaska, and Cunard is reducing (in 2017 and further in 2018) the number of visits by its ships. As a result, the Venice Port Authority estimated an 11.4 per cent drop in cruise ships arriving in 2017 versus 2016, leading to a similar reduction in income for Venice.[107]
+
+Having failed in its 2013 bid to ban oversized cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal, the city switched to a new strategy in mid-2017, banning the creation of any additional hotels. Currently, there are over 24,000 hotel rooms. The ban does not affect short-term rentals in the historic center which are causing an increase in the cost of living for the native residents of Venice.[94] The city had already banned any additional fast food "take-away" outlets, to retain the historic character of the city, which was another reason for freezing the number of hotel rooms.[108] Fewer than half of the millions of annual visitors stay overnight, however.[98][99]
+
+The city also considered a ban on wheeled suitcases, but settled for banning hard plastic wheels for transporting cargo from May 2015.[109]
+
+In addition to accelerating erosion of the ancient city's foundations and creating some pollution in the lagoon,[11][110] cruise ships dropping an excessive number of day trippers can make St. Marks Square and other popular attractions too crowded to walk through during the peak season. Government officials see little value to the economy from the "eat and flee" tourists who stay for less than a day, which is typical of those from cruise ships.[111]
+
+Some locals continued to aggressively lobby for new methods that would reduce the number of cruise ship passengers; their estimate indicated that there are up to 30,000 such sightseers per day at peak periods,[100] while others concentrate their effort on promoting a more responsible way of visiting the city.[112] An unofficial referendum to ban large cruise ships was held in June 2017. More than 18,000 people voted at 60 polling booths set up by activists, and 17,874 favored banning large ships from the lagoon. The population of Venice at the time was about 50,000.[111] The organizers of the referendum backed a plan to build a new cruise ship terminal at one of the three entrances to the Venetian Lagoon. Passengers would be transferred to the historic area in smaller boats.[113][114]
+
+On 28 February 2019, the Venice City Council voted in favour of a new municipal regulation requiring day-trippers visiting the historic centre, and the islands in the lagoon, to pay a new access fee. The extra revenue from the fee would be used for cleaning, maintaining security, reducing the financial burden on residents of Venice, and to "allow Venetians to live with more decorum". The new tax would be between €3 and €10 per person, depending on the expected tourist flow into the old city. The fee could be waived for certain types of travelers: including students, children under the age of 6, voluntary workers, residents of the Veneto region, and participants in sporting events.[115] Overnight visitors, who already pay a "stay" tax and account for around 40% of Venice's yearly total of 28 million visitors,[116] would also be exempted. The access fee was expected to come into effect in September 2019 but has been postponed until 1 January 2020.[117]
+
+Having failed in its 2013 bid to ban oversized cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal, the Italian inter-ministerial Comitatone overseeing Venice's lagoon released an official directive in November 2017 to keep the largest cruise ships away from the Piazza San Marco and the entrance to the Grand Canal.[118][119][120] Ships over 55,000 tons will be required to follow a specific route through the Vittorio Emmanuele III Canal to reach Marghera, an industrial area of the mainland, where a passenger terminal would be built.[121]
+
+In 2014, the United Nations warned the city that it may be placed on UNESCO's List of World Heritage in Danger sites unless cruise ships are banned from the canals near the historic centre.[122]
+
+According to the officials, the plan to create an alternate route for ships would require extensive dredging of the canal and the building of a new port, which would take four years, in total, to complete. However, the activist group No Grandi Navi (No big Ships), argued that the effects of pollution caused by the ships would not be diminished by the re-routing plan.[123][124]
+
+On 2 June 2019, the cruise ship MSC Opera rammed a tourist riverboat, the River Countess, which was docked on the Giudecca Canal, injuring five people, in addition to causing property damage. The incident immediately led to renewed demands to ban large cruise ships from the Giudecca Canal,[125] including a Twitter message to that effect posted by the environment minister. The city's mayor urged authorities to accelerate the steps required for cruise ships to begin using the alternate Vittorio Emanuele canal.[126] Italy's transport minister spoke of a "solution to protect both the lagoon and tourism ... after many years of inertia" but specifics were not reported.[127][128] As of June 2019[update], the 2017 plan to establish an alternative route for large ships, preventing them from coming near the historic area of the city, has not yet been approved.[124]
+
+Nonetheless, the Italian government released an announcement on 7 August 2019 that it would begin rerouting cruise ships larger than 1000 tonnes away from the historic city's Giudecca Canal. For the last four months of 2019, all heavy vessels will dock at the Fusina and Lombardia terminals which are still on the lagoon but away from the central islands. By 2020, one-third of all cruise ships will be rerouted, according to Danilo Toninelli, the minister for Venice. Preparation work for the Vittorio Emanuele Canal needed to begin soon for a long-term solution, according to the Cruise Lines International Association.[129][130] In the long-term, space for ships would be provided at new terminals, perhaps at Chioggia or Lido San Nicolo. That plan was not imminent however, since public consultations had not yet begun. Over 1.5 million people per year arrive in Venice on cruise ships.[131]
+
+Venice is built on an archipelago of 118 islands[3] in a shallow, 550 km2 (212 sq mi) lagoon,[132] connected by 400 bridges[133] over 177 canals. In the 19th century, a causeway to the mainland brought the railroad to Venice. The adjoining Ponte della Libertà road causeway and terminal parking facilities in Tronchetto island and Piazzale Roma were built during the 20th century. Beyond these rail and road terminals on the northern edge of the city, transportation within the city's historic centre remains, as it was in centuries past, entirely on water or on foot. Venice is Europe's largest urban car-free area and is unique in Europe in having remained a sizable functioning city in the 21st century entirely without motorcars or trucks.
+
+The classic Venetian boat is the gondola (plural: gondole), although it is now mostly used for tourists, or for weddings, funerals, or other ceremonies, or as traghetti (sing.: traghetto) to cross the Grand Canal in lieu of a nearby bridge. The traghetti are operated by two oarsmen. For some years there were seven such boats; but by 2017, only three remained.[134]
+
+There are approximately 400 licensed gondoliers in Venice, in their distinctive livery, and a similar number of boats, down from 10,000 two centuries ago.[135][136] Many gondolas are lushly appointed with crushed velvet seats and Persian rugs. At the front of each gondola that works in the city, there is a large piece of metal called the fèro (iron). Its shape has evolved through the centuries, as documented in many well-known paintings. Its form, topped by a likeness of the Doge's hat, became gradually standardized, and was then fixed by local law. It consists of six bars pointing forward representing the sestieri of the city, and one that points backwards representing the Giudecca.[136][137] A lesser-known boat is the smaller, simpler, but similar, sandolo.
+
+Venice's small islands were enhanced during the Middle Ages by the dredging of soil to raise the marshy ground above the tides. The resulting canals encouraged the flourishing of a nautical culture which proved central to the economy of the city. Today those canals still provide the means for transport of goods and people within the city.
+
+The maze of canals threading through the city requires more than 400 bridges to permit the flow of foot traffic. In 2011, the city opened the Ponte della Costituzione, the fourth bridge across the Grand Canal, which connects the Piazzale Roma bus-terminal area with the Venezia Santa Lucia railway station. The other bridges are the original Ponte di Rialto, the Ponte dell'Accademia, and the Ponte degli Scalzi.
+
+Azienda del Consorzio Trasporti Veneziano (ACTV) is a public company responsible for public transportation in Venice.
+
+The main means of public transportation consists of motorised waterbuses (vaporetti) which ply regular routes along the Grand Canal and between the city's islands. Private motorised water taxis are also active. The only gondole still in common use by Venetians are the traghetti, foot passenger ferries crossing the Grand Canal at certain points where there are no convenient bridges. Other gondole are rented by tourists on an hourly basis.[136]
+
+The Venice People Mover is an elevated shuttle train public transit system connecting Tronchetto island with its car parking facility with Piazzale Roma where visitors arrive in the city by bus, taxi, or automobile. The train makes a stop at the Marittima cruise terminal at the Port of Venice.[138]
+
+Lido and Pellestrina are two islands forming a barrier between the southern Venetian Lagoon and the Adriatic Sea. On those islands, road traffic, including bus service, is allowed. Vaporetti link them with other islands (Venice, Murano, Burano) and with the peninsula of Cavallino-Treporti.
+
+The mainland of Venice is composed of 5 boroughs: Mestre-Carpenedo, Marghera, Chirignago-Zelarino, and Favaro Veneto. Mestre is the center and the most populous urban area of the mainland. There are several bus routes and two Translohr tramway lines. Several bus routes and one of the tramway lines link the mainland with Piazzale Roma, the main bus station in Venice, via Ponte della Libertà, the road bridge connecting the mainland with the group of islands that comprise the historic center of Venice.
+
+The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Venice, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 52 min. Only 12.2% of public transit riders ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 10 min, while 17.6% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 7 kilometres (4.3 mi), while 12% travel for over 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) in a single direction.[139]
+
+People Mover in Venice
+
+A map of the waterbus routes in Venezia
+
+Bus in Mestre
+
+Tram in Venice leaving Piazzale Roma
+
+Venice is serviced by regional and national trains, including trains to Florence (1h53), Milan (2h13), Turin (3h10), Rome (3h33), and Naples (4h50). In addition there are international day trains to Zurich, Innsbruck, Munich, and Vienna, plus overnight sleeper services, to Paris and Dijon on Thello trains, and to Munich and Vienna via ÖBB.
+
+Both stations are managed by Grandi Stazioni; they are linked by the Ponte della Libertà (Liberty Bridge) between the mainland and the city center.
+
+Other stations in the municipality are Venezia Porto Marghera, Venezia Carpenedo, Venezia Mestre Ospedale, and Venezia Mestre Porta Ovest.
+
+The Port of Venice (Italian: Porto di Venezia) is the eighth-busiest commercial port in Italy and is a major hub for the cruise sector in the Mediterranean. It is one of the major Italian ports and is included in the list of the leading European ports which are located on the strategic nodes of trans-European networks. In 2002, the port handled 262,337 containers. In 2006, 30,936,931 tonnes passed through the port, of which 14,541,961 was commercial traffic, and saw 1,453,513 passengers.[140]
+
+Venice is served by the Marco Polo International Airport (Aeroporto di Venezia Marco Polo), named in honor of its noted citizen. The airport is on the mainland and was rebuilt away from the coast. Public transport from the airport takes one to:
+
+Some airlines market Treviso Airport in Treviso, 30 kilometres (19 mi) from Venice, as a Venice gateway. Some simply advertise flights to "Venice", while naming the actual airport only in small print.[144] There are public buses from this airport to Venice.
+
+Venezia-Lido "Giovanni Nicelli",[145] a public airport suitable for smaller aircraft, is at the NE end of Lido di Venezia. It has a 994-metre (3,261 ft) grass runway.
+
+The most Venetian sport is probably Voga alla Veneta [it] ("Venetian-style rowing"), also commonly called voga veneta. A technique invented in the Venetian Lagoon, Venetian rowing is unusual in that the rower(s), one or more, row standing, looking forward. Today, Voga alla Veneta is not only the way the gondoliers row tourists around Venice but also the way Venetians row for pleasure and sport. Many races called regata(e) happen throughout the year.[146] The culminating event of the rowing season is the day of the "Regata Storica", which occurs on the first Sunday of September each year.[147]
+
+The main football club in the city is Venezia F.C., founded in 1907, which currently plays in the Serie B. Their ground, the Stadio Pierluigi Penzo, situated in Sant'Elena, is one of the oldest venues in Italy.
+
+The local basketball club is Reyer Venezia, founded in 1872 as the gymnastics club Società Sportiva Costantino Reyer, and in 1907 as the basketball club. Reyer currently plays in the Lega Basket Serie A. The men's team were the Italian champions in 1942, 1943, and 2017. Their arena is the Palasport Giuseppe Taliercio, situated in Mestre. Luigi Brugnaro is both the president of the club and the mayor of the city.
+
+Venice is a major international centre for higher education. The city hosts the Ca' Foscari University of Venice, founded in 1868;[148] the Università Iuav di Venezia, founded in 1926;[149] Venice International University, an international research center, founded in 1995 and located on the island of San Servolo;[150] and the EIUC-European Inter-University Centre for Human Rights and Democratisation, located on the island of Lido di Venezia.[151]
+
+Other Venetian institutions of higher education are: the Accademia di Belle Arti (Academy of Fine Arts), established in 1750, whose first chairman was Giovanni Battista Piazzetta;[152] and the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory of Music, which was first established in 1876 as a high school and musical society, later (1915) became Liceo Musicale, and finally (1940), when its director was Gian Francesco Malipiero, the State Conservatory of Music.[153]
+
+Venice has long been a source of inspiration for authors, playwrights, and poets, and at the forefront of the technological development of printing and publishing.
+
+Two of the most noted Venetian writers were Marco Polo in the Middle Ages and, later, Giacomo Casanova. Polo (1254–1324) was a merchant who voyaged to the Orient. His series of books, co-written with Rustichello da Pisa and titled Il Milione provided important knowledge of the lands east of Europe, from the Middle East to China, Japan, and Russia. Giacomo Casanova (1725–1798) was a prolific writer and adventurer best remembered for his autobiography, Histoire De Ma Vie (Story of My Life), which links his colourful lifestyle to the city of Venice.
+
+Venetian playwrights followed the old Italian theatre tradition of Commedia dell'arte. Ruzante (1502–1542), Carlo Goldoni (1707–1793), and Carlo Gozzi (1720–1806) used the Venetian dialect extensively in their comedies.
+
+Venice has also inspired writers from abroad. Shakespeare set Othello and The Merchant of Venice in the city, as did Thomas Mann his novel, Death in Venice (1912). The French writer Philippe Sollers spent most of his life in Venice and published  A Dictionary For Lovers of Venice in 2004.
+
+The city features prominently in Henry James's The Aspern Papers and The Wings of the Dove. It is also visited in Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited and Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time. Perhaps the best-known children's book set in Venice is The Thief Lord, written by the German author Cornelia Funke.
+
+The poet Ugo Foscolo (1778–1827), born in Zante, an island that at the time belonged to the Republic of Venice, was also a revolutionary who wanted to see a free republic established in Venice following its fall to Napoleon.
+
+Venice also inspired the poetry of Ezra Pound, who wrote his first literary work in the city. Pound died in 1972, and his remains are buried in Venice's cemetery island of San Michele.
+
+Venice is also linked to the technological aspects of writing. The city was the location of one of Italy's earliest printing presses called Aldine Press, established by Aldus Manutius in 1494.[154] From this beginning Venice developed as an important typographic center. Around fifteen percent of all printing of the fifteenth century came from Venice,[155] and even as late as the 18th century was responsible for printing half of Italy's published books.[citation needed]
+
+The city is a particularly popular setting for essays, novels, and other works of fictional or non-fictional literature. Examples of these include:
+
+Additionally, Thomas Mann's novella, Death in Venice (1912), was the basis for Benjamin Britten's eponymous opera (1973).
+
+Some words with a Venetian etymology include arsenal, ciao, ghetto, gondola, imbroglio, lagoon, lazaret, lido, Montenegro, and regatta.[156]
+
+By the end of the 15th century, Venice had become the European capital of printing, having 417 printers by 1500, and being one of the first cities in Italy (after Subiaco and Rome) to have a printing press, after those established in Germany. The most important printing office was the Aldine Press of Aldus Manutius; which in 1497 issued the first printed work of Aristotle; in 1499 printed the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, considered the most beautiful book of the Renaissance; and established modern punctuation, page format, and italic type.
+
+Venice, especially during the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and Baroque periods, was a major centre of art and developed a unique style known as the Venetian School. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Venice, along with Florence and Rome, became one of the most important centres of art in Europe, and numerous wealthy Venetians became patrons of the arts. Venice at the time was a rich and prosperous Maritime Republic, which controlled a vast sea and trade empire.[157]
+
+In the 16th century, Venetian painting was developed through influences from the Paduan School and Antonello da Messina, who introduced the oil painting technique of the Van Eyck brothers. It is signified by a warm colour scale and a picturesque use of colour. Early masters were the Bellini and Vivarini families, followed by Giorgione and Titian, then Tintoretto and Veronese. In the early 16th century, there was rivalry in Venetian painting between the disegno and colorito techniques.[158]
+
+Canvases (the common painting surface) originated in Venice during the early Renaissance. These early canvases were generally rough.
+
+In the 18th century, Venetian painting had a revival with Tiepolo's decorative painting and Canaletto's and Guardi's panoramic views.
+
+Venice is built on unstable mud-banks, and had a very crowded city centre by the Middle Ages. On the other hand, the city was largely safe from riot, civil feuds, and invasion much earlier than most European cities. These factors, with the canals and the great wealth of the city, made for unique building styles.
+
+Venice has a rich and diverse architectural style, the most prominent of which is the Gothic style. Venetian Gothic architecture is a term given to a Venetian building style combining the use of the Gothic lancet arch with the curved ogee arch, due to Byzantine and Ottoman influences. The style originated in 14th-century Venice, with a confluence of Byzantine style from Constantinople, Islamic influences from Spain and Venice's eastern trading partners, and early Gothic forms from mainland Italy.[citation needed] Chief examples of the style are the Doge's Palace and the Ca' d'Oro in the city. The city also has several Renaissance and Baroque buildings, including the Ca' Pesaro and the Ca' Rezzonico.
+
+Venetian taste was conservative and Renaissance architecture only really became popular in buildings from about the 1470s.  More than in the rest of Italy, it kept much of the typical form of the Gothic palazzi, which had evolved to suit Venetian conditions. In turn the transition to Baroque architecture was also fairly gentle. This gives the crowded buildings on the Grand Canal and elsewhere an essential harmony, even where buildings from very different periods sit together. For example, round-topped arches are far more common in Renaissance buildings than elsewhere.
+
+It can be argued that Venice produced the best and most refined Rococo designs. At the time, the Venitian economy was in decline.  It had lost most of its maritime power, was lagging behind its rivals in political importance, and its society had become decadent, with tourism increasingly the mainstay of the economy. But Venice remained a centre of fashion.[159] Venetian rococo was well known as rich and luxurious, with usually very extravagant designs. Unique Venetian furniture types included the divani da portego, and long rococo couches and pozzetti, objects meant to be placed against the wall. Bedrooms of rich Venetians were usually sumptuous and grand, with rich damask, velvet, and silk drapery and curtains, and beautifully carved rococo beds with statues of putti, flowers, and angels.[159] Venice was especially known for its beautiful girandole mirrors, which remained among, if not the, finest in Europe. Chandeliers were usually very colourful, using Murano glass to make them look more vibrant and stand out from others; and precious stones and materials from abroad were used, since Venice still held a vast trade empire. Lacquer was very common, and many items of furniture were covered with it, the most noted being lacca povera (poor lacquer), in which allegories and images of social life were painted. Lacquerwork and Chinoiserie were particularly common in bureau cabinets.[160]
+
+Venice is known for its ornate glass-work, known as Venetian glass, which is world-renowned for being colourful, elaborate, and skilfully made.
+
+Many of the important characteristics of these objects had been developed by the 13th century. Toward the end of that century, the center of the Venetian glass industry moved to Murano, an offshore island in Venice. The glass made there is known as Murano glass.
+
+Byzantine craftsmen played an important role in the development of Venetian glass. When Constantinople was sacked in the Fourth Crusade in 1204, some fleeing artisans came to Venice. This happened again when the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, supplying Venice with still more glassworkers. By the 16th century, Venetian artisans had gained even greater control over the color and transparency of their glass, and had mastered a variety of decorative techniques.
+
+Despite efforts to keep Venetian glassmaking techniques within Venice, they became known elsewhere, and Venetian-style glassware was produced in other Italian cities and other countries of Europe.
+
+Some of the most important brands of glass in the world today are still produced in the historical glass factories on Murano. They are: Venini, Barovier & Toso, Pauly, Millevetri, and Seguso.[161] Barovier & Toso is considered one of the 100 oldest companies in the world, formed in 1295.
+
+The Carnival of Venice is held annually in the city, It lasts for around two weeks and ends on Shrove Tuesday. Venetian masks are worn.
+
+The Venice Biennale is one of the most important events in the arts calendar. In 1895 an Esposizione biennale artistica nazionale (biennial exhibition of Italian art) was inaugurated.[162] In September 1942, the activities of the Biennale were interrupted by the war, but resumed in 1948.[163]
+
+The Festa del Redentore is held in mid-July. It began as a feast to give thanks for the end of the plague of 1576. A bridge of barges is built connecting Giudecca to the rest of Venice, and fireworks play an important role.
+
+The Venice Film Festival (Italian Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica di Venezia) is the oldest film festival in the world.[164] Founded by Count Giuseppe Volpi di Misurata in 1932 as the Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica, the festival has since taken place every year in late August or early September on the island of the Lido. Screenings take place in the historic Palazzo del Cinema on the Lungomare Marconi. It is one of the world's most prestigious film festivals and is part of the Venice Biennale.
+
+The city of Venice in Italy has played an important role in the development of the music of Italy. The Venetian state – i.e., the medieval Republic of Venice – was often popularly called the "Republic of Music", and an anonymous Frenchman of the 17th century is said to have remarked that "In every home, someone is playing a musical instrument or singing. There is music everywhere."[165]
+
+During the 16th century, Venice became one of the most important musical centers of Europe, marked by a characteristic style of composition (the Venetian school) and the development of the Venetian polychoral style under composers such as Adrian Willaert, who worked at St Mark's Basilica. Venice was the early center of music printing; Ottaviano Petrucci began publishing music almost as soon as this technology was available, and his publishing enterprise helped to attract composers from all over Europe, especially from France and Flanders. By the end of the century, Venice was known for the splendor of its music, as exemplified in the "colossal style" of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, which used multiple choruses and instrumental groups. Venice was also the home of many noted composers during the baroque period, such as Antonio Vivaldi, Ippolito Ciera, Giovanni Picchi, and Girolamo Dalla Casa, to name but a few.
+
+Venice is the home of numerous symphony orchestras such as, the Orchestra della Fenice, Rondò Veneziano, Interpreti Veneziani, and Venice Baroque Orchestra.
+
+Venice has been the setting or chosen location of numerous films, games, works of fine art and literature (including essays, fiction, non-fiction, and poems), music videos, television shows, and other cultural references.
+
+Examples of films set or at least partially filmed in Venice include:[168]
+
+The city has been the setting for music videos of such songs as Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Dear Prudence"  in 1983 and Madonna's "Like a Virgin" in 1984.
+
+The city is the setting for parts of such video games as Assassin's Creed II[170] and Tomb Raider II.[171] It has also served as inspiration for the fictional city of Altissia, in Final Fantasy XV.[172] The city also serves as a setting for The House of the Dead 2. The city appears as the first main level in Sly 3: Honor Among Thieves. It is also featured in Valve's first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as the inspiration for the multiplayer map "Canals".
+
+Venice was the base theme for Soleanna, one of the hub worlds in Sonic the Hedgehog. One of the nine playable characters, Silver the Hedgehog, was once a mink named "Venice" during development. The idea was ultimately scrapped.
+
+In April 2018, Overwatch released the map Rialto, based on the city center.
+
+Its splendid architecture, artworks, landscapes, gondolas, the alternance of high and low tides, the reflections of light and colors, and the unusual daily scenes in a city living on water, make of Venice and its islands a paradise for photographers both professional and amateur. Fulvio Roiter has probably been the pioneer in artistic photography in Venice,[173] followed by a number of photographers whose works are often reproduced on postcards, thus reaching a widest international popular exposure.
+
+Venetian cuisine is characterized by seafood, but also includes garden products from the islands of the lagoon, rice from the mainland, game, and polenta. Venice is not known for a peculiar cuisine of its own: it combines local traditions with influences stemming from age-old contacts with distant countries.[clarification needed] These include sarde in saór (sardines marinated to preserve them for long voyages); bacalà mantecato (a recipe based on Norwegian stockfish and extra-virgin olive oil); bisàto (marinated eel); risi e bisi – rice, peas and (unsmoked) bacon;[174] fegato alla veneziana, Venetian-style veal liver; risòto col néro de sépe (risotto with cuttlefish, blackened by their own ink); cichéti, refined and delicious tidbits (akin to tapas); antipasti (appetizers); and prosecco, an effervescent, mildly sweet wine.
+
+In addition, Venice is known for the golden, oval-shaped cookies called baìcoli, and for other types of sweets, such as: pan del pescaór (bread of the fisherman); cookies with almonds and pistachio nuts; cookies with fried Venetian cream, or the bussolài (butter biscuits and shortbread made in the shape of a ring or an "S") from the island of Burano; the galàni or cróstoli (angel wings);[175] the frìtole (fried spherical doughnuts); the fregolòtta (a crumbly cake with almonds); a milk pudding called rosàda; and cookies called zaléti, whose ingredients include yellow maize flour.[176]
+
+The dessert tiramisù is generally thought to have been invented in Treviso in the 1970s,[177] and is popular in the Veneto area.
+
+In the 14th century, many young Venetian men began wearing tight-fitting multicoloured hose, the designs on which indicated the Compagnie della Calza ("Trouser Club") to which they belonged. The Venetian Senate passed sumptuary laws, but these merely resulted in changes in fashion in order to circumvent the law. Dull garments were worn over colourful ones, which then were cut to show the hidden colours resulting in the spread of men's "slashed" fashions in the 15th century.
+
+Today, Venice is a major fashion and shopping centre; not as important as Milan, Florence, and Rome, but on a par with Verona, Turin, Vicenza, Naples, and Genoa. Roberta di Camerino is the only major Italian fashion brand to be based in Venice.[178] Founded in 1945, it is renowned for its innovative handbags featuring hardware[clarification needed] by Venetian artisans and often covered in locally woven velvet, and has been credited with creating the concept of the easily recognisable status bag.[178] Many of the fashion boutiques and jewelry shops in the city are located on or near the Rialto Bridge and in the Piazza San Marco.
+
+In January 2000, the City of Venice and the Central Association of Cities and Communities of Greece (KEDKE) established, in pursuance to EC Regulation No. 2137/85, the Marco Polo System European Economic Interest Grouping (E.E.I.G.), to promote and realise European projects within transnational cultural and tourist fields, particularly in reference to the preservation and safeguarding of artistic and architectural heritage.
+
+Venice is twinned with:[179]
+
+In 2013, Venice announced that it wants to end the sister city relationship with St. Petersburg in opposition to laws Russia had passed against homosexuals and those who support gay rights.[180] However, as of 2020, the cities are still twinned.
+
+Venice has cooperation agreements with:[179]
+
+The name "Venezuela" is a Spanish diminutive of Venice (Veneziola).[181]Many additional places around the world are named after Venice: e.g.
+
+Others closely associated with the city include:
+
+L'Aquila, AbruzzoAosta, Aosta ValleyBari, ApuliaPotenza, Basilicata
+
+Catanzaro, CalabriaNaples, CampaniaBologna, Emilia-RomagnaTrieste, Friuli-Venezia Giulia
+
+Rome, LazioGenoa, LiguriaMilan, LombardyAncona, Marche
+
+Campobasso, MoliseTurin, PiedmontCagliari, SardiniaPalermo, Sicily
+
+Trento, Trentino-Alto Adige/SüdtirolFlorence, TuscanyPerugia, UmbriaVenice, Veneto
+

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+An auction is usually a process of buying and selling goods or services by offering them up for bid, taking bids, and then selling the item to the highest bidder or buying the item from the lowest bidder. Some exceptions to this definition exist and are described in the section about different types. The branch of economic theory dealing with auction types and participants' behavior in auctions is called auction theory.
+
+The open ascending price auction is arguably the most common form of auction in use throughout history.[1] Participants bid openly against one another, with each subsequent bid required to be higher than the previous bid.[2] An auctioneer may announce prices, bidders may call out their bids themselves or have a proxy call out a bid on their behalf, or bids may be submitted electronically with the highest current bid publicly displayed.[2]
+
+Auctions were and are applied for trade in diverse contexts. These contexts are antiques, paintings, rare collectibles, expensive wines, commodities, livestock, radio spectrum, used cars, even emission trading and many more.
+
+The word "auction" is derived from the Latin auctum, the supine of augeō, "I increase".[1] For most of history, auctions have been a relatively uncommon way to negotiate the exchange of goods and commodities. In practice, both haggling and sale by set-price have been significantly more common.[3] Indeed, before the 17th century only a few sporadic auctions were held.[4]
+
+Nonetheless, auctions have a long history, having been recorded as early as 500 BC.[5] According to Herodotus, in Babylon auctions of women for marriage were held annually. The auctions began with the woman the auctioneer considered to be the most beautiful and progressed to the least. It was considered illegal to allow a daughter to be sold outside of the auction method.[4] Attractive maidens were offered in a forward auction to determine the price to be paid by a swain, while in the case of maidens lacking attractivity a reverse auction was needed to determine the price to be paid to a swain.[6]
+
+During the Roman Empire, after a military victory, Roman soldiers would often drive a spear into the ground around which the spoils of war were left, to be auctioned off. Later slaves, often captured as the "spoils of war", were auctioned in the Forum under the sign of the spear, with the proceeds of sale going towards the war effort.[4]
+
+The Romans also used auctions to liquidate the assets of debtors whose property had been confiscated.[7] For example, Marcus Aurelius sold household furniture to pay off debts, the sales lasting for months.[8] One of the most significant historical auctions occurred in the year 193 AD when the entire Roman Empire was put on the auction block by the Praetorian Guard. On 28 March 193, the Praetorian Guard first killed emperor Pertinax, then offered the empire to the highest bidder. Didius Julianus outbid everyone else for the price of 6,250 drachmas per guard,[9][10][11] an act that initiated a brief civil war. Didius was then beheaded two months later when Septimius Severus conquered Rome.[7]
+
+From the end of the Roman Empire to the 18th century, auctions lost favor in Europe,[7] while they had never been widespread in Asia.[4] In China, the personal belongings of deceased buddhist monks were sold at auction as early as seventh century AD.[6]
+
+The first mention of auction appeared in Oxford English Dictionary in 1595.[6] In some parts of England during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries auctions by candle began to be used for the sale of goods and leaseholds.[14] In a candle auction, the end of the auction was signaled by the expiration of a candle flame, which was intended to ensure that no one could know exactly when the auction would end and make a last-second bid. Sometimes, other unpredictable events, such as a footrace, were used in place of the expiration of a candle. This type of auction was first mentioned in 1641 in the records of the House of Lords.[15] The practice rapidly became popular, and in 1660 Samuel Pepys' diary recorded two occasions when the Admiralty sold surplus ships "by an inch of candle". Pepys also relates a hint from a highly successful bidder, who had observed that, just before expiring, a candle-wick always flares up slightly: on seeing this, he would shout his final - and winning - bid.
+
+The London Gazette began reporting on the auctioning of artwork in the coffeehouses and taverns of London in the late 17th century.
+The first known auction house in the world was Stockholm Auction House, Sweden (Stockholms Auktionsverk), founded by Baron Claes Rålamb in 1674.[16][17] Sotheby's, currently the world's second-largest auction house,[16] was founded in London on 11 March 1744, when Samuel Baker presided over the disposal of "several hundred scarce and valuable" books from the library of an acquaintance. Christie's, now the world's largest auction house,[16] was founded by James Christie in 1766 in London[18] and published its first auction catalog in that year, although newspaper advertisements of Christie's sales dating from 1759 have been found.[19]
+
+Other early auction houses that are still in operation include Göteborgs Auktionsverk (1681), Dorotheum (1707), Uppsala auktionskammare (1731), Mallams (1788), Bonhams (1793), Phillips de Pury & Company (1796), Freeman's (1805) and Lyon & Turnbull (1826).[20]
+
+By the end of the 18th century, auctions of art works were commonly held in taverns and coffeehouses. These auctions were held daily, and auction catalogs were printed to announce available items. In some cases these catalogs were elaborate works of art themselves, containing considerable detail about the items being auctioned. At this time, Christie's established a reputation as a leading auction house, taking advantage of London's status as the major centre of the international art trade after the French Revolution. The Great Slave Auction took place in 1859 and is recorded as the largest single sale of enslaved people in U.S. history — 436 men, women and children.[21] During the American Civil War, goods seized by armies were sold at auction by the Colonel of the division. Thus some of today's auctioneers in the U.S. carry the unofficial title of "colonel".[8] Tobacco auctioneers in the southern United States in the late 19th century had a style that mixed traditions of 17th century England with chants of slaves from Africa.[22]
+
+The development of the internet has led to a significant rise in the use of auctions as auctioneers can solicit bids via the internet from a wide range of buyers in a much wider range of commodities than was previously practical.[3] 
+In the 1990s, Multi-attribute auction was invented to negotiate extensive conditions of construction and electricity contracts via auction.[23][24] Also in the 1990s, OnSale.com has developed Yankee auction as its trademark.[25] In the early 2000, Brazilian auction was invented as a new type of auctions to trade gas by electronic auctions for Linde plc in Brazil.[26][27]
+
+In 2008, the US National Auctioneers Association reported that the gross revenue of the auction industry for that year was approximately $268.4 billion, with the fastest growing sectors being agricultural, machinery, and equipment auctions and residential real estate auctions.[28]
+
+Auctions come in a variety of types and categories, which are sometimes not mutually exclusive. Auction types share features, which can be summarized into the following list. Typification of auctions is considered to be a part of Auction theory.[29]
+
+Auctions can differ in the number and type of participants. One should distinguish a buyer from a seller. A buyer pays to acquire a certain good or service, while a seller offers goods or services for money or barter exchange. There can be single or multiple buyers and single or multiple sellers in an auction. If just one seller and one buyer are participating, the issue is not considered to be an auction.[30][31][32]
+
+The forward auction is the most common case — a seller offers an item or items for sale and expects the highest price. The reverse auction is a type of auction in which the roles of the buyer and the seller are reversed, with the primary objective to drive purchase prices downward.[33] While ordinary auctions provide suppliers the opportunity to find the best price among interested buyers, reverse auctions or also buyer-determined auctions give buyers a chance to find the lowest-price supplier. During a reverse auction, suppliers may submit multiple offers, usually as a response to competing suppliers’ offers, bidding down the price of a good or service to the lowest price they are willing to receive. Reverse price auction is not obligatory 'descending-price' — reverse Dutch auction is an ascending-price auction because forward Dutch auctions are descending.[34] By revealing the competing bids in real-time to every participating supplier, reverse auctions promote “information transparency”. This, coupled with the dynamic bidding process, improves the chances of reaching the fair market value of the item.[35]
+
+Double auction is a combination of both, forward and reverse auctions. Walrasian auction or Walrasian tâtonnement is a double auction in which the auctioneer takes bids from both buyers and sellers in a market of multiple goods.[36] The auctioneer progressively either raises or drops the current proposed price depending on the bids of both buyers and sellers, the auction concluding when supply and demand exactly balance.[37] As a high price tends to dampen demand while a low price tends to increase demand, in theory there is a particular price somewhere in the middle where supply and demand will match.[36] A Barter double auction is an auction, where every participant has a demand and an offer consisting of multiple attributes and no money is involved.[38] For the mathematical modelling of satisfaction level Euclidean distance is used, where the offer and demand are treated as vectors.
+
+Auctions can be categorized into three types of procedures for auctions depending on the occurrence of a price development[32] during an auction run and its causes.
+
+Multiunit auctions sell more than one identical item at the same time, rather than having separate auctions for each. This type can be further classified as either a uniform price auction or a discriminatory price auction. An example for them is spectrum auctions.
+
+Combinatorial auction is any auction for the simultaneous sale of more than one item where bidders can place bids on an "all-or-nothing" basis on "packages" rather than just individual items. That is, a bidder can specify that he or she will pay for items A and B, but only if he or she gets both.[47] In combinatorial auctions, determining the winning bidder(s) can be a complex process where even the bidder with the highest individual bid is not guaranteed to win.[47] For example, in an auction with four items (W, X, Y and Z), if Bidder A offers $50 for items W & Y, Bidder B offers $30 for items W & X, Bidder C offers $5 for items X & Z and Bidder D offers $30 for items Y & Z, the winners will be Bidders B & D while Bidder A misses out because the combined bids of Bidders B & D is higher ($60) than for Bidders A and C ($55). Deferred-acceptance auction is a special case of a combinatorial auction.[48]
+
+Generalized first-price auction and Generalized second-price auction offer slots for multiple bidders instead of making a single deal. The bidders get the slots according to the ranking of their bids. The second-price ruling is derived from Vickrey auction and means the final deal sealing for the number one bidder is based on the second bidder's price.
+
+No-reserve auction (NR), also known as an absolute auction, is an auction in which the item for sale will be sold regardless of price.[49][50] From the seller's perspective, advertising an auction as having no reserve price can be desirable because it potentially attracts a greater number of bidders due to the possibility of a bargain.[49] If more bidders attend the auction, a higher price might ultimately be achieved because of heightened competition from bidders.[50] This contrasts with a reserve auction, where the item for sale may not be sold if the final bid is not high enough to satisfy the seller. In practice, an auction advertised as "absolute" or "no-reserve" may nonetheless still not sell to the highest bidder on the day, for example, if the seller withdraws the item from the auction or extends the auction period indefinitely,[51] although these practices may be restricted by law in some jurisdictions or under the terms of sale available from the auctioneer.
+
+Reserve auction is an auction where the item for sale may not be sold if the final bid is not high enough to satisfy the seller; that is, the seller reserves the right to accept or reject the highest bid.[50] In these cases a set 'reserve' price known to the auctioneer, but not necessarily to the bidders, may have been set, below which the item may not be sold.[49] If the seller announces to the bidders the reserve price, it is a public reserve price auction.[52]  In contrast, if the seller does not announce the reserve price before the sale but only after the sale, it is a secret reserve price auction.[53] The reserve price may be fixed or discretionary. In the latter case, the decision to accept a bid is deferred to the auctioneer, who may accept a bid that is marginally below it. A reserve auction is safer for the seller than a no-reserve auction as they are not required to accept a low bid, but this could result in a lower final price if less interest is generated in the sale.[50]
+
+All-pay auction is an auction in which all bidders must pay their bids regardless of whether they win. The highest bidder wins the item. All-pay auctions are primarily of academic interest, and may be used to model lobbying or bribery (bids are political contributions) or competitions such as a running race.[54] Bidding fee auction, a variation of all-pay auction, also known as a penny auction, often requires that each participant must pay a fixed price to place each bid, typically one penny (hence the name) higher than the current bid. When an auction's time expires, the highest bidder wins the item and must pay a final bid price.[55] Unlike in a conventional auction, the final price is typically much lower than the value of the item, but all bidders (not just the winner) will have paid for each bid placed; the winner will buy the item at a very low price (plus price of rights-to-bid used), all the losers will have paid, and the seller will typically receive significantly more than the value of the item.[56] Senior auction is a variation on the all-pay auction, and has a defined loser in addition to the winner. The top two bidders must pay their full final bid amounts, and only the highest wins the auction. The intent is to make the high bidders bid above their upper limits. In the final rounds of bidding, when the current losing party has hit their maximum bid, they are encouraged to bid over their maximum (seen as a small loss) to avoid losing their maximum bid with no return (a very large loss). Another variation of all-pay auction, Top-up auction is primarily used for charity events. Losing bidders must pay the difference between their bid and the next lowest bid. The winning bidder pays the amount bid for the item, without top-up. In a Chinese auction, the bidders pay sealed bids in advance and their probability to win grows with the relative size of their bids.[57]
+
+In usual auctions like the English one, bids are prices. In Dutch and Japanese auction, the bids are confirmations. In a version of Brazilian auction, bids are numbers of units being traded. Structure elements of a bid are called attributes. If a bid is one number like price, it is a single-attribute auction. If bids consists of multiple-attributes, it is a multi-attribute auction.[58][59]
+
+A Yankee auction is a single-attribute multiunit auction running like a Dutch auction, where the bids are the portions of a total amount of identical units.[60][61][62] The amount of auctioned items is firm in a Yankee auction unlike a Brazilian auction. The portions of the total amount, bidders can bid, are limited to lower numbers than the total amount. Therefore, only a portion of the total amount will be traded for the best price and the rest to the suboptimal prices.
+
+In an English auction, all bids are visible to all bidders and in a sealed-bid auction, bidders only get to know if their bid was the best. Best/not best auctions are sealed-bid auctions with multiple bids, where the bidders submit their prices like in English auction and get responses about the leadership of their bid.[63] Rank auction is an extension of best/not best auction, where the bidders also see the rank of their bids.[64] Traffic-light auction shows traffic lights to bidders as a response to their bids.[65] These traffic lights depend on the position of the last bid in the distribution of all bids.
+
+Buyout auction is an auction with an additional set price (the 'buyout' price) that any bidder can accept at any time during the auction, thereby immediately ending the auction and winning the item.[66] If no bidder chooses to utilize the buyout option before the end of bidding the highest bidder wins and pays their bid.[66] Buyout options can be either temporary or permanent.[66] In a temporary-buyout auction the option to buy out the auction is not available after the first bid is placed.[66] In a permanent-buyout auction the buyout option remains available throughout the entire auction until the close of bidding.[66] The buyout price can either remain the same throughout the entire auction, or vary throughout according to rules or simply as decided by the seller.[66]
+
+The winner selection in most auction selects the best bid. Unique bid auctions offers a special winner selection.[67] The winner is the bidder with the lowest unique bid. Chinese auction as already mentioned selects a winner partially based on random.[57] Swedish auction leaves the winner selection to the auctioneer.
+
+The final deal with the selected winner is not always conducted according to his or her final bid. In the case of the second-price ruling as in Vickrey auction, the final deal for the winner is based on the second bidder's price. Proxy bid is a special case of second-price ruling used by eBay, where a predefined increment is added to the second-price.
+
+Auctions with more than one winner are called multi-winner auctions.[68] Multiunit auction, Combinatorial auction, Generalized first-price auction and Generalized second-price auction are multi-winner auctions.
+
+Auctions can be cascaded, one after the other. For instance, Amsterdam auction is a type of premium auction which begins as an English auction. Once only two bidders remain, each submits a sealed bid. The higher bidder wins, paying either the first or second price. Both finalists receive a premium: a proportion of the excess of the second price over the third price (at which English auction ended).[69] Anglo-Dutch auction starts as an English or Japanese auction and then continues as a Dutch auction with a reduced number of bidders.[70][71] French auction is a preliminary sealed-bid auction before the actual auction, whose reserve price it determines. Sequential auction is an auction, where the bidders can participate in a sequence of auctions. Simultaneous Ascending Auction is an opposite of sequential auction, where the auctions are run in parallel.[72]
+
+Silent auction is a variant of the English auction in which bids are written on a sheet of paper. At the predetermined end of the auction, the highest listed bidder wins the item.[73] This auction is often used in charity events, with many items auctioned simultaneously and "closed" at a common finish time.[73][74] The auction is "silent" in that there is no auctioneer selling individual items,[73] the bidders writing their bids on a bidding sheet often left on a table near the item.[75] At charity auctions, bid sheets usually have a fixed starting amount, predetermined bid increments, and a "guaranteed bid" amount which works the same as a "buy now" amount. Other variations of this type of auction may include sealed bids.[73] The highest bidder pays the price he or she submitted.[73]
+
+In private value auctions, every bidder has his own valuation of the auctioned good.[76] Common value auction is opposite, where the valuation of auctioned good identical among the bidders.
+
+The range of auctions' contexts is extremely wide and one can buy almost anything, from a house to an endowment policy and everything in-between. Some of the recent developments have been the use of the Internet both as a means of disseminating information about various auctions and as a vehicle for hosting auctions themselves.
+
+As already mentioned in the history section, auctions have been used to trade commodified people from the very first. Auctions have been used in slave markets throughout history until modern times in today's Libya.[77][78][79] The word for slave auction in Atlantic slave trade is scramble. A child auction is a Swedish and Finnish historical practice of selling children into slavery-like conditions by authorities using a descending English auction. Trade of wives by auctions was also a common practice throughout history. For instance, in the old English custom of wife selling, a wife was divorced by selling her in a public auction for the highest bid. A virginity auction is the voluntary practice of individuals seeking to sell their own virginity to the highest bid.
+
+In some countries, such as Australia, auction is a common method for the sale of real estate. Used as an alternative to the private sale/treaty method, where a price is disclosed and offers can be made to purchase the property that price, auctions were traditionally used to sell property that, due to its unique characteristics, was difficult to determine a price for. The law does not require a vendor to disclose their reserve price prior to the auction. During the 1990s and 2000s, auction became the primary method for the sale of real estate in the two largest cities, Melbourne and Sydney. This was largely due to the fact that in a private sale the vendor has disclosed the price that they want, and potential purchasers would attempt to low-ball the price, whereas in an auction purchasers do not know what the vendor wants, and thus need to keep lifting the price until the reserve price is reached.
+
+The method has been the subject of increased controversy during the twenty-first century as house prices sky-rocketed. The rapidly rising housing market saw many homes, especially in Victoria and New South Wales, selling for significantly more than both the vendors' reserve price and the advertised price range. Subsequently, the auction systems' lack of transparency about the value of the property was brought into question, with estate agents and their vendor clients being accused of "under-quoting". Significant attention was given to the matter by the Australian media, with the government in Victoria eventually bowing to pressure and implementing changes to legislation in an effort to increase transparency.[80]
+
+A government auction is simply an auction held on behalf of a government body generally at a general sale. Items for sale are often surplus needed to be liquidated. Auctions ordered by estate executors enter the assets of individuals who have perhaps died intestate (those who have died without leaving a will), or in debt. In legal contexts where forced auctions occur, as when one's farm or house is sold at auction on the courthouse steps. Property seized for non-payment of property taxes, or under foreclosure, is sold in this manner. Police auctions are generally held at general auctions although some forces use online sites including eBay to dispose of lost and found and seized goods. Debt auctions, in which governments sell debt instruments, such as bonds, to investors. The auction is usually sealed and the uniform price paid by the investors is typically the best non-winning bid. In most cases, investors can also place so-called non-competitive bids, which indicates interest to purchase the debt instrument at the resulting price, whatever it may be. Some states use courts to run such auctions. In Spectrum auctions conducted by the government, companies purchase licenses to use portions of the electromagnetic spectrum for communications (e.g., mobile phone networks). In certain jurisdictions, if a storage facility's tenant fails to pay rent, the contents of their locker(s) may be sold at a public auction. Several television shows focus on such auctions, including Storage Wars and Auction Hunters.
+
+Auctions are used to trade commodities; for example, fish wholesale auctions. In wool auctions, wool is traded in the international market.[81] The wine auction business offers serious collectors an opportunity to gain access to rare bottles and mature vintages, not typically available through retail channels. In livestock auctions, sheep, cattle, pigs and other livestock are sold. Sometimes very large numbers of stock are auctioned, such as the regular sales of 50,000 or more sheep during a day in New South Wales.[82] In timber auctions, companies purchase licenses to log on government land. In timber allocation auctions, companies purchase timber directly from the government.[83] In electricity auctions, large-scale generators and distributors of electricity bid on generating contracts. Produce auctions link growers to localized wholesale buyers (buyers who are interested in acquiring large quantities of locally grown produce).[84]
+
+Websites like eBay provide a potential audience of millions to sellers. Established auction houses, as well as specialist internet auctions, sell everything from antiques and collectibles to holidays, air travel, brand new computers, and household equipment. Private electronic markets use combinatorial auction techniques to continuously sell commodities (coal, iron ore, grain, water...) online to a pre-qualified group of buyers (based on price and non-price factors).
+
+Katehakis and Puranam provided the first model[96]
+for the problem of optimal bidding for a firm that in each period procures items to meet a random demand by participating in a finite sequence of auctions. In this model an item valuation derives from the sale of the acquired items via their demand distribution, sale price, acquisition cost, salvage value and lost sales. They established monotonicity properties for the value function and the optimal dynamic bid policy. They also provided a model[97]
+for the case in which the buyer must acquire a fixed number of items either at a fixed buy-it-now price in the open market or by participating in a sequence of auctions. The objective of the buyer is to minimize his expected total cost for acquiring the fixed number of items.
+
+Bid shading is placing a bid which is below the bidder's actual value for the item. Such a strategy risks losing the auction, but has the possibility of winning at a low price. Bid shading can also be a strategy to avoid the winner's curse.
+
+This is the practice, especially by high-end art auctioneers,[98] of raising false bids at crucial times in the bidding in order to create the appearance of greater demand or to extend bidding momentum for a work on offer. To call out these nonexistent bids auctioneers might fix their gaze at a point in the auction room that is difficult for the audience to pin down.[99] The practice is frowned upon in the industry.[99] In the United States, chandelier bidding is not illegal. In fact, an auctioneer may bid up the price of an item to the reserve price, which is a threshold below which the consignor may refuse to sell the item.  However, the auction house is required to disclose this information.
+
+In the United Kingdom this practice is legal on property auctions up to but not including the reserve price, and is also known as off-the-wall bidding.[100]
+
+Whenever bidders at an auction are aware of the identity of the other bidders there is a risk that they will form a "ring" or "pool" and thus manipulate the auction result, a practice known as collusion. By agreeing to bid only against outsiders, never against members of the "ring", competition becomes weaker, which may dramatically affect the final price level. After the end of the official auction an unofficial auction may take place among the "ring" members. The difference in price between the two auctions could then be split among the members.  This form of a ring was used as a central plot device in the opening episode of the 1979 British television series The House of Caradus, 'For Love or Money', uncovered by Helena Caradus on her return from Paris.
+
+A ring can also be used to increase the price of an auction lot, in which the owner of the object being auctioned may increase competition by taking part in the bidding him or herself, but drop out of the bidding just before the final bid.  In Britain and many other countries, rings and other forms of bidding on one's own object are illegal. This form of a ring was used as a central plot device in an episode of the British television series Lovejoy (series 4, episode 3), in which the price of a watercolour by the (fictional) Jessie Webb is inflated so that others by the same artist could be sold for more than their purchase price.
+
+In an English auction, a dummy bid is a bid made by a dummy bidder acting in collusion with the auctioneer or vendor, designed to deceive genuine bidders into paying more. In a first-price auction, a dummy bid is an unfavourable bid designed so as not to become the winning bid. (The bidder does not want to win this auction, but he or she wants to make sure to be invited to the next auction).
+
+In Australia, a dummy bid (shill, schill) is a criminal offence, but a vendor bid or a co-owner bid below the reserve price is permitted, if clearly declared as such by the auctioneer. These are all official legal terms in Australia, but may have other meanings elsewhere. A co-owner is one of two or several owners (who disagree among themselves).
+
+In Sweden and many other countries there are no legal restrictions, but it will severely hurt the reputation of an auction house that knowingly permits any other bids except genuine bids. If the reserve is not reached this should be clearly declared.
+
+In South Africa auctioneers can use their staff or any bidder to raise the price as long as its disclosed before the auction sale. The Auction Alliance[101] controversy focused on vendor bidding and it was proven to be legal and acceptable in terms of the South African consumer laws.
+
+There will usually be an estimate of what price the lot will fetch. In an ascending open auction it is considered important to get at least a 50-percent increase in the bids from start to finish. To accomplish this, the auctioneer must start the auction by announcing a suggested opening bid (SOB) that is low enough to be immediately accepted by one of the bidders. Once there is an opening bid, there will quickly be several other, higher bids submitted. Experienced auctioneers will often select an SOB that is about 45 percent of the (lowest) estimate. Thus there is a certain margin of safety to ensure that there will indeed be a lively auction with many bids submitted. Several observations indicate that the lower the SOB, the higher the final winning bid. This is due to the increase in the number of bidders attracted by the low SOB.
+
+A chi-squared distribution shows many low bids but few high bids. Bids "show up together"; without several low bids there will not be any high bids.
+
+Another approach to choosing an SOB: The auctioneer may achieve good success by asking the expected final sales price for the item, as this method suggests to the potential buyers the item's particular value. For instance, say an auctioneer is about to sell a $1,000 car at a sale. Instead of asking $100, hoping to entice wide interest (for who wouldn't want a $1,000 car for $100?), the auctioneer may suggest an opening bid of $1,000; although the first bidder may begin bidding at a mere $100, the final bid may more likely approach $1,000.
+
+The Journal of Economic Literature (JEL) classification code for auctions is D44.[106]

en/5935.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,131 @@
+Wind is the flow of gases on a large scale. On the surface of the Earth, wind consists of the bulk movement of air. In outer space, solar wind is the movement of gases or charged particles from the Sun through space, while planetary wind is the outgassing of light chemical elements from a planet's atmosphere into space. Winds are commonly classified by their spatial scale, their speed, the types of forces that cause them, the regions in which they occur, and their effect. The strongest observed winds on a planet in the Solar System occur on Neptune and Saturn. Winds have various aspects: velocity (wind speed); the density of the gas involved; energy content or wind energy. The wind is also an important means of transportation for seeds and small birds; with time things can travel thousands of miles in the wind.
+
+In meteorology, winds are often referred to according to their strength, and the direction from which the wind is blowing. Short bursts of high speed wind are termed gusts. Strong winds of intermediate duration (around one minute) are termed squalls. Long-duration winds have various names associated with their average strength, such as breeze, gale, storm, and hurricane. Wind occurs on a range of scales, from thunderstorm flows lasting tens of minutes, to local breezes generated by heating of land surfaces and lasting a few hours, to global winds resulting from the difference in absorption of solar energy between the climate zones on Earth. The two main causes of large-scale atmospheric circulation are the differential heating between the equator and the poles, and the rotation of the planet (Coriolis effect). Within the tropics, thermal low circulations over terrain and high plateaus can drive monsoon circulations. In coastal areas the sea breeze/land breeze cycle can define local winds; in areas that have variable terrain, mountain and valley breezes can dominate local winds.
+
+In human civilization, the concept of wind has been explored in mythology, influenced the events of history, expanded the range of transport and warfare, and provided a power source for mechanical work, electricity, and recreation. Wind powers the voyages of sailing ships across Earth's oceans. Hot air balloons use the wind to take short trips, and powered flight uses it to increase lift and reduce fuel consumption. Areas of wind shear caused by various weather phenomena can lead to dangerous situations for aircraft. When winds become strong, trees and human-made structures are damaged or destroyed.
+
+Winds can shape landforms, via a variety of aeolian processes such as the formation of fertile soils, such as loess, and by erosion. Dust from large deserts can be moved great distances from its source region by the prevailing winds; winds that are accelerated by rough topography and associated with dust outbreaks have been assigned regional names in various parts of the world because of their significant effects on those regions. Wind also affects the spread of wildfires. Winds can disperse seeds from various plants, enabling the survival and dispersal of those plant species, as well as flying insect populations. When combined with cold temperatures, the wind has a negative impact on livestock. Wind affects animals' food stores, as well as their hunting and defensive strategies.
+
+The wind is caused by differences in the atmospheric pressure. When a difference in atmospheric pressure exists, air moves from the higher to the lower pressure area, resulting in winds of various speeds. On a rotating planet, air will also be deflected by the Coriolis effect, except exactly on the equator. Globally, the two major driving factors of large-scale wind patterns (the atmospheric circulation) are the differential heating between the equator and the poles (difference in absorption of solar energy leading to buoyancy forces) and the rotation of the planet. Outside the tropics and aloft from frictional effects of the surface, the large-scale winds tend to approach geostrophic balance. Near the Earth's surface, friction causes the wind to be slower than it would be otherwise. Surface friction also causes winds to blow more inward into low-pressure areas.[1][2]
+
+Winds defined by an equilibrium of physical forces are used in the decomposition and analysis of wind profiles. They are useful for simplifying the atmospheric equations of motion and for making qualitative arguments about the horizontal and vertical distribution of winds. The geostrophic wind component is the result of the balance between Coriolis force and pressure gradient force. It flows parallel to isobars and approximates the flow above the atmospheric boundary layer in the midlatitudes.[3] The thermal wind is the difference in the geostrophic wind between two levels in the atmosphere. It exists only in an atmosphere with horizontal temperature gradients.[4] The ageostrophic wind component is the difference between actual and geostrophic wind, which is responsible for air "filling up" cyclones over time.[5] The gradient wind is similar to the geostrophic wind but also includes centrifugal force (or centripetal acceleration).[6]
+
+Wind direction is usually expressed in terms of the direction from which it originates. For example, a northerly wind blows from the north to the south.[7] Weather vanes pivot to indicate the direction of the wind.[8] At airports, windsocks indicate wind direction, and can also be used to estimate wind speed by the angle of hang.[9] Wind speed is measured by anemometers, most commonly using rotating cups or propellers. When a high measurement frequency is needed (such as in research applications), wind can be measured by the propagation speed of ultrasound signals or by the effect of ventilation on the resistance of a heated wire.[10] Another type of anemometer uses pitot tubes that take advantage of the pressure differential between an inner tube and an outer tube that is exposed to the wind to determine the dynamic pressure, which is then used to compute the wind speed.[11]
+
+Sustained wind speeds are reported globally at a 10 meters (33 ft) height and are averaged over a 10‑minute time frame. The United States reports winds over a 1‑minute average for tropical cyclones,[12] and a 2‑minute average within weather observations.[13] India typically reports winds over a 3‑minute average.[14] Knowing the wind sampling average is important, as the value of a one-minute sustained wind is typically 14% greater than a ten-minute sustained wind.[15] A short burst of high speed wind is termed a wind gust, one technical definition of a wind gust is: the maxima that exceed the lowest wind speed measured during a ten-minute time interval by 10 knots (5 m/s) for periods of seconds. A squall is an increase of the wind speed above a certain threshold, which lasts for a minute or more.
+
+To determine winds aloft, rawinsondes determine wind speed by GPS, radio navigation, or radar tracking of the probe.[16] Alternatively, movement of the parent weather balloon position can be tracked from the ground visually using theodolites.[17] Remote sensing techniques for wind include SODAR, Doppler lidars and radars, which can measure the Doppler shift of electromagnetic radiation scattered or reflected off suspended aerosols or molecules, and radiometers and radars can be used to measure the surface roughness of the ocean from space or airplanes. Ocean roughness can be used to estimate wind velocity close to the sea surface over oceans. Geostationary satellite imagery can be used to estimate the winds throughout the atmosphere based upon how far clouds move from one image to the next. Wind engineering describes the study of the effects of the wind on the built environment, including buildings, bridges and other man-made objects.
+
+Historically, the Beaufort wind force scale (created by Beaufort) provides an empirical description of wind speed based on observed sea conditions. Originally it was a 13-level scale (0-12), but during the 1940s, the scale was expanded to 18 levels (0-17).[18] There are general terms that differentiate winds of different average speeds such as a breeze, a gale, a storm, or a hurricane. Within the Beaufort scale, gale-force winds lie between 28 knots (52 km/h) and 55 knots (102 km/h) with preceding adjectives such as moderate, fresh, strong, and whole used to differentiate the wind's strength within the gale category.[19] A storm has winds of 56 knots (104 km/h) to 63 knots (117 km/h).[20] The terminology for tropical cyclones differs from one region to another globally. Most ocean basins use the average wind speed to determine the tropical cyclone's category. Below is a summary of the classifications used by Regional Specialized Meteorological Centers worldwide:
+
+The Enhanced Fujita Scale (EF Scale) rates the strength of tornadoes in the United States by using damage to estimate wind speed. Below is the scale.
+
+Peels surface off some roofs; some damage to gutters or siding; branches broken off trees; shallow-rooted trees pushed over.
+Confirmed tornadoes with no reported damage (i.e., those that remain in open fields) are supposed to be rated EF0 as a matter of policy; however, some NWS local offices have adopted an "EFU" (for "unknown") rating for such tornadoes.[23]
+
+Roofs severely stripped; mobile homes overturned or badly damaged; loss of exterior doors; windows and other glass broken.
+
+Roofs torn off from well-constructed houses; foundations of frame homes shifted; mobile homes completely destroyed; large trees snapped or uprooted; light-object missiles generated; cars lifted off ground.
+
+Entire stories of well-constructed houses destroyed; severe damage to large buildings such as shopping malls; trains overturned; trees debarked; heavy cars lifted off the ground and thrown; structures with weak foundations are badly damaged.
+
+Well-constructed and whole frame houses completely leveled; some frame homes may be swept away; cars and other large objects thrown and small missiles generated.
+
+Strong-framed, well-built houses leveled off foundations and swept away; steel-reinforced concrete structures are critically damaged; tall buildings collapse or have severe structural deformations; cars, trucks, and trains can be thrown approximately 1 mile (1.6 km).
+
+The station model plotted on surface weather maps uses a wind barb to show both wind direction and speed. The wind barb shows the speed using "flags" on the end.
+
+Winds are depicted as blowing from the direction the barb is facing. Therefore, a northeast wind will be depicted with a line extending from the cloud circle to the northeast, with flags indicating wind speed on the northeast end of this line.[25] Once plotted on a map, an analysis of isotachs (lines of equal wind speeds) can be accomplished. Isotachs are particularly useful in diagnosing the location of the jet stream on upper-level constant pressure charts, and are usually located at or above the 300 hPa level.[26]
+
+Wind energy is the kinetic energy of the air in motion. The kinetic energy of a packet of air of mass m with velocity v is given by ½ m v2. To find the mass of the packet passing through an area A perpendicular its velocity (which could be the rotor area of a turbine), we multiply its volume after time t has passed with the air density ρ, which gives us m = A v t ρ. So, we find that the total wind energy is:
+
+Differentiating with respect to time to find the rate of increase of energy, we find that the total wind power is:
+
+Wind power is thus proportional to the third power of the wind velocity.
+
+Total wind power could be captured only if the wind velocity is reduced to zero. In a realistic wind turbine, this is impossible, as the captured air must also leave the turbine. A relation between the input and output wind velocity must be considered. Using the concept of stream tube, the maximal achievable extraction of wind power by a wind turbine is 16/27 ≈ 59% of the total theoretical wind power[27] (see: Betz' law).
+
+Further insufficiencies, such as rotor blade friction and drag, gearbox losses, generator and converter losses, reduce the power delivered by a wind turbine. The basic relation that the turbine power is (approximately) proportional to the third power of velocity remains.
+
+Easterly winds, on average, dominate the flow pattern across the poles, westerly winds blow across the mid-latitudes of the earth, polewards of the subtropical ridge, while easterlies again dominate the tropics.
+
+Directly under the subtropical ridge are the doldrums, or horse latitudes, where winds are lighter. Many of the Earth's deserts lie near the average latitude of the subtropical ridge, where descent reduces the relative humidity of the air mass.[28] The strongest winds are in the mid-latitudes where cold polar air meets warm air from the tropics.
+
+The trade winds (also called trades) are the prevailing pattern of easterly surface winds found in the tropics towards the Earth's equator.[29] The trade winds blow predominantly from the northeast in the Northern Hemisphere and from the southeast in the Southern Hemisphere.[30] The trade winds act as the steering flow for tropical cyclones that form over the world's oceans.[31] Trade winds also steer African dust westward across the Atlantic Ocean into the Caribbean, as well as portions of southeast North America.[32]
+
+A monsoon is a seasonal prevailing wind that lasts for several months within tropical regions. The term was first used in English in India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and neighboring countries to refer to the big seasonal winds blowing from the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea in the southwest bringing heavy rainfall to the area.[33] Its poleward progression is accelerated by the development of a heat low over the Asian, African, and North American continents during May through July, and over Australia in December.[34][35][36]
+
+The Westerlies or the Prevailing Westerlies are the prevailing winds in the middle latitudes between 35 and 65 degrees latitude. These prevailing winds blow from the west to the east,[37][38] and steer extratropical cyclones in this general manner. The winds are predominantly from the southwest in the Northern Hemisphere and from the northwest in the Southern Hemisphere.[30] They are strongest in the winter when the pressure is lower over the poles, and weakest during the summer and when pressures are higher over the poles.[39]
+
+Together with the trade winds, the westerlies enabled a round-trip trade route for sailing ships crossing the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, as the westerlies lead to the development of strong ocean currents on the western sides of oceans in both hemispheres through the process of western intensification.[40] These western ocean currents transport warm, sub-tropical water polewards toward the polar regions. The westerlies can be particularly strong, especially in the southern hemisphere, where there is less land in the middle latitudes to cause the flow pattern to amplify, which slows the winds down. The strongest westerly winds in the middle latitudes are within a band known as the Roaring Forties, between 40 and 50 degrees latitude south of the equator.[41] The Westerlies play an important role in carrying the warm, equatorial waters and winds to the western coasts of continents,[42][43] especially in the southern hemisphere because of its vast oceanic expanse.
+
+The polar easterlies, also known as Polar Hadley cells, are dry, cold prevailing winds that blow from the high-pressure areas of the polar highs at the north and south poles towards the low-pressure areas within the Westerlies at high latitudes. Unlike the Westerlies, these prevailing winds blow from the east to the west, and are often weak and irregular.[44] Because of the low sun angle, cold air builds up and subsides at the pole creating surface high-pressure areas, forcing an equatorward outflow of air;[45] that outflow is deflected westward by the Coriolis effect.
+
+In coastal regions, sea breezes and land breezes can be important factors in a location's prevailing winds. The sea is warmed by the sun more slowly because of water's greater specific heat compared to land.[46] As the temperature of the surface of the land rises, the land heats the air above it by conduction. The warm air is less dense than the surrounding environment and so it rises. This causes a pressure gradient of about 2 millibars from the ocean to the land. The cooler air above the sea, now with higher sea level pressure, flows inland into the lower pressure, creating a cooler breeze near the coast. When large-scale winds are calm, the strength of the sea breeze is directly proportional to the temperature difference between the landmass and the sea. If an offshore wind of 8 knots (15 km/h) exists, the sea breeze is not likely to develop.
+
+At night, the land cools off more quickly than the ocean because of differences in their specific heat values. This temperature change causes the daytime sea breeze to dissipate. When the temperature onshore cools below the temperature offshore, the pressure over the water will be lower than that of the land, establishing a land breeze, as long as an onshore wind is not strong enough to oppose it.[47]
+
+Over elevated surfaces, heating of the ground exceeds the heating of the surrounding air at the same altitude above sea level, creating an associated thermal low over the terrain and enhancing any thermal lows that would have otherwise existed,[48][49] and changing the wind circulation of the region. In areas where there is rugged topography that significantly interrupts the environmental wind flow, the wind circulation between mountains and valleys is the most important contributor to the prevailing winds. Hills and valleys substantially distort the airflow by increasing friction between the atmosphere and landmass by acting as a physical block to the flow, deflecting the wind parallel to the range just upstream of the topography, which is known as a barrier jet. This barrier jet can increase the low-level wind by 45%.[50] Wind direction also changes because of the contour of the land.[51]
+
+If there is a pass in the mountain range, winds will rush through the pass with considerable speed because of the Bernoulli principle that describes an inverse relationship between speed and pressure. The airflow can remain turbulent and erratic for some distance downwind into the flatter countryside. These conditions are dangerous to ascending and descending airplanes.[51] Cool winds accelerating through mountain gaps have been given regional names. In Central America, examples include the Papagayo wind, the Panama wind, and the Tehuano wind. In Europe, similar winds are known as the Bora, Tramontane, and Mistral. When these winds blow over open waters, they increase mixing of the upper layers of the ocean that elevates cool, nutrient rich waters to the surface, which leads to increased marine life.[52]
+
+In mountainous areas, local distortion of the airflow becomes severe. Jagged terrain combines to produce unpredictable flow patterns and turbulence, such as rotors, which can be topped by lenticular clouds. Strong updrafts, downdrafts, and eddies develop as the air flows over hills and down valleys. Orographic precipitation occurs on the windward side of mountains and is caused by the rising air motion of a large-scale flow of moist air across the mountain ridge, also known as upslope flow, resulting in adiabatic cooling and condensation. In mountainous parts of the world subjected to relatively consistent winds (for example, the trade winds), a more moist climate usually prevails on the windward side of a mountain than on the leeward or downwind side. Moisture is removed by orographic lift, leaving drier air on the descending and generally warming, leeward side where a rain shadow is observed.[53] Winds that flow over mountains down into lower elevations are known as downslope winds. These winds are warm and dry. In Europe downwind of the Alps, they are known as foehn. In Poland, an example is the halny wiatr. In Argentina, the local name for down sloped winds is zonda. In Java, the local name for such winds is koembang. In New Zealand, they are known as the Nor'west arch, and are accompanied by the cloud formation they are named after that has inspired artwork over the years.[54] In the Great Plains of the United States, these winds are known as a chinook. Downslope winds also occur in the foothills of the Appalachian mountains of the United States,[55] and they can be as strong as other downslope winds [56] and unusual compared to other foehn winds in that the relative humidity typically changes little due to the increased moisture in the source air mass.[57] In California, downslope winds are funneled through mountain passes, which intensify their effect, and examples include the Santa Ana and sundowner winds. Wind speeds during downslope wind effect can exceed 160 kilometers per hour (99 mph).[58]
+
+As described earlier, prevailing and local winds are not spread evenly across the earth, which means that wind speeds also differ by region. In addition, the wind speed also increases with the altitude.
+
+Nowadays, a yardstick used to determine the best locations for wind energy development is referred to as wind power density (WPD). It is a calculation relating to the effective force of the wind at a particular location, frequently expressed in terms of the elevation above ground level over a period of time. It takes into account wind velocity and mass. Color-coded maps are prepared for a particular area are described as, for example, "mean annual power density at 50 meters". The results of the above calculation are included in an index developed by the National Renewable Energy Lab and referred to as "NREL CLASS". The larger the WPD calculation, the higher it is rated by class.[59] At the end of 2008, worldwide nameplate capacity of wind-powered generators was 120.8 gigawatts.[60] Although wind produced only about 1.5% of worldwide electricity use in 2009,[60] it is growing rapidly, having doubled in the three years between 2005 and 2008. In several countries it has achieved relatively high levels of penetration, accounting for approximately 19% of electricity production in Denmark, 10% in Spain and Portugal, and 7% in Germany and the Republic of Ireland in 2008. One study indicates that an entirely renewable energy supply based on 70% wind is attainable at today's power prices by linking wind farms with an HVDC supergrid.[61]Wind power has expanded quickly, its share of worldwide electricity usage at the end of 2014 was 3.1%.[62] In 2011 wind energy was also used to power the longest journey in a wind-powered car which travelled a distance of 5,000 km (3,100 miles) from Perth to Melbourne in Australia.[63]
+
+Wind shear, sometimes referred to as wind gradient, is a difference in wind speed and direction over a relatively short distance in the Earth's atmosphere.[64] Wind shear can be broken down into vertical and horizontal components, with horizontal wind shear seen across weather fronts and near the coast,[65] and vertical shear typically near the surface,[66] though also at higher levels in the atmosphere near upper level jets and frontal zones aloft.[67]
+
+Wind shear itself is a microscale meteorological phenomenon occurring over a very small distance, but it can be associated with mesoscale or synoptic scale weather features such as squall lines and cold fronts. It is commonly observed near microbursts and downbursts caused by thunderstorms,[68] weather fronts, areas of locally higher low level winds referred to as low level jets, near mountains,[69] radiation inversions that occur because of clear skies and calm winds, buildings,[70] wind turbines,[71] and sailboats.[72] Wind shear has a significant effect on the control of aircraft during take-off and landing,[73] and was a significant cause of aircraft accidents involving large loss of life within the United States.[68]
+
+Sound movement through the atmosphere is affected by wind shear, which can bend the wave front, causing sounds to be heard where they normally would not, or vice versa.[74] Strong vertical wind shear within the troposphere also inhibits tropical cyclone development,[75] but helps to organize individual thunderstorms into living longer life cycles that can then produce severe weather.[76] The thermal wind concept explains how differences in wind speed with height are dependent on horizontal temperature differences, and explains the existence of the jet stream.[77]
+
+As a natural force, the wind was often personified as one or more wind gods or as an expression of the supernatural in many cultures. Vayu is the Hindu God of Wind.[78][79] The Greek wind gods include Boreas, Notus, Eurus, and Zephyrus.[79] Aeolus, in varying interpretations the ruler or keeper of the four winds, has also been described as Astraeus, the god of dusk who fathered the four winds with Eos, goddess of dawn. The ancient Greeks also observed the seasonal change of the winds, as evidenced by the Tower of the Winds in Athens.[79] Venti are the Roman gods of the winds.[80] Fūjin is the Japanese wind god and is one of the eldest Shinto gods. According to legend, he was present at the creation of the world and first let the winds out of his bag to clear the world of mist.[81] In Norse mythology, Njörðr is the god of the wind.[79] There are also four dvärgar (Norse dwarves), named Norðri, Suðri, Austri and Vestri, and probably the four stags of Yggdrasil, personify the four winds, and parallel the four Greek wind gods.[82] Stribog is the name of the Slavic god of winds, sky and air. He is said to be the ancestor (grandfather) of the winds of the eight directions.[79]
+
+Kamikaze (神風) is a Japanese word, usually translated as divine wind, believed to be a gift from the gods. The term is first known to have been used as the name of a pair or series of typhoons that are said to have saved Japan from two Mongol fleets under Kublai Khan that attacked Japan in 1274 and again in 1281.[83] Protestant Wind is a name for the storm that deterred the Spanish Armada from an invasion of England in 1588 where the wind played a pivotal role,[84] or the favorable winds that enabled William of Orange to invade England in 1688.[85] During Napoleon's Egyptian Campaign, the French soldiers had a hard time with the khamsin wind: when the storm appeared "as a blood-stint in the distant sky", the Ottomans went to take cover, while the French "did not react until it was too late, then choked and fainted in the blinding, suffocating walls of dust".[86] During the North African Campaign of the World War II, "allied and German troops were several times forced to halt in mid-battle because of sandstorms caused by khamsin ... Grains of sand whirled by the wind blinded the soldiers and created electrical disturbances that rendered compasses useless."[87]
+
+There are many different forms of sailing ships, but they all have certain basic things in common. Except for rotor ships using the Magnus effect, every sailing ship has a hull, rigging and at least one mast to hold up the sails that use the wind to power the ship.[88] Ocean journeys by sailing ship can take many months,[89] and a common hazard is becoming becalmed because of lack of wind,[90] or being blown off course by severe storms or winds that do not allow progress in the desired direction.[91] A severe storm could lead to shipwreck, and the loss of all hands.[92] Sailing ships can only carry a certain quantity of supplies in their hold, so they have to plan long voyages carefully to include appropriate provisions, including fresh water.[93]
+
+For aerodynamic aircraft which operate relative to the air, winds affect groundspeed,[94] and in the case of lighter-than-air vehicles, wind may play a significant or solitary role in their movement and ground track.[95] The velocity of surface wind is generally the primary factor governing the direction of flight operations at an airport, and airfield runways are aligned to account for the common wind direction(s) of the local area. While taking off with a tailwind may be necessary under certain circumstances, a headwind is generally desirable. A tailwind increases takeoff distance required and decreases the climb gradient.[96]
+
+Historically, the ancient Sinhalese of Anuradhapura and in other cities around Sri Lanka used the monsoon winds to power furnaces as early as 300 BCE.[97] The furnaces were constructed on the path of the monsoon winds to exploit the wind power, to bring the temperatures inside up to 1,200 °C (2,190 °F). A rudimentary windmill was used to power an organ in the first century CE.[98] The first practical windmills were later built in Sistan, Afghanistan, from the 7th century CE. These were vertical-axle windmills, which had long vertical driveshafts with rectangle shaped blades.[99] Made of six to twelve sails covered in reed matting or cloth material, these windmills were used to grind corn and draw up water, and were used in the gristmilling and sugarcane industries.[100] Horizontal-axle windmills were later used extensively in Northwestern Europe to grind flour beginning in the 1180s, and many Dutch windmills still exist. High altitude wind power is the focus of over 30 companies worldwide using tethered technology rather than ground-hugging compressive-towers.[101] Oil is being saved by using wind for powering cargo ships by use of the mechanical energy converted from the wind's kinetic energy using very large kites.[102]
+
+Wind figures prominently in several popular sports, including recreational hang gliding, hot air ballooning, kite flying, snowkiting, kite landboarding, kite surfing, paragliding, sailing, and windsurfing. In gliding, wind gradients just above the surface affect the takeoff and landing phases of flight of a glider. Wind gradient can have a noticeable effect on ground launches, also known as winch launches or wire launches. If the wind gradient is significant or sudden, or both, and the pilot maintains the same pitch attitude, the indicated airspeed will increase, possibly exceeding the maximum ground launch tow speed. The pilot must adjust the airspeed to deal with the effect of the gradient.[103] When landing, wind shear is also a hazard, particularly when the winds are strong. As the glider descends through the wind gradient on final approach to landing, airspeed decreases while sink rate increases, and there is insufficient time to accelerate prior to ground contact. The pilot must anticipate the wind gradient and use a higher approach speed to compensate for it.[104]
+
+In arid climates, the main source of erosion is wind.[105] The general wind circulation moves small particulates such as dust across wide oceans thousands of kilometers downwind of their point of origin,[106] which is known as deflation. Westerly winds in the mid-latitudes of the planet drive the movement of ocean currents from west to east across the world's oceans. Wind has a very important role in aiding plants and other immobile organisms in dispersal of seeds, spores, pollen, etc. Although wind is not the primary form of seed dispersal in plants, it provides dispersal for a large percentage of the biomass of land plants.
+
+Erosion can be the result of material movement by the wind. There are two main effects. First, wind causes small particles to be lifted and therefore moved to another region. This is called deflation. Second, these suspended particles may impact on solid objects causing erosion by abrasion (ecological succession). Wind erosion generally occurs in areas with little or no vegetation, often in areas where there is insufficient rainfall to support vegetation. An example is the formation of sand dunes, on a beach or in a desert.[107] Loess is a homogeneous, typically nonstratified, porous, friable, slightly coherent, often calcareous, fine-grained, silty, pale yellow or buff, windblown (Aeolian) sediment.[108] It generally occurs as a widespread blanket deposit that covers areas of hundreds of square kilometers and tens of meters thick. Loess often stands in either steep or vertical faces.[109] Loess tends to develop into highly rich soils. Under appropriate climatic conditions, areas with loess are among the most agriculturally productive in the world.[110] Loess deposits are geologically unstable by nature, and will erode very readily. Therefore, windbreaks (such as big trees and bushes) are often planted by farmers to reduce the wind erosion of loess.[105]
+
+During mid-summer (July in the northern hemisphere), the westward-moving trade winds south of the northward-moving subtropical ridge expand northwestward from the Caribbean into southeastern North America. When dust from the Sahara moving around the southern periphery of the ridge within the belt of trade winds moves over land, rainfall is suppressed and the sky changes from a blue to a white appearance, which leads to an increase in red sunsets. Its presence negatively impacts air quality by adding to the count of airborne particulates.[111] Over 50% of the African dust that reaches the United States affects Florida.[112] Since 1970, dust outbreaks have worsened because of periods of drought in Africa. There is a large variability in the dust transport to the Caribbean and Florida from year to year.[113] Dust events have been linked to a decline in the health of coral reefs across the Caribbean and Florida, primarily since the 1970s.[114] Similar dust plumes originate in the Gobi Desert, which combined with pollutants, spread large distances downwind, or eastward, into North America.[106]
+
+There are local names for winds associated with sand and dust storms. The Calima carries dust on southeast winds into the Canary islands.[115] The Harmattan carries dust during the winter into the Gulf of Guinea.[116] The Sirocco brings dust from north Africa into southern Europe because of the movement of extratropical cyclones through the Mediterranean.[117] Spring storm systems moving across the eastern Mediterranean Sea cause dust to carry across Egypt and the Arabian peninsula, which are locally known as Khamsin.[118] The Shamal is caused by cold fronts lifting dust into the atmosphere for days at a time across the Persian Gulf states.[119]
+
+Wind dispersal of seeds, or anemochory, is one of the more primitive means of dispersal. Wind dispersal can take on one of two primary forms: seeds can float on the breeze or alternatively, they can flutter to the ground.[120] The classic examples of these dispersal mechanisms include dandelions (Taraxacum spp., Asteraceae), which have a feathery pappus attached to their seeds and can be dispersed long distances, and maples (Acer (genus) spp., Sapindaceae), which have winged seeds and flutter to the ground. An important constraint on wind dispersal is the need for abundant seed production to maximize the likelihood of a seed landing in a site suitable for germination. There are also strong evolutionary constraints on this dispersal mechanism. For instance, species in the Asteraceae on islands tended to have reduced dispersal capabilities (i.e., larger seed mass and smaller pappus) relative to the same species on the mainland.[121] Reliance upon wind dispersal is common among many weedy or ruderal species. Unusual mechanisms of wind dispersal include tumbleweeds. A related process to anemochory is anemophily, which is the process where pollen is distributed by wind. Large families of plants are pollinated in this manner, which is favored when individuals of the dominant plant species are spaced closely together.[122]
+
+Wind also limits tree growth. On coasts and isolated mountains, the tree line is often much lower than in corresponding altitudes inland and in larger, more complex mountain systems, because strong winds reduce tree growth. High winds scour away thin soils through erosion,[123] as well as damage limbs and twigs. When high winds knock down or uproot trees, the process is known as windthrow. This is most likely on windward slopes of mountains, with severe cases generally occurring to tree stands that are 75 years or older.[124] Plant varieties near the coast, such as the Sitka spruce and sea grape,[125] are pruned back by wind and salt spray near the coastline.[126]
+
+Wind can also cause plants damage through sand abrasion. Strong winds will pick up loose sand and topsoil and hurl it through the air at speeds ranging from 25 miles per hour (40 km/h) to 40 miles per hour (64 km/h). Such windblown sand causes extensive damage to plant seedlings because it ruptures plant cells, making them vulnerable to evaporation and drought. Using a mechanical sandblaster in a laboratory setting, scientists affiliated with the Agricultural Research Service studied the effects of windblown sand abrasion on cotton seedlings. The study showed that the seedlings responded to the damage created by the windblown sand abrasion by shifting energy from stem and root growth to the growth and repair of the damaged stems.[127] After a period of four weeks, the growth of the seedling once again became uniform throughout the plant, as it was before the windblown sand abrasion occurred.[128]
+
+Cattle and sheep are prone to wind chill caused by a combination of wind and cold temperatures, when winds exceed 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph), rendering their hair and wool coverings ineffective.[129] Although penguins use both a layer of fat and feathers to help guard against coldness in both water and air, their flippers and feet are less immune to the cold. In the coldest climates such as Antarctica, emperor penguins use huddling behavior to survive the wind and cold, continuously alternating the members on the outside of the assembled group, which reduces heat loss by 50%.[130] Flying insects, a subset of arthropods, are swept along by the prevailing winds,[131] while birds follow their own course taking advantage of wind conditions, in order to either fly or glide.[132] As such, fine line patterns within weather radar imagery, associated with converging winds, are dominated by insect returns.[133] Bird migration, which tends to occur overnight within the lowest 7,000 feet (2,100 m) of the Earth's atmosphere, contaminates wind profiles gathered by weather radar, particularly the WSR-88D, by increasing the environmental wind returns by 15 knots (28 km/h) to 30 knots (56 km/h).[134]
+
+Pikas use a wall of pebbles to store dry plants and grasses for the winter in order to protect the food from being blown away.[135] Cockroaches use slight winds that precede the attacks of potential predators, such as toads, to survive their encounters. Their cerci are very sensitive to the wind, and help them survive half of their attacks.[136] Elk have a keen sense of smell that can detect potential upwind predators at a distance of 0.5 miles (800 m).[137] Increases in wind above 15 kilometers per hour (9.3 mph) signals glaucous gulls to increase their foraging and aerial attacks on thick-billed murres.[138]
+
+Wind causes the generation of sound. The movement of air causes movements of parts of natural objects, such as leaves or grass. These objects will produce sound if they touch each other. Even a soft wind will cause a low level of environmental noise. If the wind is blowing harder, it may produce howling sounds of varying frequencies. This may be caused by the wind blowing over cavities, or by vortices created in the air downstream of an object.[139] Especially on high buildings, many structural parts may be a cause of annoying noise at certain wind conditions. Examples of these parts are balconies, ventilation openings, roof openings or cables.
+
+High winds are known to cause damage, depending upon the magnitude of their velocity and pressure differential. Wind pressures are positive on the windward side of a structure and negative on the leeward side. Infrequent wind gusts can cause poorly designed suspension bridges to sway. When wind gusts are at a similar frequency to the swaying of the bridge, the bridge can be destroyed more easily, such as what occurred with the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in 1940.[140] Wind speeds as low as 23 knots (43 km/h) can lead to power outages due to tree branches disrupting the flow of energy through power lines.[141] While no species of tree is guaranteed to stand up to hurricane-force winds, those with shallow roots are more prone to uproot, and brittle trees such as eucalyptus, sea hibiscus, and avocado are more prone to damage.[142] Hurricane-force winds cause substantial damage to mobile homes, and begin to structurally damage homes with foundations. Winds of this strength due to downsloped winds off terrain have been known to shatter windows and sandblast paint from cars.[58] Once winds exceed 135 knots (250 km/h), homes completely collapse, and significant damage is done to larger buildings. Total destruction to man-made structures occurs when winds reach 175 knots (324 km/h). The Saffir–Simpson scale and Enhanced Fujita scale were designed to help estimate wind speed from the damage caused by high winds related to tropical cyclones and tornadoes, and vice versa.[143][22]
+
+Australia's Barrow Island holds the record for the strongest wind gust, reaching 408 km/h (253 mph) during tropical cyclone Olivia on 10 April 1996, surpassing the previous record of 372 km/h (231 mph) set on Mount Washington (New Hampshire) on the afternoon of 12 April 1934.[144] The most powerful gusts of wind on Earth were created by nuclear detonations. The blast wave is similar to a strong wind gust over the ground. The largest nuclear explosion (50–58 megatons at an altitude of about 13,000 feet (4,000 m)) generated a 20 bar blast pressure at ground zero, which is similar to a wind gust of 3,100 miles per hour (5,000 km/h).
+
+Wildfire intensity increases during daytime hours. For example, burn rates of smoldering logs are up to five times greater during the day because of lower humidity, increased temperatures, and increased wind speeds.[145] Sunlight warms the ground during the day and causes air currents to travel uphill, and downhill during the night as the land cools. Wildfires are fanned by these winds and often follow the air currents over hills and through valleys.[146] United States wildfire operations revolve around a 24-hour fire day that begins at 10:00 a.m. because of the predictable increase in intensity resulting from the daytime warmth.[147]
+
+The solar wind is quite different from a terrestrial wind, in that its origin is the sun, and it is composed of charged particles that have escaped the sun's atmosphere. Similar to the solar wind, the planetary wind is composed of light gases that escape planetary atmospheres. Over long periods of time, the planetary wind can radically change the composition of planetary atmospheres.
+
+The fastest wind ever recorded is coming from the accretion disc of the IGR J17091-3624 black hole. Its speed is 20,000,000 miles per hour (32,000,000 km/h), which is 3% of the speed of light.[148]
+
+The hydrodynamic wind within the upper portion of a planet's atmosphere allows light chemical elements such as hydrogen to move up to the exobase, the lower limit of the exosphere, where the gases can then reach escape velocity, entering outer space without impacting other particles of gas. This type of gas loss from a planet into space is known as planetary wind.[149] Such a process over geologic time causes water-rich planets such as the Earth to evolve into planets like Venus.[150] Additionally, planets with hotter lower atmospheres could accelerate the loss rate of hydrogen.[151]
+
+Rather than air, the solar wind is a stream of charged particles—a plasma—ejected from the upper atmosphere of the sun at a rate of 400 kilometers per second (890,000 mph). It consists mostly of electrons and protons with energies of about 1 keV. The stream of particles varies in temperature and speed with the passage of time. These particles are able to escape the sun's gravity, in part because of the high temperature of the corona,[152] but also because of high kinetic energy that particles gain through a process that is not well understood. The solar wind creates the Heliosphere, a vast bubble in the interstellar medium surrounding the Solar System.[153] Planets require large magnetic fields in order to reduce the ionization of their upper atmosphere by the solar wind.[151] Other phenomena caused by the solar wind include geomagnetic storms that can knock out power grids on Earth,[154] the aurorae such as the Northern Lights,[155] and the plasma tails of comets that always point away from the sun.[156]
+
+Strong 300 kilometers per hour (190 mph) winds at Venus's cloud tops circle the planet every four to five earth days.[157] When the poles of Mars are exposed to sunlight after their winter, the frozen CO2 sublimates, creating significant winds that sweep off the poles as fast as 400 kilometers per hour (250 mph), which subsequently transports large amounts of dust and water vapor over its landscape.[158] Other Martian winds have resulted in cleaning events and dust devils.[159][160] On Jupiter, wind speeds of 100 meters per second (220 mph) are common in zonal jet streams.[161] Saturn's winds are among the Solar System's fastest. Cassini–Huygens data indicated peak easterly winds of 375 meters per second (840 mph).[162] On Uranus, northern hemisphere wind speeds reach as high as 240 meters per second (540 mph) near 50 degrees north latitude.[163][164][165] At the cloud tops of Neptune, prevailing winds range in speed from 400 meters per second (890 mph) along the equator to 250 meters per second (560 mph) at the poles.[166] At 70° S latitude on Neptune, a high-speed jet stream travels at a speed of 300 meters per second (670 mph).[167] The fastest wind on any known planet is on HD 80606 b located 190 light years away, where it blows at more than 11,000 mph or 5 km/s.[168]
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+The abdomen (colloquially called the stomach, belly,[1] tummy or midriff) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the trunk. The region occupied by the abdomen is called the abdominal cavity. In arthropods it is the posterior tagma of the body; it follows the thorax or cephalothorax.[2][3]
+
+In humans, the abdomen stretches from the thorax at the thoracic diaphragm to the pelvis at the pelvic brim. The pelvic brim stretches from the lumbosacral joint (the intervertebral disc between L5 and S1) to the pubic symphysis and is the edge of the pelvic inlet. The space above this inlet and under the thoracic diaphragm is termed the abdominal cavity. The boundary of the abdominal cavity is the abdominal wall in the front and the peritoneal surface at the rear.
+
+
+
+In vertebrates, the abdomen is a large body cavity enclosed by the abdominal muscles, at front and to the sides, and by part of the vertebral column at the back. Lower ribs can also enclose ventral and lateral walls. The abdominal cavity is continuous with, and above, the pelvic cavity. It is attached to the thoracic cavity by the diaphragm. Structures such as the aorta, inferior vena cava and esophagus pass through the diaphragm. Both the abdominal and pelvic cavities are lined by a serous membrane known as the parietal peritoneum. This membrane is continuous with the visceral peritoneum lining the organs.[4] The abdomen in vertebrates contains a number of organs belonging to, for instance, the digestive system, urinary system, and muscular system.
+
+The abdominal cavity contains most organs of the digestive system, including the stomach, the small intestine, and the colon with its attached appendix. Other digestive organs are known as the accessory digestive organs and include the liver, its attached gallbladder, and the pancreas, and these communicate with the rest of the system via various ducts. The spleen, and organs of the urinary system including the kidneys, and adrenal glands also lie within the abdomen, along with many blood vessels including the aorta and inferior vena cava. The urinary bladder, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries may be seen as either abdominal organs or as pelvic organs. Finally, the abdomen contains an extensive membrane called the peritoneum. A fold of peritoneum may completely cover certain organs, whereas it may cover only one side of organs that usually lie closer to the abdominal wall. This is called the retroperitoneum, and the kidneys and ureters are known as retroperitoneal organs.
+
+Abdominal organs can be highly specialized in some animals. For example, the stomach of ruminants, (a suborder of mammals that includes cattle and sheep), is divided into four chambers – rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum.[5]
+
+View of the various organs and blood-vessels in proximity with liver.
+
+The relations of the viscera and large vessels of the abdomen, seen from behind.
+
+There are three layers of muscles in the abdominal wall. They are, from the outside to the inside: external oblique, internal oblique, and transverse abdominal.[6] The first three layers extend between the vertebral column, the lower ribs, the iliac crest and pubis of the hip. All of their fibers merge towards the midline and surround the rectus abdominis in a sheath before joining up on the opposite side at the linea alba. Strength is gained by the criss-crossing of fibers, such that the external oblique runs downward and forward, the internal oblique upward and forward, and the transverse abdominal horizontally forward.[6]
+
+The transverse abdominal muscle is flat and triangular, with its fibers running horizontally. It lies between the internal oblique and the underlying transverse fascia. It originates from Poupart's ligament, the inner lip of the ilium, the lumbar fascia and the inner surface of the cartilages of the six lower ribs. It inserts into the linea alba behind the rectus abdominis.
+
+The rectus abdominis muscles are long and flat. The muscle is crossed by three fibrous bands called the tendinous intersections. The rectus abdominis is enclosed in a thick sheath, formed as described above, by fibers from each of the three muscles of the lateral abdominal wall. They originate at the pubis bone, run up the abdomen on either side of the linea alba, and insert into the cartilages of the fifth, sixth, and seventh ribs. In the region of the groin, the inguinal canal, is a passage through the layers. This gap is where the testes can drop through the wall and where the fibrous cord from the uterus in the female runs. This is also where weakness can form, and cause inguinal hernias.[6]
+
+The pyramidalis muscle is small and triangular. It is located in the lower abdomen in front of the rectus abdominis. It originates at the pubic bone and is inserted into the linea alba halfway up to the navel.
+
+Functionally, the human abdomen is where most of the digestive tract is placed and so most of the absorption and digestion of food occurs here. The alimentary tract in the abdomen consists of the lower esophagus, the stomach, the duodenum, the jejunum, ileum, the cecum and the appendix, the ascending, transverse and descending colons, the sigmoid colon and the rectum. Other vital organs inside the abdomen include the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas and the spleen.
+
+The abdominal wall is split into the posterior (back), lateral (sides), and anterior (front) walls.
+
+The abdominal muscles have different important functions. They assist as muscles of exhalation in the breathing process during forceful exhalation. Moreover, these muscles serve as protection for the inner organs. Furthermore, together with the back muscles they provide postural support and are important in defining the form. When the glottis is closed and the thorax and pelvis are fixed, they are integral in the cough, urination, defecation, childbirth, vomit, and singing functions.[6] When the pelvis is fixed, they can initiate the movement of the trunk in a forward motion. They also prevent hyperextension. When the thorax is fixed, they can pull up the pelvis and finally, they can bend the vertebral column sideways and assist in the trunk's rotation.[6]
+
+The transverse abdominis muscle is the deepest muscle, therefore, it cannot be touched from the outside. It can greatly affect the body's posture. The internal obliques are also deep and also affect body posture. Both of them are involved in rotation and lateral flexion of the spine and are used to bend and support the spine from the front. The external obliques are more superficial and they are also involved in rotation and lateral flexion of the spine. Also they stabilize the spine when upright. The rectus abdominis muscle is not the most superficial abdominal muscle. The tendonous sheath extending from the external obliques cover the rectus abdominis. The rectus abdominis is the muscle that very fit people develop into the 6-pack ab look. Although, it should really be a 10 pack as there are 5 vertical sections on each side. The 2 bottom sections are just above the pubic bone and usually not visible, hence, the 6 pack abs. The rectus abdominals' function is to bend one's back forward (flexion). The main work of the abdominal muscles is to bend the spine forward when contracting concentrically.[7]
+
+Social and cultural perceptions of the outward appearance of the abdomen has varying significance around the world. Depending on the type of society, excess weight can be perceived as an indicator of wealth and prestige due to excess food, or as a sign of poor health due to lack of exercise. In many cultures, bare abdomens are distinctly sexualized and perceived similarly to breast cleavage.
+
+Being key elements of spinal support, and contributors to good posture, it is important to properly exercise the abdominal muscles together with the back muscles because when these are weak or overly tight they can suffer painful spasms and injuries. When properly exercised, abdominal muscles contribute to improved posture and balance, reduce the likelihood of back pain episodes, reduce the severity of back pain, protect against injury by responding efficiently to stresses, help avoid some back surgeries, and help with the healing of back problems, or after spine surgery. When strengthened, the abdominal muscles provide flexibility as well. The abdominal muscles can be worked by practicing disciplines of general body strength such as Pilates, yoga, T'ai chi, and jogging. There are also specific routines which target each of these muscles.
+
+Abdominal obesity is a condition where abdominal fat or visceral fat, has built up excessively between the abdominal organs. This is associated with a higher risk of heart disease, asthma and type 2 diabetes.
+
+Abdominal trauma is an injury to the abdomen and can involve damage to the abdominal organs. There is an associated risk of severe blood loss and infection.[8] Injury to the lower chest can cause injuries to the spleen and liver.[9]
+
+A scaphoid abdomen is when the abdomen is sucked inwards.[10] In a newborn, it may represent a diaphragmatic hernia.[11] In general, it is indicative of malnutrition.[12]
+
+Many gastrointestinal diseases affect the abdominal organs. These include stomach disease, liver disease, pancreatic disease, gallbladder and bile duct disease; intestinal diseases include enteritis, coeliac disease, diverticulitis, and IBS.
+
+Different medical procedures can be used to examine the organs of the gastrointestinal tract. These include endoscopy, colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, enteroscopy, oesophagogastroduodenoscopy and virtual colonoscopy. There are also a number of medical imaging techniques that can be used. Surface landmarks are important in the examination of the abdomen.
+
+In the mid-line a slight furrow extends from the xiphoid process above to the pubic symphysis below, representing the linea alba in the abdominal wall. At about its midpoint sits the umbilicus or navel. The rectus abdominis on each side of the linea alba stands out in muscular people. The outline of these muscles is interrupted by three or more transverse depressions indicating the tendinous intersections. There is usually one about the xiphoid process, one at the navel, and one in between. It is the combination of the linea alba and the tendinous intersections which form the abdominal "six-pack" sought after by many people.
+
+The upper lateral limit of the abdomen is the subcostal margin (at or near the subcostal plane) formed by the cartilages of the false ribs (8, 9, 10) joining one another. The lower lateral limit is the anterior crest of the ilium and Poupart's ligament, which runs from the anterior superior spine of the ilium to the spine of the pubis. These lower limits are marked by visible grooves. Just above the pubic spines on either side are the external abdominal rings, which are openings in the muscular wall of the abdomen through which the spermatic cord emerges in the male, and through which an inguinal hernia may rupture.
+
+One method by which the location of the abdominal contents can be appreciated is to draw three horizontal and two vertical lines.
+
+The two vertical or mid-Poupart lines are drawn from the point midway between the anterior superior spine and the pubic symphysis on each side, vertically upward to the costal margin.
+
+The right subcostal margin corresponds to the lower limit of the liver, while the right nipple is about half an inch above its upper limit.
+
+
+
+The abdomen can be divided into quadrants or regions to describe the location of an organ or structure. Classically, quadrants are described as the left upper, left lower, right upper, and right lower.[citation needed] Quadrants are also often used in describing the site of an abdominal pain.[13]
+
+The abdomen can also be divided into nine regions.
+
+These terms stem from "hypo" meaning "below" and "epi" means "above", while "chondron" means "cartilage" (in this case, the cartilage of the rib) and "gaster" means stomach. The reversal of "left" and "right" is intentional, because the anatomical designations reflect the patient's own right and left.)
+
+The "right iliac fossa" (RIF) is a common site of pain and tenderness in patients who have appendicitis. The fossa is named for the underlying iliac fossa of the hip bone, and thus is somewhat imprecise. Most of the anatomical structures that will produce pain and tenderness in this region are not in fact in the concavity of the ileum. However, the term is in common usage.
+
+In arthropods the abdomen is built up of a series of upper plates known as tergites and lower plates known as sternites, the whole being held together by a tough yet stretchable membrane.
+
+The abdomen contains the insect's digestive tract and reproductive organs, it consists of eleven segments in most orders of insects though the eleventh segment is absent in the adult of most higher orders. The number of these segments does vary from species to species with the number of segments visible reduced to only seven in the common honeybee. In the Collembola (Springtails) the abdomen has only six segments.
+
+The abdomen is sometimes highly modified. In Apocrita (bees, ants and wasps), the first segment of the abdomen is fused to the thorax and is called the propodeum. In ants the second segment forms the narrow petiole. Some ants have an additional postpetiole segment, and the remaining segments form the bulbous gaster.[14] The petiole and gaster (abdominal segments 2 and onward) are collectively called the metasoma.
+
+Unlike other arthropods, insects possess no legs on the abdomen in adult form, though the Protura do have rudimentary leg-like appendages on the first three abdominal segments, and Archaeognatha possess small, articulated "styli" which are sometimes considered to be rudimentary appendages. Many larval insects including the Lepidoptera and the Symphyta (Sawflies) have fleshy appendages called prolegs on their abdominal segments (as well as their more familiar thoracic legs), which allow them to grip onto the edges of plant leaves as they walk around.
+
+In arachnids (spiders, scorpions and relatives), the term "abdomen" is used interchangeably with "opisthosoma" ("hind body"), which is the body section posterior to that bearing the legs and head (the prosoma or cephalothorax).

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+The abdomen (colloquially called the stomach, belly,[1] tummy or midriff) is the part of the body between the thorax (chest) and pelvis, in humans and in other vertebrates. The abdomen is the front part of the abdominal segment of the trunk. The region occupied by the abdomen is called the abdominal cavity. In arthropods it is the posterior tagma of the body; it follows the thorax or cephalothorax.[2][3]
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+In humans, the abdomen stretches from the thorax at the thoracic diaphragm to the pelvis at the pelvic brim. The pelvic brim stretches from the lumbosacral joint (the intervertebral disc between L5 and S1) to the pubic symphysis and is the edge of the pelvic inlet. The space above this inlet and under the thoracic diaphragm is termed the abdominal cavity. The boundary of the abdominal cavity is the abdominal wall in the front and the peritoneal surface at the rear.
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+In vertebrates, the abdomen is a large body cavity enclosed by the abdominal muscles, at front and to the sides, and by part of the vertebral column at the back. Lower ribs can also enclose ventral and lateral walls. The abdominal cavity is continuous with, and above, the pelvic cavity. It is attached to the thoracic cavity by the diaphragm. Structures such as the aorta, inferior vena cava and esophagus pass through the diaphragm. Both the abdominal and pelvic cavities are lined by a serous membrane known as the parietal peritoneum. This membrane is continuous with the visceral peritoneum lining the organs.[4] The abdomen in vertebrates contains a number of organs belonging to, for instance, the digestive system, urinary system, and muscular system.
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+The abdominal cavity contains most organs of the digestive system, including the stomach, the small intestine, and the colon with its attached appendix. Other digestive organs are known as the accessory digestive organs and include the liver, its attached gallbladder, and the pancreas, and these communicate with the rest of the system via various ducts. The spleen, and organs of the urinary system including the kidneys, and adrenal glands also lie within the abdomen, along with many blood vessels including the aorta and inferior vena cava. The urinary bladder, uterus, fallopian tubes, and ovaries may be seen as either abdominal organs or as pelvic organs. Finally, the abdomen contains an extensive membrane called the peritoneum. A fold of peritoneum may completely cover certain organs, whereas it may cover only one side of organs that usually lie closer to the abdominal wall. This is called the retroperitoneum, and the kidneys and ureters are known as retroperitoneal organs.
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+Abdominal organs can be highly specialized in some animals. For example, the stomach of ruminants, (a suborder of mammals that includes cattle and sheep), is divided into four chambers – rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum.[5]
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+View of the various organs and blood-vessels in proximity with liver.
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+The relations of the viscera and large vessels of the abdomen, seen from behind.
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+There are three layers of muscles in the abdominal wall. They are, from the outside to the inside: external oblique, internal oblique, and transverse abdominal.[6] The first three layers extend between the vertebral column, the lower ribs, the iliac crest and pubis of the hip. All of their fibers merge towards the midline and surround the rectus abdominis in a sheath before joining up on the opposite side at the linea alba. Strength is gained by the criss-crossing of fibers, such that the external oblique runs downward and forward, the internal oblique upward and forward, and the transverse abdominal horizontally forward.[6]
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+The transverse abdominal muscle is flat and triangular, with its fibers running horizontally. It lies between the internal oblique and the underlying transverse fascia. It originates from Poupart's ligament, the inner lip of the ilium, the lumbar fascia and the inner surface of the cartilages of the six lower ribs. It inserts into the linea alba behind the rectus abdominis.
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+The rectus abdominis muscles are long and flat. The muscle is crossed by three fibrous bands called the tendinous intersections. The rectus abdominis is enclosed in a thick sheath, formed as described above, by fibers from each of the three muscles of the lateral abdominal wall. They originate at the pubis bone, run up the abdomen on either side of the linea alba, and insert into the cartilages of the fifth, sixth, and seventh ribs. In the region of the groin, the inguinal canal, is a passage through the layers. This gap is where the testes can drop through the wall and where the fibrous cord from the uterus in the female runs. This is also where weakness can form, and cause inguinal hernias.[6]
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+The pyramidalis muscle is small and triangular. It is located in the lower abdomen in front of the rectus abdominis. It originates at the pubic bone and is inserted into the linea alba halfway up to the navel.
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+Functionally, the human abdomen is where most of the digestive tract is placed and so most of the absorption and digestion of food occurs here. The alimentary tract in the abdomen consists of the lower esophagus, the stomach, the duodenum, the jejunum, ileum, the cecum and the appendix, the ascending, transverse and descending colons, the sigmoid colon and the rectum. Other vital organs inside the abdomen include the liver, the kidneys, the pancreas and the spleen.
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+The abdominal wall is split into the posterior (back), lateral (sides), and anterior (front) walls.
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+The abdominal muscles have different important functions. They assist as muscles of exhalation in the breathing process during forceful exhalation. Moreover, these muscles serve as protection for the inner organs. Furthermore, together with the back muscles they provide postural support and are important in defining the form. When the glottis is closed and the thorax and pelvis are fixed, they are integral in the cough, urination, defecation, childbirth, vomit, and singing functions.[6] When the pelvis is fixed, they can initiate the movement of the trunk in a forward motion. They also prevent hyperextension. When the thorax is fixed, they can pull up the pelvis and finally, they can bend the vertebral column sideways and assist in the trunk's rotation.[6]
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+The transverse abdominis muscle is the deepest muscle, therefore, it cannot be touched from the outside. It can greatly affect the body's posture. The internal obliques are also deep and also affect body posture. Both of them are involved in rotation and lateral flexion of the spine and are used to bend and support the spine from the front. The external obliques are more superficial and they are also involved in rotation and lateral flexion of the spine. Also they stabilize the spine when upright. The rectus abdominis muscle is not the most superficial abdominal muscle. The tendonous sheath extending from the external obliques cover the rectus abdominis. The rectus abdominis is the muscle that very fit people develop into the 6-pack ab look. Although, it should really be a 10 pack as there are 5 vertical sections on each side. The 2 bottom sections are just above the pubic bone and usually not visible, hence, the 6 pack abs. The rectus abdominals' function is to bend one's back forward (flexion). The main work of the abdominal muscles is to bend the spine forward when contracting concentrically.[7]
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+Social and cultural perceptions of the outward appearance of the abdomen has varying significance around the world. Depending on the type of society, excess weight can be perceived as an indicator of wealth and prestige due to excess food, or as a sign of poor health due to lack of exercise. In many cultures, bare abdomens are distinctly sexualized and perceived similarly to breast cleavage.
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+Being key elements of spinal support, and contributors to good posture, it is important to properly exercise the abdominal muscles together with the back muscles because when these are weak or overly tight they can suffer painful spasms and injuries. When properly exercised, abdominal muscles contribute to improved posture and balance, reduce the likelihood of back pain episodes, reduce the severity of back pain, protect against injury by responding efficiently to stresses, help avoid some back surgeries, and help with the healing of back problems, or after spine surgery. When strengthened, the abdominal muscles provide flexibility as well. The abdominal muscles can be worked by practicing disciplines of general body strength such as Pilates, yoga, T'ai chi, and jogging. There are also specific routines which target each of these muscles.
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+Abdominal obesity is a condition where abdominal fat or visceral fat, has built up excessively between the abdominal organs. This is associated with a higher risk of heart disease, asthma and type 2 diabetes.
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+Abdominal trauma is an injury to the abdomen and can involve damage to the abdominal organs. There is an associated risk of severe blood loss and infection.[8] Injury to the lower chest can cause injuries to the spleen and liver.[9]
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+A scaphoid abdomen is when the abdomen is sucked inwards.[10] In a newborn, it may represent a diaphragmatic hernia.[11] In general, it is indicative of malnutrition.[12]
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+Many gastrointestinal diseases affect the abdominal organs. These include stomach disease, liver disease, pancreatic disease, gallbladder and bile duct disease; intestinal diseases include enteritis, coeliac disease, diverticulitis, and IBS.
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+Different medical procedures can be used to examine the organs of the gastrointestinal tract. These include endoscopy, colonoscopy, sigmoidoscopy, enteroscopy, oesophagogastroduodenoscopy and virtual colonoscopy. There are also a number of medical imaging techniques that can be used. Surface landmarks are important in the examination of the abdomen.
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+In the mid-line a slight furrow extends from the xiphoid process above to the pubic symphysis below, representing the linea alba in the abdominal wall. At about its midpoint sits the umbilicus or navel. The rectus abdominis on each side of the linea alba stands out in muscular people. The outline of these muscles is interrupted by three or more transverse depressions indicating the tendinous intersections. There is usually one about the xiphoid process, one at the navel, and one in between. It is the combination of the linea alba and the tendinous intersections which form the abdominal "six-pack" sought after by many people.
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+The upper lateral limit of the abdomen is the subcostal margin (at or near the subcostal plane) formed by the cartilages of the false ribs (8, 9, 10) joining one another. The lower lateral limit is the anterior crest of the ilium and Poupart's ligament, which runs from the anterior superior spine of the ilium to the spine of the pubis. These lower limits are marked by visible grooves. Just above the pubic spines on either side are the external abdominal rings, which are openings in the muscular wall of the abdomen through which the spermatic cord emerges in the male, and through which an inguinal hernia may rupture.
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+One method by which the location of the abdominal contents can be appreciated is to draw three horizontal and two vertical lines.
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+The two vertical or mid-Poupart lines are drawn from the point midway between the anterior superior spine and the pubic symphysis on each side, vertically upward to the costal margin.
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+The right subcostal margin corresponds to the lower limit of the liver, while the right nipple is about half an inch above its upper limit.
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+The abdomen can be divided into quadrants or regions to describe the location of an organ or structure. Classically, quadrants are described as the left upper, left lower, right upper, and right lower.[citation needed] Quadrants are also often used in describing the site of an abdominal pain.[13]
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+The abdomen can also be divided into nine regions.
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+These terms stem from "hypo" meaning "below" and "epi" means "above", while "chondron" means "cartilage" (in this case, the cartilage of the rib) and "gaster" means stomach. The reversal of "left" and "right" is intentional, because the anatomical designations reflect the patient's own right and left.)
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+The "right iliac fossa" (RIF) is a common site of pain and tenderness in patients who have appendicitis. The fossa is named for the underlying iliac fossa of the hip bone, and thus is somewhat imprecise. Most of the anatomical structures that will produce pain and tenderness in this region are not in fact in the concavity of the ileum. However, the term is in common usage.
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+In arthropods the abdomen is built up of a series of upper plates known as tergites and lower plates known as sternites, the whole being held together by a tough yet stretchable membrane.
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+The abdomen contains the insect's digestive tract and reproductive organs, it consists of eleven segments in most orders of insects though the eleventh segment is absent in the adult of most higher orders. The number of these segments does vary from species to species with the number of segments visible reduced to only seven in the common honeybee. In the Collembola (Springtails) the abdomen has only six segments.
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+The abdomen is sometimes highly modified. In Apocrita (bees, ants and wasps), the first segment of the abdomen is fused to the thorax and is called the propodeum. In ants the second segment forms the narrow petiole. Some ants have an additional postpetiole segment, and the remaining segments form the bulbous gaster.[14] The petiole and gaster (abdominal segments 2 and onward) are collectively called the metasoma.
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+Unlike other arthropods, insects possess no legs on the abdomen in adult form, though the Protura do have rudimentary leg-like appendages on the first three abdominal segments, and Archaeognatha possess small, articulated "styli" which are sometimes considered to be rudimentary appendages. Many larval insects including the Lepidoptera and the Symphyta (Sawflies) have fleshy appendages called prolegs on their abdominal segments (as well as their more familiar thoracic legs), which allow them to grip onto the edges of plant leaves as they walk around.
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+In arachnids (spiders, scorpions and relatives), the term "abdomen" is used interchangeably with "opisthosoma" ("hind body"), which is the body section posterior to that bearing the legs and head (the prosoma or cephalothorax).

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+The Venus de Milo (Greek: Αφροδίτη της Μήλου, Aphroditi tis Milou) is an ancient Greek statue and one of the most famous works of ancient Greek sculpture. Initially it was attributed to the sculptor Praxiteles, but based on an inscription that was on its plinth, the statue is now thought to be the work of Alexandros of Antioch.[1]
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+Created sometime between 130 and 100 BC, the statue is believed to depict Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love and beauty. However, some scholars claim it is the sea-goddess Amphitrite, venerated on Milos.[2] It is a marble sculpture, slightly larger than life size at 203 cm (6 ft 8 in) high. Part of an arm and the original plinth were lost following the statue's discovery. It is currently on permanent display at the Louvre Museum in Paris. The statue is named after Aphrodite's Roman name, Venus, and the Greek island of Milos, where it was discovered.
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+The Venus de Milo's arms are missing, for unknown reasons.[3][page needed] There is a filled hole below her right breast that originally contained a metal tenon that would have supported the separately carved right arm.
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+It is generally asserted that the Venus de Milo was discovered on 8 April 1820 by a peasant named Yorgos Kentrotas, inside a buried niche within the ancient city ruins of Milos. Milos is the current village of Trypiti, on the island of Milos (also called Melos, or Milo) in the Aegean, which was then a part of the Ottoman Empire.[4]
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+Elsewhere, the discoverers are identified as Yorgos Bottonis and his son Antonio. Paul Carus gave the site of discovery as "the ruins of an ancient theater in the vicinity of Castro, the capital of the island", adding that Bottonis and his son "came accidentally across a small cave, carefully covered with a heavy slab and concealed, which contained a fine marble statue in two pieces, together with several other marble fragments. This happened in February, 1820". He apparently based these assertions on an article he had read in the Century Magazine.[5]
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+The Australian historian Edward Duyker, citing a letter written by Louis Brest who was the French consul in Milos in 1820, asserts the discoverer of the statue was Theodoros Kendrotas and that he has been confused with his younger son Giorgios (known phonetically as Yorgos) who later claimed credit for the find. Duyker asserts that Kendrotas was taking stone from a ruined chapel on the edge of his property – terraced land that had once formed part of a Roman gymnasium – and that he discovered an oblong cavity some 1.2 × 1.5 metres (4 × 5 ft) deep in the volcanic tuff. It was in this cavity, which had three wings, that Kendrotas first noticed the upper part of the statue.[6]
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+Notwithstanding these anomalies, the consensus is that the statue was found in two large pieces (the upper torso and the lower draped legs) along with several herms (pillars topped with heads), fragments of the upper left arm and left hand holding an apple, and an inscribed plinth.
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+In 1871, during the Paris Commune uprising, many public buildings were burned. The Venus de Milo statue was secreted out of the Louvre Museum in an oak crate and hidden in the basement of the Prefecture of Police. Although the Prefecture was burned, the statue survived undamaged.[7]
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+In 1920, sculptor Robert Ingersoll Aitken created a stir when he criticized the display, lighting, and placement of the statue of Venus de Milo in the museum.[8]
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+In the autumn of 1939, the statue was packed for removal from the Louvre in anticipation of the outbreak of war. Scenery trucks from the Comédie-Française transported the Louvre's masterpieces to safer locations in the countryside.[9] During World War II, the statue was sheltered safely in the Château de Valençay, along with the Winged Victory of Samothrace and Michelangelo's Slaves.[10]
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+The great fame of the Venus de Milo during the nineteenth century owed much to a major propaganda effort by the French authorities. In 1815, France had returned the Venus de' Medici (also known as the Medici Venus) to the Italians, after it had been looted by Napoleon Bonaparte. The Medici Venus, regarded as one of the finest classical sculptures in existence, caused the French to promote the Venus de Milo as a greater treasure than that which they recently had lost. The statue was praised dutifully by many artists and critics as the epitome of graceful female beauty. However, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was among its detractors, labelling it a "big gendarme".[11][page needed]
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+The statue has greatly influenced masters of modern art; one prime example is Salvador Dalí's Venus de Milo with Drawers.[12]
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+The statue was formerly part of the seal of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS), one of the oldest associations of plastic surgeons in the world.[13]
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+In February 2010, the German magazine Focus featured a doctored image of this Venus giving Europe the middle finger, which resulted in a defamation lawsuit against the journalists and the publication.[14] They were found not guilty by the Greek court.[15]
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+Upon its discovery in 1820, the Venus de Milo was always considered to be a significant artistic finding, but did not gain its status as an icon until later on. The exact circumstances in which she was discovered, however, are uncertain and will probably always remain this way. But, we do know that at this time, the Louvre and in turn, French art as a whole, had suffered great losses when Napoleon’s looted art collection was returned to their countries of origin. The museum lost some of its most iconic pieces, like Rome’s Laocoon and His Sons and Italy’s Venus de Medici. The hole that this left in French culture allowed the perfect path for the Venus de Milo to become an international icon. Based on early drawings, the plinth that had been detached from the statue was known to have dates on it, which revealed that it was created after the Classical period, which was the most desirable artistic period. This caused the French to hide the plinth, in an effort to conceal this fact before her introduction to the Louvre in 1821. She held a prime spot in the gallery, and became iconic, mostly due to the Louvre’s branding campaign and emphasis on her importance in order to regain national pride. This is why she is the most notable and universally known Venus statue.
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+Upon the first arrival of  the Venus de Milo to the Louvre, she was accepted and praised immediately, believed to be a Classical Grecian masterpiece. Even once the statue was discovered to have actually been created in the Hellenistic period, she still held the same amount of popularity around the world. Many artists were inspired by the beautiful sculpture, which eventually led to her role in pop culture.
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+Many modern artists have been inspired by this piece since she first arrived at the Louvre. (ancient eu) One of the more notable pieces was created by French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne who drew a pencil study in 1881. Another inspired work was by René Magritte, who painted a reduced-scale version of plaster, with bright pink and dark blue, entitled “Les Menottes de Cuivre”  or “The Copper Handcuffs” in 1931. Even more recently are the works of Neo-Dada Pop artist Jim Dine, who often utilizes the Venus de Milo in his sculptures and paintings since the 1970s. But, possibly the most widely-known adaptation is that of Salvador Dalí, with his 1936 creation “Venus de Milo aux tiroirs (Venus of Milos with Drawers).” The Spanish Surrealist created a half-size plaster cast, painted it, and covered the slightly open drawers with metal knobs and fur pom-poms. This inspired recreation of the famous sculpture was meant to display the “goddess of love as a fetishistic anthropomorphic cabinet with secret drawers filled with a maelstrom of mysteries of sexual desires that only a modern psychoanalyst can interpret” (Oppen & Meijer, 2019).
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+The image of the Venus de Milo is seen constantly in modern culture, whether it be in magazines, advertisements, or home decor. The references to the sculpture go on and on, which speaks to her ability to maintain relevance.
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+This Grecian statue is believed to depict the Greek Goddess of love and beauty, which they would refer to as Aphrodite. But, the Louvre chose to label her as Venus instead, and the name remained.
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+While most accept the statue as a depiction of Venus/Aphrodite, and some believe it depicts the sea goddess Amphitrite, others still believe it is neither. Amphitrite was widely popular on the island on which the statue was found, fueling this opinion. This debate is still very much alive, but with a lack of evidence and clues, like her missing arm, it is difficult to determine a definitive answer. If the arm had been holding something, like a spear, apple or a spool of thread, it would give much more insight into who the statue is and put the debate to rest.
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+Much like the plinth, the French are also responsible for the loss of the statues’ arms. Kentrotas, who originally uncovered the statue, found fragments of an arm and hand, but they were discarded by the French. The Venus sculpture was also robbed of her accessories, like a bracelet and earrings. These were presumably gone long before her discovery, but the proof of their existence lies in the remaining holes where the objects were fastened to her body.
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+In the fall of 1939, the French relocated the Venus de Milo and other important pieces to a chateau in the French countryside in fear of a war invasion in Paris.
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+Charlie Drake had a sketch in which the statue lost its arms as a result of careless work by museum employees tasked with packing it.[16]
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+Dean Martin referenced the statue on a TV special in a segment involving a woman from the studio audience joining him on stage. The nervous young lady giggled and repeatedly started to bite her nails when Martin gently brushed her hand away and said, "Don't bite your nails, look what happened to the Venus de Milo!" [17]
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+The film Carry on Cleo has a skit showing how the statue lost its arms. An Asterix film has a similar skit.
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+A plot to steal the statue is at the center of the spoof spy film The Last of the Secret Agents? (1966), starring Marty Allen and Steve Rossi.
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+In The Tick episode "Armless but Not Harmless", the villains Venus and Milo rob an art museum.
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+In The Simpsons episode "Homer Badman", a Gummi Venus de Milo parodies the statue.
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+In Disney's Hercules, there is a scene where Hercules skips a stone and accidentally breaks off both arms.
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+In Twin Peaks, the Venus de Milo is in the Red Room.
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+In the BBC sitcom Only Fools and Horses, Del Boy shows Rodney a model of the statue claiming there are sick-minded people in the world who would make such a statue of a disabled person.
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+In The Goodies episode Rome Antics, which was set in ancient times, Emperor Tim has the complete statue in his quarters.  Graeme enters, removes his cloak, and throws it over one of the arms.  The head falls off.
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+“...No, no, no, no te cambio por nada, Ni por un viaje a Fiji con la Venus de Milo...” (no, no, no, I will not trade you for anything, not even for a trip to Fiji with the Venus de Milo...”, another of his songs “Nada es como tú” (Nothing is like you” says:  “Besé a la Venus de Milo y a una diosa en Hollywood, de tanto patear caminos, hoy sé con exactitud que... Nada, nada, nada es como tú...” (“I kiss the Venus de Milo and a Hollywood goddess, and from all my experiences, now I know exactly that nothing, nothing, nothing is like you...”
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+Venus was a statue made entirely of stone;
+She never wore a fig leaf; She's as naked as a bone;
+On discovering her arms were gone, an engineer discoursed:
+"The damn thing's made of concrete, and it should be reinforced!"
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+On 3 October 2012, French activists belonging to Femen protested against rape by standing topless in front of the Venus de Milo. The group indicated they chose the Venus de Milo because the statue has no arms and therefore symbolizes a woman’s helplessness and vulnerability.[18]

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+Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.  As the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, Venus can cast shadows and can be, on rare occasion, visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.[15][16] Venus lies within Earth's orbit, and so never appears to venture far from the Sun, either setting in the west just after dusk or rising in the east a bit before dawn. Venus orbits the Sun every 224.7 Earth days.[17] With a rotation period of 243 Earth days,  it takes longer to rotate about its axis than any other planet in the Solar System and does so in the opposite direction to all but Uranus (meaning the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east).[18] Venus does not have any moons, a distinction it shares only with Mercury among planets in the Solar System.[19]
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+Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. It may have had water oceans in the past,[20][21] but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a runaway greenhouse effect.[22] The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field.[23] Venus's surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism.
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+As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star and evening star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.[24]
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+As the planet with the closest approach to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft (Mariner 2 in 1962), and the first to be successfully landed on (by Venera 7 in 1970). Venus's thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more complex missions, but they are hindered by Venus's hostile surface conditions.
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+In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
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+Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass, and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin".[27] The diameter of Venus is 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi)—only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) less than Earth's—and its mass is 81.5% of Earth's. Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen.[28]
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+The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. Venera landers in 1975 and 1982 returned images of a surface covered in sediment and relatively angular rocks.[29] The surface was mapped in detail by Magellan in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been recent eruptions.[30][31]
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+About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains.[32] Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent is called Ishtar Terra after Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is 11 km (7 mi) above the Venusian average surface elevation.[33] The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area.[34]
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+The absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible calderas remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, approximately 300–600 million years old.[35][36] Venus has some unique surface features in addition to the impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called "farra", which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20 to 50 km (12 to 31 mi) across, and from 100 to 1,000 m (330 to 3,280 ft) high; radial, star-like fracture systems called "novae"; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as "arachnoids"; and "coronae", circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by a depression. These features are volcanic in origin.[37]
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+Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women.[38] Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell, and highland regions Alpha Regio, Beta Regio, and Ovda Regio. The last three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union, the body which oversees planetary nomenclature.[39]
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+The longitude of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio.[40] After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne.[41][42]
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+Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (60 mi) across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii.[37]:154 This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years,[43] whereas the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old.[35][37]
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+Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulphur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold.[44] This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions.[45][46] It has also been suggested that Venusian lightning (discussed below) could originate from volcanic activity (i.e. volcanic lightning). In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
+
+In 2008 and 2009, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was observed by Venus Express, in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma,[47][n 1] near the shield volcano Maat Mons. Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions.[48][49] The actual temperatures are not known, because the size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the 800–1,100 K (527–827 °C; 980–1,520 °F) range, relative to a normal temperature of 740 K (467 °C; 872 °F).[50]
+
+Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300–600 million years ago,[35][36] followed by a decay in volcanism.[51] Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.[37]
+
+Venusian craters range from 3 to 280 km (2 to 174 mi) in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3 km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater.[52] Incoming projectiles less than 50 m (160 ft) in diameter will fragment and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.[53]
+
+The stratigraphically oldest tessera terrains have consistently lower thermal emissivity than the surrounding basaltic plains measured by Venus Express and Magellan, indicating a different, possibly a more felsic, mineral assemblage.[20][54] The mechanism to generate a large amount of felsic crust usually requires the presence of water ocean and plate tectonics, implying that habitable condition had existed on early Venus. However, the nature of tessera terrains is far from certain.[55]
+
+Without seismic data or knowledge of its moment of inertia, little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus.[56] The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests they share a similar internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusian core is at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate.[57] The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's.[58] The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous. This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field.[59]
+Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events.[35]
+
+Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% nitrogen, and traces of other gases including sulfur dioxide.[60] The mass of its atmosphere is 93 times that of Earth's, whereas the pressure at its surface is about 92 times that at Earth's—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 km (5⁄8 mi) under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m3, 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth's atmosphere at 293 K (20 °C; 68 °F) at sea level. The CO2-rich atmosphere generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 735 K (462 °C; 864 °F).[17][61] This makes Venus's surface hotter than Mercury's, which has a minimum surface temperature of 53 K (−220 °C; −364 °F) and maximum surface temperature of 700 K (427 °C; 801 °F),[62][63] even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. This temperature is higher than that used for sterilization.
+
+Venus' atmosphere is extremely enriched of primordial noble gases compared to that of Earth.[64] This enrichment indicates an early divergence from Earth in evolution. An unusually large comet impact[65] or accretion of a more massive primary atmosphere from solar nebula[66] have been proposed to explain the enrichment. However, the atmosphere is also depleted of radiogenic argon, a proxy to mantle degassing, suggesting an early shutdown of major magmatism.[67][68]
+
+Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, Venus's atmosphere could have been much more like the one surrounding Earth, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but after a period of 600 million to several billion years,[69] a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.[70] Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the  upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) up from the surface, where the temperature ranges between 303 and 353 K (30 and 80 °C; 86 and 176 °F) but the environment is acidic.[71][72][73]
+
+Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even without the heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen.[74]
+
+Above the dense CO2 layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfuric acid, which is formed by sulfur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate. Additionally, the atmosphere consists of approximately 1% ferric chloride.[75][76] Other possible constituents of the cloud particles are ferric sulfate, aluminium chloride and phosphoric anhydride. Clouds at different levels have different compositions and particle size distributions.[75] These clouds reflect and scatter about 90% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent visual observation of Venus's surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on the ground. Strong 300 km/h (185 mph) winds at the cloud tops go around Venus about every four to five Earth days.[77] Winds on Venus move at up to 60 times the speed of its rotation, whereas Earth's fastest winds are only 10–20% rotation speed.[78]
+
+The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature not only between the two hemispheres but between the equator and the poles.[5][79] Venus's minute axial tilt—less than 3°, compared to 23° on Earth—also minimises seasonal temperature variation.[80] Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperature. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes, is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about 655 K (380 °C; 715 °F) and an atmospheric pressure of about 4.5 MPa (45 bar).[81][82] In 1995, the Magellan spacecraft imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance likely formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gaseous form to higher elevations, where it is cooler and could precipitate. The identity of this substance is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide (galena).[83]
+
+Although Venus has no seasons as such, in 2019 astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus's zonal winds, and appears to rise and fall in time with the Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle.[84]
+
+The existence of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus has been controversial[85] since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes[86][87][88] In 2006–07, Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves, the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. According to these measurements, the lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth,[89] however other instruments have not detected lightning at all.[85] The origin of any lightning remains unclear, but could originate from the clouds or volcanoes.
+
+In 2007, Venus Express discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole.[90][91] Venus Express also discovered, in 2011, that an ozone layer exists high in the atmosphere of Venus.[92] On 29 January 2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions."[93][94]
+
+In December 2015, and to a lesser extent in April and May 2016, researchers working on Japan's Akatsuki mission observed bow shapes in the atmosphere of Venus. This was considered direct evidence of the existence of perhaps the largest stationary gravity waves in the solar system.[95][96][97]
+
+In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus's magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind,[100][101] rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth's core. Venus's small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation.
+
+The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field at Venus was surprising, given that it is similar to Earth in size and was expected also to contain a dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection. The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, although its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show it is adequate to produce a dynamo.[102][103] This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in Venus's core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of the core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much higher in temperature than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This would cause the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, no internal geodynamo is available to drive a magnetic field. Instead, the heat from the core is being used to reheat the crust.[104]
+
+One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core,[105] or that its core is not cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulfur, which is unknown at present.[104]
+
+The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by the dissociation of neutral molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus's gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind probably led to the loss of most of Venus's water during the first billion years after it formed.[106] The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the atmosphere 100 times compared to the rest of the solar system.[107]
+
+Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 AU (108 million km; 67 million mi), and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical, Venus's orbit is the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01.[5] When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km (25 million mi).[5] However, it spends a large amount of its time away from Earth, meaning that it is the closest planet to Earth for only a minority of the time. This means that Mercury is actually the planet that is closest to Earth a plurality of the time.[108]  The planet reaches inferior conjunction every 584 days, on average.[5] Because of the decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit, the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year 1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km; then there are none for about 60,158 years.[109]
+
+All the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets also rotate on their axes in an anti-clockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. Because its rotation is so slow, Venus is very close to spherical.[110] A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts longer than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Venus's equator rotates at 6.52 km/h (4.05 mph), whereas Earth's rotates at 1,674.4 km/h (1,040.4 mph).[114][115] Venus's rotation has slowed in the 16 years between the Magellan spacecraft and Venus Express visits; each Venusian sidereal day has increased by 6.5 minutes in that time span.[116] Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day, at 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury's 176 Earth days).[117] One Venusian year is about 1.92 Venusian solar days.[118] To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east,[118] although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface.[119]
+
+Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere, a change that would have occurred over the course of billions of years. The rotation period of Venus may represent an equilibrium state between tidal locking to the Sun's gravitation, which tends to slow rotation, and an atmospheric tide created by solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere.[120][121]
+The 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to Earth is almost exactly equal to 5 Venusian solar days (5.001444 to be precise),[122] but the hypothesis of a spin-orbit resonance with Earth has been discounted.[123]
+
+Venus has no natural satellites.[124] It has several trojan asteroids: the quasi-satellite 2002 VE68[125][126] and two other temporary trojans, 2001 CK32 and 2012 XE133.[127] In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith and numerous sightings were reported over the following 200 years, but most were determined to be stars in the vicinity. Alex Alemi's and David Stevenson's 2006 study of models of the early Solar System at the California Institute of Technology shows Venus likely had at least one moon created by a huge impact event billions of years ago.[128] About 10 million years later, according to the study, another impact reversed the planet's spin direction and caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward until it collided with Venus.[129] If later impacts created moons, these were removed in the same way. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets.[124]
+
+To the naked eye, Venus appears as a white point of light brighter than any other planet or star (apart from the Sun).[130] The planet's mean apparent magnitude is −4.14 with a standard deviation of 0.31.[14] The brightest magnitude occurs during crescent phase about one month before or after inferior conjunction. Venus fades to about magnitude −3 when it is backlit by the Sun.[131] The planet is bright enough to be seen in a clear midday sky[132] and is more easily visible when the Sun is low on the horizon or setting. As an inferior planet, it always lies within about 47° of the Sun.[133]
+
+Venus "overtakes" Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun.[5] As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise. Although Mercury, the other inferior planet, reaches a maximum elongation of only 28° and is often difficult to discern in twilight, Venus is hard to miss when it is at its brightest. Its greater maximum elongation means it is visible in dark skies long after sunset. As the brightest point-like object in the sky, Venus is a commonly misreported "unidentified flying object".
+
+As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and "full" disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction). Venus shows a larger disc and "quarter phase" at its maximum elongations from the Sun, and appears its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin "crescent" in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and "new phase" when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it.[133]
+
+The Venusian orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit; thus, when the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet's inferior conjunction coincides with its presence in the plane of Earth's orbit. Transits of Venus occur in cycles of 243 years with the current pattern of transits being pairs of transits separated by eight years, at intervals of about 105.5 years or 121.5 years—a pattern first discovered in 1639 by the English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks.[134]
+
+The latest pair was June 8, 2004 and June 5–6, 2012. The transit could be watched live from many online outlets or observed locally with the right equipment and conditions.[135]
+
+The preceding pair of transits occurred in December 1874 and December 1882; the following pair will occur in December 2117 and December 2125.[136] The 1874 transit is the subject of the oldest film known, the 1874 Passage de Venus. Historically, transits of Venus were important, because they allowed astronomers to determine the size of the astronomical unit, and hence the size of the Solar System as shown by Horrocks in 1639.[137] Captain Cook's exploration of the east coast of Australia came after he had sailed to Tahiti in 1768 to observe a transit of Venus.[138][139]
+
+The pentagram of Venus is the path that Venus makes as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat very near a 13:8 ratio (Earth orbits 8 times for every 13 orbits of Venus), shifting 144° upon sequential inferior conjunctions. The 13:8 ratio is approximate. 8/13 is approximately 0.61538 while Venus orbits the Sun in 0.61519 years.[140]
+
+Naked eye observations of Venus during daylight hours exist in several anecdotes and records. Astronomer Edmund Halley calculated its maximum naked eye brightness in 1716, when many Londoners were alarmed by its appearance in the daytime. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once witnessed a daytime apparition of the planet while at a reception in Luxembourg.[141] Another historical daytime observation of the planet took place during the inauguration of the American president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on 4 March 1865.[142] Although naked eye visibility of Venus's phases is disputed, records exist of observations of its crescent.[143]
+
+A long-standing mystery of Venus observations is the so-called ashen light—an apparent weak illumination of its dark side, seen when the planet is in the crescent phase. The first claimed observation of ashen light was made in 1643, but the existence of the illumination has never been reliably confirmed. Observers have speculated it may result from electrical activity in the Venusian atmosphere, but it could be illusory, resulting from the physiological effect of observing a bright, crescent-shaped object.[144][87]
+
+Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as single entity;[145] instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star.[145] Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period and the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa from the First Babylonian dynasty indicate that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object.[146][145][147] In the Old Babylonian period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna, and later as Dilbat.[148] The name "Ninsi'anna" translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven", which refers to Venus as the brightest visible "star". Earlier spellings of the name were written with the cuneiform sign si4 (= SU, meaning "to be red"), and the original meaning may have been "divine lady of the redness of heaven", in reference to the colour of the morning and evening sky.[149]
+
+The Chinese historically referred to the morning Venus as "the Great White" (Tài-bái 太白) or "the Opener (Starter) of Brightness" (Qǐ-m��ng 啟明), and the evening Venus as "the Excellent West One" (Cháng-gēng 長庚).[150]
+
+The ancient Greeks also initially believed Venus to be two separate stars: Phosphorus, the morning star, and Hesperus, the evening star. Pliny the Elder credited the realization that they were a single object to Pythagoras in the sixth century BCE,[151] while Diogenes Laërtius argued that Parmenides was probably responsible for this rediscovery.[152] Though they recognized Venus as a single object, the ancient Romans continued to designate the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer, literally "Light-Bringer", and the evening aspect as Vesper, both of which are literal translations of their traditional Greek names.
+
+In the second century, in his astronomical treatise Almagest, Ptolemy theorized that both Mercury and Venus are located between the Sun and the Earth. The 11th-century Persian astronomer Avicenna claimed to have observed the transit of Venus,[153] which later astronomers took as confirmation of Ptolemy's theory.[154] In the 12th century, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah observed "two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun"; these were thought to be the transits of Venus and Mercury by 13th-century Maragha astronomer Qotb al-Din Shirazi, though this cannot be true as there were no Venus transits in Ibn Bajjah's lifetime.[155][n 2]
+
+When the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei first observed the planet in the early 17th century, he found it showed phases like the Moon, varying from crescent to gibbous to full and vice versa. When Venus is furthest from the Sun in the sky, it shows a half-lit phase, and when it is closest to the Sun in the sky, it shows as a crescent or full phase. This could be possible only if Venus orbited the Sun, and this was among the first observations to clearly contradict the Ptolemaic geocentric model that the Solar System was concentric and centred on Earth.[158][159]
+
+The 1639 transit of Venus was accurately predicted by Jeremiah Horrocks and observed by him and his friend, William Crabtree, at each of their respective homes, on 4 December 1639 (24 November under the Julian calendar in use at that time).[160]
+
+The atmosphere of Venus was discovered in 1761 by Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov.[161][162] Venus's atmosphere was observed in 1790 by German astronomer Johann Schröter. Schröter found when the planet was a thin crescent, the cusps extended through more than 180°. He correctly surmised this was due to scattering of sunlight in a dense atmosphere. Later, American astronomer Chester Smith Lyman observed a complete ring around the dark side of the planet when it was at inferior conjunction, providing further evidence for an atmosphere.[163] The atmosphere complicated efforts to determine a rotation period for the planet, and observers such as Italian-born astronomer Giovanni Cassini and Schröter incorrectly estimated periods of about 24 h from the motions of markings on the planet's apparent surface.[164]
+
+Little more was discovered about Venus until the 20th century. Its almost featureless disc gave no hint what its surface might be like, and it was only with the development of spectroscopic, radar and ultraviolet observations that more of its secrets were revealed. The first ultraviolet observations were carried out in the 1920s, when Frank E. Ross found that ultraviolet photographs revealed considerable detail that was absent in visible and infrared radiation. He suggested this was due to a dense, yellow lower atmosphere with high cirrus clouds above it.[165]
+
+Spectroscopic observations in the 1900s gave the first clues about the Venusian rotation. Vesto Slipher tried to measure the Doppler shift of light from Venus, but found he could not detect any rotation. He surmised the planet must have a much longer rotation period than had previously been thought.[166] Later work in the 1950s showed the rotation was retrograde. Radar observations of Venus were first carried out in the 1960s, and provided the first measurements of the rotation period, which were close to the modern value.[167]
+
+Radar observations in the 1970s revealed details of the Venusian surface for the first time. Pulses of radio waves were beamed at the planet using the 300 m (1,000 ft) radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory, and the echoes revealed two highly reflective regions, designated the Alpha and Beta regions. The observations also revealed a bright region attributed to mountains, which was called Maxwell Montes.[168] These three features are now the only ones on Venus that do not have female names.[39]
+
+The first robotic space probe mission to Venus, and the first to any planet, began with the Soviet Venera program in 1961.[169] The United States' exploration of Venus had its first success with the Mariner 2 mission on 14 December 1962, becoming the world's first successful interplanetary mission, passing 34,833 km (21,644 mi) above the surface of Venus, and gathering data on the planet's atmosphere.[170][171]
+
+On 18 October 1967, the Soviet Venera 4 successfully entered the atmosphere and deployed science experiments. Venera 4 showed the surface temperature was hotter than Mariner 2 had calculated, at almost 500 °C (932 °F), determined that the atmosphere was 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), and discovered that Venus's atmosphere was considerably denser than Venera 4's designers had anticipated.[172] The joint Venera 4–Mariner 5 data were analysed by a combined Soviet–American science team in a series of colloquia over the following year,[173] in an early example of space cooperation.[174]
+
+In 1974, Mariner 10 swung by Venus on its way to Mercury and took ultraviolet photographs of the clouds, revealing the extraordinarily high wind speeds in the Venusian atmosphere.
+
+In 1975, the Soviet Venera 9 and 10 landers transmitted the first images from the surface of Venus, which were in black and white. In 1982 the first colour images of the surface were obtained with the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 landers.
+
+NASA obtained additional data in 1978 with the Pioneer Venus project that consisted of two separate missions:[175] Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Pioneer Venus Multiprobe.[176] The successful Soviet Venera program came to a close in October 1983, when Venera 15 and 16 were placed in orbit to conduct detailed mapping of 25% of Venus's terrain (from the north pole to 30°N latitude)[177]
+
+Several other Venus flybys took place in the 1980s and 1990s that increased the understanding of Venus, including Vega 1 (1985), Vega 2 (1985), Galileo (1990), Magellan (1994), Cassini–Huygens (1998), and MESSENGER (2006). Then, Venus Express by the European Space Agency (ESA) entered orbit around Venus in April 2006. Equipped with seven scientific instruments, Venus Express provided unprecedented long-term observation of Venus's atmosphere. ESA concluded that mission in December 2014.
+
+As of 2016, Japan's Akatsuki is in a highly elliptical orbit around Venus since 7 December 2015, and there are several probing proposals under study by Roscosmos, NASA, and India's ISRO.
+
+In 2016, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program studied a rover, the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments, designed to survive for an extended time in Venus's environmental conditions. It would be controlled by a mechanical computer and driven by wind power.[178]
+
+Venus is a primary feature of the night sky, and so has been of remarkable importance in mythology, astrology and fiction throughout history and in different cultures.
+
+In Sumerian religion, Inanna was associated with the planet Venus.[181][182] Several hymns praise Inanna in her role as the goddess of the planet Venus.[145][182][181] Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has argued that, in many myths, Inanna's movements may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky.[145] The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both mythology as well as Inanna's dual nature.[145] In Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, unlike any other deity, Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens. The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent, setting in the West and then rising again in the East.[145] An introductory hymn describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for Kur, what could be presumed to be, the mountains, replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda and Inanna's Descent into the Underworld appear to parallel the motion of the planet Venus.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda, Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna, possibly searching the eastern and western horizons.[183] In the same myth, while searching for her attacker, Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky.[145]
+
+Classical poets such as Homer, Sappho, Ovid and Virgil spoke of the star and its light.[184] Poets such as William Blake, Robert Frost, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth  wrote odes to it.[185]
+
+In Chinese the planet is called Jīn-xīng (金星), the golden planet of the metal element. In India Shukra Graha ("the planet Shukra") which is named after a powerful saint Shukra. Shukra which is used in Indian Vedic astrology[186] means "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras.[187] The word Shukra is also associated with semen, or generation. Venus is known as Kejora in Indonesian and Malay. Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures refer to the planet literally as the "metal star" (金星), based on the Five elements.[188][189][190]
+
+The Maya considered Venus to be the most important celestial body after the Sun and Moon. They called it Chac ek,[191] or Noh Ek', "the Great Star".[192] The cycles of Venus were important to their calendar.
+
+The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed Venus to be two separate bodies, a morning star and an evening star. The Egyptians knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti.[193] The Greeks used the names Phōsphoros (Φωσϕόρος), meaning "light-bringer" (whence the element phosphorus; alternately Ēōsphoros (Ἠωςϕόρος), meaning "dawn-bringer"), for the morning star, and Hesperos (Ἕσπερος), meaning "Western one", for the evening star.[194] Though by the Roman era they were recognized as one celestial object, known as "the star of Venus", the traditional two Greek names continued to be used, though usually translated to Latin as Lūcifer[194][195] and Vesper.
+
+With the invention of the telescope, the idea that Venus was a physical world and possible destination began to take form.
+
+The impenetrable Venusian cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; all the more so when early observations showed that not only was it similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the Sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans.[196] The genre reached its peak between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when science had revealed some aspects of Venus, but not yet the harsh reality of its surface conditions. Findings from the first missions to Venus showed the reality to be quite different, and brought this particular genre to an end.[197] As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, science fiction authors tried to keep pace, particularly by conjecturing human attempts to terraform Venus.[198]
+
+The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath.[199] [200] The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper.[199] [200] Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess although that is not its true origin.[199][200]
+
+The speculation of the existence of life on Venus has decreased significantly since the early 1960s, when spacecraft began studying Venus and it became clear that the conditions on Venus are extreme compared to those on Earth.
+
+That Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth, raising temperatures on the surface to nearly 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), that its atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth, and the extreme impact of the greenhouse effect make water-based life as currently known unlikely. A few scientists have speculated that thermoacidophilic extremophile microorganisms might exist in the lower-temperature, acidic upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere.[201][202][203] The atmospheric pressure and temperature fifty kilometres above the surface are similar to those at Earth's surface. This has led to proposals to use aerostats (lighter-than-air balloons) for initial exploration and ultimately for permanent "floating cities" in the Venusian atmosphere.[204] Among the many engineering challenges are the dangerous amounts of sulfuric acid at these heights.[204]
+
+Nonetheless, in August 2019, astronomers reported that newly discovered long-term pattern of absorbance and albedo changes in the atmosphere of the planet Venus are caused by "unknown absorbers", which may be chemicals or even large colonies of microorganisms high up in the atmosphere of the planet.[205][84]
+
+Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → UniverseEach arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".
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+A drum kit — also called a drum set, trap set (an abbreviation of the word, "contraption"),[1] or simply drums — is a collection of drums and other percussion instruments, typically cymbals, which are set up on stands to be played by a single player,[2] with drumsticks held in both hands, and the feet operating pedals that control the hi-hat cymbal and the beater for the bass drum. A drum kit consists of a mix of drums (categorized classically as membranophones, Hornbostel-Sachs high-level classification 2) and idiophones – most significantly cymbals, but can also include the woodblock and cowbell (classified as Hornbostel-Sachs high-level classification 1).[3] In the 2000s, some kits also include electronic instruments (Hornbostel-Sachs classification 53). Also, both hybrid (mixing acoustic instruments and electronic drums) and entirely electronic kits are used.
+
+A standard modern kit (for a right-handed player), as used in popular music and taught in music schools,[4][5][6] contains:
+
+All of these are classified as non-pitched percussion, allowing the music to be scored using percussion notation, for which a loose semi-standardized form exists for both the drum kit and electronic drums. The drum kit is usually played while seated on a stool known as a throne. While many instruments like the guitar or piano are capable of performing melodies and chords, most drum kits are unable to achieve this as they produce sounds of indeterminate pitch.[7] The drum kit is a part of the standard rhythm section, used in many types of popular and traditional music styles, ranging from rock and pop to blues and jazz. Other standard instruments used in the rhythm section include the piano, electric guitar, electric bass, and keyboards.
+
+Many drummers extend their kits from this basic configuration, adding more drums, more cymbals, and many other instruments including pitched percussion. In some styles of music, particular extensions are normal. For example, some rock and heavy metal drummers make use of double bass drums, which can be achieved with either a second bass drum or a remote double foot pedal.[8] Some progressive drummers may include orchestral percussion such as gongs and tubular bells in their rig. Some performers, such as some rockabilly drummers, play small kits that omit elements from the basic setup.
+
+Before the development of the drum set, drums and cymbals used in military and orchestral music settings were played separately by different percussionists; if the score called for bass drum, triangle and cymbals, three percussionists would be hired to play these three instruments. In the 1840s, percussionists began to experiment with foot pedals as a way to enable them to play more than one instrument, but these devices would not be mass-produced for another 75 years. By the 1860s, percussionists started combining multiple drums into a set. The bass drum, snare drum, cymbals, and other percussion instruments were all struck with hand-held drum sticks. Drummers in musical theater shows and stage shows, where the budget for pit orchestras was often limited, contributed to the creation of the drum set by developing techniques and devices that would enable them to cover the roles of multiple percussionists.
+
+Double-drumming was developed to enable one person to play the bass and snare with sticks, while the cymbals could be played by tapping the foot on a "low-boy". With this approach, the bass drum was usually played on beats one and three (in 44 time). While the music was first designed to accompany marching soldiers, this simple and straightforward drumming approach led to the birth of ragtime music when the simplistic marching beats became more syncopated. This resulted in a greater swing and dance feel. The drum set was initially referred to as a "trap set", and from the late 1800s to the 1930s, drummers were referred to as "trap drummers". By the 1870s, drummers were using an "overhang pedal". Most drummers in the 1870s preferred to do double drumming without any pedal to play multiple drums, rather than use an overhang pedal. Companies patented their pedal systems such as Dee Dee Chandler of New Orleans 1904–05.[9] Liberating the hands for the first time, this evolution saw the bass drum played with the foot of a standing percussionist (thus the term "kick drum"). The bass drum became the central piece around which every other percussion instrument would later revolve.
+
+William F. Ludwig, Sr., and his brother, Theobald Ludwig, founded the Ludwig & Ludwig Co. in 1909 and patented the first commercially successful bass drum pedal system, paving the way for the modern drum kit.[10] Wire brushes for use with drums and cymbals were introduced in 1912. The need for brushes arose due to the problem of the drum sound overshadowing the other instruments on stage. Drummers began using metal fly swatters to reduce the volume on stage next to the other acoustic instruments. Drummers could still play the rudimentary snare figures and grooves with brushes that they would normally play with drumsticks.
+
+By World War I, drum kits were often marching band-style military bass drums with many percussion items suspended on and around them. Drum kits became a central part of jazz, especially Dixieland. The modern drum kit was developed in the vaudeville era during the 1920s in New Orleans.[11]
+
+In 1917, a New Orleans band called "The Original Dixieland Jazz Band " recorded jazz tunes that became hits all over the country. These were the first official jazz recordings. Drummers such as Baby Dodds, Zutty Singleton and Ray Bauduc had taken the idea of marching rhythms, combining the bass drum and snare drum and "traps", a term used to refer to the percussion instruments associated with immigrant groups, which included miniature cymbals, tom toms, cowbells and woodblocks. They started incorporating these elements with ragtime, which had been popular for a couple of decades, creating an approach which evolved into a jazz drumming style.
+
+Budget constraints and space considerations in musical theatre pit orchestras led bandleaders to pressure fewer percussionists to cover more percussion parts. Metal consoles were developed to hold Chinese tom-toms, with swing-out stands for snare drums and cymbals. On top of the console was a "contraption" tray (shortened to "trap"), used to hold items like whistles, klaxons, and cowbells, so these drums/kits were dubbed "trap kits". Hi-hat stands became available around 1926.[10]
+
+In 1918 Baby Dodds, playing on riverboats with Louis Armstrong on the Mississippi, was modifying the military marching set-up and experimenting with playing the drum rims instead of woodblocks, hitting cymbals with sticks (1919), which was not yet common, and adding a side cymbal above the bass drum, what became known as the ride cymbal. Drum maker William Ludwig developed the "sock" or early low-mounted high-hat after observing Dodd's drumming. Ludwig noticed that Dodd tapped his left foot all the time. Dodds asked Ludwig to raise the newly produced low hats nine inches higher to make it easier to play, thus creating the modern hi-hat cymbal.[12] Dodds was one of the first drummers to play the broken-triplet beat that became the standard pulse and roll of modern ride cymbal playing. He also popularized the use of Chinese cymbals.[13] Recording technology was crude, which meant that loud sounds could distort the recording. In order to get around this, Dodds used woodblocks and the drums as quieter alternatives to cymbals and drum skins respectively.[14]
+
+In the 1920s, freelance drummers were hired to play at shows, concerts, theaters, clubs and support dancers and musicians of various genres. Some drummers in the 1920s worked as foley artists. During silent films, an orchestra was hired to accompany the silent film and the drummer was responsible for providing all the sound effects. Drummers played instruments to imitate gun shots, planes flying overhead, a train coming into a train station, and galloping horses etc.
+
+Sheet music from the 1920s provides evidence that the drummer's sets were starting to evolve in size and sound to support the various acts mentioned above. However, by 1930, "talkies" (films with audio) were more common popular, and many were accompanied with pre-recorded soundtracks. This technological breakthrough put thousands of drummers who served as sound effect specialists out of work. A similar panic was felt by drummers in the 1980s, when electronic drum machines were first released.
+
+Kit drumming, whether playing accompaniment of voices and other instruments or doing a drum solo, consists of two elements:
+
+A fill is a departure from the repetitive rhythm pattern in a song. A drum fill is used to "fill in" the space between the end of one verse and the beginning of another verse or chorus.[16] Fills vary from a simple few strokes on a tom or snare, to a distinctive rhythm played on the hi-hat, to sequences several bars long that are short virtuosic drum solos. As well as adding interest and variation to the music, fills serve an important function in preparing and indicating significant changes of sections in songs and linking sections. A vocal cue is a short drum fill that introduces a vocal entry. A fill ending with a cymbal crash on beat one is often used to lead into a chorus or verse.
+
+A drum solo is an instrumental section that highlights the virtuosity, skill, and musical creativity of the drummer.[17] While other instrument solos such as guitar solos are typically accompanied by the other rhythm section instruments (e.g., bass guitar and electric guitar), for most drum solos, all the band members stop playing so that all of the audience's focus will be on the drummer. In some drum solos, the other rhythm section instrumentalists may play "punches" at certain points–sudden, loud chords of a short duration.[18] Drum solos are common in jazz, but they are also used in several of rock genres, such as heavy metal and progressive rock. During drum solos, drummers have a degree of creative freedom that allows them to employ complex polyrhythms that would otherwise be unsuitable with an ensemble. In live concerts, drummers may be given extended drum solos, even in genres where drum solos are rare on singles.[19]
+
+Most drummers hold the drumsticks in one of two types of grip:
+
+Within these two types, there is still considerable variation, and even disagreements as to exactly how the stick is held in a particular method. For example, Jim Chapin, an early and influential exponent of the Moeller method, asserts that the technique does not rely on rebound,[22] while Dave Weckl asserts that it does rely on rebound.[23]
+
+The drum kit may be loosely divided into four parts:
+
+There are several reasons for this division. When more than one band plays in a single performance, the drum kit is often considered part of the backline (the key rhythm section equipment that stays on stage all night, which often also includes bass amps and a stage piano), and is shared between/among the drummers. Oftentimes, the main "headlining" act will provide the drums, as they are being paid more, possibly have the better gear, and in any case have the prerogative of using their own. Sticks, snare drum and cymbals, and sometimes other components, are commonly swapped though, each drummer bringing their own. The term breakables in this context refers to whatever basic components the "guest" drummer is expected to bring. Similar considerations apply if using a "house kit" (a drum kit owned by the venue, which is rare), even if there is only one band at the performance.
+
+The snare drum and cymbals are the core of the breakables, as they are particularly critical and individual components of the standard kit, in several related ways.
+
+Much the same considerations apply to bass drum pedals and the stool, but these are not always considered breakables, particularly if changeover time between bands is very limited. Swapping the snare drum in a standard kit can be done very quickly. Replacing cymbals on stands takes longer, particularly if there are many of them, and cymbals are easily damaged by incorrect mounting, so many drummers prefer to bring their own cymbal stands.
+
+The bass drum (also known as the "kick drum") provides a regular but often-varied foundation to the rhythm. The bass drum is the lowest pitched drum and usually provides the basic beat or timing element with basic pulse patterns. Some drummers may use two or more bass drums or use a double bass drum pedal with a single bass drum. Double bass drumming is an important technique in many heavy metal genres. Using a double bass drum pedal enables a drummer to play a double bass drum style with only one bass drum, saving space in recording/performance areas and reducing time and effort during set-up, taking down, and transportation.
+
+The snare drum is the heart of the drum kit, particularly in rock, due its utility of providing the backbeat. When applied in this fashion, it supplies strong regular accents, played by the left hand (if right handed), and the backbone for many fills. Its distinctive sound can be attributed to the bed of stiff snare wires held under tension to the underside of the lower drum head. When the stiff wires are "engaged" (held under tension), they vibrate with the top (snare-side) drum skin (head), creating a snappy, staccato buzzing sound, along with the sound of the stick striking the batter head.
+
+Tom-tom drums, or toms for short, are drums without snares and played with sticks (or whatever tools the music style requires), and are the most numerous drums in most kits. They provide the bulk of most drum fills and solos.
+
+They include:
+
+The smallest and largest drums without snares, octobans and gong drums respectively, are sometimes considered toms. The naming of common configurations (four-piece, five-piece, etc.) is largely a reflection of the number of toms, as only the drums are conventionally counted, and these configurations all contain one snare and one or more bass drums, (though not regularly any standardized use of two bass/kick drums) the balance usually being in toms.
+
+Octobans are smaller toms designed for use in a drum kit, extending the tom range upwards in pitch, primarily by their depth; as well as diameter (typically 6"). Pearl brand octobans are called "rocket toms"; the instruments are also called tube toms.
+
+Timbales are tuned much higher than a tom of the same diameter, and normally played with very light, thin, non-tapered sticks. They have relatively thin heads and a very different tone than a tom, but are used by some drummers/percussionists to extend the tom range upwards. Alternatively, they can be fitted with tom heads and tuned as shallow concert toms. Attack timbales and mini timbales are reduced-diameter timbales designed for drum kit usage, the smaller diameter allowing for thicker heads providing the same pitch and head tension. They are recognizable in 2010s genres and in more traditional forms of Latin, reggae & numerous world music styles. Timbales were also used on occasion by Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham. Gong drums are a rare extension to a drum kit. The single-headed mountable drum appears similar to a bass drum (sizing around 20–24 inches in diameter), but has the same purpose as that of a floor tom.
+Similarly, most hand drum percussion cannot be played easily or suitably with drum sticks without risking damage to the head and to the bearing edge, which is not protected by a metal drum rim, like a snare or tom. For use in a drum kit, they may be fitted with a metal drum head and played with care, or played by hand.
+
+In most drum kits and drum/percussion kits cymbals are as important as the drums themselves. The oldest idiophones in music are cymbals, and were used throughout the ancient Near East, very early in the Bronze Age period. Cymbals are most associated with Turkey and Turkish craftsmanship, where Zildjian (the name means cymbal smith) has predominantly made them since 1623.[24]
+
+Beginners cymbal packs normally contain four cymbals: one ride, one crash, and a pair of hi-hats. A few contain only three cymbals, using a crash/ride instead of the separate ride and crash. The sizes closely follow those given in Common configurations below.
+
+Most drummers extend this by adding another crash, a splash, a china/effects cymbal; or even all of those last mentioned.
+
+The ride cymbal is most often used for keeping a constant-rhythm pattern, every beat or more often, as the music requires. Development of this ride technique is generally credited to Baby Dodds.[25]
+
+Most drummers have a single main ride, located near their right hand—within easy playing reach, as it is used very regularly—most often a 20" sizing but, 16"-24" diameters are not uncommon. It is most often a heavy, or medium-weighted cymbal that cuts through other instrumental sounds, but some drummers use a swish cymbal, sizzle cymbal or other exotic or lighter metal ride, as the main or only ride in their kit, particularly for jazz, gospel or ballad/folk sounds. In the 1960s Ringo Starr used a sizzle cymbal as a second ride, particularly during guitar solos.[26]
+
+The hi-hat cymbals (nicknamed "hats") consist of two cymbals mounted facing each other on a metal pole with folding support legs that keep a hollow support cylinder standing up. Like the bass drum, the hi-hat has a foot pedal. The bottom cymbal is fixed in place. The top cymbal is mounted on a thin pole, by means of a clutch, which is inserted into the hollow cymbal stand cylinder. The thin pole is connected to a foot pedal. When the foot pedal is pressed down, a mechanism causes the thin pole to move down, causing the upper cymbal to move. When the foot is lifted off the pedal, the upper cymbal rises, due to the pedal's spring-loaded mechanism. The hi-hats can be sounded by striking the cymbals with one or two sticks or just by opening and closing the cymbals with the foot pedal, without striking the cymbals. The ability to create rhythms on the hi-hats with the foot alone enables drummers to use both sticks on other drums or cymbals.[27] Different sounds can be created by striking "open hi-hats" (without the pedal depressed, which creates a noisy sound nicknamed "sloppy hats") or a crisp "closed hi-hats" sound (with the pedal pressed down). As well, the high hats can be played with a partially depressed pedal.
+
+A unique effect can be created by striking an open hi-hat (i.e., in which the two cymbals are apart) and then closing the cymbals with the foot pedal; this effect is widely used in disco and funk. The hi-hat has a similar function to the ride cymbal. The two are rarely played consistently for long periods at the same time, but one or the other is used to keep the faster-moving rhythms (e.g., sixteenth notes) much of the time in a song. The hi-hats are played by the right stick of a right-handed drummer. Changing between ride and hi-hat, or between either and a "leaner" sound with neither, is often used to mark a change from one passage to another, for example; to distinguish between a verse and chorus.[28]
+
+The crash cymbals are usually the strongest accent markers within the kit, marking crescendos and climaxes, vocal entries, and major changes of mood/swells and effects. A crash cymbal is often accompanied by a strong kick on the bass drum pedal, both for musical effect and to support the stroke. It provides a fuller sound and is a commonly taught technique.
+
+In the very smallest kits, in jazz, and at very high volumes, ride cymbals may be played in with the technique and sound of a crash cymbal. Some hi-hats will also give a useful crash, particularly thinner hats or those with an unusually severe taper. At low volumes, producing a good crash from a cymbal not particularly suited to it is a highly skilled art. Alternatively, specialised crash/ride and ride/crash cymbals are specifically designed to combine both functions.
+
+All cymbals other than rides, hi-hats and crashes/splashes are usually called effects cymbals when used in a drum kit, though this is a non-classical or colloquial designation that has become a standardized label. Most extended kits include one or more splash cymbals and at least one china cymbal. Major cymbal makers produce cymbal extension packs consisting of one splash and one china, or more rarely a second crash, a splash and a china, to match some of their starter packs of ride, crash and hi-hats. However any combination of options can be found in the marketplace.[29]
+
+Some cymbals may be considered effects in some kits but "basic" in another set of components. A swish cymbal may, for example serve, as the main ride in some styles of music, but in a larger kit, which includes a conventional ride cymbal as well, it may well be considered an effects cymbal per se. Likewise, Ozone crashes have the same purpose as a standard crash cymbal, but are considered to be effects cymbals due to their rarity, and the holes cut into them, which provide a darker, more resonant attack.
+
+Cymbals of any type used to provide an accent rather than a regular pattern or groove are known as accent cymbals. While any cymbal can be used to provide an accent, the term is applied more correctly to cymbals for which the main purpose is to provide an accent. Accent cymbals include chime cymbals, small-bell domed cymbals or those with a clear sonorous/oriental chime to them like specialized crash and splash cymbals and many china types too, particularly the smaller or thinner ones.
+
+Low-volume cymbals are a specialty type of cymbal made to produce about 80% less volume than a typical cymbal. The entire surface of the cymbal is perforated by holes. Drummers use low-volume cymbals to play in small venues such as coffeehouses or in  genres or spaces where quiet drums are desired (e.g., a jazz quartet playing at a church). As well, low-volume cymbals are used to reduce the volume of drums during practice, for drummers who are trying to avoid disturbing neighbors.
+
+Other instruments that have regularly been incorporated into drum kits include:
+
+See also Extended kits below.
+
+Electronic drums are used for many reasons. Some drummers use electronic drums for playing in small venues such as coffeehouses or church services, where a very low volume for the band is desired. Since fully electronic drums do not create any acoustic sound (apart from the quiet sound of the stick hitting the sensor pads), all of the drum sounds come from a keyboard amplifier or PA system; as such, the volume of electronic drums can be much lower than an acoustic kit. Some drummers use electronic drums as practice instruments, because they can be listened to with headphones, enabling a drummer to practice in an apartment or in the middle of the night without disturbing others. Some drummers use electronic drums to take advantage of the huge range of sounds that modern drum modules can produce, which range from sampled sounds of real drums, cymbals and percussion instruments (including instruments that would be impractical to take to a small gig, such as gongs or tubular bells), to electronic and synthesized sounds, including non-instrument sounds such as ocean waves.[30]
+
+A fully electronic kit is also easier to soundcheck than acoustic drums, assuming that the electronic drum module has levels that the drummer has pre-set in her/his practice room; in contrast, when an acoustic kit is sound checked, most drums and cymbals need to be miked and each mic needs to be tested by the drummer so its level and tone equalization can be adjusted by the sound engineer. As well, even after all the individual drum and cymbal mics are soundchecked, the engineer needs to listen to the drummer play a standard groove, to check that the balance between the kit instruments is right. Finally, the engineer needs to set up the monitor mix for the drummer, which the drummer uses to hear her/his instruments and the instruments and vocals of the rest of the band. With a fully electronic kit, many of these steps could be eliminated.[31]
+
+Drummers' usage of electronic drum equipment can range from adding a single electronic pad to an acoustic kit (e.g., to have access to an instrument that might otherwise be impractical, such as a large gong), to using a mix of acoustic drums/cymbals and electronic pads, to using an acoustic kit in which the drums and cymbals have triggers, which can be used to sound electronic drums and other sounds, to having an exclusively electronic kit, which is often set up with the rubber or mesh drum pads and rubber "cymbals" in the usual drum kit locations. A fully electronic kit weighs much less and takes up less space to transport than an acoustic kit and it can be set up more quickly. One of the disadvantages of a fully electronic kit is that it may not have the same "feel" as an acoustic kit, and the drum sounds, even if they are high-quality samples, may not sound the same as acoustic drums.
+
+Electronic drum pads are the second most widely used type of MIDI performance controllers, after electronic keyboards.[32]:319–320 Drum controllers may be built into drum machines, they may be standalone control surfaces (e.g., rubber drum pads), or they may emulate the look and feel of acoustic percussion instruments. The pads built into drum machines are typically too small and fragile to be played with sticks, and they are usually played with fingers.[33]:88 Dedicated drum pads such as the Roland Octapad or the DrumKAT are playable with the hands or with sticks and are often built to resemble the general form of a drum kit. There are also percussion controllers such as the vibraphone-style MalletKAT,[33]:88–91 and Don Buchla's Marimba Lumina.[34]
+
+As well as providing an alternative to a conventional acoustic drum kit, electronic drums can be incorporated into an acoustic drum kit to supplement it. MIDI triggers can also be installed into acoustic drum and percussion instruments. Pads that can trigger a MIDI device can be homemade from a piezoelectric sensor and a practice pad or other piece of foam rubber.[35]
+
+This is possible in two ways:
+
+In either case, an electronic control unit (sound module/"brain") with suitable sampled/modeled or synthesized drum sounds, amplification equipment (a PA system, keyboard amp, etc.) and stage monitor speakers are required for the drummer (and other band members and audience) to hear the electronically produced sounds. See Triggered drum kit.
+
+A trigger pad could contain up to four independent sensors, each of them capable of sending information describing the timing and dynamic intensity of a stroke to the drum module/brain. A circular drum pad may have only one sensor for triggering, but a 2016-era cymbal-shaped rubber pad/cymbal will often contain two; one for the body and one for the bell at the centre of the cymbal, and perhaps a cymbal choke trigger, to allow drummers to produce this effect.
+
+Trigger sensors are most commonly used to replace the acoustic drum sounds, but they can often also be used effectively with an acoustic kit to augment or supplement an instrument's sound for the needs of the session or show. For example, in a live performance in a difficult acoustical space, a trigger may be placed on each drum or cymbal, and used to trigger a similar sound on a drum module. These sounds are then amplified through the PA system so the audience can hear them, and they can be amplified to any level without the risks of audio feedback or bleed problems associated with microphones and PAs in certain settings.
+
+The sound of electronic drums and cymbals themselves is heard by the drummer and possibly other musicians in close proximity, but even so, the foldback (audio monitor) system is usually fed from the electronic sounds rather than the live acoustic sounds. The drums can be heavily dampened (made to resonate less or subdue the sound), and their tuning and even quality is less critical in the latter scenario. In this way, much of the atmosphere of the live performance is retained in a large venue, but without some of the problems associated with purely microphone-amplified drums. Triggers and sensors can also be used in conjunction with conventional or built-in microphones. If some components of a kit prove more difficult to "mike" than others (e.g., an excessively "boomy" low tom), triggers may be used on only the more difficult instruments, balancing out a drummer's/band's sound in the mix.
+
+Trigger pads and drums, on the other hand, when deployed in a conventional set-up, are most commonly used to produce sounds not possible with an acoustic kit, or at least not with what is available. Any sound that can be sampled/recorded can be played when the pad is struck, by assigning the recorded sounds to specific triggers . Recordings or samples of barking dogs, sirens, breaking glass and stereo recordings of aircraft taking off and landing have all been used. Along with the more obvious electronically generated sounds there are synthesized human voices or song parts or even movie audio or digital video/pictures that (depending on device used) can also be played/triggered by electronic drums.
+
+Virtual drums are a type of audio software that simulates the sound of a drum kit using synthesized drum kit sounds or digital samples of acoustic drum sounds. Different drum software products offer a recording function, the ability to select from several acoustically distinctive drum kits (e.g., jazz, rock, metal), as well as the option to incorporate different songs into the session. Some software for the personal computer (PC) can turn any hard surface into a virtual drum kit using only one microphone.
+
+Hardware is the name given to the metal stands that support the drums, cymbals and other percussion instruments. Generally the term also includes the hi-hat pedal and bass drum pedal or pedals, and the drum stool, but not the drum sticks.
+
+Hardware is carried along with sticks and other accessories in the traps case, and includes:
+
+Many or even all of the stands may be replaced by a drum rack, particularly useful for large drum kits.
+
+Drummers often set up their own drum hardware onstage and adjust to their own comfort level. Major touring bands on tour will often have a drum tech who knows how to set up the drummer's hardware and instruments in the desired location and layout.
+
+Drum kits are traditionally categorised by the number of drums, ignoring cymbals and other instruments. Snare, tom-tom and bass drums are always counted; Other drums such as octobans may or may not be counted.[36]
+
+Traditionally, in America and the United Kingdom, drum sizes were expressed as depth x diameter, both in inches, but many drum kit manufacturers have since begun to express their sizes in terms of diameter x depth; still in the measure of inches.For example, a hanging tom 12 inches in diameter and 8 inches deep would be described by Tama as 8 inches × 12 inches, but by Pearl as 12 inches × 8 inches, and a standard diameter Ludwig snare drum 5 inches deep is a 5-inch × 14-inch, while the UK's Premier Manufacturer offers the same dimensions as: a 14-inch × 5-inch snare. The sizes of drums and cymbals given below are typical. Many drummers differ slightly or radically from them. Where no size is given, it is because there is too much variety to determine a typical size.
+
+A three-piece drum set is the most basic set. A conventional three-piece kit consists of a bass drum, a 14" diameter snare drum, 12"–14" hi-hats, a single 12" diameter hanging tom, 8"–9" in depth, and a suspended cymbal, in the range of 14"–18", both mounted on the bass drum. These kits were common in the 1950s and 1960s and are still used in the 2010s in small acoustic dance bands.[37] It is a common configuration for kits sold through mail order, and, with smaller sized drums and cymbals, for kits for children.
+
+A four-piece kit extends the three-piece by adding one tom, either a second hanging tom mounted on the bass drum (a notable user is Chris Frantz of Talking Heads) and often displacing the cymbal, or by adding a floor tom. Normally another cymbal is added as well, so there are separate ride and crash cymbals, either on two stands, or the ride cymbal mounted on the bass drum to the player's right and the crash cymbal on a separate stand. The standard cymbal sizes are 16" crash and 18"–20" ride, with the 20" ride most common.
+
+When a floor tom is added to make a four-piece kit, the floor tom is usually 14" for jazz, and 16" otherwise. This configuration is usually common in jazz and rock. Notable users include Ringo Starr in The Beatles, Mitch Mitchell in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and John Barbata in the Turtles. For jazz,  which normally emphasizes the use of ride cymbal, the lack of second hanging tom in a four-piece kit allows the cymbal to be positioned closer to the drummer, making them easier to be played.
+
+If a second hanging tom is used, it is 10" diameter and 8" deep for fusion, or 13" diameter and one inch deeper than the 12" diameter tom. Otherwise, a 14" diameter hanging tom is added to the 12", both being 8" deep. In any case, both toms are most often mounted on the bass drum with the smaller of the two next to the hi-hats (on the left for a right-handed drummer). These kits are particularly useful for smaller venues where space is limited, such as coffeehouses, cafés, hotel lounges, and small pubs.
+
+The five-piece kit is the full entry-level kit and the most common configuration across all styles and genres. It adds a third tom to the bass drum/snare drum/two toms set, making three toms in all. A fusion kit will normally add a 14" tom, either a floor tom or a hanging tom on a stand to the right of the bass drum; in either case, making the tom lineup 10", 12" and 14". Having three toms enables drummers to have a low-pitched, middle-register and higher-pitched tom, which gives them more options for fills and solos.
+
+Other kits will normally have 12" and 13" hanging toms plus either a 14" hanging tom on a stand, a 14" floor tom, or a 16" floor tom. For depths, see Tom-tom drum#Modern tom-toms. In the 2010s, it is very popular to have 10" and 12" hanging toms, with a 16" floor tom. This configuration is often called a hybrid setup.[38] The bass drum is most commonly 22" in diameter, but rock kits may use 24", fusion 20", jazz 18",[36] and in larger bands up to 26". A second crash cymbal is common, typically an inch or two larger or smaller than the 16", with the larger of the two to the right for a right-handed drummer, but a big band may use crashes up to 20" and ride up to 24" or, very rarely, 26". A rock kit may also substitute a larger ride cymbal or larger hi-hats, typically 22" for the ride and 15" for the hats.
+
+Most five-piece kits, at more than entry level, also have one or more effects cymbals. Adding cymbals beyond the basic ride, hi-hats and one crash configuration requires more stands in addition to the standard drum hardware packs. Because of this, many higher-cost kits for professionals are sold with little or even no hardware, to allow the drummer to choose the stands and also the bass drum pedal he/she prefers. At the other extreme, many inexpensive, entry-level kits are sold as a five-piece kit complete with two cymbal stands, most often one straight and one boom, and some even with a standard cymbal pack, a stool, and a pair of 5A drum sticks. In the 2010s, digital kits are often offered in a five-piece kit, usually with one plastic crash cymbal triggers and one ride cymbal trigger. Fully electronic drums do not produce any acoustic sound beyond the quiet tapping of sticks on the plastic or rubber heads. The trigger-pads are wired up to a synth module or sampler.
+
+If the toms are omitted completely, or the bass drum is replaced by a pedal-operated beater on the bottom skin of a floor tom and the hanging toms omitted, the result is a two-piece "cocktail" (lounge) kit. Such kits are particularly favoured in musical genres such as trad jazz, bebop, rockabilly and jump blues. Some rockabilly kits and beginners kits for very young players omit the hi-hat stand. In rockabilly, this allows the drummer to play standing rather than seated.
+
+Although these kits may be small with respect to the number of drums used, the drums themselves are most often normal sizes, or even larger in the case of the bass drum. Kits using smaller drums in both smaller and larger configurations are also produced for particular uses, such as boutique kits designed to reduce the visual impact that a large kit creates or due space constraints in coffeehouses, travelling kits to reduce luggage volume, and junior kits for very young players. Smaller drums also tend to be quieter, again suiting smaller venues, and many of these kits extend this with extra muffling which allows quiet or even silent practice in a hotel room or bedroom.
+
+Common extensions beyond these standard configurations include:
+
+See also other acoustic instruments above. Another versatile extension becoming increasingly common is the use of some electronic drums in a mainly conventional kit.
+
+Less common extensions found particularly, but not exclusive to very large kits, include:
+
+Sticks were traditionally made from wood (particularly maple, hickory, and oak) but more recently metal, carbon fibre and other exotic materials have been used for high market end sticks. The prototypical wooden drum stick was primarily designed for use with the snare drum, and optimized for playing snare rudiments. Sticks come in a variety of weights and tip designs; 7N is a common jazz stick with a nylon tip, while a 5B is a common wood tipped stick, heavier than a 7N but with a similar profile, and a common standard for beginners. Numbers range from 1 (heaviest) to 10 (lightest).
+
+The meanings of both numbers and letters vary from manufacturer to manufacturer, and some sticks are not described using this system at all, just being known as Smooth Jazz (typically a 7N or 9N) or Speed Rock (typically a 2B or 3B) for example. Many famous drummers endorse sticks made to their particular preference and sold under their signature.
+
+Besides drumsticks, drummers will also use brushes and rutes in jazz and similar softer music. More rarely, other beaters such as cartwheel mallets (known to kit drummers as "soft sticks") may be used. It is not uncommon for rock drummers to use the "wrong" (butt) end of a stick for a heavier sound; some makers produce tipless sticks with two butt ends.
+
+A stick bag is the standard way for a drummer to bring drumsticks to a live performance. For easy access, the stick bag is commonly mounted on the side of the floor tom, just within reach of the drummer's right hand for a right-handed drummer.
+
+Drum muffles are types of mutes that can reduce the ring, boomy overtone frequencies, or overall volume on a snare, bass, or tom. Controlling the ring is useful in studio or live settings when unwanted frequencies can clash with other instruments in the mix. There are internal and external muffling devices which rest on the inside or outside of the drumhead, respectively. Common types of mufflers include muffling rings, gels and duct tape, and improvised methods, such as placing a wallet near the edge of the head. Some drummers muffle the sound of a drum by putting a cloth over the drumhead.
+
+Snare drum and tom-tom
+Typical ways to muffle a snare or tom include placing an object on the outer edge of the drumhead. A piece of cloth, a wallet, gel, or fitted rings made of mylar are common objects. Also used are external clip-on muffles that work using the same principle. Internal mufflers that lie on the inside of the drumhead are often built into a drum, but are generally considered less effective than external muffles, as they stifle the initial tone, rather than simply reducing the sustain of it.
+
+Bass drum
+Muffling the bass can be achieved with the same muffling techniques as the snare, but bass drums in a drum kit are more commonly muffled by adding pillows, a sleeping bag or another soft filling inside the drum, between the heads. Cutting a small hole in the resonant head can also produce a more muffled tone, and allows manipulation in internally placed muffling. The Evans EQ pad places a pad against the batterhead and, when struck, the pad moves off the head momentarily, then returns to rest against the head, thus reducing the sustain without choking the tone.
+
+Silencers/mutes
+Another type of drum muffler is a piece of rubber that fits over the entire drumhead or cymbal. It interrupts contact between the stick and the head which dampens the sound even more. They are typically used in practice settings.
+
+Cymbals are usually muted with the fingers or hand, to reduce the length or volume of ringing (e.g., the cymbal choke technique which is a key part of heavy metal drumming). Cymbals can also be muted with special rubber rings or with DIY approaches such as using duct tape.
+
+Some companies with muffle products:
+
+Historical uses
+Muffled drums are often associated with funeral ceremonies as well, such as the funerals of John F. Kennedy and Queen Victoria.[39] The use of muffled drums has been written about by such poets as Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, John Mayne, and Theodore O'Hara.[40][41][42] Drums have also been used for therapy and learning purposes, such as when an experienced player will sit with a number of students and by the end of the session have all of them relaxed and playing complex rhythms.[43]
+
+There are various types of stick holder accessories, including bags that can be attached to a drum and angled sheath-style stick holders, which can hold a single pair of sticks.
+
+A sizzler is a metal chain or combination of chains that is hung across a cymbal, creating a distinctive metallic sound when the cymbal is struck similar to that of a sizzle cymbal. Using a sizzler is the non-destructive alternative to drilling holes in a cymbal and putting metal rivets in the holes. Another benefit of using a "sizzler" chain is that the chain can be removed and the cymbal will return to its normal sound (in contrast, a cymbal with rivets would have to have the rivets removed).
+
+Some sizzlers feature pivoting arms that allow the chains to be quickly raised from the cymbal, or lowered onto it, allowing the effect to be used for some songs and removed for others.
+
+Three types of protective covers are common for kit drums:
+
+As with all musical instruments, the best protection is provided by a combination of a hard-shelled case with padding such as foam next to the drums and cymbals.
+
+Microphones ("mics") are used with drums to pick up the sound of the drums and cymbals for a sound recording and/or to pick up the sound of the drum kit so that it can be amplified through a PA system or sound reinforcement system. While most drummers use microphones and amplification in live shows in the 2010s, so that the sound engineer can adjust and balance the levels of the drums and cymbals, some bands that play in quieter genres of music and that play in small venues such as coffeehouses play acoustically, without mics or PA amplification. Small jazz groups such as jazz quartets or organ trios that are playing in a small bar will often just use acoustic drums. Of course if the same small jazz groups play on the mainstage of a big jazz festival, the drums will be mic'ed so that they can be adjusted in the sound system mix. A middle-ground approach is used by some bands that play in small venues; they do not mic every drum and cymbal, but rather mic only the instruments that the sound engineer wants to be able to control in the mix, such as the bass drum and the snare.
+
+In "miking" a drum kit, dynamic microphones, which can handle high sound-pressure levels, are usually used to close-mic drums, which is the predominant way to mic drums for live shows. Condenser microphones are used for overheads and room mics, an approach which is more common with sound recording applications. Close miking of drums may be done using stands or by mounting the microphones on the rims of the drums, or even using microphones built into the drum itself, which eliminates the need for stands for these microphones, reducing both clutter and set-up time, as well as isolating them.
+
+In some styles of music, drummers use electronic effects on drums, such as individual noise gates that mute the attached microphone when the signal is below a threshold volume. This allows the sound engineer to use a higher overall volume for the drum kit by reducing the number of "active" mics which could produce unwanted feedback at any one time. When a drum kit is entirely miked and amplified through the sound reinforcement system, the drummer or the sound engineer can add other electronic effects to the drum sound, such as reverb or digital delay.
+
+Some drummers arrive at the venue with their drum kit and use the mics and mic stands provided by the venue's sound engineer. Other drummers bring their all of their own mics, or selected mics (e.g., a good quality bass drum mic and a good mic for the snare) to ensure that they have good quality mics for each show. In bars and nightclubs, the microphones supplied by the venue can sometimes be in substandard condition, due to the heavy use they experience.
+
+Drummers using electronic drums, drum machines, or hybrid acoustic-electric kits (which blend traditional acoustic drums and cymbals with electronic pads) typically use a monitor speaker, keyboard amplifier or even a small PA system to hear the electronic drum sounds. Even a drummer playing entirely acoustic drums may use a monitor speaker to hear her drums, especially if she is playing in a loud rock or metal band, where there is substantial onstage volume from huge, powerful guitar stacks. Since the drum kit uses the deep bass drum, drummers are often given a large speaker cabinet with a 15" subwoofer to help them monitor their bass drum sound (along with a full-range monitor speaker to hear the rest of their kit). Some sound engineers and drummers prefer to use an electronic vibration system, colloquially known as a "butt shaker" or "throne thumper" to monitor the bass drum, because this lowers the stage volume. With a "butt shaker", the "thump" of each bass drum strike causes a vibration in the drum stool; this way the drummer feels their beat on the posterior, rather than hears it.
+
+A number of accessories are designed for the bass drum (also called "kick drum"). Ported tubes for the bass drum are available to take advantage of the bass reflex speaker design, in which a tuned port (a hole and a carefully measured tube) are put in a speaker enclosure to improve the bass response at the lowest frequencies.[44] Bass drumhead patches are available, which protect the drumhead from the impact of the felt beater. Bass drum pillows are fabric bags with filling or stuffing that can be used to alter the tone or resonance of the bass drum. A less expensive alternative to using a specialized bass drum pillow is to use an old sleeping bag.
+
+Some drummers wear special drummer's gloves to improve their grip on the sticks when they play. Drumming gloves often have a textured grip surface made of a synthetic or rubber material and mesh or vents on the parts of the glove not used to hold sticks, to ventilate perspiration.
+
+In some styles or settings, such as country music clubs or churches, small venues, or when a live recording is being made, the drummer may use a transparent perspex or plexiglas drum screen (also known as a drum shield) to dampen the onstage volume of the drums. A screen that completely surrounds the drum kit is known as a drum booth. In live sound applications, drum shields are used so that the audio engineer can have more control over the volume of drums that the audience hears through the PA system mix or to reduce the overall volume of the drums, as a way to reduce the overall volume of the band in the venue. In some recording studios, foam and fabric baffles are used in addition to or in place of clear panels. The drawback with foam/cloth baffle panels is that the drummer cannot see other performers, the record producer or the audio engineer well.
+
+Drummers often bring a carpet, mats or rugs to venues to prevent the bass drum and hi-hat stand from "crawling" (moving away) on a slippery surface from the drum head striking the bass drum. The carpet also reduces short reverberation (which is generally but not always an advantage), and helps to prevent damage to the flooring or floor coverings. In shows where multiple drummers will bring their kits onstage over the night, it is common for drummers to mark the location of their stands and pedals with tape, to allow for quicker positioning of a kits in a drummer's accustomed position. Bass drums and hi-hat stands commonly have retractable spikes to help them to grip surfaces such as carpet, or stay stationary (on hard surfaces) with rubber feet.
+
+Drummers use a variety of accessories when practicing. Metronomes and beat counters are used to develop a sense of a steady pulse. Drum muffling pads may be used to lessen the volume of drums during practicing. A practice pad, held on the lap, on a leg, or mounted on a stand, is used for near-silent practice with drumsticks.[45] A set of practice pads mounted to simulate an entire drum kit is known as a practice kit. In the 2010s, these have largely been superseded by electronic drums, which can be listened to with headphones for quiet practice and kits with non-sounding mesh heads.[46]
+
+Drummers use a drum key for tuning their drums and adjusting some drum hardware.[47] Besides the basic type of drum key (a T-handled wrench) there are various tuning wrenches and tools. Basic drum keys are divided in three types which allows tuning of three types of tuning screws on drums: square (most used), slotted and hexagonal. Ratchet-type wrenches allow high-tension drums to be tuned easily. Spin keys (utilizing a ball joint) allow rapid head changing. Torque-wrench type keys are available, graphically revealing the torque at each lug. Also, tension gauges, or meters, which are set on the head, aid drummers to achieve a consistent tuning. Drummers can tune drums "by ear" or, in the 2010s, use a digital drum tuner, which "measures tympanic pressure" on the drumhead to provide accurate tuning.[48]
+
+Drum kit music is either written down in music notation (called "drum parts"), learned and played by ear, improvised, or some combination of some or all three of these methods.[49] Professional session musician drummers and big band drummers are often required to read drum parts. Drum parts are most commonly written on a standard five-line staff. In 2016, a special percussion clef is used, while previously the bass clef was used. However, even if the bass or no clef is used, each line and space is assigned an instrument of the kit, rather than to a pitch. In jazz, traditional music, folk music, rock music, and pop music, drummers are expected to be able to learn songs by ear (from a recording or from another musician who is playing or singing the song) and improvise. The degree of improvisation differs in different styles. Jazz and jazz fusion drummers may have lengthy improvised solos in every song. In rock music and blues, there are also drum solos in some songs, although they tend to be shorter than those in jazz. Drummers in all popular music and traditional music styles are expected to be able to improvise accompaniment parts to songs, once they are told the genre or style (e.g., shuffle, ballad, blues).
+
+On early recording media (until 1925[50]) such as wax cylinders and discs carved with an engraving needle, sound balancing meant that musicians had to be moved back in the room.[50] Drums were often put far from the horn (part of the mechanical transducer) to reduce sound distortion.
+
+In the 2020s, drum parts in many popular music styles are often recorded apart from the other instruments and singers, using multitrack recording techniques. Once the drums are recorded, the other instruments (rhythm guitar, piano, etc) and then vocals are added. To ensure that the drum tempo is consistent in this type of recording, the drummer usually plays along with a click track (a type of digital metronome) in headphones. As such, the ability to play accurately along with a click track has become an important skill for professional drummers.
+
+Manufacturers using the American traditional format in their catalogs include these:
+
+Those using the European measures of diameter x depth include these:

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+
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+Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.  As the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, Venus can cast shadows and can be, on rare occasion, visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.[15][16] Venus lies within Earth's orbit, and so never appears to venture far from the Sun, either setting in the west just after dusk or rising in the east a bit before dawn. Venus orbits the Sun every 224.7 Earth days.[17] With a rotation period of 243 Earth days,  it takes longer to rotate about its axis than any other planet in the Solar System and does so in the opposite direction to all but Uranus (meaning the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east).[18] Venus does not have any moons, a distinction it shares only with Mercury among planets in the Solar System.[19]
+
+Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. It may have had water oceans in the past,[20][21] but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a runaway greenhouse effect.[22] The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field.[23] Venus's surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism.
+
+As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star and evening star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.[24]
+
+As the planet with the closest approach to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft (Mariner 2 in 1962), and the first to be successfully landed on (by Venera 7 in 1970). Venus's thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more complex missions, but they are hindered by Venus's hostile surface conditions.
+
+In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
+
+Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass, and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin".[27] The diameter of Venus is 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi)—only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) less than Earth's—and its mass is 81.5% of Earth's. Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen.[28]
+
+The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. Venera landers in 1975 and 1982 returned images of a surface covered in sediment and relatively angular rocks.[29] The surface was mapped in detail by Magellan in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been recent eruptions.[30][31]
+
+About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains.[32] Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent is called Ishtar Terra after Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is 11 km (7 mi) above the Venusian average surface elevation.[33] The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area.[34]
+
+The absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible calderas remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, approximately 300–600 million years old.[35][36] Venus has some unique surface features in addition to the impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called "farra", which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20 to 50 km (12 to 31 mi) across, and from 100 to 1,000 m (330 to 3,280 ft) high; radial, star-like fracture systems called "novae"; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as "arachnoids"; and "coronae", circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by a depression. These features are volcanic in origin.[37]
+
+Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women.[38] Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell, and highland regions Alpha Regio, Beta Regio, and Ovda Regio. The last three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union, the body which oversees planetary nomenclature.[39]
+
+The longitude of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio.[40] After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne.[41][42]
+
+Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (60 mi) across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii.[37]:154 This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years,[43] whereas the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old.[35][37]
+
+Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulphur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold.[44] This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions.[45][46] It has also been suggested that Venusian lightning (discussed below) could originate from volcanic activity (i.e. volcanic lightning). In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
+
+In 2008 and 2009, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was observed by Venus Express, in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma,[47][n 1] near the shield volcano Maat Mons. Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions.[48][49] The actual temperatures are not known, because the size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the 800–1,100 K (527–827 °C; 980–1,520 °F) range, relative to a normal temperature of 740 K (467 °C; 872 °F).[50]
+
+Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300–600 million years ago,[35][36] followed by a decay in volcanism.[51] Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.[37]
+
+Venusian craters range from 3 to 280 km (2 to 174 mi) in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3 km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater.[52] Incoming projectiles less than 50 m (160 ft) in diameter will fragment and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.[53]
+
+The stratigraphically oldest tessera terrains have consistently lower thermal emissivity than the surrounding basaltic plains measured by Venus Express and Magellan, indicating a different, possibly a more felsic, mineral assemblage.[20][54] The mechanism to generate a large amount of felsic crust usually requires the presence of water ocean and plate tectonics, implying that habitable condition had existed on early Venus. However, the nature of tessera terrains is far from certain.[55]
+
+Without seismic data or knowledge of its moment of inertia, little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus.[56] The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests they share a similar internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusian core is at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate.[57] The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's.[58] The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous. This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field.[59]
+Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events.[35]
+
+Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% nitrogen, and traces of other gases including sulfur dioxide.[60] The mass of its atmosphere is 93 times that of Earth's, whereas the pressure at its surface is about 92 times that at Earth's—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 km (5⁄8 mi) under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m3, 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth's atmosphere at 293 K (20 °C; 68 °F) at sea level. The CO2-rich atmosphere generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 735 K (462 °C; 864 °F).[17][61] This makes Venus's surface hotter than Mercury's, which has a minimum surface temperature of 53 K (−220 °C; −364 °F) and maximum surface temperature of 700 K (427 °C; 801 °F),[62][63] even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. This temperature is higher than that used for sterilization.
+
+Venus' atmosphere is extremely enriched of primordial noble gases compared to that of Earth.[64] This enrichment indicates an early divergence from Earth in evolution. An unusually large comet impact[65] or accretion of a more massive primary atmosphere from solar nebula[66] have been proposed to explain the enrichment. However, the atmosphere is also depleted of radiogenic argon, a proxy to mantle degassing, suggesting an early shutdown of major magmatism.[67][68]
+
+Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, Venus's atmosphere could have been much more like the one surrounding Earth, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but after a period of 600 million to several billion years,[69] a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.[70] Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the  upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) up from the surface, where the temperature ranges between 303 and 353 K (30 and 80 °C; 86 and 176 °F) but the environment is acidic.[71][72][73]
+
+Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even without the heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen.[74]
+
+Above the dense CO2 layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfuric acid, which is formed by sulfur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate. Additionally, the atmosphere consists of approximately 1% ferric chloride.[75][76] Other possible constituents of the cloud particles are ferric sulfate, aluminium chloride and phosphoric anhydride. Clouds at different levels have different compositions and particle size distributions.[75] These clouds reflect and scatter about 90% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent visual observation of Venus's surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on the ground. Strong 300 km/h (185 mph) winds at the cloud tops go around Venus about every four to five Earth days.[77] Winds on Venus move at up to 60 times the speed of its rotation, whereas Earth's fastest winds are only 10–20% rotation speed.[78]
+
+The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature not only between the two hemispheres but between the equator and the poles.[5][79] Venus's minute axial tilt—less than 3°, compared to 23° on Earth—also minimises seasonal temperature variation.[80] Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperature. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes, is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about 655 K (380 °C; 715 °F) and an atmospheric pressure of about 4.5 MPa (45 bar).[81][82] In 1995, the Magellan spacecraft imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance likely formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gaseous form to higher elevations, where it is cooler and could precipitate. The identity of this substance is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide (galena).[83]
+
+Although Venus has no seasons as such, in 2019 astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus's zonal winds, and appears to rise and fall in time with the Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle.[84]
+
+The existence of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus has been controversial[85] since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes[86][87][88] In 2006–07, Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves, the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. According to these measurements, the lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth,[89] however other instruments have not detected lightning at all.[85] The origin of any lightning remains unclear, but could originate from the clouds or volcanoes.
+
+In 2007, Venus Express discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole.[90][91] Venus Express also discovered, in 2011, that an ozone layer exists high in the atmosphere of Venus.[92] On 29 January 2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions."[93][94]
+
+In December 2015, and to a lesser extent in April and May 2016, researchers working on Japan's Akatsuki mission observed bow shapes in the atmosphere of Venus. This was considered direct evidence of the existence of perhaps the largest stationary gravity waves in the solar system.[95][96][97]
+
+In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus's magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind,[100][101] rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth's core. Venus's small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation.
+
+The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field at Venus was surprising, given that it is similar to Earth in size and was expected also to contain a dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection. The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, although its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show it is adequate to produce a dynamo.[102][103] This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in Venus's core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of the core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much higher in temperature than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This would cause the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, no internal geodynamo is available to drive a magnetic field. Instead, the heat from the core is being used to reheat the crust.[104]
+
+One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core,[105] or that its core is not cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulfur, which is unknown at present.[104]
+
+The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by the dissociation of neutral molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus's gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind probably led to the loss of most of Venus's water during the first billion years after it formed.[106] The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the atmosphere 100 times compared to the rest of the solar system.[107]
+
+Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 AU (108 million km; 67 million mi), and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical, Venus's orbit is the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01.[5] When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km (25 million mi).[5] However, it spends a large amount of its time away from Earth, meaning that it is the closest planet to Earth for only a minority of the time. This means that Mercury is actually the planet that is closest to Earth a plurality of the time.[108]  The planet reaches inferior conjunction every 584 days, on average.[5] Because of the decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit, the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year 1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km; then there are none for about 60,158 years.[109]
+
+All the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets also rotate on their axes in an anti-clockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. Because its rotation is so slow, Venus is very close to spherical.[110] A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts longer than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Venus's equator rotates at 6.52 km/h (4.05 mph), whereas Earth's rotates at 1,674.4 km/h (1,040.4 mph).[114][115] Venus's rotation has slowed in the 16 years between the Magellan spacecraft and Venus Express visits; each Venusian sidereal day has increased by 6.5 minutes in that time span.[116] Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day, at 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury's 176 Earth days).[117] One Venusian year is about 1.92 Venusian solar days.[118] To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east,[118] although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface.[119]
+
+Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere, a change that would have occurred over the course of billions of years. The rotation period of Venus may represent an equilibrium state between tidal locking to the Sun's gravitation, which tends to slow rotation, and an atmospheric tide created by solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere.[120][121]
+The 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to Earth is almost exactly equal to 5 Venusian solar days (5.001444 to be precise),[122] but the hypothesis of a spin-orbit resonance with Earth has been discounted.[123]
+
+Venus has no natural satellites.[124] It has several trojan asteroids: the quasi-satellite 2002 VE68[125][126] and two other temporary trojans, 2001 CK32 and 2012 XE133.[127] In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith and numerous sightings were reported over the following 200 years, but most were determined to be stars in the vicinity. Alex Alemi's and David Stevenson's 2006 study of models of the early Solar System at the California Institute of Technology shows Venus likely had at least one moon created by a huge impact event billions of years ago.[128] About 10 million years later, according to the study, another impact reversed the planet's spin direction and caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward until it collided with Venus.[129] If later impacts created moons, these were removed in the same way. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets.[124]
+
+To the naked eye, Venus appears as a white point of light brighter than any other planet or star (apart from the Sun).[130] The planet's mean apparent magnitude is −4.14 with a standard deviation of 0.31.[14] The brightest magnitude occurs during crescent phase about one month before or after inferior conjunction. Venus fades to about magnitude −3 when it is backlit by the Sun.[131] The planet is bright enough to be seen in a clear midday sky[132] and is more easily visible when the Sun is low on the horizon or setting. As an inferior planet, it always lies within about 47° of the Sun.[133]
+
+Venus "overtakes" Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun.[5] As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise. Although Mercury, the other inferior planet, reaches a maximum elongation of only 28° and is often difficult to discern in twilight, Venus is hard to miss when it is at its brightest. Its greater maximum elongation means it is visible in dark skies long after sunset. As the brightest point-like object in the sky, Venus is a commonly misreported "unidentified flying object".
+
+As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and "full" disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction). Venus shows a larger disc and "quarter phase" at its maximum elongations from the Sun, and appears its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin "crescent" in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and "new phase" when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it.[133]
+
+The Venusian orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit; thus, when the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet's inferior conjunction coincides with its presence in the plane of Earth's orbit. Transits of Venus occur in cycles of 243 years with the current pattern of transits being pairs of transits separated by eight years, at intervals of about 105.5 years or 121.5 years—a pattern first discovered in 1639 by the English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks.[134]
+
+The latest pair was June 8, 2004 and June 5–6, 2012. The transit could be watched live from many online outlets or observed locally with the right equipment and conditions.[135]
+
+The preceding pair of transits occurred in December 1874 and December 1882; the following pair will occur in December 2117 and December 2125.[136] The 1874 transit is the subject of the oldest film known, the 1874 Passage de Venus. Historically, transits of Venus were important, because they allowed astronomers to determine the size of the astronomical unit, and hence the size of the Solar System as shown by Horrocks in 1639.[137] Captain Cook's exploration of the east coast of Australia came after he had sailed to Tahiti in 1768 to observe a transit of Venus.[138][139]
+
+The pentagram of Venus is the path that Venus makes as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat very near a 13:8 ratio (Earth orbits 8 times for every 13 orbits of Venus), shifting 144° upon sequential inferior conjunctions. The 13:8 ratio is approximate. 8/13 is approximately 0.61538 while Venus orbits the Sun in 0.61519 years.[140]
+
+Naked eye observations of Venus during daylight hours exist in several anecdotes and records. Astronomer Edmund Halley calculated its maximum naked eye brightness in 1716, when many Londoners were alarmed by its appearance in the daytime. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once witnessed a daytime apparition of the planet while at a reception in Luxembourg.[141] Another historical daytime observation of the planet took place during the inauguration of the American president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on 4 March 1865.[142] Although naked eye visibility of Venus's phases is disputed, records exist of observations of its crescent.[143]
+
+A long-standing mystery of Venus observations is the so-called ashen light—an apparent weak illumination of its dark side, seen when the planet is in the crescent phase. The first claimed observation of ashen light was made in 1643, but the existence of the illumination has never been reliably confirmed. Observers have speculated it may result from electrical activity in the Venusian atmosphere, but it could be illusory, resulting from the physiological effect of observing a bright, crescent-shaped object.[144][87]
+
+Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as single entity;[145] instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star.[145] Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period and the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa from the First Babylonian dynasty indicate that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object.[146][145][147] In the Old Babylonian period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna, and later as Dilbat.[148] The name "Ninsi'anna" translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven", which refers to Venus as the brightest visible "star". Earlier spellings of the name were written with the cuneiform sign si4 (= SU, meaning "to be red"), and the original meaning may have been "divine lady of the redness of heaven", in reference to the colour of the morning and evening sky.[149]
+
+The Chinese historically referred to the morning Venus as "the Great White" (Tài-bái 太白) or "the Opener (Starter) of Brightness" (Qǐ-m��ng 啟明), and the evening Venus as "the Excellent West One" (Cháng-gēng 長庚).[150]
+
+The ancient Greeks also initially believed Venus to be two separate stars: Phosphorus, the morning star, and Hesperus, the evening star. Pliny the Elder credited the realization that they were a single object to Pythagoras in the sixth century BCE,[151] while Diogenes Laërtius argued that Parmenides was probably responsible for this rediscovery.[152] Though they recognized Venus as a single object, the ancient Romans continued to designate the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer, literally "Light-Bringer", and the evening aspect as Vesper, both of which are literal translations of their traditional Greek names.
+
+In the second century, in his astronomical treatise Almagest, Ptolemy theorized that both Mercury and Venus are located between the Sun and the Earth. The 11th-century Persian astronomer Avicenna claimed to have observed the transit of Venus,[153] which later astronomers took as confirmation of Ptolemy's theory.[154] In the 12th century, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah observed "two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun"; these were thought to be the transits of Venus and Mercury by 13th-century Maragha astronomer Qotb al-Din Shirazi, though this cannot be true as there were no Venus transits in Ibn Bajjah's lifetime.[155][n 2]
+
+When the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei first observed the planet in the early 17th century, he found it showed phases like the Moon, varying from crescent to gibbous to full and vice versa. When Venus is furthest from the Sun in the sky, it shows a half-lit phase, and when it is closest to the Sun in the sky, it shows as a crescent or full phase. This could be possible only if Venus orbited the Sun, and this was among the first observations to clearly contradict the Ptolemaic geocentric model that the Solar System was concentric and centred on Earth.[158][159]
+
+The 1639 transit of Venus was accurately predicted by Jeremiah Horrocks and observed by him and his friend, William Crabtree, at each of their respective homes, on 4 December 1639 (24 November under the Julian calendar in use at that time).[160]
+
+The atmosphere of Venus was discovered in 1761 by Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov.[161][162] Venus's atmosphere was observed in 1790 by German astronomer Johann Schröter. Schröter found when the planet was a thin crescent, the cusps extended through more than 180°. He correctly surmised this was due to scattering of sunlight in a dense atmosphere. Later, American astronomer Chester Smith Lyman observed a complete ring around the dark side of the planet when it was at inferior conjunction, providing further evidence for an atmosphere.[163] The atmosphere complicated efforts to determine a rotation period for the planet, and observers such as Italian-born astronomer Giovanni Cassini and Schröter incorrectly estimated periods of about 24 h from the motions of markings on the planet's apparent surface.[164]
+
+Little more was discovered about Venus until the 20th century. Its almost featureless disc gave no hint what its surface might be like, and it was only with the development of spectroscopic, radar and ultraviolet observations that more of its secrets were revealed. The first ultraviolet observations were carried out in the 1920s, when Frank E. Ross found that ultraviolet photographs revealed considerable detail that was absent in visible and infrared radiation. He suggested this was due to a dense, yellow lower atmosphere with high cirrus clouds above it.[165]
+
+Spectroscopic observations in the 1900s gave the first clues about the Venusian rotation. Vesto Slipher tried to measure the Doppler shift of light from Venus, but found he could not detect any rotation. He surmised the planet must have a much longer rotation period than had previously been thought.[166] Later work in the 1950s showed the rotation was retrograde. Radar observations of Venus were first carried out in the 1960s, and provided the first measurements of the rotation period, which were close to the modern value.[167]
+
+Radar observations in the 1970s revealed details of the Venusian surface for the first time. Pulses of radio waves were beamed at the planet using the 300 m (1,000 ft) radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory, and the echoes revealed two highly reflective regions, designated the Alpha and Beta regions. The observations also revealed a bright region attributed to mountains, which was called Maxwell Montes.[168] These three features are now the only ones on Venus that do not have female names.[39]
+
+The first robotic space probe mission to Venus, and the first to any planet, began with the Soviet Venera program in 1961.[169] The United States' exploration of Venus had its first success with the Mariner 2 mission on 14 December 1962, becoming the world's first successful interplanetary mission, passing 34,833 km (21,644 mi) above the surface of Venus, and gathering data on the planet's atmosphere.[170][171]
+
+On 18 October 1967, the Soviet Venera 4 successfully entered the atmosphere and deployed science experiments. Venera 4 showed the surface temperature was hotter than Mariner 2 had calculated, at almost 500 °C (932 °F), determined that the atmosphere was 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), and discovered that Venus's atmosphere was considerably denser than Venera 4's designers had anticipated.[172] The joint Venera 4–Mariner 5 data were analysed by a combined Soviet–American science team in a series of colloquia over the following year,[173] in an early example of space cooperation.[174]
+
+In 1974, Mariner 10 swung by Venus on its way to Mercury and took ultraviolet photographs of the clouds, revealing the extraordinarily high wind speeds in the Venusian atmosphere.
+
+In 1975, the Soviet Venera 9 and 10 landers transmitted the first images from the surface of Venus, which were in black and white. In 1982 the first colour images of the surface were obtained with the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 landers.
+
+NASA obtained additional data in 1978 with the Pioneer Venus project that consisted of two separate missions:[175] Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Pioneer Venus Multiprobe.[176] The successful Soviet Venera program came to a close in October 1983, when Venera 15 and 16 were placed in orbit to conduct detailed mapping of 25% of Venus's terrain (from the north pole to 30°N latitude)[177]
+
+Several other Venus flybys took place in the 1980s and 1990s that increased the understanding of Venus, including Vega 1 (1985), Vega 2 (1985), Galileo (1990), Magellan (1994), Cassini–Huygens (1998), and MESSENGER (2006). Then, Venus Express by the European Space Agency (ESA) entered orbit around Venus in April 2006. Equipped with seven scientific instruments, Venus Express provided unprecedented long-term observation of Venus's atmosphere. ESA concluded that mission in December 2014.
+
+As of 2016, Japan's Akatsuki is in a highly elliptical orbit around Venus since 7 December 2015, and there are several probing proposals under study by Roscosmos, NASA, and India's ISRO.
+
+In 2016, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program studied a rover, the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments, designed to survive for an extended time in Venus's environmental conditions. It would be controlled by a mechanical computer and driven by wind power.[178]
+
+Venus is a primary feature of the night sky, and so has been of remarkable importance in mythology, astrology and fiction throughout history and in different cultures.
+
+In Sumerian religion, Inanna was associated with the planet Venus.[181][182] Several hymns praise Inanna in her role as the goddess of the planet Venus.[145][182][181] Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has argued that, in many myths, Inanna's movements may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky.[145] The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both mythology as well as Inanna's dual nature.[145] In Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, unlike any other deity, Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens. The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent, setting in the West and then rising again in the East.[145] An introductory hymn describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for Kur, what could be presumed to be, the mountains, replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda and Inanna's Descent into the Underworld appear to parallel the motion of the planet Venus.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda, Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna, possibly searching the eastern and western horizons.[183] In the same myth, while searching for her attacker, Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky.[145]
+
+Classical poets such as Homer, Sappho, Ovid and Virgil spoke of the star and its light.[184] Poets such as William Blake, Robert Frost, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth  wrote odes to it.[185]
+
+In Chinese the planet is called Jīn-xīng (金星), the golden planet of the metal element. In India Shukra Graha ("the planet Shukra") which is named after a powerful saint Shukra. Shukra which is used in Indian Vedic astrology[186] means "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras.[187] The word Shukra is also associated with semen, or generation. Venus is known as Kejora in Indonesian and Malay. Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures refer to the planet literally as the "metal star" (金星), based on the Five elements.[188][189][190]
+
+The Maya considered Venus to be the most important celestial body after the Sun and Moon. They called it Chac ek,[191] or Noh Ek', "the Great Star".[192] The cycles of Venus were important to their calendar.
+
+The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed Venus to be two separate bodies, a morning star and an evening star. The Egyptians knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti.[193] The Greeks used the names Phōsphoros (Φωσϕόρος), meaning "light-bringer" (whence the element phosphorus; alternately Ēōsphoros (Ἠωςϕόρος), meaning "dawn-bringer"), for the morning star, and Hesperos (Ἕσπερος), meaning "Western one", for the evening star.[194] Though by the Roman era they were recognized as one celestial object, known as "the star of Venus", the traditional two Greek names continued to be used, though usually translated to Latin as Lūcifer[194][195] and Vesper.
+
+With the invention of the telescope, the idea that Venus was a physical world and possible destination began to take form.
+
+The impenetrable Venusian cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; all the more so when early observations showed that not only was it similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the Sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans.[196] The genre reached its peak between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when science had revealed some aspects of Venus, but not yet the harsh reality of its surface conditions. Findings from the first missions to Venus showed the reality to be quite different, and brought this particular genre to an end.[197] As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, science fiction authors tried to keep pace, particularly by conjecturing human attempts to terraform Venus.[198]
+
+The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath.[199] [200] The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper.[199] [200] Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess although that is not its true origin.[199][200]
+
+The speculation of the existence of life on Venus has decreased significantly since the early 1960s, when spacecraft began studying Venus and it became clear that the conditions on Venus are extreme compared to those on Earth.
+
+That Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth, raising temperatures on the surface to nearly 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), that its atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth, and the extreme impact of the greenhouse effect make water-based life as currently known unlikely. A few scientists have speculated that thermoacidophilic extremophile microorganisms might exist in the lower-temperature, acidic upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere.[201][202][203] The atmospheric pressure and temperature fifty kilometres above the surface are similar to those at Earth's surface. This has led to proposals to use aerostats (lighter-than-air balloons) for initial exploration and ultimately for permanent "floating cities" in the Venusian atmosphere.[204] Among the many engineering challenges are the dangerous amounts of sulfuric acid at these heights.[204]
+
+Nonetheless, in August 2019, astronomers reported that newly discovered long-term pattern of absorbance and albedo changes in the atmosphere of the planet Venus are caused by "unknown absorbers", which may be chemicals or even large colonies of microorganisms high up in the atmosphere of the planet.[205][84]
+
+Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → UniverseEach arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".
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+Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.  As the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, Venus can cast shadows and can be, on rare occasion, visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.[15][16] Venus lies within Earth's orbit, and so never appears to venture far from the Sun, either setting in the west just after dusk or rising in the east a bit before dawn. Venus orbits the Sun every 224.7 Earth days.[17] With a rotation period of 243 Earth days,  it takes longer to rotate about its axis than any other planet in the Solar System and does so in the opposite direction to all but Uranus (meaning the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east).[18] Venus does not have any moons, a distinction it shares only with Mercury among planets in the Solar System.[19]
+
+Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. It may have had water oceans in the past,[20][21] but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a runaway greenhouse effect.[22] The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field.[23] Venus's surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism.
+
+As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star and evening star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.[24]
+
+As the planet with the closest approach to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft (Mariner 2 in 1962), and the first to be successfully landed on (by Venera 7 in 1970). Venus's thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more complex missions, but they are hindered by Venus's hostile surface conditions.
+
+In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
+
+Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass, and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin".[27] The diameter of Venus is 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi)—only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) less than Earth's—and its mass is 81.5% of Earth's. Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen.[28]
+
+The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. Venera landers in 1975 and 1982 returned images of a surface covered in sediment and relatively angular rocks.[29] The surface was mapped in detail by Magellan in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been recent eruptions.[30][31]
+
+About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains.[32] Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent is called Ishtar Terra after Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is 11 km (7 mi) above the Venusian average surface elevation.[33] The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area.[34]
+
+The absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible calderas remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, approximately 300–600 million years old.[35][36] Venus has some unique surface features in addition to the impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called "farra", which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20 to 50 km (12 to 31 mi) across, and from 100 to 1,000 m (330 to 3,280 ft) high; radial, star-like fracture systems called "novae"; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as "arachnoids"; and "coronae", circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by a depression. These features are volcanic in origin.[37]
+
+Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women.[38] Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell, and highland regions Alpha Regio, Beta Regio, and Ovda Regio. The last three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union, the body which oversees planetary nomenclature.[39]
+
+The longitude of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio.[40] After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne.[41][42]
+
+Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (60 mi) across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii.[37]:154 This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years,[43] whereas the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old.[35][37]
+
+Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulphur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold.[44] This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions.[45][46] It has also been suggested that Venusian lightning (discussed below) could originate from volcanic activity (i.e. volcanic lightning). In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
+
+In 2008 and 2009, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was observed by Venus Express, in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma,[47][n 1] near the shield volcano Maat Mons. Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions.[48][49] The actual temperatures are not known, because the size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the 800–1,100 K (527–827 °C; 980–1,520 °F) range, relative to a normal temperature of 740 K (467 °C; 872 °F).[50]
+
+Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300–600 million years ago,[35][36] followed by a decay in volcanism.[51] Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.[37]
+
+Venusian craters range from 3 to 280 km (2 to 174 mi) in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3 km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater.[52] Incoming projectiles less than 50 m (160 ft) in diameter will fragment and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.[53]
+
+The stratigraphically oldest tessera terrains have consistently lower thermal emissivity than the surrounding basaltic plains measured by Venus Express and Magellan, indicating a different, possibly a more felsic, mineral assemblage.[20][54] The mechanism to generate a large amount of felsic crust usually requires the presence of water ocean and plate tectonics, implying that habitable condition had existed on early Venus. However, the nature of tessera terrains is far from certain.[55]
+
+Without seismic data or knowledge of its moment of inertia, little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus.[56] The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests they share a similar internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusian core is at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate.[57] The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's.[58] The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous. This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field.[59]
+Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events.[35]
+
+Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% nitrogen, and traces of other gases including sulfur dioxide.[60] The mass of its atmosphere is 93 times that of Earth's, whereas the pressure at its surface is about 92 times that at Earth's—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 km (5⁄8 mi) under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m3, 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth's atmosphere at 293 K (20 °C; 68 °F) at sea level. The CO2-rich atmosphere generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 735 K (462 °C; 864 °F).[17][61] This makes Venus's surface hotter than Mercury's, which has a minimum surface temperature of 53 K (−220 °C; −364 °F) and maximum surface temperature of 700 K (427 °C; 801 °F),[62][63] even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. This temperature is higher than that used for sterilization.
+
+Venus' atmosphere is extremely enriched of primordial noble gases compared to that of Earth.[64] This enrichment indicates an early divergence from Earth in evolution. An unusually large comet impact[65] or accretion of a more massive primary atmosphere from solar nebula[66] have been proposed to explain the enrichment. However, the atmosphere is also depleted of radiogenic argon, a proxy to mantle degassing, suggesting an early shutdown of major magmatism.[67][68]
+
+Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, Venus's atmosphere could have been much more like the one surrounding Earth, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but after a period of 600 million to several billion years,[69] a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.[70] Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the  upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) up from the surface, where the temperature ranges between 303 and 353 K (30 and 80 °C; 86 and 176 °F) but the environment is acidic.[71][72][73]
+
+Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even without the heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen.[74]
+
+Above the dense CO2 layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfuric acid, which is formed by sulfur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate. Additionally, the atmosphere consists of approximately 1% ferric chloride.[75][76] Other possible constituents of the cloud particles are ferric sulfate, aluminium chloride and phosphoric anhydride. Clouds at different levels have different compositions and particle size distributions.[75] These clouds reflect and scatter about 90% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent visual observation of Venus's surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on the ground. Strong 300 km/h (185 mph) winds at the cloud tops go around Venus about every four to five Earth days.[77] Winds on Venus move at up to 60 times the speed of its rotation, whereas Earth's fastest winds are only 10–20% rotation speed.[78]
+
+The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature not only between the two hemispheres but between the equator and the poles.[5][79] Venus's minute axial tilt—less than 3°, compared to 23° on Earth—also minimises seasonal temperature variation.[80] Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperature. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes, is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about 655 K (380 °C; 715 °F) and an atmospheric pressure of about 4.5 MPa (45 bar).[81][82] In 1995, the Magellan spacecraft imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance likely formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gaseous form to higher elevations, where it is cooler and could precipitate. The identity of this substance is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide (galena).[83]
+
+Although Venus has no seasons as such, in 2019 astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus's zonal winds, and appears to rise and fall in time with the Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle.[84]
+
+The existence of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus has been controversial[85] since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes[86][87][88] In 2006–07, Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves, the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. According to these measurements, the lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth,[89] however other instruments have not detected lightning at all.[85] The origin of any lightning remains unclear, but could originate from the clouds or volcanoes.
+
+In 2007, Venus Express discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole.[90][91] Venus Express also discovered, in 2011, that an ozone layer exists high in the atmosphere of Venus.[92] On 29 January 2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions."[93][94]
+
+In December 2015, and to a lesser extent in April and May 2016, researchers working on Japan's Akatsuki mission observed bow shapes in the atmosphere of Venus. This was considered direct evidence of the existence of perhaps the largest stationary gravity waves in the solar system.[95][96][97]
+
+In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus's magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind,[100][101] rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth's core. Venus's small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation.
+
+The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field at Venus was surprising, given that it is similar to Earth in size and was expected also to contain a dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection. The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, although its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show it is adequate to produce a dynamo.[102][103] This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in Venus's core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of the core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much higher in temperature than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This would cause the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, no internal geodynamo is available to drive a magnetic field. Instead, the heat from the core is being used to reheat the crust.[104]
+
+One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core,[105] or that its core is not cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulfur, which is unknown at present.[104]
+
+The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by the dissociation of neutral molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus's gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind probably led to the loss of most of Venus's water during the first billion years after it formed.[106] The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the atmosphere 100 times compared to the rest of the solar system.[107]
+
+Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 AU (108 million km; 67 million mi), and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical, Venus's orbit is the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01.[5] When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km (25 million mi).[5] However, it spends a large amount of its time away from Earth, meaning that it is the closest planet to Earth for only a minority of the time. This means that Mercury is actually the planet that is closest to Earth a plurality of the time.[108]  The planet reaches inferior conjunction every 584 days, on average.[5] Because of the decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit, the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year 1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km; then there are none for about 60,158 years.[109]
+
+All the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets also rotate on their axes in an anti-clockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. Because its rotation is so slow, Venus is very close to spherical.[110] A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts longer than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Venus's equator rotates at 6.52 km/h (4.05 mph), whereas Earth's rotates at 1,674.4 km/h (1,040.4 mph).[114][115] Venus's rotation has slowed in the 16 years between the Magellan spacecraft and Venus Express visits; each Venusian sidereal day has increased by 6.5 minutes in that time span.[116] Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day, at 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury's 176 Earth days).[117] One Venusian year is about 1.92 Venusian solar days.[118] To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east,[118] although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface.[119]
+
+Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere, a change that would have occurred over the course of billions of years. The rotation period of Venus may represent an equilibrium state between tidal locking to the Sun's gravitation, which tends to slow rotation, and an atmospheric tide created by solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere.[120][121]
+The 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to Earth is almost exactly equal to 5 Venusian solar days (5.001444 to be precise),[122] but the hypothesis of a spin-orbit resonance with Earth has been discounted.[123]
+
+Venus has no natural satellites.[124] It has several trojan asteroids: the quasi-satellite 2002 VE68[125][126] and two other temporary trojans, 2001 CK32 and 2012 XE133.[127] In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith and numerous sightings were reported over the following 200 years, but most were determined to be stars in the vicinity. Alex Alemi's and David Stevenson's 2006 study of models of the early Solar System at the California Institute of Technology shows Venus likely had at least one moon created by a huge impact event billions of years ago.[128] About 10 million years later, according to the study, another impact reversed the planet's spin direction and caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward until it collided with Venus.[129] If later impacts created moons, these were removed in the same way. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets.[124]
+
+To the naked eye, Venus appears as a white point of light brighter than any other planet or star (apart from the Sun).[130] The planet's mean apparent magnitude is −4.14 with a standard deviation of 0.31.[14] The brightest magnitude occurs during crescent phase about one month before or after inferior conjunction. Venus fades to about magnitude −3 when it is backlit by the Sun.[131] The planet is bright enough to be seen in a clear midday sky[132] and is more easily visible when the Sun is low on the horizon or setting. As an inferior planet, it always lies within about 47° of the Sun.[133]
+
+Venus "overtakes" Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun.[5] As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise. Although Mercury, the other inferior planet, reaches a maximum elongation of only 28° and is often difficult to discern in twilight, Venus is hard to miss when it is at its brightest. Its greater maximum elongation means it is visible in dark skies long after sunset. As the brightest point-like object in the sky, Venus is a commonly misreported "unidentified flying object".
+
+As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and "full" disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction). Venus shows a larger disc and "quarter phase" at its maximum elongations from the Sun, and appears its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin "crescent" in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and "new phase" when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it.[133]
+
+The Venusian orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit; thus, when the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet's inferior conjunction coincides with its presence in the plane of Earth's orbit. Transits of Venus occur in cycles of 243 years with the current pattern of transits being pairs of transits separated by eight years, at intervals of about 105.5 years or 121.5 years—a pattern first discovered in 1639 by the English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks.[134]
+
+The latest pair was June 8, 2004 and June 5–6, 2012. The transit could be watched live from many online outlets or observed locally with the right equipment and conditions.[135]
+
+The preceding pair of transits occurred in December 1874 and December 1882; the following pair will occur in December 2117 and December 2125.[136] The 1874 transit is the subject of the oldest film known, the 1874 Passage de Venus. Historically, transits of Venus were important, because they allowed astronomers to determine the size of the astronomical unit, and hence the size of the Solar System as shown by Horrocks in 1639.[137] Captain Cook's exploration of the east coast of Australia came after he had sailed to Tahiti in 1768 to observe a transit of Venus.[138][139]
+
+The pentagram of Venus is the path that Venus makes as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat very near a 13:8 ratio (Earth orbits 8 times for every 13 orbits of Venus), shifting 144° upon sequential inferior conjunctions. The 13:8 ratio is approximate. 8/13 is approximately 0.61538 while Venus orbits the Sun in 0.61519 years.[140]
+
+Naked eye observations of Venus during daylight hours exist in several anecdotes and records. Astronomer Edmund Halley calculated its maximum naked eye brightness in 1716, when many Londoners were alarmed by its appearance in the daytime. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once witnessed a daytime apparition of the planet while at a reception in Luxembourg.[141] Another historical daytime observation of the planet took place during the inauguration of the American president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on 4 March 1865.[142] Although naked eye visibility of Venus's phases is disputed, records exist of observations of its crescent.[143]
+
+A long-standing mystery of Venus observations is the so-called ashen light—an apparent weak illumination of its dark side, seen when the planet is in the crescent phase. The first claimed observation of ashen light was made in 1643, but the existence of the illumination has never been reliably confirmed. Observers have speculated it may result from electrical activity in the Venusian atmosphere, but it could be illusory, resulting from the physiological effect of observing a bright, crescent-shaped object.[144][87]
+
+Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as single entity;[145] instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star.[145] Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period and the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa from the First Babylonian dynasty indicate that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object.[146][145][147] In the Old Babylonian period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna, and later as Dilbat.[148] The name "Ninsi'anna" translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven", which refers to Venus as the brightest visible "star". Earlier spellings of the name were written with the cuneiform sign si4 (= SU, meaning "to be red"), and the original meaning may have been "divine lady of the redness of heaven", in reference to the colour of the morning and evening sky.[149]
+
+The Chinese historically referred to the morning Venus as "the Great White" (Tài-bái 太白) or "the Opener (Starter) of Brightness" (Qǐ-m��ng 啟明), and the evening Venus as "the Excellent West One" (Cháng-gēng 長庚).[150]
+
+The ancient Greeks also initially believed Venus to be two separate stars: Phosphorus, the morning star, and Hesperus, the evening star. Pliny the Elder credited the realization that they were a single object to Pythagoras in the sixth century BCE,[151] while Diogenes Laërtius argued that Parmenides was probably responsible for this rediscovery.[152] Though they recognized Venus as a single object, the ancient Romans continued to designate the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer, literally "Light-Bringer", and the evening aspect as Vesper, both of which are literal translations of their traditional Greek names.
+
+In the second century, in his astronomical treatise Almagest, Ptolemy theorized that both Mercury and Venus are located between the Sun and the Earth. The 11th-century Persian astronomer Avicenna claimed to have observed the transit of Venus,[153] which later astronomers took as confirmation of Ptolemy's theory.[154] In the 12th century, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah observed "two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun"; these were thought to be the transits of Venus and Mercury by 13th-century Maragha astronomer Qotb al-Din Shirazi, though this cannot be true as there were no Venus transits in Ibn Bajjah's lifetime.[155][n 2]
+
+When the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei first observed the planet in the early 17th century, he found it showed phases like the Moon, varying from crescent to gibbous to full and vice versa. When Venus is furthest from the Sun in the sky, it shows a half-lit phase, and when it is closest to the Sun in the sky, it shows as a crescent or full phase. This could be possible only if Venus orbited the Sun, and this was among the first observations to clearly contradict the Ptolemaic geocentric model that the Solar System was concentric and centred on Earth.[158][159]
+
+The 1639 transit of Venus was accurately predicted by Jeremiah Horrocks and observed by him and his friend, William Crabtree, at each of their respective homes, on 4 December 1639 (24 November under the Julian calendar in use at that time).[160]
+
+The atmosphere of Venus was discovered in 1761 by Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov.[161][162] Venus's atmosphere was observed in 1790 by German astronomer Johann Schröter. Schröter found when the planet was a thin crescent, the cusps extended through more than 180°. He correctly surmised this was due to scattering of sunlight in a dense atmosphere. Later, American astronomer Chester Smith Lyman observed a complete ring around the dark side of the planet when it was at inferior conjunction, providing further evidence for an atmosphere.[163] The atmosphere complicated efforts to determine a rotation period for the planet, and observers such as Italian-born astronomer Giovanni Cassini and Schröter incorrectly estimated periods of about 24 h from the motions of markings on the planet's apparent surface.[164]
+
+Little more was discovered about Venus until the 20th century. Its almost featureless disc gave no hint what its surface might be like, and it was only with the development of spectroscopic, radar and ultraviolet observations that more of its secrets were revealed. The first ultraviolet observations were carried out in the 1920s, when Frank E. Ross found that ultraviolet photographs revealed considerable detail that was absent in visible and infrared radiation. He suggested this was due to a dense, yellow lower atmosphere with high cirrus clouds above it.[165]
+
+Spectroscopic observations in the 1900s gave the first clues about the Venusian rotation. Vesto Slipher tried to measure the Doppler shift of light from Venus, but found he could not detect any rotation. He surmised the planet must have a much longer rotation period than had previously been thought.[166] Later work in the 1950s showed the rotation was retrograde. Radar observations of Venus were first carried out in the 1960s, and provided the first measurements of the rotation period, which were close to the modern value.[167]
+
+Radar observations in the 1970s revealed details of the Venusian surface for the first time. Pulses of radio waves were beamed at the planet using the 300 m (1,000 ft) radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory, and the echoes revealed two highly reflective regions, designated the Alpha and Beta regions. The observations also revealed a bright region attributed to mountains, which was called Maxwell Montes.[168] These three features are now the only ones on Venus that do not have female names.[39]
+
+The first robotic space probe mission to Venus, and the first to any planet, began with the Soviet Venera program in 1961.[169] The United States' exploration of Venus had its first success with the Mariner 2 mission on 14 December 1962, becoming the world's first successful interplanetary mission, passing 34,833 km (21,644 mi) above the surface of Venus, and gathering data on the planet's atmosphere.[170][171]
+
+On 18 October 1967, the Soviet Venera 4 successfully entered the atmosphere and deployed science experiments. Venera 4 showed the surface temperature was hotter than Mariner 2 had calculated, at almost 500 °C (932 °F), determined that the atmosphere was 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), and discovered that Venus's atmosphere was considerably denser than Venera 4's designers had anticipated.[172] The joint Venera 4–Mariner 5 data were analysed by a combined Soviet–American science team in a series of colloquia over the following year,[173] in an early example of space cooperation.[174]
+
+In 1974, Mariner 10 swung by Venus on its way to Mercury and took ultraviolet photographs of the clouds, revealing the extraordinarily high wind speeds in the Venusian atmosphere.
+
+In 1975, the Soviet Venera 9 and 10 landers transmitted the first images from the surface of Venus, which were in black and white. In 1982 the first colour images of the surface were obtained with the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 landers.
+
+NASA obtained additional data in 1978 with the Pioneer Venus project that consisted of two separate missions:[175] Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Pioneer Venus Multiprobe.[176] The successful Soviet Venera program came to a close in October 1983, when Venera 15 and 16 were placed in orbit to conduct detailed mapping of 25% of Venus's terrain (from the north pole to 30°N latitude)[177]
+
+Several other Venus flybys took place in the 1980s and 1990s that increased the understanding of Venus, including Vega 1 (1985), Vega 2 (1985), Galileo (1990), Magellan (1994), Cassini–Huygens (1998), and MESSENGER (2006). Then, Venus Express by the European Space Agency (ESA) entered orbit around Venus in April 2006. Equipped with seven scientific instruments, Venus Express provided unprecedented long-term observation of Venus's atmosphere. ESA concluded that mission in December 2014.
+
+As of 2016, Japan's Akatsuki is in a highly elliptical orbit around Venus since 7 December 2015, and there are several probing proposals under study by Roscosmos, NASA, and India's ISRO.
+
+In 2016, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program studied a rover, the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments, designed to survive for an extended time in Venus's environmental conditions. It would be controlled by a mechanical computer and driven by wind power.[178]
+
+Venus is a primary feature of the night sky, and so has been of remarkable importance in mythology, astrology and fiction throughout history and in different cultures.
+
+In Sumerian religion, Inanna was associated with the planet Venus.[181][182] Several hymns praise Inanna in her role as the goddess of the planet Venus.[145][182][181] Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has argued that, in many myths, Inanna's movements may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky.[145] The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both mythology as well as Inanna's dual nature.[145] In Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, unlike any other deity, Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens. The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent, setting in the West and then rising again in the East.[145] An introductory hymn describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for Kur, what could be presumed to be, the mountains, replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda and Inanna's Descent into the Underworld appear to parallel the motion of the planet Venus.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda, Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna, possibly searching the eastern and western horizons.[183] In the same myth, while searching for her attacker, Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky.[145]
+
+Classical poets such as Homer, Sappho, Ovid and Virgil spoke of the star and its light.[184] Poets such as William Blake, Robert Frost, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth  wrote odes to it.[185]
+
+In Chinese the planet is called Jīn-xīng (金星), the golden planet of the metal element. In India Shukra Graha ("the planet Shukra") which is named after a powerful saint Shukra. Shukra which is used in Indian Vedic astrology[186] means "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras.[187] The word Shukra is also associated with semen, or generation. Venus is known as Kejora in Indonesian and Malay. Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures refer to the planet literally as the "metal star" (金星), based on the Five elements.[188][189][190]
+
+The Maya considered Venus to be the most important celestial body after the Sun and Moon. They called it Chac ek,[191] or Noh Ek', "the Great Star".[192] The cycles of Venus were important to their calendar.
+
+The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed Venus to be two separate bodies, a morning star and an evening star. The Egyptians knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti.[193] The Greeks used the names Phōsphoros (Φωσϕόρος), meaning "light-bringer" (whence the element phosphorus; alternately Ēōsphoros (Ἠωςϕόρος), meaning "dawn-bringer"), for the morning star, and Hesperos (Ἕσπερος), meaning "Western one", for the evening star.[194] Though by the Roman era they were recognized as one celestial object, known as "the star of Venus", the traditional two Greek names continued to be used, though usually translated to Latin as Lūcifer[194][195] and Vesper.
+
+With the invention of the telescope, the idea that Venus was a physical world and possible destination began to take form.
+
+The impenetrable Venusian cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; all the more so when early observations showed that not only was it similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the Sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans.[196] The genre reached its peak between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when science had revealed some aspects of Venus, but not yet the harsh reality of its surface conditions. Findings from the first missions to Venus showed the reality to be quite different, and brought this particular genre to an end.[197] As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, science fiction authors tried to keep pace, particularly by conjecturing human attempts to terraform Venus.[198]
+
+The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath.[199] [200] The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper.[199] [200] Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess although that is not its true origin.[199][200]
+
+The speculation of the existence of life on Venus has decreased significantly since the early 1960s, when spacecraft began studying Venus and it became clear that the conditions on Venus are extreme compared to those on Earth.
+
+That Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth, raising temperatures on the surface to nearly 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), that its atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth, and the extreme impact of the greenhouse effect make water-based life as currently known unlikely. A few scientists have speculated that thermoacidophilic extremophile microorganisms might exist in the lower-temperature, acidic upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere.[201][202][203] The atmospheric pressure and temperature fifty kilometres above the surface are similar to those at Earth's surface. This has led to proposals to use aerostats (lighter-than-air balloons) for initial exploration and ultimately for permanent "floating cities" in the Venusian atmosphere.[204] Among the many engineering challenges are the dangerous amounts of sulfuric acid at these heights.[204]
+
+Nonetheless, in August 2019, astronomers reported that newly discovered long-term pattern of absorbance and albedo changes in the atmosphere of the planet Venus are caused by "unknown absorbers", which may be chemicals or even large colonies of microorganisms high up in the atmosphere of the planet.[205][84]
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+Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → UniverseEach arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".
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+Venus is the second planet from the Sun. It is named after the Roman goddess of love and beauty.  As the second-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon, Venus can cast shadows and can be, on rare occasion, visible to the naked eye in broad daylight.[15][16] Venus lies within Earth's orbit, and so never appears to venture far from the Sun, either setting in the west just after dusk or rising in the east a bit before dawn. Venus orbits the Sun every 224.7 Earth days.[17] With a rotation period of 243 Earth days,  it takes longer to rotate about its axis than any other planet in the Solar System and does so in the opposite direction to all but Uranus (meaning the Sun rises in the west and sets in the east).[18] Venus does not have any moons, a distinction it shares only with Mercury among planets in the Solar System.[19]
+
+Venus is a terrestrial planet and is sometimes called Earth's "sister planet" because of their similar size, mass, proximity to the Sun, and bulk composition. It is radically different from Earth in other respects. It has the densest atmosphere of the four terrestrial planets, consisting of more than 96% carbon dioxide. The atmospheric pressure at the planet's surface is 92 times that of Earth, or roughly the pressure found 900 m (3,000 ft) underwater on Earth. Venus is by far the hottest planet in the Solar System, with a mean surface temperature of 737 K (464 °C; 867 °F), even though Mercury is closer to the Sun. Venus is shrouded by an opaque layer of highly reflective clouds of sulfuric acid, preventing its surface from being seen from space in visible light. It may have had water oceans in the past,[20][21] but these would have vaporized as the temperature rose due to a runaway greenhouse effect.[22] The water has probably photodissociated, and the free hydrogen has been swept into interplanetary space by the solar wind because of the lack of a planetary magnetic field.[23] Venus's surface is a dry desertscape interspersed with slab-like rocks and is periodically resurfaced by volcanism.
+
+As one of the brightest objects in the sky, Venus has been a major fixture in human culture for as long as records have existed. It has been made sacred to gods of many cultures, and has been a prime inspiration for writers and poets as the morning star and evening star. Venus was the first planet to have its motions plotted across the sky, as early as the second millennium BC.[24]
+
+As the planet with the closest approach to Earth, Venus has been a prime target for early interplanetary exploration. It was the first planet beyond Earth visited by a spacecraft (Mariner 2 in 1962), and the first to be successfully landed on (by Venera 7 in 1970). Venus's thick clouds render observation of its surface impossible in visible light, and the first detailed maps did not emerge until the arrival of the Magellan orbiter in 1991. Plans have been proposed for rovers or more complex missions, but they are hindered by Venus's hostile surface conditions.
+
+In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
+
+Venus is one of the four terrestrial planets in the Solar System, meaning that it is a rocky body like Earth. It is similar to Earth in size and mass, and is often described as Earth's "sister" or "twin".[27] The diameter of Venus is 12,103.6 km (7,520.8 mi)—only 638.4 km (396.7 mi) less than Earth's—and its mass is 81.5% of Earth's. Conditions on the Venusian surface differ radically from those on Earth because its dense atmosphere is 96.5% carbon dioxide, with most of the remaining 3.5% being nitrogen.[28]
+
+The Venusian surface was a subject of speculation until some of its secrets were revealed by planetary science in the 20th century. Venera landers in 1975 and 1982 returned images of a surface covered in sediment and relatively angular rocks.[29] The surface was mapped in detail by Magellan in 1990–91. The ground shows evidence of extensive volcanism, and the sulfur in the atmosphere may indicate that there have been recent eruptions.[30][31]
+
+About 80% of the Venusian surface is covered by smooth, volcanic plains, consisting of 70% plains with wrinkle ridges and 10% smooth or lobate plains.[32] Two highland "continents" make up the rest of its surface area, one lying in the planet's northern hemisphere and the other just south of the equator. The northern continent is called Ishtar Terra after Ishtar, the Babylonian goddess of love, and is about the size of Australia. Maxwell Montes, the highest mountain on Venus, lies on Ishtar Terra. Its peak is 11 km (7 mi) above the Venusian average surface elevation.[33] The southern continent is called Aphrodite Terra, after the Greek goddess of love, and is the larger of the two highland regions at roughly the size of South America. A network of fractures and faults covers much of this area.[34]
+
+The absence of evidence of lava flow accompanying any of the visible calderas remains an enigma. The planet has few impact craters, demonstrating that the surface is relatively young, approximately 300–600 million years old.[35][36] Venus has some unique surface features in addition to the impact craters, mountains, and valleys commonly found on rocky planets. Among these are flat-topped volcanic features called "farra", which look somewhat like pancakes and range in size from 20 to 50 km (12 to 31 mi) across, and from 100 to 1,000 m (330 to 3,280 ft) high; radial, star-like fracture systems called "novae"; features with both radial and concentric fractures resembling spider webs, known as "arachnoids"; and "coronae", circular rings of fractures sometimes surrounded by a depression. These features are volcanic in origin.[37]
+
+Most Venusian surface features are named after historical and mythological women.[38] Exceptions are Maxwell Montes, named after James Clerk Maxwell, and highland regions Alpha Regio, Beta Regio, and Ovda Regio. The last three features were named before the current system was adopted by the International Astronomical Union, the body which oversees planetary nomenclature.[39]
+
+The longitude of physical features on Venus are expressed relative to its prime meridian. The original prime meridian passed through the radar-bright spot at the centre of the oval feature Eve, located south of Alpha Regio.[40] After the Venera missions were completed, the prime meridian was redefined to pass through the central peak in the crater Ariadne.[41][42]
+
+Much of the Venusian surface appears to have been shaped by volcanic activity. Venus has several times as many volcanoes as Earth, and it has 167 large volcanoes that are over 100 km (60 mi) across. The only volcanic complex of this size on Earth is the Big Island of Hawaii.[37]:154 This is not because Venus is more volcanically active than Earth, but because its crust is older. Earth's oceanic crust is continually recycled by subduction at the boundaries of tectonic plates, and has an average age of about 100 million years,[43] whereas the Venusian surface is estimated to be 300–600 million years old.[35][37]
+
+Several lines of evidence point to ongoing volcanic activity on Venus. Sulphur dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere dropped by a factor of 10 between 1978 and 1986, jumped in 2006, and again declined 10-fold.[44] This may mean that levels had been boosted several times by large volcanic eruptions.[45][46] It has also been suggested that Venusian lightning (discussed below) could originate from volcanic activity (i.e. volcanic lightning). In January 2020, astronomers reported evidence that suggests that Venus is currently volcanically active.[25][26]
+
+In 2008 and 2009, the first direct evidence for ongoing volcanism was observed by Venus Express, in the form of four transient localized infrared hot spots within the rift zone Ganis Chasma,[47][n 1] near the shield volcano Maat Mons. Three of the spots were observed in more than one successive orbit. These spots are thought to represent lava freshly released by volcanic eruptions.[48][49] The actual temperatures are not known, because the size of the hot spots could not be measured, but are likely to have been in the 800–1,100 K (527–827 °C; 980–1,520 °F) range, relative to a normal temperature of 740 K (467 °C; 872 °F).[50]
+
+Almost a thousand impact craters on Venus are evenly distributed across its surface. On other cratered bodies, such as Earth and the Moon, craters show a range of states of degradation. On the Moon, degradation is caused by subsequent impacts, whereas on Earth it is caused by wind and rain erosion. On Venus, about 85% of the craters are in pristine condition. The number of craters, together with their well-preserved condition, indicates the planet underwent a global resurfacing event about 300–600 million years ago,[35][36] followed by a decay in volcanism.[51] Whereas Earth's crust is in continuous motion, Venus is thought to be unable to sustain such a process. Without plate tectonics to dissipate heat from its mantle, Venus instead undergoes a cyclical process in which mantle temperatures rise until they reach a critical level that weakens the crust. Then, over a period of about 100 million years, subduction occurs on an enormous scale, completely recycling the crust.[37]
+
+Venusian craters range from 3 to 280 km (2 to 174 mi) in diameter. No craters are smaller than 3 km, because of the effects of the dense atmosphere on incoming objects. Objects with less than a certain kinetic energy are slowed so much by the atmosphere that they do not create an impact crater.[52] Incoming projectiles less than 50 m (160 ft) in diameter will fragment and burn up in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.[53]
+
+The stratigraphically oldest tessera terrains have consistently lower thermal emissivity than the surrounding basaltic plains measured by Venus Express and Magellan, indicating a different, possibly a more felsic, mineral assemblage.[20][54] The mechanism to generate a large amount of felsic crust usually requires the presence of water ocean and plate tectonics, implying that habitable condition had existed on early Venus. However, the nature of tessera terrains is far from certain.[55]
+
+Without seismic data or knowledge of its moment of inertia, little direct information is available about the internal structure and geochemistry of Venus.[56] The similarity in size and density between Venus and Earth suggests they share a similar internal structure: a core, mantle, and crust. Like that of Earth, the Venusian core is at least partially liquid because the two planets have been cooling at about the same rate.[57] The slightly smaller size of Venus means pressures are 24% lower in its deep interior than Earth's.[58] The principal difference between the two planets is the lack of evidence for plate tectonics on Venus, possibly because its crust is too strong to subduct without water to make it less viscous. This results in reduced heat loss from the planet, preventing it from cooling and providing a likely explanation for its lack of an internally generated magnetic field.[59]
+Instead, Venus may lose its internal heat in periodic major resurfacing events.[35]
+
+Venus has an extremely dense atmosphere composed of 96.5% carbon dioxide, 3.5% nitrogen, and traces of other gases including sulfur dioxide.[60] The mass of its atmosphere is 93 times that of Earth's, whereas the pressure at its surface is about 92 times that at Earth's—a pressure equivalent to that at a depth of nearly 1 km (5⁄8 mi) under Earth's oceans. The density at the surface is 65 kg/m3, 6.5% that of water or 50 times as dense as Earth's atmosphere at 293 K (20 °C; 68 °F) at sea level. The CO2-rich atmosphere generates the strongest greenhouse effect in the Solar System, creating surface temperatures of at least 735 K (462 °C; 864 °F).[17][61] This makes Venus's surface hotter than Mercury's, which has a minimum surface temperature of 53 K (−220 °C; −364 °F) and maximum surface temperature of 700 K (427 °C; 801 °F),[62][63] even though Venus is nearly twice Mercury's distance from the Sun and thus receives only 25% of Mercury's solar irradiance. This temperature is higher than that used for sterilization.
+
+Venus' atmosphere is extremely enriched of primordial noble gases compared to that of Earth.[64] This enrichment indicates an early divergence from Earth in evolution. An unusually large comet impact[65] or accretion of a more massive primary atmosphere from solar nebula[66] have been proposed to explain the enrichment. However, the atmosphere is also depleted of radiogenic argon, a proxy to mantle degassing, suggesting an early shutdown of major magmatism.[67][68]
+
+Studies have suggested that billions of years ago, Venus's atmosphere could have been much more like the one surrounding Earth, and that there may have been substantial quantities of liquid water on the surface, but after a period of 600 million to several billion years,[69] a runaway greenhouse effect was caused by the evaporation of that original water, which generated a critical level of greenhouse gases in its atmosphere.[70] Although the surface conditions on Venus are no longer hospitable to any Earth-like life that may have formed before this event, there is speculation on the possibility that life exists in the  upper cloud layers of Venus, 50 km (30 mi) up from the surface, where the temperature ranges between 303 and 353 K (30 and 80 °C; 86 and 176 °F) but the environment is acidic.[71][72][73]
+
+Thermal inertia and the transfer of heat by winds in the lower atmosphere mean that the temperature of Venus's surface does not vary significantly between the planet's two hemispheres, those facing and not facing the Sun, despite Venus's extremely slow rotation. Winds at the surface are slow, moving at a few kilometres per hour, but because of the high density of the atmosphere at the surface, they exert a significant amount of force against obstructions, and transport dust and small stones across the surface. This alone would make it difficult for a human to walk through, even without the heat, pressure, and lack of oxygen.[74]
+
+Above the dense CO2 layer are thick clouds consisting mainly of sulfuric acid, which is formed by sulfur dioxide and water through a chemical reaction resulting in sulfuric acid hydrate. Additionally, the atmosphere consists of approximately 1% ferric chloride.[75][76] Other possible constituents of the cloud particles are ferric sulfate, aluminium chloride and phosphoric anhydride. Clouds at different levels have different compositions and particle size distributions.[75] These clouds reflect and scatter about 90% of the sunlight that falls on them back into space, and prevent visual observation of Venus's surface. The permanent cloud cover means that although Venus is closer than Earth to the Sun, it receives less sunlight on the ground. Strong 300 km/h (185 mph) winds at the cloud tops go around Venus about every four to five Earth days.[77] Winds on Venus move at up to 60 times the speed of its rotation, whereas Earth's fastest winds are only 10–20% rotation speed.[78]
+
+The surface of Venus is effectively isothermal; it retains a constant temperature not only between the two hemispheres but between the equator and the poles.[5][79] Venus's minute axial tilt—less than 3°, compared to 23° on Earth—also minimises seasonal temperature variation.[80] Altitude is one of the few factors that affect Venusian temperature. The highest point on Venus, Maxwell Montes, is therefore the coolest point on Venus, with a temperature of about 655 K (380 °C; 715 °F) and an atmospheric pressure of about 4.5 MPa (45 bar).[81][82] In 1995, the Magellan spacecraft imaged a highly reflective substance at the tops of the highest mountain peaks that bore a strong resemblance to terrestrial snow. This substance likely formed from a similar process to snow, albeit at a far higher temperature. Too volatile to condense on the surface, it rose in gaseous form to higher elevations, where it is cooler and could precipitate. The identity of this substance is not known with certainty, but speculation has ranged from elemental tellurium to lead sulfide (galena).[83]
+
+Although Venus has no seasons as such, in 2019 astronomers identified a cyclical variation in sunlight absorption by the atmosphere, possibly caused by opaque, absorbing particles suspended in the upper clouds. The variation causes observed changes in the speed of Venus's zonal winds, and appears to rise and fall in time with the Sun's 11-year sunspot cycle.[84]
+
+The existence of lightning in the atmosphere of Venus has been controversial[85] since the first suspected bursts were detected by the Soviet Venera probes[86][87][88] In 2006–07, Venus Express clearly detected whistler mode waves, the signatures of lightning. Their intermittent appearance indicates a pattern associated with weather activity. According to these measurements, the lightning rate is at least half of that on Earth,[89] however other instruments have not detected lightning at all.[85] The origin of any lightning remains unclear, but could originate from the clouds or volcanoes.
+
+In 2007, Venus Express discovered that a huge double atmospheric vortex exists at the south pole.[90][91] Venus Express also discovered, in 2011, that an ozone layer exists high in the atmosphere of Venus.[92] On 29 January 2013, ESA scientists reported that the ionosphere of Venus streams outwards in a manner similar to "the ion tail seen streaming from a comet under similar conditions."[93][94]
+
+In December 2015, and to a lesser extent in April and May 2016, researchers working on Japan's Akatsuki mission observed bow shapes in the atmosphere of Venus. This was considered direct evidence of the existence of perhaps the largest stationary gravity waves in the solar system.[95][96][97]
+
+In 1967, Venera 4 found Venus's magnetic field to be much weaker than that of Earth. This magnetic field is induced by an interaction between the ionosphere and the solar wind,[100][101] rather than by an internal dynamo as in the Earth's core. Venus's small induced magnetosphere provides negligible protection to the atmosphere against cosmic radiation.
+
+The lack of an intrinsic magnetic field at Venus was surprising, given that it is similar to Earth in size and was expected also to contain a dynamo at its core. A dynamo requires three things: a conducting liquid, rotation, and convection. The core is thought to be electrically conductive and, although its rotation is often thought to be too slow, simulations show it is adequate to produce a dynamo.[102][103] This implies that the dynamo is missing because of a lack of convection in Venus's core. On Earth, convection occurs in the liquid outer layer of the core because the bottom of the liquid layer is much higher in temperature than the top. On Venus, a global resurfacing event may have shut down plate tectonics and led to a reduced heat flux through the crust. This would cause the mantle temperature to increase, thereby reducing the heat flux out of the core. As a result, no internal geodynamo is available to drive a magnetic field. Instead, the heat from the core is being used to reheat the crust.[104]
+
+One possibility is that Venus has no solid inner core,[105] or that its core is not cooling, so that the entire liquid part of the core is at approximately the same temperature. Another possibility is that its core has already completely solidified. The state of the core is highly dependent on the concentration of sulfur, which is unknown at present.[104]
+
+The weak magnetosphere around Venus means that the solar wind is interacting directly with its outer atmosphere. Here, ions of hydrogen and oxygen are being created by the dissociation of neutral molecules from ultraviolet radiation. The solar wind then supplies energy that gives some of these ions sufficient velocity to escape Venus's gravity field. This erosion process results in a steady loss of low-mass hydrogen, helium, and oxygen ions, whereas higher-mass molecules, such as carbon dioxide, are more likely to be retained. Atmospheric erosion by the solar wind probably led to the loss of most of Venus's water during the first billion years after it formed.[106] The erosion has increased the ratio of higher-mass deuterium to lower-mass hydrogen in the atmosphere 100 times compared to the rest of the solar system.[107]
+
+Venus orbits the Sun at an average distance of about 0.72 AU (108 million km; 67 million mi), and completes an orbit every 224.7 days. Although all planetary orbits are elliptical, Venus's orbit is the closest to circular, with an eccentricity of less than 0.01.[5] When Venus lies between Earth and the Sun in inferior conjunction, it makes the closest approach to Earth of any planet at an average distance of 41 million km (25 million mi).[5] However, it spends a large amount of its time away from Earth, meaning that it is the closest planet to Earth for only a minority of the time. This means that Mercury is actually the planet that is closest to Earth a plurality of the time.[108]  The planet reaches inferior conjunction every 584 days, on average.[5] Because of the decreasing eccentricity of Earth's orbit, the minimum distances will become greater over tens of thousands of years. From the year 1 to 5383, there are 526 approaches less than 40 million km; then there are none for about 60,158 years.[109]
+
+All the planets in the Solar System orbit the Sun in an anticlockwise direction as viewed from above Earth's north pole. Most planets also rotate on their axes in an anti-clockwise direction, but Venus rotates clockwise in retrograde rotation once every 243 Earth days—the slowest rotation of any planet. Because its rotation is so slow, Venus is very close to spherical.[110] A Venusian sidereal day thus lasts longer than a Venusian year (243 versus 224.7 Earth days). Venus's equator rotates at 6.52 km/h (4.05 mph), whereas Earth's rotates at 1,674.4 km/h (1,040.4 mph).[114][115] Venus's rotation has slowed in the 16 years between the Magellan spacecraft and Venus Express visits; each Venusian sidereal day has increased by 6.5 minutes in that time span.[116] Because of the retrograde rotation, the length of a solar day on Venus is significantly shorter than the sidereal day, at 116.75 Earth days (making the Venusian solar day shorter than Mercury's 176 Earth days).[117] One Venusian year is about 1.92 Venusian solar days.[118] To an observer on the surface of Venus, the Sun would rise in the west and set in the east,[118] although Venus's opaque clouds prevent observing the Sun from the planet's surface.[119]
+
+Venus may have formed from the solar nebula with a different rotation period and obliquity, reaching its current state because of chaotic spin changes caused by planetary perturbations and tidal effects on its dense atmosphere, a change that would have occurred over the course of billions of years. The rotation period of Venus may represent an equilibrium state between tidal locking to the Sun's gravitation, which tends to slow rotation, and an atmospheric tide created by solar heating of the thick Venusian atmosphere.[120][121]
+The 584-day average interval between successive close approaches to Earth is almost exactly equal to 5 Venusian solar days (5.001444 to be precise),[122] but the hypothesis of a spin-orbit resonance with Earth has been discounted.[123]
+
+Venus has no natural satellites.[124] It has several trojan asteroids: the quasi-satellite 2002 VE68[125][126] and two other temporary trojans, 2001 CK32 and 2012 XE133.[127] In the 17th century, Giovanni Cassini reported a moon orbiting Venus, which was named Neith and numerous sightings were reported over the following 200 years, but most were determined to be stars in the vicinity. Alex Alemi's and David Stevenson's 2006 study of models of the early Solar System at the California Institute of Technology shows Venus likely had at least one moon created by a huge impact event billions of years ago.[128] About 10 million years later, according to the study, another impact reversed the planet's spin direction and caused the Venusian moon gradually to spiral inward until it collided with Venus.[129] If later impacts created moons, these were removed in the same way. An alternative explanation for the lack of satellites is the effect of strong solar tides, which can destabilize large satellites orbiting the inner terrestrial planets.[124]
+
+To the naked eye, Venus appears as a white point of light brighter than any other planet or star (apart from the Sun).[130] The planet's mean apparent magnitude is −4.14 with a standard deviation of 0.31.[14] The brightest magnitude occurs during crescent phase about one month before or after inferior conjunction. Venus fades to about magnitude −3 when it is backlit by the Sun.[131] The planet is bright enough to be seen in a clear midday sky[132] and is more easily visible when the Sun is low on the horizon or setting. As an inferior planet, it always lies within about 47° of the Sun.[133]
+
+Venus "overtakes" Earth every 584 days as it orbits the Sun.[5] As it does so, it changes from the "Evening Star", visible after sunset, to the "Morning Star", visible before sunrise. Although Mercury, the other inferior planet, reaches a maximum elongation of only 28° and is often difficult to discern in twilight, Venus is hard to miss when it is at its brightest. Its greater maximum elongation means it is visible in dark skies long after sunset. As the brightest point-like object in the sky, Venus is a commonly misreported "unidentified flying object".
+
+As it orbits the Sun, Venus displays phases like those of the Moon in a telescopic view. The planet appears as a small and "full" disc when it is on the opposite side of the Sun (at superior conjunction). Venus shows a larger disc and "quarter phase" at its maximum elongations from the Sun, and appears its brightest in the night sky. The planet presents a much larger thin "crescent" in telescopic views as it passes along the near side between Earth and the Sun. Venus displays its largest size and "new phase" when it is between Earth and the Sun (at inferior conjunction). Its atmosphere is visible through telescopes by the halo of sunlight refracted around it.[133]
+
+The Venusian orbit is slightly inclined relative to Earth's orbit; thus, when the planet passes between Earth and the Sun, it usually does not cross the face of the Sun. Transits of Venus occur when the planet's inferior conjunction coincides with its presence in the plane of Earth's orbit. Transits of Venus occur in cycles of 243 years with the current pattern of transits being pairs of transits separated by eight years, at intervals of about 105.5 years or 121.5 years—a pattern first discovered in 1639 by the English astronomer Jeremiah Horrocks.[134]
+
+The latest pair was June 8, 2004 and June 5–6, 2012. The transit could be watched live from many online outlets or observed locally with the right equipment and conditions.[135]
+
+The preceding pair of transits occurred in December 1874 and December 1882; the following pair will occur in December 2117 and December 2125.[136] The 1874 transit is the subject of the oldest film known, the 1874 Passage de Venus. Historically, transits of Venus were important, because they allowed astronomers to determine the size of the astronomical unit, and hence the size of the Solar System as shown by Horrocks in 1639.[137] Captain Cook's exploration of the east coast of Australia came after he had sailed to Tahiti in 1768 to observe a transit of Venus.[138][139]
+
+The pentagram of Venus is the path that Venus makes as observed from Earth. Successive inferior conjunctions of Venus repeat very near a 13:8 ratio (Earth orbits 8 times for every 13 orbits of Venus), shifting 144° upon sequential inferior conjunctions. The 13:8 ratio is approximate. 8/13 is approximately 0.61538 while Venus orbits the Sun in 0.61519 years.[140]
+
+Naked eye observations of Venus during daylight hours exist in several anecdotes and records. Astronomer Edmund Halley calculated its maximum naked eye brightness in 1716, when many Londoners were alarmed by its appearance in the daytime. French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte once witnessed a daytime apparition of the planet while at a reception in Luxembourg.[141] Another historical daytime observation of the planet took place during the inauguration of the American president Abraham Lincoln in Washington, D.C., on 4 March 1865.[142] Although naked eye visibility of Venus's phases is disputed, records exist of observations of its crescent.[143]
+
+A long-standing mystery of Venus observations is the so-called ashen light—an apparent weak illumination of its dark side, seen when the planet is in the crescent phase. The first claimed observation of ashen light was made in 1643, but the existence of the illumination has never been reliably confirmed. Observers have speculated it may result from electrical activity in the Venusian atmosphere, but it could be illusory, resulting from the physiological effect of observing a bright, crescent-shaped object.[144][87]
+
+Because the movements of Venus appear to be discontinuous (it disappears due to its proximity to the sun, for many days at a time, and then reappears on the other horizon), some cultures did not recognize Venus as single entity;[145] instead, they assumed it to be two separate stars on each horizon: the morning and evening star.[145] Nonetheless, a cylinder seal from the Jemdet Nasr period and the Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa from the First Babylonian dynasty indicate that the ancient Sumerians already knew that the morning and evening stars were the same celestial object.[146][145][147] In the Old Babylonian period, the planet Venus was known as Ninsi'anna, and later as Dilbat.[148] The name "Ninsi'anna" translates to "divine lady, illumination of heaven", which refers to Venus as the brightest visible "star". Earlier spellings of the name were written with the cuneiform sign si4 (= SU, meaning "to be red"), and the original meaning may have been "divine lady of the redness of heaven", in reference to the colour of the morning and evening sky.[149]
+
+The Chinese historically referred to the morning Venus as "the Great White" (Tài-bái 太白) or "the Opener (Starter) of Brightness" (Qǐ-m��ng 啟明), and the evening Venus as "the Excellent West One" (Cháng-gēng 長庚).[150]
+
+The ancient Greeks also initially believed Venus to be two separate stars: Phosphorus, the morning star, and Hesperus, the evening star. Pliny the Elder credited the realization that they were a single object to Pythagoras in the sixth century BCE,[151] while Diogenes Laërtius argued that Parmenides was probably responsible for this rediscovery.[152] Though they recognized Venus as a single object, the ancient Romans continued to designate the morning aspect of Venus as Lucifer, literally "Light-Bringer", and the evening aspect as Vesper, both of which are literal translations of their traditional Greek names.
+
+In the second century, in his astronomical treatise Almagest, Ptolemy theorized that both Mercury and Venus are located between the Sun and the Earth. The 11th-century Persian astronomer Avicenna claimed to have observed the transit of Venus,[153] which later astronomers took as confirmation of Ptolemy's theory.[154] In the 12th century, the Andalusian astronomer Ibn Bajjah observed "two planets as black spots on the face of the Sun"; these were thought to be the transits of Venus and Mercury by 13th-century Maragha astronomer Qotb al-Din Shirazi, though this cannot be true as there were no Venus transits in Ibn Bajjah's lifetime.[155][n 2]
+
+When the Italian physicist Galileo Galilei first observed the planet in the early 17th century, he found it showed phases like the Moon, varying from crescent to gibbous to full and vice versa. When Venus is furthest from the Sun in the sky, it shows a half-lit phase, and when it is closest to the Sun in the sky, it shows as a crescent or full phase. This could be possible only if Venus orbited the Sun, and this was among the first observations to clearly contradict the Ptolemaic geocentric model that the Solar System was concentric and centred on Earth.[158][159]
+
+The 1639 transit of Venus was accurately predicted by Jeremiah Horrocks and observed by him and his friend, William Crabtree, at each of their respective homes, on 4 December 1639 (24 November under the Julian calendar in use at that time).[160]
+
+The atmosphere of Venus was discovered in 1761 by Russian polymath Mikhail Lomonosov.[161][162] Venus's atmosphere was observed in 1790 by German astronomer Johann Schröter. Schröter found when the planet was a thin crescent, the cusps extended through more than 180°. He correctly surmised this was due to scattering of sunlight in a dense atmosphere. Later, American astronomer Chester Smith Lyman observed a complete ring around the dark side of the planet when it was at inferior conjunction, providing further evidence for an atmosphere.[163] The atmosphere complicated efforts to determine a rotation period for the planet, and observers such as Italian-born astronomer Giovanni Cassini and Schröter incorrectly estimated periods of about 24 h from the motions of markings on the planet's apparent surface.[164]
+
+Little more was discovered about Venus until the 20th century. Its almost featureless disc gave no hint what its surface might be like, and it was only with the development of spectroscopic, radar and ultraviolet observations that more of its secrets were revealed. The first ultraviolet observations were carried out in the 1920s, when Frank E. Ross found that ultraviolet photographs revealed considerable detail that was absent in visible and infrared radiation. He suggested this was due to a dense, yellow lower atmosphere with high cirrus clouds above it.[165]
+
+Spectroscopic observations in the 1900s gave the first clues about the Venusian rotation. Vesto Slipher tried to measure the Doppler shift of light from Venus, but found he could not detect any rotation. He surmised the planet must have a much longer rotation period than had previously been thought.[166] Later work in the 1950s showed the rotation was retrograde. Radar observations of Venus were first carried out in the 1960s, and provided the first measurements of the rotation period, which were close to the modern value.[167]
+
+Radar observations in the 1970s revealed details of the Venusian surface for the first time. Pulses of radio waves were beamed at the planet using the 300 m (1,000 ft) radio telescope at Arecibo Observatory, and the echoes revealed two highly reflective regions, designated the Alpha and Beta regions. The observations also revealed a bright region attributed to mountains, which was called Maxwell Montes.[168] These three features are now the only ones on Venus that do not have female names.[39]
+
+The first robotic space probe mission to Venus, and the first to any planet, began with the Soviet Venera program in 1961.[169] The United States' exploration of Venus had its first success with the Mariner 2 mission on 14 December 1962, becoming the world's first successful interplanetary mission, passing 34,833 km (21,644 mi) above the surface of Venus, and gathering data on the planet's atmosphere.[170][171]
+
+On 18 October 1967, the Soviet Venera 4 successfully entered the atmosphere and deployed science experiments. Venera 4 showed the surface temperature was hotter than Mariner 2 had calculated, at almost 500 °C (932 °F), determined that the atmosphere was 95% carbon dioxide (CO2), and discovered that Venus's atmosphere was considerably denser than Venera 4's designers had anticipated.[172] The joint Venera 4–Mariner 5 data were analysed by a combined Soviet–American science team in a series of colloquia over the following year,[173] in an early example of space cooperation.[174]
+
+In 1974, Mariner 10 swung by Venus on its way to Mercury and took ultraviolet photographs of the clouds, revealing the extraordinarily high wind speeds in the Venusian atmosphere.
+
+In 1975, the Soviet Venera 9 and 10 landers transmitted the first images from the surface of Venus, which were in black and white. In 1982 the first colour images of the surface were obtained with the Soviet Venera 13 and 14 landers.
+
+NASA obtained additional data in 1978 with the Pioneer Venus project that consisted of two separate missions:[175] Pioneer Venus Orbiter and Pioneer Venus Multiprobe.[176] The successful Soviet Venera program came to a close in October 1983, when Venera 15 and 16 were placed in orbit to conduct detailed mapping of 25% of Venus's terrain (from the north pole to 30°N latitude)[177]
+
+Several other Venus flybys took place in the 1980s and 1990s that increased the understanding of Venus, including Vega 1 (1985), Vega 2 (1985), Galileo (1990), Magellan (1994), Cassini–Huygens (1998), and MESSENGER (2006). Then, Venus Express by the European Space Agency (ESA) entered orbit around Venus in April 2006. Equipped with seven scientific instruments, Venus Express provided unprecedented long-term observation of Venus's atmosphere. ESA concluded that mission in December 2014.
+
+As of 2016, Japan's Akatsuki is in a highly elliptical orbit around Venus since 7 December 2015, and there are several probing proposals under study by Roscosmos, NASA, and India's ISRO.
+
+In 2016, the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program studied a rover, the Automaton Rover for Extreme Environments, designed to survive for an extended time in Venus's environmental conditions. It would be controlled by a mechanical computer and driven by wind power.[178]
+
+Venus is a primary feature of the night sky, and so has been of remarkable importance in mythology, astrology and fiction throughout history and in different cultures.
+
+In Sumerian religion, Inanna was associated with the planet Venus.[181][182] Several hymns praise Inanna in her role as the goddess of the planet Venus.[145][182][181] Theology professor Jeffrey Cooley has argued that, in many myths, Inanna's movements may correspond with the movements of the planet Venus in the sky.[145] The discontinuous movements of Venus relate to both mythology as well as Inanna's dual nature.[145] In Inanna's Descent to the Underworld, unlike any other deity, Inanna is able to descend into the netherworld and return to the heavens. The planet Venus appears to make a similar descent, setting in the West and then rising again in the East.[145] An introductory hymn describes Inanna leaving the heavens and heading for Kur, what could be presumed to be, the mountains, replicating the rising and setting of Inanna to the West.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda and Inanna's Descent into the Underworld appear to parallel the motion of the planet Venus.[145] In Inanna and Shukaletuda, Shukaletuda is described as scanning the heavens in search of Inanna, possibly searching the eastern and western horizons.[183] In the same myth, while searching for her attacker, Inanna herself makes several movements that correspond with the movements of Venus in the sky.[145]
+
+Classical poets such as Homer, Sappho, Ovid and Virgil spoke of the star and its light.[184] Poets such as William Blake, Robert Frost, Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Alfred Lord Tennyson and William Wordsworth  wrote odes to it.[185]
+
+In Chinese the planet is called Jīn-xīng (金星), the golden planet of the metal element. In India Shukra Graha ("the planet Shukra") which is named after a powerful saint Shukra. Shukra which is used in Indian Vedic astrology[186] means "clear, pure" or "brightness, clearness" in Sanskrit. One of the nine Navagraha, it is held to affect wealth, pleasure and reproduction; it was the son of Bhrgu, preceptor of the Daityas, and guru of the Asuras.[187] The word Shukra is also associated with semen, or generation. Venus is known as Kejora in Indonesian and Malay. Modern Chinese, Japanese and Korean cultures refer to the planet literally as the "metal star" (金星), based on the Five elements.[188][189][190]
+
+The Maya considered Venus to be the most important celestial body after the Sun and Moon. They called it Chac ek,[191] or Noh Ek', "the Great Star".[192] The cycles of Venus were important to their calendar.
+
+The Ancient Egyptians and Greeks believed Venus to be two separate bodies, a morning star and an evening star. The Egyptians knew the morning star as Tioumoutiri and the evening star as Ouaiti.[193] The Greeks used the names Phōsphoros (Φωσϕόρος), meaning "light-bringer" (whence the element phosphorus; alternately Ēōsphoros (Ἠωςϕόρος), meaning "dawn-bringer"), for the morning star, and Hesperos (Ἕσπερος), meaning "Western one", for the evening star.[194] Though by the Roman era they were recognized as one celestial object, known as "the star of Venus", the traditional two Greek names continued to be used, though usually translated to Latin as Lūcifer[194][195] and Vesper.
+
+With the invention of the telescope, the idea that Venus was a physical world and possible destination began to take form.
+
+The impenetrable Venusian cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface; all the more so when early observations showed that not only was it similar in size to Earth, it possessed a substantial atmosphere. Closer to the Sun than Earth, the planet was frequently depicted as warmer, but still habitable by humans.[196] The genre reached its peak between the 1930s and 1950s, at a time when science had revealed some aspects of Venus, but not yet the harsh reality of its surface conditions. Findings from the first missions to Venus showed the reality to be quite different, and brought this particular genre to an end.[197] As scientific knowledge of Venus advanced, science fiction authors tried to keep pace, particularly by conjecturing human attempts to terraform Venus.[198]
+
+The astronomical symbol for Venus is the same as that used in biology for the female sex: a circle with a small cross beneath.[199] [200] The Venus symbol also represents femininity, and in Western alchemy stood for the metal copper.[199] [200] Polished copper has been used for mirrors from antiquity, and the symbol for Venus has sometimes been understood to stand for the mirror of the goddess although that is not its true origin.[199][200]
+
+The speculation of the existence of life on Venus has decreased significantly since the early 1960s, when spacecraft began studying Venus and it became clear that the conditions on Venus are extreme compared to those on Earth.
+
+That Venus is closer to the Sun than Earth, raising temperatures on the surface to nearly 735 K (462 °C; 863 °F), that its atmospheric pressure is 90 times that of Earth, and the extreme impact of the greenhouse effect make water-based life as currently known unlikely. A few scientists have speculated that thermoacidophilic extremophile microorganisms might exist in the lower-temperature, acidic upper layers of the Venusian atmosphere.[201][202][203] The atmospheric pressure and temperature fifty kilometres above the surface are similar to those at Earth's surface. This has led to proposals to use aerostats (lighter-than-air balloons) for initial exploration and ultimately for permanent "floating cities" in the Venusian atmosphere.[204] Among the many engineering challenges are the dangerous amounts of sulfuric acid at these heights.[204]
+
+Nonetheless, in August 2019, astronomers reported that newly discovered long-term pattern of absorbance and albedo changes in the atmosphere of the planet Venus are caused by "unknown absorbers", which may be chemicals or even large colonies of microorganisms high up in the atmosphere of the planet.[205][84]
+
+Solar System → Local Interstellar Cloud → Local Bubble → Gould Belt → Orion Arm → Milky Way → Milky Way subgroup → Local Group → Local Sheet → Virgo Supercluster → Laniakea Supercluster → Observable universe → UniverseEach arrow (→) may be read as "within" or "part of".
+

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+
+
+A verb, from  the Latin verbum meaning word, is a word (part of speech) that in syntax conveys an action (bring, read, walk, run, learn), an occurrence (happen, become), or a state of being (be, exist, stand).  In the usual description of English, the basic form, with or without the particle to, is the infinitive. In many languages, verbs are inflected (modified in form) to encode tense, aspect, mood, and voice. A verb may also agree with the person, gender or number of some of its arguments, such as its subject, or object. Verbs have tenses: present, to indicate that an action is being carried out; past, to indicate that an action has been done; future, to indicate that an action will be done.
+
+In languages where the verb is inflected, it often agrees with its primary argument (the subject) in person, number or gender. With the exception of the verb to be, English shows distinctive agreements only in the third person singular, present tense form of verbs, which are marked by adding "-s" ( walks) or "-es" (fishes). The rest of the persons are not distinguished in the verb (I walk, you walk, they walk, etc.).
+
+Latin and the Romance languages inflect verbs for tense–aspect–mood (abbreviated 'TAM'), and they agree in person and number (but not in gender, as for example in Polish) with the subject. Japanese, like many languages with SOV word order, inflects verbs for tense-aspect-mood, as well as other categories such as negation, but shows absolutely no agreement with the subject - it is a strictly dependent-marking language. On the other hand, Basque, Georgian, and some other languages, have polypersonal agreement: the verb agrees with the subject, the direct object, and even the secondary object if present, a greater degree of head-marking than is found in most European languages.
+
+Verbs vary by type, and each type is determined by the kinds of words that accompany it and the relationship those words have with the verb itself. Classified by the number of their valency arguments, usually three basic types are distinguished: intransitives, transitives, ditransitives and double transitive verbs. Some verbs have special grammatical uses and hence complements, such as copular verbs (i.e., be); the verb "do" used for do-support in questioning and negation, and tense or aspect auxiliaries, e.g., "be", "have" or "can". In addition, verbs can be nonfinite, namely, not inflected for tense, and have various special forms such as infinitives, participles or gerunds.[1]
+
+An intransitive verb is one that does not have a direct object. Intransitive verbs may be followed by an adverb (a word that addresses how, where, when, and how often) or end a sentence. For example: "The woman spoke softly." "The athlete ran faster than the official." "The boy wept."
+
+A transitive verb is followed by a noun or noun phrase. These noun phrases are not called predicate nouns, but are instead called direct objects because they refer to the object that is being acted upon. For example: "My friend read the newspaper." "The teenager earned a speeding ticket."
+
+A way to identify a transitive verb is to invert the sentence, making it passive. For example: "The newspaper was read by my friend." "A speeding ticket was earned by the teenager."
+
+Ditransitive verbs (sometimes called Vg verbs after the verb give) precede either two noun phrases or a noun phrase and then a prepositional phrase often led by to or for. For example: "The players gave their teammates high fives." "The players gave high fives to their teammates."
+
+When two noun phrases follow a transitive verb, the first is an indirect object, that which is receiving something, and the second is a direct object, that being acted upon. Indirect objects can be noun phrases or prepositional phrases.[2]
+
+Double transitive verbs (sometimes called Vc verbs after the verb consider) are followed by a noun phrase that serves as a direct object and then a second noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive phrase. The second element (noun phrase, adjective, or infinitive) is called a complement, which completes a clause that would not otherwise have the same meaning. For example: "The young couple considers the neighbors wealthy people." "Some students perceive adults quite inaccurately." "Sarah deemed her project to be the hardest she has ever completed."
+
+Copular verbs (a.k.a. linking verbs) can't be followed by an adverb or end a sentence, but instead must be followed by a noun or adjective, whether in a single word or phrase. Common copulae include be, seem, become, appear, look, and remain. For example: "His mother looked worried." "Josh remained a reliable friend." Copulae are thought to 'link' the adjective or noun to the subject.
+
+The copular verb be is manifested in eight forms: be, is, am, are, was, were, been, and being in English. These verbs precede nouns or adjectives in a sentence, which become predicate nouns and predicate adjectives similar to those that function with a linking verb. They can also be followed by an adverb of place, which is sometimes referred to as a predicate adverb. For example: "Her daughter was a writing tutor." "The singers were very nervous." "My house is down the street."
+
+Adjectives that come after copular verbs are predicate adjectives, and nouns that come after linking verbs are predicate nouns.[3]
+
+The number of arguments that a verb takes is called its valency or valence. Verbs can be classified according to their valency:
+
+A few English verbs, particularly those concerned with financial transactions, take four arguments, as in "Pat1 sold Chris2 a lawnmower3 for $204" or "Chris1 paid Pat2 $203 for a lawnmower4".[4]
+
+Weather verbs often appear to be impersonal (subjectless, or avalent) in null-subject languages like Spanish, where the verb llueve means "It rains". In English, French and German, they require a dummy pronoun, and therefore formally have a valency of 1. However, as verbs in Spanish incorporate the subject as a TAM suffix, Spanish is not actually a null-subject language, unlike Mandarin (see above). Such verbs in Spanish also have a valency of 1.
+
+Intransitive and transitive verbs are the most common, but the impersonal and objective verbs are somewhat different from the norm.  In the objective, the verb takes an object but no subject; the nonreferent subject in some uses may be marked in the verb by an incorporated dummy pronoun similar to that used with the English weather verbs. Impersonal verbs in null subject languages take neither subject nor object, as is true of other verbs, but again the verb may show incorporated dummy pronouns despite the lack of subject and object phrases.
+
+Verbs are often flexible with regard to valency. In non-valency marking languages such as English, a transitive verb can often drop its object and become intransitive; or an intransitive verb can take an object and become transitive. For example, in English the verb move has no grammatical object in he moves (though in this case, the subject itself may be an implied object, also expressible explicitly as in he moves himself); but in he moves the car, the subject and object are distinct and the verb has a different valency. Some verbs in English, however, have historically derived forms that show change of valency in some causative verbs, such as fall-fell-fallen:fell-felled-felled; rise-rose-risen:raise-raised-raised; cost-cost-cost:cost-costed-costed.
+
+In valency marking languages, valency change is shown by inflecting the verb in order to change the valency. In Kalaw Lagaw Ya of Australia, for example, verbs distinguish valency by argument agreement suffixes and TAM endings:
+
+Verb structure: manga-i-[number]-TAM "arrive+active+singular/dual/plural+TAM"
+
+Verb structure: manga-Ø-[number]-TAM "arrive+attainative+singular/dual/plural+TAM"
+
+The verb stem manga- 'to take/come/arrive' at the destination takes the active suffix -i (> mangai-) in the intransitive form, and as a transitive verb the stem is not suffixed. The TAM ending -nu is the general today past attainative perfective, found with all numbers in the perfective except the singular active, where -ma is found.
+
+Depending on the language, verbs may express grammatical tense, aspect, or modality.  Grammatical tense[5][6][7]  is the use of auxiliary verbs or inflections to convey whether the action or state is before, simultaneous with, or after some reference point.  The reference point could be the time of utterance, in which case the verb expresses absolute tense, or it could be a past, present, or future time of reference previously established in the sentence, in which case the verb expresses relative tense.
+
+Aspect[6][8] expresses how the action or state occurs through time.  Important examples include:
+
+Aspect can either be lexical, in which case the aspect is embedded in the verb's meaning (as in "the sun shines," where "shines" is lexically stative), or it can be grammatically expressed, as in "I am running."
+
+Modality[10] expresses the speaker's attitude toward the action or state given by the verb, especially with regard to degree of necessity, obligation, or permission ("You must go", "You should go", "You may go"), determination or willingness ("I will do this no matter what"), degree of probability ("It must be raining by now", "It may be raining", "It might be raining"), or ability ("I can speak French").  All languages can express modality with adverbs, but some also use verbal forms as in the given examples.  If the verbal expression of modality involves the use of an auxiliary verb, that auxiliary is called a modal verb. If the verbal expression of modality involves inflection, we have the special case of mood; moods include the indicative (as in "I am there"), the subjunctive (as in "I wish I were there"), and the imperative ("Be there!").
+
+The voice[11] of a verb expresses whether the subject of the verb is performing the action of the verb or whether the action is being performed on the subject. The two most common voices are the active voice (as in "I saw the car") and the passive voice (as in "The car was seen by me" or simply "The car was seen").
+
+Most languages have a number of verbal nouns that describe the action of the verb.
+
+In the Indo-European languages, verbal adjectives are generally called participles.  English has an active participle, also called a present participle; and a passive participle, also called a past participle.  The active participle of break is breaking, and the passive participle is broken. 
+Other languages have attributive verb forms with tense and aspect. This is especially common among verb-final languages, where attributive verb phrases act as relative clauses.
+
+
+

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+Vercingetorix (/ˌvɜːrsɪnˈdʒɛtərɪks, -ˈɡɛt-/ VUR-sin-JET-ər-iks, -⁠GET-, Latin: [wɛrkɪŋˈɡɛtɔriːks]; c. 82 BC – 46 BC) was a king and chieftain of the Arverni tribe who united the Gauls in a revolt against Roman forces during the last phase of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars.
+
+Vercingetorix was the son of Celtillus the Arvernian, leader of the Gallic tribes. Vercingetorix came to power after his formal designation as chieftain of the Arverni at the oppidum Gergovia in 52 BC. He immediately established an alliance with other Gallic tribes, took command and combined all forces, and led them in the Celts' most significant revolt against Roman power. He won the Battle of Gergovia against Julius Caesar in which several thousand Romans and their allies died and the Roman legions withdrew.
+However, Caesar had been able to exploit Gaulish internal division to easily subjugate the country, and Vercingetorix's attempt to unite the Gauls against Roman invasion came too late.[2][3] At the Battle of Alesia, also in 52 BC, the Romans besieged and defeated his forces. In order to save as many of his men as possible, he gave himself to the Romans. He was held prisoner for five years. In 46 BC, as part of Caesar's triumph, he was paraded through the streets of Rome and then executed by strangulation. Vercingetorix is primarily known through Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. To this day, he is considered a folk hero in Auvergne, his native region.
+
+The name Vercingetorix derives from the Gaulish ver- ("over, superior" – an etymological cognate of Cornish gor-, Irish for-, more distantly English over, German über, Latin super, or Greek hyper),[4] cingeto- ("warrior", related to roots meaning "tread, step, walk", so possibly "infantry"; compare Old Irish cingid),[5][4] and rix ("king") (cf. Welsh rhi, Latin rex), thus literally either "great warrior king" or "king of great warriors".[5][4][6][7] In his Life of Caesar, Plutarch renders the name as Vergentorix.[8]
+
+Having been appointed governor of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis (modern Provence) in 58 BC, Julius Caesar proceeded to conquer the Gallic tribes beyond over the next few years, maintaining control through a careful divide and rule strategy. He made use of the factionalism among the Gallic elites, favouring certain noblemen over others with political support and Roman luxuries such as wine. Attempts at revolt, such as that of Ambiorix in 54 BC, had secured only local support, but Vercingetorix, whose father, Celtillus, had been put to death by his own countrymen for seeking to rule all of Gaul, managed to unify the Gallic tribes against the Romans and adopted more current styles of warfare.
+
+The revolt that Vercingetorix came to lead began in early 52 BC while Caesar was raising troops in Cisalpine Gaul. Believing that Caesar would be distracted by the turmoil in Rome following the death of Publius Clodius Pulcher, the Carnutes, under Cotuatus and Conetodunus, made the first move, slaughtering the Romans who had settled in their territory.
+
+Vercingetorix, a young nobleman of the Arvernian city of Gergovia, roused his dependents to join the revolt, but he and his followers were expelled by Vercingetorix's uncle Gobanitio and the rest of the nobles because they thought opposing Caesar was too great a risk. Undeterred, Vercingetorix raised an army of the poor, took Gergovia, and was hailed as king.[9]
+
+He made alliances with other tribes, and having been unanimously given supreme command of their armies, imposed his authority through harsh discipline and the taking of hostages.
+
+He adopted a policy of retreating to natural fortifications, and undertook an early example of a scorched earth strategy by burning towns to prevent the Roman legions from living off the land.
+Vercingetorix scorched much of the land marching north with his army from Gergovia in an attempt to deprive Caesar of the resources and safe haven of the towns and villages along Caesar's march south.
+
+However, the capital of the Bituriges, Avaricum (near modern-day Bourges), a Gallic settlement directly in Caesar's path, was spared. Due to the town's strong protests, naturally defensible terrain, and apparently strong man-made reinforcing defenses, Vercingetorix decided against razing and burning it. Leaving the town to its fate, Vercingetorix camped well outside of Avaricum and focused on conducting harassing engagements of the advancing Roman units led by Caesar and his chief lieutenant Titus Labienus. Upon reaching Avaricum, however, the Romans laid siege and eventually captured the capital.
+
+Afterwards, in a contemptuous reprisal for 25 days of hunger and of laboring over the siegeworks required to breach Avaricum's defenses, the Romans slaughtered nearly the entire population, some 40,000 people, leaving only about 800 alive.[10]
+
+The next major battle was at Gergovia, capital city of the Arverni. During the battle, Vercingetorix and his warriors crushed Caesar's legions and allies, inflicting heavy losses. Vercingetorix then decided to follow Caesar but suffered heavy losses (as did the Romans and their allies) during a cavalry battle and he retreated and moved to another stronghold, Alesia.
+
+In the Battle of Alesia in September 52 BC, Caesar built a fortification around the city to besiege it. However, Vercingetorix had summoned his Gallic allies to attack the besieging Romans. These forces included an army of Arverni led by Vercingetorix's cousin Vercassivellaunos and an army of 10,000 Lemovices led by Sedullos.
+
+With the Roman circumvallation surrounded by the rest of Gaul, Caesar built another outward-facing fortification (a contravallation) against the expected relief armies, resulting in a doughnut-shaped fortification. The Gallic relief came in insufficient numbers: estimates range from 80,000 to 250,000 soldiers. Vercingetorix, the tactical leader, was cut off from them on the inside, and without his guidance the attacks were initially unsuccessful. However, the attacks did reveal a weak point in the fortifications and the combined forces on the inside and the outside almost made a breakthrough. Only when Caesar personally led the last reserves into battle did he finally manage to prevail. This was a decisive battle in the creation of the Roman Empire.
+
+According to Plutarch, Caes. 27.8-10, Vercingetorix surrendered in a dramatic fashion, riding his beautifully adorned horse out of Alesia and around Caesar's camp before dismounting in front of Caesar, stripping himself of his armor and sitting down at his opponent's feet, where he remained motionless until he was taken away.[11][12] Caesar provides a first-hand contradiction of this account, De Bell. Gal. 7.89, describing Vercingetorix's surrender much more modestly.[13]
+
+Vercingetorix was imprisoned in the Tullianum in Rome for almost six years before being publicly displayed in the first of Caesar's four triumphs in 46 BC. He was executed after the triumph, most likely by strangulation in his prison according to Roman custom.[14]
+
+Napoleon III erected a 7-metre-tall (23 ft) Vercingétorix monument in 1865, created by the sculptor Aimé Millet, on the supposed site of Alesia. The architect for the memorial was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.[15] The statue still stands. The inscription on the base, written by Viollet-le-Duc, which copied the famous statement of Julius Caesar, reads (in French):
+
+La Gaule unie
+Formant une seule nation
+Animée d'un même esprit,
+Peut défier l'Univers.
+
+Gaul united,
+Forming a single nation
+Animated by a common spirit,
+Can defy the Universe.
+
+Many other monumental statues of Vercingetorix were erected in France during the 19th century, including one by Frédéric Bartholdi on the Place de Jaude in Clermont-Ferrand.[16]
+
+Asteroid 52963 Vercingetorix, discovered by the OCA–DLR Asteroid Survey, was named in his honor.[17] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 25 September 2018 (M.P.C. 111800).[18]

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+Vercingetorix (/ˌvɜːrsɪnˈdʒɛtərɪks, -ˈɡɛt-/ VUR-sin-JET-ər-iks, -⁠GET-, Latin: [wɛrkɪŋˈɡɛtɔriːks]; c. 82 BC – 46 BC) was a king and chieftain of the Arverni tribe who united the Gauls in a revolt against Roman forces during the last phase of Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars.
+
+Vercingetorix was the son of Celtillus the Arvernian, leader of the Gallic tribes. Vercingetorix came to power after his formal designation as chieftain of the Arverni at the oppidum Gergovia in 52 BC. He immediately established an alliance with other Gallic tribes, took command and combined all forces, and led them in the Celts' most significant revolt against Roman power. He won the Battle of Gergovia against Julius Caesar in which several thousand Romans and their allies died and the Roman legions withdrew.
+However, Caesar had been able to exploit Gaulish internal division to easily subjugate the country, and Vercingetorix's attempt to unite the Gauls against Roman invasion came too late.[2][3] At the Battle of Alesia, also in 52 BC, the Romans besieged and defeated his forces. In order to save as many of his men as possible, he gave himself to the Romans. He was held prisoner for five years. In 46 BC, as part of Caesar's triumph, he was paraded through the streets of Rome and then executed by strangulation. Vercingetorix is primarily known through Caesar's Commentaries on the Gallic War. To this day, he is considered a folk hero in Auvergne, his native region.
+
+The name Vercingetorix derives from the Gaulish ver- ("over, superior" – an etymological cognate of Cornish gor-, Irish for-, more distantly English over, German über, Latin super, or Greek hyper),[4] cingeto- ("warrior", related to roots meaning "tread, step, walk", so possibly "infantry"; compare Old Irish cingid),[5][4] and rix ("king") (cf. Welsh rhi, Latin rex), thus literally either "great warrior king" or "king of great warriors".[5][4][6][7] In his Life of Caesar, Plutarch renders the name as Vergentorix.[8]
+
+Having been appointed governor of the Roman province of Gallia Narbonensis (modern Provence) in 58 BC, Julius Caesar proceeded to conquer the Gallic tribes beyond over the next few years, maintaining control through a careful divide and rule strategy. He made use of the factionalism among the Gallic elites, favouring certain noblemen over others with political support and Roman luxuries such as wine. Attempts at revolt, such as that of Ambiorix in 54 BC, had secured only local support, but Vercingetorix, whose father, Celtillus, had been put to death by his own countrymen for seeking to rule all of Gaul, managed to unify the Gallic tribes against the Romans and adopted more current styles of warfare.
+
+The revolt that Vercingetorix came to lead began in early 52 BC while Caesar was raising troops in Cisalpine Gaul. Believing that Caesar would be distracted by the turmoil in Rome following the death of Publius Clodius Pulcher, the Carnutes, under Cotuatus and Conetodunus, made the first move, slaughtering the Romans who had settled in their territory.
+
+Vercingetorix, a young nobleman of the Arvernian city of Gergovia, roused his dependents to join the revolt, but he and his followers were expelled by Vercingetorix's uncle Gobanitio and the rest of the nobles because they thought opposing Caesar was too great a risk. Undeterred, Vercingetorix raised an army of the poor, took Gergovia, and was hailed as king.[9]
+
+He made alliances with other tribes, and having been unanimously given supreme command of their armies, imposed his authority through harsh discipline and the taking of hostages.
+
+He adopted a policy of retreating to natural fortifications, and undertook an early example of a scorched earth strategy by burning towns to prevent the Roman legions from living off the land.
+Vercingetorix scorched much of the land marching north with his army from Gergovia in an attempt to deprive Caesar of the resources and safe haven of the towns and villages along Caesar's march south.
+
+However, the capital of the Bituriges, Avaricum (near modern-day Bourges), a Gallic settlement directly in Caesar's path, was spared. Due to the town's strong protests, naturally defensible terrain, and apparently strong man-made reinforcing defenses, Vercingetorix decided against razing and burning it. Leaving the town to its fate, Vercingetorix camped well outside of Avaricum and focused on conducting harassing engagements of the advancing Roman units led by Caesar and his chief lieutenant Titus Labienus. Upon reaching Avaricum, however, the Romans laid siege and eventually captured the capital.
+
+Afterwards, in a contemptuous reprisal for 25 days of hunger and of laboring over the siegeworks required to breach Avaricum's defenses, the Romans slaughtered nearly the entire population, some 40,000 people, leaving only about 800 alive.[10]
+
+The next major battle was at Gergovia, capital city of the Arverni. During the battle, Vercingetorix and his warriors crushed Caesar's legions and allies, inflicting heavy losses. Vercingetorix then decided to follow Caesar but suffered heavy losses (as did the Romans and their allies) during a cavalry battle and he retreated and moved to another stronghold, Alesia.
+
+In the Battle of Alesia in September 52 BC, Caesar built a fortification around the city to besiege it. However, Vercingetorix had summoned his Gallic allies to attack the besieging Romans. These forces included an army of Arverni led by Vercingetorix's cousin Vercassivellaunos and an army of 10,000 Lemovices led by Sedullos.
+
+With the Roman circumvallation surrounded by the rest of Gaul, Caesar built another outward-facing fortification (a contravallation) against the expected relief armies, resulting in a doughnut-shaped fortification. The Gallic relief came in insufficient numbers: estimates range from 80,000 to 250,000 soldiers. Vercingetorix, the tactical leader, was cut off from them on the inside, and without his guidance the attacks were initially unsuccessful. However, the attacks did reveal a weak point in the fortifications and the combined forces on the inside and the outside almost made a breakthrough. Only when Caesar personally led the last reserves into battle did he finally manage to prevail. This was a decisive battle in the creation of the Roman Empire.
+
+According to Plutarch, Caes. 27.8-10, Vercingetorix surrendered in a dramatic fashion, riding his beautifully adorned horse out of Alesia and around Caesar's camp before dismounting in front of Caesar, stripping himself of his armor and sitting down at his opponent's feet, where he remained motionless until he was taken away.[11][12] Caesar provides a first-hand contradiction of this account, De Bell. Gal. 7.89, describing Vercingetorix's surrender much more modestly.[13]
+
+Vercingetorix was imprisoned in the Tullianum in Rome for almost six years before being publicly displayed in the first of Caesar's four triumphs in 46 BC. He was executed after the triumph, most likely by strangulation in his prison according to Roman custom.[14]
+
+Napoleon III erected a 7-metre-tall (23 ft) Vercingétorix monument in 1865, created by the sculptor Aimé Millet, on the supposed site of Alesia. The architect for the memorial was Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.[15] The statue still stands. The inscription on the base, written by Viollet-le-Duc, which copied the famous statement of Julius Caesar, reads (in French):
+
+La Gaule unie
+Formant une seule nation
+Animée d'un même esprit,
+Peut défier l'Univers.
+
+Gaul united,
+Forming a single nation
+Animated by a common spirit,
+Can defy the Universe.
+
+Many other monumental statues of Vercingetorix were erected in France during the 19th century, including one by Frédéric Bartholdi on the Place de Jaude in Clermont-Ferrand.[16]
+
+Asteroid 52963 Vercingetorix, discovered by the OCA–DLR Asteroid Survey, was named in his honor.[17] The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 25 September 2018 (M.P.C. 111800).[18]

en/5946.html.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,172 @@
+
+
+Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian opera composer. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, and developed a musical education with the help of a local patron.  Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti, and Gioachino Rossini, whose works significantly influenced him.
+
+In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated a sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also participated briefly as an elected politician. The chorus "Va, pensiero" from his early opera Nabucco (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi, however, did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements and as he became professionally successful was able to reduce his operatic workload and sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), and the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).
+
+His operas remain extremely popular, especially the three peaks of his 'middle period': Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata, and the 2013 bicentenary of his birth was widely celebrated in broadcasts and performances.
+
+Verdi, the first child of Carlo Giuseppe Verdi (1785–1867) and Luigia Uttini (1787–1851), was born at their home in Le Roncole, a village near Busseto, then in the Département Taro and within the borders of  the First French Empire following the annexation of the Duchy of Parma and Piacenza in 1808. The baptismal register, prepared on 11 October 1813, lists his parents Carlo and Luigia as "innkeeper" and "spinner" respectively.  Additionally, it lists Verdi as being "born yesterday", but since days were often considered to begin at sunset, this could have meant either 9 or 10 October.[1] Following his mother, Verdi always celebrated his birthday on 9 October, the day he himself believed he was born.[2]
+
+Verdi had a younger sister, Giuseppa, who died aged 17 in 1833.[2] She is said to have been his closest friend during childhood.[3] From the age of four, Verdi was given private lessons in Latin and Italian by the village schoolmaster, Baistrocchi, and at six he attended the local school. After learning to play the organ, he showed so much interest in music that his parents finally provided him with a spinet.[4] Verdi's gift for music was already apparent by 1820–21 when he began his association with the local church, serving in the choir, acting as an altar boy for a while, and taking organ lessons. After Baistrocchi's death, Verdi, at the age of eight, became the official paid organist.[5]
+
+The music historian Roger Parker points out that both of Verdi's parents "belonged to families of small landowners and traders, certainly not the illiterate peasants from which Verdi later liked to present himself as having emerged... Carlo Verdi was energetic in furthering his son's education...something which Verdi tended to hide in later life... [T]he picture emerges of youthful precocity eagerly nurtured by an ambitious father and of a sustained, sophisticated and elaborate formal education."[6]
+
+In 1823, when he was 10, Verdi's parents arranged for the boy to attend school in Busseto, enrolling him in a Ginnasio—an upper school for boys—run by Don Pietro Seletti, while they continued to run their inn at Le Roncole. Verdi returned to Busseto regularly to play the organ on Sundays, covering the distance of several kilometres on foot.[7] At age 11, Verdi received schooling in Italian, Latin, the humanities, and rhetoric. By the time he was 12, he began lessons with Ferdinando Provesi, maestro di cappella at San Bartolomeo, director of the municipal music school and co-director of the local Società Filarmonica (Philharmonic Society). Verdi later stated: "From the ages of 13 to 18 I wrote a motley assortment of pieces: marches for band by the hundred, perhaps as many little sinfonie that were used in church, in the theatre and at concerts, five or six concertos and sets of variations for pianoforte, which I played myself at concerts, many serenades, cantatas (arias, duets, very many trios) and various pieces of church music, of which I remember only a Stabat Mater."[1] This information comes from the Autobiographical Sketch which Verdi dictated to the publisher Giulio Ricordi late in life, in 1879, and remains the leading source for his early life and career.[8] Written, understandably, with the benefit of hindsight, it is not always reliable when dealing with issues more contentious than those of his childhood.[9][10]
+
+The other director of the Philharmonic Society was Antonio Barezzi [it], a wholesale grocer and distiller, who was described by a contemporary as a "manic dilettante" of music. The young Verdi did not immediately become involved with the Philharmonic. By June 1827, he had graduated with honours from the Ginnasio and was able to focus solely on music under Provesi. By chance, when he was 13, Verdi was asked to step in as a replacement to play in what became his first public event in his home town; he was an immediate success mostly playing his own music to the surprise of many and receiving strong local recognition.[11]
+
+By 1829–30, Verdi had established himself as a leader of the Philharmonic: "none of us could rival him" reported the secretary of the organisation, Giuseppe Demaldè. An eight-movement cantata, I deliri di Saul, based on a drama by Vittorio Alfieri, was written by Verdi when he was 15 and performed in Bergamo. It was acclaimed by both Demaldè and Barezzi, who commented: "He shows a vivid imagination, a philosophical outlook, and sound judgment in the arrangement of instrumental parts."[12] In late 1829, Verdi had completed his studies with Provesi, who declared that he had no more to teach him.[13] At the time, Verdi had been giving singing and piano lessons to Barezzi's daughter Margherita; by 1831, they were unofficially engaged.[1]
+
+Verdi set his sights on Milan, then the cultural capital of northern Italy, where he applied unsuccessfully to study at the Conservatory.[1] Barezzi made arrangements for him to become a private pupil of Vincenzo Lavigna [it], who had been maestro concertatore at La Scala, and who described Verdi's compositions as "very promising".[14] Lavigna encouraged Verdi to take out a subscription to La Scala, where he heard Maria Malibran in operas by Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini.[15] Verdi began making connections in the Milanese world of music that were to stand him in good stead. These included an introduction by Lavigna to an amateur choral group, the Società Filarmonica, led by Pietro Massini.[16] Attending the Società frequently in 1834, Verdi soon found himself functioning as rehearsal director (for Rossini's La cenerentola) and continuo player. It was Massini who encouraged him to write his first opera, originally titled Rocester, to a libretto by the journalist Antonio Piazza.[1]
+
+List of compositions by Giuseppe Verdi
+
+In mid-1834, Verdi sought to acquire Provesi's former post in Busseto but without success.  But with Barezzi's help he did obtain the secular post of maestro di musica. He taught, gave lessons, and conducted the Philharmonic for several months before returning to Milan in early 1835.[6] By the following July, he obtained his certification from Lavigna.[17] Eventually in 1835 Verdi became director of the Busseto school with a three-year contract. He married Margherita in May 1836, and by March 1837, she had given birth to their first child, Virginia Maria Luigia on 26 March 1837. Icilio Romano followed on 11 July 1838. Both the children died young, Virginia on 12 August 1838, Icilio on 22 October 1839.[1]
+
+In 1837, the young composer asked for Massini's assistance to stage his opera in Milan.[18] The La Scala impresario, Bartolomeo Merelli,  agreed to put on Oberto (as the reworked opera was now called, with a libretto rewritten by Temistocle Solera)[19] in November 1839. It achieved a respectable 13 additional performances, following which Merelli offered Verdi a contract for three more works.[20]
+
+While Verdi was working on his second opera Un giorno di regno, Margherita died of encephalitis at the age of 26. Verdi adored his wife and children and was devastated by their deaths. Un giorno, a comedy, was premiered only a few months later. It was a flop and only given the one performance.[20] Following its failure, it is claimed Verdi vowed never to compose again,[10] but in his Sketch he recounts how Merelli persuaded him to write a new opera.
+
+Verdi was to claim that he gradually began to work on the music for Nabucco, the libretto of which had originally been rejected by the composer Otto Nicolai:[21] "This verse today, tomorrow that, here a note, there a whole phrase, and little by little the opera was written", he later recalled.[22] By the autumn of 1841 it was complete, originally under the title Nabucodonosor. Well received at its first performance on 9 March 1842, Nabucco underpinned Verdi's success until his retirement from the theatre, twenty-nine operas (including some revised and updated versions) later.[10] At its revival in La Scala for the 1842 autumn season it was given an unprecedented (and later unequalled) total of 57 performances; within three years it had reached (among other venues) Vienna, Lisbon, Barcelona, Berlin, Paris and Hamburg; in 1848 it was heard in New York, in 1850 in Buenos Aires. Porter comments that "similar accounts...could be provided to show how widely and rapidly all [Verdi's] other successful operas were disseminated."[23]
+
+A period of hard work for Verdi—with the creation of twenty operas (excluding revisions and translations)—followed over the next sixteen years, culminating in Un ballo in maschera. This period was not without its frustrations and setbacks for the young composer, and he was frequently demoralised. In April 1845, in connection with I due Foscari, he wrote: "I am happy, no matter what reception it gets, and I am utterly indifferent to everything. I cannot wait for these next three years to pass. I have to write six operas, then addio to everything."[24] In 1858 Verdi complained: "Since Nabucco, you may say, I have never had one hour of peace. Sixteen years in the galleys."[25]
+
+After the initial success of Nabucco, Verdi settled in Milan, making a number of influential acquaintances.  He attended the Salotto Maffei, Countess Clara Maffei's salons in Milan, becoming her lifelong friend and correspondent.[10] A revival of Nabucco followed in 1842 at La Scala where it received a run of fifty-seven performances,[26] and this led to a commission from Merelli for a new opera for the 1843 season. I Lombardi alla prima crociata was based on a libretto by Solera and premiered in February 1843. Inevitably, comparisons were made with Nabucco; but one contemporary writer noted: "If [Nabucco] created this young man's reputation, I Lombardi served to confirm it."[27]
+
+Verdi paid close attention to his financial contracts, making sure he was appropriately remunerated as his popularity increased. For I Lombardi and Ernani (1844) in Venice he was paid 12,000 lire (including supervision of the productions); Attila and Macbeth (1847), each brought him 18,000 lire. His contracts with the publishers Ricordi in 1847 were very specific about the amounts he was to receive for new works, first productions, musical arrangements, and so on.[28] He began to use his growing prosperity to invest in land near his birthplace. In 1844 he purchased Il Pulgaro, 62 acres (23 hectares) of farmland with a farmhouse and outbuildings, providing a home for his parents from May 1844. Later that year, he also bought the Palazzo Cavalli (now known as the Palazzo Orlandi) on the via Roma, Busseto's main street.[29] In May 1848, Verdi signed a contract for land and houses at Sant'Agata in Busseto, which had once belonged to his family.[30] It was here he built his own house, completed in 1880, now known as the Villa Verdi, where he lived from 1851 until his death.[31]
+
+In March 1843, Verdi visited Vienna (where Gaetano Donizetti was musical director) to oversee a production of Nabucco. The older composer, recognising Verdi's talent, noted in a letter of January 1844: "I am very, very happy to give way to people of talent like Verdi... Nothing will prevent the good Verdi from soon reaching one of the most honourable positions in the cohort of composers."[32] Verdi travelled on to Parma, where the Teatro Regio di Parma was producing Nabucco with Strepponi in the cast. For Verdi the performances were a personal triumph in his native region, especially as his father, Carlo, attended the first performance. Verdi remained in Parma for some weeks beyond his intended departure date. This fuelled speculation that the delay was due to Verdi's interest in Giuseppina Strepponi (who stated that their relationship began in 1843).[33] Strepponi was in fact known for her amorous relationships (and many illegitimate children) and her history was an awkward factor in their relationship until they eventually agreed on marriage.[34]
+
+After successful stagings of Nabucco in Venice (with twenty-five performances in the 1842/43 season), Verdi began negotiations with the impresario of La Fenice to stage I Lombardi, and to write a new opera.  Eventually, Victor Hugo's Hernani was chosen, with Francesco Maria Piave as librettist. Ernani was successfully premiered in 1844 and within six months had been performed at twenty other theatres in Italy, and also in Vienna.[35] The writer Andrew Porter notes that for the next ten years, Verdi's life "reads like a travel diary—a timetable of visits...to bring new operas to the stage or to supervise local premieres". La Scala premiered none of these new works, except for Giovanna d'Arco. Verdi "never forgave the Milanese for their reception of Un giorno di regno".[28]
+
+During this period, Verdi began to work more consistently with his librettists. He relied on Piave again for I due Foscari, performed in Rome in November 1844, then on Solera once more for Giovanna d'Arco, at La Scala in February 1845, while in August that year he was able to work with Salvadore Cammarano on Alzira for the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. Solera and Piave worked together on Attila for La Fenice (March 1846).[36]
+
+In April 1844, Verdi took on Emanuele Muzio, eight years his junior, as a pupil and amanuensis. He had known him since about 1828 as another of Barezzi's protégés.[37] Muzio, who in fact was Verdi's only pupil, became indispensable to the composer. He reported to Barezzi that Verdi "has a breadth of spirit, of generosity, a wisdom".[38] In November 1846, Muzio wrote of Verdi: "If you could see us, I seem more like a friend, rather than his pupil. We are always together at dinner, in the cafes, when we play cards...; all in all, he doesn't go anywhere without me at his side; in the house we have a big table and we both write there together, and so I always have his advice."[39] Muzio was to remain associated with Verdi, assisting in the preparation of scores and transcriptions, and later conducting many of his works in their premiere performances in the US and elsewhere outside Italy. He was chosen by Verdi as one of the executors of his will, but predeceased the composer in 1890.[40]
+
+After a period of illness Verdi began work on Macbeth in September 1846. He dedicated the opera to Barezzi: "I have long intended to dedicate an opera to you, as you have been a father, a benefactor and a friend for me. It was a duty I should have fulfilled sooner if imperious circumstances had not prevented me. Now, I send you Macbeth, which I prize above all my other operas, and therefore deem worthier to present to you."[41] In 1997 Martin Chusid wrote that Macbeth was the only one of Verdi's operas of his "early period" to remain regularly in the international repertoire,[42] although in the 21st century Nabucco has also entered the lists.[43]
+
+Strepponi's voice declined and her engagements dried up in the 1845 to 1846 period, and she returned to live in Milan whilst retaining contact with Verdi as his "supporter, promoter, unofficial adviser, and occasional secretary" until she decided to move to Paris in October 1846. Before she left Verdi gave her a letter that pledged his love. On the envelope, Strepponi wrote: "5 or 6 October 1846. They shall lay this letter on my heart when they bury me."[44]
+
+Verdi had completed I masnadieri for London by May 1847 except for the orchestration. This he left until the opera was in rehearsal, since he wanted to hear "la [Jenny] Lind and modify her role to suit her more exactly".[45] Verdi agreed to conduct the premiere on 22 July 1847 at Her Majesty's Theatre, as well as the second performance. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert attended the first performance, and for the most part, the press was generous in its praise.[46]
+
+For the next two years, except for two visits to Italy during periods of political unrest, Verdi was based in Paris.[47] Within a week of returning to Paris in July 1847, he received his first commission from the Paris Opéra. Verdi agreed to adapt I Lombardi to a new French libretto; the result was Jérusalem, which contained significant changes to the music and structure of the work (including an extensive ballet scene) to meet Parisian expectations.[48] Verdi was awarded the Order of Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.[49][n 1] To satisfy his contracts with the publisher Francesco Lucca [it], Verdi dashed off Il Corsaro. Budden comments "In no other opera of his does Verdi appear to have taken so little interest before it was staged."[52]
+
+On hearing the news of the "Cinque Giornate", the "Five Days" of street fighting that took place between 18 and 22 March 1848 and temporarily drove the Austrians out of Milan, Verdi travelled there, arriving on 5 April.[53] He discovered that Piave was now "Citizen Piave" of the newly proclaimed Republic of San Marco.  Writing a patriotic letter to him in Venice, Verdi concluded "Banish every petty municipal idea! We must all extend a fraternal hand, and Italy will yet become the first nation of the world...I am drunk with joy! Imagine that there are no more Germans here!!"[54]
+
+Verdi had been admonished by the poet Giuseppe Giusti for turning away from patriotic subjects, the poet pleading with him to "do what you can to nourish the [sorrow of the Italian people], to strengthen it, and direct it to its goal."[55] Cammarano suggested adapting Joseph Méry's 1828 play La Bataille de Toulouse, which he described as a story "that should stir every man with an Italian soul in his breast".[56] The premiere was set for late January 1849. Verdi travelled to Rome before the end of 1848. He found that city on the verge of becoming a (short-lived) republic, which commenced within days of La battaglia di Legnano's enthusiastically received premiere. In the spirit of the time were the tenor hero's final words, "Whoever dies for the fatherland cannot be evil-minded".[57]
+
+Verdi had intended to return to Italy in early 1848, but was prevented by work and illness, as well as, most probably, by his increasing attachment to Strepponi. Verdi and Strepponi left Paris in July 1849, the immediate cause being an outbreak of cholera,[58] and Verdi went directly to Busseto to continue work on completing his latest opera, Luisa Miller, for a production in Naples later in the year.[59]
+
+Verdi was committed to the publisher Giovanni Ricordi for an opera—which became Stiffelio—for Trieste in the Spring of 1850; and, subsequently, following negotiations with La Fenice, developed a libretto with Piave and wrote the music for Rigoletto (based on Victor Hugo's Le roi s'amuse) for Venice in March 1851. This was the first of a sequence of three operas (followed by Il trovatore and La traviata) which were to cement his fame as a master of opera.[60]
+The failure of Stiffelio (attributable not least to the censors of the time taking offence at the taboo subject of the supposed adultery of a clergyman's wife and interfering with the text and roles) incited Verdi to take pains to rework it, although even in the completely recycled version of Aroldo (1857) it still failed to please.[61] Rigoletto, with its intended murder of royalty, and its sordid attributes, also upset the censors. Verdi would not compromise:
+
+What does the sack matter to the police? Are they worried about the effect it will produce?...Do they think they know better than I?...I see the hero has been made no longer ugly and hunchbacked!! Why?  A singing hunchback...why not?...I think it splendid to show this character as outwardly deformed and ridiculous, and inwardly passionate and full of love. I chose the subject for these very qualities...if they are removed I can no longer set it to music.[62]
+
+Verdi substituted a Duke for the King, and the public response and subsequent success of the opera all over Italy and Europe fully vindicated the composer.[63] Aware that the melody of the Duke's song "La donna è mobile" ("Woman is fickle") would become a popular hit, Verdi excluded it from orchestral rehearsals for the opera, and rehearsed the tenor separately.[64][n 2]
+
+For several months Verdi was preoccupied with family matters. These stemmed from the way in which the citizens of Busseto were treating Giuseppina Strepponi, with whom he was living openly in an unmarried relationship. She was shunned in the town and at church, and while Verdi appeared indifferent, she was certainly not.[66] Furthermore, Verdi was concerned about the administration of his newly acquired property at Sant'Agata.[67] A growing estrangement between Verdi and his parents was perhaps also attributable to Strepponi[68] (the suggestion that this situation was sparked by the birth of a child to Verdi and Strepponi which was given away as a foundling[69] lacks any firm evidence). In January 1851, Verdi broke off relations with his parents, and in April they were  ordered to leave Sant'Agata; Verdi found new premises for them and helped them financially to settle into their new home. It may not be coincidental that all six Verdi operas written in the period 1849–53 (La battaglia, Luisa Miller, Stiffelio, Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata), have, uniquely in his oeuvre, heroines who are, in the opera critic Joseph Kerman's words, "women who come to grief because of sexual transgression, actual or perceived". Kerman, like the psychologist Gerald Mendelssohn, sees this choice of subjects as being influenced by Verdi's uneasy passion for Strepponi.[70]
+
+Verdi and Strepponi moved into Sant'Agata on 1 May 1851.[71] May also brought an offer for a new opera from La Fenice, which Verdi eventually realised as La traviata. That was followed by an agreement with the Rome Opera company to present Il trovatore for January 1853.[72] Verdi now had sufficient earnings to retire, had he wished to.[73] He had reached a stage where he could develop his operas as he wished, rather than be dependent on commissions from third parties.  Il trovatore was in fact the first opera he wrote without a specific commission (apart from Oberto).[74] At around the same time he began to consider creating an opera from Shakespeare's King Lear. After first (1850) seeking a libretto from Cammarano (which never appeared), Verdi later (1857) commissioned one from Antonio Somma, but this proved intractable, and no music was ever written.[75][n 3] Verdi began work on Il trovatore after the death of his mother in June 1851. The fact that this is "the one opera of Verdi's which focuses on a mother rather than a father" is perhaps related to her death.[78]
+
+In the winter of 1851–52 Verdi decided to go to Paris with Strepponi, where he concluded an agreement with the Opéra to write what became Les vêpres siciliennes, his first original work in the style of grand opera. In February 1852, the couple attended a performance of Alexander Dumas fils's  play The Lady of the Camellias; Verdi immediately began to compose music for what would later become La traviata.[79]
+
+After his visit to Rome for Il trovatore in January 1853, Verdi worked on completing La traviata, but with little hope of its success, due to his lack of confidence in any of the singers engaged for the season.[80] Furthermore, the management insisted that the opera be given a historical, not a contemporary setting. The premiere in March 1853 was indeed a failure: Verdi wrote: "Was the fault mine or the singers'? Time will tell."[81]  Subsequent productions (following some rewriting) throughout Europe over the following two years fully vindicated the composer; Roger Parker has written "Il trovatore consistently remains one of the three or four most popular operas in the Verdian repertoire: but it has never pleased the critics".[82]
+
+In the eleven years up to and including Traviata, Verdi had written sixteen operas. Over the next eighteen years (up to Aida), he wrote only six new works for the stage.[83]  Verdi was happy to return to Sant'Agata and, in February 1856, was reporting a  "total abandonment of music; a little reading; some light occupation with agriculture and horses; that's all". A couple of months later, writing in the same vein to Countess Maffei he stated: "I'm not doing anything. I don't read. I don't write. I walk in the fields from morning to evening, trying to recover, so far without success, from the stomach trouble caused me by I vespri siciliani. Cursed operas!"[84] An 1858 letter by Strepponi to the publisher Léon Escudier describes the kind of lifestyle that increasingly appealed to the composer: "His love for the country has become a mania, madness, rage, and fury—anything you like that is exaggerated.  He gets up almost with the dawn, to go and examine the wheat, the maize, the vines, etc....Fortunately our tastes for this sort of life coincide, except in the matter of sunrise, which he likes to see up and dressed, and I from my bed."[85]
+
+Nonetheless on 15 May, Verdi signed a contract with La Fenice for an opera for the following spring. This was to be Simon Boccanegra. The couple stayed in Paris until January 1857 to deal with these proposals, and also the offer to stage the translated version of Il trovatore as a grand opera. Verdi and Strepponi travelled to Venice in March for the premiere of Simon Boccanegra, which turned out to be "a fiasco" (as Verdi reported, although on the second and third nights, the reception improved considerably).[86]
+
+With Strepponi, Verdi went to Naples early in January 1858 to work with Somma on the libretto of the opera Gustave III, which over a year later would become Un ballo in maschera. By this time, Verdi had begun to write about Strepponi as "my wife" and she was signing her letters as "Giuseppina Verdi".[85] Verdi raged against the stringent requirements of the Neapolitan censor stating: "I'm drowning in a sea of troubles. It's almost certain that the censors will forbid our libretto."[87] With no hope of seeing his Gustavo III staged as written, he broke his contract. This resulted in litigation and counter-litigation; with the legal issues resolved, Verdi was free to present the libretto and musical outline of Gustave III to the Rome Opera. There, the censors demanded further changes; at this point, the opera took the title Un ballo in maschera.[88]
+
+Arriving in Sant'Agata in March 1859 Verdi and Strepponi found the nearby city of Piacenza occupied by about 6,000 Austrian troops who had made it their base, to combat the rise of Italian interest in unification in the Piedmont region. In the ensuing Second Italian War of Independence the Austrians abandoned the region and began to leave Lombardy, although they remained in control of the Venice region under the terms of the armistice signed at Villafranca. Verdi was disgusted at this outcome: "[W]here then is the independence of Italy, so long hoped for and promised?...Venice is not Italian? After so many victories, what an outcome... It is enough to drive one mad" he wrote to Clara Maffei.[89]
+
+Verdi and Strepponi now decided on marriage; they travelled to Collonges-sous-Salève, a village then part of Piedmont. On 29 August 1859 the couple were married there, with only the coachman who had driven them there and the church bell-ringer as witnesses.[90] At the end of 1859, Verdi wrote to his friend Cesare De Sanctis "[Since completing Ballo] I have not made any more music, I have not seen any more music, I have not thought anymore about music. I don't even know what colour my last opera is, and I almost don't remember it." [91] He began to remodel Sant'Agata, which took most of 1860 to complete and on which he continued to work for the next twenty years. This included major work on a square room that became his workroom, his bedroom, and his office.[92]
+
+Having achieved some fame and prosperity, Verdi began in 1859 to take an active interest in Italian politics. His early commitment to the Risorgimento movement is difficult to estimate accurately; in the words of the music historian Philip Gossett "myths intensifying and exaggerating [such] sentiment began circulating" during the nineteenth century.[93] An example is the claim that when the "Va, pensiero" chorus in Nabucco was first sung in Milan, the audience, responding with nationalistic fervour, demanded an encore. As encores were expressly forbidden by the government at the time, such a gesture would have been extremely significant. But in fact the piece encored was not "Va, pensiero" but the hymn "Immenso Jehova".[94][n 4]
+
+The growth of the "identification of Verdi's music with Italian nationalist politics" perhaps began in the 1840s.[98] In 1848, the nationalist leader Giuseppe Mazzini (whom Verdi had met in London the previous year) requested Verdi (who complied) to write a patriotic hymn.[99] The opera historian Charles Osborne describes the 1849 La battaglia di Legnano as "an opera with a purpose" and maintains that  "while parts of Verdi's earlier operas had frequently been taken up by the fighters of the Risorgimento...this time the composer had given the movement its own opera"[100] It was not until 1859 in Naples, and only then spreading throughout Italy, that the slogan "Viva Verdi" was used as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Viva Victor Emmanuel King of Italy), (who was then king of Piedmont).[101] After Italy was unified in 1861, many of Verdi's early operas were increasingly re-interpreted as Risorgimento works with hidden Revolutionary messages that perhaps had not been originally intended by either the composer or his librettists.[102]
+
+In 1859, Verdi was elected as a member of the new provincial council, and was appointed to head a group of five who would meet with King Vittorio Emanuele II in Turin. They were enthusiastically greeted along the way and in Turin Verdi himself received much of the publicity. On 17 October Verdi met with Cavour, the architect of the initial stages of Italian unification.[103] Later that year the government of Emilia was subsumed under the United Provinces of Central Italy, and Verdi's political life temporarily came to an end. Whilst still maintaining nationalist feelings, he declined in 1860 the office of provincial council member to which he had been elected in absentia.[104] Cavour however was anxious to convince a man of Verdi's stature that running for political office was essential to strengthening and securing Italy's future.[105] The composer confided to Piave some years later that "I accepted on the condition that after a few months I would resign."[106] Verdi was elected on 3 February 1861 for the town of Borgo San Donnino (Fidenza) to the Parliament of Piedmont-Sardinia in Turin (which from March 1861 became the Parliament of the Kingdom of Italy), but following the death of Cavour in 1861, which deeply distressed him, he scarcely attended.[107] Later, in 1874, Verdi was appointed a member of the Italian Senate, but did not participate in its activities.[108][109]
+
+In the months following the staging of Ballo, Verdi was approached by several opera companies seeking a new work or making offers to stage one of his existing ones, but refused them all.[110] But when, in December 1860, an approach was made from Saint Petersburg's Imperial Theatre, the offer of 60,000 francs plus all expenses was doubtless a strong incentive. Verdi came up with the idea of adapting the 1835 Spanish play Don Alvaro o la fuerza del sino by Angel Saavedra, which became La forza del destino, with Piave writing the libretto. The Verdis arrived in St. Petersburg in December 1861 for the premiere, but casting problems meant that it had to be postponed.[111]
+
+Returning via Paris from Russia on 24 February 1862, Verdi met two young Italian writers, the twenty-year-old Arrigo Boito and Franco Faccio. Verdi had been invited to write a piece of music for the 1862 International Exhibition in London, [112] and charged Boito with writing a text, which became the Inno delle nazioni. Boito, as a supporter of the grand opera of Giacomo Meyerbeer and an opera composer in his own right, was later in the 1860s critical of Verdi's "reliance on formula rather than form", incurring the composer's wrath. Nevertheless, he was to become Verdi's close collaborator in his final operas.[113] The St. Petersburg premiere of La forza finally took place in September 1862, and Verdi received the Order of St. Stanislaus.[114]
+
+A revival of Macbeth in Paris in 1865 was not a success, but he obtained a commission for a new work, Don Carlos, based on the play Don Carlos by Friedrich Schiller. He and Giuseppina spent late 1866 and much of 1867 in Paris, where they heard, and did not warm to, Giacomo Meyerbeer's last opera, L'Africaine, and Richard Wagner's overture to Tannhäuser.[115] The opera's premiere in 1867 drew mixed comments.  While the critic Théophile Gautier praised the work, the composer Georges Bizet was disappointed at Verdi's changing style: "Verdi is no longer Italian. He is following Wagner."[115]
+
+During the 1860s and 1870s, Verdi paid great attention to his estate around Busseto, purchasing additional land, dealing with unsatisfactory (in one case, embezzling) stewards, installing irrigation, and coping with variable harvests and economic slumps.[116] In 1867, both Verdi's father Carlo, with whom he had restored good relations, and his early patron and father-in-law Antonio Barezzi, died. Verdi and Giuseppina decided to adopt Carlo's great-niece Filomena Maria Verdi, then seven years old, as their own child. She was to marry in 1878 the son of Verdi's friend and lawyer Angelo Carrara and her family became eventually the heirs of Verdi's estate.[117]
+
+Aida was commissioned by the Egyptian government for the opera house built by the Khedive Isma'il Pasha to celebrate the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. The opera house actually opened with a production of Rigoletto. The prose libretto in French by Camille du Locle, based on a scenario by the Egyptologist Auguste Mariette, was transformed to Italian verse by Antonio Ghislanzoni.[118] Verdi was offered the enormous sum of 150,000 francs for the opera (even though he confessed that Ancient Egypt was "a civilization I have never been able to admire"), and it was first performed in Cairo in 1871.[119] Verdi spent much of 1872 and 1873 supervising the Italian productions of Aida at Milan, Parma and Naples, effectively acting as producer and demanding high standards and adequate rehearsal time.[120] During the rehearsals for the Naples production he wrote his string quartet, the only chamber music by him to survive, and the only major work in the form by an Italian of the 19th century.[121]
+
+In 1869, Verdi had been asked to compose a section for a requiem mass in memory of Gioachino Rossini. He compiled and completed the requiem, but its performance was abandoned (and its premiere did not take place until 1988).[122] Five years later, Verdi reworked his "Libera Me" section of the Rossini Requiem and made it a part of his Requiem honouring Alessandro Manzoni, who had died in 1873. The complete Requiem was first performed at the cathedral in Milan on the anniversary of Manzoni's death on 22 May 1874.[122] The spinto soprano Teresa Stolz (1834–1902), who had sung in La Scala productions from 1865 onwards, was the soloist in the first and many later performances of the Requiem; in February 1872, she had created Aida in its European premiere in Milan. She became closely associated personally with Verdi (exactly how closely remains conjectural), to Giuseppina Verdi's initial disquiet; but the women were reconciled and Stolz remained a companion of Verdi after Giuseppina's death in 1897 until his own death.[123]
+
+Verdi conducted his Requiem in Paris, London and Vienna in 1875 and in Cologne in 1876.[108] It seemed that it would be his last work. In the words of his biographer John Rosselli, it "confirmed him as the unique presiding genius of Italian music. No fellow composer...came near him in popularity or reputation". Verdi, now in his sixties, initially seemed to withdraw into retirement. He deliberately shied away from opportunities to publicise himself or to become involved with new productions of his works,[124] but secretly he began work on Otello, which Boito (to whom the composer had been reconciled by Ricordi) had proposed to him privately in 1879. The composition was delayed by a revision of Simon Boccanegra which Verdi undertook with Boito, produced in 1881, and a revision of Don Carlos. Even when Otello was virtually completed, Verdi teased "Shall I finish it? Shall I have it performed? Hard to tell, even for me." As news leaked out, Verdi was pressed by opera houses across Europe with enquiries; eventually the opera was triumphantly premiered at La Scala in February 1887.[125]
+
+Following the success of Otello Verdi commented, "After having relentlessly massacred so many heroes and heroines, I have at last the right to laugh a little." He had considered a variety of comic subjects but had found none of them wholly suitable and confided his ambition to Boito. The librettist said nothing at the time but secretly began work on a libretto based on The Merry Wives of Windsor with additional material taken from Henry IV, Part 1 and Part 2.[126] Verdi received the draft libretto probably in early July 1889 after he had just read Shakespeare's play: "Benissimo! Benissimo!... No one could have done better than you", he wrote back to Boito. But he still had doubts: his age, his health (which he admits to being good) and his ability to complete the project: "If I were not to finish the music?". If the project failed, it would have been a waste of Boito's time, and have distracted him from completing his own new opera. Finally on 10 July 1889 he wrote again: "So be it! So let's do Falstaff! For now, let's not think of obstacles, of age, of illnesses!" Verdi emphasised the need for secrecy, but continued "If you are in the mood, then start to write."[127] Later he wrote to Boito (capitals and exclamation marks are Verdi's own): "What joy to be able to say to the public: HERE WE ARE AGAIN!!! COME AND SEE US!"[128]
+
+The first performance of Falstaff took place at La Scala on 9 February 1893. For the first night, official ticket prices were thirty times higher than usual. Royalty, aristocracy, critics and leading figures from the arts all over Europe were present. The performance was a huge success; numbers were encored, and at the end the applause for Verdi and the cast lasted an hour. That was followed by a tumultuous welcome when the composer, his wife and Boito arrived at the Grand Hotel de Milan.[129] Even more hectic scenes ensued when he went to Rome in May for the opera's premiere at the Teatro Costanzi, when crowds of well-wishers at the railway station initially forced Verdi to take refuge in a tool-shed. He witnessed the performance from the Royal Box at the side of King Umberto and the Queen.[130]
+
+In his last years Verdi undertook a number of philanthropic ventures, publishing in 1894 a song for the benefit of earthquake victims in Sicily, and from 1895 onwards planning, building and endowing a rest-home for retired musicians in Milan, the Casa di Riposo per Musicisti, and building a hospital at Villanova sull'Arda, close to Busseto.[131][132] His last major composition, the choral set of Four sacred pieces, was published in 1898. In  1900 he was deeply upset at the assassination of King Umberto and sketched a setting of a poem in his memory but was unable to complete it.[133] While staying at the Grand Hotel, Verdi suffered a stroke on 21 January 1901.[n 5] He gradually grew more feeble over the next week, during which Stolz cared for him, and died on 27 January at the age of 87.[134][135]
+
+Verdi was initially buried in a private ceremony at Milan's Cimitero Monumentale.[136] A month later, his body was moved to the crypt of the Casa di Riposo. On this occasion, "Va, pensiero" from Nabucco was conducted by  Arturo Toscanini with a chorus of 820 singers. A huge crowd was in attendance, estimated at 300,000.[137] Boito wrote to a friend, in words which recall the mysterious final scene of Don Carlos, "[Verdi] sleeps like a King of Spain in his Escurial, under a bronze slab that completely covers him."[138]
+
+Not all of Verdi's personal qualities were amiable. John Rosselli concluded after writing his biography that "I do not very much like the man Verdi, in particular the autocratic rentier-cum-estate owner, part-time composer, and seemingly full-time grumbler and reactionary critic of the later years", yet admits that like other writers, he must "admire him, warts and all...a deep integrity runs beneath his life, and can be felt even when he is being unreasonable or wrong."[139]
+
+Budden suggests that "With Verdi...the man and the artist on many ways developed side by side." Ungainly and awkward in society in his early years, "as he became a man of property and underwent the civilizing influence of Giuseppina,...[he] acquired assurance and authority."[140] He also learnt to keep himself to himself, never discussing his private life and maintaining when it suited his convenience legends about his supposed 'peasant' origins, his materialism and his indifference to criticism.[141] Gerald Mendelsohn describes the composer as "an intensely private man who deeply resented efforts to inquire into his personal affairs. He regarded journalists and would-be biographers, as well as his neighbors in Busseto and the operatic public at large, as an intrusive lot, against whose prying attentions he needed constantly to defend himself."[142]
+
+Verdi was similarly never explicit about his religious beliefs. Anti-clerical by nature in his early years,[143] he nonetheless built a chapel at Sant'Agata, but is rarely recorded as going to church. Strepponi wrote in 1871 "I won't say [Verdi] is an atheist, but he is not much of a believer."[144] Rosselli comments that in the Requiem "The prospect of Hell appears to rule...[the Requiem] is troubled to the end," and offers little consolation.[145]
+
+See also List of compositions by Giuseppe Verdi and individual articles on the works.
+
+The writer Friedrich Schiller (four of whose plays were adapted as operas by Verdi) distinguished two types of artist in his 1795 essay On Naïve and Sentimental Poetry. The philosopher Isaiah Berlin ranked Verdi in the 'naïve' category—"They are not...self-conscious. They do not...stand aside to contemplate their creations and express their own feelings....They are able...if they have genius, to embody their vision fully." (The 'sentimentals' seek to recreate nature and natural feelings on their own terms—Berlin instances Richard Wagner—"offering not peace, but a sword".)[146] Verdi's operas are not written according to an aesthetic theory, or with a purpose to change the tastes of their audiences. In conversation with a German visitor in 1887 he is recorded as saying that, whilst "there was much to be admired in [Wagner's operas] Tannhäuser and Lohengrin...in his recent operas [Wagner] seemed to be overstepping the bounds of what can be expressed in  music. For him "philosophical" music was incomprehensible."[147] Although Verdi's works belong, as Rosselli admits "to the most artificial of genres...[they] ring emotionally true: truth and directness make them exciting, often hugely so."[148]
+
+The earliest study of Verdi's music, published in 1859 by the Italian critic Abraham Basevi, already distinguished four periods in Verdi's music. The early, 'grandiose' period, ended according to Basevi with La battaglia di Legnano (1849), and a 'personal' style began with the next opera Luisa Miller. These two operas are generally agreed today by critics to mark the division between Verdi's 'early' and 'middle' periods. The 'middle' period is felt to end with La traviata (1853) and Les vêpres siciliennes (1855), with a 'late' period commencing with Simon Boccanegra (1857) running through to Aida (1871). The last two operas, Otello and Falstaff, together with the Requiem and the Four Sacred Pieces, then represent a 'final' period.[149]
+
+Verdi was to claim in his Sketch that during his early training with Lavigna "I did nothing but canons and fugues...No-one taught me orchestration or how to handle dramatic music."[150] He is known to have written a variety of music for the Busseto Philharmonic society, including vocal music, band music and chamber works,[151] (and including an alternative overture to Rossini's Barber of Seville)[152]  but few of these works survive. (He may have given instructions before his death to destroy his early works).[153]
+
+Verdi uses in his early operas (and, in his own stylized versions, throughout his later work) the standard elements of Italian opera content of the period, referred to by the opera writer Julian Budden as the 'Code Rossini', after the composer who established through his work and popularity the accepted templates of these forms; they were also used by the composers dominant during Verdi's early career, Bellini, Donizetti and Saverio Mercadante. Amongst the essential elements are the aria, the duet, the ensemble, and the finale sequence of an act.[154] The aria format, centred on a soloist, typically involved three sections;  a slow introduction, marked typically cantabile or adagio, a tempo di mezzo which might involve chorus or other characters, and a cabaletta, an opportunity for bravura singing for the soloist. The duet was similarly formatted. Finales, covering climactic sequences of action, used the various forces of soloists, ensemble and chorus, usually culminating with an exciting stretto section. Verdi was to develop these and the other formulae of the generation preceding him with increasing sophistication during his career. [155][156]
+
+The operas of the early period show Verdi learning by doing and gradually establishing mastery over the different elements of opera. Oberto is poorly structured, and the orchestration of the first operas is generally simple, sometimes even basic.[157] The musicologist Richard Taruskin suggests "the most striking effect in the early Verdi operas, and the one most obviously allied to the mood of the Risorgimento, was the big choral number sung—crudely or sublimely, according to the ear of the beholder—in unison. The success of "Va, pensiero" in Nabucco (which Rossini approvingly denoted as "a grand aria sung by sopranos, contraltos, tenors and basses"), was replicated in the similar "O Signor, dal tetto natio" in I lombardi and in 1844 in the chorus "Si ridesti il Leon di Castiglia" in Ernani, the battle hymn of the conspirators seeking freedom[158][159] In I due Foscari Verdi first uses recurring themes identified with main characters; here and in future operas the accent moves away from the 'oratorio' characteristics of the first operas towards individual action and intrigue.[157]
+
+From this period onwards Verdi also develops his instinct for "tinta" (literally 'colour'), a term which he used for characterising elements of an individual opera score—Parker gives as an example "the rising 6th that begins so many lyric pieces in Ernani".[160] Macbeth, even in its original 1847 version, shows many original touches; characterization by key (the Macbeths themselves generally singing in sharp keys, the witches in flat keys),[160] a preponderance of minor key music, and highly original orchestration. In the 'dagger scene' and the duet following the murder of Duncan, the  forms transcend the 'Code Rossini' and propel the drama in a compelling fashion.[161] Verdi was to comment in 1868 that Rossini and his followers missed "the golden thread that binds all the parts together and, rather than a set of numbers without coherence, makes an opera". Tinta was for Verdi this "golden thread", an essential unifying factor in his works.[162]
+
+The writer David Kimbell states that in Luisa Miller and Stiffelio (the earliest operas of this period) there appears to be a "growing freedom in the large scale structure...and an acute attention to fine detail".[42] Others echo those feelings. Julian Budden expresses the impact of Rigoletto and its place in Verdi's output as follows: "Just after 1850 at the age of 38, Verdi closed the door on a period of Italian opera with Rigoletto. The so-called ottocento in music is finished. Verdi will continue to draw on certain of its forms for the next few operas, but in a totally new spirit."[163] One example of Verdi's wish to move away from "standard forms" appears in his feelings about the structure of Il trovatore. To his librettist, Cammarano, Verdi plainly states in a letter of April 1851 that if there were no standard forms—"cavatinas, duets, trios, choruses, finales, etc. ... and if you could avoid beginning with an opening chorus....", he would be quite happy. [164]
+
+Two external factors had their impacts on Verdi's compositions of this period. One is that with increasing reputation and financial security he no longer needed to commit himself to the productive treadmill, had more freedom to choose his own subjects, and had more time to develop them according to his own ideas. In the years 1849 to 1859 he wrote eight new operas, compared with fourteen in the previous ten years.[74]
+
+Another factor was the changed political situation; the failure of the 1848 revolutions led both to some diminution of the Risorgimento ethos (at least initially) and a significant increase in theatre censorship.[74]  This is reflected both in Verdi's choices of plots dealing more with personal relationships than political conflict, and in a (partly consequent) dramatic reduction in the operas of this period in the  number of choruses (of the type which had first made him famous)—not only are there on average 40% fewer choruses in the 'middle' period operas compared to the 'early' period', but whereas virtually all the 'early' operas commence with a chorus, only one (Luisa Miller) of the 'middle' period operas begin this way. Instead, Verdi experiments with a variety of means, e.g. a stage band (Rigoletto), an aria for bass (Stiffelio), a party scene (La traviata). Chusid also notes Verdi's increasing tendency to replace full-scale overtures with shorter orchestral introductions.[165] Parker comments that La traviata, the last opera of the 'middle' period,  is "again a new adventure. It gestures towards a level of 'realism'...the contemporary world of waltzes pervades the score, and the heroine's death from disease is graphically depicted in the  music."[166] Verdi's increasing command of musical highlighting of changing moods and relationships is exemplified in Act III of Rigoletto, where Duke's flippant song "La donna è mobile" is followed immediately by the quartet "Bella figlia dell'amore", contrasting the rapacious Duke and his inamorata with the (concealed) indignant Rigoletto and his grieving daughter. Taruskin asserts this is "the most famous ensemble Verdi ever composed".[167]
+
+Chusid notes Strepponi's description of the operas of the 1860s and 1870s as being "modern" whereas Verdi described the pre-1849 works as "the cavatina operas", as further indication that "Verdi became increasingly dissatisfied with the older, familiar conventions of his predecessors that he had adopted at the outset of his career,"[168] Parker sees a physical differentiation of the operas from Les vêpres siciliennes (1855) to Aida (1871) is that they are significantly longer, and with larger cast-lists, than previous works. They also reflect a shift towards the French genre of grand opera, notable in more colorful orchestration, counterpointing of serious and comic scenes, and greater spectacle.[169] The opportunities of transforming Italian opera by utilising such resources appealed to him. For a commission from the Paris Opéra he expressly demanded a libretto from Eugène Scribe, the favorite librettist of Meyerbeer, telling him: "I want—in fact, I must have—a grandiose, impassioned and original subject." The result was Les vêpres siciliennes, and the scenarios of Simon Boccanegra (1857), Un ballo in maschera (1859), La forza del destino (1862), Don Carlos (1865) and Aida (1872) all meet the same criteria. Porter notes that Un ballo marks an almost complete synthesis of Verdi's style with the grand opera hallmarks, such that "huge spectacle is not mere decoration but essential to the drama...musical and theatrical lines remain taut [and] the characters still sing as warmly, passionately and personally as in Il trovatore."[170]
+
+When the composer Ferdinand Hiller asked Verdi whether he preferred Aida or Don Carlos, Verdi replied that Aida had "more bite and (if you'll forgive the word), more theatricality".[171] During the rehearsals for the Naples production of Aida Verdi amused himself by writing his only string quartet, a sprightly work which shows in its last movement that he had not lost the skill for fugue-writing that he had learned with Lavigna.[172]
+
+Verdi's three last major works continued to show new development in conveying drama and emotion. The first to appear, in 1874 was his Requiem, scored for operatic forces but by no means an "opera in ecclesiastical dress" (the words in which Hans von Bülow condemned it before even hearing it).[173] Although in the Requiem Verdi puts to use many of the techniques he learned in opera, its musical forms and emotions are not those of the stage.[174] Verdi's tone painting at the opening of the Requiem is vividly described by the Italian composer Ildebrando Pizzetti,  writing in 1941: "in [the words] murmured by an invisible crowd over the slow swaying of a few simple chords, you straightaway sense the fear and sadness of a vast multitude before the mystery of death. In the [following] Et lux perpetuum the melody spreads it wings...before falling back on itself...you hear a sigh for consolation and eternal peace."[175]
+
+By the time Otello premièred in 1887, more than 15 years after Aida, the operas of Verdi's (predeceased) contemporary Richard Wagner had begun their ascendancy in popular taste, and many sought or identified Wagnerian aspects in Verdi's latest composition.[176] Budden points out that there is little in the music of Otello that relates either to the verismo opera of the younger Italian composers, and little if anything which can be construed as a homage to the New German School.[177] Nonetheless there is still much originality, building on the strengths which Verdi had already demonstrated; the powerful storm which opens the opera in medias res, the recollection of the love duet of Act I in Otello's dying words (more an aspect of tinta than leitmotif), imaginative touches of harmony in Iago's "Era la notte" (Act II).[178]
+
+Finally, six years later, appeared Falstaff, Verdi's only comedy apart from the early, ill-fated Un giorno di regno. In this work Roger Parker writes that:
+
+Although Verdi's operas brought him a popular following, not all contemporary critics approved of his work. The English critic Henry Chorley allowed in 1846 that "he is the only modern man...having a style—for better or worse", but found  all his output unacceptable. "[His] faults [are] grave ones, calculated to destroy and degrade taste beyond those of any Italian composer in the long list" wrote Chorley, whilst conceding that "howsoever incomplete may have been his training, howsoever mistaken his aspirations may have proved...he has aspired."[181] But by the time of Verdi's death, 55 years later, his reputation was assured, and the 1910 edition of Grove's Dictionary  pronounced him "one of the greatest and most popular opera composers of the nineteenth century".[182]
+
+Verdi had no pupils apart from Muzio and no school of composers sought to follow his style which, however much it reflected his own musical direction, was rooted in the period of his own youth. By the time of his death, verismo was the accepted style of young Italian composers. [183] The New York Metropolitan Opera frequently staged Rigoletto, Trovatore and Traviata during this period and featured Aida in every season from 1898 to 1945. Interest in the operas reawakened in mid-1920s Germany and this sparked a revival in England and elsewhere. From the 1930s onward there began to appear scholarly biographies and publications of documentation and correspondence.[184]
+
+In 1959 the Instituto di Studi Verdiani (from 1989 the Istituto Nazionale di Studi Verdiani) was founded in Parma and became a leading centre for research and publication of Verdi studies,[185] and in the 1970s the American Institute for Verdi Studies was founded at New York University.[186][187]
+
+Historians have  debated how political Verdi's operas were. In particular, the Chorus of the Hebrew Slaves (known as Va, pensiero) from the third act of the opera Nabucco was used an anthem for Italian patriots, who were seeking to unify their country and free it from foreign control in the years up to 1861 (the chorus's theme of exiles singing about their homeland, and its lines such as O mia patria, si bella e perduta / "O my country, so lovely and so lost" were thought to have resonated with many Italians).[188] Beginning in Naples in 1859 and spreading throughout Italy, the slogan "Viva VERDI" was used as an acronym for Viva Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (Long live Victor Emmanuel King of Italy), referring to Victor Emmanuel II.[189][190] Marco Pizzo argues that after 1815, music became a political tool, and many songwriters expressed ideals of freedom and equality. Pizzo claims that Verdi was part of this movement, for his operas were inspired by the love of country, the struggle for Italian independence, and speak to the sacrifice of patriots and exiles.[191] George Martin claims Verdi was "the greatest artist" of the Risorgimento. "Throughout his work its values, its issues recur constantly, and he expressed them with great power".[192]
+
+But Mary Ann Smart argues that music critics at the time seldom mentioned any political themes.[193][194]  Likewise, Roger Parker argues that the political dimension of Verdi's operas was exaggerated by nationalistic historians looking for a hero in the late 19th century.[195]
+
+From the 1850s onwards, Verdi's operas displayed few patriotic themes because of the heavy censorship by the absolutist regime in power. Verdi later became disillusioned by politics, but he was personally active part in the political world of events of the Risorgimento and was elected to the first Italian parliament in 1861.[196]
+
+Three Italian conservatories, the Milan Conservatory[197] and those in Turin[198] and Como,[199] are named after Verdi, as are many Italian theatres.
+
+Verdi's hometown of Busseto displays Luigi Secchi's statue of a seated Verdi in 1913, next to the Teatro Verdi built in his honour in the 1850s.[200] It is one of many statues to the composer in Italy.[201] The Giuseppe Verdi Monument, a 1906 marble memorial, sculpted by Pasquale Civiletti, is located in Verdi Square in Manhattan, New York City. The monument includes a statue of Verdi himself and life-sized statues of four characters from his operas, (Aida, Otello,  and Falstaff from the operas of the same names, and Leonora from Il trovatore).[202]
+
+Verdi has been the subject of a number of film and stage works. These include the 1938 film directed by Carmine Gallone, Giuseppe Verdi, starring Fosco Giachetti;[203] the 1982 miniseries, The Life of Verdi, directed by Renato Castellani, where Verdi was played by Ronald Pickup, with narration by Burt Lancaster in the English version;[204] and the 1985 play After Aida, by Julian Mitchell (1985).[205] He is a character in the 2011 opera Risorgimento! by Italian composer Lorenzo Ferrero, written to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Italian unification of 1861.[206]
+
+Verdi's operas are frequently staged around the world.[43] All of his operas are available in recordings in a number of versions,[207] and on DVD – Naxos Records offers a complete boxed set.[208]
+
+Modern productions may differ substantially from those originally envisaged by the composer. Jonathan Miller's 1982 version of Rigoletto for English National Opera, set in the world of modern American mafiosi, received critical plaudits.[209] But the same company's staging in 2002 of Un ballo in maschera as A Masked Ball, directed by Calixto Bieito, including "satanic sex rituals, homosexual rape, [and] a demonic dwarf", got a general critical thumbs down.[210]
+
+Meanwhile, the music of Verdi can still evoke a range of cultural and political resonances. Excerpts from the Requiem were featured at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997.[137] On 12 March 2011 during a performance of Nabucco at the Opera di Roma celebrating 150 years of Italian unification, the conductor Riccardo Muti paused after "Va pensiero" and turned to address the audience (which included the then Italian Prime Minister, Silvio Berlusconi) to complain about cuts in state funding of culture; the audience then joined in a repeat of the chorus.[211][212] In 2014, the pop singer Katy Perry appeared at the Grammy Award wearing a dress designed by  Valentino, embroidered with the music of "Dell'invito trascorsa è già l'ora" from the start of La traviata.[213] The bicentenary of Verdi's birth in 2013 was celebrated in numerous events around the world, both in  performances and broadcasts.[214]

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+
+Worms are many different distantly related animals that typically have a long cylindrical tube-like body, no limbs, and no eyes. Worms vary in size from microscopic to over 1 metre (3.3 ft) in length for marine polychaete worms (bristle worms),[1] 6.7 metres (22 ft) for the African giant earthworm, Microchaetus rappi,[2] and 58 metres (190 ft) for the marine nemertean worm (bootlace worm), Lineus longissimus.[3]  Various types of worm occupy a small variety of parasitic niches, living inside the bodies of other animals. Free-living worm species do not live on land, but instead, live in marine or freshwater environments, or underground by burrowing.
+In biology, "worm" refers to an obsolete taxon, vermes, used by Carolus Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, now seen to be paraphyletic. The name stems from the Old English word wyrm. Most animals called "worms" are invertebrates, but the term is also used for the amphibian caecilians and the slowworm Anguis, a legless burrowing lizard. Invertebrate animals commonly called "worms" include annelids (earthworms and marine polychaete or bristle worms), nematodes (roundworms), platyhelminthes (flatworms), marine nemertean worms ("bootlace worms"), marine Chaetognatha (arrow worms), priapulid worms, and insect larvae such as grubs and maggots.
+
+Worms may also be called helminths, particularly in medical terminology when referring to parasitic worms, especially the Nematoda (roundworms) and Cestoda (tapeworms) which reside in the intestines of their host. When an animal or human is said to "have worms", it means that it is infested with parasitic worms, typically roundworms or tapeworms. Lungworm is also a common parasitic worm found in various animal species such as fish and cats.
+
+In taxonomy, "worm" refers to an obsolete grouping, Vermes, used by Carl Linnaeus and Jean-Baptiste Lamarck for all non-arthropod invertebrate animals, now seen to be polyphyletic. In 1758, Linnaeus created the first hierarchical classification in his Systema Naturae.[4] In his original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, the Chordata, while his Insecta (which included the crustaceans and arachnids) and Vermes have been renamed or broken up. The process was begun in 1793 by Lamarck, who called the Vermes une espèce de chaos (a sort of chaos)[a] and split the group into three new phyla, worms, echinoderms, and polyps (which contained corals and jellyfish). By 1809, in his Philosophie Zoologique, Lamarck had created 9 phyla apart from vertebrates (where he still had 4 phyla: mammals, birds, reptiles, and fish) and molluscs, namely cirripedes, annelids, crustaceans, arachnids, insects, worms, radiates, polyps, and infusorians.[6] Chordates are remarkably wormlike by ancestry.[7]
+
+In the 13th century, worms were recognized in Europe as part of the category of reptiles that consisted of a miscellany of egg-laying creatures, including "snakes, various fantastic monsters, lizards, assorted amphibians," as recorded by Vincent of Beauvais in his Mirror of Nature.[8] In everyday language, the term worm is also applied to various other living forms such as larvae, insects, millipedes, centipedes, shipworms (teredo worms), or even some vertebrates (creatures with a backbone) such as blindworms and caecilians. Worms can be divided into several groups, but are still technically decomposers.
+
+Familiar worms include the earthworms, members of phylum Annelida. Other invertebrate groups may be called worms, especially colloquially. In particular, many unrelated insect larvae are called "worms", such as the railroad worm, woodworm, glowworm, bloodworm, inchworm, mealworm, silkworm, and woolly bear worm.
+
+Worms may also be called helminths, particularly in medical terminology when referring to parasitic worms, especially the Nematoda (roundworms) and Cestoda (tapeworms). Hence "helminthology" is the study of parasitic worms. When a human or an animal, such as a dog or horse, is said to "have worms", it means that it is infested with parasitic worms, typically roundworms or tapeworms. Deworming is a method to kill off the worms that have infected a human or animal by giving anthelmintic drugs.
+
+"Ringworm" is not a worm at all, but a skin fungus.
+
+Wurm, or wyrm was the Old English  term for carnivorous reptiles ("serpents"), and mythical dragons. Worm has been used as a pejorative epithet to describe a cowardly, weak or pitiable person. Worms can also be farmed for the production of nutrient-rich vermicompost.

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+
+Vermont (/vərˈmɒnt/ (listen))[7] is a northeastern state in the New England region of the United States. It borders the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to the north. Vermont is the only state in New England that does not border the Atlantic Ocean. Vermont is the second-least-populated U.S. state and the sixth-smallest by area of the 50 U.S. states. The state capital is Montpelier, the least-populous state capital in the United States. The most-populous city, Burlington, is the least-populous city to be the most-populous city in a state.
+
+For some 12,000 years, indigenous peoples inhabited this area. The historically competitive tribes of the Algonquian-speaking Abenaki and Iroquoian-speaking Mohawk were active in the area at the time of European encounter.
+
+During the 17th century, French colonists claimed the territory as part of the Kingdom of France's colony of New France. After the Kingdom of Great Britain began to settle colonies to the south along the Atlantic coast, the two nations competed in North America in addition to Europe. For years, each country enlisted Native American allies in continuous raiding and warfare between the New England and New France colonies. This produced an active trade in captives taken during such raids, often held for ransom, although some captives were adopted by families into the Mohawk or Abenaki tribes.
+
+After being defeated in 1763 in the Seven Years' War, France ceded its territory east of the Mississippi River to Great Britain. Thereafter, the nearby British Thirteen Colonies, especially the provinces of New Hampshire and New York, disputed the extent of the area called the New Hampshire Grants to the west of the Connecticut River, encompassing present-day Vermont. The provincial government of New York sold land grants to settlers in the region, which conflicted with earlier grants from the government of New Hampshire. The Green Mountain Boys militia protected the interests of the established New Hampshire land grant settlers against the newly-arrived settlers with land titles granted by New York.
+
+Ultimately, a group of settlers with New Hampshire land grant titles established the Vermont Republic in 1777 as an independent state during the American Revolutionary War. The Vermont Republic abolished slavery before any of the other states.[8][9] Vermont was also the first state to produce an African-American university graduate, Alexander Twilight, in 1823.
+
+Vermont was admitted to the newly established United States as the fourteenth state in 1791. Vermont is one of the four U.S. states that were previously sovereign states (along with Texas, California, and Hawaii).
+
+During the mid-19th century, Vermont was a strong source of abolitionist sentiment, although it was also tied to King Cotton through the development of textile mills in the region, which relied on southern cotton. It sent a significant contingent of soldiers to participate in the American Civil War. In the 21st century, Protestants (30%) and Catholics (22%) make up the majority of those reporting a religious preference, with 37% reporting no religion, the highest rate of irreligion of all states.[10] Other religions individually contribute no more than two percent to the total.
+
+The geography of the state is marked by the Green Mountains, which run north–south up the middle of the state, separating Lake Champlain and other valley terrain on the west from the Connecticut River valley that defines much of its eastern border. A majority of its terrain is forested with hardwoods and conifers, and a majority of its open land is devoted to agriculture. The state's climate is characterized by warm, humid summers and cold, snowy winters.
+
+Vermont's economic activity of $34 billion in 2018 ranked 52nd on the list of U.S. states and territories by GDP (every state plus Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico were larger), but 34th in GDP per capita. In 1960, Vermonters' politics started to shift from being reliably Republican toward favoring Democratic candidates. Starting in 1963, Vermont voters have alternated between electing Republican and Democratic governors. Since 2007, Vermont has elected only Democrats and independents to Congress. In 2000, the state legislature was the first to recognize civil unions for same-sex couples. In 2011–2012, the state officially recognized four Abenaki tribes.
+
+Samuel de Champlain claimed the area around what is now Lake Champlain, giving the name, Verd Mont (Green Mountain) to the region he found, on a 1647 map.[11] Evidence suggests that this name came into use among English settlers, before it morphed to "Vermont", ca. 1760.[12][13] In 1777, Thomas Young introduced the name in writing with a broadside "To the Inhabitants of Vermont, a Free and Independent State".[12]
+
+Vermont is located in the New England region of the Northeastern United States and comprises 9,614 square miles (24,900 km2), making it the 45th-largest state. It is the only state that does not have any buildings taller than 124 feet (38 m).[15] Land comprises 9,250 square miles (24,000 km2) and water comprises 365 square miles (950 km2), making it the 43rd-largest in land area and the 47th in water area. In total area, it is larger than El Salvador and smaller than Haiti. It is the only landlocked state in New England, and it is the easternmost and the smallest in area of all landlocked states.
+
+The Green Mountains in Vermont form a north–south spine running most of the length of the state, slightly west of its center. In the southwest portion of the state are located the Taconic Mountains.[16] In the northwest, near Lake Champlain, is the fertile Champlain Valley. In the south of the valley is Lake Bomoseen.
+
+The west bank of the Connecticut River marks the state's eastern border with New Hampshire, though much of the river flows within New Hampshire's territory.[17] 41% of Vermont's land area is part of the Connecticut River's watershed.[18]
+
+Lake Champlain, the sixth-largest body of fresh water in the United States, separates Vermont from New York in the northwest portion of the state. From north to south, Vermont is 159 miles (256 km) long. Its greatest width, from east to west, is 89 miles (143 km) at the Canada–U.S. border; the narrowest width is 37 miles (60 km) near the Massachusetts border. The width averages 60.5 miles (97.4 km). The state's geographic center is approximately three miles (5 km) east of Roxbury, in Washington County. There are fifteen U.S. federal border crossings between Vermont and Canada.
+
+Several mountains have timberlines with delicate year-round alpine ecosystems, including Mount Mansfield, the highest mountain in the state; Killington Peak, the second-highest; Camel's Hump, the state's third-highest; and Mount Abraham, the fifth-highest peak.[19] Areas in Vermont administered by the National Park Service include the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller National Historical Park (in Woodstock) and the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.[20]
+
+Vermont has nine incorporated cities.
+
+The most populous city in Vermont is Burlington. Its metropolitan area is also the most populous in the state, with an estimate of 218,395 as of 2017.
+
+Although these towns are large enough to be considered cities, they are not incorporated as such.
+
+The annual mean temperature for the state is 43 °F (6 °C).[21] Vermont has a humid continental climate, with muddy springs, in general a mild early summer, hot Augusts; it has colorful autumns: Vermont's hills reveal red, orange, and (on sugar maples) gold foliage as cold weather approaches.[22] Winters are colder at higher elevations.[23] It has a Köppen climate classification of Dfb, a warm humid continental climate.[24]
+
+The rural northeastern section known as the "Northeast Kingdom" often averages 10 °F (5.6 °C) colder than the southern areas of the state during winter. The annual snowfall averages between 60 and 100 inches (1,500 and 2,500 mm) depending on elevation. Vermont is the seventh coldest state in the country.[25]
+
+The highest recorded temperature was 105 °F (41 °C), at Vernon, on July 4, 1911. The lowest recorded temperature was −50 °F (−46 °C), at Bloomfield, on December 30, 1933; this is the lowest temperature recorded in New England alongside Big Black River, which recorded a verified −50 °F (−46 °C) in 2009.[26][27] The agricultural growing season ranges from 120 to 180 days.[28] The United States Department of Agriculture plant hardiness zones for the state range between zone 3b, no colder than −35 °F (−37 °C), in the Northeast Kingdom and northern part of the state and zone 5b, no colder than −15 °F (−26 °C), in the southern part of the state.[29] The state receives between 2,200 and 2,400 hours of sunshine annually. New England as a whole receives a range of less than 2,000 hours of sunshine in part of New Hampshire to as much as 2,600 hours of sunshine per year in Connecticut and Rhode Island.[30]
+
+Climate change in Vermont encompasses the effects of climate change, attributed to man-made increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide, in the U.S. state of Vermont.
+
+The state is already seeing effects of climate change that affect its ecosystems, economy and public health. According to the Vermont state government, rainfall has significantly increased in the last 50 years, storms and flooding have increased, and winters have become warmer and shorter.[31] These changes have led to significant impacts on both the winter tourism industry,[32] and a decline in critical agricultural and woodland industries like maple sugaring.[33]
+
+There are five distinct physiographic regions of Vermont.[35] Categorized by geological and physical attributes, they are the Northeastern Highlands, the Green Mountains, the Taconic Mountains, the Champlain Lowlands, and the Vermont Piedmont.[36]
+
+About 500 million years ago, Vermont was part of Laurentia and located in the tropics.[37] The central and southern Green Mountain range include the oldest rocks in Vermont, formed about one billion years ago during the first mountain building period (or orogeny). Subsequently, about 400 million years ago, the second mountain building period created Green Mountain peaks that were 15,000–20,000 feet (4,600–6,100 m) tall, three to four times their current height and comparable to the Himalayas. The geological pressures that created those peaks remain evident as the Champlain Thrust, running north–south to the west of the mountains (now the eastern shore of Lake Champlain). It is an example of geological fault thrusting where bedrock is pushed over the newer rock formation.
+
+As a result of tectonic formation, Vermont east of the Green Mountains tends to be formed from rocks produced in the Silurian and Devonian periods, and western Vermont mainly from the older Pre-Cambrian and Cambrian material.[38] Several large deposits within the state contain granite.[39] The remains of the Chazy Formation can be observed in Isle La Motte. It was one of the first tropical reefs. It is the site of the limestone Fisk Quarry, which contains a collection of ancient marine fossils, such as stromatoporoids, that date to 200 million years ago. At one point, Vermont is believed to have been connected to Africa (Pangaea); the fossils found and the rock formations found on the coasts in both Africa and America are evidence affirming the Pangaea theory.[40][41][42]
+
+In the past four centuries, Vermont has experienced a few earthquakes, rarely centered under the state. The highest ranked, in 1952, had a Richter magnitude scale 6.0 and was based in Canada.[43]
+
+The state contains 41 species of reptiles and amphibians, 89 species of fish, of which 12 are non native;[44] 193 species of breeding birds, 58 species of mammals, more than 15,000 insect species, and 2,000 higher plant species, plus fungi, algae, and 75 different types of natural communities.[45] Vermont contains one species of venomous snake, the timber rattlesnake, which is confined to a few acres in western Rutland County.[46]
+
+Wildlife has suffered because of human development of the state. By the mid-19th century, wild turkeys were exterminated in the state through overhunting and destruction of habitat. Sixteen were re-introduced in 1969, and had grown to a flock estimated to number 45,000 in 2009.[47] In 2013, hunters killed 6,968 of these.[48] Since 1970, reduction of farmland has resulted in reduced environment for, and resulted in a decline in numbers of various shrubland birds, including the American woodcock, brown thrasher, eastern towhee, willow flycatcher, golden-winged warbler, blue-winged warbler, field sparrow, and Baltimore oriole.[49]
+
+The use of DDT for insect control resulted in ospreys laying eggs that were too thin to support the development of young. This species disappeared from the state. It began to reappear in 1998, when ospreys were observed again locally. As of 2010, they were no longer endangered in the state.[50]
+
+From 2008 to 2010, White-nose syndrome killed an estimated two-thirds of all cave-wintering bats in the state.[51]
+
+The New England cottontail disappeared from the state in the early 1970s, out-competed by the eastern cottontail rabbit, imported in the 1800s for hunting. It is better able to detect and avoid predators.[52]
+
+Out of a total of 33 species of bumblebee, by 2013 the number declined to 19 or 20 species in the state. Bombus terricola (the yellow-banded bumblebee), although once common in Vermont, has not been seen in most of its range since 1999 and is now absent from the state.[53] For honey bees, colony collapse disorder has affected bee population in the state, as elsewhere.[54]
+
+Invasive species included the Asian spotted-wing drosophila, which started damaging berry crops in 2012. Vermont was the initial point of invasion in New England.[55]
+
+Since 2010, the Vermont Department of Health has worked with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to conduct blood serum surveys of the state's deer and moose populations. Tests for eastern equine encephalitis virus antibodies were positive in moose or deer in each of Vermont's counties. In 2012, 12% of deer and 2.4% of moose tested positive.[56]
+
+Vermont is in the temperate broadleaf and mixed forests biome. Much of the state, in particular the Green Mountains, is covered by the conifers and northern hardwoods of the New England-Acadian forests. The western border with New York and the area around Lake Champlain lies within the Eastern Great Lakes lowland forests. The southwest corner of the state and parts of the Connecticut River are covered by northeastern coastal forests of mixed oak.[57]
+
+Invasive wild honeysuckle has been deemed a threat to the state's forests, native species of plants, and wildlife.[58] Many of Vermont's rivers, including the Winooski River, have been subjected to man-made barriers to prevent flooding.[citation needed]
+
+Climate change appears to be affecting the maple sugar industry. Sugar maples have been subject to stress by acid rain, asian longhorn beetles, and pear thrips. In 2011 the deer herd had grown too large for habitat, and many resorted to eating bark to survive the winter, destroying trees in the process. In addition, the sugar maples need a certain period of cold to produce sap for maple syrup. The time to tap these trees has shrunk to one week in some years. The tree may be replaced by the more aggressive Norway maples, in effect forcing the sugar maples to "migrate" north to Canada.[59]
+
+Between 8500 and 7000 BCE, at the time of the Champlain Sea, Native Americans inhabited and hunted in present-day Vermont. During the Archaic period, from the 8th millennium BCE to 1000 BCE, Native Americans migrated year-round. During the Woodland period, from 1000 BCE to 1600 CE, they established villages and trade networks, and developed ceramic and bow and arrow technology. Their population in 1500 CE was estimated to be around 10,000 people.[60]
+
+During colonial times, where encounters and settlement were initiated by French colonists, the territory was occupied mainly by an Abenaki tribe known as the Sokoki, or Missisquois. The eastern part of the state may have also been occupied by the Androscoggin and Pennacook peoples.[60]
+
+To the west, the Missisquois competed with the Iroquoian Mohawk, based in the Mohawk valley but with a large territory, and the Algonquin Mohican peoples.[60] Many of the tribes later formed the Wabanaki Confederacy during King Philip's War. The warfare by English colonists defeated and scattered most of the surviving Abenaki tribes.[61]
+
+The first European to see Vermont is thought to have been French explorer Jacques Cartier in 1535. On July 30, 1609, French explorer Samuel de Champlain claimed this territory as part of New France. In 1666, French settlers erected Fort Sainte Anne on Isle La Motte,[62] the first European settlement in Vermont.
+
+The "violent" 1638 New Hampshire earthquake was centered in the St. Lawrence Valley and reported throughout New England. This was the first seismic event noted in Vermont.[43] In 1690, a group of Dutch-British settlers from Albany established a settlement and trading post at Chimney Point, 8 miles (13 km) west of present-day Addison.[citation needed] During Dummer's War, the first permanent English settlement was established in 1724 with the construction of Fort Dummer. It was intended to protect the nearby settlements of Dummerston and Brattleboro.[63]
+
+From 1731 to 1734, the French constructed Fort St. Frédéric, which gave them control of the New France–Vermont frontier region in the Lake Champlain Valley. With the outbreak of the French and Indian War in 1754, the North American front of the Seven Years' War between the French and British, the French began construction in 1755 of Fort Carillon at present-day Ticonderoga, New York. The British failed to take either fort between 1755 and 1758. In 1759 a combined force of 12,000 British regular and provincial troops under Sir Jeffery Amherst captured Carillon, after which the French abandoned Fort St. Frédéric. Amherst constructed Fort Crown Point next to the remains of the Fort St. Frédéric, securing British control over the area.[citation needed]
+
+Following France's loss in the French and Indian War, through the 1763 Treaty of Paris, it ceded control of land east of the Mississippi River to the British. The Crown attempted to limit colonial settlement to lands east of the Appalachians, in order to prohibit encroachment on Native American lands. The territory of Vermont was divided nearly in half in a jagged line running from Fort William Henry in Lake George diagonally north-eastward to Lake Memphremagog.[citation needed] With the end of the war, new settlers arrived in Vermont. Ultimately, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New York all claimed this frontier area.[citation needed]
+
+On July 20, 1764, King George III established the boundary between New Hampshire and New York along the west bank of the Connecticut River, north of Massachusetts, and south of 45 degrees north latitude.[64] New York refused to recognize the land titles known as the New Hampshire Grants (towns created by land grants sold by New Hampshire Governor Benning Wentworth) and dissatisfied New Hampshire settlers organized in opposition. In 1770 Ethan Allen, his brothers Ira and Levi, and the Allens' cousins Seth Warner and Remember Baker, recruited an informal militia known as the Green Mountain Boys to protect the interests of the original New Hampshire settlers against newcomers from New York.[citation needed]
+
+In 1775, after the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, the Green Mountain Boys assisted a force from Connecticut, led by Benedict Arnold, in capturing the British fort at Ticonderoga. Thereafter, the Continental Congress in Philadelphia directed the New York colony's revolutionary congress to fund and equip Allen's militia as a ranger regiment of the Continental Army, which it did. Seth Warner was chosen by the men of the regiment to lead, while Ethan Allen later served as a colonel in Schuyler's Army of Northern New York.[65]
+
+On January 15, 1777, representatives of the New Hampshire Grants declared the independence of Vermont.[66] For the first six months of its existence, it was called the Republic of New Connecticut.[67]
+
+On June 2, 1777, a second convention of 72 delegates met and adopted the name "Vermont." This was on the advice of a friendly Pennsylvanian, Dr. Thomas Young, friend and mentor of Ethan Allen. He was advising them on how to achieve admission into the newly independent United States of America as the 14th state.[67] On July 4, they completed the drafting of the Constitution of Vermont at the Windsor Tavern, and adopted it on July 8. This was the first written constitution in North America to ban adult slavery,[68] saying male slaves become free at the age of 21 and females at 18. It provided for universal adult male suffrage and required support of public schools. It was in effect from 1777 to 1786.[69]
+
+The Battle of Bennington, fought on August 16, 1777, was a seminal event in the history of the state of Vermont and the United States. A combined American force, under General John Stark's command, attacked the Hessian column at Hoosick, New York, just across the border from Bennington. It killed or captured virtually the entire Hessian detachment. General Burgoyne never recovered from this loss and eventually surrendered the remainder of his 6,000-man force at Saratoga, New York, on October 17 that year.[70]
+
+The battles of Bennington and Saratoga together are recognized as the turning point in the Revolutionary War because they were the first major defeat of a British army. The anniversary of the battle is still celebrated in Vermont as a legal holiday.
+
+The Battle of Hubbardton (July 7, 1777) was the only Revolutionary battle within the present boundaries of Vermont. Although the Continental forces were technically defeated, the British forces were damaged to the point that they did not pursue the Americans (retreating from Fort Ticonderoga) any further.
+
+Vermont continued to govern itself as a sovereign entity based in the eastern town of Windsor for 14 years. The independent state of Vermont issued its own coinage from 1785 to 1788[71] and operated a national postal service. Thomas Chittenden was the Governor in 1778–89 and in 1790–91.
+
+Because the state of New York continued to assert a disputed claim that Vermont was a part of New York, Vermont could not be admitted to the Union under Article IV, Section 3 of the Constitution until the legislature of New York consented. On March 6, 1790, the legislature made its consent contingent upon a negotiated agreement on the precise boundary between the two states. When commissioners from New York and Vermont met to decide on the boundary, Vermont's negotiators insisted on also settling the property ownership disputes with New Yorkers, rather than leaving that to be decided later in a federal court.[72] The negotiations were successfully concluded in October 1790 with an agreement that Vermont would pay $30,000 to New York to be distributed among New Yorkers who claimed land in Vermont under New York land patents.[73] In January 1791, a convention in Vermont voted 105–4[74] to petition Congress to become a state in the federal union. Congress acted on February 18, 1791 to admit Vermont to the Union as the 14th state as of March 4, 1791.[75] Vermont became the first to enter the Union after the original 13 states.
+
+The revised constitution of 1786, which established a greater separation of powers, continued in effect until 1793, two years after Vermont's admission to the Union.
+
+Under the Act "To Secure Freedom to All Persons Within This State,"[76] Slavery was officially banned by state law on November 25, 1858, less than three years before the American Civil War.[77][78][79] Vermonters provided refuge in several sites for escaped slaves, fleeing to Canada, as part of what was called the Underground Railroad.[80]
+
+From the mid-1850s on, some Vermonters became activists opposing slavery, which they had previously worked to contain in the South. Abolitionist Thaddeus Stevens was born in Vermont and later represented a district in Pennsylvania in Congress. He developed as a national leader and later promoted Radical Republican goals after the American Civil War. While the Whig Party shriveled, and the Republican Party emerged, Vermont supported Republican candidates. In 1860 it voted for Abraham Lincoln, giving him the largest margin of victory of any state.[81]
+
+During the American Civil War, Vermont sent 33,288 men into United States service. 5,224 Vermonters (more than 15 percent) were killed.[82]
+
+The northernmost land action of the war was the St. Albans Raid—the robbery of three St. Albans banks, perpetrated in October 1864 by 21 Confederate agents. A posse pursued the Confederate raiders into Canada and captured several of them. They had to turn their captives over to Canadian officials. Canada reimbursed the banks, released, and later re-arrested some of the perpetrators.[83][84]
+
+As English speakers came to dominate the population in Vermont, they anglicized the names of many ethnic French residents and often discriminated against them. In the mid-20th century, descendants began to reclaim their French names, especially surnames.
+
+Beginning in the mid-19th century, Vermont industries attracted numerous Irish, Scots-Irish and Italian immigrants, adding to its residents of mostly English and some French-Canadian ancestry. Many of the immigrants migrated to Barre, where the men worked as stonecutters of granite, for which there was a national market. Vermont granite was used in major public buildings in many states.
+
+In this period, many Italian and Scottish women operated boarding houses to support their families. Such facilities also helped absorb new residents and help them learn the new culture; European immigrants peaked in number between 1890 and 1900. Typically immigrants boarded with people of their own language and ethnicity, but sometimes they boarded with others.[85]
+
+Gradually the new immigrants were absorbed into the state. Times of tension aroused divisions. In the early 20th century, some people in Vermont became alarmed about what they considered to be a decline in rural areas; people left farming to move to cities and others seemed unable to fit within society. In addition, there was a wave of immigration by French Canadians, and those of Protestant Yankee stock feared being overtaken by the new people, who added to the Catholic population of Irish and Italians. Based on the colonial past, some Yankee residents considered the French Canadians to have intermarried too frequently with Native Americans.[86]
+
+In an era influenced by ideas of Social Darwinism, some Vermont leaders promoted eugenics, an idea that the population could be managed and improved by limiting marriage and reproduction by certain members classified as unfit or defective. It passed a marriage law, to limit marriage by people considered unfit. In 1915 the Brandon State School opened, the beginning of a related effort to segregate and control those judged unfit to reproduce.[86]
+
+The state followed efforts to improve children's welfare by establishing other institutions to house the mentally ill or disabled. From 1925–1928 the Eugenics Survey of Vermont conducted research and recorded the histories of families it determined were degenerate or dependent. It also attempted to educate the public about why restrictive measures, including voluntary sterilization, were desirable. Review by current historians reveals the results were socially prejudiced, as the surveys tended to target the poor and disenfranchised minorities, including French Canadians, Abenaki, and disabled.[86]
+
+In 1931 Vermont was the 29th state to pass a eugenics law. Vermont like other states, sterilized some patients in institutions and persons it had identified through surveys as degenerate or unfit. It nominally had permission from the patients or their guardians, but abuses have been documented. Two-thirds of the sterilizations were done on women, and poor, unwed mothers were targeted, among others. The surgery was performed at institutions and hospitals in the state supposedly devoted to care of people in need. There is disagreement about how many sterilizations were performed; most were completed from 1931 to 1941, but such procedures were recorded as late as 1970.[86]
+
+In addition to the increased intensity and flooding caused by climate change,[87] the state has suffered several extreme natural disasters in the 20th and 21st centuries related to hurricanes, and extensive rain and flooding.
+
+Large-scale flooding occurred in early November 1927. During this incident, 84 people died, including the state's lieutenant governor.[88]
+
+The 1938 New England hurricane in the fall of that year blew down 15,000,000 acres (61,000 km2) of trees, one-third of the total forest at the time in New England. Three billion board feet were salvaged. Today many of the older trees in Vermont are about 75 years old, dating from after this storm.[89]
+
+A major flood occurred in 1973, causing the deaths of two people and millions of dollars in property damage.[90]
+
+The state suffered severe flooding in late August 2011 caused by Tropical Storm Irene. Heavy rains caused flooding in many towns built along narrow river valleys. The governor described it as one of the worst natural disasters of the 20th and 21st centuries, second only to the flood of 1927. The state was classified as a federal disaster area.[91]
+
+Vermont approved women's suffrage decades before it became part of the national constitution. Women were first allowed to vote in the elections of December 18, 1880, when women were granted limited suffrage. They were first allowed to vote in town elections, and later in state legislative races.
+
+In 1964, the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Reynolds v. Sims required "one man, one vote" redistricting in all states. It had found that many state legislatures had not redistricted and were unjustly dominated by rural interests, years after the development of densely populated and industrial urban areas. In addition, it found that many states had an upper house based on geographical jurisdictions, such as counties. This gave disproportionate power to rural and lightly populated counties. The court ruled there was no basis for such a structure. Major changes in political apportionment took place in Vermont and other affected states.
+
+This ruling required districts to be reassessed after every census and to be based on roughly equal population, rather than geography (such as counties). Under redistricting, residents in urban areas were to gain an equitable share of apportionment in both houses in every state. Vermont and some other northern states had long been dominated by rural districts, as were several Southern states in those years, who had not redistricted since the turn of the century.[92] Until that time, apportionment of upper houses was often based on county jurisdictions, which had given more power to rural counties and failed to acknowledge the increased population in urban areas. This arrangement had meant that urban areas did not have proportionate political power and often suffered from underinvestment in needed infrastructure; other urban issues were also neglected by rural-dominated legislatures.[92]
+
+In July 2000, Vermont became the first state to introduce civil unions. In 2009, Vermont became the first state to legalize same-sex marriage, unforced by court challenge or ruling.[93]
+
+Since the late 20th century, Abenaki peoples in Vermont lobbied for recognition. In 2011 the state officially recognized their continued presence in the region by recognizing the Elnu Tribe of the Abenaki and the Nulhegan Band of the Coosuk Abenaki Nation; in 2012 it recognized the Abenaki Nation of Missisquoi and the Koasek Traditional Band of the Koos Abenaki Nation. In 2016 the state governor proclaimed Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day.[94]
+
+On January 22, 2018, Vermont became the first of the United States to legalize cannabis for recreational use by legislative action, and the ninth state in the United States to legalize marijuana for medical purposes. This law was signed by Republican Governor Phil Scott.[95]
+
+Racial/ethnic makeup of Vermont, treating Hispanics as a separate category (2017)[98]
+
+According to the United States Census Bureau, as of July 1, 2019, Vermont had an estimated population of 623,989.[99] This included a natural increase 3,178 (31,716 births minus 28,538 deaths) and a decrease due to net migration of 2,432 people out of the state.[100] In 2006 it had the second lowest birthrate in the nation, 42/1000 women.[101] The center of population of Vermont is located in Washington County, in the town of Warren.[102]
+
+As of 2014, 51.3% of Vermont's population was born in the state (compared with 58.7% for the United States).[103] The changing demographics between those with multi-generational ties to the state and those who are newcomers, bringing different values with them, has resulted in a degree of tension between the two perspectives. This tension is expressed in the terms, "Woodchuck", being applied to those established in the state, and "Flatlander", applied to the newcomers.[104]
+Vermont is the least populous New England state. As of 2012, Vermont was one of only two states in the U.S. with fewer people than the District of Columbia (Wyoming was the other).[105]
+
+From 2010 to 2013, 16 out of Vermont's 251 towns experienced an increase in population. All towns in Chittenden increased with the exception of Burlington. More than 180 towns experienced a decrease, which hadn't happened since the mid-19th century.[106]
+
+Note: Births in table do not add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number.
+
+94.3% of the population identified as white not of Hispanic or Latino origin in a 2013 U.S. Census estimate.[113] As of the 2010 census, Vermont was the second-whitest state in the Union after Maine.[114]
+
+In 2009, 12.6% of people over 15 were divorced. This was the fifth highest percentage in the nation.[115] As of 2008, the median age of Vermonters was 40.6 and that of the work force was 43.7, compared with the national average of 41.1 years.[116]
+
+Vermont leads U.S. states with the highest rates of LGBT identification, at 5.3%.[117] Its LGBT population density is second in the U.S. only to the District of Columbia.[117]
+
+Following national trends for opioid use which has roughly tripled, people seeking treatment for opioid addiction in Vermont have increased from 650 in 2011 to 7,500 in 2016.[118]
+
+Linguists have identified speech patterns found among Vermonters as belonging to Western New England English, a dialect of New England English, which features full pronunciation of all r sounds, pronouncing horse and hoarse the same, and pronouncing vowels in father and bother the same, none of which are features traditionally shared in neighboring Eastern New England English.[119] Some rural speakers realize the t as a glottal stop (mitten sounds like "mi'in" and Vermont like "Vermon' "[a]).[120] A dwindling segment of the Vermont population, generally both rural and male, pronounces certain vowels in a distinctive manner (e.g. cows with a raised vowel as [kʰɛʊz] and ride with a backed, somewhat rounded vowel as [ɹɒɪd]).[121]
+
+Eastern New England English—also found in New Hampshire, Maine and eastern Massachusetts—was common in eastern Vermont in the mid-twentieth century and before, but has become rare.[122] This accent drops the r sound in words ending in r (farmer sounds like "farm-uh") and adds an r sound to some words ending in a vowel (idea sounds like "idee-er") was common.[123][122] Those characteristics in eastern Vermont appear to have been inherited from West Country[124] and Scots-Irish ancestors.[125]
+
+In 2015, Vermont was ranked by Forbes magazine as the 42nd best state in which to do business.[128] It was 32nd in 2007, and 30th in 2006.[129] In 2008 an economist said that the state had "a really stagnant economy, which is what we are forecasting for Vermont for the next 30 years."[130] In May 2010 Vermont's 6.2% unemployment rate was the fourth lowest in the nation.[131] This rate reflects the second sharpest decline among the 50 states since the prior May.[132]
+
+As of 2017, Vermont's gross regional domestic product (GDP) was $19.3 billion, making it the second smallest among the 50 states. Its per capita GDP was $51,600, ranking it 34th among the states.[133]
+
+Components of GSP were:[134][135]
+
+Canada was Vermont's largest foreign trade partner in 2007. The state's second-largest foreign trade partner was Taiwan.[136] The state had $4 billion worth of commerce with Quebec.[137]
+
+One measure of economic activity is retail sales. The state had $5.2 billion in 2007.[138] In 2008, 8,631 new businesses were registered in Vermont, a decline of 500 from 2007.[139]
+
+The median household income from 2002 to 2004 was $45,692. This was 15th nationally.[140] The median wage in the state in 2008 was $15.31 hourly or $31,845 annually.[141] In 2007 about 80% of the 68,000 Vermonters who qualify for food stamps received them.[142] 40% of seniors 75 years or older live on annual incomes of $21,660 or less.[143] In 2011, 15.2% of Vermonters received food stamps. This compares to 14.8% nationally.[144]
+
+In 2011, 91,000 seniors received an annual average of $14,000 from Social Security. This was 59% of the average senior's income. This contributed $1.7 billion to the state's economy.[145]
+
+Agriculture contributed 2.2% of the state's domestic product in 2000.[146] In 2000 about 3% of the state's working population engaged in agriculture.[147] As of 2014, the Pew Research Center estimated that farms in the state employed fewer than 5,000 illegal immigrants.[148] In 2017, Vermont Governor Phil Scott announce that the state was "exploring a legal challenge" to the executive order signed by President Donald Trump for Vermont law enforcement authorities to cooperate with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and "perform the functions of immigration officers in relation to the investigation, apprehension, or detention of aliens".[149]
+
+Dairy farming is the primary source of agricultural income. In the second half of the 20th century, developers had plans to build condos and houses on what was relatively inexpensive, open land. Vermont's government responded with a series of laws controlling development and with some pioneering initiatives to prevent the loss of Vermont's dairy industry. Still, the number of Vermont dairy farms has declined more than 85% from the 11,206 dairy farms operating in 1947. In 2003 there were fewer than 1,500 dairy farms in the state; in 2006 there were 1,138; in 2019 there were 658.[150] The number of dairy farms has been diminishing by 10% annually.[151] 80% of open land is controlled by dairy farms.[150]
+
+The number of cattle in Vermont had declined by 40%; however, milk production has doubled in the same period due to tripling the production per cow.[152] While milk production rose, Vermont's market share declined. Within a group of states supplying the Boston and New York City markets (called "Federal order Class I"),[153] Vermont was third in market share, with 10.6%; New York has 44.9% and Pennsylvania has 32.9%.[154] In 2007 dairy farmers received a record $23.60 for 100 pounds (45 kg) (11.63 gallons at $2.03/gallon) of milk. This dropped in 2008 to $17 ($1.46/gallon).[155] The average dairy farm produced 1.3 million pounds of milk annually in 2008.[156]
+
+The dairy barn remains an iconic image of Vermont, but the 87% decrease in active dairy farms between 1947 and 2003[157] means that preservation of the dairy barns has increasingly become dependent upon a commitment to maintaining a legacy rather than basic need in the agricultural economy. The Vermont Barn Census, organized by a collaboration of educational and nonprofit state and local historic preservation programs, has developed educational and administrative systems for recording the number, condition, and features of barns throughout Vermont.[158]
+
+In 2009, there were 543 organic farms. Twenty percent of the dairy farms were organic and 23% (128) vegetable farms were organic. Organic farming increased in 2006–07, but leveled off in 2008–09.[159]
+
+A significant amount of milk is shipped into the Boston market. Therefore the Commonwealth of Massachusetts certifies that Vermont farms meet Massachusetts sanitary standards. Without this certification, a farmer may not sell milk for distribution into the bulk market.[160] In 2019, two-thirds of all milk in New England was produced by Vermont dairies.[150]
+
+Forest products have always been a staple to the economy, comprising 1% of the total gross state output and 9% of total manufacturing as of 2013.[161] In 2007, Windham County contained the largest concentration of kilns for drying lumber east of the Mississippi River. The decline of farms has resulted in a regrowth of Vermont's forests due to ecological succession. Today, most of Vermont's forests are secondary. The state and non-profit organizations are actively encouraging regrowth and careful forest management. Over 78% of the land area of the state is forested compared to only 37% in the 1880s, when sheep farming was at its peak and large amounts of acreage were cleared for grazing.[162] Over 85% of that area is non-industrial, private forestland owned by individuals or families. In 2013, 73,054 million cubic feet (2,068.7 million cubic meters) of wood was harvested in Vermont.[163] A large amount of Vermont forest products are exports with 21,504 million feet (6.554×109 meters) being shipped overseas plus an additional 16,384 million cubic feet (463.9 million cubic meters) to Canada.[163] Most of it was processed within the state. In this century the manufacture of wood products has fallen by almost half. The annual net growth has been estimated at 172,810 million cubic feet (4,893 million cubic meters).[163] The USDA estimates that 8,584 billion cubic feet (243.1 billion cubic meters) remain in the state.[163] Forest products also add to carbon sequestration since lumber and timber used in houses and furniture hold carbon for long periods of time while the trees that were removed are replaced overtime with new growing stock.[164]
+
+In 2017, the price of wood products had either plummeted or remained the same when compared to previous decades, which meant there was cause for concern with jobs in the industry. For example, in 1994, the price of a thousand board feet was $300, the same as it was in 2017. The price of wood chips has halved in the same time frame. In 1980, the price for a cord of wood was $50; in 2017, $25. For lack of demand, Vermont's forests are growing twice as fast as they are being cut.[165]
+
+An important and growing part of Vermont's economy is the manufacture and sale of artisan foods, fancy foods, and novelty items trading in part upon the Vermont "brand," which the state manages and defends. Examples of these specialty exports include Cabot Cheese, the Vermont Teddy Bear Company, Fine Paints of Europe, Vermont Butter and Cheese Company, several microbreweries, ginseng growers, Burton Snowboards, King Arthur Flour, and Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream.
+
+As of 2019, Vermont was the leading producer of maple syrup in the United States.[166] There were about 2,000 maple products producers in 2010.[167] Production rose to 920,000 US gallons (3,500,000 l; 770,000 imp gal) in 2009.[168] The state's share of the nation's production rose to 42% in 2013. It had the second lowest price at $33.40/gallon.[169]
+
+The wine industry in Vermont started in 1985. As of 2007, there were 14 wineries.[170]
+
+As of 2015, GlobalFoundries was the largest private employer in the state and provides jobs to 3,000 employees at its plant in the village of Essex Junction within Chittenden County.[171]
+
+A 2010 University of Connecticut study reported that Vermont, Rhode Island, and New Hampshire tied as the most costly states in the U.S. for manufacturers.[172]
+
+An increasingly aging population is expected to improve the position of aging services and health care in the state economy. The University of Vermont Medical Center, with approximately 6,400 employees, is the largest employer in the state.[173]
+
+In 2010, all of Vermont's hospitals billed patients $3.76 billion, and collected $2 billion.[174] 92,000 people are enrolled in Medicare. In 2011, Medicare spent $740 million on health care in the state.[145]
+
+In 2007, Vermont was the 17th highest state in the nation for mortgage affordability. However, in 41 other states, inhabitants contributed within plus or minus 4% of Vermont's 18.4% of household income to a mortgage.[175]
+
+Because housing prices did not rise much during the early 2000s, the collapse in real estate values was not that precipitous either. While foreclosure rose significantly in 2007, the state stood 50th—the most favorable—in ratio of foreclosure filings to households.[176] While housing sales dropped annually from 2004 to 2008, prices continued to rise.[177]
+
+In 2007, Vermont was best in the country for construction of new energy efficient homes as evaluated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under the Energy Star program.[178] However, about 60% of Vermont homes were heated with oil in 2008.[179] In August 2008, the cost in Vermont of various heating sources per 1 million BTU ranged from $14.39 for cord wood to $43.50 for kerosene.
+
+While the number of houses sold in the state has dropped from 8,318 in 2004 to 8,120 in 2005, 6,919 in 2006, and 5,820 in 2007, the average price has continued to rise to $202,500 in 2008 ($200,000 in 2007).[180]
+
+In 2009, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment was $920 per month. Rental vacancy was 5.4%, the lowest in the nation. 2,800 people were counted as homeless in January 2010, 22% more than in 2008.[181]
+
+In 2011, Vermont was fifth among the states with the greatest backlog of foreclosures needing court processing, taking an estimated 18 years. The national average was eight years.[182]
+
+In 2009, the state attained a high of 361,290 workers.[183]
+
+As of 2006, there were 305,000 workers in Vermont. Eleven percent of these are unionized.[184][185] Out of a workforce of 299,200 workers, 52,000 were government jobs, federal, state, and local.[186]
+
+A modern high unemployment rate of 9% was reached in June 1976. A modern low of 2.4% was measured in February 2000.[187] As of October 2019, the unemployment rate was 2.2%.[188]
+
+Employment grew 7.5% from 2000 to 2006. From 1980 to 2000, employment grew by 3.4%; nationally it was up 4.6%. Real wages were $33,385 in 2006 constant dollars and remained there in 2010; the nation, $36,871.[189]
+
+Captive insurance plays an increasingly large role in Vermont's economy. With this form of alternative insurance, large corporations or industry associations form standalone insurance companies to insure their own risks, thereby substantially reducing their insurance premiums and gaining a significant measure of control over types of risks to be covered. There are also significant tax advantages to be gained from the formation and operation of captive insurance companies. According to the Insurance Information Institute, Vermont in 2009 was the world's third-largest domicile for captive insurance companies, following Bermuda and the Cayman Islands.[190] In 2009, there were 560 such companies.[191] In 2010, the state had 900 such companies.[192]
+
+Summer camps such as camp Abenaki, camp Billings, camp Dudley, and camp Hochelaga contribute to Vermont's tourist economy.
+
+In 2005, visitors made an estimated 13.4 million trips to the state, spending $1.57 billion.[193] In 2012, fall accounted for $460 million of income, about one-quarter of all tourism.[194]
+
+In 2011, the state government earned $274 million in taxes and fees from tourism. 89% of the money came from out-of-state visitors. Tourism supported over 26,000 jobs, 7.2% of total employment.[195]
+
+According to the 2000 Census, almost 15% of all housing units in Vermont were vacant and classified "for seasonal, recreational, or occasional use".[196][clarification needed] This was the second highest percentage nationwide, after Maine. In some Vermont cities, vacation homes owned by wealthy residents of New England and New York constitute the bulk of all housing stock. According to one estimate, as of 2009, 84% of all houses in Ludlow were owned by out-of-state residents.[197] Other notable vacation-home resorts include Manchester and Stowe.
+
+Hunting is controlled for black bear, wild turkeys, deer, and moose.[198] There are 5,500 bears in the state. The goal is to keep the numbers between 4,500 and 6,000.[199] In 2010, there were about 141,000 deer in the state, which is in range of government goals. However, these are distributed unevenly and when in excess of 10–15 per square mile (4–6/km2), negatively impact timber growth.[200]
+
+In 2012, hunting of migratory birds was limited to October 13 to December 16. Waterfowl hunting is also controlled by federal law.[201]
+
+Some of the largest ski areas in New England are located in Vermont. Skiers and snowboarders visit Burke Mountain Ski Area, Bolton Valley, Smugglers' Notch, Killington Ski Resort, Mad River Glen, Stowe Mountain Resort, Cochrans Ski Area, Sugarbush, Stratton, Jay Peak, Okemo, Suicide Six, Mount Snow, Bromley, and Magic Mountain Ski Area. Summer visitors tour resort towns like Stowe, Manchester, Quechee, Wilmington and Woodstock. The effects of global warming have been predicted to shorten the length of the ski season across Vermont, which would continue the contraction and consolidation of the ski industry in Vermont and threaten individual ski businesses and communities that rely on ski tourism.[202]
+
+In winter, Nordic and backcountry skiers visit to travel the length of the state on the Catamount Trail. Several horse shows are annual events. Vermont's state parks, historic sites, museums, golf courses, and new boutique hotels with spas were designed to attract tourists.
+
+In 2000–01, there were 4,579,719 skier and snowboarder visits to the state. There were 4,125,082 visits in 2009–2010, a rise from recent years.[203]
+
+In 2008, there were 35,000 members of 138 snowmobiling clubs in Vermont. The combined association of clubs maintains 6,000 miles (9,700 km) of trail often over private lands. The industry is said to generate "hundreds of millions of dollars worth of business."[204]
+
+The towns of Rutland and Barre are the traditional centers of marble and granite quarrying and carving in the U.S. For many years Vermont was also the headquarters of the smallest union in the U.S., the Stonecutters Association, of about 500 members. The first marble quarry in America was on Mount Aeolus overlooking East Dorset.[205] The granite industry attracted numerous skilled stonecutters in the late 19th century from Italy, Scotland, and Ireland. Barre is the location of the Rock of Ages quarry, the largest dimension stone granite quarry in the United States. Vermont is the largest producer of slate in the country. The highest quarrying revenues result from the production of dimension stone.[citation needed] The Rock of Ages quarry in Barre is one of the leading exporters of granite in the country. The work of the sculptors of this corporation can be seen 3 miles (4.8 km) down the road at the Hope Cemetery, where there are gravestones and mausoleums.[citation needed]
+
+There were 2,682 non-profit organizations in Vermont in 2008, with $2.8 billion in revenue.[206] The state ranked ninth in the country for volunteerism for the period 2005–08. 35.6% of the population volunteered during this period. The national average was 26.4%.[207]
+
+Vermont's main mode of travel is by automobile. 5.7% of Vermont households did not own a car in 2008.[208] In 2012, there were 605,000 motor vehicles registered, nearly one car for every person in the state. This is similar to average car ownership nationwide.[209] In 2012, about half the carbon emissions in the state resulted from vehicles.[210]
+
+On average, 20–25 people die each year from drunk driving incidents, and 70–80 people are in fatal car crashes in the state.[211] Motorists have the highest insurance rates in the country, 93%, tied with Pennsylvania.[212]
+
+In 2010, Vermont owned 2,840 miles (4,570 km) of highway. This was the third smallest quantity among the 50 states. 2.5% of the highways were listed as "congested," the 5th lowest in the country. The highway fatality rate was one per 100,000,000 miles (160,000,000 km), tenth lowest in the nation. The highways cost $28,669 per mile ($17,814/km) to maintain, the 17th highest in the states. 34.4% of its bridges were rated deficient or obsolete, the 8th worst in the nation.[213]
+
+Individual communities and counties have public transit, but their breadth of coverage is frequently limited. Greyhound Lines services a number of small towns. Two Amtrak trains serve Vermont, the Vermonter[214] and the Ethan Allen Express.[215] In early 2011, Amtrak evaluated the track used by the Ethan Allen Express between Rutland and Whitehall as the worst in the nation,[216] but subsequent improvements to the track later in 2011 vastly improved its performance going forward.[217]
+
+Trucks weighing less than 80,000 pounds (36,000 kg) can use Vermont's interstate highways. The limit for state roads is 99,000 pounds (45,000 kg). This means that vehicles too heavy for the interstates can legally use only secondary roads.[218][219]
+
+In 1968, Vermont outlawed the use of billboards for advertisement along its roads. It is one of four states in the U.S. to have done this, along with Hawaii, Maine, and Alaska.[220][221]
+
+The state has 2,843 miles (4,575 km) of highways under its control.[222] Three Interstate highways and five U.S. highways enter Vermont, in addition to its own state highway network.
+
+
+
+
+
+A 2005–06 study ranked Vermont 37th out of the states for "cost-effective road maintenance", a decline of thirteen places since 2004–05.[223]
+
+Federal data indicates that 16% of Vermont's 2,691 bridges had been rated structurally deficient by the state in 2006.[224] In 2007 Vermont had the sixth worst percentage of structurally deficient bridges in the country.[225]
+
+The state is served by Amtrak's Vermonter and Ethan Allen Express, the New England Central Railroad, the Vermont Railway, and the Green Mountain Railroad.
+
+The Ethan Allen Express serves Castleton and Rutland,[215] while the Vermonter serves St. Albans, Essex Junction, Waterbury, Montpelier, Randolph, White River Junction, Windsor, Bellows Falls, and Brattleboro.[214]
+
+Greyhound Lines stops at Bellows Falls, Brattleboro, Burlington, Montpelier, and White River Junction.[226] Megabus, as of November 2014, stops in Burlington and Montpelier.[227] Vermont Translines, an intercity bus company started by Premier Coach in 2013 partnering with Greyhound and starting service on June 9, 2014, serves Milton, Colchester, Burlington, Middlebury, Brandon, Rutland, Wallingford, Manchester and Bennington on its Burlington to Albany line, and Rutland, Killington, Bridgewater, Woodstock, Queechee and White River Junction along the U.S. Route 4 corridor.[228] The town of Bennington also has the weekday-operating Albany-Bennington Shuttle, an intercity bus operated by Yankee Trails World Travel.[229]
+
+Other transportation includes:[230]
+
+There is a year-round ferry service to and from New York State across Lake Champlain from Burlington, Charlotte, Grand Isle, and Shoreham. All but the Shoreham ferry are operated by the LCTC (Lake Champlain Transportation Company).
+
+Vermont statute[235] requires the Vermont Secretary of State to designate newspapers that provide general coverage across the state as the "Newspapers of Record." This is the list, as of 2019:[236]
+
+Vermont hosts 93 radio broadcast stations. The top categories are talk/information (11), country (9) and classic rock (9). The top owner of radio broadcast stations is Vermont Public Radio (11 broadcast frequencies and 13 low-power, local transmitters).[237] Other companies had five or fewer stations. The state has 15 online radio stations.[238]
+
+Vermont hosts 10 high-power television broadcast stations, three of which are satellites of a primary station. Represented are the following networks and number of high-power transmitters, ABC (1), CBS (1), Fox (1), NBC (2), PBS (4), and RTV (1). In addition, it has 17 low-power television broadcast stations, which in several cases are satellites of the high-power stations.
+
+2008 peak demand in the state was 1,100 megawatts (MW).[239]
+
+In May 2009, Vermont created the first state-wide renewable energy feed-in law.[240]
+In 2010, there were about 150 methane digesters in the nation, Vermont led the nation with six online.[241]
+
+While Vermont paid the lowest rates in New England for power in 2007, it is still ranked among the highest eleven states in the nation; that is, about 16% higher than the national average.[242]
+
+In 2009, the state paid the highest rates for energy (including heating) in the U.S. and had the worst affordability gap nationwide.[143]
+
+In 2009, the state received one-third (400 MW)[239] of its power from Hydro-Québec and one-third from Vermont Yankee.[243] In total, the state got half its power from Canada and other states. It received 75% of the power it generated in the state from Vermont Yankee.[244] The state is part of the Northeast Power Coordinating Council for the distribution of electricity.
+
+The state's largest electric utility, Green Mountain Power Corporation, serves 80% of Vermont households.[143]
+
+The state has 78 hydropower dams. They generate 143 MW, about 12% of the state's total requirement.[239] Vermont experts estimate that the state has the capacity to ultimately generate from 134 to 175 megawatts of electricity from hydro power.[245]
+
+In 2006, the total summer generating capacity of Vermont was 1,117 megawatts.[246] In 2005, the inhabitants of the state used an average of 5,883 kilowatt-hours (21,180 MJ) of electricity per capita.[247] Another source says that each household consumed 7,100 kilowatt-hours (26,000 MJ) annually in 2008.[248]
+
+Until the Vermont Yankee nuclear power plant was shut down in 2014, Vermont had the highest rate of nuclear-generated power in the nation, 73.7%.[249] Vermont is one of two states with no coal-fired power plants.[250]
+
+All Vermont utilities get their power from lines run by ISO New England. Each utility pays a share of transmitting power over these lines. Vermont's share is about 4.5%.[251]
+
+A 2013 survey found that of 18,790 miles (30,240 km) of roads surveyed, all but 3,118 mi had cellular coverage by at least one carrier. The roads surveyed are concentrated in the more heavily populated areas.[252]
+
+A June 2013 survey found that of nearly 249,976 addresses surveyed, 84.7% had fixed (as opposed to mobile) broadband available. It was projected that all but 29 addresses would have fixed broadband available by the end of 2013.[253]
+
+Vermont is federally represented in the United States Congress by two senators and one representative.
+
+The state is governed by a constitution which divides governmental duties into legislative, executive and judicial branches: the Vermont General Assembly, the governor of Vermont and the Vermont Supreme Court. The governorship and the General Assembly serve two-year terms including the governor and 30 senators. There are no term limits for any office. The state capital is in Montpelier.
+
+There are three types of incorporated municipalities in Vermont: towns, cities, and villages. Like most of New England, there is slight provision for autonomous county government. Counties and county seats are merely convenient repositories for various government services such as state courts, with several elected officers such as a state's Attorney and sheriff. All county services are directly funded by the state of Vermont. The next effective governmental level below state government are municipalities. Most of these are towns.[254]
+
+Vermont is the only state in the union not to have a balanced-budget requirement, yet it has had a balanced budget every year since 1991.[255] In 2007 Moody's gave its top bond credit rating (Aaa) to the state.[256]
+
+The state uses enterprise funds for operations that are similar to private business enterprises. The Vermont Lottery Commission, the Liquor Control Fund, and the Unemployment Compensation Trust Fund, are the largest of the State's enterprise funds.[257]
+
+In 2007, Vermont was the 14th highest out of 50 states and the District of Columbia for state and local taxation, with a per capita load of $3,681. The national average was $3,447.[258] However, CNNMoney ranked Vermont highest in the nation based on the percentage of per capita income. The rankings showed Vermont had a per capita tax load of $5,387, 14.1% of the per capita income of $38,306.[259]
+
+Vermont collects a state personal income tax in a progressive structure of five different income brackets, with marginal tax rates ranging from 3.6% to 9.5%. In 2008, the top 1% of Vermont residents provided 30% of the income tax revenue; around 2,000 people had sufficient income to be taxed at the highest marginal rate of 9.5%.[260]
+
+Vermont's general state sales tax rate is 6%, which is imposed on sales of tangible personal property, amusement charges, fabrication charges, some public utility charges and some service contracts. Some towns and cities impose an additional 1% Local Option Tax. There are 46 exemptions from the sales tax, including exemptions for food, medical items, manufacturing machinery, equipment and fuel, residential fuel and electricity, clothing, and shoes. A use tax is imposed on the buyer at the same rate as the sales tax. The buyer pays the use tax when the seller fails to collect the sales tax or the items are purchased from a source where no tax is collected. The use tax applies to items taxable under the sales tax.
+
+Vermont does not collect inheritance taxes, but does impose a state estate tax; a Vermont estate tax return must be filed if the estate must file a federal estate tax return (the requirement for which depends on federal law).[261]
+
+Vermont does not collect a state gift tax.[261]
+
+Property taxes are levied by municipalities for the support of education and municipal services. Vermont does not assess tax on personal property.[262] Property taxes are based on appraisal of the fair market value of real property.[262] Rates vary from 0.97% on homesteaded property in Ferdinand, Essex County, to 2.72% on nonresidents' property in Barre City.[263] Statewide, towns average 1.77% to 1.82% tax rate. In 2007, Vermont counties were among the highest in the country for property taxes. Chittenden ($3,809 median), Windham ($3,412), Addison ($3,352), and Windsor ($3,327) ranked in the top 100, out of 1,817 counties in the nation with populations greater than 20,000. Twelve of the state's 14 counties stood in the top 20%.[264] Median annual property taxes as a percentage of median homeowners income, 5.4%, was rated as the third highest in the nation in 2011.[265][266]
+
+To equitably support education, some towns are required by Act 60 to send some of their collected taxes to be redistributed to school districts lacking adequate support.[267]
+
+Vermont is one of four states that were once independent nations (Texas, California, and Hawaii are the others). Notably, Vermont is the only state to have voted for a presidential candidate from the Anti-Masonic Party, and Vermont was one of only two states to vote against Franklin D. Roosevelt in all four of his presidential campaigns (the other was Maine).
+
+Vermont's history of independent political thought has led to movements for the establishment of the Second Vermont Republic and other plans advocating secession.
+
+Vermont is the only state in the United States that requires voters to be sworn in,[268] having established the voter's oath or affirmation in 1777.
+
+Republicans dominated local Vermont politics from the party's founding in 1854 until the mid-1970s. Before the 1960s, rural interests dominated the legislature. As a result, cities, particularly the older sections of Burlington and Winooski, were neglected and fell into decay, and people began to move out to newer suburbs.
+
+Vermont was for many years a stronghold of the Republican Party. Ethno-political culture of the last century has seen a dramatic shift in voter turnout in the Green Mountain State. Since 1992, Vermont has voted for the Democrat in every Presidential election. Before 1992, Vermont voted for the Republican in every single Presidential election with the exception of 1964.[269][270][271][272]
+
+A series of one man, one vote decisions made by the United States Supreme Court in the 1960s required states to redraw their legislative districts to accurately reflect population. As a result, urban areas in Vermont gained political power.
+
+The legislature was redistricted under one-person, one-vote in the 1960s. It passed the Land Use and Development Law (Act 250) in 1970 to discourage suburban sprawl and to limit major growth to already developed areas. The law, the first of its kind in the nation, created nine District Environmental Commissions appointed by the Governor, who judged land development and subdivision plans that would have a significant impact on the state's environment and many small communities. As a result of Act 250, Vermont was the last state to get a Wal-Mart (there are now six Wal-Marts in the state, as of November 2017, but only three—in Williston, St. Albans, and Derby—were newly built from the ground up). Because of the successful attempts to dilute what is perceived as the original intent of Act 250,[273] and other development pressures, Vermont has been designated one of America's most "endangered historic places" by the National Trust for Historic Preservation.[274]
+
+In 1995, the state banned the spreading of manure from December 15 to April 1, to prevent runoff and protect the water. Therefore farms must have environmentally approved facilities to store manure during this time frame.[275]
+
+While the state voted largely Democratic, Republican Governor Douglas won all counties but Windham in the 2006 election.
+
+A controversy dating from 1999 has been over the adoption of civil unions, an institution which grants same-sex couples nearly all the rights and privileges of marriage at the state, but not federal, level. In Baker v. Vermont (1999), the Vermont Supreme Court ruled that, under the Constitution of Vermont, the state must either allow same-sex marriage or provide a separate but equal status for them. The state legislature chose the second option by creating the institution of civil union; the bill was passed by the legislature and signed into law by Governor Howard Dean. In April 2009, the state legislature overrode governor Jim Douglas's veto to allow same-sex marriage, becoming the first state in the nation to legalize same-sex marriage through legislation.[276] In September 2009, Vermont became the fourth state in which same-sex couples could marry. The previous three were Massachusetts, Connecticut, Iowa.
+
+In 2007, the state's House of Representatives rejected a measure which would have legalized assisted suicide for the terminally ill, by a vote of 82–63. With the governor's signature on May 20, 2013, Vermont became the fourth state to pass a "death with dignity" law—the first to be passed through legislation rather than by ballot initiative.[277]
+
+Minor parties and independents flourish. Rules which eliminate smaller parties from the ballot in most states do not exist in Vermont. As a result, voters often have extensive choices for general elections. Among others, this more open policy enabled independents like Bernie Sanders to win election as mayor of Burlington, as a U.S. Congressman, and as a U.S. Senator.
+
+A political issue has been Act 60, which balances taxation for education funding. This has resulted in the town of Killington trying to secede from Vermont and join New Hampshire due to what the locals say is an unfair tax burden.[278][279]
+
+The Vermont constitution and the courts supports the right of a person to walk (fish and hunt) on any unposted, unfenced land. That is, trespass must be proven by the owner; it is not automatically assumed.[280]
+
+Vermont has a pro-sanctuary city law.[281]
+
+The state is an alcoholic beverage control state. In 2007, through the Vermont Department of Liquor Control, it took in over $14 million from the sale and distribution of liquor.[282]
+
+In 2013, Vermont became the 17th state to decriminalize marijuana. The statute makes possession of less than an ounce of the drug punishable by a small fine rather than arrest and possible jail time.[283]
+
+In 2014, Vermont became the first state to call for a constitutional convention to overturn the Supreme Court's decision in Citizens United v. FEC.[284]
+
+In 2014, Vermont became the first state to mandate labeling of genetically modified organisms in the retail food supply.
+
+In January 2018, Governor Phil Scott opted to sign H.511, the Vermont marijuana legalization bill, which allows adults 21 and older to possess up to one ounce of marijuana and grow up to two mature plants starting July 1, 2018.[285]
+
+Historically, Vermont was considered one of the most reliably Republican states in the country in terms of national elections. From 1856 to 1988, Vermont voted Democratic only once, in Lyndon B. Johnson's landslide victory of 1964 against Barry M. Goldwater. It was also one of only two states—Maine is the other—where Franklin D. Roosevelt was completely shut out in all four of his presidential bids. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Republican presidential candidates frequently won the state with over 70% of the vote.
+
+In the 1980s and 1990s, many people moved in from out of state.[104][286][287] Much of this immigration included the arrival of more liberal political influences of the urban areas of New York and the rest of New England in Vermont.[286] The brand of Republicanism in Vermont has historically been a moderate one, and combined with the newcomers from out of state, this made Vermont friendlier to Democrats as the national GOP moved to the right. As evidence of this, in 1990 Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist, was elected to Vermont's lone seat in the House as an independent. Sanders became the state's junior Senator in 2007. However, for his entire career in the House and Senate, Sanders has caucused with the Democrats and is counted as a Democrat for the purposes of committee assignments and voting for party leadership.[288]
+
+After narrowly supporting George H. W. Bush in 1988, it gave Democrat Bill Clinton a 16-point margin in 1992—the first time the state had gone Democratic since 1964. Vermont has voted Democratic in every presidential election since.
+
+Since 2004, Vermont has been one of the Democrats' most loyal states. It gave John Kerry his fourth-largest margin of victory in the presidential campaign against George W. Bush; he won the state's popular vote by 20 percentage points, taking almost 59% of the vote. (Kerry, from neighboring Massachusetts, also became the first Northern Democrat ever to carry Vermont; Johnson was from Texas, Clinton from Arkansas and Al Gore, triumphant in the Green Mountain State in 2000, from Tennessee.) Essex County in the state's northeastern section was the only county to vote for Bush. Vermont is the only state that did not receive a visit from George W. Bush during his tenure as President of the United States.[289] Indeed, George W. Bush and Donald Trump are the only Republicans to win the White House without carrying Vermont. In 2008, Vermont gave Barack Obama his third-largest margin of victory (37 percentage points) and third-largest vote share in the nation by his winning the state 68% to 31%. Only Obama's birth state of Hawaii and Washington, D.C. were stronger Democratic victories. The same held true in 2012, when Obama carried Vermont 67% of the vote to 31% for Romney, and in 2016, when Hillary Clinton won with 57% of the vote to 30% for Donald Trump.
+
+Vermont's two Senators are Democrat Patrick Leahy, the longest-serving member of the Senate, and independent Bernie Sanders.[290] The state is represented by an at-large member of the House, Democrat Peter Welch, who succeeded Sanders in 2007.
+
+In 2010, Vermont was the sixth highest ranked state for Well-Being in a study by Gallup and Healthways.[291] In 2010, the state stood third in physical well-being of children.[292]
+
+In 2010, Vermont was ranked the highest in the country for health outcomes.[293]
+
+In 2000, the state implemented the Vermont Child Health Improvement Program to improve preventive services and management of chronic conditions. In 2011, the state ranked third in the nation in child health system performance.[294] In 2011, the March of Dimes gave Vermont an "A," ranking it number one in the country on its Prematurity Report Card.[295]
+
+In 2008, Vermont was ranked number one in the nation as the healthiest place to live for the seventh time in eight years. Criteria included low teenage birth rate, strong health coverage, the lowest AIDS rate in the country, and 18 other factors.[296] The state scored well in cessation of smoking, obesity, fewer occupational fatalities, prevalence of health insurance, and low infant mortality. A problem area was a high prevalence of binge drinking.[297] While ranking sixth from best for adults in obesity in 2009, the state still had 22% obese with a rate of 27% for children 10–17. The ranking for children was ninth best in the nation.[298]
+In 1993, the obesity rate for adults was 12%. Vermonters spend $141 million annually in medical costs related to obesity.[299] The combined figures for overweight and obese adults rose from 40.7% in 1990 to 58.4% in 2010. This is better than most other states.[300]
+
+In 2011, Vermont led the nation in the rate of young people who had consumed alcohol in the past month; one-third of people aged 11 through 20. One-fifth of that group had binged during that time. The state was second for the use of marijuana by young people; 30% of adults 18 to 25 in the past month.[301]
+
+In 2009, Vermont was ranked second in the nation for safety. Crime statistics on violence were used for the criteria.[302]
+
+Vermont has some of the least restrictive gun control laws in the country. A permit or license is not required for purchasing or carrying firearms. Concealed carry and open carry of a firearm is legal over the age of 16, with those below 16 requiring parental permission.[303][304][305][306]
+
+In 2007, Vermont was ranked among the best five states in the country for preventing "premature death" in people under 75 years of age. The rate of survival was twice that of the five lowest performing states.[307]
+
+In 2007, Vermont was ranked the third safest state for highway fatalities.[308] In 2007, a third of fatal crashes involved a drunken driver.[309] In 2008, Vermont was the fifth best state for fewest uninsured motorists—6%.[310]
+
+Parts of the state have been declared federal disaster areas on 28 occasions from 1963 to 2008.[311]
+
+In 2007, the Environmental Protection Agency cited Chittenden and Bennington as counties with 70 parts per billion of smog which is undesirable.[312]
+
+In northern Vermont particularly, moose are not uncommon, including in urban areas.[313] They constitute a traffic threat since they are unaware of vehicles. There are several deaths each year from automobiles striking moose.
+
+In 2008, about 100,000 Vermonters got their health care through the federal government, Medicare, Tri-Care, and the Veteran's Administration. An additional 10,000 Vermonters work for employers who provide insurance under federal law under ERISA. About 20% of Vermonters receive health care outside of Vermont; 20% of the care provided within the state is to non-Vermonters.[314] In 2008, the state had an estimated 7.6% with no medical insurance, down from 9.8% in 2005.[315] In 2008, the Vermont Health Access Program for low-income, uninsured adults cost from $7 to $49 per month.[316] A "Catamount Health" premium assistance program was available for Vermonters who do not qualify for other programs. Total monthly premiums ranged from $60 to $393 for an individual. There was a $250 deductible. Insured paid $10 toward each generic prescription. 16.9% of residents 18 to 35 were uninsured, the highest group.[317]
+
+Health care spending increased from $2.3 billion in 2000 to $4.8 billion in 2009.[318]
+In 2009, adult day care services cost more in Vermont than any other state—$150 daily.[319]
+
+The state started air drops of rabies bait for raccoons in 1997. Known rabies cases in raccoons peaked in 2007 at 165. The program is in cooperation with neighboring states and Canada.[320]
+
+Vermont was named the nation's smartest state in 2005 and 2006.[321] In 2006, there was a gap between state testing standards and national, which is biased in favor of the state standards by 30%, on average. This puts Vermont 11th-best in the nation. Most states have a higher bias.[322] However, when allowance for race is considered, a 2007 U.S. Government list of test scores shows Vermont white fourth graders performed 25th in the nation for reading (229) and 26th for math (247).[323] White eighth graders scored 18th for math (292) and 12th for reading (273). The first three scores were not considered statistically different from average. White eighth graders scored significantly above average in reading. Statistics for black students were not reliable because of their small representation in the testing.
+
+In 2017, spending $1.6 billion on education for 76,000 public school children, represents more than $21,000 per student.[324]
+
+Education Week ranked the state second[325] in high school graduation rates for 2007.[326]
+
+In 2011, 91% of the population had graduated from high school compared with 85% nationally. Almost 34% have at least an undergraduate degree compared with 28% nationally.[327]
+
+In 2013, the ratio of pupils to teachers was the lowest in the country.[328]
+
+Experimentation at the University of Vermont by George Perkins Marsh, and later the influence of Vermont-born philosopher and educator John Dewey brought about the concepts of electives and learning by doing.
+
+Vermont has five colleges within the Vermont State Colleges system, University of Vermont (UVM), and thirteen other private, degree-granting colleges, including Bennington College, Champlain College, Goddard College, Marlboro College, Middlebury College, Saint Michael's College, the Vermont Law School, and Norwich University.
+
+In 2016, the University of Vermont charged the second highest tuition in the nation for four years, $61,000 for in-state students, to $147,000 for out-of-state students. This compares with an average of 34,800 nationally for in-state students.[329]
+
+Vermont festivals include the Vermont Maple Festival, Festival on the Green,[330] The Vermont Dairy Festival in Enosburg Falls,[331] the Apple Festival (held each Columbus Day Weekend), the Marlboro Music Festival, and the Vermont Brewers Festival.[332] The Vermont Symphony Orchestra is supported by the state and performs throughout the area.
+
+Since 1973 the Sage City Symphony, formed by composer Louis Calabro, has performed in the Bennington area. In 1988 a number of Vermont-based composers including Gwyneth Walker formed the Vermont Composers Consortium,[333][334] which was recognized by the governor proclaiming 2011 as The Year of the Composer.[335]
+
+Burlington, Vermont's largest city, hosts the annual Vermont International Film Festival, which presents ten days in October of independent films.[336] The Brattleboro-based Vermont Theatre Company presents an annual summer Shakespeare festival. Brattleboro also hosts the summertime Strolling of the Heifers parade which celebrates Vermont's dairy culture. The annual Green Mountain Film Festival is held in Montpelier.
+
+In the Northeast Kingdom, the Bread and Puppet Theatre holds weekly shows in Glover in a natural outdoor amphitheater.
+
+One of Vermont's best known musical acts is the rock band Phish, whose members met while attending school in Vermont and spent much of their early years playing at venues across the state.
+
+The Vermont-based House of LeMay[337] performs several shows a year, hosts the annual "Winter is a Drag Ball,"[338] and performs for fundraisers.
+
+Examples of folk art found in Vermont include the Vermontasaurus in Post Mills, a community in Thetford.
+
+The rate of volunteerism in Vermont was eighth in the nation with 37% in 2007. The state stood first in New England.[339] In 2011 Vermont residents were ranked as the healthiest in the country.[340] Also in 2011, Vermont was ranked as the fourth most peaceful state in the United States.[341] In 2011 Vermont residents were ranked as the sixth most fit/leanest in the country.[342] Vermonters were the second most active citizens of state with 55.9% meeting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's physical activity requirements.[343] Vermont was ranked as the 12th happiest state in the country.[344]
+
+There are a number of museums in the state.
+
+Winter sports are popular in New England, and Vermont's winter sports attractions are a big part of Vermont tourism. Some well known attractions include Burke Mountain ski area, Jay Peak Resort, Killington Ski Resort, Stowe Mountain Resort, the Quechee Club Ski Area, and Smugglers' Notch Resort.
+
+Vermont natives in the snowboarding profession include Kevin Pearce, Ross Powers, Hannah Teter, and Kelly Clark. Others learned snowboarding in the state, such as Louie Vito and Ellery Hollingsworth.
+
+Vermont Olympic gold medalists include Barbara Cochran,[345]
+Hannah Kearney,[346]
+Kelly Clark,[347]
+Ross Powers,[348]
+and Hannah Teter.[349]
+
+The largest professional franchise is the Vermont Lake Monsters, a single-A minor league baseball affiliate of the Oakland Athletics, based in Burlington. They were named the Vermont Expos before 2006.[350] Up until the 2011 season, they were the affiliate of the Washington Nationals (formerly the Montreal Expos).
+
+Currently the highest-ranked teams in basketball representing Vermont are the NCAA's Vermont Catamounts—male and female.[351]
+
+The Vermont Frost Heaves, the 2007 and 2008 American Basketball Association national champions, were a franchise of the Premier Basketball League, and were based in Barre and Burlington from the fall of 2006 through the winter of 2011.
+
+The Vermont Bucks, an indoor football team, were based in Burlington and began play in 2017 as the founding team in the Can-Am Indoor Football League.[352] For 2018, the Bucks joined the American Arena League, but folded prior to playing in the new league.[353]
+
+Vermont is home to the University of Vermont Men's and Women's hockey teams. Vermont's only professional hockey team was the Vermont Wild who played in the Federal Hockey League during the 2011–12 season, but the team folded before the season ended.
+
+The Vermont Voltage were a USL Premier Development League soccer club that played in St. Albans.
+
+Annually since 2002, high school statewide all stars compete against New Hampshire in ten sports during "Twin State" playoffs.[354]
+
+Vermont also has a few auto racing venues. The most popular of them is Thunder Road International Speedbowl in Barre, Vermont. It is well known for its tight racing and has become well known in short track stock car racing. Other racing circuits include the USC sanctioned Bear Ridge Speedway, and the NASCAR sanctioned Devil's Bowl Speedway. Some NASCAR Cup drivers have come to Vermont circuits to compete against local weekly drivers such as Tony Stewart, Clint Bowyer, Kyle Busch, Kenny Wallace, Ken Schrader,[355] and Christopher Bell.[356] Kevin Lepage from Shelburne, Vermont is one of a few professional drivers from Vermont. Racing series in Vermont include NASCAR Whelen All-American Series, American Canadian Tour, and Vermont's own Tiger Sportsman Series.
+
+The following were either born in Vermont or resided there for a substantial period during their lives and whose names are widely known.
+
+State House in Montpelier—Vermont's capital city
+
+Mount Mansfield—Vermont's highest mountain
+
+Church Street in Burlington—Vermont's largest city
+
+Burke Mountain from Lyndonville—in the state's "Northeast Kingdom"
+
+Coordinates: 44°00′N 72°42′W / 44°N 72.7°W / 44; -72.7

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+Glass is a non-crystalline, often transparent amorphous solid, that has widespread practical, technological, and decorative use in, for example, window panes, tableware, and optics. Glass is most often formed by rapid cooling (quenching) of the molten form; some glasses such as volcanic glass are naturally occurring. The most familiar, and historically the oldest, types of manufactured glass are "silicate glasses" based on the chemical compound silica (silicon dioxide, or quartz), the primary constituent of sand. Soda-lime glass, containing around 70% silica, accounts for around 90% of manufactured glass. The term glass, in popular usage, is often used to refer only to this type of material, although silica-free glasses often have desirable properties for applications in modern communications technology. Some objects, such as drinking glasses and eyeglasses, are so commonly made of silicate-based glass that they are simply called by the name of the material.
+
+Although brittle, silicate glass is extremely durable, and many examples of glass fragments exist from early glass-making cultures. Archaeological evidence suggests glass-making dates back to at least 3,600 BCE in Mesopotamia, Egypt, or Syria. The earliest known glass objects were beads, perhaps created accidentally during metal-working or the production of faience. Due to its ease of formability into any shape, glass has been traditionally used for vessels: bowls, vases, bottles, jars and drinking glasses. In its most solid forms, it has also been used for paperweights and marbles. Glass can be coloured by adding metal salts or painted and printed with vitreous enamels, leading to its use in stained glass windows and other glass art objects.
+
+The refractive, reflective and transmission properties of glass make glass suitable for manufacturing optical lenses, prisms, and optoelectronics materials. Extruded glass fibres have application as optical fibres in communications networks, thermal insulating material when matted as glass wool so as to trap air, or in glass-fibre reinforced plastic (fibreglass).
+
+The standard definition of a glass (or vitreous solid) is a solid formed by rapid melt quenching.[1][2][3][4] However, the term "glass" is often defined in a broader sense, to describe any non-crystalline (amorphous) solid that exhibits a glass transition when heated towards the liquid state.[4][5]
+
+Glass is an amorphous solid. Although the atomic-scale structure of glass shares characteristics of the structure of a supercooled liquid, glass exhibits all the mechanical properties of a solid.[6][7][8] As in other amorphous solids, the atomic structure of a glass lacks the long-range periodicity observed in crystalline solids. Due to chemical bonding constraints, glasses do possess a high degree of short-range order with respect to local atomic polyhedra.[9] The notion that glass flows to an appreciable extent over extended periods of time is not supported by empirical research or theoretical analysis (see viscosity in solids). Laboratory measurements of room temperature glass flow do show a motion consistent with a material viscosity on the order of 1017–1018 Pa s.[5][10]
+
+For melt quenching, if the cooling is sufficiently rapid (relative to the characteristic crystallization time) then crystallization is prevented and instead the disordered atomic configuration of the supercooled liquid is frozen into the solid state at Tg. The tendency for a material to form a glass while quenched is called glass-forming ability. This ability can be predicted by the rigidity theory.[12] Generally, a glass exists in a structurally metastable state with respect to its crystalline form, although in certain circumstances, for example in atactic polymers, there is no crystalline analogue of the amorphous phase.[13]
+
+Glass is sometimes considered to be a liquid due to its lack of a first-order phase transition[7][14]
+where certain thermodynamic variables such as volume, entropy and enthalpy are discontinuous through the glass transition range. The glass transition may be described as analogous to a second-order phase transition where the intensive thermodynamic variables such as the thermal expansivity and heat capacity are discontinuous.[2] Nonetheless, the equilibrium theory of phase transformations does not entirely hold for glass, and hence the glass transition cannot be classed as one of the classical equilibrium phase transformations in solids.[4][5]
+
+Glass can form naturally from volcanic magma. Obsidian is a common volcanic glass with high silica (SiO2) content formed when felsic lava extruded from a volcano cools rapidly.[15] Impactite is a form of glass formed by the impact of a meteorite, where Moldavite (found in central and eastern Europe), and Libyan desert glass (found in areas in the eastern Sahara, the deserts of eastern Libya and western Egypt) are notable examples.[16] Vitrification of quartz can also occur when lightning strikes sand, forming hollow, branching rootlike structures called fulgurites.[17] Trinitite is a glassy residue formed from the desert floor sand at the Trinity nuclear bomb test site.[18] Edeowie glass, found in South Australia, is proposed to originate from Pleistocene grassland fires, lightning strikes, or hypervelocity impact by one or several asteroids or comets.[19]
+
+A piece of volcanic obsidian glass
+
+Moldavite, a natural glass formed by meteorite impact, from Besednice, Bohemia
+
+Tube fulgurites
+
+Trinitite, a glass made by the Trinity nuclear-weapon test
+
+Libyan desert glass
+
+Naturally occurring obsidian glass was used by Stone Age societies as it fractures along very sharp edges, making it ideal for cutting tools and weapons.[20][21] Glassmaking dates back to at least 6000 years, long before humans had discovered how to smelt iron.[20] Archaeological evidence suggests that the first true synthetic glass was made in Lebanon and the coastal north Syria, Mesopotamia or ancient Egypt.[22][23] The earliest known glass objects, of the mid third millennium BCE, were beads, perhaps initially created as accidental by-products of metal-working (slags) or during the production of faience, a pre-glass vitreous material made by a process similar to glazing.[24]
+Early glass was rarely transparent and often contained impurities and imperfections.[20] The early glass have been declared as faience and the true glass did not appear in the same area until 15th century BC.[25] Red orange glass beads excavated from the Indus Valley Civilization dated before 1700 BC as early as 1900 BC are earlier than sustained glass production which appeared around 1600 in mesopotamia and 1500 in Egypt.[26][27] During the Late Bronze Age there was a rapid growth in glassmaking technology in Egypt and Western Asia.[22] Archaeological finds from this period include coloured glass ingots, vessels, and beads.[22][28] Much early glass production relied on grinding techniques borrowed from stone working meaning that glass was ground and carved in a cold state.[29]
+
+The term glass developed in the late Roman Empire. It was in the Roman glassmaking centre at Trier, now in modern Germany, that the late-Latin term glesum originated, probably from a Germanic word for a transparent, lustrous substance.[30] Glass objects have been recovered across the Roman Empire[31] in domestic, funerary,[32] and industrial contexts.[33] Examples of Roman glass have been found outside of the former Roman Empire in China,[34] the Baltics, the Middle East and India.[35] The Romans perfected Cameo glass, produced by etching and carving through fused layers of different colours to produce a design in relief on the glass object.[36]
+
+Glass was used extensively during the Middle Ages. Anglo-Saxon glass has been found across England during archaeological excavations of both settlement and cemetery sites.[37] From the 10th-century onwards, glass was employed in stained glass windows of churches and cathedrals, with famous examples at Chartres Cathedral and the Basilica of Saint Denis. By the 14th-century, architects were designing buildings with walls of stained glass such as Sainte-Chapelle, Paris, (1203–1248) and the East end of Gloucester Cathedral. With the Renaissance, and a change in architectural style, the use of large stained glass windows became much less prevalent,[38] although stained glass had a major revival with Gothic Revival architecture in the 19th century.[39]
+
+During the 13th century, the island of Murano, Venice, became a centre for glass making, building on medieval techniques to produce colourful ornamental pieces in large quantities.[36] Murano glass makers developed the exceptionally clear colourless glass cristallo, so called for its resemblance to natural crystal, and extensively used for windows, mirrors, ships' lanterns, and lenses.[20] In the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries, enamelling and gilding on glass vessels was perfected in Egypt and Syria.[40] Towards the end of the 17th century Bohemia became an important region for glass-production, remaining so until the start of the 20th century. By the 17th century, glass was also being produced in England in the Venetian tradition. In around 1675, George Ravenscroft invented lead crystal glass, with cut glass becoming fashionable in the 18th century.[36] Ornamental glass objects became an important art medium during the Art Nouveau period in the late 19th century.[36]
+
+Throughout the 20th century, new mass production techniques led to the widespread availability and utility for bulk glass and its increased use as a building material and new applications of glass.[41] In the 1920s a mould-etch process was developed, in which art was etched directly into the mould, so that each cast piece emerged from the mould with the image already on the surface of the glass. This reduced manufacturing costs and, combined with a wider use of coloured glass, led to cheap glassware in the 1930s, which later became known as Depression glass.[42] In the 1950s, Pilkington Bros., England, developed the float glass process, producing high-quality distortion free flat sheets of glass by floating on molten tin.[20] Modern multi-story buildings are frequently constructed with curtain walls made almost entirely of glass.[43] Similarly, laminated glass has been widely applied to vehicles for windscreens.[44] Optical glass for spectacles has been used since the Middle Ages.[45] The production of lenses has become increasingly proficient, aiding astronomers[46] as well as having other application in medicine and science.[47] Glass is also employed as the aperture cover in many solar energy collectors.[48]
+
+In the 21st century, glass manufacturers have developed different brands of chemically strengthened glass for widespread application in touchscreens for smartphones, tablet computers, and many other types of information appliances. These include Gorilla glass, developed and manufactured by Corning, AGC Inc.'s Dragontrail and Schott AG's Xensation.[49][50][51]
+
+Glass is in widespread use in optical systems due to its ability to refract, reflect, and transmit light following geometrical optics. The most common and oldest applications of glass in optics are as lenses, windows, mirrors, and prisms.[52] The key optical properties refractive index, dispersion, and transmission, of glass are strongly dependent on chemical composition and, to a lesser degree, its thermal history.[52] Optical glass typically has a refractive index of 1.4 to 2.4 and Abbe number, which characterises dispersion, of 15 to 100.[52] Refractive index may be modified by high-density (refractive index increases) or low-density (refractive index decreases) additives.[53]
+
+Glass transparency results from the absence of grain boundaries which diffusely scatter light in polycrystalline materials.[54] Semi-opacity due to crystallization may be induced in many glasses by maintaining them for a long period at a temperature just insufficient to cause fusion. In this way, the crystalline, devitrified material, known as Réaumur's glass porcelain is produced.[40][55] Although generally transparent to visible light, glasses may be opaque to other wavelengths of light. While silicate glasses are generally opaque to infrared wavelengths with a transmission cut-off at 4 μm, heavy-metal fluoride and chalcogenide glasses are transparent to infrared wavelengths of 7 to 18 μm, respectively.[56] The addition of metallic oxides results in different coloured glasses as the metallic ions will absorb wavelengths of light corresponding to specific colours.[56]
+
+In the manufacturing process, glasses can be poured, formed, extruded and moulded into forms ranging from flat sheets to highly intricate shapes.[57] The finished product is brittle and will fracture, unless laminated or tempered to enhance durability.[58][59] Glass is typically inert, resistant to chemical attack, and can mostly withstand the action of water, making it an ideal material for the manufacture of containers for foodstuffs and most chemicals.[20][60][61] Nevertheless, although usually highly resistant to chemical attack, glass will corrode or dissolve under some conditions.[60][62] The materials that make up a particular glass composition have an effect on how quickly the glass corrodes. Glasses containing a high proportion of alkali or alkaline earth elements are more susceptible to corrosion than other glass compositions.[63][64]
+
+The density of glass varies with chemical composition with values ranging from 2.2 grams per cubic centimetre (2,200 kg/m3) for fused silica to 7.2 grams per cubic centimetre (7,200 kg/m3) for dense flint glass.[65] Glass is stronger than most metals, with a theoretical tensile strength estimated at 14 gigapascals (2,000,000 psi) to 35 gigapascals (5,100,000 psi) due to its ability to undergo reversible compression without fracture. However, the presence of scratches, bubbles, and other microscopic flaws lead to a typical range of 14 megapascals (2,000 psi) to 175 megapascals (25,400 psi) in most commercial glasses.[56] Several processes such as toughening can increase the strength of glass.[66] Carefully drawn flawless glass fibres can be produced with strength of up to 11.5 gigapascals (1,670,000 psi).[56]
+
+The observation that old windows are sometimes found to be thicker at the bottom than at the top is often offered as supporting evidence for the view that glass flows over a timescale of centuries, the assumption being that the glass has exhibited the liquid property of flowing from one shape to another.[67] This assumption is incorrect, as once solidified, glass stops flowing. Instead, glass manufacturing processes in the past produced sheets of non-uniform thickness leading to observed sagging and ripples in old windows.[7]
+
+Silicon dioxide (SiO2) is a common fundamental constituent of glass. Fused quartz is a glass made from chemically-pure silica.[64] It has very low thermal expansion and excellent resistance to thermal shock, being able to survive immersion in water while red hot, resists high temperatures (1000–1500 °C) and chemical weathering, and is very hard. It is also transparent to a wider spectral range than ordinary glass, extending from the visible further into both the UV and IR ranges, and is sometimes used where transparency to these wavelengths is necessary. Fused quartz is used for high-temperature applications such as furnace tubes, lighting tubes, melting crucibles, etc.[68] However, its high melting temperature (1723°C) and viscosity make it difficult to work with. Therefore, normally, other substances (fluxes) are added to lower the melting temperature and simplify glass processing.[69]
+
+Sodium carbonate (Na2CO3, "soda") is a common additive and acts to lowers the glass-transition temperature. However, Sodium silicate is water-soluble, so lime (CaO, calcium oxide, generally obtained from limestone), some magnesium oxide (MgO) and aluminium oxide (Al2O3) are other common components added to improve chemical durability. Soda-lime glasses (Na2O) + lime (CaO) + magnesia (MgO) + alumina (Al2O3) account for over 75% of manufactured glass, containing about 70 to 74% silica by weight.[64][70] Soda-lime-silicate glass is transparent, easily formed, and most suitable for window glass and tableware.[71] However, it has a high thermal expansion and poor resistance to heat.[71] Soda-lime glass is typically used for windows, bottles, light bulbs, and jars.[69]
+
+Borosilicate glasses (e.g. Pyrex, Duran) typically contain 5–13% boron trioxide (B2O3).[69] Borosilicate glasses have fairly low coefficients of thermal expansion (7740 Pyrex CTE is 3.25×10−6/°C[72] as compared to about 9×10−6/°C for a typical soda-lime glass[73]). They are, therefore, less subject to stress caused by thermal expansion and thus less vulnerable to cracking from thermal shock. They are commonly used for e.g. labware, household cookware, and sealed beam car head lamps.[69]
+
+The addition of lead(II) oxide into silicate glass lowers melting point and viscosity of the melt.[74] The high density of Lead glass (silica + lead oxide (PbO) + potassium oxide (K2O) + soda (Na2O) + zinc oxide (ZnO) + alumina) results in a high electron density, and hence high refractive index, making the look of glassware more brilliant and causing noticeably more specular reflection and increased optical dispersion.[64][75] Lead glass has a high elasticity, making the glassware more workable and giving rise to a clear "ring" sound when struck. However, lead glass cannot withstand high temperatures well.[68] Lead oxide also facilitates solubility of other metal oxides and is used in colored glass. The viscosity decrease of lead glass melt is very significant (roughly 100 times in comparison with soda glass); this allows easier removal of bubbles and working at lower temperatures, hence its frequent use as an additive in vitreous enamels and glass solders. The high ionic radius of the Pb2+ ion renders it highly immobile and hinders the movement of other ions; lead glasses therefore have high electrical resistance, about two orders of magnitude higher than soda-lime glass (108.5 vs 106.5 Ω⋅cm, DC at 250 °C).[76]
+
+Aluminosilicate glass typically contains 5-10% alumina (Al2O3). Aluminosilicate glass tends to be more difficult to melt and shape compared to borosilicate compositions, but has excellent thermal resistance and durability.[69] Aluminosilicate glass is extensively used for fiberglass,[77] used for making glass-reinforced plastics (boats, fishing rods, etc.), top-of-stove cookware, and halogen bulb glass.[68][69]
+
+The addition of barium also increases the refractive index. Thorium oxide gives glass a high refractive index and low dispersion and was formerly used in producing high-quality lenses, but due to its radioactivity has been replaced by lanthanum oxide in modern eyeglasses.[78] Iron can be incorporated into glass to absorb infrared radiation, for example in heat-absorbing filters for movie projectors, while cerium(IV) oxide can be used for glass that absorbs ultraviolet wavelengths.[79] Fluorine lowers the dielectric constant of glass. Fluorine is highly electronegative and lowers the polarizability of the material. Fluoride silicate glasses are used in manufacture of integrated circuits as an insulator.[80]
+
+Glass-ceramic materials contain both non-crystalline glass and crystalline ceramic phases. They are formed by controlled nucleation and partial crystallisation of a base glass by heat treatment.[81] Crystalline grains are often embedded within a non-crystalline intergranular phase of grain boundaries. Glass-ceramics exhibit advantageous thermal, chemical, biological, and dielectric properties as compared to metals or organic polymers.[81]
+
+The most commercially important property of glass-ceramics is their imperviousness to thermal shock. Thus, glass-ceramics have become extremely useful for countertop cooking and industrial processes. The negative thermal expansion coefficient (CTE) of the crystalline ceramic phase can be balanced with the positive CTE of the glassy phase. At a certain point (~70% crystalline) the glass-ceramic has a net CTE near zero. This type of glass-ceramic exhibits excellent mechanical properties and can sustain repeated and quick temperature changes up to 1000 ��C.[82][81]
+
+Fibreglass (also called glass fibre reinforced plastic, GRP) is a composite material made by reinforcing a plastic resin with glass fibres. It is made by melting glass and stretching the glass into fibres. These fibres are woven together into a cloth and left to set in a plastic resin.[83][84][85]
+Fibreglass has the properties of being lightweight and corrosion resistant, and is a good insulator enabling its use as building insulation material and for electronic housing for consumer products. Fibreglass was originally used in the United Kingdom and United States during World War II to manufacture radomes. Uses of fibreglass include building and construction materials, boat hulls, car body parts, and aerospace composite materials.[86][83][85]
+
+Glass-fibre wool is an excellent thermal and sound insulation material, commonly used in buildings (e.g. attic and cavity wall insulation), and plumbing (e.g. pipe insulation), and soundproofing.[86] It is produced by forcing molten glass through a fine mesh by centripetal force, and breaking the extruded glass fibres into short lengths using a stream of high-velocity air. The fibres are bonded with an adhesive spray and the resulting wool mat is cut and packed in rolls or panels.[56]
+
+Besides common silica-based glasses many other inorganic and organic materials may also form glasses, including metals, aluminates, phosphates, borates, chalcogenides, fluorides, germanates (glasses based on GeO2), tellurites (glasses based on TeO2), antimonates (glasses based on Sb2O3), arsenates (glasses based on As2O3), titanates (glasses based on TiO2), tantalates (glasses based on Ta2O5), nitrates, carbonates, plastics, acrylic, and many other substances.[5] Some of these glasses (e.g. Germanium dioxide (GeO2, Germania), in many respects a structural analogue of silica, fluoride, aluminate, phosphate, borate, and chalcogenide glasses) have physico-chemical properties useful for their application in fibre-optic waveguides in communication networks and other specialized technological applications.[88][89]
+
+Silica-free glasses may often have poor glass forming tendencies. Novel techniques, including containerless processing by aerodynamic levitation (cooling the melt whilst it floats on a gas stream) or splat quenching (pressing the melt between two metal anvils or rollers), may be used increase cooling rate, or reduce crystal nucleation triggers.[90][91][92]
+
+In the past, small batches of amorphous metals with high surface area configurations (ribbons, wires, films, etc.) have been produced through the implementation of extremely rapid rates of cooling. Amorphous metal wires have been produced by sputtering molten metal onto a spinning metal disk. More recently a number of alloys have been produced in layers with thickness exceeding 1 millimeter. These are known as bulk metallic glasses (BMG). Liquidmetal Technologies sell a number of zirconium-based BMGs. Batches of amorphous steel have also been produced that demonstrate mechanical properties far exceeding those found in conventional steel alloys.[93][94][95]
+
+Experimental evidence indicates that the system Al-Fe-Si may undergo a first-order transition to an amorphous form (dubbed "q-glass") on rapid cooling from the melt. Transmission electron microscopy (TEM) images indicate that q-glass nucleates from the melt as discrete particles with a uniform spherical growth in all directions. While x-ray diffraction reveals the isotropic nature of q-glass, a nucleation barrier exists implying an interfacial discontinuity (or internal surface) between the glass and melt phases.[96][97]
+
+Important polymer glasses include amorphous and glassy pharmaceutical compounds. These are useful because the solubility of the compound is greatly increased when it is amorphous compared to the same crystalline composition. Many emerging pharmaceuticals are practically insoluble in their crystalline forms.[98] Many polymer thermoplastics familiar from everyday use are glasses. For many applications, like glass bottles or eyewear, polymer glasses (acrylic glass, polycarbonate or polyethylene terephthalate) are a lighter alternative to traditional glass.[99]
+
+Molecular liquids, electrolytes, molten salts, and aqueous solutions are mixtures of different molecules or ions that do not form a covalent network but interact only through weak van der Waals forces or through transient hydrogen bonds. In a mixture of three or more ionic species of dissimilar size and shape, crystallization can be so difficult that the liquid can easily be supercooled into a glass.[100][101] Examples include LiCl:RH2O (a solution of lithium chloride salt and water molecules) in the composition range 4<R<8.[102] sugar glass,[103] or Ca0.4K0.6(NO3)1.4.[104] Glass electrolytes in the form of Ba-doped Li-glass and Ba-doped Na-glass have been proposed as solutions to problems identified with organic liquid electrolytes used in modern lithium-ion battery cells.[105]
+
+Following the glass batch preparation and mixing, the raw materials are transported to the furnace. Soda-lime glass for mass production is melted in gas fired units. Smaller scale furnaces for specialty glasses include electric melters, pot furnaces, and day tanks.[70]
+After melting, homogenization and refining (removal of bubbles), the glass is formed. Flat glass for windows and similar applications is formed by the float glass process, developed between 1953 and 1957 by Sir Alastair Pilkington and Kenneth Bickerstaff of the UK's Pilkington Brothers, who created a continuous ribbon of glass using a molten tin bath on which the molten glass flows unhindered under the influence of gravity. The top surface of the glass is subjected to nitrogen under pressure to obtain a polished finish.[106] Container glass for common bottles and jars is formed by blowing and pressing methods.[107] This glass is often slightly modified chemically (with more alumina and calcium oxide) for greater water resistance.[108]
+
+Once the desired form is obtained, glass is usually annealed for the removal of stresses and to increase the glass's hardness and durability.[109] Surface treatments, coatings or lamination may follow to improve the chemical durability (glass container coatings, glass container internal treatment), strength (toughened glass, bulletproof glass, windshields[110]), or optical properties (insulated glazing, anti-reflective coating).[111]
+
+New chemical glass compositions or new treatment techniques can be initially investigated in small-scale laboratory experiments. The raw materials for laboratory-scale glass melts are often different from those used in mass production because the cost factor has a low priority. In the laboratory mostly pure chemicals are used. Care must be taken that the raw materials have not reacted with moisture or other chemicals in the environment (such as alkali or alkaline earth metal oxides and hydroxides, or boron oxide), or that the impurities are quantified (loss on ignition).[112] Evaporation losses during glass melting should be considered during the selection of the raw materials, e.g., sodium selenite may be preferred over easily evaporating selenium dioxide (SeO2). Also, more readily reacting raw materials may be preferred over relatively inert ones, such as aluminum hydroxide (Al(OH)3) over alumina (Al2O3). Usually, the melts are carried out in platinum crucibles to reduce contamination from the crucible material. Glass homogeneity is achieved by homogenizing the raw materials mixture (glass batch), by stirring the melt, and by crushing and re-melting the first melt. The obtained glass is usually annealed to prevent breakage during processing.[112][113]
+
+Colour in glass may be obtained by addition of homogenously distributed electrically charged ions (or colour centres). While ordinary soda-lime glass appears colourless in thin section, iron(II) oxide (FeO) impurities produce a green tint in thick sections.[114] Manganese dioxide (MnO2), which gives glass a purple colour, may be added to remove the green tint given by FeO.[115] FeO and chromium(III) oxide (Cr2O3) additives are used in the production of green bottles.[114] Iron (III) oxide, on the other-hand, produces yellow or yellow-brown glass.[116] Low concentrations (0.025 to 0.1%) of cobalt oxide (CoO) produces rich, deep blue cobalt glass.[117] Chromium is a very powerful colourising agent, yielding dark green.[118]
+Sulphur combined with carbon and iron salts produces amber glass ranging from yellowish to almost black.[119] A glass melt can also acquire an amber colour from a reducing combustion atmosphere.[120] Cadmium sulfide produces imperial red, and combined with selenium can produce shades of yellow, orange, and red.[114][116] The additive Copper(II) oxide (CuO) produces a turquoise colour in glass, in contrast to Copper(I) oxide (Cu2O) which gives a dull brown-red colour.[121]
+
+Iron(II) oxide and chromium(III) oxide additives are often used in the production of green bottles.[114]
+
+Cobalt oxide produces rich, deep blue glass, such as Bristol blue glass.
+
+Different oxide additives produce the different colours in glass: turquoise (Copper(II) oxide),[121] purple (Manganese dioxide),[114] and red (Cadmium sulfide).[114]
+
+Red glass bottle with yellow glass overlay
+
+Amber-coloured glass
+
+Four-colour Roman glass bowl, manufactured circa 1st century B.C.
+
+Soda-lime sheet glass is typically used as transparent glazing material, typically as windows in external walls of buildings. Float or rolled sheet glass products is cut to size either by scoring and snapping the material, laser cutting, water jets, or diamond bladed saw. The glass may be thermally or chemically tempered (strengthened) for safety and bent or curved during heating. Surface coatings may be added for specific functions such as scratch resistance, blocking specific wavelengths of light (e.g. infrared or ultraviolet), dirt-repellence (e.g. self-cleaning glass), or switchable electrochromic coatings.[122]
+
+Structural glazing systems represent one of the most significant architectural innovations of modern times, where glass buildings now often dominate skylines of many modern cities.[123] These systems use stainless steel fittings countersunk into recesses in the corners of the glass panels allowing strengthened panes to appear unsupported creating a flush exterior.[123] Structural glazing systems have their roots in iron and glass conservatories of the nineteenth century[124]
+
+Glass is an essential component of tableware and is typically used for water, beer and wine drinking glasses.[47] Wine glasses are typically stemware, i.e. goblets formed from a bowl, stem, and foot. Crystal or Lead crystal glass may be cut and polished to produce decorative drinking glasses with gleaming facets.[125][126] Other uses of glass in tableware include decanters, jugs, plates, and bowls.[47]
+
+Wine glasses and other glass tableware
+
+Dimpled glass beer pint jug
+
+Cut lead crystal glass
+
+A glass decanter and stopper
+
+Glass is an important material in scientific laboratories for the manufacture of experimental apparatus because it is relatively cheap, readily formed into required shapes for experiment, easy to keep clean, can withstand heat and cold treatment, is generally non-reactive with many reagents, and its transparency allows for the observation of chemical reactions and processes.[127][128] Laboratory glassware applications include flasks, petri dishes, test tubes, pipettes, graduated cylinders, glass lined metallic containers for chemical processing, fractionation columns, glass pipes, Schlenk lines, gauges, and thermometers.[129][127] Although most standard laboratory glassware has been mass-produced since the 1920s, scientists still employ skilled glassblowers to manufacture bespoke glass apparatus for their experimental requirements.[130]
+
+A Vigreux column in a laboratory setup
+
+A Schlenk line with four ports
+
+Graduated cylinders
+
+Erlenmeyer flask
+
+Glass is a ubiquitous material in optics by virtue of its ability to refract, reflect, and transmit light. These and other optical properties can be controlled by varying chemical compositions, thermal treatment, and manufacturing techniques. The many applications of glass in optics includes glasses for eyesight correction, imaging optics (e.g. lenses and mirrors in telescopes, microscopes, and cameras), fibre optics in telecommunications technology, and integrated optics. Microlenses and gradient-index optics (where the refractive index is non-uniform) find application in e.g. reading optical discs, laser printers, photocopiers, and laser diodes.
+[52]
+
+The 19th century saw a revival in ancient glass-making techniques including cameo glass, achieved for the first time since the Roman Empire, initially mostly for pieces in a neo-classical style. The Art Nouveau movement made great use of glass, with René Lalique, Émile Gallé, and Daum of Nancy in the first French wave of the movement, producing coloured vases and similar pieces, often in cameo glass or in luster techniques.[131] Louis Comfort Tiffany in America specialized in stained glass, both secular and religious, in panels and his famous lamps. The early 20th-century saw the large-scale factory production of glass art by firms such as Waterford and Lalique. Small studios may hand-produce glass artworks. Techniques for producing glass art include blowing, kiln-casting, fusing, slumping, pâte de verre, flame-working, hot-sculpting and cold-working. Cold work includes traditional stained glass work and other methods of shaping glass at room temperature. Objects made out of glass include vessels, paperweights, marbles, beads, sculptures and installation art.[132]
+
+Cameo glass vase with clematis, by art nouveau artist Émile Gallé
+
+Glass vase by art nouveau artist René Lalique
+
+Tiffany glass panel "Girl with Cherry Blossoms"
+
+A glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly, "The Sun" at the "Gardens of Glass" exhibition in Kew Gardens, London
+
+Modern stained glass window
+
+Glass marbles
+
+A flower bouquet glass paperweight