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+The Romani (also spelled Romany /ˈroʊməni/, /ˈrɒ-/), colloquially known as Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants living mostly in Europe, and diaspora populations in the Americas. The Romani as a people originate from the northern Indian subcontinent,[61][62][63] from the Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab regions of modern-day India.[62][63]
+Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani "came from a single group that left northwestern India" in about 512 CE.[64] Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65] They are dispersed, but their most concentrated populations are located in Europe, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (including Turkey, Spain and Southern France). The Romani arrived in Mid-West Asia and Europe around 1007.[66] They have been associated with another Indo-Aryan group, the Dom people: the two groups have been said to have separated from each other or, at least, to share a similar history.[67] Specifically, the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the 6th and 11th century.[66]
+The Romani are widely known in English by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered by some Roma people to be pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity.[68] Beginning in 1888, the Gypsy Lore Society[69] started to publish a journal that was meant to dispel rumors about their lifestyle.[70]
+Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States;[6] and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from people deported by the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition.[71] In migrations since the late 19th century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada.[72][page needed]
+In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India.[73] The conference ended with a recommendation to the government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.[74]
+The Romani language is divided into several dialects which together have an estimated number of speakers of more than two million.[75] The total number of Romani people is at least twice as high (several times as high according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence or of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.[76]
+Perceived as derogatory, many of these exonyms are falling out of standard usage and being replaced by a version of the name Roma.
+Rom means man or husband in the Romani language. It has the variants dom and lom, which may be related to the Sanskrit words dam-pati (lord of the house, husband), dama (to subdue), lom (hair), lomaka (hairy), loman, roman (hairy), romaça (man with beard and long hair).[86] Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma (member of a low caste of travelling musicians and dancers).
+In the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning 'man of the Roma ethnic group' or 'man, husband', with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni. However, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of both genders.[87]
+Romani is the feminine adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as an ethnic name, while others (such as the Sinti, or the Romanichal) do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group.[88]
+Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., rrom and rromani. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/ (also written as ř and rh), which in some Romani dialects has remained different from the one written with a single r. The rr spelling is common in certain institutions (such as the INALCO Institute in Paris), or used in certain countries, e.g., Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians (sg. român, pl. români).[89]
+In the English language (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), Rom is a noun (with the plural Roma or Roms) and an adjective, while Romani (Romany) is also a noun (with the plural Romani, the Romani, Romanies, or Romanis) and an adjective.  Both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy.[90] Romani was sometimes spelled Rommany, but more often Romany, while today Romani is the most popular spelling.  Occasionally, the double r spelling (e.g., Rroma, Rromani) mentioned above is also encountered in English texts.
+The term Roma is increasingly encountered,[91][92] as a generic term for the Romani people.[93][94][95]
+Because all Romanis use the word Romani as an adjective, the term became a noun for the entire ethnic group.[96] Today, the term Romani is used by some organizations, including the United Nations and the US Library of Congress.[89] However, the Council of Europe and other organizations consider that Roma is the correct term referring to all related groups, regardless of their country of origin, and recommend that Romani be restricted to the language and culture: Romani language, Romani culture.[87]
+The standard assumption is that the demonyms of the Romani people, Lom and Dom share the same origin.[97][98]
+The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. The Spanish term Gitano and French Gitan have similar etymologies. They are ultimately derived from the Greek Αιγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), meaning Egyptian, via Latin. This designation owes its existence to the belief, common in the Middle Ages, that the Romani, or some related group (such as the Middle Eastern Dom people), were itinerant Egyptians.[99][100] This belief appears to derive from verses in the biblical Book of Ezekiel (29: 6 and 12-13) referring to the Egyptians being scattered among the nations by an angry God. According to one narrative, they were exiled from Egypt as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus.[101] In his book 'The Zincali: an account of the Gypsies of Spain', George Borrow notes that when they first appeared in Germany it was under the character of Egyptians doing penance for their having refused hospitality to the Virgin and her son. As described in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the medieval French referred to the Romanies as Egyptiens.
+This exonym is sometimes written with capital letter, to show that it designates an ethnic group.[102] However, the word is considered derogatory because of its negative and stereotypical associations.[94][103][104][105] The Council of Europe consider that "Gypsy" or equivalent terms, as well as administrative terms such as "Gens du Voyage" (referring in fact to an ethnic group but not acknowledging ethnic identification) are not in line with European recommendations.[87] In North America, the word Gypsy is most commonly used as a reference to Romani ethnicity, though lifestyle and fashion are at times also referenced by using this word.[106]
+Another common designation of the Romani people is Cingane (alt. Tsinganoi, Zigar, Zigeuner), which likely derives from Athinganoi, the name of a Christian sect with whom the Romani (or some related group) became associated in the Middle Ages.[100][107][108][109]
+For a variety of reasons, many Romanis choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe (as of 2019),[110] although some high estimates by Romani organizations give numbers as high as 14 million.[111] Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. In the European Union there are an estimated 6 million Romanis.[112]  Several million more Romanis may live outside Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.[113]
+Like the Roma in general, many different ethnonyms are given to subgroups of Roma. Sometimes a subgroup uses more than one endonym, is commonly known by an exonym or erroneously by the endonym of another subgroup. The only name approaching an all-encompassing self-description is Rom.[114] Even when subgroups don't use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and Gadjo (non-Roma).[114] For instance, while the main group of Roma in German-speaking countries refer to themselves as Sinti, their name for their original language is Romanes.
+Subgroups have been described as, in part, a result of the Hindu caste system, which the founding population of Rom almost certainly experienced in their South Asian urheimat.[114][115]
+Many groups use names apparently derived from the Romani word kalo or calo, meaning "black" or "absorbing all light".[116] This closely resembles words for "black" or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Sanskrit काल kāla: "black", "of a dark colour").[114] Likewise, the name of the Dom or Domba people of North India – to whom the Roma have genetic,[117] cultural and linguistic links – has come to imply "dark-skinned", in some Indian languages.[118] Hence names such as kale and calé may have originated as an exonym or a euphemism for Roma.
+Other endonyms for Romani include, for example:
+The Roma people have a number of distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century, from a migration out of northwestern India beginning about 600 years earlier.[132][64] They settled in present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.[133] Brazil has the second largest Romani population in the Americas, estimated at approximately 800,000 by the 2011 census. The Romani people are mainly called by non-Romani ethnic Brazilians as ciganos. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup Calés (Kale), of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president during 1956–1961 term, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline; and Washington Luís, last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930 term), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.
+There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide.[134] Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for fear of discrimination.[135][better source needed] Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations and no longer identify only as Romani, or not at all.
+As of the early 2000s, an estimated 3.8[136][page needed] to 9 million Romani people lived in Europe and Asia Minor.[137][page needed] although some Romani organizations estimate numbers as high as 14 million.[138]  Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkan peninsula, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia, and Ukraine. The total number of Romani living outside Europe are primarily in the Middle East and North Africa and in the Americas, and are estimated in total at more than two million. Some countries do not collect data by ethnicity.
+The Romani people identify as distinct ethnicities based in part on territorial, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation.[139][140][141][142]
+Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma.[132][64][143] Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani's migration early history are based on linguistic theory.[144] There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.[145]
+According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh, from Iran and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, lute-playing experts.  When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox, a donkey, and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music for free for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags and go wandering around the world on their donkeys.[146]
+The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon, for example, regarding body parts or daily routines.[147]
+More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.[148]
+Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second Layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative.[149] This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent –  but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.[67][150]
+In phonology, Romani language shares several isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves several dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages.[151]
+Numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with Sanskrit, Hindi and Persian forms for comparison.[152] Note that Romani 7–9 are borrowed from Greek.
+Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group.[132][64][153] According to the study, the ancestors of present scheduled castes and scheduled tribes populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.[154] In December 2012, additional findings appeared to confirm the "Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago".[64] They reached the Balkans about 900 years ago[132] and then spread throughout Europe. The team also found the Roma to display genetic isolation, as well as "differential gene flow in time and space with non-Romani Europeans".[132][64]
+Genetic research published in European Journal of Human Genetics "has revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65]
+Genetic evidence supports the medieval migration from India. The Romani have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations",[155] while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect".[155][156]
+A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group".[157] The same study found that "a single lineage... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males".[157] A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".[158]
+Haplogroup H-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for approximately 60% of the total.[159] Haplogroup H is uncommon in Europe but present in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.
+A study of 444 people representing three different ethnic groups in North Macedonia found mtDNA haplogroups M5a1 and H7a1a were dominant in Romanies (13.7% and 10.3%, respectively).[160]
+Y-DNA composition of Romani in North Macedonia, based on 57 samples:[161]
+Y-DNA Haplogroup H1a occurs in Romani at frequencies 7–70%. Unlike ethnic Hungarians, among Hungarian and Slovakian Romani subpopulations, Haplogroup E-M78 and I1 usually occur above 10% and sometimes over 20%.  While among Slovakian and Tiszavasvari Romani the dominant haplogroup is H1a, among Tokaj Romani is Haplogroup J2a (23%), while among Taktaharkány Romani is Haplogroup I2a (21%).[162] Five, rather consistent founder lineages throughout the subpopulations, were found among Romani – J-M67 and J-M92 (J2), H-M52 (H1a1), and I-P259 (I1?). Haplogroup I-P259 as H is not found at frequencies of over 3 percent among host populations, while haplogroups E and I are absent in South Asia. The lineages E-V13, I-P37 (I2a) and R-M17 (R1a) may represent gene flow from the host populations. Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek Romani are dominated by Haplogroup H-M82 (H1a1), while among Spanish Romani J2 is prevalent.[163] In Serbia among Kosovo[a] and Belgrade Romani Haplogroup H prevails, while among Vojvodina Romani, H drops to 7 percent and E-V13 rises to a prevailing level.[164]
+Among non-Roma Europeans Haplogroup H is extremely rare, peaking at 7 percent among Albanians from Tirana[165] and 11 percent among Bulgarian Turks. It occurs at 5 percent among Hungarians,[162] although the carriers might be of Romani origin.[163] Among non Roma-speaking Europeans at 2 percent among Slovaks,[166] 2 percent among Croats,[167] 1 percent among Macedonians from Skopje, 3 percent among Macedonian Albanians,[168] 1 percent among Serbs from Belgrade,[169] 3 percent among Bulgarians from Sofia,[170] 1 percent among Austrians and Swiss,[171] 3 percent among Romanians from Ploiesti, 1 percent among Turks.[166]
+They may have emerged from the modern Indian state of Rajasthan,[172] migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region, Sindh and Baluchistan of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BC. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about CE 500.[64]
+It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire.[173] The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.[151][174]
+Though according to a 2012 genomic study, the Romani reached the Balkans as early as the 12th century,[175] the first historical records of the Romani reaching south-eastern Europe are from the 14th century: in 1322, after leaving Ireland on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Irish Franciscan friar Symon Semeonis encountered a migrant group of Romani outside the town of Candia (modern Heraklion), in Crete, calling them "the descendants of Cain"; his account is the earliest surviving description by a Western chronicler of the Romani in Europe.
+In 1350, Ludolph of Saxony mentioned a similar people with a unique language whom he called Mandapolos, a word some think derives from the Greek word mantes (meaning prophet or fortune teller).[176]
+Around 1360, a fiefdom called the Feudum Acinganorum was established in Corfu, which mainly used Romani serfs and to which the Romani on the island were subservient.[177]
+By the 1440s, they were recorded in Germany;[178] and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden.[179] Some Romani migrated from Persia through North Africa, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. The two currents met in France.[180]
+Their early history shows a mixed reception. Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in 1417. Romanies were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Catalonia in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530 (see Egyptians Act 1530), and Denmark in 1536. In 1510, any Romani found in Switzerland were ordered put to death, with similar rules established in England in 1554, and Denmark in 1589, whereas Portugal began deportations of Romanies to its colonies in 1538.[182]
+A 1596 English statute gave Romanis special privileges that other wanderers lacked. France passed a similar law in 1683. Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Romanies "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs), but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital.[183] In 1595, Ștefan Răzvan overcame his birth into slavery, and became the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia.[182]
+Since a royal edict by Charles II in 1695, Spanish Romanis had been restricted to certain towns.[184] An official edict in 1717 restricted them to only 75 towns and districts, so that they would not be concentrated in any one region. In the Great Gypsy Round-up, Romani were arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish Monarchy in 1749.
+During the latter part of the 17th century, around the Franco-Dutch War, both France and Holland needed thousands of men to fight. Some recruitment took the form of rounding up vagrants and the poor to work the galleys and provide the armies' labour force. With this background, Romanis were targets of both the French and the Dutch.
+After the wars, and into the first decade of the 18th century, Romanis were slaughtered with impunity throughout Holland. Romanis, called ‘heiden’ by the Dutch, wandered throughout the rural areas of Europe and became the societal pariahs of the age. Heidenjachten, translated as "heathen hunt" happened throughout Holland in an attempt to eradicate them.[185]
+Although some Romani could be kept as slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia until abolition in 1856, the majority traveled as free nomads with their wagons, as alluded to in the spoked wheel symbol in the Romani flag.[186] Elsewhere in Europe, they were subjected to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labour. In England, Romani were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded, and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Romani moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Romani were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.[187]
+Romani began emigrating to North America in colonial times, with small groups recorded in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale Roma emigration to the United States began in the 1860s, with Romanichal groups from Great Britain. The most significant number immigrated in the early 20th century, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Romani also settled in South America.
+During World War II, the Nazis embarked on a systematic genocide of the Romani, a process known in Romani as the Porajmos.[188] Romanies were marked for extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps. They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads) on the Eastern Front.[189] The total number of victims has been variously estimated at between 220,000 and 1,500,000.[190]
+The treatment of the Romani in Nazi puppet states differed markedly. In the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša killed almost the entire Roma population of 25,000. The concentration camp system of Jasenovac, run by the Ustaša militia and the Croat political police, were responsible for the deaths of between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma.[191]
+In Czechoslovakia, they were labeled a "socially degraded stratum", and Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, threats of denying future welfare payments, with misinformation, or after administering drugs.[192][193]
+An official inquiry from the Czech Republic, resulting in a report (December 2005), concluded that the Communist authorities had practised an assimilation policy towards Romanis, which "included efforts by social services to control the birth rate in the Romani community. The problem of sexual sterilisation carried out in the Czech Republic, either with improper motivation or illegally, exists," said the Czech Public Defender of Rights, recommending state compensation for women affected between 1973 and 1991.[194] New cases were revealed up until 2004, in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland "all have histories of coercive sterilization of minorities and other groups".[195]
+The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practise of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow it.
+Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs and take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men, in general, have more authority than women. Women gain respect and power as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children.
+Romani social behavior is strictly regulated by Hindu purity laws[196] ("marime" or "marhime"), still respected by most Roma (and by most older generations of Sinti). This regulation affects many aspects of life and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure: the genital organs (because they produce emissions) and the rest of the lower body. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is deemed to be impure for forty days after giving birth.
+Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. In contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Romani dead must be buried.[197] Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (although the tendency is for Hindus to practice cremation, while some communities in South India tend to bury their dead).[198] Some animals are also considered impure, for instance, cats, because they lick their hindquarters. Horses, in contrast, are not considered impure because they cannot do so.[199]
+In Romani philosophy, Romanipen (also romanypen, romanipe, romanype, romanimos, romaimos, romaniya) is the totality of the Romani spirit, Romani culture, Romani Law,  being a Romani, a set of Romani strains.
+An ethnic Romani is considered a gadjo in the Romani society if he has no Romanipen. Sometimes a non-Romani may be considered a Romani if he has Romanipen. Usually this is an adopted child. It has been hypothesized that it owes more to a framework of culture rather than simply an adherence to historically received rules.[200]
+Most Romani people are Christian,[201] others Muslim; some retained their ancient faith of Hinduism from their original homeland of India, while others have their own religion and political organization.[202]
+The ancestors of modern-day Romani people were Hindu, but adopted Christianity or Islam depending on the regions through which they had migrated.[203] Muslim Roma are found in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Egypt, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria, forming a very significant proportion of the Romani people. In neighboring countries such as Serbia and Greece, most Romani inhabitants follow the practice of Orthodoxy. It is likely that the adherence to differing religions prevented families from engaging in intermarriage.[204]
+In Spain, most Gitanos are Roman Catholics.[citation needed]
+Some brotherhoods have organized Gitanos in their Holy Week devotions.
+They are popularly known as Cofradía de los Gitanos.
+However, the proportion of followers of Evangelical Christianity among Gitanos is higher than among the rest of Spaniards.[citation needed]
+Their version of el culto integrates Flamenco music.
+Blessed Ceferino Giménez Malla is recently considered a patron saint of the Romani people in Roman Catholicism.[205] Saint Sarah, or Sara e Kali, has also been venerated as a patron saint in her shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. Since the turn of the 21st century, Sara e Kali is understood to have been Kali, an Indian deity brought from India by the refugee ancestors of the Roma people; as the Roma became Christianized, she was absorbed in a syncretic way and venerated as a saint.[206]
+Saint Sarah is now increasingly being considered as "a Romani Goddess, the Protectress of the Roma" and an "indisputable link with Mother India".[206][207]
+Romanies often adopt the dominant religion of their host country in the event that a ceremony associated with a formal religious institution is necessary, such as a baptism or funeral (their particular belief systems and indigenous religion and worship remain preserved regardless of such adoption processes). The Roma continue to practice "Shaktism", a practice with origins in India, whereby a female consort is required for the worship of a god. Adherence to this practice means that for the Roma who worship the Christian God, prayer is conducted through the Virgin Mary, or her mother, Saint Anne. Shaktism continues over one thousand years after the people's separation from India.[208]
+Besides the Roma elders (who serve as spiritual leaders), priests, churches, or bibles do not exist among the Romanies –  the only exception is the Pentecostal Roma.[208]
+For the Roma communities that have resided in the Balkans for numerous centuries, often referred to as "Turkish Gypsies", the following histories apply for religious beliefs:
+In Ukraine and Russia, the Roma populations are also Muslim as the families of Balkan migrants continue to live in these locations. Their ancestors settled on the Crimean peninsula during the 17th and 18th centuries, but then migrated to Ukraine, southern Russia and the Povolzhie (along the Volga River). Formally, Islam is the religion that these communities align themselves with and the people are recognized for their staunch preservation of the Romani language and identity.[210]
+In Poland and Slovakia, their populations are Roman Catholic, many times adopting and following local, cultural Catholicism as a syncretic system of belief that incorporates distinct Roma beliefs and cultural aspects. For example, many Polish Roma delays their Church wedding due to the belief that sacramental marriage is accompanied by divine ratification, creating a virtually indissoluble union until the couple consummate, after which the sacramental marriage is dissoluble only by the death of a spouse. Therefore, for Polish Roma, once married, one can't ever divorce. Another aspect of Polish Roma's Catholicism is a tradition of pilgrimage to the Jasna Góra Monastery.[212]
+Most Eastern European Romanies are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim.[213] Those in Western Europe and the United States are mostly Roman Catholic or Protestant –  in southern Spain, many Romanies are Pentecostal, but this is a small minority that has emerged in contemporary times.[208] In Egypt, the Romanies are split into Christian and Muslim populations.[214]
+Romani music plays an important role in Central and Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, and the style and performance practices of Romani musicians have influenced European classical composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The lăutari who perform at traditional Romanian weddings are virtually all Romani.[citation needed]
+Probably the most internationally prominent contemporary performers[citation needed] in the lăutari tradition are Taraful Haiducilor. Bulgaria's popular "wedding music", too, is almost exclusively performed by Romani musicians such as Ivo Papasov, a virtuoso clarinetist closely associated with this genre and Bulgarian pop-folk singer Azis.
+Many famous classical musicians, such as the Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra, are Romani, as are many prominent performers of manele. Zdob și Zdub, one of the most prominent rock bands in Moldova, although not Romanies themselves, draw heavily on Romani music, as do Spitalul de Urgență in Romania, Shantel in Germany, Goran Bregović in Serbia, Darko Rundek in Croatia, Beirut and Gogol Bordello in the United States.
+Another tradition of Romani music is the genre of the Romani brass band, with such notable practitioners as Boban Marković of Serbia, and the brass lăutari groups Fanfare Ciocărlia and Fanfare din Cozmesti of Romania.
+Dances such as the flamenco of Spain and Oriental dances of Egypt are said to have originated from the Romani.[215]
+The distinctive sound of Romani music has also strongly influenced bolero, jazz, and flamenco (especially cante jondo) in Spain. European-style gypsy jazz ("jazz Manouche" or "Sinti jazz") is still widely practiced among the original creators (the Romanie People); one who acknowledged this artistic debt was guitarist Django Reinhardt. Contemporary artists in this tradition known internationally include Stochelo Rosenberg, Biréli Lagrène, Jimmy Rosenberg, Paulus Schäfer and Tchavolo Schmitt.
+The Romanies of Turkey have achieved musical acclaim from national and local audiences. Local performers usually perform for special holidays. Their music is usually performed on instruments such as the darbuka, gırnata and cümbüş.[216]
+Romani contemporary art is art created by Romani people. It emerged at the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the late-1980s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the Cultural turn. The idea of the "cultural turn" was introduced; and this was also the time when the notion of cultural democracy became crystallized in the debates carried on at various public forums. Civil society gained strength, and civil politics appeared, which is a prerequisite for cultural democracy. This shift of attitude in scholarly circles derived from concerns specific not only to ethnicity, but also to society, gender and class.[217]
+Most Romani speak one of several dialects of the Romani language,[218] an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in. Typically, they also incorporate loanwords and calques into Romani from the languages of those countries and especially words for terms that the Romani language does not have. Most of the Ciganos of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of the UK, and Scandinavian Travellers have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and respectively speak the mixed languages Caló,[219] Angloromany, and Scandoromani. Most of the speaker communities in these regions consist of later immigrants from eastern or central Europe.[220]
+There are no concrete statistics for the number of Romani speakers, both in Europe and globally. However, a conservative estimation has been made at 3.5 million speakers in Europe and a further 500,000 elsewhere,[220] although the actual number may be considerably higher. This makes Romani the second largest minority language in Europe, behind Catalan.[220]
+In relation to dialect diversity, Romani works in the same way as most other European languages.[221] Cross-dialect communication is dominated by the following features:
+One of the most enduring persecutions against the Romani people was their enslavement. Slavery was widely practiced in medieval Europe, including the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in the 13th–14th century.[222][page needed] Legislation decreed that all the Romani living in these states, as well as any others who immigrated there, were classified as slaves.[223] Slavery was gradually abolished during the 1840s and 1850s.[224][page needed]
+The exact origins of slavery in the Danubian Principalities are not known. There is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia and Moldavia as free men or were brought as slaves. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, in which the Romanians took the Roma as slaves from the Mongols and preserved their status to use their labor. Other historians believe that the Romani were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving war prisoners may also have been adopted from the Mongols.[222][page needed]
+Some Romani may have been slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, but most of them migrated from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the foundation of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia and possibly in both principalities. After the Roma migrated into the area, slavery became a widespread practice by the majority population. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.[225]
+Some branches of the Romani people reached Western Europe in the 15th century, fleeing as refugees from the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.[226] Although the Romani were refugees from the conflicts in southeastern Europe, they were often suspected by certain populations in the West of being associated with the Ottoman invasion because their physical appearance seemed Turkish. (The Imperial Diet at Landau and Freiburg in 1496–1498 declared that the Romani were spies of the Turks). In Western Europe, such suspicions and discrimination against a people who were a visible minority resulted in persecution, often violent, with efforts to achieve ethnic cleansing until the modern era. In times of social tension, the Romani suffered as scapegoats; for instance, they were accused of bringing the plague during times of epidemics.[227]
+On 30 July 1749, Spain conducted The Great Roundup of Romani (Gitanos) in its territory. The Spanish Crown ordered a nationwide raid that led to the break-up of families as all able-bodied men were interned into forced labor camps in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The measure was eventually reversed and the Romanis were freed as protests began to arise in different communities, sedentary romanis being highly esteemed and protected in rural Spain.[228][229]
+Later in the 19th century, Romani immigration was forbidden on a racial basis in areas outside Europe, mostly in the English-speaking world. Argentina in 1880 prohibited immigration by Roma, as did the United States in 1885.[227]
+In the Habsburg Monarchy under Maria Theresa (1740–1780), a series of decrees tried to force the Romanies to permanently settle, removed rights to horse and wagon ownership (1754), renamed them as "New Citizens" and forced Romani boys into military service if they had no trade (1761), forced them to register with the local authorities (1767), and prohibited marriage between Romanies (1773). Her successor Josef II prohibited the wearing of traditional Romani clothing and the use of the Romani language, punishable by flogging.[230]
+In Spain, attempts to assimilate the Gitanos were under way as early as 1619, when Gitanos were forcibly settled, the use of the Romani language was prohibited, Gitano men and women were sent to separate workhouses and their children sent to orphanages. King Charles III took on a more progressive attitude to Gitano assimilation, proclaiming their equal rights as Spanish citizens and ending official denigration based on their race. While he prohibited the nomadic lifestyle, the use of the Calo language, Romani clothing, their trade in horses and other itinerant trades, he also forbade any form of discrimination against them or barring them from the guilds. The use of the word gitano was also forbidden to further assimilation, substituted for "New Castilian", which was also applied to former Jews and Muslims.[231][232]
+Most historians agree that Charles III pragmática failed for three main reasons, ultimately derived from its implementation outside major cities and in marginal areas: The difficulty the Gitano community faced in changing its nomadic lifestyle, the marginal lifestyle in which the community had been driven by society and the serious difficulties of applying the pragmática in the fields of education and work. One author ascribes its failure to the overall rejection by the wider population of the integration of the Gitanos.[230][233]
+Other examples of forced assimilation include Norway, where a law was passed in 1896 permitting the state to remove children from their parents and place them in state institutions.[234] This resulted in some 1,500 Romani children being taken from their parents in the 20th century.[235]
+The persecution of the Romanies reached a peak during World War II in the Porajmos genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws stripped the Romani people living in Nazi Germany of their citizenship, after which they were subjected to violence, imprisonment in concentration camps and later genocide in extermination camps. The policy was extended in areas occupied by the Nazis during the war, and it was also applied by their allies, notably the Independent State of Croatia, Romania, and Hungary.
+Because no accurate pre-war census figures exist for the Romanis, it is impossible to accurately assess the actual number of victims. Most estimates for numbers of Romani victims of the Holocaust fall between 200,000 and 500,000, although figures ranging between 90,000 and 1.5 million have been proposed. Lower estimates do not include those killed in all Axis-controlled countries. A detailed study by Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a figure of at least a minimum of 220,000, possibly closer to 500,000.[236] Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, argues in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000.[237]
+In Central Europe, the extermination in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was so thorough that the Bohemian Romani language became extinct.
+In Europe, Romani people are associated with poverty, and are accused of high rates of crime and behaviours that are perceived by the rest of the population as being antisocial or inappropriate.[239] Partly for this reason, discrimination against the Romani people has continued to the present day,[240][241] although efforts are being made to address them.[242] Amnesty International reports continued instances of Antizigan discrimination during the 20th century, particularly in Romania, Serbia,[243] Slovakia,[244] Hungary,[245] Slovenia,[246] and Kosovo.[247] The European Union has recognized that discrimination against Romani must be addressed, and with the national Roma integration strategy they encourage member states to work towards greater Romani inclusion and upholding the rights of the Romani in the European union.[248]
+In Eastern Europe, Roma children often attend Roma Special Schools, separate from non-Roma children, which puts them at an educational disadvantage.[251]:83
+The Romanis of Kosovo have been severely persecuted by ethnic Albanians since the end of the Kosovo War, and the region's Romani community is, for the most part, annihilated.[252]
+Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Romani women, starting in 1973.[253] The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977–78 as a genocide, but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989.[254] A 2005 report by the Czech Republic's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators.[255]
+In 2008, following the rape and subsequent murder of an Italian woman in Rome at the hands of a young man from a local Romani encampment,[256] the Italian government declared that Italy's Romani population represented a national security risk and that swift action was required to address the emergenza nomadi (nomad emergency).[257] Specifically, officials in the Italian government accused the Romanies of being responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas.
+The 2008 deaths of Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, two Roma children who drowned while Italian beach-goers remained unperturbed, brought international attention to the relationship between Italians and the Roma people. Reviewing the situation in 2012, one Belgian magazine observed:
+On International Roma Day, which falls on 8 April, the significant proportion of Europe's 12 million Roma who live in deplorable conditions will not have much to celebrate. And poverty is not the only worry for the community. Ethnic tensions are on the rise. In 2008, Roma camps came under attack in Italy, intimidation by racist parliamentarians is the norm in Hungary. Speaking in 1993, Václav Havel prophetically remarked that "the treatment of the Roma is a Litmus test for democracy": and democracy has been found wanting. The consequences of the transition to capitalism have been disastrous for the Roma. Under communism they had jobs, free housing and schooling. Now many are unemployed, many are losing their homes and racism is increasingly rewarded with impunity.[258]
+The 2016 Pew Research poll found that Italians, in particular, hold strong anti-Roma views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions about Roma. In Greece 67%, in Hungary 64%, in France 61%, in Spain 49%, in Poland 47%, in the UK 45%, in Sweden 42%, in Germany 40%, and in the Netherlands[259] 37% had an unfavourable view of Roma.[260] The 2019 Pew Research poll found that 83% of Italians, 76% of Slovaks, 72% of Greeks, 68% of Bulgarians, 66% of Czechs, 61% of Lithuanians, 61% of Hungarians, 54% of Ukrainians, 52% of Russians, 51% of Poles, 44% of French, 40% of Spaniards, and 37% of Germans held unfavorable views of Roma.[261]
+Reports of anti-Roma incidents are increasing across Europe.[262] Discrimination against Roma remains widespread in Romania,[263] Slovakia,[264] Bulgaria,[265][266], and the Czech Republic.[267] Roma communities across Ukraine have been the target of violent attacks.[268][269]
+In the summer of 2010, French authorities demolished at least 51 illegal Roma camps and began the process of repatriating their residents to their countries of origin.[270] This followed tensions between the French state and Roma communities, which had been heightened after French police opened fire and killed a traveller who drove through a police checkpoint, hitting an officer, and attempted to hit two more officers at another checkpoint. In retaliation a group of Roma, armed with hatchets and iron bars, attacked the police station of Saint-Aignan, toppled traffic lights and road signs and burned three cars.[271][272] The French government has been accused of perpetrating these actions to pursue its political agenda.[273] EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that the European Commission should take legal action against France over the issue, calling the deportations "a disgrace". A leaked file dated 5 August, sent from the Interior Ministry to regional police chiefs, included the instruction: "Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority."[274]
+Many depictions of Romani people in literature and art present romanticized narratives of mystical powers of fortune telling or irascible or passionate temper paired with an indomitable love of freedom and a habit of criminality. Romani were a popular subject in Venetian painting from the time of Giorgione at the start of the 16th century; the inclusion of such a figure adds an exotic oriental flavour to scenes. A Venetian Renaissance painting by Paris Bordone (ca. 1530, Strasbourg) of the Holy Family in Egypt makes Elizabeth, a Romani fortune-teller; the scene is otherwise located in a distinctly European landscape.[275]
+Particularly notable are classics like the story Carmen by Prosper Mérimée and the opera based on it by Georges Bizet, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Herge's The Castafiore Emerald and Miguel de Cervantes' La Gitanilla. The Romani were also depicted in A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Othello and The Tempest, all by William Shakespeare.
+The Romani were also heavily romanticized in the Soviet Union, a classic example being the 1975 film Tabor ukhodit v Nebo.
+A more realistic depiction of contemporary Romani in the Balkans, featuring Romani lay actors speaking in their native dialects, although still playing with established clichés of a Romani penchant for both magic and crime, was presented by Emir Kusturica in his Time of the Gypsies (1988) and Black Cat, White Cat (1998). The films of Tony Gatlif, a French director of Romani ethnicity, like Les Princes (1983), Latcho Drom (1993) and Gadjo Dilo (1997) also portray romani life.
+Paris Bordone, c. 1530, Elizabeth, at right, is shown as a Romani fortune-teller
+August von Pettenkofen: Gypsy Children (1885), Hermitage Museum
+Vincent van Gogh: The Caravans – Gypsy Camp near Arles (1888, oil on canvas)
+Carmen
+Esméralda
+Nicolae Grigorescu Gypsy from Boldu (1897), Art Museum of Iași
+General
+Lists
+European countries Roma links
+Non-governmental organisations
+Museums and libraries

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+The Romani (also spelled Romany /ˈroʊməni/, /ˈrɒ-/), colloquially known as Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants living mostly in Europe, and diaspora populations in the Americas. The Romani as a people originate from the northern Indian subcontinent,[61][62][63] from the Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab regions of modern-day India.[62][63]
+Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani "came from a single group that left northwestern India" in about 512 CE.[64] Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65] They are dispersed, but their most concentrated populations are located in Europe, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (including Turkey, Spain and Southern France). The Romani arrived in Mid-West Asia and Europe around 1007.[66] They have been associated with another Indo-Aryan group, the Dom people: the two groups have been said to have separated from each other or, at least, to share a similar history.[67] Specifically, the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the 6th and 11th century.[66]
+The Romani are widely known in English by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered by some Roma people to be pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity.[68] Beginning in 1888, the Gypsy Lore Society[69] started to publish a journal that was meant to dispel rumors about their lifestyle.[70]
+Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States;[6] and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from people deported by the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition.[71] In migrations since the late 19th century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada.[72][page needed]
+In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India.[73] The conference ended with a recommendation to the government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.[74]
+The Romani language is divided into several dialects which together have an estimated number of speakers of more than two million.[75] The total number of Romani people is at least twice as high (several times as high according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence or of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.[76]
+Perceived as derogatory, many of these exonyms are falling out of standard usage and being replaced by a version of the name Roma.
+Rom means man or husband in the Romani language. It has the variants dom and lom, which may be related to the Sanskrit words dam-pati (lord of the house, husband), dama (to subdue), lom (hair), lomaka (hairy), loman, roman (hairy), romaça (man with beard and long hair).[86] Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma (member of a low caste of travelling musicians and dancers).
+In the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning 'man of the Roma ethnic group' or 'man, husband', with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni. However, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of both genders.[87]
+Romani is the feminine adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as an ethnic name, while others (such as the Sinti, or the Romanichal) do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group.[88]
+Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., rrom and rromani. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/ (also written as ř and rh), which in some Romani dialects has remained different from the one written with a single r. The rr spelling is common in certain institutions (such as the INALCO Institute in Paris), or used in certain countries, e.g., Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians (sg. român, pl. români).[89]
+In the English language (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), Rom is a noun (with the plural Roma or Roms) and an adjective, while Romani (Romany) is also a noun (with the plural Romani, the Romani, Romanies, or Romanis) and an adjective.  Both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy.[90] Romani was sometimes spelled Rommany, but more often Romany, while today Romani is the most popular spelling.  Occasionally, the double r spelling (e.g., Rroma, Rromani) mentioned above is also encountered in English texts.
+The term Roma is increasingly encountered,[91][92] as a generic term for the Romani people.[93][94][95]
+Because all Romanis use the word Romani as an adjective, the term became a noun for the entire ethnic group.[96] Today, the term Romani is used by some organizations, including the United Nations and the US Library of Congress.[89] However, the Council of Europe and other organizations consider that Roma is the correct term referring to all related groups, regardless of their country of origin, and recommend that Romani be restricted to the language and culture: Romani language, Romani culture.[87]
+The standard assumption is that the demonyms of the Romani people, Lom and Dom share the same origin.[97][98]
+The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. The Spanish term Gitano and French Gitan have similar etymologies. They are ultimately derived from the Greek Αιγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), meaning Egyptian, via Latin. This designation owes its existence to the belief, common in the Middle Ages, that the Romani, or some related group (such as the Middle Eastern Dom people), were itinerant Egyptians.[99][100] This belief appears to derive from verses in the biblical Book of Ezekiel (29: 6 and 12-13) referring to the Egyptians being scattered among the nations by an angry God. According to one narrative, they were exiled from Egypt as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus.[101] In his book 'The Zincali: an account of the Gypsies of Spain', George Borrow notes that when they first appeared in Germany it was under the character of Egyptians doing penance for their having refused hospitality to the Virgin and her son. As described in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the medieval French referred to the Romanies as Egyptiens.
+This exonym is sometimes written with capital letter, to show that it designates an ethnic group.[102] However, the word is considered derogatory because of its negative and stereotypical associations.[94][103][104][105] The Council of Europe consider that "Gypsy" or equivalent terms, as well as administrative terms such as "Gens du Voyage" (referring in fact to an ethnic group but not acknowledging ethnic identification) are not in line with European recommendations.[87] In North America, the word Gypsy is most commonly used as a reference to Romani ethnicity, though lifestyle and fashion are at times also referenced by using this word.[106]
+Another common designation of the Romani people is Cingane (alt. Tsinganoi, Zigar, Zigeuner), which likely derives from Athinganoi, the name of a Christian sect with whom the Romani (or some related group) became associated in the Middle Ages.[100][107][108][109]
+For a variety of reasons, many Romanis choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe (as of 2019),[110] although some high estimates by Romani organizations give numbers as high as 14 million.[111] Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. In the European Union there are an estimated 6 million Romanis.[112]  Several million more Romanis may live outside Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.[113]
+Like the Roma in general, many different ethnonyms are given to subgroups of Roma. Sometimes a subgroup uses more than one endonym, is commonly known by an exonym or erroneously by the endonym of another subgroup. The only name approaching an all-encompassing self-description is Rom.[114] Even when subgroups don't use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and Gadjo (non-Roma).[114] For instance, while the main group of Roma in German-speaking countries refer to themselves as Sinti, their name for their original language is Romanes.
+Subgroups have been described as, in part, a result of the Hindu caste system, which the founding population of Rom almost certainly experienced in their South Asian urheimat.[114][115]
+Many groups use names apparently derived from the Romani word kalo or calo, meaning "black" or "absorbing all light".[116] This closely resembles words for "black" or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Sanskrit काल kāla: "black", "of a dark colour").[114] Likewise, the name of the Dom or Domba people of North India – to whom the Roma have genetic,[117] cultural and linguistic links – has come to imply "dark-skinned", in some Indian languages.[118] Hence names such as kale and calé may have originated as an exonym or a euphemism for Roma.
+Other endonyms for Romani include, for example:
+The Roma people have a number of distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century, from a migration out of northwestern India beginning about 600 years earlier.[132][64] They settled in present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.[133] Brazil has the second largest Romani population in the Americas, estimated at approximately 800,000 by the 2011 census. The Romani people are mainly called by non-Romani ethnic Brazilians as ciganos. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup Calés (Kale), of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president during 1956–1961 term, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline; and Washington Luís, last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930 term), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.
+There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide.[134] Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for fear of discrimination.[135][better source needed] Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations and no longer identify only as Romani, or not at all.
+As of the early 2000s, an estimated 3.8[136][page needed] to 9 million Romani people lived in Europe and Asia Minor.[137][page needed] although some Romani organizations estimate numbers as high as 14 million.[138]  Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkan peninsula, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia, and Ukraine. The total number of Romani living outside Europe are primarily in the Middle East and North Africa and in the Americas, and are estimated in total at more than two million. Some countries do not collect data by ethnicity.
+The Romani people identify as distinct ethnicities based in part on territorial, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation.[139][140][141][142]
+Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma.[132][64][143] Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani's migration early history are based on linguistic theory.[144] There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.[145]
+According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh, from Iran and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, lute-playing experts.  When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox, a donkey, and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music for free for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags and go wandering around the world on their donkeys.[146]
+The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon, for example, regarding body parts or daily routines.[147]
+More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.[148]
+Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second Layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative.[149] This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent –  but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.[67][150]
+In phonology, Romani language shares several isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves several dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages.[151]
+Numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with Sanskrit, Hindi and Persian forms for comparison.[152] Note that Romani 7–9 are borrowed from Greek.
+Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group.[132][64][153] According to the study, the ancestors of present scheduled castes and scheduled tribes populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.[154] In December 2012, additional findings appeared to confirm the "Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago".[64] They reached the Balkans about 900 years ago[132] and then spread throughout Europe. The team also found the Roma to display genetic isolation, as well as "differential gene flow in time and space with non-Romani Europeans".[132][64]
+Genetic research published in European Journal of Human Genetics "has revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65]
+Genetic evidence supports the medieval migration from India. The Romani have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations",[155] while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect".[155][156]
+A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group".[157] The same study found that "a single lineage... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males".[157] A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".[158]
+Haplogroup H-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for approximately 60% of the total.[159] Haplogroup H is uncommon in Europe but present in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.
+A study of 444 people representing three different ethnic groups in North Macedonia found mtDNA haplogroups M5a1 and H7a1a were dominant in Romanies (13.7% and 10.3%, respectively).[160]
+Y-DNA composition of Romani in North Macedonia, based on 57 samples:[161]
+Y-DNA Haplogroup H1a occurs in Romani at frequencies 7–70%. Unlike ethnic Hungarians, among Hungarian and Slovakian Romani subpopulations, Haplogroup E-M78 and I1 usually occur above 10% and sometimes over 20%.  While among Slovakian and Tiszavasvari Romani the dominant haplogroup is H1a, among Tokaj Romani is Haplogroup J2a (23%), while among Taktaharkány Romani is Haplogroup I2a (21%).[162] Five, rather consistent founder lineages throughout the subpopulations, were found among Romani – J-M67 and J-M92 (J2), H-M52 (H1a1), and I-P259 (I1?). Haplogroup I-P259 as H is not found at frequencies of over 3 percent among host populations, while haplogroups E and I are absent in South Asia. The lineages E-V13, I-P37 (I2a) and R-M17 (R1a) may represent gene flow from the host populations. Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek Romani are dominated by Haplogroup H-M82 (H1a1), while among Spanish Romani J2 is prevalent.[163] In Serbia among Kosovo[a] and Belgrade Romani Haplogroup H prevails, while among Vojvodina Romani, H drops to 7 percent and E-V13 rises to a prevailing level.[164]
+Among non-Roma Europeans Haplogroup H is extremely rare, peaking at 7 percent among Albanians from Tirana[165] and 11 percent among Bulgarian Turks. It occurs at 5 percent among Hungarians,[162] although the carriers might be of Romani origin.[163] Among non Roma-speaking Europeans at 2 percent among Slovaks,[166] 2 percent among Croats,[167] 1 percent among Macedonians from Skopje, 3 percent among Macedonian Albanians,[168] 1 percent among Serbs from Belgrade,[169] 3 percent among Bulgarians from Sofia,[170] 1 percent among Austrians and Swiss,[171] 3 percent among Romanians from Ploiesti, 1 percent among Turks.[166]
+They may have emerged from the modern Indian state of Rajasthan,[172] migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region, Sindh and Baluchistan of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BC. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about CE 500.[64]
+It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire.[173] The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.[151][174]
+Though according to a 2012 genomic study, the Romani reached the Balkans as early as the 12th century,[175] the first historical records of the Romani reaching south-eastern Europe are from the 14th century: in 1322, after leaving Ireland on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Irish Franciscan friar Symon Semeonis encountered a migrant group of Romani outside the town of Candia (modern Heraklion), in Crete, calling them "the descendants of Cain"; his account is the earliest surviving description by a Western chronicler of the Romani in Europe.
+In 1350, Ludolph of Saxony mentioned a similar people with a unique language whom he called Mandapolos, a word some think derives from the Greek word mantes (meaning prophet or fortune teller).[176]
+Around 1360, a fiefdom called the Feudum Acinganorum was established in Corfu, which mainly used Romani serfs and to which the Romani on the island were subservient.[177]
+By the 1440s, they were recorded in Germany;[178] and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden.[179] Some Romani migrated from Persia through North Africa, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. The two currents met in France.[180]
+Their early history shows a mixed reception. Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in 1417. Romanies were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Catalonia in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530 (see Egyptians Act 1530), and Denmark in 1536. In 1510, any Romani found in Switzerland were ordered put to death, with similar rules established in England in 1554, and Denmark in 1589, whereas Portugal began deportations of Romanies to its colonies in 1538.[182]
+A 1596 English statute gave Romanis special privileges that other wanderers lacked. France passed a similar law in 1683. Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Romanies "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs), but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital.[183] In 1595, Ștefan Răzvan overcame his birth into slavery, and became the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia.[182]
+Since a royal edict by Charles II in 1695, Spanish Romanis had been restricted to certain towns.[184] An official edict in 1717 restricted them to only 75 towns and districts, so that they would not be concentrated in any one region. In the Great Gypsy Round-up, Romani were arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish Monarchy in 1749.
+During the latter part of the 17th century, around the Franco-Dutch War, both France and Holland needed thousands of men to fight. Some recruitment took the form of rounding up vagrants and the poor to work the galleys and provide the armies' labour force. With this background, Romanis were targets of both the French and the Dutch.
+After the wars, and into the first decade of the 18th century, Romanis were slaughtered with impunity throughout Holland. Romanis, called ‘heiden’ by the Dutch, wandered throughout the rural areas of Europe and became the societal pariahs of the age. Heidenjachten, translated as "heathen hunt" happened throughout Holland in an attempt to eradicate them.[185]
+Although some Romani could be kept as slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia until abolition in 1856, the majority traveled as free nomads with their wagons, as alluded to in the spoked wheel symbol in the Romani flag.[186] Elsewhere in Europe, they were subjected to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labour. In England, Romani were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded, and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Romani moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Romani were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.[187]
+Romani began emigrating to North America in colonial times, with small groups recorded in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale Roma emigration to the United States began in the 1860s, with Romanichal groups from Great Britain. The most significant number immigrated in the early 20th century, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Romani also settled in South America.
+During World War II, the Nazis embarked on a systematic genocide of the Romani, a process known in Romani as the Porajmos.[188] Romanies were marked for extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps. They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads) on the Eastern Front.[189] The total number of victims has been variously estimated at between 220,000 and 1,500,000.[190]
+The treatment of the Romani in Nazi puppet states differed markedly. In the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša killed almost the entire Roma population of 25,000. The concentration camp system of Jasenovac, run by the Ustaša militia and the Croat political police, were responsible for the deaths of between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma.[191]
+In Czechoslovakia, they were labeled a "socially degraded stratum", and Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, threats of denying future welfare payments, with misinformation, or after administering drugs.[192][193]
+An official inquiry from the Czech Republic, resulting in a report (December 2005), concluded that the Communist authorities had practised an assimilation policy towards Romanis, which "included efforts by social services to control the birth rate in the Romani community. The problem of sexual sterilisation carried out in the Czech Republic, either with improper motivation or illegally, exists," said the Czech Public Defender of Rights, recommending state compensation for women affected between 1973 and 1991.[194] New cases were revealed up until 2004, in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland "all have histories of coercive sterilization of minorities and other groups".[195]
+The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practise of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow it.
+Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs and take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men, in general, have more authority than women. Women gain respect and power as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children.
+Romani social behavior is strictly regulated by Hindu purity laws[196] ("marime" or "marhime"), still respected by most Roma (and by most older generations of Sinti). This regulation affects many aspects of life and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure: the genital organs (because they produce emissions) and the rest of the lower body. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is deemed to be impure for forty days after giving birth.
+Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. In contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Romani dead must be buried.[197] Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (although the tendency is for Hindus to practice cremation, while some communities in South India tend to bury their dead).[198] Some animals are also considered impure, for instance, cats, because they lick their hindquarters. Horses, in contrast, are not considered impure because they cannot do so.[199]
+In Romani philosophy, Romanipen (also romanypen, romanipe, romanype, romanimos, romaimos, romaniya) is the totality of the Romani spirit, Romani culture, Romani Law,  being a Romani, a set of Romani strains.
+An ethnic Romani is considered a gadjo in the Romani society if he has no Romanipen. Sometimes a non-Romani may be considered a Romani if he has Romanipen. Usually this is an adopted child. It has been hypothesized that it owes more to a framework of culture rather than simply an adherence to historically received rules.[200]
+Most Romani people are Christian,[201] others Muslim; some retained their ancient faith of Hinduism from their original homeland of India, while others have their own religion and political organization.[202]
+The ancestors of modern-day Romani people were Hindu, but adopted Christianity or Islam depending on the regions through which they had migrated.[203] Muslim Roma are found in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Egypt, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria, forming a very significant proportion of the Romani people. In neighboring countries such as Serbia and Greece, most Romani inhabitants follow the practice of Orthodoxy. It is likely that the adherence to differing religions prevented families from engaging in intermarriage.[204]
+In Spain, most Gitanos are Roman Catholics.[citation needed]
+Some brotherhoods have organized Gitanos in their Holy Week devotions.
+They are popularly known as Cofradía de los Gitanos.
+However, the proportion of followers of Evangelical Christianity among Gitanos is higher than among the rest of Spaniards.[citation needed]
+Their version of el culto integrates Flamenco music.
+Blessed Ceferino Giménez Malla is recently considered a patron saint of the Romani people in Roman Catholicism.[205] Saint Sarah, or Sara e Kali, has also been venerated as a patron saint in her shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. Since the turn of the 21st century, Sara e Kali is understood to have been Kali, an Indian deity brought from India by the refugee ancestors of the Roma people; as the Roma became Christianized, she was absorbed in a syncretic way and venerated as a saint.[206]
+Saint Sarah is now increasingly being considered as "a Romani Goddess, the Protectress of the Roma" and an "indisputable link with Mother India".[206][207]
+Romanies often adopt the dominant religion of their host country in the event that a ceremony associated with a formal religious institution is necessary, such as a baptism or funeral (their particular belief systems and indigenous religion and worship remain preserved regardless of such adoption processes). The Roma continue to practice "Shaktism", a practice with origins in India, whereby a female consort is required for the worship of a god. Adherence to this practice means that for the Roma who worship the Christian God, prayer is conducted through the Virgin Mary, or her mother, Saint Anne. Shaktism continues over one thousand years after the people's separation from India.[208]
+Besides the Roma elders (who serve as spiritual leaders), priests, churches, or bibles do not exist among the Romanies –  the only exception is the Pentecostal Roma.[208]
+For the Roma communities that have resided in the Balkans for numerous centuries, often referred to as "Turkish Gypsies", the following histories apply for religious beliefs:
+In Ukraine and Russia, the Roma populations are also Muslim as the families of Balkan migrants continue to live in these locations. Their ancestors settled on the Crimean peninsula during the 17th and 18th centuries, but then migrated to Ukraine, southern Russia and the Povolzhie (along the Volga River). Formally, Islam is the religion that these communities align themselves with and the people are recognized for their staunch preservation of the Romani language and identity.[210]
+In Poland and Slovakia, their populations are Roman Catholic, many times adopting and following local, cultural Catholicism as a syncretic system of belief that incorporates distinct Roma beliefs and cultural aspects. For example, many Polish Roma delays their Church wedding due to the belief that sacramental marriage is accompanied by divine ratification, creating a virtually indissoluble union until the couple consummate, after which the sacramental marriage is dissoluble only by the death of a spouse. Therefore, for Polish Roma, once married, one can't ever divorce. Another aspect of Polish Roma's Catholicism is a tradition of pilgrimage to the Jasna Góra Monastery.[212]
+Most Eastern European Romanies are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim.[213] Those in Western Europe and the United States are mostly Roman Catholic or Protestant –  in southern Spain, many Romanies are Pentecostal, but this is a small minority that has emerged in contemporary times.[208] In Egypt, the Romanies are split into Christian and Muslim populations.[214]
+Romani music plays an important role in Central and Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, and the style and performance practices of Romani musicians have influenced European classical composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The lăutari who perform at traditional Romanian weddings are virtually all Romani.[citation needed]
+Probably the most internationally prominent contemporary performers[citation needed] in the lăutari tradition are Taraful Haiducilor. Bulgaria's popular "wedding music", too, is almost exclusively performed by Romani musicians such as Ivo Papasov, a virtuoso clarinetist closely associated with this genre and Bulgarian pop-folk singer Azis.
+Many famous classical musicians, such as the Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra, are Romani, as are many prominent performers of manele. Zdob și Zdub, one of the most prominent rock bands in Moldova, although not Romanies themselves, draw heavily on Romani music, as do Spitalul de Urgență in Romania, Shantel in Germany, Goran Bregović in Serbia, Darko Rundek in Croatia, Beirut and Gogol Bordello in the United States.
+Another tradition of Romani music is the genre of the Romani brass band, with such notable practitioners as Boban Marković of Serbia, and the brass lăutari groups Fanfare Ciocărlia and Fanfare din Cozmesti of Romania.
+Dances such as the flamenco of Spain and Oriental dances of Egypt are said to have originated from the Romani.[215]
+The distinctive sound of Romani music has also strongly influenced bolero, jazz, and flamenco (especially cante jondo) in Spain. European-style gypsy jazz ("jazz Manouche" or "Sinti jazz") is still widely practiced among the original creators (the Romanie People); one who acknowledged this artistic debt was guitarist Django Reinhardt. Contemporary artists in this tradition known internationally include Stochelo Rosenberg, Biréli Lagrène, Jimmy Rosenberg, Paulus Schäfer and Tchavolo Schmitt.
+The Romanies of Turkey have achieved musical acclaim from national and local audiences. Local performers usually perform for special holidays. Their music is usually performed on instruments such as the darbuka, gırnata and cümbüş.[216]
+Romani contemporary art is art created by Romani people. It emerged at the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the late-1980s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the Cultural turn. The idea of the "cultural turn" was introduced; and this was also the time when the notion of cultural democracy became crystallized in the debates carried on at various public forums. Civil society gained strength, and civil politics appeared, which is a prerequisite for cultural democracy. This shift of attitude in scholarly circles derived from concerns specific not only to ethnicity, but also to society, gender and class.[217]
+Most Romani speak one of several dialects of the Romani language,[218] an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in. Typically, they also incorporate loanwords and calques into Romani from the languages of those countries and especially words for terms that the Romani language does not have. Most of the Ciganos of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of the UK, and Scandinavian Travellers have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and respectively speak the mixed languages Caló,[219] Angloromany, and Scandoromani. Most of the speaker communities in these regions consist of later immigrants from eastern or central Europe.[220]
+There are no concrete statistics for the number of Romani speakers, both in Europe and globally. However, a conservative estimation has been made at 3.5 million speakers in Europe and a further 500,000 elsewhere,[220] although the actual number may be considerably higher. This makes Romani the second largest minority language in Europe, behind Catalan.[220]
+In relation to dialect diversity, Romani works in the same way as most other European languages.[221] Cross-dialect communication is dominated by the following features:
+One of the most enduring persecutions against the Romani people was their enslavement. Slavery was widely practiced in medieval Europe, including the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in the 13th–14th century.[222][page needed] Legislation decreed that all the Romani living in these states, as well as any others who immigrated there, were classified as slaves.[223] Slavery was gradually abolished during the 1840s and 1850s.[224][page needed]
+The exact origins of slavery in the Danubian Principalities are not known. There is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia and Moldavia as free men or were brought as slaves. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, in which the Romanians took the Roma as slaves from the Mongols and preserved their status to use their labor. Other historians believe that the Romani were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving war prisoners may also have been adopted from the Mongols.[222][page needed]
+Some Romani may have been slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, but most of them migrated from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the foundation of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia and possibly in both principalities. After the Roma migrated into the area, slavery became a widespread practice by the majority population. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.[225]
+Some branches of the Romani people reached Western Europe in the 15th century, fleeing as refugees from the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.[226] Although the Romani were refugees from the conflicts in southeastern Europe, they were often suspected by certain populations in the West of being associated with the Ottoman invasion because their physical appearance seemed Turkish. (The Imperial Diet at Landau and Freiburg in 1496–1498 declared that the Romani were spies of the Turks). In Western Europe, such suspicions and discrimination against a people who were a visible minority resulted in persecution, often violent, with efforts to achieve ethnic cleansing until the modern era. In times of social tension, the Romani suffered as scapegoats; for instance, they were accused of bringing the plague during times of epidemics.[227]
+On 30 July 1749, Spain conducted The Great Roundup of Romani (Gitanos) in its territory. The Spanish Crown ordered a nationwide raid that led to the break-up of families as all able-bodied men were interned into forced labor camps in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The measure was eventually reversed and the Romanis were freed as protests began to arise in different communities, sedentary romanis being highly esteemed and protected in rural Spain.[228][229]
+Later in the 19th century, Romani immigration was forbidden on a racial basis in areas outside Europe, mostly in the English-speaking world. Argentina in 1880 prohibited immigration by Roma, as did the United States in 1885.[227]
+In the Habsburg Monarchy under Maria Theresa (1740–1780), a series of decrees tried to force the Romanies to permanently settle, removed rights to horse and wagon ownership (1754), renamed them as "New Citizens" and forced Romani boys into military service if they had no trade (1761), forced them to register with the local authorities (1767), and prohibited marriage between Romanies (1773). Her successor Josef II prohibited the wearing of traditional Romani clothing and the use of the Romani language, punishable by flogging.[230]
+In Spain, attempts to assimilate the Gitanos were under way as early as 1619, when Gitanos were forcibly settled, the use of the Romani language was prohibited, Gitano men and women were sent to separate workhouses and their children sent to orphanages. King Charles III took on a more progressive attitude to Gitano assimilation, proclaiming their equal rights as Spanish citizens and ending official denigration based on their race. While he prohibited the nomadic lifestyle, the use of the Calo language, Romani clothing, their trade in horses and other itinerant trades, he also forbade any form of discrimination against them or barring them from the guilds. The use of the word gitano was also forbidden to further assimilation, substituted for "New Castilian", which was also applied to former Jews and Muslims.[231][232]
+Most historians agree that Charles III pragmática failed for three main reasons, ultimately derived from its implementation outside major cities and in marginal areas: The difficulty the Gitano community faced in changing its nomadic lifestyle, the marginal lifestyle in which the community had been driven by society and the serious difficulties of applying the pragmática in the fields of education and work. One author ascribes its failure to the overall rejection by the wider population of the integration of the Gitanos.[230][233]
+Other examples of forced assimilation include Norway, where a law was passed in 1896 permitting the state to remove children from their parents and place them in state institutions.[234] This resulted in some 1,500 Romani children being taken from their parents in the 20th century.[235]
+The persecution of the Romanies reached a peak during World War II in the Porajmos genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws stripped the Romani people living in Nazi Germany of their citizenship, after which they were subjected to violence, imprisonment in concentration camps and later genocide in extermination camps. The policy was extended in areas occupied by the Nazis during the war, and it was also applied by their allies, notably the Independent State of Croatia, Romania, and Hungary.
+Because no accurate pre-war census figures exist for the Romanis, it is impossible to accurately assess the actual number of victims. Most estimates for numbers of Romani victims of the Holocaust fall between 200,000 and 500,000, although figures ranging between 90,000 and 1.5 million have been proposed. Lower estimates do not include those killed in all Axis-controlled countries. A detailed study by Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a figure of at least a minimum of 220,000, possibly closer to 500,000.[236] Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, argues in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000.[237]
+In Central Europe, the extermination in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was so thorough that the Bohemian Romani language became extinct.
+In Europe, Romani people are associated with poverty, and are accused of high rates of crime and behaviours that are perceived by the rest of the population as being antisocial or inappropriate.[239] Partly for this reason, discrimination against the Romani people has continued to the present day,[240][241] although efforts are being made to address them.[242] Amnesty International reports continued instances of Antizigan discrimination during the 20th century, particularly in Romania, Serbia,[243] Slovakia,[244] Hungary,[245] Slovenia,[246] and Kosovo.[247] The European Union has recognized that discrimination against Romani must be addressed, and with the national Roma integration strategy they encourage member states to work towards greater Romani inclusion and upholding the rights of the Romani in the European union.[248]
+In Eastern Europe, Roma children often attend Roma Special Schools, separate from non-Roma children, which puts them at an educational disadvantage.[251]:83
+The Romanis of Kosovo have been severely persecuted by ethnic Albanians since the end of the Kosovo War, and the region's Romani community is, for the most part, annihilated.[252]
+Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Romani women, starting in 1973.[253] The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977–78 as a genocide, but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989.[254] A 2005 report by the Czech Republic's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators.[255]
+In 2008, following the rape and subsequent murder of an Italian woman in Rome at the hands of a young man from a local Romani encampment,[256] the Italian government declared that Italy's Romani population represented a national security risk and that swift action was required to address the emergenza nomadi (nomad emergency).[257] Specifically, officials in the Italian government accused the Romanies of being responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas.
+The 2008 deaths of Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, two Roma children who drowned while Italian beach-goers remained unperturbed, brought international attention to the relationship between Italians and the Roma people. Reviewing the situation in 2012, one Belgian magazine observed:
+On International Roma Day, which falls on 8 April, the significant proportion of Europe's 12 million Roma who live in deplorable conditions will not have much to celebrate. And poverty is not the only worry for the community. Ethnic tensions are on the rise. In 2008, Roma camps came under attack in Italy, intimidation by racist parliamentarians is the norm in Hungary. Speaking in 1993, Václav Havel prophetically remarked that "the treatment of the Roma is a Litmus test for democracy": and democracy has been found wanting. The consequences of the transition to capitalism have been disastrous for the Roma. Under communism they had jobs, free housing and schooling. Now many are unemployed, many are losing their homes and racism is increasingly rewarded with impunity.[258]
+The 2016 Pew Research poll found that Italians, in particular, hold strong anti-Roma views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions about Roma. In Greece 67%, in Hungary 64%, in France 61%, in Spain 49%, in Poland 47%, in the UK 45%, in Sweden 42%, in Germany 40%, and in the Netherlands[259] 37% had an unfavourable view of Roma.[260] The 2019 Pew Research poll found that 83% of Italians, 76% of Slovaks, 72% of Greeks, 68% of Bulgarians, 66% of Czechs, 61% of Lithuanians, 61% of Hungarians, 54% of Ukrainians, 52% of Russians, 51% of Poles, 44% of French, 40% of Spaniards, and 37% of Germans held unfavorable views of Roma.[261]
+Reports of anti-Roma incidents are increasing across Europe.[262] Discrimination against Roma remains widespread in Romania,[263] Slovakia,[264] Bulgaria,[265][266], and the Czech Republic.[267] Roma communities across Ukraine have been the target of violent attacks.[268][269]
+In the summer of 2010, French authorities demolished at least 51 illegal Roma camps and began the process of repatriating their residents to their countries of origin.[270] This followed tensions between the French state and Roma communities, which had been heightened after French police opened fire and killed a traveller who drove through a police checkpoint, hitting an officer, and attempted to hit two more officers at another checkpoint. In retaliation a group of Roma, armed with hatchets and iron bars, attacked the police station of Saint-Aignan, toppled traffic lights and road signs and burned three cars.[271][272] The French government has been accused of perpetrating these actions to pursue its political agenda.[273] EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that the European Commission should take legal action against France over the issue, calling the deportations "a disgrace". A leaked file dated 5 August, sent from the Interior Ministry to regional police chiefs, included the instruction: "Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority."[274]
+Many depictions of Romani people in literature and art present romanticized narratives of mystical powers of fortune telling or irascible or passionate temper paired with an indomitable love of freedom and a habit of criminality. Romani were a popular subject in Venetian painting from the time of Giorgione at the start of the 16th century; the inclusion of such a figure adds an exotic oriental flavour to scenes. A Venetian Renaissance painting by Paris Bordone (ca. 1530, Strasbourg) of the Holy Family in Egypt makes Elizabeth, a Romani fortune-teller; the scene is otherwise located in a distinctly European landscape.[275]
+Particularly notable are classics like the story Carmen by Prosper Mérimée and the opera based on it by Georges Bizet, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Herge's The Castafiore Emerald and Miguel de Cervantes' La Gitanilla. The Romani were also depicted in A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Othello and The Tempest, all by William Shakespeare.
+The Romani were also heavily romanticized in the Soviet Union, a classic example being the 1975 film Tabor ukhodit v Nebo.
+A more realistic depiction of contemporary Romani in the Balkans, featuring Romani lay actors speaking in their native dialects, although still playing with established clichés of a Romani penchant for both magic and crime, was presented by Emir Kusturica in his Time of the Gypsies (1988) and Black Cat, White Cat (1998). The films of Tony Gatlif, a French director of Romani ethnicity, like Les Princes (1983), Latcho Drom (1993) and Gadjo Dilo (1997) also portray romani life.
+Paris Bordone, c. 1530, Elizabeth, at right, is shown as a Romani fortune-teller
+August von Pettenkofen: Gypsy Children (1885), Hermitage Museum
+Vincent van Gogh: The Caravans – Gypsy Camp near Arles (1888, oil on canvas)
+Carmen
+Esméralda
+Nicolae Grigorescu Gypsy from Boldu (1897), Art Museum of Iași
+General
+Lists
+European countries Roma links
+Non-governmental organisations
+Museums and libraries

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+A tsunami (Japanese: 津波) (/(t)suːˈnɑːmi, (t)sʊˈ-/ (t)soo-NAH-mee, (t)suu-[1][2][3][4][5] pronounced [tsɯnami]) is a series of waves in a water body caused by the displacement of a large volume of water, generally in an ocean or a large lake. Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and other underwater explosions (including detonations, landslides, glacier calvings, meteorite impacts and other disturbances) above or below water all have the potential to generate a tsunami.[6] Unlike normal ocean waves, which are generated by wind, or tides, which are generated by the gravitational pull of the Moon and the Sun, a tsunami is generated by the displacement of water.
+Tsunami waves do not resemble normal undersea currents or sea waves because their wavelength is far longer.[7] Rather than appearing as a breaking wave, a tsunami may instead initially resemble a rapidly rising tide.[8] For this reason, it is often referred to as a tidal wave,[9] although this usage is not favoured by the scientific community because it might give the false impression of a causal relationship between tides and tsunamis.[10] Tsunamis generally consist of a series of waves, with periods ranging from minutes to hours, arriving in a so-called "wave train".[11] Wave heights of tens of metres can be generated by large events. Although the impact of tsunamis is limited to coastal areas, their destructive power can be enormous, and they can affect entire ocean basins. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was among the deadliest natural disasters in human history, with at least 230,000 people killed or missing in 14 countries bordering the Indian Ocean.
+The Ancient Greek historian Thucydides suggested in his 5th century BC History of the Peloponnesian War that tsunamis were related to submarine earthquakes,[12][13] but the understanding of tsunamis remained slim until the 20th century and much remains unknown. Major areas of current research include determining why some large earthquakes do not generate tsunamis while other smaller ones do; accurately forecasting the passage of tsunamis across the oceans; and forecasting how tsunami waves interact with shorelines.
+The term "tsunami" is a borrowing from the Japanese tsunami 津波, meaning "harbour wave". For the plural, one can either follow ordinary English practice and add an s, or use an invariable plural as in the Japanese.[14] Some English speakers alter the word's initial /ts/ to an /s/ by dropping the "t", since English does not natively permit /ts/ at the beginning of words, though the original Japanese pronunciation is /ts/.
+Tsunamis are sometimes referred to as tidal waves.[15] This once-popular term derives from the most common appearance of a tsunami, which is that of an extraordinarily high tidal bore. Tsunamis and tides both produce waves of water that move inland, but in the case of a tsunami, the inland movement of water may be much greater, giving the impression of an incredibly high and forceful tide. In recent years, the term "tidal wave" has fallen out of favour, especially in the scientific community, because the causes of tsunamis have nothing to do with those of tides, which are produced by the gravitational pull of the moon and sun rather than the displacement of water. Although the meanings of "tidal" include "resembling"[16] or "having the form or character of"[17] the tides, use of the term tidal wave is discouraged by geologists and oceanographers.
+A 1969 episode of the TV crime show Hawaii Five-O entitled "Forty Feet High and It Kills!" used the terms "tsunami" and "tidal wave" interchangeably.[18]
+The term seismic sea wave is also used to refer to the phenomenon, because the waves most often are generated by seismic activity such as earthquakes.[19] Prior to the rise of the use of the term tsunami in English, scientists generally encouraged the use of the term seismic sea wave rather than tidal wave. However, like tsunami, seismic sea wave is not a completely accurate term, as forces other than earthquakes – including underwater landslides, volcanic eruptions, underwater explosions, land or ice slumping into the ocean, meteorite impacts, and the weather when the atmospheric pressure changes very rapidly – can generate such waves by displacing water.[20][21]
+While Japan may have the longest recorded history of tsunamis, the sheer destruction caused by the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami event mark it as the most devastating of its kind in modern times, killing around 230,000 people.[22] The Sumatran region is also accustomed to tsunamis, with earthquakes of varying magnitudes regularly occurring off the coast of the island.[23]
+Tsunamis are an often underestimated hazard in the Mediterranean Sea and parts of Europe. Of historical and current (with regard to risk assumptions) importance are the 1755 Lisbon earthquake and tsunami (which was caused by the Azores–Gibraltar Transform Fault), the 1783 Calabrian earthquakes, each causing several tens of thousands of deaths and the 1908 Messina earthquake and tsunami. The tsunami claimed more than 123,000 lives in Sicily and Calabria and is among the most deadly natural disasters in modern Europe. The Storegga Slide in the Norwegian Sea and some examples of tsunamis affecting the British Isles refer to landslide and meteotsunamis predominantly and less to earthquake-induced waves.
+As early as 426 BC the Greek historian Thucydides inquired in his book History of the Peloponnesian War about the causes of tsunami, and was the first to argue that ocean earthquakes must be the cause.[12][13]
+The cause, in my opinion, of this phenomenon must be sought in the earthquake. At the point where its shock has been the most violent the sea is driven back, and suddenly recoiling with redoubled force, causes the inundation. Without an earthquake I do not see how such an accident could happen.[24]
+The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae 26.10.15–19) described the typical sequence of a tsunami, including an incipient earthquake, the sudden retreat of the sea and a following gigantic wave, after the 365 AD tsunami devastated Alexandria.[25][26]
+The principal generation mechanism of a tsunami is the displacement of a substantial volume of water or perturbation of the sea.[27] This displacement of water is usually attributed to either earthquakes, landslides, volcanic eruptions, glacier calvings or more rarely by meteorites and nuclear tests.[28][29]
+Tsunamis can be generated when the sea floor abruptly deforms and vertically displaces the overlying water. Tectonic earthquakes are a particular kind of earthquake that are associated with the Earth's crustal deformation; when these earthquakes occur beneath the sea, the water above the deformed area is displaced from its equilibrium position.[30] More specifically, a tsunami can be generated when thrust faults associated with convergent or destructive plate boundaries move abruptly, resulting in water displacement, owing to the vertical component of movement involved. Movement on normal (extensional) faults can also cause displacement of the seabed, but only the largest of such events (typically related to flexure in the outer trench swell) cause enough displacement to give rise to a significant tsunami, such as the 1977 Sumba and 1933 Sanriku events.[31][32]
+Drawing of tectonic plate boundary before earthquake
+Over-riding plate bulges under strain, causing tectonic uplift.
+Plate slips, causing subsidence and releasing energy into water.
+The energy released produces tsunami waves.
+Tsunamis have a small wave height offshore, and a very long wavelength (often hundreds of kilometres long, whereas normal ocean waves have a wavelength of only 30 or 40 metres),[33] which is why they generally pass unnoticed at sea, forming only a slight swell usually about 300 millimetres (12 in) above the normal sea surface. They grow in height when they reach shallower water, in a wave shoaling process described below. A tsunami can occur in any tidal state and even at low tide can still inundate coastal areas.
+On April 1, 1946, the 8.6 Mw  Aleutian Islands earthquake occurred with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong). It generated a tsunami which inundated Hilo on the island of Hawaii with a 14-metre high (46 ft) surge. Between 165 and 173 were killed. The area where the earthquake occurred is where the Pacific Ocean floor is subducting (or being pushed downwards) under Alaska.
+Examples of tsunamis originating at locations away from convergent boundaries include Storegga about 8,000 years ago, Grand Banks in 1929, and Papua New Guinea in 1998 (Tappin, 2001). The Grand Banks and Papua New Guinea tsunamis came from earthquakes which destabilised sediments, causing them to flow into the ocean and generate a tsunami. They dissipated before travelling transoceanic distances.
+The cause of the Storegga sediment failure is unknown. Possibilities include an overloading of the sediments, an earthquake or a release of gas hydrates (methane etc.).
+The 1960 Valdivia earthquake (Mw 9.5), 1964 Alaska earthquake (Mw 9.2), 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake (Mw 9.2), and 2011 Tōhoku earthquake (Mw9.0) are recent examples of powerful megathrust earthquakes that generated tsunamis (known as teletsunamis) that can cross entire oceans. Smaller (Mw 4.2) earthquakes in Japan can trigger tsunamis (called local and regional tsunamis) that can devastate stretches of coastline, but can do so in only a few minutes at a time.
+In the 1950s, it was discovered that tsunamis larger than had previously been believed possible can be caused by giant submarine landslides.  These rapidly displace large water volumes, as energy transfers to the water at a rate faster than the water can absorb. Their existence was confirmed in 1958, when a giant landslide in Lituya Bay, Alaska, caused the highest wave ever recorded, which had a height of 524 metres (1,719 ft).[34] The wave did not travel far, as it struck land almost immediately. The wave struck three boats — each with two people aboard — anchored in the bay. One boat rode out the wave, but the wave sank the other two, killing both people aboard one of them.[35][36][37]
+Another landslide-tsunami event occurred in 1963 when a massive landslide from Monte Toc entered the reservoir behind the Vajont Dam in Italy. The resulting wave surged over the 262-metre (860 ft)-high dam by 250 metres (820 ft) and destroyed several towns. Around 2,000 people died.[38][39] Scientists named these waves megatsunamis.
+Some geologists claim that large landslides from volcanic islands, e.g. Cumbre Vieja on La Palma in the Canary Islands, may be able to generate megatsunamis that can cross oceans, but this is disputed by many others.
+In general, landslides generate displacements mainly in the shallower parts of the coastline, and there is conjecture about the nature of large landslides that enter the water.  This has been shown to subsequently affect water in enclosed bays and lakes, but a landslide large enough to cause a transoceanic tsunami has not occurred within recorded history. Susceptible locations are believed to be the Big Island of Hawaii, Fogo in the Cape Verde Islands, La Reunion in the Indian Ocean, and Cumbre Vieja on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands; along with other volcanic ocean islands. This is because large masses of relatively unconsolidated volcanic material occurs on the flanks and in some cases detachment planes are believed to be developing. However, there is growing controversy about how dangerous these slopes actually are.[40]
+Some meteorological conditions, especially rapid changes in barometric pressure, as seen with the passing of a front, can displace bodies of water enough to cause trains of waves with wavelengths comparable to seismic tsunamis, but usually with lower energies. These are essentially dynamically equivalent to seismic tsunamis, the only differences being that meteotsunamis lack the transoceanic reach of significant seismic tsunamis and that the force that displaces the water is sustained over some length of time such that meteotsunamis cannot be modelled as having been caused instantaneously. In spite of their lower energies, on shorelines where they can be amplified by resonance, they are sometimes powerful enough to cause localised damage and potential for loss of life. They have been documented in many places, including the Great Lakes, the Aegean Sea, the English Channel, and the Balearic Islands, where they are common enough to have a local name, rissaga. In Sicily they are called marubbio and in Nagasaki Bay, they are called abiki. Some examples of destructive meteotsunamis include 31 March 1979 at Nagasaki and 15 June 2006 at Menorca, the latter causing damage in the tens of millions of euros.[41]
+Meteotsunamis should not be confused with storm surges, which are local increases in sea level associated with the low barometric pressure of passing tropical cyclones, nor should they be confused with setup, the temporary local raising of sea level caused by strong on-shore winds. Storm surges and setup are also dangerous causes of coastal flooding in severe weather but their dynamics are completely unrelated to tsunami waves.[41] They are unable to propagate beyond their sources, as waves do.
+There have been studies of the potential of the induction of and at least one actual attempt to create tsunami waves as a tectonic weapon.
+In World War II, the New Zealand Military Forces initiated Project Seal, which attempted to create small tsunamis with explosives in the area of today's Shakespear Regional Park; the attempt failed.[42]
+There has been considerable speculation on the possibility of using nuclear weapons to cause tsunamis near an enemy coastline.  Even during World War II consideration of the idea using conventional explosives was explored. Nuclear testing in the Pacific Proving Ground by the United States seemed to generate poor results.  Operation Crossroads fired two 20 kilotonnes of TNT (84 TJ) bombs, one in the air and one underwater, above and below the shallow (50 m (160 ft)) waters of the Bikini Atoll lagoon.  Fired about 6 km (3.7 mi) from the nearest island, the waves there were no higher than 3–4 m (9.8–13.1 ft) upon reaching the shoreline.  Other underwater tests, mainly Hardtack I/Wahoo (deep water) and Hardtack I/Umbrella (shallow water) confirmed the results.  Analysis of the effects of shallow and deep underwater explosions indicate that the energy of the explosions does not easily generate the kind of deep, all-ocean waveforms which are tsunamis; most of the energy creates steam, causes vertical fountains above the water, and creates compressional waveforms.[43] Tsunamis are hallmarked by permanent large vertical displacements of very large volumes of water which do not occur in explosions.
+Tsunamis cause damage by two mechanisms: the smashing force of a wall of water travelling at high speed, and the destructive power of a large volume of water draining off the land and carrying a large amount of debris with it, even with waves that do not appear to be large.
+While everyday wind waves have a wavelength (from crest to crest) of about 100 metres (330 ft) and a height of roughly 2 metres (6.6 ft), a tsunami in the deep ocean has a much larger wavelength of up to 200 kilometres (120 mi). Such a wave travels at well over 800 kilometres per hour (500 mph), but owing to the enormous wavelength the wave oscillation at any given point takes 20 or 30 minutes to complete a cycle and has an amplitude of only about 1 metre (3.3 ft).[44] This makes tsunamis difficult to detect over deep water, where ships are unable to feel their passage.
+The velocity of a tsunami can be calculated by obtaining the square root of the depth of the water in metres multiplied by the acceleration due to gravity (approximated to 10 m/s2). For example, if the Pacific Ocean is considered to have a depth of 5000 metres, the velocity of a tsunami would be the square root of √(5000 × 10) = √50000 = ~224 metres per second (735 feet per second), which equates to a speed of ~806 kilometres per hour or about 500 miles per hour. This is the formula used for calculating the velocity of shallow-water waves. Even the deep ocean is shallow in this sense because a tsunami wave is so long (horizontally from crest to crest) by comparison.
+The reason for the Japanese name "harbour wave" is that sometimes a village's fishermen would sail out, and encounter no unusual waves while out at sea fishing, and come back to land to find their village devastated by a huge wave.
+As the tsunami approaches the coast and the waters become shallow, wave shoaling compresses the wave and its speed decreases below 80 kilometres per hour (50 mph). Its wavelength diminishes to less than 20 kilometres (12 mi) and its amplitude grows enormously – in accord with Green's law. Since the wave still has the same very long period, the tsunami may take minutes to reach full height. Except for the very largest tsunamis, the approaching wave does not break, but rather appears like a fast-moving tidal bore.[45] Open bays and coastlines adjacent to very deep water may shape the tsunami further into a step-like wave with a steep-breaking front.
+When the tsunami's wave peak reaches the shore, the resulting temporary rise in sea level is termed run up. Run up is measured in metres above a reference sea level.[45] A large tsunami may feature multiple waves arriving over a period of hours, with significant time between the wave crests. The first wave to reach the shore may not have the highest run-up.[46]
+About 80% of tsunamis occur in the Pacific Ocean, but they are possible wherever there are large bodies of water, including lakes. They are caused by earthquakes, landslides, volcanic explosions, glacier calvings, and bolides.
+All waves have a positive and negative peak; that is, a ridge and a trough.  In the case of a propagating wave like a tsunami, either may be the first to arrive.  If the first part to arrive at the shore is the ridge, a massive breaking wave or sudden flooding will be the first effect noticed on land.  However, if the first part to arrive is a trough, a drawback will occur as the shoreline recedes dramatically, exposing normally submerged areas.  The drawback can exceed hundreds of metres, and people unaware of the danger sometimes remain near the shore to satisfy their curiosity or to collect fish from the exposed seabed.
+A typical wave period for a damaging tsunami is about twelve minutes. Thus, the sea recedes in the drawback phase, with areas well below sea level exposed after three minutes.  For the next six minutes, the wave trough builds into a ridge which may flood the coast, and destruction ensues.  During the next six minutes, the wave changes from a ridge to a trough, and the flood waters recede in a second drawback.  Victims and debris may be swept into the ocean.  The process repeats with succeeding waves.
+As with earthquakes, several attempts have been made to set up scales of tsunami intensity or magnitude to allow comparison between different events.[47]
+The first scales used routinely to measure the intensity of tsunamis were the Sieberg-Ambraseys scale (1962), used in the Mediterranean Sea and the Imamura-Iida intensity scale (1963), used in the Pacific Ocean. The latter scale was modified by Soloviev (1972), who calculated the tsunami intensity "I" according to the formula:
+where
+H
+a
+v
+{\displaystyle {\mathit {H}}_{av}}
+ is the "tsunami height", averaged along the nearest coastline, with the tsunami height defined as the rise of the water level above the normal tidal level at the time of occurrence of the tsunami.[48] This scale, known as the Soloviev-Imamura tsunami intensity scale, is used in the global tsunami catalogues compiled by the NGDC/NOAA[49] and the Novosibirsk Tsunami Laboratory as the main parameter for the size of the tsunami.
+This formula yields:
+In 2013, following the intensively studied tsunamis in 2004 and 2011, a new 12-point scale was proposed, the Integrated Tsunami Intensity Scale (ITIS-2012), intended to match as closely as possible to the modified ESI2007 and EMS earthquake intensity scales.[50][51]
+The first scale that genuinely calculated a magnitude for a tsunami, rather than an intensity at a particular location was the ML scale proposed by Murty & Loomis based on the potential energy.[47] Difficulties in calculating the potential energy of the tsunami mean that this scale is rarely used. Abe introduced the tsunami magnitude scale
+M
+t
+{\displaystyle {\mathit {M}}_{t}}
+, calculated from,
+where h is the maximum tsunami-wave amplitude (in m) measured by a tide gauge at a distance R from the epicentre, a, b and D are constants used to make the Mt scale match as closely as possible with the moment magnitude scale.[52]
+Several terms are used to describe the different characteristics of tsunami in terms of their height:[53][54][55][56]
+Drawbacks can serve as a brief warning. People who observe drawback (many survivors report an accompanying sucking sound), can survive only if they immediately run for high ground or seek the upper floors of nearby buildings. In 2004, ten-year-old Tilly Smith of Surrey, England, was on Maikhao beach in Phuket, Thailand with her parents and sister, and having learned about tsunamis recently in school, told her family that a tsunami might be imminent. Her parents warned others minutes before the wave arrived, saving dozens of lives. She credited her geography teacher, Andrew Kearney.
+In the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami drawback was not reported on the African coast or any other east-facing coasts that it reached. This was because the initial wave moved downwards on the eastern side of the megathrust and upwards on the western side. The western pulse hit coastal Africa and other western areas.
+A tsunami cannot be precisely predicted, even if the magnitude and location of an earthquake is known. Geologists, oceanographers, and seismologists analyse each earthquake and based on many factors may or may not issue a tsunami warning. However, there are some warning signs of an impending tsunami, and automated systems can provide warnings immediately after an earthquake in time to save lives. One of the most successful systems uses bottom pressure sensors, attached to buoys, which constantly monitor the pressure of the overlying water column.
+Regions with a high tsunami risk typically use tsunami warning systems to warn the population before the wave reaches land. On the west coast of the United States, which is prone to Pacific Ocean tsunami, warning signs indicate evacuation routes. In Japan, the community is well-educated about earthquakes and tsunamis, and along the Japanese shorelines the tsunami warning signs are reminders of the natural hazards together with a network of warning sirens, typically at the top of the cliff of surroundings hills.[58]
+The Pacific Tsunami Warning System is based in Honolulu, Hawaiʻi. It monitors Pacific Ocean seismic activity. A sufficiently large earthquake magnitude and other information triggers a tsunami warning. While the subduction zones around the Pacific are seismically active, not all earthquakes generate a tsunami. Computers assist in analysing the tsunami risk of every earthquake that occurs in the Pacific Ocean and the adjoining land masses.
+Tsunami hazard sign at Bamfield, British Columbia
+A tsunami warning sign in Kamakura, Japan
+A Tsunami hazard sign (Spanish - English) in Iquique, Chile.
+Tsunami Evacuation Route signage along U.S. Route 101, in Washington
+As a direct result of the Indian Ocean tsunami, a re-appraisal of the tsunami threat for all coastal areas is being undertaken by national governments and the United Nations Disaster Mitigation Committee. A tsunami warning system is being installed in the Indian Ocean.
+Computer models can predict tsunami arrival, usually within minutes of the arrival time. Bottom pressure sensors can relay information in real time. Based on these pressure readings and other seismic information and the seafloor's shape (bathymetry) and coastal topography, the models estimate the amplitude and surge height of the approaching tsunami. All Pacific Rim countries collaborate in the Tsunami Warning System and most regularly practise evacuation and other procedures. In Japan, such preparation is mandatory for government, local authorities, emergency services and the population.
+Along the United States west coast, in addition to sirens, warnings are sent on television and radio via the National Weather Service, using the Emergency Alert System.
+Some zoologists hypothesise that some animal species have an ability to sense subsonic Rayleigh waves from an earthquake or a tsunami. If correct, monitoring their behaviour could provide advance warning of earthquakes and tsunamis. However, the evidence is controversial and is not widely accepted. There are unsubstantiated claims about the Lisbon quake that some animals escaped to higher ground, while many other animals in the same areas drowned. The phenomenon was also noted by media sources in Sri Lanka in the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake.[59][60] It is possible that certain animals (e.g., elephants) may have heard the sounds of the tsunami as it approached the coast. The elephants' reaction was to move away from the approaching noise. By contrast, some humans went to the shore to investigate and many drowned as a result.
+In some tsunami-prone countries, earthquake engineering measures have been taken to reduce the damage caused onshore.
+Japan, where tsunami science and response measures first began following a disaster in 1896, has produced ever-more elaborate countermeasures and response plans.[61] The country has built many tsunami walls of up to 12 metres (39 ft) high to protect populated coastal areas. Other localities have built floodgates of up to 15.5 metres (51 ft) high and channels to redirect the water from an incoming tsunami.  However, their effectiveness has been questioned, as tsunamis often overtop the barriers.
+The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster was directly triggered by the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, when waves exceeded the height of the plant's sea wall.[62] Iwate Prefecture, which is an area at high risk from tsunami, had tsunami barriers walls (Taro sea wall) totalling 25 kilometres (16 mi) long at coastal towns.  The 2011 tsunami toppled more than 50% of the walls and caused catastrophic damage.[63]
+The Okushiri, Hokkaidō tsunami which struck Okushiri Island of Hokkaidō within two to five minutes of the earthquake on July 12, 1993, created waves as much as 30 metres (100 ft) tall—as high as a 10-storey building. The port town of Aonae was completely surrounded by a tsunami wall, but the waves washed right over the wall and destroyed all the wood-framed structures in the area. The wall may have succeeded in slowing down and moderating the height of the tsunami, but it did not prevent major destruction and loss of life.[64]

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+Plucked
+The tuba (UK: /ˈtjuːbə/;[1] US: /ˈtuːbə/; Italian: [ˈtuːba]) is the lowest-pitched musical instrument in the brass family.  As with all brass instruments, the sound is produced by lip vibration, or a buzz, into a large mouthpiece. It first appeared in the mid-19th century, making it one of the newer instruments in the modern orchestra and concert band. The tuba largely replaced the ophicleide.[2] Tuba is Latin for "trumpet".[3]
+In America, a person who plays the tuba is known as a tubaist or tubist.[4] In the United Kingdom, a person who plays the tuba in an orchestra is known simply as a tuba player; in a brass band or military band, they are known as bass players.
+Prussian Patent No. 19 was granted to Wilhelm Friedrich Wieprecht and Johann Gottfried Moritz (1777–1840)[5] on September 12, 1835 for a "bass tuba" in F1. The original Wieprecht and Moritz instrument used five valves of the Berlinerpumpen type that were the forerunners of the modern piston valve. The first tenor tuba was invented in 1838 by Carl Wilhelm Moritz (1810–1855), son of Johann Gottfried Moritz.
+The addition of valves made it possible to play low in the harmonic series of the instrument and still have a complete selection of notes. Prior to the invention of valves, brass instruments were limited to notes in the harmonic series, and were thus generally played very high with respect to their fundamental pitch. Harmonics starting three octaves above the fundamental pitch are about a whole step apart, making a useful variety of notes possible.
+The ophicleide used a bowl-shaped brass instrument mouthpiece but employed keys and tone holes similar to those of a modern saxophone. Another forerunner to the tuba was the serpent, a bass instrument that was shaped in a wavy form to make the tone holes accessible to the player. Tone holes changed the pitch by providing an intentional leak in the bugle of the instrument. While this changed the pitch, it also had a pronounced effect on the timbre. By using valves to adjust the length of the bugle the tuba produced a smoother tone that eventually led to its popularity. These popular instruments were mostly written for by French composers, especially Hector Berlioz. Berlioz famously wrote for the ophicleide in his compositions Symphonie fantastique and Benvenuto Cellini (opera). These pieces are now normally performed on F or CC tuba.
+Adolphe Sax, like Wieprecht, was interested in marketing systems of instruments from soprano to bass, and developed a series of brass instruments known as saxhorns. The instruments developed by Sax were generally pitched in E♭ and B♭, while the Wieprecht "basstuba" and the subsequent Cerveny contrabass tuba were pitched in F and C (see below on pitch systems). Sax's instruments gained dominance in France, and later in Britain and America, as a result of the popularity and movements of instrument makers such as Gustave Auguste Besson (who moved from France to Britain) and Henry Distin (who eventually found his way to America).[6]
+The Cimbasso is also seen instead of a tuba in the orchestral repertoire. The name is translated from "corno in basso" in German. The original design was inspired by the ophicleide and bassoon.[7] It is rare to see the cimbasso performed today, but are still around and used in historically accurate performances.
+An orchestra usually has a single tuba, though an additional tuba may be requested. It serves as the bass of the orchestral brass section and it can reinforce the bass voices of the strings and woodwinds.  It provides the bass of brass quintets and choirs (though many small brass ensembles will use the euphonium or bass trombone as the lowest voice). It is the principal bass instrument in concert bands, brass bands and military bands, and those ensembles generally have two to four tubas. It is also a solo instrument.
+Tubas are used in marching bands, drum and bugle corps and in many jazz bands (see below). In British style brass bands, two E♭ and two B♭ tubas are used and are referred to as basses.
+Well known and influential parts for the tuba include:
+Concertos have been written for the tuba by many notable composers, including Ralph Vaughan Williams (Tuba Concerto), Edward Gregson, John Williams, Alexander Arutiunian, Eric Ewazen, James Barnes, Joseph Hallman, Martin Ellerby, Philip Sparke, Kalevi Aho, Josef Tal, Bruce Broughton (Tuba Concerto), John Golland, Roger Steptoe and David Carlson.
+Tubas are found in various pitches, most commonly in F, E♭, C, or B♭. The main tube of a B♭ tuba is approximately 18 feet (5.5 m) long, while that of a C tuba is 16 feet (4.9 m), of an E♭ tuba 13 feet (4.0 m), and of an F tuba 12 feet (3.7 m). The instrument has a conical bore, meaning the bore diameter increases as a function of the tubing length from the mouthpiece to the bell. The conical bore causes the instrument to produce a preponderance of even-order harmonics.
+A tuba with its tubing wrapped for placing the instrument on the player's lap is usually called a concert tuba or simply a tuba. Tubas with the bell pointing forward (pavillon tournant) instead of upward are often called recording tubas because of their popularity in the early days of recorded music, as their sound could more easily be directed at the recording microphone. When wrapped to surround the body for cavalry bands on horseback or marching, it is traditionally known as a hélicon. The modern sousaphone, named after American bandmaster John Philip Sousa, resembles a hélicon with the bell pointed up (in the original models as the J. W. Pepper prototype and Sousa's concert instruments) and then curved to point forward (as developed by Conn and others). Some ancestors of the tuba, such as the military bombardon, had unusual valve and bore arrangements compared to modern tubas.
+During the American Civil War, most brass bands used a branch of the brass family known as saxhorns, which, by today's standards, have a narrower bore taper than tuba—the same as true cornets and baritones, but distinct from trumpets, euphoniums, and others with different tapers or no taper. Around the start of the Civil War, saxhorns manufactured for military use in the USA were commonly wrapped with the bell pointing backwards over the player's shoulder, and these were known as over-the-shoulder saxhorns, and came in sizes from cornets down to E♭ basses. However, the E♭ bass, even though it shared the same tube length as a modern E♭ tuba, has a narrower bore and as such cannot be called by the name tuba except as a convenience when comparing it to other sizes of the Saxhorn.
+Most music for the tuba is written in bass clef in concert pitch, so tuba players must know the correct fingerings for their specific instruments. Traditional British-style brass band parts for the tuba are usually written in treble clef, with the B♭ tuba sounding two octaves and one step below and the E♭ tuba sounding one octave and a major sixth below the written pitch. This allows musicians to change instruments without learning new fingerings for the same written music. Consequently, when its music is written in treble clef, the tuba is a transposing instrument, but not when the music is in bass clef.
+The lowest pitched tubas are the contrabass tubas, pitched in C or B♭, referred to as CC and BB♭ tubas respectively, based on a traditional distortion of a now-obsolete octave naming convention. The fundamental pitch of a CC tuba is 32 Hz, and for a BB♭ tuba, 29 Hz. The CC tuba is used as an orchestral, and concert band instrument in the U.S., but BB♭ tubas are the contrabass tuba of choice in German, Austrian, and Russian orchestras. In the United States, the BB♭  tuba is the most common in schools (largely due to the use of BB♭  sousaphones in high school marching bands) and for adult amateurs. Many professionals in the U.S. play CC tubas, with BB♭ also common, and many train in the use of all four pitches of tubas.[citation needed]
+The next smaller tubas are the bass tubas, pitched in F or E♭ (a fourth above the contrabass tubas). The E♭ tuba often plays an octave above the contrabass tubas in brass bands, and the F tuba is commonly used by professional players as a solo instrument and, in America, to play higher parts in the classical repertoire (or parts that were originally written for the F tuba, as is the case with Berlioz). In most of Europe, the F tuba is the standard orchestral instrument, supplemented by the CC or BB♭ only when the extra weight is desired. Wagner, for example, specifically notates the low tuba parts for Kontrabasstuba, which are played on CC or BB♭ tubas in most regions. In the United Kingdom, the E♭ is the standard orchestral tuba.
+The euphonium is sometimes referred to as a tenor tuba and is pitched in B♭, one octave higher than the BB♭ contrabass tuba. The term "tenor tuba" is often used more specifically to refer to B♭ rotary-valved tubas pitched in the same octave as euphoniums. The "Small Swiss Tuba in C" is a tenor tuba pitched in C, and provided with 6 valves to make the lower notes in the orchestral repertoire possible. The French C tuba was the standard instrument in French orchestras until overtaken by F and C tubas since the Second World War. One popular example of the use of the French C tuba is the Bydło movement in Ravel's orchestration of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, though the rest of the work is scored for this instrument as well.
+Larger BBB♭ subcontrabass tubas exist, but are extremely rare (there are at least four known examples). The first two were built by Gustave Besson in BBB♭, one octave below the BB♭ Contrabass tuba, on the suggestion of John Philip Sousa. The monster instruments were not completed until just after Sousa's death. Later, in the 1950s, British musician Gerard Hoffnung commissioned the London firm of Paxman to create a subcontrabass tuba in EEE♭ for use in his comedic music festivals. Also, a tuba pitched in FFF was made in Kraslice by Bohland & Fuchs probably during 1910 or 1911 and was destined for the World Exhibition in New York in 1913. Two players are needed; one to operate the valves and one to blow into the mouthpiece.
+In addition to the length of the instrument, which dictates the fundamental pitch, tubas also vary in overall width of the tubing sections. Tuba sizes are usually denoted by a quarter system, with 4⁄4 designating a normal, full-size tuba. Larger rotary instruments are known as kaisertubas and are often denoted 5⁄4. Larger piston tubas, particularly those with front action, are sometimes known as grand orchestral tubas (examples: the Conn 36J Orchestra Grand Bass from the 1930s, and the current model Hirsbrunner HB-50 Grand Orchestral, which is a replica of the large York tubas owned by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra). Grand orchestral tubas are generally described as 6⁄4 tubas. Smaller instruments may be described as 3⁄4 instruments. No standards exist for these designations, and their use is up to manufacturers who usually use them to distinguish among the instruments in their own product line. The size designation is related to the larger outer branches, and not to the bore of the tubing at the valves, though the bore is usually reported in instrument specifications. The quarter system is also not directly related to bell size, though there is typically a correlation. 3⁄4 tubas are common in American grade schools for use by young tuba players for whom a full size instrument might be too cumbersome. Though smaller and lighter, they are tuned and keyed identically to full-size tubas of the same pitch, although they usually have 3 rather than 4 or 5 valves.
+Tubas are made with either piston or rotary valves. Rotary valves, invented by Joseph Riedl, are based on a design included in the original valve patents by Friedrich Blühmel and Heinrich Stölzel in 1818. Červeny of Graslitz was the first to use true rotary valves, starting in the 1840s or 1850s. Modern piston valves were developed by François Périnet for the saxhorn family of instruments promoted by Adolphe Sax around the same time. Pistons may either be oriented to point to the top of the instrument (top-action, as pictured in the figure at the top of the article) or out the front of the instrument (front-action or side-action). There are advantages and disadvantages to each valve style, but assertions concerning sound, speed, and clarity are difficult to quantify. German players generally prefer rotary valves while British and American players favor piston valves; the choice of valve type remains up to the performer.
+Piston valves require more maintenance than rotary valves – they require regular oiling to keep them freely operating, while rotary valves are sealed and seldom require oiling. Piston valves are easy to disassemble and re-assemble, while rotary valve disassembly and re-assembly is much more difficult and is generally left to qualified instrument repair persons.
+Tubas generally have from three to six valves, though some rare exceptions exist. Three-valve tubas are generally the least expensive and are almost exclusively used by amateurs, and the sousaphone (a marching version of a BB♭ tuba) almost always has three valves. Among advanced players, four and five valve tubas are by far the most common choices, with six-valve tubas being relatively rare except among F tubas, which mostly have five or six valves.
+The valves add tubing to the main tube of the instrument, thus lowering its fundamental pitch. The first valve lowers the pitch by a whole step (two semitones), the second valve by a semitone, and the third valve by three semitones. Used in combination, the valve tubing is too short and the resulting pitch tends to be sharp. For example, a BB♭ tuba becomes (in effect) an A♭ tuba when the first valve is depressed. The third valve is long enough to lower the pitch of a BB♭ tuba by three semitones, but it is not long enough to lower the pitch of an A♭ tuba by three semitones. Thus, the first and third valves used in combination lower the pitch by something just short of five semitones, and the first three valves used in combination are nearly a quarter tone sharp.
+The fourth valve is used in place of combinations of the first and third valves, and the second and fourth used in combination are used in place of the first three valves in combination. The fourth valve can be tuned to lower the pitch of the main tube accurately by five semitones, and thus its use corrects the main problem of combinations being too sharp. By using the fourth valve by itself to replace the first and third combination, or the fourth and second valves in place of the first, second and third valve combinations, the notes requiring these fingerings are more in tune. The fourth valve used in combination with, rather than instead of, the first three valves fills in the missing notes in the bottom octave allowing the player to play chromatically down to the fundamental pitch of the instrument. For the reason given in the preceding paragraph some of these notes will tend to be sharp and must by "lipped" into tune by the player.
+A fifth and sixth valve, if fitted, are used to provide alternative fingering possibilities to improve intonation, and are also used to reach into the low register of the instrument where all the valves will be used in combination to fill the first octave between the fundamental pitch and the next available note on the open tube. The fifth and sixth valves also give the musician the ability to trill more smoothly or to use alternative fingerings for ease of playing. This type of tuba is what is most found in orchestras and wind bands around the world.
+The bass tuba in F is pitched a fifth above the BB♭ tuba and a fourth above the CC tuba, so it needs additional tubing length beyond that provided by four valves to play securely down to a low F as required in much tuba music. The fifth valve is commonly tuned to a flat whole step, so that when used with the fourth valve, it gives an in-tune low B♭. The sixth valve is commonly tuned as a flat half step, allowing the F tuba to play low G as 1-4-5-6 and low G♭ as 1-2-4-5-6. In CC tubas with five valves, the fifth valve may be tuned as a flat whole step or as a minor third depending on the instrument.
+Some tubas have a compensating system to allow accurate tuning when using several valves in combination, simplifying fingering and removing the need to constantly adjust slide positions. The most popular of the automatic compensation systems was invented by Blaikley (Bevan, 1874) and was patented by Boosey (later, Boosey and Hawkes, which also, later still, produced Besson instruments). The patent on the system limited its application outside of Britain, and to this day tubas with compensating valves are primarily popular in the United Kingdom and countries of the former British Empire. The Blaikley design plumbs the instrument so that if the fourth valve is used, the air is sent back through a second set of branches in the first three valves to compensate for the combination of valves. This does have the disadvantage of making the instrument significantly more "stuffy" or resistant to air flow when compared to a non-compensating tuba. This is due to the need for the air to flow through the valves twice. It also makes the instrument heavier. But many prefer this approach to additional valves or to manipulation of tuning slides while playing to achieve improved intonation within an ensemble. Most modern professional-grade euphoniums also now feature Blaikley-style compensating valves.[8]
+Some tubas have a strong and useful resonance that is not in the well-known harmonic series. For example, most large B♭ tubas have a strong resonance at low E♭ (E♭1, 39 Hz), which is between the fundamental and the second harmonic (an octave higher than the fundamental). These alternative resonances are often known as false tones or privileged tones. Adding the six semitones provided by the three valves, these alternative resonances let the instrument play chromatically down to the fundamental of the open bugle (which is a 29 Hz B♭0). The addition of valves below that note can lower the instrument a further six semitones to a 20 Hz E0. Thus, even three-valved instruments with good alternative resonances can produce very low sounds in the hands of skilled players; instruments with four valves can play even lower. The lowest note in the widely known repertoire is a 16 Hz double-pedal C0 in the William Kraft piece Encounters II, which is often played using a timed flutter tongue rather than by buzzing the lips. The fundamental of this pitch borders on infrasound and its overtones define the pitch in the listener's ear.
+The most convincing explanation[according to whom?] for false tones is that the horn is acting as a "third of a pipe" rather than as a half-pipe. The bell remains an anti-node, but there would then be a node one-third of the way back to the mouthpiece.[why?] If so, it seems that the fundamental would be missing entirely, and would only be inferred from the overtones. However, the node and the antinode collide in the same spot and cancel out the fundamental.[clarification needed]
+The tuba is generally constructed of brass, which is either unfinished, lacquered or electro-plated with nickel, gold or silver. Unfinished brass will eventually tarnish and thus must be periodically polished to maintain its appearance.[9]
+There are many types of tubas that are manufactured in Europe, the United States, and Asia. In Europe, the predominant models that are professionally used are Meinl-Weston (Germany) and Miraphone (Germany). Asian brands include the Yamaha Corporation (Japan) and Jupiter Instruments (Taiwan). Holton Instrument Company and King Musical Instruments are the some of the most well known brands from the United States.[10]
+Some tubas are capable of being converted into a marching style, known as "marching tubas". A leadpipe can be manually screwed on next to the valves. The tuba is then usually rested on the left shoulder (although some tubas allow use of the right shoulder), with the bell facing directly in front of the player. Some marching tubas are made only for marching, and cannot be converted into a concert model. Most marching bands opt for the sousaphone, an instrument that is easier to carry since it was invented specifically for this and almost always cheaper than a true marching tuba.[11] The earlier helicon is still used by bands in Europe and other parts of the world. Drum and bugle corps players, however, generally use marching tubas or Contrabass bugles. Standard tubas can also be played whilst standing. With the comfort of the player in mind, companies have provided harnesses that sometimes use a strap joined to the tuba with two rings, a 'sack' to hold the bottom of the tuba, or numerous straps holding the larger parts of tubing on the tuba. The strap(s) goes over the shoulder like a sash or sit at the waist, so the musician can play the instrument in the same position as when sitting.
+The tuba has been used in jazz since the genre's inception. In the earliest years, bands often used a tuba for outdoor playing and a double bass for indoor performances. In this context, the tuba was sometimes called "brass bass", as opposed to the double bass (string bass). Many musicians played both instruments.
+This practice was mostly used in the New Orleans jazz scene. The tuba was used most frequently with the Louis Armstrong groups and prominent in the album Hot Five.
+In modern jazz, it is not unknown for their players to take solos. New Orleans style brass bands like the Dirty Dozen Brass Band and the Rebirth Brass Band use a sousaphone as the bass instrument. Bill Barber played tuba on several Miles Davis albums, including the sessions compiled as the Birth of the Cool and Miles Ahead. New York City-based tubist Marcus Rojas performed frequently with Henry Threadgill.[12]

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+The gastrointestinal tract, (GI tract, GIT, digestive tract, digestion tract, alimentary canal) is the tract from the mouth to the anus which includes all the organs of the digestive system in humans and other animals. Food taken in through the mouth is digested to extract nutrients and absorb energy, and expelled in the remaining waste as feces. The mouth, esophagus, stomach and intestines are all part of the gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the stomach and intestines. A tract is a collection of related anatomic structures or a series of connected body organs.
+All vertebrates and most invertebrates have a digestive tract. The sponges, cnidarians, and ctenophores are the early invertebrates with an incomplete digestive tract having just one opening instead of two, where food is taken in and waste expelled.[1][2]
+The human gastrointestinal tract consists of the esophagus,  stomach, and intestines, and is divided into the upper and lower gastrointestinal tracts.[3] The GI tract includes all structures between the mouth and the anus,[4] forming a continuous passageway that includes the main organs of digestion, namely, the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. However, the complete human digestive system is made up of the gastrointestinal tract plus the accessory organs of digestion (the tongue, salivary glands, pancreas, liver and gallbladder).[5] The tract may also be divided into foregut, midgut, and hindgut, reflecting the embryological origin of each segment. The whole human GI tract is about nine metres (30 feet) long at autopsy. It is considerably shorter in the living body because the intestines, which are tubes of smooth muscle tissue, maintain constant muscle tone in a halfway-tense state but can relax in spots to allow for local distention and peristalsis.[6][7]
+The gastrointestinal tract contains trillions of microbes, with some 4,000 different strains of bacteria having diverse roles in maintenance of immune health and metabolism.[8][9][10] Cells of the GI tract release hormones to help regulate the digestive process. These digestive hormones, including gastrin, secretin, cholecystokinin, and ghrelin, are mediated through either intracrine or autocrine mechanisms, indicating that the cells releasing these hormones are conserved structures throughout evolution.[11]
+The structure and function can be described both as gross anatomy and as microscopic anatomy or histology. The tract itself is divided into upper and lower tracts, and the intestines small and large parts.[12]
+The upper gastrointestinal tract consists of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, and duodenum.[13]
+The exact demarcation between the upper and lower tracts is the suspensory muscle of the duodenum. This differentiates the embryonic borders between the foregut and midgut, and is also the division commonly used by clinicians to describe gastrointestinal bleeding as being of either "upper" or "lower" origin. Upon dissection, the duodenum may appear to be a unified organ, but it is divided into four segments based upon function, location, and internal anatomy. The four segments of the duodenum are as follows (starting at the stomach, and moving toward the jejunum): bulb, descending, horizontal, and ascending. The suspensory muscle attaches the superior border of the ascending duodenum to the diaphragm.
+The suspensory muscle is an important anatomical landmark which shows the formal division between the duodenum and the jejunum, the first and second parts of the small intestine, respectively.[14] This is a thin muscle which is derived from the embryonic mesoderm.
+The lower gastrointestinal tract includes most of the small intestine and all of the large intestine.[15] In human anatomy, the intestine (bowel, or gut. Greek: éntera) is the segment of the gastrointestinal tract extending from the pyloric sphincter of the stomach to the anus and, as in other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine. In humans, the small intestine is further subdivided into the duodenum, jejunum and ileum while the large intestine is subdivided into the, cecum, ascending, transverse, descending and sigmoid colon, rectum, and anal canal.[16][17]
+The small intestine begins at the duodenum and is a tubular structure, usually between 6 and 7 m long.[18] Its mucosal area in an adult human is about 30 m2.[19] The combination of the circular folds, the villi, and the microvilli increases the absorptive area of the mucosa about 600-fold, making a total area of about 250 square meters for the entire small intestine.[20] Its main function is to absorb the products of digestion (including carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and vitamins) into the bloodstream. There are three major divisions:
+The large intestine also called the colon, consists of the cecum, rectum, and anal canal. It also includes the appendix, which is attached to the cecum. The colon is further divided into:
+The main function of the large intestine is to absorb water.
+The area of the large intestinal mucosa of an adult human is about 2 m2.[19]
+The gut is an endoderm-derived structure. At approximately the sixteenth day of human development, the embryo begins to fold ventrally (with the embryo's ventral surface becoming concave) in two directions: the sides of the embryo fold in on each other and the head and tail fold toward one another. The result is that a piece of the yolk sac, an endoderm-lined structure in contact with the ventral aspect of the embryo, begins to be pinched off to become the primitive gut. The yolk sac remains connected to the gut tube via the vitelline duct. Usually, this structure regresses during development; in cases where it does not, it is known as Meckel's diverticulum.
+During fetal life, the primitive gut is gradually patterned into three segments: foregut, midgut, and hindgut. Although these terms are often used in reference to segments of the primitive gut, they are also used regularly to describe regions of the definitive gut as well.
+Each segment of the gut is further specified and gives rise to specific gut and gut-related structures in later development. Components derived from the gut proper, including the stomach and colon, develop as swellings or dilatations in the cells of the primitive gut. In contrast, gut-related derivatives — that is, those structures that derive from the primitive gut but are not part of the gut proper, in general, develop as out-pouchings of the primitive gut. The blood vessels supplying these structures remain constant throughout development.[21]
+The gastrointestinal tract has a form of general histology with some differences that reflect the specialization in functional anatomy.[22] The GI tract can be divided into four concentric layers in the following order:
+The mucosa is the innermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract. The mucosa surrounds the lumen, or open space within the tube. This layer comes in direct contact with digested food (chyme). The mucosa is made up of:
+The mucosae are highly specialized in each organ of the gastrointestinal tract to deal with the different conditions. The most variation is seen in the epithelium.
+The submucosa consists of a dense irregular layer of connective tissue with large blood vessels, lymphatics, and nerves branching into the mucosa and muscularis externa. It contains the  submucosal plexus, an enteric nervous plexus, situated on the inner surface of the muscularis externa.
+The muscular layer consists of an inner circular layer and a longitudinal outer layer. The circular layer prevents food from traveling backward and the longitudinal layer shortens the tract. The layers are not truly longitudinal or circular, rather the layers of muscle are helical with different pitches. The inner circular is helical with a steep pitch and the outer longitudinal is helical with a much shallower pitch.[23] Whilst the muscularis externa is similar throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract, an exception is the stomach which has an additional inner oblique muscular layer to aid with grinding and mixing of food. The muscularis externa of the stomach is composed of the inner oblique layer, middle circular layer, and outer longitudinal layer.
+Between the circular and longitudinal muscle layers is the myenteric plexus. This controls peristalsis. Activity is initiated by the pacemaker cells, (myenteric interstitial cells of Cajal). The gut has intrinsic peristaltic activity (basal electrical rhythm) due to its self-contained enteric nervous system. The rate can be modulated by the rest of the autonomic nervous system.[23]
+The coordinated contractions of these layers is called peristalsis and propels the food through the tract. Food in the GI tract is called a bolus (ball of food) from the mouth down to the stomach. After the stomach, the food is partially digested and semi-liquid, and is referred to as chyme. In the large intestine the remaining semi-solid substance is referred to as faeces.[23]
+The outermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract consists of several layers of connective tissue.
+Intraperitoneal parts of the GI tract are covered with serosa. These include most of the stomach, first part of the duodenum, all of the small intestine, caecum and appendix, transverse colon, sigmoid colon and rectum. In these sections of the gut there is clear boundary between the gut and the surrounding tissue. These parts of the tract have a mesentery.
+Retroperitoneal parts are covered with adventitia. They blend into the surrounding tissue and are fixed in position. For example, the retroperitoneal section of the duodenum usually passes through the transpyloric plane. These include the esophagus, pylorus of the stomach, distal duodenum, ascending colon, descending colon and anal canal. In addition, the oral cavity has adventitia.
+Approximately 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and 75% of these genes are expressed in at least one of the different parts of the digestive organ system.[24][25] Over 600 of these genes are more specifically expressed in one or more parts of the GI tract and the corresponding proteins have functions related to digestion of food and uptake of nutrients. Examples of specific proteins with such functions are pepsinogen PGC and the lipase LIPF, expressed in chief cells, and gastric ATPase ATP4A and gastric intrinsic factor GIF, expressed in parietal cells of the stomach mucosa. Specific proteins expressed in the stomach and duodenum involved in defence include mucin proteins, such as mucin 6 and intelectin-1.[26]
+The time taken for food to transit through the gastrointestinal tract varies on multiple factors, including age, ethnicity, and gender.[medical citation needed] Several techniques have been used to measure transit time, including radiography following a barium-labeled meal, breath hydrogen analysis, and scintigraphic analysis following a radiolabeled meal.[medical citation needed] It takes 2.5 to 3 hours for 50% of the contents to leave the stomach.[medical citation needed] The rate of digestion is also dependent of the material being digested, as food composition from the same meal may leave the stomach at different rates.[medical citation needed] Total emptying of the stomach takes around 4-5 hours, and transit through the colon takes 30 to 50 hours.[27][28][29]
+The gastrointestinal tract forms an important part of the immune system.[30] The surface area of the digestive tract is estimated to be about 32 square meters, or about half a badminton court.[19] With such a large exposure (more than three times larger than the exposed surface of the skin), these immune components function to prevent pathogens from entering the blood and lymph circulatory systems.[31] Fundamental components of this protection are provided by the intestinal mucosal barrier which is composed of physical, biochemical, and immune elements elaborated by the intestinal mucosa.[32] Microorganisms also are kept at bay by an extensive immune system comprising the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT)
+There are additional factors contributing to protection from pathogen invasion. For example, low pH (ranging from 1 to 4) of the stomach is fatal for many microorganisms that enter it.[33] Similarly, mucus (containing IgA antibodies) neutralizes many pathogenic microorganisms.[34] Other factors in the GI tract contribution to immune function include enzymes secreted in the saliva and bile.
+Beneficial bacteria also can contribute to the homeostasis of the gastrointestinal immune system. For example, Clostridia, one of the most predominant bacterial groups in the GI tract, play an important role in influencing the dynamics of the gut's immune system.[35] It has been demonstrated that the intake of a high fiber diet could be the responsible for the induction of T-regulatory cells (Tregs). This is due to the production of short-chain fatty acids during the fermentation of plant-derived nutrients  such as butyrate and propionate.  Basically, the butyrate induces the differentiation of Treg cells by enhancing histone H3 acetylation in the promoter and conserved non-coding sequence regions of the FOXP3 locus, thus regulating the T cells, resulting in the reduction of the inflammatory response and allergies.
+The large intestine hosts several kinds of bacteria that can deal with molecules that the human body cannot otherwise break down.[36] This is an example of symbiosis. These bacteria also account for the production of gases at host-pathogen interface, inside our intestine(this gas is released as flatulence when eliminated through the anus). However the large intestine is mainly concerned with the absorption of water from digested material (which is regulated by the hypothalamus) and the re absorption of sodium, as well as any nutrients that may have escaped primary digestion in the ileum.[citation needed]
+Health-enhancing intestinal bacteria of the gut flora serve to prevent the overgrowth of potentially harmful bacteria in the gut. These two types of bacteria compete for space and "food", as there are limited resources within the intestinal tract. A ratio of 80-85% beneficial to 15–20% potentially harmful bacteria generally is considered normal within the intestines.[citation needed]
+Enzymes such as CYP3A4, along with the antiporter activities, are also instrumental in the intestine's role of drug metabolism in the detoxification of antigens and xenobiotics.[37]
+There are many diseases and conditions that can affect the gastrointestinal system, including infections, inflammation and cancer.
+Various pathogens, such as bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses, can induce gastroenteritis which results from inflammation of the stomach and small intestine. Antibiotics to treat such bacterial infections can decrease the microbiome diversity of the gastrointestinal tract, and further enable inflammatory mediators.[38] Gastroenteritis is the most common disease of the GI tract.
+Diverticular disease is a condition that is very common in older people in industrialized countries.  It usually affects the large intestine but has been known to affect the small intestine as well.  Diverticulosis occurs when pouches form on the intestinal wall.  Once the pouches become inflamed it is known as diverticulitis.
+Inflammatory bowel disease is an inflammatory condition affecting the bowel walls, and includes the subtypes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. While Crohn's can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract, ulcerative colitis is limited to the large intestine. Crohn's disease is widely regarded as an autoimmune disease. Although ulcerative colitis is often treated as though it were an autoimmune disease, there is no consensus that it actually is such.
+Functional gastrointestinal disorders the most common of which is irritable bowel syndrome. Functional constipation and chronic functional abdominal pain are other functional disorders of the intestine that have physiological causes but do not have identifiable structural, chemical, or infectious pathologies.
+Several symptoms are used to indicate problems with the gastrointestinal tract:
+Gastrointestinal surgery can often be performed in the outpatient setting.  In the United States in 2012, operations on the digestive system accounted for 3 of the 25 most common ambulatory surgery procedures and constituted 9.1 percent of all outpatient ambulatory surgeries.[39]
+Various methods of imaging the gastrointestinal tract include the upper and lower gastrointestinal series:
+Intestines from animals other than humans are used in a number of ways.  From each species of livestock that is a source of milk, a corresponding rennet is obtained from the intestines of milk-fed calves.  Pig and calf intestines are eaten, and pig intestines are used as sausage casings. Calf intestines supply calf-intestinal alkaline phosphatase (CIP), and are used to make goldbeater's skin.
+Other uses are:
+Many birds and other animals have a specialised stomach in the digestive tract called a gizzard used for grinding up food.
+Another feature not found in the human but found in a range of other animals is the crop. In birds this is found as a pouch alongside the esophagus.
+Other animals including amphibians, birds, reptiles, and egg-laying mammals have a major difference in their GI tract in that it ends in a cloaca and not an anus.
+In 2020, the oldest known fossil digestive tract, of an extinct wormlike organism in the Cloudinidae was discovered; it lived during the late Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago.[46][47]

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+The gastrointestinal tract, (GI tract, GIT, digestive tract, digestion tract, alimentary canal) is the tract from the mouth to the anus which includes all the organs of the digestive system in humans and other animals. Food taken in through the mouth is digested to extract nutrients and absorb energy, and expelled in the remaining waste as feces. The mouth, esophagus, stomach and intestines are all part of the gastrointestinal tract. Gastrointestinal is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the stomach and intestines. A tract is a collection of related anatomic structures or a series of connected body organs.
+All vertebrates and most invertebrates have a digestive tract. The sponges, cnidarians, and ctenophores are the early invertebrates with an incomplete digestive tract having just one opening instead of two, where food is taken in and waste expelled.[1][2]
+The human gastrointestinal tract consists of the esophagus,  stomach, and intestines, and is divided into the upper and lower gastrointestinal tracts.[3] The GI tract includes all structures between the mouth and the anus,[4] forming a continuous passageway that includes the main organs of digestion, namely, the stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. However, the complete human digestive system is made up of the gastrointestinal tract plus the accessory organs of digestion (the tongue, salivary glands, pancreas, liver and gallbladder).[5] The tract may also be divided into foregut, midgut, and hindgut, reflecting the embryological origin of each segment. The whole human GI tract is about nine metres (30 feet) long at autopsy. It is considerably shorter in the living body because the intestines, which are tubes of smooth muscle tissue, maintain constant muscle tone in a halfway-tense state but can relax in spots to allow for local distention and peristalsis.[6][7]
+The gastrointestinal tract contains trillions of microbes, with some 4,000 different strains of bacteria having diverse roles in maintenance of immune health and metabolism.[8][9][10] Cells of the GI tract release hormones to help regulate the digestive process. These digestive hormones, including gastrin, secretin, cholecystokinin, and ghrelin, are mediated through either intracrine or autocrine mechanisms, indicating that the cells releasing these hormones are conserved structures throughout evolution.[11]
+The structure and function can be described both as gross anatomy and as microscopic anatomy or histology. The tract itself is divided into upper and lower tracts, and the intestines small and large parts.[12]
+The upper gastrointestinal tract consists of the mouth, pharynx, esophagus, stomach, and duodenum.[13]
+The exact demarcation between the upper and lower tracts is the suspensory muscle of the duodenum. This differentiates the embryonic borders between the foregut and midgut, and is also the division commonly used by clinicians to describe gastrointestinal bleeding as being of either "upper" or "lower" origin. Upon dissection, the duodenum may appear to be a unified organ, but it is divided into four segments based upon function, location, and internal anatomy. The four segments of the duodenum are as follows (starting at the stomach, and moving toward the jejunum): bulb, descending, horizontal, and ascending. The suspensory muscle attaches the superior border of the ascending duodenum to the diaphragm.
+The suspensory muscle is an important anatomical landmark which shows the formal division between the duodenum and the jejunum, the first and second parts of the small intestine, respectively.[14] This is a thin muscle which is derived from the embryonic mesoderm.
+The lower gastrointestinal tract includes most of the small intestine and all of the large intestine.[15] In human anatomy, the intestine (bowel, or gut. Greek: éntera) is the segment of the gastrointestinal tract extending from the pyloric sphincter of the stomach to the anus and, as in other mammals, consists of two segments, the small intestine and the large intestine. In humans, the small intestine is further subdivided into the duodenum, jejunum and ileum while the large intestine is subdivided into the, cecum, ascending, transverse, descending and sigmoid colon, rectum, and anal canal.[16][17]
+The small intestine begins at the duodenum and is a tubular structure, usually between 6 and 7 m long.[18] Its mucosal area in an adult human is about 30 m2.[19] The combination of the circular folds, the villi, and the microvilli increases the absorptive area of the mucosa about 600-fold, making a total area of about 250 square meters for the entire small intestine.[20] Its main function is to absorb the products of digestion (including carbohydrates, proteins, lipids, and vitamins) into the bloodstream. There are three major divisions:
+The large intestine also called the colon, consists of the cecum, rectum, and anal canal. It also includes the appendix, which is attached to the cecum. The colon is further divided into:
+The main function of the large intestine is to absorb water.
+The area of the large intestinal mucosa of an adult human is about 2 m2.[19]
+The gut is an endoderm-derived structure. At approximately the sixteenth day of human development, the embryo begins to fold ventrally (with the embryo's ventral surface becoming concave) in two directions: the sides of the embryo fold in on each other and the head and tail fold toward one another. The result is that a piece of the yolk sac, an endoderm-lined structure in contact with the ventral aspect of the embryo, begins to be pinched off to become the primitive gut. The yolk sac remains connected to the gut tube via the vitelline duct. Usually, this structure regresses during development; in cases where it does not, it is known as Meckel's diverticulum.
+During fetal life, the primitive gut is gradually patterned into three segments: foregut, midgut, and hindgut. Although these terms are often used in reference to segments of the primitive gut, they are also used regularly to describe regions of the definitive gut as well.
+Each segment of the gut is further specified and gives rise to specific gut and gut-related structures in later development. Components derived from the gut proper, including the stomach and colon, develop as swellings or dilatations in the cells of the primitive gut. In contrast, gut-related derivatives — that is, those structures that derive from the primitive gut but are not part of the gut proper, in general, develop as out-pouchings of the primitive gut. The blood vessels supplying these structures remain constant throughout development.[21]
+The gastrointestinal tract has a form of general histology with some differences that reflect the specialization in functional anatomy.[22] The GI tract can be divided into four concentric layers in the following order:
+The mucosa is the innermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract. The mucosa surrounds the lumen, or open space within the tube. This layer comes in direct contact with digested food (chyme). The mucosa is made up of:
+The mucosae are highly specialized in each organ of the gastrointestinal tract to deal with the different conditions. The most variation is seen in the epithelium.
+The submucosa consists of a dense irregular layer of connective tissue with large blood vessels, lymphatics, and nerves branching into the mucosa and muscularis externa. It contains the  submucosal plexus, an enteric nervous plexus, situated on the inner surface of the muscularis externa.
+The muscular layer consists of an inner circular layer and a longitudinal outer layer. The circular layer prevents food from traveling backward and the longitudinal layer shortens the tract. The layers are not truly longitudinal or circular, rather the layers of muscle are helical with different pitches. The inner circular is helical with a steep pitch and the outer longitudinal is helical with a much shallower pitch.[23] Whilst the muscularis externa is similar throughout the entire gastrointestinal tract, an exception is the stomach which has an additional inner oblique muscular layer to aid with grinding and mixing of food. The muscularis externa of the stomach is composed of the inner oblique layer, middle circular layer, and outer longitudinal layer.
+Between the circular and longitudinal muscle layers is the myenteric plexus. This controls peristalsis. Activity is initiated by the pacemaker cells, (myenteric interstitial cells of Cajal). The gut has intrinsic peristaltic activity (basal electrical rhythm) due to its self-contained enteric nervous system. The rate can be modulated by the rest of the autonomic nervous system.[23]
+The coordinated contractions of these layers is called peristalsis and propels the food through the tract. Food in the GI tract is called a bolus (ball of food) from the mouth down to the stomach. After the stomach, the food is partially digested and semi-liquid, and is referred to as chyme. In the large intestine the remaining semi-solid substance is referred to as faeces.[23]
+The outermost layer of the gastrointestinal tract consists of several layers of connective tissue.
+Intraperitoneal parts of the GI tract are covered with serosa. These include most of the stomach, first part of the duodenum, all of the small intestine, caecum and appendix, transverse colon, sigmoid colon and rectum. In these sections of the gut there is clear boundary between the gut and the surrounding tissue. These parts of the tract have a mesentery.
+Retroperitoneal parts are covered with adventitia. They blend into the surrounding tissue and are fixed in position. For example, the retroperitoneal section of the duodenum usually passes through the transpyloric plane. These include the esophagus, pylorus of the stomach, distal duodenum, ascending colon, descending colon and anal canal. In addition, the oral cavity has adventitia.
+Approximately 20,000 protein coding genes are expressed in human cells and 75% of these genes are expressed in at least one of the different parts of the digestive organ system.[24][25] Over 600 of these genes are more specifically expressed in one or more parts of the GI tract and the corresponding proteins have functions related to digestion of food and uptake of nutrients. Examples of specific proteins with such functions are pepsinogen PGC and the lipase LIPF, expressed in chief cells, and gastric ATPase ATP4A and gastric intrinsic factor GIF, expressed in parietal cells of the stomach mucosa. Specific proteins expressed in the stomach and duodenum involved in defence include mucin proteins, such as mucin 6 and intelectin-1.[26]
+The time taken for food to transit through the gastrointestinal tract varies on multiple factors, including age, ethnicity, and gender.[medical citation needed] Several techniques have been used to measure transit time, including radiography following a barium-labeled meal, breath hydrogen analysis, and scintigraphic analysis following a radiolabeled meal.[medical citation needed] It takes 2.5 to 3 hours for 50% of the contents to leave the stomach.[medical citation needed] The rate of digestion is also dependent of the material being digested, as food composition from the same meal may leave the stomach at different rates.[medical citation needed] Total emptying of the stomach takes around 4-5 hours, and transit through the colon takes 30 to 50 hours.[27][28][29]
+The gastrointestinal tract forms an important part of the immune system.[30] The surface area of the digestive tract is estimated to be about 32 square meters, or about half a badminton court.[19] With such a large exposure (more than three times larger than the exposed surface of the skin), these immune components function to prevent pathogens from entering the blood and lymph circulatory systems.[31] Fundamental components of this protection are provided by the intestinal mucosal barrier which is composed of physical, biochemical, and immune elements elaborated by the intestinal mucosa.[32] Microorganisms also are kept at bay by an extensive immune system comprising the gut-associated lymphoid tissue (GALT)
+There are additional factors contributing to protection from pathogen invasion. For example, low pH (ranging from 1 to 4) of the stomach is fatal for many microorganisms that enter it.[33] Similarly, mucus (containing IgA antibodies) neutralizes many pathogenic microorganisms.[34] Other factors in the GI tract contribution to immune function include enzymes secreted in the saliva and bile.
+Beneficial bacteria also can contribute to the homeostasis of the gastrointestinal immune system. For example, Clostridia, one of the most predominant bacterial groups in the GI tract, play an important role in influencing the dynamics of the gut's immune system.[35] It has been demonstrated that the intake of a high fiber diet could be the responsible for the induction of T-regulatory cells (Tregs). This is due to the production of short-chain fatty acids during the fermentation of plant-derived nutrients  such as butyrate and propionate.  Basically, the butyrate induces the differentiation of Treg cells by enhancing histone H3 acetylation in the promoter and conserved non-coding sequence regions of the FOXP3 locus, thus regulating the T cells, resulting in the reduction of the inflammatory response and allergies.
+The large intestine hosts several kinds of bacteria that can deal with molecules that the human body cannot otherwise break down.[36] This is an example of symbiosis. These bacteria also account for the production of gases at host-pathogen interface, inside our intestine(this gas is released as flatulence when eliminated through the anus). However the large intestine is mainly concerned with the absorption of water from digested material (which is regulated by the hypothalamus) and the re absorption of sodium, as well as any nutrients that may have escaped primary digestion in the ileum.[citation needed]
+Health-enhancing intestinal bacteria of the gut flora serve to prevent the overgrowth of potentially harmful bacteria in the gut. These two types of bacteria compete for space and "food", as there are limited resources within the intestinal tract. A ratio of 80-85% beneficial to 15–20% potentially harmful bacteria generally is considered normal within the intestines.[citation needed]
+Enzymes such as CYP3A4, along with the antiporter activities, are also instrumental in the intestine's role of drug metabolism in the detoxification of antigens and xenobiotics.[37]
+There are many diseases and conditions that can affect the gastrointestinal system, including infections, inflammation and cancer.
+Various pathogens, such as bacteria that cause foodborne illnesses, can induce gastroenteritis which results from inflammation of the stomach and small intestine. Antibiotics to treat such bacterial infections can decrease the microbiome diversity of the gastrointestinal tract, and further enable inflammatory mediators.[38] Gastroenteritis is the most common disease of the GI tract.
+Diverticular disease is a condition that is very common in older people in industrialized countries.  It usually affects the large intestine but has been known to affect the small intestine as well.  Diverticulosis occurs when pouches form on the intestinal wall.  Once the pouches become inflamed it is known as diverticulitis.
+Inflammatory bowel disease is an inflammatory condition affecting the bowel walls, and includes the subtypes Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. While Crohn's can affect the entire gastrointestinal tract, ulcerative colitis is limited to the large intestine. Crohn's disease is widely regarded as an autoimmune disease. Although ulcerative colitis is often treated as though it were an autoimmune disease, there is no consensus that it actually is such.
+Functional gastrointestinal disorders the most common of which is irritable bowel syndrome. Functional constipation and chronic functional abdominal pain are other functional disorders of the intestine that have physiological causes but do not have identifiable structural, chemical, or infectious pathologies.
+Several symptoms are used to indicate problems with the gastrointestinal tract:
+Gastrointestinal surgery can often be performed in the outpatient setting.  In the United States in 2012, operations on the digestive system accounted for 3 of the 25 most common ambulatory surgery procedures and constituted 9.1 percent of all outpatient ambulatory surgeries.[39]
+Various methods of imaging the gastrointestinal tract include the upper and lower gastrointestinal series:
+Intestines from animals other than humans are used in a number of ways.  From each species of livestock that is a source of milk, a corresponding rennet is obtained from the intestines of milk-fed calves.  Pig and calf intestines are eaten, and pig intestines are used as sausage casings. Calf intestines supply calf-intestinal alkaline phosphatase (CIP), and are used to make goldbeater's skin.
+Other uses are:
+Many birds and other animals have a specialised stomach in the digestive tract called a gizzard used for grinding up food.
+Another feature not found in the human but found in a range of other animals is the crop. In birds this is found as a pouch alongside the esophagus.
+Other animals including amphibians, birds, reptiles, and egg-laying mammals have a major difference in their GI tract in that it ends in a cloaca and not an anus.
+In 2020, the oldest known fossil digestive tract, of an extinct wormlike organism in the Cloudinidae was discovered; it lived during the late Ediacaran period about 550 million years ago.[46][47]

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+Guadeloupe (/ˌɡwɑːdəˈluːp/, French: [ɡwad(ə)lup] (listen); Antillean Creole: Gwadloup) is an archipelago forming an overseas region of France in the Caribbean.[2] It consists of six inhabited islands, Basse-Terre, Grande-Terre, Marie-Galante, La Désirade, and the Îles des Saintes, as well as many uninhabited islands and outcroppings.[3] It lies south of Antigua and Barbuda and Montserrat, and north of Dominica. Its capital is Basse-Terre on the southern west coast; however, the largest city is Les Abymes and the main city is Pointe-à-Pitre.[2]
+Like the other overseas departments, it is an integral part of France. As a constituent territory of the European Union and the Eurozone, the euro is its official currency and any European Union citizen is free to settle and work there indefinitely. As an overseas department, however, it is not part of the Schengen Area. The region formerly included Saint Barthélemy and Saint Martin, which were detached from Guadeloupe in 2007 following a 2003 referendum.
+The official language is French; Antillean Creole is also spoken.[2][4]
+The archipelago was called Karukera (or "The Island of Beautiful Waters") by the native Arawak people.[2]
+Christopher Columbus named the island Santa María de Guadalupe in 1493 after the Our Lady of Guadalupe, a shrine to the Virgin Mary venerated in the Spanish town of Guadalupe, Extremadura.[2] Upon becoming a French colony, the Spanish name was retained though altered to French orthography and phonology. The islands are locally known as Gwada.[5]
+The islands were first populated by indigenous peoples of the Americas, possibly as far back as 3000 BC.[6][7][8] The Arawak people are the first identifiable group; however, they were later displaced circa 1400 AD by Kalina-Carib peoples.[2]
+Christopher Columbus was the first European to see Guadeloupe, landing in November 1493 and giving it its current name.[2] Several attempts at colonisation by the Spanish in the 16th century failed due to attacks from the native Caribs peoples.[2] In 1626 the French under Pierre Belain d'Esnambuc began to take an interest in Guadeloupe, expelling Spanish settlers.[2] The Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique settled in Guadeloupe in 1635, under the direction of Charles Liénard de L'Olive and Jean du Plessis d'Ossonville; they formally took possession of the island for France and brought in French farmers to colonise the land. This led to the death of many Caribs by disease and violence.[9] By 1640, however, the Compagnie des Îles de l'Amérique had gone bankrupt, and they thus sold Guadeloupe to Charles Houël du Petit Pré who began plantation agriculture, with the first African slaves arriving in 1650.[10][11] Ownership of the island then passed to the French West India Company before it was annexed to France in 1674 under the tutelage of their Martinique colony.[2] Institutionalised slavery, enforced by the Code Noir from 1685, led to a booming sugar plantation economy.[12]
+During the Seven Years' War the British occupied Guadeloupe from the time of 1759 British Invasion of Guadeloupe until the 1763 Treaty of Paris.[2] During this time Pointe-à-Pitre became a major harbour, and markets in Britain's North American colonies were opened to Guadeloupean sugar which was traded for cheap food and timber. The economy expanded quickly, creating vast wealth for the European colonists.[13] During this time about 18,000 slaves were imported to Guadeloupe.[10] So prosperous was Guadeloupe at the time that under the 1763 Treaty of Paris France forfeited its Canadian colonies in exchange for Guadeloupe.[14] Coffee planting began in the late 1720s,[15] also worked by slaves, and by 1775 cocoa had also become a major export product.[10]
+The 1789 French Revolution brought chaos to Guadeloupe. Under new revolutionary law free people of colour were entitled to equal rights. Taking advantage of the anarchic political situation, Britain invaded Guadeloupe in 1794, to which the French responded by sending in soldiers led by Victor Hugues, who retook the lands and abolished slavery.[2] In the Reign of Terror that followed more than 1,000 colonists were killed.[13]
+In 1802 the First French Empire reinstated the pre-revolutionary government and slavery, prompting a slave rebellion led by Louis Delgrès.[2] The French authorities responded quickly, culminating in the Battle of Matouba on 28 May 1802. Realising they had no chance of success, Delgrès and his followers committed mass suicide by deliberately exploding their gunpowder stores.[16][17] In 1810 the British again seized the island, handing it over to Sweden in 1813.[18]
+In the Treaty of Paris of 1814, Sweden ceded Guadeloupe to France, giving rise to the Guadeloupe Fund. In 1815 the Treaty of Vienna definitively acknowledged French control of Guadeloupe.[2][10]
+Slavery was abolished in the French Empire in 1848.[2] From 1854 indentured labourers from the French colony of Pondicherry in India were brought in.[citation needed] Emancipated slaves had the vote from 1849, but French nationality and the vote was not granted to Indian citizens until 1923, thanks largely to the efforts of Henry Sidambarom.[19]
+In 1936 Félix Éboué became the first black governor of Guadeloupe.[20] During the Second World War Guadeloupe initially came under the control of the Vichy government, later joining Free France in 1943.[2] In 1946, the colony of Guadeloupe became an overseas department of France.[2]
+Tensions arose in the post-war era over the social structure of Guadeloupe and its relationship with mainland France. The 'Massacre of St Valentine' occurred in 1952, when striking factory workers in Le Moule were shot at by the Compagnies républicaines de sécurité, resulting in four deaths.[21][22][23] In May 1967 racial tensions exploded into rioting following a racist attack on a black Guadeloupean, resulting in eight deaths.[24][25][26]
+An independence movement grew in the 1970s, prompting France to declare Guadeloupe a French region in 1974.[2] The Union populaire pour la libération de la Guadeloupe (UPLG) campaigned for complete independence, and by the 1980s the situation had turned violent with the actions of groups such as Groupe de libération armée (GLA) and Alliance révolutionnaire caraïbe (ARC).
+Greater autonomy was granted to Guadeloupe in 2000.[2] Through a referendum in 2003, Saint-Martin and Saint Barthélemy voted to separate from the administrative jurisdiction of Guadeloupe, this being fully enacted by 2007.[2]
+In January 2009, labour unions and others known as the Liyannaj Kont Pwofitasyon went on strike for more pay.[27] Strikers were angry with low wages, the high cost of living, high levels of poverty relative to mainland France and levels of unemployment that are amongst the worst in the European Union.[28] The situation quickly escalated, exacerbated by what was seen as an ineffectual response by the French government, turning violent and prompting the deployment of extra police after a union leader (Jacques Bino) was shot and killed.[29] The strike lasted 44 days and had also inspired similar actions on nearby Martinique. President Nicolas Sarkozy later visited the island, promising reform.[30] Tourism suffered greatly during this time and affected the 2010 tourist season as well.
+Guadeloupe is an archipelago of more than 12 islands, as well as islets and rocks situated where the northeastern Caribbean Sea meets the western Atlantic Ocean.[2] It is located in the Leeward Islands in the northern part of the Lesser Antilles, a partly volcanic island arc. To the north lies Antigua and Barbuda and the British Oversea Territory of Montserrat, with Dominica lying to the south.
+The main two islands are Basse-Terre (west) and Grande-Terre (east), which form a butterfly shape as viewed from above, the two 'wings' of which are separated by the Grand Cul-de-Sac Marin, Rivière Salée and Petit Cul-de-Sac Marin. More than half of Guadeloupe's land surface consists of the 847.8 km2 Basse-Terre.[31] The island is mountainous, containing such peaks as Mount Sans Toucher (4,442 feet; 1,354 metres) and Grande Découverte (4,143 feet; 1,263 metres), culminating in the active volcano La Grande Soufrière, the highest mountain peak in the Lesser Antilles with an elevation of 1,467 metres (4,813 ft).[2][32] In contrast Grande-Terre is mostly flat, with rocky coasts to the north, irregular hills at the centre, mangrove at the southwest, and white sand beaches sheltered by coral reefs along the southern shore.[33] This is where the main tourist resorts are found.[34]
+Marie-Galante is the third-largest island, followed by La Désirade, a north-east slanted limestone plateau, the highest point of which is 275 metres (902 ft). To the south lies the Îles de Petite-Terre, which are two islands (Terre de Haut and Terre de Bas) totalling 2 km2.[34]
+Les Saintes is an archipelago of eight islands of which two, Terre-de-Bas and Terre-de-Haut are inhabited. The landscape is similar to that of Basse-Terre, with volcanic hills and irregular shoreline with deep bays.
+There are numerous other smaller islands, most notably Tête à l'Anglais, Îlet à Kahouanne, Îlet à Fajou, Îlet Macou, Îlet aux Foux, Îlets de Carénage, La Biche, Îlet Crabière, Îlets à Goyaves, Îlet à Cochons, Îlet à Boissard, Îlet à Chasse and Îlet du Gosier.
+Basse-Terre is a volcanic island. The Lesser Antilles are at the outer edge of the Caribbean Plate, and Guadeloupe is part of the outer arc of the Lesser Antilles Volcanic Arc. Many of the islands were formed as a result of the subduction of oceanic crust of the Atlantic Plate under the Caribbean Plate in the Lesser Antilles subduction zone. This process is ongoing and is responsible for volcanic and earthquake activity in the region. Guadeloupe was formed from multiple volcanoes, of which only la Soufriere is not extinct.[35] Its last eruption was in 1976, and led to the evacuation of the southern part of Basse-Terre. 73,600 people were displaced over a course of three and a half months following the eruption.
+K–Ar dating indicates that the three northern massifs on Basse-Terre Island are 2.79 million years old. Sections of volcanoes collapsed and eroded within the last 650,000 years, after which the Sans Toucher volcano grew in the collapsed area. Volcanoes in the north of Basse-Terre Island mainly produced andesite and basaltic andesite.[36] There are several beaches of dark or "black" sand.[34]
+La Désirade, east of the main islands has a basement from the Mesozoic, overlaid with thick limestones from the Pliocene to Quaternary periods.[37]
+Grande-Terre and Marie-Galante have basements probably composed of volcanic units of Eocene to Oligocene, but there are no visible outcrops. On Grande-Terre, the overlying carbonate platform is 120 metres thick.[37]
+The islands are part of the Leeward Islands, so called because they are downwind of the prevailing trade winds, which blow out of the northeast.[2][38] This was significant in the days of sailing ships. Grande-Terre is so named because it is on the eastern, or windward side, exposed to the Atlantic winds. Basse-Terre is so named because it is on the leeward south-west side and sheltered from the winds. Guadeloupe has a tropical climate tempered by maritime influences and the Trade Winds. There are two seasons, the dry season called "Lent" from January to June, and the wet season called "winter", from July to December.[2]
+The island is vulnerable to hurricanes - among the storms to make landfall on the islands are:[31] Hurricane Cleo in 1964, Hurricane Hugo in 1989, and Hurricane Maria in 2017.[39][40][41]
+With fertile volcanic soils, heavy rainfall and a warm climate, vegetation on Basse-Terre is lush.[31] Most of the islands' forests are on Basse-Terre, containing such species as mahogany, ironwood and chestnut trees.[2] Mangrove swamps line the Salée River.[2] Much of the forest on Grande-Terre has been cleared, with only a few small patches remaining.[2]
+Numerous mammal species live on the islands, notably raccoons, agouti and mongoose.[2] Bird species include the Guadeloupe woodpecker, Antillean nighthawk and monk parakeets.[2] The waters of the islands support a rich variety of marine life.[2]
+Guadeloupe recorded a population of 402,119 in the 2013 census.[43] The population is mainly of Afro-Caribbean or mixed Creole, white European, Indian (Tamil, Telugu, and other South Indians), Lebanese, Syrians, and Chinese. There is also a substantial population of Haitians in Guadeloupe who work mainly in construction and as street vendors.[44] Basse-Terre is the political capital; however, the largest city and economic hub is Pointe-à-Pitre.[2]
+The population of Guadeloupe has been stable recently, with a net increase of only 335 people between the 2008 and 2013 censuses.[45] In 2012 the average population density in Guadeloupe was 247.7 inhabitants for every square kilometre, which is very high in comparison to the whole France's 116.5 inhabitants for every square kilometre.[citation needed] One third of the land is devoted to agriculture and all mountains are uninhabitable; this lack of space and shelter makes the population density even higher.
+In 2011, life expectancy at birth was recorded at 77.0 years for males and 83.5 for females.[46]
+Medical centers in Guadeloupe include: University Hospital Center (CHU) in Pointe-à-Pitre, Regional Hospital Center (CHR) in Basse-Terre, and four hospitals located in Capesterre-Belle-Eau, Pointe-Noire, Bouillante and Saint-Claude.[circular reference]
+The Institut Pasteur de la Guadeloupe, is located in Pointe-à-Pitre and is responsible for researching environmental hygiene, vaccinations, and the spread of tuberculosis and mycobacteria[47]
+Together with Martinique, La Réunion, Mayotte and French Guiana, Guadeloupe is one of the overseas departments, being both a region and a department combined into one entity.[2] It is also an outermost region of the European Union. The inhabitants of are French citizens with full political and legal rights.
+Legislative powers are centred on the separate departmental and regional councils.[2] The elected president of the Departmental Council of Guadeloupe is currently Josette Borel-Lincertin; its main areas of responsibility include the management of a number of social and welfare allowances, of junior high school (collège) buildings and technical staff, and local roads and school and rural buses. The Regional Council of Guadeloupe is a body, elected every six years, consisting of a president (currently Ary Chalus) and eight vice-presidents. The regional council oversees secondary education, regional transportation, economic development, the environment, and some infrastructure, among other things.
+Guadeloupe elects one deputy from one of each of the first, second, third, and fourth constituencies to the National Assembly of France. Three senators are chosen for the Senate of France by indirect election.[2] For electoral purposes, Guadeloupe is divided into two arrondissements (Basse-Terre and Pointe-à-Pitre), and 21 cantons.
+Most of the French political parties are active in Guadeloupe. In addition there are also regional parties such as the Guadeloupe Communist Party, the Progressive Democratic Party of Guadeloupe, the Guadeloupean Objective, the Pluralist Left, and United Guadaloupe, Socialism and Realities.
+The prefecture (regional capital) of Guadeloupe is Basse-Terre. Local services of the state administration are traditionally organised at departmental level, where the prefect represents the government.[2]
+For the purposes of local government, Guadeloupe is divided into 32 communes.[2] Each commune has a municipal council and a mayor. Revenues for the communes come from transfers from the French government, and local taxes. Administrative responsibilities at this level include water management, acts of birth, marriage, etc., and municipal police.
+As a part of France, Guadeloupe uses the French tricolour as its flag and La Marseillaise as its anthem.[48] However, a variety of other flags are also used in an unofficial or informal context, most notably the sun-based flag. Independentists also have their own flag.
+National flag of France
+Colonial flag of Guadeloupe
+Red variant of the colonial sun flag
+Flag used by the independence and the cultural movements
+Logo of the Regional Council of Guadeloupe
+The economy of Guadeloupe depends on tourism, agriculture, light industry and services.[49] It is reliant upon mainland France for large subsidies and imports and public administration is the largest single employer on the islands.[2][50] Unemployment is especially high among the youth population.[51]
+In 2006, the GDP per capita of Guadeloupe at market exchange rates, not at PPP, was €17,338 (US$21,780).[52]
+GDP: real exchange rate - US$9.74 billion (in 2006)[53]
+GDP - real growth rate: NA%
+GDP - per capita: real exchange rate - US$21,780 (in 2006)[54]
+Exports: US$676 million (in 2005)[55]
+Exports - commodities: bananas, sugar, rum
+Imports: US$3.102 billion (in 2005)[55]
+Tourism is the one of the most prominent sources of income, with most visitors coming from France and North America.[56] An increasingly large number of cruise ships visit Guadeloupe, the cruise terminal of which is in Pointe-à-Pitre.[57]
+The traditional sugar cane crop is slowly being replaced by other crops, such as bananas (which now supply about 50% of export earnings), eggplant, guinnep, noni, sapotilla, giraumon squash, yam, gourd, plantain, christophine, cocoa, jackfruit, pomegranate, and many varieties of flowers.[2] Other vegetables and root crops are cultivated for local consumption, although Guadeloupe is dependent upon imported food, mainly from the rest of France.[citation needed]
+Of the various light industries, sugar and rum production, solar energy, cement, furniture and clothing are the most prominent.[2] Most manufactured goods and fuel are imported.
+Guadeloupe's official language is French, which is spoken by nearly all of the population.[2][58] In addition, most of the population can also speak Guadeloupean Creole, a variety of Antillean Creole. Traditionally stigmatised as the language of the Creole majority, attitudes have changed in recent decades. In the early 1970s to the mid 1980s Guadeloupe saw the rise and fall of an at-times violent movement for (greater) political independence from France,[59][60] and Creole was claimed as key to local cultural pride and unity. In the 1990s, in the wake of the independence movement's demise, Creole retained its de-stigmatized status as a symbol of local culture, albeit without de jure support from the state and without being practiced with equal competence in all strata and age groups of society.[61][62] However, the language has since gained greater acceptance on the part of France, such that it was introduced as an elective in public schools. Today, the question as to whether French and Creole are stable in Guadeloupe, i.e. whether both languages are practised widely and competently throughout society, remains a subject of active research.[63]
+About 80% of the population are Roman Catholic.[2] Guadeloupe is in the diocese of Basse-Terre (et Pointe-à-Pitre).[64][65] Other major religions include various Protestant denominations.[2]
+Guadeloupe has always had a rich literary output, with Guadeloupean author Saint-John Perse winning the 1960 Nobel Prize in Literature. Other prominent writers from Guadeloupe or of Guadeloupean descent include Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, Myriam Warner-Vieyra, Oruno Lara, Daniel Maximin, Paul Niger, Guy Tirolien and Nicolas-Germain Léonard.
+Music and dance are also very popular, and the interaction of African, French and Indian cultures[66] has given birth to some original new forms specific to the archipelago, most notably zouk music.[67] Since the 1970s, Guadeloupean music has increasingly claimed the local language, Guadeloupean Creole as the preferred language of popular music. Islanders enjoy many local dance styles including zouk, zouk-love, compas, as well as the modern international genres such as hip hop, etc.
+Traditional Guadeloupean music includes biguine, kadans, cadence-lypso, and gwo ka. Popular music artists and bands such as Experience 7, Francky Vincent, Kassav' (which included Patrick St-Eloi, and Gilles Floro) embody the more traditional music styles of the island, whilst other musical artists such as the punk band The Bolokos (1) or Tom Frager focus on more international genres such as rock or reggae. Many international festivals take place in Guadeloupe, such as the Creole Blues Festival on Marie-Galante.[citation needed] All the Euro-French forms of art are also ubiquitous, enriched by other communities from Brazil, Dominican Republic, Haiti, India, Lebanon, Syria) who have migrated to the islands.
+Classical music has seen a resurgent interest in Guadeloupe. One of the first known composers of African origin was born in Guadeloupe, Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, a contemporary of Joseph Haydn and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and a celebrated figure in Guadeloupe. Several monuments and cites are dedicated to Saint-Georges in Guadeloupe, and there is an annual music festival, Festival International de Musique Saint-Georges, dedicated in his honour.[68] The festival attracts classical musicians from all over the world and is one of the largest classical music festivals in the Caribbean.[69]
+Another element of Guadeloupean culture is its dress. A few women (particularly of the older generation) wear a unique style of traditional dress, with many layers of colourful fabric, now only worn on special occasions.[citation needed] On festive occasions they also wore a madras (originally a "kerchief" from South India) headscarf tied in many different symbolic ways, each with a different name. The headdress could be tied in the "bat" style, or the "firefighter" style, as well as the "Guadeloupean woman".[citation needed] Jewellery, mainly gold, is also important in the Guadeloupean lady's dress, a product of European, African and Indian inspiration.[citation needed]
+Football (soccer) is popular in Guadeloupe, and several notable footballers are of Guadeloupean origin, including Marius Trésor, Stéphane Auvray, Ronald Zubar and his younger brother Stéphane, Miguel Comminges, Dimitri Foulquier, Bernard Lambourde, Anthony Martial, Alexandre Lacazette, Thierry Henry, Lilian Thuram, William Gallas, Layvin Kurzawa Thomas Lemar and Kingsley Coman.
+The national football team were 2007 CONCACAF Gold Cup semi-finalists, defeated by Mexico.
+Basketball is also popular. Best known players are the NBA players Rudy Gobert, Mickaël Piétrus, Johan Petro, Rodrigue Beaubois, and Mickael Gelabale (now playing in Russia), who were born on the island.
+Several track and field athletes, such as Marie-José Pérec, Patricia Girard-Léno, Christine Arron, and Wilhem Belocian, are also Guadeloupe natives. Triple Olympic champion Marie-José Pérec, and fourth-fastest 100-metre (330-foot) runner Christine Arron.
+The island has produced many world-class fencers. Yannick Borel, Daniel Jérent, Ysaora Thibus, Anita Blaze, Enzo Lefort and Laura Flessel were all born and raised in Guadeloupe. According to olympic gold medalist and world champion Yannick Borel, there is a good fencing school and a culture of fencing in Guadeloupe.[70]
+Even though Guadeloupe is part of France, it has its own sports teams. Rugby union is a small but rapidly growing sport in Guadeloupe.
+The island is also internationally known for hosting the Karujet Race – Jet Ski World Championship since 1998. This nine-stage, four-day event attracts competitors from around the world (mostly Caribbeans, Americans, and Europeans). The Karujet, generally made up of seven races around the island, has an established reputation as one of the most difficult championships in which to compete.
+The Route du Rhum is one of the most prominent nautical French sporting events, occurring every four years.
+Bodybuilder Serge Nubret was born in Anse-Bertrand, Grande-Terre, representing the French state in various bodybuilding competitions throughout the 1960s and 1970s including the IFBB's Mr. Olympia contest, taking 3rd place every year from 1972 to 1974, and 2nd place in 1975.[71] Bodybuilder Marie-Laure Mahabir also hails from Guadeloupe.
+The country has also a passion for cycling. It hosted the French Cycling Championships in 2009 and continues to host the Tour de Guadeloupe every year.
+Guadeloupe also continues to host the Orange Open de Guadeloupe tennis tournament (since 2011).
+The Tour of Guadeloupe sailing, which was founded in 1981.
+In boxing, the following athletes come from the island of Guadeloupe: Ludovic Proto (amateur; competed in the 1988 Summer Olympics in the men's light welterweight division), Gilbert Delé (professional; held the European light-middleweight title from 1989 to 1990, then won the WBA light-middleweight title in 1991, by defeating Carlos Elliott via TKO), and Jean-Marc Mormeck (professional; former two-time unified cruiserweight champion—held the WBA, WBC, and The Ring world titles twice between 2005 and 2007).
+Guadeloupe is served by a number of airports; most international flights use Pointe-à-Pitre International Airport.[2] Boats and cruise ships frequent the islands, using the ports at Pointe-à-Pitre and Basse-Terre.[2]
+On 9 September 2013 the county government voted in favour of constructing a tramway in Pointe-à-Pitre. The first phase will link northern Abymes to downtown Pointe-à-Pitre by 2019. The second phase, scheduled for completion in 2023, will extend the line to serve the university.[72]
+Guadeloupe is one of the safest islands in the Caribbean;[73] nevertheless, it was the most violent overseas French department in 2016.[74] The murder rate is slightly more than that of Paris, at 8.2 per 100,000. The high level of unemployment caused violence and crime to rise especially in 2009 and 2010, the years following a great worldwide recession.[75] While the residents of Guadeloupe describe the island as a place with little everyday crime, most violence is caused by the drug trade or domestic disputes.[73]

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+A tumulus (plural tumuli) is a mound of earth and stones raised over a grave or graves. Tumuli are also known as barrows, burial mounds or kurgans, and may be found throughout much of the world. A cairn, which is a mound of stones built for various purposes, may also originally have been a tumulus.
+Tumuli are often categorised according to their external apparent shape. In this respect, a long barrow is a long tumulus, usually constructed on top of several burials, such as passage graves. A round barrow is a round tumulus, also commonly constructed on top of burials. The internal structure and architecture of both long and round barrows has a broad range; the categorization only refers to the external apparent shape.
+The method of inhumation may involve a dolmen, a cist, a mortuary enclosure, a mortuary house, or a chamber tomb. Examples of barrows include Duggleby Howe and Maeshowe.
+The word tumulus is Latin for 'mound' or 'small hill', which is derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *teuh2- with extended zero grade *tum-, 'to bulge, swell' also found in tomb, tumor, tumescent, thumb, thigh, and thousand.[4]
+The funeral of Patroclus is described in book 23 of the Iliad. Patroclus is burned on a pyre, and his bones are collected into a golden urn in two layers of fat. The barrow is built on the location of the pyre. Achilles then sponsors funeral games, consisting of a chariot race, boxing, wrestling, running, a duel between two champions to the first blood, discus throwing, archery and spear throwing.
+Beowulf's body is taken to Hronesness, where it is burned on a funeral pyre. During cremation, the Geats lament the death of their lord, a widow's lament being mentioned in particular, singing dirges as they circumambulate the barrow.
+Afterwards, a mound is built on top of a hill, overlooking the sea, and filled with treasure. A band of twelve of the best warriors ride around the barrow, singing dirges in praise of their lord.
+Parallels have also been drawn to the account of Attila's burial in Jordanes' Getica.[5] Jordanes tells that as Attila's body was lying in state, the best horsemen of the Huns circled it, as in circus games.
+An Old Irish Life of Columcille reports that every funeral procession "halted at a mound called Eala, whereupon the corpse was laid, and the mourners marched thrice solemnly round the spot."
+Archaeologists often classify tumuli according to their location, form, and date of construction (see also mound). Some British types are listed below:
+There is a contemporary revival in barrow building in the UK.[6] In 2015 the first long barrow in thousands of years, the Long Barrow at All Cannings, inspired by those built in the Neolithic era, was built on land just outside the village of All Cannings.[7] The barrow was designed to have a large number of private niches within the stone and earth structure to receive cremation urns.
+This was followed by new barrows at:
+Plans have also been announced for a barrow in Milton Keynes[16] and in Powis[17].
+The word kurgan is of Turkic origin, derives from Proto-Turkic *Kur- ("to erect (a building), to establish"). In Ukraine and Russia, there are royal kurgans of Varangian chieftains, such as the Black Grave in Ukrainian Chernihiv (excavated in the 19th century), Oleg's Grave in Russian Staraya Ladoga, and vast, intricate Rurik's Hill near Russian Novgorod. Other important kurgans are found in Ukraine and South Russia and are associated with much more ancient steppe peoples, notably the Scythians (e.g., Chortomlyk, Pazyryk) and early Indo-Europeans (e.g., Ipatovo kurgan) The steppe cultures found in Ukraine and South Russia naturally continue into Central Asia, in particular Kazakhstan.
+Salweyn in northern Somalia contains a very large field of cairns, which stretches for a distance of around 8 km.[18] An excavation of one of these tumuli by Georges Révoil in 1881 uncovered a tomb, beside which were artefacts pointing to an ancient, advanced civilization. The interred objects included pottery shards from Samos, some well-crafted enamels, and a mask of Ancient Greek design.[19]
+Tumuli are one of the most prominent types of prehistoric monuments spread throughout northern and southern Albania. Some well-known local tumuli are:
+More than 50 burial mounds were found in Kupres. Man from Kupres- the skeleton found in one of the tumuli is believed to be more than 3000 years old and it is kept in Gorica museum in Livno. Glasinac has many tumuli. During the Bronze and Iron Age it was a place of strong Glasinac culture, who buried their dead in tumulus.
+Hundreds of Thracian burial mounds are found throughout Bulgaria, including the Kazanlak and Sveshtari tombs, UNESCO World Heritage sites. Located near the ancient Thracian capital cities of Seuthopolis (of the Odrysian kingdom) and Daosdava or Helis (of the Getae), perhaps they represented royal burials. Other tombs contained offerings such as the Panagyurishte and Rogozen treasures.
+There are thousands of tumuli throughout all Croatia, built of stone (Croatian: gomila, gromila) in the carst areas (by the Adriatic Sea) or made of earth (Croatian: humak) in the inland plains and hills.  Most of these prehistoric structures were built in the 2nd and 1st millennium BC, from the middle Bronze Age to the end of the Iron Age, by the Illyrians or their direct ancestors in the same place; the Liburnian inhumation of dead under tumuli was certainly inherited from the earlier times, as early as the Copper Age. Smaller tumuli were used as the burial mounds, while bigger (some up to 7 metres high with 60 metres long base) were the cenotaphs (empty tombs) and ritual places.[20]
+There are over 40,000 tumuli in the Great Hungarian Plain, the highest is Gödény-halom near the settlement of Békésszentandrás, in Békés county.[21]
+Sírhalom origins and forms are diverse: tells, graves, border barrows, watcher barrows.[22]
+In the United Kingdom, barrows of a wide range of types were in widespread use for burying the dead from the late Neolithic until the end of the Bronze Age, 2900–800 BC. Square barrows were occasionally used in the Iron Age (800 BC-43 AD) in the east of England. The traditional round barrow experienced a brief resurgence following the Anglo-Saxon conquests, with the introduction of northern Germanic burial practices from continental Europe. These later barrows were often built near older Bronze Age barrows. They included a few instances of ship burial. Barrow burial fell out of use during the 7th century as a result of the spread of Christianity.
+Early scholarly investigation of tumuli and theorising as to their origins was undertaken from the 17th century by antiquaries, notably John Aubrey, and William Stukeley. During the 19th century in England the excavation of tumuli was a popular pastime amongst the educated and wealthy upper classes, who became known as "barrow-diggers". This leisure activity played a key role in laying the foundations for the scientific study of the past in Britain but also resulted in untold damage to the sites.
+Notable British barrows include:
+During the early Middle Ages, Slavic tribesmen inhabiting what is now the Czech Republic used to bury their dead under barrows. This practice has been widespread in southern and eastern Bohemia and some neighbouring regions, like Upper Austria and Lusatia, which at that time have been also populated with Slavic people. There are no known Slavic barrows in the central part of the country (around Prague), nor are they found in Moravia. This has led some of the archaeologists to speculations about at least three distinct waves of Slavic settlers, who colonized Czech lands separately from each other, each wave bringing its customs with it (including burial rituals).
+At places where barrows have been constructed, they are usually found in groups (10 to 100 together), often forming several clearly distinct lines going from the west to the east. Only a few of them have been studied scientifically so far; in them, both burials by fire (with burnt ashes) and unburned skeletons have been found, even on the same site. It seems that builders of the barrows have at some time switched from burials by fire to burying of unburned corpses; the reason for such change is unknown. The barrows date too far back in history (700 AD to 800 AD) to contain any Christian influences.
+As Czech barrows usually served for burials of poor villagers, only a few objects are found in them except for cheap pottery. Only one Slavic barrow is known to have contained gold.
+Most of the Czech burial barrows have been damaged or destroyed by intense agriculture in the densely populated region. Those that remain are usually in forests, especially at hilltops in remote places. Therefore, there is no general knowledge about burial barrows among Czech population.
+The best Slavic barrow sites can be found near to Vitín, a small village close to České Budějovice. There are two groups of barrows close to Vitín, each containing about 80 barrows ordered in lines. Some of the barrows are as much as 2 metres high.
+There are also some prehistoric burial barrows in Czech Republic, built by unknown people. Unlike Slavic barrows, they can be found all across the country, though they are scarce. Distinguishing them from Slavic ones is not an easy task for the unskilled eye. Perhaps the most famous of them forms the top of the Žuráň hill near Slavkov u Brna; it is from here that Napoleon commanded his forces during the Battle of Austerlitz.
+Hügelgrab ("barrow", "burial mound" or "tumulus") sites in Germany dating to the Early and Middle Bronze Age.
+Barrows or tumuli sites in Germany dating to the Late Bronze and Iron Age.
+Barrows or tumuli sites in Germany dating to the Stone Age.
+Other Barrows/tumuli in Germany of unstated date.
+A tumulus can be found close to the Grianán of Aileach in County Donegal. It has been suggested by historians such as George Petrie, who surveyed the site in the early 19th century, that the tumulus may predate the ringfort of Aileach by many centuries possibly to the neolithic age. Surrounding stones were laid horizontally, and converged towards the centre. the mound had been excavated in Petrie's time, but nothing explaining its meaning was discovered. It was subsequently destroyed, but its former position is marked by a heap of broken stones. Similar mounds can be found at The Hill of Tara and there are several prominent tumuli at Brú na Bóinne in County Meath.
+Some large tumulus tombs can be found especially in the Etruscan culture. Smaller barrows are dated to the Villanova period (ninth-eighth centuries BC) but the biggest were used in the following centuries (from the seventh century afterwards) by the Etruscan aristocracy.
+The Etruscan tumuli were normally family tombs that were used for many generation of the same noble family, and the deceased were buried with many precious objects that had to be the "grave goods" or the furnishings for these "houses" in the Afterlife.
+Many tombs also hold paintings, that in many cases represent the funeral or scenes of real life.
+The most important graveyards (necropolises) with tumulus tombs are Veio, Cerveteri, Vetulonia, Populonia. Many isolated big barrows can be found in the whole Etruscan territory (mostly in Central Italy).
+Tumulus of Montopoli is relative of arcaic center Colli della Citta' along paratiberina way in Tiber valley.
+Burial mounds are the most numerous archaeological monuments in the Netherlands. In many places, these prehistoric graves are still clearly visible as low hills. The oldest tumuli (grafheuvels) in the Netherlands were built near Apeldoorn about 5,000 years ago. Concentrations of tumuli from the Bronze Age are located on the Veluwe and Drenthe.
+Early scholarly investigation of tumuli and hunebedden and theorising as to their origins was undertaken from the 17th century by notably Johan Picardt. Although many have disappeared over the centuries, some 3000 tumuli are known of which 636 are protected as Rijksmonument.[43] The largest tumulus in the Netherlands is the grave of a king near Oss. Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Drents Museum, and Huis van Hilde have findings from tumuli in their collections.
+One of the densest manifestations of the megalithic phenomenon in Europe occurred in Portugal. In the north of the country there are more than 1000 late prehistoric barrows. They generally occur in clusters, forming a necropolis. The method of inhumation usually involves a dolmen. The tumuli, dated from c. 4450 to 1900 BC, are up to 3 metres high, with diameters from 6 to 30 metres. Most of them are mounds of earth and stones, but the more recent ones are composed largely or entirely of stones (cairns). In Portuguese, barrows are called mamoas, from the Latin mammulas, given to them by the Romans because of their shape, similar to the breast of a woman.
+Burial mounds were in use from the Stone Age until the 11th century in Scandinavia and figure heavily in Norse paganism. In their original state they usually appear as small, man-made hillocks, though many examples have been damaged by ploughing or plundering so that little visible evidence remains.
+The tumuli of Scandinavia is of a great variety of designs, depending on the cultural traditions of the era in which they were constructed. The tumuli tombs may contain single graves, collective graves and both inhumation and cremation was practiced, again depending on the era, but also on geography. Many tumuli in Scandinavia shows a continuation of use from Stone Age to Viking Age. In the Viking Age (and perhaps in earlier times as well) burning the deceased, was believed to transfer the person to Valhalla by the consuming force of fire. Archaeological finds testifies that the cremation fire could reach temperatures of up to 1500 °C. The remains were often covered with cobblestones and then a layer of gravel and sand and finally a thin layer of turf or placed in urns. The tumuli were used for ancestral worshipping, an important practice in Norse culture and many places shows continuation of use for millennia.
+Thus he (Odin) established by law that all dead men should be burned, and their belongings laid with them on the pile, and the ashes be cast into the sea or buried in the earth. Thus, said he, every one will come to Valhalla with the riches he had with him upon the pile, and he would also enjoy whatever he himself buried in the earth. For men of consequence a mound should be raised to their memory, and for all other warriors distinguished for manhood, a standing stone. This custom remained long after Odin's time. [...] It was their faith that the higher the smoke arose in the air, the higher he would be raised whose pile it was, and the richer he would be, the more property that was consumed with him.
+Denmark has about 20,000 preserved tumuli, with the oldest being around 5,000 years old. A great number of tumuli in Denmark has been destroyed in the course of history, ploughed down for agricultural fields or used for road or dyke constructions. Tumuli have been protected by law since 1937 and is officially supervised by the Danish Agency for Culture.[47] Examples of tumuli in Denmark are:[48][49][50]
+The Ahom kingdom in medieval Assam built octagonal tumuli called Maidams for their kings and high officials. The kings were buried in a hillock at Charaideo in Sibsagar district of Assam, whereas other Maidams are found scattered more widely.
+The damb was a type of mound, or small stone structure, found in Balochistan, including the coastal areas of Makran.
+Some of the world's most prominent Tumuli, the Macedonian tombs and a cist-grave at Vergina include the tomb of Philip II (359–336 BC), father of Alexander the Great (336–323 BC), as well as the tomb of Alexander IV (323–309 BC), son of Alexander the Great. A very large tumulus has been discovered in Amphipolis. Known as the Kasta Tomb, the tomb's occupant is presently unknown. Also numerous Mycenaean Greek Tombs are in all essence Tumuli, notably Agamemnon's site in Mycenae, and other sites in Tiryns, near Olympia and Pylos, and mostly in the Peloponnese peninsula near Mycenaean sites and Bronze Age settlements. Moreover, in Central Greece there are numerous Tumuli, some excavated, others not. A notable one is in Marathon, serving as a burial for the ones who fell during battle.
+As of October 2014 there are ongoing excavations at the Kasta Tomb in Amphipolis, Macedonia, Greece with the tumulus having a perimeter of 497 meters. The tomb within is assessed to be an ancient Macedonian burial monument of the last quarter of the 4th century BC.
+On the Anatolian peninsula, there are several sites where one can find the biggest specimens of these artificial mounds throughout the world. Three of these sites are especially important. Bin Tepeler (and other Lydian mounds of the Aegean inland), Phrygian mounds in Gordium (Central Anatolia), and the famous Commagene tumulus on the Mount Nemrut (Southeastern Anatolia).
+This is the most important of the enumerated sites with the number of specimens it has and with the dimensions of certain among them. It is in the Aegean inland of Turkey. The site is called "Bin Tepeler" (a thousand mounds in Turkish) and it is in the northwest of Salihli district of Manisa province. The site is very close to the southern shoreline of Lake Marmara (Lake Gyges or Gygaea). Bin Tepeler is a Lydian necropolis that dates back to 7th and 6th centuries BC. These mounds are called, "the pyramids of Anatolia," as a giant specimen among them is 355 metres in diameter, 1115 metres in perimeter and 69 metres high. According to Herodotus, this giant tumulus belongs to the famous Lydian King Alyattes who ruled between 619–560 BC. There is also another mound belonging to King Gyges. The Gyges mound was excavated but the burial chamber hasn't been found yet. In this site, there are 75 tumuli dating back to Lydian period that belong to the nobility. A large number of smaller artificial mounds can also be observed in the site. There are other Lydian tumuli sites around Eşme district of Uşak province. Certain mounds in these sites had been plundered by raiders in the late 1960s, and the Lydian treasures found in their burial chambers were smuggled to the United States, which later returned them to Turkish authorities after negotiations. These artifacts are now exhibited in the Archaeological Museum of Uşak.
+Gordium (Gordion) was the capital of the ancient kingdom of Phrygia. Its ruins are in the immediate vicinity of Polatlı, near the Turkish capital Ankara. At this site, approximately 80–90 tumuli date back to the Phrygian, Persian and Hellenistic periods. Around 35 tumuli have been excavated so far, ranging in date from the 8th century BC to the 3rd or 2nd century BC. The biggest tumulus at the site is believed to have covered the burial of the famous Phrygian King Midas or that of his father. This mound, called Tumulus MM (for "Midas Mound"), was excavated in 1957 by a team from the University of Pennsylvania Museum, led by Rodney Young and his graduate students. Among the many fine bronze artifacts recovered from the wooden burial chamber were 170 bronze vessels, including numerous "omphalos bowls," and more than 180 bronze "Phrygian fibulae" (ancient safety pins). The wooden furniture found in the tomb is especially noteworthy, as wood seldom survives from archaeological contexts: the collection included nine tables, one of them elaborately carved and inlaid, and two ceremonial serving stands inlaid with religious symbols and geometric patterns. Important bronze and wooden artifacts were also found in other tumulus burials at the site.
+The Mount Nemrut is 86 km in the east of Adıyaman province of Turkey. It is very close to Kahta district of the same province. The mountain has, at its peak, 3050 metres of height above the sea level. A tumulus that dates to the 1st century BC is at the peak of the mountain. This artificial mound has 150 metres of diameter and a height of 50 metres, which was originally 55 metres. It belongs to the Commagene King Antiochus I Theos of Commagene who ruled between 69–40 BC. This tumulus is made of broken stone pieces, which renders excavation attempts almost impossible. The tumulus is surrounded by ceremonial terraces in the east, west, and north. The east and west terraces have tremendous statues (reaching 8 to 10 meters of height) and bas reliefs of gods and goddesses from the Commagene pantheon where divine figures used to embody the Persian and Roman perceptions together.
+A tumulus forms the center of the ancient megalithic structure of Rujm el-Hiri in the Golan Heights. Rujm in Arabic can mean tumulus, cairn or stone heap. Near the western city limits of modern Jerusalem, 19 tumuli have been documented (Amiran, 1958). Though first noticed in the 1870s by early surveyors, the first one to be formally documented was Tumulus #2 in 1923 by William Foxwell Albright, and the most recent one (Tumulus #4) was excavated by Gabriel Barkay in 1983.  The association of these tumuli with the Judean kings who ruled Jerusalem does not substantiate Biblical history since it is mere speculation. No inscriptions naming any specific Judean king have been excavated from a tumulus.
+The Chinese pyramids house the remains of some of China's former emperors.
+Before the expansion of Shang and Zhou culture through the region, many hundreds of tumuli were also constructed by the "Baiyue" peoples of the Yangtze valley and southeastern China.
+In Japan, powerful leaders built tumuli known as kofun. The Kofun period of Japanese history takes its name from these burial mounds.[51] The largest is Daisen-ryo Kofun, or more commonly Nintoku-ryo Kofun, with a length of 840 metres. In addition to other shapes, kofun include a keyhole shape, typically seen in Daisen Kofun. Foreign museums possesses some grave goods.
+see also Cheonmachong, the Heavenly Horse Tomb
+The first burial mounds in Korea were dolmens, which contained material from cultures of the 1st millennium AD, such as bronze-ware, pottery, and other symbols of society elite. The most famous tumuli in Korea, dating around 300 AD, are those left behind by the Korean Baekje, Goguryeo(Kogyuro/Koguryo), Silla, and Gaya states and are clustered around ancient capital cities in modern-day Pyongyang, Ji'an, Jilin, Seoul, and Gyeongju. The Goguryeo tombs, shaped like pyramids, are famous for the well-preserved wall murals like the ones at Anak Tomb No.3, which depict the culture and artistry of the people. The base of the tomb of King Gwanggaeto is 85 meters on each side, half of the size of the Great Pyramids.[52] Goguryeo Silla tombs are most noted for the fabulous offerings that have been excavated such as delicate golden crowns and glassware and beads that probably made their way to Korea via the Silk Road. Many indigenous Korean artifacts and culture were transmitted to the tomb builders of early Japan, such as horsetrappings, bronze mirrors, paintings and iron-ware.
+Human settlement in L'anse Amour dates back at least 7,500 years as evidenced by the burial mound of a Maritime Archaic boy. His body was wrapped in a shroud of bark or hide and placed face down with his head pointed to the west. The site was first excavated in the 1970s.
+The Augustine Mound is an important Mi'kmaq burial site in New Brunswick.
+Taber Hill is a Haudenosaunee burial mound in Toronto, Ontario.
+In the southern regions of Manitoba and Saskatchewan, evidence of ancient mound builders was discovered by archaeologists, beginning with excavations by Henry Youle Hind in 1857.[53][54][55]
+In Southwestern British Columbia, several types of burial mounds are known from the Salishan region (Hill-Tout 1895).
+Mound building was a central feature of the public architecture of many Native American and Mesoamerican cultures from Chile to Minnesota. Thousands of mounds in the United States have been destroyed as a result of farming, pot-hunting, amateur and professional archaeology, road-building and construction. Surviving mounds are still found in river valleys, especially along the Mississippi, Tennessee and Ohio Rivers, and as far west as Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma.[56]
+Mounds were used for burial, to support residential and religious structures, to represent a shared cosmology, and to unite and demarcate community. Common forms include conical mounds, ridge-top mounds, platform mounds, and animal effigy mounds, but there are many variations. Mound building in the USA is believed to date back to at least 3400 BC in the Southeast (see Watson Brake). The Adena and the Mississippian cultures are principally known for their mounds, as is the Hopewell tradition. The largest mound site north of Mexico is Cahokia Mounds, a vast World Heritage Site located just east of St. Louis, Missouri.

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+Tunis (Arabic: تونس‎ Tūnis) is the capital and largest city of Tunisia. The greater metropolitan area of Tunis, often referred to as "Grand Tunis", has about 2,700,000 inhabitants, making it the third-largest city in the Maghreb region (after Casablanca and Algiers) and the sixteenth-largest in the Arab world.
+Situated on a large Mediterranean Sea gulf (the Gulf of Tunis), behind the Lake of Tunis and the port of La Goulette (Ḥalq il-Wād), the city extends along the coastal plain and the hills that surround it. At its core lies its ancient medina, a World Heritage Site. East of the medina through the Sea Gate (also known as the Bab el Bhar and the Porte de France) begins the modern city, or Ville Nouvelle, traversed by the grand Avenue Habib Bourguiba (often referred to by popular press and travel guides as "the Tunisian Champs-Élysées"), where the colonial-era buildings provide a clear contrast to smaller, older structures. Further east by the sea lie the suburbs of Carthage, La Marsa, and Sidi Bou Said. As the capital city of the country, Tunis is the focus of Tunisian political and administrative life; it is also the centre of the country's commercial and cultural activities. It has two cultural centres, as well as a municipal theatre that is used by international theatre groups and a summer festival, the International Festival of Carthage, which is held in July.
+Tunis is the transcription of the Arabic name تونس which can be pronounced as "Tūnus", "Tūnas", or "Tūnis". All three variations were mentioned by the Greek-Syrian geographer al-Rumi Yaqout in his Mu'jam al-Bûldan (Dictionary of Countries).
+Different explanations exist for the origin of the name Tunis. Some scholars relate it to the Phoenician goddess Tanith ('Tanit or Tanut), as many ancient cities were named after patron deities.[2][3] Some scholars claim that it originated from Tynes, which was mentioned by Diodorus Siculus and Polybius in the course of descriptions of a location resembling present-day Al-Kasbah; Tunis's old Berber Bourgade.[4][5]
+Another possibility is that it was derived from the Berber verbal root ens which means "to lie down" or "to pass the night".[6] The term Tunis can possibly mean "camp at night", "camp", or "stop", or may have referred to as "the last stop before Carthage" by people who were journeying to Carthage by land. There are also some mentions in ancient Roman sources of such names of nearby towns as Tuniza (now El Kala), Thunusuda (now Sidi-Meskin), Thinissut (now Bir Bouregba), and Thunisa (now Ras Jebel). As all of these Berber villages were situated on Roman roads, they undoubtedly served as rest-stations or stops.[7]
+The historical study of Carthage is problematic. Because its culture and records were destroyed by the Romans at the end of the Third Punic War, very few Carthaginian primary historical sources survive. While there are a few ancient translations of Punic texts into Greek and Latin, as well as inscriptions on monuments and buildings discovered in Northwest Africa,[8] the main sources are Greek and Roman historians, including Livy, Polybius, Appian, Cornelius Nepos, Silius Italicus, Plutarch, Dio Cassius, and Herodotus. These writers belonged to peoples in competition, and often in conflict, with Carthage.[9] Greek cities contended with Carthage over Sicily,[10] and the Romans fought three wars against Carthage.[11] Not surprisingly, their accounts of Carthage are extremely hostile; while there are a few Greek authors who took a favourable view, these works have been lost.[9]
+Ruins of the Baths of Antoninus in Carthage
+The Lady of Carthage mosaic, one of the major surviving pieces of Byzantine art in modern Tunisia
+Carthage 2013
+Carthage 2013
+Carthage 2013
+Artifacts from the siege of 149–146
+Punic tombs
+Tunis was originally a Berber settlement.[12] The existence of the town is attested by sources dating from the 4th century BC.[13] Situated on a hill, Tunis served as an excellent point from which the comings and goings of naval and caravan traffic to and from Carthage could be observed. Tunis was one of the first towns in the region to fall under Carthaginian control, and in the centuries that followed Tunis was mentioned in the military histories associated with Carthage. Thus, during Agathocles' expedition, which landed at Cape Bon in 310 BC, Tunis changed hands on various occasions.[citation needed]
+During the Mercenary War, it is possible that Tunis served as a center for the native population of the area,[13] and that its population was mainly composed of peasants, fishermen, and craftsmen. Compared to the ancient ruins of Carthage, the ruins of ancient Tunis are not as large. According to Strabo, it was destroyed by the Romans in 146 BC during the Third Punic War. Both Tunis and Carthage were destroyed; Tunis, however, was rebuilt first[14] under the rule of Augustus and became an important town under Roman control and the center of a booming agricultural industry. The city is mentioned in the Tabula Peutingeriana as Thuni.[14] In the system of Roman roads for the Roman province of Africa, Tunis had the title of mutatio ("way station, resting place").[14] Tunis, increasingly Romanized, was also eventually Christianized and became the seat of a bishop. However, Tunis remained modestly sized compared to Carthage during this time.[15]
+When the Arab Muslim troops conquered the region at the end of the 7th century, they established themselves at the outskirts of ancient Tunes, and the small town soon became the city of Tunis that could easily be taken for an Arab foundation.[16] The medina of Tunis, the oldest section of the city, dates from this period, during which the region was conquered by the Umayyad emir Hasan ibn al-Nu'man al-Ghasani. The city had the natural advantage of coastal access, via the Mediterranean, to the major ports of southern Europe. Early on, Tunis played a military role; the Arabs recognized the strategic importance of its proximity to the Strait of Sicily. From the beginning of the 8th century Tunis was the chef-lieu of the area: it became the Arabs' naval base in the western Mediterranean Sea, and took on considerable military importance.[15] Under the Aghlabids, the people of Tunis revolted numerous times,[15] but the city benefited from economic improvements and quickly became the second most important in the kingdom. It was briefly the national capital, from the end of the reign of Ibrahim II in 902, until 909[17] when control over Ifriqiya was lost to the newly founded Fatimid Caliphate.
+Local opposition to the authorities began to intensify in September 945, when Kharijite insurgents occupied Tunis, resulting in general pillaging.[15][18] With the rise of the Zirid dynasty Tunis gained importance, but the Sunni population tolerated Shi'ite rule less and less, and carried out massacres against the Shi'ite community.[18] In 1048 the Zirid ruler Al-Muizz ibn Badis rejected his city's obedience to the Fatimids and re-established Sunni rites throughout all of Ifriqiya. This decision infuriated the Shi'ite caliph Al-Mustansir Billah. To punish the Zirids, he unleashed the Banu Hilal Arab tribe on Ifriqiya; a large part of the country was set to the torch, the Zirid capital Kairouan was razed in 1057, and only a few coastal towns, including Tunis and Mahdia, escaped destruction. Exposed to violence from the hostile tribes that settled around the city, the population of Tunis repudiated the authority of the Zirids and swore allegiance to the Hammadid prince El Nacer ibn Alennas, who was based in Béjaïa, in 1059. The governor appointed by Béjaïa, having reestablished order in the country, did not hesitate to free himself from the Hammadids to found the Khurasanid dynasty with Tunis as its capital. This small independent kingdom picked up the threads of trade and commerce with other nations, and brought the region back to peace and prosperity.[19]
+In 1159, the Almohad 'Abd al-Mu'min took Tunis, overthrew the last Khurasanid leader and installed a new government in the kasbah of Tunis.[15] The Almohad conquest marked the beginning of the dominance of the city in Tunisia. Having previously played a minor role behind Kairouan and Mahdia, Tunis was promoted to the rank of provincial capital.
+In 1228, Governor Abu Zakariya seized power and, a year later, took the title of Emir and founded the Hafsid dynasty. The city became the capital of a Hafsid kingdom stretching towards Tripoli and Fez. Walls were built to protect the emerging principal town of the kingdom, surrounding the medina, the kasbah and the new suburbs of Tunis. In 1270 the city was taken briefly by Louis IX of France, who was hoping to convert the Hafsid sovereign to Christianity. King Louis easily captured Carthage, but his army soon fell victim to an outbreak of dysentery. Louis himself died before the walls of the capital and the army was forced out.  At the same time, driven by the reconquest of Spain, the first Andalusian Muslims and Jews arrived in Tunis and would become of importance to the economic prosperity of the Hafsid capital and the development of its intellectual life.[15]
+During the Almohad and Hafsid periods Tunis was one of the richest and grandest cities in the Islamic world, with a population of about 100,000.
+During this period, one of the famous travellers to Tunis was Ibn Battuta. In his travel account, when Ibn Battuta and his group arrived in Tunis, the population of the city came out to meet him and the other the members of his party. They all greeted them and were very curious, many were asking questions, however, no one in Tunis personally greeted Ibn Battuta, greatly upsetting him. He felt very lonely and could not hold back the tears coming from his eyes. This went on for a while until one of the pilgrims realized he was upset, he went up and greeted and talked to Ibn until he entered the city. At the time, the Sultan of Tunis was Abu Yahya and during Ibn Battuta's stay, the Festival of the Breaking of the Fast was taking place. The people in the city assembled in large numbers to celebrate the festival, in extravagant and most luxurious outfits. Abu Yahya arrived on horseback, where all of his relatives joined him. After the performance, the people returned to their homes.[20]
+The Ottoman Empire took nominal control of Tunis in 1534 when Hayreddin Barbarossa captured it from the Hafsid Sultan Mulai Hassan, who fled to the court of Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain. Charles, suffering losses from the corsairs operating out of Djerba, Tunis, and Algiers, agreed to reinstate Mulai Hassan in exchange for his acceptance of Spanish suzerainty. A naval expedition led by Charles himself was dispatched in 1535, and the city was recaptured. The victory against the corsairs is recorded in a tapestry at the Royal Palace of Madrid. The Spanish governor of La Goulette, Luys Peres Varga,  fortified the island of Chikly in the lake of Tunis to strengthen the city's defences between 1546 and 1550.
+The Ottoman Uluç Ali Reis, at the head of an army of janissaries and Kabyles, retook Tunis in 1569. However, following the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Spanish under John of Austria succeeded in retaking the city and re-establishing the Hafsid sovereign in October 1573. Following these conflicts, the city finally fell into Ottoman hands in August 1574. Having become an Ottoman province governed by a Pasha who was appointed by the Sultan based in Constantinople, the country attained a degree of autonomy. After 1591, the Ottoman governors (Beys) were relatively independent, and both piracy and trade continued to flourish. Under the rule of deys and Moorish beys, the capital sprang into new life. Its population grew by additions from various ethnicities, among which were Moorish refugees from Spain, and economic activities diversified. To traditional industry and trade with distant lands was added the activity of the Barbary pirates, then in their golden age. Profits obtained from the trade in Christian slaves allowed the rulers to build sumptuous structures that revived the architectural heritage of the Middle Ages.[15]
+In April 1655 the English admiral Robert Blake was sent to the Mediterranean to extract compensation from states that had been attacking English shipping. Only the Bey of Tunis refused to comply, with the result that Blake's fifteen ships attacked the Bey's arsenal at Porto Farina (Ghar el Melh), destroying nine Algerian ships and two shore batteries, the first time in naval warfare that shore batteries had been eliminated without landing men ashore.
+At the beginning of the 18th century, Tunisia entered into a new period in its history with the advent of the Husainid dynasty. Successive Husainid rulers made great progress in developing the city and its buildings. During this period, the city prospered as a centre of commerce. Taking advantage of divisions within the ruling house, Algerians captured Tunis in 1756 and put the country under supervision. Hammouda Bey faced bombardment by the Venetian fleet, and the city experienced a rebellion in 1811.[23] Under the reign of Hussein Bey II, naval defeats by the British (1826) and French (1827) saw the French become increasingly active in the city and in the economy.[24]
+Various sources estimate the 19th-century population to have ranged from 90,000 to 110,000 inhabitants.[25] During the later 19th century, Tunis became increasingly populated by Europeans, particularly the French, and immigration dramatically increased the size of the city. This resulted in the first demolition of the old city walls, from 1860, to accommodate growth in the suburbs. The city spilled outside the area of the earlier town and the banks of the lake, and the new districts were modernised with running water (1860), lighting gas (1872), roads, waste collection (1873), and communication with adjacent suburbs and the city centre.[26] The crafts and traditional trades declined somewhat, as the newcomers increased trade with Europe, introducing the first modern industries and new forms of urban life.
+The creation of the French protectorate in 1881 was a turning point in Tunis's history, leading to rapid redevelopment of the city in the span of two to three decades. The city quickly spread out of its fortifications: it divided into a traditional Arab-populated old city, and a new city populated by immigrants, with a different structure from that of the traditional medina. Tunis also benefited from French construction of a water supply, natural gas and electricity networks, public transport services and other public infrastructure.
+Under French rule, a substantial number of Europeans settled (like the Tunisian Italians); half of the population was European in origin.[27] The city expanded and created new boulevards and neighborhoods.
+Tunis was quiet during the First World War. After the war, the city faced new transformations as the modern portion grew in importance and extended its network of boulevards and streets in all directions. In addition, a series of satellite cities emerged on the urban rim and encroached on the municipality of Tunis proper. In the economic sphere, commercial activities expanded and diversified as modern industries continued to grow, while traditional industry continued to decline.
+During World War II, Tunis was held by Axis forces from November 1942 to May 1943. It was their last base in Africa, as they retreated towards Sicily after being surrounded by Allied forces from Algeria to the west and from Libya to the east.[28]
+On 7 May 1943, at about 15:30 in the afternoon, Tunis fell to troops of British 1st Army and the U.S. 1st Army, which had defeated the German 5th Panzer Army guarding the city. At midday on 20 May 1943, the Allies held a victory parade on Avenue Maréchal Galliéni, and Avenue Jules Ferry, to signal the end of fighting in North Africa.[29]
+Having succeeded in driving the Axis powers out of Tunisia, the Allies used Tunis as a base of operations from which to stage amphibious assaults first against the island of Pantelleria, and then Sicily, and finally the mainland of Italy.[30]
+After independence in 1956, Tunis consolidated its role as the capital, first with the establishment of a constitution stating that the Chamber of Deputies and the Presidency of the Republic must have their headquarters in Tunis and its suburbs. In a very short time, the colonial city transformed rapidly. As the city has grown and native Tunisians gradually began to replace the extensive European population, conflict between the Arab city and the European city has gradually decreased with the arabization of the population.
+Because of population pressure and the rate of migration to the capital, the city continued to grow, even with the creation of new districts in the suburbs. Old buildings have gradually been renovated and upgraded and new buildings have come to influence the urban landscape. At the same time, an active policy of industrialization is developing the municipal economy.
+The Arab League was headquartered in Tunis from 1979 to 1990. The Arab League, which represents 22 Arab nations, transferred its headquarters to Tunis in 1979 because of Egypt's peace with Israel but has been headquartered back in Egypt since 1990.
+The Palestine Liberation Organization also had its headquarters in Tunis, from 1982 to 2003.
+In 1985, the PLO's headquarters was bombed by Israeli Air Force F-15s, killing approximately 60 people.
+Many protests took place during the Arab Spring of 2011–12.
+On 18 March 2015, two gunmen attacked the Bardo National Museum and held hostages.[31] Twenty civilians and one policeman were killed in the attack, while around 50 others were injured.[32] Five Japanese, two Colombians, and visitors from Italy, Poland, and Spain were among the dead. Both gunmen were killed by Tunisian police. The incident has been treated as a terrorist attack.[33][34]
+Tunis is located in north-eastern Tunisia on the Lake of Tunis, and is connected to the Mediterranean sea's Gulf of Tunis by a canal which terminates at the port of La Goulette/Halq al Wadi. The ancient city of Carthage is located just north of Tunis along the coastal part. The city lies on a similar latitude as the southernmost points of Europe.
+The city of Tunis is built on a hill slope down to the lake of Tunis. These hills contain places such as Notre-Dame de Tunis, Ras Tabia, La Rabta, La Kasbah, Montfleury and La Manoubia with altitudes just above 50 metres (160 feet).[35] The city is located at the crossroads of a narrow strip of land between Lake Tunis and Séjoumi. The isthmus between them is what geologists call the "Tunis dome", which includes hills of limestone and sediments. It forms a natural bridge and since ancient times several major roads linking to Egypt and elsewhere in Tunisia have branched out from it. The roads also connect with Carthage, emphasising its political and economic importance not only in Tunisia but more widely in North Africa and the Mediterranean Sea in ancient times.
+The Greater Tunis area has an area of 300,000 hectares, 30,000 of which is urbanized, the rest being shared between bodies of water (20,000 hectares of lakes or lagoons) and agricultural or natural land (250,000 hectares). However, urban growth, which is estimated to be increasing by 500 hectares per year, is gradually changing the landscape with urban sprawl.
+A summer night in Tunis
+Tunis bay at sunrise
+Satellite view
+A Tunis suburb
+Bab El Bhar located 7 metres (23 feet) above sea level
+Hammouda Pasha Mosque in El Kasbah is located 23 metres (75 feet) above sea level
+After World War II, suburbs began to rapidly spring up on the outskirts of Tunis. These form a large percentage of the population of the Tunis metropolitan area. It grew from 27% of the total population in 1956, to 37% in 1975 and 50% in 2006.
+Tunis has a hot-summer Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification Csa),[37] characterized by hot and dry, prolonged summers and mild winters with moderate rainfall. The local climate is also affected somewhat by the latitude of the city, the moderating influence of the Mediterranean sea and the terrain of the hills.
+Winter is the wettest season of the year, when more than a third of the annual rainfall falls during this period, raining on average every two or three days.  The sun may still increase the temperature from 7 °C (45 °F) in the morning to 16 °C (61 °F) in the afternoon on average during the winter. Frosts are rare.  In spring, rainfall declines by half.  The sunshine becomes dominant in May when it reaches 10 hours a day on average.  In March temperatures may vary between 8 °C (46 °F) and 18 °C (64 °F), and between 13 °C (55 °F) and 24 °C (75 °F) in May. However, it is common for temperatures to soar even as early as April with record temperatures reaching 40 °C (104 °F).  In summer, rain is almost completely absent and the sunlight is at a maximum.  The average temperatures in the summer months of June, July, August, and September are very high. Sea breezes may mitigate the heat, but sometimes the sirocco winds reverse the trend.  In autumn, it begins to rain, often with short thunderstorms, which can sometimes cause flash floods or even flood some parts of the city.[38][39]  The month of November marks a break in the general heat with average temperatures ranging from 11 °C (52 °F) to 20 °C (68 °F).
+Tunis has been the capital of Tunisia since 1159. Under Articles 43 and 24 of the Constitution of 1959,[46] Tunis and its suburbs host the national institutions: the Presidential Palace, which is known as Carthage Palace, residence of the President of Tunisia, the Chamber of Deputies and the Chamber of Advisors and parliament, the Constitutional Council and the main judicial institutions  and public bodies. The revised Tunisian Constitution of 2014 similarly provides that the National Assembly is to sit in Tunis (article 51) and that the Presidency is based there (article 73).[47]
+Following the municipal elections of 6 May 2018, Ennahdha obtained 21 seats out of 60. Nidaa Tounes came second with 17 seats. On 3 July 2018, the head of the Ennahdha list Souad Abderrahim was elected by the council as the new mayor of the capital.
+Before 2011, unlike other mayors in Tunisia, the mayor of Tunis is appointed by decree of the President of the Republic from among the members of the City Council.
+The 2008 budget adopted by the City Council is structured as follows: 61.61 million dinars for operations and 32,516 million dinars for investment.[48] It reflects the improved financial situation of the municipality, the year 2007 was a year registering a surplus in resources that allowed the settlement of debts of the municipality and the strengthening of its credibility with respect its suppliers and public and private partners.
+Revenues are generated by the proceeds of taxes on buildings and vacant lots, fees for the rental of municipal property, income from the operation of the public, advertising, and that the fact that the municipality has capital shares in some companies. On the expenditure side, provision is made for the consolidation of hygiene and cleanliness, the state of the environment and urban design, infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation and renovation of facilities, and strengthening the logistics and means of work and transport.[48]
+The city of Tunis, whose size has increased significantly during the second half of the 20th century, now extends beyond the Tunis Governorate into parts of the governorates of Ben Arous, Ariana and Manouba.
+The municipality of Tunis is divided into 15 municipal districts:[49]  These include El Bab Bhar, Bab Souika, Cité El Khadra, Jelloud Jebel El Kabaria, El Menzah, El Ouardia, Ettahrir, Ezzouhour, Hraïria, Medina, El Omrane, El Omrane Higher Séjoumi, Sidi El-Bashir and Sidi Hassine.
+In the years following independence, the population of the metropolitan area continued to grow: by 21.1% from 1956 to 1966 and by 28.5% from 1966 to 1975 (55.6% between 1956 and 1975).[50] This steady growth was accompanied by changes which affected the nature of the settlement of the capital. Decolonization led to the exodus of some European minorities whose numbers dwindled every year. The gaps created by their departure were filled by Tunisians who emigrated to Tunis from other parts of the country.
+The population of the city of Tunis exceeds 2,000,000 inhabitants. After independence, the Tunisian government implemented a plan to cope with population growth of the city and country, a system of family planning, to attempt to lower the rate of population growth. However, between 1994 and 2004, the population of the governorate of Tunis grew more than 1.03% per annum. It represents, in the 2004 census, 9.9% of the total population of Tunisia.[51] As in the rest of Tunisia, literacy in the region of Tunis evolved rapidly during the second half of the 20th century and has reached a level slightly higher than the national average. The education level is only exceeded by the neighbouring governorate of Ariana which has many institutions of education.
+Products include textiles, carpets, and olive oil. Tourism also provides a significant portion of the city's income.
+Because of the concentration of political authority (headquarters of the central government, presidency, parliament, ministries and central government) and culture (festivals and mainstream media), Tunis is the only nationally ranking metropolis. Tunis is the heartland of the Tunisian economy and is the industrial and economic hub of the country, home to one third of Tunisian companies—including almost all the head offices of companies with more than fifty employees, with the exception of the Compagnie des Phosphates de Gafsa, headquartered in Gafsa—and produces a third of the national gross domestic product.[52]  Tunis attracts foreign investors (33% of companies, 26% of investments and 27% of employment), excluding several areas due to economic imbalances. According to the Mercer 2017 Cost of Living Rankings, Tunis has the lowest cost of living for expatriates in the world.[53] The urban unemployment rate of university graduates is increasing and the illiteracy rate remains high among the elderly (27% of women and 12% of men).[52] The number of people living below the poverty line, falling at the national level, remains higher in urban areas. In addition, unemployment is high in young people aged 18 to 24, with one in three unemployed as compared to one in six at the national level. In Greater Tunis, the proportion of young unemployed is at 35%.[52]
+Gulf finance house or GFH has invested $10 billion in order for the construction of tunis financial harbor, that will transform Tunisia as the gateway to Africa from Europe. The project hopes to boost the economy of Tunisia as well as increase the number of tourists visiting Tunisia annually. The project is going through planning.
+The economic structure of Tunis, as well as that of the country, is overwhelmingly tertiary industry.  The city is the largest financial center in the country hosting the headquarters of 65% of financial companies – while the industrial sectors are gradually declining in importance.[52]  However the secondary industry is still very represented and Tunis hosts 85% of industrial establishments in the four governorates, with a trend towards the spread of specialized industrial zones in the suburbs.
+Primary industry such as agriculture, however, is active in specialized agricultural areas on the suburbs, particularly in the wine and olive oil industries. The generally flat terrain and the two main rivers in Tunisia, the Medjerda to the north and the Milian to the south, the soils are fertile.[54]  Tunis has several large plains, the most productive are in Ariana and La Soukra (north), the plain of Manouba (west) and the plain of Mornag (south).  In addition, groundwater is easily accessible through the drilling of deep wells, providing water for the different agriculture crops. The soils are heavy and contain limestone in the north but are lighter and sandy containing clay in the south.[55]  There is much diversification in the municipality of Tunis, with Durum grown in Manouba, Olives and olive oil in Ariana and Mornag, wine (Mornag), and fruit, vegetable and legumes are grown in all regions.[56]
+Panorama
+Minaret of Al-Zaytuna Mosque
+Cathedral of St. Vincent de Paul
+Bab el Bhar - Porte De France
+The Medina, built on a gentle hill slope on the way down to the Lake of Tunis, is the historical heart of the city and home to many monuments, including palaces, such as the Dar Ben Abdallah and Dar Hussein, the mausoleum of Tourbet el Bey or many mosques such as the Al-Zaytuna Mosque. Some of the fortifications around it have now largely disappeared, and it is flanked by the two suburbs of Bab Souika to the north and Bab El Jazira to the south. Located near the Bab Souika, the neighborhood of Halfaouine which gained international attention through the film 'Halfaouine Child of the Terraces'.
+But east of the original nucleus, first with the construction of the French Consulate, the modern city was built gradually with the introduction of the French protectorate at the end of the 19th century, on open land between the city and the lake. The axis to the structure of this part of the city is the Avenue Habib Bourguiba, designed by the French to be a Tunisian form of Champs-Élysées in Paris with its cafes, major hotels, shops and cultural venues. On both sides of the tree lines avenue, north and south, the city was extended in various districts, with the northern end welcoming residential and business districts while the south receives industrial districts and poorer peoples.
+South-east of the Avenue Bourguiba the district of La Petite Sicile (Little Sicily) is adjacent to the old port area and takes its name from its original population of workers from Italy. It is now the subject of a redevelopment project including the construction of twin towers. North of the Avenue Bourguiba is the district of La Fayette, which is still home to the Great Synagogue of Tunis and the Habib Thameur Gardens, built on the site of an ancient Jewish cemetery which lay outside the walls. Also to the north is the long Avenue Mohamed V, which leads to the Boulevard of 7 November through the neighborhood of the big banks where there are hotels and Abu Nawas Lake and finally to the Belvedere area around the place Pasteur. This is where the Belvedere Park lies, the largest in the city, and home to a zoo and the Pasteur Institute founded by Adrien Loir in 1893. Continuing to the north are the most exclusive neighborhoods of Mutuelleville which house the French Lycée Pierre-Mendès-France, the Sheraton Hotel and some embassies.
+Still further north of the Belvedere Park, behind the Boulevard of 7 November are the neighborhoods of El Menzah and El Manar now reaching the peaks of the hills overlooking the north of the town. They support a range of residential and commercial buildings. To the west of the park lies the district of El Omrane which holds the main Muslim cemetery in the capital and the warehouses of public transport.  Heading east is the Tunis-Carthage International Airport and the neighborhoods of Borgel, giving his name to the existing Jewish and Christian cemeteries in the capital, and the neighbourhood of Montplaisir. Beyond that, several kilometers north-east, on the road to La Marsa,  the Berges du Lac was built on land reclaimed from the north shore of the lake near the airport, which has holds offices of Tunisian and foreign companies, many embassies as well as shops.
+Southwest of the Medina, on the crest of the hills across the Isthmus of Tunis, is the Montfleury district then on down to the foothills of Séjoumi, the poor neighborhood of Mellassine. Northwest of the latter, north of the National Route 3 leading to the west, is the city of Ezzouhour (formerly El Kharrouba), which spans more than three metres (9.8 feet) and is divided into five sections. It is still surrounded with farmland and vegetables are grown which supply many of the souks in the region.
+The south of Tunis is made up of disadvantaged neighborhoods, especially due to the strong industry in this part of the metropolis. These include Jebel Jelloud, located in the south-east of Tunis, which concentrates on the heavy industry of cement production, the treatment plant of phosphate s, etc. The main cemetery in Tunis, the Djellaz Cemetery, dominates this part of town, perched on the slopes of a rocky outcrop.
+The medina of Tunis has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979. The Medina contains some 700 monuments, including palaces, mosques, mausoleums, madrasas and fountains dating from the Almohad and the Hafsid periods. These ancient buildings include:
+With an area of 270 hectares (over 29 hectares for the Kasbah)[57]  and more than 100,000 people, the Medina comprises one-tenth of the population of Tunis. The planning of the Medina of Tunis has the distinction of not grid lines or formal geometric compositions. However, studies were undertaken in the 1930s with the arrival of the first anthropologists who found that the space of the Medina is not random: the houses are based on a socio-cultural code according to the types of complex human relations.
+Domestic architecture (palaces and townhouses), official and civilian (libraries and administrations), religious (mosques and zaouïas) and services (commercial and fondouks) are located in the Medina. The notion of public space is ambiguous in the case of Medina where the streets are seen as an extension of the houses and subject to social tags. The concept of ownership is low however and souks often spill out onto public roads. Today, each district has its culture and rivalries can be strong.
+The northern end supports the football club of Esperance Sportive de Tunis while at the other end is the rival Club Africain. The Medina also has a social sectorization: with the neighborhood of Tourbet el Bey and the Kasbah district being aristocratic, with a population of judges and politicians, while the streets of Pacha often being military and bourgeois.
+Founded in 698 is the Al-Zaytuna Mosque and the surrounding area which developed throughout the Middle Ages,[57]  dividing Tunis into a main town in two suburbs, in the north (Bab Souika) and the south (Bab El Jazira). The area became the capital of a powerful kingdom during the Hafsid era, and was considered a religious and intellectual home and economic center for the Middle East, Africa and Europe. A great fusion of influences can be seen blending Andalusian styles with eastern influences, and Roman or Byzantine columns, and typical Arab architecture, characterized by the archways.
+The architectural heritage is also omnipresent in the homes of individuals and small palace officials as well as in the palace of the sovereign of Kasbah. Although some palaces and houses date back to the Middle Ages, a greater number of prestigious houses were built in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries such as Dar Othman (early 17th century), Dar Ben Abdallah (18th century), Dar Hussein, Dar Cherif and other houses. The main palace beys are those of La Marsa, Bardo and Ksar Said. If we add the mosques and oratories (about 200), the madrasahs (El Bachia, Slimania, El Achouria, Bir El Ahjar, Ennakhla, etc..), The zaouias (Mahrez Sidi Sidi Ali Azouz, Sidi Abdel Kader, etc.) and Tourbet El Fellari, Tourbet Aziza Othman and Tourbet El Bey the number of monuments in Tunis approaches 600. Unlike Algiers, Palermo and Naples, its historical heart has never suffered from major natural disasters or urban radical interventions. The main conflicts and potentially destructive human behavior has been experienced in the city occurred relatively recently following the country's independence which it why it made into a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1979. At the beginning of the 21st century, the Medina is one of the best preserved urban locations in the Arab world.[58]
+Furthermore, along the boulevards, the contribution of the architectural period 1850–1950 can be felt in the buildings, such as the government buildings of the nine ministries and the headquarters of the municipality of Tunis.
+The souks are a network of covered streets lined with shops and traders and artisans ordered by specialty.[59]  Clothing merchants, perfumers, fruit sellers, booksellers and wool merchants have goods at the souks, while fishmongers, blacksmiths and potters tend to be relegated to the periphery of the markets.[59]
+North of the Al-Zaytuna Mosque is the Souk El Attarine, built in the early 18th century. It is known for its essences and perfumes. From this souk, there is a street leading to the Souk Ech-Chaouachine (chachia). The main company that operates it is one of the oldest in the country and they are generally descendants of Andalusian immigrants expelled from Spain. Attached to El Attarine are two other souks: the first, which runs along the western coast of the Al-Zaytuna Mosque, is the Souk El Kmach which is noted for its fabrics, and the second, the Souk El Berka, which was built in the 17th century and houses embroiderers and jewelers. Given the valuable items it sells, it is the only souk whose doors are closed and guarded during the night. In the middle there is a square where the former slave market stood until the middle of the 19th century.
+Souk El Berka leads to Souk El Leffa, a souk that sells all kinds of carpets, blankets and other weavings, and extends with the Souk Es Sarragine, built in the early 18th century and specializing in leather. At the periphery are the souks Et Trouk, El Blat, El Blaghgia, El Kébabgia, En Nhas (copper), Es Sabbaghine (dyeing) and El Grana that sell clothing and blankets and was occupied by Jewish merchants.
+Medina Alleys
+Medina 2013
+Medina 2013
+Medina 2013
+Medina 2013
+From the early days of its founding, Tunis has been considered an important military base. The Arab geographer El Yacoubi has written that in the 9th century Tunis was surrounded by a wall of brick and clay except the side of the sea where it was stone.[60]  Bab El-Jazeera, perhaps the oldest gate of the south wall, opened onto the southern road. Bab Cartagena gave access to Carthage, important for bringing in construction materials needed for the city. Bab Souika (initially known as Bab El Saqqayin) had a strategic role to keep the roads to Bizerte, Béja and Le Kef. Bab Menara (initially known as Bab El Artha) opened onto the medina and on the suburb of El Haoua. As for El Bab Bhar, it allowed access to some funduqs where Christian merchants lived in Tunis.
+With the development of the capital under the reign of the Hafsids, two emerging suburbs grew outside the walls; Bab El Jazira in the south and Bab Souika to the north. In the early 14th century, Hafsid Darba Abû al-Muhammad al-Mustansir Lihyânî ordered the construction of a second chamber including the Medina and two suburbs outside.[61] Six new gates were built including Bab El Khadra, Bab Saadoun, Bab El Allouj (initially called Bab Er-Rehiba), Khalid or Bab Bab Sidi Abdallah Cherif, Bab El Fellah and Bab Alioua. In the Ottoman period, four new gates were established: Bab Laassal, Bab Sidi Abdesselam, Bab El Bab Gorjani and Sidi Kacem. The city retains some of these gates including Bab El Khadra, Bab El Bhar and Bab Jedid but some of the earlier ones have long disappeared.
+Among the places of worship, they are predominantly Muslim mosques.   There are also Christian churches and temples : Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Tunis (Catholic Church), Protestant churches, Evangelical Churches.[62]
+As in the rest of Tunisia, a very large majority of the population of Tunis (around 99%) is Sunni Muslim.  The capital is home to a large number of mosques in various architectural styles, signs of construction of their respective eras.  The main and oldest of them, is the Al-Zaytuna Mosque, founded in 698 and built in 732 and is in the heart of the Medina. Practicing the Maliki rite as the vast majority of Tunisia's Mosques. It was completely rebuilt in 864 and is a prestigious place of worship, and was long an important place of culture and knowledge with the University of Ez-Zitouna on the premises until the independence of Tunisia.  It still hosts the main ceremonies marking the dates on the Muslim calendar and is regularly attended by the president.
+The medina contains most of the major mosques in the capital which were built before the advent of the French protectorate.  The mosque in the Kasbah, was founded in 1230.  Practicing the Hanafi rite since 1584, it is recognisable mainly by the dome as well as its minaret, similar to the Koutoubia in Marrakesh and is the highest in the city.[63] Ksar Mosque, also of the Hanafi rite, is located in front of Dar Hussein (Bab Menara) and was built in the 12th century.[63]  The Hammouda Pasha Mosque, built in 1655, is the second mosque built by the Hanafi rite in Tunis.[63] Youssef Dey Mosque operated primarily as public speaking venue before becoming a real mosque in 1631.[63] The Sidi Mahrez Mosque is the largest mosque Hanafi mosque in terms of area but not the tallest.  Built in 1692, it resembles the Ottoman Süleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul.[63]  The Saheb Ettabaâ Mosque, built between 1808 and 1814 was the last mosque built by the Tunis Husseinites before the French occupation.[63]
+The presence of modern churches in Tunis are also testimony to the French presence for half a century.  Tunis is the seat of the Diocese of Tunis, with the seat located at the Cathedral of St Vincent de Paul, The church was built in 1897 on the site of the old Christian cemetery of Saint-Antoine.[63]  This includes a network of Catholic buildings, including the Church of St. Joan of Arc, but also with the Protestant Reformed Church and the Anglican church Saint-Georges.[64][65]
+Greeks used to enjoy an important presence in the city since ancient times. Tunis is the headquarters of the Greek Orthodox Holy Archdiocese of Carthage with jurisdiction over Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. It belongs to the Patriarchate of Alexandria and All Africa, and its cathedral, small school and other buildings are in Central Tunis.
+In total, there are three Greek Orthodox and two Russian Orthodox parishes in Tunisia. The Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria also maintains jurisdiction in Tunisia.
+The small Orthodox community is centred around the Greek Orthodox Church (1862), managed by the Greek Embassy and the Russian Orthodox Church (1957), reflecting the presence in Tunisia of a small colony of Russian immigrants.[63]
+Judaism, meanwhile, enjoys a long tradition of presence in the city despite the emigration of a large part of the community after independence.  Among the places of worship are Beit Yaacouv Synagogue and especially the Great Synagogue of Tunis, built at the end of the 1940s to replace the former Great Synagogue which was demolished as part of the Jewish redevelopment area, the Hara.
+Tunis has some large parks, many of which were installed at the end of the 19th century by the authorities of the French protectorate. The largest Park, Belvédère Park, was founded in 1892 overlooks Lake Tunis. It is the oldest public park in the country and is built in the landscape style common to France.[66]  The park covers an area of more than one hundred hectares across roads that can be explored on foot or by car. It is also home to Tunis Zoo, which houses African fauna, and the Museum of Modern Art.
+Habib Thameur garden in Tunis has a central pond and flower beds. The Gorjani garden, is an English garden located southwest of the city, which notably takes an irregular form, partly due to the steep topography of the land.[67]
+Located in an old beylical palace (the palace of the Bey of Tunis since the end of the 18th century), the Bardo National Museum (Tunis) is the most important archaeological museum in the Maghreb, and has one of the richest Roman mosaic collections in the world.  Its collections developed rapidly, thanks to numerous archaeological discoveries in the surrounding territory.
+In 1964 the Dar Ben Abdallah, a palace probably dating back to the 18th century, became the seat of the capital's Museum of Arts and Popular Traditions.  In its exposition halls it holds numerous traditional items, witnesses of the everyday lives of families of the Medina quarter.
+The Museum of the National Movement is situated in Dar Maâkal Az-Zaïm, which was the residence of nationalist Habib Bourguiba for the entirety of the fight for independence.  After the advent of independence, a museum was built there to relate the details of the national struggle between 1938 and 1952.
+The National Military Museum, opened in 1989 in the suburbs west of the city, holds a collection of 23,000 weapons, 13,000 of which date back to the 19th century, and some of which were used by the Tunisian troops during the Crimean War.
+Tunis holds some of the most prestigious musical institutions in the country.[68] The Rachidia was founded in 1934 to safeguard Arab music, and in particular to promote Tunisian and malouf music.  The group is made up of 22 members, both instrumental players and choral musicians.[69]
+The Musical Troupe of the City of Tunis was created in 1954 by Salah El Mahdi. In 1955 he placed his student Mohamed Saâda in charge of the ensemble, which at that time included the best artists, and later merged with the ensemble of Radio Tunis.[70]  This group contributed to the rise to stardom of numerous Tunisian singers, including Oulaya.
+The Association of Arab Orchestra of the City of Tunis began its activities at the end of April 1982, as a workshop linked to the cultural center of the city.  It worked on promoting Arab music, on music education and training, and on cooperation with various partners both in Tunisia and abroad.  The Tunisian Symphony Orchestra, created in 1969 by the Minister of Culture, has also produced monthly concerts at the Municipal Theater and in various cultural spaces in the city.
+Tunis is a center of Tunisian culture. The Théâtre municipal de Tunis, opened on 20 November 1902, showcases opera, ballet, symphonic concerts, drama, etc. On the stage of this theater, many performances are regularly given by Tunisian, Arabic and international actors.[71] The National Theatre of Tunisia is an important public enterprise in Tunis,[72] and since 1988 been located in the Khaznadar palace (dating from the middle of the 19th century and situated in the Halfaouine quarter), renamed "Theater Palace." In 1993, it also took possession of the former movie theater Le Paris, with a 350-person seating capacity.  During each "cultural season" (from October 1 to 30 June) the theater holds over 80 events.[72]  The Al Hamra theater was the second theater to be opened in Tunis, situated on El Jazira Road.  Al Hamra was one of the most famous theaters in the capital during the 1930s and 1940s.[73]  After being closed for fifteen years, it was turned into a small theater in 1986, and since 2001 has housed the first Arab-African center for theater training and research.[73]  One should also note the El Teatro and Étoile du Nord theater groups.
+Other arts are also represented in the capital. The National Center of the Arts established the puppet theatre in 1976.[72]  The National School of Circus Arts was founded following a meeting between the Director of the National Theater and the Director General of the National Center for Arts of Châlons-en-Champagne (France) in 1998. In addition, various small theatres and cultural centres are scattered throughout the city and display various artistic performances.
+Film producers and cinema have long been present in the city of Tunis. The first animated film was shown in Tunis by the Lumiere brothers as early as 1896.[74] The first screenings were held the following year and the first cinema, the Omnia Pathé, opened in October 1908. The first film club opened in Tunis in 1946 and the Globe, in 1965. The Carthage Film Festival is the oldest established film festival in Africa, running biennially until 2014 and annually thereafter.
+[75]
+[76]
+In 1990, Ferid Boughedir shot the notable film Halfaouine Child of the Terraces in Halfaouine district. The films The English Patient (1996) and The Last Days of Pompeii (2003) were also shot in studios in Tunis.
+The city holds several festivals each year, of which the largest is the International Festival of Carthage which takes place in July and August. Founded in 1964, much of the festival is held in an old amphitheater of Carthage (with a capacity of 7,500 seats), and hosts the performances of singers, musicians, actors, dancers and films on display on outdoor screens.
+Tunis and its suburbs have many of the major Tunisian universities including the University of Tunis, Tunisia Private University, University of Ez-Zitouna, the University of Tunis – El Manar, the University of Carthage and the Manouba University. It therefore has the highest concentration of students in Tunisia, with a student population of 75,597 as of 2006[update].[77]
+There are also a number of other post-secondary institutions, such as the National School of Engineers of Tunis, the National School of Science, the Graduate School of Communications of Tunis, and the Higher Institute of Technological Studies in Communications of Tunis. In addition, private training institutes include the Open University of Tunis, the Central University Private Business Administration and Technology, the Graduate School of Private Engineering and Technology, and the North African Institute of Economics and Technology.
+Among the high schools in the capital, the best-known are the Lycée de la Rue du Pacha (founded 1900), Lycée Bab El Khadhra, Lycée de la Rue de Russie, Lycée Bourguiba (formerly Lycée Carnot de Tunis), and the Lycée Alaoui. Until independence, Sadiki College (founded 1875) and Khaldounia (founded 1896) were also among the most recognized. A legacy of the French presence in the country remains, and the city retains many French schools, the most important being the Lycée Pierre Mendes-France at Mutuelleville.
+Students can pursue language studies at small private schools such as Sidi Bou Said Centre for Languages (Centre Sidi Bou Said de Langues et d'Informatique) in the picturesque Tunis suburb of Sidi Bou Said, next to the Sidi Bou Said TGM station that specializes in Arabic, offering classes in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), classical Arabic, Tunisian Arabic and the various dialects of North Africa, the Gulf and the Levant.
+Tunis has some of the most important libraries in Tunisia including the National Library of Tunisia which was first installed in 1924 in the Medina, in a building built in 1810 by Hammouda Bey to serve as barracks for troops and then a jail.[78]  The library moved to its current location on Boulevard 9 April in 1938. The new building contains a reading room, conference room, laboratories, an exhibition gallery, a block of technical and administrative services, a restaurant, a parking and green space areas.
+Housed in a former home of a Hafsid scholar, the library of the Khaldounia was founded in 1896 along with the creation of the educational institution. After independence and following the consolidation of programs of education, the association ceased operations but the library is now linked to the National Library, which provides for its management.[79]
+Built in the 17th century, the Dar Ben Achour also contains a library. Acquired in the late 1970s by the municipality of Tunis, the house was restored in 1983 into a library.[78]
+Tunis is served by the Tunis-Carthage International Airport. The growing metropolitan area is served by an extensive network of public transportation including buses, an above-ground light rail system (le Metro), as well a regional train line (the TGM) that links the city centre to its closest northern suburbs. Multi-lane autoroutes surround the city and serve the increasing number of privately owned cars one encounters in Tunisia.
+The Tunis area is served by the métro léger (Ar.: المترو الخفيف لمدينة تونس) and TGM (Tunis-Goulette-Marsa), as well as bus services, and is linked to other places in Tunisia by SNCFT, the national railways. The important transport authorities are the Société des Transports de Tunis (STT)[80] and the Ministry of Transport (Airports)
+[81]
+The A1 motorway connects Tunis with Sfax to the south, and the A3 with Oued Zarga and Béja to the west, while the A4 is the link with Bizerte.
+The city has, as of the beginning of the 21st century, a public transportation system developed under the management of the Société des transports de Tunis (STT). In addition to some 200 bus routes, the first light rail line opened in 1985. The Métro léger de Tunis network has extended gradually since then to reach the suburbs. The capital is also linked to its northern suburbs by the railway line that crosses the lake, dividing the lake into two.
+A new mass transit was planned for Greater Tunis in 2009. This was the RTS (rapid rail network), the local equivalent of the Paris RER, which was to carry tens of thousands of travellers from the distant suburbs of Tunis to the centre by using either existing tracks or new tracks yet to be built.[82] The plan was for lines based on certain criteria such as population density and the lack of coverage for a given area. Among the priority lines were: Tunis-Borj Cédria (23 km) where modernization and electrification are already planned; Tunis-Mohamedia-Fouchana (19.4 km); Tunis-Manouba-Mnihla (19.2 km); Tunis-Ezzouhour-Sidi Hassine Séjoumi (13.9 km). In addition, the TGM will be integrated into the light-rail network and a new line built around Ayn Zaghouan and Bhar Lazrag (8.4 km). Such an operation would require the upgrading of the docks' TGM stations so that they become suitable for light rail trains.[82] Among other projects are a line to the city of Ennasr (8.4 km) and the extension of the Tunis-Ettadhamen to Mnihla (1.7 km). For its part, the south light-rail line was extended in November 2008 to El Mourouj with a length of 6.8 kilometres (4.2 miles). The total length of the network will eventually be in the range of 84 km (52 mi).[82]
+Tunis is served by Tunis-Carthage International Airport, located 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) northeast of downtown, which began operating in 1940 under the name of Tunis El Aouina.  The terminal had 4.4 million passengers (35.98% of total airport traffic in the country) in 2006.  In 2007 that increased to 6 million passengers with a rise in tourism to the city.
+After independence, in the 1960s, the National Board of Seaports, which supports all ports in the country, modernized the infrastructure of the port of Tunis.[83]  In the 21st Century, the port of Tunis underwent further transformation with a marina as part of the redevelopment district of La Petite Sicile.
+Tunis is the starting point from which the main roads and all highways that serve different parts of the country of Tunis originate.  This city has a high density of traffic because vehicle ownership is rising at 7.5% per year.[84]  The capital is home to approximately 40% of the cars in Tunisia, with 700,000 cars on average used in the city per day.[84]  In this context, major road infrastructure (bridges, interchanges, roads, etc..) was initiated in the late 1990s to decongest the main areas of the capital.[85]  The main roads to other Tunisian cities include: Autoroute A1, Tunis-Sfax; Autoroute A3, Tunis-Oued Zarga; and Autoroute A4, Tunis-Bizerte. Also, as part of the major infrastructure project, the city's traffic lights were increased from 5,000 to 7,500.
+At the beginning of the 20th century, a number of sports institutions were established in Tunis, particularly in school and college settings. In 1905 the Muslim Association of Tunisia brought together students from Lycée Alaoui and Sadiki College to organize gymnastics. A regional gymnastics competition was held in Tunis in 1912 with the participation of thousands of French gymnasts. Football made its appearance in the capital on 15 September 1904, followed by the formal creation of the country's first league, the Racing Club Tunis, on 11 May 1905. It took some time to run properly but soon organized meetings between the teams in schools. The first took place on 9 June 1907, between teams from Lycée Alaoui and Lycée Carnot (1–1).
+But football is not the only discipline to emerge. Between 1928 and 1955 the city hosted nine rounds of the Grand Prix of Tunis, where notable drivers such as Marcel Lehoux, Achille Varzi, Tazio Nuvolari and Rudolf Caracciola took part. The Grand Prix of Tunis has re-emerged since 2000.[86] The city has also held the Mediterranean Games twice, in 1967 and 2001, and the international tennis tournament, the Tunis Open, which is included in the ATP Challenger Series. The 2005 World Championship final for men in team handball was played in Tunis.
+In total the governorate of Tunis registered 24,095 licences for various clubs in the municipal area in 2007.[87] The city further put itself onto the international basketball map as it hosted the FIBA Africa Championship 1965 and the FIBA Africa Championship 1987.
+The Esperance Sportive de Tunis (EST), Club Africain (CA), and Stade Tunisien are the major sports clubs in the city. A symbolic class difference is present between the EST's and the CA's supporters, despite their playing at the same stadium. The EST is supported by the majority of the masses, while the CA, a poorer club, is supported by the others.[88]
+The first true sports facilities were managed under the French protectorate, as illustrated by the development of the Ksar Said racecourse and construction of the Stade Chedli Zouiten in the neighborhood of Belvedere, which had long been the main stadium in the capital before being supplanted by the Olympic stadium, Stade El Menzah, where EST and CA play their football today. The Olympic stadium and village area was built to accommodate the Mediterranean Games in 1967. A 60,000-seat stadium was also built in Radès for the Mediterranean Games in 2001 at an estimated cost of 170 million dinars, with nearly half of the loans financed by South Korean businessmen. The Olympic village was financed by an investment estimated at 50 million dinars.[89]  In 2008, the government announced the start of construction of a large sports complex that will include several sports academies, a 20,000-seat stadium, and a swimming centre. Known as Tunis Sports City, it will expand around the lake of Tunis, on the road to La Marsa.[90]
+Tunis is twinned with:[91]

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+in Africa (light blue)
+Tunisia,[a] officially the Republic of Tunisia,[b][18] is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa, covering 163,610 square kilometres (63,170 square miles). Its northernmost point, Cape Angela, is also the northernmost point on the African continent. Tunisia is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia's population was 11.7 million in 2019.[12] Tunisia's name is derived from its capital city, Tunis (Berber native name: Tunest), which is located on its northeast coast.
+Geographically, Tunisia contains the eastern end of the Atlas Mountains, and the northern reaches of the Sahara desert. Much of the rest of the country's land is fertile soil. Its 1,300 kilometres (810 miles) of coastline include the African conjunction of the western and eastern parts of the Mediterranean Basin.
+Tunisia is a unitary semi-presidential representative democratic republic. It is considered to be the only fully democratic sovereign state in the Arab world.[19][20] It has a high human development index.[15] It has an association agreement with the European Union; is a member of La Francophonie, the Union for the Mediterranean, the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa, the Arab Maghreb Union, the Arab League, the OIC, the Greater Arab Free Trade Area, the Community of Sahel–Saharan States, the African Union, the Non-Aligned Movement, the Group of 77; and has obtained the status of major non-NATO ally of the United States. In addition, Tunisia is also a member state of the United Nations and a state party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. Close relations with Europe, in particular with France[21] and with Italy,[22][23] have been forged through economic cooperation, privatisation and industrial modernization.
+In ancient times, Tunisia was primarily inhabited by Berbers. Phoenician immigration began in the 12th century BC; these immigrants founded Carthage. A major mercantile power and a military rival of the Roman Republic, Carthage was defeated by the Romans in 146 BC. The Romans occupied Tunisia for most of the next 800 years, introduced Christianity and left architectural legacies like the amphitheatre of El Jem. After several attempts starting in 647, Muslims conquered the whole of Tunisia by 697 and introduced Islam. After a series of campaigns beginning in 1534 to conquer and colonize the region, the Ottoman Empire established control in 1574 and held sway for over 300 years afterwards. French colonization of Tunisia occurred in 1881. Tunisia gained independence with Habib Bourguiba and declared the Tunisian Republic in 1957. In 2011, the Tunisian Revolution resulted in the overthrow of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, followed by parliamentary elections. The country voted for parliament again on 26 October 2014,[24] and for President on 23 November 2014.[25] As a result, Tunisia is the only country in North Africa classified as "Free" by the Freedom House organization[26] and is also considered by The Economist's Democracy Index as the only democracy in the Arab World.[27]
+The word Tunisia is derived from Tunis; a central urban hub and the capital of modern-day Tunisia. The present form of the name, with its Latinate suffix -ia, evolved from French Tunisie,[28] in turn generally associated with the Berber root ⵜⵏⵙ, transcribed tns, which means "to lay down" or "encampment".[29] It is sometimes also associated with the Punic goddess Tanith (aka Tunit),[28][30] ancient city of Tynes.[31][32]
+The French derivative Tunisie was adopted in some European languages with slight modifications, introducing a distinctive name to designate the country. Other languages remained untouched, such as the Russian Туни́с (Tunís) and Spanish Túnez. In this case, the same name is used for both country and city, as with the Arabic تونس‎, and only by context can one tell the difference.[28]
+Before Tunisia, the territory's name was Ifriqiya or Africa, which gave the present-day name of the continent Africa.
+Farming methods reached the Nile Valley from the Fertile Crescent region about 5000 BC, and spread to the Maghreb by about 4000 BC. Agricultural communities in the humid coastal plains of central Tunisia then were ancestors of today's Berber tribes.
+It was believed in ancient times that Africa was originally populated by Gaetulians and Libyans, both nomadic peoples.  According to the Roman historian Sallust, the demigod Hercules died in Spain and his polyglot eastern army was left to settle the land, with some migrating to Africa. Persians went to the West and intermarried with the Gaetulians and became the Numidians. The Medes settled and were known as Mauri, later Moors.[33]
+The Numidians and Moors belonged to the race from which the Berbers are descended. The translated meaning of Numidian is Nomad and indeed the people were semi-nomadic until the reign of Masinissa of the Massyli tribe.[34][35][36]
+At the beginning of recorded history, Tunisia was inhabited by Berber tribes. Its coast was settled by Phoenicians starting as early as the 12th century BC (Bizerte, Utica). The city of Carthage was founded in the 9th century BC by Phoenicians. Legend says that Dido from Tyre, now in modern-day Lebanon, founded the city in 814 BC, as retold by the Greek writer Timaeus of Tauromenium. The settlers of Carthage brought their culture and religion from Phoenicia, now present-day Lebanon and adjacent areas.[37]
+After the series of wars with Greek city-states of Sicily in the 5th century BC, Carthage rose to power and eventually became the dominant civilization in the Western Mediterranean. The people of Carthage worshipped a pantheon of Middle Eastern gods including Baal and Tanit. Tanit's symbol, a simple female figure with extended arms and long dress, is a popular icon found in ancient sites. The founders of Carthage also established a Tophet, which was altered in Roman times.
+A Carthaginian invasion of Italy led by Hannibal during the Second Punic War, one of a series of wars with Rome, nearly crippled the rise of Roman power. From the conclusion of the Second Punic War in 202 BC, Carthage functioned as a client state of the Roman Republic for another 50 years.[38]
+Following the Battle of Carthage which began in 149 BC during the Third Punic War, Carthage was conquered by Rome in 146 BC.[39] Following its conquest, the Romans renamed Carthage to Africa, incorporating it as a province.
+During the Roman period, the area of what is now Tunisia enjoyed a huge development. The economy, mainly during the Empire, boomed: the prosperity of the area depended on agriculture. Called the Granary of the Empire, the area of actual Tunisia and coastal Tripolitania, according to one estimate, produced one million tons of cereals each year, one-quarter of which was exported to the Empire. Additional crops included beans, figs, grapes, and other fruits.
+By the 2nd century, olive oil rivaled cereals as an export item. In addition to the cultivations and the capture and transporting of exotic wild animals from the western mountains, the principal production and exports included the textiles, marble, wine, timber, livestock, pottery such as African Red Slip, and wool.
+There was even a huge production of mosaics and ceramics, exported mainly to Italy, in the central area of El Djem (where there was the second biggest amphitheater in the Roman Empire).
+Berber bishop Donatus Magnus was the founder of a Christian group known as the Donatists.[40] During the 5th and 6th centuries (from 430 to 533 AD), the Germanic Vandals invaded and ruled over a kingdom in Northwest Africa that included present-day Tripoli. The region was easily reconquered in 533–534 AD, during the rule of Emperor Justinian I, by the Eastern Romans led by General Belisarius.[41]
+Sometime between the second half of the 7th century and the early part of the 8th century, Arab Muslim conquest occurred in the region. They founded the first Islamic city in Northwest Africa, Kairouan. It was there in 670 AD that the Mosque of Uqba, or the Great Mosque of Kairouan, was constructed.[42] This mosque is the oldest and most prestigious sanctuary in the Muslim West with the oldest standing minaret in the world;[43] it is also considered a masterpiece of Islamic art and architecture.[44]
+Tunis was taken in 695, re-taken by the Byzantine Eastern Romans in 697, but lost finally in 698. The transition from a Latin-speaking Christian Berber society to a Muslim and mostly Arabic-speaking society took over 400 years (the equivalent process in Egypt and the Fertile Crescent took 600 years) and resulted in the final disappearance of Christianity and Latin in the 12th or 13th centuries. The majority of the population were not Muslim until quite late in the 9th century; a vast majority were during the 10th. Also, some Tunisian Christians emigrated; some richer members of society did so after the conquest in 698 and others were welcomed by Norman rulers to Sicily or Italy in the 11th and 12th centuries – the logical destination because of the 1200 year close connection between the two regions.[45]
+The Arab governors of Tunis founded the Aghlabid dynasty, which ruled Tunisia, Tripolitania and eastern Algeria from 800 to 909.[46] Tunisia flourished under Arab rule when extensive systems were constructed to supply towns with water for household use and irrigation that promoted agriculture (especially olive production).[46][47] This prosperity permitted luxurious court life and was marked by the construction of new palace cities such as al-Abassiya (809) and Raqadda (877).[46]
+After conquering Cairo, the Fatimids abandoned Tunisia and parts of Eastern Algeria to the local Zirids (972–1148).[48] Zirid Tunisia flourished in many areas: agriculture, industry, trade, and religious and secular learning.[49] Management by the later Zirid emirs was neglectful though, and political instability was connected to the decline of Tunisian trade and agriculture.[46][50][51]
+The depredation of the Tunisian campaigns by the Banu Hilal, a warlike Arab Bedouin tribe encouraged by the Fatimids of Egypt to seize Northwest Africa, sent the region's rural and urban economic life into further decline.[48] Consequently, the region underwent rapid urbanisation as famines depopulated the countryside and industry shifted from agriculture to manufactures.[52] The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun wrote that the lands ravaged by Banu Hilal invaders had become completely arid desert.[50][53]
+The main Tunisian cities were conquered by the Normans of Sicily under the Kingdom of Africa in the 12th century, but following the conquest of Tunisia in 1159–1160 by the Almohads the Normans were evacuated to Sicily. Communities of Tunisian Christians would still exist in Nefzaoua up to the 14th century.[54] The Almohads initially ruled over Tunisia through a governor, usually a near relative of the Caliph. Despite the prestige of the new masters, the country was still unruly, with continuous rioting and fighting between the townsfolk and wandering Arabs and Turks, the latter being subjects of the Muslim Armenian adventurer Karakush. Also, Tunisia was occupied by Ayyubids between 1182 and 1183 and again between 1184 and 1187.[55]
+The greatest threat to Almohad rule in Tunisia was the Banu Ghaniya, relatives of the Almoravids, who from their base in Mallorca tried to restore Almoravid rule over the Maghreb. Around 1200 they succeeded in extending their rule over the whole of Tunisia until they were crushed by Almohad troops in 1207. After this success, the Almohads installed Walid Abu Hafs as the governor of Tunisia. Tunisia remained part of the Almohad state, until 1230 when the son of Abu Hafs declared himself independent. During the reign of the Hafsid dynasty, fruitful commercial relationships were established with several Christian Mediterranean states.[56] In the late 16th century the coast became a pirate stronghold.
+In the last years of the Hafsid dynasty, Spain seized many of the coastal cities, but these were recovered by the Ottoman Empire.
+The first Ottoman conquest of Tunis took place in 1534 under the command of Barbarossa Hayreddin Pasha, the younger brother of Oruç Reis, who was the Kapudan Pasha of the Ottoman Fleet during the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent. However, it was not until the final Ottoman reconquest of Tunis from Spain in 1574 under Kapudan Pasha Uluç Ali Reis that the Ottomans permanently acquired the former Hafsid Tunisia, retaining it until the French conquest of Tunisia in 1881.
+Initially under Turkish rule from Algiers, soon the Ottoman Porte appointed directly for Tunis a governor called the Pasha supported by janissary forces. Before long, however, Tunisia became in effect an autonomous province, under the local Bey. Under its Turkish governors, the Beys, Tunisia attained virtual independence. The Hussein dynasty of Beys, established in 1705, lasted until 1957.[57] This evolution of status was from time to time challenged without success by Algiers. During this era the governing councils controlling Tunisia remained largely composed of a foreign elite who continued to conduct state business in the Turkish language.
+Attacks on European shipping were made by corsairs, primarily from Algiers, but also from Tunis and Tripoli, yet after a long period of declining raids the growing power of the European states finally forced its termination. Under the Ottoman Empire, the boundaries of Tunisia contracted; it lost territory to the west (Constantine) and to the east (Tripoli).
+The plague epidemics ravaged Tunisia in 1784–1785, 1796–1797 and 1818–1820.[58]
+In the 19th century, the rulers of Tunisia became aware of the ongoing efforts at political and social reform in the Ottoman capital. The Bey of Tunis then, by his own lights but informed by the Turkish example, attempted to effect a modernizing reform of institutions and the economy.[59] Tunisian international debt grew unmanageable. This was the reason or pretext for French forces to establish a protectorate in 1881.
+In 1869, Tunisia declared itself bankrupt and an international financial commission took control over its economy. In 1881, using the pretext of a Tunisian incursion into Algeria, the French invaded with an army of about 36,000 and forced the Bey to agree to the terms of the 1881 Treaty of Bardo (Al Qasr as Sa'id).[60] With this treaty, Tunisia was officially made a French protectorate, over the objections of Italy. Under French colonization, European settlements in the country were actively encouraged; the number of French colonists grew from 34,000 in 1906 to 144,000 in 1945. In 1910 there were 105,000 Italians in Tunisia.[61]
+During World War II, French Tunisia was ruled by the collaborationist Vichy government located in Metropolitan France. The antisemitic Statute on Jews enacted by the Vichy was also implemented in Vichy Northwest Africa and overseas French territories. Thus, the persecution, and murder of the Jews from 1940 to 1943 was part of the Shoah in France.
+From November 1942 until May 1943, Vichy Tunisia was occupied by Nazi Germany. SS Commander Walter Rauff continued to implement the Final Solution there. From 1942–1943, Tunisia was the scene of the Tunisia Campaign, a series of battles between the Axis and Allied forces. The battle opened with initial success by the German and Italian forces, but the massive supply and numerical superiority of the Allies led to the Axis surrender on 13 May 1943.[62][63]
+Tunisia achieved independence from France on 20 March 1956 with Habib Bourguiba as Prime Minister.[64] 20 March is celebrated annually as Tunisian Independence Day.[65] A year later, Tunisia was declared a republic, with Bourguiba as the first President.[66] From independence in 1956 until the 2011 revolution, the government and the Constitutional Democratic Rally (RCD), formerly Neo Destour and the Socialist Destourian Party, were effectively one.  Following a report by Amnesty International, The Guardian called Tunisia "one of the most modern but repressive countries in the Arab world".[67]
+In November 1987, doctors[68] declared Bourguiba unfit to rule and, in a bloodless coup d'état, Prime Minister Zine El Abidine Ben Ali assumed the presidency[66] in accordance with Article 57 of the Tunisian constitution.[69] The anniversary of Ben Ali's succession, 7 November, was celebrated as a national holiday. He was consistently re-elected with enormous majorities every five years (well over 80 percent of the vote), the last being 25 October 2009,[70] until he fled the country amid popular unrest in January 2011.
+Ben Ali and his family were accused of corruption[71] and plundering the country's money. Economic liberalisation provided further opportunities for financial mismanagement,[72] while corrupt members of the Trabelsi family, most notably in the cases of Imed Trabelsi and Belhassen Trabelsi, controlled much of the business sector in the country.[73] The First Lady Leila Ben Ali was described as an "unabashed shopaholic" who used the state airplane to make frequent unofficial trips to Europe's fashion capitals.[74] Tunisia refused a French request for the extradition of two of the President's nephews, from Leila's side, who were accused by the French State prosecutor of having stolen two mega-yachts from a French marina.[75] Ben Ali's son-in-law Sakher El Materi was rumoured as being primed to eventually take over the country.[76]
+Independent human rights groups, such as Amnesty International, Freedom House, and Protection International, documented that basic human and political rights were not respected.[77][78] The regime obstructed in any way possible the work of local human rights organizations.[79] In 2008, in terms of Press freedom, Tunisia was ranked 143rd out of 173.[80]
+The Tunisian Revolution[81][82] was an intensive campaign of civil resistance that was precipitated by high unemployment, food inflation, corruption,[83] a lack of freedom of speech and other political freedoms[84] and poor living conditions. Labour unions were said to be an integral part of the protests.[85] The protests inspired the Arab Spring, a wave of similar actions throughout the Arab world.
+The catalyst for mass demonstrations was the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, a 26-year-old Tunisian street vendor, who set himself afire on 17 December 2010 in protest at the confiscation of his wares and the humiliation inflicted on him by a municipal official named Faida Hamdy. Anger and violence intensified following Bouazizi's death on 4 January 2011, ultimately leading longtime President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali to resign and flee the country on 14 January 2011, after 23 years in power.[86]
+Protests continued for banning of the ruling party and the eviction of all its members from the transitional government formed by Mohammed Ghannouchi. Eventually the new government gave in to the demands. A Tunis court banned the ex-ruling party RCD and confiscated all its resources. A decree by the minister of the interior banned the "political police", special forces which were used to intimidate and persecute political activists.[87]
+On 3 March 2011, the interim president announced that elections to a Constituent Assembly would be held on 24 July 2011.[88] On 9 June 2011, the prime minister announced the election would be postponed until 23 October 2011.[89] International and internal observers declared the vote free and fair. The Ennahda Movement, formerly banned under the Ben Ali regime, came out of the election as the largest party, with 89 seats out of a total of 217.[90] On 12 December 2011, former dissident and veteran human rights activist Moncef Marzouki was elected president.[91]
+In March 2012, Ennahda declared it will not support making sharia the main source of legislation in the new constitution, maintaining the secular nature of the state. Ennahda's stance on the issue was criticized by hardline Islamists, who wanted strict sharia, but was welcomed by secular parties.[92] On 6 February 2013, Chokri Belaid, the leader of the leftist opposition and prominent critic of Ennahda, was assassinated.[93]
+In 2014, President Moncef Marzouki established Tunisia's Truth and Dignity Commission, as a key part of creating a national reconciliation.[94]
+Tunisia was hit by two terror attacks on foreign tourists in 2015, first killing 22 people at the Bardo National Museum, and later killing 38 people at the Sousse beachfront. Tunisian president Beji Caid Essebsi renewed the state of emergency in October for three more months.[95]
+The Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet won the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for its work in building a peaceful, pluralistic political order in Tunisia.[96]
+Tunisia is situated on the Mediterranean coast of Northwest Africa, midway between the Atlantic Ocean and the Nile Delta. It is bordered by Algeria on the west and southwest and Libya on the south east. It lies between latitudes 30° and 38°N, and longitudes 7° and 12°E. An abrupt southward turn of the Mediterranean coast in northern Tunisia gives the country two distinctive Mediterranean coasts, west–east in the north, and north–south in the east.
+Though it is relatively small in size, Tunisia has great environmental diversity due to its north–south extent. Its east–west extent is limited. Differences in Tunisia, like the rest of the Maghreb, are largely north–south environmental differences defined by sharply decreasing rainfall southward from any point. The Dorsal, the eastern extension of the Atlas Mountains, runs across Tunisia in a northeasterly direction from the Algerian border in the west to the Cape Bon peninsula in the east. North of the Dorsal is the Tell, a region characterized by low, rolling hills and plains, again an extension of mountains to the west in Algeria. In the Khroumerie, the northwestern corner of the Tunisian Tell, elevations reach 1,050 metres (3,440 ft) and snow occurs in winter.
+The Sahel, a broadening coastal plain along Tunisia's eastern Mediterranean coast, is among the world's premier areas of olive cultivation. Inland from the Sahel, between the Dorsal and a range of hills south of Gafsa, are the Steppes. Much of the southern region is semi-arid and desert.
+Tunisia has a coastline 1,148 kilometres (713 mi) long. In maritime terms, the country claims a contiguous zone of 24 nautical miles (44.4 km; 27.6 mi), and a territorial sea of 12 nautical miles (22.2 km; 13.8 mi).[97]
+Tunisia's climate is Mediterranean in the north, with mild rainy winters and hot, dry summers.[98] The south of the country is desert. The terrain in the north is mountainous, which, moving south, gives way to a hot, dry central plain. The south is semiarid, and merges into the Sahara. A series of salt lakes, known as chotts or shatts, lie in an east–west line at the northern edge of the Sahara, extending from the Gulf of Gabes into Algeria. The lowest point is Chott el Djerid at 17 metres (56 ft) below sea level and the highest is Jebel ech Chambi at 1,544 metres (5,066 ft).[99]
+Tunisia is a representative democracy and a republic with a president serving as head of state, a prime minister as head of government, a unicameral parliament, and a civil law court system. The Constitution of Tunisia, adopted 26 January 2014, guarantees rights for women and states that the President's religion "shall be Islam". In October 2014 Tunisia held its first elections under the new constitution following the Arab Spring.[101] Tunisia (#69 worldwide) is the only democracy in North Africa.[102]
+The number of legalized political parties in Tunisia has grown considerably since the revolution. There are now over 100 legal parties, including several that existed under the former regime. During the rule of Ben Ali, only three functioned as independent opposition parties: the PDP, FDTL, and Tajdid. While some older parties are well-established and can draw on previous party structures, many of the 100-plus parties extant as of February 2012 are small.[103]
+Rare for the Arab world, women held more than 20% of seats in the country's pre-revolution bicameral parliament.[104] In the 2011 constituent assembly, women held between 24% and 31% of all seats.[105][106]
+Tunisia is included in the European Union's European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP), which aims at bringing the EU and its neighbours closer. On 23 November 2014 Tunisia held its first Presidential Election following the Arab Spring in 2011.[107]
+The Tunisian legal system is heavily influenced by French civil law, while the Law of Personal Status is based on Islamic law.[108] Sharia courts were abolished in 1956.[108]
+A Code of Personal Status was adopted shortly after independence in 1956, which, among other things, gave women full legal status (allowing them to run and own businesses, have bank accounts, and seek passports under their own authority). The code outlawed the practices of polygamy and repudiation and a husband's right to unilaterally divorce his wife.[109] Further reforms in 1993 included a provision to allow Tunisian women to transmit citizenship even if they are married to a foreigner and living abroad.[110] The Law of Personal Status is applied to all Tunisians regardless of their religion.[108] The Code of Personal Status remains one of the most progressive civil codes in North Africa and the Muslim world.[111]
+After the revolution, a number of Salafist groups emerged and in some occasions have violently repressed artistic expression that is viewed to be hostile to Islam.[112]
+Since the revolution, some non-governmental organizations have reconstituted themselves and hundreds of new ones have emerged. For instance, the Tunisian Human Rights League, the first human rights organization in Africa and the Arab world, operated under restrictions and state intrusion for over half of its existence, but is now free to operate. Some independent organizations, such as the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, the Association of Tunisian Women for Research and Development, and the Bar Association also remain active.[103]
+Homosexuality is illegal in Tunisia and can be punished by up to three years in prison.[113] On 7 December 2016, two Tunisian men were arrested on suspicion of homosexual activity in Sousse.[114] According to 2013 survey by the Pew Research Center, 94% of Tunisians believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society.[115]
+The Tunisian regime has been criticised[by whom?] for its policy on recreational drug use, for instance automatic 1-year prison sentences for consuming cannabis. Prisons are crowded and drug offenders represent nearly a third of the prison population.[116]
+In 2017, Tunisia became the first Arab country to outlaw domestic violence against women, which was previously not a crime.[117] Also, the law allowing rapists to escape punishment by marrying the victim was abolished.[117] According to Human Rights Watch, 47% of Tunisian women have been subject to domestic violence.[118][119]
+As of 2008[update], Tunisia had an army of 27,000 personnel equipped with 84 main battle tanks and 48 light tanks. The navy had 4,800 personnel operating 25 patrol boats and 6 other craft. The Tunisian Air Force has 154 aircraft and 4 UAVs. Paramilitary forces consisted of a 12,000-member national guard.[120] Tunisia's military spending was 1.6% of GDP as of 2006[update]. The army is responsible for national defence and also internal security. Tunisia has participated in peacekeeping efforts in the DROC and Ethiopia/Eritrea.[121] United Nations peacekeeping deployments for the Tunisian armed forces have been in Cambodia (UNTAC), Namibia (UNTAG), Somalia, Rwanda, Burundi, Western Sahara (MINURSO) and the 1960s mission in the Congo, ONUC.
+The military has historically played a professional, apolitical role in defending the country from external threats. Since January 2011 and at the direction of the executive branch, the military has taken on increasing responsibility for domestic security and humanitarian crisis response.[103]
+Tunisia is subdivided into 24 governorates (Wilaya), which are further divided into 264 "delegations" or "districts" (mutamadiyat), and further subdivided into municipalities (baladiyats)[122] and sectors (imadats).[123]
+Tunisia is an export-oriented country in the process of liberalizing and privatizing an economy that, while averaging 5% GDP growth since the early 1990s, has suffered from corruption benefiting politically connected elites.[124] Tunisia's Penal Code criminalises several forms of corruption, including active and passive bribery, abuse of office, extortion and conflicts of interest, but the anti-corruption framework is not effectively enforced.[125] However, according to the Corruption Perceptions Index published annually by Transparency International, Tunisia was ranked the least corrupt North-African-country in 2016, with a score of 41. Tunisia has a diverse economy, ranging from agriculture, mining, manufacturing, and petroleum products, to tourism. In 2008 it had a GDP of US$41 billion (official exchange rates), or $82 billion (purchasing power parity).[8]
+The agricultural sector accounts for 11.6% of the GDP, industry 25.7%, and services 62.8%. The industrial sector is mainly made up of clothing and footwear manufacturing, production of car parts, and electric machinery. Although Tunisia managed an average 5% growth over the last decade it continues to suffer from a high unemployment especially among youth.
+Tunisia was in 2009 ranked the most competitive economy in Africa and the 40th in the world by the World Economic Forum.[126] Tunisia has managed to attract many international companies such as Airbus[127] and Hewlett-Packard.[128]
+Tourism accounted for 7% of GDP and 370,000 jobs in 2009.[129]
+The European Union remains Tunisia's first trading partner, currently accounting for 72.5% of Tunisian imports and 75% of Tunisian exports. Tunisia is one of the European Union's most established trading partners in the Mediterranean region and ranks as the EU's 30th largest trading partner. Tunisia was the first Mediterranean country to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union, in July 1995, although even before the date of entry came into force, Tunisia started dismantling tariffs on bilateral EU trade. Tunisia finalised the tariffs dismantling for industrial products in 2008 and therefore was the first non-EU Mediterranean country to enter in a free trade area with EU.[130]
+Tunis Sports City is an entire sports city currently being constructed in Tunis, Tunisia. The city that will consist of apartment buildings as well as several sports facilities will be built by the Bukhatir Group at a cost of $5 Billion.[131] The Tunis Financial harbour will deliver North Africa's first offshore financial centre at Tunis Bay in a project with an end development value of US$3 billion.[132] The Tunis Telecom City is a US$3 billion project to create an IT hub in Tunis.[133]
+Tunisia Economic City is a city being constructed near Tunis in Enfidha. The city will consist of residential, medical, financial, industrial, entertainment and touristic buildings as well as a port zone for a total cost of US$80 Billion. The project is financed by Tunisian and foreign enterprises.[134]
+On 29 and 30 November 2016, Tunisia held an investment conference Tunisia2020 to attract $30 billion in investment projects.[135]
+Days before Tunisia's 2019 parliamentary elections, the nation finds itself struggling with a sluggish economy. The Arab world's only democratic state fought hard against the dictatorial regime of president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali during the Arab Spring. Nevertheless, Tunisia could not accomplish anything more than freedom and democracy. It still finds itself hanging between inflation and unemployment while looking up to the 6 October elections with hope of a reform.[136]
+Among Tunisia's tourist attractions are its cosmopolitan capital city of Tunis, the ancient ruins of Carthage, the Muslim and Jewish quarters of Jerba, and coastal resorts outside of Monastir. According to The New York Times, Tunisia is "known for its golden beaches, sunny weather and affordable luxuries".[137]
+Sources of electricity production in Tunisia[138]
+The majority of the electricity used in Tunisia is produced locally, by state-owned company STEG (Société Tunisienne de l'Electricité et du Gaz). In 2008, a total of 13,747 GWh was produced in the country.[139]
+Oil production of Tunisia is about 97,600 barrels per day (15,520 m3/d). The main field is El Bourma.[140]
+Oil production began in 1966 in Tunisia. Currently there are 12 oil fields.[141]
+Tunisia had plans for two nuclear power stations, to be operational by 2020. Both facilities are projected to produce 900–1000 MW. France is set to become an important partner in Tunisia's nuclear power plans, having signed an agreement, along with other partners, to deliver training and technology.[142][143] As of 2015[update], Tunisia has abandoned these plans. Instead, Tunisia is considering other options to diversify its energy mix, such as renewable energies, coal, shale gas, liquified natural gas and constructing a submarine power interconnection with Italy.[144]
+According to the Tunisian Solar Plan (which is Tunisia's Renewable Energy Strategy not limited to solar, contrary to what its title may suggest, proposed by the National Agency for Energy Conservation), Tunisia's objective is to reach a share of 30% of renewable energies in the electricity mix by 2030, most of which should be accounted for by wind power and photovoltaics.[145] As of 2015[update], Tunisia had a total renewable capacity of 312 MW (245 MW wind, 62 MW hydropower, 15 MW photovoltaics.)[146][147]
+The country maintains 19,232 kilometres (11,950 mi) of roads,[8] with three highways: the A1 from Tunis to Sfax (works ongoing for Sfax-Libya), A3 Tunis-Beja (works ongoing Beja – Boussalem, studies ongoing Boussalem – Algeria) and A4 Tunis – Bizerte. There are 29 airports in Tunisia, with Tunis Carthage International Airport and Djerba–Zarzis International Airport being the most important ones. A new airport, Enfidha – Hammamet International Airport opened in 2011. The airport is located north of Sousse at Enfidha and is to mainly serve the resorts of Hamammet and Port El Kantaoui, together with inland cities such as Kairouan. Five airlines are headquartered in Tunisia: Tunisair, Syphax airlines, Karthago Airlines, Nouvelair, and Tunisair Express. The railway network is operated by SNCFT and amounts to 2,135 kilometres (1,327 mi) in total.[8] The Tunis area is served by a Light rail network named Metro Leger which is managed by Transtu.
+Tunisia has achieved the highest access rates to water supply and sanitation
+services in the Middle East and North Africa. As of 2011[update], access to
+safe drinking water became close to universal approaching 100% in urban
+areas and 90% in rural areas.[148] Tunisia provides good quality drinking water throughout the year.[149]
+Responsibility for the water supply systems in urban areas and large rural centres is assigned to the Sociéte Nationale d'Exploitation et de Distribution des Eaux
+(SONEDE), a national water supply authority that is an autonomous
+public entity under the Ministry of Agriculture. Planning, design and
+supervision of small and medium water supplies in the remaining rural
+areas are the responsibility of the Direction Générale du Génie Rurale (DGGR).
+In 1974, ONAS was established to manage the sanitation sector. Since 1993, ONAS has had the status of a main operator for
+protection of water environment and combating pollution.
+The rate of non-revenue water is the lowest in the region at 21% in 2012.[150]
+According to the CIA, as of 2017, Tunisia has a population of 11,403,800 inhabitants.[8] The government has supported a successful family planning program that has reduced the population growth rate to just over 1% per annum, contributing to Tunisia's economic and social stability.[103]
+According to CIA The World Factbook, ethnic groups in Tunisia are: Arab 98%, European 1%, Jewish and other 1%.[8]
+According to the 1956 Tunisian census, Tunisia had a population at the time of 3,783,000 residents, of which mainly Berbers and Arabs. The proportion of speakers of Berber dialects was at 2% of the population.[151] According to another source the population of Arabs is estimated to be <40%[152] to 98%,[8][153][154] and that of Berbers at 1%[155] to over 60%.[152]
+Amazighs are concentrated in the Dahar mountains and on the island of Djerba in the south-east and in the Khroumire mountainous region in the north-west.
+That said, an important number of genetic and other historical studies point out to the predominance of the Amazighs in Tunisia.[156]
+An Ottoman influence has been particularly significant in forming the Turco-Tunisian community. Other peoples have also migrated to Tunisia during different periods of time, including West Africans, Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians (Punics), Jews, and French settlers.[157] By 1870 the distinction between the Arabic-speaking mass and the Turkish elite had blurred.[158]
+From the late 19th century to after World War II, Tunisia was home to large populations of French and Italians (255,000 Europeans in 1956),[159] although nearly all of them, along with the Jewish population, left after Tunisia became independent. The history of the Jews in Tunisia goes back some 2,000 years. In 1948 the Jewish population was an estimated 105,000, but by 2013 only about 900 remained.[160]
+The first people known to history in what is now Tunisia were the Berbers. Numerous civilizations and peoples have invaded, migrated to, or have been assimilated into the population over the millennia, with influences of population from Phoenicians/Carthaginians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Spaniards, Ottoman Turks and Janissaries, and French. There was a continuing inflow of nomadic Arab tribes from Arabia.[48]
+After the Reconquista and expulsion of non-Christians and Moriscos from Spain, many Spanish Muslims and Jews also arrived. According to Matthew Carr, "As many as eighty thousand Moriscos settled in Tunisia, most of them in and around the capital, Tunis, which still contains a quarter known as Zuqaq al-Andalus, or Andalusia Alley."[161]
+Arabic is the official language, and Tunisian Arabic, known as Tounsi,[162] is the national, vernacular variety of Arabic and is used by the public.[163] There is also a small minority of speakers of Berber languages known collectively as Jebbali or Shelha.[164][165]
+French also plays a major role in Tunisian society, despite having no official status. It is widely used in education (e.g., as the language of instruction in the sciences in secondary school), the press, and business. In 2010, there were 6,639,000 French-speakers in Tunisia, or about 64% of the population.[166] Italian is understood and spoken by a small part of the Tunisian population.[167]
+Shop signs, menus and road signs in Tunisia are generally written in both Arabic and French.[168]
+The majority of Tunisia's population (around 98%) are Muslims while about 2% follow Christianity and Judaism or other religions.[8] The bulk of Tunisians belong to the Maliki School of Sunni Islam and their mosques are easily recognizable by square minarets.  However, the Turks brought with them the teaching of the Hanafi School during the Ottoman rule, which still survives among the Turkish descended families today, and their mosques traditionally have octagonal minarets.[170] Sunnis form the majority with non-denominational Muslims being the second largest group of Muslims,[171] followed by Ibadite Amazighs.[172][173]
+Tunisia has a sizable Christian community of around over 35,000 adherents,[174][175] mainly Catholics (22,000) and to a lesser degree Protestants. Berber Christians continued to live in some Nefzaoua villages up until the early 15th century[176] and the community of Tunisian Christians existed in the town of Tozeur up to the 18th century.[54] International Religious Freedom Report for 2007 estimates thousands of Tunisian Muslims have converted to Christianity.[177][178] Judaism is the country's third largest religion with 900 members. One-third of the Jewish population lives in and around the capital. The remainder lives on the island of Djerba with 39 synagogues where the Jewish community dates back 2,600 years,[179] in Sfax, and in Hammam-Lif.[180]
+Djerba, an island in the Gulf of Gabès, is home to El Ghriba synagogue, which is one of the oldest synagogues in the world and the oldest uninterruptedly used. Many Jews consider it a pilgrimage site, with celebrations taking place there once every year due to its age and the legend that the synagogue was built using stones from Solomon's temple.[181] In fact, Tunisia along with Morocco has been said to be the Arab countries most accepting of their Jewish populations.[182]
+The constitution declares Islam as the official state religion and requires the President to be Muslim. Aside from the president, Tunisians enjoy a significant degree of religious freedom, a right enshrined and protected in its constitution, which guarantees the freedom of thoughts, beliefs and to practice one's religion.[180]
+The country has a secular culture where religion is separated from not only political, but in public life. During the pre-revolution era there were at some point restrictions in the wearing of Islamic head scarves (hijab) in government offices and on public streets and public gatherings. The government believed the hijab is a "garment of foreign origin having a partisan connotation". There were reports that the Tunisian police harassed men with "Islamic" appearance (such as those with beards), detained them, and sometimes compelled men to shave their beards off.[183]
+In 2006, the former Tunisian president declared that he would "fight" the hijab, which he refers to as "ethnic clothing".[184] Mosques were restricted from holding communal prayers or classes. After the revolution however, a moderate Islamist government was elected leading to more freedom in the practice of religion. It has also made room for the rise of fundamentalist groups such as the Salafists, who call for a strict interpretation of Sharia law.[185] The fall in favour of the moderate Islamist government of Ennahdha was partly due to that, modern Tunisian governments intelligence objectives are to suppress fundamentalist groups before they can act.
+Individual Tunisians are tolerant of religious freedom and generally do not inquire about a person's personal beliefs.[180] Those who violate the rules of work and eating during the Islamic month of Ramadan may be arrested and jailed.[186]
+In 2017 a handful of men were arrested for eating in public during Ramadan; they were convicted of committing "a provocative act of public indecency" and sentenced to month-long jail sentences. The state in Tunisia has a role as a "guardian of religion" which was used to justify the arrests.[187]
+The total adult literacy rate in 2008 was 78%[188] and this rate goes up to 97.3% when considering only people from 15 to 24 years old.[189] Education is given a high priority and accounts for 6% of GNP. A basic education for children between the ages of 6 and 16 has been compulsory since 1991. Tunisia ranked 17th in the category of "quality of the [higher] educational system" and 21st in the category of "quality of primary education" in The Global Competitiveness Report 2008–9, released by The World Economic Forum.[190]
+While children generally acquire Tunisian Arabic at home, when they enter school at age 6, they are taught to read and write in Standard Arabic. From the age of 7, they are taught French while English is introduced at the age of 8.
+The four years of secondary education are open to all holders of Diplôme de Fin d'Etudes de l'Enseignement de Base where the students focus on entering university level or join the workforce after completion. The Enseignement secondaire is divided into two stages: general academic and specialized. The higher education system in Tunisia has experienced a rapid expansion and the number of students has more than tripled over the past 10 years from approximately 102,000 in 1995 to 365,000 in 2005. The gross enrollment rate at the tertiary level in 2007 was 31 percent, with gender parity index of GER of 1.5.[190]
+In 2010, spending on healthcare accounted for 3.37% of the country's GDP. In 2009, there were 12.02 physicians and 33.12 nurses per 10,000 inhabitants.[191] The life expectancy at birth was 75.73 years in 2016, or 73.72 years for males and 77.78 years for females.[192] Infant mortality in 2016 was 11.7 per 1,000.[193]
+The culture of Tunisia is mixed due to its long established history of outside influence from people ‒ such as Phoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Byzantines, Arabs, Turks, Italians, Spaniards, and the French ‒ who all left their mark on the country.
+The birth of Tunisian contemporary painting is strongly linked to the School of Tunis, established by a group of artists from Tunisia united by the desire to incorporate native themes and rejecting the influence of Orientalist colonial painting. It was founded in 1949 and brings together French and Tunisian Muslims, Christians and Jews. Pierre Boucherle was its main instigator, along with Yahia Turki, Abdelaziz Gorgi, Moses Levy, Ammar Farhat, and Jules Lellouche. Given its doctrine, some members have therefore turned to the sources of aesthetic Arab-Muslim art: such as miniature Islamic architecture, etc. Expressionist paintings by Amara Debbache, Jellal Ben Abdallah, and Ali Ben Salem are recognized while abstract art captures the imagination of painters like Edgar Naccache, Nello Levy, and Hedi Turki.[194]
+After independence in 1956, the art movement in Tunisia was propelled by the dynamics of nation building and by artists serving the state. A Ministry of Culture was established, under the leadership of ministers such as Habib Boularès who oversaw art and education and power.[194] Artists gained international recognition such as Hatem El Mekki or Zoubeir Turki and influenced a generation of new young painters. Sadok Gmech draws his inspiration from national wealth while Moncef Ben Amor turns to fantasy. In another development, Youssef Rekik reused the technique of painting on glass and founded Nja Mahdaoui calligraphy with its mystical dimension.[194]
+There are currently fifty art galleries housing exhibitions of Tunisian and international artists.[195] These galleries include Gallery Yahia in Tunis and Carthage Essaadi gallery.[195]
+A new exposition opened in an old monarchal palace in Bardo dubbed the "awakening of a nation". The exposition boasts documents and artifacts from the Tunisian reformist monarchal rule in mid 19th century.[196]
+Tunisian literature exists in two forms: Arabic and French. Arabic literature dates back to the 7th century with the arrival of Arab civilization in the region. It is more important in both volume and value than French literature, introduced during the French protectorate from 1881.[197]
+Among the literary figures include Ali Douagi, who has produced more than 150 radio stories, over 500 poems and folk songs and nearly 15 plays,[198] Khraief Bashir, an Arabic novelist who published many notable books in the 1930s and which caused a scandal because the dialogues were written in Tunisian dialect,[198] and others such as Moncef Ghachem, Mohamed Salah Ben Mrad, or Mahmoud Messadi.
+As for poetry, Tunisian poetry typically opts for nonconformity and innovation with poets such as Aboul-Qacem Echebbi.
+As for literature in French, it is characterized by its critical approach. Contrary to the pessimism of Albert Memmi, who predicted that Tunisian literature was sentenced to die young,[199] a high number of Tunisian writers are abroad including Abdelwahab Meddeb, Bakri Tahar, Mustapha Tlili, Hele Beji, or Mellah Fawzi. The themes of wandering, exile and heartbreak are the focus of their creative writing.[citation needed]
+The national bibliography lists 1249 non-school books published in 2002 in Tunisia, with 885 titles in Arabic.[200] In 2006 this figure had increased to 1,500 and 1,700 in 2007.[201] Nearly a third of the books are published for children.[202]
+In 2014 Tunisian American creative nonfiction scribe and translator Med-Ali Mekki who wrote many books, not for publication but just for his own private reading translated the new Constitution of the Tunisian Republic from Arabic to English for the first time in Tunisian bibliographical history, the book was published worldwide the following year and it was the Internet's most viewed and downloaded Tunisian book.
+At the beginning of the 20th century, musical activity was dominated by the liturgical repertoire associated with different religious brotherhoods and secular repertoire which consisted of instrumental pieces and songs in different Andalusian forms and styles of origins, essentially borrowing characteristics of musical language. In 1930 "The Rachidia" was founded well known thanks to artists from the Jewish community. The founding in 1934 of a musical school helped revive Arab Andalusian music largely to a social and cultural revival led by the elite of the time who became aware of the risks of loss of the musical heritage and which they believed threatened the foundations of Tunisian national identity. The institution did not take long to assemble a group of musicians, poets, scholars. The creation of Radio Tunis in 1938 allowed musicians a greater opportunity to disseminate their works.[citation needed]
+Notable Tunisian musicians include Saber Rebaï, Dhafer Youssef, Belgacem Bouguenna, Sonia M'barek, Latifa, Salah El Mahdi, Anouar Brahem, Emel Mathlouthi and Lotfi Bouchnak.
+The TV media has long remained under the domination of the Establishment of the Broadcasting Authority Tunisia (ERTT) and its predecessor, the Tunisian Radio and Television, founded in 1957. On 7 November 2006, President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali announced the demerger of the business, which became effective on 31 August 2007. Until then, ERTT managed all public television stations (Télévision Tunisienne 1 as well as Télévision Tunisienne 2 which had replaced the defunct RTT 2) and four national radio stations (Radio Tunis, Tunisia Radio Culture, Youth and Radio RTCI) and five regional Sfax, Monastir, Gafsa, Le Kef and Tataouine. Most programs are in Arabic but some are in French. Growth in private sector radio and television broadcasting has seen the creation of numerous operations including Radio Mosaique FM, Jawhara FM, Zaytuna FM, Hannibal TV, Ettounsiya TV, and Nessma TV.[203][204]
+In 2007, some 245 newspapers and magazines (compared to only 91 in 1987) are 90% owned by private groups and independents.[205] The Tunisian political parties have the right to publish their own newspapers, but those of the opposition parties have very limited editions (like Al Mawkif or Mouwatinoun). Before the recent democratic transition, although freedom of the press was formally guaranteed by the constitution, almost all newspapers have in practice followed the government line report. Critical approach to the activities of the president, government and the Constitutional Democratic Rally Party (then in power) were suppressed. In essence, the media was dominated by state authorities through the Agence Tunis Afrique Presse. This has changed since, as the media censorship by the authorities have been largely abolished, and self-censorship has significantly decreased.[206] Nonetheless, the current regulatory framework and social and political culture mean that the future of press and media freedom is still unclear.[206]
+Football is the most popular sport in Tunisia. The Tunisia national football team, also known as "The Eagles of Carthage," won the 2004 African Cup of Nations (ACN), which was held in Tunisia.[207][208] They also represented Africa in the 2005 FIFA Cup of Confederations, which was held in Germany, but they could not go beyond the first round.
+The premier football league is the "Tunisian Ligue Professionnelle 1". The main clubs are Espérance Sportive de Tunis, Étoile Sportive du Sahel, Club Africain, Club Sportif Sfaxien, Union Sportive Monastirienne, and ES Metlaoui.
+The Tunisia national handball team has participated in several handball world championships. In 2005, Tunisia came fourth. The national league consists of about 12 teams, with ES. Sahel and Esperance S.Tunis dominating. The most famous Tunisian handball player is Wissem Hmam. In the 2005 Handball Championship in Tunis, Wissem Hmam was ranked as the top scorer of the tournament. The Tunisian national handball team won the African Cup ten times, being the team dominating this competition. The Tunisians won the 2018 African Cup in Gabon by defeating Egypt.[209]
+Tunisia's national basketball team has emerged as a top side in Africa. The team won the 2011 Afrobasket and hosted Africa's top basketball event in 1965, 1987 and 2015.
+In boxing, Victor Perez ("Young") was world champion in the flyweight weight class in 1931 and 1932.[210]
+In the 2008 Summer Olympics, Tunisian Oussama Mellouli won a gold medal in 1500 meter freestyle.[211] In the 2012 Summer Olympics, he won a bronze medal in the 1500 meter freestyle and a gold medal in the Men's marathon swim at a distance of 10 kilometers.
+In 2012, Tunisia participated for the seventh time in her history in the Summer Paralympic Games. She finished the competition with 19 medals; 9 golds, 5 silvers and 5 bronzes. Tunisia was classified 14th on the Paralympics medal table and 5th in Athletics.
+Tunisia was suspended from Davis Cup play for the year 2014, because the Tunisian Tennis Federation was found to have ordered Malek Jaziri not to compete against an Israeli tennis player, Amir Weintraub.[212] ITF president Francesco Ricci Bitti said: "There is no room for prejudice of any kind in sport or in society. The ITF Board decided to send a strong message to the Tunisian Tennis Federation that this kind of action will not be tolerated."[212]
+Coordinates: 34°N 9°E / 34°N 9°E / 34; 9

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+Coordinates: 40°N 60°E / 40°N 60°E / 40; 60
+Turkmenistan (/tɜːrkˈmɛnɪstæn/ (listen) or /tɜːrkmɛnɪˈstɑːn/ (listen); Turkmen: Türkmenistan/Түркменистан, pronounced [tʏɾkmɛnɪˈθtɑn]), also known as Turkmenia, is a sovereign country in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north and east, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ashgabat is the capital and largest city of the country. The population of the country is 6 million, the lowest of the Central Asian republics. Turkmenistan is one of the most sparsely populated nations in Asia. Citizens of Turkmenistan are known as Turkmenistanis.[6]
+Turkmenistan has been at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries. Merv being the oldest of oasis-cities in Central Asia[12] was once the biggest city in the world[13], in medieval times one of the great cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road, a caravan route used for trade with China until the mid-15th century. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan later figured prominently in the anti-Bolshevik movement in Central Asia. In 1925, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkmen SSR); it became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[6]
+Turkmenistan possesses the world's fourth largest reserves of natural gas.[14] Most of the country is covered by the Karakum (Black Sand) Desert. From 1993 to 2017, citizens received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge.[15]
+The sovereign state of Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov (also known as Turkmenbashi) until his death in 2006. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was elected president in 2007 (he had been vice-president and then acting president previously). According to Human Rights Watch, "Turkmenistan remains one of the world’s most repressive countries. The country is virtually closed to independent scrutiny, media and religious freedoms are subject to draconian restrictions, and human rights defenders and other activists face the constant threat of government reprisal."[16] After the suspension of the death penalty, the use of capital punishment was formally abolished in the 2008 constitution.[4][17]
+The name of Turkmenistan (Turkmen: Türkmenistan) can be divided into two components: the ethnonym Türkmen and the Persian suffix -stan meaning "place of" or "country". The name "Turkmen" comes from Turk, plus the Sogdian suffix -men, meaning "almost Turk", in reference to their status outside the Turkic dynastic mythological system.[18] However, some scholars argue the suffix is an intensifier, changing the meaning of Türkmen to "pure Turks" or "the Turkish Turks."[19]
+Muslim chroniclers like Ibn Kathir suggested that the etymology of Turkmenistan came from the words Türk and Iman (Arabic: إيمان‎, "faith, belief") in reference to a massive conversion to Islam of two hundred thousand households in the year 971.[20]
+Turkmenistan declared its independence from the Soviet Union after the independence referendum in 1991.  As a result, the constitutional law had been adopted in October 27th, the Article 1of this law established the new name of the state - Turkmenistan (Türkmenistan' / Түркменистан).[21]
+A common name for the Turkmen SSR was Turkmenia (Russian: Туркмения), used in some reports of the country's independence.[22]
+Historically inhabited by the Indo-Iranians, the written history of Turkmenistan begins with its annexation by the Achaemenid Empire of Ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved from Mongolia into present-day Central Asia. Part of a powerful confederation of tribes, these Oghuz formed the ethnic basis of the modern Turkmen population.[23] In the 10th century, the name "Turkmen" was first applied to Oghuz groups that accepted Islam and began to occupy present-day Turkmenistan.[23] There they were under the dominion of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed of Oghuz groups living in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan.[23] Oghuz groups in the service of the empire played an important role in the spreading of Turkic culture when they migrated westward into present-day Azerbaijan and eastern Turkey.[23]
+In the 12th century, Turkmen and other tribes overthrew the Seljuk Empire.[23] In the next century, the Mongols took over the more northern lands where the Turkmens had settled, scattering the Turkmens southward and contributing to the formation of new tribal groups.[23] The sixteenth and eighteenth centuries saw a series of splits and confederations among the nomadic Turkmen tribes, who remained staunchly independent and inspired fear in their neighbors.[23] By the 16th century, most of those tribes were under the nominal control of two sedentary Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro.[23] Turkmen soldiers were an important element of the Uzbek militaries of this period.[23] In the 19th century, raids and rebellions by the Yomud Turkmen group resulted in that group's dispersal by the Uzbek rulers.[23] In 1855 the Turkmen tribe of Teke led by Gowshut-Khan defeated the invading army of the Khan of Khiva Muhammad Amin Khan[24] and in 1861 the invading Persian army of Nasreddin-Shah[25].
+In the 2nd half of the 19th century, northern Turkmens were the main military and political power in the Khanate of Khiva[26][27]. According to Paul R. Spickard, "Prior to the Russian conquest, the Turkmen were known and feared for their involvement in the Central Asian slave trade."[28][29]
+Russian forces began occupying Turkmen territory late in the 19th century.[23] From their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk (now Turkmenbashi), the Russians eventually overcame the Uzbek khanates.[23] In 1879, the Russian forces were defeated by the Teke Turkmens during the first attempt to conquer the Akhal area of Turkmenistan[30]. However, in 1881, the last significant resistance in Turkmen territory was crushed at the Battle of Geok Tepe, and shortly thereafter Turkmenistan was annexed, together with adjoining Uzbek territory, into the Russian Empire.[23] In 1916, the Russian Empire's participation in World War I resonated in Turkmenistan, as an anticonscription revolt swept most of Russian Central Asia.[23] Although the Russian Revolution of 1917 had little direct impact, in the 1920s Turkmen forces joined Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uzbeks in the so-called Basmachi Rebellion against the rule of the newly formed Soviet Union.[23] In 1924, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the tsarist province of Transcaspia.[23] By the late 1930s, Soviet reorganization of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle in Turkmenistan, and Moscow controlled political life.[23] The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people,[31] amounting to two-thirds of the city's population.
+During the next half-century, Turkmenistan played its designated economic role within the Soviet Union and remained outside the course of major world events.[23] Even the major liberalization movement that shook Russia in the late 1980s had little impact.[23] However, in 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Turkmenistan declared sovereignty as a nationalist response to perceived exploitation by Moscow.[23] Although Turkmenistan was ill-prepared for independence and then-communist leader Saparmurat Niyazov preferred to preserve the Soviet Union, in October 1991, the fragmentation of that entity forced him to call a national referendum that approved independence.[23] On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Niyazov continued as Turkmenistan's chief of state, replacing communism with a unique brand of independent nationalism reinforced by a pervasive cult of personality.[23] A 1994 referendum and legislation in 1999 abolished further requirements for the president to stand for re-election (although in 1992 he completely dominated the only presidential election in which he ran, as he was the only candidate and no one else was allowed to run for the office), making him effectively president for life.[23] During his tenure, Niyazov conducted frequent purges of public officials and abolished organizations deemed threatening.[23] Throughout the post-Soviet era, Turkmenistan has taken a neutral position on almost all international issues.[23] Niyazov eschewed membership in regional organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and in the late 1990s he maintained relations with the Taliban and its chief opponent in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance.[23] He offered limited support to the military campaign against the Taliban following the 11 September 2001 attacks.[23] In 2002 an alleged assassination attempt against Niyazov led to a new wave of security restrictions, dismissals of government officials, and restrictions placed on the media.[23] Niyazov accused exiled former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov of having planned the attack.[23]
+Between 2002 and 2004, serious tension arose between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan because of bilateral disputes and Niyazov's implication that Uzbekistan had a role in the 2002 assassination attempt.[23] In 2004, a series of bilateral treaties restored friendly relations.[23] In the parliamentary elections of December 2004 and January 2005, only Niyazov's party was represented, and no international monitors participated.[23] In 2005, Niyazov exercised his dictatorial power by closing all hospitals outside Ashgabat and all rural libraries.[23] The year 2006 saw intensification of the trends of arbitrary policy changes, shuffling of top officials, diminishing economic output outside the oil and gas sector, and isolation from regional and world organizations.[23] China was among a very few nations to whom Turkmenistan made significant overtures.[23] The sudden death of Niyazov at the end of 2006 left a complete vacuum of power, as his cult of personality, comparable to the one of eternal president Kim Il-sung of North Korea, had precluded the naming of a successor.[23] Deputy Prime Minister Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who was named interim head of government, won the special presidential election held in early February 2007.[23] He was re-elected in 2012 with 97% of the vote.[32]
+After 69 years as part of the Soviet Union (including 67 years as a union republic), Turkmenistan declared its independence on 27 October 1991.
+President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov, a former bureaucrat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ruled Turkmenistan from 1985, when he became head of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR, until his death in 2006. He retained absolute control over the country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 28 December 1999, Niyazov was declared President for Life of Turkmenistan by the Mejlis (parliament), which itself had taken office a week earlier in elections that included only candidates hand-picked by President Niyazov. No opposition candidates were allowed.
+Since the December 2006 death of Niyazov, Turkmenistan's leadership has made tentative moves to open up the country. His successor, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, repealed some of Niyazov's most idiosyncratic policies, including banning opera and the circus for being "insufficiently Turkmen". In education, Berdimuhamedow's government increased basic education to ten years from nine years, and higher education was extended from four years to five. It also increased contacts with the West, which is eager for access to the country's natural gas riches.
+The politics of Turkmenistan take place in the framework of a presidential republic, with the President both head of state and head of government. Under Niyazov, Turkmenistan had a one-party system; however, in September 2008, the People's Council unanimously passed a resolution adopting a new Constitution. The latter resulted in the abolition of the Council and a significant increase in the size of Parliament in December 2008 and also permits the formation of multiple political parties.
+The former Communist Party, now known as the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, is the dominant party. The second party, the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs was established in August 2012. Political gatherings are illegal unless government sanctioned. In 2013, the first multi-party Parliamentary Elections were held in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan was a one-party state from 1991 to 2012; however, the 2013 elections were widely seen as mere window dressing.[33] In practice, all parties in parliament operate jointly under the direction of the DPT. There are no true opposition parties in the Turkmen parliament.[34]
+Turkmenistan's declaration of "permanent neutrality" was formally recognized by the United Nations in 1995.[35] Former President Saparmurat Niyazov stated that the neutrality would prevent Turkmenistan from participating in multi-national defense organizations, but allows military assistance. Its neutral foreign policy has an important place in the country's constitution. Turkmenistan has diplomatic relations with 139 countries.[36]
+Turkmenistan has been widely criticised for human rights abuses and has imposed severe restrictions on foreign travel for its citizens.[38] Discrimination against the country's ethnic minorities remains in practice. Universities have been encouraged to reject applicants with non-Turkmen surnames, especially ethnic Russians.[39] It is forbidden to teach the customs and language of the Baloch, an ethnic minority.[40] The same happens to Uzbeks, though the Uzbek language was formerly taught in some national schools.[40]
+According to Reporters Without Borders's 2014 World Press Freedom Index, Turkmenistan had the 3rd worst press freedom conditions in the world (178/180 countries), just before North Korea and Eritrea.[41] It is considered to be one of the "10 Most Censored Countries". Each broadcast under Niyazov began with a pledge that the broadcaster's tongue will shrivel if he slanders the country, flag, or president.[42]
+Religious minorities are discriminated against for conscientious objection and practicing their religion by imprisonment, preventing foreign travel, confiscating copies of Christian literature or defamation.[43][44][45] Many detainees who have been arrested for exercising their freedom of religion or belief, were tortured and subsequently sentenced to imprisonment, many of them without a court decision.[46][47] Homosexual acts are illegal in Turkmenistan.[48]
+Despite the launch of Turkmenistan's first communication satellite—TurkmenSat 1—in April 2015, the Turkmen government banned all satellite dishes in Turkmenistan the same month. The statement issued by the government indicated that all existing satellite dishes would have to be removed or destroyed—despite the communications receiving antennas having been legally installed since 1995—in an effort by the government to fully block access of the population to many "hundreds of independent international media outlets" which are currently accessible in the country only through satellite dishes, including all leading international news channels in different languages. The main target of this campaign is Radio Azatlyk, the Turkmen-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It is the only independent source of information about Turkmenistan and the world in the Turkmen language and is widely listened to in the country."[49]
+Turkmenistan is divided into five provinces or welayatlar (singular welayat) and one capital city district. The provinces are subdivided into districts (etraplar, sing. etrap), which may be either counties or cities. According to the Constitution of Turkmenistan (Article 16 in the 2008 Constitution, Article 47 in the 1992 Constitution), some cities may have the status of welaýat (province) or etrap (district).
+The Karakum Desert is one of the driest deserts in the world; some places have an average annual precipitation of only 12 mm (0.47 in). The highest temperature recorded in Ashgabat is 48.0 °C (118.4 °F) and Kerki, an extreme inland city located on the banks of the Amu Darya river, recorded 51.7 °C (125.1 °F) in July 1983, although this value is unofficial. 50.1 °C (122 °F) is the highest temperature recorded at Repetek Reserve, recognized as the highest temperature ever recorded in the whole former Soviet Union.[citation needed]
+At 488,100 km2 (188,500 sq mi), Turkmenistan is the world's 52nd-largest country. It is slightly smaller than Spain and somewhat larger than the US state of California. It lies between latitudes 35° and 43° N, and longitudes 52° and 67° E.
+Over 80% of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert. The center of the country is dominated by the Turan Depression and the Karakum Desert. The Kopet Dag Range, along the southwestern border, reaches 2,912 metres (9,554 feet) at Kuh-e Rizeh (Mount Rizeh).[51]
+The Great Balkhan Range in the west of the country (Balkan Province) and the Köýtendag Range on the southeastern border with Uzbekistan (Lebap Province) are the only other significant elevations. The Great Balkhan Range rises to 1,880 metres (6,170 ft) at Mount Arlan[52] and the highest summit in Turkmenistan is Ayrybaba in the Kugitangtau Range – 3,137 metres (10,292 ft).[53]
+The Kopet Dag mountain range forms most of the border between Turkmenistan and Iran. Rivers include the Amu Darya, the Murghab, and the Tejen.
+The climate is mostly arid desert with subtropical temperature ranges and little rainfall. Winters are mild and dry, with most precipitation falling between January and May. The area of the country with the heaviest precipitation is the Kopet Dag Range.
+The Turkmen shore along the Caspian Sea is 1,748 kilometres (1,086 mi) long. The Caspian Sea is entirely landlocked, with no natural access to the ocean, although the Volga–Don Canal allows shipping access to and from the Black Sea.
+The major cities include Aşgabat, Türkmenbaşy (formerly Krasnovodsk) and Daşoguz.
+Turkmenistan's greenhouse gas emissions per person (17.5 tCO2e) are considerably higher than the OECD average: due to natural gas seepage from oil and gas exploration, and very high energy subsidies.[54]
+The country possesses the world's fourth largest reserves of natural gas and substantial oil resources.[55]
+Turkmenistan has taken a cautious approach to economic reform, hoping to use gas and cotton sales to sustain its economy. In 2014, the unemployment rate was estimated to be 11%.[6]
+Between 1998 and 2002, Turkmenistan suffered from the continued lack of adequate export routes for natural gas and from obligations on extensive short-term external debt. At the same time, however, the value of total exports has risen sharply because of increases in international oil and gas prices. Economic prospects in the near future are discouraging because of widespread internal poverty and the burden of foreign debt.[citation needed]
+President Niyazov spent much of the country's revenue on extensively renovating cities, Ashgabat in particular. Corruption watchdogs voiced particular concern over the management of Turkmenistan's currency reserves, most of which are held in off-budget funds such as the Foreign Exchange Reserve Fund in the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, according to a report released in April 2006 by London-based non-governmental organization Global Witness.
+According to the decree of the Peoples' Council of 14 August 2003,[56] electricity, natural gas, water and salt will be subsidized for citizens up to 2030. Under current regulations, every citizen is entitled to 35 kilowatt hours of electricity and 50 cubic meters of natural gas each month. The state also provides 250 liters (66 gallons) of water per day.[57]
+As of May 2011[update], the Galkynysh Gas Field has the second-largest volume of gas in the world, after the South Pars field in the Persian Gulf. Reserves at the Galkynysh Gas Field are estimated at around 21.2 trillion cubic metres.[58] The Turkmenistan Natural Gas Company (Türkmengaz), under the auspices of the Ministry of Oil and Gas, controls gas extraction in the country. Gas production is the most dynamic and promising sector of the national economy.[citation needed] In 2010 Ashgabat started a policy of diversifying export routes for its raw materials.[59] China is the largest buyer of gas from Turkmenistan, via a pipeline linking the two countries through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan[60]  and Ashgabat's main external financial donor.[61] In addition to supplying Russia, China and Iran, Ashgabat took concrete measures to accelerate progress in the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan and India pipeline (TAPI).[citation needed] Turkmenistan has previously estimated the cost of the project at $3.3 billion.[citation needed]
+Most of Turkmenistan's oil is extracted by the Turkmenistan State Company (Concern) Türkmennebit from fields at Koturdepe, Balkanabat, and Cheleken near the Caspian Sea, which have a combined estimated reserve of 700 million tons. The oil extraction industry started with the exploitation of the fields in Cheleken in 1909 (by Branobel) and in Balkanabat in the 1930s. Production leaped ahead with the discovery of the Kumdag field in 1948 and the Koturdepe field in 1959. A big part of the oil produced in Turkmenistan is refined in Turkmenbashy and Seidi refineries. Also, oil is exported by tankers through the Caspian Sea to Europe via canals.[62]
+Turkmenistan is a net exporter of electrical power to Central Asian republics and southern neighbors. The most important generating installations are the Hindukush Hydroelectric Station,[citation needed] which has a rated capacity of 350 megawatts, and the Mary Thermoelectric Power Station, which has a rated capacity of 1,370 megawatts. In 1992, electrical power production totaled 14.9 billion kilowatt-hours.[63][needs update]
+In Turkmenistan, most of irrigated land is planted with cotton,[why?] making the country the world's ninth-largest cotton producer.[64]
+During the 2011 season, Turkmenistan produced around 1.1 million tons of raw cotton, mainly from Mary, Balkan, Akhal, Lebap and Dashoguz provinces. In 2012, around 7,000 tractors, 5,000 cotton cultivators, 2,200 sowing machines and other machinery, mainly procured from Belarus and the United States, are being used. The country traditionally exports raw cotton to Russia, Iran, South Korea, United Kingdom, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Ukraine, Singapore and the Baltic states.[65]
+The tourism industry has been growing rapidly in recent[when?] years, especially medical tourism. This is primarily due to the creation of the Awaza tourist zone on the Caspian Sea.[66] Every traveler must obtain a visa before entering Turkmenistan (see Visa policy of Turkmenistan). To obtain a tourist visa, citizens of most countries need visa support from a local travel agency. For tourists visiting Turkmenistan, there are organized tours with a visit to historical sites Daşoguz, Konye-Urgench, Nisa, Merv, Mary, beach tours to Avaza and medical tours and holidays in Mollakara, Ýylysuw and Archman.
+Most of Turkmenistan's citizens are ethnic Turkmens with sizeable minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. Smaller minorities include Kazakhs, Tatars, Ukrainians, Kurds (native to Kopet Dagh mountains), Armenians, Azeris, Balochs and Pashtuns. The percentage of ethnic Russians in Turkmenistan dropped from 18.6% in 1939 to 9.5% in 1989. In 2012, it was confirmed that the population of Turkmenistan decreased due to some specific factors[which?] and is less than the previously estimated 5 million.[69] Citizens of Turkmenistan are known as Turkmenistanis.[6]
+The CIA World Factbook gives the ethnic composition of Turkmenistan as 85% Turkmen, 5% Uzbek, 4% Russian and 6% other (2003 estimates[update]).[6] According to data announced in Ashgabat in February 2001[update], 91% of the population are Turkmen, 3% are Uzbeks and 2% are Russians. Between 1989 and 2001 the number of Turkmen in Turkmenistan doubled (from 2.5 to 4.9 million), while the number of Russians dropped by two-thirds (from 334,000 to slightly over 100,000).[70]
+Turkmen is the official language of Turkmenistan (per the 1992 Constitution), although Russian still is widely spoken in cities as a "language of inter-ethnic communication". Turkmen is spoken by 72% of the population, Russian by 12% (349,000), Uzbek by 9%[6] (317,000), and other languages by 7% (Kazakh (88,000), Tatar (40,400), Ukrainian (37,118), Azerbaijani (33,000), Armenian (32,000), Northern Kurdish (20,000), Lezgian (10,400), Persian (8,000), Belarusian (5,290), Erzya (3,490), Korean (3,490), Bashkir (2,610), Karakalpak (2,540), Ossetic (1,890), Dargwa (1,600), Lak (1,590), Tajik (1,280), Georgian (1,050), Lithuanian (224), Tabasaran (180), Dungan).[71]
+According to the CIA World Factbook, Muslims constitute 93% of the population while 6% of the population are followers of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the remaining 1% religion is reported as non-religious.[6] According to a 2009 Pew Research Center report, 93.1% of Turkmenistan's population is Muslim.[73]
+The first migrants were sent as missionaries and often were adopted as patriarchs of particular clans or tribal groups, thereby becoming their "founders." Reformulation of communal identity around such figures accounts for one of the highly localized developments of Islamic practice in Turkmenistan.[74]
+In the Soviet era, all religious beliefs were attacked by the communist authorities as superstition and "vestiges of the past." Most religious schooling and religious observance were banned, and the vast majority of mosques were closed. However, since 1990, efforts have been made to regain some of the cultural heritage lost under Soviet rule.
+Former president Saparmurat Niyazov ordered that basic Islamic principles be taught in public schools. More religious institutions, including religious schools and mosques, have appeared, many with the support of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey. Religious classes are held in both schools and mosques, with instruction in Arabic language, the Qur'an and the hadith, and history of Islam.[75]
+President Niyazov wrote his own religious text, published in separate volumes in 2001 and 2004, entitled the Ruhnama. The Turkmenbashi regime required that the book, which formed the basis of the educational system in Turkmenistan, be given equal status with the Quran (mosques were required to display the two books side by side). The book was heavily promoted as part of the former president's personality cult, and knowledge of the Ruhnama is required even for obtaining a driver's license.[76]
+Most Christians in Turkmenistan belong to Eastern Orthodoxy (about 5% of the population).[77] The Russian Orthodox Church is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Archbishop in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.[78] There are three Russian Orthodox Churches in Ashgabat, two in Turkmenabat, in Mary, Turkmenbashi, Balkanabat, Bayram-Ali and Dushauguze one each.[77] The highest Russian Orthodox priest in Turkmenistan is based in Ashgabat.[79] There is one Russian orthodox monastery, in Ashgabat.[79] Turkmenistan has no Russian Orthodox seminary, however.[79]
+There are also small communities of the following denominations: the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, Pentecostal Christians, the Protestant Word of Life Church, the Greater Grace World Outreach Church, the New Apostolic Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, and several unaffiliated, nondenominational evangelical Christian groups. In addition, there are small communities of Baha'is, Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, and Hare Krishnas.[43]
+The history of Bahá'í Faith in Turkmenistan is as old as the religion itself, and Bahá'í communities still exist today.[80] The first Bahá'í House of Worship was built in Ashgabat at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was seized by the Soviets in the 1920s and converted to an art gallery. It was heavily damaged in the earthquake of 1948 and later demolished. The site was converted to a public park.[81]
+There are a number of newspapers and monthly magazines published and online news-portal Turkmenportal in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan currently broadcasts 7 national TV channels through satellite. They are Altyn asyr, Yashlyk, Miras, Turkmenistan (in 7 languages), Türkmen Owazy, Turkmen sporty and Ashgabat. There are no commercial or private TV stations. Articles published by the state-controlled newspapers are heavily censored and written to glorify the state and its leader.
+Internet services are the least developed in Central Asia. Access to Internet services are provided by the government's ISP company "Turkmentelekom". As of 31 December 2011, it was estimated that there were 252,741 internet users in Turkmenistan or roughly 5% of total population.[85][6][needs update]
+Education is universal and mandatory through the secondary level, the total duration of which was earlier reduced from 10 to 9 years; with the new President it has been decreed that from the 2007–2008 school year on, mandatory education will be for 10 years. From 2013 secondary general education in Turkmenistan is a three-stage secondary schools for 12 years according to the following steps: Elementary school (grades 1–3), High School – the first cycle of secondary education with duration of 5 years (4–8 classes), Secondary school – the second cycle of secondary education, shall be made within 4 years (9–12 classes).[86][87]
+At the end of the 2019/2020 academic year, nearly 80,000 Turkmen pupils were graduated from high school.[88]  As of the 2019/2020 academic year, 12,242 of these students were admitted to institutions of higher education in Turkmenistan.  An additional 9,063 were admitted to the country's 42 vocational colleges.[89]
+The task for modern Turkmen architecture is diverse application of modern aesthetics, the search for an architect's own artistic style and inclusion of the existing historico-cultural environment. Most buildings are faced with white marble. Major projects such as Turkmenistan Tower, Bagt köşgi, Alem Cultural and Entertainment Center have transformed the country's skyline and promotes its contemporary identity.
+Construction of new and modernization of existing roads has an important role in the development of the country. With the increase in traffic flow is adjusted already built roads, as well as the planned construction of new highways. Construction of roads and road transport has always paid great attention. So, in 2004, Baimukhamet Kelov was removed from office by the Minister of road transport and highways Turkmenistan for embezzlement of public funds and deficiencies in the work.[90]
+Turkmenistan's cities of Turkmenbashi and Ashgabat both have scheduled commercial air service. The largest airport is Ashgabat Airport, with regular international flights. Additionally, scheduled international flights are available to Turkmenbashi. The principal government-managed airline of Turkmenistan is Turkmenistan Airlines. It is also the largest airline operating in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan Airlines' passenger fleet is composed only of United States Boeing aircraft.[91] Air transport carries more than two thousand passengers daily in the country.[92] International flights annually transport over half a million people into and out of Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan Airlines operates regular flights to Moscow, London, Frankfurt, Birmingham, Bangkok, Delhi, Abu Dhabi, Amritsar, Kiev, Lviv, Beijing, Istanbul, Minsk, Almaty, Tashkent, and St. Petersburg.
+Since 1962, the Turkmenbashi International Seaport operates a ferry to the port of Baku, Azerbaijan. In recent years there has been increased tanker transport of oil. The port of Turkmenbashi, associated rail ferries to the ports of the Caspian Sea (Baku, Aktau). In 2011, it was announced that the port of Turkmenbashi will be completely renovated. The project involves the reconstruction of the terminal disassembly of old and construction of new berths.[93][94]
+Rail is one of the main modes of transport in Turkmenistan. Trains have been used in the nation since 1876. Originally, it was part of the Trans-Caspian railway, then the Central Asian Railway, after the collapse of the USSR, the railway network in Turkmenistan owned and operated by state-owned Türkmendemirýollary. The total length of railways is 3181 km. The passenger traffic railways of Turkmenistan are limited by the national borders of the country, except in the areas along which the transit trains are coming from Tajikistan to Uzbekistan and beyond. Locomotive fleet consists of a series of soviet-made locomotives 2TE10L, 2TE10U, 2M62U also have several locomotives made in China. Shunting locomotives include Soviet-made TEM2, TEM2U, CME3. Currently under construction railway Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan.

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+Coordinates: 40°N 60°E / 40°N 60°E / 40; 60
+Turkmenistan (/tɜːrkˈmɛnɪstæn/ (listen) or /tɜːrkmɛnɪˈstɑːn/ (listen); Turkmen: Türkmenistan/Түркменистан, pronounced [tʏɾkmɛnɪˈθtɑn]), also known as Turkmenia, is a sovereign country in Central Asia, bordered by Kazakhstan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north and east, Afghanistan to the southeast, Iran to the south and southwest and the Caspian Sea to the west. Ashgabat is the capital and largest city of the country. The population of the country is 6 million, the lowest of the Central Asian republics. Turkmenistan is one of the most sparsely populated nations in Asia. Citizens of Turkmenistan are known as Turkmenistanis.[6]
+Turkmenistan has been at the crossroads of civilizations for centuries. Merv being the oldest of oasis-cities in Central Asia[12] was once the biggest city in the world[13], in medieval times one of the great cities of the Islamic world and an important stop on the Silk Road, a caravan route used for trade with China until the mid-15th century. Annexed by the Russian Empire in 1881, Turkmenistan later figured prominently in the anti-Bolshevik movement in Central Asia. In 1925, Turkmenistan became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic (Turkmen SSR); it became independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.[6]
+Turkmenistan possesses the world's fourth largest reserves of natural gas.[14] Most of the country is covered by the Karakum (Black Sand) Desert. From 1993 to 2017, citizens received government-provided electricity, water and natural gas free of charge.[15]
+The sovereign state of Turkmenistan was ruled by President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov (also known as Turkmenbashi) until his death in 2006. Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow was elected president in 2007 (he had been vice-president and then acting president previously). According to Human Rights Watch, "Turkmenistan remains one of the world’s most repressive countries. The country is virtually closed to independent scrutiny, media and religious freedoms are subject to draconian restrictions, and human rights defenders and other activists face the constant threat of government reprisal."[16] After the suspension of the death penalty, the use of capital punishment was formally abolished in the 2008 constitution.[4][17]
+The name of Turkmenistan (Turkmen: Türkmenistan) can be divided into two components: the ethnonym Türkmen and the Persian suffix -stan meaning "place of" or "country". The name "Turkmen" comes from Turk, plus the Sogdian suffix -men, meaning "almost Turk", in reference to their status outside the Turkic dynastic mythological system.[18] However, some scholars argue the suffix is an intensifier, changing the meaning of Türkmen to "pure Turks" or "the Turkish Turks."[19]
+Muslim chroniclers like Ibn Kathir suggested that the etymology of Turkmenistan came from the words Türk and Iman (Arabic: إيمان‎, "faith, belief") in reference to a massive conversion to Islam of two hundred thousand households in the year 971.[20]
+Turkmenistan declared its independence from the Soviet Union after the independence referendum in 1991.  As a result, the constitutional law had been adopted in October 27th, the Article 1of this law established the new name of the state - Turkmenistan (Türkmenistan' / Түркменистан).[21]
+A common name for the Turkmen SSR was Turkmenia (Russian: Туркмения), used in some reports of the country's independence.[22]
+Historically inhabited by the Indo-Iranians, the written history of Turkmenistan begins with its annexation by the Achaemenid Empire of Ancient Iran. In the 8th century AD, Turkic-speaking Oghuz tribes moved from Mongolia into present-day Central Asia. Part of a powerful confederation of tribes, these Oghuz formed the ethnic basis of the modern Turkmen population.[23] In the 10th century, the name "Turkmen" was first applied to Oghuz groups that accepted Islam and began to occupy present-day Turkmenistan.[23] There they were under the dominion of the Seljuk Empire, which was composed of Oghuz groups living in present-day Iran and Turkmenistan.[23] Oghuz groups in the service of the empire played an important role in the spreading of Turkic culture when they migrated westward into present-day Azerbaijan and eastern Turkey.[23]
+In the 12th century, Turkmen and other tribes overthrew the Seljuk Empire.[23] In the next century, the Mongols took over the more northern lands where the Turkmens had settled, scattering the Turkmens southward and contributing to the formation of new tribal groups.[23] The sixteenth and eighteenth centuries saw a series of splits and confederations among the nomadic Turkmen tribes, who remained staunchly independent and inspired fear in their neighbors.[23] By the 16th century, most of those tribes were under the nominal control of two sedentary Uzbek khanates, Khiva and Bukhoro.[23] Turkmen soldiers were an important element of the Uzbek militaries of this period.[23] In the 19th century, raids and rebellions by the Yomud Turkmen group resulted in that group's dispersal by the Uzbek rulers.[23] In 1855 the Turkmen tribe of Teke led by Gowshut-Khan defeated the invading army of the Khan of Khiva Muhammad Amin Khan[24] and in 1861 the invading Persian army of Nasreddin-Shah[25].
+In the 2nd half of the 19th century, northern Turkmens were the main military and political power in the Khanate of Khiva[26][27]. According to Paul R. Spickard, "Prior to the Russian conquest, the Turkmen were known and feared for their involvement in the Central Asian slave trade."[28][29]
+Russian forces began occupying Turkmen territory late in the 19th century.[23] From their Caspian Sea base at Krasnovodsk (now Turkmenbashi), the Russians eventually overcame the Uzbek khanates.[23] In 1879, the Russian forces were defeated by the Teke Turkmens during the first attempt to conquer the Akhal area of Turkmenistan[30]. However, in 1881, the last significant resistance in Turkmen territory was crushed at the Battle of Geok Tepe, and shortly thereafter Turkmenistan was annexed, together with adjoining Uzbek territory, into the Russian Empire.[23] In 1916, the Russian Empire's participation in World War I resonated in Turkmenistan, as an anticonscription revolt swept most of Russian Central Asia.[23] Although the Russian Revolution of 1917 had little direct impact, in the 1920s Turkmen forces joined Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, and Uzbeks in the so-called Basmachi Rebellion against the rule of the newly formed Soviet Union.[23] In 1924, the Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic was formed from the tsarist province of Transcaspia.[23] By the late 1930s, Soviet reorganization of agriculture had destroyed what remained of the nomadic lifestyle in Turkmenistan, and Moscow controlled political life.[23] The Ashgabat earthquake of 1948 killed over 110,000 people,[31] amounting to two-thirds of the city's population.
+During the next half-century, Turkmenistan played its designated economic role within the Soviet Union and remained outside the course of major world events.[23] Even the major liberalization movement that shook Russia in the late 1980s had little impact.[23] However, in 1990, the Supreme Soviet of Turkmenistan declared sovereignty as a nationalist response to perceived exploitation by Moscow.[23] Although Turkmenistan was ill-prepared for independence and then-communist leader Saparmurat Niyazov preferred to preserve the Soviet Union, in October 1991, the fragmentation of that entity forced him to call a national referendum that approved independence.[23] On 26 December 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Niyazov continued as Turkmenistan's chief of state, replacing communism with a unique brand of independent nationalism reinforced by a pervasive cult of personality.[23] A 1994 referendum and legislation in 1999 abolished further requirements for the president to stand for re-election (although in 1992 he completely dominated the only presidential election in which he ran, as he was the only candidate and no one else was allowed to run for the office), making him effectively president for life.[23] During his tenure, Niyazov conducted frequent purges of public officials and abolished organizations deemed threatening.[23] Throughout the post-Soviet era, Turkmenistan has taken a neutral position on almost all international issues.[23] Niyazov eschewed membership in regional organizations such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and in the late 1990s he maintained relations with the Taliban and its chief opponent in Afghanistan, the Northern Alliance.[23] He offered limited support to the military campaign against the Taliban following the 11 September 2001 attacks.[23] In 2002 an alleged assassination attempt against Niyazov led to a new wave of security restrictions, dismissals of government officials, and restrictions placed on the media.[23] Niyazov accused exiled former foreign minister Boris Shikhmuradov of having planned the attack.[23]
+Between 2002 and 2004, serious tension arose between Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan because of bilateral disputes and Niyazov's implication that Uzbekistan had a role in the 2002 assassination attempt.[23] In 2004, a series of bilateral treaties restored friendly relations.[23] In the parliamentary elections of December 2004 and January 2005, only Niyazov's party was represented, and no international monitors participated.[23] In 2005, Niyazov exercised his dictatorial power by closing all hospitals outside Ashgabat and all rural libraries.[23] The year 2006 saw intensification of the trends of arbitrary policy changes, shuffling of top officials, diminishing economic output outside the oil and gas sector, and isolation from regional and world organizations.[23] China was among a very few nations to whom Turkmenistan made significant overtures.[23] The sudden death of Niyazov at the end of 2006 left a complete vacuum of power, as his cult of personality, comparable to the one of eternal president Kim Il-sung of North Korea, had precluded the naming of a successor.[23] Deputy Prime Minister Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, who was named interim head of government, won the special presidential election held in early February 2007.[23] He was re-elected in 2012 with 97% of the vote.[32]
+After 69 years as part of the Soviet Union (including 67 years as a union republic), Turkmenistan declared its independence on 27 October 1991.
+President for Life Saparmurat Niyazov, a former bureaucrat of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, ruled Turkmenistan from 1985, when he became head of the Communist Party of the Turkmen SSR, until his death in 2006. He retained absolute control over the country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. On 28 December 1999, Niyazov was declared President for Life of Turkmenistan by the Mejlis (parliament), which itself had taken office a week earlier in elections that included only candidates hand-picked by President Niyazov. No opposition candidates were allowed.
+Since the December 2006 death of Niyazov, Turkmenistan's leadership has made tentative moves to open up the country. His successor, President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow, repealed some of Niyazov's most idiosyncratic policies, including banning opera and the circus for being "insufficiently Turkmen". In education, Berdimuhamedow's government increased basic education to ten years from nine years, and higher education was extended from four years to five. It also increased contacts with the West, which is eager for access to the country's natural gas riches.
+The politics of Turkmenistan take place in the framework of a presidential republic, with the President both head of state and head of government. Under Niyazov, Turkmenistan had a one-party system; however, in September 2008, the People's Council unanimously passed a resolution adopting a new Constitution. The latter resulted in the abolition of the Council and a significant increase in the size of Parliament in December 2008 and also permits the formation of multiple political parties.
+The former Communist Party, now known as the Democratic Party of Turkmenistan, is the dominant party. The second party, the Party of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs was established in August 2012. Political gatherings are illegal unless government sanctioned. In 2013, the first multi-party Parliamentary Elections were held in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan was a one-party state from 1991 to 2012; however, the 2013 elections were widely seen as mere window dressing.[33] In practice, all parties in parliament operate jointly under the direction of the DPT. There are no true opposition parties in the Turkmen parliament.[34]
+Turkmenistan's declaration of "permanent neutrality" was formally recognized by the United Nations in 1995.[35] Former President Saparmurat Niyazov stated that the neutrality would prevent Turkmenistan from participating in multi-national defense organizations, but allows military assistance. Its neutral foreign policy has an important place in the country's constitution. Turkmenistan has diplomatic relations with 139 countries.[36]
+Turkmenistan has been widely criticised for human rights abuses and has imposed severe restrictions on foreign travel for its citizens.[38] Discrimination against the country's ethnic minorities remains in practice. Universities have been encouraged to reject applicants with non-Turkmen surnames, especially ethnic Russians.[39] It is forbidden to teach the customs and language of the Baloch, an ethnic minority.[40] The same happens to Uzbeks, though the Uzbek language was formerly taught in some national schools.[40]
+According to Reporters Without Borders's 2014 World Press Freedom Index, Turkmenistan had the 3rd worst press freedom conditions in the world (178/180 countries), just before North Korea and Eritrea.[41] It is considered to be one of the "10 Most Censored Countries". Each broadcast under Niyazov began with a pledge that the broadcaster's tongue will shrivel if he slanders the country, flag, or president.[42]
+Religious minorities are discriminated against for conscientious objection and practicing their religion by imprisonment, preventing foreign travel, confiscating copies of Christian literature or defamation.[43][44][45] Many detainees who have been arrested for exercising their freedom of religion or belief, were tortured and subsequently sentenced to imprisonment, many of them without a court decision.[46][47] Homosexual acts are illegal in Turkmenistan.[48]
+Despite the launch of Turkmenistan's first communication satellite—TurkmenSat 1—in April 2015, the Turkmen government banned all satellite dishes in Turkmenistan the same month. The statement issued by the government indicated that all existing satellite dishes would have to be removed or destroyed—despite the communications receiving antennas having been legally installed since 1995—in an effort by the government to fully block access of the population to many "hundreds of independent international media outlets" which are currently accessible in the country only through satellite dishes, including all leading international news channels in different languages. The main target of this campaign is Radio Azatlyk, the Turkmen-language service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. It is the only independent source of information about Turkmenistan and the world in the Turkmen language and is widely listened to in the country."[49]
+Turkmenistan is divided into five provinces or welayatlar (singular welayat) and one capital city district. The provinces are subdivided into districts (etraplar, sing. etrap), which may be either counties or cities. According to the Constitution of Turkmenistan (Article 16 in the 2008 Constitution, Article 47 in the 1992 Constitution), some cities may have the status of welaýat (province) or etrap (district).
+The Karakum Desert is one of the driest deserts in the world; some places have an average annual precipitation of only 12 mm (0.47 in). The highest temperature recorded in Ashgabat is 48.0 °C (118.4 °F) and Kerki, an extreme inland city located on the banks of the Amu Darya river, recorded 51.7 °C (125.1 °F) in July 1983, although this value is unofficial. 50.1 °C (122 °F) is the highest temperature recorded at Repetek Reserve, recognized as the highest temperature ever recorded in the whole former Soviet Union.[citation needed]
+At 488,100 km2 (188,500 sq mi), Turkmenistan is the world's 52nd-largest country. It is slightly smaller than Spain and somewhat larger than the US state of California. It lies between latitudes 35° and 43° N, and longitudes 52° and 67° E.
+Over 80% of the country is covered by the Karakum Desert. The center of the country is dominated by the Turan Depression and the Karakum Desert. The Kopet Dag Range, along the southwestern border, reaches 2,912 metres (9,554 feet) at Kuh-e Rizeh (Mount Rizeh).[51]
+The Great Balkhan Range in the west of the country (Balkan Province) and the Köýtendag Range on the southeastern border with Uzbekistan (Lebap Province) are the only other significant elevations. The Great Balkhan Range rises to 1,880 metres (6,170 ft) at Mount Arlan[52] and the highest summit in Turkmenistan is Ayrybaba in the Kugitangtau Range – 3,137 metres (10,292 ft).[53]
+The Kopet Dag mountain range forms most of the border between Turkmenistan and Iran. Rivers include the Amu Darya, the Murghab, and the Tejen.
+The climate is mostly arid desert with subtropical temperature ranges and little rainfall. Winters are mild and dry, with most precipitation falling between January and May. The area of the country with the heaviest precipitation is the Kopet Dag Range.
+The Turkmen shore along the Caspian Sea is 1,748 kilometres (1,086 mi) long. The Caspian Sea is entirely landlocked, with no natural access to the ocean, although the Volga–Don Canal allows shipping access to and from the Black Sea.
+The major cities include Aşgabat, Türkmenbaşy (formerly Krasnovodsk) and Daşoguz.
+Turkmenistan's greenhouse gas emissions per person (17.5 tCO2e) are considerably higher than the OECD average: due to natural gas seepage from oil and gas exploration, and very high energy subsidies.[54]
+The country possesses the world's fourth largest reserves of natural gas and substantial oil resources.[55]
+Turkmenistan has taken a cautious approach to economic reform, hoping to use gas and cotton sales to sustain its economy. In 2014, the unemployment rate was estimated to be 11%.[6]
+Between 1998 and 2002, Turkmenistan suffered from the continued lack of adequate export routes for natural gas and from obligations on extensive short-term external debt. At the same time, however, the value of total exports has risen sharply because of increases in international oil and gas prices. Economic prospects in the near future are discouraging because of widespread internal poverty and the burden of foreign debt.[citation needed]
+President Niyazov spent much of the country's revenue on extensively renovating cities, Ashgabat in particular. Corruption watchdogs voiced particular concern over the management of Turkmenistan's currency reserves, most of which are held in off-budget funds such as the Foreign Exchange Reserve Fund in the Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt, according to a report released in April 2006 by London-based non-governmental organization Global Witness.
+According to the decree of the Peoples' Council of 14 August 2003,[56] electricity, natural gas, water and salt will be subsidized for citizens up to 2030. Under current regulations, every citizen is entitled to 35 kilowatt hours of electricity and 50 cubic meters of natural gas each month. The state also provides 250 liters (66 gallons) of water per day.[57]
+As of May 2011[update], the Galkynysh Gas Field has the second-largest volume of gas in the world, after the South Pars field in the Persian Gulf. Reserves at the Galkynysh Gas Field are estimated at around 21.2 trillion cubic metres.[58] The Turkmenistan Natural Gas Company (Türkmengaz), under the auspices of the Ministry of Oil and Gas, controls gas extraction in the country. Gas production is the most dynamic and promising sector of the national economy.[citation needed] In 2010 Ashgabat started a policy of diversifying export routes for its raw materials.[59] China is the largest buyer of gas from Turkmenistan, via a pipeline linking the two countries through Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan[60]  and Ashgabat's main external financial donor.[61] In addition to supplying Russia, China and Iran, Ashgabat took concrete measures to accelerate progress in the construction of the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan and India pipeline (TAPI).[citation needed] Turkmenistan has previously estimated the cost of the project at $3.3 billion.[citation needed]
+Most of Turkmenistan's oil is extracted by the Turkmenistan State Company (Concern) Türkmennebit from fields at Koturdepe, Balkanabat, and Cheleken near the Caspian Sea, which have a combined estimated reserve of 700 million tons. The oil extraction industry started with the exploitation of the fields in Cheleken in 1909 (by Branobel) and in Balkanabat in the 1930s. Production leaped ahead with the discovery of the Kumdag field in 1948 and the Koturdepe field in 1959. A big part of the oil produced in Turkmenistan is refined in Turkmenbashy and Seidi refineries. Also, oil is exported by tankers through the Caspian Sea to Europe via canals.[62]
+Turkmenistan is a net exporter of electrical power to Central Asian republics and southern neighbors. The most important generating installations are the Hindukush Hydroelectric Station,[citation needed] which has a rated capacity of 350 megawatts, and the Mary Thermoelectric Power Station, which has a rated capacity of 1,370 megawatts. In 1992, electrical power production totaled 14.9 billion kilowatt-hours.[63][needs update]
+In Turkmenistan, most of irrigated land is planted with cotton,[why?] making the country the world's ninth-largest cotton producer.[64]
+During the 2011 season, Turkmenistan produced around 1.1 million tons of raw cotton, mainly from Mary, Balkan, Akhal, Lebap and Dashoguz provinces. In 2012, around 7,000 tractors, 5,000 cotton cultivators, 2,200 sowing machines and other machinery, mainly procured from Belarus and the United States, are being used. The country traditionally exports raw cotton to Russia, Iran, South Korea, United Kingdom, China, Indonesia, Turkey, Ukraine, Singapore and the Baltic states.[65]
+The tourism industry has been growing rapidly in recent[when?] years, especially medical tourism. This is primarily due to the creation of the Awaza tourist zone on the Caspian Sea.[66] Every traveler must obtain a visa before entering Turkmenistan (see Visa policy of Turkmenistan). To obtain a tourist visa, citizens of most countries need visa support from a local travel agency. For tourists visiting Turkmenistan, there are organized tours with a visit to historical sites Daşoguz, Konye-Urgench, Nisa, Merv, Mary, beach tours to Avaza and medical tours and holidays in Mollakara, Ýylysuw and Archman.
+Most of Turkmenistan's citizens are ethnic Turkmens with sizeable minorities of Uzbeks and Russians. Smaller minorities include Kazakhs, Tatars, Ukrainians, Kurds (native to Kopet Dagh mountains), Armenians, Azeris, Balochs and Pashtuns. The percentage of ethnic Russians in Turkmenistan dropped from 18.6% in 1939 to 9.5% in 1989. In 2012, it was confirmed that the population of Turkmenistan decreased due to some specific factors[which?] and is less than the previously estimated 5 million.[69] Citizens of Turkmenistan are known as Turkmenistanis.[6]
+The CIA World Factbook gives the ethnic composition of Turkmenistan as 85% Turkmen, 5% Uzbek, 4% Russian and 6% other (2003 estimates[update]).[6] According to data announced in Ashgabat in February 2001[update], 91% of the population are Turkmen, 3% are Uzbeks and 2% are Russians. Between 1989 and 2001 the number of Turkmen in Turkmenistan doubled (from 2.5 to 4.9 million), while the number of Russians dropped by two-thirds (from 334,000 to slightly over 100,000).[70]
+Turkmen is the official language of Turkmenistan (per the 1992 Constitution), although Russian still is widely spoken in cities as a "language of inter-ethnic communication". Turkmen is spoken by 72% of the population, Russian by 12% (349,000), Uzbek by 9%[6] (317,000), and other languages by 7% (Kazakh (88,000), Tatar (40,400), Ukrainian (37,118), Azerbaijani (33,000), Armenian (32,000), Northern Kurdish (20,000), Lezgian (10,400), Persian (8,000), Belarusian (5,290), Erzya (3,490), Korean (3,490), Bashkir (2,610), Karakalpak (2,540), Ossetic (1,890), Dargwa (1,600), Lak (1,590), Tajik (1,280), Georgian (1,050), Lithuanian (224), Tabasaran (180), Dungan).[71]
+According to the CIA World Factbook, Muslims constitute 93% of the population while 6% of the population are followers of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the remaining 1% religion is reported as non-religious.[6] According to a 2009 Pew Research Center report, 93.1% of Turkmenistan's population is Muslim.[73]
+The first migrants were sent as missionaries and often were adopted as patriarchs of particular clans or tribal groups, thereby becoming their "founders." Reformulation of communal identity around such figures accounts for one of the highly localized developments of Islamic practice in Turkmenistan.[74]
+In the Soviet era, all religious beliefs were attacked by the communist authorities as superstition and "vestiges of the past." Most religious schooling and religious observance were banned, and the vast majority of mosques were closed. However, since 1990, efforts have been made to regain some of the cultural heritage lost under Soviet rule.
+Former president Saparmurat Niyazov ordered that basic Islamic principles be taught in public schools. More religious institutions, including religious schools and mosques, have appeared, many with the support of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Turkey. Religious classes are held in both schools and mosques, with instruction in Arabic language, the Qur'an and the hadith, and history of Islam.[75]
+President Niyazov wrote his own religious text, published in separate volumes in 2001 and 2004, entitled the Ruhnama. The Turkmenbashi regime required that the book, which formed the basis of the educational system in Turkmenistan, be given equal status with the Quran (mosques were required to display the two books side by side). The book was heavily promoted as part of the former president's personality cult, and knowledge of the Ruhnama is required even for obtaining a driver's license.[76]
+Most Christians in Turkmenistan belong to Eastern Orthodoxy (about 5% of the population).[77] The Russian Orthodox Church is under the jurisdiction of the Russian Orthodox Archbishop in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.[78] There are three Russian Orthodox Churches in Ashgabat, two in Turkmenabat, in Mary, Turkmenbashi, Balkanabat, Bayram-Ali and Dushauguze one each.[77] The highest Russian Orthodox priest in Turkmenistan is based in Ashgabat.[79] There is one Russian orthodox monastery, in Ashgabat.[79] Turkmenistan has no Russian Orthodox seminary, however.[79]
+There are also small communities of the following denominations: the Armenian Apostolic Church, the Roman Catholic Church, Pentecostal Christians, the Protestant Word of Life Church, the Greater Grace World Outreach Church, the New Apostolic Church, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews, and several unaffiliated, nondenominational evangelical Christian groups. In addition, there are small communities of Baha'is, Baptists, Seventh-day Adventists, and Hare Krishnas.[43]
+The history of Bahá'í Faith in Turkmenistan is as old as the religion itself, and Bahá'í communities still exist today.[80] The first Bahá'í House of Worship was built in Ashgabat at the beginning of the twentieth century. It was seized by the Soviets in the 1920s and converted to an art gallery. It was heavily damaged in the earthquake of 1948 and later demolished. The site was converted to a public park.[81]
+There are a number of newspapers and monthly magazines published and online news-portal Turkmenportal in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan currently broadcasts 7 national TV channels through satellite. They are Altyn asyr, Yashlyk, Miras, Turkmenistan (in 7 languages), Türkmen Owazy, Turkmen sporty and Ashgabat. There are no commercial or private TV stations. Articles published by the state-controlled newspapers are heavily censored and written to glorify the state and its leader.
+Internet services are the least developed in Central Asia. Access to Internet services are provided by the government's ISP company "Turkmentelekom". As of 31 December 2011, it was estimated that there were 252,741 internet users in Turkmenistan or roughly 5% of total population.[85][6][needs update]
+Education is universal and mandatory through the secondary level, the total duration of which was earlier reduced from 10 to 9 years; with the new President it has been decreed that from the 2007–2008 school year on, mandatory education will be for 10 years. From 2013 secondary general education in Turkmenistan is a three-stage secondary schools for 12 years according to the following steps: Elementary school (grades 1–3), High School – the first cycle of secondary education with duration of 5 years (4–8 classes), Secondary school – the second cycle of secondary education, shall be made within 4 years (9–12 classes).[86][87]
+At the end of the 2019/2020 academic year, nearly 80,000 Turkmen pupils were graduated from high school.[88]  As of the 2019/2020 academic year, 12,242 of these students were admitted to institutions of higher education in Turkmenistan.  An additional 9,063 were admitted to the country's 42 vocational colleges.[89]
+The task for modern Turkmen architecture is diverse application of modern aesthetics, the search for an architect's own artistic style and inclusion of the existing historico-cultural environment. Most buildings are faced with white marble. Major projects such as Turkmenistan Tower, Bagt köşgi, Alem Cultural and Entertainment Center have transformed the country's skyline and promotes its contemporary identity.
+Construction of new and modernization of existing roads has an important role in the development of the country. With the increase in traffic flow is adjusted already built roads, as well as the planned construction of new highways. Construction of roads and road transport has always paid great attention. So, in 2004, Baimukhamet Kelov was removed from office by the Minister of road transport and highways Turkmenistan for embezzlement of public funds and deficiencies in the work.[90]
+Turkmenistan's cities of Turkmenbashi and Ashgabat both have scheduled commercial air service. The largest airport is Ashgabat Airport, with regular international flights. Additionally, scheduled international flights are available to Turkmenbashi. The principal government-managed airline of Turkmenistan is Turkmenistan Airlines. It is also the largest airline operating in Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan Airlines' passenger fleet is composed only of United States Boeing aircraft.[91] Air transport carries more than two thousand passengers daily in the country.[92] International flights annually transport over half a million people into and out of Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan Airlines operates regular flights to Moscow, London, Frankfurt, Birmingham, Bangkok, Delhi, Abu Dhabi, Amritsar, Kiev, Lviv, Beijing, Istanbul, Minsk, Almaty, Tashkent, and St. Petersburg.
+Since 1962, the Turkmenbashi International Seaport operates a ferry to the port of Baku, Azerbaijan. In recent years there has been increased tanker transport of oil. The port of Turkmenbashi, associated rail ferries to the ports of the Caspian Sea (Baku, Aktau). In 2011, it was announced that the port of Turkmenbashi will be completely renovated. The project involves the reconstruction of the terminal disassembly of old and construction of new berths.[93][94]
+Rail is one of the main modes of transport in Turkmenistan. Trains have been used in the nation since 1876. Originally, it was part of the Trans-Caspian railway, then the Central Asian Railway, after the collapse of the USSR, the railway network in Turkmenistan owned and operated by state-owned Türkmendemirýollary. The total length of railways is 3181 km. The passenger traffic railways of Turkmenistan are limited by the national borders of the country, except in the areas along which the transit trains are coming from Tajikistan to Uzbekistan and beyond. Locomotive fleet consists of a series of soviet-made locomotives 2TE10L, 2TE10U, 2M62U also have several locomotives made in China. Shunting locomotives include Soviet-made TEM2, TEM2U, CME3. Currently under construction railway Kazakhstan-Turkmenistan-Iran and Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Tajikistan.

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+The Basset Hound is a short-legged breed of dog in the hound family. The Basset is a scent hound that was originally bred for the purpose of hunting hare. Their sense of smell and ability to ground-scent is second only to the Bloodhound.[1]
+Basset Hounds are one of six recognised "basset"-type breeds in France. The name basset is derived from the French word bas, meaning 'low', with the attenuating suffix -et—together meaning 'rather low'. Basset Hounds are usually bicolours or tricolours of standard hound colouration.
+Bassets are large, short, solid and long, with curved sabre tails held high over their long backs. An adult dog weighs between 20 and 35 kilograms (44 and 77 lb). This breed, relative to its size, is heavier-boned than any other.[2]
+This breed, like its ancestor the Bloodhound, has a hanging skin structure, which causes the face to tend to have a sad look; this, for many people, adds to the breed's charm. The dewlap, seen as the loose, elastic skin around the neck, and the trailing ears which along with the Bloodhound are the longest of any breed, help trap the scent of what they are tracking.[3][4] Its neck is wider than its head. This, combined with the loose skin around its face and neck means that flat collars can easily be pulled off. The previous FCI standard described the characteristic skin of the Basset, which resembles its ancestor the Bloodhound as "loose". This wording has since been updated to "supple and elastic". The looseness of the skin results in the Basset's characteristic facial wrinkles. They drool a lot due to their loose flews.
+The Basset's skull is characterised by its large dolichocephalic nose, which is second only to the Bloodhound in scenting ability and number of olfactory receptor cells.
+The Basset's short legs are due to a form of dwarfism (see: Health). Their short stature can be deceiving; Bassets are surprisingly long and can reach things on table tops that other dogs of similar heights cannot. Because Bassets are so heavy and have such short legs, they are not able to hold themselves above water for very long when swimming, and should always be closely supervised in the water.
+The short-haired coat of a Basset is smooth and soft, and sheds constantly. Any hound coloration is acceptable, but this varies from country to country. They are usually Black, Tan and White tricolors or Tan and White bicolors. Tan can vary from reddish-brown and Red to Lemon. Lemon and White is a less common color. Some Bassets are also classified as gray or blue - this colour is considered rare and undesirable in the show ring.
+The source of colour is the E Locus (MC1R), which has four alleles: EM, EG, E, and e. The EM, E and e alleles are present in the Basset Hounds. The E allele allows for the production of both red and black pigments, so is present with the majority of colour patterns in Basset Hounds.
+Red and Lemon colours are caused by the e allele of MC1R. The e allele is recessive, so red and lemon dogs are homozygous e/e. Lemon dogs are lighter in colour than Reds, but the genetic mechanism that dilutes phaeomelanin in this instance is unknown. No black hairs will be present on either Red or Lemon dogs. If there are any black hairs, the dog is officially a tricolour.
+The EM allele produces a black mask on the face that may extend up around the eyes and onto the ears. This pattern is most easily seen on Mahogany dogs, although any Basset colour pattern may express the EM allele, except for "red and white" or "lemon and white" due to e/e.[6]
+Many Bassets have a clearly defined white blaze and a white tip to their tail, intended to aid hunters in finding their dogs when tracking through underbrush.
+Like all dogs, the Basset Hound's coat is naturally oily. The oil in their coat has a distinctive "hound scent", which is natural to the breed.[7]
+The Basset Hound is a friendly, outgoing, and playful dog, tolerant of children and other pets.[5] They are extremely vocal and famously devoted to tracking. They are also widely known for being stubborn. Prospective owners must be prepared to handle bassets firmly and patiently.
+Basset Hounds have large pendulous ears[8] (known as "leathers") that do not allow air to circulate inside them, unlike other breeds with erect or more open ears. Their ears must be cleaned inside and out frequently to avoid infections and ear mites.[9]
+According to the Basset Hound Club of America, the height of a Basset should not exceed 14 inches or 36 cm.[10]
+The Basset Hound's short stature is due to the genetic condition osteochondrodysplasia (meaning abnormal growth of both bone and cartilage).[11] Dwarfism of this type in most animals is traditionally known as achondroplasia. Basset Hounds, Dachshunds and Bulldogs are a few of the dog breeds classified as Achondroplastic.[12][13] This bone growth abnormality may be a predisposing factor in the development of elbow dysplasia seen in the breed, which leads to arthritis of the elbow joint.[14]
+In addition to ear problems, basset hounds may be susceptible to eye issues. Because of their droopy eyes the area under the eyeball can collect dirt and become clogged with a mucus.[15]
+Basset Hounds are prone to yeast infections[16] in the folds around the mouth,[17] where drool can collect without thoroughly drying out.[citation needed]
+Overweight Basset Hounds develop many serious health issues, including bone and joint injuries, Gastric Dilatation Volvulus and paralysis.
+The only recent mortality and morbidity surveys of Basset Hounds are from the UK:[18] a 1999 longevity survey with a small sample size of 10 deceased dogs[19] and a 2004 UK Kennel Club health survey with a larger sample size of 142 deceased dogs and 226 live dogs.[20] See Mortality and Morbidity below.
+Median longevity of Basset Hounds is about 10.3 years in France and 11.3 years in the UK,[18][21] which is a typical median longevity for purebred dogs and for breeds similar in size to Basset Hounds.[22] The oldest of the 142 deceased dogs in the 2004 UK Kennel Club survey was 16.7 years.[20] Leading causes of death in the 2004 UK Kennel Club survey were cancer (31%), old age (13%), gastric dilatation volvulus (11%), and cardiac (8%).
+Among the 226 live Basset Hounds in the 2004 UKC survey, the most-common health issues noted by owners were dermatologic (such as dermatitis), reproductive, musculoskeletal (for example, arthritis and lameness), and gastrointestinal (for example, gastric dilatation volvulus and colitis).[20] Basset Hounds are also prone to epilepsy, glaucoma, luxating patella, thrombopathia, Von Willebrand disease, hypothyroidism, hip dysplasia, and elbow dysplasia.[14]
+The modern Basset Hound descends from French dogs that were bred in Great Britain in the late 1800s.
+The earliest-known depictions of short-legged hunting dogs are engravings from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt.[23] Mummified remains of short-legged dogs from that period have been uncovered in the Dog Catacombs of Saqqara, Egypt.[24] Scent Hounds were used for hunting in both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
+The basset type originated in France, and is descended from the 6th century hounds belonging to St Hubert of Belgium, which through breeding at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Hubert eventually became what is known as the St Hubert's Hound around 1000 AD. St Hubert's original hounds are descended from the Laconian (Spartan) Hound,[25] one of four groups of dogs discerned from Greek representations and descriptions. These scent hounds were described as large, slow, 'short-legged and deep mouthed' dogs with a small head, straight nose, upright ears and long neck, and either tan with white markings or black with tan markings.[26] Laconian Hounds were reputed to not give up the scent until they found their prey. They eventually found their way to Constantinople, and from there to Europe.[25]
+The first mention of a "basset" dog appeared in La Venerie, an illustrated hunting text written by Jacques du Fouilloux in 1585.[27][28] The dogs in Fouilloux's text were used to hunt foxes and badgers. It is believed that the Basset type originated as a mutation in the litters of Norman Staghounds, a descendant of the St Hubert's Hound. These precursors were most likely bred back to the St. Hubert's Hound, among other derivative French hounds. Until after the French Revolution around the year 1789, hunting from horseback was the preserve of kings, large aristocratic families and of the country squires, and for this reason short-legged dogs were highly valued for hunting on foot.
+Basset-type hounds became popular during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852–1870). In 1853, Emmanuel Fremiet, "the leading sculptor of animals in his day" exhibited bronze sculptures of Emperor Napoleon III's basset hounds at the Paris Salon.[29] Ten years later in 1863 at the first exhibition of dogs held in Paris, basset hounds attained international attention.[30]
+The controlled breeding of the short haired basset began in France in the year 1870. From the existing bassets, Count Le Couteulx of Canteleu fixed a utilitarian type with straight front legs known as the Chien d'Artois, whereas Mr. Louis Lane developed a more spectacular type, with crooked front legs, known as the Basset Normand. These were bred together to create the original Basset Artésien Normand.[31]
+French basset hounds were being imported into England at least as early as the 1870s. While some of these dogs were certainly Basset Artésien Normands, by the 1880s linebreeding had thrown back to a different heavier type. Everett Millais, who is considered to be the father of the modern Basset Hound, bred one such dog, Nicholas, to a Bloodhound bitch named Inoculation through artificial insemination in order to create a heavier basset in England in the 1890s. The litter was delivered by caesarean section, and the surviving pups were refined with French and English bassets.[32] The first breed standard for what is now known as the Basset Hound was made in Great Britain at the end of 19th century.[33] This standard was updated in 2010.[34]
+The Basset Hound was bred to hunt, with a keen nose and short stature suited to small-game hunting on foot. A variety of Basset Hound developed purely for hunting by Colonel Morrison was admitted to the Masters of Basset Hounds Association in 1959 via an Appendix to the Stud Book. This breed differs in being straighter and longer in the leg and having shorter ears.[35]
+Basset Hounds have been featured in popular culture many times. Some artists, such as director Mamoru Oshii and webcomic artist Scott Kurtz regularly feature their pet Bassets in their work.
+On February 27, 1928, Time magazine featured a basset hound on the front cover.[36] The accompanying story was about the 52nd annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden as if observed by the basset hound puppy.
+Many cartoon dogs are based on the Basset, such as Droopy, with several Bassets appearing in animated Disney films. Syndicated comic strip Fred Basset has been a regular feature in newspapers since 1963.
+There is a Basset Hound in the Smokey and the Bandit movie series. The dog, Fred, was personally picked by lead actor Burt Reynolds because it refused to obey commands.[37]
+In the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard, a Basset Hound called Flash served as a companion to Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane.
+In the series Foofur, a Basset Hound named Dolly, is the affection of Foofur and Burt's.
+In Disney's 1986 film The Great Mouse Detective, a Basset Hound named Toby is the dog of Sherlock Holmes.
+Stella, in The Princess and the Frog, is a Basset Hound.
+In the early days of television, Elvis Presley famously sang "Hound Dog" to a disinterested top hat-wearing basset hound named Sherlock on The Steve Allen Show on July 1, 1956. Lassie had a Basset friend named Pokey early in the Lassie television series. Other famous TV Bassets are the wisecracking Cleo from The People's Choice, and the sheriff's dog Flash in The Dukes of Hazzard.
+In the television series Columbo, Lieutenant Columbo owns a basset hound named Dog. Originally, it was not going to appear in the show because Peter Falk believed that it ‘already had enough gimmicks’ but once the two met, Falk stated that Dog ‘was exactly the type of dog that Columbo would own,’ so he was added to the show and made his first appearance in 1972's Étude In Black.[38]
+In the young adult novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, the basset hound is the symbol of college society 'The Loyal Order of the Basset Hound.[39]
+Basset Hounds are often used as advertising logos. The logo for Hush Puppies brand shoes prominently features a Basset Hound whose real name is Jason.[40]  Basset hounds are occasionally referred to as "hush puppies" for that reason. A basset hound also serves as the companion to the lonely Maytag Man in Maytag appliance advertisements. Tidewater Petroleum advertised its "Flying A" gasoline using a basset hound named Axelrod.

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+Tyrannosaurus[nb 1] is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin), often called T. rex or colloquially T-Rex, is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous period, 68 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
+Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to its large and powerful hind limbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were short but unusually powerful for their size and had two clawed digits. The most complete specimen measures up to 12.3 meters (40 feet) in length though T. rex could grow to lengths of over 12.3 m (40 ft), up to 3.66 m (12 ft) tall at the hips, and according to most modern estimates 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons) in weight. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it is still among the largest known land predators and is estimated to have exerted the strongest bite force among all terrestrial animals. By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods. Some experts have suggested the dinosaur was primarily a scavenger. The question of whether Tyrannosaurus was an apex predator or a pure scavenger was among the longest debates in paleontology. Most paleontologists today accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger.
+Specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex include some that are nearly complete skeletons. Soft tissue and proteins have been reported in at least one of these specimens. The abundance of fossil material has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics. The feeding habits, physiology and potential speed of Tyrannosaurus rex are a few subjects of debate. Its taxonomy is also controversial, as some scientists consider Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to be a second Tyrannosaurus species while others maintain Tarbosaurus is a separate genus. Several other genera of North American tyrannosaurids have also been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.
+As the archetypal theropod, Tyrannosaurus has been one of the best-known dinosaurs since the early 20th century, and has been featured in film, advertising, postal stamps, and many other media.
+Teeth from what is now documented as a Tyrannosaurus rex were found in 1874 by Arthur Lakes near Golden, Colorado. In the early 1890s, John Bell Hatcher collected postcranial elements in eastern Wyoming. The fossils were believed to be from the large species Ornithomimus grandis (now Deinodon) but are now considered T. rex remains.[2]
+In 1892, Edward Drinker Cope found two vertebral fragments of large dinosaur. Cope believed the fragments belonged to an "agathaumid" (ceratopsid) dinosaur, and named them Manospondylus gigas, meaning "giant porous vertebra", in reference to the numerous openings for blood vessels he found in the bone.[2] The M. gigas remains were, in 1907, identified by Hatcher as those of a theropod rather than a ceratopsid.[3]
+Henry Fairfield Osborn recognized the similarity between Manospondylus gigas and T. rex as early as 1917, by which time the second vertebra had been lost. Owing to the fragmentary nature of the Manospondylus vertebrae, Osborn did not synonymize the two genera, instead considering the older genus indeterminate.[4] In June 2000, the Black Hills Institute found around 10% of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton (BHI 6248) at a site that might have been the original M. gigas locality.[5]
+Barnum Brown, assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History, found the first partial skeleton of T. rex in eastern Wyoming in 1900. Brown found another partial skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 1902, comprising approximately 34 fossilized bones.[6] Writing at the time Brown said "Quarry No. 1 contains the femur, pubes, humerus, three vertebrae and two undetermined bones of a large Carnivorous Dinosaur not described by Marsh.... I have never seen anything like it from the Cretaceous".[7] Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, named the second skeleton T. rex in 1905. The generic name is derived from the Greek words τύραννος (tyrannos, meaning "tyrant") and σαῦρος (sauros, meaning "lizard"). Osborn used the Latin word rex, meaning "king", for the specific name. The full binomial therefore translates to "tyrant lizard the king" or "King Tyrant Lizard", emphasizing the animal's size and perceived dominance over other species of the time.[6]
+Osborn named the other specimen Dynamosaurus imperiosus in a paper in 1905.[6] In 1906, Osborn recognized that the two skeletons were from the same species and selected Tyrannosaurus as the preferred name.[8] The original Dynamosaurus material resides in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.[9] In 1941, the T. rex type specimen was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for $7,000.[7] Dynamosaurus would later be honored by the 2018 description of another species of tyrannosaurid by Andrew McDonald and colleagues, Dynamoterror dynastes, whose name was chosen in reference to the 1905 name, as it had been a "childhood favorite" of McDonald's.[10]
+From the 1910s through the end of the 1950s, Barnum's discoveries remained the only specimens of Tyrannosaurus, as the Great Depression and wars kept many paleontologists out of the field.[5]
+Beginning in the 1960s, there was renewed interest in Tyrannosaurus, resulting in recovery of 42 skeletons (5-80% complete by bone count) from Western North America.[5] In 1967, Dr. William MacMannis located and recovered the skeleton named "MOR 008", which is 15% complete by bone count and has a reconstructed skull displayed at the Museum of the Rockies. The 1990s saw numerous discoveries, with nearly twice as many finds as in all previous years, including two of the most complete skeletons found to date: Sue and Stan.[5]
+Sue Hendrickson, an amateur paleontologist, discovered the most complete (approximately 85%) and largest Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation on August 12, 1990. The specimen Sue, named after the discoverer, was the object of a legal battle over its ownership. In 1997, the litigation was settled in favor of Maurice Williams, the original land owner. The fossil collection was purchased by the Field Museum of Natural History at auction for $7.6 million, making it the most expensive dinosaur skeleton to date. From 1998 to 1999, Field Museum of Natural History staff spent over 25,000 hours taking the rock off the bones.[11] The bones were then shipped to New Jersey where the mount was constructed, then shipped back to Chicago for the final assembly. The mounted skeleton opened to the public on May 17, 2000 in the Field Museum of Natural History. A study of this specimen's fossilized bones showed that Sue reached full size at age 19 and died at the age of 28, the longest estimated life of any tyrannosaur known.[12]
+Another Tyrannosaurus, nicknamed Stan (BHI 3033), in honor of amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, was recovered from the Hell Creek Formation in 1992. Stan is the second most complete skeleton found, with 199 bones recovered representing 70% of the total.[13] This tyrannosaur also had many bone pathologies, including broken and healed ribs, a broken (and healed) neck, and a substantial hole in the back of its head, about the size of a Tyrannosaurus tooth.[14]
+In 1998, Bucky Derflinger noticed one of Bucky's toes exposed above ground, making Derflinger, who was 20 years old at the time, the youngest person to discover a Tyrannosaurus. The specimen was a young adult, 3.0 metres (10 ft) tall and 11 metres (35 ft) long. Bucky is the first Tyrannosaurus to be found that preserved a furcula (wishbone). Bucky is permanently displayed at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.[15]
+In the summer of 2000, crews organized by Jack Horner discovered five Tyrannosaurus skeletons near the Fort Peck Reservoir.[16] In 2001, a 50% complete skeleton of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation by a crew from the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Dubbed Jane (BMRP 2002.4.1), the find was thought to be the first known skeleton of a pygmy tyrannosaurid, Nanotyrannus, but subsequent research revealed that it is more likely a juvenile Tyrannosaurus, and the most complete juvenile example known;[17] Jane is exhibited at the Burpee Museum of Natural History.[18] In 2002, a skeleton named Wyrex, discovered by amateur collectors Dan Wells and Don Wyrick, had 114 bones and was 38% complete. The dig was concluded over 3 weeks in 2004 by the Black Hills Institute with the first live online Tyrannosaurus excavation providing daily reports, photos, and video.[5]
+In 2006, Montana State University revealed that it possessed the largest Tyrannosaurus skull yet discovered (from a specimen named MOR 008), measuring 5 feet (152 cm) long.[19] Subsequent comparisons indicated that the longest head was 136.5 centimetres (53.7 in) (from specimen LACM 23844) and the widest head was 90.2 centimetres (35.5 in) (from Sue).[20]
+Two isolated fossilized footprints have been tentatively assigned to T. rex. The first was discovered at Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, in 1983 by American geologist Charles Pillmore. Originally thought to belong to a hadrosaurid, examination of the footprint revealed a large 'heel' unknown in ornithopod dinosaur tracks, and traces of what may have been a hallux, the dewclaw-like fourth digit of the tyrannosaur foot. The footprint was published as the ichnogenus Tyrannosauripus pillmorei in 1994, by Martin Lockley and Adrian Hunt. Lockley and Hunt suggested that it was very likely the track was made by a T. rex, which would make it the first known footprint from this species. The track was made in what was once a vegetated wetland mud flat. It measures 83 centimeters (33 in) long by 71 centimeters (28 in) wide.[21]
+A second footprint that may have been made by a Tyrannosaurus was first reported in 2007 by British paleontologist Phil Manning, from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. This second track measures 72 centimeters (28 in) long, shorter than the track described by Lockley and Hunt. Whether or not the track was made by Tyrannosaurus is unclear, though Tyrannosaurus and Nanotyrannus are the only large theropods known to have existed in the Hell Creek Formation.[22][23]
+A set of footprints in Glenrock, Wyoming dating to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous and hailing from the Lance Formation were described by Scott Persons, Phil Currie and colleagues in 2016, and are believed to belong to either a juvenile T. rex or the dubious tyrannosaurid Nanotyrannus lancensis. From measurements and based on the positions of the footprints, the animal was believed to be traveling at a walking speed of around 2.8 to 5 miles per hour and was estimated to have a hip height of 1.56 m (5.1 ft) to 2.06 m (6.8 ft).[24][25][26] A follow-up paper appeared in 2017, increasing the speed estimations by 50-80%.[27]
+T. rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time. One of the largest and the most complete specimens, nicknamed Sue (FMNH PR2081), is located at the Field Museum of Natural History. Sue measured 12.3–12.8 meters (40–42 ft) long,[28][29] was 3.66 meters (12 ft) tall at the hips,[30] and according to the most recent studies, using a variety of techniques, estimated to have weighed between 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons).[29][31] A specimen nicknamed Scotty (RSM P2523.8), located at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, is reported to measure 13 m (43 ft) in length. Using a mass estimation technique that extrapolates from the circumference of the femur, Scotty was estimated as the largest known specimen at 8.8 metric tons (9.7 short tons) in weight.[32][33]
+Not every adult Tyrannosaurus specimen recovered is as big. Historically average adult mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from as low as 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons),[34][35] to more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons),[36] with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 metric tons (6.0 short tons) and 8.0 metric tons (8.8 short tons).[29][37][38][39][40]
+The largest known T. rex skull is 1.52 meters (5 ft) in length.[30] Large fenestrae (openings) in the skull reduced weight, as in all carnivorous theropods. In other respects Tyrannosaurus's skull was significantly different from those of large non-tyrannosaurid theropods. It was extremely wide at the rear but had a narrow snout, allowing unusually good binocular vision.[41][42] The skull bones were massive and the nasals and some other bones were fused, preventing movement between them; but many were pneumatized (contained a "honeycomb" of tiny air spaces) and thus lighter. These and other skull-strengthening features are part of the tyrannosaurid trend towards an increasingly powerful bite, which easily surpassed that of all non-tyrannosaurids.[43][44][45] The tip of the upper jaw was U-shaped (most non-tyrannosauroid carnivores had V-shaped upper jaws), which increased the amount of tissue and bone a tyrannosaur could rip out with one bite, although it also increased the stresses on the front teeth.[46]
+The teeth of T. rex displayed marked heterodonty (differences in shape).[47][48] The premaxillary teeth, four per side at the front of the upper jaw, were closely packed, D-shaped in cross-section, had reinforcing ridges on the rear surface, were incisiform (their tips were chisel-like blades) and curved backwards. The D-shaped cross-section, reinforcing ridges and backwards curve reduced the risk that the teeth would snap when Tyrannosaurus bit and pulled. The remaining teeth were robust, like "lethal bananas" rather than daggers, more widely spaced and also had reinforcing ridges.[49] Those in the upper jaw, twelve per side in mature individuals,[47] were larger than their counterparts of the lower jaw, except at the rear. The largest found so far is estimated to have been 30.5 centimeters (12 in) long including the root when the animal was alive, making it the largest tooth of any carnivorous dinosaur yet found.[50] The lower jaw was robust. Its front dentary bone bore thirteen teeth. Behind the tooth row, the lower jaw became notably taller.[47] The upper and lower jaws of Tyrannosaurus, like those of many dinosaurs, possessed numerous foramina, or small holes in the bone. Various functions have been proposed for these foramina, such as a crocodile-like sensory system[51] or evidence of extra-oral structures such as scales or potentially lips.[52][53]
+The vertebral column of Tyrannosaurus consisted of ten neck vertebrae, thirteen back vertebrae and five sacral vertebrae. The number of tail vertebrae is unknown and could well have varied between individuals but probably numbered at least forty. Sue was mounted with forty-seven of such caudal vertebrae.[47] The neck of T. rex formed a natural S-shaped curve like that of other theropods. Compared to these, it was exceptionally short, deep and muscular to support the massive head. The second vertebra, the axis, was especially short. The remaining neck vertebrae were weakly opisthocoelous, i.e. with a convex front of the vertebral body and a concave rear. The vertebral bodies had single pleurocoels, pneumatic depressions created by air sacs, on their sides.[47] The vertebral bodies of the torso were robust but with a narrow waist. Their undersides were keeled. The front sides were concave with a deep vertical trough. They had large pleurocoels. Their neural spines had very rough front and rear sides for the attachment of strong tendons. The sacral vertebrae were fused to each other, both in their vertebral bodies and neural spines. They were pneumatized. They were connected to the pelvis by transverse processes and sacral ribs. The tail was heavy and moderately long, in order to balance the massive head and torso and to provide space for massive locomotor muscles that attached to the thighbones. The thirteenth tail vertebra formed the transition point between the deep tail base and the middle tail that was stiffened by rather long front articulation processes. The underside of the trunk was covered by eighteen or nineteen pairs of segmented belly ribs.[47]
+The shoulder girdle was longer than the entire forelimb. The shoulder blade had a narrow shaft but was exceptionally expanded at its upper end. It connected via a long forward protrusion to the coracoid, which was rounded. Both shoulder blades were connected by a small furcula. The paired breast bones possibly were made of cartilage only.[47]
+The forelimb or arm was very short. The upper arm bone, the humerus, was short but robust. It had a narrow upper end with an exceptionally rounded head. The lower arm bones, the ulna and radius, were straight elements, much shorter than the humerus. The second metacarpal was longer and wider than the first, whereas normally in theropods the opposite is true. The forelimbs had only two clawed fingers,[47] along with an additional splint-like small third metacarpal representing the remnant of a third digit.[54]
+The pelvis was a large structure. Its upper bone, the ilium, was both very long and high, providing an extensive attachment area for hindlimb muscles. The front pubic bone ended in an enormous pubic boot, longer than the entire shaft of the element. The rear ischium was slender and straight, pointing obliquely to behind and below.[47]
+In contrast to the arms, the hindlimbs were among the longest in proportion to body size of any theropod. In the foot, the metatarsus was "arctometatarsalian", meaning that the part of the third metatarsal near the ankle was pinched. The third metatarsal was also exceptionally sinuous.[47] Compensating for the immense bulk of the animal, many bones throughout the skeleton were hollowed, reducing its weight without significant loss of strength.[47]
+The discovery of feathered dinosaurs led to debate regarding whether, and to what extent, Tyrannosaurus might have been feathered.[55][56] Filamentous structures, which are commonly recognized as the precursors of feathers, have been reported in the small-bodied, basal tyrannosauroid Dilong paradoxus from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China in 2004.[57] Because integumentary impressions of larger tyrannosauroids known at that time showed evidence of scales, the researchers who studied Dilong speculated that insulating feathers might have been lost by larger species due to their smaller surface-to-volume ratio.[57] The subsequent discovery of the giant species Yutyrannus huali, also from the Yixian, showed that even some large tyrannosauroids had feathers covering much of their bodies, casting doubt on the hypothesis that they were a size-related feature.[58] A 2017 study reviewed known skin impressions of tyrannosaurids, including those of a Tyrannosaurus specimen nicknamed "Wyrex" (BHI 6230) which preserves patches of mosaic scales on the tail, hip, and neck.[5] The study concluded that feather covering of large tyrannosaurids such as Tyrannosaurus was, if present, limited to the upper side of the trunk.[55]
+A conference abstract published in 2016 posited that theropods such as Tyrannosaurus had their upper teeth covered in lips, instead of bare teeth as seen in crocodilians. This was based on the presence of enamel, which according to the study needs to remain hydrated, an issue not faced by aquatic animals like crocodilians.[53] A 2017 analytical study proposed that tyrannosaurids had large, flat scales on their snouts instead of lips.[51][59]
+Tyrannosaurus is the type genus of the superfamily Tyrannosauroidea, the family Tyrannosauridae, and the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae; in other words it is the standard by which paleontologists decide whether to include other species in the same group. Other members of the tyrannosaurine subfamily include the North American Daspletosaurus and the Asian Tarbosaurus,[17][60] both of which have occasionally been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.[61] Tyrannosaurids were once commonly thought to be descendants of earlier large theropods such as megalosaurs and carnosaurs, although more recently they were reclassified with the generally smaller coelurosaurs.[46]
+In 1955, Soviet paleontologist Evgeny Maleev named a new species, Tyrannosaurus bataar, from Mongolia.[62] By 1965, this species had been renamed Tarbosaurus bataar.[63] Despite the renaming, many phylogenetic analyses have found Tarbosaurus bataar to be the sister taxon of T. rex,[60] and it has often been considered an Asian species of Tyrannosaurus.[46][64][65]  The discovery of the tyrannosaurid Lythronax further indicates that Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are closely related, forming a clade with fellow Asian tyrannosaurid Zhuchengtyrannus, with Lythronax being their sister taxon.[66][67] A further study from 2016 by Steve Brusatte, Thomas Carr and colleagues, also indicates that Tyrannosaurus may have been an immigrant from Asia, as well as a possible descendant of Tarbosaurus.[68]
+In 2001, various tyrannosaurid teeth and a metatarsal unearthed in a quarry near Zhucheng, China were assigned by Chinese paleontologist Hu Chengzhi to the newly erected Tyrannosaurus zhuchengensis. However, in a nearby site, a right maxilla and left jawbone were assigned to the newly erected tyrannosaurid genus Zhuchengtyrannus in 2011, and it is possible T. zhuchengensis is synonymous with Zhuchengtyrannus. In any case, T. zhuchengensis is considered to be a nomen dubium as the holotype lacks diagnostic features below the level Tyrannosaurinae.[69]
+Below is the cladogram of Tyrannosauridae based on the phylogenetic analysis conducted by Loewen and colleagues in 2013.[66]
+Gorgosaurus libratus
+Albertosaurus sarcophagus
+Dinosaur Park tyrannosaurid
+Daspletosaurus torosus
+Two Medicine tyrannosaurid
+Teratophoneus curriei
+Bistahieversor sealeyi
+Lythronax argestes
+Tyrannosaurus rex
+Tarbosaurus bataar
+Zhuchengtyrannus magnus
+Other tyrannosaurid fossils found in the same formations as T. rex were originally classified as separate taxa, including Aublysodon and Albertosaurus megagracilis,[61] the latter being named Dinotyrannus megagracilis in 1995.[70] These fossils are now universally considered to belong to juvenile T. rex.[71] A small but nearly complete skull from Montana, 60 centimeters (2.0 ft) long, might be an exception. This skull, CMNH 7541, was originally classified as a species of Gorgosaurus (G. lancensis) by Charles W. Gilmore in 1946.[72] In 1988, the specimen was re-described by Robert T. Bakker, Phil Currie, and Michael Williams, then the curator of paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where the original specimen was housed and is now on display. Their initial research indicated that the skull bones were fused, and that it therefore represented an adult specimen. In light of this, Bakker and colleagues assigned the skull to a new genus named Nanotyrannus (meaning "dwarf tyrant", for its apparently small adult size). The specimen is estimated to have been around 5.2 metres (17 ft) long when it died.[73] However, In 1999, a detailed analysis by Thomas Carr revealed the specimen to be a juvenile, leading Carr and many other paleontologists to consider it a juvenile T. rex individual.[74][75]
+In 2001, a more complete juvenile tyrannosaur (nicknamed "Jane", catalog number BMRP 2002.4.1), belonging to the same species as the original Nanotyrannus specimen, was uncovered. This discovery prompted a conference on tyrannosaurs focused on the issues of Nanotyrannus validity at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in 2005. Several paleontologists who had previously published opinions that N. lancensis was a valid species, including Currie and Williams, saw the discovery of "Jane" as a confirmation that Nanotyrannus was, in fact, a juvenile T. rex.[76][77][78] Peter Larson continued to support the hypothesis that N. lancensis was a separate but closely related species, based on skull features such as two more teeth in both jaws than T. rex; as well as proportionately larger hands with phalanges on the third metacarpal and different wishbone anatomy in an undescribed specimen. He also argued that Stygivenator, generally considered to be a juvenile T. rex, may be a younger Nanotyrannus specimen.[79][80] Later research revealed that other tyrannosaurids such as Gorgosaurus also experienced reduction in tooth count during growth,[74] and given the disparity in tooth count between individuals of the same age group in this genus and Tyrannosaurus, this feature may also be due to individual variation.[75] In 2013, Carr noted that all of the differences claimed to support Nanotyrannus have turned out to be individually or ontogenetically variable features or products of distortion of the bones.[81]
+In 2016, analysis of limb proportions by Persons and Currie suggested Nanotyrannus specimens to have differing cursoriality levels, potentially separating it from T. rex.[82] However, paleontologist Manabu Sakomoto has commented that this conclusion may be impacted by low sample size, and the discrepancy does not necessarily reflect taxonomic distinction.[83] In 2016, Joshua Schmerge argued for Nanotyrannus' validity based on skull features, including a dentary groove in BMRP 2002.4.1's skull. According to Schmerge, as that feature is absent in T. rex and found only in Dryptosaurus and albertosaurines, this suggests Nanotyrannus is a distinct taxon within the Albertosaurinae.[84] The same year, Carr and colleagues noted that this was not sufficient enough to clarify Nanotyrannus' validity or classification, being a common and ontogenetically variable feature among tyrannosauroids.[85]
+A 2020 study by Holly Woodward and colleagues showed the specimens referred to Nanotyrannus were all ontogenetically immature and found it probable that these specimens belonged to T. rex.[86] The same year, Carr published a paper on T. rex's growth history, finding that CMNH 7541 fit within the expected ontogenetic variation of the taxon and displayed juvenile characteristics found in other specimens. It was classified as a juvenile, under 13 years old with a skull less than 80 cm (31 in). No significant sexual or phylogenetic variation was discernible among any of the 44 specimens studied, with Carr stating that characters of potential phylogenetic importance decrease throughout age at the same rate as growth occurs.[87] Discussing the paper's results, Carr described how all "Nanotyrannus" specimens formed a continual growth transition between the smallest juveniles and the subadults, unlike what would be expected if it were a distinct taxon where the specimens would group to the exclusion of Tyrannosaurus. Carr concluded that "the 'nanomorphs' are not all that similar to each other and instead form an important bridge in the growth series of T. rex that captures the beginnings of the profound change from the shallow skull of juveniles to the deep skull that is seen in fully-developed adults."[88]
+The identification of several specimens as juvenile T. rex has allowed scientists to document ontogenetic changes in the species, estimate the lifespan, and determine how quickly the animals would have grown. The smallest known individual (LACM 28471, the "Jordan theropod") is estimated to have weighed only 30 kg (66 lb), while the largest, such as FMNH PR2081 (Sue) most likely weighed about 5,650 kg (12,460 lb). Histologic analysis of T. rex bones showed LACM 28471 had aged only 2 years when it died, while Sue was 28 years old, an age which may have been close to the maximum for the species.[37]
+Histology has also allowed the age of other specimens to be determined. Growth curves can be developed when the ages of different specimens are plotted on a graph along with their mass. A T. rex growth curve is S-shaped, with juveniles remaining under 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) until approximately 14 years of age, when body size began to increase dramatically. During this rapid growth phase, a young T. rex would gain an average of 600 kg (1,300 lb) a year for the next four years. At 18 years of age, the curve plateaus again, indicating that growth slowed dramatically. For example, only 600 kg (1,300 lb) separated the 28-year-old Sue from a 22-year-old Canadian specimen (RTMP 81.12.1).[37] A 2004 histological study performed by different workers corroborates these results, finding that rapid growth began to slow at around 16 years of age.[89]
+A study by Hutchinson and colleagues in 2011 corroborated the previous estimation methods in general, but their estimation of peak growth rates is significantly higher; it found that the "maximum growth rates for T. rex during the exponential stage are 1790 kg/year".[29] Although these results were much higher than previous estimations, the authors noted that these results significantly lowered the great difference between its actual growth rate and the one which would be expected of an animal of its size.[29] The sudden change in growth rate at the end of the growth spurt may indicate physical maturity, a hypothesis which is supported by the discovery of medullary tissue in the femur of a 16 to 20-year-old T. rex from Montana (MOR 1125, also known as B-rex). Medullary tissue is found only in female birds during ovulation, indicating that B-rex was of reproductive age.[90] Further study indicates an age of 18 for this specimen.[91] In 2016, it was finally confirmed by Mary Higby Schweitzer and Lindsay Zanno and colleagues that the soft tissue within the femur of MOR 1125 was medullary tissue. This also confirmed the identity of the specimen as a female. The discovery of medullary bone tissue within Tyrannosaurus may prove valuable in determining the sex of other dinosaur species in future examinations, as the chemical makeup of medullary tissue is unmistakable.[92] Other tyrannosaurids exhibit extremely similar growth curves, although with lower growth rates corresponding to their lower adult sizes.[93]
+An additional study published in 2020 by Woodward and colleagues, for the journal Science Advances indicates that during their growth from juvenile to adult, Tyrannosaurus was capable of slowing down its growth to counter environmental factors such as lack of food. The study, focusing on two juvenile specimens between 13 and 15 years old housed at the Burpee Museum in Illinois, indicates that the rate of maturation for Tyrannosaurus was dependent on resource abundance. This study also indicates that in such changing environments, Tyrannosaurus was particularly well-suited to an environment that shifted yearly in regards to resource abundance, hinting that other midsize predators might have had difficulty surviving in such harsh conditions and explaining the niche partitioning between juvenile and adult tyrannosaurs. The study further indicates that Tyrannosaurus and the dubious genus Nanotyrannus are synonymous, due to analysis of the growth rings in the bones of the two specimens studied.[94][95]
+Over half of the known T. rex specimens appear to have died within six years of reaching sexual maturity, a pattern which is also seen in other tyrannosaurs and in some large, long-lived birds and mammals today. These species are characterized by high infant mortality rates, followed by relatively low mortality among juveniles. Mortality increases again following sexual maturity, partly due to the stresses of reproduction. One study suggests that the rarity of juvenile T. rex fossils is due in part to low juvenile mortality rates; the animals were not dying in large numbers at these ages, and so were not often fossilized. This rarity may also be due to the incompleteness of the fossil record or to the bias of fossil collectors towards larger, more spectacular specimens.[93] In a 2013 lecture, Thomas Holtz Jr. suggested that dinosaurs "lived fast and died young" because they reproduced quickly whereas mammals have long life spans because they take longer to reproduce.[96] Gregory S. Paul also writes that Tyrannosaurus reproduced quickly and died young, but attributes their short life spans to the dangerous lives they lived.[97]
+As the number of known specimens increased, scientists began to analyze the variation between individuals and discovered what appeared to be two distinct body types, or morphs, similar to some other theropod species. As one of these morphs was more solidly built, it was termed the 'robust' morph while the other was termed 'gracile'. Several morphological differences associated with the two morphs were used to analyze sexual dimorphism in T. rex, with the 'robust' morph usually suggested to be female. For example, the pelvis of several 'robust' specimens seemed to be wider, perhaps to allow the passage of eggs.[98] It was also thought that the 'robust' morphology correlated with a reduced chevron on the first tail vertebra, also ostensibly to allow eggs to pass out of the reproductive tract, as had been erroneously reported for crocodiles.[99]
+In recent years, evidence for sexual dimorphism has been weakened. A 2005 study reported that previous claims of sexual dimorphism in crocodile chevron anatomy were in error, casting doubt on the existence of similar dimorphism between T. rex sexes.[100] A full-sized chevron was discovered on the first tail vertebra of Sue, an extremely robust individual, indicating that this feature could not be used to differentiate the two morphs anyway. As T. rex specimens have been found from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, differences between individuals may be indicative of geographic variation rather than sexual dimorphism. The differences could also be age-related, with 'robust' individuals being older animals.[47]
+Only a single T. rex specimen has been conclusively shown to belong to a specific sex. Examination of B-rex demonstrated the preservation of soft tissue within several bones. Some of this tissue has been identified as a medullary tissue, a specialized tissue grown only in modern birds as a source of calcium for the production of eggshell during ovulation. As only female birds lay eggs, medullary tissue is only found naturally in females, although males are capable of producing it when injected with female reproductive hormones like estrogen. This strongly suggests that B-rex was female, and that she died during ovulation.[90] Recent research has shown that medullary tissue is never found in crocodiles, which are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, aside from birds. The shared presence of medullary tissue in birds and theropod dinosaurs is further evidence of the close evolutionary relationship between the two.[101]
+Like many bipedal dinosaurs, T. rex was historically depicted as a 'living tripod', with the body at 45 degrees or less from the vertical and the tail dragging along the ground, similar to a kangaroo. This concept dates from Joseph Leidy's 1865 reconstruction of Hadrosaurus, the first to depict a dinosaur in a bipedal posture.[102] In 1915, convinced that the creature stood upright, Henry Fairfield Osborn, former president of the American Museum of Natural History, further reinforced the notion in unveiling the first complete T. rex skeleton arranged this way. It stood in an upright pose for 77 years, until it was dismantled in 1992.[103]
+By 1970, scientists realized this pose was incorrect and could not have been maintained by a living animal, as it would have resulted in the dislocation or weakening of several joints, including the hips and the articulation between the head and the spinal column.[104] The inaccurate AMNH mount inspired similar depictions in many films and paintings (such as Rudolph Zallinger's famous mural The Age of Reptiles in Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History)[105] until the 1990s, when films such as Jurassic Park introduced a more accurate posture to the general public.[106] Modern representations in museums, art, and film show T. rex with its body approximately parallel to the ground with the tail extended behind the body to balance the head.[107]
+To sit down, Tyrannosaurus may have settled its weight backwards and rested its weight on a pubic boot, the wide expansion at the end of the pubis in some dinosaurs. With its weight rested on the pelvis, it may have been free to move the hindlimbs. Getting back up again might have involved some stabilization from the diminutive forelimbs.[108][104] The latter known as Newman's pushup theory has been debated. Nonetheless, Tyrannosaurus was probably able to get up if it fell, which only would have required placing the limbs below the center of gravity, with the tail as an effective counterbalance.[109]
+When T. rex was first discovered, the humerus was the only element of the forelimb known.[6] For the initial mounted skeleton as seen by the public in 1915, Osborn substituted longer, three-fingered forelimbs like those of Allosaurus.[4] A year earlier, Lawrence Lambe described the short, two-fingered forelimbs of the closely related Gorgosaurus.[110] This strongly suggested that T. rex had similar forelimbs, but this hypothesis was not confirmed until the first complete T. rex forelimbs were identified in 1989, belonging to MOR 555 (the "Wankel rex").[111][112] The remains of Sue also include complete forelimbs.[47] T. rex arms are very small relative to overall body size, measuring only 1 meter (3.3 ft) long, and some scholars have labelled them as vestigial. The bones show large areas for muscle attachment, indicating considerable strength. This was recognized as early as 1906 by Osborn, who speculated that the forelimbs may have been used to grasp a mate during copulation.[8] It has also been suggested that the forelimbs were used to assist the animal in rising from a prone position.[104]
+Another possibility is that the forelimbs held struggling prey while it was killed by the tyrannosaur's enormous jaws. This hypothesis may be supported by biomechanical analysis. T. rex forelimb bones exhibit extremely thick cortical bone, which has been interpreted as evidence that they were developed to withstand heavy loads. The biceps brachii muscle of an adult T. rex was capable of lifting 199 kilograms (439 lb) by itself; other muscles such as the brachialis would work along with the biceps to make elbow flexion even more powerful. The M. biceps muscle of T. rex was 3.5 times as powerful as the human equivalent. A T. rex forearm had a limited range of motion, with the shoulder and elbow joints allowing only 40 and 45 degrees of motion, respectively. In contrast, the same two joints in Deinonychus allow up to 88 and 130 degrees of motion, respectively, while a human arm can rotate 360 degrees at the shoulder and move through 165 degrees at the elbow. The heavy build of the arm bones, strength of the muscles, and limited range of motion may indicate a system evolved to hold fast despite the stresses of a struggling prey animal. In the first detailed scientific description of Tyrannosaurus forelimbs, paleontologists Kenneth Carpenter and Matt Smith dismissed notions that the forelimbs were useless or that T. rex was an obligate scavenger.[113]
+According to paleontologist Steven M. Stanley, the 1 metre (3.3 ft) arms of T. rex were used for slashing prey, especially by using its claws to rapidly inflict long, deep gashes to its prey, although this concept is disputed by others believing the arms were used for grasping a sexual partner.[114]
+As of 2014, it is not clear if Tyrannosaurus was endothermic (“warm-blooded”). Tyrannosaurus, like most dinosaurs, was long thought to have an ectothermic ("cold-blooded") reptilian metabolism. The idea of dinosaur ectothermy was challenged by scientists like Robert T. Bakker and John Ostrom in the early years of the "Dinosaur Renaissance", beginning in the late 1960s.[115][116] T. rex itself was claimed to have been endothermic ("warm-blooded"), implying a very active lifestyle.[35] Since then, several paleontologists have sought to determine the ability of Tyrannosaurus to regulate its body temperature. Histological evidence of high growth rates in young T. rex, comparable to those of mammals and birds, may support the hypothesis of a high metabolism. Growth curves indicate that, as in mammals and birds, T. rex growth was limited mostly to immature animals, rather than the indeterminate growth seen in most other vertebrates.[89]
+Oxygen isotope ratios in fossilized bone are sometimes used to determine the temperature at which the bone was deposited, as the ratio between certain isotopes correlates with temperature. In one specimen, the isotope ratios in bones from different parts of the body indicated a temperature difference of no more than 4 to 5 °C (7 to 9 °F) between the vertebrae of the torso and the tibia of the lower leg. This small temperature range between the body core and the extremities was claimed by paleontologist Reese Barrick and geochemist William Showers to indicate that T. rex maintained a constant internal body temperature (homeothermy) and that it enjoyed a metabolism somewhere between ectothermic reptiles and endothermic mammals.[117] Other scientists have pointed out that the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the fossils today does not necessarily represent the same ratio in the distant past, and may have been altered during or after fossilization (diagenesis).[118] Barrick and Showers have defended their conclusions in subsequent papers, finding similar results in another theropod dinosaur from a different continent and tens of millions of years earlier in time (Giganotosaurus).[119] Ornithischian dinosaurs also showed evidence of homeothermy, while varanid lizards from the same formation did not.[120] Even if T. rex does exhibit evidence of homeothermy, it does not necessarily mean that it was endothermic. Such thermoregulation may also be explained by gigantothermy, as in some living sea turtles.[121][122][123] Similar to contemporary alligators, dorsotemporal fenestra in Tyrannosaurus's skull may have aided thermoregulation.[124]
+In the March 2005 issue of Science, Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and colleagues announced the recovery of soft tissue from the marrow cavity of a fossilized leg bone from a T. rex. The bone had been intentionally, though reluctantly, broken for shipping and then not preserved in the normal manner, specifically because Schweitzer was hoping to test it for soft tissue.[125] Designated as the Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125, or MOR 1125, the dinosaur was previously excavated from the Hell Creek Formation. Flexible, bifurcating blood vessels and fibrous but elastic bone matrix tissue were recognized. In addition, microstructures resembling blood cells were found inside the matrix and vessels. The structures bear resemblance to ostrich blood cells and vessels. Whether an unknown process, distinct from normal fossilization, preserved the material, or the material is original, the researchers do not know, and they are careful not to make any claims about preservation.[126] If it is found to be original material, any surviving proteins may be used as a means of indirectly guessing some of the DNA content of the dinosaurs involved, because each protein is typically created by a specific gene. The absence of previous finds may be the result of people assuming preserved tissue was impossible, therefore not looking. Since the first, two more tyrannosaurs and a hadrosaur have also been found to have such tissue-like structures.[125] Research on some of the tissues involved has suggested that birds are closer relatives to tyrannosaurs than other modern animals.[127]
+In studies reported in Science in April 2007, Asara and colleagues concluded that seven traces of collagen proteins detected in purified T. rex bone most closely match those reported in chickens, followed by frogs and newts. The discovery of proteins from a creature tens of millions of years old, along with similar traces the team found in a mastodon bone at least 160,000 years old, upends the conventional view of fossils and may shift paleontologists' focus from bone hunting to biochemistry. Until these finds, most scientists presumed that fossilization replaced all living tissue with inert minerals. Paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, who was not part of the studies, called the finds "a milestone", and suggested that dinosaurs could "enter the field of molecular biology and really slingshot paleontology into the modern world".[128]
+The presumed soft tissue was called into question by Thomas Kaye of the University of Washington and his co-authors in 2008. They contend that what was really inside the tyrannosaur bone was slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.[129] The researchers found that what previously had been identified as remnants of blood cells, because of the presence of iron, were actually framboids, microscopic mineral spheres bearing iron. They found similar spheres in a variety of other fossils from various periods, including an ammonite. In the ammonite they found the spheres in a place where the iron they contain could not have had any relationship to the presence of blood.[130] Schweitzer has strongly criticized Kaye's claims and argues that there is no reported evidence that biofilms can produce branching, hollow tubes like those noted in her study.[131] San Antonio, Schweitzer and colleagues published an analysis in 2011 of what parts of the collagen had been recovered, finding that it was the inner parts of the collagen coil that had been preserved, as would have been expected from a long period of protein degradation.[132] Other research challenges the identification of soft tissue as biofilm and confirms finding "branching, vessel-like structures" from within fossilized bone.[133]
+Scientists have produced a wide range of possible maximum running speeds for Tyrannosaurus, mostly around 11 meters per second (40 km/h; 25 mph), but as low as 5–11 meters per second (18–40 km/h; 11–25 mph) and as high as 20 meters per second (72 km/h; 45 mph). Estimates that Tyrannosaurus had relatively larger leg muscles than any animal alive today indicate that fast running was possible at speeds of 40–70 kilometers per hour (25–43 mph).[134] Researchers have relied on various estimating techniques because, while there are many tracks of large theropods walking, none had the pattern of running.[135]
+A 2002 report used a mathematical model (validated by applying it to three living animals: alligators, chickens, and humans; and eight more species, including emus and ostriches[135]) to gauge the leg muscle mass needed for fast running (over 40 km/h or 25 mph).[134] Scientists who think that Tyrannosaurus was able to run point out that hollow bones and other features that would have lightened its body may have kept adult weight to a mere 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons) or so, or that other animals like ostriches and horses with long, flexible legs are able to achieve high speeds through slower but longer strides.[135] Proposed top speeds exceeded 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph) for Tyrannosaurus, but were deemed infeasible because they would require exceptional leg muscles of approximately 40–86% of total body mass. Even moderately fast speeds would have required large leg muscles. If the muscle mass was less, only 18 kilometers per hour (11 mph) for walking or jogging would have been possible.[134] Holtz noted that tyrannosaurids and some closely related groups had significantly longer distal hindlimb components (shin plus foot plus toes) relative to the femur length than most other theropods, and that tyrannosaurids and their close relatives had a tightly interlocked metatarsus (foot bones).[136] The third metatarsal was squeezed between the second and fourth metatarsals to form a single unit called an arctometatarsus. This ankle feature may have helped the animal to run more efficiently.[137] Together, these leg features allowed Tyrannosaurus to transmit locomotory forces from the foot to the lower leg more effectively than in earlier theropods.[136]
+Additionally, a 2020 study indicates that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were exceptionally efficient walkers. Studies by Dececchi et al., compared the leg proportions, body mass, and the gaits of more than 70 species of theropod dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus and its relatives. The research team then applied a variety of methods to estimate each dinosaur's top speed when running as well as how much energy each dinosaur expended while moving at more relaxed speeds such as when walking. Among smaller to medium-sized species such as dromaeosaurids, longer legs appear to be an adaptation for faster running, in line with previous results by other researchers. But for theropods weighing over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), top running speed is limited by body size, so longer legs instead were found to have correlated with low-energy walking. The results further indicate that smaller theropods evolved long legs as a means to both aid in hunting and escape from larger predators while larger theropods that evolved long legs did so to reduce the energy costs and increase foraging efficiency, as they were freed from the demands of predation pressure due to their role as apex predators. Compared to more basal groups of theropods in the study, tyrannosaurs like Tyrannosaurus itself showed a marked increase in foraging efficiency due to reduced energy expenditures during hunting or scavenging. This in turn likely resulted in tyrannosaurs having a reduced need for hunting forays and requiring less food to sustain themselves as a result. Additionally, the research, in conjunction with studies that show tyrannosaurs were more agile than other large bodied-theropods, indicates they were quite well-adapted to a long-distance stalking approach followed by a quick burst of speed to go for the kill. Analogies can be noted between tyrannosaurids and modern wolves as a result, supported by evidence that at least some tyrannosaurids were hunting in group settings.[138][139]
+A 2017 study estimated the top running speed of Tyrannosaurus as 17 mph (27 km/h), speculating that Tyrannosaurus exhausted its energy reserves long before reaching top speed, resulting in a parabola-like relationship between size and speed.[140][141] Another 2017 study hypothesized that an adult Tyrannosaurus was incapable of running due to high skeletal loads. Using a calculated weight estimate of 7 tons, the model showed that speeds above 11 mph (18 km/h) would have probably shattered the leg bones of Tyrannosaurus. The finding may mean that running was also not possible for other giant theropod dinosaurs like Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus and Acrocanthosaurus.[142]
+However, studies by Eric Snively and colleagues, published in 2019 indicate that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were more maneuverable than allosauroids and other theropods of comparable size due to low rotational inertia compared to their body mass combined with large leg muscles. As a result, it is hypothesized that Tyrannosaurus was capable of making relatively quick turns and could likely pivot its body more quickly when close to its prey, or that while turning, the theropod could "pirouette" on a single planted foot while the alternating leg was held out in a suspended swing during pursuit. The results of this study potentially could shed light on how agility could have contributed to the success of tyrannosaurid evolution.[143]
+A study conducted by Lawrence Witmer and Ryan Ridgely of Ohio University found that Tyrannosaurus shared the heightened sensory abilities of other coelurosaurs, highlighting relatively rapid and coordinated eye and head movements; an enhanced ability to sense low frequency sounds, which would allow tyrannosaurs to track prey movements from long distances; and an enhanced sense of smell.[144] A study published by Kent Stevens concluded that Tyrannosaurus had keen vision. By applying modified perimetry to facial reconstructions of several dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus, the study found that Tyrannosaurus had a binocular range of 55 degrees, surpassing that of modern hawks. Stevens estimated that Tyrannosaurus had 13 times the visual acuity of a human and surpassed the visual acuity of an eagle, which is 3.6 times that of a person. Stevens estimated a limiting far point (that is, the distance at which an object can be seen as separate from the horizon) as far as 6 km (3.7 mi) away, which is greater than the 1.6 km (1 mi) that a human can see.[41][42][145]
+Thomas Holtz Jr. would note that high depth perception of Tyrannosaurus may have been due to the prey it had to hunt, noting that it had to hunt horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops, armored dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus, and the duck-billed dinosaurs and their possibly complex social behaviors. He would suggest that this made precision more crucial for Tyrannosaurus enabling it to, "get in, get that blow in and take it down." In contrast, Acrocanthosaurus had limited depth perception because they hunted large sauropods, which were relatively rare during the time of Tyrannosaurus.[96]
+Tyrannosaurus had very large olfactory bulbs and olfactory nerves relative to their brain size, the organs responsible for a heightened sense of smell. This suggests that the sense of smell was highly developed, and implies that tyrannosaurs could detect carcasses by scent alone across great distances. The sense of smell in tyrannosaurs may have been comparable to modern vultures, which use scent to track carcasses for scavenging. Research on the olfactory bulbs has shown that T. rex had the most highly developed sense of smell of 21 sampled non-avian dinosaur species.[146]
+Somewhat unusually among theropods, T. rex had a very long cochlea. The length of the cochlea is often related to hearing acuity, or at least the importance of hearing in behavior, implying that hearing was a particularly important sense to tyrannosaurs. Specifically, data suggests that T. rex heard best in the low-frequency range, and that low-frequency sounds were an important part of tyrannosaur behavior.[144] A 2017 study by Thomas Carr and colleagues found that the snout of tyrannosaurids was highly sensitive, based on a high number of small openings in the facial bones of the related Daspletosaurus that contained sensory neurons. The study speculated that tyrannosaurs might have used their sensitive snouts to measure the temperature of their nests and to gently pick-up eggs and hatchlings, as seen in modern crocodylians.[51]
+A study by Grant R. Hurlburt, Ryan C. Ridgely and Lawrence Witmer obtained estimates for Encephalization Quotients (EQs), based on reptiles and birds, as well as estimates for the ratio of cerebrum to brain mass. The study concluded that Tyrannosaurus had the relatively largest brain of all adult non-avian dinosaurs with the exception of certain small maniraptoriforms (Bambiraptor, Troodon and Ornithomimus). The study found that Tyrannosaurus's relative brain size was still within the range of modern reptiles, being at most 2 standard deviations above the mean of non-avian reptile EQs. The estimates for the ratio of cerebrum mass to brain mass would range from 47.5 to 49.53 percent. According to the study, this is more than the lowest estimates for extant birds (44.6 percent), but still close to the typical ratios of the smallest sexually mature alligators which range from 45.9–47.9 percent.[147] Other studies, such as those by Steve Brusatte, indicate the encephalization quotient of Tyrannosaurus was similar in range (2.0-2.4) to a chimpanzee (2.2-2.5), though this may be debatable as reptilian and mammalian encephalization quotients are not equivalent.[148]
+Suggesting that Tyrannosaurus may have been pack hunters, Philip J. Currie compared T. rex to related species Tarbosaurus bataar and Albertosaurus sarcophagus, citing fossil evidence that may indicate pack behavior.[149] A find in South Dakota where three T. rex skeletons were in close proximity suggested a pack.[150][151] Because available prey such as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus had significant defenses, it may have been effective for T. rex to hunt in groups.[149]
+Currie's pack-hunting hypothesis has been criticized for not having been peer-reviewed, but rather was discussed in a television interview and book called Dino Gangs.[152] The Currie theory for pack hunting by T. rex is based mainly by analogy to a different species, Tarbosaurus bataar, and that the supposed evidence for pack hunting in T. bataar itself had not yet been peer-reviewed. According to scientists assessing the Dino Gangs program, the evidence for pack hunting in Tarbosaurus and Albertosaurus is weak and based on skeletal remains for which alternate explanations may apply (such as drought or a flood forcing dinosaurs to die together in one place).[152] Fossilized trackways from the Upper Cretaceous Wapiti Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, left by three tyrannosaurids traveling in the same direction, may also indicate packs.[153][154]
+Evidence of intraspecific attack were found by Joseph Peterson and his colleagues in the juvenile Tyrannosaurus nicknamed Jane. Peterson and his team found that Jane's skull showed healed puncture wounds on the upper jaw and snout which they believe came from another juvenile Tyrannosaurus. Subsequent CT scans of Jane's skull would further confirm the team's hypothesis, showing that the puncture wounds came from a traumatic injury and that there was subsequent healing.[155] The team would also state that Jane's injuries were structurally different from the parasite-induced lesions found in Sue and that Jane's injuries were on her face whereas the parasite that infected Sue caused lesions to the lower jaw.[156]
+Most paleontologists accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger like most large carnivores.[157] By far the largest carnivore in its environment, T. rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods.[158] A study in 2012 by Karl Bates and Peter Falkingham found that Tyrannosaurus had the most powerful bite of any terrestrial animal that has ever lived, finding an adult Tyrannosaurus could have exerted 35,000 to 57,000 N (7,868 to 12,814 lbf) of force in the back teeth.[159][160][161] Even higher estimates were made by Mason B. Meers in 2003.[44] This allowed it to crush bones during repetitive biting and fully consume the carcasses of large dinosaurs.[20] Stephan Lautenschlager and colleagues calculated that Tyrannosaurus was capable of a maximum jaw gape of around 80 degrees, a necessary adaptation for a wide range of jaw angles to power the creature's strong bite.[162][163]
+A debate exists, however, about whether Tyrannosaurus was primarily a predator or a pure scavenger; the debate was assessed in a 1917 study by Lambe which argued Tyrannosaurus was a pure scavenger because the Gorgosaurus teeth showed hardly any wear.[164] This argument may not be valid because theropods replaced their teeth quite rapidly. Ever since the first discovery of Tyrannosaurus most scientists have speculated that it was a predator; like modern large predators it would readily scavenge or steal another predator's kill if it had the opportunity.[165]
+Paleontologist Jack Horner has been a major proponent of the view that Tyrannosaurus was not a predator at all but instead was exclusively a scavenger.[111][166][167] He has put forward arguments in the popular literature to support the pure scavenger hypothesis:
+Other evidence suggests hunting behavior in Tyrannosaurus. The eye sockets of tyrannosaurs are positioned so that the eyes would point forward, giving them binocular vision slightly better than that of modern hawks. It is not obvious why natural selection would have favored this long-term trend if tyrannosaurs had been pure scavengers, which would not have needed the advanced depth perception that stereoscopic vision provides.[41][42] In modern animals, binocular vision is found mainly in predators.
+A skeleton of the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens has been described from Montana with healed tyrannosaur-inflicted damage on its tail vertebrae. The fact that the damage seems to have healed suggests that the Edmontosaurus survived a tyrannosaur's attack on a living target, i.e. the tyrannosaur had attempted active predation.[169] Despite the consensus that the tail bites were caused by Tyrannosaurus, there has been some evidence to show that they might have been created by other factors. For example, a 2014 study suggested that the tail injuries might have been due to Edmontosaurus indivduals stepping on each other,[170] while another study in 2020 backs up the hypothesis that biomechanical stress is the cause for the tail injuries.[171]. There is also evidence for an aggressive interaction between a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus in the form of partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a Triceratops brow horn and squamosal (a bone of the neck frill); the bitten horn is also broken, with new bone growth after the break. It is not known what the exact nature of the interaction was, though: either animal could have been the aggressor.[172] Since the Triceratops wounds healed, it is most likely that the Triceratops survived the encounter and managed to overcome the Tyrannosaurus. In a battle against a bull Triceratops, the Triceratops would likely defend itself by inflicting fatal wounds to the Tyrannosaurus using its sharp horns.[173] Studies of Sue found a broken and healed fibula and tail vertebrae, scarred facial bones and a tooth from another Tyrannosaurus embedded in a neck vertebra, providing evidence for aggressive behavior.[174] Studies on hadrosaur vertebrae from the Hell Creek Formation that were punctured by the teeth of what appears to be a late-stage juvenile Tyrannosaurus indicate that despite lacking the bone-crushing adaptations of the adults, young individuals were still capable of using the same bone-puncturing feeding technique as their adult counterparts.[175]
+Tyrannosaurus may have had infectious saliva used to kill its prey, as proposed by William Abler in 1992. Abler observed that the serrations (tiny protuberances) on the cutting edges of the teeth are closely spaced, enclosing little chambers. These chambers might have trapped pieces of carcass with bacteria, giving Tyrannosaurus a deadly, infectious bite much like the Komodo dragon was thought to have.[176][177] Jack Horner and Don Lessem, in a 1993 popular book, questioned Abler's hypothesis, arguing that Tyrannosaurus's tooth serrations as more like cubes in shape than the serrations on a Komodo monitor's teeth, which are rounded.[111]:214–215
+Tyrannosaurus, and most other theropods, probably primarily processed carcasses with lateral shakes of the head, like crocodilians. The head was not as maneuverable as the skulls of allosauroids, due to flat joints of the neck vertebrae.[178]
+In 2001, Bruce Rothschild and others published a study examining evidence for stress fractures and tendon avulsions in theropod dinosaurs and the implications for their behavior. Since stress fractures are caused by repeated trauma rather than singular events they are more likely to be caused by regular behavior than other types of injuries. Of the 81 Tyrannosaurus foot bones examined in the study one was found to have a stress fracture, while none of the 10 hand bones were found to have stress fractures. The researchers found tendon avulsions only among Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. An avulsion injury left a divot on the humerus of Sue the T. rex, apparently located at the origin of the deltoid or teres major muscles. The presence of avulsion injuries being limited to the forelimb and shoulder in both Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus suggests that theropods may have had a musculature more complex than and functionally different from those of birds. The researchers concluded that Sue's tendon avulsion was probably obtained from struggling prey. The presence of stress fractures and tendon avulsions in general provides evidence for a "very active" predation-based diet rather than obligate scavenging.[179]
+A 2009 study showed that smooth-edged holes in the skulls of several specimens might have been caused by Trichomonas-like parasites that commonly infect birds. Seriously infected individuals, including "Sue" and MOR 980 ("Peck's Rex"), might therefore have died from starvation after feeding became increasingly difficult. Previously, these holes had been explained by the bacterious bone infection Actinomycosis or by intraspecific attacks.[180]
+One study of Tyrannosaurus specimens with tooth marks in the bones attributable to the same genus was presented as evidence of cannibalism.[181] Tooth marks in the humerus, foot bones and metatarsals, may indicate opportunistic scavenging, rather than wounds caused by combat with another T. rex.[181][182] Other tyrannosaurids may also have practiced cannibalism.[181]
+Tyrannosaurus lived during what is referred to as the Lancian faunal stage (Maastrichtian age) at the end of the Late Cretaceous. Tyrannosaurus ranged from Canada in the north to at least New Mexico in the south of Laramidia.[5] During this time Triceratops was the major herbivore in the northern portion of its range, while the titanosaurian sauropod Alamosaurus "dominated" its southern range. Tyrannosaurus remains have been discovered in different ecosystems, including inland and coastal subtropical, and semi-arid plains.
+Several notable Tyrannosaurus remains have been found in the Hell Creek Formation. During the Maastrichtian this area was subtropical, with a warm and humid climate. The flora consisted mostly of angiosperms, but also included trees like dawn redwood (Metasequoia) and Araucaria. Tyrannosaurus shared this ecosystem with ceratopsians Leptoceratops, Torosaurus, and Triceratops, the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens, the parksosaurid Thescelosaurus, the ankylosaurs Ankylosaurus and Denversaurus, the pachycephalosaurs Pachycephalosaurus and Sphaerotholus, and the theropods Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, Acheroraptor, Dakotaraptor, Pectinodon and Anzu.[183]
+Another formation with Tyrannosaurus remains is the Lance Formation of Wyoming. This has been interpreted as a bayou environment similar to today's Gulf Coast. The fauna was very similar to Hell Creek, but with Struthiomimus replacing its relative Ornithomimus. The small ceratopsian Leptoceratops also lived in the area.[184]
+In its southern range Tyrannosaurus lived alongside the titanosaur Alamosaurus, the ceratopsians Torosaurus, Bravoceratops and Ojoceratops, hadrosaurs which consisted of a species of Edmontosaurus, Kritosaurus and a possible species of Gryposaurus, the nodosaur Glyptodontopelta, the oviraptorid Ojoraptosaurus, possible species of the theropods Troodon and Richardoestesia, and the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus.[185] The region is thought to have been dominated by semi-arid inland plains, following the probable retreat of the Western Interior Seaway as global sea levels fell.[186]
+Tyrannosaurus may have also inhabited Mexico's Lomas Coloradas formation in Sonora. Though skeletal evidence is lacking, six shed and broken teeth from the fossil bed have been thoroughly compared with other theropod genera and appear to be identical to those of Tyrannosaurus. If true, the evidence indicates the range of Tyrannosaurus was possibly more extensive than previously believed.[187] It is possible that tyrannosaurs were originally Asian species, migrating to North America before the end of the Cretaceous period.[188]
+Since it was first described in 1905, T. rex has become the most widely recognized dinosaur species in popular culture. It is the only dinosaur that is commonly known to the general public by its full scientific name (binomial name) and the scientific abbreviation T. rex has also come into wide usage.[47] Robert T. Bakker notes this in The Dinosaur Heresies and explains that, "a name like ‘T. rex’ is just irresistible to the tongue."[35]

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+Tyrannosaurus[nb 1] is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin), often called T. rex or colloquially T-Rex, is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous period, 68 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
+Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to its large and powerful hind limbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were short but unusually powerful for their size and had two clawed digits. The most complete specimen measures up to 12.3 meters (40 feet) in length though T. rex could grow to lengths of over 12.3 m (40 ft), up to 3.66 m (12 ft) tall at the hips, and according to most modern estimates 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons) in weight. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it is still among the largest known land predators and is estimated to have exerted the strongest bite force among all terrestrial animals. By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods. Some experts have suggested the dinosaur was primarily a scavenger. The question of whether Tyrannosaurus was an apex predator or a pure scavenger was among the longest debates in paleontology. Most paleontologists today accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger.
+Specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex include some that are nearly complete skeletons. Soft tissue and proteins have been reported in at least one of these specimens. The abundance of fossil material has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics. The feeding habits, physiology and potential speed of Tyrannosaurus rex are a few subjects of debate. Its taxonomy is also controversial, as some scientists consider Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to be a second Tyrannosaurus species while others maintain Tarbosaurus is a separate genus. Several other genera of North American tyrannosaurids have also been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.
+As the archetypal theropod, Tyrannosaurus has been one of the best-known dinosaurs since the early 20th century, and has been featured in film, advertising, postal stamps, and many other media.
+Teeth from what is now documented as a Tyrannosaurus rex were found in 1874 by Arthur Lakes near Golden, Colorado. In the early 1890s, John Bell Hatcher collected postcranial elements in eastern Wyoming. The fossils were believed to be from the large species Ornithomimus grandis (now Deinodon) but are now considered T. rex remains.[2]
+In 1892, Edward Drinker Cope found two vertebral fragments of large dinosaur. Cope believed the fragments belonged to an "agathaumid" (ceratopsid) dinosaur, and named them Manospondylus gigas, meaning "giant porous vertebra", in reference to the numerous openings for blood vessels he found in the bone.[2] The M. gigas remains were, in 1907, identified by Hatcher as those of a theropod rather than a ceratopsid.[3]
+Henry Fairfield Osborn recognized the similarity between Manospondylus gigas and T. rex as early as 1917, by which time the second vertebra had been lost. Owing to the fragmentary nature of the Manospondylus vertebrae, Osborn did not synonymize the two genera, instead considering the older genus indeterminate.[4] In June 2000, the Black Hills Institute found around 10% of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton (BHI 6248) at a site that might have been the original M. gigas locality.[5]
+Barnum Brown, assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History, found the first partial skeleton of T. rex in eastern Wyoming in 1900. Brown found another partial skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 1902, comprising approximately 34 fossilized bones.[6] Writing at the time Brown said "Quarry No. 1 contains the femur, pubes, humerus, three vertebrae and two undetermined bones of a large Carnivorous Dinosaur not described by Marsh.... I have never seen anything like it from the Cretaceous".[7] Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, named the second skeleton T. rex in 1905. The generic name is derived from the Greek words τύραννος (tyrannos, meaning "tyrant") and σαῦρος (sauros, meaning "lizard"). Osborn used the Latin word rex, meaning "king", for the specific name. The full binomial therefore translates to "tyrant lizard the king" or "King Tyrant Lizard", emphasizing the animal's size and perceived dominance over other species of the time.[6]
+Osborn named the other specimen Dynamosaurus imperiosus in a paper in 1905.[6] In 1906, Osborn recognized that the two skeletons were from the same species and selected Tyrannosaurus as the preferred name.[8] The original Dynamosaurus material resides in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.[9] In 1941, the T. rex type specimen was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for $7,000.[7] Dynamosaurus would later be honored by the 2018 description of another species of tyrannosaurid by Andrew McDonald and colleagues, Dynamoterror dynastes, whose name was chosen in reference to the 1905 name, as it had been a "childhood favorite" of McDonald's.[10]
+From the 1910s through the end of the 1950s, Barnum's discoveries remained the only specimens of Tyrannosaurus, as the Great Depression and wars kept many paleontologists out of the field.[5]
+Beginning in the 1960s, there was renewed interest in Tyrannosaurus, resulting in recovery of 42 skeletons (5-80% complete by bone count) from Western North America.[5] In 1967, Dr. William MacMannis located and recovered the skeleton named "MOR 008", which is 15% complete by bone count and has a reconstructed skull displayed at the Museum of the Rockies. The 1990s saw numerous discoveries, with nearly twice as many finds as in all previous years, including two of the most complete skeletons found to date: Sue and Stan.[5]
+Sue Hendrickson, an amateur paleontologist, discovered the most complete (approximately 85%) and largest Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation on August 12, 1990. The specimen Sue, named after the discoverer, was the object of a legal battle over its ownership. In 1997, the litigation was settled in favor of Maurice Williams, the original land owner. The fossil collection was purchased by the Field Museum of Natural History at auction for $7.6 million, making it the most expensive dinosaur skeleton to date. From 1998 to 1999, Field Museum of Natural History staff spent over 25,000 hours taking the rock off the bones.[11] The bones were then shipped to New Jersey where the mount was constructed, then shipped back to Chicago for the final assembly. The mounted skeleton opened to the public on May 17, 2000 in the Field Museum of Natural History. A study of this specimen's fossilized bones showed that Sue reached full size at age 19 and died at the age of 28, the longest estimated life of any tyrannosaur known.[12]
+Another Tyrannosaurus, nicknamed Stan (BHI 3033), in honor of amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, was recovered from the Hell Creek Formation in 1992. Stan is the second most complete skeleton found, with 199 bones recovered representing 70% of the total.[13] This tyrannosaur also had many bone pathologies, including broken and healed ribs, a broken (and healed) neck, and a substantial hole in the back of its head, about the size of a Tyrannosaurus tooth.[14]
+In 1998, Bucky Derflinger noticed one of Bucky's toes exposed above ground, making Derflinger, who was 20 years old at the time, the youngest person to discover a Tyrannosaurus. The specimen was a young adult, 3.0 metres (10 ft) tall and 11 metres (35 ft) long. Bucky is the first Tyrannosaurus to be found that preserved a furcula (wishbone). Bucky is permanently displayed at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.[15]
+In the summer of 2000, crews organized by Jack Horner discovered five Tyrannosaurus skeletons near the Fort Peck Reservoir.[16] In 2001, a 50% complete skeleton of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation by a crew from the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Dubbed Jane (BMRP 2002.4.1), the find was thought to be the first known skeleton of a pygmy tyrannosaurid, Nanotyrannus, but subsequent research revealed that it is more likely a juvenile Tyrannosaurus, and the most complete juvenile example known;[17] Jane is exhibited at the Burpee Museum of Natural History.[18] In 2002, a skeleton named Wyrex, discovered by amateur collectors Dan Wells and Don Wyrick, had 114 bones and was 38% complete. The dig was concluded over 3 weeks in 2004 by the Black Hills Institute with the first live online Tyrannosaurus excavation providing daily reports, photos, and video.[5]
+In 2006, Montana State University revealed that it possessed the largest Tyrannosaurus skull yet discovered (from a specimen named MOR 008), measuring 5 feet (152 cm) long.[19] Subsequent comparisons indicated that the longest head was 136.5 centimetres (53.7 in) (from specimen LACM 23844) and the widest head was 90.2 centimetres (35.5 in) (from Sue).[20]
+Two isolated fossilized footprints have been tentatively assigned to T. rex. The first was discovered at Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, in 1983 by American geologist Charles Pillmore. Originally thought to belong to a hadrosaurid, examination of the footprint revealed a large 'heel' unknown in ornithopod dinosaur tracks, and traces of what may have been a hallux, the dewclaw-like fourth digit of the tyrannosaur foot. The footprint was published as the ichnogenus Tyrannosauripus pillmorei in 1994, by Martin Lockley and Adrian Hunt. Lockley and Hunt suggested that it was very likely the track was made by a T. rex, which would make it the first known footprint from this species. The track was made in what was once a vegetated wetland mud flat. It measures 83 centimeters (33 in) long by 71 centimeters (28 in) wide.[21]
+A second footprint that may have been made by a Tyrannosaurus was first reported in 2007 by British paleontologist Phil Manning, from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. This second track measures 72 centimeters (28 in) long, shorter than the track described by Lockley and Hunt. Whether or not the track was made by Tyrannosaurus is unclear, though Tyrannosaurus and Nanotyrannus are the only large theropods known to have existed in the Hell Creek Formation.[22][23]
+A set of footprints in Glenrock, Wyoming dating to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous and hailing from the Lance Formation were described by Scott Persons, Phil Currie and colleagues in 2016, and are believed to belong to either a juvenile T. rex or the dubious tyrannosaurid Nanotyrannus lancensis. From measurements and based on the positions of the footprints, the animal was believed to be traveling at a walking speed of around 2.8 to 5 miles per hour and was estimated to have a hip height of 1.56 m (5.1 ft) to 2.06 m (6.8 ft).[24][25][26] A follow-up paper appeared in 2017, increasing the speed estimations by 50-80%.[27]
+T. rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time. One of the largest and the most complete specimens, nicknamed Sue (FMNH PR2081), is located at the Field Museum of Natural History. Sue measured 12.3–12.8 meters (40–42 ft) long,[28][29] was 3.66 meters (12 ft) tall at the hips,[30] and according to the most recent studies, using a variety of techniques, estimated to have weighed between 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons).[29][31] A specimen nicknamed Scotty (RSM P2523.8), located at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, is reported to measure 13 m (43 ft) in length. Using a mass estimation technique that extrapolates from the circumference of the femur, Scotty was estimated as the largest known specimen at 8.8 metric tons (9.7 short tons) in weight.[32][33]
+Not every adult Tyrannosaurus specimen recovered is as big. Historically average adult mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from as low as 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons),[34][35] to more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons),[36] with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 metric tons (6.0 short tons) and 8.0 metric tons (8.8 short tons).[29][37][38][39][40]
+The largest known T. rex skull is 1.52 meters (5 ft) in length.[30] Large fenestrae (openings) in the skull reduced weight, as in all carnivorous theropods. In other respects Tyrannosaurus's skull was significantly different from those of large non-tyrannosaurid theropods. It was extremely wide at the rear but had a narrow snout, allowing unusually good binocular vision.[41][42] The skull bones were massive and the nasals and some other bones were fused, preventing movement between them; but many were pneumatized (contained a "honeycomb" of tiny air spaces) and thus lighter. These and other skull-strengthening features are part of the tyrannosaurid trend towards an increasingly powerful bite, which easily surpassed that of all non-tyrannosaurids.[43][44][45] The tip of the upper jaw was U-shaped (most non-tyrannosauroid carnivores had V-shaped upper jaws), which increased the amount of tissue and bone a tyrannosaur could rip out with one bite, although it also increased the stresses on the front teeth.[46]
+The teeth of T. rex displayed marked heterodonty (differences in shape).[47][48] The premaxillary teeth, four per side at the front of the upper jaw, were closely packed, D-shaped in cross-section, had reinforcing ridges on the rear surface, were incisiform (their tips were chisel-like blades) and curved backwards. The D-shaped cross-section, reinforcing ridges and backwards curve reduced the risk that the teeth would snap when Tyrannosaurus bit and pulled. The remaining teeth were robust, like "lethal bananas" rather than daggers, more widely spaced and also had reinforcing ridges.[49] Those in the upper jaw, twelve per side in mature individuals,[47] were larger than their counterparts of the lower jaw, except at the rear. The largest found so far is estimated to have been 30.5 centimeters (12 in) long including the root when the animal was alive, making it the largest tooth of any carnivorous dinosaur yet found.[50] The lower jaw was robust. Its front dentary bone bore thirteen teeth. Behind the tooth row, the lower jaw became notably taller.[47] The upper and lower jaws of Tyrannosaurus, like those of many dinosaurs, possessed numerous foramina, or small holes in the bone. Various functions have been proposed for these foramina, such as a crocodile-like sensory system[51] or evidence of extra-oral structures such as scales or potentially lips.[52][53]
+The vertebral column of Tyrannosaurus consisted of ten neck vertebrae, thirteen back vertebrae and five sacral vertebrae. The number of tail vertebrae is unknown and could well have varied between individuals but probably numbered at least forty. Sue was mounted with forty-seven of such caudal vertebrae.[47] The neck of T. rex formed a natural S-shaped curve like that of other theropods. Compared to these, it was exceptionally short, deep and muscular to support the massive head. The second vertebra, the axis, was especially short. The remaining neck vertebrae were weakly opisthocoelous, i.e. with a convex front of the vertebral body and a concave rear. The vertebral bodies had single pleurocoels, pneumatic depressions created by air sacs, on their sides.[47] The vertebral bodies of the torso were robust but with a narrow waist. Their undersides were keeled. The front sides were concave with a deep vertical trough. They had large pleurocoels. Their neural spines had very rough front and rear sides for the attachment of strong tendons. The sacral vertebrae were fused to each other, both in their vertebral bodies and neural spines. They were pneumatized. They were connected to the pelvis by transverse processes and sacral ribs. The tail was heavy and moderately long, in order to balance the massive head and torso and to provide space for massive locomotor muscles that attached to the thighbones. The thirteenth tail vertebra formed the transition point between the deep tail base and the middle tail that was stiffened by rather long front articulation processes. The underside of the trunk was covered by eighteen or nineteen pairs of segmented belly ribs.[47]
+The shoulder girdle was longer than the entire forelimb. The shoulder blade had a narrow shaft but was exceptionally expanded at its upper end. It connected via a long forward protrusion to the coracoid, which was rounded. Both shoulder blades were connected by a small furcula. The paired breast bones possibly were made of cartilage only.[47]
+The forelimb or arm was very short. The upper arm bone, the humerus, was short but robust. It had a narrow upper end with an exceptionally rounded head. The lower arm bones, the ulna and radius, were straight elements, much shorter than the humerus. The second metacarpal was longer and wider than the first, whereas normally in theropods the opposite is true. The forelimbs had only two clawed fingers,[47] along with an additional splint-like small third metacarpal representing the remnant of a third digit.[54]
+The pelvis was a large structure. Its upper bone, the ilium, was both very long and high, providing an extensive attachment area for hindlimb muscles. The front pubic bone ended in an enormous pubic boot, longer than the entire shaft of the element. The rear ischium was slender and straight, pointing obliquely to behind and below.[47]
+In contrast to the arms, the hindlimbs were among the longest in proportion to body size of any theropod. In the foot, the metatarsus was "arctometatarsalian", meaning that the part of the third metatarsal near the ankle was pinched. The third metatarsal was also exceptionally sinuous.[47] Compensating for the immense bulk of the animal, many bones throughout the skeleton were hollowed, reducing its weight without significant loss of strength.[47]
+The discovery of feathered dinosaurs led to debate regarding whether, and to what extent, Tyrannosaurus might have been feathered.[55][56] Filamentous structures, which are commonly recognized as the precursors of feathers, have been reported in the small-bodied, basal tyrannosauroid Dilong paradoxus from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China in 2004.[57] Because integumentary impressions of larger tyrannosauroids known at that time showed evidence of scales, the researchers who studied Dilong speculated that insulating feathers might have been lost by larger species due to their smaller surface-to-volume ratio.[57] The subsequent discovery of the giant species Yutyrannus huali, also from the Yixian, showed that even some large tyrannosauroids had feathers covering much of their bodies, casting doubt on the hypothesis that they were a size-related feature.[58] A 2017 study reviewed known skin impressions of tyrannosaurids, including those of a Tyrannosaurus specimen nicknamed "Wyrex" (BHI 6230) which preserves patches of mosaic scales on the tail, hip, and neck.[5] The study concluded that feather covering of large tyrannosaurids such as Tyrannosaurus was, if present, limited to the upper side of the trunk.[55]
+A conference abstract published in 2016 posited that theropods such as Tyrannosaurus had their upper teeth covered in lips, instead of bare teeth as seen in crocodilians. This was based on the presence of enamel, which according to the study needs to remain hydrated, an issue not faced by aquatic animals like crocodilians.[53] A 2017 analytical study proposed that tyrannosaurids had large, flat scales on their snouts instead of lips.[51][59]
+Tyrannosaurus is the type genus of the superfamily Tyrannosauroidea, the family Tyrannosauridae, and the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae; in other words it is the standard by which paleontologists decide whether to include other species in the same group. Other members of the tyrannosaurine subfamily include the North American Daspletosaurus and the Asian Tarbosaurus,[17][60] both of which have occasionally been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.[61] Tyrannosaurids were once commonly thought to be descendants of earlier large theropods such as megalosaurs and carnosaurs, although more recently they were reclassified with the generally smaller coelurosaurs.[46]
+In 1955, Soviet paleontologist Evgeny Maleev named a new species, Tyrannosaurus bataar, from Mongolia.[62] By 1965, this species had been renamed Tarbosaurus bataar.[63] Despite the renaming, many phylogenetic analyses have found Tarbosaurus bataar to be the sister taxon of T. rex,[60] and it has often been considered an Asian species of Tyrannosaurus.[46][64][65]  The discovery of the tyrannosaurid Lythronax further indicates that Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are closely related, forming a clade with fellow Asian tyrannosaurid Zhuchengtyrannus, with Lythronax being their sister taxon.[66][67] A further study from 2016 by Steve Brusatte, Thomas Carr and colleagues, also indicates that Tyrannosaurus may have been an immigrant from Asia, as well as a possible descendant of Tarbosaurus.[68]
+In 2001, various tyrannosaurid teeth and a metatarsal unearthed in a quarry near Zhucheng, China were assigned by Chinese paleontologist Hu Chengzhi to the newly erected Tyrannosaurus zhuchengensis. However, in a nearby site, a right maxilla and left jawbone were assigned to the newly erected tyrannosaurid genus Zhuchengtyrannus in 2011, and it is possible T. zhuchengensis is synonymous with Zhuchengtyrannus. In any case, T. zhuchengensis is considered to be a nomen dubium as the holotype lacks diagnostic features below the level Tyrannosaurinae.[69]
+Below is the cladogram of Tyrannosauridae based on the phylogenetic analysis conducted by Loewen and colleagues in 2013.[66]
+Gorgosaurus libratus
+Albertosaurus sarcophagus
+Dinosaur Park tyrannosaurid
+Daspletosaurus torosus
+Two Medicine tyrannosaurid
+Teratophoneus curriei
+Bistahieversor sealeyi
+Lythronax argestes
+Tyrannosaurus rex
+Tarbosaurus bataar
+Zhuchengtyrannus magnus
+Other tyrannosaurid fossils found in the same formations as T. rex were originally classified as separate taxa, including Aublysodon and Albertosaurus megagracilis,[61] the latter being named Dinotyrannus megagracilis in 1995.[70] These fossils are now universally considered to belong to juvenile T. rex.[71] A small but nearly complete skull from Montana, 60 centimeters (2.0 ft) long, might be an exception. This skull, CMNH 7541, was originally classified as a species of Gorgosaurus (G. lancensis) by Charles W. Gilmore in 1946.[72] In 1988, the specimen was re-described by Robert T. Bakker, Phil Currie, and Michael Williams, then the curator of paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where the original specimen was housed and is now on display. Their initial research indicated that the skull bones were fused, and that it therefore represented an adult specimen. In light of this, Bakker and colleagues assigned the skull to a new genus named Nanotyrannus (meaning "dwarf tyrant", for its apparently small adult size). The specimen is estimated to have been around 5.2 metres (17 ft) long when it died.[73] However, In 1999, a detailed analysis by Thomas Carr revealed the specimen to be a juvenile, leading Carr and many other paleontologists to consider it a juvenile T. rex individual.[74][75]
+In 2001, a more complete juvenile tyrannosaur (nicknamed "Jane", catalog number BMRP 2002.4.1), belonging to the same species as the original Nanotyrannus specimen, was uncovered. This discovery prompted a conference on tyrannosaurs focused on the issues of Nanotyrannus validity at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in 2005. Several paleontologists who had previously published opinions that N. lancensis was a valid species, including Currie and Williams, saw the discovery of "Jane" as a confirmation that Nanotyrannus was, in fact, a juvenile T. rex.[76][77][78] Peter Larson continued to support the hypothesis that N. lancensis was a separate but closely related species, based on skull features such as two more teeth in both jaws than T. rex; as well as proportionately larger hands with phalanges on the third metacarpal and different wishbone anatomy in an undescribed specimen. He also argued that Stygivenator, generally considered to be a juvenile T. rex, may be a younger Nanotyrannus specimen.[79][80] Later research revealed that other tyrannosaurids such as Gorgosaurus also experienced reduction in tooth count during growth,[74] and given the disparity in tooth count between individuals of the same age group in this genus and Tyrannosaurus, this feature may also be due to individual variation.[75] In 2013, Carr noted that all of the differences claimed to support Nanotyrannus have turned out to be individually or ontogenetically variable features or products of distortion of the bones.[81]
+In 2016, analysis of limb proportions by Persons and Currie suggested Nanotyrannus specimens to have differing cursoriality levels, potentially separating it from T. rex.[82] However, paleontologist Manabu Sakomoto has commented that this conclusion may be impacted by low sample size, and the discrepancy does not necessarily reflect taxonomic distinction.[83] In 2016, Joshua Schmerge argued for Nanotyrannus' validity based on skull features, including a dentary groove in BMRP 2002.4.1's skull. According to Schmerge, as that feature is absent in T. rex and found only in Dryptosaurus and albertosaurines, this suggests Nanotyrannus is a distinct taxon within the Albertosaurinae.[84] The same year, Carr and colleagues noted that this was not sufficient enough to clarify Nanotyrannus' validity or classification, being a common and ontogenetically variable feature among tyrannosauroids.[85]
+A 2020 study by Holly Woodward and colleagues showed the specimens referred to Nanotyrannus were all ontogenetically immature and found it probable that these specimens belonged to T. rex.[86] The same year, Carr published a paper on T. rex's growth history, finding that CMNH 7541 fit within the expected ontogenetic variation of the taxon and displayed juvenile characteristics found in other specimens. It was classified as a juvenile, under 13 years old with a skull less than 80 cm (31 in). No significant sexual or phylogenetic variation was discernible among any of the 44 specimens studied, with Carr stating that characters of potential phylogenetic importance decrease throughout age at the same rate as growth occurs.[87] Discussing the paper's results, Carr described how all "Nanotyrannus" specimens formed a continual growth transition between the smallest juveniles and the subadults, unlike what would be expected if it were a distinct taxon where the specimens would group to the exclusion of Tyrannosaurus. Carr concluded that "the 'nanomorphs' are not all that similar to each other and instead form an important bridge in the growth series of T. rex that captures the beginnings of the profound change from the shallow skull of juveniles to the deep skull that is seen in fully-developed adults."[88]
+The identification of several specimens as juvenile T. rex has allowed scientists to document ontogenetic changes in the species, estimate the lifespan, and determine how quickly the animals would have grown. The smallest known individual (LACM 28471, the "Jordan theropod") is estimated to have weighed only 30 kg (66 lb), while the largest, such as FMNH PR2081 (Sue) most likely weighed about 5,650 kg (12,460 lb). Histologic analysis of T. rex bones showed LACM 28471 had aged only 2 years when it died, while Sue was 28 years old, an age which may have been close to the maximum for the species.[37]
+Histology has also allowed the age of other specimens to be determined. Growth curves can be developed when the ages of different specimens are plotted on a graph along with their mass. A T. rex growth curve is S-shaped, with juveniles remaining under 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) until approximately 14 years of age, when body size began to increase dramatically. During this rapid growth phase, a young T. rex would gain an average of 600 kg (1,300 lb) a year for the next four years. At 18 years of age, the curve plateaus again, indicating that growth slowed dramatically. For example, only 600 kg (1,300 lb) separated the 28-year-old Sue from a 22-year-old Canadian specimen (RTMP 81.12.1).[37] A 2004 histological study performed by different workers corroborates these results, finding that rapid growth began to slow at around 16 years of age.[89]
+A study by Hutchinson and colleagues in 2011 corroborated the previous estimation methods in general, but their estimation of peak growth rates is significantly higher; it found that the "maximum growth rates for T. rex during the exponential stage are 1790 kg/year".[29] Although these results were much higher than previous estimations, the authors noted that these results significantly lowered the great difference between its actual growth rate and the one which would be expected of an animal of its size.[29] The sudden change in growth rate at the end of the growth spurt may indicate physical maturity, a hypothesis which is supported by the discovery of medullary tissue in the femur of a 16 to 20-year-old T. rex from Montana (MOR 1125, also known as B-rex). Medullary tissue is found only in female birds during ovulation, indicating that B-rex was of reproductive age.[90] Further study indicates an age of 18 for this specimen.[91] In 2016, it was finally confirmed by Mary Higby Schweitzer and Lindsay Zanno and colleagues that the soft tissue within the femur of MOR 1125 was medullary tissue. This also confirmed the identity of the specimen as a female. The discovery of medullary bone tissue within Tyrannosaurus may prove valuable in determining the sex of other dinosaur species in future examinations, as the chemical makeup of medullary tissue is unmistakable.[92] Other tyrannosaurids exhibit extremely similar growth curves, although with lower growth rates corresponding to their lower adult sizes.[93]
+An additional study published in 2020 by Woodward and colleagues, for the journal Science Advances indicates that during their growth from juvenile to adult, Tyrannosaurus was capable of slowing down its growth to counter environmental factors such as lack of food. The study, focusing on two juvenile specimens between 13 and 15 years old housed at the Burpee Museum in Illinois, indicates that the rate of maturation for Tyrannosaurus was dependent on resource abundance. This study also indicates that in such changing environments, Tyrannosaurus was particularly well-suited to an environment that shifted yearly in regards to resource abundance, hinting that other midsize predators might have had difficulty surviving in such harsh conditions and explaining the niche partitioning between juvenile and adult tyrannosaurs. The study further indicates that Tyrannosaurus and the dubious genus Nanotyrannus are synonymous, due to analysis of the growth rings in the bones of the two specimens studied.[94][95]
+Over half of the known T. rex specimens appear to have died within six years of reaching sexual maturity, a pattern which is also seen in other tyrannosaurs and in some large, long-lived birds and mammals today. These species are characterized by high infant mortality rates, followed by relatively low mortality among juveniles. Mortality increases again following sexual maturity, partly due to the stresses of reproduction. One study suggests that the rarity of juvenile T. rex fossils is due in part to low juvenile mortality rates; the animals were not dying in large numbers at these ages, and so were not often fossilized. This rarity may also be due to the incompleteness of the fossil record or to the bias of fossil collectors towards larger, more spectacular specimens.[93] In a 2013 lecture, Thomas Holtz Jr. suggested that dinosaurs "lived fast and died young" because they reproduced quickly whereas mammals have long life spans because they take longer to reproduce.[96] Gregory S. Paul also writes that Tyrannosaurus reproduced quickly and died young, but attributes their short life spans to the dangerous lives they lived.[97]
+As the number of known specimens increased, scientists began to analyze the variation between individuals and discovered what appeared to be two distinct body types, or morphs, similar to some other theropod species. As one of these morphs was more solidly built, it was termed the 'robust' morph while the other was termed 'gracile'. Several morphological differences associated with the two morphs were used to analyze sexual dimorphism in T. rex, with the 'robust' morph usually suggested to be female. For example, the pelvis of several 'robust' specimens seemed to be wider, perhaps to allow the passage of eggs.[98] It was also thought that the 'robust' morphology correlated with a reduced chevron on the first tail vertebra, also ostensibly to allow eggs to pass out of the reproductive tract, as had been erroneously reported for crocodiles.[99]
+In recent years, evidence for sexual dimorphism has been weakened. A 2005 study reported that previous claims of sexual dimorphism in crocodile chevron anatomy were in error, casting doubt on the existence of similar dimorphism between T. rex sexes.[100] A full-sized chevron was discovered on the first tail vertebra of Sue, an extremely robust individual, indicating that this feature could not be used to differentiate the two morphs anyway. As T. rex specimens have been found from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, differences between individuals may be indicative of geographic variation rather than sexual dimorphism. The differences could also be age-related, with 'robust' individuals being older animals.[47]
+Only a single T. rex specimen has been conclusively shown to belong to a specific sex. Examination of B-rex demonstrated the preservation of soft tissue within several bones. Some of this tissue has been identified as a medullary tissue, a specialized tissue grown only in modern birds as a source of calcium for the production of eggshell during ovulation. As only female birds lay eggs, medullary tissue is only found naturally in females, although males are capable of producing it when injected with female reproductive hormones like estrogen. This strongly suggests that B-rex was female, and that she died during ovulation.[90] Recent research has shown that medullary tissue is never found in crocodiles, which are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, aside from birds. The shared presence of medullary tissue in birds and theropod dinosaurs is further evidence of the close evolutionary relationship between the two.[101]
+Like many bipedal dinosaurs, T. rex was historically depicted as a 'living tripod', with the body at 45 degrees or less from the vertical and the tail dragging along the ground, similar to a kangaroo. This concept dates from Joseph Leidy's 1865 reconstruction of Hadrosaurus, the first to depict a dinosaur in a bipedal posture.[102] In 1915, convinced that the creature stood upright, Henry Fairfield Osborn, former president of the American Museum of Natural History, further reinforced the notion in unveiling the first complete T. rex skeleton arranged this way. It stood in an upright pose for 77 years, until it was dismantled in 1992.[103]
+By 1970, scientists realized this pose was incorrect and could not have been maintained by a living animal, as it would have resulted in the dislocation or weakening of several joints, including the hips and the articulation between the head and the spinal column.[104] The inaccurate AMNH mount inspired similar depictions in many films and paintings (such as Rudolph Zallinger's famous mural The Age of Reptiles in Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History)[105] until the 1990s, when films such as Jurassic Park introduced a more accurate posture to the general public.[106] Modern representations in museums, art, and film show T. rex with its body approximately parallel to the ground with the tail extended behind the body to balance the head.[107]
+To sit down, Tyrannosaurus may have settled its weight backwards and rested its weight on a pubic boot, the wide expansion at the end of the pubis in some dinosaurs. With its weight rested on the pelvis, it may have been free to move the hindlimbs. Getting back up again might have involved some stabilization from the diminutive forelimbs.[108][104] The latter known as Newman's pushup theory has been debated. Nonetheless, Tyrannosaurus was probably able to get up if it fell, which only would have required placing the limbs below the center of gravity, with the tail as an effective counterbalance.[109]
+When T. rex was first discovered, the humerus was the only element of the forelimb known.[6] For the initial mounted skeleton as seen by the public in 1915, Osborn substituted longer, three-fingered forelimbs like those of Allosaurus.[4] A year earlier, Lawrence Lambe described the short, two-fingered forelimbs of the closely related Gorgosaurus.[110] This strongly suggested that T. rex had similar forelimbs, but this hypothesis was not confirmed until the first complete T. rex forelimbs were identified in 1989, belonging to MOR 555 (the "Wankel rex").[111][112] The remains of Sue also include complete forelimbs.[47] T. rex arms are very small relative to overall body size, measuring only 1 meter (3.3 ft) long, and some scholars have labelled them as vestigial. The bones show large areas for muscle attachment, indicating considerable strength. This was recognized as early as 1906 by Osborn, who speculated that the forelimbs may have been used to grasp a mate during copulation.[8] It has also been suggested that the forelimbs were used to assist the animal in rising from a prone position.[104]
+Another possibility is that the forelimbs held struggling prey while it was killed by the tyrannosaur's enormous jaws. This hypothesis may be supported by biomechanical analysis. T. rex forelimb bones exhibit extremely thick cortical bone, which has been interpreted as evidence that they were developed to withstand heavy loads. The biceps brachii muscle of an adult T. rex was capable of lifting 199 kilograms (439 lb) by itself; other muscles such as the brachialis would work along with the biceps to make elbow flexion even more powerful. The M. biceps muscle of T. rex was 3.5 times as powerful as the human equivalent. A T. rex forearm had a limited range of motion, with the shoulder and elbow joints allowing only 40 and 45 degrees of motion, respectively. In contrast, the same two joints in Deinonychus allow up to 88 and 130 degrees of motion, respectively, while a human arm can rotate 360 degrees at the shoulder and move through 165 degrees at the elbow. The heavy build of the arm bones, strength of the muscles, and limited range of motion may indicate a system evolved to hold fast despite the stresses of a struggling prey animal. In the first detailed scientific description of Tyrannosaurus forelimbs, paleontologists Kenneth Carpenter and Matt Smith dismissed notions that the forelimbs were useless or that T. rex was an obligate scavenger.[113]
+According to paleontologist Steven M. Stanley, the 1 metre (3.3 ft) arms of T. rex were used for slashing prey, especially by using its claws to rapidly inflict long, deep gashes to its prey, although this concept is disputed by others believing the arms were used for grasping a sexual partner.[114]
+As of 2014, it is not clear if Tyrannosaurus was endothermic (“warm-blooded”). Tyrannosaurus, like most dinosaurs, was long thought to have an ectothermic ("cold-blooded") reptilian metabolism. The idea of dinosaur ectothermy was challenged by scientists like Robert T. Bakker and John Ostrom in the early years of the "Dinosaur Renaissance", beginning in the late 1960s.[115][116] T. rex itself was claimed to have been endothermic ("warm-blooded"), implying a very active lifestyle.[35] Since then, several paleontologists have sought to determine the ability of Tyrannosaurus to regulate its body temperature. Histological evidence of high growth rates in young T. rex, comparable to those of mammals and birds, may support the hypothesis of a high metabolism. Growth curves indicate that, as in mammals and birds, T. rex growth was limited mostly to immature animals, rather than the indeterminate growth seen in most other vertebrates.[89]
+Oxygen isotope ratios in fossilized bone are sometimes used to determine the temperature at which the bone was deposited, as the ratio between certain isotopes correlates with temperature. In one specimen, the isotope ratios in bones from different parts of the body indicated a temperature difference of no more than 4 to 5 °C (7 to 9 °F) between the vertebrae of the torso and the tibia of the lower leg. This small temperature range between the body core and the extremities was claimed by paleontologist Reese Barrick and geochemist William Showers to indicate that T. rex maintained a constant internal body temperature (homeothermy) and that it enjoyed a metabolism somewhere between ectothermic reptiles and endothermic mammals.[117] Other scientists have pointed out that the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the fossils today does not necessarily represent the same ratio in the distant past, and may have been altered during or after fossilization (diagenesis).[118] Barrick and Showers have defended their conclusions in subsequent papers, finding similar results in another theropod dinosaur from a different continent and tens of millions of years earlier in time (Giganotosaurus).[119] Ornithischian dinosaurs also showed evidence of homeothermy, while varanid lizards from the same formation did not.[120] Even if T. rex does exhibit evidence of homeothermy, it does not necessarily mean that it was endothermic. Such thermoregulation may also be explained by gigantothermy, as in some living sea turtles.[121][122][123] Similar to contemporary alligators, dorsotemporal fenestra in Tyrannosaurus's skull may have aided thermoregulation.[124]
+In the March 2005 issue of Science, Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and colleagues announced the recovery of soft tissue from the marrow cavity of a fossilized leg bone from a T. rex. The bone had been intentionally, though reluctantly, broken for shipping and then not preserved in the normal manner, specifically because Schweitzer was hoping to test it for soft tissue.[125] Designated as the Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125, or MOR 1125, the dinosaur was previously excavated from the Hell Creek Formation. Flexible, bifurcating blood vessels and fibrous but elastic bone matrix tissue were recognized. In addition, microstructures resembling blood cells were found inside the matrix and vessels. The structures bear resemblance to ostrich blood cells and vessels. Whether an unknown process, distinct from normal fossilization, preserved the material, or the material is original, the researchers do not know, and they are careful not to make any claims about preservation.[126] If it is found to be original material, any surviving proteins may be used as a means of indirectly guessing some of the DNA content of the dinosaurs involved, because each protein is typically created by a specific gene. The absence of previous finds may be the result of people assuming preserved tissue was impossible, therefore not looking. Since the first, two more tyrannosaurs and a hadrosaur have also been found to have such tissue-like structures.[125] Research on some of the tissues involved has suggested that birds are closer relatives to tyrannosaurs than other modern animals.[127]
+In studies reported in Science in April 2007, Asara and colleagues concluded that seven traces of collagen proteins detected in purified T. rex bone most closely match those reported in chickens, followed by frogs and newts. The discovery of proteins from a creature tens of millions of years old, along with similar traces the team found in a mastodon bone at least 160,000 years old, upends the conventional view of fossils and may shift paleontologists' focus from bone hunting to biochemistry. Until these finds, most scientists presumed that fossilization replaced all living tissue with inert minerals. Paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, who was not part of the studies, called the finds "a milestone", and suggested that dinosaurs could "enter the field of molecular biology and really slingshot paleontology into the modern world".[128]
+The presumed soft tissue was called into question by Thomas Kaye of the University of Washington and his co-authors in 2008. They contend that what was really inside the tyrannosaur bone was slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.[129] The researchers found that what previously had been identified as remnants of blood cells, because of the presence of iron, were actually framboids, microscopic mineral spheres bearing iron. They found similar spheres in a variety of other fossils from various periods, including an ammonite. In the ammonite they found the spheres in a place where the iron they contain could not have had any relationship to the presence of blood.[130] Schweitzer has strongly criticized Kaye's claims and argues that there is no reported evidence that biofilms can produce branching, hollow tubes like those noted in her study.[131] San Antonio, Schweitzer and colleagues published an analysis in 2011 of what parts of the collagen had been recovered, finding that it was the inner parts of the collagen coil that had been preserved, as would have been expected from a long period of protein degradation.[132] Other research challenges the identification of soft tissue as biofilm and confirms finding "branching, vessel-like structures" from within fossilized bone.[133]
+Scientists have produced a wide range of possible maximum running speeds for Tyrannosaurus, mostly around 11 meters per second (40 km/h; 25 mph), but as low as 5–11 meters per second (18–40 km/h; 11–25 mph) and as high as 20 meters per second (72 km/h; 45 mph). Estimates that Tyrannosaurus had relatively larger leg muscles than any animal alive today indicate that fast running was possible at speeds of 40–70 kilometers per hour (25–43 mph).[134] Researchers have relied on various estimating techniques because, while there are many tracks of large theropods walking, none had the pattern of running.[135]
+A 2002 report used a mathematical model (validated by applying it to three living animals: alligators, chickens, and humans; and eight more species, including emus and ostriches[135]) to gauge the leg muscle mass needed for fast running (over 40 km/h or 25 mph).[134] Scientists who think that Tyrannosaurus was able to run point out that hollow bones and other features that would have lightened its body may have kept adult weight to a mere 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons) or so, or that other animals like ostriches and horses with long, flexible legs are able to achieve high speeds through slower but longer strides.[135] Proposed top speeds exceeded 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph) for Tyrannosaurus, but were deemed infeasible because they would require exceptional leg muscles of approximately 40–86% of total body mass. Even moderately fast speeds would have required large leg muscles. If the muscle mass was less, only 18 kilometers per hour (11 mph) for walking or jogging would have been possible.[134] Holtz noted that tyrannosaurids and some closely related groups had significantly longer distal hindlimb components (shin plus foot plus toes) relative to the femur length than most other theropods, and that tyrannosaurids and their close relatives had a tightly interlocked metatarsus (foot bones).[136] The third metatarsal was squeezed between the second and fourth metatarsals to form a single unit called an arctometatarsus. This ankle feature may have helped the animal to run more efficiently.[137] Together, these leg features allowed Tyrannosaurus to transmit locomotory forces from the foot to the lower leg more effectively than in earlier theropods.[136]
+Additionally, a 2020 study indicates that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were exceptionally efficient walkers. Studies by Dececchi et al., compared the leg proportions, body mass, and the gaits of more than 70 species of theropod dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus and its relatives. The research team then applied a variety of methods to estimate each dinosaur's top speed when running as well as how much energy each dinosaur expended while moving at more relaxed speeds such as when walking. Among smaller to medium-sized species such as dromaeosaurids, longer legs appear to be an adaptation for faster running, in line with previous results by other researchers. But for theropods weighing over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), top running speed is limited by body size, so longer legs instead were found to have correlated with low-energy walking. The results further indicate that smaller theropods evolved long legs as a means to both aid in hunting and escape from larger predators while larger theropods that evolved long legs did so to reduce the energy costs and increase foraging efficiency, as they were freed from the demands of predation pressure due to their role as apex predators. Compared to more basal groups of theropods in the study, tyrannosaurs like Tyrannosaurus itself showed a marked increase in foraging efficiency due to reduced energy expenditures during hunting or scavenging. This in turn likely resulted in tyrannosaurs having a reduced need for hunting forays and requiring less food to sustain themselves as a result. Additionally, the research, in conjunction with studies that show tyrannosaurs were more agile than other large bodied-theropods, indicates they were quite well-adapted to a long-distance stalking approach followed by a quick burst of speed to go for the kill. Analogies can be noted between tyrannosaurids and modern wolves as a result, supported by evidence that at least some tyrannosaurids were hunting in group settings.[138][139]
+A 2017 study estimated the top running speed of Tyrannosaurus as 17 mph (27 km/h), speculating that Tyrannosaurus exhausted its energy reserves long before reaching top speed, resulting in a parabola-like relationship between size and speed.[140][141] Another 2017 study hypothesized that an adult Tyrannosaurus was incapable of running due to high skeletal loads. Using a calculated weight estimate of 7 tons, the model showed that speeds above 11 mph (18 km/h) would have probably shattered the leg bones of Tyrannosaurus. The finding may mean that running was also not possible for other giant theropod dinosaurs like Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus and Acrocanthosaurus.[142]
+However, studies by Eric Snively and colleagues, published in 2019 indicate that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were more maneuverable than allosauroids and other theropods of comparable size due to low rotational inertia compared to their body mass combined with large leg muscles. As a result, it is hypothesized that Tyrannosaurus was capable of making relatively quick turns and could likely pivot its body more quickly when close to its prey, or that while turning, the theropod could "pirouette" on a single planted foot while the alternating leg was held out in a suspended swing during pursuit. The results of this study potentially could shed light on how agility could have contributed to the success of tyrannosaurid evolution.[143]
+A study conducted by Lawrence Witmer and Ryan Ridgely of Ohio University found that Tyrannosaurus shared the heightened sensory abilities of other coelurosaurs, highlighting relatively rapid and coordinated eye and head movements; an enhanced ability to sense low frequency sounds, which would allow tyrannosaurs to track prey movements from long distances; and an enhanced sense of smell.[144] A study published by Kent Stevens concluded that Tyrannosaurus had keen vision. By applying modified perimetry to facial reconstructions of several dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus, the study found that Tyrannosaurus had a binocular range of 55 degrees, surpassing that of modern hawks. Stevens estimated that Tyrannosaurus had 13 times the visual acuity of a human and surpassed the visual acuity of an eagle, which is 3.6 times that of a person. Stevens estimated a limiting far point (that is, the distance at which an object can be seen as separate from the horizon) as far as 6 km (3.7 mi) away, which is greater than the 1.6 km (1 mi) that a human can see.[41][42][145]
+Thomas Holtz Jr. would note that high depth perception of Tyrannosaurus may have been due to the prey it had to hunt, noting that it had to hunt horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops, armored dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus, and the duck-billed dinosaurs and their possibly complex social behaviors. He would suggest that this made precision more crucial for Tyrannosaurus enabling it to, "get in, get that blow in and take it down." In contrast, Acrocanthosaurus had limited depth perception because they hunted large sauropods, which were relatively rare during the time of Tyrannosaurus.[96]
+Tyrannosaurus had very large olfactory bulbs and olfactory nerves relative to their brain size, the organs responsible for a heightened sense of smell. This suggests that the sense of smell was highly developed, and implies that tyrannosaurs could detect carcasses by scent alone across great distances. The sense of smell in tyrannosaurs may have been comparable to modern vultures, which use scent to track carcasses for scavenging. Research on the olfactory bulbs has shown that T. rex had the most highly developed sense of smell of 21 sampled non-avian dinosaur species.[146]
+Somewhat unusually among theropods, T. rex had a very long cochlea. The length of the cochlea is often related to hearing acuity, or at least the importance of hearing in behavior, implying that hearing was a particularly important sense to tyrannosaurs. Specifically, data suggests that T. rex heard best in the low-frequency range, and that low-frequency sounds were an important part of tyrannosaur behavior.[144] A 2017 study by Thomas Carr and colleagues found that the snout of tyrannosaurids was highly sensitive, based on a high number of small openings in the facial bones of the related Daspletosaurus that contained sensory neurons. The study speculated that tyrannosaurs might have used their sensitive snouts to measure the temperature of their nests and to gently pick-up eggs and hatchlings, as seen in modern crocodylians.[51]
+A study by Grant R. Hurlburt, Ryan C. Ridgely and Lawrence Witmer obtained estimates for Encephalization Quotients (EQs), based on reptiles and birds, as well as estimates for the ratio of cerebrum to brain mass. The study concluded that Tyrannosaurus had the relatively largest brain of all adult non-avian dinosaurs with the exception of certain small maniraptoriforms (Bambiraptor, Troodon and Ornithomimus). The study found that Tyrannosaurus's relative brain size was still within the range of modern reptiles, being at most 2 standard deviations above the mean of non-avian reptile EQs. The estimates for the ratio of cerebrum mass to brain mass would range from 47.5 to 49.53 percent. According to the study, this is more than the lowest estimates for extant birds (44.6 percent), but still close to the typical ratios of the smallest sexually mature alligators which range from 45.9–47.9 percent.[147] Other studies, such as those by Steve Brusatte, indicate the encephalization quotient of Tyrannosaurus was similar in range (2.0-2.4) to a chimpanzee (2.2-2.5), though this may be debatable as reptilian and mammalian encephalization quotients are not equivalent.[148]
+Suggesting that Tyrannosaurus may have been pack hunters, Philip J. Currie compared T. rex to related species Tarbosaurus bataar and Albertosaurus sarcophagus, citing fossil evidence that may indicate pack behavior.[149] A find in South Dakota where three T. rex skeletons were in close proximity suggested a pack.[150][151] Because available prey such as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus had significant defenses, it may have been effective for T. rex to hunt in groups.[149]
+Currie's pack-hunting hypothesis has been criticized for not having been peer-reviewed, but rather was discussed in a television interview and book called Dino Gangs.[152] The Currie theory for pack hunting by T. rex is based mainly by analogy to a different species, Tarbosaurus bataar, and that the supposed evidence for pack hunting in T. bataar itself had not yet been peer-reviewed. According to scientists assessing the Dino Gangs program, the evidence for pack hunting in Tarbosaurus and Albertosaurus is weak and based on skeletal remains for which alternate explanations may apply (such as drought or a flood forcing dinosaurs to die together in one place).[152] Fossilized trackways from the Upper Cretaceous Wapiti Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, left by three tyrannosaurids traveling in the same direction, may also indicate packs.[153][154]
+Evidence of intraspecific attack were found by Joseph Peterson and his colleagues in the juvenile Tyrannosaurus nicknamed Jane. Peterson and his team found that Jane's skull showed healed puncture wounds on the upper jaw and snout which they believe came from another juvenile Tyrannosaurus. Subsequent CT scans of Jane's skull would further confirm the team's hypothesis, showing that the puncture wounds came from a traumatic injury and that there was subsequent healing.[155] The team would also state that Jane's injuries were structurally different from the parasite-induced lesions found in Sue and that Jane's injuries were on her face whereas the parasite that infected Sue caused lesions to the lower jaw.[156]
+Most paleontologists accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger like most large carnivores.[157] By far the largest carnivore in its environment, T. rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods.[158] A study in 2012 by Karl Bates and Peter Falkingham found that Tyrannosaurus had the most powerful bite of any terrestrial animal that has ever lived, finding an adult Tyrannosaurus could have exerted 35,000 to 57,000 N (7,868 to 12,814 lbf) of force in the back teeth.[159][160][161] Even higher estimates were made by Mason B. Meers in 2003.[44] This allowed it to crush bones during repetitive biting and fully consume the carcasses of large dinosaurs.[20] Stephan Lautenschlager and colleagues calculated that Tyrannosaurus was capable of a maximum jaw gape of around 80 degrees, a necessary adaptation for a wide range of jaw angles to power the creature's strong bite.[162][163]
+A debate exists, however, about whether Tyrannosaurus was primarily a predator or a pure scavenger; the debate was assessed in a 1917 study by Lambe which argued Tyrannosaurus was a pure scavenger because the Gorgosaurus teeth showed hardly any wear.[164] This argument may not be valid because theropods replaced their teeth quite rapidly. Ever since the first discovery of Tyrannosaurus most scientists have speculated that it was a predator; like modern large predators it would readily scavenge or steal another predator's kill if it had the opportunity.[165]
+Paleontologist Jack Horner has been a major proponent of the view that Tyrannosaurus was not a predator at all but instead was exclusively a scavenger.[111][166][167] He has put forward arguments in the popular literature to support the pure scavenger hypothesis:
+Other evidence suggests hunting behavior in Tyrannosaurus. The eye sockets of tyrannosaurs are positioned so that the eyes would point forward, giving them binocular vision slightly better than that of modern hawks. It is not obvious why natural selection would have favored this long-term trend if tyrannosaurs had been pure scavengers, which would not have needed the advanced depth perception that stereoscopic vision provides.[41][42] In modern animals, binocular vision is found mainly in predators.
+A skeleton of the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens has been described from Montana with healed tyrannosaur-inflicted damage on its tail vertebrae. The fact that the damage seems to have healed suggests that the Edmontosaurus survived a tyrannosaur's attack on a living target, i.e. the tyrannosaur had attempted active predation.[169] Despite the consensus that the tail bites were caused by Tyrannosaurus, there has been some evidence to show that they might have been created by other factors. For example, a 2014 study suggested that the tail injuries might have been due to Edmontosaurus indivduals stepping on each other,[170] while another study in 2020 backs up the hypothesis that biomechanical stress is the cause for the tail injuries.[171]. There is also evidence for an aggressive interaction between a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus in the form of partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a Triceratops brow horn and squamosal (a bone of the neck frill); the bitten horn is also broken, with new bone growth after the break. It is not known what the exact nature of the interaction was, though: either animal could have been the aggressor.[172] Since the Triceratops wounds healed, it is most likely that the Triceratops survived the encounter and managed to overcome the Tyrannosaurus. In a battle against a bull Triceratops, the Triceratops would likely defend itself by inflicting fatal wounds to the Tyrannosaurus using its sharp horns.[173] Studies of Sue found a broken and healed fibula and tail vertebrae, scarred facial bones and a tooth from another Tyrannosaurus embedded in a neck vertebra, providing evidence for aggressive behavior.[174] Studies on hadrosaur vertebrae from the Hell Creek Formation that were punctured by the teeth of what appears to be a late-stage juvenile Tyrannosaurus indicate that despite lacking the bone-crushing adaptations of the adults, young individuals were still capable of using the same bone-puncturing feeding technique as their adult counterparts.[175]
+Tyrannosaurus may have had infectious saliva used to kill its prey, as proposed by William Abler in 1992. Abler observed that the serrations (tiny protuberances) on the cutting edges of the teeth are closely spaced, enclosing little chambers. These chambers might have trapped pieces of carcass with bacteria, giving Tyrannosaurus a deadly, infectious bite much like the Komodo dragon was thought to have.[176][177] Jack Horner and Don Lessem, in a 1993 popular book, questioned Abler's hypothesis, arguing that Tyrannosaurus's tooth serrations as more like cubes in shape than the serrations on a Komodo monitor's teeth, which are rounded.[111]:214–215
+Tyrannosaurus, and most other theropods, probably primarily processed carcasses with lateral shakes of the head, like crocodilians. The head was not as maneuverable as the skulls of allosauroids, due to flat joints of the neck vertebrae.[178]
+In 2001, Bruce Rothschild and others published a study examining evidence for stress fractures and tendon avulsions in theropod dinosaurs and the implications for their behavior. Since stress fractures are caused by repeated trauma rather than singular events they are more likely to be caused by regular behavior than other types of injuries. Of the 81 Tyrannosaurus foot bones examined in the study one was found to have a stress fracture, while none of the 10 hand bones were found to have stress fractures. The researchers found tendon avulsions only among Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. An avulsion injury left a divot on the humerus of Sue the T. rex, apparently located at the origin of the deltoid or teres major muscles. The presence of avulsion injuries being limited to the forelimb and shoulder in both Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus suggests that theropods may have had a musculature more complex than and functionally different from those of birds. The researchers concluded that Sue's tendon avulsion was probably obtained from struggling prey. The presence of stress fractures and tendon avulsions in general provides evidence for a "very active" predation-based diet rather than obligate scavenging.[179]
+A 2009 study showed that smooth-edged holes in the skulls of several specimens might have been caused by Trichomonas-like parasites that commonly infect birds. Seriously infected individuals, including "Sue" and MOR 980 ("Peck's Rex"), might therefore have died from starvation after feeding became increasingly difficult. Previously, these holes had been explained by the bacterious bone infection Actinomycosis or by intraspecific attacks.[180]
+One study of Tyrannosaurus specimens with tooth marks in the bones attributable to the same genus was presented as evidence of cannibalism.[181] Tooth marks in the humerus, foot bones and metatarsals, may indicate opportunistic scavenging, rather than wounds caused by combat with another T. rex.[181][182] Other tyrannosaurids may also have practiced cannibalism.[181]
+Tyrannosaurus lived during what is referred to as the Lancian faunal stage (Maastrichtian age) at the end of the Late Cretaceous. Tyrannosaurus ranged from Canada in the north to at least New Mexico in the south of Laramidia.[5] During this time Triceratops was the major herbivore in the northern portion of its range, while the titanosaurian sauropod Alamosaurus "dominated" its southern range. Tyrannosaurus remains have been discovered in different ecosystems, including inland and coastal subtropical, and semi-arid plains.
+Several notable Tyrannosaurus remains have been found in the Hell Creek Formation. During the Maastrichtian this area was subtropical, with a warm and humid climate. The flora consisted mostly of angiosperms, but also included trees like dawn redwood (Metasequoia) and Araucaria. Tyrannosaurus shared this ecosystem with ceratopsians Leptoceratops, Torosaurus, and Triceratops, the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens, the parksosaurid Thescelosaurus, the ankylosaurs Ankylosaurus and Denversaurus, the pachycephalosaurs Pachycephalosaurus and Sphaerotholus, and the theropods Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, Acheroraptor, Dakotaraptor, Pectinodon and Anzu.[183]
+Another formation with Tyrannosaurus remains is the Lance Formation of Wyoming. This has been interpreted as a bayou environment similar to today's Gulf Coast. The fauna was very similar to Hell Creek, but with Struthiomimus replacing its relative Ornithomimus. The small ceratopsian Leptoceratops also lived in the area.[184]
+In its southern range Tyrannosaurus lived alongside the titanosaur Alamosaurus, the ceratopsians Torosaurus, Bravoceratops and Ojoceratops, hadrosaurs which consisted of a species of Edmontosaurus, Kritosaurus and a possible species of Gryposaurus, the nodosaur Glyptodontopelta, the oviraptorid Ojoraptosaurus, possible species of the theropods Troodon and Richardoestesia, and the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus.[185] The region is thought to have been dominated by semi-arid inland plains, following the probable retreat of the Western Interior Seaway as global sea levels fell.[186]
+Tyrannosaurus may have also inhabited Mexico's Lomas Coloradas formation in Sonora. Though skeletal evidence is lacking, six shed and broken teeth from the fossil bed have been thoroughly compared with other theropod genera and appear to be identical to those of Tyrannosaurus. If true, the evidence indicates the range of Tyrannosaurus was possibly more extensive than previously believed.[187] It is possible that tyrannosaurs were originally Asian species, migrating to North America before the end of the Cretaceous period.[188]
+Since it was first described in 1905, T. rex has become the most widely recognized dinosaur species in popular culture. It is the only dinosaur that is commonly known to the general public by its full scientific name (binomial name) and the scientific abbreviation T. rex has also come into wide usage.[47] Robert T. Bakker notes this in The Dinosaur Heresies and explains that, "a name like ‘T. rex’ is just irresistible to the tongue."[35]

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+Tyrannosaurus[nb 1] is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin), often called T. rex or colloquially T-Rex, is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous period, 68 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
+Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to its large and powerful hind limbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were short but unusually powerful for their size and had two clawed digits. The most complete specimen measures up to 12.3 meters (40 feet) in length though T. rex could grow to lengths of over 12.3 m (40 ft), up to 3.66 m (12 ft) tall at the hips, and according to most modern estimates 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons) in weight. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it is still among the largest known land predators and is estimated to have exerted the strongest bite force among all terrestrial animals. By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods. Some experts have suggested the dinosaur was primarily a scavenger. The question of whether Tyrannosaurus was an apex predator or a pure scavenger was among the longest debates in paleontology. Most paleontologists today accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger.
+Specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex include some that are nearly complete skeletons. Soft tissue and proteins have been reported in at least one of these specimens. The abundance of fossil material has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics. The feeding habits, physiology and potential speed of Tyrannosaurus rex are a few subjects of debate. Its taxonomy is also controversial, as some scientists consider Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to be a second Tyrannosaurus species while others maintain Tarbosaurus is a separate genus. Several other genera of North American tyrannosaurids have also been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.
+As the archetypal theropod, Tyrannosaurus has been one of the best-known dinosaurs since the early 20th century, and has been featured in film, advertising, postal stamps, and many other media.
+Teeth from what is now documented as a Tyrannosaurus rex were found in 1874 by Arthur Lakes near Golden, Colorado. In the early 1890s, John Bell Hatcher collected postcranial elements in eastern Wyoming. The fossils were believed to be from the large species Ornithomimus grandis (now Deinodon) but are now considered T. rex remains.[2]
+In 1892, Edward Drinker Cope found two vertebral fragments of large dinosaur. Cope believed the fragments belonged to an "agathaumid" (ceratopsid) dinosaur, and named them Manospondylus gigas, meaning "giant porous vertebra", in reference to the numerous openings for blood vessels he found in the bone.[2] The M. gigas remains were, in 1907, identified by Hatcher as those of a theropod rather than a ceratopsid.[3]
+Henry Fairfield Osborn recognized the similarity between Manospondylus gigas and T. rex as early as 1917, by which time the second vertebra had been lost. Owing to the fragmentary nature of the Manospondylus vertebrae, Osborn did not synonymize the two genera, instead considering the older genus indeterminate.[4] In June 2000, the Black Hills Institute found around 10% of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton (BHI 6248) at a site that might have been the original M. gigas locality.[5]
+Barnum Brown, assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History, found the first partial skeleton of T. rex in eastern Wyoming in 1900. Brown found another partial skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 1902, comprising approximately 34 fossilized bones.[6] Writing at the time Brown said "Quarry No. 1 contains the femur, pubes, humerus, three vertebrae and two undetermined bones of a large Carnivorous Dinosaur not described by Marsh.... I have never seen anything like it from the Cretaceous".[7] Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, named the second skeleton T. rex in 1905. The generic name is derived from the Greek words τύραννος (tyrannos, meaning "tyrant") and σαῦρος (sauros, meaning "lizard"). Osborn used the Latin word rex, meaning "king", for the specific name. The full binomial therefore translates to "tyrant lizard the king" or "King Tyrant Lizard", emphasizing the animal's size and perceived dominance over other species of the time.[6]
+Osborn named the other specimen Dynamosaurus imperiosus in a paper in 1905.[6] In 1906, Osborn recognized that the two skeletons were from the same species and selected Tyrannosaurus as the preferred name.[8] The original Dynamosaurus material resides in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.[9] In 1941, the T. rex type specimen was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for $7,000.[7] Dynamosaurus would later be honored by the 2018 description of another species of tyrannosaurid by Andrew McDonald and colleagues, Dynamoterror dynastes, whose name was chosen in reference to the 1905 name, as it had been a "childhood favorite" of McDonald's.[10]
+From the 1910s through the end of the 1950s, Barnum's discoveries remained the only specimens of Tyrannosaurus, as the Great Depression and wars kept many paleontologists out of the field.[5]
+Beginning in the 1960s, there was renewed interest in Tyrannosaurus, resulting in recovery of 42 skeletons (5-80% complete by bone count) from Western North America.[5] In 1967, Dr. William MacMannis located and recovered the skeleton named "MOR 008", which is 15% complete by bone count and has a reconstructed skull displayed at the Museum of the Rockies. The 1990s saw numerous discoveries, with nearly twice as many finds as in all previous years, including two of the most complete skeletons found to date: Sue and Stan.[5]
+Sue Hendrickson, an amateur paleontologist, discovered the most complete (approximately 85%) and largest Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation on August 12, 1990. The specimen Sue, named after the discoverer, was the object of a legal battle over its ownership. In 1997, the litigation was settled in favor of Maurice Williams, the original land owner. The fossil collection was purchased by the Field Museum of Natural History at auction for $7.6 million, making it the most expensive dinosaur skeleton to date. From 1998 to 1999, Field Museum of Natural History staff spent over 25,000 hours taking the rock off the bones.[11] The bones were then shipped to New Jersey where the mount was constructed, then shipped back to Chicago for the final assembly. The mounted skeleton opened to the public on May 17, 2000 in the Field Museum of Natural History. A study of this specimen's fossilized bones showed that Sue reached full size at age 19 and died at the age of 28, the longest estimated life of any tyrannosaur known.[12]
+Another Tyrannosaurus, nicknamed Stan (BHI 3033), in honor of amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, was recovered from the Hell Creek Formation in 1992. Stan is the second most complete skeleton found, with 199 bones recovered representing 70% of the total.[13] This tyrannosaur also had many bone pathologies, including broken and healed ribs, a broken (and healed) neck, and a substantial hole in the back of its head, about the size of a Tyrannosaurus tooth.[14]
+In 1998, Bucky Derflinger noticed one of Bucky's toes exposed above ground, making Derflinger, who was 20 years old at the time, the youngest person to discover a Tyrannosaurus. The specimen was a young adult, 3.0 metres (10 ft) tall and 11 metres (35 ft) long. Bucky is the first Tyrannosaurus to be found that preserved a furcula (wishbone). Bucky is permanently displayed at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.[15]
+In the summer of 2000, crews organized by Jack Horner discovered five Tyrannosaurus skeletons near the Fort Peck Reservoir.[16] In 2001, a 50% complete skeleton of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation by a crew from the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Dubbed Jane (BMRP 2002.4.1), the find was thought to be the first known skeleton of a pygmy tyrannosaurid, Nanotyrannus, but subsequent research revealed that it is more likely a juvenile Tyrannosaurus, and the most complete juvenile example known;[17] Jane is exhibited at the Burpee Museum of Natural History.[18] In 2002, a skeleton named Wyrex, discovered by amateur collectors Dan Wells and Don Wyrick, had 114 bones and was 38% complete. The dig was concluded over 3 weeks in 2004 by the Black Hills Institute with the first live online Tyrannosaurus excavation providing daily reports, photos, and video.[5]
+In 2006, Montana State University revealed that it possessed the largest Tyrannosaurus skull yet discovered (from a specimen named MOR 008), measuring 5 feet (152 cm) long.[19] Subsequent comparisons indicated that the longest head was 136.5 centimetres (53.7 in) (from specimen LACM 23844) and the widest head was 90.2 centimetres (35.5 in) (from Sue).[20]
+Two isolated fossilized footprints have been tentatively assigned to T. rex. The first was discovered at Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, in 1983 by American geologist Charles Pillmore. Originally thought to belong to a hadrosaurid, examination of the footprint revealed a large 'heel' unknown in ornithopod dinosaur tracks, and traces of what may have been a hallux, the dewclaw-like fourth digit of the tyrannosaur foot. The footprint was published as the ichnogenus Tyrannosauripus pillmorei in 1994, by Martin Lockley and Adrian Hunt. Lockley and Hunt suggested that it was very likely the track was made by a T. rex, which would make it the first known footprint from this species. The track was made in what was once a vegetated wetland mud flat. It measures 83 centimeters (33 in) long by 71 centimeters (28 in) wide.[21]
+A second footprint that may have been made by a Tyrannosaurus was first reported in 2007 by British paleontologist Phil Manning, from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. This second track measures 72 centimeters (28 in) long, shorter than the track described by Lockley and Hunt. Whether or not the track was made by Tyrannosaurus is unclear, though Tyrannosaurus and Nanotyrannus are the only large theropods known to have existed in the Hell Creek Formation.[22][23]
+A set of footprints in Glenrock, Wyoming dating to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous and hailing from the Lance Formation were described by Scott Persons, Phil Currie and colleagues in 2016, and are believed to belong to either a juvenile T. rex or the dubious tyrannosaurid Nanotyrannus lancensis. From measurements and based on the positions of the footprints, the animal was believed to be traveling at a walking speed of around 2.8 to 5 miles per hour and was estimated to have a hip height of 1.56 m (5.1 ft) to 2.06 m (6.8 ft).[24][25][26] A follow-up paper appeared in 2017, increasing the speed estimations by 50-80%.[27]
+T. rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time. One of the largest and the most complete specimens, nicknamed Sue (FMNH PR2081), is located at the Field Museum of Natural History. Sue measured 12.3–12.8 meters (40–42 ft) long,[28][29] was 3.66 meters (12 ft) tall at the hips,[30] and according to the most recent studies, using a variety of techniques, estimated to have weighed between 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons).[29][31] A specimen nicknamed Scotty (RSM P2523.8), located at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, is reported to measure 13 m (43 ft) in length. Using a mass estimation technique that extrapolates from the circumference of the femur, Scotty was estimated as the largest known specimen at 8.8 metric tons (9.7 short tons) in weight.[32][33]
+Not every adult Tyrannosaurus specimen recovered is as big. Historically average adult mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from as low as 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons),[34][35] to more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons),[36] with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 metric tons (6.0 short tons) and 8.0 metric tons (8.8 short tons).[29][37][38][39][40]
+The largest known T. rex skull is 1.52 meters (5 ft) in length.[30] Large fenestrae (openings) in the skull reduced weight, as in all carnivorous theropods. In other respects Tyrannosaurus's skull was significantly different from those of large non-tyrannosaurid theropods. It was extremely wide at the rear but had a narrow snout, allowing unusually good binocular vision.[41][42] The skull bones were massive and the nasals and some other bones were fused, preventing movement between them; but many were pneumatized (contained a "honeycomb" of tiny air spaces) and thus lighter. These and other skull-strengthening features are part of the tyrannosaurid trend towards an increasingly powerful bite, which easily surpassed that of all non-tyrannosaurids.[43][44][45] The tip of the upper jaw was U-shaped (most non-tyrannosauroid carnivores had V-shaped upper jaws), which increased the amount of tissue and bone a tyrannosaur could rip out with one bite, although it also increased the stresses on the front teeth.[46]
+The teeth of T. rex displayed marked heterodonty (differences in shape).[47][48] The premaxillary teeth, four per side at the front of the upper jaw, were closely packed, D-shaped in cross-section, had reinforcing ridges on the rear surface, were incisiform (their tips were chisel-like blades) and curved backwards. The D-shaped cross-section, reinforcing ridges and backwards curve reduced the risk that the teeth would snap when Tyrannosaurus bit and pulled. The remaining teeth were robust, like "lethal bananas" rather than daggers, more widely spaced and also had reinforcing ridges.[49] Those in the upper jaw, twelve per side in mature individuals,[47] were larger than their counterparts of the lower jaw, except at the rear. The largest found so far is estimated to have been 30.5 centimeters (12 in) long including the root when the animal was alive, making it the largest tooth of any carnivorous dinosaur yet found.[50] The lower jaw was robust. Its front dentary bone bore thirteen teeth. Behind the tooth row, the lower jaw became notably taller.[47] The upper and lower jaws of Tyrannosaurus, like those of many dinosaurs, possessed numerous foramina, or small holes in the bone. Various functions have been proposed for these foramina, such as a crocodile-like sensory system[51] or evidence of extra-oral structures such as scales or potentially lips.[52][53]
+The vertebral column of Tyrannosaurus consisted of ten neck vertebrae, thirteen back vertebrae and five sacral vertebrae. The number of tail vertebrae is unknown and could well have varied between individuals but probably numbered at least forty. Sue was mounted with forty-seven of such caudal vertebrae.[47] The neck of T. rex formed a natural S-shaped curve like that of other theropods. Compared to these, it was exceptionally short, deep and muscular to support the massive head. The second vertebra, the axis, was especially short. The remaining neck vertebrae were weakly opisthocoelous, i.e. with a convex front of the vertebral body and a concave rear. The vertebral bodies had single pleurocoels, pneumatic depressions created by air sacs, on their sides.[47] The vertebral bodies of the torso were robust but with a narrow waist. Their undersides were keeled. The front sides were concave with a deep vertical trough. They had large pleurocoels. Their neural spines had very rough front and rear sides for the attachment of strong tendons. The sacral vertebrae were fused to each other, both in their vertebral bodies and neural spines. They were pneumatized. They were connected to the pelvis by transverse processes and sacral ribs. The tail was heavy and moderately long, in order to balance the massive head and torso and to provide space for massive locomotor muscles that attached to the thighbones. The thirteenth tail vertebra formed the transition point between the deep tail base and the middle tail that was stiffened by rather long front articulation processes. The underside of the trunk was covered by eighteen or nineteen pairs of segmented belly ribs.[47]
+The shoulder girdle was longer than the entire forelimb. The shoulder blade had a narrow shaft but was exceptionally expanded at its upper end. It connected via a long forward protrusion to the coracoid, which was rounded. Both shoulder blades were connected by a small furcula. The paired breast bones possibly were made of cartilage only.[47]
+The forelimb or arm was very short. The upper arm bone, the humerus, was short but robust. It had a narrow upper end with an exceptionally rounded head. The lower arm bones, the ulna and radius, were straight elements, much shorter than the humerus. The second metacarpal was longer and wider than the first, whereas normally in theropods the opposite is true. The forelimbs had only two clawed fingers,[47] along with an additional splint-like small third metacarpal representing the remnant of a third digit.[54]
+The pelvis was a large structure. Its upper bone, the ilium, was both very long and high, providing an extensive attachment area for hindlimb muscles. The front pubic bone ended in an enormous pubic boot, longer than the entire shaft of the element. The rear ischium was slender and straight, pointing obliquely to behind and below.[47]
+In contrast to the arms, the hindlimbs were among the longest in proportion to body size of any theropod. In the foot, the metatarsus was "arctometatarsalian", meaning that the part of the third metatarsal near the ankle was pinched. The third metatarsal was also exceptionally sinuous.[47] Compensating for the immense bulk of the animal, many bones throughout the skeleton were hollowed, reducing its weight without significant loss of strength.[47]
+The discovery of feathered dinosaurs led to debate regarding whether, and to what extent, Tyrannosaurus might have been feathered.[55][56] Filamentous structures, which are commonly recognized as the precursors of feathers, have been reported in the small-bodied, basal tyrannosauroid Dilong paradoxus from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China in 2004.[57] Because integumentary impressions of larger tyrannosauroids known at that time showed evidence of scales, the researchers who studied Dilong speculated that insulating feathers might have been lost by larger species due to their smaller surface-to-volume ratio.[57] The subsequent discovery of the giant species Yutyrannus huali, also from the Yixian, showed that even some large tyrannosauroids had feathers covering much of their bodies, casting doubt on the hypothesis that they were a size-related feature.[58] A 2017 study reviewed known skin impressions of tyrannosaurids, including those of a Tyrannosaurus specimen nicknamed "Wyrex" (BHI 6230) which preserves patches of mosaic scales on the tail, hip, and neck.[5] The study concluded that feather covering of large tyrannosaurids such as Tyrannosaurus was, if present, limited to the upper side of the trunk.[55]
+A conference abstract published in 2016 posited that theropods such as Tyrannosaurus had their upper teeth covered in lips, instead of bare teeth as seen in crocodilians. This was based on the presence of enamel, which according to the study needs to remain hydrated, an issue not faced by aquatic animals like crocodilians.[53] A 2017 analytical study proposed that tyrannosaurids had large, flat scales on their snouts instead of lips.[51][59]
+Tyrannosaurus is the type genus of the superfamily Tyrannosauroidea, the family Tyrannosauridae, and the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae; in other words it is the standard by which paleontologists decide whether to include other species in the same group. Other members of the tyrannosaurine subfamily include the North American Daspletosaurus and the Asian Tarbosaurus,[17][60] both of which have occasionally been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.[61] Tyrannosaurids were once commonly thought to be descendants of earlier large theropods such as megalosaurs and carnosaurs, although more recently they were reclassified with the generally smaller coelurosaurs.[46]
+In 1955, Soviet paleontologist Evgeny Maleev named a new species, Tyrannosaurus bataar, from Mongolia.[62] By 1965, this species had been renamed Tarbosaurus bataar.[63] Despite the renaming, many phylogenetic analyses have found Tarbosaurus bataar to be the sister taxon of T. rex,[60] and it has often been considered an Asian species of Tyrannosaurus.[46][64][65]  The discovery of the tyrannosaurid Lythronax further indicates that Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are closely related, forming a clade with fellow Asian tyrannosaurid Zhuchengtyrannus, with Lythronax being their sister taxon.[66][67] A further study from 2016 by Steve Brusatte, Thomas Carr and colleagues, also indicates that Tyrannosaurus may have been an immigrant from Asia, as well as a possible descendant of Tarbosaurus.[68]
+In 2001, various tyrannosaurid teeth and a metatarsal unearthed in a quarry near Zhucheng, China were assigned by Chinese paleontologist Hu Chengzhi to the newly erected Tyrannosaurus zhuchengensis. However, in a nearby site, a right maxilla and left jawbone were assigned to the newly erected tyrannosaurid genus Zhuchengtyrannus in 2011, and it is possible T. zhuchengensis is synonymous with Zhuchengtyrannus. In any case, T. zhuchengensis is considered to be a nomen dubium as the holotype lacks diagnostic features below the level Tyrannosaurinae.[69]
+Below is the cladogram of Tyrannosauridae based on the phylogenetic analysis conducted by Loewen and colleagues in 2013.[66]
+Gorgosaurus libratus
+Albertosaurus sarcophagus
+Dinosaur Park tyrannosaurid
+Daspletosaurus torosus
+Two Medicine tyrannosaurid
+Teratophoneus curriei
+Bistahieversor sealeyi
+Lythronax argestes
+Tyrannosaurus rex
+Tarbosaurus bataar
+Zhuchengtyrannus magnus
+Other tyrannosaurid fossils found in the same formations as T. rex were originally classified as separate taxa, including Aublysodon and Albertosaurus megagracilis,[61] the latter being named Dinotyrannus megagracilis in 1995.[70] These fossils are now universally considered to belong to juvenile T. rex.[71] A small but nearly complete skull from Montana, 60 centimeters (2.0 ft) long, might be an exception. This skull, CMNH 7541, was originally classified as a species of Gorgosaurus (G. lancensis) by Charles W. Gilmore in 1946.[72] In 1988, the specimen was re-described by Robert T. Bakker, Phil Currie, and Michael Williams, then the curator of paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where the original specimen was housed and is now on display. Their initial research indicated that the skull bones were fused, and that it therefore represented an adult specimen. In light of this, Bakker and colleagues assigned the skull to a new genus named Nanotyrannus (meaning "dwarf tyrant", for its apparently small adult size). The specimen is estimated to have been around 5.2 metres (17 ft) long when it died.[73] However, In 1999, a detailed analysis by Thomas Carr revealed the specimen to be a juvenile, leading Carr and many other paleontologists to consider it a juvenile T. rex individual.[74][75]
+In 2001, a more complete juvenile tyrannosaur (nicknamed "Jane", catalog number BMRP 2002.4.1), belonging to the same species as the original Nanotyrannus specimen, was uncovered. This discovery prompted a conference on tyrannosaurs focused on the issues of Nanotyrannus validity at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in 2005. Several paleontologists who had previously published opinions that N. lancensis was a valid species, including Currie and Williams, saw the discovery of "Jane" as a confirmation that Nanotyrannus was, in fact, a juvenile T. rex.[76][77][78] Peter Larson continued to support the hypothesis that N. lancensis was a separate but closely related species, based on skull features such as two more teeth in both jaws than T. rex; as well as proportionately larger hands with phalanges on the third metacarpal and different wishbone anatomy in an undescribed specimen. He also argued that Stygivenator, generally considered to be a juvenile T. rex, may be a younger Nanotyrannus specimen.[79][80] Later research revealed that other tyrannosaurids such as Gorgosaurus also experienced reduction in tooth count during growth,[74] and given the disparity in tooth count between individuals of the same age group in this genus and Tyrannosaurus, this feature may also be due to individual variation.[75] In 2013, Carr noted that all of the differences claimed to support Nanotyrannus have turned out to be individually or ontogenetically variable features or products of distortion of the bones.[81]
+In 2016, analysis of limb proportions by Persons and Currie suggested Nanotyrannus specimens to have differing cursoriality levels, potentially separating it from T. rex.[82] However, paleontologist Manabu Sakomoto has commented that this conclusion may be impacted by low sample size, and the discrepancy does not necessarily reflect taxonomic distinction.[83] In 2016, Joshua Schmerge argued for Nanotyrannus' validity based on skull features, including a dentary groove in BMRP 2002.4.1's skull. According to Schmerge, as that feature is absent in T. rex and found only in Dryptosaurus and albertosaurines, this suggests Nanotyrannus is a distinct taxon within the Albertosaurinae.[84] The same year, Carr and colleagues noted that this was not sufficient enough to clarify Nanotyrannus' validity or classification, being a common and ontogenetically variable feature among tyrannosauroids.[85]
+A 2020 study by Holly Woodward and colleagues showed the specimens referred to Nanotyrannus were all ontogenetically immature and found it probable that these specimens belonged to T. rex.[86] The same year, Carr published a paper on T. rex's growth history, finding that CMNH 7541 fit within the expected ontogenetic variation of the taxon and displayed juvenile characteristics found in other specimens. It was classified as a juvenile, under 13 years old with a skull less than 80 cm (31 in). No significant sexual or phylogenetic variation was discernible among any of the 44 specimens studied, with Carr stating that characters of potential phylogenetic importance decrease throughout age at the same rate as growth occurs.[87] Discussing the paper's results, Carr described how all "Nanotyrannus" specimens formed a continual growth transition between the smallest juveniles and the subadults, unlike what would be expected if it were a distinct taxon where the specimens would group to the exclusion of Tyrannosaurus. Carr concluded that "the 'nanomorphs' are not all that similar to each other and instead form an important bridge in the growth series of T. rex that captures the beginnings of the profound change from the shallow skull of juveniles to the deep skull that is seen in fully-developed adults."[88]
+The identification of several specimens as juvenile T. rex has allowed scientists to document ontogenetic changes in the species, estimate the lifespan, and determine how quickly the animals would have grown. The smallest known individual (LACM 28471, the "Jordan theropod") is estimated to have weighed only 30 kg (66 lb), while the largest, such as FMNH PR2081 (Sue) most likely weighed about 5,650 kg (12,460 lb). Histologic analysis of T. rex bones showed LACM 28471 had aged only 2 years when it died, while Sue was 28 years old, an age which may have been close to the maximum for the species.[37]
+Histology has also allowed the age of other specimens to be determined. Growth curves can be developed when the ages of different specimens are plotted on a graph along with their mass. A T. rex growth curve is S-shaped, with juveniles remaining under 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) until approximately 14 years of age, when body size began to increase dramatically. During this rapid growth phase, a young T. rex would gain an average of 600 kg (1,300 lb) a year for the next four years. At 18 years of age, the curve plateaus again, indicating that growth slowed dramatically. For example, only 600 kg (1,300 lb) separated the 28-year-old Sue from a 22-year-old Canadian specimen (RTMP 81.12.1).[37] A 2004 histological study performed by different workers corroborates these results, finding that rapid growth began to slow at around 16 years of age.[89]
+A study by Hutchinson and colleagues in 2011 corroborated the previous estimation methods in general, but their estimation of peak growth rates is significantly higher; it found that the "maximum growth rates for T. rex during the exponential stage are 1790 kg/year".[29] Although these results were much higher than previous estimations, the authors noted that these results significantly lowered the great difference between its actual growth rate and the one which would be expected of an animal of its size.[29] The sudden change in growth rate at the end of the growth spurt may indicate physical maturity, a hypothesis which is supported by the discovery of medullary tissue in the femur of a 16 to 20-year-old T. rex from Montana (MOR 1125, also known as B-rex). Medullary tissue is found only in female birds during ovulation, indicating that B-rex was of reproductive age.[90] Further study indicates an age of 18 for this specimen.[91] In 2016, it was finally confirmed by Mary Higby Schweitzer and Lindsay Zanno and colleagues that the soft tissue within the femur of MOR 1125 was medullary tissue. This also confirmed the identity of the specimen as a female. The discovery of medullary bone tissue within Tyrannosaurus may prove valuable in determining the sex of other dinosaur species in future examinations, as the chemical makeup of medullary tissue is unmistakable.[92] Other tyrannosaurids exhibit extremely similar growth curves, although with lower growth rates corresponding to their lower adult sizes.[93]
+An additional study published in 2020 by Woodward and colleagues, for the journal Science Advances indicates that during their growth from juvenile to adult, Tyrannosaurus was capable of slowing down its growth to counter environmental factors such as lack of food. The study, focusing on two juvenile specimens between 13 and 15 years old housed at the Burpee Museum in Illinois, indicates that the rate of maturation for Tyrannosaurus was dependent on resource abundance. This study also indicates that in such changing environments, Tyrannosaurus was particularly well-suited to an environment that shifted yearly in regards to resource abundance, hinting that other midsize predators might have had difficulty surviving in such harsh conditions and explaining the niche partitioning between juvenile and adult tyrannosaurs. The study further indicates that Tyrannosaurus and the dubious genus Nanotyrannus are synonymous, due to analysis of the growth rings in the bones of the two specimens studied.[94][95]
+Over half of the known T. rex specimens appear to have died within six years of reaching sexual maturity, a pattern which is also seen in other tyrannosaurs and in some large, long-lived birds and mammals today. These species are characterized by high infant mortality rates, followed by relatively low mortality among juveniles. Mortality increases again following sexual maturity, partly due to the stresses of reproduction. One study suggests that the rarity of juvenile T. rex fossils is due in part to low juvenile mortality rates; the animals were not dying in large numbers at these ages, and so were not often fossilized. This rarity may also be due to the incompleteness of the fossil record or to the bias of fossil collectors towards larger, more spectacular specimens.[93] In a 2013 lecture, Thomas Holtz Jr. suggested that dinosaurs "lived fast and died young" because they reproduced quickly whereas mammals have long life spans because they take longer to reproduce.[96] Gregory S. Paul also writes that Tyrannosaurus reproduced quickly and died young, but attributes their short life spans to the dangerous lives they lived.[97]
+As the number of known specimens increased, scientists began to analyze the variation between individuals and discovered what appeared to be two distinct body types, or morphs, similar to some other theropod species. As one of these morphs was more solidly built, it was termed the 'robust' morph while the other was termed 'gracile'. Several morphological differences associated with the two morphs were used to analyze sexual dimorphism in T. rex, with the 'robust' morph usually suggested to be female. For example, the pelvis of several 'robust' specimens seemed to be wider, perhaps to allow the passage of eggs.[98] It was also thought that the 'robust' morphology correlated with a reduced chevron on the first tail vertebra, also ostensibly to allow eggs to pass out of the reproductive tract, as had been erroneously reported for crocodiles.[99]
+In recent years, evidence for sexual dimorphism has been weakened. A 2005 study reported that previous claims of sexual dimorphism in crocodile chevron anatomy were in error, casting doubt on the existence of similar dimorphism between T. rex sexes.[100] A full-sized chevron was discovered on the first tail vertebra of Sue, an extremely robust individual, indicating that this feature could not be used to differentiate the two morphs anyway. As T. rex specimens have been found from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, differences between individuals may be indicative of geographic variation rather than sexual dimorphism. The differences could also be age-related, with 'robust' individuals being older animals.[47]
+Only a single T. rex specimen has been conclusively shown to belong to a specific sex. Examination of B-rex demonstrated the preservation of soft tissue within several bones. Some of this tissue has been identified as a medullary tissue, a specialized tissue grown only in modern birds as a source of calcium for the production of eggshell during ovulation. As only female birds lay eggs, medullary tissue is only found naturally in females, although males are capable of producing it when injected with female reproductive hormones like estrogen. This strongly suggests that B-rex was female, and that she died during ovulation.[90] Recent research has shown that medullary tissue is never found in crocodiles, which are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, aside from birds. The shared presence of medullary tissue in birds and theropod dinosaurs is further evidence of the close evolutionary relationship between the two.[101]
+Like many bipedal dinosaurs, T. rex was historically depicted as a 'living tripod', with the body at 45 degrees or less from the vertical and the tail dragging along the ground, similar to a kangaroo. This concept dates from Joseph Leidy's 1865 reconstruction of Hadrosaurus, the first to depict a dinosaur in a bipedal posture.[102] In 1915, convinced that the creature stood upright, Henry Fairfield Osborn, former president of the American Museum of Natural History, further reinforced the notion in unveiling the first complete T. rex skeleton arranged this way. It stood in an upright pose for 77 years, until it was dismantled in 1992.[103]
+By 1970, scientists realized this pose was incorrect and could not have been maintained by a living animal, as it would have resulted in the dislocation or weakening of several joints, including the hips and the articulation between the head and the spinal column.[104] The inaccurate AMNH mount inspired similar depictions in many films and paintings (such as Rudolph Zallinger's famous mural The Age of Reptiles in Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History)[105] until the 1990s, when films such as Jurassic Park introduced a more accurate posture to the general public.[106] Modern representations in museums, art, and film show T. rex with its body approximately parallel to the ground with the tail extended behind the body to balance the head.[107]
+To sit down, Tyrannosaurus may have settled its weight backwards and rested its weight on a pubic boot, the wide expansion at the end of the pubis in some dinosaurs. With its weight rested on the pelvis, it may have been free to move the hindlimbs. Getting back up again might have involved some stabilization from the diminutive forelimbs.[108][104] The latter known as Newman's pushup theory has been debated. Nonetheless, Tyrannosaurus was probably able to get up if it fell, which only would have required placing the limbs below the center of gravity, with the tail as an effective counterbalance.[109]
+When T. rex was first discovered, the humerus was the only element of the forelimb known.[6] For the initial mounted skeleton as seen by the public in 1915, Osborn substituted longer, three-fingered forelimbs like those of Allosaurus.[4] A year earlier, Lawrence Lambe described the short, two-fingered forelimbs of the closely related Gorgosaurus.[110] This strongly suggested that T. rex had similar forelimbs, but this hypothesis was not confirmed until the first complete T. rex forelimbs were identified in 1989, belonging to MOR 555 (the "Wankel rex").[111][112] The remains of Sue also include complete forelimbs.[47] T. rex arms are very small relative to overall body size, measuring only 1 meter (3.3 ft) long, and some scholars have labelled them as vestigial. The bones show large areas for muscle attachment, indicating considerable strength. This was recognized as early as 1906 by Osborn, who speculated that the forelimbs may have been used to grasp a mate during copulation.[8] It has also been suggested that the forelimbs were used to assist the animal in rising from a prone position.[104]
+Another possibility is that the forelimbs held struggling prey while it was killed by the tyrannosaur's enormous jaws. This hypothesis may be supported by biomechanical analysis. T. rex forelimb bones exhibit extremely thick cortical bone, which has been interpreted as evidence that they were developed to withstand heavy loads. The biceps brachii muscle of an adult T. rex was capable of lifting 199 kilograms (439 lb) by itself; other muscles such as the brachialis would work along with the biceps to make elbow flexion even more powerful. The M. biceps muscle of T. rex was 3.5 times as powerful as the human equivalent. A T. rex forearm had a limited range of motion, with the shoulder and elbow joints allowing only 40 and 45 degrees of motion, respectively. In contrast, the same two joints in Deinonychus allow up to 88 and 130 degrees of motion, respectively, while a human arm can rotate 360 degrees at the shoulder and move through 165 degrees at the elbow. The heavy build of the arm bones, strength of the muscles, and limited range of motion may indicate a system evolved to hold fast despite the stresses of a struggling prey animal. In the first detailed scientific description of Tyrannosaurus forelimbs, paleontologists Kenneth Carpenter and Matt Smith dismissed notions that the forelimbs were useless or that T. rex was an obligate scavenger.[113]
+According to paleontologist Steven M. Stanley, the 1 metre (3.3 ft) arms of T. rex were used for slashing prey, especially by using its claws to rapidly inflict long, deep gashes to its prey, although this concept is disputed by others believing the arms were used for grasping a sexual partner.[114]
+As of 2014, it is not clear if Tyrannosaurus was endothermic (“warm-blooded”). Tyrannosaurus, like most dinosaurs, was long thought to have an ectothermic ("cold-blooded") reptilian metabolism. The idea of dinosaur ectothermy was challenged by scientists like Robert T. Bakker and John Ostrom in the early years of the "Dinosaur Renaissance", beginning in the late 1960s.[115][116] T. rex itself was claimed to have been endothermic ("warm-blooded"), implying a very active lifestyle.[35] Since then, several paleontologists have sought to determine the ability of Tyrannosaurus to regulate its body temperature. Histological evidence of high growth rates in young T. rex, comparable to those of mammals and birds, may support the hypothesis of a high metabolism. Growth curves indicate that, as in mammals and birds, T. rex growth was limited mostly to immature animals, rather than the indeterminate growth seen in most other vertebrates.[89]
+Oxygen isotope ratios in fossilized bone are sometimes used to determine the temperature at which the bone was deposited, as the ratio between certain isotopes correlates with temperature. In one specimen, the isotope ratios in bones from different parts of the body indicated a temperature difference of no more than 4 to 5 °C (7 to 9 °F) between the vertebrae of the torso and the tibia of the lower leg. This small temperature range between the body core and the extremities was claimed by paleontologist Reese Barrick and geochemist William Showers to indicate that T. rex maintained a constant internal body temperature (homeothermy) and that it enjoyed a metabolism somewhere between ectothermic reptiles and endothermic mammals.[117] Other scientists have pointed out that the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the fossils today does not necessarily represent the same ratio in the distant past, and may have been altered during or after fossilization (diagenesis).[118] Barrick and Showers have defended their conclusions in subsequent papers, finding similar results in another theropod dinosaur from a different continent and tens of millions of years earlier in time (Giganotosaurus).[119] Ornithischian dinosaurs also showed evidence of homeothermy, while varanid lizards from the same formation did not.[120] Even if T. rex does exhibit evidence of homeothermy, it does not necessarily mean that it was endothermic. Such thermoregulation may also be explained by gigantothermy, as in some living sea turtles.[121][122][123] Similar to contemporary alligators, dorsotemporal fenestra in Tyrannosaurus's skull may have aided thermoregulation.[124]
+In the March 2005 issue of Science, Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and colleagues announced the recovery of soft tissue from the marrow cavity of a fossilized leg bone from a T. rex. The bone had been intentionally, though reluctantly, broken for shipping and then not preserved in the normal manner, specifically because Schweitzer was hoping to test it for soft tissue.[125] Designated as the Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125, or MOR 1125, the dinosaur was previously excavated from the Hell Creek Formation. Flexible, bifurcating blood vessels and fibrous but elastic bone matrix tissue were recognized. In addition, microstructures resembling blood cells were found inside the matrix and vessels. The structures bear resemblance to ostrich blood cells and vessels. Whether an unknown process, distinct from normal fossilization, preserved the material, or the material is original, the researchers do not know, and they are careful not to make any claims about preservation.[126] If it is found to be original material, any surviving proteins may be used as a means of indirectly guessing some of the DNA content of the dinosaurs involved, because each protein is typically created by a specific gene. The absence of previous finds may be the result of people assuming preserved tissue was impossible, therefore not looking. Since the first, two more tyrannosaurs and a hadrosaur have also been found to have such tissue-like structures.[125] Research on some of the tissues involved has suggested that birds are closer relatives to tyrannosaurs than other modern animals.[127]
+In studies reported in Science in April 2007, Asara and colleagues concluded that seven traces of collagen proteins detected in purified T. rex bone most closely match those reported in chickens, followed by frogs and newts. The discovery of proteins from a creature tens of millions of years old, along with similar traces the team found in a mastodon bone at least 160,000 years old, upends the conventional view of fossils and may shift paleontologists' focus from bone hunting to biochemistry. Until these finds, most scientists presumed that fossilization replaced all living tissue with inert minerals. Paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, who was not part of the studies, called the finds "a milestone", and suggested that dinosaurs could "enter the field of molecular biology and really slingshot paleontology into the modern world".[128]
+The presumed soft tissue was called into question by Thomas Kaye of the University of Washington and his co-authors in 2008. They contend that what was really inside the tyrannosaur bone was slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.[129] The researchers found that what previously had been identified as remnants of blood cells, because of the presence of iron, were actually framboids, microscopic mineral spheres bearing iron. They found similar spheres in a variety of other fossils from various periods, including an ammonite. In the ammonite they found the spheres in a place where the iron they contain could not have had any relationship to the presence of blood.[130] Schweitzer has strongly criticized Kaye's claims and argues that there is no reported evidence that biofilms can produce branching, hollow tubes like those noted in her study.[131] San Antonio, Schweitzer and colleagues published an analysis in 2011 of what parts of the collagen had been recovered, finding that it was the inner parts of the collagen coil that had been preserved, as would have been expected from a long period of protein degradation.[132] Other research challenges the identification of soft tissue as biofilm and confirms finding "branching, vessel-like structures" from within fossilized bone.[133]
+Scientists have produced a wide range of possible maximum running speeds for Tyrannosaurus, mostly around 11 meters per second (40 km/h; 25 mph), but as low as 5–11 meters per second (18–40 km/h; 11–25 mph) and as high as 20 meters per second (72 km/h; 45 mph). Estimates that Tyrannosaurus had relatively larger leg muscles than any animal alive today indicate that fast running was possible at speeds of 40–70 kilometers per hour (25–43 mph).[134] Researchers have relied on various estimating techniques because, while there are many tracks of large theropods walking, none had the pattern of running.[135]
+A 2002 report used a mathematical model (validated by applying it to three living animals: alligators, chickens, and humans; and eight more species, including emus and ostriches[135]) to gauge the leg muscle mass needed for fast running (over 40 km/h or 25 mph).[134] Scientists who think that Tyrannosaurus was able to run point out that hollow bones and other features that would have lightened its body may have kept adult weight to a mere 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons) or so, or that other animals like ostriches and horses with long, flexible legs are able to achieve high speeds through slower but longer strides.[135] Proposed top speeds exceeded 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph) for Tyrannosaurus, but were deemed infeasible because they would require exceptional leg muscles of approximately 40–86% of total body mass. Even moderately fast speeds would have required large leg muscles. If the muscle mass was less, only 18 kilometers per hour (11 mph) for walking or jogging would have been possible.[134] Holtz noted that tyrannosaurids and some closely related groups had significantly longer distal hindlimb components (shin plus foot plus toes) relative to the femur length than most other theropods, and that tyrannosaurids and their close relatives had a tightly interlocked metatarsus (foot bones).[136] The third metatarsal was squeezed between the second and fourth metatarsals to form a single unit called an arctometatarsus. This ankle feature may have helped the animal to run more efficiently.[137] Together, these leg features allowed Tyrannosaurus to transmit locomotory forces from the foot to the lower leg more effectively than in earlier theropods.[136]
+Additionally, a 2020 study indicates that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were exceptionally efficient walkers. Studies by Dececchi et al., compared the leg proportions, body mass, and the gaits of more than 70 species of theropod dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus and its relatives. The research team then applied a variety of methods to estimate each dinosaur's top speed when running as well as how much energy each dinosaur expended while moving at more relaxed speeds such as when walking. Among smaller to medium-sized species such as dromaeosaurids, longer legs appear to be an adaptation for faster running, in line with previous results by other researchers. But for theropods weighing over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), top running speed is limited by body size, so longer legs instead were found to have correlated with low-energy walking. The results further indicate that smaller theropods evolved long legs as a means to both aid in hunting and escape from larger predators while larger theropods that evolved long legs did so to reduce the energy costs and increase foraging efficiency, as they were freed from the demands of predation pressure due to their role as apex predators. Compared to more basal groups of theropods in the study, tyrannosaurs like Tyrannosaurus itself showed a marked increase in foraging efficiency due to reduced energy expenditures during hunting or scavenging. This in turn likely resulted in tyrannosaurs having a reduced need for hunting forays and requiring less food to sustain themselves as a result. Additionally, the research, in conjunction with studies that show tyrannosaurs were more agile than other large bodied-theropods, indicates they were quite well-adapted to a long-distance stalking approach followed by a quick burst of speed to go for the kill. Analogies can be noted between tyrannosaurids and modern wolves as a result, supported by evidence that at least some tyrannosaurids were hunting in group settings.[138][139]
+A 2017 study estimated the top running speed of Tyrannosaurus as 17 mph (27 km/h), speculating that Tyrannosaurus exhausted its energy reserves long before reaching top speed, resulting in a parabola-like relationship between size and speed.[140][141] Another 2017 study hypothesized that an adult Tyrannosaurus was incapable of running due to high skeletal loads. Using a calculated weight estimate of 7 tons, the model showed that speeds above 11 mph (18 km/h) would have probably shattered the leg bones of Tyrannosaurus. The finding may mean that running was also not possible for other giant theropod dinosaurs like Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus and Acrocanthosaurus.[142]
+However, studies by Eric Snively and colleagues, published in 2019 indicate that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were more maneuverable than allosauroids and other theropods of comparable size due to low rotational inertia compared to their body mass combined with large leg muscles. As a result, it is hypothesized that Tyrannosaurus was capable of making relatively quick turns and could likely pivot its body more quickly when close to its prey, or that while turning, the theropod could "pirouette" on a single planted foot while the alternating leg was held out in a suspended swing during pursuit. The results of this study potentially could shed light on how agility could have contributed to the success of tyrannosaurid evolution.[143]
+A study conducted by Lawrence Witmer and Ryan Ridgely of Ohio University found that Tyrannosaurus shared the heightened sensory abilities of other coelurosaurs, highlighting relatively rapid and coordinated eye and head movements; an enhanced ability to sense low frequency sounds, which would allow tyrannosaurs to track prey movements from long distances; and an enhanced sense of smell.[144] A study published by Kent Stevens concluded that Tyrannosaurus had keen vision. By applying modified perimetry to facial reconstructions of several dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus, the study found that Tyrannosaurus had a binocular range of 55 degrees, surpassing that of modern hawks. Stevens estimated that Tyrannosaurus had 13 times the visual acuity of a human and surpassed the visual acuity of an eagle, which is 3.6 times that of a person. Stevens estimated a limiting far point (that is, the distance at which an object can be seen as separate from the horizon) as far as 6 km (3.7 mi) away, which is greater than the 1.6 km (1 mi) that a human can see.[41][42][145]
+Thomas Holtz Jr. would note that high depth perception of Tyrannosaurus may have been due to the prey it had to hunt, noting that it had to hunt horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops, armored dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus, and the duck-billed dinosaurs and their possibly complex social behaviors. He would suggest that this made precision more crucial for Tyrannosaurus enabling it to, "get in, get that blow in and take it down." In contrast, Acrocanthosaurus had limited depth perception because they hunted large sauropods, which were relatively rare during the time of Tyrannosaurus.[96]
+Tyrannosaurus had very large olfactory bulbs and olfactory nerves relative to their brain size, the organs responsible for a heightened sense of smell. This suggests that the sense of smell was highly developed, and implies that tyrannosaurs could detect carcasses by scent alone across great distances. The sense of smell in tyrannosaurs may have been comparable to modern vultures, which use scent to track carcasses for scavenging. Research on the olfactory bulbs has shown that T. rex had the most highly developed sense of smell of 21 sampled non-avian dinosaur species.[146]
+Somewhat unusually among theropods, T. rex had a very long cochlea. The length of the cochlea is often related to hearing acuity, or at least the importance of hearing in behavior, implying that hearing was a particularly important sense to tyrannosaurs. Specifically, data suggests that T. rex heard best in the low-frequency range, and that low-frequency sounds were an important part of tyrannosaur behavior.[144] A 2017 study by Thomas Carr and colleagues found that the snout of tyrannosaurids was highly sensitive, based on a high number of small openings in the facial bones of the related Daspletosaurus that contained sensory neurons. The study speculated that tyrannosaurs might have used their sensitive snouts to measure the temperature of their nests and to gently pick-up eggs and hatchlings, as seen in modern crocodylians.[51]
+A study by Grant R. Hurlburt, Ryan C. Ridgely and Lawrence Witmer obtained estimates for Encephalization Quotients (EQs), based on reptiles and birds, as well as estimates for the ratio of cerebrum to brain mass. The study concluded that Tyrannosaurus had the relatively largest brain of all adult non-avian dinosaurs with the exception of certain small maniraptoriforms (Bambiraptor, Troodon and Ornithomimus). The study found that Tyrannosaurus's relative brain size was still within the range of modern reptiles, being at most 2 standard deviations above the mean of non-avian reptile EQs. The estimates for the ratio of cerebrum mass to brain mass would range from 47.5 to 49.53 percent. According to the study, this is more than the lowest estimates for extant birds (44.6 percent), but still close to the typical ratios of the smallest sexually mature alligators which range from 45.9–47.9 percent.[147] Other studies, such as those by Steve Brusatte, indicate the encephalization quotient of Tyrannosaurus was similar in range (2.0-2.4) to a chimpanzee (2.2-2.5), though this may be debatable as reptilian and mammalian encephalization quotients are not equivalent.[148]
+Suggesting that Tyrannosaurus may have been pack hunters, Philip J. Currie compared T. rex to related species Tarbosaurus bataar and Albertosaurus sarcophagus, citing fossil evidence that may indicate pack behavior.[149] A find in South Dakota where three T. rex skeletons were in close proximity suggested a pack.[150][151] Because available prey such as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus had significant defenses, it may have been effective for T. rex to hunt in groups.[149]
+Currie's pack-hunting hypothesis has been criticized for not having been peer-reviewed, but rather was discussed in a television interview and book called Dino Gangs.[152] The Currie theory for pack hunting by T. rex is based mainly by analogy to a different species, Tarbosaurus bataar, and that the supposed evidence for pack hunting in T. bataar itself had not yet been peer-reviewed. According to scientists assessing the Dino Gangs program, the evidence for pack hunting in Tarbosaurus and Albertosaurus is weak and based on skeletal remains for which alternate explanations may apply (such as drought or a flood forcing dinosaurs to die together in one place).[152] Fossilized trackways from the Upper Cretaceous Wapiti Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, left by three tyrannosaurids traveling in the same direction, may also indicate packs.[153][154]
+Evidence of intraspecific attack were found by Joseph Peterson and his colleagues in the juvenile Tyrannosaurus nicknamed Jane. Peterson and his team found that Jane's skull showed healed puncture wounds on the upper jaw and snout which they believe came from another juvenile Tyrannosaurus. Subsequent CT scans of Jane's skull would further confirm the team's hypothesis, showing that the puncture wounds came from a traumatic injury and that there was subsequent healing.[155] The team would also state that Jane's injuries were structurally different from the parasite-induced lesions found in Sue and that Jane's injuries were on her face whereas the parasite that infected Sue caused lesions to the lower jaw.[156]
+Most paleontologists accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger like most large carnivores.[157] By far the largest carnivore in its environment, T. rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods.[158] A study in 2012 by Karl Bates and Peter Falkingham found that Tyrannosaurus had the most powerful bite of any terrestrial animal that has ever lived, finding an adult Tyrannosaurus could have exerted 35,000 to 57,000 N (7,868 to 12,814 lbf) of force in the back teeth.[159][160][161] Even higher estimates were made by Mason B. Meers in 2003.[44] This allowed it to crush bones during repetitive biting and fully consume the carcasses of large dinosaurs.[20] Stephan Lautenschlager and colleagues calculated that Tyrannosaurus was capable of a maximum jaw gape of around 80 degrees, a necessary adaptation for a wide range of jaw angles to power the creature's strong bite.[162][163]
+A debate exists, however, about whether Tyrannosaurus was primarily a predator or a pure scavenger; the debate was assessed in a 1917 study by Lambe which argued Tyrannosaurus was a pure scavenger because the Gorgosaurus teeth showed hardly any wear.[164] This argument may not be valid because theropods replaced their teeth quite rapidly. Ever since the first discovery of Tyrannosaurus most scientists have speculated that it was a predator; like modern large predators it would readily scavenge or steal another predator's kill if it had the opportunity.[165]
+Paleontologist Jack Horner has been a major proponent of the view that Tyrannosaurus was not a predator at all but instead was exclusively a scavenger.[111][166][167] He has put forward arguments in the popular literature to support the pure scavenger hypothesis:
+Other evidence suggests hunting behavior in Tyrannosaurus. The eye sockets of tyrannosaurs are positioned so that the eyes would point forward, giving them binocular vision slightly better than that of modern hawks. It is not obvious why natural selection would have favored this long-term trend if tyrannosaurs had been pure scavengers, which would not have needed the advanced depth perception that stereoscopic vision provides.[41][42] In modern animals, binocular vision is found mainly in predators.
+A skeleton of the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens has been described from Montana with healed tyrannosaur-inflicted damage on its tail vertebrae. The fact that the damage seems to have healed suggests that the Edmontosaurus survived a tyrannosaur's attack on a living target, i.e. the tyrannosaur had attempted active predation.[169] Despite the consensus that the tail bites were caused by Tyrannosaurus, there has been some evidence to show that they might have been created by other factors. For example, a 2014 study suggested that the tail injuries might have been due to Edmontosaurus indivduals stepping on each other,[170] while another study in 2020 backs up the hypothesis that biomechanical stress is the cause for the tail injuries.[171]. There is also evidence for an aggressive interaction between a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus in the form of partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a Triceratops brow horn and squamosal (a bone of the neck frill); the bitten horn is also broken, with new bone growth after the break. It is not known what the exact nature of the interaction was, though: either animal could have been the aggressor.[172] Since the Triceratops wounds healed, it is most likely that the Triceratops survived the encounter and managed to overcome the Tyrannosaurus. In a battle against a bull Triceratops, the Triceratops would likely defend itself by inflicting fatal wounds to the Tyrannosaurus using its sharp horns.[173] Studies of Sue found a broken and healed fibula and tail vertebrae, scarred facial bones and a tooth from another Tyrannosaurus embedded in a neck vertebra, providing evidence for aggressive behavior.[174] Studies on hadrosaur vertebrae from the Hell Creek Formation that were punctured by the teeth of what appears to be a late-stage juvenile Tyrannosaurus indicate that despite lacking the bone-crushing adaptations of the adults, young individuals were still capable of using the same bone-puncturing feeding technique as their adult counterparts.[175]
+Tyrannosaurus may have had infectious saliva used to kill its prey, as proposed by William Abler in 1992. Abler observed that the serrations (tiny protuberances) on the cutting edges of the teeth are closely spaced, enclosing little chambers. These chambers might have trapped pieces of carcass with bacteria, giving Tyrannosaurus a deadly, infectious bite much like the Komodo dragon was thought to have.[176][177] Jack Horner and Don Lessem, in a 1993 popular book, questioned Abler's hypothesis, arguing that Tyrannosaurus's tooth serrations as more like cubes in shape than the serrations on a Komodo monitor's teeth, which are rounded.[111]:214–215
+Tyrannosaurus, and most other theropods, probably primarily processed carcasses with lateral shakes of the head, like crocodilians. The head was not as maneuverable as the skulls of allosauroids, due to flat joints of the neck vertebrae.[178]
+In 2001, Bruce Rothschild and others published a study examining evidence for stress fractures and tendon avulsions in theropod dinosaurs and the implications for their behavior. Since stress fractures are caused by repeated trauma rather than singular events they are more likely to be caused by regular behavior than other types of injuries. Of the 81 Tyrannosaurus foot bones examined in the study one was found to have a stress fracture, while none of the 10 hand bones were found to have stress fractures. The researchers found tendon avulsions only among Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. An avulsion injury left a divot on the humerus of Sue the T. rex, apparently located at the origin of the deltoid or teres major muscles. The presence of avulsion injuries being limited to the forelimb and shoulder in both Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus suggests that theropods may have had a musculature more complex than and functionally different from those of birds. The researchers concluded that Sue's tendon avulsion was probably obtained from struggling prey. The presence of stress fractures and tendon avulsions in general provides evidence for a "very active" predation-based diet rather than obligate scavenging.[179]
+A 2009 study showed that smooth-edged holes in the skulls of several specimens might have been caused by Trichomonas-like parasites that commonly infect birds. Seriously infected individuals, including "Sue" and MOR 980 ("Peck's Rex"), might therefore have died from starvation after feeding became increasingly difficult. Previously, these holes had been explained by the bacterious bone infection Actinomycosis or by intraspecific attacks.[180]
+One study of Tyrannosaurus specimens with tooth marks in the bones attributable to the same genus was presented as evidence of cannibalism.[181] Tooth marks in the humerus, foot bones and metatarsals, may indicate opportunistic scavenging, rather than wounds caused by combat with another T. rex.[181][182] Other tyrannosaurids may also have practiced cannibalism.[181]
+Tyrannosaurus lived during what is referred to as the Lancian faunal stage (Maastrichtian age) at the end of the Late Cretaceous. Tyrannosaurus ranged from Canada in the north to at least New Mexico in the south of Laramidia.[5] During this time Triceratops was the major herbivore in the northern portion of its range, while the titanosaurian sauropod Alamosaurus "dominated" its southern range. Tyrannosaurus remains have been discovered in different ecosystems, including inland and coastal subtropical, and semi-arid plains.
+Several notable Tyrannosaurus remains have been found in the Hell Creek Formation. During the Maastrichtian this area was subtropical, with a warm and humid climate. The flora consisted mostly of angiosperms, but also included trees like dawn redwood (Metasequoia) and Araucaria. Tyrannosaurus shared this ecosystem with ceratopsians Leptoceratops, Torosaurus, and Triceratops, the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens, the parksosaurid Thescelosaurus, the ankylosaurs Ankylosaurus and Denversaurus, the pachycephalosaurs Pachycephalosaurus and Sphaerotholus, and the theropods Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, Acheroraptor, Dakotaraptor, Pectinodon and Anzu.[183]
+Another formation with Tyrannosaurus remains is the Lance Formation of Wyoming. This has been interpreted as a bayou environment similar to today's Gulf Coast. The fauna was very similar to Hell Creek, but with Struthiomimus replacing its relative Ornithomimus. The small ceratopsian Leptoceratops also lived in the area.[184]
+In its southern range Tyrannosaurus lived alongside the titanosaur Alamosaurus, the ceratopsians Torosaurus, Bravoceratops and Ojoceratops, hadrosaurs which consisted of a species of Edmontosaurus, Kritosaurus and a possible species of Gryposaurus, the nodosaur Glyptodontopelta, the oviraptorid Ojoraptosaurus, possible species of the theropods Troodon and Richardoestesia, and the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus.[185] The region is thought to have been dominated by semi-arid inland plains, following the probable retreat of the Western Interior Seaway as global sea levels fell.[186]
+Tyrannosaurus may have also inhabited Mexico's Lomas Coloradas formation in Sonora. Though skeletal evidence is lacking, six shed and broken teeth from the fossil bed have been thoroughly compared with other theropod genera and appear to be identical to those of Tyrannosaurus. If true, the evidence indicates the range of Tyrannosaurus was possibly more extensive than previously believed.[187] It is possible that tyrannosaurs were originally Asian species, migrating to North America before the end of the Cretaceous period.[188]
+Since it was first described in 1905, T. rex has become the most widely recognized dinosaur species in popular culture. It is the only dinosaur that is commonly known to the general public by its full scientific name (binomial name) and the scientific abbreviation T. rex has also come into wide usage.[47] Robert T. Bakker notes this in The Dinosaur Heresies and explains that, "a name like ‘T. rex’ is just irresistible to the tongue."[35]

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+Tyrannosaurus[nb 1] is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin), often called T. rex or colloquially T-Rex, is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous period, 68 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
+Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to its large and powerful hind limbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were short but unusually powerful for their size and had two clawed digits. The most complete specimen measures up to 12.3 meters (40 feet) in length though T. rex could grow to lengths of over 12.3 m (40 ft), up to 3.66 m (12 ft) tall at the hips, and according to most modern estimates 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons) in weight. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it is still among the largest known land predators and is estimated to have exerted the strongest bite force among all terrestrial animals. By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods. Some experts have suggested the dinosaur was primarily a scavenger. The question of whether Tyrannosaurus was an apex predator or a pure scavenger was among the longest debates in paleontology. Most paleontologists today accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger.
+Specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex include some that are nearly complete skeletons. Soft tissue and proteins have been reported in at least one of these specimens. The abundance of fossil material has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics. The feeding habits, physiology and potential speed of Tyrannosaurus rex are a few subjects of debate. Its taxonomy is also controversial, as some scientists consider Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to be a second Tyrannosaurus species while others maintain Tarbosaurus is a separate genus. Several other genera of North American tyrannosaurids have also been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.
+As the archetypal theropod, Tyrannosaurus has been one of the best-known dinosaurs since the early 20th century, and has been featured in film, advertising, postal stamps, and many other media.
+Teeth from what is now documented as a Tyrannosaurus rex were found in 1874 by Arthur Lakes near Golden, Colorado. In the early 1890s, John Bell Hatcher collected postcranial elements in eastern Wyoming. The fossils were believed to be from the large species Ornithomimus grandis (now Deinodon) but are now considered T. rex remains.[2]
+In 1892, Edward Drinker Cope found two vertebral fragments of large dinosaur. Cope believed the fragments belonged to an "agathaumid" (ceratopsid) dinosaur, and named them Manospondylus gigas, meaning "giant porous vertebra", in reference to the numerous openings for blood vessels he found in the bone.[2] The M. gigas remains were, in 1907, identified by Hatcher as those of a theropod rather than a ceratopsid.[3]
+Henry Fairfield Osborn recognized the similarity between Manospondylus gigas and T. rex as early as 1917, by which time the second vertebra had been lost. Owing to the fragmentary nature of the Manospondylus vertebrae, Osborn did not synonymize the two genera, instead considering the older genus indeterminate.[4] In June 2000, the Black Hills Institute found around 10% of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton (BHI 6248) at a site that might have been the original M. gigas locality.[5]
+Barnum Brown, assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History, found the first partial skeleton of T. rex in eastern Wyoming in 1900. Brown found another partial skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 1902, comprising approximately 34 fossilized bones.[6] Writing at the time Brown said "Quarry No. 1 contains the femur, pubes, humerus, three vertebrae and two undetermined bones of a large Carnivorous Dinosaur not described by Marsh.... I have never seen anything like it from the Cretaceous".[7] Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, named the second skeleton T. rex in 1905. The generic name is derived from the Greek words τύραννος (tyrannos, meaning "tyrant") and σαῦρος (sauros, meaning "lizard"). Osborn used the Latin word rex, meaning "king", for the specific name. The full binomial therefore translates to "tyrant lizard the king" or "King Tyrant Lizard", emphasizing the animal's size and perceived dominance over other species of the time.[6]
+Osborn named the other specimen Dynamosaurus imperiosus in a paper in 1905.[6] In 1906, Osborn recognized that the two skeletons were from the same species and selected Tyrannosaurus as the preferred name.[8] The original Dynamosaurus material resides in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.[9] In 1941, the T. rex type specimen was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for $7,000.[7] Dynamosaurus would later be honored by the 2018 description of another species of tyrannosaurid by Andrew McDonald and colleagues, Dynamoterror dynastes, whose name was chosen in reference to the 1905 name, as it had been a "childhood favorite" of McDonald's.[10]
+From the 1910s through the end of the 1950s, Barnum's discoveries remained the only specimens of Tyrannosaurus, as the Great Depression and wars kept many paleontologists out of the field.[5]
+Beginning in the 1960s, there was renewed interest in Tyrannosaurus, resulting in recovery of 42 skeletons (5-80% complete by bone count) from Western North America.[5] In 1967, Dr. William MacMannis located and recovered the skeleton named "MOR 008", which is 15% complete by bone count and has a reconstructed skull displayed at the Museum of the Rockies. The 1990s saw numerous discoveries, with nearly twice as many finds as in all previous years, including two of the most complete skeletons found to date: Sue and Stan.[5]
+Sue Hendrickson, an amateur paleontologist, discovered the most complete (approximately 85%) and largest Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation on August 12, 1990. The specimen Sue, named after the discoverer, was the object of a legal battle over its ownership. In 1997, the litigation was settled in favor of Maurice Williams, the original land owner. The fossil collection was purchased by the Field Museum of Natural History at auction for $7.6 million, making it the most expensive dinosaur skeleton to date. From 1998 to 1999, Field Museum of Natural History staff spent over 25,000 hours taking the rock off the bones.[11] The bones were then shipped to New Jersey where the mount was constructed, then shipped back to Chicago for the final assembly. The mounted skeleton opened to the public on May 17, 2000 in the Field Museum of Natural History. A study of this specimen's fossilized bones showed that Sue reached full size at age 19 and died at the age of 28, the longest estimated life of any tyrannosaur known.[12]
+Another Tyrannosaurus, nicknamed Stan (BHI 3033), in honor of amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, was recovered from the Hell Creek Formation in 1992. Stan is the second most complete skeleton found, with 199 bones recovered representing 70% of the total.[13] This tyrannosaur also had many bone pathologies, including broken and healed ribs, a broken (and healed) neck, and a substantial hole in the back of its head, about the size of a Tyrannosaurus tooth.[14]
+In 1998, Bucky Derflinger noticed one of Bucky's toes exposed above ground, making Derflinger, who was 20 years old at the time, the youngest person to discover a Tyrannosaurus. The specimen was a young adult, 3.0 metres (10 ft) tall and 11 metres (35 ft) long. Bucky is the first Tyrannosaurus to be found that preserved a furcula (wishbone). Bucky is permanently displayed at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.[15]
+In the summer of 2000, crews organized by Jack Horner discovered five Tyrannosaurus skeletons near the Fort Peck Reservoir.[16] In 2001, a 50% complete skeleton of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation by a crew from the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Dubbed Jane (BMRP 2002.4.1), the find was thought to be the first known skeleton of a pygmy tyrannosaurid, Nanotyrannus, but subsequent research revealed that it is more likely a juvenile Tyrannosaurus, and the most complete juvenile example known;[17] Jane is exhibited at the Burpee Museum of Natural History.[18] In 2002, a skeleton named Wyrex, discovered by amateur collectors Dan Wells and Don Wyrick, had 114 bones and was 38% complete. The dig was concluded over 3 weeks in 2004 by the Black Hills Institute with the first live online Tyrannosaurus excavation providing daily reports, photos, and video.[5]
+In 2006, Montana State University revealed that it possessed the largest Tyrannosaurus skull yet discovered (from a specimen named MOR 008), measuring 5 feet (152 cm) long.[19] Subsequent comparisons indicated that the longest head was 136.5 centimetres (53.7 in) (from specimen LACM 23844) and the widest head was 90.2 centimetres (35.5 in) (from Sue).[20]
+Two isolated fossilized footprints have been tentatively assigned to T. rex. The first was discovered at Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, in 1983 by American geologist Charles Pillmore. Originally thought to belong to a hadrosaurid, examination of the footprint revealed a large 'heel' unknown in ornithopod dinosaur tracks, and traces of what may have been a hallux, the dewclaw-like fourth digit of the tyrannosaur foot. The footprint was published as the ichnogenus Tyrannosauripus pillmorei in 1994, by Martin Lockley and Adrian Hunt. Lockley and Hunt suggested that it was very likely the track was made by a T. rex, which would make it the first known footprint from this species. The track was made in what was once a vegetated wetland mud flat. It measures 83 centimeters (33 in) long by 71 centimeters (28 in) wide.[21]
+A second footprint that may have been made by a Tyrannosaurus was first reported in 2007 by British paleontologist Phil Manning, from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. This second track measures 72 centimeters (28 in) long, shorter than the track described by Lockley and Hunt. Whether or not the track was made by Tyrannosaurus is unclear, though Tyrannosaurus and Nanotyrannus are the only large theropods known to have existed in the Hell Creek Formation.[22][23]
+A set of footprints in Glenrock, Wyoming dating to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous and hailing from the Lance Formation were described by Scott Persons, Phil Currie and colleagues in 2016, and are believed to belong to either a juvenile T. rex or the dubious tyrannosaurid Nanotyrannus lancensis. From measurements and based on the positions of the footprints, the animal was believed to be traveling at a walking speed of around 2.8 to 5 miles per hour and was estimated to have a hip height of 1.56 m (5.1 ft) to 2.06 m (6.8 ft).[24][25][26] A follow-up paper appeared in 2017, increasing the speed estimations by 50-80%.[27]
+T. rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time. One of the largest and the most complete specimens, nicknamed Sue (FMNH PR2081), is located at the Field Museum of Natural History. Sue measured 12.3–12.8 meters (40–42 ft) long,[28][29] was 3.66 meters (12 ft) tall at the hips,[30] and according to the most recent studies, using a variety of techniques, estimated to have weighed between 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons).[29][31] A specimen nicknamed Scotty (RSM P2523.8), located at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, is reported to measure 13 m (43 ft) in length. Using a mass estimation technique that extrapolates from the circumference of the femur, Scotty was estimated as the largest known specimen at 8.8 metric tons (9.7 short tons) in weight.[32][33]
+Not every adult Tyrannosaurus specimen recovered is as big. Historically average adult mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from as low as 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons),[34][35] to more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons),[36] with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 metric tons (6.0 short tons) and 8.0 metric tons (8.8 short tons).[29][37][38][39][40]
+The largest known T. rex skull is 1.52 meters (5 ft) in length.[30] Large fenestrae (openings) in the skull reduced weight, as in all carnivorous theropods. In other respects Tyrannosaurus's skull was significantly different from those of large non-tyrannosaurid theropods. It was extremely wide at the rear but had a narrow snout, allowing unusually good binocular vision.[41][42] The skull bones were massive and the nasals and some other bones were fused, preventing movement between them; but many were pneumatized (contained a "honeycomb" of tiny air spaces) and thus lighter. These and other skull-strengthening features are part of the tyrannosaurid trend towards an increasingly powerful bite, which easily surpassed that of all non-tyrannosaurids.[43][44][45] The tip of the upper jaw was U-shaped (most non-tyrannosauroid carnivores had V-shaped upper jaws), which increased the amount of tissue and bone a tyrannosaur could rip out with one bite, although it also increased the stresses on the front teeth.[46]
+The teeth of T. rex displayed marked heterodonty (differences in shape).[47][48] The premaxillary teeth, four per side at the front of the upper jaw, were closely packed, D-shaped in cross-section, had reinforcing ridges on the rear surface, were incisiform (their tips were chisel-like blades) and curved backwards. The D-shaped cross-section, reinforcing ridges and backwards curve reduced the risk that the teeth would snap when Tyrannosaurus bit and pulled. The remaining teeth were robust, like "lethal bananas" rather than daggers, more widely spaced and also had reinforcing ridges.[49] Those in the upper jaw, twelve per side in mature individuals,[47] were larger than their counterparts of the lower jaw, except at the rear. The largest found so far is estimated to have been 30.5 centimeters (12 in) long including the root when the animal was alive, making it the largest tooth of any carnivorous dinosaur yet found.[50] The lower jaw was robust. Its front dentary bone bore thirteen teeth. Behind the tooth row, the lower jaw became notably taller.[47] The upper and lower jaws of Tyrannosaurus, like those of many dinosaurs, possessed numerous foramina, or small holes in the bone. Various functions have been proposed for these foramina, such as a crocodile-like sensory system[51] or evidence of extra-oral structures such as scales or potentially lips.[52][53]
+The vertebral column of Tyrannosaurus consisted of ten neck vertebrae, thirteen back vertebrae and five sacral vertebrae. The number of tail vertebrae is unknown and could well have varied between individuals but probably numbered at least forty. Sue was mounted with forty-seven of such caudal vertebrae.[47] The neck of T. rex formed a natural S-shaped curve like that of other theropods. Compared to these, it was exceptionally short, deep and muscular to support the massive head. The second vertebra, the axis, was especially short. The remaining neck vertebrae were weakly opisthocoelous, i.e. with a convex front of the vertebral body and a concave rear. The vertebral bodies had single pleurocoels, pneumatic depressions created by air sacs, on their sides.[47] The vertebral bodies of the torso were robust but with a narrow waist. Their undersides were keeled. The front sides were concave with a deep vertical trough. They had large pleurocoels. Their neural spines had very rough front and rear sides for the attachment of strong tendons. The sacral vertebrae were fused to each other, both in their vertebral bodies and neural spines. They were pneumatized. They were connected to the pelvis by transverse processes and sacral ribs. The tail was heavy and moderately long, in order to balance the massive head and torso and to provide space for massive locomotor muscles that attached to the thighbones. The thirteenth tail vertebra formed the transition point between the deep tail base and the middle tail that was stiffened by rather long front articulation processes. The underside of the trunk was covered by eighteen or nineteen pairs of segmented belly ribs.[47]
+The shoulder girdle was longer than the entire forelimb. The shoulder blade had a narrow shaft but was exceptionally expanded at its upper end. It connected via a long forward protrusion to the coracoid, which was rounded. Both shoulder blades were connected by a small furcula. The paired breast bones possibly were made of cartilage only.[47]
+The forelimb or arm was very short. The upper arm bone, the humerus, was short but robust. It had a narrow upper end with an exceptionally rounded head. The lower arm bones, the ulna and radius, were straight elements, much shorter than the humerus. The second metacarpal was longer and wider than the first, whereas normally in theropods the opposite is true. The forelimbs had only two clawed fingers,[47] along with an additional splint-like small third metacarpal representing the remnant of a third digit.[54]
+The pelvis was a large structure. Its upper bone, the ilium, was both very long and high, providing an extensive attachment area for hindlimb muscles. The front pubic bone ended in an enormous pubic boot, longer than the entire shaft of the element. The rear ischium was slender and straight, pointing obliquely to behind and below.[47]
+In contrast to the arms, the hindlimbs were among the longest in proportion to body size of any theropod. In the foot, the metatarsus was "arctometatarsalian", meaning that the part of the third metatarsal near the ankle was pinched. The third metatarsal was also exceptionally sinuous.[47] Compensating for the immense bulk of the animal, many bones throughout the skeleton were hollowed, reducing its weight without significant loss of strength.[47]
+The discovery of feathered dinosaurs led to debate regarding whether, and to what extent, Tyrannosaurus might have been feathered.[55][56] Filamentous structures, which are commonly recognized as the precursors of feathers, have been reported in the small-bodied, basal tyrannosauroid Dilong paradoxus from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China in 2004.[57] Because integumentary impressions of larger tyrannosauroids known at that time showed evidence of scales, the researchers who studied Dilong speculated that insulating feathers might have been lost by larger species due to their smaller surface-to-volume ratio.[57] The subsequent discovery of the giant species Yutyrannus huali, also from the Yixian, showed that even some large tyrannosauroids had feathers covering much of their bodies, casting doubt on the hypothesis that they were a size-related feature.[58] A 2017 study reviewed known skin impressions of tyrannosaurids, including those of a Tyrannosaurus specimen nicknamed "Wyrex" (BHI 6230) which preserves patches of mosaic scales on the tail, hip, and neck.[5] The study concluded that feather covering of large tyrannosaurids such as Tyrannosaurus was, if present, limited to the upper side of the trunk.[55]
+A conference abstract published in 2016 posited that theropods such as Tyrannosaurus had their upper teeth covered in lips, instead of bare teeth as seen in crocodilians. This was based on the presence of enamel, which according to the study needs to remain hydrated, an issue not faced by aquatic animals like crocodilians.[53] A 2017 analytical study proposed that tyrannosaurids had large, flat scales on their snouts instead of lips.[51][59]
+Tyrannosaurus is the type genus of the superfamily Tyrannosauroidea, the family Tyrannosauridae, and the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae; in other words it is the standard by which paleontologists decide whether to include other species in the same group. Other members of the tyrannosaurine subfamily include the North American Daspletosaurus and the Asian Tarbosaurus,[17][60] both of which have occasionally been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.[61] Tyrannosaurids were once commonly thought to be descendants of earlier large theropods such as megalosaurs and carnosaurs, although more recently they were reclassified with the generally smaller coelurosaurs.[46]
+In 1955, Soviet paleontologist Evgeny Maleev named a new species, Tyrannosaurus bataar, from Mongolia.[62] By 1965, this species had been renamed Tarbosaurus bataar.[63] Despite the renaming, many phylogenetic analyses have found Tarbosaurus bataar to be the sister taxon of T. rex,[60] and it has often been considered an Asian species of Tyrannosaurus.[46][64][65]  The discovery of the tyrannosaurid Lythronax further indicates that Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are closely related, forming a clade with fellow Asian tyrannosaurid Zhuchengtyrannus, with Lythronax being their sister taxon.[66][67] A further study from 2016 by Steve Brusatte, Thomas Carr and colleagues, also indicates that Tyrannosaurus may have been an immigrant from Asia, as well as a possible descendant of Tarbosaurus.[68]
+In 2001, various tyrannosaurid teeth and a metatarsal unearthed in a quarry near Zhucheng, China were assigned by Chinese paleontologist Hu Chengzhi to the newly erected Tyrannosaurus zhuchengensis. However, in a nearby site, a right maxilla and left jawbone were assigned to the newly erected tyrannosaurid genus Zhuchengtyrannus in 2011, and it is possible T. zhuchengensis is synonymous with Zhuchengtyrannus. In any case, T. zhuchengensis is considered to be a nomen dubium as the holotype lacks diagnostic features below the level Tyrannosaurinae.[69]
+Below is the cladogram of Tyrannosauridae based on the phylogenetic analysis conducted by Loewen and colleagues in 2013.[66]
+Gorgosaurus libratus
+Albertosaurus sarcophagus
+Dinosaur Park tyrannosaurid
+Daspletosaurus torosus
+Two Medicine tyrannosaurid
+Teratophoneus curriei
+Bistahieversor sealeyi
+Lythronax argestes
+Tyrannosaurus rex
+Tarbosaurus bataar
+Zhuchengtyrannus magnus
+Other tyrannosaurid fossils found in the same formations as T. rex were originally classified as separate taxa, including Aublysodon and Albertosaurus megagracilis,[61] the latter being named Dinotyrannus megagracilis in 1995.[70] These fossils are now universally considered to belong to juvenile T. rex.[71] A small but nearly complete skull from Montana, 60 centimeters (2.0 ft) long, might be an exception. This skull, CMNH 7541, was originally classified as a species of Gorgosaurus (G. lancensis) by Charles W. Gilmore in 1946.[72] In 1988, the specimen was re-described by Robert T. Bakker, Phil Currie, and Michael Williams, then the curator of paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where the original specimen was housed and is now on display. Their initial research indicated that the skull bones were fused, and that it therefore represented an adult specimen. In light of this, Bakker and colleagues assigned the skull to a new genus named Nanotyrannus (meaning "dwarf tyrant", for its apparently small adult size). The specimen is estimated to have been around 5.2 metres (17 ft) long when it died.[73] However, In 1999, a detailed analysis by Thomas Carr revealed the specimen to be a juvenile, leading Carr and many other paleontologists to consider it a juvenile T. rex individual.[74][75]
+In 2001, a more complete juvenile tyrannosaur (nicknamed "Jane", catalog number BMRP 2002.4.1), belonging to the same species as the original Nanotyrannus specimen, was uncovered. This discovery prompted a conference on tyrannosaurs focused on the issues of Nanotyrannus validity at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in 2005. Several paleontologists who had previously published opinions that N. lancensis was a valid species, including Currie and Williams, saw the discovery of "Jane" as a confirmation that Nanotyrannus was, in fact, a juvenile T. rex.[76][77][78] Peter Larson continued to support the hypothesis that N. lancensis was a separate but closely related species, based on skull features such as two more teeth in both jaws than T. rex; as well as proportionately larger hands with phalanges on the third metacarpal and different wishbone anatomy in an undescribed specimen. He also argued that Stygivenator, generally considered to be a juvenile T. rex, may be a younger Nanotyrannus specimen.[79][80] Later research revealed that other tyrannosaurids such as Gorgosaurus also experienced reduction in tooth count during growth,[74] and given the disparity in tooth count between individuals of the same age group in this genus and Tyrannosaurus, this feature may also be due to individual variation.[75] In 2013, Carr noted that all of the differences claimed to support Nanotyrannus have turned out to be individually or ontogenetically variable features or products of distortion of the bones.[81]
+In 2016, analysis of limb proportions by Persons and Currie suggested Nanotyrannus specimens to have differing cursoriality levels, potentially separating it from T. rex.[82] However, paleontologist Manabu Sakomoto has commented that this conclusion may be impacted by low sample size, and the discrepancy does not necessarily reflect taxonomic distinction.[83] In 2016, Joshua Schmerge argued for Nanotyrannus' validity based on skull features, including a dentary groove in BMRP 2002.4.1's skull. According to Schmerge, as that feature is absent in T. rex and found only in Dryptosaurus and albertosaurines, this suggests Nanotyrannus is a distinct taxon within the Albertosaurinae.[84] The same year, Carr and colleagues noted that this was not sufficient enough to clarify Nanotyrannus' validity or classification, being a common and ontogenetically variable feature among tyrannosauroids.[85]
+A 2020 study by Holly Woodward and colleagues showed the specimens referred to Nanotyrannus were all ontogenetically immature and found it probable that these specimens belonged to T. rex.[86] The same year, Carr published a paper on T. rex's growth history, finding that CMNH 7541 fit within the expected ontogenetic variation of the taxon and displayed juvenile characteristics found in other specimens. It was classified as a juvenile, under 13 years old with a skull less than 80 cm (31 in). No significant sexual or phylogenetic variation was discernible among any of the 44 specimens studied, with Carr stating that characters of potential phylogenetic importance decrease throughout age at the same rate as growth occurs.[87] Discussing the paper's results, Carr described how all "Nanotyrannus" specimens formed a continual growth transition between the smallest juveniles and the subadults, unlike what would be expected if it were a distinct taxon where the specimens would group to the exclusion of Tyrannosaurus. Carr concluded that "the 'nanomorphs' are not all that similar to each other and instead form an important bridge in the growth series of T. rex that captures the beginnings of the profound change from the shallow skull of juveniles to the deep skull that is seen in fully-developed adults."[88]
+The identification of several specimens as juvenile T. rex has allowed scientists to document ontogenetic changes in the species, estimate the lifespan, and determine how quickly the animals would have grown. The smallest known individual (LACM 28471, the "Jordan theropod") is estimated to have weighed only 30 kg (66 lb), while the largest, such as FMNH PR2081 (Sue) most likely weighed about 5,650 kg (12,460 lb). Histologic analysis of T. rex bones showed LACM 28471 had aged only 2 years when it died, while Sue was 28 years old, an age which may have been close to the maximum for the species.[37]
+Histology has also allowed the age of other specimens to be determined. Growth curves can be developed when the ages of different specimens are plotted on a graph along with their mass. A T. rex growth curve is S-shaped, with juveniles remaining under 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) until approximately 14 years of age, when body size began to increase dramatically. During this rapid growth phase, a young T. rex would gain an average of 600 kg (1,300 lb) a year for the next four years. At 18 years of age, the curve plateaus again, indicating that growth slowed dramatically. For example, only 600 kg (1,300 lb) separated the 28-year-old Sue from a 22-year-old Canadian specimen (RTMP 81.12.1).[37] A 2004 histological study performed by different workers corroborates these results, finding that rapid growth began to slow at around 16 years of age.[89]
+A study by Hutchinson and colleagues in 2011 corroborated the previous estimation methods in general, but their estimation of peak growth rates is significantly higher; it found that the "maximum growth rates for T. rex during the exponential stage are 1790 kg/year".[29] Although these results were much higher than previous estimations, the authors noted that these results significantly lowered the great difference between its actual growth rate and the one which would be expected of an animal of its size.[29] The sudden change in growth rate at the end of the growth spurt may indicate physical maturity, a hypothesis which is supported by the discovery of medullary tissue in the femur of a 16 to 20-year-old T. rex from Montana (MOR 1125, also known as B-rex). Medullary tissue is found only in female birds during ovulation, indicating that B-rex was of reproductive age.[90] Further study indicates an age of 18 for this specimen.[91] In 2016, it was finally confirmed by Mary Higby Schweitzer and Lindsay Zanno and colleagues that the soft tissue within the femur of MOR 1125 was medullary tissue. This also confirmed the identity of the specimen as a female. The discovery of medullary bone tissue within Tyrannosaurus may prove valuable in determining the sex of other dinosaur species in future examinations, as the chemical makeup of medullary tissue is unmistakable.[92] Other tyrannosaurids exhibit extremely similar growth curves, although with lower growth rates corresponding to their lower adult sizes.[93]
+An additional study published in 2020 by Woodward and colleagues, for the journal Science Advances indicates that during their growth from juvenile to adult, Tyrannosaurus was capable of slowing down its growth to counter environmental factors such as lack of food. The study, focusing on two juvenile specimens between 13 and 15 years old housed at the Burpee Museum in Illinois, indicates that the rate of maturation for Tyrannosaurus was dependent on resource abundance. This study also indicates that in such changing environments, Tyrannosaurus was particularly well-suited to an environment that shifted yearly in regards to resource abundance, hinting that other midsize predators might have had difficulty surviving in such harsh conditions and explaining the niche partitioning between juvenile and adult tyrannosaurs. The study further indicates that Tyrannosaurus and the dubious genus Nanotyrannus are synonymous, due to analysis of the growth rings in the bones of the two specimens studied.[94][95]
+Over half of the known T. rex specimens appear to have died within six years of reaching sexual maturity, a pattern which is also seen in other tyrannosaurs and in some large, long-lived birds and mammals today. These species are characterized by high infant mortality rates, followed by relatively low mortality among juveniles. Mortality increases again following sexual maturity, partly due to the stresses of reproduction. One study suggests that the rarity of juvenile T. rex fossils is due in part to low juvenile mortality rates; the animals were not dying in large numbers at these ages, and so were not often fossilized. This rarity may also be due to the incompleteness of the fossil record or to the bias of fossil collectors towards larger, more spectacular specimens.[93] In a 2013 lecture, Thomas Holtz Jr. suggested that dinosaurs "lived fast and died young" because they reproduced quickly whereas mammals have long life spans because they take longer to reproduce.[96] Gregory S. Paul also writes that Tyrannosaurus reproduced quickly and died young, but attributes their short life spans to the dangerous lives they lived.[97]
+As the number of known specimens increased, scientists began to analyze the variation between individuals and discovered what appeared to be two distinct body types, or morphs, similar to some other theropod species. As one of these morphs was more solidly built, it was termed the 'robust' morph while the other was termed 'gracile'. Several morphological differences associated with the two morphs were used to analyze sexual dimorphism in T. rex, with the 'robust' morph usually suggested to be female. For example, the pelvis of several 'robust' specimens seemed to be wider, perhaps to allow the passage of eggs.[98] It was also thought that the 'robust' morphology correlated with a reduced chevron on the first tail vertebra, also ostensibly to allow eggs to pass out of the reproductive tract, as had been erroneously reported for crocodiles.[99]
+In recent years, evidence for sexual dimorphism has been weakened. A 2005 study reported that previous claims of sexual dimorphism in crocodile chevron anatomy were in error, casting doubt on the existence of similar dimorphism between T. rex sexes.[100] A full-sized chevron was discovered on the first tail vertebra of Sue, an extremely robust individual, indicating that this feature could not be used to differentiate the two morphs anyway. As T. rex specimens have been found from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, differences between individuals may be indicative of geographic variation rather than sexual dimorphism. The differences could also be age-related, with 'robust' individuals being older animals.[47]
+Only a single T. rex specimen has been conclusively shown to belong to a specific sex. Examination of B-rex demonstrated the preservation of soft tissue within several bones. Some of this tissue has been identified as a medullary tissue, a specialized tissue grown only in modern birds as a source of calcium for the production of eggshell during ovulation. As only female birds lay eggs, medullary tissue is only found naturally in females, although males are capable of producing it when injected with female reproductive hormones like estrogen. This strongly suggests that B-rex was female, and that she died during ovulation.[90] Recent research has shown that medullary tissue is never found in crocodiles, which are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, aside from birds. The shared presence of medullary tissue in birds and theropod dinosaurs is further evidence of the close evolutionary relationship between the two.[101]
+Like many bipedal dinosaurs, T. rex was historically depicted as a 'living tripod', with the body at 45 degrees or less from the vertical and the tail dragging along the ground, similar to a kangaroo. This concept dates from Joseph Leidy's 1865 reconstruction of Hadrosaurus, the first to depict a dinosaur in a bipedal posture.[102] In 1915, convinced that the creature stood upright, Henry Fairfield Osborn, former president of the American Museum of Natural History, further reinforced the notion in unveiling the first complete T. rex skeleton arranged this way. It stood in an upright pose for 77 years, until it was dismantled in 1992.[103]
+By 1970, scientists realized this pose was incorrect and could not have been maintained by a living animal, as it would have resulted in the dislocation or weakening of several joints, including the hips and the articulation between the head and the spinal column.[104] The inaccurate AMNH mount inspired similar depictions in many films and paintings (such as Rudolph Zallinger's famous mural The Age of Reptiles in Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History)[105] until the 1990s, when films such as Jurassic Park introduced a more accurate posture to the general public.[106] Modern representations in museums, art, and film show T. rex with its body approximately parallel to the ground with the tail extended behind the body to balance the head.[107]
+To sit down, Tyrannosaurus may have settled its weight backwards and rested its weight on a pubic boot, the wide expansion at the end of the pubis in some dinosaurs. With its weight rested on the pelvis, it may have been free to move the hindlimbs. Getting back up again might have involved some stabilization from the diminutive forelimbs.[108][104] The latter known as Newman's pushup theory has been debated. Nonetheless, Tyrannosaurus was probably able to get up if it fell, which only would have required placing the limbs below the center of gravity, with the tail as an effective counterbalance.[109]
+When T. rex was first discovered, the humerus was the only element of the forelimb known.[6] For the initial mounted skeleton as seen by the public in 1915, Osborn substituted longer, three-fingered forelimbs like those of Allosaurus.[4] A year earlier, Lawrence Lambe described the short, two-fingered forelimbs of the closely related Gorgosaurus.[110] This strongly suggested that T. rex had similar forelimbs, but this hypothesis was not confirmed until the first complete T. rex forelimbs were identified in 1989, belonging to MOR 555 (the "Wankel rex").[111][112] The remains of Sue also include complete forelimbs.[47] T. rex arms are very small relative to overall body size, measuring only 1 meter (3.3 ft) long, and some scholars have labelled them as vestigial. The bones show large areas for muscle attachment, indicating considerable strength. This was recognized as early as 1906 by Osborn, who speculated that the forelimbs may have been used to grasp a mate during copulation.[8] It has also been suggested that the forelimbs were used to assist the animal in rising from a prone position.[104]
+Another possibility is that the forelimbs held struggling prey while it was killed by the tyrannosaur's enormous jaws. This hypothesis may be supported by biomechanical analysis. T. rex forelimb bones exhibit extremely thick cortical bone, which has been interpreted as evidence that they were developed to withstand heavy loads. The biceps brachii muscle of an adult T. rex was capable of lifting 199 kilograms (439 lb) by itself; other muscles such as the brachialis would work along with the biceps to make elbow flexion even more powerful. The M. biceps muscle of T. rex was 3.5 times as powerful as the human equivalent. A T. rex forearm had a limited range of motion, with the shoulder and elbow joints allowing only 40 and 45 degrees of motion, respectively. In contrast, the same two joints in Deinonychus allow up to 88 and 130 degrees of motion, respectively, while a human arm can rotate 360 degrees at the shoulder and move through 165 degrees at the elbow. The heavy build of the arm bones, strength of the muscles, and limited range of motion may indicate a system evolved to hold fast despite the stresses of a struggling prey animal. In the first detailed scientific description of Tyrannosaurus forelimbs, paleontologists Kenneth Carpenter and Matt Smith dismissed notions that the forelimbs were useless or that T. rex was an obligate scavenger.[113]
+According to paleontologist Steven M. Stanley, the 1 metre (3.3 ft) arms of T. rex were used for slashing prey, especially by using its claws to rapidly inflict long, deep gashes to its prey, although this concept is disputed by others believing the arms were used for grasping a sexual partner.[114]
+As of 2014, it is not clear if Tyrannosaurus was endothermic (“warm-blooded”). Tyrannosaurus, like most dinosaurs, was long thought to have an ectothermic ("cold-blooded") reptilian metabolism. The idea of dinosaur ectothermy was challenged by scientists like Robert T. Bakker and John Ostrom in the early years of the "Dinosaur Renaissance", beginning in the late 1960s.[115][116] T. rex itself was claimed to have been endothermic ("warm-blooded"), implying a very active lifestyle.[35] Since then, several paleontologists have sought to determine the ability of Tyrannosaurus to regulate its body temperature. Histological evidence of high growth rates in young T. rex, comparable to those of mammals and birds, may support the hypothesis of a high metabolism. Growth curves indicate that, as in mammals and birds, T. rex growth was limited mostly to immature animals, rather than the indeterminate growth seen in most other vertebrates.[89]
+Oxygen isotope ratios in fossilized bone are sometimes used to determine the temperature at which the bone was deposited, as the ratio between certain isotopes correlates with temperature. In one specimen, the isotope ratios in bones from different parts of the body indicated a temperature difference of no more than 4 to 5 °C (7 to 9 °F) between the vertebrae of the torso and the tibia of the lower leg. This small temperature range between the body core and the extremities was claimed by paleontologist Reese Barrick and geochemist William Showers to indicate that T. rex maintained a constant internal body temperature (homeothermy) and that it enjoyed a metabolism somewhere between ectothermic reptiles and endothermic mammals.[117] Other scientists have pointed out that the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the fossils today does not necessarily represent the same ratio in the distant past, and may have been altered during or after fossilization (diagenesis).[118] Barrick and Showers have defended their conclusions in subsequent papers, finding similar results in another theropod dinosaur from a different continent and tens of millions of years earlier in time (Giganotosaurus).[119] Ornithischian dinosaurs also showed evidence of homeothermy, while varanid lizards from the same formation did not.[120] Even if T. rex does exhibit evidence of homeothermy, it does not necessarily mean that it was endothermic. Such thermoregulation may also be explained by gigantothermy, as in some living sea turtles.[121][122][123] Similar to contemporary alligators, dorsotemporal fenestra in Tyrannosaurus's skull may have aided thermoregulation.[124]
+In the March 2005 issue of Science, Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and colleagues announced the recovery of soft tissue from the marrow cavity of a fossilized leg bone from a T. rex. The bone had been intentionally, though reluctantly, broken for shipping and then not preserved in the normal manner, specifically because Schweitzer was hoping to test it for soft tissue.[125] Designated as the Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125, or MOR 1125, the dinosaur was previously excavated from the Hell Creek Formation. Flexible, bifurcating blood vessels and fibrous but elastic bone matrix tissue were recognized. In addition, microstructures resembling blood cells were found inside the matrix and vessels. The structures bear resemblance to ostrich blood cells and vessels. Whether an unknown process, distinct from normal fossilization, preserved the material, or the material is original, the researchers do not know, and they are careful not to make any claims about preservation.[126] If it is found to be original material, any surviving proteins may be used as a means of indirectly guessing some of the DNA content of the dinosaurs involved, because each protein is typically created by a specific gene. The absence of previous finds may be the result of people assuming preserved tissue was impossible, therefore not looking. Since the first, two more tyrannosaurs and a hadrosaur have also been found to have such tissue-like structures.[125] Research on some of the tissues involved has suggested that birds are closer relatives to tyrannosaurs than other modern animals.[127]
+In studies reported in Science in April 2007, Asara and colleagues concluded that seven traces of collagen proteins detected in purified T. rex bone most closely match those reported in chickens, followed by frogs and newts. The discovery of proteins from a creature tens of millions of years old, along with similar traces the team found in a mastodon bone at least 160,000 years old, upends the conventional view of fossils and may shift paleontologists' focus from bone hunting to biochemistry. Until these finds, most scientists presumed that fossilization replaced all living tissue with inert minerals. Paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, who was not part of the studies, called the finds "a milestone", and suggested that dinosaurs could "enter the field of molecular biology and really slingshot paleontology into the modern world".[128]
+The presumed soft tissue was called into question by Thomas Kaye of the University of Washington and his co-authors in 2008. They contend that what was really inside the tyrannosaur bone was slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.[129] The researchers found that what previously had been identified as remnants of blood cells, because of the presence of iron, were actually framboids, microscopic mineral spheres bearing iron. They found similar spheres in a variety of other fossils from various periods, including an ammonite. In the ammonite they found the spheres in a place where the iron they contain could not have had any relationship to the presence of blood.[130] Schweitzer has strongly criticized Kaye's claims and argues that there is no reported evidence that biofilms can produce branching, hollow tubes like those noted in her study.[131] San Antonio, Schweitzer and colleagues published an analysis in 2011 of what parts of the collagen had been recovered, finding that it was the inner parts of the collagen coil that had been preserved, as would have been expected from a long period of protein degradation.[132] Other research challenges the identification of soft tissue as biofilm and confirms finding "branching, vessel-like structures" from within fossilized bone.[133]
+Scientists have produced a wide range of possible maximum running speeds for Tyrannosaurus, mostly around 11 meters per second (40 km/h; 25 mph), but as low as 5–11 meters per second (18–40 km/h; 11–25 mph) and as high as 20 meters per second (72 km/h; 45 mph). Estimates that Tyrannosaurus had relatively larger leg muscles than any animal alive today indicate that fast running was possible at speeds of 40–70 kilometers per hour (25–43 mph).[134] Researchers have relied on various estimating techniques because, while there are many tracks of large theropods walking, none had the pattern of running.[135]
+A 2002 report used a mathematical model (validated by applying it to three living animals: alligators, chickens, and humans; and eight more species, including emus and ostriches[135]) to gauge the leg muscle mass needed for fast running (over 40 km/h or 25 mph).[134] Scientists who think that Tyrannosaurus was able to run point out that hollow bones and other features that would have lightened its body may have kept adult weight to a mere 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons) or so, or that other animals like ostriches and horses with long, flexible legs are able to achieve high speeds through slower but longer strides.[135] Proposed top speeds exceeded 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph) for Tyrannosaurus, but were deemed infeasible because they would require exceptional leg muscles of approximately 40–86% of total body mass. Even moderately fast speeds would have required large leg muscles. If the muscle mass was less, only 18 kilometers per hour (11 mph) for walking or jogging would have been possible.[134] Holtz noted that tyrannosaurids and some closely related groups had significantly longer distal hindlimb components (shin plus foot plus toes) relative to the femur length than most other theropods, and that tyrannosaurids and their close relatives had a tightly interlocked metatarsus (foot bones).[136] The third metatarsal was squeezed between the second and fourth metatarsals to form a single unit called an arctometatarsus. This ankle feature may have helped the animal to run more efficiently.[137] Together, these leg features allowed Tyrannosaurus to transmit locomotory forces from the foot to the lower leg more effectively than in earlier theropods.[136]
+Additionally, a 2020 study indicates that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were exceptionally efficient walkers. Studies by Dececchi et al., compared the leg proportions, body mass, and the gaits of more than 70 species of theropod dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus and its relatives. The research team then applied a variety of methods to estimate each dinosaur's top speed when running as well as how much energy each dinosaur expended while moving at more relaxed speeds such as when walking. Among smaller to medium-sized species such as dromaeosaurids, longer legs appear to be an adaptation for faster running, in line with previous results by other researchers. But for theropods weighing over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), top running speed is limited by body size, so longer legs instead were found to have correlated with low-energy walking. The results further indicate that smaller theropods evolved long legs as a means to both aid in hunting and escape from larger predators while larger theropods that evolved long legs did so to reduce the energy costs and increase foraging efficiency, as they were freed from the demands of predation pressure due to their role as apex predators. Compared to more basal groups of theropods in the study, tyrannosaurs like Tyrannosaurus itself showed a marked increase in foraging efficiency due to reduced energy expenditures during hunting or scavenging. This in turn likely resulted in tyrannosaurs having a reduced need for hunting forays and requiring less food to sustain themselves as a result. Additionally, the research, in conjunction with studies that show tyrannosaurs were more agile than other large bodied-theropods, indicates they were quite well-adapted to a long-distance stalking approach followed by a quick burst of speed to go for the kill. Analogies can be noted between tyrannosaurids and modern wolves as a result, supported by evidence that at least some tyrannosaurids were hunting in group settings.[138][139]
+A 2017 study estimated the top running speed of Tyrannosaurus as 17 mph (27 km/h), speculating that Tyrannosaurus exhausted its energy reserves long before reaching top speed, resulting in a parabola-like relationship between size and speed.[140][141] Another 2017 study hypothesized that an adult Tyrannosaurus was incapable of running due to high skeletal loads. Using a calculated weight estimate of 7 tons, the model showed that speeds above 11 mph (18 km/h) would have probably shattered the leg bones of Tyrannosaurus. The finding may mean that running was also not possible for other giant theropod dinosaurs like Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus and Acrocanthosaurus.[142]
+However, studies by Eric Snively and colleagues, published in 2019 indicate that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were more maneuverable than allosauroids and other theropods of comparable size due to low rotational inertia compared to their body mass combined with large leg muscles. As a result, it is hypothesized that Tyrannosaurus was capable of making relatively quick turns and could likely pivot its body more quickly when close to its prey, or that while turning, the theropod could "pirouette" on a single planted foot while the alternating leg was held out in a suspended swing during pursuit. The results of this study potentially could shed light on how agility could have contributed to the success of tyrannosaurid evolution.[143]
+A study conducted by Lawrence Witmer and Ryan Ridgely of Ohio University found that Tyrannosaurus shared the heightened sensory abilities of other coelurosaurs, highlighting relatively rapid and coordinated eye and head movements; an enhanced ability to sense low frequency sounds, which would allow tyrannosaurs to track prey movements from long distances; and an enhanced sense of smell.[144] A study published by Kent Stevens concluded that Tyrannosaurus had keen vision. By applying modified perimetry to facial reconstructions of several dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus, the study found that Tyrannosaurus had a binocular range of 55 degrees, surpassing that of modern hawks. Stevens estimated that Tyrannosaurus had 13 times the visual acuity of a human and surpassed the visual acuity of an eagle, which is 3.6 times that of a person. Stevens estimated a limiting far point (that is, the distance at which an object can be seen as separate from the horizon) as far as 6 km (3.7 mi) away, which is greater than the 1.6 km (1 mi) that a human can see.[41][42][145]
+Thomas Holtz Jr. would note that high depth perception of Tyrannosaurus may have been due to the prey it had to hunt, noting that it had to hunt horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops, armored dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus, and the duck-billed dinosaurs and their possibly complex social behaviors. He would suggest that this made precision more crucial for Tyrannosaurus enabling it to, "get in, get that blow in and take it down." In contrast, Acrocanthosaurus had limited depth perception because they hunted large sauropods, which were relatively rare during the time of Tyrannosaurus.[96]
+Tyrannosaurus had very large olfactory bulbs and olfactory nerves relative to their brain size, the organs responsible for a heightened sense of smell. This suggests that the sense of smell was highly developed, and implies that tyrannosaurs could detect carcasses by scent alone across great distances. The sense of smell in tyrannosaurs may have been comparable to modern vultures, which use scent to track carcasses for scavenging. Research on the olfactory bulbs has shown that T. rex had the most highly developed sense of smell of 21 sampled non-avian dinosaur species.[146]
+Somewhat unusually among theropods, T. rex had a very long cochlea. The length of the cochlea is often related to hearing acuity, or at least the importance of hearing in behavior, implying that hearing was a particularly important sense to tyrannosaurs. Specifically, data suggests that T. rex heard best in the low-frequency range, and that low-frequency sounds were an important part of tyrannosaur behavior.[144] A 2017 study by Thomas Carr and colleagues found that the snout of tyrannosaurids was highly sensitive, based on a high number of small openings in the facial bones of the related Daspletosaurus that contained sensory neurons. The study speculated that tyrannosaurs might have used their sensitive snouts to measure the temperature of their nests and to gently pick-up eggs and hatchlings, as seen in modern crocodylians.[51]
+A study by Grant R. Hurlburt, Ryan C. Ridgely and Lawrence Witmer obtained estimates for Encephalization Quotients (EQs), based on reptiles and birds, as well as estimates for the ratio of cerebrum to brain mass. The study concluded that Tyrannosaurus had the relatively largest brain of all adult non-avian dinosaurs with the exception of certain small maniraptoriforms (Bambiraptor, Troodon and Ornithomimus). The study found that Tyrannosaurus's relative brain size was still within the range of modern reptiles, being at most 2 standard deviations above the mean of non-avian reptile EQs. The estimates for the ratio of cerebrum mass to brain mass would range from 47.5 to 49.53 percent. According to the study, this is more than the lowest estimates for extant birds (44.6 percent), but still close to the typical ratios of the smallest sexually mature alligators which range from 45.9–47.9 percent.[147] Other studies, such as those by Steve Brusatte, indicate the encephalization quotient of Tyrannosaurus was similar in range (2.0-2.4) to a chimpanzee (2.2-2.5), though this may be debatable as reptilian and mammalian encephalization quotients are not equivalent.[148]
+Suggesting that Tyrannosaurus may have been pack hunters, Philip J. Currie compared T. rex to related species Tarbosaurus bataar and Albertosaurus sarcophagus, citing fossil evidence that may indicate pack behavior.[149] A find in South Dakota where three T. rex skeletons were in close proximity suggested a pack.[150][151] Because available prey such as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus had significant defenses, it may have been effective for T. rex to hunt in groups.[149]
+Currie's pack-hunting hypothesis has been criticized for not having been peer-reviewed, but rather was discussed in a television interview and book called Dino Gangs.[152] The Currie theory for pack hunting by T. rex is based mainly by analogy to a different species, Tarbosaurus bataar, and that the supposed evidence for pack hunting in T. bataar itself had not yet been peer-reviewed. According to scientists assessing the Dino Gangs program, the evidence for pack hunting in Tarbosaurus and Albertosaurus is weak and based on skeletal remains for which alternate explanations may apply (such as drought or a flood forcing dinosaurs to die together in one place).[152] Fossilized trackways from the Upper Cretaceous Wapiti Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, left by three tyrannosaurids traveling in the same direction, may also indicate packs.[153][154]
+Evidence of intraspecific attack were found by Joseph Peterson and his colleagues in the juvenile Tyrannosaurus nicknamed Jane. Peterson and his team found that Jane's skull showed healed puncture wounds on the upper jaw and snout which they believe came from another juvenile Tyrannosaurus. Subsequent CT scans of Jane's skull would further confirm the team's hypothesis, showing that the puncture wounds came from a traumatic injury and that there was subsequent healing.[155] The team would also state that Jane's injuries were structurally different from the parasite-induced lesions found in Sue and that Jane's injuries were on her face whereas the parasite that infected Sue caused lesions to the lower jaw.[156]
+Most paleontologists accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger like most large carnivores.[157] By far the largest carnivore in its environment, T. rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods.[158] A study in 2012 by Karl Bates and Peter Falkingham found that Tyrannosaurus had the most powerful bite of any terrestrial animal that has ever lived, finding an adult Tyrannosaurus could have exerted 35,000 to 57,000 N (7,868 to 12,814 lbf) of force in the back teeth.[159][160][161] Even higher estimates were made by Mason B. Meers in 2003.[44] This allowed it to crush bones during repetitive biting and fully consume the carcasses of large dinosaurs.[20] Stephan Lautenschlager and colleagues calculated that Tyrannosaurus was capable of a maximum jaw gape of around 80 degrees, a necessary adaptation for a wide range of jaw angles to power the creature's strong bite.[162][163]
+A debate exists, however, about whether Tyrannosaurus was primarily a predator or a pure scavenger; the debate was assessed in a 1917 study by Lambe which argued Tyrannosaurus was a pure scavenger because the Gorgosaurus teeth showed hardly any wear.[164] This argument may not be valid because theropods replaced their teeth quite rapidly. Ever since the first discovery of Tyrannosaurus most scientists have speculated that it was a predator; like modern large predators it would readily scavenge or steal another predator's kill if it had the opportunity.[165]
+Paleontologist Jack Horner has been a major proponent of the view that Tyrannosaurus was not a predator at all but instead was exclusively a scavenger.[111][166][167] He has put forward arguments in the popular literature to support the pure scavenger hypothesis:
+Other evidence suggests hunting behavior in Tyrannosaurus. The eye sockets of tyrannosaurs are positioned so that the eyes would point forward, giving them binocular vision slightly better than that of modern hawks. It is not obvious why natural selection would have favored this long-term trend if tyrannosaurs had been pure scavengers, which would not have needed the advanced depth perception that stereoscopic vision provides.[41][42] In modern animals, binocular vision is found mainly in predators.
+A skeleton of the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens has been described from Montana with healed tyrannosaur-inflicted damage on its tail vertebrae. The fact that the damage seems to have healed suggests that the Edmontosaurus survived a tyrannosaur's attack on a living target, i.e. the tyrannosaur had attempted active predation.[169] Despite the consensus that the tail bites were caused by Tyrannosaurus, there has been some evidence to show that they might have been created by other factors. For example, a 2014 study suggested that the tail injuries might have been due to Edmontosaurus indivduals stepping on each other,[170] while another study in 2020 backs up the hypothesis that biomechanical stress is the cause for the tail injuries.[171]. There is also evidence for an aggressive interaction between a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus in the form of partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a Triceratops brow horn and squamosal (a bone of the neck frill); the bitten horn is also broken, with new bone growth after the break. It is not known what the exact nature of the interaction was, though: either animal could have been the aggressor.[172] Since the Triceratops wounds healed, it is most likely that the Triceratops survived the encounter and managed to overcome the Tyrannosaurus. In a battle against a bull Triceratops, the Triceratops would likely defend itself by inflicting fatal wounds to the Tyrannosaurus using its sharp horns.[173] Studies of Sue found a broken and healed fibula and tail vertebrae, scarred facial bones and a tooth from another Tyrannosaurus embedded in a neck vertebra, providing evidence for aggressive behavior.[174] Studies on hadrosaur vertebrae from the Hell Creek Formation that were punctured by the teeth of what appears to be a late-stage juvenile Tyrannosaurus indicate that despite lacking the bone-crushing adaptations of the adults, young individuals were still capable of using the same bone-puncturing feeding technique as their adult counterparts.[175]
+Tyrannosaurus may have had infectious saliva used to kill its prey, as proposed by William Abler in 1992. Abler observed that the serrations (tiny protuberances) on the cutting edges of the teeth are closely spaced, enclosing little chambers. These chambers might have trapped pieces of carcass with bacteria, giving Tyrannosaurus a deadly, infectious bite much like the Komodo dragon was thought to have.[176][177] Jack Horner and Don Lessem, in a 1993 popular book, questioned Abler's hypothesis, arguing that Tyrannosaurus's tooth serrations as more like cubes in shape than the serrations on a Komodo monitor's teeth, which are rounded.[111]:214–215
+Tyrannosaurus, and most other theropods, probably primarily processed carcasses with lateral shakes of the head, like crocodilians. The head was not as maneuverable as the skulls of allosauroids, due to flat joints of the neck vertebrae.[178]
+In 2001, Bruce Rothschild and others published a study examining evidence for stress fractures and tendon avulsions in theropod dinosaurs and the implications for their behavior. Since stress fractures are caused by repeated trauma rather than singular events they are more likely to be caused by regular behavior than other types of injuries. Of the 81 Tyrannosaurus foot bones examined in the study one was found to have a stress fracture, while none of the 10 hand bones were found to have stress fractures. The researchers found tendon avulsions only among Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. An avulsion injury left a divot on the humerus of Sue the T. rex, apparently located at the origin of the deltoid or teres major muscles. The presence of avulsion injuries being limited to the forelimb and shoulder in both Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus suggests that theropods may have had a musculature more complex than and functionally different from those of birds. The researchers concluded that Sue's tendon avulsion was probably obtained from struggling prey. The presence of stress fractures and tendon avulsions in general provides evidence for a "very active" predation-based diet rather than obligate scavenging.[179]
+A 2009 study showed that smooth-edged holes in the skulls of several specimens might have been caused by Trichomonas-like parasites that commonly infect birds. Seriously infected individuals, including "Sue" and MOR 980 ("Peck's Rex"), might therefore have died from starvation after feeding became increasingly difficult. Previously, these holes had been explained by the bacterious bone infection Actinomycosis or by intraspecific attacks.[180]
+One study of Tyrannosaurus specimens with tooth marks in the bones attributable to the same genus was presented as evidence of cannibalism.[181] Tooth marks in the humerus, foot bones and metatarsals, may indicate opportunistic scavenging, rather than wounds caused by combat with another T. rex.[181][182] Other tyrannosaurids may also have practiced cannibalism.[181]
+Tyrannosaurus lived during what is referred to as the Lancian faunal stage (Maastrichtian age) at the end of the Late Cretaceous. Tyrannosaurus ranged from Canada in the north to at least New Mexico in the south of Laramidia.[5] During this time Triceratops was the major herbivore in the northern portion of its range, while the titanosaurian sauropod Alamosaurus "dominated" its southern range. Tyrannosaurus remains have been discovered in different ecosystems, including inland and coastal subtropical, and semi-arid plains.
+Several notable Tyrannosaurus remains have been found in the Hell Creek Formation. During the Maastrichtian this area was subtropical, with a warm and humid climate. The flora consisted mostly of angiosperms, but also included trees like dawn redwood (Metasequoia) and Araucaria. Tyrannosaurus shared this ecosystem with ceratopsians Leptoceratops, Torosaurus, and Triceratops, the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens, the parksosaurid Thescelosaurus, the ankylosaurs Ankylosaurus and Denversaurus, the pachycephalosaurs Pachycephalosaurus and Sphaerotholus, and the theropods Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, Acheroraptor, Dakotaraptor, Pectinodon and Anzu.[183]
+Another formation with Tyrannosaurus remains is the Lance Formation of Wyoming. This has been interpreted as a bayou environment similar to today's Gulf Coast. The fauna was very similar to Hell Creek, but with Struthiomimus replacing its relative Ornithomimus. The small ceratopsian Leptoceratops also lived in the area.[184]
+In its southern range Tyrannosaurus lived alongside the titanosaur Alamosaurus, the ceratopsians Torosaurus, Bravoceratops and Ojoceratops, hadrosaurs which consisted of a species of Edmontosaurus, Kritosaurus and a possible species of Gryposaurus, the nodosaur Glyptodontopelta, the oviraptorid Ojoraptosaurus, possible species of the theropods Troodon and Richardoestesia, and the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus.[185] The region is thought to have been dominated by semi-arid inland plains, following the probable retreat of the Western Interior Seaway as global sea levels fell.[186]
+Tyrannosaurus may have also inhabited Mexico's Lomas Coloradas formation in Sonora. Though skeletal evidence is lacking, six shed and broken teeth from the fossil bed have been thoroughly compared with other theropod genera and appear to be identical to those of Tyrannosaurus. If true, the evidence indicates the range of Tyrannosaurus was possibly more extensive than previously believed.[187] It is possible that tyrannosaurs were originally Asian species, migrating to North America before the end of the Cretaceous period.[188]
+Since it was first described in 1905, T. rex has become the most widely recognized dinosaur species in popular culture. It is the only dinosaur that is commonly known to the general public by its full scientific name (binomial name) and the scientific abbreviation T. rex has also come into wide usage.[47] Robert T. Bakker notes this in The Dinosaur Heresies and explains that, "a name like ‘T. rex’ is just irresistible to the tongue."[35]

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+Tyrannosaurus[nb 1] is a genus of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs. The species Tyrannosaurus rex (rex meaning "king" in Latin), often called T. rex or colloquially T-Rex, is one of the most well-represented of the large theropods. Tyrannosaurus lived throughout what is now western North America, on what was then an island continent known as Laramidia. Tyrannosaurus had a much wider range than other tyrannosaurids. Fossils are found in a variety of rock formations dating to the Maastrichtian age of the upper Cretaceous period, 68 to 66 million years ago. It was the last known member of the tyrannosaurids, and among the last non-avian dinosaurs to exist before the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.
+Like other tyrannosaurids, Tyrannosaurus was a bipedal carnivore with a massive skull balanced by a long, heavy tail. Relative to its large and powerful hind limbs, Tyrannosaurus forelimbs were short but unusually powerful for their size and had two clawed digits. The most complete specimen measures up to 12.3 meters (40 feet) in length though T. rex could grow to lengths of over 12.3 m (40 ft), up to 3.66 m (12 ft) tall at the hips, and according to most modern estimates 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons) in weight. Although other theropods rivaled or exceeded Tyrannosaurus rex in size, it is still among the largest known land predators and is estimated to have exerted the strongest bite force among all terrestrial animals. By far the largest carnivore in its environment, Tyrannosaurus rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods. Some experts have suggested the dinosaur was primarily a scavenger. The question of whether Tyrannosaurus was an apex predator or a pure scavenger was among the longest debates in paleontology. Most paleontologists today accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger.
+Specimens of Tyrannosaurus rex include some that are nearly complete skeletons. Soft tissue and proteins have been reported in at least one of these specimens. The abundance of fossil material has allowed significant research into many aspects of its biology, including its life history and biomechanics. The feeding habits, physiology and potential speed of Tyrannosaurus rex are a few subjects of debate. Its taxonomy is also controversial, as some scientists consider Tarbosaurus bataar from Asia to be a second Tyrannosaurus species while others maintain Tarbosaurus is a separate genus. Several other genera of North American tyrannosaurids have also been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.
+As the archetypal theropod, Tyrannosaurus has been one of the best-known dinosaurs since the early 20th century, and has been featured in film, advertising, postal stamps, and many other media.
+Teeth from what is now documented as a Tyrannosaurus rex were found in 1874 by Arthur Lakes near Golden, Colorado. In the early 1890s, John Bell Hatcher collected postcranial elements in eastern Wyoming. The fossils were believed to be from the large species Ornithomimus grandis (now Deinodon) but are now considered T. rex remains.[2]
+In 1892, Edward Drinker Cope found two vertebral fragments of large dinosaur. Cope believed the fragments belonged to an "agathaumid" (ceratopsid) dinosaur, and named them Manospondylus gigas, meaning "giant porous vertebra", in reference to the numerous openings for blood vessels he found in the bone.[2] The M. gigas remains were, in 1907, identified by Hatcher as those of a theropod rather than a ceratopsid.[3]
+Henry Fairfield Osborn recognized the similarity between Manospondylus gigas and T. rex as early as 1917, by which time the second vertebra had been lost. Owing to the fragmentary nature of the Manospondylus vertebrae, Osborn did not synonymize the two genera, instead considering the older genus indeterminate.[4] In June 2000, the Black Hills Institute found around 10% of a Tyrannosaurus skeleton (BHI 6248) at a site that might have been the original M. gigas locality.[5]
+Barnum Brown, assistant curator of the American Museum of Natural History, found the first partial skeleton of T. rex in eastern Wyoming in 1900. Brown found another partial skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation in Montana in 1902, comprising approximately 34 fossilized bones.[6] Writing at the time Brown said "Quarry No. 1 contains the femur, pubes, humerus, three vertebrae and two undetermined bones of a large Carnivorous Dinosaur not described by Marsh.... I have never seen anything like it from the Cretaceous".[7] Henry Fairfield Osborn, president of the American Museum of Natural History, named the second skeleton T. rex in 1905. The generic name is derived from the Greek words τύραννος (tyrannos, meaning "tyrant") and σαῦρος (sauros, meaning "lizard"). Osborn used the Latin word rex, meaning "king", for the specific name. The full binomial therefore translates to "tyrant lizard the king" or "King Tyrant Lizard", emphasizing the animal's size and perceived dominance over other species of the time.[6]
+Osborn named the other specimen Dynamosaurus imperiosus in a paper in 1905.[6] In 1906, Osborn recognized that the two skeletons were from the same species and selected Tyrannosaurus as the preferred name.[8] The original Dynamosaurus material resides in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London.[9] In 1941, the T. rex type specimen was sold to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for $7,000.[7] Dynamosaurus would later be honored by the 2018 description of another species of tyrannosaurid by Andrew McDonald and colleagues, Dynamoterror dynastes, whose name was chosen in reference to the 1905 name, as it had been a "childhood favorite" of McDonald's.[10]
+From the 1910s through the end of the 1950s, Barnum's discoveries remained the only specimens of Tyrannosaurus, as the Great Depression and wars kept many paleontologists out of the field.[5]
+Beginning in the 1960s, there was renewed interest in Tyrannosaurus, resulting in recovery of 42 skeletons (5-80% complete by bone count) from Western North America.[5] In 1967, Dr. William MacMannis located and recovered the skeleton named "MOR 008", which is 15% complete by bone count and has a reconstructed skull displayed at the Museum of the Rockies. The 1990s saw numerous discoveries, with nearly twice as many finds as in all previous years, including two of the most complete skeletons found to date: Sue and Stan.[5]
+Sue Hendrickson, an amateur paleontologist, discovered the most complete (approximately 85%) and largest Tyrannosaurus skeleton in the Hell Creek Formation on August 12, 1990. The specimen Sue, named after the discoverer, was the object of a legal battle over its ownership. In 1997, the litigation was settled in favor of Maurice Williams, the original land owner. The fossil collection was purchased by the Field Museum of Natural History at auction for $7.6 million, making it the most expensive dinosaur skeleton to date. From 1998 to 1999, Field Museum of Natural History staff spent over 25,000 hours taking the rock off the bones.[11] The bones were then shipped to New Jersey where the mount was constructed, then shipped back to Chicago for the final assembly. The mounted skeleton opened to the public on May 17, 2000 in the Field Museum of Natural History. A study of this specimen's fossilized bones showed that Sue reached full size at age 19 and died at the age of 28, the longest estimated life of any tyrannosaur known.[12]
+Another Tyrannosaurus, nicknamed Stan (BHI 3033), in honor of amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, was recovered from the Hell Creek Formation in 1992. Stan is the second most complete skeleton found, with 199 bones recovered representing 70% of the total.[13] This tyrannosaur also had many bone pathologies, including broken and healed ribs, a broken (and healed) neck, and a substantial hole in the back of its head, about the size of a Tyrannosaurus tooth.[14]
+In 1998, Bucky Derflinger noticed one of Bucky's toes exposed above ground, making Derflinger, who was 20 years old at the time, the youngest person to discover a Tyrannosaurus. The specimen was a young adult, 3.0 metres (10 ft) tall and 11 metres (35 ft) long. Bucky is the first Tyrannosaurus to be found that preserved a furcula (wishbone). Bucky is permanently displayed at The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.[15]
+In the summer of 2000, crews organized by Jack Horner discovered five Tyrannosaurus skeletons near the Fort Peck Reservoir.[16] In 2001, a 50% complete skeleton of a juvenile Tyrannosaurus was discovered in the Hell Creek Formation by a crew from the Burpee Museum of Natural History. Dubbed Jane (BMRP 2002.4.1), the find was thought to be the first known skeleton of a pygmy tyrannosaurid, Nanotyrannus, but subsequent research revealed that it is more likely a juvenile Tyrannosaurus, and the most complete juvenile example known;[17] Jane is exhibited at the Burpee Museum of Natural History.[18] In 2002, a skeleton named Wyrex, discovered by amateur collectors Dan Wells and Don Wyrick, had 114 bones and was 38% complete. The dig was concluded over 3 weeks in 2004 by the Black Hills Institute with the first live online Tyrannosaurus excavation providing daily reports, photos, and video.[5]
+In 2006, Montana State University revealed that it possessed the largest Tyrannosaurus skull yet discovered (from a specimen named MOR 008), measuring 5 feet (152 cm) long.[19] Subsequent comparisons indicated that the longest head was 136.5 centimetres (53.7 in) (from specimen LACM 23844) and the widest head was 90.2 centimetres (35.5 in) (from Sue).[20]
+Two isolated fossilized footprints have been tentatively assigned to T. rex. The first was discovered at Philmont Scout Ranch, New Mexico, in 1983 by American geologist Charles Pillmore. Originally thought to belong to a hadrosaurid, examination of the footprint revealed a large 'heel' unknown in ornithopod dinosaur tracks, and traces of what may have been a hallux, the dewclaw-like fourth digit of the tyrannosaur foot. The footprint was published as the ichnogenus Tyrannosauripus pillmorei in 1994, by Martin Lockley and Adrian Hunt. Lockley and Hunt suggested that it was very likely the track was made by a T. rex, which would make it the first known footprint from this species. The track was made in what was once a vegetated wetland mud flat. It measures 83 centimeters (33 in) long by 71 centimeters (28 in) wide.[21]
+A second footprint that may have been made by a Tyrannosaurus was first reported in 2007 by British paleontologist Phil Manning, from the Hell Creek Formation of Montana. This second track measures 72 centimeters (28 in) long, shorter than the track described by Lockley and Hunt. Whether or not the track was made by Tyrannosaurus is unclear, though Tyrannosaurus and Nanotyrannus are the only large theropods known to have existed in the Hell Creek Formation.[22][23]
+A set of footprints in Glenrock, Wyoming dating to the Maastrichtian stage of the Late Cretaceous and hailing from the Lance Formation were described by Scott Persons, Phil Currie and colleagues in 2016, and are believed to belong to either a juvenile T. rex or the dubious tyrannosaurid Nanotyrannus lancensis. From measurements and based on the positions of the footprints, the animal was believed to be traveling at a walking speed of around 2.8 to 5 miles per hour and was estimated to have a hip height of 1.56 m (5.1 ft) to 2.06 m (6.8 ft).[24][25][26] A follow-up paper appeared in 2017, increasing the speed estimations by 50-80%.[27]
+T. rex was one of the largest land carnivores of all time. One of the largest and the most complete specimens, nicknamed Sue (FMNH PR2081), is located at the Field Museum of Natural History. Sue measured 12.3–12.8 meters (40–42 ft) long,[28][29] was 3.66 meters (12 ft) tall at the hips,[30] and according to the most recent studies, using a variety of techniques, estimated to have weighed between 8.4 metric tons (9.3 short tons) to 14 metric tons (15.4 short tons).[29][31] A specimen nicknamed Scotty (RSM P2523.8), located at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum, is reported to measure 13 m (43 ft) in length. Using a mass estimation technique that extrapolates from the circumference of the femur, Scotty was estimated as the largest known specimen at 8.8 metric tons (9.7 short tons) in weight.[32][33]
+Not every adult Tyrannosaurus specimen recovered is as big. Historically average adult mass estimates have varied widely over the years, from as low as 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons),[34][35] to more than 7.2 metric tons (7.9 short tons),[36] with most modern estimates ranging between 5.4 metric tons (6.0 short tons) and 8.0 metric tons (8.8 short tons).[29][37][38][39][40]
+The largest known T. rex skull is 1.52 meters (5 ft) in length.[30] Large fenestrae (openings) in the skull reduced weight, as in all carnivorous theropods. In other respects Tyrannosaurus's skull was significantly different from those of large non-tyrannosaurid theropods. It was extremely wide at the rear but had a narrow snout, allowing unusually good binocular vision.[41][42] The skull bones were massive and the nasals and some other bones were fused, preventing movement between them; but many were pneumatized (contained a "honeycomb" of tiny air spaces) and thus lighter. These and other skull-strengthening features are part of the tyrannosaurid trend towards an increasingly powerful bite, which easily surpassed that of all non-tyrannosaurids.[43][44][45] The tip of the upper jaw was U-shaped (most non-tyrannosauroid carnivores had V-shaped upper jaws), which increased the amount of tissue and bone a tyrannosaur could rip out with one bite, although it also increased the stresses on the front teeth.[46]
+The teeth of T. rex displayed marked heterodonty (differences in shape).[47][48] The premaxillary teeth, four per side at the front of the upper jaw, were closely packed, D-shaped in cross-section, had reinforcing ridges on the rear surface, were incisiform (their tips were chisel-like blades) and curved backwards. The D-shaped cross-section, reinforcing ridges and backwards curve reduced the risk that the teeth would snap when Tyrannosaurus bit and pulled. The remaining teeth were robust, like "lethal bananas" rather than daggers, more widely spaced and also had reinforcing ridges.[49] Those in the upper jaw, twelve per side in mature individuals,[47] were larger than their counterparts of the lower jaw, except at the rear. The largest found so far is estimated to have been 30.5 centimeters (12 in) long including the root when the animal was alive, making it the largest tooth of any carnivorous dinosaur yet found.[50] The lower jaw was robust. Its front dentary bone bore thirteen teeth. Behind the tooth row, the lower jaw became notably taller.[47] The upper and lower jaws of Tyrannosaurus, like those of many dinosaurs, possessed numerous foramina, or small holes in the bone. Various functions have been proposed for these foramina, such as a crocodile-like sensory system[51] or evidence of extra-oral structures such as scales or potentially lips.[52][53]
+The vertebral column of Tyrannosaurus consisted of ten neck vertebrae, thirteen back vertebrae and five sacral vertebrae. The number of tail vertebrae is unknown and could well have varied between individuals but probably numbered at least forty. Sue was mounted with forty-seven of such caudal vertebrae.[47] The neck of T. rex formed a natural S-shaped curve like that of other theropods. Compared to these, it was exceptionally short, deep and muscular to support the massive head. The second vertebra, the axis, was especially short. The remaining neck vertebrae were weakly opisthocoelous, i.e. with a convex front of the vertebral body and a concave rear. The vertebral bodies had single pleurocoels, pneumatic depressions created by air sacs, on their sides.[47] The vertebral bodies of the torso were robust but with a narrow waist. Their undersides were keeled. The front sides were concave with a deep vertical trough. They had large pleurocoels. Their neural spines had very rough front and rear sides for the attachment of strong tendons. The sacral vertebrae were fused to each other, both in their vertebral bodies and neural spines. They were pneumatized. They were connected to the pelvis by transverse processes and sacral ribs. The tail was heavy and moderately long, in order to balance the massive head and torso and to provide space for massive locomotor muscles that attached to the thighbones. The thirteenth tail vertebra formed the transition point between the deep tail base and the middle tail that was stiffened by rather long front articulation processes. The underside of the trunk was covered by eighteen or nineteen pairs of segmented belly ribs.[47]
+The shoulder girdle was longer than the entire forelimb. The shoulder blade had a narrow shaft but was exceptionally expanded at its upper end. It connected via a long forward protrusion to the coracoid, which was rounded. Both shoulder blades were connected by a small furcula. The paired breast bones possibly were made of cartilage only.[47]
+The forelimb or arm was very short. The upper arm bone, the humerus, was short but robust. It had a narrow upper end with an exceptionally rounded head. The lower arm bones, the ulna and radius, were straight elements, much shorter than the humerus. The second metacarpal was longer and wider than the first, whereas normally in theropods the opposite is true. The forelimbs had only two clawed fingers,[47] along with an additional splint-like small third metacarpal representing the remnant of a third digit.[54]
+The pelvis was a large structure. Its upper bone, the ilium, was both very long and high, providing an extensive attachment area for hindlimb muscles. The front pubic bone ended in an enormous pubic boot, longer than the entire shaft of the element. The rear ischium was slender and straight, pointing obliquely to behind and below.[47]
+In contrast to the arms, the hindlimbs were among the longest in proportion to body size of any theropod. In the foot, the metatarsus was "arctometatarsalian", meaning that the part of the third metatarsal near the ankle was pinched. The third metatarsal was also exceptionally sinuous.[47] Compensating for the immense bulk of the animal, many bones throughout the skeleton were hollowed, reducing its weight without significant loss of strength.[47]
+The discovery of feathered dinosaurs led to debate regarding whether, and to what extent, Tyrannosaurus might have been feathered.[55][56] Filamentous structures, which are commonly recognized as the precursors of feathers, have been reported in the small-bodied, basal tyrannosauroid Dilong paradoxus from the Early Cretaceous Yixian Formation of China in 2004.[57] Because integumentary impressions of larger tyrannosauroids known at that time showed evidence of scales, the researchers who studied Dilong speculated that insulating feathers might have been lost by larger species due to their smaller surface-to-volume ratio.[57] The subsequent discovery of the giant species Yutyrannus huali, also from the Yixian, showed that even some large tyrannosauroids had feathers covering much of their bodies, casting doubt on the hypothesis that they were a size-related feature.[58] A 2017 study reviewed known skin impressions of tyrannosaurids, including those of a Tyrannosaurus specimen nicknamed "Wyrex" (BHI 6230) which preserves patches of mosaic scales on the tail, hip, and neck.[5] The study concluded that feather covering of large tyrannosaurids such as Tyrannosaurus was, if present, limited to the upper side of the trunk.[55]
+A conference abstract published in 2016 posited that theropods such as Tyrannosaurus had their upper teeth covered in lips, instead of bare teeth as seen in crocodilians. This was based on the presence of enamel, which according to the study needs to remain hydrated, an issue not faced by aquatic animals like crocodilians.[53] A 2017 analytical study proposed that tyrannosaurids had large, flat scales on their snouts instead of lips.[51][59]
+Tyrannosaurus is the type genus of the superfamily Tyrannosauroidea, the family Tyrannosauridae, and the subfamily Tyrannosaurinae; in other words it is the standard by which paleontologists decide whether to include other species in the same group. Other members of the tyrannosaurine subfamily include the North American Daspletosaurus and the Asian Tarbosaurus,[17][60] both of which have occasionally been synonymized with Tyrannosaurus.[61] Tyrannosaurids were once commonly thought to be descendants of earlier large theropods such as megalosaurs and carnosaurs, although more recently they were reclassified with the generally smaller coelurosaurs.[46]
+In 1955, Soviet paleontologist Evgeny Maleev named a new species, Tyrannosaurus bataar, from Mongolia.[62] By 1965, this species had been renamed Tarbosaurus bataar.[63] Despite the renaming, many phylogenetic analyses have found Tarbosaurus bataar to be the sister taxon of T. rex,[60] and it has often been considered an Asian species of Tyrannosaurus.[46][64][65]  The discovery of the tyrannosaurid Lythronax further indicates that Tarbosaurus and Tyrannosaurus are closely related, forming a clade with fellow Asian tyrannosaurid Zhuchengtyrannus, with Lythronax being their sister taxon.[66][67] A further study from 2016 by Steve Brusatte, Thomas Carr and colleagues, also indicates that Tyrannosaurus may have been an immigrant from Asia, as well as a possible descendant of Tarbosaurus.[68]
+In 2001, various tyrannosaurid teeth and a metatarsal unearthed in a quarry near Zhucheng, China were assigned by Chinese paleontologist Hu Chengzhi to the newly erected Tyrannosaurus zhuchengensis. However, in a nearby site, a right maxilla and left jawbone were assigned to the newly erected tyrannosaurid genus Zhuchengtyrannus in 2011, and it is possible T. zhuchengensis is synonymous with Zhuchengtyrannus. In any case, T. zhuchengensis is considered to be a nomen dubium as the holotype lacks diagnostic features below the level Tyrannosaurinae.[69]
+Below is the cladogram of Tyrannosauridae based on the phylogenetic analysis conducted by Loewen and colleagues in 2013.[66]
+Gorgosaurus libratus
+Albertosaurus sarcophagus
+Dinosaur Park tyrannosaurid
+Daspletosaurus torosus
+Two Medicine tyrannosaurid
+Teratophoneus curriei
+Bistahieversor sealeyi
+Lythronax argestes
+Tyrannosaurus rex
+Tarbosaurus bataar
+Zhuchengtyrannus magnus
+Other tyrannosaurid fossils found in the same formations as T. rex were originally classified as separate taxa, including Aublysodon and Albertosaurus megagracilis,[61] the latter being named Dinotyrannus megagracilis in 1995.[70] These fossils are now universally considered to belong to juvenile T. rex.[71] A small but nearly complete skull from Montana, 60 centimeters (2.0 ft) long, might be an exception. This skull, CMNH 7541, was originally classified as a species of Gorgosaurus (G. lancensis) by Charles W. Gilmore in 1946.[72] In 1988, the specimen was re-described by Robert T. Bakker, Phil Currie, and Michael Williams, then the curator of paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, where the original specimen was housed and is now on display. Their initial research indicated that the skull bones were fused, and that it therefore represented an adult specimen. In light of this, Bakker and colleagues assigned the skull to a new genus named Nanotyrannus (meaning "dwarf tyrant", for its apparently small adult size). The specimen is estimated to have been around 5.2 metres (17 ft) long when it died.[73] However, In 1999, a detailed analysis by Thomas Carr revealed the specimen to be a juvenile, leading Carr and many other paleontologists to consider it a juvenile T. rex individual.[74][75]
+In 2001, a more complete juvenile tyrannosaur (nicknamed "Jane", catalog number BMRP 2002.4.1), belonging to the same species as the original Nanotyrannus specimen, was uncovered. This discovery prompted a conference on tyrannosaurs focused on the issues of Nanotyrannus validity at the Burpee Museum of Natural History in 2005. Several paleontologists who had previously published opinions that N. lancensis was a valid species, including Currie and Williams, saw the discovery of "Jane" as a confirmation that Nanotyrannus was, in fact, a juvenile T. rex.[76][77][78] Peter Larson continued to support the hypothesis that N. lancensis was a separate but closely related species, based on skull features such as two more teeth in both jaws than T. rex; as well as proportionately larger hands with phalanges on the third metacarpal and different wishbone anatomy in an undescribed specimen. He also argued that Stygivenator, generally considered to be a juvenile T. rex, may be a younger Nanotyrannus specimen.[79][80] Later research revealed that other tyrannosaurids such as Gorgosaurus also experienced reduction in tooth count during growth,[74] and given the disparity in tooth count between individuals of the same age group in this genus and Tyrannosaurus, this feature may also be due to individual variation.[75] In 2013, Carr noted that all of the differences claimed to support Nanotyrannus have turned out to be individually or ontogenetically variable features or products of distortion of the bones.[81]
+In 2016, analysis of limb proportions by Persons and Currie suggested Nanotyrannus specimens to have differing cursoriality levels, potentially separating it from T. rex.[82] However, paleontologist Manabu Sakomoto has commented that this conclusion may be impacted by low sample size, and the discrepancy does not necessarily reflect taxonomic distinction.[83] In 2016, Joshua Schmerge argued for Nanotyrannus' validity based on skull features, including a dentary groove in BMRP 2002.4.1's skull. According to Schmerge, as that feature is absent in T. rex and found only in Dryptosaurus and albertosaurines, this suggests Nanotyrannus is a distinct taxon within the Albertosaurinae.[84] The same year, Carr and colleagues noted that this was not sufficient enough to clarify Nanotyrannus' validity or classification, being a common and ontogenetically variable feature among tyrannosauroids.[85]
+A 2020 study by Holly Woodward and colleagues showed the specimens referred to Nanotyrannus were all ontogenetically immature and found it probable that these specimens belonged to T. rex.[86] The same year, Carr published a paper on T. rex's growth history, finding that CMNH 7541 fit within the expected ontogenetic variation of the taxon and displayed juvenile characteristics found in other specimens. It was classified as a juvenile, under 13 years old with a skull less than 80 cm (31 in). No significant sexual or phylogenetic variation was discernible among any of the 44 specimens studied, with Carr stating that characters of potential phylogenetic importance decrease throughout age at the same rate as growth occurs.[87] Discussing the paper's results, Carr described how all "Nanotyrannus" specimens formed a continual growth transition between the smallest juveniles and the subadults, unlike what would be expected if it were a distinct taxon where the specimens would group to the exclusion of Tyrannosaurus. Carr concluded that "the 'nanomorphs' are not all that similar to each other and instead form an important bridge in the growth series of T. rex that captures the beginnings of the profound change from the shallow skull of juveniles to the deep skull that is seen in fully-developed adults."[88]
+The identification of several specimens as juvenile T. rex has allowed scientists to document ontogenetic changes in the species, estimate the lifespan, and determine how quickly the animals would have grown. The smallest known individual (LACM 28471, the "Jordan theropod") is estimated to have weighed only 30 kg (66 lb), while the largest, such as FMNH PR2081 (Sue) most likely weighed about 5,650 kg (12,460 lb). Histologic analysis of T. rex bones showed LACM 28471 had aged only 2 years when it died, while Sue was 28 years old, an age which may have been close to the maximum for the species.[37]
+Histology has also allowed the age of other specimens to be determined. Growth curves can be developed when the ages of different specimens are plotted on a graph along with their mass. A T. rex growth curve is S-shaped, with juveniles remaining under 1,800 kg (4,000 lb) until approximately 14 years of age, when body size began to increase dramatically. During this rapid growth phase, a young T. rex would gain an average of 600 kg (1,300 lb) a year for the next four years. At 18 years of age, the curve plateaus again, indicating that growth slowed dramatically. For example, only 600 kg (1,300 lb) separated the 28-year-old Sue from a 22-year-old Canadian specimen (RTMP 81.12.1).[37] A 2004 histological study performed by different workers corroborates these results, finding that rapid growth began to slow at around 16 years of age.[89]
+A study by Hutchinson and colleagues in 2011 corroborated the previous estimation methods in general, but their estimation of peak growth rates is significantly higher; it found that the "maximum growth rates for T. rex during the exponential stage are 1790 kg/year".[29] Although these results were much higher than previous estimations, the authors noted that these results significantly lowered the great difference between its actual growth rate and the one which would be expected of an animal of its size.[29] The sudden change in growth rate at the end of the growth spurt may indicate physical maturity, a hypothesis which is supported by the discovery of medullary tissue in the femur of a 16 to 20-year-old T. rex from Montana (MOR 1125, also known as B-rex). Medullary tissue is found only in female birds during ovulation, indicating that B-rex was of reproductive age.[90] Further study indicates an age of 18 for this specimen.[91] In 2016, it was finally confirmed by Mary Higby Schweitzer and Lindsay Zanno and colleagues that the soft tissue within the femur of MOR 1125 was medullary tissue. This also confirmed the identity of the specimen as a female. The discovery of medullary bone tissue within Tyrannosaurus may prove valuable in determining the sex of other dinosaur species in future examinations, as the chemical makeup of medullary tissue is unmistakable.[92] Other tyrannosaurids exhibit extremely similar growth curves, although with lower growth rates corresponding to their lower adult sizes.[93]
+An additional study published in 2020 by Woodward and colleagues, for the journal Science Advances indicates that during their growth from juvenile to adult, Tyrannosaurus was capable of slowing down its growth to counter environmental factors such as lack of food. The study, focusing on two juvenile specimens between 13 and 15 years old housed at the Burpee Museum in Illinois, indicates that the rate of maturation for Tyrannosaurus was dependent on resource abundance. This study also indicates that in such changing environments, Tyrannosaurus was particularly well-suited to an environment that shifted yearly in regards to resource abundance, hinting that other midsize predators might have had difficulty surviving in such harsh conditions and explaining the niche partitioning between juvenile and adult tyrannosaurs. The study further indicates that Tyrannosaurus and the dubious genus Nanotyrannus are synonymous, due to analysis of the growth rings in the bones of the two specimens studied.[94][95]
+Over half of the known T. rex specimens appear to have died within six years of reaching sexual maturity, a pattern which is also seen in other tyrannosaurs and in some large, long-lived birds and mammals today. These species are characterized by high infant mortality rates, followed by relatively low mortality among juveniles. Mortality increases again following sexual maturity, partly due to the stresses of reproduction. One study suggests that the rarity of juvenile T. rex fossils is due in part to low juvenile mortality rates; the animals were not dying in large numbers at these ages, and so were not often fossilized. This rarity may also be due to the incompleteness of the fossil record or to the bias of fossil collectors towards larger, more spectacular specimens.[93] In a 2013 lecture, Thomas Holtz Jr. suggested that dinosaurs "lived fast and died young" because they reproduced quickly whereas mammals have long life spans because they take longer to reproduce.[96] Gregory S. Paul also writes that Tyrannosaurus reproduced quickly and died young, but attributes their short life spans to the dangerous lives they lived.[97]
+As the number of known specimens increased, scientists began to analyze the variation between individuals and discovered what appeared to be two distinct body types, or morphs, similar to some other theropod species. As one of these morphs was more solidly built, it was termed the 'robust' morph while the other was termed 'gracile'. Several morphological differences associated with the two morphs were used to analyze sexual dimorphism in T. rex, with the 'robust' morph usually suggested to be female. For example, the pelvis of several 'robust' specimens seemed to be wider, perhaps to allow the passage of eggs.[98] It was also thought that the 'robust' morphology correlated with a reduced chevron on the first tail vertebra, also ostensibly to allow eggs to pass out of the reproductive tract, as had been erroneously reported for crocodiles.[99]
+In recent years, evidence for sexual dimorphism has been weakened. A 2005 study reported that previous claims of sexual dimorphism in crocodile chevron anatomy were in error, casting doubt on the existence of similar dimorphism between T. rex sexes.[100] A full-sized chevron was discovered on the first tail vertebra of Sue, an extremely robust individual, indicating that this feature could not be used to differentiate the two morphs anyway. As T. rex specimens have been found from Saskatchewan to New Mexico, differences between individuals may be indicative of geographic variation rather than sexual dimorphism. The differences could also be age-related, with 'robust' individuals being older animals.[47]
+Only a single T. rex specimen has been conclusively shown to belong to a specific sex. Examination of B-rex demonstrated the preservation of soft tissue within several bones. Some of this tissue has been identified as a medullary tissue, a specialized tissue grown only in modern birds as a source of calcium for the production of eggshell during ovulation. As only female birds lay eggs, medullary tissue is only found naturally in females, although males are capable of producing it when injected with female reproductive hormones like estrogen. This strongly suggests that B-rex was female, and that she died during ovulation.[90] Recent research has shown that medullary tissue is never found in crocodiles, which are thought to be the closest living relatives of dinosaurs, aside from birds. The shared presence of medullary tissue in birds and theropod dinosaurs is further evidence of the close evolutionary relationship between the two.[101]
+Like many bipedal dinosaurs, T. rex was historically depicted as a 'living tripod', with the body at 45 degrees or less from the vertical and the tail dragging along the ground, similar to a kangaroo. This concept dates from Joseph Leidy's 1865 reconstruction of Hadrosaurus, the first to depict a dinosaur in a bipedal posture.[102] In 1915, convinced that the creature stood upright, Henry Fairfield Osborn, former president of the American Museum of Natural History, further reinforced the notion in unveiling the first complete T. rex skeleton arranged this way. It stood in an upright pose for 77 years, until it was dismantled in 1992.[103]
+By 1970, scientists realized this pose was incorrect and could not have been maintained by a living animal, as it would have resulted in the dislocation or weakening of several joints, including the hips and the articulation between the head and the spinal column.[104] The inaccurate AMNH mount inspired similar depictions in many films and paintings (such as Rudolph Zallinger's famous mural The Age of Reptiles in Yale University's Peabody Museum of Natural History)[105] until the 1990s, when films such as Jurassic Park introduced a more accurate posture to the general public.[106] Modern representations in museums, art, and film show T. rex with its body approximately parallel to the ground with the tail extended behind the body to balance the head.[107]
+To sit down, Tyrannosaurus may have settled its weight backwards and rested its weight on a pubic boot, the wide expansion at the end of the pubis in some dinosaurs. With its weight rested on the pelvis, it may have been free to move the hindlimbs. Getting back up again might have involved some stabilization from the diminutive forelimbs.[108][104] The latter known as Newman's pushup theory has been debated. Nonetheless, Tyrannosaurus was probably able to get up if it fell, which only would have required placing the limbs below the center of gravity, with the tail as an effective counterbalance.[109]
+When T. rex was first discovered, the humerus was the only element of the forelimb known.[6] For the initial mounted skeleton as seen by the public in 1915, Osborn substituted longer, three-fingered forelimbs like those of Allosaurus.[4] A year earlier, Lawrence Lambe described the short, two-fingered forelimbs of the closely related Gorgosaurus.[110] This strongly suggested that T. rex had similar forelimbs, but this hypothesis was not confirmed until the first complete T. rex forelimbs were identified in 1989, belonging to MOR 555 (the "Wankel rex").[111][112] The remains of Sue also include complete forelimbs.[47] T. rex arms are very small relative to overall body size, measuring only 1 meter (3.3 ft) long, and some scholars have labelled them as vestigial. The bones show large areas for muscle attachment, indicating considerable strength. This was recognized as early as 1906 by Osborn, who speculated that the forelimbs may have been used to grasp a mate during copulation.[8] It has also been suggested that the forelimbs were used to assist the animal in rising from a prone position.[104]
+Another possibility is that the forelimbs held struggling prey while it was killed by the tyrannosaur's enormous jaws. This hypothesis may be supported by biomechanical analysis. T. rex forelimb bones exhibit extremely thick cortical bone, which has been interpreted as evidence that they were developed to withstand heavy loads. The biceps brachii muscle of an adult T. rex was capable of lifting 199 kilograms (439 lb) by itself; other muscles such as the brachialis would work along with the biceps to make elbow flexion even more powerful. The M. biceps muscle of T. rex was 3.5 times as powerful as the human equivalent. A T. rex forearm had a limited range of motion, with the shoulder and elbow joints allowing only 40 and 45 degrees of motion, respectively. In contrast, the same two joints in Deinonychus allow up to 88 and 130 degrees of motion, respectively, while a human arm can rotate 360 degrees at the shoulder and move through 165 degrees at the elbow. The heavy build of the arm bones, strength of the muscles, and limited range of motion may indicate a system evolved to hold fast despite the stresses of a struggling prey animal. In the first detailed scientific description of Tyrannosaurus forelimbs, paleontologists Kenneth Carpenter and Matt Smith dismissed notions that the forelimbs were useless or that T. rex was an obligate scavenger.[113]
+According to paleontologist Steven M. Stanley, the 1 metre (3.3 ft) arms of T. rex were used for slashing prey, especially by using its claws to rapidly inflict long, deep gashes to its prey, although this concept is disputed by others believing the arms were used for grasping a sexual partner.[114]
+As of 2014, it is not clear if Tyrannosaurus was endothermic (“warm-blooded”). Tyrannosaurus, like most dinosaurs, was long thought to have an ectothermic ("cold-blooded") reptilian metabolism. The idea of dinosaur ectothermy was challenged by scientists like Robert T. Bakker and John Ostrom in the early years of the "Dinosaur Renaissance", beginning in the late 1960s.[115][116] T. rex itself was claimed to have been endothermic ("warm-blooded"), implying a very active lifestyle.[35] Since then, several paleontologists have sought to determine the ability of Tyrannosaurus to regulate its body temperature. Histological evidence of high growth rates in young T. rex, comparable to those of mammals and birds, may support the hypothesis of a high metabolism. Growth curves indicate that, as in mammals and birds, T. rex growth was limited mostly to immature animals, rather than the indeterminate growth seen in most other vertebrates.[89]
+Oxygen isotope ratios in fossilized bone are sometimes used to determine the temperature at which the bone was deposited, as the ratio between certain isotopes correlates with temperature. In one specimen, the isotope ratios in bones from different parts of the body indicated a temperature difference of no more than 4 to 5 °C (7 to 9 °F) between the vertebrae of the torso and the tibia of the lower leg. This small temperature range between the body core and the extremities was claimed by paleontologist Reese Barrick and geochemist William Showers to indicate that T. rex maintained a constant internal body temperature (homeothermy) and that it enjoyed a metabolism somewhere between ectothermic reptiles and endothermic mammals.[117] Other scientists have pointed out that the ratio of oxygen isotopes in the fossils today does not necessarily represent the same ratio in the distant past, and may have been altered during or after fossilization (diagenesis).[118] Barrick and Showers have defended their conclusions in subsequent papers, finding similar results in another theropod dinosaur from a different continent and tens of millions of years earlier in time (Giganotosaurus).[119] Ornithischian dinosaurs also showed evidence of homeothermy, while varanid lizards from the same formation did not.[120] Even if T. rex does exhibit evidence of homeothermy, it does not necessarily mean that it was endothermic. Such thermoregulation may also be explained by gigantothermy, as in some living sea turtles.[121][122][123] Similar to contemporary alligators, dorsotemporal fenestra in Tyrannosaurus's skull may have aided thermoregulation.[124]
+In the March 2005 issue of Science, Mary Higby Schweitzer of North Carolina State University and colleagues announced the recovery of soft tissue from the marrow cavity of a fossilized leg bone from a T. rex. The bone had been intentionally, though reluctantly, broken for shipping and then not preserved in the normal manner, specifically because Schweitzer was hoping to test it for soft tissue.[125] Designated as the Museum of the Rockies specimen 1125, or MOR 1125, the dinosaur was previously excavated from the Hell Creek Formation. Flexible, bifurcating blood vessels and fibrous but elastic bone matrix tissue were recognized. In addition, microstructures resembling blood cells were found inside the matrix and vessels. The structures bear resemblance to ostrich blood cells and vessels. Whether an unknown process, distinct from normal fossilization, preserved the material, or the material is original, the researchers do not know, and they are careful not to make any claims about preservation.[126] If it is found to be original material, any surviving proteins may be used as a means of indirectly guessing some of the DNA content of the dinosaurs involved, because each protein is typically created by a specific gene. The absence of previous finds may be the result of people assuming preserved tissue was impossible, therefore not looking. Since the first, two more tyrannosaurs and a hadrosaur have also been found to have such tissue-like structures.[125] Research on some of the tissues involved has suggested that birds are closer relatives to tyrannosaurs than other modern animals.[127]
+In studies reported in Science in April 2007, Asara and colleagues concluded that seven traces of collagen proteins detected in purified T. rex bone most closely match those reported in chickens, followed by frogs and newts. The discovery of proteins from a creature tens of millions of years old, along with similar traces the team found in a mastodon bone at least 160,000 years old, upends the conventional view of fossils and may shift paleontologists' focus from bone hunting to biochemistry. Until these finds, most scientists presumed that fossilization replaced all living tissue with inert minerals. Paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal, who was not part of the studies, called the finds "a milestone", and suggested that dinosaurs could "enter the field of molecular biology and really slingshot paleontology into the modern world".[128]
+The presumed soft tissue was called into question by Thomas Kaye of the University of Washington and his co-authors in 2008. They contend that what was really inside the tyrannosaur bone was slimy biofilm created by bacteria that coated the voids once occupied by blood vessels and cells.[129] The researchers found that what previously had been identified as remnants of blood cells, because of the presence of iron, were actually framboids, microscopic mineral spheres bearing iron. They found similar spheres in a variety of other fossils from various periods, including an ammonite. In the ammonite they found the spheres in a place where the iron they contain could not have had any relationship to the presence of blood.[130] Schweitzer has strongly criticized Kaye's claims and argues that there is no reported evidence that biofilms can produce branching, hollow tubes like those noted in her study.[131] San Antonio, Schweitzer and colleagues published an analysis in 2011 of what parts of the collagen had been recovered, finding that it was the inner parts of the collagen coil that had been preserved, as would have been expected from a long period of protein degradation.[132] Other research challenges the identification of soft tissue as biofilm and confirms finding "branching, vessel-like structures" from within fossilized bone.[133]
+Scientists have produced a wide range of possible maximum running speeds for Tyrannosaurus, mostly around 11 meters per second (40 km/h; 25 mph), but as low as 5–11 meters per second (18–40 km/h; 11–25 mph) and as high as 20 meters per second (72 km/h; 45 mph). Estimates that Tyrannosaurus had relatively larger leg muscles than any animal alive today indicate that fast running was possible at speeds of 40–70 kilometers per hour (25–43 mph).[134] Researchers have relied on various estimating techniques because, while there are many tracks of large theropods walking, none had the pattern of running.[135]
+A 2002 report used a mathematical model (validated by applying it to three living animals: alligators, chickens, and humans; and eight more species, including emus and ostriches[135]) to gauge the leg muscle mass needed for fast running (over 40 km/h or 25 mph).[134] Scientists who think that Tyrannosaurus was able to run point out that hollow bones and other features that would have lightened its body may have kept adult weight to a mere 4.5 metric tons (5.0 short tons) or so, or that other animals like ostriches and horses with long, flexible legs are able to achieve high speeds through slower but longer strides.[135] Proposed top speeds exceeded 40 kilometers per hour (25 mph) for Tyrannosaurus, but were deemed infeasible because they would require exceptional leg muscles of approximately 40–86% of total body mass. Even moderately fast speeds would have required large leg muscles. If the muscle mass was less, only 18 kilometers per hour (11 mph) for walking or jogging would have been possible.[134] Holtz noted that tyrannosaurids and some closely related groups had significantly longer distal hindlimb components (shin plus foot plus toes) relative to the femur length than most other theropods, and that tyrannosaurids and their close relatives had a tightly interlocked metatarsus (foot bones).[136] The third metatarsal was squeezed between the second and fourth metatarsals to form a single unit called an arctometatarsus. This ankle feature may have helped the animal to run more efficiently.[137] Together, these leg features allowed Tyrannosaurus to transmit locomotory forces from the foot to the lower leg more effectively than in earlier theropods.[136]
+Additionally, a 2020 study indicates that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were exceptionally efficient walkers. Studies by Dececchi et al., compared the leg proportions, body mass, and the gaits of more than 70 species of theropod dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus and its relatives. The research team then applied a variety of methods to estimate each dinosaur's top speed when running as well as how much energy each dinosaur expended while moving at more relaxed speeds such as when walking. Among smaller to medium-sized species such as dromaeosaurids, longer legs appear to be an adaptation for faster running, in line with previous results by other researchers. But for theropods weighing over 1,000 kg (2,200 lb), top running speed is limited by body size, so longer legs instead were found to have correlated with low-energy walking. The results further indicate that smaller theropods evolved long legs as a means to both aid in hunting and escape from larger predators while larger theropods that evolved long legs did so to reduce the energy costs and increase foraging efficiency, as they were freed from the demands of predation pressure due to their role as apex predators. Compared to more basal groups of theropods in the study, tyrannosaurs like Tyrannosaurus itself showed a marked increase in foraging efficiency due to reduced energy expenditures during hunting or scavenging. This in turn likely resulted in tyrannosaurs having a reduced need for hunting forays and requiring less food to sustain themselves as a result. Additionally, the research, in conjunction with studies that show tyrannosaurs were more agile than other large bodied-theropods, indicates they were quite well-adapted to a long-distance stalking approach followed by a quick burst of speed to go for the kill. Analogies can be noted between tyrannosaurids and modern wolves as a result, supported by evidence that at least some tyrannosaurids were hunting in group settings.[138][139]
+A 2017 study estimated the top running speed of Tyrannosaurus as 17 mph (27 km/h), speculating that Tyrannosaurus exhausted its energy reserves long before reaching top speed, resulting in a parabola-like relationship between size and speed.[140][141] Another 2017 study hypothesized that an adult Tyrannosaurus was incapable of running due to high skeletal loads. Using a calculated weight estimate of 7 tons, the model showed that speeds above 11 mph (18 km/h) would have probably shattered the leg bones of Tyrannosaurus. The finding may mean that running was also not possible for other giant theropod dinosaurs like Giganotosaurus, Mapusaurus and Acrocanthosaurus.[142]
+However, studies by Eric Snively and colleagues, published in 2019 indicate that Tyrannosaurus and other tyrannosaurids were more maneuverable than allosauroids and other theropods of comparable size due to low rotational inertia compared to their body mass combined with large leg muscles. As a result, it is hypothesized that Tyrannosaurus was capable of making relatively quick turns and could likely pivot its body more quickly when close to its prey, or that while turning, the theropod could "pirouette" on a single planted foot while the alternating leg was held out in a suspended swing during pursuit. The results of this study potentially could shed light on how agility could have contributed to the success of tyrannosaurid evolution.[143]
+A study conducted by Lawrence Witmer and Ryan Ridgely of Ohio University found that Tyrannosaurus shared the heightened sensory abilities of other coelurosaurs, highlighting relatively rapid and coordinated eye and head movements; an enhanced ability to sense low frequency sounds, which would allow tyrannosaurs to track prey movements from long distances; and an enhanced sense of smell.[144] A study published by Kent Stevens concluded that Tyrannosaurus had keen vision. By applying modified perimetry to facial reconstructions of several dinosaurs including Tyrannosaurus, the study found that Tyrannosaurus had a binocular range of 55 degrees, surpassing that of modern hawks. Stevens estimated that Tyrannosaurus had 13 times the visual acuity of a human and surpassed the visual acuity of an eagle, which is 3.6 times that of a person. Stevens estimated a limiting far point (that is, the distance at which an object can be seen as separate from the horizon) as far as 6 km (3.7 mi) away, which is greater than the 1.6 km (1 mi) that a human can see.[41][42][145]
+Thomas Holtz Jr. would note that high depth perception of Tyrannosaurus may have been due to the prey it had to hunt, noting that it had to hunt horned dinosaurs such as Triceratops, armored dinosaurs such as Ankylosaurus, and the duck-billed dinosaurs and their possibly complex social behaviors. He would suggest that this made precision more crucial for Tyrannosaurus enabling it to, "get in, get that blow in and take it down." In contrast, Acrocanthosaurus had limited depth perception because they hunted large sauropods, which were relatively rare during the time of Tyrannosaurus.[96]
+Tyrannosaurus had very large olfactory bulbs and olfactory nerves relative to their brain size, the organs responsible for a heightened sense of smell. This suggests that the sense of smell was highly developed, and implies that tyrannosaurs could detect carcasses by scent alone across great distances. The sense of smell in tyrannosaurs may have been comparable to modern vultures, which use scent to track carcasses for scavenging. Research on the olfactory bulbs has shown that T. rex had the most highly developed sense of smell of 21 sampled non-avian dinosaur species.[146]
+Somewhat unusually among theropods, T. rex had a very long cochlea. The length of the cochlea is often related to hearing acuity, or at least the importance of hearing in behavior, implying that hearing was a particularly important sense to tyrannosaurs. Specifically, data suggests that T. rex heard best in the low-frequency range, and that low-frequency sounds were an important part of tyrannosaur behavior.[144] A 2017 study by Thomas Carr and colleagues found that the snout of tyrannosaurids was highly sensitive, based on a high number of small openings in the facial bones of the related Daspletosaurus that contained sensory neurons. The study speculated that tyrannosaurs might have used their sensitive snouts to measure the temperature of their nests and to gently pick-up eggs and hatchlings, as seen in modern crocodylians.[51]
+A study by Grant R. Hurlburt, Ryan C. Ridgely and Lawrence Witmer obtained estimates for Encephalization Quotients (EQs), based on reptiles and birds, as well as estimates for the ratio of cerebrum to brain mass. The study concluded that Tyrannosaurus had the relatively largest brain of all adult non-avian dinosaurs with the exception of certain small maniraptoriforms (Bambiraptor, Troodon and Ornithomimus). The study found that Tyrannosaurus's relative brain size was still within the range of modern reptiles, being at most 2 standard deviations above the mean of non-avian reptile EQs. The estimates for the ratio of cerebrum mass to brain mass would range from 47.5 to 49.53 percent. According to the study, this is more than the lowest estimates for extant birds (44.6 percent), but still close to the typical ratios of the smallest sexually mature alligators which range from 45.9–47.9 percent.[147] Other studies, such as those by Steve Brusatte, indicate the encephalization quotient of Tyrannosaurus was similar in range (2.0-2.4) to a chimpanzee (2.2-2.5), though this may be debatable as reptilian and mammalian encephalization quotients are not equivalent.[148]
+Suggesting that Tyrannosaurus may have been pack hunters, Philip J. Currie compared T. rex to related species Tarbosaurus bataar and Albertosaurus sarcophagus, citing fossil evidence that may indicate pack behavior.[149] A find in South Dakota where three T. rex skeletons were in close proximity suggested a pack.[150][151] Because available prey such as Triceratops and Ankylosaurus had significant defenses, it may have been effective for T. rex to hunt in groups.[149]
+Currie's pack-hunting hypothesis has been criticized for not having been peer-reviewed, but rather was discussed in a television interview and book called Dino Gangs.[152] The Currie theory for pack hunting by T. rex is based mainly by analogy to a different species, Tarbosaurus bataar, and that the supposed evidence for pack hunting in T. bataar itself had not yet been peer-reviewed. According to scientists assessing the Dino Gangs program, the evidence for pack hunting in Tarbosaurus and Albertosaurus is weak and based on skeletal remains for which alternate explanations may apply (such as drought or a flood forcing dinosaurs to die together in one place).[152] Fossilized trackways from the Upper Cretaceous Wapiti Formation of northeastern British Columbia, Canada, left by three tyrannosaurids traveling in the same direction, may also indicate packs.[153][154]
+Evidence of intraspecific attack were found by Joseph Peterson and his colleagues in the juvenile Tyrannosaurus nicknamed Jane. Peterson and his team found that Jane's skull showed healed puncture wounds on the upper jaw and snout which they believe came from another juvenile Tyrannosaurus. Subsequent CT scans of Jane's skull would further confirm the team's hypothesis, showing that the puncture wounds came from a traumatic injury and that there was subsequent healing.[155] The team would also state that Jane's injuries were structurally different from the parasite-induced lesions found in Sue and that Jane's injuries were on her face whereas the parasite that infected Sue caused lesions to the lower jaw.[156]
+Most paleontologists accept that Tyrannosaurus was both an active predator and a scavenger like most large carnivores.[157] By far the largest carnivore in its environment, T. rex was most likely an apex predator, preying upon hadrosaurs, armored herbivores like ceratopsians and ankylosaurs, and possibly sauropods.[158] A study in 2012 by Karl Bates and Peter Falkingham found that Tyrannosaurus had the most powerful bite of any terrestrial animal that has ever lived, finding an adult Tyrannosaurus could have exerted 35,000 to 57,000 N (7,868 to 12,814 lbf) of force in the back teeth.[159][160][161] Even higher estimates were made by Mason B. Meers in 2003.[44] This allowed it to crush bones during repetitive biting and fully consume the carcasses of large dinosaurs.[20] Stephan Lautenschlager and colleagues calculated that Tyrannosaurus was capable of a maximum jaw gape of around 80 degrees, a necessary adaptation for a wide range of jaw angles to power the creature's strong bite.[162][163]
+A debate exists, however, about whether Tyrannosaurus was primarily a predator or a pure scavenger; the debate was assessed in a 1917 study by Lambe which argued Tyrannosaurus was a pure scavenger because the Gorgosaurus teeth showed hardly any wear.[164] This argument may not be valid because theropods replaced their teeth quite rapidly. Ever since the first discovery of Tyrannosaurus most scientists have speculated that it was a predator; like modern large predators it would readily scavenge or steal another predator's kill if it had the opportunity.[165]
+Paleontologist Jack Horner has been a major proponent of the view that Tyrannosaurus was not a predator at all but instead was exclusively a scavenger.[111][166][167] He has put forward arguments in the popular literature to support the pure scavenger hypothesis:
+Other evidence suggests hunting behavior in Tyrannosaurus. The eye sockets of tyrannosaurs are positioned so that the eyes would point forward, giving them binocular vision slightly better than that of modern hawks. It is not obvious why natural selection would have favored this long-term trend if tyrannosaurs had been pure scavengers, which would not have needed the advanced depth perception that stereoscopic vision provides.[41][42] In modern animals, binocular vision is found mainly in predators.
+A skeleton of the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens has been described from Montana with healed tyrannosaur-inflicted damage on its tail vertebrae. The fact that the damage seems to have healed suggests that the Edmontosaurus survived a tyrannosaur's attack on a living target, i.e. the tyrannosaur had attempted active predation.[169] Despite the consensus that the tail bites were caused by Tyrannosaurus, there has been some evidence to show that they might have been created by other factors. For example, a 2014 study suggested that the tail injuries might have been due to Edmontosaurus indivduals stepping on each other,[170] while another study in 2020 backs up the hypothesis that biomechanical stress is the cause for the tail injuries.[171]. There is also evidence for an aggressive interaction between a Triceratops and a Tyrannosaurus in the form of partially healed tyrannosaur tooth marks on a Triceratops brow horn and squamosal (a bone of the neck frill); the bitten horn is also broken, with new bone growth after the break. It is not known what the exact nature of the interaction was, though: either animal could have been the aggressor.[172] Since the Triceratops wounds healed, it is most likely that the Triceratops survived the encounter and managed to overcome the Tyrannosaurus. In a battle against a bull Triceratops, the Triceratops would likely defend itself by inflicting fatal wounds to the Tyrannosaurus using its sharp horns.[173] Studies of Sue found a broken and healed fibula and tail vertebrae, scarred facial bones and a tooth from another Tyrannosaurus embedded in a neck vertebra, providing evidence for aggressive behavior.[174] Studies on hadrosaur vertebrae from the Hell Creek Formation that were punctured by the teeth of what appears to be a late-stage juvenile Tyrannosaurus indicate that despite lacking the bone-crushing adaptations of the adults, young individuals were still capable of using the same bone-puncturing feeding technique as their adult counterparts.[175]
+Tyrannosaurus may have had infectious saliva used to kill its prey, as proposed by William Abler in 1992. Abler observed that the serrations (tiny protuberances) on the cutting edges of the teeth are closely spaced, enclosing little chambers. These chambers might have trapped pieces of carcass with bacteria, giving Tyrannosaurus a deadly, infectious bite much like the Komodo dragon was thought to have.[176][177] Jack Horner and Don Lessem, in a 1993 popular book, questioned Abler's hypothesis, arguing that Tyrannosaurus's tooth serrations as more like cubes in shape than the serrations on a Komodo monitor's teeth, which are rounded.[111]:214–215
+Tyrannosaurus, and most other theropods, probably primarily processed carcasses with lateral shakes of the head, like crocodilians. The head was not as maneuverable as the skulls of allosauroids, due to flat joints of the neck vertebrae.[178]
+In 2001, Bruce Rothschild and others published a study examining evidence for stress fractures and tendon avulsions in theropod dinosaurs and the implications for their behavior. Since stress fractures are caused by repeated trauma rather than singular events they are more likely to be caused by regular behavior than other types of injuries. Of the 81 Tyrannosaurus foot bones examined in the study one was found to have a stress fracture, while none of the 10 hand bones were found to have stress fractures. The researchers found tendon avulsions only among Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. An avulsion injury left a divot on the humerus of Sue the T. rex, apparently located at the origin of the deltoid or teres major muscles. The presence of avulsion injuries being limited to the forelimb and shoulder in both Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus suggests that theropods may have had a musculature more complex than and functionally different from those of birds. The researchers concluded that Sue's tendon avulsion was probably obtained from struggling prey. The presence of stress fractures and tendon avulsions in general provides evidence for a "very active" predation-based diet rather than obligate scavenging.[179]
+A 2009 study showed that smooth-edged holes in the skulls of several specimens might have been caused by Trichomonas-like parasites that commonly infect birds. Seriously infected individuals, including "Sue" and MOR 980 ("Peck's Rex"), might therefore have died from starvation after feeding became increasingly difficult. Previously, these holes had been explained by the bacterious bone infection Actinomycosis or by intraspecific attacks.[180]
+One study of Tyrannosaurus specimens with tooth marks in the bones attributable to the same genus was presented as evidence of cannibalism.[181] Tooth marks in the humerus, foot bones and metatarsals, may indicate opportunistic scavenging, rather than wounds caused by combat with another T. rex.[181][182] Other tyrannosaurids may also have practiced cannibalism.[181]
+Tyrannosaurus lived during what is referred to as the Lancian faunal stage (Maastrichtian age) at the end of the Late Cretaceous. Tyrannosaurus ranged from Canada in the north to at least New Mexico in the south of Laramidia.[5] During this time Triceratops was the major herbivore in the northern portion of its range, while the titanosaurian sauropod Alamosaurus "dominated" its southern range. Tyrannosaurus remains have been discovered in different ecosystems, including inland and coastal subtropical, and semi-arid plains.
+Several notable Tyrannosaurus remains have been found in the Hell Creek Formation. During the Maastrichtian this area was subtropical, with a warm and humid climate. The flora consisted mostly of angiosperms, but also included trees like dawn redwood (Metasequoia) and Araucaria. Tyrannosaurus shared this ecosystem with ceratopsians Leptoceratops, Torosaurus, and Triceratops, the hadrosaurid Edmontosaurus annectens, the parksosaurid Thescelosaurus, the ankylosaurs Ankylosaurus and Denversaurus, the pachycephalosaurs Pachycephalosaurus and Sphaerotholus, and the theropods Ornithomimus, Struthiomimus, Acheroraptor, Dakotaraptor, Pectinodon and Anzu.[183]
+Another formation with Tyrannosaurus remains is the Lance Formation of Wyoming. This has been interpreted as a bayou environment similar to today's Gulf Coast. The fauna was very similar to Hell Creek, but with Struthiomimus replacing its relative Ornithomimus. The small ceratopsian Leptoceratops also lived in the area.[184]
+In its southern range Tyrannosaurus lived alongside the titanosaur Alamosaurus, the ceratopsians Torosaurus, Bravoceratops and Ojoceratops, hadrosaurs which consisted of a species of Edmontosaurus, Kritosaurus and a possible species of Gryposaurus, the nodosaur Glyptodontopelta, the oviraptorid Ojoraptosaurus, possible species of the theropods Troodon and Richardoestesia, and the pterosaur Quetzalcoatlus.[185] The region is thought to have been dominated by semi-arid inland plains, following the probable retreat of the Western Interior Seaway as global sea levels fell.[186]
+Tyrannosaurus may have also inhabited Mexico's Lomas Coloradas formation in Sonora. Though skeletal evidence is lacking, six shed and broken teeth from the fossil bed have been thoroughly compared with other theropod genera and appear to be identical to those of Tyrannosaurus. If true, the evidence indicates the range of Tyrannosaurus was possibly more extensive than previously believed.[187] It is possible that tyrannosaurs were originally Asian species, migrating to North America before the end of the Cretaceous period.[188]
+Since it was first described in 1905, T. rex has become the most widely recognized dinosaur species in popular culture. It is the only dinosaur that is commonly known to the general public by its full scientific name (binomial name) and the scientific abbreviation T. rex has also come into wide usage.[47] Robert T. Bakker notes this in The Dinosaur Heresies and explains that, "a name like ‘T. rex’ is just irresistible to the tongue."[35]

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+The Romani (also spelled Romany /ˈroʊməni/, /ˈrɒ-/), colloquially known as Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants living mostly in Europe, and diaspora populations in the Americas. The Romani as a people originate from the northern Indian subcontinent,[61][62][63] from the Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab regions of modern-day India.[62][63]
+Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani "came from a single group that left northwestern India" in about 512 CE.[64] Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65] They are dispersed, but their most concentrated populations are located in Europe, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (including Turkey, Spain and Southern France). The Romani arrived in Mid-West Asia and Europe around 1007.[66] They have been associated with another Indo-Aryan group, the Dom people: the two groups have been said to have separated from each other or, at least, to share a similar history.[67] Specifically, the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the 6th and 11th century.[66]
+The Romani are widely known in English by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered by some Roma people to be pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity.[68] Beginning in 1888, the Gypsy Lore Society[69] started to publish a journal that was meant to dispel rumors about their lifestyle.[70]
+Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States;[6] and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from people deported by the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition.[71] In migrations since the late 19th century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada.[72][page needed]
+In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India.[73] The conference ended with a recommendation to the government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.[74]
+The Romani language is divided into several dialects which together have an estimated number of speakers of more than two million.[75] The total number of Romani people is at least twice as high (several times as high according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence or of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.[76]
+Perceived as derogatory, many of these exonyms are falling out of standard usage and being replaced by a version of the name Roma.
+Rom means man or husband in the Romani language. It has the variants dom and lom, which may be related to the Sanskrit words dam-pati (lord of the house, husband), dama (to subdue), lom (hair), lomaka (hairy), loman, roman (hairy), romaça (man with beard and long hair).[86] Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma (member of a low caste of travelling musicians and dancers).
+In the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning 'man of the Roma ethnic group' or 'man, husband', with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni. However, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of both genders.[87]
+Romani is the feminine adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as an ethnic name, while others (such as the Sinti, or the Romanichal) do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group.[88]
+Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., rrom and rromani. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/ (also written as ř and rh), which in some Romani dialects has remained different from the one written with a single r. The rr spelling is common in certain institutions (such as the INALCO Institute in Paris), or used in certain countries, e.g., Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians (sg. român, pl. români).[89]
+In the English language (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), Rom is a noun (with the plural Roma or Roms) and an adjective, while Romani (Romany) is also a noun (with the plural Romani, the Romani, Romanies, or Romanis) and an adjective.  Both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy.[90] Romani was sometimes spelled Rommany, but more often Romany, while today Romani is the most popular spelling.  Occasionally, the double r spelling (e.g., Rroma, Rromani) mentioned above is also encountered in English texts.
+The term Roma is increasingly encountered,[91][92] as a generic term for the Romani people.[93][94][95]
+Because all Romanis use the word Romani as an adjective, the term became a noun for the entire ethnic group.[96] Today, the term Romani is used by some organizations, including the United Nations and the US Library of Congress.[89] However, the Council of Europe and other organizations consider that Roma is the correct term referring to all related groups, regardless of their country of origin, and recommend that Romani be restricted to the language and culture: Romani language, Romani culture.[87]
+The standard assumption is that the demonyms of the Romani people, Lom and Dom share the same origin.[97][98]
+The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. The Spanish term Gitano and French Gitan have similar etymologies. They are ultimately derived from the Greek Αιγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), meaning Egyptian, via Latin. This designation owes its existence to the belief, common in the Middle Ages, that the Romani, or some related group (such as the Middle Eastern Dom people), were itinerant Egyptians.[99][100] This belief appears to derive from verses in the biblical Book of Ezekiel (29: 6 and 12-13) referring to the Egyptians being scattered among the nations by an angry God. According to one narrative, they were exiled from Egypt as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus.[101] In his book 'The Zincali: an account of the Gypsies of Spain', George Borrow notes that when they first appeared in Germany it was under the character of Egyptians doing penance for their having refused hospitality to the Virgin and her son. As described in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the medieval French referred to the Romanies as Egyptiens.
+This exonym is sometimes written with capital letter, to show that it designates an ethnic group.[102] However, the word is considered derogatory because of its negative and stereotypical associations.[94][103][104][105] The Council of Europe consider that "Gypsy" or equivalent terms, as well as administrative terms such as "Gens du Voyage" (referring in fact to an ethnic group but not acknowledging ethnic identification) are not in line with European recommendations.[87] In North America, the word Gypsy is most commonly used as a reference to Romani ethnicity, though lifestyle and fashion are at times also referenced by using this word.[106]
+Another common designation of the Romani people is Cingane (alt. Tsinganoi, Zigar, Zigeuner), which likely derives from Athinganoi, the name of a Christian sect with whom the Romani (or some related group) became associated in the Middle Ages.[100][107][108][109]
+For a variety of reasons, many Romanis choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe (as of 2019),[110] although some high estimates by Romani organizations give numbers as high as 14 million.[111] Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. In the European Union there are an estimated 6 million Romanis.[112]  Several million more Romanis may live outside Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.[113]
+Like the Roma in general, many different ethnonyms are given to subgroups of Roma. Sometimes a subgroup uses more than one endonym, is commonly known by an exonym or erroneously by the endonym of another subgroup. The only name approaching an all-encompassing self-description is Rom.[114] Even when subgroups don't use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and Gadjo (non-Roma).[114] For instance, while the main group of Roma in German-speaking countries refer to themselves as Sinti, their name for their original language is Romanes.
+Subgroups have been described as, in part, a result of the Hindu caste system, which the founding population of Rom almost certainly experienced in their South Asian urheimat.[114][115]
+Many groups use names apparently derived from the Romani word kalo or calo, meaning "black" or "absorbing all light".[116] This closely resembles words for "black" or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Sanskrit काल kāla: "black", "of a dark colour").[114] Likewise, the name of the Dom or Domba people of North India – to whom the Roma have genetic,[117] cultural and linguistic links – has come to imply "dark-skinned", in some Indian languages.[118] Hence names such as kale and calé may have originated as an exonym or a euphemism for Roma.
+Other endonyms for Romani include, for example:
+The Roma people have a number of distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century, from a migration out of northwestern India beginning about 600 years earlier.[132][64] They settled in present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.[133] Brazil has the second largest Romani population in the Americas, estimated at approximately 800,000 by the 2011 census. The Romani people are mainly called by non-Romani ethnic Brazilians as ciganos. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup Calés (Kale), of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president during 1956–1961 term, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline; and Washington Luís, last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930 term), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.
+There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide.[134] Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for fear of discrimination.[135][better source needed] Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations and no longer identify only as Romani, or not at all.
+As of the early 2000s, an estimated 3.8[136][page needed] to 9 million Romani people lived in Europe and Asia Minor.[137][page needed] although some Romani organizations estimate numbers as high as 14 million.[138]  Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkan peninsula, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia, and Ukraine. The total number of Romani living outside Europe are primarily in the Middle East and North Africa and in the Americas, and are estimated in total at more than two million. Some countries do not collect data by ethnicity.
+The Romani people identify as distinct ethnicities based in part on territorial, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation.[139][140][141][142]
+Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma.[132][64][143] Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani's migration early history are based on linguistic theory.[144] There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.[145]
+According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh, from Iran and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, lute-playing experts.  When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox, a donkey, and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music for free for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags and go wandering around the world on their donkeys.[146]
+The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon, for example, regarding body parts or daily routines.[147]
+More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.[148]
+Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second Layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative.[149] This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent –  but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.[67][150]
+In phonology, Romani language shares several isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves several dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages.[151]
+Numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with Sanskrit, Hindi and Persian forms for comparison.[152] Note that Romani 7–9 are borrowed from Greek.
+Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group.[132][64][153] According to the study, the ancestors of present scheduled castes and scheduled tribes populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.[154] In December 2012, additional findings appeared to confirm the "Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago".[64] They reached the Balkans about 900 years ago[132] and then spread throughout Europe. The team also found the Roma to display genetic isolation, as well as "differential gene flow in time and space with non-Romani Europeans".[132][64]
+Genetic research published in European Journal of Human Genetics "has revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65]
+Genetic evidence supports the medieval migration from India. The Romani have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations",[155] while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect".[155][156]
+A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group".[157] The same study found that "a single lineage... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males".[157] A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".[158]
+Haplogroup H-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for approximately 60% of the total.[159] Haplogroup H is uncommon in Europe but present in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.
+A study of 444 people representing three different ethnic groups in North Macedonia found mtDNA haplogroups M5a1 and H7a1a were dominant in Romanies (13.7% and 10.3%, respectively).[160]
+Y-DNA composition of Romani in North Macedonia, based on 57 samples:[161]
+Y-DNA Haplogroup H1a occurs in Romani at frequencies 7–70%. Unlike ethnic Hungarians, among Hungarian and Slovakian Romani subpopulations, Haplogroup E-M78 and I1 usually occur above 10% and sometimes over 20%.  While among Slovakian and Tiszavasvari Romani the dominant haplogroup is H1a, among Tokaj Romani is Haplogroup J2a (23%), while among Taktaharkány Romani is Haplogroup I2a (21%).[162] Five, rather consistent founder lineages throughout the subpopulations, were found among Romani – J-M67 and J-M92 (J2), H-M52 (H1a1), and I-P259 (I1?). Haplogroup I-P259 as H is not found at frequencies of over 3 percent among host populations, while haplogroups E and I are absent in South Asia. The lineages E-V13, I-P37 (I2a) and R-M17 (R1a) may represent gene flow from the host populations. Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek Romani are dominated by Haplogroup H-M82 (H1a1), while among Spanish Romani J2 is prevalent.[163] In Serbia among Kosovo[a] and Belgrade Romani Haplogroup H prevails, while among Vojvodina Romani, H drops to 7 percent and E-V13 rises to a prevailing level.[164]
+Among non-Roma Europeans Haplogroup H is extremely rare, peaking at 7 percent among Albanians from Tirana[165] and 11 percent among Bulgarian Turks. It occurs at 5 percent among Hungarians,[162] although the carriers might be of Romani origin.[163] Among non Roma-speaking Europeans at 2 percent among Slovaks,[166] 2 percent among Croats,[167] 1 percent among Macedonians from Skopje, 3 percent among Macedonian Albanians,[168] 1 percent among Serbs from Belgrade,[169] 3 percent among Bulgarians from Sofia,[170] 1 percent among Austrians and Swiss,[171] 3 percent among Romanians from Ploiesti, 1 percent among Turks.[166]
+They may have emerged from the modern Indian state of Rajasthan,[172] migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region, Sindh and Baluchistan of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BC. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about CE 500.[64]
+It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire.[173] The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.[151][174]
+Though according to a 2012 genomic study, the Romani reached the Balkans as early as the 12th century,[175] the first historical records of the Romani reaching south-eastern Europe are from the 14th century: in 1322, after leaving Ireland on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Irish Franciscan friar Symon Semeonis encountered a migrant group of Romani outside the town of Candia (modern Heraklion), in Crete, calling them "the descendants of Cain"; his account is the earliest surviving description by a Western chronicler of the Romani in Europe.
+In 1350, Ludolph of Saxony mentioned a similar people with a unique language whom he called Mandapolos, a word some think derives from the Greek word mantes (meaning prophet or fortune teller).[176]
+Around 1360, a fiefdom called the Feudum Acinganorum was established in Corfu, which mainly used Romani serfs and to which the Romani on the island were subservient.[177]
+By the 1440s, they were recorded in Germany;[178] and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden.[179] Some Romani migrated from Persia through North Africa, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. The two currents met in France.[180]
+Their early history shows a mixed reception. Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in 1417. Romanies were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Catalonia in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530 (see Egyptians Act 1530), and Denmark in 1536. In 1510, any Romani found in Switzerland were ordered put to death, with similar rules established in England in 1554, and Denmark in 1589, whereas Portugal began deportations of Romanies to its colonies in 1538.[182]
+A 1596 English statute gave Romanis special privileges that other wanderers lacked. France passed a similar law in 1683. Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Romanies "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs), but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital.[183] In 1595, Ștefan Răzvan overcame his birth into slavery, and became the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia.[182]
+Since a royal edict by Charles II in 1695, Spanish Romanis had been restricted to certain towns.[184] An official edict in 1717 restricted them to only 75 towns and districts, so that they would not be concentrated in any one region. In the Great Gypsy Round-up, Romani were arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish Monarchy in 1749.
+During the latter part of the 17th century, around the Franco-Dutch War, both France and Holland needed thousands of men to fight. Some recruitment took the form of rounding up vagrants and the poor to work the galleys and provide the armies' labour force. With this background, Romanis were targets of both the French and the Dutch.
+After the wars, and into the first decade of the 18th century, Romanis were slaughtered with impunity throughout Holland. Romanis, called ‘heiden’ by the Dutch, wandered throughout the rural areas of Europe and became the societal pariahs of the age. Heidenjachten, translated as "heathen hunt" happened throughout Holland in an attempt to eradicate them.[185]
+Although some Romani could be kept as slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia until abolition in 1856, the majority traveled as free nomads with their wagons, as alluded to in the spoked wheel symbol in the Romani flag.[186] Elsewhere in Europe, they were subjected to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labour. In England, Romani were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded, and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Romani moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Romani were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.[187]
+Romani began emigrating to North America in colonial times, with small groups recorded in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale Roma emigration to the United States began in the 1860s, with Romanichal groups from Great Britain. The most significant number immigrated in the early 20th century, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Romani also settled in South America.
+During World War II, the Nazis embarked on a systematic genocide of the Romani, a process known in Romani as the Porajmos.[188] Romanies were marked for extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps. They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads) on the Eastern Front.[189] The total number of victims has been variously estimated at between 220,000 and 1,500,000.[190]
+The treatment of the Romani in Nazi puppet states differed markedly. In the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša killed almost the entire Roma population of 25,000. The concentration camp system of Jasenovac, run by the Ustaša militia and the Croat political police, were responsible for the deaths of between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma.[191]
+In Czechoslovakia, they were labeled a "socially degraded stratum", and Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, threats of denying future welfare payments, with misinformation, or after administering drugs.[192][193]
+An official inquiry from the Czech Republic, resulting in a report (December 2005), concluded that the Communist authorities had practised an assimilation policy towards Romanis, which "included efforts by social services to control the birth rate in the Romani community. The problem of sexual sterilisation carried out in the Czech Republic, either with improper motivation or illegally, exists," said the Czech Public Defender of Rights, recommending state compensation for women affected between 1973 and 1991.[194] New cases were revealed up until 2004, in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland "all have histories of coercive sterilization of minorities and other groups".[195]
+The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practise of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow it.
+Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs and take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men, in general, have more authority than women. Women gain respect and power as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children.
+Romani social behavior is strictly regulated by Hindu purity laws[196] ("marime" or "marhime"), still respected by most Roma (and by most older generations of Sinti). This regulation affects many aspects of life and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure: the genital organs (because they produce emissions) and the rest of the lower body. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is deemed to be impure for forty days after giving birth.
+Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. In contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Romani dead must be buried.[197] Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (although the tendency is for Hindus to practice cremation, while some communities in South India tend to bury their dead).[198] Some animals are also considered impure, for instance, cats, because they lick their hindquarters. Horses, in contrast, are not considered impure because they cannot do so.[199]
+In Romani philosophy, Romanipen (also romanypen, romanipe, romanype, romanimos, romaimos, romaniya) is the totality of the Romani spirit, Romani culture, Romani Law,  being a Romani, a set of Romani strains.
+An ethnic Romani is considered a gadjo in the Romani society if he has no Romanipen. Sometimes a non-Romani may be considered a Romani if he has Romanipen. Usually this is an adopted child. It has been hypothesized that it owes more to a framework of culture rather than simply an adherence to historically received rules.[200]
+Most Romani people are Christian,[201] others Muslim; some retained their ancient faith of Hinduism from their original homeland of India, while others have their own religion and political organization.[202]
+The ancestors of modern-day Romani people were Hindu, but adopted Christianity or Islam depending on the regions through which they had migrated.[203] Muslim Roma are found in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Egypt, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria, forming a very significant proportion of the Romani people. In neighboring countries such as Serbia and Greece, most Romani inhabitants follow the practice of Orthodoxy. It is likely that the adherence to differing religions prevented families from engaging in intermarriage.[204]
+In Spain, most Gitanos are Roman Catholics.[citation needed]
+Some brotherhoods have organized Gitanos in their Holy Week devotions.
+They are popularly known as Cofradía de los Gitanos.
+However, the proportion of followers of Evangelical Christianity among Gitanos is higher than among the rest of Spaniards.[citation needed]
+Their version of el culto integrates Flamenco music.
+Blessed Ceferino Giménez Malla is recently considered a patron saint of the Romani people in Roman Catholicism.[205] Saint Sarah, or Sara e Kali, has also been venerated as a patron saint in her shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. Since the turn of the 21st century, Sara e Kali is understood to have been Kali, an Indian deity brought from India by the refugee ancestors of the Roma people; as the Roma became Christianized, she was absorbed in a syncretic way and venerated as a saint.[206]
+Saint Sarah is now increasingly being considered as "a Romani Goddess, the Protectress of the Roma" and an "indisputable link with Mother India".[206][207]
+Romanies often adopt the dominant religion of their host country in the event that a ceremony associated with a formal religious institution is necessary, such as a baptism or funeral (their particular belief systems and indigenous religion and worship remain preserved regardless of such adoption processes). The Roma continue to practice "Shaktism", a practice with origins in India, whereby a female consort is required for the worship of a god. Adherence to this practice means that for the Roma who worship the Christian God, prayer is conducted through the Virgin Mary, or her mother, Saint Anne. Shaktism continues over one thousand years after the people's separation from India.[208]
+Besides the Roma elders (who serve as spiritual leaders), priests, churches, or bibles do not exist among the Romanies –  the only exception is the Pentecostal Roma.[208]
+For the Roma communities that have resided in the Balkans for numerous centuries, often referred to as "Turkish Gypsies", the following histories apply for religious beliefs:
+In Ukraine and Russia, the Roma populations are also Muslim as the families of Balkan migrants continue to live in these locations. Their ancestors settled on the Crimean peninsula during the 17th and 18th centuries, but then migrated to Ukraine, southern Russia and the Povolzhie (along the Volga River). Formally, Islam is the religion that these communities align themselves with and the people are recognized for their staunch preservation of the Romani language and identity.[210]
+In Poland and Slovakia, their populations are Roman Catholic, many times adopting and following local, cultural Catholicism as a syncretic system of belief that incorporates distinct Roma beliefs and cultural aspects. For example, many Polish Roma delays their Church wedding due to the belief that sacramental marriage is accompanied by divine ratification, creating a virtually indissoluble union until the couple consummate, after which the sacramental marriage is dissoluble only by the death of a spouse. Therefore, for Polish Roma, once married, one can't ever divorce. Another aspect of Polish Roma's Catholicism is a tradition of pilgrimage to the Jasna Góra Monastery.[212]
+Most Eastern European Romanies are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim.[213] Those in Western Europe and the United States are mostly Roman Catholic or Protestant –  in southern Spain, many Romanies are Pentecostal, but this is a small minority that has emerged in contemporary times.[208] In Egypt, the Romanies are split into Christian and Muslim populations.[214]
+Romani music plays an important role in Central and Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, and the style and performance practices of Romani musicians have influenced European classical composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The lăutari who perform at traditional Romanian weddings are virtually all Romani.[citation needed]
+Probably the most internationally prominent contemporary performers[citation needed] in the lăutari tradition are Taraful Haiducilor. Bulgaria's popular "wedding music", too, is almost exclusively performed by Romani musicians such as Ivo Papasov, a virtuoso clarinetist closely associated with this genre and Bulgarian pop-folk singer Azis.
+Many famous classical musicians, such as the Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra, are Romani, as are many prominent performers of manele. Zdob și Zdub, one of the most prominent rock bands in Moldova, although not Romanies themselves, draw heavily on Romani music, as do Spitalul de Urgență in Romania, Shantel in Germany, Goran Bregović in Serbia, Darko Rundek in Croatia, Beirut and Gogol Bordello in the United States.
+Another tradition of Romani music is the genre of the Romani brass band, with such notable practitioners as Boban Marković of Serbia, and the brass lăutari groups Fanfare Ciocărlia and Fanfare din Cozmesti of Romania.
+Dances such as the flamenco of Spain and Oriental dances of Egypt are said to have originated from the Romani.[215]
+The distinctive sound of Romani music has also strongly influenced bolero, jazz, and flamenco (especially cante jondo) in Spain. European-style gypsy jazz ("jazz Manouche" or "Sinti jazz") is still widely practiced among the original creators (the Romanie People); one who acknowledged this artistic debt was guitarist Django Reinhardt. Contemporary artists in this tradition known internationally include Stochelo Rosenberg, Biréli Lagrène, Jimmy Rosenberg, Paulus Schäfer and Tchavolo Schmitt.
+The Romanies of Turkey have achieved musical acclaim from national and local audiences. Local performers usually perform for special holidays. Their music is usually performed on instruments such as the darbuka, gırnata and cümbüş.[216]
+Romani contemporary art is art created by Romani people. It emerged at the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the late-1980s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the Cultural turn. The idea of the "cultural turn" was introduced; and this was also the time when the notion of cultural democracy became crystallized in the debates carried on at various public forums. Civil society gained strength, and civil politics appeared, which is a prerequisite for cultural democracy. This shift of attitude in scholarly circles derived from concerns specific not only to ethnicity, but also to society, gender and class.[217]
+Most Romani speak one of several dialects of the Romani language,[218] an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in. Typically, they also incorporate loanwords and calques into Romani from the languages of those countries and especially words for terms that the Romani language does not have. Most of the Ciganos of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of the UK, and Scandinavian Travellers have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and respectively speak the mixed languages Caló,[219] Angloromany, and Scandoromani. Most of the speaker communities in these regions consist of later immigrants from eastern or central Europe.[220]
+There are no concrete statistics for the number of Romani speakers, both in Europe and globally. However, a conservative estimation has been made at 3.5 million speakers in Europe and a further 500,000 elsewhere,[220] although the actual number may be considerably higher. This makes Romani the second largest minority language in Europe, behind Catalan.[220]
+In relation to dialect diversity, Romani works in the same way as most other European languages.[221] Cross-dialect communication is dominated by the following features:
+One of the most enduring persecutions against the Romani people was their enslavement. Slavery was widely practiced in medieval Europe, including the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in the 13th–14th century.[222][page needed] Legislation decreed that all the Romani living in these states, as well as any others who immigrated there, were classified as slaves.[223] Slavery was gradually abolished during the 1840s and 1850s.[224][page needed]
+The exact origins of slavery in the Danubian Principalities are not known. There is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia and Moldavia as free men or were brought as slaves. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, in which the Romanians took the Roma as slaves from the Mongols and preserved their status to use their labor. Other historians believe that the Romani were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving war prisoners may also have been adopted from the Mongols.[222][page needed]
+Some Romani may have been slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, but most of them migrated from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the foundation of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia and possibly in both principalities. After the Roma migrated into the area, slavery became a widespread practice by the majority population. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.[225]
+Some branches of the Romani people reached Western Europe in the 15th century, fleeing as refugees from the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.[226] Although the Romani were refugees from the conflicts in southeastern Europe, they were often suspected by certain populations in the West of being associated with the Ottoman invasion because their physical appearance seemed Turkish. (The Imperial Diet at Landau and Freiburg in 1496–1498 declared that the Romani were spies of the Turks). In Western Europe, such suspicions and discrimination against a people who were a visible minority resulted in persecution, often violent, with efforts to achieve ethnic cleansing until the modern era. In times of social tension, the Romani suffered as scapegoats; for instance, they were accused of bringing the plague during times of epidemics.[227]
+On 30 July 1749, Spain conducted The Great Roundup of Romani (Gitanos) in its territory. The Spanish Crown ordered a nationwide raid that led to the break-up of families as all able-bodied men were interned into forced labor camps in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The measure was eventually reversed and the Romanis were freed as protests began to arise in different communities, sedentary romanis being highly esteemed and protected in rural Spain.[228][229]
+Later in the 19th century, Romani immigration was forbidden on a racial basis in areas outside Europe, mostly in the English-speaking world. Argentina in 1880 prohibited immigration by Roma, as did the United States in 1885.[227]
+In the Habsburg Monarchy under Maria Theresa (1740–1780), a series of decrees tried to force the Romanies to permanently settle, removed rights to horse and wagon ownership (1754), renamed them as "New Citizens" and forced Romani boys into military service if they had no trade (1761), forced them to register with the local authorities (1767), and prohibited marriage between Romanies (1773). Her successor Josef II prohibited the wearing of traditional Romani clothing and the use of the Romani language, punishable by flogging.[230]
+In Spain, attempts to assimilate the Gitanos were under way as early as 1619, when Gitanos were forcibly settled, the use of the Romani language was prohibited, Gitano men and women were sent to separate workhouses and their children sent to orphanages. King Charles III took on a more progressive attitude to Gitano assimilation, proclaiming their equal rights as Spanish citizens and ending official denigration based on their race. While he prohibited the nomadic lifestyle, the use of the Calo language, Romani clothing, their trade in horses and other itinerant trades, he also forbade any form of discrimination against them or barring them from the guilds. The use of the word gitano was also forbidden to further assimilation, substituted for "New Castilian", which was also applied to former Jews and Muslims.[231][232]
+Most historians agree that Charles III pragmática failed for three main reasons, ultimately derived from its implementation outside major cities and in marginal areas: The difficulty the Gitano community faced in changing its nomadic lifestyle, the marginal lifestyle in which the community had been driven by society and the serious difficulties of applying the pragmática in the fields of education and work. One author ascribes its failure to the overall rejection by the wider population of the integration of the Gitanos.[230][233]
+Other examples of forced assimilation include Norway, where a law was passed in 1896 permitting the state to remove children from their parents and place them in state institutions.[234] This resulted in some 1,500 Romani children being taken from their parents in the 20th century.[235]
+The persecution of the Romanies reached a peak during World War II in the Porajmos genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws stripped the Romani people living in Nazi Germany of their citizenship, after which they were subjected to violence, imprisonment in concentration camps and later genocide in extermination camps. The policy was extended in areas occupied by the Nazis during the war, and it was also applied by their allies, notably the Independent State of Croatia, Romania, and Hungary.
+Because no accurate pre-war census figures exist for the Romanis, it is impossible to accurately assess the actual number of victims. Most estimates for numbers of Romani victims of the Holocaust fall between 200,000 and 500,000, although figures ranging between 90,000 and 1.5 million have been proposed. Lower estimates do not include those killed in all Axis-controlled countries. A detailed study by Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a figure of at least a minimum of 220,000, possibly closer to 500,000.[236] Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, argues in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000.[237]
+In Central Europe, the extermination in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was so thorough that the Bohemian Romani language became extinct.
+In Europe, Romani people are associated with poverty, and are accused of high rates of crime and behaviours that are perceived by the rest of the population as being antisocial or inappropriate.[239] Partly for this reason, discrimination against the Romani people has continued to the present day,[240][241] although efforts are being made to address them.[242] Amnesty International reports continued instances of Antizigan discrimination during the 20th century, particularly in Romania, Serbia,[243] Slovakia,[244] Hungary,[245] Slovenia,[246] and Kosovo.[247] The European Union has recognized that discrimination against Romani must be addressed, and with the national Roma integration strategy they encourage member states to work towards greater Romani inclusion and upholding the rights of the Romani in the European union.[248]
+In Eastern Europe, Roma children often attend Roma Special Schools, separate from non-Roma children, which puts them at an educational disadvantage.[251]:83
+The Romanis of Kosovo have been severely persecuted by ethnic Albanians since the end of the Kosovo War, and the region's Romani community is, for the most part, annihilated.[252]
+Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Romani women, starting in 1973.[253] The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977–78 as a genocide, but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989.[254] A 2005 report by the Czech Republic's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators.[255]
+In 2008, following the rape and subsequent murder of an Italian woman in Rome at the hands of a young man from a local Romani encampment,[256] the Italian government declared that Italy's Romani population represented a national security risk and that swift action was required to address the emergenza nomadi (nomad emergency).[257] Specifically, officials in the Italian government accused the Romanies of being responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas.
+The 2008 deaths of Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, two Roma children who drowned while Italian beach-goers remained unperturbed, brought international attention to the relationship between Italians and the Roma people. Reviewing the situation in 2012, one Belgian magazine observed:
+On International Roma Day, which falls on 8 April, the significant proportion of Europe's 12 million Roma who live in deplorable conditions will not have much to celebrate. And poverty is not the only worry for the community. Ethnic tensions are on the rise. In 2008, Roma camps came under attack in Italy, intimidation by racist parliamentarians is the norm in Hungary. Speaking in 1993, Václav Havel prophetically remarked that "the treatment of the Roma is a Litmus test for democracy": and democracy has been found wanting. The consequences of the transition to capitalism have been disastrous for the Roma. Under communism they had jobs, free housing and schooling. Now many are unemployed, many are losing their homes and racism is increasingly rewarded with impunity.[258]
+The 2016 Pew Research poll found that Italians, in particular, hold strong anti-Roma views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions about Roma. In Greece 67%, in Hungary 64%, in France 61%, in Spain 49%, in Poland 47%, in the UK 45%, in Sweden 42%, in Germany 40%, and in the Netherlands[259] 37% had an unfavourable view of Roma.[260] The 2019 Pew Research poll found that 83% of Italians, 76% of Slovaks, 72% of Greeks, 68% of Bulgarians, 66% of Czechs, 61% of Lithuanians, 61% of Hungarians, 54% of Ukrainians, 52% of Russians, 51% of Poles, 44% of French, 40% of Spaniards, and 37% of Germans held unfavorable views of Roma.[261]
+Reports of anti-Roma incidents are increasing across Europe.[262] Discrimination against Roma remains widespread in Romania,[263] Slovakia,[264] Bulgaria,[265][266], and the Czech Republic.[267] Roma communities across Ukraine have been the target of violent attacks.[268][269]
+In the summer of 2010, French authorities demolished at least 51 illegal Roma camps and began the process of repatriating their residents to their countries of origin.[270] This followed tensions between the French state and Roma communities, which had been heightened after French police opened fire and killed a traveller who drove through a police checkpoint, hitting an officer, and attempted to hit two more officers at another checkpoint. In retaliation a group of Roma, armed with hatchets and iron bars, attacked the police station of Saint-Aignan, toppled traffic lights and road signs and burned three cars.[271][272] The French government has been accused of perpetrating these actions to pursue its political agenda.[273] EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that the European Commission should take legal action against France over the issue, calling the deportations "a disgrace". A leaked file dated 5 August, sent from the Interior Ministry to regional police chiefs, included the instruction: "Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority."[274]
+Many depictions of Romani people in literature and art present romanticized narratives of mystical powers of fortune telling or irascible or passionate temper paired with an indomitable love of freedom and a habit of criminality. Romani were a popular subject in Venetian painting from the time of Giorgione at the start of the 16th century; the inclusion of such a figure adds an exotic oriental flavour to scenes. A Venetian Renaissance painting by Paris Bordone (ca. 1530, Strasbourg) of the Holy Family in Egypt makes Elizabeth, a Romani fortune-teller; the scene is otherwise located in a distinctly European landscape.[275]
+Particularly notable are classics like the story Carmen by Prosper Mérimée and the opera based on it by Georges Bizet, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Herge's The Castafiore Emerald and Miguel de Cervantes' La Gitanilla. The Romani were also depicted in A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Othello and The Tempest, all by William Shakespeare.
+The Romani were also heavily romanticized in the Soviet Union, a classic example being the 1975 film Tabor ukhodit v Nebo.
+A more realistic depiction of contemporary Romani in the Balkans, featuring Romani lay actors speaking in their native dialects, although still playing with established clichés of a Romani penchant for both magic and crime, was presented by Emir Kusturica in his Time of the Gypsies (1988) and Black Cat, White Cat (1998). The films of Tony Gatlif, a French director of Romani ethnicity, like Les Princes (1983), Latcho Drom (1993) and Gadjo Dilo (1997) also portray romani life.
+Paris Bordone, c. 1530, Elizabeth, at right, is shown as a Romani fortune-teller
+August von Pettenkofen: Gypsy Children (1885), Hermitage Museum
+Vincent van Gogh: The Caravans – Gypsy Camp near Arles (1888, oil on canvas)
+Carmen
+Esméralda
+Nicolae Grigorescu Gypsy from Boldu (1897), Art Museum of Iași
+General
+Lists
+European countries Roma links
+Non-governmental organisations
+Museums and libraries

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+The Romani (also spelled Romany /ˈroʊməni/, /ˈrɒ-/), colloquially known as Roma, are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group, traditionally nomadic itinerants living mostly in Europe, and diaspora populations in the Americas. The Romani as a people originate from the northern Indian subcontinent,[61][62][63] from the Rajasthan, Haryana, and Punjab regions of modern-day India.[62][63]
+Genetic findings appear to confirm that the Romani "came from a single group that left northwestern India" in about 512 CE.[64] Genetic research published in the European Journal of Human Genetics "revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65] They are dispersed, but their most concentrated populations are located in Europe, especially Central, Eastern and Southern Europe (including Turkey, Spain and Southern France). The Romani arrived in Mid-West Asia and Europe around 1007.[66] They have been associated with another Indo-Aryan group, the Dom people: the two groups have been said to have separated from each other or, at least, to share a similar history.[67] Specifically, the ancestors of both the Romani and the Dom left North India sometime between the 6th and 11th century.[66]
+The Romani are widely known in English by the exonym Gypsies (or Gipsies), which is considered by some Roma people to be pejorative due to its connotations of illegality and irregularity.[68] Beginning in 1888, the Gypsy Lore Society[69] started to publish a journal that was meant to dispel rumors about their lifestyle.[70]
+Since the 19th century, some Romani have also migrated to the Americas. There are an estimated one million Roma in the United States;[6] and 800,000 in Brazil, most of whose ancestors emigrated in the 19th century from Eastern Europe. Brazil also includes a notable Romani community descended from people deported by the Portuguese Empire during the Portuguese Inquisition.[71] In migrations since the late 19th century, Romani have also moved to other countries in South America and to Canada.[72][page needed]
+In February 2016, during the International Roma Conference, the Indian Minister of External Affairs stated that the people of the Roma community were children of India.[73] The conference ended with a recommendation to the government of India to recognize the Roma community spread across 30 countries as a part of the Indian diaspora.[74]
+The Romani language is divided into several dialects which together have an estimated number of speakers of more than two million.[75] The total number of Romani people is at least twice as high (several times as high according to high estimates). Many Romani are native speakers of the dominant language in their country of residence or of mixed languages combining the dominant language with a dialect of Romani; those varieties are sometimes called Para-Romani.[76]
+Perceived as derogatory, many of these exonyms are falling out of standard usage and being replaced by a version of the name Roma.
+Rom means man or husband in the Romani language. It has the variants dom and lom, which may be related to the Sanskrit words dam-pati (lord of the house, husband), dama (to subdue), lom (hair), lomaka (hairy), loman, roman (hairy), romaça (man with beard and long hair).[86] Another possible origin is from Sanskrit डोम doma (member of a low caste of travelling musicians and dancers).
+In the Romani language, Rom is a masculine noun, meaning 'man of the Roma ethnic group' or 'man, husband', with the plural Roma. The feminine of Rom in the Romani language is Romni. However, in most cases, in other languages Rom is now used for people of both genders.[87]
+Romani is the feminine adjective, while Romano is the masculine adjective. Some Romanies use Rom or Roma as an ethnic name, while others (such as the Sinti, or the Romanichal) do not use this term as a self-ascription for the entire ethnic group.[88]
+Sometimes, rom and romani are spelled with a double r, i.e., rrom and rromani. In this case rr is used to represent the phoneme /ʀ/ (also written as ř and rh), which in some Romani dialects has remained different from the one written with a single r. The rr spelling is common in certain institutions (such as the INALCO Institute in Paris), or used in certain countries, e.g., Romania, to distinguish from the endonym/homonym for Romanians (sg. român, pl. români).[89]
+In the English language (according to the Oxford English Dictionary), Rom is a noun (with the plural Roma or Roms) and an adjective, while Romani (Romany) is also a noun (with the plural Romani, the Romani, Romanies, or Romanis) and an adjective.  Both Rom and Romani have been in use in English since the 19th century as an alternative for Gypsy.[90] Romani was sometimes spelled Rommany, but more often Romany, while today Romani is the most popular spelling.  Occasionally, the double r spelling (e.g., Rroma, Rromani) mentioned above is also encountered in English texts.
+The term Roma is increasingly encountered,[91][92] as a generic term for the Romani people.[93][94][95]
+Because all Romanis use the word Romani as an adjective, the term became a noun for the entire ethnic group.[96] Today, the term Romani is used by some organizations, including the United Nations and the US Library of Congress.[89] However, the Council of Europe and other organizations consider that Roma is the correct term referring to all related groups, regardless of their country of origin, and recommend that Romani be restricted to the language and culture: Romani language, Romani culture.[87]
+The standard assumption is that the demonyms of the Romani people, Lom and Dom share the same origin.[97][98]
+The English term Gypsy (or Gipsy) originates from the Middle English gypcian, short for Egipcien. The Spanish term Gitano and French Gitan have similar etymologies. They are ultimately derived from the Greek Αιγύπτιοι (Aigyptioi), meaning Egyptian, via Latin. This designation owes its existence to the belief, common in the Middle Ages, that the Romani, or some related group (such as the Middle Eastern Dom people), were itinerant Egyptians.[99][100] This belief appears to derive from verses in the biblical Book of Ezekiel (29: 6 and 12-13) referring to the Egyptians being scattered among the nations by an angry God. According to one narrative, they were exiled from Egypt as punishment for allegedly harbouring the infant Jesus.[101] In his book 'The Zincali: an account of the Gypsies of Spain', George Borrow notes that when they first appeared in Germany it was under the character of Egyptians doing penance for their having refused hospitality to the Virgin and her son. As described in Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the medieval French referred to the Romanies as Egyptiens.
+This exonym is sometimes written with capital letter, to show that it designates an ethnic group.[102] However, the word is considered derogatory because of its negative and stereotypical associations.[94][103][104][105] The Council of Europe consider that "Gypsy" or equivalent terms, as well as administrative terms such as "Gens du Voyage" (referring in fact to an ethnic group but not acknowledging ethnic identification) are not in line with European recommendations.[87] In North America, the word Gypsy is most commonly used as a reference to Romani ethnicity, though lifestyle and fashion are at times also referenced by using this word.[106]
+Another common designation of the Romani people is Cingane (alt. Tsinganoi, Zigar, Zigeuner), which likely derives from Athinganoi, the name of a Christian sect with whom the Romani (or some related group) became associated in the Middle Ages.[100][107][108][109]
+For a variety of reasons, many Romanis choose not to register their ethnic identity in official censuses. There are an estimated 10 million Romani people in Europe (as of 2019),[110] although some high estimates by Romani organizations give numbers as high as 14 million.[111] Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkans, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia and Ukraine. In the European Union there are an estimated 6 million Romanis.[112]  Several million more Romanis may live outside Europe, in particular in the Middle East and in the Americas.[113]
+Like the Roma in general, many different ethnonyms are given to subgroups of Roma. Sometimes a subgroup uses more than one endonym, is commonly known by an exonym or erroneously by the endonym of another subgroup. The only name approaching an all-encompassing self-description is Rom.[114] Even when subgroups don't use the name, they all acknowledge a common origin and a dichotomy between themselves and Gadjo (non-Roma).[114] For instance, while the main group of Roma in German-speaking countries refer to themselves as Sinti, their name for their original language is Romanes.
+Subgroups have been described as, in part, a result of the Hindu caste system, which the founding population of Rom almost certainly experienced in their South Asian urheimat.[114][115]
+Many groups use names apparently derived from the Romani word kalo or calo, meaning "black" or "absorbing all light".[116] This closely resembles words for "black" or "dark" in Indo-Aryan languages (e.g., Sanskrit काल kāla: "black", "of a dark colour").[114] Likewise, the name of the Dom or Domba people of North India – to whom the Roma have genetic,[117] cultural and linguistic links – has come to imply "dark-skinned", in some Indian languages.[118] Hence names such as kale and calé may have originated as an exonym or a euphemism for Roma.
+Other endonyms for Romani include, for example:
+The Roma people have a number of distinct populations, the largest being the Roma and the Iberian Calé or Caló, who reached Anatolia and the Balkans about the early 12th century, from a migration out of northwestern India beginning about 600 years earlier.[132][64] They settled in present-day Turkey, Greece, Serbia, Romania, Moldova, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Hungary and Slovakia, by order of volume, and Spain. From the Balkans, they migrated throughout Europe and, in the nineteenth and later centuries, to the Americas. The Romani population in the United States is estimated at more than one million.[133] Brazil has the second largest Romani population in the Americas, estimated at approximately 800,000 by the 2011 census. The Romani people are mainly called by non-Romani ethnic Brazilians as ciganos. Most of them belong to the ethnic subgroup Calés (Kale), of the Iberian peninsula. Juscelino Kubitschek, Brazilian president during 1956–1961 term, was 50% Czech Romani by his mother's bloodline; and Washington Luís, last president of the First Brazilian Republic (1926–1930 term), had Portuguese Kale ancestry.
+There is no official or reliable count of the Romani populations worldwide.[134] Many Romani refuse to register their ethnic identity in official censuses for fear of discrimination.[135][better source needed] Others are descendants of intermarriage with local populations and no longer identify only as Romani, or not at all.
+As of the early 2000s, an estimated 3.8[136][page needed] to 9 million Romani people lived in Europe and Asia Minor.[137][page needed] although some Romani organizations estimate numbers as high as 14 million.[138]  Significant Romani populations are found in the Balkan peninsula, in some Central European states, in Spain, France, Russia, and Ukraine. The total number of Romani living outside Europe are primarily in the Middle East and North Africa and in the Americas, and are estimated in total at more than two million. Some countries do not collect data by ethnicity.
+The Romani people identify as distinct ethnicities based in part on territorial, cultural and dialectal differences, and self-designation.[139][140][141][142]
+Genetic findings suggest an Indian origin for Roma.[132][64][143] Because Romani groups did not keep chronicles of their history or have oral accounts of it, most hypotheses about the Romani's migration early history are based on linguistic theory.[144] There is also no known record of a migration from India to Europe from medieval times that can be connected indisputably to Roma.[145]
+According to a legend reported in the Persian epic poem, the Shahnameh, from Iran and repeated by several modern authors, the Sasanian king Bahrām V Gōr learned towards the end of his reign (421–39) that the poor could not afford to enjoy music, and he asked the king of India to send him ten thousand luris, lute-playing experts.  When the luris arrived, Bahrām gave each one an ox, a donkey, and a donkey-load of wheat so that they could live on agriculture and play music for free for the poor. But the luris ate the oxen and the wheat and came back a year later with their cheeks hollowed with hunger. The king, angered with their having wasted what he had given them, ordered them to pack up their bags and go wandering around the world on their donkeys.[146]
+The linguistic evidence has indisputably shown that the roots of the Romani language lie in India: the language has grammatical characteristics of Indian languages and shares with them a large part of the basic lexicon, for example, regarding body parts or daily routines.[147]
+More exactly, Romani shares the basic lexicon with Hindi and Punjabi. It shares many phonetic features with Marwari, while its grammar is closest to Bengali.[148]
+Romani and Domari share some similarities: agglutination of postpositions of the second Layer (or case marking clitics) to the nominal stem, concord markers for the past tense, the neutralisation of gender marking in the plural, and the use of the oblique case as an accusative.[149] This has prompted much discussion about the relationships between these two languages. Domari was once thought to be a "sister language" of Romani, the two languages having split after the departure from the Indian subcontinent –  but later research suggests that the differences between them are significant enough to treat them as two separate languages within the Central zone (Hindustani) group of languages. The Dom and the Rom therefore likely descend from two different migration waves out of India, separated by several centuries.[67][150]
+In phonology, Romani language shares several isoglosses with the Central branch of Indo-Aryan languages especially in the realization of some sounds of the Old Indo-Aryan. However, it also preserves several dental clusters. In regards to verb morphology, Romani follows exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers, lending credence to the theory of their Central Indian origin and a subsequent migration to northwestern India. Though the retention of dental clusters suggests a break from central languages during the transition from Old to Middle Indo-Aryan, the overall morphology suggests that the language participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages.[151]
+Numerals in the Romani, Domari and Lomavren languages, with Sanskrit, Hindi and Persian forms for comparison.[152] Note that Romani 7–9 are borrowed from Greek.
+Genetic findings in 2012 suggest the Romani originated in northwestern India and migrated as a group.[132][64][153] According to the study, the ancestors of present scheduled castes and scheduled tribes populations of northern India, traditionally referred to collectively as the Ḍoma, are the likely ancestral populations of modern European Roma.[154] In December 2012, additional findings appeared to confirm the "Roma came from a single group that left northwestern India about 1,500 years ago".[64] They reached the Balkans about 900 years ago[132] and then spread throughout Europe. The team also found the Roma to display genetic isolation, as well as "differential gene flow in time and space with non-Romani Europeans".[132][64]
+Genetic research published in European Journal of Human Genetics "has revealed that over 70% of males belong to a single lineage that appears unique to the Roma".[65]
+Genetic evidence supports the medieval migration from India. The Romani have been described as "a conglomerate of genetically isolated founder populations",[155] while a number of common Mendelian disorders among Romanies from all over Europe indicates "a common origin and founder effect".[155][156]
+A study from 2001 by Gresham et al. suggests "a limited number of related founders, compatible with a small group of migrants splitting from a distinct caste or tribal group".[157] The same study found that "a single lineage... found across Romani populations, accounts for almost one-third of Romani males".[157] A 2004 study by Morar et al. concluded that the Romani population "was founded approximately 32–40 generations ago, with secondary and tertiary founder events occurring approximately 16–25 generations ago".[158]
+Haplogroup H-M82 is a major lineage cluster in the Balkan Romani group, accounting for approximately 60% of the total.[159] Haplogroup H is uncommon in Europe but present in the Indian subcontinent and Sri Lanka.
+A study of 444 people representing three different ethnic groups in North Macedonia found mtDNA haplogroups M5a1 and H7a1a were dominant in Romanies (13.7% and 10.3%, respectively).[160]
+Y-DNA composition of Romani in North Macedonia, based on 57 samples:[161]
+Y-DNA Haplogroup H1a occurs in Romani at frequencies 7–70%. Unlike ethnic Hungarians, among Hungarian and Slovakian Romani subpopulations, Haplogroup E-M78 and I1 usually occur above 10% and sometimes over 20%.  While among Slovakian and Tiszavasvari Romani the dominant haplogroup is H1a, among Tokaj Romani is Haplogroup J2a (23%), while among Taktaharkány Romani is Haplogroup I2a (21%).[162] Five, rather consistent founder lineages throughout the subpopulations, were found among Romani – J-M67 and J-M92 (J2), H-M52 (H1a1), and I-P259 (I1?). Haplogroup I-P259 as H is not found at frequencies of over 3 percent among host populations, while haplogroups E and I are absent in South Asia. The lineages E-V13, I-P37 (I2a) and R-M17 (R1a) may represent gene flow from the host populations. Bulgarian, Romanian and Greek Romani are dominated by Haplogroup H-M82 (H1a1), while among Spanish Romani J2 is prevalent.[163] In Serbia among Kosovo[a] and Belgrade Romani Haplogroup H prevails, while among Vojvodina Romani, H drops to 7 percent and E-V13 rises to a prevailing level.[164]
+Among non-Roma Europeans Haplogroup H is extremely rare, peaking at 7 percent among Albanians from Tirana[165] and 11 percent among Bulgarian Turks. It occurs at 5 percent among Hungarians,[162] although the carriers might be of Romani origin.[163] Among non Roma-speaking Europeans at 2 percent among Slovaks,[166] 2 percent among Croats,[167] 1 percent among Macedonians from Skopje, 3 percent among Macedonian Albanians,[168] 1 percent among Serbs from Belgrade,[169] 3 percent among Bulgarians from Sofia,[170] 1 percent among Austrians and Swiss,[171] 3 percent among Romanians from Ploiesti, 1 percent among Turks.[166]
+They may have emerged from the modern Indian state of Rajasthan,[172] migrating to the northwest (the Punjab region, Sindh and Baluchistan of the Indian subcontinent) around 250 BC. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, is now believed to have occurred beginning in about CE 500.[64]
+It has also been suggested that emigration from India may have taken place in the context of the raids by Mahmud of Ghazni. As these soldiers were defeated, they were moved west with their families into the Byzantine Empire.[173] The author Ralph Lilley Turner theorised a central Indian origin of Romani followed by a migration to Northwest India as it shares a number of ancient isoglosses with Central Indo-Aryan languages in relation to realization of some sounds of Old Indo-Aryan. This is lent further credence by its sharing exactly the same pattern of northwestern languages such as Kashmiri and Shina through the adoption of oblique enclitic pronouns as person markers. The overall morphology suggests that Romani participated in some of the significant developments leading toward the emergence of New Indo-Aryan languages, thus indicating that the proto-Romani did not leave the Indian subcontinent until late in the second half of the first millennium.[151][174]
+Though according to a 2012 genomic study, the Romani reached the Balkans as early as the 12th century,[175] the first historical records of the Romani reaching south-eastern Europe are from the 14th century: in 1322, after leaving Ireland on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, Irish Franciscan friar Symon Semeonis encountered a migrant group of Romani outside the town of Candia (modern Heraklion), in Crete, calling them "the descendants of Cain"; his account is the earliest surviving description by a Western chronicler of the Romani in Europe.
+In 1350, Ludolph of Saxony mentioned a similar people with a unique language whom he called Mandapolos, a word some think derives from the Greek word mantes (meaning prophet or fortune teller).[176]
+Around 1360, a fiefdom called the Feudum Acinganorum was established in Corfu, which mainly used Romani serfs and to which the Romani on the island were subservient.[177]
+By the 1440s, they were recorded in Germany;[178] and by the 16th century, Scotland and Sweden.[179] Some Romani migrated from Persia through North Africa, reaching the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. The two currents met in France.[180]
+Their early history shows a mixed reception. Although 1385 marks the first recorded transaction for a Romani slave in Wallachia, they were issued safe conduct by Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund in 1417. Romanies were ordered expelled from the Meissen region of Germany in 1416, Lucerne in 1471, Milan in 1493, France in 1504, Catalonia in 1512, Sweden in 1525, England in 1530 (see Egyptians Act 1530), and Denmark in 1536. In 1510, any Romani found in Switzerland were ordered put to death, with similar rules established in England in 1554, and Denmark in 1589, whereas Portugal began deportations of Romanies to its colonies in 1538.[182]
+A 1596 English statute gave Romanis special privileges that other wanderers lacked. France passed a similar law in 1683. Catherine the Great of Russia declared the Romanies "crown slaves" (a status superior to serfs), but also kept them out of certain parts of the capital.[183] In 1595, Ștefan Răzvan overcame his birth into slavery, and became the Voivode (Prince) of Moldavia.[182]
+Since a royal edict by Charles II in 1695, Spanish Romanis had been restricted to certain towns.[184] An official edict in 1717 restricted them to only 75 towns and districts, so that they would not be concentrated in any one region. In the Great Gypsy Round-up, Romani were arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish Monarchy in 1749.
+During the latter part of the 17th century, around the Franco-Dutch War, both France and Holland needed thousands of men to fight. Some recruitment took the form of rounding up vagrants and the poor to work the galleys and provide the armies' labour force. With this background, Romanis were targets of both the French and the Dutch.
+After the wars, and into the first decade of the 18th century, Romanis were slaughtered with impunity throughout Holland. Romanis, called ‘heiden’ by the Dutch, wandered throughout the rural areas of Europe and became the societal pariahs of the age. Heidenjachten, translated as "heathen hunt" happened throughout Holland in an attempt to eradicate them.[185]
+Although some Romani could be kept as slaves in Wallachia and Moldavia until abolition in 1856, the majority traveled as free nomads with their wagons, as alluded to in the spoked wheel symbol in the Romani flag.[186] Elsewhere in Europe, they were subjected to ethnic cleansing, abduction of their children, and forced labour. In England, Romani were sometimes expelled from small communities or hanged; in France, they were branded, and their heads were shaved; in Moravia and Bohemia, the women were marked by their ears being severed. As a result, large groups of the Romani moved to the East, toward Poland, which was more tolerant, and Russia, where the Romani were treated more fairly as long as they paid the annual taxes.[187]
+Romani began emigrating to North America in colonial times, with small groups recorded in Virginia and French Louisiana. Larger-scale Roma emigration to the United States began in the 1860s, with Romanichal groups from Great Britain. The most significant number immigrated in the early 20th century, mainly from the Vlax group of Kalderash. Many Romani also settled in South America.
+During World War II, the Nazis embarked on a systematic genocide of the Romani, a process known in Romani as the Porajmos.[188] Romanies were marked for extermination and sentenced to forced labor and imprisonment in concentration camps. They were often killed on sight, especially by the Einsatzgruppen (paramilitary death squads) on the Eastern Front.[189] The total number of victims has been variously estimated at between 220,000 and 1,500,000.[190]
+The treatment of the Romani in Nazi puppet states differed markedly. In the Independent State of Croatia, the Ustaša killed almost the entire Roma population of 25,000. The concentration camp system of Jasenovac, run by the Ustaša militia and the Croat political police, were responsible for the deaths of between 15,000 and 20,000 Roma.[191]
+In Czechoslovakia, they were labeled a "socially degraded stratum", and Romani women were sterilized as part of a state policy to reduce their population. This policy was implemented with large financial incentives, threats of denying future welfare payments, with misinformation, or after administering drugs.[192][193]
+An official inquiry from the Czech Republic, resulting in a report (December 2005), concluded that the Communist authorities had practised an assimilation policy towards Romanis, which "included efforts by social services to control the birth rate in the Romani community. The problem of sexual sterilisation carried out in the Czech Republic, either with improper motivation or illegally, exists," said the Czech Public Defender of Rights, recommending state compensation for women affected between 1973 and 1991.[194] New cases were revealed up until 2004, in both the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Germany, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland "all have histories of coercive sterilization of minorities and other groups".[195]
+The traditional Romanies place a high value on the extended family. Virginity is essential in unmarried women. Both men and women often marry young; there has been controversy in several countries over the Romani practise of child marriage. Romani law establishes that the man's family must pay a bride price to the bride's parents, but only traditional families still follow it.
+Once married, the woman joins the husband's family, where her main job is to tend to her husband's and her children's needs and take care of her in-laws. The power structure in the traditional Romani household has at its top the oldest man or grandfather, and men, in general, have more authority than women. Women gain respect and power as they get older. Young wives begin gaining authority once they have children.
+Romani social behavior is strictly regulated by Hindu purity laws[196] ("marime" or "marhime"), still respected by most Roma (and by most older generations of Sinti). This regulation affects many aspects of life and is applied to actions, people and things: parts of the human body are considered impure: the genital organs (because they produce emissions) and the rest of the lower body. Clothes for the lower body, as well as the clothes of menstruating women, are washed separately. Items used for eating are also washed in a different place. Childbirth is considered impure and must occur outside the dwelling place. The mother is deemed to be impure for forty days after giving birth.
+Death is considered impure, and affects the whole family of the dead, who remain impure for a period of time. In contrast to the practice of cremating the dead, Romani dead must be buried.[197] Cremation and burial are both known from the time of the Rigveda, and both are widely practiced in Hinduism today (although the tendency is for Hindus to practice cremation, while some communities in South India tend to bury their dead).[198] Some animals are also considered impure, for instance, cats, because they lick their hindquarters. Horses, in contrast, are not considered impure because they cannot do so.[199]
+In Romani philosophy, Romanipen (also romanypen, romanipe, romanype, romanimos, romaimos, romaniya) is the totality of the Romani spirit, Romani culture, Romani Law,  being a Romani, a set of Romani strains.
+An ethnic Romani is considered a gadjo in the Romani society if he has no Romanipen. Sometimes a non-Romani may be considered a Romani if he has Romanipen. Usually this is an adopted child. It has been hypothesized that it owes more to a framework of culture rather than simply an adherence to historically received rules.[200]
+Most Romani people are Christian,[201] others Muslim; some retained their ancient faith of Hinduism from their original homeland of India, while others have their own religion and political organization.[202]
+The ancestors of modern-day Romani people were Hindu, but adopted Christianity or Islam depending on the regions through which they had migrated.[203] Muslim Roma are found in Turkey, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Egypt, Kosovo, North Macedonia, and Bulgaria, forming a very significant proportion of the Romani people. In neighboring countries such as Serbia and Greece, most Romani inhabitants follow the practice of Orthodoxy. It is likely that the adherence to differing religions prevented families from engaging in intermarriage.[204]
+In Spain, most Gitanos are Roman Catholics.[citation needed]
+Some brotherhoods have organized Gitanos in their Holy Week devotions.
+They are popularly known as Cofradía de los Gitanos.
+However, the proportion of followers of Evangelical Christianity among Gitanos is higher than among the rest of Spaniards.[citation needed]
+Their version of el culto integrates Flamenco music.
+Blessed Ceferino Giménez Malla is recently considered a patron saint of the Romani people in Roman Catholicism.[205] Saint Sarah, or Sara e Kali, has also been venerated as a patron saint in her shrine at Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, France. Since the turn of the 21st century, Sara e Kali is understood to have been Kali, an Indian deity brought from India by the refugee ancestors of the Roma people; as the Roma became Christianized, she was absorbed in a syncretic way and venerated as a saint.[206]
+Saint Sarah is now increasingly being considered as "a Romani Goddess, the Protectress of the Roma" and an "indisputable link with Mother India".[206][207]
+Romanies often adopt the dominant religion of their host country in the event that a ceremony associated with a formal religious institution is necessary, such as a baptism or funeral (their particular belief systems and indigenous religion and worship remain preserved regardless of such adoption processes). The Roma continue to practice "Shaktism", a practice with origins in India, whereby a female consort is required for the worship of a god. Adherence to this practice means that for the Roma who worship the Christian God, prayer is conducted through the Virgin Mary, or her mother, Saint Anne. Shaktism continues over one thousand years after the people's separation from India.[208]
+Besides the Roma elders (who serve as spiritual leaders), priests, churches, or bibles do not exist among the Romanies –  the only exception is the Pentecostal Roma.[208]
+For the Roma communities that have resided in the Balkans for numerous centuries, often referred to as "Turkish Gypsies", the following histories apply for religious beliefs:
+In Ukraine and Russia, the Roma populations are also Muslim as the families of Balkan migrants continue to live in these locations. Their ancestors settled on the Crimean peninsula during the 17th and 18th centuries, but then migrated to Ukraine, southern Russia and the Povolzhie (along the Volga River). Formally, Islam is the religion that these communities align themselves with and the people are recognized for their staunch preservation of the Romani language and identity.[210]
+In Poland and Slovakia, their populations are Roman Catholic, many times adopting and following local, cultural Catholicism as a syncretic system of belief that incorporates distinct Roma beliefs and cultural aspects. For example, many Polish Roma delays their Church wedding due to the belief that sacramental marriage is accompanied by divine ratification, creating a virtually indissoluble union until the couple consummate, after which the sacramental marriage is dissoluble only by the death of a spouse. Therefore, for Polish Roma, once married, one can't ever divorce. Another aspect of Polish Roma's Catholicism is a tradition of pilgrimage to the Jasna Góra Monastery.[212]
+Most Eastern European Romanies are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim.[213] Those in Western Europe and the United States are mostly Roman Catholic or Protestant –  in southern Spain, many Romanies are Pentecostal, but this is a small minority that has emerged in contemporary times.[208] In Egypt, the Romanies are split into Christian and Muslim populations.[214]
+Romani music plays an important role in Central and Eastern European countries such as Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Albania, Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania, and the style and performance practices of Romani musicians have influenced European classical composers such as Franz Liszt and Johannes Brahms. The lăutari who perform at traditional Romanian weddings are virtually all Romani.[citation needed]
+Probably the most internationally prominent contemporary performers[citation needed] in the lăutari tradition are Taraful Haiducilor. Bulgaria's popular "wedding music", too, is almost exclusively performed by Romani musicians such as Ivo Papasov, a virtuoso clarinetist closely associated with this genre and Bulgarian pop-folk singer Azis.
+Many famous classical musicians, such as the Hungarian pianist Georges Cziffra, are Romani, as are many prominent performers of manele. Zdob și Zdub, one of the most prominent rock bands in Moldova, although not Romanies themselves, draw heavily on Romani music, as do Spitalul de Urgență in Romania, Shantel in Germany, Goran Bregović in Serbia, Darko Rundek in Croatia, Beirut and Gogol Bordello in the United States.
+Another tradition of Romani music is the genre of the Romani brass band, with such notable practitioners as Boban Marković of Serbia, and the brass lăutari groups Fanfare Ciocărlia and Fanfare din Cozmesti of Romania.
+Dances such as the flamenco of Spain and Oriental dances of Egypt are said to have originated from the Romani.[215]
+The distinctive sound of Romani music has also strongly influenced bolero, jazz, and flamenco (especially cante jondo) in Spain. European-style gypsy jazz ("jazz Manouche" or "Sinti jazz") is still widely practiced among the original creators (the Romanie People); one who acknowledged this artistic debt was guitarist Django Reinhardt. Contemporary artists in this tradition known internationally include Stochelo Rosenberg, Biréli Lagrène, Jimmy Rosenberg, Paulus Schäfer and Tchavolo Schmitt.
+The Romanies of Turkey have achieved musical acclaim from national and local audiences. Local performers usually perform for special holidays. Their music is usually performed on instruments such as the darbuka, gırnata and cümbüş.[216]
+Romani contemporary art is art created by Romani people. It emerged at the climax of the process that began in Central and Eastern Europe in the late-1980s, when the interpretation of the cultural practice of minorities was enabled by a paradigm shift, commonly referred to in specialist literature as the Cultural turn. The idea of the "cultural turn" was introduced; and this was also the time when the notion of cultural democracy became crystallized in the debates carried on at various public forums. Civil society gained strength, and civil politics appeared, which is a prerequisite for cultural democracy. This shift of attitude in scholarly circles derived from concerns specific not only to ethnicity, but also to society, gender and class.[217]
+Most Romani speak one of several dialects of the Romani language,[218] an Indo-Aryan language, with roots in Sanskrit. They also often speak the languages of the countries they live in. Typically, they also incorporate loanwords and calques into Romani from the languages of those countries and especially words for terms that the Romani language does not have. Most of the Ciganos of Portugal, the Gitanos of Spain, the Romanichal of the UK, and Scandinavian Travellers have lost their knowledge of pure Romani, and respectively speak the mixed languages Caló,[219] Angloromany, and Scandoromani. Most of the speaker communities in these regions consist of later immigrants from eastern or central Europe.[220]
+There are no concrete statistics for the number of Romani speakers, both in Europe and globally. However, a conservative estimation has been made at 3.5 million speakers in Europe and a further 500,000 elsewhere,[220] although the actual number may be considerably higher. This makes Romani the second largest minority language in Europe, behind Catalan.[220]
+In relation to dialect diversity, Romani works in the same way as most other European languages.[221] Cross-dialect communication is dominated by the following features:
+One of the most enduring persecutions against the Romani people was their enslavement. Slavery was widely practiced in medieval Europe, including the territory of present-day Romania from before the founding of the principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia in the 13th–14th century.[222][page needed] Legislation decreed that all the Romani living in these states, as well as any others who immigrated there, were classified as slaves.[223] Slavery was gradually abolished during the 1840s and 1850s.[224][page needed]
+The exact origins of slavery in the Danubian Principalities are not known. There is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia and Moldavia as free men or were brought as slaves. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, in which the Romanians took the Roma as slaves from the Mongols and preserved their status to use their labor. Other historians believe that the Romani were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving war prisoners may also have been adopted from the Mongols.[222][page needed]
+Some Romani may have been slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, but most of them migrated from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the foundation of Wallachia. By then, the institution of slavery was already established in Moldavia and possibly in both principalities. After the Roma migrated into the area, slavery became a widespread practice by the majority population. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.[225]
+Some branches of the Romani people reached Western Europe in the 15th century, fleeing as refugees from the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans.[226] Although the Romani were refugees from the conflicts in southeastern Europe, they were often suspected by certain populations in the West of being associated with the Ottoman invasion because their physical appearance seemed Turkish. (The Imperial Diet at Landau and Freiburg in 1496–1498 declared that the Romani were spies of the Turks). In Western Europe, such suspicions and discrimination against a people who were a visible minority resulted in persecution, often violent, with efforts to achieve ethnic cleansing until the modern era. In times of social tension, the Romani suffered as scapegoats; for instance, they were accused of bringing the plague during times of epidemics.[227]
+On 30 July 1749, Spain conducted The Great Roundup of Romani (Gitanos) in its territory. The Spanish Crown ordered a nationwide raid that led to the break-up of families as all able-bodied men were interned into forced labor camps in an attempt at ethnic cleansing. The measure was eventually reversed and the Romanis were freed as protests began to arise in different communities, sedentary romanis being highly esteemed and protected in rural Spain.[228][229]
+Later in the 19th century, Romani immigration was forbidden on a racial basis in areas outside Europe, mostly in the English-speaking world. Argentina in 1880 prohibited immigration by Roma, as did the United States in 1885.[227]
+In the Habsburg Monarchy under Maria Theresa (1740–1780), a series of decrees tried to force the Romanies to permanently settle, removed rights to horse and wagon ownership (1754), renamed them as "New Citizens" and forced Romani boys into military service if they had no trade (1761), forced them to register with the local authorities (1767), and prohibited marriage between Romanies (1773). Her successor Josef II prohibited the wearing of traditional Romani clothing and the use of the Romani language, punishable by flogging.[230]
+In Spain, attempts to assimilate the Gitanos were under way as early as 1619, when Gitanos were forcibly settled, the use of the Romani language was prohibited, Gitano men and women were sent to separate workhouses and their children sent to orphanages. King Charles III took on a more progressive attitude to Gitano assimilation, proclaiming their equal rights as Spanish citizens and ending official denigration based on their race. While he prohibited the nomadic lifestyle, the use of the Calo language, Romani clothing, their trade in horses and other itinerant trades, he also forbade any form of discrimination against them or barring them from the guilds. The use of the word gitano was also forbidden to further assimilation, substituted for "New Castilian", which was also applied to former Jews and Muslims.[231][232]
+Most historians agree that Charles III pragmática failed for three main reasons, ultimately derived from its implementation outside major cities and in marginal areas: The difficulty the Gitano community faced in changing its nomadic lifestyle, the marginal lifestyle in which the community had been driven by society and the serious difficulties of applying the pragmática in the fields of education and work. One author ascribes its failure to the overall rejection by the wider population of the integration of the Gitanos.[230][233]
+Other examples of forced assimilation include Norway, where a law was passed in 1896 permitting the state to remove children from their parents and place them in state institutions.[234] This resulted in some 1,500 Romani children being taken from their parents in the 20th century.[235]
+The persecution of the Romanies reached a peak during World War II in the Porajmos genocide perpetrated by Nazi Germany. In 1935, the Nuremberg laws stripped the Romani people living in Nazi Germany of their citizenship, after which they were subjected to violence, imprisonment in concentration camps and later genocide in extermination camps. The policy was extended in areas occupied by the Nazis during the war, and it was also applied by their allies, notably the Independent State of Croatia, Romania, and Hungary.
+Because no accurate pre-war census figures exist for the Romanis, it is impossible to accurately assess the actual number of victims. Most estimates for numbers of Romani victims of the Holocaust fall between 200,000 and 500,000, although figures ranging between 90,000 and 1.5 million have been proposed. Lower estimates do not include those killed in all Axis-controlled countries. A detailed study by Sybil Milton, formerly senior historian at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum gave a figure of at least a minimum of 220,000, possibly closer to 500,000.[236] Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, argues in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000.[237]
+In Central Europe, the extermination in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was so thorough that the Bohemian Romani language became extinct.
+In Europe, Romani people are associated with poverty, and are accused of high rates of crime and behaviours that are perceived by the rest of the population as being antisocial or inappropriate.[239] Partly for this reason, discrimination against the Romani people has continued to the present day,[240][241] although efforts are being made to address them.[242] Amnesty International reports continued instances of Antizigan discrimination during the 20th century, particularly in Romania, Serbia,[243] Slovakia,[244] Hungary,[245] Slovenia,[246] and Kosovo.[247] The European Union has recognized that discrimination against Romani must be addressed, and with the national Roma integration strategy they encourage member states to work towards greater Romani inclusion and upholding the rights of the Romani in the European union.[248]
+In Eastern Europe, Roma children often attend Roma Special Schools, separate from non-Roma children, which puts them at an educational disadvantage.[251]:83
+The Romanis of Kosovo have been severely persecuted by ethnic Albanians since the end of the Kosovo War, and the region's Romani community is, for the most part, annihilated.[252]
+Czechoslovakia carried out a policy of sterilization of Romani women, starting in 1973.[253] The dissidents of the Charter 77 denounced it in 1977–78 as a genocide, but the practice continued through the Velvet Revolution of 1989.[254] A 2005 report by the Czech Republic's independent ombudsman, Otakar Motejl, identified dozens of cases of coercive sterilization between 1979 and 2001, and called for criminal investigations and possible prosecution against several health care workers and administrators.[255]
+In 2008, following the rape and subsequent murder of an Italian woman in Rome at the hands of a young man from a local Romani encampment,[256] the Italian government declared that Italy's Romani population represented a national security risk and that swift action was required to address the emergenza nomadi (nomad emergency).[257] Specifically, officials in the Italian government accused the Romanies of being responsible for rising crime rates in urban areas.
+The 2008 deaths of Cristina and Violetta Djeordsevic, two Roma children who drowned while Italian beach-goers remained unperturbed, brought international attention to the relationship between Italians and the Roma people. Reviewing the situation in 2012, one Belgian magazine observed:
+On International Roma Day, which falls on 8 April, the significant proportion of Europe's 12 million Roma who live in deplorable conditions will not have much to celebrate. And poverty is not the only worry for the community. Ethnic tensions are on the rise. In 2008, Roma camps came under attack in Italy, intimidation by racist parliamentarians is the norm in Hungary. Speaking in 1993, Václav Havel prophetically remarked that "the treatment of the Roma is a Litmus test for democracy": and democracy has been found wanting. The consequences of the transition to capitalism have been disastrous for the Roma. Under communism they had jobs, free housing and schooling. Now many are unemployed, many are losing their homes and racism is increasingly rewarded with impunity.[258]
+The 2016 Pew Research poll found that Italians, in particular, hold strong anti-Roma views, with 82% of Italians expressing negative opinions about Roma. In Greece 67%, in Hungary 64%, in France 61%, in Spain 49%, in Poland 47%, in the UK 45%, in Sweden 42%, in Germany 40%, and in the Netherlands[259] 37% had an unfavourable view of Roma.[260] The 2019 Pew Research poll found that 83% of Italians, 76% of Slovaks, 72% of Greeks, 68% of Bulgarians, 66% of Czechs, 61% of Lithuanians, 61% of Hungarians, 54% of Ukrainians, 52% of Russians, 51% of Poles, 44% of French, 40% of Spaniards, and 37% of Germans held unfavorable views of Roma.[261]
+Reports of anti-Roma incidents are increasing across Europe.[262] Discrimination against Roma remains widespread in Romania,[263] Slovakia,[264] Bulgaria,[265][266], and the Czech Republic.[267] Roma communities across Ukraine have been the target of violent attacks.[268][269]
+In the summer of 2010, French authorities demolished at least 51 illegal Roma camps and began the process of repatriating their residents to their countries of origin.[270] This followed tensions between the French state and Roma communities, which had been heightened after French police opened fire and killed a traveller who drove through a police checkpoint, hitting an officer, and attempted to hit two more officers at another checkpoint. In retaliation a group of Roma, armed with hatchets and iron bars, attacked the police station of Saint-Aignan, toppled traffic lights and road signs and burned three cars.[271][272] The French government has been accused of perpetrating these actions to pursue its political agenda.[273] EU Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding stated that the European Commission should take legal action against France over the issue, calling the deportations "a disgrace". A leaked file dated 5 August, sent from the Interior Ministry to regional police chiefs, included the instruction: "Three hundred camps or illegal settlements must be cleared within three months, Roma camps are a priority."[274]
+Many depictions of Romani people in literature and art present romanticized narratives of mystical powers of fortune telling or irascible or passionate temper paired with an indomitable love of freedom and a habit of criminality. Romani were a popular subject in Venetian painting from the time of Giorgione at the start of the 16th century; the inclusion of such a figure adds an exotic oriental flavour to scenes. A Venetian Renaissance painting by Paris Bordone (ca. 1530, Strasbourg) of the Holy Family in Egypt makes Elizabeth, a Romani fortune-teller; the scene is otherwise located in a distinctly European landscape.[275]
+Particularly notable are classics like the story Carmen by Prosper Mérimée and the opera based on it by Georges Bizet, Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Herge's The Castafiore Emerald and Miguel de Cervantes' La Gitanilla. The Romani were also depicted in A Midsummer Night's Dream, As You Like It, Othello and The Tempest, all by William Shakespeare.
+The Romani were also heavily romanticized in the Soviet Union, a classic example being the 1975 film Tabor ukhodit v Nebo.
+A more realistic depiction of contemporary Romani in the Balkans, featuring Romani lay actors speaking in their native dialects, although still playing with established clichés of a Romani penchant for both magic and crime, was presented by Emir Kusturica in his Time of the Gypsies (1988) and Black Cat, White Cat (1998). The films of Tony Gatlif, a French director of Romani ethnicity, like Les Princes (1983), Latcho Drom (1993) and Gadjo Dilo (1997) also portray romani life.
+Paris Bordone, c. 1530, Elizabeth, at right, is shown as a Romani fortune-teller
+August von Pettenkofen: Gypsy Children (1885), Hermitage Museum
+Vincent van Gogh: The Caravans – Gypsy Camp near Arles (1888, oil on canvas)
+Carmen
+Esméralda
+Nicolae Grigorescu Gypsy from Boldu (1897), Art Museum of Iași
+General
+Lists
+European countries Roma links
+Non-governmental organisations
+Museums and libraries

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+U2 are  an Irish rock band from Dublin, formed in 1976. The group consists of Bono (lead vocals and rhythm guitar), the Edge (lead guitar, keyboards, and backing vocals), Adam Clayton (bass guitar), and Larry Mullen Jr. (drums and percussion). Initially rooted in post-punk, U2's musical style has evolved throughout their career, yet has maintained an anthemic quality built on Bono's expressive vocals and the Edge's effects-based guitar textures. Their lyrics, often embellished with spiritual imagery, focus on personal and sociopolitical themes. Popular for their live performances, the group have staged several ambitious and elaborate tours over their career.
+The band formed as teenagers while attending Mount Temple Comprehensive School, when they had limited musical proficiency. Within four years, they signed with Island Records and released their debut album, Boy (1980). Subsequent work such as their first UK number-one album, War (1983), and the singles "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" helped establish U2's reputation as a politically and socially conscious group. By the mid-1980s, they had become renowned globally for their live act, highlighted by their performance at Live Aid in 1985. The group's fifth album, The Joshua Tree (1987), made them international superstars and was their greatest critical and commercial success. Topping music charts around the world, it produced their only number-one singles in the US to date: "With or Without You" and "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For".
+Facing creative stagnation and a backlash following their documentary/double album, Rattle and Hum (1988), U2 reinvented themselves in the 1990s through a new musical direction and public image. Beginning with their acclaimed seventh album, Achtung Baby (1991), and the multimedia-intensive Zoo TV Tour, the band integrated influences from alternative rock, electronic dance music, and industrial music into their sound, and embraced a more ironic, flippant image. This experimentation continued through their ninth album, Pop (1997), and the PopMart Tour, which were mixed successes. U2 regained critical and commercial favour with the records All That You Can't Leave Behind (2000) and How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb (2004), which established a more conventional, mainstream sound for the group. Their U2 360° Tour of 2009–2011 set records for the highest-attended and highest-grossing concert tour in history. The group most recently released the companion albums Songs of Innocence (2014) and Songs of Experience (2017), the former of which received criticism for its pervasive, no-cost release through the iTunes Store.
+U2 have released 14 studio albums and are one of the world's best-selling music artists, having sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide.[1] They have won 22 Grammy Awards, more than any other band, and in 2005, they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. Rolling Stone ranked U2 at number 22 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".[2] Throughout their career, as a band and as individuals, they have campaigned for human rights and social justice causes, including Amnesty International, Jubilee 2000, the ONE/DATA campaigns, Product Red, War Child, and Music Rising.
+In 1976, Larry Mullen Jr., then a 14-year-old student at Mount Temple Comprehensive School in Dublin, Ireland, posted a note on the school's notice board in search of musicians for a new band. Six people responded and met at his house on 25 September.[3]  Set up in the kitchen, Mullen was on drums, with: Paul Hewson ("Bono") on lead vocals; David Evans ("the Edge") and his older brother Dik Evans on guitar; Adam Clayton, a friend of the Evans brothers, on bass guitar; and initially Ivan McCormick and Peter Martin, two other friends of Mullen.[4] Mullen later described it as "'The Larry Mullen Band' for about ten minutes, then Bono walked in and blew any chance I had of being in charge."[5] Martin, who had brought his guitar and amplifier to the first practice but could not play, did not remain with the group,[6] and McCormick was dropped after a few weeks.[7] The remaining five members settled on the name "Feedback" for the group because it was one of the few technical terms they knew.[5] Most of their initial material consisted of cover songs, which they admitted was not their forte.[8] Some of the earliest influences on the band were emerging punk rock acts, such as the Jam, the Clash, Buzzcocks, and Sex Pistols. The popularity of punk rock convinced the group that musical proficiency was not a prerequisite to success.[9]
+—The Edge, on winning the talent contest in Limerick[10]
+In April 1977, Feedback played their first gig for a paying audience at St. Fintan's High School. Shortly thereafter, the band changed their name to "The Hype".[11] Dik Evans, who was older and by this time at college, was becoming the odd man out. The rest of the band was leaning towards the idea of a four-piece ensemble.[10] In March 1978, the group changed their name to "U2".[12] Steve Averill, a punk rock musician (with the Radiators) and family friend of Clayton's, had suggested six potential names from which the band chose "U2" for its ambiguity and open-ended interpretations, and because it was the name that they disliked the least.[13] That same month, U2, as a four-piece, won a talent contest in Limerick sponsored by Harp Lager and the Evening Press. The prize consisted of £500 and studio time to record a demo which would be heard by record label CBS Ireland.[14] The win was an important milestone and affirmation for the fledgling band.[10] Within a few days, Dik Evans was officially phased out of the band with a farewell concert at the Presbyterian Church Hall in Howth.[14] During the show, which featured the group playing cover songs as the Hype, Dik ceremonially walked offstage. The remaining four band members returned later in the concert to play original material as U2.[10] Dik joined another band, the Virgin Prunes, which comprised mutual friends of U2's; the Prunes were their default opening act early on, and the two groups often shared members for live performances to cover for occasional absences.[15] As part of their contest prize, U2 recorded their first demo tape at Keystone Studios in Dublin in April 1978,[14] but the results were largely unsuccessful due to their nervousness.[16]
+Irish magazine Hot Press was influential in shaping U2's future; in addition to being one of their earliest allies, the publication's journalist Bill Graham introduced the band to Paul McGuinness, who agreed to be their manager in mid-1978.[14][17] With the connections he was making within the music industry, McGuinness booked demo sessions for the group and sought to garner them a record deal. The band continued to build their fanbase with performances across Ireland,[18] the most famous of which were a series of Saturday afternoon shows at Dublin's Dandelion Market in the summer of 1979.[19] In August, U2 recorded demos with producer Chas de Whalley at Windmill Lane Studios, marking the first of what would be many recordings there by the band during their career.[20] The following month, three songs from the session were released by CBS as the Ireland-only EP U2-3. It was the group's first chart success, selling all 1,000 copies of its limited edition 12-inch vinyl almost immediately.[19] In December 1979, the band performed in London for their first shows outside Ireland, although they were unable to gain much attention from audiences or critics.[21] On 26 February 1980, their second single, "Another Day", was released on the CBS label, but again only for the Irish market. The same day, U2 played a show at the 2,000-seat National Stadium in Dublin as part of an Irish tour.[22][23] Although they took a significant risk in booking a venue of that size, the move paid off;[22] Bill Stewart, an A&R representative for Island Records, was in attendance and subsequently signed the group to the label.[24]
+In May 1980, U2 released "11 O'Clock Tick Tock", their first international single and their debut on Island Records, but it failed to chart.[25] Martin Hannett, who produced the single, was slated to produce the band's debut album, Boy, but ultimately was replaced with Steve Lillywhite.[26] From July to September 1980, U2 recorded the album at Windmill Lane Studios,[27][28] drawing from their nearly 40-song repertoire at the time.[29] Lillywhite employed unorthodox production techniques, such as recording Mullen's drums in a stairwell, and recording smashed bottles and forks played against a spinning bicycle wheel.[26] The band found Lillywhite to be very encouraging and creative; Bono called him "such a breath of fresh air", while the Edge said he "had a great way of pulling the best out of everybody".[26] The album's lead single, "A Day Without Me", was released in August. Although it did not chart,[27] the song was the impetus for the Edge's purchase of a delay effect unit, the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man, which came to define his guitar playing style and had a significant impact on the group's creative output.[25]
+Released in October 1980,[30] Boy received generally positive reviews.[31] Paul Morley of NME called it "touching, precocious, full of archaic and modernist conviction",[32] while Declan Lynch of Hot Press said he found it "almost impossible to react negatively to U2's music".[33] Bono's lyrics reflected on adolescence, innocence, and the passage into adulthood,[34] themes represented on the album cover through the photo of a young boy's face.[26] Boy peaked at number 52 in the United Kingdom and number 63 in the United States.[30][35] The album included the band's first song to receive airplay on US radio, the single "I Will Follow",[36] which reached number 20 on the Top Tracks rock chart.[37] Boy's release was followed by the Boy Tour, U2's first tour of continental Europe and the US.[38] Despite being unpolished, these early live performances demonstrated the band's potential, as critics complimented their ambition and Bono's exuberance.[39]
+The band faced several challenges in writing their second album, October. On an otherwise successful American leg of the Boy Tour, Bono's briefcase containing in-progress lyrics and musical ideas was lost backstage during a March 1981 performance at a nightclub in Portland, Oregon.[40][41] The band had limited time to write new music on tour and in July began a two-month recording session at Windmill Lane Studios largely unprepared,[42] forcing Bono to quickly improvise lyrics.[40] Lillywhite, reprising his role as producer, called the sessions "completely chaotic and mad".[43] October's lead single, "Fire", was released in July and was U2's first song to chart in the UK.[42][44] Despite garnering the band an appearance on UK television programme Top of the Pops, the single fell in the charts afterwards.[40] On 16 August 1981, the group opened for Thin Lizzy at the inaugural Slane Concert, but the Edge called it "one of the worst shows [U2] ever played in [their] lives".[42] Adding to this period of self-doubt, Bono's, the Edge's, and Mullen's involvement in a Charismatic Christian group in Dublin called the "Shalom Fellowship" led them to question the relationship between their religious faith and the lifestyle of a rock band.[40][45] Bono and the Edge considered quitting U2 due to their perceived spiritual conflicts before deciding to leave Shalom instead.[40][46]
+October was released in October 1981 and contained overtly spiritual themes.[47] The album received mixed reviews and limited radio play,[48] and although it debuted at number 11 in the UK,[47] it sold poorly elsewhere.[49] The single "Gloria" was U2's first song to have its music video played on MTV, generating excitement for the band during the October Tour of 1981–1982 in markets where the television channel was available.[50] During the tour, U2 met Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn,[51] who became their principal photographer and has had a major influence on their vision and public image.[52] In March 1982, the band played 14 dates as the opening act for the J. Geils Band, increasing their exposure.[53] Still, U2 were disappointed by their lack of progress by the end of the October Tour. Having run out of money and feeling unsupported by their record label, the group committed to improving; Clayton recalled that "there was a firm resolve to come out of the box fighting with the next record".[49]
+After the October Tour, U2 decamped to a rented cottage in Howth, where they lived, wrote new songs, and rehearsed for their third album, War. Significant musical breakthroughs were achieved by the Edge in August 1982 during a two-week period of independent songwriting, while the other band members vacationed and Bono honeymooned with his wife Ali.[54][55] From September to November, the group recorded War at Windmill Lane Studios. Lillywhite, who had a policy of not working with an artist more than twice, was convinced by the group to return as their producer for a third time.[56][57] The recording sessions featured contributions from violinist Steve Wickham and the female singers of Kid Creole and the Coconuts.[56] For the first time, Mullen agreed to play drums to a click track to keep time.[54] After completing the album, U2 undertook a short tour of Western Europe in December.[58]
+War's lead single, "New Year's Day", was released on 1 January 1983.[59] It reached number 10 in the UK and became the group's first hit outside of Europe; in the US, it received extensive radio coverage and peaked at number 53.[60] Resolving their doubts of the October period,[61] U2 released War in February.[60] Critically, the album received favourable reviews, although a few UK reviewers were critical of it.[62] Nonetheless, it was the band's first commercial success, debuting at number one in the UK, while reaching number 12 in the US.[60] War's sincerity and "rugged" guitar were intentionally at odds with the trendier synthpop of the time.[63] A record on which the band "turned pacifism itself into a crusade",[64] War was lyrically more political than their first two records,[65] focusing on the physical and emotional effects of warfare.[56] The album included the protest song "Sunday Bloody Sunday", in which Bono lyrically tried to contrast the events of the 1972 Bloody Sunday shooting with Easter Sunday.[54] Other songs from the record addressed topics such as nuclear proliferation ("Seconds") and the Polish Solidarity movement ("New Year's Day").[66] War was U2's first record to feature Corbijn's photography.[67] The album cover depicted the same young child who had appeared on the cover of their debut album, albeit with his previously innocent expression replaced by a fearful one.[60]
+On the subsequent 1983 War Tour of Europe, the US, and Japan,[60] the band began to play progressively larger venues, moving from clubs to halls to arenas.[68] Bono attempted to engage the growing audiences with theatrical, often dangerous antics, climbing scaffoldings and lighting rigs and jumping into the audience.[69] The sight of Bono waving a white flag during performances of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" became the tour's iconic image.[70] The band played several dates at large European and American music festivals,[59] including a performance at the US Festival on Memorial Day weekend for an audience of 125,000 people.[71] The group's 5 June 1983 concert at Red Rocks Amphitheatre on a rain-soaked evening was singled out by Rolling Stone as one "50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll".[72] The show was recorded for the concert video Live at Red Rocks and was one of several concerts from the tour captured on their live album Under a Blood Red Sky.[73] The releases received extensive play on MTV and the radio, expanding the band's audience and showcasing their prowess as a live act.[72] During the tour, the group established a new tradition by closing concerts with the War track "40", during which the Edge and Clayton would switch instruments and the band members would leave the stage one-by-one as the crowd continued to sing the refrain "How long to sing this song?".[74][75] The War Tour was U2's first profitable tour, grossing about US$2 million.[76]
+With their record deal with Island Records coming to an end, U2 signed a more lucrative extension in 1984. They negotiated the return of the copyrights of their songs, an increase in their royalty rate, and a general improvement in terms, at the expense of a larger initial payment.[77]
+U2 feared that following the overt rock of the War album and tour, they were in danger of becoming another "shrill", "sloganeering arena-rock band".[78] They were confident that fans would embrace them as successors to groups like the Who and Led Zeppelin, but according to Bono: "something just didn't feel right. We felt we had more dimension than just the next big anything, we had something unique to offer."[79] Thus, they sought experimentation for their fourth studio album, The Unforgettable Fire.[80] Clayton said, "We were looking for something that was a bit more serious, more arty."[79] The Edge admired the ambient and "weird works" of Brian Eno, who, along with his engineer Daniel Lanois, eventually agreed to produce the record. Their hiring contravened the initial recommendation of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell, who believed that just when the band were about to achieve the highest levels of success, Eno would "bury them under a layer of avant-garde nonsense".[81]
+Partly recorded in Slane Castle, The Unforgettable Fire was released in October 1984 and was at the time the band's most marked change in direction.[83] It was ambient and abstract, and featured a rich, orchestrated sound. Under Lanois' direction, Mullen's drumming became looser, funkier, and more subtle, and Clayton's bass became more subliminal.[84] Complementing the album's atmospheric sound, the lyrics were left open to interpretation, providing what the band called a "very visual feel".[83] Due to a tight recording schedule, Bono felt songs like "Bad" and "Pride (In the Name of Love)" were incomplete "sketches".[81] The album reached number one in the UK,[85] and was successful in the US.[86] The lead single "Pride (In the Name of Love)", written about Martin Luther King, Jr., was the band's biggest hit to that point and was their first song to chart in the US top 40.[87]
+Much of the Unforgettable Fire Tour moved into indoor arenas as U2 began to win their long battle to build their audience.[88] The complex textures of the new studio-recorded tracks, such as "The Unforgettable Fire" and "Bad", posed a challenge in translating to live performances.[83] One solution was programming music sequencers, which the band had previously been reluctant to use but now incorporate into the majority of their performances.[83] Songs on the album had been criticised as being "unfinished", "fuzzy", and "unfocused", but were better received by critics when played on stage. Rolling Stone, which was critical of the album version of "Bad", described its live performance as a "show stopper".[89]
+In March 1985, a Rolling Stone cover story called U2 the "Band of the '80s", saying that "for a growing number of rock-and-roll fans, U2 have become the band that matters most, maybe even the only band that matters".[77] The group participated in the Live Aid concert for Ethiopian famine relief at Wembley Stadium on 13 July 1985.[90] Their performance in front of 72,000 fans and for a worldwide television audience of two billion people was a pivotal moment in the band's career.[91] The band started the performance with "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and intended to perform other songs, but during the impromptu 12-minute performance of the song "Bad", which made the set a two-song show, Bono leapt down off the stage to embrace and dance with a fan, showing a television audience the personal connection that he could make with audiences.[92]
+—Anthony DeCurtis[93]
+For their fifth album, The Joshua Tree,[94] the band wanted to build on The Unforgettable Fire's textures, but instead of out-of-focus experimentation, they sought a harder-hitting sound within the limitation of conventional song structures.[95] Realising that "U2 had no tradition" and that their knowledge of music from before their childhood was limited, the group delved into American and Irish roots music.[96] Friendships with Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Keith Richards motivated Bono to explore blues, folk, and gospel music and focused him on his skills as a songwriter and lyricist.[97] U2 halted the album sessions in June 1986 to serve as a headline act on the Conspiracy of Hope benefit concert tour for Amnesty International. Rather than distract the band, the tour invigorated their new material.[98] The following month, Bono travelled to Nicaragua and El Salvador and saw first-hand the distress of peasants affected by political conflicts and US military intervention. The experience became a central influence on their new music.[99]
+The Joshua Tree was released in March 1987. The album juxtaposes antipathy towards US foreign policy against the group's deep fascination with the country, its open spaces, freedom, and ideals.[101] The band wanted music with a sense of location and a "cinematic" quality, and the record's music and lyrics draw on imagery created by American writers whose works the band had been reading.[102] The Joshua Tree was critically acclaimed; Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times said the album "confirms on record what this band has been slowly asserting for three years now on stage: U2 is what the Rolling Stones ceased being years ago—the greatest rock and roll band in the world".[103] The record went to number one in over 20 countries,[104] including the UK where it received a platinum certification in 48 hours and sold 235,000 copies in its first week, making it the fastest seller in British chart history.[105][106] In the US, it spent nine consecutive weeks at number one.[107] The album included the hit singles "With or Without You", "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For", and "Where the Streets Have No Name", the first two of which became the group's only number-one hits in the US. U2 became the fourth rock band to be featured on the cover of Time magazine,[108] which called them "Rock's Hottest Ticket".[109] The album and its songs received four Grammy Award nominations, winning for Album of the Year and Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.[110]  Many publications, including Rolling Stone, have cited it as one of rock's greatest.[111] The Joshua Tree Tour was the first tour on which the band played shows in stadiums alongside smaller arena shows.[112] It grossed US$40 million[113] and drew 3 million attendees.[99]
+In October 1988, the group released Rattle and Hum, a double album and theatrically released documentary film that captured the band's experiences with American roots music on the Joshua Tree Tour. The record featured nine studio tracks and six live U2 performances, including recordings at Sun Studio in Memphis and collaborations with Dylan and B.B. King. Intended as a tribute to American music,[114] the project received mixed reviews from both film and music critics; one Rolling Stone editor spoke of the album's "excitement", another described it as "misguided and bombastic".[115] The film's director, Phil Joanou, described it as "an overly pretentious look at U2".[116] Despite the criticism, the album sold 14 million copies and reached number one worldwide.[117] Lead single "Desire" became the band's first number-one song in the UK while reaching number three in the US.[118] Most of the album's new material was played on 1989–1990's Lovetown Tour, which only visited Australasia, Japan, and Europe, so as to avoid the critical backlash the group faced in the US. In addition, they had grown dissatisfied with their live performances; Mullen recalled, "We were the biggest, but we weren't the best".[119] With a sense of musical stagnation, Bono said to fans on one of the last dates of the tour that it was "the end of something for U2" and that they had to "go away and ... just dream it all up again".[120]
+—Brian Eno, on the recording of Achtung Baby[121]
+Stung by the criticism of Rattle and Hum, the band sought to transform themselves musically.[122] Seeking inspiration from German reunification, they began work on their seventh studio album, Achtung Baby, at Berlin's Hansa Studios in October 1990 with producers Daniel Lanois and Brian Eno.[123] The sessions were fraught with conflict, as the band argued over their musical direction and the quality of their material. While Clayton and Mullen preferred a sound similar to U2's previous work, Bono and the Edge were inspired by European industrial music and electronic dance music and advocated a change. Weeks of tension and slow progress nearly prompted the group to break up until they made a breakthrough with the improvised writing of the song "One".[124] They returned to Dublin in 1991, where morale improved and the majority of the album was completed.
+Achtung Baby was released in November 1991. The album represented a calculated change in musical and thematic direction for the group; the shift was one of their most dramatic since The Unforgettable Fire.[126] Sonically, the record incorporated influences from alternative rock, dance, and industrial music of the time, and Bono referred to its musical departure as "four men chopping down the Joshua Tree".[127] Thematically, it was a more introspective and personal record; it was darker, yet at times more flippant than the band's previous work. Commercially and critically, it has been one of the band's most successful albums. It produced five hit singles, including "The Fly", "Mysterious Ways", and "One", and it was a crucial part of the band's early 1990s reinvention.[128] In 1993, Achtung Baby won the Grammy Award for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal.[129] Like The Joshua Tree, many publications have cited the record as one of rock's greatest.[111]
+Like Achtung Baby, the 1992–1993 Zoo TV Tour was an unequivocal break with the band's past. In contrast to the austere stage setups of previous U2 tours, Zoo TV was an elaborate multimedia event. It satirised the pervasive nature of television and its blurring of news, entertainment, and home shopping by attempting to instill "sensory overload" in its audience.[127][130][131] The stage featured large video screens that showed visual effects, random video clips from pop culture, and flashing text phrases, along with a lighting system partially made of Trabant automobiles.[132] Whereas U2 were known for their earnest performances in the 1980s, the group's Zoo TV performances were intentionally ironic and self-deprecating.[127] On stage, Bono performed as several over-the-top characters, including the leather-clad egomaniac "The Fly",[133] the greedy televangelist "Mirror Ball Man", and the devilish "MacPhisto".[134] Prank phone calls were made to President Bush, the United Nations, and others. Live satellite link-ups to war-torn Sarajevo caused controversy.[135] Zoo TV was the highest-grossing North American tour of 1992, earning US$67 million.[136]
+In June 1993, U2 signed a long-term, six-album deal to remain with Island Records/PolyGram.[137] The Los Angeles Times estimated that the deal was worth US$60 million to the band,[138] making them the highest-paid rock group ever.[139] The following month, the group released a new album, Zooropa. Quickly recorded during a break in the Zoo TV Tour in early 1993, it expanded on many of the themes from Achtung Baby and the Zoo TV Tour. Initially intended to be an EP, Zooropa ultimately evolved into a full-length LP album. It was an even greater musical departure for the group, delving further into electronic, industrial, and dance music.[140] Country musician Johnny Cash sang the lead vocals on the closing track "The Wanderer". Most of the songs were played at least once during the 1993 legs of the tour, which visited Europe, Australia, New Zealand, and Japan; half the album's tracks became permanent fixtures in the setlist.[141] Although the commercially successful Zooropa won the Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1994, the band regard it with mixed feelings, as they felt it was more of "an interlude".
+On the final leg of the Zoo TV Tour, Clayton was unable to perform for the group's 26 November 1993 show in Sydney due to a hangover, causing him to miss the dress rehearsal for filming Zoo TV: Live from Sydney. Bass guitar technician Stuart Morgan filled in for him, marking the first time any member of U2 had missed a show. After the incident, Clayton gave up drinking alcohol.[142] The tour concluded the following month in Japan, having sold 5.3 million tickets overall.[143] Q's Tom Doyle called Zoo TV "the most spectacular rock tour staged by any band".[144]
+In 1995, following a long break, U2 contributed "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me" to the soundtrack album of the film Batman Forever.[145] The song was a hit, reaching number one in Australia and Ireland, number two in the UK, and number 16 in the US.[146] In November, the band released an experimental album called Original Soundtracks 1, a collaboration with Brian Eno, who contributed as a full songwriting partner and performer. Due to his participation and the record's highly experimental nature, the band chose to release it under the moniker "Passengers" to distinguish it from U2's conventional albums.[147] Mullen said of the release: "There's a thin line between interesting music and self-indulgence. We crossed it on the Passengers record."[148] It was commercially unnoticed by U2 standards and it received generally mixed reviews.[149] The single "Miss Sarajevo" (featuring Luciano Pavarotti) was among Bono's favourite U2 songs.[150]
+U2 began work on their next studio album, Pop, in mid-1995, holding recording sessions with Nellee Hooper, Flood, and Howie B. The band mixed the contrasting influences of each producer into their music, in particular Howie B's experiences with electronica and dance music.[151] Mullen was sidelined due to back surgery in November,[152] prompting the other band members to take different approaches to songwriting, such as programming drum loops and playing to samples provided by Howie B.[151] Upon Mullen's return in February 1996, the group began re-working much of their material but struggled to complete songs, causing them to miss their mid-year deadline to complete the record.[153] Further complicating matters, the band allowed manager Paul McGuinness to book their 1997–1998 PopMart Tour with the album still in progress;[154] Bono called it "the worst decision U2 ever made".[155] Rushed to complete the album, the band delayed its release date a second time from the 1996 holiday season to March 1997,[153][156] cutting into tour rehearsal time.[23][157] Even with the additional recording time, U2 worked up to the last minute to complete songs.[151][154]
+In February 1997,[158] the group released Pop's lead single, "Discotheque", a dance-heavy song with a music video in which the band wore Village People costumes.[159] The song reached number one in the UK, Japan, and Canada, but did not chart for long in the US despite debuting at number 10.[158] Within days of the single's release, the group announced the PopMart Tour with a press conference in the lingerie section of a Kmart department store.[158] Tickets went on sale shortly after, but Pop would not be released until March.[160] The album represented U2's further exploration of nightclub culture, featuring heavy, funky dance rhythms.[161] The record drew favourable reviews.[162] Rolling Stone stated that U2 had "defied the odds and made some of the greatest music of their lives".[163] Other critics, though, felt that the album was a major disappointment.[164] Despite debuting at number one in over 30 countries, Pop dropped off the charts quickly.[158] Bono admitted that the album "didn't communicate the way it was intended to",[155] while the Edge called it a "compromise project by the end".[154]
+The PopMart Tour commenced in April 1997 and was intended as a satire of consumerism.[160] The stage included a 100-foot-tall (30 m) golden yellow arch reminiscent of the McDonald's logo, a 40-foot-tall (12 m) mirrorball lemon, and a 150-foot-long (46 m) LED video screen, at the time the world's largest.[165] U2's "big shtick" failed to satisfy many who were seemingly confused by the band's new kitsch image and the tour's elaborate set.[166] The reduced rehearsal time for the tour affected the quality of early shows,[167] and in some US markets, the band played to half-empty stadiums.[168][169] On several occasions, the mirrorball lemon from which the band emerged for the encores malfunctioned, trapping them inside.[170] Despite the mixed reviews and difficulties of the tour, Bono considered PopMart to be "better than Zoo TV aesthetically, and as an art project it is a clearer thought."[171] He later explained, "When that show worked, it was mindblowing."[172]
+The European leg of the tour featured two highlights. The group's 20 September 1997 show in Reggio Emilia was attended by over 150,000 people, setting a world record for the largest paying audience for a one-act show.[173] U2 also performed in Sarajevo on 23 September, making them the first major group to stage a concert there following the Bosnian War.[174] Mullen described the show as "an experience I will never forget for the rest of my life, and if I had to spend 20 years in the band just to play that show, and have done that, I think it would have been worthwhile."[175] Bono called the show "one of the toughest and one of the sweetest nights of my life".[176] The tour concluded in March 1998 with gross revenues of US$171.7 million and 3.9 million tickets sold.[177] The following month, U2 appeared on the 200th episode of the animated sitcom The Simpsons, in which Homer Simpson disrupts the band on stage during a PopMart concert.[178] In November 1998, U2 released their first compilation album, The Best of 1980–1990,[179] which featured a re-recording of a 1987 B-side, "Sweetest Thing", as its single.[180] The album broke a first-week sales record in the US for a greatest hits collection by a group,[181] while "Sweetest Thing" topped the singles charts in Ireland and Canada.[179]
+Following the mixed success of their musical pursuits in the 1990s, U2 sought to simplify their sound; the Edge said that with Pop, the group had "taken the deconstruction of the rock 'n' roll band format to its absolute 'nth degree".[182] For their tenth album, All That You Can't Leave Behind, the group wanted to return to their old recording ethos of "the band in a room playing together".[182] Reuniting with Eno and Lanois, U2 began working on the album in late 1998.[182][183] After their experiences with being pressured to complete Pop, the band were content to work without deadlines.[182] With Bono's schedule limited by his commitments to debt relief for Jubilee 2000 and the other band members spending time with their families, the recording sessions stretched through August 2000.[182][184]
+Released in October of that year, All That You Can't Leave Behind was seen by critics as a "back to basics" album,[185] on which the group returned to a more mainstream, conventional rock sound.[182][186] For many of those not won over by the band's forays into dance music, it was considered a return to grace;[187][188] Rolling Stone called it U2's "third masterpiece" alongside The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby.[189] The album debuted at number one in 32 countries[190] and sold 12 million copies.[191] Its lead single, "Beautiful Day", was a worldwide hit, reaching number one in Ireland, the UK, Australia, and Canada, while peaking at number 21 in the US.[192] The song won Grammy Awards for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group with Vocal, Song of the Year, and Record of the Year.[193] At the awards ceremony, Bono declared that U2 were "reapplying for the job ... [of] the best band in the world".[194] The album's other singles were worldwide hits as well; "Stuck in a Moment You Can't Get Out Of", "Elevation", and "Walk On" reached number one in Canada,[195] while charting in the top five in the UK and top ten in Australia.[44][196]
+The band's 2001 Elevation Tour commenced in March, visiting North America and Europe across three legs.[197] For the tour, U2 performed on a scaled-down stage, returning to arenas after nearly a decade of stadium productions.[188] Mirroring the album's themes of "emotional contact, connection, and communication", the tour's set was designed to afford the group greater proximity to their fans;[198] a heart-shaped catwalk around the stage encircled many audience members,[199] and festival seating was offered in the US for the first time in the group's history.[200] During the tour, U2 headlined a pair of Slane Concerts in Ireland, playing to crowds of 80,000.[201][202] Following the September 11 attacks in the US, All That You Can't Leave Behind found added resonance with American audiences,[203] as the album climbed in the charts and songs such as "Walk On" and "Peace on Earth" garnered radio airplay.[204] In October, U2 performed at Madison Square Garden in New York City for the first time since the attacks. Bono and the Edge said these shows were among their most memorable and emotional performances.[203][205] The Elevation Tour was the top-earning North American tour of 2001 with a gross of US$109.7 million, the second-most ever at the time for a North American tour.[206] Globally, it grossed US$143.5 million from 2.18 million tickets sold,[207] making it the year's highest-grossing tour overall.[208] Spin named U2 the "Band of the Year" for 2001, saying they had "schooled bands half their age about what a rock show could really accomplish".[188]
+On 3 February 2002, U2 performed during the Super Bowl XXXVI halftime show. In a tribute to those who died in the September 11 attacks, the victims' names were projected onto a backdrop, and at the end, Bono opened his jacket to reveal an American flag in the lining.[209] Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, and USA Today ranked the band's performance as the best halftime show in Super Bowl history.[210] Later that month, U2 received four additional Grammy Awards; All That You Can't Leave Behind won Best Rock Album, while "Walk On" was named Record of the Year, marking the first time an artist had won the latter award in consecutive years for songs from the same album.[211] In November 2002, the band released their second compilation, The Best of 1990–2000, which featured several remixed 1990s songs and two new tracks, including the single "Electrical Storm".[212]
+Looking for a harder-hitting rock sound than that of All That You Can't Leave Behind,[213] U2 began recording their eleventh studio album, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, in February 2003 with producer Chris Thomas.[214] After nine months of work, the band had an album's worth of material ready for release, but they were not satisfied with the results; Mullen said that the songs "had no magic".[213] The group subsequently enlisted Steve Lillywhite to take over as producer in Dublin in January 2004.[215] Lillywhite, along with his assistant Jacknife Lee, spent six months with the band reworking songs and encouraging better performances.[213] Several other producers received credits on the album, including Lanois, Eno, Flood, Carl Glanville, and Nellee Hooper;[216] Bono acknowledged that the involvement of multiple producers affected the record's "sonic cohesion".[217]
+Released in November 2004, How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb received favourable reviews from critics.[218] The album featured lyrics touching on life, death, love, war, faith, and family.[219] It reached number one in 30 countries,[218] including the US, where first-week sales of 840,000 copies nearly doubled those of All That You Can't Leave Behind, setting a personal best for the band.[220] Overall, it sold 9 million copies globally.[221] For the album's release, U2 partnered with Apple for several cross-promotions: the first single, "Vertigo", was featured in a television advertisement for the company's iPod music player, while a U2-branded iPod and digital box set exclusive to the iTunes Store were released.[222] "Vertigo" was an international hit, topping the charts in Ireland and the UK,[223] while reaching number two in Canada, number five in Australia,[224] and number 31 in the US.[225] The song won three Grammy Awards, including one for Best Rock Song.[226] Other singles from the album were also hits; "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", written as a tribute to Bono's late father, went to number one in the UK and Canada, while "City of Blinding Lights" reached number two in both regions.[227] In March 2005, U2 were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Bruce Springsteen in their first year of eligibility.[228][229] During his speech, Springsteen said the band had "beaten [the odds] by continuing to do their finest work and remaining at the top of their game and the charts for 25 years".[230]
+U2's 2005–2006 Vertigo Tour was preceded by several complications. A sudden illness afflicting the Edge's daughter nearly resulted in the tour's cancellation, before the group decided to adjust the tour schedule to accommodate her treatment.[231] Additionally, ticket presales on the band's website were plagued with issues, as subscribing members encountered technical glitches and limited ticket availability, partially due to scalpers exploiting the system.[232] Commencing in March 2005,[230] the Vertigo Tour consisted of arena shows in North America and stadium shows internationally across five legs.[233] The indoor stage replaced the heart-shaped ramp of the Elevation Tour with an elliptical one and featured retractable video curtains around the stage,[234] while the stadium stage used a massive LED video screen.[235] Setlists on tour varied more than in the group's past and included songs they had not played in decades.[236] Like its predecessor, the Vertigo Tour was a commercial success, ranking as the top-earning tour of 2005 with US$260 million grossed.[237]
+In February 2006, U2 received five additional Grammy Awards, including Song of the Year for "Sometimes You Can't Make It on Your Own", and Best Rock Album and Album of the Year for How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb;[238] the awards made the album and its singles winners in all eight categories in which U2 were nominated, spanning two separate Grammy ceremonies.[239] The group resumed the Vertigo Tour that month with a Latin American leg,[238] on which several shows were filmed for the concert film U2 3D.[240] It would be released in theatres nearly two years later,[241] and was the world's first live-action digital 3-D film.[240] In March, the band postponed the tour's remaining shows until the end of the year due to the health of the Edge's daughter.[238][242] On 25 September 2006, U2 and Green Day performed at the Louisiana Superdome prior to an NFL football game, the New Orleans Saints' first home game in the city since Hurricane Katrina. The two bands covered the Skids' song "The Saints Are Coming" during the performance and for a benefit single,[243] which reached number one in Australia and throughout Europe.[244] U2 issued an official autobiography, U2 by U2, that month,[243] followed in November by their third compilation album, U218 Singles.[245] The Vertigo Tour concluded in December, having sold 4.6 million tickets and having earned US$389 million, the second-highest gross ever at the time.[235]
+In August 2006, the band incorporated its publishing business in the Netherlands following the capping of Irish artists' tax exemption at €250,000.[246] The Edge stated that businesses often seek to minimise their tax burdens.[247] The move was criticised in the Irish parliament.[247][248] The band defended themselves, saying approximately 95% of their business took place outside Ireland, that they were taxed globally because of this, and that they were all "personal investors and employers in the country".[249] Bono later said, "I think U2's tax business is our own business and I think it is not just to the letter of the law but to the spirit of the law."[250]
+Recording for U2's twelfth album, No Line on the Horizon, began with producer Rick Rubin in 2006, but the sessions were short-lived and the material was shelved.[251] In May 2007, the group began new sessions with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois in Fez, Morocco, involving the producers as full songwriting partners.[252] Intending to write "future hymns"—songs that would be played forever—the group spent two weeks recording in a riad and exploring local music.[253][254] The Edge called it "a very freeing experience" that "reminded [him] in many ways of early on and why [they] got into a band in the first place. Just that joy of playing."[255] As recording on the album continued in New York, London, and Dublin, the band scaled back their experimental pursuits, which Eno said "sounded kind of synthetic" and were not easily married with the group's sound.[256]
+No Line on the Horizon was released in February 2009, more than four years after How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, marking the longest gap between albums of the band's career to that point.[257] It received generally positive reviews, including their first five-star Rolling Stone review, but critics found it was not as experimental as originally billed.[258] The album debuted at number one in over 30 countries,[259] but its sales of 5 million were seen as a disappointment by U2 standards and it did not contain a hit single.[260][261] Following the album's release, the band discussed tentative plans for a follow-up record entitled Songs of Ascent.[262] Bono described the project as "a more meditative album on the theme of pilgrimage".[253]
+The group embarked on the U2 360° Tour in June 2009. It was their first live venture for Live Nation under a 12-year, US$100 million (£50 million) contract signed the year prior.[263][264] As part of the deal, the company assumed control over U2's touring, merchandising, and official website.[265] The 360° Tour concerts featured the band playing stadiums "in the round" on a circular stage, allowing the audience to surround them on all sides.[266] To accommodate the stage configuration, a large four-legged structure nicknamed "The Claw" was built above the stage, with the sound system and a cylindrical, expanding video screen on top of it. At 164 feet (50 m) tall, it was the largest stage ever constructed.[267] The tour visited Europe and North America in 2009. On 25 October 2009, U2 set a new US record for single concert attendance for one headline act, performing to 97,014 people at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.[268] In May 2010, while rehearsing for the next leg of the tour, Bono suffered a herniated disk and severe compression of the sciatic nerve, requiring emergency back surgery.[269] The band were forced to postpone the North American leg of the tour and a headlining performance at the Glastonbury Festival 2010 until the following year.[270] After Bono's recovery, U2 resumed the 360° Tour in August 2010 with legs in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, during which they began to play new, unreleased songs live.[271] By its conclusion in July 2011, U2 360° had set records for the highest-grossing concert tour (US$736 million) and most tickets sold for a tour (7.3 million).[272]
+Throughout the 360° Tour, the band worked on multiple album projects, including: a traditional rock album produced by Danger Mouse; a dance record produced by RedOne and will.i.am; and Songs of Ascent.[273] However, the latter was not completed to their satisfaction, and by December 2011, Clayton admitted it would not come to fruition.[274] The sessions with Danger Mouse instead formed the foundation of U2's next album, and they worked with him until May 2013 before enlisting the help of producers Paul Epworth, Ryan Tedder, Declan Gaffney, and Flood. The band suspended work on the album late in 2013 to contribute a new song, "Ordinary Love", to the film Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom.[275][276] The track, written in honour of Nelson Mandela, won the 2014 Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song.[275][277] In November 2013, U2's long-time manager Paul McGuinness stepped down from his post as part of a deal with Live Nation to acquire his management firm, Principle Management. McGuinness, who had managed the group for over 30 years, was succeeded by Guy Oseary.[278] In February 2014, another new U2 song, the single "Invisible", debuted in a Super Bowl television advertisement and was made available in the iTunes Store at no cost to launch a partnership with Product Red and Bank of America to fight AIDS.[279][280] Bono called the track a "sneak preview" of their pending record.[281]
+On 9 September 2014, U2 announced their thirteenth studio album, Songs of Innocence, at an Apple product launch event, and released it digitally the same day to all iTunes Store customers at no cost.[282] The release made the album available to over 500 million iTunes customers in what Apple CEO Tim Cook called "the largest album release of all time."[283] Apple reportedly paid Universal Music Group and U2 a lump sum for a five-week exclusivity period in which to distribute the album[284] and spent US$100 million on a promotional campaign.[283] Songs of Innocence recalls the group members' youth in Ireland, touching on childhood experiences, loves and losses, while paying tribute to their musical inspirations.[285] Bono described it as "the most personal album we've written".[286] The record received mixed reviews and drew criticism for its digital release strategy; it was automatically added to users' iTunes accounts, which for many, triggered an unprompted download to their electronic devices.[287][288][289] Chris Richards of The Washington Post called the release "rock-and-roll as dystopian junk mail".[290] The group's press tour for the album was interrupted after Bono was seriously injured in a bicycle accident in Central Park on 16 November 2014. He suffered fractures of his shoulder blade, humerus, orbit, and pinky finger,[291] leading to uncertainty that he would ever be able to play guitar again.[292]
+Following Bono's recuperation, U2 embarked on the Innocence + Experience Tour in May 2015,[293] visiting arenas in North America and Europe from May through December.[294] The group structured their concerts around a loose autobiographical narrative of "innocence" passing into "experience", with a fixed set of songs for the first half of each show and a varying second half, separated by an intermission—a first for U2 concerts.[295] The stage spanned the length of the venue floor and comprised three sections: a rectangular main stage, a smaller circular B-stage, and a connecting walkway.[295] The centerpiece of the set was a 96-foot-long (29 m) double-sided video screen that featured an interior catwalk, allowing the band members to perform amidst the video projections.[296][297] U2's sound system was moved to the venue ceilings and arranged in an oval array, in hopes of improving acoustics by evenly distributing sound throughout the arena.[295] In total, the tour grossed US$152.2 million from 1.29 million tickets sold.[298] The final date of the tour, one of two Paris shows rescheduled due to the 13 November 2015 attacks in the city, was filmed for the video Innocence + Experience: Live in Paris and broadcast on the American television network HBO.[299][300]
+In 2016, U2 worked on their next studio album, Songs of Experience, which was intended to be a companion piece to Songs of Innocence.[301] The group had mostly completed the album by year's end and planned to release it in the fourth quarter, but after the shift of global politics in a conservative direction, highlighted by the UK's Brexit referendum and the 2016 US presidential election, they chose to put the record on hold and reassess its tone.[302] The group spent the extra time rewriting lyrics, rearranging and remixing songs, and pursuing different production styles.[301][303]
+U2 toured in 2017 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of The Joshua Tree, with each show featuring a performance of the entire album.[304] It was the first time the group toured in promotion of an album from their back catalogue, rather than a new release.[305] The Edge cited the same world events that caused the group to delay Songs of Experience for what he judged to be renewed resonance of The Joshua Tree's subject matter and a reason to revisit it.[304] The tour's stage featured a 7.6K video screen measuring 200 ft × 45 ft (61 m × 14 m)[306] that was, according to The Guardian, the largest and highest resolution screen used on a concert tour.[307] The tour included a headlining appearance at the Bonnaroo Music Festival in June.[308] The tour grossed more than $316 million from over 2.7 million tickets sold,[309] making it the highest-grossing tour of the year.[310]
+Songs of Experience was released on 1 December 2017.[311] The first single, "You're the Best Thing About Me",[312] is one of many songs from the album that are letters written by Bono to people and places closest to his heart. The personal nature of the lyrics reflects a "brush with mortality" that he had during the album's recording.[303][313] In 2018, the group embarked on the Experience + Innocence Tour, beginning in Tulsa, Oklahoma, on 2 May 2018.[314] It grossed $126.2 million from 924,000 tickets sold, according to Billboard.[315]
+U2's Joshua Tree anniversary concert tour visited Oceania and Asia in 2019, marking the band's first performances in Australia and New Zealand since the 360° Tour in 2010,[316] and their first ever performances in South Korea, Singapore, India, and the Philippines.[317] The band released a new single, "Ahimsa", with Indian musician A.R. Rahman to promote their December concert in India.[318] The group's 2019 shows grossed $73.8 million and sold 567,000 tickets, bringing the cumulative totals for their Joshua Tree anniversary tours to $390.8 million grossed and 3.3 million tickets sold.[319]
+U2 developed a melodic sound under the early influence of record producer Steve Lillywhite at a time when the band was not known for musical proficiency.[214] Bono's lyrical songwriting exhibits a penchant for social, political, and personal subject matter, while maintaining a grandiosity. In addition, the Edge has described U2 as a fundamentally live band.[320] U2's early sound was influenced by bands such as Television and Joy Division, and has been described as containing a "sense of exhilaration" that resulted from the Edge's "radiant chords" and Bono's "ardent vocals".[321] U2's sound began with post-punk roots and minimalistic and uncomplicated instrumentals heard on Boy and October, but evolved through War to include aspects of rock anthem, funk, and dance rhythms to become more versatile and aggressive.[322] Boy and War were labelled "muscular and assertive" by Rolling Stone,[78] influenced in large part by Lillywhite's producing. The Unforgettable Fire, which began with the Edge playing more keyboards than guitars, as well as follow-up The Joshua Tree, had Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois at the production helm. With their influence, both albums achieved a "diverse texture".[78] The songs from The Joshua Tree and Rattle and Hum placed more emphasis on Lanois-inspired rhythm as they mixed distinct and varied styles of gospel and blues music, which stemmed from the band's burgeoning fascination with America's culture, people and places. In the 1990s, U2 reinvented themselves as they began using synthesisers, distortion, and electronic beats derived from noise music, dance, and hip-hop on Achtung Baby,[115] Zooropa, and Pop.[323] In the 2000s, U2 returned to a more stripped-down sound, with more conventional rhythms and reduced usage of synthesisers and effects.[324]
+The Edge's style of playing guitar is distinguished by his chiming timbres,[325][326] echoing notes,[36] sparse voicings,[327] and extensive use of effects units.[328] He favours the perfect fifth interval and often plays chords consisting of just two notes, the fifth and the root note, while eliminating the third.[329][330] This style is not explicitly in a minor or major key, but implies both, creating a musical ambiguity.[329][36] For these chords, he often plays the same notes on multiple strings, some which are left open, creating an Irish-influenced drone.[320][326][331] Against this drone, he changes other notes to imply a harmony.[332][333] Among the Edge's signature techniques are playing arpeggios,[28][332] sixteenth note percussive strumming,[334] and harmonics,[329] the latter of which he described as "so pure and finely-focused that [they have] the incredible ability to pierce through [their] environment of sound, just like lightning".[320] His approach to guitar playing is relatively understated and eschews virtuosity in favour of "atmospherics, subtlety, minimalism, and clever signal processing".[335] Rather than emulate common playing styles, the Edge is interested in "tearing up the rule book" and finding new ways to approach the instrument.[36] He cited guitarists such as Tom Verlaine of Television, Rory Gallagher, and Patti Smith as some of his strongest influences.[336][320]
+The Edge's guitar sound is frequently modulated with a delay effect set to a dotted eighth note for rhythmic effect.[326][337][338] After acquiring his first delay pedal, the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man,[25] he became fascinated with how to use its return echo to "fill in notes that [he's] not playing, like two guitar players rather than one".[339] The effect unit became a mainstay in his guitar rig and had a significant impact on the band's creative output.[25] The Edge became known for his extensive use of effects units, and for his meticulous nature in crafting specific sounds and guitar tones from his equipment choices.[328][340] Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page called him a "sonic architect",[339] while Neil McCormick described him as an "effects maestro".[341] Critics have variously referred to the Edge's guitar sounds as evoking the image of fighter planes on "Bullet the Blue Sky",[342] resembling a "dentist's drill" on "Love Is Blindness",[343] and resembling an "airplane turbine" on "Mofo".[344] The Edge said that rather than using effects merely to modify his sound, he uses them to spark ideas during his songwriting process.[337]
+The Edge developed his playing style during his teenage years, partially as a result of him and Mullen trying to accommodate the "eccentric" bass playing of Clayton by being the timekeepers of the band.[329] In their early days, the Edge's only guitar was his 1976 Gibson Explorer Limited Edition,[337][345] which became a signature of the group.[346] However, he found the sound of the Explorer's bass strings unsatisfactory and avoided them in his playing early on, resulting in a trebly sound. He said by focusing "on one area of the fretboard [he] was developing a very stylized way of doing something that someone else would play in a normal way".[347] Other equipment choices contribute to the Edge's unique sound. His 1964 Vox AC30 "Top Boost" amplifier (housed in a 1970s cabinet) is favoured for its "sparkle" tone, and is the basis for his sound both in the studio and live.[340] Rather than hold his plectrum with a standard grip, the Edge turns it sideways or upside down to use the dimpled edge against the strings, producing a "rasping top end" to his tone.[36]
+U2's lyrics are known for their social and political themes, and are often embellished with Christian and spiritual imagery.[348] Songs such as "Sunday Bloody Sunday", "Silver and Gold", and "Mothers of the Disappeared" were motivated by current events of the time. The first was written about the Troubles in Northern Ireland,[349] while the last was a tribute to COMADRES, the women whose children were killed or forcibly disappeared at the hands of the Salvadoran government during the country's civil war.[350] The song "Running to Stand Still" from The Joshua Tree was inspired by the heroin addiction that was sweeping through Dublin—the lyric "I see seven towers, but I only see one way out" references the Ballymun Towers of Dublin's Northside and the imagery throughout the song personifies the struggles of addiction.[351]
+Bono's personal conflicts and turmoil inspired songs like "Mofo", "Tomorrow" and "Kite". An emotional yearning or pleading frequently appears as a lyrical theme,[352] in tracks such as "Yahweh",[353] "Peace on Earth", and "Please". Much of U2's songwriting and music is also motivated by contemplations of loss and anguish, coupled with hopefulness and resilience, themes that are central to The Joshua Tree.[78] Some of these lyrical ideas have been amplified by Bono and the band's personal experiences during their youth in Ireland, as well as Bono's campaigning and activism later in his life. U2 have used tours such as Zoo TV and PopMart to caricature social trends, such as media overload and consumerism, respectively.[323]
+While the band and its fans often affirm the political nature of their music, U2's lyrics and music have been criticised as apolitical because of their vagueness and "fuzzy imagery", and a lack of any specific references to actual people or characters.[354]
+The band cites the Who,[355] the Clash,[356] Television,[24] Ramones,[357] the Beatles,[358] Joy Division,[359] Siouxsie and the Banshees,[360] Elvis Presley,[361] Patti Smith,[362] and Kraftwerk[363] as influences. In addition, Van Morrison has been cited by Bono as an influence,[364] and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame mentioned his influence on U2.[365] U2 have also worked with and/or had influential relationships with artists including Johnny Cash, Green Day, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, B.B. King, Lou Reed, Bob Dylan, and Luciano Pavarotti.[366] Bono said that David Bowie helped him discover the works of Bertolt Brecht, William Burroughs, Springsteen, and Brian Eno.[367]
+Since the early 1980s, the members of U2—as a band and individually—have collaborated with other musicians, artists, celebrities, and politicians to address issues concerning poverty, disease, and social injustice.
+In 1984, Bono and Adam Clayton participated in Band Aid to raise money for the 1983–85 famine in Ethiopia. This initiative produced the hit charity single "Do They Know It's Christmas?", which would be the first among several collaborations between U2 and Bob Geldof. In July 1985, U2 played Live Aid, a follow-up to Band Aid's efforts. Bono and his wife Ali, invited by World Vision, later visited Ethiopia where they witnessed the famine first hand. Bono would later say this laid the groundwork for his Africa campaigning and some of his songwriting.[194][324] In 1986, U2 participated in the A Conspiracy of Hope tour in support of Amnesty International and in Self Aid for unemployment in Ireland. The same year, Bono and Ali Hewson also visited Nicaragua and El Salvador at the invitation of the Sanctuary movement, and saw the effects of the Salvadoran Civil War. These 1986 events greatly influenced The Joshua Tree album, which was being recorded at the time.[98][99]
+During their Zoo TV Tour in 1992, U2 participated in the "Stop Sellafield" concert with Greenpeace to protest a nuclear factory.[368] Events in Sarajevo during the Bosnian War inspired the song "Miss Sarajevo", which premiered at a September 1995 Pavarotti and Friends show, and which Bono and the Edge performed at War Child.[152] U2 fulfilled a 1993 promise to play in Sarajevo during the PopMart Tour in 1997.[169] The following year, they performed in Belfast days prior to the vote on the Good Friday Agreement, bringing Northern Irish political leaders David Trimble and John Hume on stage to promote the agreement.[369] Later that year, all proceeds from the release of the "Sweetest Thing" single went towards supporting the Chernobyl Children's Project.[370]
+The band dedicated their 2000 song "Walk On" to Burma's pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, who had been under house arrest since 1989.[371] In late 2003, Bono and the Edge participated in the South Africa HIV/AIDS awareness 46664 series of concerts hosted by Nelson Mandela.[372] In 2005, the band played the Live 8 concert in London, which Geldof helped stage on the 20th anniversary of Live Aid to support the Make Poverty History campaign. The band and manager Paul McGuinness were awarded Amnesty International's Ambassador of Conscience Award for their work in promoting human rights.[373]
+Since 2000, Bono's campaigning has included Jubilee 2000 with Geldof, Muhammad Ali, and others to promote the cancellation of third-world debt during the Great Jubilee. In January 2002, Bono co-founded the multinational NGO DATA, with the aim of improving the social, political, and financial state of Africa. He continued his campaigns for debt and HIV/AIDS relief into June 2002 by making high-profile visits to Africa.[374] Product Red, a for-profit licensed brand seeking to raise money for the Global Fund, was co-founded by Bono in 2006.[375] The ONE Campaign, originally the US counterpart of Make Poverty History, was shaped by his efforts and vision.
+In November 2005, the Edge and producer Bob Ezrin helped introduce Music Rising, an initiative to replace instruments for musicians in the New Orleans area impacted by Hurricane Katrina and Hurricane Rita.[376] In 2006, U2 collaborated with pop punk band Green Day to record a remake of the song "The Saints Are Coming" by the Skids to benefit Music Rising.[377] A live version of the song recorded at the Louisiana Superdome was released on the single.
+At the 3rd iHeartRadio Music Awards in April 2016, U2 were honored with the Innovator Award for their "impact on popular culture and commitment to social causes."[378] In April 2020, the group donated €10 million to purchase personal protective equipment for healthcare workers working during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ireland.[379]
+Bono has received a number of awards for his music and activism, including the Legion of Honour from the French Government in 2003,[380] Time's Person of the Year for 2005 (along with Bill Gates and Melinda Gates),[381] and an honorary British knighthood in 2007.[382] Several authors and activists who publish in politically left journals such as CounterPunch have decried Bono for allowing his celebrity to be co-opted by an association with political figures such as Paul Wolfowitz,[383] as well as his "essential paternalism".[384] Other news sources have more generally questioned the efficacy of Bono's campaign to relieve debt and provide assistance to Africa.[385]
+The members of U2 have undertaken side projects, sometimes in collaboration with some of their bandmates. In 1985, Bono recorded the song "In a Lifetime" with the Irish band Clannad. The Edge recorded a solo soundtrack album for the film Captive, which was released in 1986[386] and included a vocal performance by Sinéad O'Connor that predates her own debut album by a year. Bono and the Edge wrote the song "She's a Mystery to Me" for Roy Orbison, which was featured on his 1989 album Mystery Girl.[387] In 1990, Bono and the Edge provided the original score to the Royal Shakespeare Company London stage adaptation of A Clockwork Orange. One track, "Alex Descends into Hell for a Bottle of Milk/Korova 1", was on the B-side to "The Fly" single.[388][389] That same year, Mullen produced and played drums on "Put 'Em Under Pressure", a song for the Irish national football team for the 1990 FIFA World Cup; the song topped the Irish charts for 13 weeks.[390]
+Bono and the Edge wrote the song "GoldenEye" for the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, which was performed by Tina Turner.[391] Clayton and Mullen reworked the "Theme from Mission: Impossible" for the franchise's 1996 film.[392] Bono loaned his voice to "Joy" on Mick Jagger's 2001 album Goddess in the Doorway.[393] Bono also recorded a spare, nearly spoken-word version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" for the Tower of Song compilation in 1995. Additionally, in 1998, Bono collaborated with Kirk Franklin and Crystal Lewis along with R. Kelly and Mary J. Blige for a successful gospel song called "Lean on Me".
+Aside from musical collaborations, U2 have worked with several authors. American author William S. Burroughs had a guest appearance in U2's video for "Last Night on Earth" shortly before he died.[394] Video footage of him reading his poem "Thanksgiving Prayer" was used during a Zoo TV Tour television special.[395] Other collaborators include William Gibson and Allen Ginsberg.[396] In early 2000, the band contributed three songs to The Million Dollar Hotel movie soundtrack, including "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", whose lyrics are taken from Salman Rushdie's book of the same name.[397]
+In 2007, Bono appeared in the film Across the Universe and performed songs by the Beatles.[398] Bono and the Edge also wrote the music and lyrics for the Broadway musical Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark.[399] Additionally, the Edge created the theme song for seasons one and two of the animated television series The Batman.[400]
+In April 2017, U2 were featured on a Kendrick Lamar song, "XXX", from his album DAMN.[401]
+U2 have sold an estimated 150–170 million records worldwide, placing them among the best-selling music artists in history.[1] The group's fifth studio album, The Joshua Tree, is one of the best-selling albums in the US (10 million copies shipped) and worldwide (25 million copies sold).[402][403] With 52 million certified units by the RIAA, U2 rank as the 22nd-highest-selling music artist in the US.[404] U2 have eight albums that have reached number one in the US, the third-most of any group. They were the first group to attain number-one albums in the US in the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s.[405] In the UK, the group have had seven number-one singles, tied for the 16th-most of any artist, and ten number-one albums, tied for the 8th-most of any artist. The band's 1,463 weeks spent on the UK music charts ranks 15th all-time.[44] In their native Ireland, U2 hold the record for most number-one singles with 19.[406]
+According to Billboard Boxscore, the band grossed US$1.67 billion in ticket sales from 1990 to 2016, second only to the Rolling Stones.[407] U2 were the only band in the top 25 touring acts from 2000 to 2009 to sell out every show they played.[408] According to Pollstar, the band grossed $1.038 billion and sold 9,300,500 tickets from 255 shows played between 2010 and November 2019, earning the publication's title of touring artist of the 2010s decade; U2 were the only artist to surpass $1 billion grossed during that span.[409] Forbes estimates that the group earned US$78 million between May 2011 and May 2012, making them the fourth-highest-paid musical artist.[410]  The Sunday Times Rich List 2019 estimated the group's collective wealth at €662 million.[411]
+Rolling Stone placed U2 at number 22 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time",[2] while ranking Bono the 32nd-greatest singer,[412] the Edge the 38th-greatest guitarist,[413] and Mullen the 96th-greatest drummer.[414] The magazine placed Bono and the Edge at number 35 on its list of the "100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time".[415] In 2004, Q ranked U2 as the fourth-biggest band in a list compiled based on album sales, time spent on the UK charts, and largest audience for a headlining show.[416] VH1 placed U2 at number 19 on its 2010 list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time".[417] In 2010, eight of U2's songs appeared on Rolling Stone's updated list of "The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time", with "One" ranking the highest at number 36.[418] Five of the group's twelve studio albums were ranked on the magazine's 2012 list of "The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time"—The Joshua Tree placed the highest at number 27.[111] Reflecting on the band's popularity and worldwide impact, Jeff Pollack for The Huffington Post said, "like The Who before them, U2 wrote songs about things that were important and resonated with their audience".[419]
+U2 received their first Grammy Award in 1988 for The Joshua Tree, and they have won 22 in total out of 46 nominations,[110] more than any other group.[420] These include Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group, Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Rock Album. In the UK, U2 have received 7 Brit Awards out of 20 nominations from the British Phonographic Industry, including five wins for Best International Group. They were the first international group to win the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music.[421] In Ireland, U2 have won 14 Meteor Awards since the awards began in 2001. Other awards won the band and their members include one American Music Award, six MTV Video Music Awards, eleven Q Awards, two Juno Awards, five NME Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. The band were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2005.[228] In 2006, all four members of the band received ASCAP awards for writing the songs "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" and "Vertigo".[422]
+Current members
+Former members

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+The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA /juːˈeɪfə/ yoo-AY-fə; French: Union des Associations Européennes de Football;[a] German: Vereinigung Europäischer Fußballverbände)[b] is the administrative body for association football, futsal and beach soccer in Europe, although several member states are primarily or entirely located in Asia. It is one of six continental confederations of world football's governing body FIFA. UEFA consists of 55 national association members.
+UEFA represents the national football associations of Europe, runs nation and club competitions including the UEFA European Championship, UEFA Nations League, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and UEFA Super Cup, and controls the prize money, regulations, and media rights to those competitions.
+Henri Delaunay was the first general secretary and Ebbe Schwartz the first president. The current president is Aleksander Čeferin, a former Football Association of Slovenia president, who was elected as UEFA's seventh president at the 12th Extraordinary UEFA Congress in Athens in September 2016, and automatically became a vice-president of the world body FIFA.[3]
+UEFA was founded on 15 June 1954 in Basel, Switzerland after consultation between the Italian, French, and Belgian associations.[4] At the founding meeting, 25 members were present. However, 6 other associations which were not present were still recognised as founding members, bringing the total of founding associations to 31.[5] That number (not counting the six absent founders) doubled by the early 1990s as new associations were born out of the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia into their constituent states. Until 1959 the main headquarters were located in Paris, and later in Bern. In 1995, UEFA headquarters were transferred to Nyon, Switzerland.
+UEFA membership coincides for the most part with recognition as a sovereign country in Europe (48 out of 55 members are sovereign UN member states), although there are some exceptions. One UN member state (Monaco) and one UN observer state (Vatican City) are not members. Some UEFA members are not sovereign states, but form part of a larger recognised sovereign state in the context of international law. These include Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales (countries of the United Kingdom), Gibraltar (British Overseas Territory), the Faroe Islands (constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark), and Kosovo (state with limited recognition), however in the context of these countries government functions concerning sport tend to be carried at the territorial level coterminous with the UEFA member entity.
+Some UEFA members are transcontinental states (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey) and others are considered part of Europe both culturally and politically (Armenia and Cyprus). Countries which had been members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) were also admitted to the European football association, particularly Israel (because it had been banned from the AFC group in 1974) and Kazakhstan. Additionally some UEFA member associations allow teams from outside their association's main territory to take part in their "domestic" competition. AS Monaco, for example, takes part in the French League (though a separate sovereign entity); Welsh clubs Cardiff City, Swansea City and Newport County A.F.C. participate in the English League; Derry City, situated in Northern Ireland, plays in the Republic of Ireland-based League of Ireland and the 7 native Liechtenstein teams play in the Swiss Leagues, as Liechtenstein has no own league and only a cup competition.
+There are several national teams within Europe that are not members of UEFA. Many of them are instead affiliated with CONIFA.
+National teams:
+Clubs:
+Defunct
+Intercontinental:
+Defunct
+Amateur:
+Defunct
+UEFA runs official international competitions in Europe and some countries of Northern, Southwestern and Central Asia for national teams and professional clubs, known as UEFA competitions, some of which are regarded as the world's most prestigious tournaments.
+UEFA is the organiser of two of the most prestigious competitions in international football: The UEFA European Championship and the UEFA Nations League. The main competition for men's national teams is the UEFA European Championship (also known as the Euro), started in 1958, with the first finals in 1960, and known as the European Nations Cup until 1964. The UEFA Nations League is the second tournament of UEFA and was introduced in 2018. The tournament largely replaced the international friendly matches previously played on the FIFA International Match Calendar. It will be played every two years.
+UEFA also runs national competitions at Under-21, Under-19 and Under-17 levels. For women's national teams, UEFA operates the UEFA Women's Championship for senior national sides as well as Women's Under-19 and Women's Under-17 Championships.
+UEFA also organised the UEFA–CAF Meridian Cup with CAF for youth teams in an effort to boost youth football. UEFA launched the UEFA Regions' Cup, for semi-professional teams representing their local region, in 1999. In futsal there is the UEFA Futsal Championship and UEFA Under-19 Futsal Championship. Despite the existence of UEFA's Futsal and Beach soccer committee, UEFA does not organise any beach soccer competitions. International and club beach soccer competitions for UEFA members are organised externally by Beach Soccer Worldwide.
+The Italian, German, Spanish, French and Russian[8] men's national teams are the sole teams to have won the European football championship in all categories.
+The top-ranked UEFA competition is the UEFA Champions League, which started in the 1992/93 season and gathers the top 1–4 teams of each country's league (the number of teams depend on that country's ranking and can be upgraded or downgraded); this competition was re-structured from a previous one that only gathered the top team of each country (held from 1955 to 1992 and known as the European Champion Clubs' Cup or simply the European Cup).
+A second, lower-ranked competition is the UEFA Europa League. This competition, for national knockout cup winners and high-placed league teams, was launched by UEFA in 1971 as a successor of both the former UEFA Cup and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (also begun in 1955). A third competition, the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, which had started in 1960, was absorbed into the UEFA Cup (now UEFA Europa League) in 1999.
+In December 2018, UEFA announced the creation of a third club competition, with a working title of Europa League 2 (UEL2) (The name was later decided as UEFA Europa Conference League) . The competition would feature 32 teams directly in 8 groups of 4, with a knockout round between the second placed teams in UEFA Europa Conference League and the third placed teams in the Europa League, leading to a final 16 knockout stage featuring the eight group winners. UEFA announced that the first edition of the competition begins in 2021 [9].
+In women's football UEFA also conducts the UEFA Women's Champions League for club teams. The competition was first held in 2001, and known as the UEFA Women's Cup until 2009.
+The UEFA Super Cup pits the winners of the Champions League against the winners of the Europa League (previously the winners of the Cup Winners' Cup), and came into being in 1973.[10][11][12]
+The UEFA Intertoto Cup was a summer competition, previously operated by several Central European football associations, which was relaunched and recognised as official UEFA club competition by UEFA in 1995.[13] The last Intertoto Cup took place in 2008.
+The European/South American Cup was jointly organised with CONMEBOL between the Champions League and the Copa Libertadores winners.[14]
+Only five teams[15][16] (Juventus, Ajax, Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Chelsea[17]) have won each of the three main competitions (European Cup/UEFA Champions League, European Cup Winners' Cup/UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League),[18] a feat that is no longer possible for any team that did not win the Cup Winners' Cup. There are currently eight teams throughout Europe that have won two of the three trophies; all but one have won the Cup Winners' Cup, four require a win in the Champions League and four require a UEFA Europa League win.
+Juventus of Italy was the first team in Europe—remaining the only one to date (2019)—to win all UEFA's official championships and cups[19] and, in commemoration of achieving that feat, have received The UEFA Plaque by the Union of European Football Associations on 12 July 1988.[20][21]
+UEFA's premier futsal competition is the UEFA Futsal Cup, a tournament started in 2001 which replaced the former Futsal European Clubs Championship. This event, despite enjoying a long and well-established tradition in the European futsal community, dating back to 1984, was never recognised as official by UEFA.
+Note: The UEFA Champions League sponsors are also sponsors of the UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Women's Champions League and the UEFA Youth League (excluding Heineken, which is replaced by EA Sports´s FIFA).
+Legend
+For each tournament, the flag of the host country and the number of teams in each finals tournament (in brackets) are shown.
+Notes
+Dissatisfied fans across Europe have referred to the organisation as UEFA mafia, including in Russia's top league,[32] in Bulgaria's top league,[33] and in a Champions League group stage match held in Sweden.[34] The term has also been covered for its use outside of stadiums, for example during a protest in Kosovo outside an EU building following the Serbia v Albania (UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying) match.[35]
+Following the 2015 FIFA corruption case, the current president of UEFA, Michel Platini, was also involved himself in the case. Swiss prosecutors accuse FIFA president Sepp Blatter of making a "disloyal payment" of $2m (£1.6m) to Mr Platini. Swiss attorney general, Michael Lauber, stated: "We didn't interview Mr Platini as a witness, that's not true. We investigated against him in between as a witness and an accused person".[36][37] Both Platini and Sepp Blatter are currently under formal investigation by FIFA's independent ethics committee.[citation needed] On 8 October 2015, Platini was provisionally suspended for 90 days from any football-related activity.[38]
+In 2019 UEFA's decision to host Europa League Cup final in Baku, Azerbaijan left one of the finalists, Arsenal, with a decision to withdraw their Armenian player Henrikh Mkhitaryan out of the competition due to safety concerns.[39]
+President
+Vice-presidents
+Members
+General secretary
+Deputy general secretary
+Treasurer
+Head of club competitions
+Head of national competitions
+Awards:
+Qualifications:
+Match:

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+The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.[11] Its members have a combined area of 4,233,255.3 km2 (1,634,469.0 sq mi) and an estimated total population of about 447 million. The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where members have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market;[12] enact legislation in justice and home affairs; and maintain common policies on trade,[13] agriculture,[14] fisheries and regional development.[15] Passport controls have been abolished for travel within the Schengen Area.[16] A monetary union was established in 1999, coming into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity (without precedent or comparison).[17][18]
+The EU and European citizenship were established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993.[19] The EU traces its origins to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), established, respectively, by the 1951 Treaty of Paris and 1957 Treaty of Rome. The original members of what came to be known as the European Communities were the Inner Six: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The Communities and their successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to their remit. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009.
+On 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom became the first member state to leave the EU.[20] Following a 2016 referendum, the UK signified its intention to leave and negotiated a withdrawal agreement. The UK is in a transitional phase until at least 31 December 2020, during which it remains subject to EU law and part of the EU single market and customs union. Before this, three territories of member states had left the EU or its forerunners, these being French Algeria (in 1962, upon independence), Greenland (in 1985, following a referendum) and Saint Barthélemy (in 2012).
+Containing in 2020 some 5.8% of the world population,[d] the EU (excluding the United Kingdom) had generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around US$15.5 trillion in 2019,[8] constituting approximately 18% of global nominal GDP.[22] Additionally, all EU countries have a very high Human Development Index according to the United Nations Development Programme. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[23] Through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the union has developed a role in external relations and defence. It maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7 and the G20. Due to its global influence, the European Union has been described as an emerging superpower.[24]
+The following timeline outlines the legal inception of the European Union (EU), from the post-war period until the union's founding and consolidation³ in 1993 and 2009, respectively. This integration ― also referred to as the European project or the construction of Europe (French: la construction européenne) ― involved treaty-based European cooperation in various policy areas, including the European Communities that were founded in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration.
+During the centuries following the fall of Rome in 476, several European states viewed themselves as translatio imperii ("transfer of rule") of the defunct Roman Empire: the Frankish Empire (481–843) and the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) were thereby attempts to resurrect Rome in the West.[e] This political philosophy of a supra-national rule over the continent, similar to the example of the ancient Roman Empire, resulted in the early Middle Ages in the concept of a renovatio imperii ("restoration of the empire"),[26] either in the forms of the Reichsidee ("imperial idea") or the religiously inspired Imperium Christianum ("christian empire").[27][28] Medieval Christendom[29][30] and the political power of the Papacy[31][32] are often cited as conducive to European integration and unity.
+In the oriental parts of the continent, the Russian Tsardom, and ultimately the Empire (1547–1917), declared Moscow to be Third Rome and inheritor of the Eastern tradition after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.[33] The gap between Greek East and Latin West had already been widened by the political scission of the Roman Empire in the 4th century and the Great Schism of 1054, and would be eventually widened again by the Iron Curtain (1945–1991).[34]
+Pan-European political thought truly emerged during the 19th century, inspired by the liberal ideas of the French and American Revolutions after the demise of Napoléon's Empire (1804–1815). In the decades following the outcomes of the Congress of Vienna, ideals of European unity flourished across the continent, especially in the writings of Wojciech Jastrzębowski,[35] Giuseppe Mazzini,[36] or Theodore de Korwin Szymanowski.[37] The term United States of Europe (French: États-Unis d'Europe) was used at that time by Victor Hugo during a speech at the International Peace Congress held in Paris in 1849:[38]
+A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood ... A day will come when we shall see ... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.
+During the interwar period, the consciousness that national markets in Europe were interdependent though confrontational, along with the observation of a larger and growing US market on the other side of the ocean, nourished the urge for the economic integration of the continent.[39] In 1920, advocating the creation of a European economic union, British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that "a Free Trade Union should be established ... to impose no protectionist tariffs whatever against the produce of other members of the Union."[40] During the same decade, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, one of the first to imagine of a modern political union of Europe, founded the Pan-Europa Movement.[41] His ideas influenced his contemporaries, among which then Prime Minister of France Aristide Briand. In 1929, the latter gave a speech in favour of a European Union before the assembly of the League of Nations, precursor of the United Nations.[42] In a radio address in March 1943, with war still raging, Britain's leader Sir Winston Churchill spoke warmly of "restoring the true greatness of Europe" once victory had been achieved, and mused on the post-war creation of a "Council of Europe" which would bring the European nations together to build peace.[43][44]
+After World War II, European integration was seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism which had devastated parts of the continent.[45] In a speech delivered on 19 September 1946 at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, Winston Churchill went further and advocated the emergence of a United States of Europe.[46] The 1948 Hague Congress was a pivotal moment in European federal history, as it led to the creation of the European Movement International and of the College of Europe, where Europe's future leaders would live and study together.[47]
+It also led directly to the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949, the first great effort to bring the nations of Europe together, initially ten of them. The Council focused primarily on values—human rights and democracy—rather than on economic or trade issues, and was always envisaged as a forum where sovereign governments could choose to work together, with no supra-national authority. It raised great hopes of further European integration, and there were fevered debates in the two years that followed as to how this could be achieved.
+But in 1952, disappointed at what they saw as the lack of progress within the Council of Europe, six nations decided to go further and created the European Coal and Steel Community, which was declared to be "a first step in the federation of Europe".[48] This community helped to economically integrate and coordinate the large number of Marshall Plan funds from the United States.[49] European leaders Alcide De Gasperi from Italy, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman from France, and Paul-Henri Spaak from Belgium understood that coal and steel were the two industries essential for waging war, and believed that by tying their national industries together, future war between their nations became much less likely.[50] These men and others are officially credited as the founding fathers of the European Union.
+In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community (EEC) and established a customs union. They also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for co-operation in developing nuclear energy. Both treaties came into force in 1958.[50]
+The EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC and they shared the same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein (Hallstein Commission) and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand (Armand Commission) and then Étienne Hirsch. Euratom was to integrate sectors in nuclear energy while the EEC would develop a customs union among members.[51][52]
+During the 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power. Nevertheless, in 1965 an agreement was reached and on 1 July 1967 the Merger Treaty created a single set of institutions for the three communities, which were collectively referred to as the European Communities.[53][54] Jean Rey presided over the first merged Commission (Rey Commission).[55]
+In 1973, the Communities were enlarged to include Denmark (including Greenland, which later left the Communities in 1985, following a dispute over fishing rights), Ireland, and the United Kingdom.[56] Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum. In 1979, the first direct elections to the European Parliament were held.[57]
+Greece joined in 1981, Portugal and Spain following in 1986.[58] In 1985, the Schengen Agreement paved the way for the creation of open borders without passport controls between most member states and some non-member states.[59] In 1986, the European flag began to be used by the EEC[60] and the Single European Act was signed.
+In 1990, after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the former East Germany became part of the Communities as part of a reunified Germany.[61]
+The European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty—whose main architects were Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand—came into force on 1 November 1993.[19][62] The treaty also gave the name European Community to the EEC, even if it was referred as such before the treaty. With further enlargement planned to include the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Cyprus and Malta, the Copenhagen criteria for candidate members to join the EU were agreed upon in June 1993. The expansion of the EU introduced a new level of complexity and discord.[63] In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU.
+In 2002, euro banknotes and coins replaced national currencies in 12 of the member states. Since then, the eurozone has increased to encompass 19 countries. The euro currency became the second largest reserve currency in the world. In 2004, the EU saw its biggest enlargement to date when Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined the Union.[64]
+In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became EU members. The same year, Slovenia adopted the euro,[64] followed in 2008 by Cyprus and Malta, by Slovakia in 2009, by Estonia in 2011, by Latvia in 2014, and by Lithuania in 2015.
+On 1 December 2009, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force and reformed many aspects of the EU. In particular, it changed the legal structure of the European Union, merging the EU three pillars system into a single legal entity provisioned with a legal personality, created a permanent President of the European Council, the first of which was Herman Van Rompuy, and strengthened the position of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.[65][66]
+In 2012, the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe."[67][68] In 2013, Croatia became the 28th EU member.[69]
+From the beginning of the 2010s, the cohesion of the European Union has been tested by several issues, including a debt crisis in some of the Eurozone countries, increasing migration from Africa and Asia, and the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU.[70] A referendum in the UK on its membership of the European Union was held in 2016, with 51.9% of participants voting to leave.[71] The UK formally notified the European Council of its decision to leave on 29 March 2017, initiating the formal withdrawal procedure for leaving the EU; following extensions to the process, the UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020, though most areas of EU law will continue to apply to the UK for a transition period lasting until the end of 2020 at the earliest.[72]
+As of 1 February 2020[update], the population of the European Union was about 447 million people (5.8% of the world population).[73][74] In 2015, 5.1 million children were born in the EU-28 corresponding to a birth rate of 10 per 1,000, which is 8 births below the world average.[75] For comparison, the EU-28 birth rate had stood at 10.6 in 2000, 12.8 in 1985 and 16.3 in 1970.[76] Its population growth rate was positive at an estimated 0.23% in 2016.[77]
+In 2010, 47.3 million people who lived in the EU were born outside their resident country. This corresponds to 9.4% of the total EU population. Of these, 31.4 million (6.3%) were born outside the EU and 16.0 million (3.2%) were born in another EU member state. The largest absolute numbers of people born outside the EU were in Germany (6.4 million), France (5.1 million), the United Kingdom (4.7 million), Spain (4.1 million), Italy (3.2 million), and the Netherlands (1.4 million).[78] In 2017, approximately 825,000 people acquired citizenship of a member state of the European Union. The largest groups were nationals of Morocco, Albania, India, Turkey and Pakistan.[79] 2.4 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2017.[80][81]
+The EU contains about 40 urban areas with populations of over one million. The largest metropolitan area in the EU is Paris.[82] These are followed by Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Rhine-Ruhr, Rome, and Milan, all with a metropolitan population of over 4 million.[83]
+The EU also has numerous polycentric urbanised regions like Rhine-Ruhr (Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf et al.), Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht et al.), Frankfurt Rhine-Main (Frankfurt), the Flemish Diamond (Antwerp, Brussels, Leuven, Ghent et al.) and Upper Silesian area (Katowice, Ostrava et al.).[82]
+The European Union has 24 official languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish. Important documents, such as legislation, are translated into every official language and the European Parliament provides translation for documents and plenary sessions.[89][90][91]
+Due to the high number of official languages, most of the institutions use only a handful of working languages.[92] The European Commission conducts its internal business in three procedural languages: English, French, and German. Similarly, the Court of Justice of the European Union uses French as the working language,[93] while the European Central Bank conducts its business primarily in English.[94][95]
+Even though language policy is the responsibility of member states, EU institutions promote multilingualism among its citizens.[h][96] English is the most widely spoken language in the EU, being understood by 51% of the EU population when counting both native and non-native speakers.[97] German is the most widely spoken mother tongue (18% of the EU population), and the second most widely understood foreign language, followed by French (13% of the EU population). In addition, both are official languages of several EU member states. More than half (56%) of EU citizens are able to engage in a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.[98]
+A total of twenty official languages of the EU belong to the Indo-European language family, represented by the Balto-Slavic,[i] the Italic,[j] the Germanic,[k] the Hellenic,[l] and the Celtic[m] branches. Only four languages, namely Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian (all three Uralic), and Maltese (Semitic), are not Indo-European languages.[99] The three official alphabets of the European Union (Cyrillic, Latin, and modern Greek) all derive from the Archaic Greek scripts.[3][100]
+Luxembourgish (in Luxembourg) and Turkish (in Cyprus) are the only two national languages that are not official languages of the EU. On 26 February 2016 it was made public that Cyprus has asked to make Turkish an official EU language, in a “gesture” that could help solve the division of the country.[101] Already in 2004, it was planned that Turkish would become an official language when Cyprus reunites.[102]
+Besides the 24 official languages, there are about 150 regional and minority languages, spoken by up to 50 million people.[99] Catalan, Galician and Basque are not recognised official languages of the European Union but have semi-official status in one member state (Spain): therefore, official translations of the treaties are made into them and citizens have the right to correspond with the institutions in these languages.[103][104] The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ratified by most EU states provides general guidelines that states can follow to protect their linguistic heritage. The European Day of Languages is held annually on 26 September and is aimed at encouraging language learning across Europe.[105]
+The EU has no formal connection to any religion. The Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union[106] recognises the "status under national law of churches and religious associations" as well as that of "philosophical and non-confessional organisations".[107]
+The preamble to the Treaty on European Union mentions the "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe".[107] Discussion over the draft texts of the European Constitution and later the Treaty of Lisbon included proposals to mention Christianity or a god, or both, in the preamble of the text, but the idea faced opposition and was dropped.[108]
+Christians in the European Union are divided among members of Catholicism (both Roman and Eastern Rite), numerous Protestant denominations (Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed forming the bulk of this category), and the Eastern Orthodox Church. In 2009, the EU had an estimated Muslim population of 13 million,[109] and an estimated Jewish population of over a million.[110] The other world religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism are also represented in the EU population.
+According to new polls about religiosity in the European Union in 2015 by Eurobarometer, Christianity is the largest religion in the European Union, accounting for 71.6% of the EU population. Catholics are the largest Christian group, accounting for 45.3% of the EU population, while Protestants make up 11.1%, Eastern Orthodox make up 9.6%, and other Christians make up 5.6%.[4]
+Eurostat's Eurobarometer opinion polls showed in 2005 that 52% of EU citizens believed in a god, 27% in "some sort of spirit or life force", and 18% had no form of belief.[111] Many countries have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years.[112] The countries where the fewest people reported a religious belief were Estonia (16%) and the Czech Republic (19%).[111] The most religious countries were Malta (95%, predominantly Catholic) as well as Cyprus and Romania (both predominantly Orthodox) each with about 90% of citizens professing a belief in their respective god. Across the EU, belief was higher among women, older people, those with religious upbringing, those who left school at 15 or 16, and those "positioning themselves on the right of the political scale".[111]
+Through successive enlargements, the European Union has grown from the six founding states (Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) to the current 27. Countries accede to the union by becoming party to the founding treaties, thereby subjecting themselves to the privileges and obligations of EU membership. This entails a partial delegation of sovereignty to the institutions in return for representation within those institutions, a practice often referred to as "pooling of sovereignty".[113][114]
+To become a member, a country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, defined at the 1993 meeting of the European Council in Copenhagen. These require a stable democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law; a functioning market economy; and the acceptance of the obligations of membership, including EU law. Evaluation of a country's fulfilment of the criteria is the responsibility of the European Council.[115] Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty provides the basis for a member to leave the Union. Two territories have left the Union: Greenland (an autonomous province of Denmark) withdrew in 1985;[116] the United Kingdom formally invoked Article 50 of the Consolidated Treaty on European Union in 2017, and became the only sovereign state to leave when it withdrew from the EU in 2020.
+There are six countries that are recognised as candidates for membership: Albania, Iceland, North Macedonia,[n] Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey,[117] though Iceland suspended negotiations in 2013.[118] Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are officially recognised as potential candidates,[117] with Bosnia and Herzegovina having submitted a membership application.
+The four countries forming the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) are not EU members, but have partly committed to the EU's economy and regulations: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, which are a part of the single market through the European Economic Area, and Switzerland, which has similar ties through bilateral treaties.[119][120] The relationships of the European microstates, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City include the use of the euro and other areas of co-operation.[121] The following 27 sovereign states (of which the map only shows territories situated in and around Europe) constitute the European Union:[122]
+The EU's member states cover an area of 4,233,262 square kilometres (1,634,472 sq mi).[p] The EU's highest peak is Mont Blanc in the Graian Alps, 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft) above sea level.[123] The lowest points in the EU are Lammefjorden, Denmark and Zuidplaspolder, Netherlands, at 7 m (23 ft) below sea level.[124]
+The landscape, climate, and economy of the EU are influenced by its coastline, which is 65,993 kilometres (41,006 mi) long.
+65,993 km (41,006 mi) coastline dominates the European climate (Natural Park of Penyal d'Ifac, Spain)
+Mont Blanc in the Alps is the highest peak in the EU
+The Danube (pictured in Budapest), is the longest river in the European Union
+Repovesi National Park in Finland, where there are some 187,888 lakes larger than 500 square metres (5,382 sq ft)
+Including the overseas territories of France which are located outside the continent of Europe, but which are members of the union, the EU experiences most types of climate from Arctic (north-east Europe) to tropical (French Guiana), rendering meteorological averages for the EU as a whole meaningless. The majority of the population lives in areas with a temperate maritime climate (North-Western Europe and Central Europe), a Mediterranean climate (Southern Europe), or a warm summer continental or hemiboreal climate (Northern Balkans and Central Europe).[125]
+The EU's population is highly urbanised, with some 75% of inhabitants living in urban areas as of 2006. Cities are largely spread out across the EU with a large grouping in and around the Benelux.[126]
+The EU operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making,[127][128] and according to the principles of conferral (which says that it should act only within the limits of the competences conferred on it by the treaties) and of subsidiarity (which says that it should act only where an objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states acting alone). Laws made by the EU institutions are passed in a variety of forms.[129] Generally speaking, they can be classified into two groups: those which come into force without the necessity for national implementation measures (regulations) and those which specifically require national implementation measures (directives).[130]
+Constitutionally, the EU bears some resemblance to both a confederation and a federation,[131][132] but has not formally defined itself as either. (It does not have a formal constitution: its status is defined by the Treaty of European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). It is more integrated than a traditional confederation of states because the general level of government widely employs qualified majority voting in some decision-making among the member states, rather than relying exclusively on unanimity.[133][134] It is less integrated than a federal state because it is not a state in its own right: sovereignty continues to flow 'from the bottom up', from the several peoples of the separate member states, rather than from a single undifferentiated whole. This is reflected in the fact that the member states remain the 'masters of the Treaties', retaining control over the allocation of competences to the Union through constitutional change (thus retaining so-called Kompetenz-kompetenz); in that they retain control of the use of armed force; they retain control of taxation; and in that they retain a right of unilateral withdrawal from the Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. In addition, the principle of subsidiarity requires that only those matters that need to be determined collectively are so determined.
+The European Union has seven principal decision-making bodies, its institutions: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors. Competence in scrutinising and amending legislation is shared between the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, while executive tasks are performed by the European Commission and in a limited capacity by the European Council (not to be confused with the aforementioned Council of the European Union). The monetary policy of the eurozone is determined by the European Central Bank. The interpretation and the application of EU law and the treaties are ensured by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The EU budget is scrutinised by the European Court of Auditors. There are also a number of ancillary bodies which advise the EU or operate in a specific area.
+EU policy is in general promulgated by EU directives, which are then implemented in the domestic legislation of its member states, and EU regulations, which are immediately enforceable in all member states. Lobbying at EU level by special interest groups is regulated to try to balance the aspirations of private initiatives with public interest decision-making process[135]
+The European Parliament is one of three legislative institutions of the EU, which together with the Council of the European Union is tasked with amending and approving the Commission's proposals.
+The 705 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are directly elected by EU citizens every five years on the basis of proportional representation. MEPs are elected on a national basis and they sit according to political groups rather than their nationality. Each country has a set number of seats and is divided into sub-national constituencies where this does not affect the proportional nature of the voting system.[136]
+In the ordinary legislative procedure, the European Commission proposes legislation, which requires the joint approval of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to pass. This process applies to nearly all areas, including the EU budget. The Parliament is the final body to approve or reject the proposed membership of the Commission, and can attempt motions of censure on the Commission by appeal to the Court of Justice. The President of the European Parliament (currently David Sassoli) carries out the role of speaker in Parliament and represents it externally. The President and Vice-Presidents are elected by MEPs every two and a half years.[137]
+The European Council gives political direction to the EU. It convenes at least four times a year and comprises the President of the European Council (currently Charles Michel), the President of the European Commission and one representative per member state (either its head of state or head of government). The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (currently Josep Borrell) also takes part in its meetings. It has been described by some as the Union's "supreme political authority".[138] It is actively involved in the negotiation of treaty changes and defines the EU's policy agenda and strategies.
+The European Council uses its leadership role to sort out disputes between member states and the institutions, and to resolve political crises and disagreements over controversial issues and policies. It acts externally as a "collective head of state" and ratifies important documents (for example, international agreements and treaties).[139]
+Tasks for the President of the European Council are ensuring the external representation of the EU,[140] driving consensus and resolving divergences among member states, both during meetings of the European Council and over the periods between them.
+The European Council should not be mistaken for the Council of Europe, an international organisation independent of the EU based in Strasbourg.
+The European Commission acts both as the EU's executive arm, responsible for the day-to-day running of the EU, and also the legislative initiator, with the sole power to propose laws for debate.[141][142][143] The Commission is 'guardian of the Treaties' and is responsible for their efficient operation and policing.[144] It operates de facto as a cabinet government,[citation needed] with 27 Commissioners for different areas of policy, one from each member state, though Commissioners are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.
+One of the 27 is the President of the European Commission (Jean-Claude Juncker for 2014–2019), appointed by the European Council, subject to the Parliament's approval. After the President, the most prominent Commissioner is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who is ex-officio a Vice-President of the Commission and is also chosen by the European Council.[145] The other 26 Commissioners are subsequently appointed by the Council of the European Union in agreement with the nominated President. The 27 Commissioners as a single body are subject to approval (or otherwise) by vote of the European Parliament.
+The Council of the European Union (also called the "Council"[146] and the "Council of Ministers", its former title)[147] forms one half of the EU's legislature. It consists of a government minister from each member state and meets in different compositions depending on the policy area being addressed. Notwithstanding its different configurations, it is considered to be one single body.[148] In addition to its legislative functions, the Council also exercises executive functions in relations to the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
+In some policies, there are several member states that ally with strategic partners within the Union. Examples of such alliances include the Visegrad Group, Benelux, the Baltic Assembly, the New Hanseatic League, and the Craiova Group.
+The EU had an agreed budget of €120.7 billion for the year 2007 and €864.3 billion for the period 2007–2013,[150] representing 1.10% and 1.05% of the EU-27's GNI forecast for the respective periods. In 1960, the budget of the then European Economic Community was 0.03% of GDP.[151]
+In the 2010 budget of €141.5 billion, the largest single expenditure item is "cohesion & competitiveness" with around 45% of the total budget.[152] Next comes "agriculture" with approximately 31% of the total.[152] "Rural development, environment and fisheries" takes up around 11%.[152] "Administration" accounts for around 6%.[152] The "EU as a global partner" and "citizenship, freedom, security and justice" bring up the rear with approximately 6% and 1% respectively.[152]
+The Court of Auditors is legally obliged to provide the Parliament and the Council (specifically, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council) with "a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions".[153] The Court also gives opinions and proposals on financial legislation and anti-fraud actions.[154] The Parliament uses this to decide whether to approve the Commission's handling of the budget.
+The European Court of Auditors has signed off the European Union accounts every year since 2007 and, while making it clear that the European Commission has more work to do, has highlighted that most of the errors take place at national level.[155][156] In their report on 2009 the auditors found that five areas of Union expenditure, agriculture and the cohesion fund, were materially affected by error.[157] The European Commission estimated in 2009 that the financial effect of irregularities was €1,863 million.[158]
+EU member states retain all powers not explicitly handed to the European Union. In some areas the EU enjoys exclusive competence. These are areas in which member states have renounced any capacity to enact legislation. In other areas the EU and its member states share the competence to legislate. While both can legislate, member states can only legislate to the extent to which the EU has not. In other policy areas the EU can only co-ordinate, support and supplement member state action but cannot enact legislation with the aim of harmonising national laws.[159]
+That a particular policy area falls into a certain category of competence is not necessarily indicative of what legislative procedure is used for enacting legislation within that policy area. Different legislative procedures are used within the same category of competence, and even with the same policy area.
+The distribution of competences in various policy areas between Member States and the Union is divided in the following three categories:
+The EU is based on a series of treaties. These first established the European Community and the EU, and then made amendments to those founding treaties.[161] These are power-giving treaties which set broad policy goals and establish institutions with the necessary legal powers to implement those goals. These legal powers include the ability to enact legislation[q] which can directly affect all member states and their inhabitants.[r] The EU has legal personality, with the right to sign agreements and international treaties.[162]
+Under the principle of supremacy, national courts are required to enforce the treaties that their member states have ratified, and thus the laws enacted under them, even if doing so requires them to ignore conflicting national law, and (within limits) even constitutional provisions.[s]
+The direct effect and supremacy doctrines were not explicitly set out in the European Treaties but were developed by the Court of Justice itself over the 1960s, apparently under the influence of its then most influential judge, Frenchman Robert Lecourt[163]
+The judicial branch of the EU—formally called the Court of Justice of the European Union—consists of two courts: the Court of Justice and the General Court.[164]
+The Court of Justice primarily deals with cases taken by member states, the institutions, and cases referred to it by the courts of member states.[165] Because of the doctrines of direct effect and supremacy, many judgments of the Court of Justice are automatically applicable within the internal legal orders of the member states.
+The General Court mainly deals with cases taken by individuals and companies directly before the EU's courts,[166] and the European Union Civil Service Tribunal adjudicates in disputes between the European Union and its civil service.[167] Decisions from the General Court can be appealed to the Court of Justice but only on a point of law.[168]
+The treaties declare that the EU itself is "founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities ... in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail."[169]
+In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty gave legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The charter is a codified catalogue of fundamental rights against which the EU's legal acts can be judged. It consolidates many rights which were previously recognised by the Court of Justice and derived from the "constitutional traditions common to the member states."[170] The Court of Justice has long recognised fundamental rights and has, on occasion, invalidated EU legislation based on its failure to adhere to those fundamental rights.[171]
+Signing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a condition for EU membership.[t] Previously, the EU itself could not accede to the Convention as it is neither a state[u] nor had the competence to accede.[v] The Lisbon Treaty and Protocol 14 to the ECHR have changed this: the former binds the EU to accede to the Convention while the latter formally permits it.
+The EU is independent from the Council of Europe, although they share purpose and ideas,  especially on the rule of law, human rights and democracy. Furthermore, the European Convention on Human Rights and European Social Charter, as well as the source of law for the Charter of Fundamental Rights are created by the Council of Europe. The EU has also promoted human rights issues in the wider world. The EU opposes the death penalty and has proposed its worldwide abolition. Abolition of the death penalty is a condition for EU membership.[172]
+The main legal acts of the EU come in three forms: regulations, directives, and decisions. Regulations become law in all member states the moment they come into force, without the requirement for any implementing measures,[w] and automatically override conflicting domestic provisions.[q] Directives require member states to achieve a certain result while leaving them discretion as to how to achieve the result. The details of how they are to be implemented are left to member states.[x] When the time limit for implementing directives passes, they may, under certain conditions, have direct effect in national law against member states.
+Decisions offer an alternative to the two above modes of legislation. They are legal acts which only apply to specified individuals, companies or a particular member state. They are most often used in competition law, or on rulings on State Aid, but are also frequently used for procedural or administrative matters within the institutions. Regulations, directives, and decisions are of equal legal value and apply without any formal hierarchy.[173]
+The European Ombudsman was established by the Maastricht Treaty. The ombudsman is elected by the European Parliament for the length of the Parliament's term, and the position is renewable.[174] Any EU citizen or entity may appeal to the ombudsman to investigate an EU institution on the grounds of maladministration (administrative irregularities, unfairness, discrimination, abuse of power, failure to reply, refusal of information or unnecessary delay).[175] Emily O'Reilly is the current ombudsman since 2013.[176]
+The borders inside the Schengen Area between Germany and Austria
+Europol Headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands
+Eurojust Headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands
+Seat of Frontex in Warsaw, Poland
+Since the creation of the EU in 1993, it has developed its competencies in the area of justice and home affairs; initially at an intergovernmental level and later by supranationalism. Accordingly, the Union has legislated in areas such as extradition,[177] family law,[178] asylum law,[179] and criminal justice.[180] Prohibitions against sexual and nationality discrimination have a long standing in the treaties.[y] In more recent years, these have been supplemented by powers to legislate against discrimination based on race, religion, disability, age, and sexual orientation.[z] By virtue of these powers, the EU has enacted legislation on sexual discrimination in the work-place, age discrimination, and racial discrimination.[aa]
+The Union has also established agencies to co-ordinate police, prosecutorial and immigrations controls across the member states: Europol for co-operation of police forces,[181] Eurojust for co-operation between prosecutors,[182] and Frontex for co-operation between border control authorities.[183] The EU also operates the Schengen Information System[16] which provides a common database for police and immigration authorities. This co-operation had to particularly be developed with the advent of open borders through the Schengen Agreement and the associated cross border crime.
+Foreign policy co-operation between member states dates from the establishment of the Community in 1957, when member states negotiated as a bloc in international trade negotiations under the EU's common commercial policy.[184] Steps for a more wide-ranging co-ordination in foreign relations began in 1970 with the establishment of European Political Cooperation which created an informal consultation process between member states with the aim of forming common foreign policies. In 1987 the European Political Cooperation was introduced on a formal basis by the Single European Act. EPC was renamed as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) by the Maastricht Treaty.[185]
+The aims of the CFSP are to promote both the EU's own interests and those of the international community as a whole, including the furtherance of international co-operation, respect for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.[186] The CFSP requires unanimity among the member states on the appropriate policy to follow on any particular issue. The unanimity and difficult issues treated under the CFSP sometimes lead to disagreements, such as those which occurred over the war in Iraq.[187]
+The coordinator and representative of the CFSP within the EU is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy who speaks on behalf of the EU in foreign policy and defence matters, and has the task of articulating the positions expressed by the member states on these fields of policy into a common alignment. The High Representative heads up the European External Action Service (EEAS), a unique EU department[188] that has been officially implemented and operational since 1 December 2010 on the occasion of the first anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.[189] The EEAS will serve as a foreign ministry and diplomatic corps for the European Union.[190]
+Besides the emerging international policy of the European Union, the international influence of the EU is also felt through enlargement. The perceived benefits of becoming a member of the EU act as an incentive for both political and economic reform in states wishing to fulfil the EU's accession criteria, and are considered an important factor contributing to the reform of European formerly Communist countries.[191]:762 This influence on the internal affairs of other countries is generally referred to as "soft power", as opposed to military "hard power".[192]
+The predecessors of the European Union were not devised as a military alliance because NATO was largely seen as appropriate and sufficient for defence purposes.[193] 21 EU members are members of NATO[194] while the remaining member states follow policies of neutrality.[195] The Western European Union, a military alliance with a mutual defence clause, was disbanded in 2010 as its role had been transferred to the EU.[196]
+France is the only member officially recognised as a nuclear weapon state holding a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Most EU member states opposed the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty.[197]
+Following the Kosovo War in 1999, the European Council agreed that "the Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and the readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO". To that end, a number of efforts were made to increase the EU's military capability, notably the Helsinki Headline Goal process. After much discussion, the most concrete result was the EU Battlegroups initiative, each of which is planned to be able to deploy quickly about 1500 personnel.[198]
+EU forces have been deployed on peacekeeping missions from middle and northern Africa to the western Balkans and western Asia.[199] EU military operations are supported by a number of bodies, including the European Defence Agency, European Union Satellite Centre and the European Union Military Staff.[200] Frontex is an agency of the EU established to manage the cooperation between national border guards securing its external borders. It aims to detect and stop illegal immigration, human trafficking and terrorist infiltration. In 2015 the European Commission presented its proposal for a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency having a stronger role and mandate along with national authorities for border management. In an EU consisting of 27 members, substantial security and defence co-operation is increasingly relying on collaboration among all member states.[201]
+The European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department, or "ECHO", provides humanitarian aid from the EU to developing countries. In 2012, its budget amounted to €874 million, 51% of the budget went to Africa and 20% to Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Pacific, and 20% to the Middle East and Mediterranean.[202]
+Humanitarian aid is financed directly by the budget (70%) as part of the financial instruments for external action and also by the European Development Fund (30%).[203] The EU's external action financing is divided into 'geographic' instruments and 'thematic' instruments.[203] The 'geographic' instruments provide aid through the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI, €16.9 billion, 2007–2013), which must spend 95% of its budget on official development assistance (ODA), and from the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), which contains some relevant programmes.[203] The European Development Fund (EDF, €22.7 billion for the period 2008–2013 and €30.5 billion for the period 2014–2020) is made up of voluntary contributions by member states, but there is pressure to merge the EDF into the budget-financed instruments to encourage increased contributions to match the 0.7% target and allow the European Parliament greater oversight.[203][204]
+In 2016, the average among EU countries was 0.4% and five had met or exceeded the 0.7% target: Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom.[205] If considered collectively, EU member states are the largest contributor of foreign aid in the world.[206][207]
+The EU uses foreign relations instruments like the European Neighbourhood Policy which seeks to tie those countries to the east and south of the European territory of the EU to the Union. These countries, primarily developing countries, include some who seek to one day become either a member state of the European Union, or more closely integrated with the European Union. The EU offers financial assistance to countries within the European Neighbourhood, so long as they meet the strict conditions of government reform, economic reform and other issues surrounding positive transformation. This process is normally underpinned by an Action Plan, as agreed by both Brussels and the target country.
+International recognition of sustainable development as a key element is growing steadily. Its role was recognized in three major UN summits on sustainable development: the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa; and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in Rio de Janeiro. Other key global agreements are the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). The SDGs recognize that all countries must stimulate action in the following key areas - people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership - in order to tackle the global challenges that are crucial for the survival of humanity.
+EU development action is based on the European Consensus on Development, which was endorsed on 20 December 2005 by EU Member States, the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission.[208] It is applied from the principles of Capability approach and Rights-based approach to development.
+Partnership and cooperation agreements are bilateral agreements with non-member nations.[209]
+The European Union is the largest exporter in the world[213] and as of 2008 the largest importer of goods and services.[214][215] Internal trade between the member states is aided by the removal of barriers to trade such as tariffs and border controls. In the eurozone, trade is helped by not having any currency differences to deal with amongst most members.[216]
+The European Union Association Agreement does something similar for a much larger range of countries, partly as a so-called soft approach ('a carrot instead of a stick') to influence the politics in those countries.
+The European Union represents all its members at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and acts on behalf of member states in any disputes. When the EU negotiates trade related agreement outside the WTO framework, the subsequent agreement must be approved by each individual EU member state government.[216]
+The European Union has concluded free trade agreements (FTAs)[217] and other agreements with a trade component with many countries worldwide and is negotiating with many others.[218]
+As a political entity the European Union is represented in the World Trade Organization (WTO). EU member states own the estimated second largest after the United States (US$105 trillion) net wealth in the world, equal to around 20% (~€60 trillion) of the US$360 trillion (~€300 trillion)[219] global wealth.[220]
+19 member states have joined a monetary union known as the eurozone, which uses the euro as a single currency. The currency union represents 342 million EU citizens.[221] The euro is the second largest reserve currency as well as the second most traded currency in the world after the United States dollar.[222][223][224]
+Of the top 500 largest corporations in the world measured by revenue in 2010, 161 had their headquarters in the EU.[225] In 2016, unemployment in the EU stood at 8.9%[226] while inflation was at 2.2%, and the current account balance at −0.9% of GDP. The average annual net earnings in the European Union was around €24,000 (US$30,000)[227] in 2015.
+There is a significant variation in Nominal GDP per capita within individual EU states. The difference between the richest and poorest regions (281 NUTS-2 regions of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) ranged, in 2017, from 31% (Severozapaden, Bulgaria) of the EU28 average (€30,000) to 253% (Luxembourg), or from €4,600 to €92,600.[228]
+Two of the original core objectives of the European Economic Community were the development of a common market, subsequently becoming a single market, and a customs union between its member states. The single market involves the free circulation of goods, capital, people, and services within the EU,[221] and the customs union involves the application of a common external tariff on all goods entering the market. Once goods have been admitted into the market they cannot be subjected to customs duties, discriminatory taxes or import quotas, as they travel internally. The non-EU member states of Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland participate in the single market but not in the customs union.[119] Half the trade in the EU is covered by legislation harmonised by the EU.[229]
+Free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchases and buying of shares between countries.[230] Until the drive towards economic and monetary union the development of the capital provisions had been slow. Post-Maastricht there has been a rapidly developing corpus of ECJ judgements regarding this initially neglected freedom. The free movement of capital is unique insofar as it is granted equally to non-member states.
+The free movement of persons means that EU citizens can move freely between member states to live, work, study or retire in another country. This required the lowering of administrative formalities and recognition of professional qualifications of other states.[231]
+The free movement of services and of establishment allows self-employed persons to move between member states to provide services on a temporary or permanent basis. While services account for 60–70% of GDP, legislation in the area is not as developed as in other areas. This lacuna has been addressed by the recently passed Directive on services in the internal market which aims to liberalise the cross border provision of services.[232] According to the Treaty the provision of services is a residual freedom that only applies if no other freedom is being exercised.
+The creation of a European single currency became an official objective of the European Economic Community in 1969. In 1992, having negotiated the structure and procedures of a currency union, the member states signed the Maastricht Treaty and were legally bound to fulfil the agreed-on rules including the convergence criteria if they wanted to join the monetary union. The states wanting to participate had first to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
+In 1999 the currency union started, first as an accounting currency with eleven member states joining. In 2002, the currency was fully put into place, when euro notes and coins were issued and national currencies began to phase out in the eurozone, which by then consisted of 12 member states. The eurozone (constituted by the EU member states which have adopted the euro) has since grown to 19 countries.[233][ab]
+The euro, and the monetary policies of those who have adopted it in agreement with the EU, are under the control of the European Central Bank (ECB).[234] The ECB is the central bank for the eurozone, and thus controls monetary policy in that area with an agenda to maintain price stability. It is at the centre of the European System of Central Banks, which comprehends all EU national central banks and is controlled by its General Council, consisting of the President of the ECB, who is appointed by the European Council, the Vice-President of the ECB, and the governors of the national central banks of all 27 EU member states.[235]
+The European System of Financial Supervision is an institutional architecture of the EU's framework of financial supervision composed by three authorities: the European Banking Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority. To complement this framework, there is also a European Systemic Risk Board under the responsibility of the ECB. The aim of this financial control system is to ensure the economic stability of the EU.[236]
+To prevent the joining states from getting into financial trouble or crisis after entering the monetary union, they were obliged in the Maastricht treaty to fulfil important financial obligations and procedures, especially to show budgetary discipline and a high degree of sustainable economic convergence, as well as to avoid excessive government deficits and limit the government debt to a sustainable level.
+The European Commission working sectors are: Aeronautics, automotive, biotechnology, chemicals, construction, cosmetics, defense, electronics, firearms, food and drink, gambling, healthcare, maritime, mechanics, medical, postal, raw materials, space, textile, tourism, toys and Social economy (Societas cooperativa Europaea).
+In 2006, the EU-27 had a gross inland energy consumption of 1,825 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe).[237] Around 46% of the energy consumed was produced within the member states while 54% was imported.[237] In these statistics, nuclear energy is treated as primary energy produced in the EU, regardless of the source of the uranium, of which less than 3% is produced in the EU.[238]
+The EU has had legislative power in the area of energy policy for most of its existence; this has its roots in the original European Coal and Steel Community. The introduction of a mandatory and comprehensive European energy policy was approved at the meeting of the European Council in October 2005, and the first draft policy was published in January 2007.[239]
+The EU has five key points in its energy policy: increase competition in the internal market, encourage investment and boost interconnections between electricity grids; diversify energy resources with better systems to respond to a crisis; establish a new treaty framework for energy co-operation with Russia while improving relations with energy-rich states in Central Asia[240] and North Africa; use existing energy supplies more efficiently while increasing renewable energy commercialisation; and finally increase funding for new energy technologies.[239]
+In 2007, EU countries as a whole imported 82% of their oil, 57% of their natural gas[241] and 97.48% of their uranium[238] demands. There is a strong dependence on Russian energy that the EU has been attempting to reduce.[242]
+The EU is working to improve cross-border infrastructure within the EU, for example through the Trans-European Networks (TEN). Projects under TEN include the Channel Tunnel, LGV Est, the Fréjus Rail Tunnel, the Öresund Bridge, the Brenner Base Tunnel and the Strait of Messina Bridge. In 2010 the estimated network covers: 75,200 kilometres (46,700 mi) of roads; 78,000 kilometres (48,000 mi) of railways; 330 airports; 270 maritime harbours; and 210 internal harbours.[243][244]
+Rail transport in Europe is being synchronised with the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), an initiative to greatly enhance safety, increase efficiency of trains and enhance cross-border interoperability of rail transport in Europe by replacing signalling equipment with digitised mostly wireless versions and by creating a single Europe-wide standard for train control and command systems.
+The developing European transport policies will increase the pressure on the environment in many regions by the increased transport network. In the pre-2004 EU members, the major problem in transport deals with congestion and pollution. After the recent enlargement, the new states that joined since 2004 added the problem of solving accessibility to the transport agenda.[245] The Polish road network was upgraded such as the A4 autostrada.[246]
+The Galileo positioning system is another EU infrastructure project. Galileo is a proposed Satellite navigation system, to be built by the EU and launched by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Galileo project was launched partly to reduce the EU's dependency on the US-operated Global Positioning System, but also to give more complete global coverage and allow for greater accuracy, given the aged nature of the GPS system.[247]
+The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the long lasting policies of the European Community.[248] The policy has the objectives of increasing agricultural production, providing certainty in food supplies, ensuring a high quality of life for farmers, stabilising markets, and ensuring reasonable prices for consumers.[ad] It was, until recently, operated by a system of subsidies and market intervention. Until the 1990s, the policy accounted for over 60% of the then European Community's annual budget, and as of 2013[update] accounts for around 34%.[249]
+The policy's price controls and market interventions led to considerable overproduction. These were intervention stores of products bought up by the Community to maintain minimum price levels. To dispose of surplus stores, they were often sold on the world market at prices considerably below Community guaranteed prices, or farmers were offered subsidies (amounting to the difference between the Community and world prices) to export their products outside the Community. This system has been criticised for under-cutting farmers outside Europe, especially those in the developing world.[250] Supporters of CAP argue that the economic support which it gives to farmers provides them with a reasonable standard of living.[250]
+Since the beginning of the 1990s, the CAP has been subject to a series of reforms. Initially, these reforms included the introduction of set-aside in 1988, where a proportion of farm land was deliberately withdrawn from production, milk quotas and, more recently, the 'de-coupling' (or disassociation) of the money farmers receive from the EU and the amount they produce (by the Fischler reforms in 2004). Agriculture expenditure will move away from subsidy payments linked to specific produce, toward direct payments based on farm size. This is intended to allow the market to dictate production levels.[248] One of these reforms entailed the modification of the EU's sugar regime, which previously divided the sugar market between member states and certain African-Caribbean nations with a privileged relationship with the EU.[251]
+The EU operates a competition policy intended to ensure undistorted competition within the single market.[ae]
+The Competition Commissioner, currently Margrethe Vestager, is one of the most powerful positions in the Commission, notable for the ability to affect the commercial interests of trans-national corporations.[citation needed] For example, in 2001 the Commission for the first time prevented a merger between two companies based in the United States (GE and Honeywell) which had already been approved by their national authority.[252] Another high-profile case against Microsoft, resulted in the Commission fining Microsoft over €777 million following nine years of legal action.[253]
+The EU seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.7% in September 2018.[254] The euro area unemployment rate was 8.1%.[254] Among the member states, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in the Czech Republic (2.3%), Germany and Poland (both 3.4%), and the highest in Spain (14.9%) and Greece (19.0 in July 2018).[254]
+The EU has long sought to mitigate the effects of free markets by protecting workers rights and preventing social and environmental dumping. To this end it has adopted laws establishing minimum employment and environmental standards. These included the Working Time Directive and the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. The EU has also sought to coordinate the social security and health systems of member states to facilitate individuals exercising free movement rights and to ensure they maintain their ability to access social security and health services in other member states.
+The European Social Charter is the main body that recognizes the social rights of European citizens.
+A European unemployment insurance has been proposed among others by the commissioner of Jobs Nicolas Schmit.[255]
+Since 2019 there is a European Commissioner for Equality; a European Institute for Gender Equality has existed since 2007.
+Housing, youth, childhood, Functional diversity or elderly care are supportive competencies of the European Union and can be financed by the European Social Fund.
+Structural Funds and Cohesion Funds are supporting the development of underdeveloped regions of the EU. Such regions are primarily located in the states of central and southern Europe.[256][257] Several funds provide emergency aid, support for candidate members to transform their country to conform to the EU's standard (Phare, ISPA, and SAPARD), and support to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS). TACIS has now become part of the worldwide EuropeAid programme.
+Demographic transition to a society of aging population, low fertility-rates and depopulation of non-metropolitan regions is tackled within this policies.
+In 1957, when the EEC was founded, it had no environmental policy.[258] Over the past 50 years, an increasingly dense network of legislation has been created, extending to all areas of environmental protection, including air pollution, water quality, waste management, nature conservation, and the control of chemicals, industrial hazards, and biotechnology.[259] According to the Institute for European Environmental Policy, environmental law comprises over 500 Directives, Regulations and Decisions, making environmental policy a core area of European politics.[260]
+European policy-makers originally increased the EU's capacity to act on environmental issues by defining it as a trade problem.[261]
+Trade barriers and competitive distortions in the Common Market could emerge due to the different environmental standards in each member state.[262] In subsequent years, the environment became a formal policy area, with its own policy actors, principles and procedures. The legal basis for EU environmental policy was established with the introduction of the Single European Act in 1987.[260]
+Initially, EU environmental policy focused on Europe. More recently, the EU has demonstrated leadership in global environmental governance, e.g. the role of the EU in securing the ratification and coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol despite opposition from the United States. This international dimension is reflected in the EU's Sixth Environmental Action Programme,[263] which recognises that its objectives can only be achieved if key international agreements are actively supported and properly implemented both at EU level and worldwide. The Lisbon Treaty further strengthened the leadership ambitions.[264] EU law has played a significant role in improving habitat and species protection in Europe, as well as contributing to improvements in air and water quality and waste management.[260]
+Mitigating climate change is one of the top priorities of EU environmental policy. In 2007, member states agreed that, in the future, 20% of the energy used across the EU must be renewable, and carbon dioxide emissions have to be lower in 2020 by at least 20% compared to 1990 levels.[265] The EU has adopted an emissions trading system to incorporate carbon emissions into the economy.[266] The European Green Capital is an annual award given to cities that focuses on the environment, energy efficiency, and quality of life in urban areas to create smart city.
+In the Elections to the European Parliament in 2019, the green parties increased their power, possibly because of the rise of post materialist values.[267]
+Proposals to reach a zero carbon economy in the European Union by 2050 were suggested in 2018 - 2019. Almost all member states supported that goal at an EU summit in June 2019. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Poland disagreed.[268]
+Basic education is an area where the EU's role is limited to supporting national governments. In higher education, the policy was developed in the 1980s in programmes supporting exchanges and mobility. The most visible of these has been the Erasmus Programme, a university exchange programme which began in 1987. In its first 20 years, it supported international exchange opportunities for well over 1.5 million university and college students and became a symbol of European student life.[269]
+There are similar programmes for school pupils and teachers, for trainees in vocational education and training, and for adult learners in the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013. These programmes are designed to encourage a wider knowledge of other countries and to spread good practices in the education and training fields across the EU.[270][271] Through its support of the Bologna Process, the EU is supporting comparable standards and compatible degrees across Europe.
+Scientific development is facilitated through the EU's Framework Programmes, the first of which started in 1984. The aims of EU policy in this area are to co-ordinate and stimulate research. The independent European Research Council allocates EU funds to European or national research projects.[272] EU research and technological framework programmes deal in a number of areas, for example energy where the aim is to develop a diverse mix of renewable energy to help the environment and to reduce dependence on imported fuels.[273]
+The EU has no major competences in the field of health care and Article 35 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union affirms that "A high level of human health protection shall be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies and activities". The European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Consumers seeks to align national laws on the protection of people's health, on the consumers' rights, on the safety of food and other products.[274][275][276]
+All EU and many other European countries offer their citizens a free European Health Insurance Card which, on a reciprocal basis, provides insurance for emergency medical treatment insurance when visiting other participating European countries.[277] A directive on cross-border healthcare aims at promoting co-operation on health care between member states and facilitating access to safe and high-quality cross-border healthcare for European patients.[278][279][280]
+The EU has some of the highest levels of life expectancy in the world, with Spain, Italy, Sweden, France, Malta, Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Greece all among the world's top 20 countries with the highest life expectancy.[281] In general, life expectancy is lower in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe.[282] In 2018, the EU region with the highest life expectancy was Madrid, Spain at 85.2 years, followed by the Spanish regions of La Rioja and Castilla y León both at 84.3 years, Trentino in Italy at 84.3 years and Île-de-France in France at 84.2 years. The overall life expectancy in the EU in 2018 was 81.0 years, higher than the World average of 72.6 years.[283]
+Cultural co-operation between member states has been an interest of the EU since its inclusion as a community competency in the Maastricht Treaty.[284] Actions taken in the cultural area by the EU include the Culture 2000 seven-year programme,[284] the European Cultural Month event,[285] and orchestras such as the European Union Youth Orchestra.[286] The European Capital of Culture programme selects one or more cities in every year to assist the cultural development of that city.[287]
+Association football is by far the most popular sport in the European Union by the number of registered players. The other sports with the most participants in clubs are tennis, basketball, swimming, athletics, golf, gymnastics, equestrian sports, handball, volleyball and sailing.[288]
+Sport is mainly the responsibility of the member states or other international organisations, rather than of the EU. There are some EU policies that have affected sport, such as the free movement of workers, which was at the core of the Bosman ruling that prohibited national football leagues from imposing quotas on foreign players with European citizenship.[289]
+The Treaty of Lisbon requires any application of economic rules to take into account the specific nature of sport and its structures based on voluntary activity.[290] This followed lobbying by governing organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, due to objections over the application of free market principles to sport, which led to an increasing gap between rich and poor clubs.[291] The EU does fund a programme for Israeli, Jordanian, Irish, and British football coaches, as part of the Football 4 Peace project.[292]
+The flag used is the Flag of Europe, which consists of a circle of 12 golden stars on a blue background. Originally designed in 1955 for the Council of Europe, the flag was adopted by the European Communities, the predecessors of the present Union, in 1986. The Council of Europe gave the flag a symbolic description in the following terms,[293] though the official symbolic description adopted by the EU omits the reference to the "Western world":[294]
+Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars symbolise the peoples of Europe in a form of a circle, the sign of union. The number of stars is invariably twelve, the figure twelve being the symbol of perfection and entirety.
+United in Diversity was adopted as the motto of the Union in the year 2000, having been selected from proposals submitted by school pupils.[295] Since 1985, the flag day of the Union has been Europe Day, on 9 May (the date of the 1950 Schuman declaration). The anthem of the Union is an instrumental version of the prelude to the Ode to Joy, the 4th movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's ninth symphony. The anthem was adopted by European Community leaders in 1985 and has since been played on official occasions.[296]
+Besides naming the continent, the Greek mythological figure of Europa has frequently been employed as a personification of Europe. Known from the myth in which Zeus seduces her in the guise of a white bull, Europa has also been referred to in relation to the present Union. Statues of Europa and the bull decorate several of the Union's institutions and a portrait of her is seen on the 2013 series of Euro banknotes. The bull is, for its part, depicted on all residence permit cards.[297]
+Charles the Great, also known as Charlemagne (Latin: Carolus Magnus) and later recognised as Pater Europae ("Father of Europe"),[298][299][300] has a symbolic relevance to Europe. The Commission has named one of its central buildings in Brussels after Charlemagne and the city of Aachen has since 1949 awarded the Charlemagne Prize to champions of European unification.[301] Since 2008, the organisers of this prize, in conjunction with the European Parliament, have awarded the Charlemagne Youth Prize in recognition of similar efforts by young people.[302]
+Media freedom is a fundamental right that applies to all member states of the European Union and its citizens, as defined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as well as the European Convention on Human Rights.[303]:1 Within the EU enlargement process, guaranteeing media freedom is named a "key indicator of a country's readiness to become part of the EU".[304]
+The majority of media in the European Union are national-oriented. Some EU-wide media focusing on European affairs have emerged since the early 1990s, such as Euronews, EUobserver, EURACTIV or Politico Europe.[305][306] ARTE is a public Franco-German TV network that promotes programming in the areas of culture and the arts. 80% of its programming are provided in equal proportion by the two member companies, while the remainder is being provided by the European Economic Interest Grouping ARTE GEIE and the channel's European partners.[307]
+The MEDIA Programme of the European Union has supported the European popular film and audiovisual industries since 1991. It provides support for the development, promotion and distribution of European works within Europe and beyond.[308]
+The European Union has had a significant positive economic impact on most member states.[309] According to a 2019 study of the member states who joined from 1973 to 2004, "without European integration, per capita incomes would have been, on average, approximately 10% lower in the first ten years after joining the EU."[309] Greece was the exception reported by the study, which analysed up to 2008, "to avoid confounding effects from the global financial crisis".[309]
+The European Union has contributed to peace in Europe, in particular by pacifying border disputes.[310][311]
+The European Union has contributed to the spread of democracy, in particular by encouraging democratic reforms in aspiring Eastern European member states after the collapse of the USSR.[312][313] Thomas Risse wrote in 2009, "there is a consensus in the literature on Eastern Europe that the EU membership perspective had a huge anchoring effects for the new democracies."[313] However, R. Daniel Keleman argues that over time, the EU has proved beneficial to leaders who are overseeing democratic backsliding, as the EU is reluctant to intervene in domestic politics, gives the authoritarians funds which they can use to strengthen their regimes, and because freedom of movement within the EU allows dissenting citizens to leave their backsliding countries.[314]
+Official:
+Overviews and data:
+News and interviews:
+Educational resources:

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+The Basset Hound is a short-legged breed of dog in the hound family. The Basset is a scent hound that was originally bred for the purpose of hunting hare. Their sense of smell and ability to ground-scent is second only to the Bloodhound.[1]
+Basset Hounds are one of six recognised "basset"-type breeds in France. The name basset is derived from the French word bas, meaning 'low', with the attenuating suffix -et—together meaning 'rather low'. Basset Hounds are usually bicolours or tricolours of standard hound colouration.
+Bassets are large, short, solid and long, with curved sabre tails held high over their long backs. An adult dog weighs between 20 and 35 kilograms (44 and 77 lb). This breed, relative to its size, is heavier-boned than any other.[2]
+This breed, like its ancestor the Bloodhound, has a hanging skin structure, which causes the face to tend to have a sad look; this, for many people, adds to the breed's charm. The dewlap, seen as the loose, elastic skin around the neck, and the trailing ears which along with the Bloodhound are the longest of any breed, help trap the scent of what they are tracking.[3][4] Its neck is wider than its head. This, combined with the loose skin around its face and neck means that flat collars can easily be pulled off. The previous FCI standard described the characteristic skin of the Basset, which resembles its ancestor the Bloodhound as "loose". This wording has since been updated to "supple and elastic". The looseness of the skin results in the Basset's characteristic facial wrinkles. They drool a lot due to their loose flews.
+The Basset's skull is characterised by its large dolichocephalic nose, which is second only to the Bloodhound in scenting ability and number of olfactory receptor cells.
+The Basset's short legs are due to a form of dwarfism (see: Health). Their short stature can be deceiving; Bassets are surprisingly long and can reach things on table tops that other dogs of similar heights cannot. Because Bassets are so heavy and have such short legs, they are not able to hold themselves above water for very long when swimming, and should always be closely supervised in the water.
+The short-haired coat of a Basset is smooth and soft, and sheds constantly. Any hound coloration is acceptable, but this varies from country to country. They are usually Black, Tan and White tricolors or Tan and White bicolors. Tan can vary from reddish-brown and Red to Lemon. Lemon and White is a less common color. Some Bassets are also classified as gray or blue - this colour is considered rare and undesirable in the show ring.
+The source of colour is the E Locus (MC1R), which has four alleles: EM, EG, E, and e. The EM, E and e alleles are present in the Basset Hounds. The E allele allows for the production of both red and black pigments, so is present with the majority of colour patterns in Basset Hounds.
+Red and Lemon colours are caused by the e allele of MC1R. The e allele is recessive, so red and lemon dogs are homozygous e/e. Lemon dogs are lighter in colour than Reds, but the genetic mechanism that dilutes phaeomelanin in this instance is unknown. No black hairs will be present on either Red or Lemon dogs. If there are any black hairs, the dog is officially a tricolour.
+The EM allele produces a black mask on the face that may extend up around the eyes and onto the ears. This pattern is most easily seen on Mahogany dogs, although any Basset colour pattern may express the EM allele, except for "red and white" or "lemon and white" due to e/e.[6]
+Many Bassets have a clearly defined white blaze and a white tip to their tail, intended to aid hunters in finding their dogs when tracking through underbrush.
+Like all dogs, the Basset Hound's coat is naturally oily. The oil in their coat has a distinctive "hound scent", which is natural to the breed.[7]
+The Basset Hound is a friendly, outgoing, and playful dog, tolerant of children and other pets.[5] They are extremely vocal and famously devoted to tracking. They are also widely known for being stubborn. Prospective owners must be prepared to handle bassets firmly and patiently.
+Basset Hounds have large pendulous ears[8] (known as "leathers") that do not allow air to circulate inside them, unlike other breeds with erect or more open ears. Their ears must be cleaned inside and out frequently to avoid infections and ear mites.[9]
+According to the Basset Hound Club of America, the height of a Basset should not exceed 14 inches or 36 cm.[10]
+The Basset Hound's short stature is due to the genetic condition osteochondrodysplasia (meaning abnormal growth of both bone and cartilage).[11] Dwarfism of this type in most animals is traditionally known as achondroplasia. Basset Hounds, Dachshunds and Bulldogs are a few of the dog breeds classified as Achondroplastic.[12][13] This bone growth abnormality may be a predisposing factor in the development of elbow dysplasia seen in the breed, which leads to arthritis of the elbow joint.[14]
+In addition to ear problems, basset hounds may be susceptible to eye issues. Because of their droopy eyes the area under the eyeball can collect dirt and become clogged with a mucus.[15]
+Basset Hounds are prone to yeast infections[16] in the folds around the mouth,[17] where drool can collect without thoroughly drying out.[citation needed]
+Overweight Basset Hounds develop many serious health issues, including bone and joint injuries, Gastric Dilatation Volvulus and paralysis.
+The only recent mortality and morbidity surveys of Basset Hounds are from the UK:[18] a 1999 longevity survey with a small sample size of 10 deceased dogs[19] and a 2004 UK Kennel Club health survey with a larger sample size of 142 deceased dogs and 226 live dogs.[20] See Mortality and Morbidity below.
+Median longevity of Basset Hounds is about 10.3 years in France and 11.3 years in the UK,[18][21] which is a typical median longevity for purebred dogs and for breeds similar in size to Basset Hounds.[22] The oldest of the 142 deceased dogs in the 2004 UK Kennel Club survey was 16.7 years.[20] Leading causes of death in the 2004 UK Kennel Club survey were cancer (31%), old age (13%), gastric dilatation volvulus (11%), and cardiac (8%).
+Among the 226 live Basset Hounds in the 2004 UKC survey, the most-common health issues noted by owners were dermatologic (such as dermatitis), reproductive, musculoskeletal (for example, arthritis and lameness), and gastrointestinal (for example, gastric dilatation volvulus and colitis).[20] Basset Hounds are also prone to epilepsy, glaucoma, luxating patella, thrombopathia, Von Willebrand disease, hypothyroidism, hip dysplasia, and elbow dysplasia.[14]
+The modern Basset Hound descends from French dogs that were bred in Great Britain in the late 1800s.
+The earliest-known depictions of short-legged hunting dogs are engravings from the Middle Kingdom of Egypt.[23] Mummified remains of short-legged dogs from that period have been uncovered in the Dog Catacombs of Saqqara, Egypt.[24] Scent Hounds were used for hunting in both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.
+The basset type originated in France, and is descended from the 6th century hounds belonging to St Hubert of Belgium, which through breeding at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Hubert eventually became what is known as the St Hubert's Hound around 1000 AD. St Hubert's original hounds are descended from the Laconian (Spartan) Hound,[25] one of four groups of dogs discerned from Greek representations and descriptions. These scent hounds were described as large, slow, 'short-legged and deep mouthed' dogs with a small head, straight nose, upright ears and long neck, and either tan with white markings or black with tan markings.[26] Laconian Hounds were reputed to not give up the scent until they found their prey. They eventually found their way to Constantinople, and from there to Europe.[25]
+The first mention of a "basset" dog appeared in La Venerie, an illustrated hunting text written by Jacques du Fouilloux in 1585.[27][28] The dogs in Fouilloux's text were used to hunt foxes and badgers. It is believed that the Basset type originated as a mutation in the litters of Norman Staghounds, a descendant of the St Hubert's Hound. These precursors were most likely bred back to the St. Hubert's Hound, among other derivative French hounds. Until after the French Revolution around the year 1789, hunting from horseback was the preserve of kings, large aristocratic families and of the country squires, and for this reason short-legged dogs were highly valued for hunting on foot.
+Basset-type hounds became popular during the reign of Emperor Napoleon III (r. 1852–1870). In 1853, Emmanuel Fremiet, "the leading sculptor of animals in his day" exhibited bronze sculptures of Emperor Napoleon III's basset hounds at the Paris Salon.[29] Ten years later in 1863 at the first exhibition of dogs held in Paris, basset hounds attained international attention.[30]
+The controlled breeding of the short haired basset began in France in the year 1870. From the existing bassets, Count Le Couteulx of Canteleu fixed a utilitarian type with straight front legs known as the Chien d'Artois, whereas Mr. Louis Lane developed a more spectacular type, with crooked front legs, known as the Basset Normand. These were bred together to create the original Basset Artésien Normand.[31]
+French basset hounds were being imported into England at least as early as the 1870s. While some of these dogs were certainly Basset Artésien Normands, by the 1880s linebreeding had thrown back to a different heavier type. Everett Millais, who is considered to be the father of the modern Basset Hound, bred one such dog, Nicholas, to a Bloodhound bitch named Inoculation through artificial insemination in order to create a heavier basset in England in the 1890s. The litter was delivered by caesarean section, and the surviving pups were refined with French and English bassets.[32] The first breed standard for what is now known as the Basset Hound was made in Great Britain at the end of 19th century.[33] This standard was updated in 2010.[34]
+The Basset Hound was bred to hunt, with a keen nose and short stature suited to small-game hunting on foot. A variety of Basset Hound developed purely for hunting by Colonel Morrison was admitted to the Masters of Basset Hounds Association in 1959 via an Appendix to the Stud Book. This breed differs in being straighter and longer in the leg and having shorter ears.[35]
+Basset Hounds have been featured in popular culture many times. Some artists, such as director Mamoru Oshii and webcomic artist Scott Kurtz regularly feature their pet Bassets in their work.
+On February 27, 1928, Time magazine featured a basset hound on the front cover.[36] The accompanying story was about the 52nd annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show at Madison Square Garden as if observed by the basset hound puppy.
+Many cartoon dogs are based on the Basset, such as Droopy, with several Bassets appearing in animated Disney films. Syndicated comic strip Fred Basset has been a regular feature in newspapers since 1963.
+There is a Basset Hound in the Smokey and the Bandit movie series. The dog, Fred, was personally picked by lead actor Burt Reynolds because it refused to obey commands.[37]
+In the TV series The Dukes of Hazzard, a Basset Hound called Flash served as a companion to Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane.
+In the series Foofur, a Basset Hound named Dolly, is the affection of Foofur and Burt's.
+In Disney's 1986 film The Great Mouse Detective, a Basset Hound named Toby is the dog of Sherlock Holmes.
+Stella, in The Princess and the Frog, is a Basset Hound.
+In the early days of television, Elvis Presley famously sang "Hound Dog" to a disinterested top hat-wearing basset hound named Sherlock on The Steve Allen Show on July 1, 1956. Lassie had a Basset friend named Pokey early in the Lassie television series. Other famous TV Bassets are the wisecracking Cleo from The People's Choice, and the sheriff's dog Flash in The Dukes of Hazzard.
+In the television series Columbo, Lieutenant Columbo owns a basset hound named Dog. Originally, it was not going to appear in the show because Peter Falk believed that it ‘already had enough gimmicks’ but once the two met, Falk stated that Dog ‘was exactly the type of dog that Columbo would own,’ so he was added to the show and made his first appearance in 1972's Étude In Black.[38]
+In the young adult novel The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, the basset hound is the symbol of college society 'The Loyal Order of the Basset Hound.[39]
+Basset Hounds are often used as advertising logos. The logo for Hush Puppies brand shoes prominently features a Basset Hound whose real name is Jason.[40]  Basset hounds are occasionally referred to as "hush puppies" for that reason. A basset hound also serves as the companion to the lonely Maytag Man in Maytag appliance advertisements. Tidewater Petroleum advertised its "Flying A" gasoline using a basset hound named Axelrod.

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+U or u is the 21st and sixth-to-last letter of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and the fifth vowel letter of the modern English alphabet. Its name in English is u (pronounced /ˈjuː/), plural ues.[1][2]
+The letter u ultimately comes from the Phoenician letter waw by way of the letter y. See the letter y for details.
+During the late Middle Ages, two forms of 'v' developed, which were both used for its ancestor 'u' and modern 'v'. The pointed form 'v' was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form 'u' was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas 'through' and 'excuse' appeared as in modern printing, 'have' and 'upon' were printed 'haue' and 'vpon', respectively. The first recorded use of 'u' and 'v' as distinct letters is in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where 'v' preceded 'u'. Printers eschewed capital 'U' into the 17th century and the distinction between the two letters was not fully accepted by the French Academy until 1762.[3]
+Languages in italics do not use the Latin alphabet; the table refers to latinizations
+In English, the letter ⟨u⟩ has four main pronunciations. There are "long" and "short" pronunciations. Short ⟨u⟩, found originally in closed syllables, most commonly represents /ʌ/ (as in 'duck'), though it retains its old pronunciation /ʊ/ after labial consonants in some words (as in 'put') and occasionally elsewhere (as in 'sugar'). Long ⟨u⟩, found originally in words of French origin (the descendant of Old English long u was respelled as ⟨ou⟩), most commonly represents /juː/ (as in 'mule'), reducing to /uː/ after ⟨r⟩ (as in 'rule'), ⟨j⟩ (as in 'June') and sometimes (or optionally) after ⟨l⟩ (as in 'lute'), and after additional consonants in American English (see do–dew merger).  (After ⟨s⟩, /sjuː, zjuː/ have assimilated to /ʃuː, ʒuː/.) In a few words, short ⟨u⟩ represents other sounds, such as /ɪ/ in 'business' and /ɛ/ in 'bury'.
+The letter ⟨u⟩ is used in the digraphs ⟨au⟩ /ɔː/, ⟨ou⟩ (various pronunciations, but usually /aʊ/), and with the value of "long u" in ⟨eu⟩, ⟨ue⟩, and in a few words ⟨ui⟩ (as in 'fruit'). It often has the sound /w/ before a vowel in the sequences ⟨qu⟩ (as in 'quick'), ⟨gu⟩ (as in 'anguish'), and ⟨su⟩ (as in 'suave'), though it is silent in final -que (as in 'unique') and in many words with ⟨gu⟩ (as in 'guard').
+Additionally, the letter ⟨u⟩ is used in text messaging and internet and other written slang to denote 'you', by virtue of both being pronounced /juː/.
+One thing to note is that certain varieties of the English language (i.e. British English, Canadian English, etc.) use the letter U in words such as colour, labour, valour, etc.; however, in American English the letter is not used and said words mentioned are spelled as color and so on.
+In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨u⟩ represents the close back rounded vowel /u/ or a similar vowel.[4]
+In French orthography the letter represents the close front rounded vowel (/y/); /u/ is represented by ⟨ou⟩. In Dutch and Afrikaans, it represents either /y/, or a near-close near-front rounded vowel (/ʏ/); likewise the phoneme /u/ is represented by ⟨oe⟩. In Welsh orthography the letter can represent a long close front unrounded vowel (/iː/) or short near-close near-front unrounded vowel (/ɪ/)  in Southern dialects. In Northern dialects, the corresponding long and short vowels are a long close central unrounded vowel (/ɨː/) and a short lowered close central unrounded vowel (/ɨ̞/), respectively. /uː/ and /ʊ/ are represented by ⟨w⟩.
+The symbol 'U' is the chemical symbol for uranium.
+In the context of Newtonian mechanics 'U' is the symbol for the potential energy of a system.
+'u' is the symbol for the atomic mass unit and 'U' is the symbol for one Enzyme unit.
+In IPA, the close back rounded vowel is represented by the lower case ⟨u⟩.
+U is also the source of the mathematical symbol ∪, representing a union. It is used mainly for Venn diagrams and geometry.
+It is used as for micro- in metric measurements as a replacement for the Greek letter μ (mu), of which it is a graphic approximation, when that Greek letter is not available, as in "um" for μm (micrometer).
+Some universities, such as the University of Miami and the University of Utah, are locally known as "The U".
+U (or sometimes RU) is a standard height unit of measure in rack units, with each U equal to 44.50 millimetres (1.75 in).

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+U or u is the 21st and sixth-to-last letter of the ISO basic Latin alphabet and the fifth vowel letter of the modern English alphabet. Its name in English is u (pronounced /ˈjuː/), plural ues.[1][2]
+The letter u ultimately comes from the Phoenician letter waw by way of the letter y. See the letter y for details.
+During the late Middle Ages, two forms of 'v' developed, which were both used for its ancestor 'u' and modern 'v'. The pointed form 'v' was written at the beginning of a word, while a rounded form 'u' was used in the middle or end, regardless of sound. So whereas 'through' and 'excuse' appeared as in modern printing, 'have' and 'upon' were printed 'haue' and 'vpon', respectively. The first recorded use of 'u' and 'v' as distinct letters is in a Gothic alphabet from 1386, where 'v' preceded 'u'. Printers eschewed capital 'U' into the 17th century and the distinction between the two letters was not fully accepted by the French Academy until 1762.[3]
+Languages in italics do not use the Latin alphabet; the table refers to latinizations
+In English, the letter ⟨u⟩ has four main pronunciations. There are "long" and "short" pronunciations. Short ⟨u⟩, found originally in closed syllables, most commonly represents /ʌ/ (as in 'duck'), though it retains its old pronunciation /ʊ/ after labial consonants in some words (as in 'put') and occasionally elsewhere (as in 'sugar'). Long ⟨u⟩, found originally in words of French origin (the descendant of Old English long u was respelled as ⟨ou⟩), most commonly represents /juː/ (as in 'mule'), reducing to /uː/ after ⟨r⟩ (as in 'rule'), ⟨j⟩ (as in 'June') and sometimes (or optionally) after ⟨l⟩ (as in 'lute'), and after additional consonants in American English (see do–dew merger).  (After ⟨s⟩, /sjuː, zjuː/ have assimilated to /ʃuː, ʒuː/.) In a few words, short ⟨u⟩ represents other sounds, such as /ɪ/ in 'business' and /ɛ/ in 'bury'.
+The letter ⟨u⟩ is used in the digraphs ⟨au⟩ /ɔː/, ⟨ou⟩ (various pronunciations, but usually /aʊ/), and with the value of "long u" in ⟨eu⟩, ⟨ue⟩, and in a few words ⟨ui⟩ (as in 'fruit'). It often has the sound /w/ before a vowel in the sequences ⟨qu⟩ (as in 'quick'), ⟨gu⟩ (as in 'anguish'), and ⟨su⟩ (as in 'suave'), though it is silent in final -que (as in 'unique') and in many words with ⟨gu⟩ (as in 'guard').
+Additionally, the letter ⟨u⟩ is used in text messaging and internet and other written slang to denote 'you', by virtue of both being pronounced /juː/.
+One thing to note is that certain varieties of the English language (i.e. British English, Canadian English, etc.) use the letter U in words such as colour, labour, valour, etc.; however, in American English the letter is not used and said words mentioned are spelled as color and so on.
+In most languages that use the Latin alphabet, ⟨u⟩ represents the close back rounded vowel /u/ or a similar vowel.[4]
+In French orthography the letter represents the close front rounded vowel (/y/); /u/ is represented by ⟨ou⟩. In Dutch and Afrikaans, it represents either /y/, or a near-close near-front rounded vowel (/ʏ/); likewise the phoneme /u/ is represented by ⟨oe⟩. In Welsh orthography the letter can represent a long close front unrounded vowel (/iː/) or short near-close near-front unrounded vowel (/ɪ/)  in Southern dialects. In Northern dialects, the corresponding long and short vowels are a long close central unrounded vowel (/ɨː/) and a short lowered close central unrounded vowel (/ɨ̞/), respectively. /uː/ and /ʊ/ are represented by ⟨w⟩.
+The symbol 'U' is the chemical symbol for uranium.
+In the context of Newtonian mechanics 'U' is the symbol for the potential energy of a system.
+'u' is the symbol for the atomic mass unit and 'U' is the symbol for one Enzyme unit.
+In IPA, the close back rounded vowel is represented by the lower case ⟨u⟩.
+U is also the source of the mathematical symbol ∪, representing a union. It is used mainly for Venn diagrams and geometry.
+It is used as for micro- in metric measurements as a replacement for the Greek letter μ (mu), of which it is a graphic approximation, when that Greek letter is not available, as in "um" for μm (micrometer).
+Some universities, such as the University of Miami and the University of Utah, are locally known as "The U".
+U (or sometimes RU) is a standard height unit of measure in rack units, with each U equal to 44.50 millimetres (1.75 in).

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+Katsushika Hokusai (葛飾 北斎, c. 31 October 1760 – 10 May 1849), known simply as Hokusai, was a Japanese artist, ukiyo-e painter and printmaker of the Edo period.[1] Born in Edo (now Tokyo), Hokusai is best known as author of the woodblock print series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽三十六景, Fugaku Sanjūroku-kei, c. 1831) which includes the internationally iconic print, The Great Wave off Kanagawa.
+Hokusai created the Thirty-Six Views both as a response to a domestic travel boom and as part of a personal obsession with Mount Fuji.[2] It was this series, specifically The Great Wave print and Fine Wind, Clear Morning, that secured Hokusai's fame both in Japan and overseas. As historian Richard Lane concludes, "if there is one work that made Hokusai's name, both in Japan and abroad, it must be this monumental print-series".[3] While Hokusai's work prior to this series is certainly important, it was not until this series that he gained broad recognition.[4]
+Hokusai's date of birth is unclear, but is often stated as the 23rd day of the 9th month of the 10th year of the Hōreki era (in the old calendar, or 31 October 1760) to an artisan family, in the Katsushika district of Edo, Japan.[5] His childhood name was Tokitarō.[6] It is believed his father was the mirror-maker Nakajima Ise, who produced mirrors for the shōgun.[6] His father never made Hokusai an heir, so it is possible that his mother was a concubine.[5] Hokusai began painting around the age of six, perhaps learning from his father, whose work on mirrors included a painting of designs around mirrors.[5]
+Hokusai was known by at least thirty names during his lifetime. While the use of multiple names was a common practice of Japanese artists of the time, his number of pseudonyms exceeds that of any other major Japanese artist. Hokusai's name changes are so frequent, and so often related to changes in his artistic production and style, that they are used for breaking his life up into periods.[5]
+At the age of 12, his father sent him to work in a bookshop and lending library, a popular institution in Japanese cities, where reading books made from wood-cut blocks was a popular entertainment of the middle and upper classes.[7] At 14, he worked as an apprentice to a wood-carver, until the age of 18, when he entered the studio of Katsukawa Shunshō. Shunshō was an artist of ukiyo-e, a style of woodblock prints and paintings that Hokusai would master, and head of the so-called Katsukawa school.[6] Ukiyo-e, as practised by artists like Shunshō, focused on images of the courtesans and Kabuki actors who were popular in Japan's cities at the time.[8]
+After a year, Hokusai's name changed for the first time, when he was dubbed Shunrō by his master. It was under this name that he published his first prints, a series of pictures of Kabuki actors published in 1779. During the decade he worked in Shunshō's studio, Hokusai was married to his first wife, about whom very little is known except that she died in the early 1790s. He married again in 1797, although this second wife also died after a short time. He fathered two sons and three daughters with these two wives, and his youngest daughter Ei, also known as Ōi, eventually became an artist.[8][9]
+Upon the death of Shunshō in 1793, Hokusai began exploring other styles of art, including European styles he was exposed to through French and Dutch copper engravings he was able to acquire.[8] He was soon expelled from the Katsukawa school by Shunkō, the chief disciple of Shunshō, possibly due to studies at the rival Kanō school. This event was, in his own words, inspirational: "What really motivated the development of my artistic style was the embarrassment I suffered at Shunkō's hands."[3]
+Hokusai also changed the subjects of his works, moving away from the images of courtesans and actors that were the traditional subjects of ukiyo-e. Instead, his work became focused on landscapes and images of the daily life of Japanese people from a variety of social levels. This change of subject was a breakthrough in ukiyo-e and in Hokusai's career.[8] Fireworks in the Cool of Evening at Ryogoku Bridge in Edo (1790) dates from this period of Hokusai's life.[10]
+The next period saw Hokusai's association with the Tawaraya School and the adoption of the name "Tawaraya Sōri". He produced many brush paintings, called surimono, and illustrations for kyōka ehon (illustrated book of humorous poems) during this time. In 1798, Hokusai passed his name on to a pupil and set out as an independent artist, free from ties to a school for the first time, adopting the name Hokusai Tomisa.
+By 1800, Hokusai was further developing his use of ukiyo-e for purposes other than portraiture. He had also adopted the name he would most widely be known by, Katsushika Hokusai, the former name referring to the part of Edo where he was born and the latter meaning, 'north studio'. That year, he published two collections of landscapes, Famous Sights of the Eastern Capital and Eight Views of Edo (modern Tokyo). He also began to attract students of his own, eventually teaching 50 pupils over the course of his life.[8]
+He became increasingly famous over the next decade, both due to his artwork and his talent for self-promotion. During an Edo festival in 1804, he created a portrait of the Buddhist prelate Daruma, founder of Zen, said to be 600 feet (180 m) long using a broom and buckets full of ink.[citation needed] Another story places him in the court of the shogun Tokugawa Ienari, invited there to compete with another artist who practised more traditional brush stroke painting. Hokusai's painting, created in front of the Shōgun, consisted of painting a blue curve on paper, then chasing across it a chicken whose feet had been dipped in red paint. He described the painting to the Shōgun as a landscape showing the Tatsuta River with red maple leaves floating in it, winning the competition.[11]
+1807 saw Hokusai collaborate with the popular novelist Takizawa Bakin on a series of illustrated books. The two did not get along due to artistic differences, and their collaboration ended during work on their fourth book. The publisher, given the choice between keeping Hokusai or Bakin on the project, opted to keep Hokusai, emphasizing the importance of illustrations in printed works of the period.[12]
+Hokusai paid close attention to the production of his work in books. Two instances are documented in letters he wrote to the publishers and block cutters involved in the production of his designs in Toshisen Ehon, a Japanese edition of an anthology of Chinese poetry. Hokusai writes to the book's publisher that the blockcutter Egawa Tomekichi, with whom Hokusai had previously worked and whom he respected, had strayed from Hokusai's style in the cutting of certain heads. Hokusai also wrote directly to another block cutter involved in the project, Sugita Kinsuke, stating that he disliked the Utagawa-school style in which Kinsuke had cut the figure's eyes and noses and that amendments would need to be made for the final prints to be true to Hokusai's style. In his letter, Hokusai includes illustrated examples of both his style of illustrating eyes and noses and the Utagawa–school style. The publisher agreed to make these alterations, even with hundreds of copies of the book already printed. To correct these details the already existing cut blocks would be corrected by use of the Umeki technique. The sections to be corrected would be removed and a prepared piece of wood inserted, into which the blockcutter would cut the revised design. Use of the Umeki technique can be detected by fine break marks bordering the inserted block. Copies in print of both the original woodblock and those made of Hokusai's requested revisions survive, printed in 1833 and 1836 respectively.[13]
+In 1811, at the age of 51, Hokusai changed his name to Taito and entered the period in which he created the Hokusai Manga and various etehon, or art manuals.[6] These etehon, beginning in 1812 with Quick Lessons in Simplified Drawing, served as a convenient way to make money and attract more students. Manga (meaning random drawings) included studies in perspective.[14] The first book of Hokusai's manga, sketches or caricatures that influenced the modern form of comics known by the same name, was published in 1814. Together, his 12 volumes of manga published before 1820 and three more published posthumously include thousands of drawings of animals, religious figures, and everyday people. They often have humorous overtones and were very popular at the time.[12] Later, Hokusai created 4-frame-cartoons. Many of his Manga also illustrates rich people's live in a humorous way.[15]
+On 5 October 1817, he painted at the Hongan-ji Nagoya Betsuin in Nagoya the Big Daruma on paper,[citation needed] measuring 18 × 10.8 metres,[citation needed] impressing many onlookers. For this feat he received the name "Darusen" (a shortened form of Daruma Sensei).[16][17] Although the original was destroyed in 1945, promotional handbills from that time survived and are preserved at the Nagoya City Museum. Based on studies, a reproduction of the large painting was done at a large public event on 23 November 2017 to commemorate the 200-year anniversary of the painting, using the same size and techniques and material as the original.[18][19]
+In 1820, Hokusai changed his name yet again, this time to "Iitsu," a change which marked the start of a period in which he secured fame as an artist throughout Japan. His most famous work, Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, including the famous Great Wave off Kanagawa, was produced in the early 1830s. The results of Hokusai's perspectival studies in Manga can be seen here in The Great Wave off Kanagawa where he uses what would have been seen as a western perspective to represent depth and volume.[14] It proved so popular that Hokusai later added ten more prints to the series. Among the other popular series of prints he published during this time are A Tour of the Waterfalls of the Provinces, Oceans of Wisdom and Unusual Views of Celebrated Bridges in the Provinces.[20] He also began producing a number of detailed individual images of flowers and birds, including the extraordinarily detailed Poppies and Flock of Chickens.[21]
+The next period, beginning in 1834, saw Hokusai working under the name "Gakyō Rōjin" (画狂老人; "The Old Man Mad About Art").[22] It was at this time that Hokusai produced One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji, another significant landscape series.[23]
+In the postscript to this work, Hokusai writes:
+From the age of six, I had a passion for copying the form of things and since the age of fifty I have published many drawings, yet of all I drew by my seventieth year there is nothing worth taking into account. At seventy-three years I partly understood the structure of animals, birds, insects and fishes, and the life of grasses and plants. And so, at eighty-six I shall progress further; at ninety I shall even further penetrate their secret meaning, and by one hundred I shall perhaps truly have reached the level of the marvellous and divine. When I am one hundred and ten, each dot, each line will possess a life of its own.[24]
+In 1839, a fire destroyed Hokusai's studio and much of his work. By this time, his career was beginning to fade as younger artists such as Andō Hiroshige became increasingly popular. At the age of 83, Hokusai traveled to Obuse in Shinano Province (now Nagano Prefecture) at the invitation of a wealthy farmer, Takai Kozan where he stayed for several years.[25] During his time in Obuse, he created several masterpieces, included the Masculine Wave and the Feminine Wave.[25] Hokusai never stopped painting and completed Ducks in a Stream at the age of 87.[26]
+Constantly seeking to produce better work, he apparently exclaimed on his deathbed, "If only Heaven will give me just another ten years ... Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter." He died on 10 May 1849 (18th day of the 4th month of the 2nd year of the Kaei era by the old calendar), and was buried at the Seikyō-ji in Tokyo (Taito Ward).[6]
+Dragon on the Higashimachi Festival Float, Obuse, 1844.
+Feminine Wave, painted while living in Obuse, 1845.
+The Dragon of Smoke Escaping from Mt Fuji
+Hokusai also created erotic art, called shunga in Japanese. Most shunga are a type of ukiyo-e, usually executed in woodblock print format.[27] Translated literally, the Japanese word shunga means picture of spring or "spring".
+Hokusai had a long career, but he produced most of his important work after age 60. His most popular work is the ukiyo-e series Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji, which was created between 1826 and 1833. It actually consists of 46 prints (10 of them added after initial publication).[3]
+In addition, Hokusai is responsible for the 1834 One Hundred Views of Mount Fuji (富嶽百景, Fugaku Hyakkei), a work which "is generally considered the masterpiece among his landscape picture books".[3] His ukiyo-e transformed the art form from a style of portraiture focused on the courtesans and actors popular during the Edo period in Japan's cities into a much broader style of art that focused on landscapes, plants, and animals.[8]
+Both Hokusai's choice of art name and frequent depiction of Mount Fuji stem from his religious beliefs. The name Hokusai (北斎) means "North Studio (room)", an abbreviation of Hokushinsai (北辰際) or "North Star Studio". Hokusai was a member of the Nichiren sect of Buddhism, who see the North Star as associated with the deity Myōken (妙見菩薩).[3]
+Mount Fuji has traditionally been linked with eternal life. This belief can be traced to The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, where a goddess deposits the elixir of life on the peak. As Henry Smith expounds:
+Thus from an early time, Mt. Fuji was seen as the source of the secret of immortality, a tradition that was at the heart of Hokusai's own obsession with the mountain.[2]
+The largest of Hokusai's works is the 15-volume collection Hokusai Manga (北斎漫画), published in 1814. The work is crammed with a collection of nearly 4,000 sketches of animals, people, objects, etc.[3] Despite the name, the sketches can not really be considered the precedent to modern manga, as the style and content of Hokusai's Manga is different from the story-based comic-book style of modern manga.[3]
+Fine Wind, Clear Morning,  from Thirty-six Views of Mount Fuji
+Kirifuri waterfall at Kurokami Mountain in Shimotsuke, from A Tour of Japanese Waterfalls
+Cuckoo and Azaleas, 1834from the Small Flower series
+The Ghost of Oiwa, from One Hundred Ghost Tales
+Courtesan asleep
+Still Life
+The Yodo River [Moon],  from Snow, Moon, Blossoms
+Tenma Bridge in Setsu Province, from Rare Views of Famous Japanese Bridges
+Chōshi in Shimosha,  from One Thousand Images of the Sea
+Fuji From Goten Yama[28]
+Lake Suwa in Shinano Province,  from Rare Views of Famous Landscapes
+Carp Leaping up a Cascade
+The Strong Oi Pouring Sake
+Yoshino Waterfalls, where Yoshitsune Washed his Horse, from A Tour of Japanese Waterfalls
+Hokusai had achievements in various fields as an artist. He made designs for book illustrations and woodblock prints, sketches, and painting for over 70 years.[29] Hokusai was an early experimenter with western linear perspective among Japanese artists.[30] Hokusai himself was influenced by Sesshū Tōyō and other styles of Chinese painting.[31] His influences stretched across the globe to his western contemporaries in nineteenth-century Europe with Japonism, which started with a craze for collecting Japanese art, particularly ukiyo-e, of which some of the first samples were to be seen in Paris, when in about 1856, the French artist Félix Bracquemond first came across a copy of the sketchbook Hokusai Manga at the workshop of his printer.[citation needed] He influenced Art Nouveau, or Jugendstil in Germany, and the larger Impressionism movement, with themes echoing his work appearing in the work of Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. According to the Brooklyn Rail, "many artists collected his woodcuts: Degas, Gauguin, Klimt, Franz Marc, August Macke, Manet, and van Gogh."[32] Hermann Obrist's whiplash motif, or Peitschenhieb, which came to exemplify the new movement, is visibly influenced by Hokusai's work.
+Even after his death, exhibitions of his artworks continue to grow. In 2005, Tokyo National Museum held a Hokusai exhibition which had the largest number of visitors of any exhibit there that year.[33] Several paintings from the Tokyo exhibition were also exhibited in the United Kingdom. The British Museum held the first exhibition of Hokusai's later year artworks including 'The Great Wave' in 2017.[34]
+Hokusai inspired the Hugo Award–winning short story by science fiction author Roger Zelazny, "24 Views of Mt. Fuji, by Hokusai", in which the protagonist tours the area surrounding Mount Fuji, stopping at locations painted by Hokusai. A 2011 book on mindfulness closes with the poem "Hokusai Says" by Roger Keyes, preceded with the explanation that "[s]ometimes poetry captures the soul of an idea better than anything else."[35]
+In the 1985 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Richard Lane characterizes Hokusai as "since the later 19th century [having] impressed Western artists, critics and art lovers alike, more, possibly, than any other single Asian artist".[36]
+'Store Selling Picture Books and Ukiyo-e' by Hokusai shows how ukiyo-e during the time was actually sold; it shows how these prints were sold at local shops, and ordinary people could buy ukiyo-e. Unusually in this image, Hokusai used a hand-colored approach instead of using several separated woodblocks.[1]
+For readers who want more information on specific works of art by Hokusai, these particular works are recommended.
+Monographs dedicated to Hokusai art works:

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+Odysseus /oʊˈdɪsiːəs/ (Greek: Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς,  Ὀdysseús [odysse͜ús]), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses (US: /juːˈlɪsiːz/, UK: /ˈjuːlɪsiːz/; Latin: Ulyssēs, Ulixēs), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
+Son of Laërtes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus and Acusilaus,[1] Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility (polytropos), and is thus known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning (Greek: μῆτις or mētis, "cunning intelligence"[2]). He is most famous for his nostos, or "homecoming", which took him ten eventful years after the decade-long Trojan War.
+In Greek the name was used in various versions. Vase inscriptions have the two groups of Olyseus (Ὀλυσεύς), Olysseus (Ὀλυσσεύς) or Ōlysseus (Ὠλυσσεύς), and Olyteus (Ὀλυτεύς) or Olytteus (Ὀλυττεύς). Probably from an early source from Magna Graecia dates the form Oulixēs (Οὐλίξης), while a later grammarian has Oulixeus (Οὐλιξεύς).[3] In Latin, the figure was known as Ulixēs or (considered less correct) Ulyssēs. Some have supposed that "there may originally have been two separate figures, one called something like Odysseus, the other something like Ulixes, who were combined into one complex personality."[4] However, the change between d and l is common also in some Indo-European and Greek names,[5] and the Latin form is supposed to be derived from the Etruscan Uthuze (see below), which perhaps accounts for some of the phonetic innovations.
+The etymology of the name is unknown. Ancient authors linked the name to the Greek verbs odussomai (ὀδύσσομαι) “to be wroth against, to hate”,[6] to oduromai (ὀδύρομαι) “to lament, bewail”,[7][8] or even to ollumi (ὄλλυμι) “to perish, to be lost”.[9][10] Homer relates it to various forms of this verb in references and puns. In Book 19 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus' early childhood is recounted, Euryclea asks the boy's grandfather Autolycus to name him. Euryclea seems to suggest a name like Polyaretos, "for he has much been prayed for" (πολυάρητος)  but Autolycus "apparently in a sardonic mood" decided to give the child another name commemorative of "his own experience in life":[11] "Since I have been angered (ὀδυσσάμενος odyssamenos) with many, both men and women, let the name of the child be Odysseus".[12] Odysseus often receives the patronymic epithet Laertiades (Λαερτιάδης), "son of Laërtes". In the Iliad and Odyssey there are several further epithets used to describe Odysseus.
+It has also been suggested that the name is of non-Greek origin, possibly not even Indo-European, with an unknown etymology.[13] Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin.[14] In Etruscan religion the name (and stories) of Odysseus were adopted under the name Uthuze (Uθuze), which has been interpreted as a parallel borrowing from a preceding Minoan form of the name (possibly *Oduze, pronounced /'ot͡θut͡se/); this theory is supposed to explain also the insecurity of the phonologies (d or l), since the affricate /t͡θ/, unknown to the Greek of that time, gave rise to different counterparts (i. e. δ or λ in Greek, θ in Etruscan).[15]
+Relatively little is given of Odysseus' background other than that according to Pseudo-Apollodorus, his paternal grandfather or step-grandfather is Arcesius, son of Cephalus and grandson of Aeolus, while his maternal grandfather is the thief Autolycus, son of Hermes[16] and Chione. Hence, Odysseus was the great-grandson of the Olympian god Hermes.
+According to the Iliad and Odyssey, his father is Laertes[17] and his mother Anticlea, although there was a non-Homeric tradition[18][19] that Sisyphus was his true father.[20] The rumour went that Laërtes bought Odysseus from the conniving king.[21] Odysseus is said to have a younger sister, Ctimene, who went to Same to be married and is mentioned by the swineherd Eumaeus, whom she grew up alongside, in book 15 of the Odyssey.[22]
+The majority of sources for Odysseus' pre-war exploits—principally the mythographers Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus—postdate Homer by many centuries. Two stories in particular are well known:
+When Helen is abducted, Menelaus calls upon the other suitors to honour their oaths and help him to retrieve her, an attempt that leads to the Trojan War. Odysseus tries to avoid it by feigning lunacy, as an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed return home for him if he went. He hooks a donkey and an ox to his plow (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of the plow) and (some modern sources add) starts sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes, at the behest of Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, seeks to disprove Odysseus' madness and places Telemachus, Odysseus' infant son, in front of the plow. Odysseus veers the plow away from his son, thus exposing his stratagem.[23] Odysseus holds a grudge against Palamedes during the war for dragging him away from his home.
+Odysseus and other envoys of Agamemnon travel to Scyros to recruit Achilles because of a prophecy that Troy could not be taken without him. By most accounts, Thetis, Achilles' mother, disguises the youth as a woman to hide him from the recruiters because an oracle had predicted that Achilles would either live a long uneventful life or achieve everlasting glory while dying young. Odysseus cleverly discovers which among the women before him is Achilles when the youth is the only one of them to show interest in examining the weapons hidden among an array of adornment gifts for the daughters of their host. Odysseus arranges further for the sounding of a battle horn, which prompts Achilles to clutch a weapon and show his trained disposition. With his disguise foiled, he is exposed and joins Agamemnon's call to arms among the Hellenes.[24]
+Odysseus is one of the most influential Greek champions during the Trojan War. Along with Nestor and Idomeneus he is one of the most trusted counsellors and advisors. He always champions the Achaean cause, especially when others question Agamemnon's command, as in one instance when Thersites speaks against him. When Agamemnon, to test the morale of the Achaeans, announces his intentions to depart Troy, Odysseus restores order to the Greek camp.[25] Later on, after many of the heroes leave the battlefield due to injuries (including Odysseus and Agamemnon), Odysseus once again persuades Agamemnon not to withdraw. Along with two other envoys, he is chosen in the failed embassy to try to persuade Achilles to return to combat.[26]
+When Hector proposes a single combat duel, Odysseus is one of the Danaans who reluctantly volunteered to battle him. Telamonian Ajax ("The Greater"), however, is the volunteer who eventually fights Hector. Odysseus aids Diomedes during the night operations to kill Rhesus, because it had been foretold that if his horses drank from the Scamander River, Troy could not be taken.[27]
+After Patroclus is slain, it is Odysseus who counsels Achilles to let the Achaean men eat and rest rather than follow his rage-driven desire to go back on the offensive—and kill Trojans—immediately. Eventually (and reluctantly), he consents. During the funeral games for Patroclus, Odysseus becomes involved in a wrestling match with Ajax "The Greater" and foot race with Ajax "The Lesser," son of Oileus and Nestor's son Antilochus. He draws the wrestling match, and with the help of the goddess Athena, he wins the race.[28]
+Odysseus has traditionally been viewed as Achilles' antithesis in the Iliad:[29] while Achilles' anger is all-consuming and of a self-destructive nature, Odysseus is frequently viewed as a man of the mean, a voice of reason, renowned for his self-restraint and diplomatic skills. He is also in some respects antithetical to Telamonian Ajax (Shakespeare's "beef-witted" Ajax): while the latter has only brawn to recommend him, Odysseus is not only ingenious (as evidenced by his idea for the Trojan Horse), but an eloquent speaker, a skill perhaps best demonstrated in the embassy to Achilles in book 9 of the Iliad. The two are not only foils in the abstract but often opposed in practice since they have many duels and run-ins.
+Since a prophecy suggested that the Trojan War would not be won without Achilles, Odysseus and several other Achaean leaders went to Skyros to find him. Odysseus discovered Achilles by offering gifts, adornments and musical instruments as well as weapons, to the king's daughters, and then having his companions imitate the noises of an enemy's attack on the island (most notably, making a blast of a trumpet heard), which prompted Achilles to reveal himself by picking a weapon to fight back, and together they departed for the Trojan War.[31]
+The story of the death of Palamedes has many versions. According to some, Odysseus never forgives Palamedes for unmasking his feigned madness and plays a part in his downfall. One tradition says Odysseus convinces a Trojan captive to write a letter pretending to be from Palamedes. A sum of gold is mentioned to have been sent as a reward for Palamedes' treachery. Odysseus then kills the prisoner and hides the gold in Palamedes' tent. He ensures that the letter is found and acquired by Agamemnon, and also gives hints directing the Argives to the gold. This is evidence enough for the Greeks, and they have Palamedes stoned to death. Other sources say that Odysseus and Diomedes goad Palamedes into descending a well with the prospect of treasure being at the bottom. When Palamedes reaches the bottom, the two proceed to bury him with stones, killing him.[32]
+When Achilles is slain in battle by Paris, it is Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax who  retrieve the fallen warrior's body and armour in the thick of heavy fighting. During the funeral games for Achilles, Odysseus competes once again with Telamonian Ajax. Thetis says that the arms of Achilles will go to the bravest of the Greeks, but only these two warriors dare lay claim to that title. The two Argives became embroiled in a heavy dispute about one another's merits to receive the reward. The Greeks dither out of fear in deciding a winner, because they did not want to insult one and have him abandon the war effort. Nestor suggests that they allow the captive Trojans decide the winner.[33] The accounts of the Odyssey disagree, suggesting that the Greeks themselves hold a secret vote.[34] In any case, Odysseus is the winner. Enraged and humiliated, Ajax is driven mad by Athena. When he returns to his senses, in shame at how he has slaughtered livestock in his madness, Ajax kills himself by the sword that Hector had given him after their duel.[35]
+Together with Diomedes, Odysseus fetches Achilles' son, Pyrrhus, to come to the aid of the Achaeans, because an oracle had stated that Troy could not be taken without him. A great warrior, Pyrrhus is also called Neoptolemus (Greek for "new warrior"). Upon the success of the mission, Odysseus gives Achilles' armour to him.
+It is learned that the war can not be won without the poisonous arrows of Heracles, which are owned by the abandoned Philoctetes. Odysseus and Diomedes (or, according to some accounts, Odysseus and Neoptolemus) leave to retrieve them. Upon their arrival, Philoctetes (still suffering from the wound) is seen still to be enraged at the Danaans, especially at Odysseus, for abandoning him. Although his first instinct is to shoot Odysseus, his anger is eventually diffused by Odysseus' persuasive powers and the influence of the gods. Odysseus returns to the Argive camp with Philoctetes and his arrows.[36]
+Perhaps Odysseus' most famous contribution to the Greek war effort is devising the strategem of the Trojan Horse, which allows the Greek army to sneak into Troy under cover of darkness. It is built by Epeius and filled with Greek warriors, led by Odysseus.[37] Odysseus and Diomedes steal the Palladium that lay within Troy's walls, for the Greeks were told they could not sack the city without it. Some late Roman sources indicate that Odysseus schemed to kill his partner on the way back, but Diomedes thwarts this attempt.
+Homer's Iliad and Odyssey portray Odysseus as a culture hero, but the Romans, who believed themselves the heirs of Prince Aeneas of Troy, considered him a villainous falsifier. In Virgil's Aeneid, written between 29 and 19 BC, he is constantly referred to as "cruel Odysseus" (Latin dirus Ulixes) or "deceitful Odysseus" (pellacis, fandi fictor). Turnus, in Aeneid, book 9, reproaches the Trojan Ascanius with images of rugged, forthright Latin virtues, declaring (in John Dryden's translation), "You shall not find the sons of Atreus here, nor need the frauds of sly Ulysses fear." While the Greeks admired his cunning and deceit, these qualities did not recommend themselves to the Romans, who possessed a rigid sense of honour. In Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis, having convinced Agamemnon to consent to the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Artemis, Odysseus facilitates the immolation by telling Iphigenia's mother, Clytemnestra, that the girl is to be wed to Achilles. Odysseus' attempts to avoid his sacred oath to defend Menelaus and Helen offended Roman notions of duty, and the many stratagems and tricks that he employed to get his way offended Roman notions of honour.
+Odysseus is probably best known as the eponymous hero of the Odyssey. This epic describes his travails, which lasted for 10 years, as he tries to return home after the Trojan War and reassert his place as rightful king of Ithaca.
+On the way home from Troy, after a raid on Ismarus in the land of the Cicones, he and his twelve ships are driven off course by storms. They visit the lethargic Lotus-Eaters and are captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus while visiting his island. After Polyphemus eats several of his men, Polyphemus and Odysseus have a discussion and Odysseus tells Polyphemus his name is "Nobody". Odysseus takes a barrel of wine, and the Cyclops drinks it, falling asleep. Odysseus and his men take a wooden stake, ignite it with the remaining wine, and blind him. While they escape, Polyphemus cries in pain, and the other Cyclopes ask him what is wrong. Polyphemus cries, "Nobody has blinded me!" and the other Cyclopes think he has gone mad. Odysseus and his crew escape, but Odysseus rashly reveals his real name, and Polyphemus prays to Poseidon, his father, to take revenge. They stay with Aeolus, the master of the winds, who gives Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. However, the sailors foolishly open the bag while Odysseus sleeps, thinking that it contains gold. All of the winds fly out, and the resulting storm drives the ships back the way they had come, just as Ithaca comes into sight.
+After pleading in vain with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embark and encounter the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. Odysseus' ship is the only one to escape. He sails on and visits the witch-goddess Circe. She turns half of his men into swine after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes warns Odysseus about Circe and gives him a drug called moly, which resists Circe's magic. Circe, being attracted to Odysseus' resistance, falls in love with him and releases his men. Odysseus and his crew remain with her on the island for one year, while they feast and drink. Finally, Odysseus' men convince him to leave for Ithaca.
+Guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew cross the ocean and reach a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrifices to the dead and summons the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias for advice. Next Odysseus meets the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief during his long absence. From her, he learns for the first time news of his own household, threatened by the greed of Penelope's suitors. Odysseus also talks to his fallen war comrades and the mortal shade of Heracles.
+Odysseus and his men return to Circe's island, and she advises them on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirt the land of the Sirens, pass between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, where they row directly between the two. However, Scylla drags the boat towards her by grabbing the oars and eats six men.
+They land on the island of Thrinacia. There, Odysseus' men ignore the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunt down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. Helios tells Zeus what happened and demands Odysseus' men be punished or else he will take the sun and shine it in the Underworld. Zeus fulfills Helios' demands by causing a shipwreck during a thunderstorm in which all but Odysseus drown. He washes ashore on the island of Ogygia, where Calypso compels him to remain as her lover for seven years. He finally escapes when Hermes tells Calypso to release Odysseus.
+Odysseus is shipwrecked and befriended by the Phaeacians. After he tells them his story, the Phaeacians, led by King Alcinous, agree to help Odysseus get home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus, and also meets up with Telemachus returning from Sparta. Athena disguises Odysseus as a wandering beggar to learn how things stand in his household.
+When the disguised Odysseus returns after 20 years, he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos. Penelope announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus' rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe shafts may have her hand. According to Bernard Knox, "For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero".[38] Odysseus' identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, as she is washing his feet and discovers an old scar Odysseus received during a boar hunt. Odysseus swears her to secrecy, threatening to kill her if she tells anyone.
+When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors is able to string the bow. After all the suitors have given up, the disguised Odysseus asks to participate. Though the suitors refuse at first, Penelope intervenes and allows the "stranger" (the disguised Odysseus) to participate. Odysseus easily strings his bow and wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors (beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus' cup) with help from Telemachus and two of Odysseus' servants, Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd. Odysseus tells the serving women who slept with the suitors to clean up the mess of corpses and then has those women hanged in terror. He tells Telemachus that he will replenish his stocks by raiding nearby islands. Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory (with a little makeover by Athena); yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned—she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene (mother of Heracles)—and tests him by ordering her servant Euryclea to move the bed in their wedding-chamber. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope finally accepts that he truly is her husband, a moment that highlights their homophrosýnē (“like-mindedness”).
+The next day Odysseus and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laërtes. The citizens of Ithaca follow Odysseus on the road, planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to make peace.
+Odysseus is one of the most recurrent characters in Western culture.
+According to some late sources, most of them purely genealogical, Odysseus had many other children besides Telemachus, the most famous being:
+Most such genealogies aimed to link Odysseus with the foundation of many Italic cities in remote antiquity.
+He figures in the end of the story of King Telephus of Mysia.
+The supposed last poem in the Epic Cycle is called the Telegony and is thought to tell the story of Odysseus' last voyage, and of his death at the hands of Telegonus, his son with Circe. The poem, like the others of the cycle, is "lost" in that no authentic version has been discovered.
+In 5th century BC Athens, tales of the Trojan War were popular subjects for tragedies. Odysseus figures centrally or indirectly in a number of the extant plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes) and Euripides (Hecuba, Rhesus, Cyclops) and figured in still more that have not survived. In his Ajax, Sophocles portrays Odysseus as a modern voice of reasoning compared to the title character's rigid antiquity.
+Plato in his dialogue Hippias Minor examines a literary question about whom Homer intended to portray as the better man, Achilles or Odysseus.
+As Ulysses, he is mentioned regularly in Virgil's Aeneid written between 29 and 19 BC, and the poem's hero, Aeneas, rescues one of Ulysses' crew members who was left behind on the island of the Cyclopes. He in turn offers a first-person account of some of the same events Homer relates, in which Ulysses appears directly. Virgil's Ulysses typifies his view of the Greeks: he is cunning but impious, and ultimately malicious and hedonistic.
+Ovid retells parts of Ulysses' journeys, focusing on his romantic involvements with Circe and Calypso, and recasts him as, in Harold Bloom's phrase, "one of the great wandering womanizers." Ovid also gives a detailed account of the contest between Ulysses and Ajax for the armour of Achilles.
+Greek legend tells of Ulysses as the founder of Lisbon, Portugal, calling it Ulisipo or Ulisseya, during his twenty-year errand on the Mediterranean and Atlantic seas. Olisipo was Lisbon's name in the Roman Empire. This folk etymology is recounted by Strabo based on Asclepiades of Myrleia's words, by Pomponius Mela, by Gaius Julius Solinus (3rd century AD), and will be resumed by Camões in his epic poem Os Lusíadas (first printed in 1572).[citation needed]
+Dante Alighieri, in the Canto XXVI of the Inferno segment of his Divine Comedy (1308–1320), encounters Odysseus ("Ulisse" in Italian) near the very bottom of Hell: with Diomedes, he walks wrapped in flame in the eighth ring (Counselors of Fraud) of the Eighth Circle (Sins of Malice), as punishment for his schemes and conspiracies that won the Trojan War. In a famous passage, Dante has Odysseus relate a different version of his voyage and death from the one told by Homer. He tells how he set out with his men from Circe's island for a journey of exploration to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and into the Western sea to find what adventures awaited them. Men, says Ulisse, are not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.[40]
+After travelling west and south for five months, they see in the distance a great mountain rising from the sea (this is Purgatory, in Dante's cosmology) before a storm sinks them. Dante does not have access to the original Greek texts of the Homeric epics, so his knowledge of their subject-matter was based only on information from later sources, chiefly Virgil's Aeneid but also Ovid; hence the discrepancy between Dante and Homer.
+He appears in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1602), set during the Trojan War.
+In her poem  Site of the Castle of Ulysses. (published in 1836), Letitia Elizabeth Landon gives her version of The Song of the Sirens with an explanation of its purpose, structure and meaning.
+Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" (published in 1842) presents an aging king who has seen too much of the world to be happy sitting on a throne idling his days away. Leaving the task of civilizing his people to his son, he gathers together a band of old comrades "to sail beyond the sunset".
+Frederick Rolfe's The Weird of the Wanderer (1912) has the hero Nicholas Crabbe (based on the author) travelling back in time, discovering that he is the reincarnation of Odysseus, marrying Helen, being deified and ending up as one of the three Magi.
+James Joyce's novel Ulysses (first published 1918–1920) uses modern literary devices to narrate a single day in the life of a Dublin businessman named Leopold Bloom. Bloom's day turns out to bear many elaborate parallels to Odysseus' ten years of wandering.
+In Virginia Woolf's response novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) the comparable character is Clarisse Dalloway, who also appears in The Voyage Out (1915) and several short stories.
+Nikos Kazantzakis' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938), a 33,333 line epic poem, begins with Odysseus cleansing his body of the blood of Penelope's suitors. Odysseus soon leaves Ithaca in search of new adventures. Before his death he abducts Helen, incites revolutions in Crete and Egypt, communes with God, and meets representatives of such famous historical and literary figures as Vladimir Lenin, Don Quixote and Jesus.
+Return to Ithaca (1946) by Eyvind Johnson is a more realistic retelling of the events that adds a deeper psychological study of the characters of Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. Thematically, it uses Odysseus' backstory and struggle as a metaphor for dealing with the aftermath of war (the novel being written immediately after the end of the Second World War).
+Odysseus is the hero of The Luck of Troy (1961) by Roger Lancelyn Green, whose title refers to the theft of the Palladium.
+In 1986, Irish poet Eilean Ni Chuilleanain published "The Second Voyage", a poem in which she makes use of the story of Odysseus.
+In S. M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time (1998), first part to his Nantucket series of alternate history novels, Odikweos ("Odysseus" in Mycenaean Greek) is a 'historical' figure who is every bit as cunning as his legendary self and is one of the few Bronze Age inhabitants who discerns the time-travellers' real background. Odikweos first aids William Walker's rise to power in Achaea and later helps bring Walker down after seeing his homeland turn into a police state.
+The Penelopiad (2005) by Margaret Atwood retells his story from the point of view of his wife Penelope.
+The literary theorist Núria Perpinyà conceived twenty different interpretations of the Odyssey in a 2008 study.[41]
+Odysseus is also a character in David Gemmell's Troy trilogy (2005–2007), in which he is a good friend and mentor of Helikaon. He is known as the ugly king of Ithaka. His marriage with Penelope was arranged, but they grew to love each other. He is also a famous storyteller, known to exaggerate his stories and heralded as the greatest storyteller of his age. This is used as a plot device to explain the origins of such myths as those of Circe and the Gorgons. In the series, he is fairly old and an unwilling ally of Agamemnon.
+In Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles (a retelling of the Trojan War as well as the life of Patroclus and his romance with Achilles), Odysseus is a major character with much the same role he had in Homer's "Illiad", though it is expanded upon.  Miller's Circe tells of Odysseus's visit to Circe's island from Circe's point of view, the birth of their son Telegonus, and Odysseus' inadvertent death when Telegonus travels to Ithaca to meet him.
+The actors who have portrayed Odysseus in feature films include Kirk Douglas in the Italian Ulysses (1955), John Drew Barrymore in The Trojan Horse (1961), Piero Lulli in The Fury of Achilles (1962), and Sean Bean in Troy (2004).
+In TV miniseries he has been played by Bekim Fehmiu in L'Odissea (1968), Armand Assante in The Odyssey (1997), and by Joseph Mawle in Troy: Fall of a City (2018).
+Ulysses 31 is a French-Japanese animated television series (1981) that updates the Greek mythology of Odysseus to the 31st century.[42]
+Joel and Ethan Coen's film O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) is loosely based on the Odyssey. However, the Coens have stated that they had never read the epic. George Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill, leading a group of escapees from a chain gang through an adventure in search of the proceeds of an armoured truck heist. On their voyage, the gang encounter—amongst other characters—a trio of Sirens and a one-eyed bible salesman.
+The British group Cream recorded the song "Tales of Brave Ulysses" in 1967. Suzanne Vega's song "Calypso" from 1987 album Solitude Standing shows Odysseus from Calypso's point of view, and tells the tale of him coming to the island and his leaving.
+Rolf Riehm composed an opera based on the myth, Sirenen – Bilder des Begehrens und des Vernichtens (Sirens – Images of Desire and Destruction) which premiered at the Oper Frankfurt in 2014.
+Over time, comparisons between Odysseus and other heroes of different mythologies and religions have been made.
+A similar story exists in Hindu mythology with Nala and Damayanti where Nala separates from Damayanti and is reunited with her.[43] The story of stringing a bow is similar to the description in Ramayana of Rama stringing the bow to win Sita's hand in marriage.[44]
+The Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas and his travels to what would become Rome. On his journey he also endures strife comparable to that of Odysseus. However, the motives for both of their journeys differ as Aeneas was driven by this sense of duty granted to him by the Gods that he must abide by. He also kept in mind the future of his people, fitting for the future Father of Rome.
+Strabo writes that on Meninx (Ancient Greek: Μῆνιγξ) island, modern Djerba at Tunisia, there was an altar of the Odysseus.[45]
+Prince Odysseas-Kimon of Greece and Denmark (born 2004), is the grandson of the deposed Greek king, Constantine II.

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+Odysseus /oʊˈdɪsiːəs/ (Greek: Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς,  Ὀdysseús [odysse͜ús]), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses (US: /juːˈlɪsiːz/, UK: /ˈjuːlɪsiːz/; Latin: Ulyssēs, Ulixēs), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
+Son of Laërtes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus and Acusilaus,[1] Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility (polytropos), and is thus known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning (Greek: μῆτις or mētis, "cunning intelligence"[2]). He is most famous for his nostos, or "homecoming", which took him ten eventful years after the decade-long Trojan War.
+In Greek the name was used in various versions. Vase inscriptions have the two groups of Olyseus (Ὀλυσεύς), Olysseus (Ὀλυσσεύς) or Ōlysseus (Ὠλυσσεύς), and Olyteus (Ὀλυτεύς) or Olytteus (Ὀλυττεύς). Probably from an early source from Magna Graecia dates the form Oulixēs (Οὐλίξης), while a later grammarian has Oulixeus (Οὐλιξεύς).[3] In Latin, the figure was known as Ulixēs or (considered less correct) Ulyssēs. Some have supposed that "there may originally have been two separate figures, one called something like Odysseus, the other something like Ulixes, who were combined into one complex personality."[4] However, the change between d and l is common also in some Indo-European and Greek names,[5] and the Latin form is supposed to be derived from the Etruscan Uthuze (see below), which perhaps accounts for some of the phonetic innovations.
+The etymology of the name is unknown. Ancient authors linked the name to the Greek verbs odussomai (ὀδύσσομαι) “to be wroth against, to hate”,[6] to oduromai (ὀδύρομαι) “to lament, bewail”,[7][8] or even to ollumi (ὄλλυμι) “to perish, to be lost”.[9][10] Homer relates it to various forms of this verb in references and puns. In Book 19 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus' early childhood is recounted, Euryclea asks the boy's grandfather Autolycus to name him. Euryclea seems to suggest a name like Polyaretos, "for he has much been prayed for" (πολυάρητος)  but Autolycus "apparently in a sardonic mood" decided to give the child another name commemorative of "his own experience in life":[11] "Since I have been angered (ὀδυσσάμενος odyssamenos) with many, both men and women, let the name of the child be Odysseus".[12] Odysseus often receives the patronymic epithet Laertiades (Λαερτιάδης), "son of Laërtes". In the Iliad and Odyssey there are several further epithets used to describe Odysseus.
+It has also been suggested that the name is of non-Greek origin, possibly not even Indo-European, with an unknown etymology.[13] Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin.[14] In Etruscan religion the name (and stories) of Odysseus were adopted under the name Uthuze (Uθuze), which has been interpreted as a parallel borrowing from a preceding Minoan form of the name (possibly *Oduze, pronounced /'ot͡θut͡se/); this theory is supposed to explain also the insecurity of the phonologies (d or l), since the affricate /t͡θ/, unknown to the Greek of that time, gave rise to different counterparts (i. e. δ or λ in Greek, θ in Etruscan).[15]
+Relatively little is given of Odysseus' background other than that according to Pseudo-Apollodorus, his paternal grandfather or step-grandfather is Arcesius, son of Cephalus and grandson of Aeolus, while his maternal grandfather is the thief Autolycus, son of Hermes[16] and Chione. Hence, Odysseus was the great-grandson of the Olympian god Hermes.
+According to the Iliad and Odyssey, his father is Laertes[17] and his mother Anticlea, although there was a non-Homeric tradition[18][19] that Sisyphus was his true father.[20] The rumour went that Laërtes bought Odysseus from the conniving king.[21] Odysseus is said to have a younger sister, Ctimene, who went to Same to be married and is mentioned by the swineherd Eumaeus, whom she grew up alongside, in book 15 of the Odyssey.[22]
+The majority of sources for Odysseus' pre-war exploits—principally the mythographers Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus—postdate Homer by many centuries. Two stories in particular are well known:
+When Helen is abducted, Menelaus calls upon the other suitors to honour their oaths and help him to retrieve her, an attempt that leads to the Trojan War. Odysseus tries to avoid it by feigning lunacy, as an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed return home for him if he went. He hooks a donkey and an ox to his plow (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of the plow) and (some modern sources add) starts sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes, at the behest of Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, seeks to disprove Odysseus' madness and places Telemachus, Odysseus' infant son, in front of the plow. Odysseus veers the plow away from his son, thus exposing his stratagem.[23] Odysseus holds a grudge against Palamedes during the war for dragging him away from his home.
+Odysseus and other envoys of Agamemnon travel to Scyros to recruit Achilles because of a prophecy that Troy could not be taken without him. By most accounts, Thetis, Achilles' mother, disguises the youth as a woman to hide him from the recruiters because an oracle had predicted that Achilles would either live a long uneventful life or achieve everlasting glory while dying young. Odysseus cleverly discovers which among the women before him is Achilles when the youth is the only one of them to show interest in examining the weapons hidden among an array of adornment gifts for the daughters of their host. Odysseus arranges further for the sounding of a battle horn, which prompts Achilles to clutch a weapon and show his trained disposition. With his disguise foiled, he is exposed and joins Agamemnon's call to arms among the Hellenes.[24]
+Odysseus is one of the most influential Greek champions during the Trojan War. Along with Nestor and Idomeneus he is one of the most trusted counsellors and advisors. He always champions the Achaean cause, especially when others question Agamemnon's command, as in one instance when Thersites speaks against him. When Agamemnon, to test the morale of the Achaeans, announces his intentions to depart Troy, Odysseus restores order to the Greek camp.[25] Later on, after many of the heroes leave the battlefield due to injuries (including Odysseus and Agamemnon), Odysseus once again persuades Agamemnon not to withdraw. Along with two other envoys, he is chosen in the failed embassy to try to persuade Achilles to return to combat.[26]
+When Hector proposes a single combat duel, Odysseus is one of the Danaans who reluctantly volunteered to battle him. Telamonian Ajax ("The Greater"), however, is the volunteer who eventually fights Hector. Odysseus aids Diomedes during the night operations to kill Rhesus, because it had been foretold that if his horses drank from the Scamander River, Troy could not be taken.[27]
+After Patroclus is slain, it is Odysseus who counsels Achilles to let the Achaean men eat and rest rather than follow his rage-driven desire to go back on the offensive—and kill Trojans—immediately. Eventually (and reluctantly), he consents. During the funeral games for Patroclus, Odysseus becomes involved in a wrestling match with Ajax "The Greater" and foot race with Ajax "The Lesser," son of Oileus and Nestor's son Antilochus. He draws the wrestling match, and with the help of the goddess Athena, he wins the race.[28]
+Odysseus has traditionally been viewed as Achilles' antithesis in the Iliad:[29] while Achilles' anger is all-consuming and of a self-destructive nature, Odysseus is frequently viewed as a man of the mean, a voice of reason, renowned for his self-restraint and diplomatic skills. He is also in some respects antithetical to Telamonian Ajax (Shakespeare's "beef-witted" Ajax): while the latter has only brawn to recommend him, Odysseus is not only ingenious (as evidenced by his idea for the Trojan Horse), but an eloquent speaker, a skill perhaps best demonstrated in the embassy to Achilles in book 9 of the Iliad. The two are not only foils in the abstract but often opposed in practice since they have many duels and run-ins.
+Since a prophecy suggested that the Trojan War would not be won without Achilles, Odysseus and several other Achaean leaders went to Skyros to find him. Odysseus discovered Achilles by offering gifts, adornments and musical instruments as well as weapons, to the king's daughters, and then having his companions imitate the noises of an enemy's attack on the island (most notably, making a blast of a trumpet heard), which prompted Achilles to reveal himself by picking a weapon to fight back, and together they departed for the Trojan War.[31]
+The story of the death of Palamedes has many versions. According to some, Odysseus never forgives Palamedes for unmasking his feigned madness and plays a part in his downfall. One tradition says Odysseus convinces a Trojan captive to write a letter pretending to be from Palamedes. A sum of gold is mentioned to have been sent as a reward for Palamedes' treachery. Odysseus then kills the prisoner and hides the gold in Palamedes' tent. He ensures that the letter is found and acquired by Agamemnon, and also gives hints directing the Argives to the gold. This is evidence enough for the Greeks, and they have Palamedes stoned to death. Other sources say that Odysseus and Diomedes goad Palamedes into descending a well with the prospect of treasure being at the bottom. When Palamedes reaches the bottom, the two proceed to bury him with stones, killing him.[32]
+When Achilles is slain in battle by Paris, it is Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax who  retrieve the fallen warrior's body and armour in the thick of heavy fighting. During the funeral games for Achilles, Odysseus competes once again with Telamonian Ajax. Thetis says that the arms of Achilles will go to the bravest of the Greeks, but only these two warriors dare lay claim to that title. The two Argives became embroiled in a heavy dispute about one another's merits to receive the reward. The Greeks dither out of fear in deciding a winner, because they did not want to insult one and have him abandon the war effort. Nestor suggests that they allow the captive Trojans decide the winner.[33] The accounts of the Odyssey disagree, suggesting that the Greeks themselves hold a secret vote.[34] In any case, Odysseus is the winner. Enraged and humiliated, Ajax is driven mad by Athena. When he returns to his senses, in shame at how he has slaughtered livestock in his madness, Ajax kills himself by the sword that Hector had given him after their duel.[35]
+Together with Diomedes, Odysseus fetches Achilles' son, Pyrrhus, to come to the aid of the Achaeans, because an oracle had stated that Troy could not be taken without him. A great warrior, Pyrrhus is also called Neoptolemus (Greek for "new warrior"). Upon the success of the mission, Odysseus gives Achilles' armour to him.
+It is learned that the war can not be won without the poisonous arrows of Heracles, which are owned by the abandoned Philoctetes. Odysseus and Diomedes (or, according to some accounts, Odysseus and Neoptolemus) leave to retrieve them. Upon their arrival, Philoctetes (still suffering from the wound) is seen still to be enraged at the Danaans, especially at Odysseus, for abandoning him. Although his first instinct is to shoot Odysseus, his anger is eventually diffused by Odysseus' persuasive powers and the influence of the gods. Odysseus returns to the Argive camp with Philoctetes and his arrows.[36]
+Perhaps Odysseus' most famous contribution to the Greek war effort is devising the strategem of the Trojan Horse, which allows the Greek army to sneak into Troy under cover of darkness. It is built by Epeius and filled with Greek warriors, led by Odysseus.[37] Odysseus and Diomedes steal the Palladium that lay within Troy's walls, for the Greeks were told they could not sack the city without it. Some late Roman sources indicate that Odysseus schemed to kill his partner on the way back, but Diomedes thwarts this attempt.
+Homer's Iliad and Odyssey portray Odysseus as a culture hero, but the Romans, who believed themselves the heirs of Prince Aeneas of Troy, considered him a villainous falsifier. In Virgil's Aeneid, written between 29 and 19 BC, he is constantly referred to as "cruel Odysseus" (Latin dirus Ulixes) or "deceitful Odysseus" (pellacis, fandi fictor). Turnus, in Aeneid, book 9, reproaches the Trojan Ascanius with images of rugged, forthright Latin virtues, declaring (in John Dryden's translation), "You shall not find the sons of Atreus here, nor need the frauds of sly Ulysses fear." While the Greeks admired his cunning and deceit, these qualities did not recommend themselves to the Romans, who possessed a rigid sense of honour. In Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis, having convinced Agamemnon to consent to the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Artemis, Odysseus facilitates the immolation by telling Iphigenia's mother, Clytemnestra, that the girl is to be wed to Achilles. Odysseus' attempts to avoid his sacred oath to defend Menelaus and Helen offended Roman notions of duty, and the many stratagems and tricks that he employed to get his way offended Roman notions of honour.
+Odysseus is probably best known as the eponymous hero of the Odyssey. This epic describes his travails, which lasted for 10 years, as he tries to return home after the Trojan War and reassert his place as rightful king of Ithaca.
+On the way home from Troy, after a raid on Ismarus in the land of the Cicones, he and his twelve ships are driven off course by storms. They visit the lethargic Lotus-Eaters and are captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus while visiting his island. After Polyphemus eats several of his men, Polyphemus and Odysseus have a discussion and Odysseus tells Polyphemus his name is "Nobody". Odysseus takes a barrel of wine, and the Cyclops drinks it, falling asleep. Odysseus and his men take a wooden stake, ignite it with the remaining wine, and blind him. While they escape, Polyphemus cries in pain, and the other Cyclopes ask him what is wrong. Polyphemus cries, "Nobody has blinded me!" and the other Cyclopes think he has gone mad. Odysseus and his crew escape, but Odysseus rashly reveals his real name, and Polyphemus prays to Poseidon, his father, to take revenge. They stay with Aeolus, the master of the winds, who gives Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. However, the sailors foolishly open the bag while Odysseus sleeps, thinking that it contains gold. All of the winds fly out, and the resulting storm drives the ships back the way they had come, just as Ithaca comes into sight.
+After pleading in vain with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embark and encounter the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. Odysseus' ship is the only one to escape. He sails on and visits the witch-goddess Circe. She turns half of his men into swine after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes warns Odysseus about Circe and gives him a drug called moly, which resists Circe's magic. Circe, being attracted to Odysseus' resistance, falls in love with him and releases his men. Odysseus and his crew remain with her on the island for one year, while they feast and drink. Finally, Odysseus' men convince him to leave for Ithaca.
+Guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew cross the ocean and reach a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrifices to the dead and summons the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias for advice. Next Odysseus meets the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief during his long absence. From her, he learns for the first time news of his own household, threatened by the greed of Penelope's suitors. Odysseus also talks to his fallen war comrades and the mortal shade of Heracles.
+Odysseus and his men return to Circe's island, and she advises them on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirt the land of the Sirens, pass between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, where they row directly between the two. However, Scylla drags the boat towards her by grabbing the oars and eats six men.
+They land on the island of Thrinacia. There, Odysseus' men ignore the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunt down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. Helios tells Zeus what happened and demands Odysseus' men be punished or else he will take the sun and shine it in the Underworld. Zeus fulfills Helios' demands by causing a shipwreck during a thunderstorm in which all but Odysseus drown. He washes ashore on the island of Ogygia, where Calypso compels him to remain as her lover for seven years. He finally escapes when Hermes tells Calypso to release Odysseus.
+Odysseus is shipwrecked and befriended by the Phaeacians. After he tells them his story, the Phaeacians, led by King Alcinous, agree to help Odysseus get home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus, and also meets up with Telemachus returning from Sparta. Athena disguises Odysseus as a wandering beggar to learn how things stand in his household.
+When the disguised Odysseus returns after 20 years, he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos. Penelope announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus' rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe shafts may have her hand. According to Bernard Knox, "For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero".[38] Odysseus' identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, as she is washing his feet and discovers an old scar Odysseus received during a boar hunt. Odysseus swears her to secrecy, threatening to kill her if she tells anyone.
+When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors is able to string the bow. After all the suitors have given up, the disguised Odysseus asks to participate. Though the suitors refuse at first, Penelope intervenes and allows the "stranger" (the disguised Odysseus) to participate. Odysseus easily strings his bow and wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors (beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus' cup) with help from Telemachus and two of Odysseus' servants, Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd. Odysseus tells the serving women who slept with the suitors to clean up the mess of corpses and then has those women hanged in terror. He tells Telemachus that he will replenish his stocks by raiding nearby islands. Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory (with a little makeover by Athena); yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned—she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene (mother of Heracles)—and tests him by ordering her servant Euryclea to move the bed in their wedding-chamber. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope finally accepts that he truly is her husband, a moment that highlights their homophrosýnē (“like-mindedness”).
+The next day Odysseus and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laërtes. The citizens of Ithaca follow Odysseus on the road, planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to make peace.
+Odysseus is one of the most recurrent characters in Western culture.
+According to some late sources, most of them purely genealogical, Odysseus had many other children besides Telemachus, the most famous being:
+Most such genealogies aimed to link Odysseus with the foundation of many Italic cities in remote antiquity.
+He figures in the end of the story of King Telephus of Mysia.
+The supposed last poem in the Epic Cycle is called the Telegony and is thought to tell the story of Odysseus' last voyage, and of his death at the hands of Telegonus, his son with Circe. The poem, like the others of the cycle, is "lost" in that no authentic version has been discovered.
+In 5th century BC Athens, tales of the Trojan War were popular subjects for tragedies. Odysseus figures centrally or indirectly in a number of the extant plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes) and Euripides (Hecuba, Rhesus, Cyclops) and figured in still more that have not survived. In his Ajax, Sophocles portrays Odysseus as a modern voice of reasoning compared to the title character's rigid antiquity.
+Plato in his dialogue Hippias Minor examines a literary question about whom Homer intended to portray as the better man, Achilles or Odysseus.
+As Ulysses, he is mentioned regularly in Virgil's Aeneid written between 29 and 19 BC, and the poem's hero, Aeneas, rescues one of Ulysses' crew members who was left behind on the island of the Cyclopes. He in turn offers a first-person account of some of the same events Homer relates, in which Ulysses appears directly. Virgil's Ulysses typifies his view of the Greeks: he is cunning but impious, and ultimately malicious and hedonistic.
+Ovid retells parts of Ulysses' journeys, focusing on his romantic involvements with Circe and Calypso, and recasts him as, in Harold Bloom's phrase, "one of the great wandering womanizers." Ovid also gives a detailed account of the contest between Ulysses and Ajax for the armour of Achilles.
+Greek legend tells of Ulysses as the founder of Lisbon, Portugal, calling it Ulisipo or Ulisseya, during his twenty-year errand on the Mediterranean and Atlantic seas. Olisipo was Lisbon's name in the Roman Empire. This folk etymology is recounted by Strabo based on Asclepiades of Myrleia's words, by Pomponius Mela, by Gaius Julius Solinus (3rd century AD), and will be resumed by Camões in his epic poem Os Lusíadas (first printed in 1572).[citation needed]
+Dante Alighieri, in the Canto XXVI of the Inferno segment of his Divine Comedy (1308–1320), encounters Odysseus ("Ulisse" in Italian) near the very bottom of Hell: with Diomedes, he walks wrapped in flame in the eighth ring (Counselors of Fraud) of the Eighth Circle (Sins of Malice), as punishment for his schemes and conspiracies that won the Trojan War. In a famous passage, Dante has Odysseus relate a different version of his voyage and death from the one told by Homer. He tells how he set out with his men from Circe's island for a journey of exploration to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and into the Western sea to find what adventures awaited them. Men, says Ulisse, are not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.[40]
+After travelling west and south for five months, they see in the distance a great mountain rising from the sea (this is Purgatory, in Dante's cosmology) before a storm sinks them. Dante does not have access to the original Greek texts of the Homeric epics, so his knowledge of their subject-matter was based only on information from later sources, chiefly Virgil's Aeneid but also Ovid; hence the discrepancy between Dante and Homer.
+He appears in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1602), set during the Trojan War.
+In her poem  Site of the Castle of Ulysses. (published in 1836), Letitia Elizabeth Landon gives her version of The Song of the Sirens with an explanation of its purpose, structure and meaning.
+Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" (published in 1842) presents an aging king who has seen too much of the world to be happy sitting on a throne idling his days away. Leaving the task of civilizing his people to his son, he gathers together a band of old comrades "to sail beyond the sunset".
+Frederick Rolfe's The Weird of the Wanderer (1912) has the hero Nicholas Crabbe (based on the author) travelling back in time, discovering that he is the reincarnation of Odysseus, marrying Helen, being deified and ending up as one of the three Magi.
+James Joyce's novel Ulysses (first published 1918–1920) uses modern literary devices to narrate a single day in the life of a Dublin businessman named Leopold Bloom. Bloom's day turns out to bear many elaborate parallels to Odysseus' ten years of wandering.
+In Virginia Woolf's response novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) the comparable character is Clarisse Dalloway, who also appears in The Voyage Out (1915) and several short stories.
+Nikos Kazantzakis' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938), a 33,333 line epic poem, begins with Odysseus cleansing his body of the blood of Penelope's suitors. Odysseus soon leaves Ithaca in search of new adventures. Before his death he abducts Helen, incites revolutions in Crete and Egypt, communes with God, and meets representatives of such famous historical and literary figures as Vladimir Lenin, Don Quixote and Jesus.
+Return to Ithaca (1946) by Eyvind Johnson is a more realistic retelling of the events that adds a deeper psychological study of the characters of Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. Thematically, it uses Odysseus' backstory and struggle as a metaphor for dealing with the aftermath of war (the novel being written immediately after the end of the Second World War).
+Odysseus is the hero of The Luck of Troy (1961) by Roger Lancelyn Green, whose title refers to the theft of the Palladium.
+In 1986, Irish poet Eilean Ni Chuilleanain published "The Second Voyage", a poem in which she makes use of the story of Odysseus.
+In S. M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time (1998), first part to his Nantucket series of alternate history novels, Odikweos ("Odysseus" in Mycenaean Greek) is a 'historical' figure who is every bit as cunning as his legendary self and is one of the few Bronze Age inhabitants who discerns the time-travellers' real background. Odikweos first aids William Walker's rise to power in Achaea and later helps bring Walker down after seeing his homeland turn into a police state.
+The Penelopiad (2005) by Margaret Atwood retells his story from the point of view of his wife Penelope.
+The literary theorist Núria Perpinyà conceived twenty different interpretations of the Odyssey in a 2008 study.[41]
+Odysseus is also a character in David Gemmell's Troy trilogy (2005–2007), in which he is a good friend and mentor of Helikaon. He is known as the ugly king of Ithaka. His marriage with Penelope was arranged, but they grew to love each other. He is also a famous storyteller, known to exaggerate his stories and heralded as the greatest storyteller of his age. This is used as a plot device to explain the origins of such myths as those of Circe and the Gorgons. In the series, he is fairly old and an unwilling ally of Agamemnon.
+In Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles (a retelling of the Trojan War as well as the life of Patroclus and his romance with Achilles), Odysseus is a major character with much the same role he had in Homer's "Illiad", though it is expanded upon.  Miller's Circe tells of Odysseus's visit to Circe's island from Circe's point of view, the birth of their son Telegonus, and Odysseus' inadvertent death when Telegonus travels to Ithaca to meet him.
+The actors who have portrayed Odysseus in feature films include Kirk Douglas in the Italian Ulysses (1955), John Drew Barrymore in The Trojan Horse (1961), Piero Lulli in The Fury of Achilles (1962), and Sean Bean in Troy (2004).
+In TV miniseries he has been played by Bekim Fehmiu in L'Odissea (1968), Armand Assante in The Odyssey (1997), and by Joseph Mawle in Troy: Fall of a City (2018).
+Ulysses 31 is a French-Japanese animated television series (1981) that updates the Greek mythology of Odysseus to the 31st century.[42]
+Joel and Ethan Coen's film O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) is loosely based on the Odyssey. However, the Coens have stated that they had never read the epic. George Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill, leading a group of escapees from a chain gang through an adventure in search of the proceeds of an armoured truck heist. On their voyage, the gang encounter—amongst other characters—a trio of Sirens and a one-eyed bible salesman.
+The British group Cream recorded the song "Tales of Brave Ulysses" in 1967. Suzanne Vega's song "Calypso" from 1987 album Solitude Standing shows Odysseus from Calypso's point of view, and tells the tale of him coming to the island and his leaving.
+Rolf Riehm composed an opera based on the myth, Sirenen – Bilder des Begehrens und des Vernichtens (Sirens – Images of Desire and Destruction) which premiered at the Oper Frankfurt in 2014.
+Over time, comparisons between Odysseus and other heroes of different mythologies and religions have been made.
+A similar story exists in Hindu mythology with Nala and Damayanti where Nala separates from Damayanti and is reunited with her.[43] The story of stringing a bow is similar to the description in Ramayana of Rama stringing the bow to win Sita's hand in marriage.[44]
+The Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas and his travels to what would become Rome. On his journey he also endures strife comparable to that of Odysseus. However, the motives for both of their journeys differ as Aeneas was driven by this sense of duty granted to him by the Gods that he must abide by. He also kept in mind the future of his people, fitting for the future Father of Rome.
+Strabo writes that on Meninx (Ancient Greek: Μῆνιγξ) island, modern Djerba at Tunisia, there was an altar of the Odysseus.[45]
+Prince Odysseas-Kimon of Greece and Denmark (born 2004), is the grandson of the deposed Greek king, Constantine II.

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+Odysseus /oʊˈdɪsiːəs/ (Greek: Ὀδυσσεύς, Ὀδυσεύς,  Ὀdysseús [odysse͜ús]), also known by the Latin variant Ulysses (US: /juːˈlɪsiːz/, UK: /ˈjuːlɪsiːz/; Latin: Ulyssēs, Ulixēs), is a legendary Greek king of Ithaca and the hero of Homer's epic poem the Odyssey. Odysseus also plays a key role in Homer's Iliad and other works in that same epic cycle.
+Son of Laërtes and Anticlea, husband of Penelope, and father of Telemachus and Acusilaus,[1] Odysseus is renowned for his intellectual brilliance, guile, and versatility (polytropos), and is thus known by the epithet Odysseus the Cunning (Greek: μῆτις or mētis, "cunning intelligence"[2]). He is most famous for his nostos, or "homecoming", which took him ten eventful years after the decade-long Trojan War.
+In Greek the name was used in various versions. Vase inscriptions have the two groups of Olyseus (Ὀλυσεύς), Olysseus (Ὀλυσσεύς) or Ōlysseus (Ὠλυσσεύς), and Olyteus (Ὀλυτεύς) or Olytteus (Ὀλυττεύς). Probably from an early source from Magna Graecia dates the form Oulixēs (Οὐλίξης), while a later grammarian has Oulixeus (Οὐλιξεύς).[3] In Latin, the figure was known as Ulixēs or (considered less correct) Ulyssēs. Some have supposed that "there may originally have been two separate figures, one called something like Odysseus, the other something like Ulixes, who were combined into one complex personality."[4] However, the change between d and l is common also in some Indo-European and Greek names,[5] and the Latin form is supposed to be derived from the Etruscan Uthuze (see below), which perhaps accounts for some of the phonetic innovations.
+The etymology of the name is unknown. Ancient authors linked the name to the Greek verbs odussomai (ὀδύσσομαι) “to be wroth against, to hate”,[6] to oduromai (ὀδύρομαι) “to lament, bewail”,[7][8] or even to ollumi (ὄλλυμι) “to perish, to be lost”.[9][10] Homer relates it to various forms of this verb in references and puns. In Book 19 of the Odyssey, where Odysseus' early childhood is recounted, Euryclea asks the boy's grandfather Autolycus to name him. Euryclea seems to suggest a name like Polyaretos, "for he has much been prayed for" (πολυάρητος)  but Autolycus "apparently in a sardonic mood" decided to give the child another name commemorative of "his own experience in life":[11] "Since I have been angered (ὀδυσσάμενος odyssamenos) with many, both men and women, let the name of the child be Odysseus".[12] Odysseus often receives the patronymic epithet Laertiades (Λαερτιάδης), "son of Laërtes". In the Iliad and Odyssey there are several further epithets used to describe Odysseus.
+It has also been suggested that the name is of non-Greek origin, possibly not even Indo-European, with an unknown etymology.[13] Robert S. P. Beekes has suggested a Pre-Greek origin.[14] In Etruscan religion the name (and stories) of Odysseus were adopted under the name Uthuze (Uθuze), which has been interpreted as a parallel borrowing from a preceding Minoan form of the name (possibly *Oduze, pronounced /'ot͡θut͡se/); this theory is supposed to explain also the insecurity of the phonologies (d or l), since the affricate /t͡θ/, unknown to the Greek of that time, gave rise to different counterparts (i. e. δ or λ in Greek, θ in Etruscan).[15]
+Relatively little is given of Odysseus' background other than that according to Pseudo-Apollodorus, his paternal grandfather or step-grandfather is Arcesius, son of Cephalus and grandson of Aeolus, while his maternal grandfather is the thief Autolycus, son of Hermes[16] and Chione. Hence, Odysseus was the great-grandson of the Olympian god Hermes.
+According to the Iliad and Odyssey, his father is Laertes[17] and his mother Anticlea, although there was a non-Homeric tradition[18][19] that Sisyphus was his true father.[20] The rumour went that Laërtes bought Odysseus from the conniving king.[21] Odysseus is said to have a younger sister, Ctimene, who went to Same to be married and is mentioned by the swineherd Eumaeus, whom she grew up alongside, in book 15 of the Odyssey.[22]
+The majority of sources for Odysseus' pre-war exploits—principally the mythographers Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus—postdate Homer by many centuries. Two stories in particular are well known:
+When Helen is abducted, Menelaus calls upon the other suitors to honour their oaths and help him to retrieve her, an attempt that leads to the Trojan War. Odysseus tries to avoid it by feigning lunacy, as an oracle had prophesied a long-delayed return home for him if he went. He hooks a donkey and an ox to his plow (as they have different stride lengths, hindering the efficiency of the plow) and (some modern sources add) starts sowing his fields with salt. Palamedes, at the behest of Menelaus' brother Agamemnon, seeks to disprove Odysseus' madness and places Telemachus, Odysseus' infant son, in front of the plow. Odysseus veers the plow away from his son, thus exposing his stratagem.[23] Odysseus holds a grudge against Palamedes during the war for dragging him away from his home.
+Odysseus and other envoys of Agamemnon travel to Scyros to recruit Achilles because of a prophecy that Troy could not be taken without him. By most accounts, Thetis, Achilles' mother, disguises the youth as a woman to hide him from the recruiters because an oracle had predicted that Achilles would either live a long uneventful life or achieve everlasting glory while dying young. Odysseus cleverly discovers which among the women before him is Achilles when the youth is the only one of them to show interest in examining the weapons hidden among an array of adornment gifts for the daughters of their host. Odysseus arranges further for the sounding of a battle horn, which prompts Achilles to clutch a weapon and show his trained disposition. With his disguise foiled, he is exposed and joins Agamemnon's call to arms among the Hellenes.[24]
+Odysseus is one of the most influential Greek champions during the Trojan War. Along with Nestor and Idomeneus he is one of the most trusted counsellors and advisors. He always champions the Achaean cause, especially when others question Agamemnon's command, as in one instance when Thersites speaks against him. When Agamemnon, to test the morale of the Achaeans, announces his intentions to depart Troy, Odysseus restores order to the Greek camp.[25] Later on, after many of the heroes leave the battlefield due to injuries (including Odysseus and Agamemnon), Odysseus once again persuades Agamemnon not to withdraw. Along with two other envoys, he is chosen in the failed embassy to try to persuade Achilles to return to combat.[26]
+When Hector proposes a single combat duel, Odysseus is one of the Danaans who reluctantly volunteered to battle him. Telamonian Ajax ("The Greater"), however, is the volunteer who eventually fights Hector. Odysseus aids Diomedes during the night operations to kill Rhesus, because it had been foretold that if his horses drank from the Scamander River, Troy could not be taken.[27]
+After Patroclus is slain, it is Odysseus who counsels Achilles to let the Achaean men eat and rest rather than follow his rage-driven desire to go back on the offensive—and kill Trojans—immediately. Eventually (and reluctantly), he consents. During the funeral games for Patroclus, Odysseus becomes involved in a wrestling match with Ajax "The Greater" and foot race with Ajax "The Lesser," son of Oileus and Nestor's son Antilochus. He draws the wrestling match, and with the help of the goddess Athena, he wins the race.[28]
+Odysseus has traditionally been viewed as Achilles' antithesis in the Iliad:[29] while Achilles' anger is all-consuming and of a self-destructive nature, Odysseus is frequently viewed as a man of the mean, a voice of reason, renowned for his self-restraint and diplomatic skills. He is also in some respects antithetical to Telamonian Ajax (Shakespeare's "beef-witted" Ajax): while the latter has only brawn to recommend him, Odysseus is not only ingenious (as evidenced by his idea for the Trojan Horse), but an eloquent speaker, a skill perhaps best demonstrated in the embassy to Achilles in book 9 of the Iliad. The two are not only foils in the abstract but often opposed in practice since they have many duels and run-ins.
+Since a prophecy suggested that the Trojan War would not be won without Achilles, Odysseus and several other Achaean leaders went to Skyros to find him. Odysseus discovered Achilles by offering gifts, adornments and musical instruments as well as weapons, to the king's daughters, and then having his companions imitate the noises of an enemy's attack on the island (most notably, making a blast of a trumpet heard), which prompted Achilles to reveal himself by picking a weapon to fight back, and together they departed for the Trojan War.[31]
+The story of the death of Palamedes has many versions. According to some, Odysseus never forgives Palamedes for unmasking his feigned madness and plays a part in his downfall. One tradition says Odysseus convinces a Trojan captive to write a letter pretending to be from Palamedes. A sum of gold is mentioned to have been sent as a reward for Palamedes' treachery. Odysseus then kills the prisoner and hides the gold in Palamedes' tent. He ensures that the letter is found and acquired by Agamemnon, and also gives hints directing the Argives to the gold. This is evidence enough for the Greeks, and they have Palamedes stoned to death. Other sources say that Odysseus and Diomedes goad Palamedes into descending a well with the prospect of treasure being at the bottom. When Palamedes reaches the bottom, the two proceed to bury him with stones, killing him.[32]
+When Achilles is slain in battle by Paris, it is Odysseus and Telamonian Ajax who  retrieve the fallen warrior's body and armour in the thick of heavy fighting. During the funeral games for Achilles, Odysseus competes once again with Telamonian Ajax. Thetis says that the arms of Achilles will go to the bravest of the Greeks, but only these two warriors dare lay claim to that title. The two Argives became embroiled in a heavy dispute about one another's merits to receive the reward. The Greeks dither out of fear in deciding a winner, because they did not want to insult one and have him abandon the war effort. Nestor suggests that they allow the captive Trojans decide the winner.[33] The accounts of the Odyssey disagree, suggesting that the Greeks themselves hold a secret vote.[34] In any case, Odysseus is the winner. Enraged and humiliated, Ajax is driven mad by Athena. When he returns to his senses, in shame at how he has slaughtered livestock in his madness, Ajax kills himself by the sword that Hector had given him after their duel.[35]
+Together with Diomedes, Odysseus fetches Achilles' son, Pyrrhus, to come to the aid of the Achaeans, because an oracle had stated that Troy could not be taken without him. A great warrior, Pyrrhus is also called Neoptolemus (Greek for "new warrior"). Upon the success of the mission, Odysseus gives Achilles' armour to him.
+It is learned that the war can not be won without the poisonous arrows of Heracles, which are owned by the abandoned Philoctetes. Odysseus and Diomedes (or, according to some accounts, Odysseus and Neoptolemus) leave to retrieve them. Upon their arrival, Philoctetes (still suffering from the wound) is seen still to be enraged at the Danaans, especially at Odysseus, for abandoning him. Although his first instinct is to shoot Odysseus, his anger is eventually diffused by Odysseus' persuasive powers and the influence of the gods. Odysseus returns to the Argive camp with Philoctetes and his arrows.[36]
+Perhaps Odysseus' most famous contribution to the Greek war effort is devising the strategem of the Trojan Horse, which allows the Greek army to sneak into Troy under cover of darkness. It is built by Epeius and filled with Greek warriors, led by Odysseus.[37] Odysseus and Diomedes steal the Palladium that lay within Troy's walls, for the Greeks were told they could not sack the city without it. Some late Roman sources indicate that Odysseus schemed to kill his partner on the way back, but Diomedes thwarts this attempt.
+Homer's Iliad and Odyssey portray Odysseus as a culture hero, but the Romans, who believed themselves the heirs of Prince Aeneas of Troy, considered him a villainous falsifier. In Virgil's Aeneid, written between 29 and 19 BC, he is constantly referred to as "cruel Odysseus" (Latin dirus Ulixes) or "deceitful Odysseus" (pellacis, fandi fictor). Turnus, in Aeneid, book 9, reproaches the Trojan Ascanius with images of rugged, forthright Latin virtues, declaring (in John Dryden's translation), "You shall not find the sons of Atreus here, nor need the frauds of sly Ulysses fear." While the Greeks admired his cunning and deceit, these qualities did not recommend themselves to the Romans, who possessed a rigid sense of honour. In Euripides' tragedy Iphigenia at Aulis, having convinced Agamemnon to consent to the sacrifice of his daughter, Iphigenia, to appease the goddess Artemis, Odysseus facilitates the immolation by telling Iphigenia's mother, Clytemnestra, that the girl is to be wed to Achilles. Odysseus' attempts to avoid his sacred oath to defend Menelaus and Helen offended Roman notions of duty, and the many stratagems and tricks that he employed to get his way offended Roman notions of honour.
+Odysseus is probably best known as the eponymous hero of the Odyssey. This epic describes his travails, which lasted for 10 years, as he tries to return home after the Trojan War and reassert his place as rightful king of Ithaca.
+On the way home from Troy, after a raid on Ismarus in the land of the Cicones, he and his twelve ships are driven off course by storms. They visit the lethargic Lotus-Eaters and are captured by the Cyclops Polyphemus while visiting his island. After Polyphemus eats several of his men, Polyphemus and Odysseus have a discussion and Odysseus tells Polyphemus his name is "Nobody". Odysseus takes a barrel of wine, and the Cyclops drinks it, falling asleep. Odysseus and his men take a wooden stake, ignite it with the remaining wine, and blind him. While they escape, Polyphemus cries in pain, and the other Cyclopes ask him what is wrong. Polyphemus cries, "Nobody has blinded me!" and the other Cyclopes think he has gone mad. Odysseus and his crew escape, but Odysseus rashly reveals his real name, and Polyphemus prays to Poseidon, his father, to take revenge. They stay with Aeolus, the master of the winds, who gives Odysseus a leather bag containing all the winds, except the west wind, a gift that should have ensured a safe return home. However, the sailors foolishly open the bag while Odysseus sleeps, thinking that it contains gold. All of the winds fly out, and the resulting storm drives the ships back the way they had come, just as Ithaca comes into sight.
+After pleading in vain with Aeolus to help them again, they re-embark and encounter the cannibalistic Laestrygonians. Odysseus' ship is the only one to escape. He sails on and visits the witch-goddess Circe. She turns half of his men into swine after feeding them cheese and wine. Hermes warns Odysseus about Circe and gives him a drug called moly, which resists Circe's magic. Circe, being attracted to Odysseus' resistance, falls in love with him and releases his men. Odysseus and his crew remain with her on the island for one year, while they feast and drink. Finally, Odysseus' men convince him to leave for Ithaca.
+Guided by Circe's instructions, Odysseus and his crew cross the ocean and reach a harbor at the western edge of the world, where Odysseus sacrifices to the dead and summons the spirit of the old prophet Tiresias for advice. Next Odysseus meets the spirit of his own mother, who had died of grief during his long absence. From her, he learns for the first time news of his own household, threatened by the greed of Penelope's suitors. Odysseus also talks to his fallen war comrades and the mortal shade of Heracles.
+Odysseus and his men return to Circe's island, and she advises them on the remaining stages of the journey. They skirt the land of the Sirens, pass between the six-headed monster Scylla and the whirlpool Charybdis, where they row directly between the two. However, Scylla drags the boat towards her by grabbing the oars and eats six men.
+They land on the island of Thrinacia. There, Odysseus' men ignore the warnings of Tiresias and Circe and hunt down the sacred cattle of the sun god Helios. Helios tells Zeus what happened and demands Odysseus' men be punished or else he will take the sun and shine it in the Underworld. Zeus fulfills Helios' demands by causing a shipwreck during a thunderstorm in which all but Odysseus drown. He washes ashore on the island of Ogygia, where Calypso compels him to remain as her lover for seven years. He finally escapes when Hermes tells Calypso to release Odysseus.
+Odysseus is shipwrecked and befriended by the Phaeacians. After he tells them his story, the Phaeacians, led by King Alcinous, agree to help Odysseus get home. They deliver him at night, while he is fast asleep, to a hidden harbor on Ithaca. He finds his way to the hut of one of his own former slaves, the swineherd Eumaeus, and also meets up with Telemachus returning from Sparta. Athena disguises Odysseus as a wandering beggar to learn how things stand in his household.
+When the disguised Odysseus returns after 20 years, he is recognized only by his faithful dog, Argos. Penelope announces in her long interview with the disguised hero that whoever can string Odysseus' rigid bow and shoot an arrow through twelve axe shafts may have her hand. According to Bernard Knox, "For the plot of the Odyssey, of course, her decision is the turning point, the move that makes possible the long-predicted triumph of the returning hero".[38] Odysseus' identity is discovered by the housekeeper, Eurycleia, as she is washing his feet and discovers an old scar Odysseus received during a boar hunt. Odysseus swears her to secrecy, threatening to kill her if she tells anyone.
+When the contest of the bow begins, none of the suitors is able to string the bow. After all the suitors have given up, the disguised Odysseus asks to participate. Though the suitors refuse at first, Penelope intervenes and allows the "stranger" (the disguised Odysseus) to participate. Odysseus easily strings his bow and wins the contest. Having done so, he proceeds to slaughter the suitors (beginning with Antinous whom he finds drinking from Odysseus' cup) with help from Telemachus and two of Odysseus' servants, Eumaeus the swineherd and Philoetius the cowherd. Odysseus tells the serving women who slept with the suitors to clean up the mess of corpses and then has those women hanged in terror. He tells Telemachus that he will replenish his stocks by raiding nearby islands. Odysseus has now revealed himself in all his glory (with a little makeover by Athena); yet Penelope cannot believe that her husband has really returned—she fears that it is perhaps some god in disguise, as in the story of Alcmene (mother of Heracles)—and tests him by ordering her servant Euryclea to move the bed in their wedding-chamber. Odysseus protests that this cannot be done since he made the bed himself and knows that one of its legs is a living olive tree. Penelope finally accepts that he truly is her husband, a moment that highlights their homophrosýnē (“like-mindedness”).
+The next day Odysseus and Telemachus visit the country farm of his old father Laërtes. The citizens of Ithaca follow Odysseus on the road, planning to avenge the killing of the Suitors, their sons. The goddess Athena intervenes and persuades both sides to make peace.
+Odysseus is one of the most recurrent characters in Western culture.
+According to some late sources, most of them purely genealogical, Odysseus had many other children besides Telemachus, the most famous being:
+Most such genealogies aimed to link Odysseus with the foundation of many Italic cities in remote antiquity.
+He figures in the end of the story of King Telephus of Mysia.
+The supposed last poem in the Epic Cycle is called the Telegony and is thought to tell the story of Odysseus' last voyage, and of his death at the hands of Telegonus, his son with Circe. The poem, like the others of the cycle, is "lost" in that no authentic version has been discovered.
+In 5th century BC Athens, tales of the Trojan War were popular subjects for tragedies. Odysseus figures centrally or indirectly in a number of the extant plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles (Ajax, Philoctetes) and Euripides (Hecuba, Rhesus, Cyclops) and figured in still more that have not survived. In his Ajax, Sophocles portrays Odysseus as a modern voice of reasoning compared to the title character's rigid antiquity.
+Plato in his dialogue Hippias Minor examines a literary question about whom Homer intended to portray as the better man, Achilles or Odysseus.
+As Ulysses, he is mentioned regularly in Virgil's Aeneid written between 29 and 19 BC, and the poem's hero, Aeneas, rescues one of Ulysses' crew members who was left behind on the island of the Cyclopes. He in turn offers a first-person account of some of the same events Homer relates, in which Ulysses appears directly. Virgil's Ulysses typifies his view of the Greeks: he is cunning but impious, and ultimately malicious and hedonistic.
+Ovid retells parts of Ulysses' journeys, focusing on his romantic involvements with Circe and Calypso, and recasts him as, in Harold Bloom's phrase, "one of the great wandering womanizers." Ovid also gives a detailed account of the contest between Ulysses and Ajax for the armour of Achilles.
+Greek legend tells of Ulysses as the founder of Lisbon, Portugal, calling it Ulisipo or Ulisseya, during his twenty-year errand on the Mediterranean and Atlantic seas. Olisipo was Lisbon's name in the Roman Empire. This folk etymology is recounted by Strabo based on Asclepiades of Myrleia's words, by Pomponius Mela, by Gaius Julius Solinus (3rd century AD), and will be resumed by Camões in his epic poem Os Lusíadas (first printed in 1572).[citation needed]
+Dante Alighieri, in the Canto XXVI of the Inferno segment of his Divine Comedy (1308–1320), encounters Odysseus ("Ulisse" in Italian) near the very bottom of Hell: with Diomedes, he walks wrapped in flame in the eighth ring (Counselors of Fraud) of the Eighth Circle (Sins of Malice), as punishment for his schemes and conspiracies that won the Trojan War. In a famous passage, Dante has Odysseus relate a different version of his voyage and death from the one told by Homer. He tells how he set out with his men from Circe's island for a journey of exploration to sail beyond the Pillars of Hercules and into the Western sea to find what adventures awaited them. Men, says Ulisse, are not made to live like brutes, but to follow virtue and knowledge.[40]
+After travelling west and south for five months, they see in the distance a great mountain rising from the sea (this is Purgatory, in Dante's cosmology) before a storm sinks them. Dante does not have access to the original Greek texts of the Homeric epics, so his knowledge of their subject-matter was based only on information from later sources, chiefly Virgil's Aeneid but also Ovid; hence the discrepancy between Dante and Homer.
+He appears in Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida (1602), set during the Trojan War.
+In her poem  Site of the Castle of Ulysses. (published in 1836), Letitia Elizabeth Landon gives her version of The Song of the Sirens with an explanation of its purpose, structure and meaning.
+Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem "Ulysses" (published in 1842) presents an aging king who has seen too much of the world to be happy sitting on a throne idling his days away. Leaving the task of civilizing his people to his son, he gathers together a band of old comrades "to sail beyond the sunset".
+Frederick Rolfe's The Weird of the Wanderer (1912) has the hero Nicholas Crabbe (based on the author) travelling back in time, discovering that he is the reincarnation of Odysseus, marrying Helen, being deified and ending up as one of the three Magi.
+James Joyce's novel Ulysses (first published 1918–1920) uses modern literary devices to narrate a single day in the life of a Dublin businessman named Leopold Bloom. Bloom's day turns out to bear many elaborate parallels to Odysseus' ten years of wandering.
+In Virginia Woolf's response novel Mrs Dalloway (1925) the comparable character is Clarisse Dalloway, who also appears in The Voyage Out (1915) and several short stories.
+Nikos Kazantzakis' The Odyssey: A Modern Sequel (1938), a 33,333 line epic poem, begins with Odysseus cleansing his body of the blood of Penelope's suitors. Odysseus soon leaves Ithaca in search of new adventures. Before his death he abducts Helen, incites revolutions in Crete and Egypt, communes with God, and meets representatives of such famous historical and literary figures as Vladimir Lenin, Don Quixote and Jesus.
+Return to Ithaca (1946) by Eyvind Johnson is a more realistic retelling of the events that adds a deeper psychological study of the characters of Odysseus, Penelope, and Telemachus. Thematically, it uses Odysseus' backstory and struggle as a metaphor for dealing with the aftermath of war (the novel being written immediately after the end of the Second World War).
+Odysseus is the hero of The Luck of Troy (1961) by Roger Lancelyn Green, whose title refers to the theft of the Palladium.
+In 1986, Irish poet Eilean Ni Chuilleanain published "The Second Voyage", a poem in which she makes use of the story of Odysseus.
+In S. M. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time (1998), first part to his Nantucket series of alternate history novels, Odikweos ("Odysseus" in Mycenaean Greek) is a 'historical' figure who is every bit as cunning as his legendary self and is one of the few Bronze Age inhabitants who discerns the time-travellers' real background. Odikweos first aids William Walker's rise to power in Achaea and later helps bring Walker down after seeing his homeland turn into a police state.
+The Penelopiad (2005) by Margaret Atwood retells his story from the point of view of his wife Penelope.
+The literary theorist Núria Perpinyà conceived twenty different interpretations of the Odyssey in a 2008 study.[41]
+Odysseus is also a character in David Gemmell's Troy trilogy (2005–2007), in which he is a good friend and mentor of Helikaon. He is known as the ugly king of Ithaka. His marriage with Penelope was arranged, but they grew to love each other. He is also a famous storyteller, known to exaggerate his stories and heralded as the greatest storyteller of his age. This is used as a plot device to explain the origins of such myths as those of Circe and the Gorgons. In the series, he is fairly old and an unwilling ally of Agamemnon.
+In Madeline Miller's The Song of Achilles (a retelling of the Trojan War as well as the life of Patroclus and his romance with Achilles), Odysseus is a major character with much the same role he had in Homer's "Illiad", though it is expanded upon.  Miller's Circe tells of Odysseus's visit to Circe's island from Circe's point of view, the birth of their son Telegonus, and Odysseus' inadvertent death when Telegonus travels to Ithaca to meet him.
+The actors who have portrayed Odysseus in feature films include Kirk Douglas in the Italian Ulysses (1955), John Drew Barrymore in The Trojan Horse (1961), Piero Lulli in The Fury of Achilles (1962), and Sean Bean in Troy (2004).
+In TV miniseries he has been played by Bekim Fehmiu in L'Odissea (1968), Armand Assante in The Odyssey (1997), and by Joseph Mawle in Troy: Fall of a City (2018).
+Ulysses 31 is a French-Japanese animated television series (1981) that updates the Greek mythology of Odysseus to the 31st century.[42]
+Joel and Ethan Coen's film O Brother Where Art Thou? (2000) is loosely based on the Odyssey. However, the Coens have stated that they had never read the epic. George Clooney plays Ulysses Everett McGill, leading a group of escapees from a chain gang through an adventure in search of the proceeds of an armoured truck heist. On their voyage, the gang encounter—amongst other characters—a trio of Sirens and a one-eyed bible salesman.
+The British group Cream recorded the song "Tales of Brave Ulysses" in 1967. Suzanne Vega's song "Calypso" from 1987 album Solitude Standing shows Odysseus from Calypso's point of view, and tells the tale of him coming to the island and his leaving.
+Rolf Riehm composed an opera based on the myth, Sirenen – Bilder des Begehrens und des Vernichtens (Sirens – Images of Desire and Destruction) which premiered at the Oper Frankfurt in 2014.
+Over time, comparisons between Odysseus and other heroes of different mythologies and religions have been made.
+A similar story exists in Hindu mythology with Nala and Damayanti where Nala separates from Damayanti and is reunited with her.[43] The story of stringing a bow is similar to the description in Ramayana of Rama stringing the bow to win Sita's hand in marriage.[44]
+The Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas and his travels to what would become Rome. On his journey he also endures strife comparable to that of Odysseus. However, the motives for both of their journeys differ as Aeneas was driven by this sense of duty granted to him by the Gods that he must abide by. He also kept in mind the future of his people, fitting for the future Father of Rome.
+Strabo writes that on Meninx (Ancient Greek: Μῆνιγξ) island, modern Djerba at Tunisia, there was an altar of the Odysseus.[45]
+Prince Odysseas-Kimon of Greece and Denmark (born 2004), is the grandson of the deposed Greek king, Constantine II.

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+Umberto Eco[a] OMRI (5 January 1932 – 19 February 2016) was an Italian novelist, literary critic, philosopher, semiotician, and university professor. He is widely known for his 1980 novel Il nome della rosa (The Name of the Rose), a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies, and literary theory. He later wrote other novels, including Il pendolo di Foucault (Foucault's Pendulum) and L'isola del giorno prima (The Island of the Day Before). His novel Il cimitero di Praga (The Prague Cemetery), released in 2010, topped the bestseller charts in Italy.[2]
+Eco also wrote academic texts, children's books, and essays, and edited and translated into Italian books from French, such as Raymond Queneau’s “Exercises in Style” (1983). He was the founder of the Department of Media Studies at the University of the Republic of San Marino,[3] president of the Graduate School for the Study of the Humanities at the University of Bologna,[4] member of the Accademia dei Lincei, and an honorary fellow of Kellogg College, Oxford.[5]
+Eco was honoured with the Kenyon Review Award for Literary Achievement in 2005 along with Roger Angell.[6]
+Eco was born on 5 January 1932 in the city of Alessandria, in Piedmont in northern Italy, and he attended high school there. His father, Giulio, one of thirteen children, was an accountant before the government called him to serve in three wars. During World War II, Umberto and his mother, Giovanna (Bisio), moved to a small village in the Piedmontese mountainside.[7] Eco received a Salesian education and made references to the order and its founder in his works and interviews.[8] His family name is supposedly an acronym of ex caelis oblatus (from Latin: a gift from the heavens), which was given to his grandfather (a foundling) by a city official.
+Umberto's father urged him to become a lawyer, but he entered the University of Turin to take up medieval philosophy and literature, writing his thesis on Thomas Aquinas and earning a Laurea degree in philosophy in 1954. During his university studies, Eco stopped believing in God and left the Catholic Church.[9][10] After that, Eco worked as a cultural editor for the state broadcasting station Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) and lectured at the University of Turin (1956–1964). A group of avant-garde artists, painters, musicians and writers, whom he had befriended at RAI (Gruppo 63), became an important and influential component in Eco's writing career. This was especially true after the publication of his first book in 1956, Il problema estetico in San Tommaso, which was an extension of his Laurea thesis. This also marked the beginning of his lecturing career at his alma mater.
+In September 1962 he married Renate Ramge, a German art teacher with whom he had a son and a daughter.
+He divided his time between an apartment in Milan and a vacation house near Urbino. He had a 30,000 volume library in the former and a 20,000 volume library in the latter.[11] He was a visiting professor at Columbia University several times in the 1980s and 1990s. In 1992–1993 Eco was the Norton professor at Harvard University.
+In November 1992 he was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Kent at Canterbury Cathedral.
+On 8 May 1993, Eco received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (DHL) from Indiana University Bloomington in recognition of his over fifteen-year association with the university's Research Center for Language and Semiotic Studies. Six books that were authored, co-authored, or co-edited by Eco were published by  Indiana University Press. In 1996, he was appointed Honorary Doctor of Philosophy of the University of Tartu.[12] He frequently collaborated with his friend Thomas Sebeok, semiotician and Distinguished Professor of Linguistics at Indiana University. He became Satrap of the Collège de 'Pataphysique in 2001. He was Weidenfeld Visiting Professor of Comparative Literature at St Anne's College, Oxford from 2001 to 2002.[13]
+On 23 May 2002, Eco received an honorary Doctor of Letters (DLitt) from Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In 2009, the University of Belgrade in Serbia awarded him an honorary doctorate.[14] Eco was a member of the Italian skeptic organization Comitato Italiano per il Controllo delle Affermazioni sulle Pseudoscienze (Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims of the Pseudosciences) CICAP.[15]
+Eco died at his Milanese home of pancreatic cancer,[16] from which he had been suffering for two years, on the night of 19 February 2016.[17][18] At the time of his death at the age of 84, he was a professor emeritus at the University of Bologna, a position that he had held since 2008.[17][19][20][21]
+In 1959 Eco published his second book, Sviluppo dell'estetica medievale (The Development of Medieval Aesthetics), on medieval philosophy. After 18 months' military service in the Italian Army, he left RAI in 1959 to become the senior non-fiction editor of the Bompiani publishing house in Milan, a position he occupied until 1975.
+Eco began seriously developing his ideas on the "open" text and on semiotics, writing many essays on these subjects, and in 1962 he published Opera aperta (translated into English as "The Open Work"). In it, Eco argued that literary texts are fields of meaning, rather than strings of meaning; and that they are understood as open, internally dynamic and psychologically engaged fields. Literature which limits one's potential understanding to a single, unequivocal line, the closed text, remains the least rewarding, while texts that are the most active between mind, society and life (open texts) are the liveliest and best—although valuation terminology was not his primary focus. Eco came to these positions through study of language and from semiotics, rather than from psychology or historical analysis (as did theorists such as Wolfgang Iser, on the one hand, and Hans Robert Jauss, on the other).
+Eco's short 1961 essay "Fenomenologia di Mike Bongiorno" ("Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno", then the most popular quiz show host in Italy) received much notoriety among the general public and has drawn endless questions by journalists at every public appearance by Eco; the essay was later included in the collection Diario minimo (1963). His book Apocalittici e integrati (1964) analyzes the phenomenon of mass communication from a sociological perspective.
+In 1967 he gave the influential[22] lecture "Towards a Semiological Guerrilla Warfare", which coined the influential term "semiological guerrilla", and influenced the theorization of guerrilla tactics against mainstream mass media culture, such as guerrilla television and culture jamming.[citation needed] Among the expressions used in the essay are "communications guerrilla warfare" and "cultural guerrilla".[23][24] The essay was later included in Eco's book Faith in Fakes.
+In 2012, Eco and Jean-Claude Carrière published a book of conversations on the future of information carriers.[25] Eco criticized social networks, saying for example that "Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community ... but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It's the invasion of the idiots."[26][27]
+Eco founded and developed one of the most important approaches in contemporary semiotics, usually referred to as interpretative semiotics. The main books in which he elaborates his theory are La struttura assente (1968; literally: The Absent Structure), A Theory of Semiotics (1975), The Role of the Reader (1979), Semiotics and Philosophy of Language (1984), The Limits of Interpretation (1990), Kant and the Platypus (1997), and From the Tree to the Labyrinth: Historical Studies on the Sign and Interpretation (2014).
+Eco co-founded Versus: Quaderni di studi semiotici (known as VS among Italian academics), a semiotic journal. VS is used by scholars whose work is related to signs and signification. The journal's foundation and activities have contributed to semiotics as an academic field in its own right, both in Italy and in the rest of Europe. Most of the well-known European semioticians, including Eco, A. J. Greimas, Jean-Marie Floch, and Jacques Fontanille, as well as philosophers and linguists like John Searle and George Lakoff, have published original articles in VS. His work with Serbian and Russian scholars and writers included thought on Milorad Pavić and a meeting with Alexander Genis.[28]
+In 1988, at the University of Bologna, Eco created an unusual program called Anthropology of the West from the perspective of non-Westerners (African and Chinese scholars), as defined by their own criteria. Eco developed this transcultural international network based on the idea of Alain le Pichon in West Africa. The Bologna program resulted in the first conference in Guangzhou, China, in 1991 entitled "Frontiers of Knowledge". The first event was soon followed by an Itinerant Euro-Chinese seminar on "Misunderstandings in the Quest for the Universal" along the silk trade route from Guangzhou to Beijing. The latter culminated in a book entitled The Unicorn and the Dragon,[29] which discussed the question of the creation of knowledge in China and in Europe. Scholars contributing to this volume were from China, including Tang Yijie, Wang Bin and Yue Daiyun, as well as from Europe: Furio Colombo, Antoine Danchin, Jacques Le Goff, Paolo Fabbri and Alain Rey.[30]
+In 2000 a seminar in Timbuktu, Mali, was followed up with another gathering in Bologna to reflect on the conditions of reciprocal knowledge between East and West. This, in turn, gave rise to a series of conferences in Brussels, Paris and Goa, culminating in Beijing in 2007. The topics of the Beijing conference were "Order and Disorder", "New Concepts of War and Peace", "Human Rights" and "Social Justice and Harmony". Eco presented the opening lecture. Among those giving presentations were anthropologists Balveer Arora, Varun Sahni, and Rukmini Bhaya Nair from India, Moussa Sow from Africa, Roland Marti and Maurice Olender from Europe, Cha Insuk from Korea, and Huang Ping and Zhao Tinyang from China. Also on the program were scholars from the fields of law and science including Antoine Danchin, Ahmed Djebbar and Dieter Grimm.[31] Eco's interest in east–west dialogue to facilitate international communication and understanding also correlates with his related interest in the international auxiliary language Esperanto.
+Eco's fiction has enjoyed a wide audience around the world, with many translations. His novels are full of subtle, often multilingual, references to literature and history. Eco's work illustrates the concept of intertextuality, or the inter-connectedness of all literary works. Eco cited James Joyce and Jorge Luis Borges as the two modern authors who have influenced his work the most.[32]
+Eco employed his education as a medievalist in his first novel The Name of the Rose (1980), a historical mystery set in a 14th-century monastery. Franciscan friar William of Baskerville, aided by his assistant Adso, a Benedictine novice, investigates a series of murders at a monastery that is to host an important religious debate. The novel contains many direct or indirect metatextual references to other sources, requiring the detective work of the reader to 'solve'. The title is unexplained in the book. As a symbol, the rose is ubiquitous enough not to confer any single meaning.[33] There is a tribute to Jorge Luis Borges, a major influence on Eco, in the blind monk and librarian Jorge of Burgos: Borges, like the character Jorge, lived a celibate life consecrated to his passion for books, and also went blind in later life. William of Baskerville is a logically-minded Englishman who is a friar and a detective, and his name evokes both William of Ockham and Sherlock Holmes (by way of The Hound of the Baskervilles); several passages describing him are strongly reminiscent of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's descriptions of Holmes.[34][35] The underlying mystery of the murder is borrowed from the "Arabian Nights". The Name of the Rose was later made into a motion picture starring Sean Connery, F. Murray Abraham, Christian Slater and Ron Perlman, which follows the plot, though not the philosophical and historical themes, of the novel [36] and a made-for-television mini-series.
+In Foucault's Pendulum (1988), three under-employed editors who work for a minor publishing house decide to amuse themselves by inventing a conspiracy theory. Their conspiracy, which they call "The Plan", is about an immense and intricate plot to take over the world by a secret order descended from the Knights Templar. As the game goes on, the three slowly become obsessed with the details of this plan. The game turns dangerous when outsiders learn of The Plan, and believe that the men have really discovered the secret to regaining the lost treasure of the Templars.
+The Island of the Day Before (1994) was Eco's third novel. The book, set in the 17th century, is about a man stranded on a ship within sight of an island which he believes is on the other side of the international date-line. The main character is trapped by his inability to swim and instead spends the bulk of the book reminiscing on his life and the adventures that brought him to be stranded.
+Baudolino was published in 2000. Baudolino is a much-travelled polyglot Piedmontese scholar who saves the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates during the sack of Constantinople in the Fourth Crusade. Claiming to be an accomplished liar, he confides his history, from his childhood as a peasant lad endowed with a vivid imagination, through his role as adopted son of Emperor Frederick Barbarossa, to his mission to visit the mythical realm of Prester John. Throughout his retelling, Baudolino brags of his ability to swindle and tell tall tales, leaving the historian (and the reader) unsure of just how much of his story was a lie.
+The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana (2005) is about Giambattista Bodoni, an old bookseller specializing in antiques who emerges from a coma with only some memories to recover his past. Bodoni is pressed to make a very difficult choice, one between his past and his future. He must either abandon his past to live his future or regain his past and sacrifice his future.
+The Prague Cemetery, Eco's sixth novel, was published in 2010. It is the story of a secret agent who "weaves plots, conspiracies, intrigues and attacks, and helps determine the historical and political fate of the European Continent". The book is a narrative of the rise of Modern-day antisemitism, by way of the Dreyfus affair, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other important 19th-century events which gave rise to hatred and hostility toward the Jewish people.
+Numero Zero was published in 2015. Set in 1992 and narrated by Colonna, a hack journalist working on a Milan newspaper, it offers a satire of Italy's kickback and bribery culture[37] as well as, among many things, the legacy of Fascism.
+Ten essays on methods of abductive inference in Poe's Dupin, Doyle's Holmes, Peirce and many others, 236 pages.
+(Art by Eugenio Carmi)

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+An archipelago (/ˌɑːrkɪˈpɛləɡoʊ/ (listen) ARK-ih-PEL-ə-goh), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands.
+Indonesia, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, the Galápagos Islands, Japan, the Philippines, Maldives, the Balearic Isles, the Bahamas, the Aegean Islands, Hawaii, the Canary Islands, Malta, the Azores, Canadian Arctic Archipelago, Archipelago Sea (Finland) and the Shetland Islands are all examples of well-known archipelagos. They are sometimes defined by political boundaries. The Gulf archipelago off the pacific coast forms part of a larger archipelago that geographically includes Washington state's San Juan islands. While the Gulf archipelago and San Juan islands are geographically related, they are not technically included in the same archipelago due to manmade geopolitical borders. [1]
+The word archipelago is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄρχι-(arkhi-, "chief") and πέλαγος (pélagos, "sea") through the Italian arcipelago. In Italian, possibly following a tradition of antiquity, "Archipelago" (from medieval Greek *ἀρχιπέλαγος and Latin archipelagus) was the proper name for the Aegean Sea. Later, usage shifted to refer to the Aegean Islands (since the sea is remarkable for its large number of islands).
+Archipelagos may be found isolated in large amounts of water or neighbouring a large land mass. For example, Scotland has more than 700 islands surrounding its mainland which form an archipelago
+Archipelagos are often volcanic, forming along island arcs generated by subduction zones or hotspots, but may also be the result of erosion, deposition, and land elevation. Depending on their geological origin, islands forming archipelagos can be referred to as oceanic islands, continental fragments, and continental islands.[2]
+Oceanic islands are mainly of volcanic origin, and widely separated from any adjacent continent. The Hawaiian Islands and Easter Island in the Pacific, and Île Amsterdam in the south Indian Ocean are examples.
+Continental fragments correspond to land masses that have separated from a continental mass due to tectonic displacement. The Farallon Islands off the coast of California are an example.
+Sets of islands formed close to the coast of a continent are considered continental archipelagos when they form part of the same continental shelf, when those islands are above-water extensions of the shelf. The islands of the Inside Passage off the coast of British Columbia and the Canadian Arctic Archipelago are examples.
+Artificial archipelagos have been created in various countries for different purposes. Palm Islands and the World Islands off Dubai were or are being created for leisure and tourism purposes.[3][4] Marker Wadden in the Netherlands is being built as a conservation area for birds and other wildlife.[5]
+The largest archipelagic state in the world by area, and by population, is Indonesia.[6]

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+Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other elements; chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen.[1]
+Coal is formed when dead plant matter decays into peat and is converted into coal by the heat and pressure of deep burial over millions of years.[2] Vast deposits of coal originate in former wetlands—called coal forests—that covered much of the Earth's tropical land areas during the late Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian) and Permian times.[3][4]
+As a fossil fuel burned for heat, coal supplies about a quarter of the world's primary energy and two-fifths of its  electricity.[5] Some iron and steel making and other industrial processes burn coal.
+The extraction and use of coal causes many premature deaths and much illness.[6] The coal industry damages the environment, including by climate change as it is the largest anthropogenic source of carbon dioxide, 14 gigatonnes (Gt) in 2016,[7] which is 40% of the total fossil fuel emissions[8] and almost 25% of total global greenhouse gas emissions.[9] As part of the worldwide energy transition many countries have stopped using or use less coal, and the UN Secretary General has asked governments to stop building new coal plants by 2020.[10]  Coal use peaked in 2013[11] but to meet the Paris Agreement target of keeping global warming to well below 2 °C (3.6 °F) coal use needs to halve from 2020 to 2030.[12]
+The largest consumer and importer of coal is  China. China mines almost half the world's coal, followed by India with about a tenth. Australia accounts for about a third of world coal exports followed by Indonesia and Russia.[13]
+The word originally took the form col in Old English, from Proto-Germanic *kula(n), which in turn is hypothesized to come from the Proto-Indo-European root *g(e)u-lo- "live coal".[14] Germanic cognates include the Old Frisian kole, Middle Dutch cole, Dutch kool, Old High German chol, German Kohle and Old Norse kol, and the  Irish word gual is also a cognate via the Indo-European root.[14]
+Coal is composed of macerals, minerals and water.[15] Fossils and amber may be found in coal.
+One theory states that about 360 million years ago, some plants evolved the ability to produce lignin, a complex polymer that made their cellulose stems much harder and more woody. Thus, the first trees evolved. But bacteria and fungi did not immediately evolve the ability to decompose lignin, so the wood did not fully decay but became buried under sediment, eventually turning into coal. About 300 million years ago, mushrooms and other fungi developed this ability, ending the main coal-formation period of earth's history.[16]
+At various times in the geologic past, the Earth had dense forests[17] in low-lying wetland areas. Due to natural processes such as flooding, these forests were buried underneath soil. As more and more soil deposited over them, they were compressed. The temperature also rose as they sank deeper and deeper. As the process continued the plant matter was protected from biodegradation and oxidation, usually by mud or acidic water. This trapped the carbon in immense peat bogs that were eventually covered and deeply buried by sediments. Under high pressure and high temperature, dead vegetation was slowly converted to coal. The conversion of dead vegetation into coal is called coalification. Coalification starts with dead plant matter decaying into peat. Then over millions of years the heat and pressure of deep burial causes the loss of water, methane and carbon dioxide and an increase in the proportion of carbon.[15] Thus first lignite (also called "brown coal"), then sub-bituminous coal, bituminous coal, and lastly anthracite (also called "hard coal" or "black coal") may be formed.[2][18]
+The wide, shallow seas of the Carboniferous Period provided ideal conditions for coal formation, although coal is known from most geological periods. The exception is the coal gap in the Permian–Triassic extinction event, where coal is rare. Coal is known from Precambrian strata, which predate land plants—this coal is presumed to have originated from residues of algae.[19][20]
+Sometimes coal seams (also known as coal beds) are interbedded with other sediments in a cyclothem.
+As geological processes apply pressure to dead biotic material over time, under suitable conditions, its metamorphic grade or rank increases successively into:
+Cannel coal (sometimes called "candle coal") is a variety of fine-grained, high-rank coal with significant hydrogen content, which consists primarily of liptinite.
+There are several international standards for coal.[22] The classification of coal is generally based on the content of volatiles. However the most important distinction is between thermal coal (also known as steam coal), which is burnt to generate electricity via steam; and metallurgical coal (also known as coking coal), which is burnt at high temperature to make steel.
+Hilt's law is a geological observation that (within a small area) the deeper the coal is found, the higher its rank (or grade). It applies if the thermal gradient is entirely vertical; however, metamorphism may cause lateral changes of rank, irrespective of depth.
+The earliest recognized use is from the Shenyang area of China where by 4000 BC Neolithic inhabitants had begun carving ornaments from black lignite.[23] Coal from the Fushun mine in northeastern China was used to smelt copper as early as 1000 BC.[24] Marco Polo, the Italian who traveled to China in the 13th century, described coal as "black stones ... which burn like logs", and said coal was so plentiful, people could take three hot baths a week.[25] In Europe, the earliest reference to the use of coal as fuel is from the geological treatise On stones (Lap. 16) by the Greek scientist Theophrastus (c. 371–287 BC):[26][27]
+Among the materials that are dug because they are useful, those known as anthrakes [coals] are made of earth, and, once set on fire, they burn like charcoal. They are found in Liguria ... and in Elis as one approaches Olympia by the mountain road; and they are used by those who work in metals.
+Outcrop coal was used in Britain during the Bronze Age (3000–2000 BC), where it formed part of funeral pyres.[28][29] In Roman Britain, with the exception of two modern fields, "the Romans were exploiting coals in all the major coalfields in England and Wales by the end of the second century AD".[30] Evidence of trade in coal, dated to about AD 200, has been found at the Roman settlement at Heronbridge, near Chester; and in the Fenlands of East Anglia, where coal from the Midlands was transported via the Car Dyke for use in drying grain.[31] Coal cinders have been found in the hearths of villas and Roman forts, particularly in Northumberland, dated to around AD 400. In the west of England, contemporary writers described the wonder of a permanent brazier of coal on the altar of Minerva at Aquae Sulis (modern day Bath), although in fact easily accessible surface coal from what became the Somerset coalfield was in common use in quite lowly dwellings locally.[32] Evidence of coal's use for iron-working in the city during the Roman period has been found.[33] In Eschweiler, Rhineland, deposits of bituminous coal were used by the Romans for the smelting of iron ore.[30]
+No evidence exists of the product being of great importance in Britain before about AD 1000, the High Middle Ages.[34] Mineral[clarification needed] coal came to be referred to as "seacoal" in the 13th century; the wharf where the material arrived in London was known as Seacoal Lane, so identified in a charter of King Henry III granted in 1253.[35] Initially, the name was given because much coal was found on the shore, having fallen from the exposed coal seams on cliffs above or washed out of underwater coal outcrops,[34] but by the time of Henry VIII, it was understood to derive from the way it was carried to London by sea.[36] In 1257–1259, coal from Newcastle upon Tyne was shipped to London for the smiths and lime-burners building Westminster Abbey.[34] Seacoal Lane and Newcastle Lane, where coal was unloaded at wharves along the River Fleet, still exist.[37]
+These easily accessible sources had largely become exhausted (or could not meet the growing demand) by the 13th century, when underground extraction by shaft mining or adits was developed.[28] The alternative name was "pitcoal", because it came from mines. The development of the Industrial Revolution led to the large-scale use of coal, as the steam engine took over from the water wheel. In 1700, five-sixths of the world's coal was mined in Britain. Britain would have run out of suitable sites for watermills by the 1830s if coal had not been available as a source of energy.[38] In 1947 there were some 750,000 miners in Britain[39] but the last deep coal mine in the UK closed in 2015.[40]
+A grade between bituminous coal and anthracite was once known as "steam coal" as it was widely used as a fuel for steam locomotives. In this specialized use, it is sometimes known as "sea coal" in the United States.[41] Small "steam coal", also called dry small steam nuts (or DSSN), was used as a fuel for domestic water heating.
+Coal continues to arrive on beaches around the world from both natural erosion of exposed coal seams and windswept spills from cargo ships. Many homes in such areas gather this coal as a significant, and sometimes primary, source of home heating fuel.[42]
+Emission intensity is the greenhouse gas emitted over the life of a generator per unit of electricity generated. Of the currently widely used methods of generating electricity the emission intensity of coal and oil is high, as they emit around 1000g of CO2eq for each kWh generated; natural gas is medium emission intensity at around 500g CO2eq per kWh; and all other methods are typically low emission intensity  of under 100g per kWh. The emission intensity of coal varies with type and generator technology and exceeds 1200g per kWh in some countries.[43]
+The energy density of coal, that is its heating value, is roughly 24 megajoules per kilogram[44] (approximately 6.7 kilowatt-hours per kg). For a coal power plant with a 40% efficiency, it takes an estimated 325 kg (717 lb) of coal to power a 100 W lightbulb for one year.[45]
+27.6% of world energy was supplied by coal in 2017 and Asia used almost three quarters of it.[46]
+The composition of coal is reported either as a proximate analysis (moisture, volatile matter, fixed carbon, and ash) or an ultimate analysis (ash, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, and sulfur). The "volatile matter" does not exist by itself (except for some adsorbed methane) but designates the volatile compounds that are produced and driven off by heating the coal. A typical bituminous coal may have an ultimate analysis on a dry, ash-free basis of 84.4% carbon, 5.4% hydrogen, 6.7% oxygen, 1.7% nitrogen, and 1.8% sulfur, on a weight basis.[47]
+The composition of ash, given in terms of oxides, varies:[47]
+Other minor components include:
+Coke is a solid carbonaceous residue derived from coking coal (a low-ash, low-sulfur bituminous coal, also known as metallurgical coal), which is used in manufacturing steel and other iron products.[52] Coke is made from coking coal by baking in an oven without oxygen at temperatures as high as 1,000 °C, driving off the volatile constituents and fusing together the fixed carbon and residual ash. Metallurgical coke is used as a fuel and as a reducing agent in smelting iron ore in a blast furnace.[53]  The carbon monoxide produced by its combustion reduces hematite (an iron oxide) to iron.
+Waste carbon dioxide is also produced (
+2
+Fe
+2
+O
+3
++
+3
+C
+⟶
+4
+Fe
++
+3
+CO
+2
+{\displaystyle {\ce {2Fe2O3 + 3C -> 4Fe + 3CO2}}}
+) together with pig iron, which is too rich in dissolved carbon so must be treated further to make steel.
+Coking coal should be low in ash, sulfur, and phosphorus, so that these do not migrate to the metal.[52]
+The coke must be strong enough to resist the weight of overburden in the blast furnace, which is why coking coal is so important in making steel using the conventional route. Coke from coal is grey, hard, and porous and has a heating value of 29.6 MJ/kg. Some cokemaking processes produce byproducts, including coal tar, ammonia, light oils, and coal gas.
+Petroleum coke (petcoke) is the solid residue obtained in oil refining, which resembles coke but contains too many impurities to be useful in metallurgical applications.
+Finely ground bituminous coal, known in this application as sea coal, is a constituent of foundry sand. While the molten metal is in the mould, the coal burns slowly, releasing reducing gases at pressure, and so preventing the metal from penetrating the pores of the sand. It is also contained in 'mould wash', a paste or liquid with the same function applied to the mould before casting.[54] Sea coal can be mixed with the clay lining (the "bod") used for the bottom of a cupola furnace. When heated, the coal decomposes and the bod becomes slightly friable, easing the process of breaking open holes for tapping the molten metal.[55]
+Scrap steel can be recycled in an electric arc furnace; and an alternative to making iron by smelting is direct reduced iron, where any carbonaceous fuel can be used to make sponge or pelletised iron. To lessen carbon dioxide emissions hydrogen can be used as the reducing agent[56] and biomass or waste as the source of carbon.[57] Historically, charcoal has been used as an alternative to coke in a blast furnace, with the resultant iron being known as charcoal iron.
+Coal gasification, as part of an integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal-fired power station, is used to produce syngas, a mixture of carbon monoxide (CO) and the hydrogen (H2) gas to fire gas turbines to produce electricity. Syngas can also be converted into transportation fuels, such as gasoline and diesel, through the Fischer-Tropsch process; alternatively, syngas can be converted into methanol, which can be blended into fuel directly or converted to gasoline via the methanol to gasoline process.[58] Gasification combined with Fischer-Tropsch technology was used by the Sasol chemical company of South Africa to make chemicals and motor vehicle fuels from coal.[59]
+During gasification, the coal is mixed with oxygen and steam while also being heated and pressurized. During the reaction, oxygen and water molecules oxidize the coal into carbon monoxide (CO), while also releasing hydrogen gas (H2). This used to be done in underground coal mines, and also to make town gas which was piped to customers to burn for illumination, heating, and cooking.
+If the refiner wants to produce gasoline, the syngas is routed into a Fischer-Tropsch reaction. This is known as indirect coal liquefaction. If hydrogen is the desired end-product, however, the syngas is fed into the water gas shift reaction, where more hydrogen is liberated:
+Coal can be converted directly into synthetic fuels equivalent to gasoline or diesel by hydrogenation or carbonization.[60] Coal liquefaction emits more carbon dioxide than liquid fuel production from crude oil. Mixing in biomass and using CCS would emit slightly less than the oil process but at a high cost.[61] State owned China Energy Investment runs a coal liquefaction plant and plans to build 2 more.[62]
+Coal liquefaction may also refer to the cargo hazard when shipping coal.[63]
+Chemicals have been produced from coal since the 1950s. Coal can be used as a feedstock in the production of a wide range of chemical fertilizers and other chemical products. The main route to these products was coal gasification to produce syngas. Primary chemicals that are produced directly from the syngas include methanol, hydrogen and carbon monoxide, which are the chemical building blocks from which a whole spectrum of derivative chemicals are manufactured, including olefins, acetic acid, formaldehyde, ammonia, urea and others. The versatility of syngas as a precursor to primary chemicals and high-value derivative products provides the option of using coal to produce a wide range of commodities. In the 21st century, however, the use of coal bed methane is becoming more important.[64]
+Because the slate of chemical products that can be made via coal gasification can in general also use feedstocks derived from natural gas and petroleum, the chemical industry tends to use whatever feedstocks are most cost-effective. Therefore, interest in using coal tended to increase for higher oil and natural gas prices and during periods of high global economic growth that might have strained oil and gas production.
+Coal to chemical processes require substantial quantities of water.[65] Much coal to chemical production is in China[66][67] where coal dependent provinces such as Shanxi are struggling to control its pollution.[68]
+Refined coal is the product of a coal-upgrading technology that removes moisture and certain pollutants from lower-rank coals such as sub-bituminous and lignite (brown) coals. It is one form of several precombustion treatments and processes for coal that alter coal's characteristics before it is burned. Thermal efficiency improvements are achievable by improved pre-drying (especially relevant with high-moisture fuel such as lignite or biomass).[69] The goals of precombustion coal technologies are to increase efficiency and reduce emissions when the coal is burned. Precombustion technology can sometimes be used as a supplement to postcombustion technologies to control emissions from coal-fueled boilers.
+Coal burnt as a solid fuel in coal power stations to generate electricity is called thermal coal. Coal is also used to produce very high temperatures through combustion. Early deaths due to air pollution have been estimated at 200 per GW-year, however they may be higher around power plants where scrubbers are not used or lower if they are far from cities.[70] Efforts around the world to reduce the use of coal have led some regions to switch to natural gas and electricity from lower carbon sources.
+When coal is used for electricity generation, it is usually pulverized and then burned in a furnace with a boiler.[71] The furnace heat converts boiler water to steam, which is then used to spin turbines which turn generators and create electricity.[72] The thermodynamic efficiency of this process varies between about 25% and 50% depending on the pre-combustion treatment, turbine technology (e.g. supercritical steam generator) and the age of the plant.[73][74]
+A few integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) power plants have been built, which burn coal more efficiently. Instead of pulverizing the coal and burning it directly as fuel in the steam-generating boiler, the coal is gasified to create syngas, which is burned in a gas turbine to produce electricity (just like natural gas is burned in a turbine). Hot exhaust gases from the turbine are used to raise steam in a heat recovery steam generator which powers a supplemental steam turbine. The overall plant efficiency when used to provide combined heat and power can reach as much as 94%.[75] IGCC power plants emit less local pollution than conventional pulverized coal-fueled plants; however the technology for carbon capture and storage after gasification and before burning has so far proved to be too expensive to use with coal.[76] Other ways to use coal are as coal-water slurry fuel (CWS), which was developed in the Soviet Union, or in an MHD topping cycle. However these are not widely used due to lack of profit.
+In 2017 38% of the world's electricity came from coal, the same percentage as 30 years previously.[77] In 2018 global installed capacity was 2TW (of which 1TW is in China) which was 30% of total electricity generation capacity.[78] The most dependent major country is South Africa, with over 80% of its electricity generated by coal.[79]
+Maximum use of coal was reached in 2013.[80] In 2018 coal-fired power station capacity factor averaged 51%, that is they operated for about half their available operating hours.[81]
+About 8000 Mt of coal are produced annually, about 90% of which is hard coal and 10% lignite. As of 2018[update] just over half is from underground mines.[82] More accidents occur during underground mining than surface mining. Not all countries publish mining accident statistics so worldwide figures are uncertain, but it is thought that most deaths occur in coal mining accidents in China: in 2017 there were 375 coal mining related deaths in China.[83] Most coal mined is thermal coal (also called steam coal as it is used to make steam to generate electricity) but metallurgical coal (also called "metcoal" or "coking coal" as it is used to make coke to make iron) accounts for 10% to 15% of global coal use.[84]
+China mines almost half the world's coal, followed by India with about a tenth.[85] Australia accounts for about a third of world coal exports, followed by Indonesia and Russia; while the largest importers are Japan and India.
+The price of metallurgical coal is volatile[86] and much higher than the price of thermal coal because metallurgical coal must be lower in sulfur and requires more cleaning.[87] Coal futures contracts provide coal producers and the electric power industry an important tool for hedging and risk management.
+In some countries new onshore wind or solar generation already costs less than coal power from existing plants (see Cost of electricity by source).[88][89]
+However, for China this is forecast for the early 2020s[90] and for south-east Asia not until the late 2020s.[91] In India building new plants is uneconomic and, despite being subsidized, existing plants are losing market share to renewables.[92]
+Of the countries which produce coal China mines by far the most, almost half the world's coal, followed by less than 10% by India. China is also by far the largest consumer. Therefore, market trends depend on Chinese energy policy.[93] Although the effort to reduce pollution means that the global long-term trend is to burn less coal, the short and medium term trends may differ, in part due to Chinese financing of new coal-fired power plants in other countries.[78]
+Countries with annual production higher than 300 million tonnes are shown.
+Countries with annual consumption higher than 500 million tonnes are shown. Shares are based on data expressed in tonnes oil equivalent.
+Exporters are at risk of a reduction in import demand from India and China.[99]
+The use of coal as fuel causes ill health and deaths.[102] Mining and processing of coal causes air and water pollution.[103] Coal-powered plants emit nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide, particulate pollution and heavy metals, which adversely affect human health.[103] Coal bed methane extraction is important to avoid mining accidents.
+The deadly London smog was caused primarily by the heavy use of coal. Globally coal is estimated to cause 800,000 premature deaths every year,[104] mostly in India[105] and China.[106][107][108]
+Burning coal is a major emitter of sulfur dioxide, which creates PM2.5 particulates, the most dangerous form of air pollution.[109]
+Coal smokestack emissions cause asthma, strokes, reduced intelligence, artery blockages, heart attacks, congestive heart failure, cardiac arrhythmias, mercury poisoning, arterial occlusion, and lung cancer.[110][111]
+Annual health costs in Europe from use of coal to generate electricity are estimated at up to €43 billion.[112]
+In China, improvements to air quality and human health would increase with more stringent climate policies, mainly because the country's energy is so heavily reliant on coal. And there would be a net economic benefit.[113]
+A 2017 study in the Economic Journal found that for Britain during the period 1851–1860, "a one standard deviation increase in coal use raised infant mortality by 6–8% and that industrial coal use explains roughly one-third of the urban mortality penalty observed during this period."[114]
+Breathing in coal dust causes coalworker's pneumoconiosis which is known colloquially as "black lung", so-called because the coal dust literally turns the lungs black from their usual pink color.[115] In the United States alone, it is estimated that 1,500 former employees of the coal industry die every year from the effects of breathing in coal mine dust.[116]
+Huge amounts of coal ash and other waste is produced annually. Use of coal generates hundreds of millions of tons of ash and other waste products every year. These include fly ash, bottom ash, and flue-gas desulfurization sludge, that contain mercury, uranium, thorium, arsenic, and other heavy metals, along with non-metals such as selenium.[117]
+Around 10% of coal is ash:[118] coal ash is hazardous and toxic to human beings and some other living things.[119] Coal ash contains the radioactive elements uranium and thorium. Coal ash and other solid combustion byproducts are stored locally and escape in various ways that expose those living near coal plants to radiation and environmental toxics.[120]
+Coal mining and coal fueling of power stations and industrial processes can cause major environmental damage.[121]
+Water systems are affected by coal mining.[122] For example, mining affects groundwater and water table levels and acidity. Spills of fly ash, such as the Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill, can also contaminate land and waterways, and destroy homes. Power stations that burn coal also consume large quantities of water. This can affect the flows of rivers, and has consequential impacts on other land uses. In areas of water scarcity, such as the Thar Desert in Pakistan, coal mining and coal power plants would use significant quantities of water.[123]
+One of the earliest known impacts of coal on the water cycle was acid rain. Approximately 75 Tg/S per year of sulfur dioxide (SO2) is released from burning coal. After release, the sulfur dioxide is oxidized to gaseous H2SO2 which scatters solar radiation, hence its increase in the atmosphere exerts a cooling effect on climate. This beneficially masks some of the warming caused by increased greenhouse gases. However, the sulfur is precipitated out of the atmosphere as acid rain in a matter of weeks,[124] whereas carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. Release of SO2 also contributes to the widespread acidification of ecosystems.[125]
+Disused coal mines can also cause issues. Subsidence can occur above tunnels, causing damage to infrastructure or cropland. Coal mining can also cause long lasting fires, and it has been estimated that thousands of coal seam fires are burning at any given time.[126] For example, Brennender Berg has been burning since 1668 and is still burning in the 21st century.[127]
+The production of coke from coal produces ammonia, coal tar, and gaseous compounds as by-products which if discharged to land, air or waterways can pollute the environment.[128] The Whyalla steelworks is one example of a coke producing facility where liquid ammonia is discharged to the marine environment.[citation needed]
+Thousands of coal fires are burning around the world.[129] Those burning underground can be difficult to locate and many cannot be extinguished. Fires can cause the ground above to subside, their combustion gases are dangerous to life, and breaking out to the surface can initiate surface wildfires. Coal seams can be set on fire by spontaneous combustion or contact with a mine fire or surface fire. Lightning strikes are an important source of ignition. The coal continues to burn slowly back into the seam until oxygen (air) can no longer reach the flame front. A grass fire in a coal area can set dozens of coal seams on fire.[130][131] Coal fires in China burn an estimated 120 million tons of coal a year, emitting 360 million metric tons of CO2, amounting to 2–3% of the annual worldwide production of CO2 from fossil fuels.[132][133] In Centralia, Pennsylvania (a borough located in the Coal Region of the United States), an exposed vein of anthracite ignited in 1962 due to a trash fire in the borough landfill, located in an abandoned anthracite strip mine pit. Attempts to extinguish the fire were unsuccessful, and it continues to burn underground to this day. The Australian Burning Mountain was originally believed to be a volcano, but the smoke and ash come from a coal fire that has been burning for some 6,000 years.[134]
+At Kuh i Malik in Yagnob Valley, Tajikistan, coal deposits have been burning for thousands of years, creating vast underground labyrinths full of unique minerals, some of them very beautiful.
+The reddish siltstone rock that caps many ridges and buttes in the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and in western North Dakota is called porcelanite, which resembles the coal burning waste "clinker" or volcanic "scoria".[135] Clinker is rock that has been fused by the natural burning of coal. In the Powder River Basin approximately 27 to 54 billion tons of coal burned within the past three million years.[136] Wild coal fires in the area were reported by the Lewis and Clark Expedition as well as explorers and settlers in the area.[137]
+The largest and most long-term effect of coal use is the release of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that causes climate change and global warming. Coal-fired power plants were the single largest contributor to the growth in global CO2 emissions in 2018,[138] 40% of the total fossil fuel emissions.[8] Coal mining can emit methane, another greenhouse gas.[139][140]
+In 2016 world gross carbon dioxide emissions from coal usage were 14.5 gigatonnes.[141] For every megawatt-hour generated, coal-fired electric power generation emits around a tonne of carbon dioxide, which is double the approximately 500 kg of carbon dioxide released by a natural gas-fired electric plant.[142] In 2013, the head of the UN climate agency advised that most of the world's coal reserves should be left in the ground to avoid catastrophic global warming.[143] To keep global warming below 1.5 °C or 2 °C hundreds, or possibly thousands, of coal-fired power plants will need to be retired early.[144]
+"Clean" coal technology usually addresses atmospheric problems resulting from burning coal. Historically, the primary focus was on SO2 and NOx, the most important gases which caused acid rain; and particulates which cause visible air pollution, illness and premature deaths. SO2 can be removed by flue-gas desulfurization and NO2 by selective catalytic reduction (SCR). Particulates can be removed with electrostatic precipitators. Although perhaps less efficient wet scrubbers can remove both gases and particulates. And mercury emissions can be reduced up to 95%.[145] However capturing carbon dioxide emissions is generally not economically viable.
+Local pollution standards include GB13223-2011 (China), India,[146] the Industrial Emissions Directive (EU) and the Clean Air Act (United States).
+Satellite monitoring is now used to crosscheck national data, for example Sentinel-5 Precursor has shown that Chinese control of SO2 has only been partially successful.[147] It has also revealed that low use of technology such as SCR has resulted in high NO2 emissions in South Africa and India.[148]
+A few Integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) coal-fired power plants have been built with coal gasification. Although they burn coal more efficiently and therefore emit less pollution, the technology has not generally proved economically viable for coal, except possibly in Japan although this is controversial.[149][150]
+Although still being intensively researched and considered economically viable for some uses other than with coal; carbon capture and storage has been tested at the Petra Nova and Boundary Dam coal-fired power plants and has been found to be technically feasible but not economically viable for use with coal, due to reductions in the cost of solar PV technology.[151]
+In 2018 USD 80 billion was invested in coal supply but almost all for sustaining production levels rather than opening new mines.[152]
+In the long term coal and oil could cost the world trillions of dollars per year.[153][154] Coal alone may cost Australia billions,[155] whereas costs to some smaller companies or cities could be on the scale of millions of dollars.[156] The economies most damaged by coal (via climate change) may be India and the US as they are the countries with the highest social cost of carbon.[157] Bank loans to finance coal are a risk to the Indian economy.[105]
+China is the largest producer of coal in the world. It is the world's largest energy consumer, and coal in China supplies 60% of its primary energy. However two fifths of China's coal power stations are estimated to be loss-making.[90]
+Air pollution from coal storage and handling costs the USA almost 200 dollars for every extra ton stored, due to PM2.5.[158] Coal pollution costs the EU €43 billion each year.[159] Measures to cut air pollution benefit individuals financially and the economies of countries[160][161] such as China.[162]
+Broadly defined total subsidies for coal in 2015 have been estimated at around US$2.5 trillion, about 3% of global GDP.[163] As of 2019[update] G20 countries provide at least  US$63.9 billion[138] of government support per year for the production of coal, including coal-fired power: many subsidies are impossible to quantify[164] but they include US$27.6 billion in domestic and international public finance, US$15.4 billion in fiscal support, and US$20.9 billion in state-owned enterprise (SOE) investments per year.[138] In the EU state aid to new coal-fired plants is banned from 2020, and to existing coal-fired plants from 2025.[165] However government funding for new coal power plants is being supplied via Exim Bank of China,[166] the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Indian public sector banks.[167] Coal in Kazakhstan was the main recipient of coal consumption subsidies totalling US$2 billion in 2017.[168] Coal in Turkey benefited from substantial subsidies.
+Some coal-fired power stations could become stranded assets, for example China Energy Investment, the world's largest power company, risks losing half its capital.[90] However state owned electricity utilities such as Eskom in South Africa, Perusahaan Listrik Negara in Indonesia, Sarawak Energy in Malaysia, Taipower in Taiwan, EGAT in Thailand, Vietnam Electricity and EÜAŞ in Turkey are building or planning new plants.[166] As of 2019[update] this may be helping to cause a carbon bubble which could cause financial instability if it bursts.[169]
+Countries building or financing new coal-fired power stations, such as China, India, and Japan, face mounting international criticism for obstructing the aims of the Paris Agreement.[78] In 2019, the Pacific Island nations (in particular Vanuatu and Fiji) criticized Australia for failing to cut their emissions at a faster rate than they were, citing concerns about coastal inundation and erosion.[170]
+Allegations of corruption are being investigated in India[171] and China.[172]
+Opposition to coal pollution was one of the main reasons the modern environmental movement started in the 19th century.
+In order to meet global climate goals and provide power to those that don't currently have it coal power must be reduced from nearly 10,000 TWh to less than 2,000 TWh by 2040.[173] Phasing out coal has short-term health and environmental benefits which exceed the costs,[174] but some countries still favor coal,[175] and there is much disagreement about how quickly it should be phased out.[176][177] However many countries, such as the Powering Past Coal Alliance, have already or are transitioned away from coal;[178] the largest transition announced so far being Germany, which is due to shut down its last coal-fired power station between 2035 and 2038.[179] Some countries use the ideas of a "Just Transition", for example to use some of the benefits of transition to provide early pensions for coal miners.[180] However low-lying Pacific Islands are concerned the transition is not fast enough and that they will be inundated by sea level rise; so they have called for OECD countries to completely phase out coal by 2030 and other countries by 2040.[170]
+Peak coal is a concept describing the peak consumption or production of coal by a human community. As of 2020, the global coal peak consumption was 2013.[181]
+The peak of coal's share in the global energy mix was in 2008, when coal accounted for 30% of global energy production.[181]
+The decline in coal use is largely driven by consumption decline in the United States and Europe, as well as developed economies in Asia.[181]
+Coal-fired generation puts out about twice the amount of carbon dioxide—around a tonne for every megawatt hour generated—than electricity generated by burning natural gas at 500 kg of greenhouse gas per megawatt hour.[182] In addition to generating electricity, natural gas is also popular in some countries for heating and as an automotive fuel.
+The use of coal in the United Kingdom declined as a result of the development of North Sea oil and the subsequent dash for gas during the 1990s. In Canada some coal power plants, such as the Hearn Generating Station, switched from coal to natural gas. In 2017, coal power in the United States provided 30% of the electricity, down from approximately 49% in 2008,[183][184][185] due to plentiful supplies of low cost natural gas obtained by hydraulic fracturing of tight shale formations.[186]
+Some coal-mining regions are highly dependent on coal.[187]
+Some coal miners are concerned their jobs may be lost in the transition.[188]
+The white rot fungus Trametes versicolor can grow on and metabolize naturally occurring coal.[189] The bacteria Diplococcus has been found to degrade coal, raising its temperature.[190]
+Coal is the official state mineral of Kentucky[191] and the official state rock of Utah;[192] both U.S. states have a historic link to coal mining. Some cultures hold that children who misbehave will receive only a lump of coal from Santa Claus for Christmas in their christmas stockings instead of presents. It is also customary and considered lucky in Scotland and the North of England to give coal as a gift on New Year's Day. This occurs as part of First-Footing and represents warmth for the year to come.
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+A Christmas Carol. In Prose. Being a Ghost Story of Christmas, commonly known as A Christmas Carol, is a novella by Charles Dickens, first published in London by Chapman & Hall in 1843 and illustrated by John Leech. A Christmas Carol recounts the story of Ebenezer Scrooge, an elderly miser who is visited by the ghost of his former business partner Jacob Marley and the spirits of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come. After their visits, Scrooge is transformed into a kinder, gentler man.
+Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol during a period when the British were exploring and re-evaluating past Christmas traditions, including carols, and newer customs such as Christmas trees. He was influenced by the experiences of his own youth and by the Christmas stories of other authors, including Washington Irving and Douglas Jerrold. Dickens had written three Christmas stories prior to the novella, and was inspired following a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several establishments for London's street children. The treatment of the poor and the ability of a selfish man to redeem himself by transforming into a more sympathetic character are the key themes of the story. There is discussion among academics as to whether this is a fully secular story, or if it is a Christian allegory.
+Published on 19 December, the first edition sold out by Christmas Eve; by the end of 1844 thirteen editions had been released. Most critics reviewed the novella favourably. The story was illicitly copied in January 1844; Dickens took legal action against the publishers, who went bankrupt, further reducing Dickens's small profits from the publication. He went on to write four other Christmas stories in subsequent years. In 1849 he began public readings of the story, which proved so successful he undertook 127 further performances until 1870, the year of his death. A Christmas Carol has never been out of print and has been translated into several languages; the story has been adapted many times for film, stage, opera and other media.
+A Christmas Carol captured the zeitgeist of the mid-Victorian revival of the Christmas holiday. Dickens had acknowledged the influence of the modern Western observance of Christmas and later inspired several aspects of Christmas, including family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games and a festive generosity of spirit.
+The book is divided into five chapters, which Dickens titled "staves".
+A Christmas Carol opens on a bleak, cold Christmas Eve in London, seven years after the death of Ebenezer Scrooge's business partner, Jacob Marley. Scrooge, an ageing miser, dislikes Christmas and refuses a dinner invitation from his nephew Fred—the son of Fan, Scrooge's dead sister. He turns away two men who seek a donation from him to provide food and heating for the poor and only grudgingly allows his overworked, underpaid clerk, Bob Cratchit, Christmas Day off with pay to conform to the social custom.
+That night Scrooge is visited at home by Marley's ghost, who wanders the Earth entwined by heavy chains and money boxes forged during a lifetime of greed and selfishness. Marley tells Scrooge that he has a single chance to avoid the same fate: he will be visited by three spirits and must listen or be cursed to carry much heavier chains of his own.
+The first spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Past, takes Scrooge to Christmas scenes of Scrooge's boyhood, reminding him of a time when he was more innocent. The scenes reveal Scrooge's lonely childhood at boarding school, his relationship with his beloved sister Fan, and a Christmas party hosted by his first employer, Mr Fezziwig, who treated him like a son. Scrooge's neglected fiancée Belle is shown ending their relationship, as she realises that he will never love her as much as he loves money. Finally, they visit a now-married Belle with her large, happy family on the Christmas Eve that Marley died. Scrooge, upset by hearing Belle's description of the man that he has become, demands that the ghost remove him from the house.
+The second spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Present, takes Scrooge to a joyous market with people buying the makings of Christmas dinner and to celebrations of Christmas in a miner's cottage and in a lighthouse. Scrooge and the ghost also visit Fred's Christmas party. A major part of this stave is taken up with Bob Cratchit's family feast and introduces his youngest son, Tiny Tim, a happy boy who is seriously ill. The spirit informs Scrooge that Tiny Tim will die unless the course of events changes. Before disappearing, the spirit shows Scrooge two hideous, emaciated children named Ignorance and Want. He tells Scrooge to beware the former above all and mocks Scrooge's concern for their welfare.
+The third spirit, the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, shows Scrooge a Christmas Day in the future. The silent ghost reveals scenes involving the death of a disliked man whose funeral is attended by local businessmen only on condition that lunch is provided. His charwoman, laundress and the local undertaker steal his possessions to sell to a fence. When he asks the spirit to show a single person who feels emotion over his death, he is only given the pleasure of a poor couple who rejoice that his death gives them more time to put their finances in order. When Scrooge asks to see tenderness connected with any death, the ghost shows him Bob Cratchit and his family mourning the death of Tiny Tim. The ghost then allows Scrooge to see a neglected grave, with a tombstone bearing Scrooge's name. Sobbing, Scrooge pledges to change his ways.
+Scrooge awakens on Christmas morning a changed man. He makes a large donation to the charity he rejected the previous day, anonymously sends a large turkey to the Cratchit home for Christmas dinner and spends the afternoon with Fred's family. The following day he gives Cratchit an increase in pay, and begins to become a father figure to Tiny Tim. From then on Scrooge treats everyone with kindness, generosity and compassion, embodying the spirit of Christmas.
+The writer Charles Dickens was born to a middle-class family which got into financial difficulties as a result of the spendthrift nature of his father John. In 1824 John was committed to the Marshalsea, a debtors' prison in Southwark, London. Dickens, aged 12, was forced to pawn his collection of books, leave school and work at a dirty and rat-infested shoe-blacking factory. The change in circumstances gave him what his biographer, Michael Slater, describes as a "deep personal and social outrage", which heavily influenced his writing and outlook.[1]
+By the end of 1842 Dickens was a well-established author, having written six major works,[n 1] as well as several short stories, novellas and other pieces.[2] On 31 December that year he began publishing his novel Martin Chuzzlewit as a monthly serial;[n 2] the novel was his favourite work, but sales were disappointing and he faced temporary financial difficulties.[3]
+Celebrating the Christmas season had been growing in popularity through the Victorian era.[4] The Christmas tree had been introduced in Britain during the 18th century, and its use was popularised by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Their practice was copied in many homes across the country.[5] In the early 19th century there had been a revival of interest in Christmas carols, following a decline in popularity over the previous hundred years. The publication of Davies Gilbert's 1823 work Some Ancient Christmas Carols, With the Tunes to Which They Were Formerly Sung in the West of England and William Sandys's 1833 collection Christmas Carols, Ancient and Modern led to a growth in the form's popularity in Britain.[6]
+Dickens had an interest in Christmas, and his first story on the subject was "Christmas Festivities", published in Bell's Weekly Messenger in 1835; the story was then published as "A Christmas Dinner" in Sketches by Boz (1836).[7] "The Story of the Goblins Who Stole a Sexton", another Christmas story, appeared in the 1836 novel The Pickwick Papers. In the episode, a Mr Wardle relates the tale of Gabriel Grub, a lonely and mean-spirited sexton, who undergoes a Christmas conversion after being visited by goblins who show him the past and future.[8] Slater considers that "the main elements of the Carol are present in the story", but not yet in a firm form.[9] The story is followed by a passage about Christmas in Dickens's editorial Master Humphrey's Clock.[9] The professor of English literature Paul Davis writes that although the "Goblins" story appears to be a prototype of A Christmas Carol, all Dickens's earlier writings about Christmas influenced the story.[10]
+Dickens was not the first author to celebrate the Christmas season in literature.[11] Among earlier authors who influenced Dickens was Washington Irving, whose 1819–20 work The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. included four essays on old English Christmas traditions that he experienced while staying at Aston Hall near Birmingham.[12] The tales and essays attracted Dickens, and the two authors shared the belief that the staging of a nostalgic English Christmas might help restore the social harmony that they felt had been lost in the modern world.[13]
+Several works may have had an influence on the writing of A Christmas Carol, including two Douglas Jerrold essays: one from an 1841 issue of Punch, "How Mr. Chokepear Keeps a Merry Christmas" and one from 1843, "The Beauties of the Police".[14] More broadly, Dickens was influenced by fairy tales and nursery stories, which he closely associated with Christmas, because he saw them as stories of conversion and transformation.[15]
+Dickens was touched by the lot of poor children in the middle decades of the 19th century.[16] In early 1843 he toured the Cornish tin mines, where he was angered by seeing children working in appalling conditions.[17] The suffering he witnessed there was reinforced by a visit to the Field Lane Ragged School, one of several London schools set up for the education of the capital's half-starved, illiterate street children.[18]
+In February 1843 the Second Report of the Children's Employment Commission was published. It was a parliamentary report exposing the effects of the Industrial Revolution upon working class children. Horrified by what he read, Dickens planned to publish an inexpensive political pamphlet tentatively titled, An Appeal to the People of England, on behalf of the Poor Man's Child, but changed his mind, deferring the pamphlet's production until the end of the year.[19] In March he wrote to Dr Southwood Smith, one of the four commissioners responsible for the Second Report, about his change in plans: "you will certainly feel that a Sledge hammer has come down with twenty times the force—twenty thousand times the force—I could exert by following out my first idea".[20]
+In a fundraising speech on 5 October 1843 at the Manchester Athenaeum, Dickens urged workers and employers to join together to combat ignorance with educational reform,[21] and realised in the days following that the most effective way to reach the broadest segment of the population with his social concerns about poverty and injustice was to write a deeply felt Christmas narrative rather than polemical pamphlets and essays.[22]
+By mid-1843 Dickens began to suffer from financial problems. Sales of Martin Chuzzlewit were falling off, and his wife, Catherine, was pregnant with their fifth child. Matters worsened when Chapman & Hall, his publishers, threatened to reduce his monthly income by £50 if sales dropped further.[23] He began A Christmas Carol in October 1843.[24] Michael Slater, Dickens's biographer, describes the book as being "written at white heat"; it was completed in six weeks, the final pages being written in early December.[25] He built much of the work in his head while taking night-time walks of 15 to 20 miles (24 to 32 km) around London.[26] Dickens's sister-in-law wrote how he "wept, and laughed, and wept again, and excited himself in a most extraordinary manner, in composition".[27] Slater says that A Christmas Carol was
+intended to open its readers' hearts towards those struggling to survive on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and to encourage practical benevolence, but also to warn of the terrible danger to society created by the toleration of widespread ignorance and actual want among the poor.[16]
+George Cruikshank, the illustrator who had earlier worked with Dickens on Sketches by Boz (1836) and Oliver Twist (1838), introduced him to the caricaturist John Leech. By 24 October Dickens invited Leech to work on A Christmas Carol, and four hand-coloured etchings and four black-and-white wood engravings by the artist accompanied the text.[28] Dickens's hand-written manuscript of the story does not include the sentence in the penultimate paragraph "... and to Tiny Tim, who did not die"; this was added later, during the printing process.[29][n 3]
+The central character of A Christmas Carol is Ebenezer Scrooge, a miserly London-based businessman,[30] described in the story as "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner!"[31] Kelly writes that Scrooge may have been influenced by Dickens's conflicting feelings for his father, whom he both loved and demonised. This psychological conflict may be responsible for the two radically different Scrooges in the tale—one a cold, stingy and greedy semi-recluse, the other a benevolent, sociable man.[32] The professor of English literature Robert Douglas-Fairhurst considers that in the opening part of the book covering young Scrooge's lonely and unhappy childhood, and his aspiration for money to avoid poverty "is something of a self-parody of Dickens's fears about himself"; the post-transformation parts of the book are how Dickens optimistically sees himself.[33]
+Scrooge could also be based on two misers: the eccentric John Elwes, MP,[34] or Jemmy Wood, the owner of the Gloucester Old Bank and also known as "The Gloucester Miser".[35] According to the sociologist Frank W. Elwell, Scrooge's views on the poor are a reflection of those of the demographer and political economist Thomas Malthus,[36] while the miser's questions "Are there no prisons? ... And the Union workhouses? ... The treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?" are a reflection of a sarcastic question raised by the philosopher Thomas Carlyle, "Are there not treadmills, gibbets; even hospitals, poor-rates, New Poor-Law?"[37][n 4]
+There are literary precursors for Scrooge in Dickens's own works. Peter Ackroyd, Dickens's biographer, sees similarities between the character and the elder Martin Chuzzlewit character, although the miser is "a more fantastic image" than the Chuzzlewit patriarch; Ackroyd observes that Chuzzlewit's transformation to a charitable figure is a parallel to that of the miser.[39] Douglas-Fairhurst sees that the minor character Gabriel Grub from The Pickwick Papers was also an influence when creating Scrooge.[40][n 5] Scrooge's name came from a tombstone Dickens had seen on a visit to Edinburgh. The grave was for Ebenezer Lennox Scroggie, whose job was given as a meal man—a corn merchant; Dickens misread the inscription as "mean man".[42][n 6]
+When Dickens was young he lived near a tradesman's premises with the sign "Goodge and Marney", which may have provided the name for Scrooge's former business partner.[44] For the chained Marley, Dickens drew on his memory of a visit to the Western Penitentiary in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in March 1842, where he saw—and was affected by seeing—fettered prisoners.[37] For the character Tiny Tim, Dickens used his nephew Henry, a disabled boy who was five at the time A Christmas Carol was written.[45][n 7] The two figures of Want and Ignorance, sheltering in the robes of the Ghost of Christmas Present, were inspired by the children Dickens had seen on his visit to a ragged school in the East End of London.[18]
+The transformation of Scrooge is central to the story.[47] Davis considers Scrooge to be "a protean figure always in process of reformation";[48] Kelly writes that the transformation is reflected in the description of Scrooge, who begins as a two-dimensional character, but who then grows into one who "possess[es] an emotional depth [and] a regret for lost opportunities".[49] Some writers, including Grace Moore, the Dickens scholar, consider that there is a Christian theme running through A Christmas Carol, and that the novella should be seen as an allegory of the Christian concept of redemption.[50][n 8] Dickens's biographer, Claire Tomalin, sees the conversion of Scrooge as carrying the Christian message that "even the worst of sinners may repent and become a good man".[53] Dickens's attitudes towards organised religion were complex;[n 9] he based his beliefs and principles on the New Testament.[52] Dickens's statement that Marley "had no bowels" is a reference to the "bowels of compassion" mentioned in the First Epistle of John, the reason for his eternal damnation.[56][n 10]
+Other writers, including Kelly, consider that Dickens put forward a "secular vision of this sacred holiday".[11] The Dickens scholar John O. Jordan argues that A Christmas Carol shows what Dickens referred to in a letter to his friend John Forster as his "Carol philosophy, cheerful views, sharp anatomisation of humbug, jolly good temper ... and a vein of glowing, hearty, generous, mirthful, beaming reference in everything to Home and Fireside".[57] From a secular viewpoint, the cultural historian Penne Restad suggests that Scrooge's redemption underscores "the conservative, individualistic and patriarchal aspects" of Dickens's "Carol philosophy" of charity and altruism.[58]
+Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in response to British social attitudes towards poverty, particularly child poverty, and wished to use the novella as a means to put forward his arguments against it.[59] The story shows Scrooge as a paradigm for self-interest, and the possible repercussions of ignoring the poor, especially children in poverty—personified by the allegorical figures of Want and Ignorance.[60] The two figures were created to arouse sympathy with readers—as was Tiny Tim.[61] Douglas-Fairhurst observes that the use of such figures allowed Dickens to present his message of the need for charity, without alienating his largely middle-class readership.[62]
+As the result of the disagreements with Chapman and Hall over the commercial failures of Martin Chuzzlewit,[63] Dickens arranged to pay for the publishing himself, in exchange for a percentage of the profits.[33] Production of A Christmas Carol was not without problems. The first printing contained drab olive endpapers that Dickens felt were unacceptable, and the publisher Chapman and Hall quickly replaced them with yellow endpapers, but, once replaced, those clashed with the title page, which was then redone.[64] The final product was bound in red cloth with gilt-edged pages, completed only two days before the publication date of 19 December 1843.[65] Following publication, Dickens arranged for the manuscript to be bound in red Morocco leather and presented as a gift to his solicitor, Thomas Mitton.[66][n 11]
+Priced at five shillings (equal to £25 in 2020 pounds),[67] the first run of 6,000 copies sold out by Christmas Eve. Chapman and Hall issued second and third editions before the new year, and the book continued to sell well into 1844.[69] By the end of 1844 eleven more editions had been released.[70] Since its initial publication the book has been issued in numerous hardback and paperback editions, translated into several languages and has never been out of print.[71] It was Dickens's most popular book in the United States, and sold over two million copies in the hundred years following its first publication there.[51]
+The high production costs upon which Dickens insisted led to reduced profits, and the first edition brought him only £230 (equal to £23,000 in 2020 pounds)[67] rather than the £1,000 (equal to £99,000 in 2020 pounds)[67] he expected.[72] A year later, the profits were only £744, and Dickens was deeply disappointed.[63][n 12]
+According to Douglas-Fairhurst, contemporary reviews of A Christmas Carol "were almost uniformly kind".[74] The Illustrated London News described how the story's "impressive eloquence ... its unfeigned lightness of heart—its playful and sparkling humour ... its gentle spirit of humanity" all put the reader "in good humour with ourselves, with each other, with the season and with the author".[75] The critic from The Athenaeum, the literary magazine, considered it a "tale to make the reader laugh and cry – to open his hands, and open his heart to charity even toward the uncharitable ... a dainty dish to set before a King."[76] William Makepeace Thackeray, writing in Fraser's Magazine, described the book as "a national benefit and to every man or woman who reads it, a personal kindness. The last two people I heard speak of it were women; neither knew the other, or the author, and both said, by way of criticism, 'God bless him!'"[73]
+The poet Thomas Hood, in his own journal, wrote that "If Christmas, with its ancient and hospitable customs, its social and charitable observances, were ever in danger of decay, this is the book that would give them a new lease."[77] The reviewer for Tait's Edinburgh Magazine—Theodore Martin, who was usually critical of Dickens's work[74]—spoke well of A Christmas Carol, noting it was "a noble book, finely felt and calculated to work much social good".[78] After Dickens's death, Margaret Oliphant deplored the turkey and plum pudding aspects of the book but admitted that in the days of its first publication it was regarded as "a new gospel", and noted that the book was unique in that it made people behave better.[74] The religious press generally ignored the tale but, in January 1884, Christian Remembrancer thought the tale's old and hackneyed subject was treated in an original way and praised the author's sense of humour and pathos.[79] The writer and social thinker John Ruskin told a friend that he thought Dickens had taken the religion from Christmas, and had imagined it as "mistletoe and pudding – neither resurrection from the dead, nor rising of new stars, nor teaching of wise men, nor shepherds".[80]
+There were critics of the book. The New Monthly Magazine praised the story, but thought the book's physical excesses—the gilt edges and expensive binding—kept the price high, making it unavailable to the poor. The review recommended that the tale should be printed on cheap paper and priced accordingly.[81] An unnamed writer for The Westminster Review mocked Dickens's grasp of economics, asking "Who went without turkey and punch in order that Bob Cratchit might get them—for, unless there were turkeys and punch in surplus, someone must go without".[82]
+Following criticism of the US in American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit, American readers were less enthusiastic at first, but by the end of the American Civil War, copies of the book were in wide circulation.[83] In 1863 The New York Times published an enthusiastic review, noting that the author brought the "old Christmas ... of bygone centuries and remote manor houses, into the living rooms of the poor of today".[84]
+In January 1844 Parley's Illuminated Library published an unauthorised version of the story in a condensed form which they sold for twopence.[n 13] Dickens wrote to his solicitor
+I have not the least doubt that if these Vagabonds can be stopped they must. ... Let us be the sledge-hammer in this, or I shall be beset by hundreds of the same crew when I come out with a long story.[86]
+Two days after the release of the Parley version, Dickens sued on the basis of copyright infringement and won. The publishers declared themselves bankrupt and Dickens was left to pay £700 in costs.[87] The small profits Dickens earned from A Christmas Carol further strained his relationship with his publishers, and he broke with them in favour of Bradbury and Evans, who had been printing his works to that point.[16]
+Dickens returned to the tale several times during his life to amend the phrasing and punctuation. He capitalised on the success of the book by publishing other Christmas stories: The Chimes (1844), The Cricket on the Hearth (1845), The Battle of Life (1846) and The Haunted Man and the Ghost's Bargain (1848); these were secular conversion tales which acknowledged the progressive societal changes of the previous year, and highlighted those social problems which still needed to be addressed. While the public eagerly bought the later books, the reviewers were highly critical of the stories.[88]
+By 1849 Dickens was engaged with David Copperfield and had neither the time nor the inclination to produce another Christmas book.[89] He decided the best way to reach his audience with his "Carol philosophy" was by public readings.[90] During Christmas 1852 Dickens gave a reading in Birmingham Town Hall to the Industrial and Literary Institute; the performance was a great success.[91] Thereafter, he read the tale in an abbreviated version 127 times, until 1870 (the year of his death), including at his farewell performance.[92]
+In the years following the book's publication, responses to the tale were published by W. M. Swepstone (Christmas Shadows, 1850), Horatio Alger (Job Warner's Christmas, 1863), Louisa May Alcott (A Christmas Dream, and How It Came True, 1882), and others who followed Scrooge's life as a reformed man – or some who thought Dickens had got it wrong and needed to be corrected.[93]
+The novella was adapted for the stage almost immediately. Three productions opened on 5 February 1844, one by Edward Stirling being sanctioned by Dickens and running for more than 40 nights.[94] By the close of February 1844 eight rival A Christmas Carol theatrical productions were playing in London.[74] The story has been adapted for film and television more than any of Dickens's other works.[95] In 1901 it was produced as Scrooge, or, Marley's Ghost, a silent black-and-white British film; it was one of the first known adaptations of a Dickens work on film, but it is now largely lost.[96] The story was adapted in 1923 for BBC radio.[97] The story has been adapted to other media, including opera, ballet, animation, stage musicals and a BBC mime production starring Marcel Marceau.[98]
+Davis considers the adaptations have become better remembered than the original. Some of Dickens's scenes—such as visiting the miners and lighthouse keepers—have been forgotten by many, while other events often added—such as Scrooge visiting the Cratchits on Christmas Day—are now thought by many to be part of the original story. Accordingly, Davis distinguishes between the original text and the "remembered version".[99]
+The phrase "Merry Christmas" had been around for many years – the earliest known written  use was in a letter in 1534 – but Dickens's use of the phrase in A Christmas Carol popularised it among the Victorian public.[100] The exclamation "Bah! Humbug!" entered popular use in the English language as a retort to anything sentimental or overly festive;[101] the name "Scrooge" became used as a designation for a miser, and was added to the Oxford English Dictionary as such in 1982.[102]
+In the early 19th century the celebration of Christmas was associated in Britain with the countryside and peasant revels, disconnected to the increasing urbanisation and industrialisation taking place. Davis considers that in A Christmas Carol, Dickens showed that Christmas could be celebrated in towns and cities, despite increasing modernisation.[103] The modern observance of Christmas is largely the result of a mid-Victorian revival of the holiday. The Oxford Movement of the 1830s and 1840s had produced a resurgence of the traditional rituals and religious observances associated with Christmastide and, with A Christmas Carol, Dickens captured the zeitgeist while he reflected and reinforced his vision of Christmas.[104]
+Dickens advocated a humanitarian focus of the holiday,[105] which influenced several aspects of Christmas that are still celebrated in Western culture, such as family gatherings, seasonal food and drink, dancing, games and a festive generosity of spirit.[106][n 14] The historian Ronald Hutton writes that Dickens "linked worship and feasting, within a context of social reconciliation".[107]
+The novelist William Dean Howells, analysing several of Dickens's Christmas stories, including A Christmas Carol, considered that by 1891 the "pathos appears false and strained; the humor largely horseplay; the characters theatrical; the joviality pumped; the psychology commonplace; the sociology alone funny".[108][109] The writer James Joyce considered that Dickens took a childish approach with A Christmas Carol, to produce a gap between the naïve optimism of the story, and the realities of life at the time.[109]
+Ruth Glancy, a professor of English literature, states that the largest impact of A Christmas Carol was the influence felt by individual readers.[110] In early 1844 The Gentleman's Magazine attributed a rise of charitable giving in Britain to Dickens's novella;[111] in 1874, Robert Louis Stevenson, after reading Dickens's Christmas books, vowed to give generously to those in need;[112] and Thomas Carlyle expressed a generous hospitality by hosting two Christmas dinners after reading the book.[113] In 1867 one American businessman was so moved by attending a reading, that he closed his factory on Christmas Day and sent every employee a turkey,[74] while in the early years of the 20th century Maud of Wales – the Queen of Norway – sent gifts to London's crippled children signed "With Tiny Tim's Love".[114] On the novella, the author G. K. Chesterton wrote "The beauty and blessing of the story ... lie in the great furnace of real happiness that glows through Scrooge and everything around him. ... Whether the Christmas visions would or would not convert Scrooge, they convert us."[115]
+Davis, analysing the changes made to adaptations over time, sees changes to the focus of the story and its characters to reflect mainstream thinking of the period. While Dickens's Victorian audiences would have viewed the tale as a spiritual but secular parable, in the early 20th century it became a children's story, read by parents who remembered their parents reading it when they were younger. In the lead-up to, and during, the Great Depression, Davis identifies that while some see the story as a "denunciation of capitalism, ...most read it as a way to escape oppressive economic realities".[116] The film versions of the 1930s were different in the UK and US. British-made films showed a traditional telling of the story, while US-made works showed Cratchit in a more central role, escaping the depression caused by European bankers and celebrating what Davis calls "the Christmas of the common man".[117] In the 1960s, Scrooge was sometimes portrayed as a Freudian figure wrestling with his past. By the 1980s he was again set in a world of depression and economic uncertainty.[117]
+Literature portal
+ Novels portal

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+The lyre (Greek: λύρα, lýra) is a string instrument known for its use in Greek classical antiquity and later periods. The lyre is similar in appearance to a small harp but with distinct differences.
+In organology, lyre is defined as a "yoke lute", being a lute in which the strings are attached to a yoke that lies in the same plane as the sound-table and consists of two arms and a cross-bar.
+In Ancient Greece, recitations of lyric poetry were accompanied by lyre playing. The earliest picture of a lyre with seven strings appears in the famous sarcophagus of Hagia Triada (a Minoan settlement in Crete). The sarcophagus was used during the Mycenaean occupation of Crete (c. 1400 BC).[1][2]
+The lyre of classical antiquity was ordinarily played by being strummed with a plectrum (pick), like a guitar or a zither, rather than being plucked with the fingers as with a harp. The fingers of the free hand silenced the unwanted strings in the chord. Other instruments, also called "lyres", were played with a bow in Europe and parts of the Middle East, namely the Arabic rebab and its descendants,[3] including the Byzantine lyra.[4]
+The earliest reference to the word is the Mycenaean Greek ru-ra-ta-e, meaning "lyrists" and written in the Linear B script.[5] In classical Greek, the word "lyre" could either refer specifically to an amateur instrument, which is a smaller version of the professional cithara and eastern-Aegean barbiton, or "lyre" can refer generally to all three instruments as a family.[6] The English word comes via Latin from the Greek.[7]
+The term is also used metaphorically to refer to the work or skill of a poet, as in Shelley's "Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is"[8] or Byron's "I wish to tune my quivering lyre, / To deeds of fame, and notes of fire".[9]
+A classical lyre has a hollow body or sound-chest (also known as soundbox or resonator), which, in ancient Greek tradition, was made out of turtle shell.[7][10] Extending from this sound-chest are two raised arms, which are sometimes hollow, and are curved both outward and forward. They are connected near the top by a crossbar or yoke. An additional crossbar, fixed to the sound-chest, makes the bridge, which transmits the vibrations of the strings. The deepest note was that farthest from the player's body; since the strings did not differ much in length, more weight may have been gained for the deeper notes by thicker strings, as in the violin and similar modern instruments, or they were tuned by having a slacker tension. The strings were of gut. They were stretched between the yoke and bridge, or to a tailpiece below the bridge. There were two ways of tuning: one was to fasten the strings to pegs that might be turned, while the other was to change the placement of the string on the crossbar; it is likely that both expedients were used simultaneously.[6]
+According to ancient Greek mythology, the young god Hermes stole a herd of sacred cows from Apollo. In order not to be followed, he made shoes for the cows which forced them to walk backwards. Apollo, following the trails, could not follow where the cows were going. Along the way, Hermes slaughtered one of the cows and offered all but the entrails to the gods. From the entrails and a tortoise/turtle shell, he created the Lyre. Apollo, figuring out it was Hermes who had his cows, confronted the young god. Apollo was furious, but after hearing the sound of the lyre, his anger faded. Apollo offered to trade the herd of cattle for the lyre. Hence, the creation of the lyre is attributed to Hermes. Other sources credit it to Apollo himself.[11]
+Locales in southern Europe, western Asia, or north Africa have been proposed[by whom?] as the historic birthplace of the genus.[citation needed] The instrument is still played in north-eastern parts of Africa.
+Some of the cultures using and developing the lyre were the Aeolian and Ionian Greek colonies on the coasts of Asia (ancient Asia Minor, modern day Turkey) bordering the Lydian empire. Some mythic masters like Musaeus, and Thamyris were believed to have been born in Thrace, another place of extensive Greek colonization. The name kissar (cithara) given by the ancient Greeks to Egyptian box instruments reveals the apparent similarities recognized by Greeks themselves. The cultural peak of ancient Egypt, and thus the possible age of the earliest instruments of this type, predates the 5th century classic Greece. This indicates the possibility that the lyre might have existed in one of Greece's neighboring countries, either Thrace, Lydia, or Egypt, and was introduced into Greece at pre-classic times.
+The number of strings on the classical lyre varied at different epochs and possibly in different localities—four, seven, and ten having been favorite numbers. They were used without a fingerboard, no Greek description or representation having ever been met with that can be construed as referring to one. Nor was a bow possible, the flat sound-board being an insuperable impediment. The pick, or plectrum, however, was in constant use. It was held in the right hand to set the upper strings in vibration; when not in use, it hung from the instrument by a ribbon. The fingers of the left hand touched the lower strings (presumably to silence those whose notes were not wanted).[6]
+There is no evidence as to the stringing of the Greek lyre in the heroic age. Plutarch says that Olympus and Terpander used but three strings to accompany their recitation. As the four strings led to seven and eight by doubling the tetrachord, or series of four tones filling in the interval of a perfect fourth, so the trichord is connected with the hexachord or six-stringed lyre depicted on many archaic Greek vases.[clarification needed] The accuracy of this representation cannot be insisted upon, the vase painters being little mindful of the complete expression of details; yet one may suppose their tendency would be rather to imitate than to invent a number. It was their constant practice to represent the strings as being damped by the fingers of the left hand of the player, after having been struck by the plectrum held in the right hand.[6] Before Greek civilization had assumed its historic form, there was likely to have been great freedom and independence of different localities in the matter of lyre stringing, which is corroborated by the antique use of the chromatic (half-tone) and enharmonic (quarter-tone) tunings pointing to an early exuberance, and perhaps also to a bias towards refinements of intonation.[original research?]
+Lyres from various times and places are sometimes regarded by organologists as a branch of the zither family, a general category that includes not only zithers, but many different stringed instruments, such as lutes, guitars, kantele, and psalteries.
+Others view the lyre and zither as being two separate classes. Those specialists maintain that the zither is distinguished by strings spread across all or most of its soundboard, or the top surface of its sound-chest, also called soundbox or resonator, as opposed to the lyre, whose strings emanate from a more or less common point off the soundboard, such as a tailpiece. Examples of that difference include a piano (a keyed zither) and a violin (referred to by some as a species of fingerboard lyre). Some specialists even argue that instruments such as the violin and guitar belong to a class apart from the lyre because they have no yokes or uprights surmounting their resonators as "true" lyres have. This group they usually refer to as the lute class, after the instrument of that name, and include within it the guitar, the violin, the banjo, and similar stringed instruments with fingerboards. Those who differ with that opinion counter by calling the lute, violin, guitar, banjo, and other such instruments "independent fingerboard lyres," as opposed to simply "fingerboard lyres" such as the Welsh crwth, which have both fingerboards and frameworks above their resonators.[citation needed]
+The so-called lyres of Ur, excavated in ancient Mesopotamia (modern Iraq), date to 2500 BC and are considered to be the world's oldest surviving stringed instruments.[12]
+Over time, the name in the wider Hellenic space came to be used to label mostly bowed lutes such as the Byzantine lyra, the Pontic lyra, the Constantinopolitan lyra, the Cretan lyra, the lira da braccio, the Calabrian lira, the lijerica, the lyra viol, the lirone.
+Other instruments known as lyres have been fashioned and used in Europe outside the Greco-Roman world since at least the Iron Age.[13] The remains of what is thought to be the bridge of a 2300-year-old lyre were discovered on the Isle of Skye, Scotland in 2010 making it Europe's oldest surviving piece of a stringed musical instrument.[13][14] Material evidence suggests lyres became more widespread during the early Middle Ages,[citation needed] and one view[whose?] holds that many modern stringed instruments are late-emerging examples of the lyre class. There is no clear evidence that non-Greco-Roman lyres were played exclusively with plectra, and numerous instruments regarded by some as modern lyres are played with bows.
+Lyres appearing to have emerged independently of Greco-Roman prototypes were used by the Germanic and Celtic peoples over a thousand years ago (sometimes called psalterys). Dates of origin, which probably vary from region to region, cannot be determined, but the oldest known fragments of such instruments are thought to date from the fifth century England with the Discovery of the Abingdon Lyre. After the bow made its way into Europe from the Middle-East, around two centuries later, it was applied to several species of those lyres that were small enough to make bowing practical. There came to be two broad classes of bowed European yoke lyres: those with fingerboards dividing the open space within the yoke longitudinally, and those without fingerboards. The last surviving examples of instruments within the latter class were the Scandinavian talharpa and the Finnish jouhikko. Different tones could be obtained from a single bowed string by pressing the fingernails of the player's left hand against various points along the string to fret the string.
+The last of the bowed yoke lyres with fingerboard was the "modern" (c. 1485–1800) Welsh crwth. It had several predecessors both in the British Isles and in Continental Europe. Pitch was changed on individual strings by pressing the string firmly against the fingerboard with the fingertips. Like a violin, this method shortened the vibrating length of the string to produce higher tones, while releasing the finger gave the string a greater vibrating length, thereby producing a tone lower in pitch. This is the principle on which the modern violin and guitar work.
+While the dates of origin and other evolutionary details of the European bowed yoke lyres continue to be disputed among organologists, there is general agreement that none of them were the ancestors of modern orchestral bowed stringed instruments, as once was thought.

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+The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO;[1] French: Organisation des Nations unies pour l'éducation, la science et la culture) is a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at contributing "to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.[2][3] It is the successor of the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.[4]
+UNESCO has 193 member states and 11 associate members.[5] Based in Paris, France, most of its field offices are "cluster" offices that cover three or more countries; national and regional offices also exist.
+UNESCO seeks to build a culture of peace and inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication.[6] To that end, it pursues its objectives through five major program areas: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and communication/information. It sponsors projects related to literacy, technical training, education, the advancement of science, promoting independent media and freedom of the press, preserving regional and cultural history, and promoting cultural diversity.  UNESCO assists in translating and disseminating world literature, establishing international cooperation agreements to secure "World Heritage Sites" of cultural and natural importance, preserving human rights, and bridging the worldwide digital divide. It also launched and leads the Education For All movement and lifelong learning.
+UNESCO is a member of the United Nations Development Group,[7] a coalition of UN agencies and organisations aimed at fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals.
+UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, to elect a Commission to study feasibility.[8][9] This new body, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) was created in 1922. On 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development.[10] However, the onset of World War II largely interrupted the work of these predecessor organizations.[citation needed]
+After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) began meetings in London which continued from 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an international organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the USSR. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944. Upon the proposal of CAME and in accordance with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO), held in San Francisco in April–June 1945, a United Nations Conference for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization (ECO/CONF) was convened in London 1–16 November 1945 with 44 governments represented. The idea of UNESCO was largely developed by Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom, who had a great deal of influence in its development.[11] At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, and a Preparatory Commission was established.[12] The Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCO's Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state.[13]
+The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General.[14] The Constitution was amended in November 1954 when the General Conference resolved that members of the Executive Board would be representatives of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their personal capacity.[15] This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the ICIC, in how member states would work together in the organization's fields of competence. As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO's mandate, political and historical factors have shaped the organization's operations in particular during the Cold War, the decolonization process, and the dissolution of the USSR.[citation needed]
+Among the major achievements of the organization is its work against racism, for example through influential statements on race starting with a declaration of anthropologists (among them was Claude Lévi-Strauss) and other scientists in 1950[16] and concluding with the 1978 Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice.[17]
+In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO saying that some of the organization's publications amounted to "interference" in the country's "racial problems".[18] South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.[citation needed]
+UNESCO's early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947.[19]
+This project was followed by expert missions to other countries, including, for example, a mission to Afghanistan in 1949.[20]
+In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory and universal.[21]
+In 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults.[22]
+Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, led member governments to commit to achieving basic education for all by 2015.[23]
+UNESCO's early activities in culture included the Nubia Campaign, launched in 1960.[24]
+The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after the construction of the Aswan Dam. During the 20-year campaign, 22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro (Pakistan), Fes (Morocco), Kathmandu (Nepal), Borobudur (Indonesia) and the Acropolis (Greece).[citation needed]
+The organization's work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.[25]
+The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978.[26]
+Since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 (Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage[27]) and 2005 (Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions[28]).
+An intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951 led to the creation of the European Council for Nuclear Research, which was responsible for establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)[29] later on, in 1954.
+Arid Zone programming, 1948–1966, is another example of an early major UNESCO project in the field of natural sciences.[30]
+In 1968, UNESCO organized the first intergovernmental conference aimed at reconciling the environment and development, a problem that continues to be addressed in the field of sustainable development. The main outcome of the 1968 conference was the creation of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme.[31]
+In the field of communication, the "free flow of ideas by word and image" has been in UNESCO's constitution from its beginnings, following the experience of the Second World War when control of information was a factor in indoctrinating populations for aggression.[32]
+In the years immediately following World War II, efforts were concentrated on reconstruction and on the identification of needs for means of mass communication around the world. UNESCO started organizing training and education for journalists in the 1950s.[33]
+In response to calls for a "New World Information and Communication Order" in the late 1970s, UNESCO established the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems,[34] which produced the 1980 MacBride report (named after the Chair of the Commission, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Seán MacBride).[35]
+The same year, UNESCO created the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), a multilateral forum designed to promote media development in developing countries.[36][37] In 1991, UNESCO's General Conference endorsed the Windhoek Declaration on media independence and pluralism, which led the UN General Assembly to declare the date of its adoption, 3 May, as World Press Freedom Day.[38] Since 1997, UNESCO has awarded the UNESCO / Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize every 3 May. In the lead up to the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 (Geneva) and 2005 (Tunis), UNESCO introduced the Information for All Programme.[citation needed]
+UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member in 2011.[39][40]
+Laws passed in the United States after Palestine applied for UNESCO and WHO membership in April 1989[41][42] mean that the US cannot contribute financially to any UN organisation that accepts Palestine as a full member.[43][44] As a result, the US withdrew its funding, which had accounted for about 22% of UNESCO's budget.[45] Israel also reacted to Palestine's admittance to UNESCO by freezing Israeli payments to UNESCO and imposing sanctions on the Palestinian Authority,[46] stating that Palestine's admittance would be detrimental "to potential peace talks".[47] Two years after they stopped paying their dues to UNESCO, the US and Israel lost UNESCO voting rights in 2013 without losing the right to be elected; thus, the US was elected as a member of the Executive Board for the period 2016–19.[48]  In 2019, Israel left UNESCO after 69 years of membership, with Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon writing: "UNESCO is the body that continually rewrites history, including by erasing the Jewish connection to Jerusalem... it is corrupted and manipulated by Israel's enemies... we are not going to be a member of an organisation that deliberately acts against us".[49]
+UNESCO implements its activities through the five program areas: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information.
+UNESCO does not accredit institutions of higher learning.[50]
+The UNESCO transparency portal has been designed to enable public access to information regarding Organization's activities, such as its aggregate budget for a biennium, as well as links to relevant programmatic and financial documents. These two distinct sets of information are published on the IATI registry, respectively based on the IATI Activity Standard and the IATI Organization Standard.
+There have been proposals to establish two new UNESCO lists. The first proposed list will focus on movable cultural heritage such as artifacts, paintings, and biofacts. The list may include cultural objects, such as the Jōmon Venus of Japan, the Mona Lisa of France, the Gebel el-Arak Knife of Egypt, The Ninth Wave of Russia, the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük of Turkey, the David (Michelangelo) of Italy, the Mathura Herakles of India, the Manunggul Jar of the Philippines, the Crown of Baekje of South Korea, The Hay Wain of the United Kingdom and the Benin Bronzes of Nigeria. The second proposed list will focus on the world's living species, such as the komodo dragon of Indonesia, the panda of China, the bald eagle of North American countries, the aye-aye of Madagascar, the Asiatic lion of India, the kakapo of New Zealand, and the mountain tapir of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.[67][68]
+UNESCO and its specialized institutions issue a number of magazines.
+The UNESCO Courier magazine states its mission to "promote UNESCO's ideals, maintain a platform for the dialogue between cultures and provide a forum for international debate". Since March 2006 it is available online, with limited printed issues. Its articles express the opinions of the authors which are not necessarily the opinions of UNESCO. There was a hiatus in publishing between 2012 and 2017.[69]
+In 1950, UNESCO initiated the quarterly review Impact of Science on Society (also known as Impact) to discuss the influence of science on society. The journal ceased publication in 1992.[70] UNESCO also published Museum International Quarterly from the year 1948.
+UNESCO has official relations with 322 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).[71] Most of these are what UNESCO calls "operational"; a select few are "formal".[72]
+The highest form of affiliation to UNESCO is "formal associate", and the 22 NGOs[73] with formal associate (ASC) relations occupying offices at UNESCO are:
+The institutes are specialized departments of the organization that support UNESCO's programme, providing specialized support for cluster and national offices.
+UNESCO awards 22 prizes[85] in education, science, culture and peace:
+International Days observed at UNESCO is provided in the table given below[86]
+As of January 2019, UNESCO has 193 member states and 11 associate members.[88] Some members are not independent states and some members have additional National Organizing Committees from some of their dependent territories.[89] UNESCO state parties are the United Nations member states (except Liechtenstein, United States[90] and Israel[91]), as well as Cook Islands, Niue and Palestine.[92][93] The United States and Israel left UNESCO on 31 December 2018.[94]
+There has been no elected UNESCO Director-General from Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and North Asia, Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, Australia-Oceania, and South America since inception.
+The Directors-General of UNESCO came from West Europe (5), Central America (1), North America (2), West Africa (1), East Asia (1), and East Europe (1). Out of the 11 Directors-General since inception, women have held the position only twice. Qatar, the Philippines, and Iran are proposing for a Director-General bid by 2021 or 2025. There have never been a Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian UNESCO Director-General since inception. The ASEAN bloc and some Pacific and Latin American nations support the possible bid of the Philippines, which is culturally Asian, Oceanic, and Latin. Qatar and Iran, on the other hand, have fragmented support in the Middle East. Egypt, Israel, and Madagascar are also vying for the position but have yet to express a direct or indirect proposal. Both Qatar and Egypt lost in the 2017 bid against France.
+The list of the Directors-General of UNESCO since its establishment in 1946 is as follows:[95]
+This is the list of the sessions of the UNESCO General Conference held since 1946:[96]
+The 40th General Conference On 12th To 27 November 2019.
+Italy
+Netherlands
+Spain
+Switzerland
+Poland
+Russia
+Serbia
+Brazil
+Dominican Republic
+Uruguay
+Kyrgyzstan
+Philippines
+Pakistan
+South Korea
+Thailand
+Congo
+Guinea
+Ghana
+Kenya
+Namibia
+Senegal
+Togo
+UAE
+Tunisia
+France
+ Greece
+ Italy
+ Spain
+ United Kingdom
+Lithuania
+ Russia
+ Serbia
+ Slovenia
+Brazil
+ Haiti
+ Mexico
+ Nicaragua
+ Paraguay
+India
+ Iran
+ Malaysia
+ Pakistan
+ South Korea
+ Sri Lanka
+ Vietnam
+Cameroon
+ Ivory Coast
+ Ghana
+ Kenya
+ Nigeria
+ Senegal
+ South Africa
+Lebanon
+ Oman
+ Qatar
+ Sudan
+Germany
+ Netherlands
+ Sweden
+Albania
+ Estonia
+ Ukraine
+Argentina
+ Belize
+ Dominican Republic
+ El Salvador
+ Saint Kitts and Nevis
+ Trinidad and Tobago
+Bangladesh
+ China
+ India
+ Japan
+   Nepal
+ Turkmenistan
+Chad
+ Guinea
+ Mauritius
+ Mozambique
+ Togo
+ Uganda
+Algeria
+ Egypt
+ Kuwait
+ Morocco
+Austria
+ France
+ Italy
+ India
+ Spain
+ United Kingdom
+ United States
+Czech Republic
+ Montenegro
+ North Macedonia
+Russia
+Brazil
+ Cuba
+ Ecuador
+ Mexico
+Afghanistan
+ Indonesia
+ Pakistan
+ Papua New Guinea
+ South Korea
+ Thailand
+Angola
+ Ethiopia
+ Gabon
+ Gambia
+ Malawi
+ Mali
+ Namibia
+ Nigeria
+Jordan
+ Tunisia
+ United Arab Emirates
+UNESCO headquarters are located at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, France.
+UNESCO's field offices across the globe are categorized into four primary office types based upon their function and geographic coverage: cluster offices, national offices, regional bureaus and liaison offices.
+The following list of all UNESCO Field Offices is organized geographically by UNESCO Region and identifies the members states and associate members of UNESCO which are served by each office.[103]
+UNESCO has been the centre of controversy in the past, particularly in its relationships with the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the former Soviet Union. During the 1970s and 1980s, UNESCO's support for a "New World Information and Communication Order" and its MacBride report calling for democratization of the media and more egalitarian access to information was condemned in these countries as attempts to curb freedom of the press. UNESCO was perceived as a platform for communists and Third World dictators to attack the West, in contrast to accusations made by the USSR in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[107] In 1984, the United States withheld its contributions and withdrew from the organization in protest, followed by the United Kingdom in 1985.[108] Singapore withdrew also at the end of 1985, citing rising membership fees.[109] Following a change of government in 1997, the UK rejoined. The United States rejoined in 2003, followed by Singapore on 8 October 2007.[110]
+Israel was admitted to UNESCO in 1949, one year after its creation. Israel has maintained its membership since 1949.
+In 2010, Israel designated the Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron and Rachel's Tomb, Bethlehem as National Heritage Sites and announced restoration work, prompting criticism from the Obama administration and protests from Palestinians.[111] In October 2010, UNESCO's Executive Board voted to declare the sites as "al-Haram al-Ibrahimi/Tomb of the Patriarchs" and "Bilal bin Rabah Mosque/Rachel's Tomb" and stated that they were "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories" and any unilateral Israeli action was a violation of international law.[112]
+UNESCO described the sites as significant to "people of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish traditions", and accused Israel of highlighting only the Jewish character of the sites.[113]
+Israel in turn accused UNESCO of "detach[ing] the Nation of Israel from its heritage", and accused it of being politically motivated.[114]
+The Rabbi of the Western Wall said that Rachel's tomb had not previously been declared a holy Muslim site.[115] Israel partially suspended ties with UNESCO. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon declared that the resolution was a "part of Palestinian escalation".
+Zevulun Orlev, chairman of the Knesset Education and Culture Committee, referred to the resolutions as an attempt to undermine the mission of UNESCO as a scientific and cultural organization that promotes cooperation throughout the world.[116][117]
+On 28 June 2011, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, at Jordan's insistence, censured[clarification needed] Israel's decision to demolish and rebuild the Mughrabi Gate Bridge in Jerusalem for safety reasons. Israel stated that Jordan had signed an agreement with Israel stipulating that the existing bridge must be dismantled for safety reasons; Jordan disputed the agreement, saying that it was only signed under U.S. pressure. Israel was also unable to address the UNESCO committee over objections from Egypt.[118]
+In January 2014, days before it was scheduled to open, UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, "indefinitely postponed" and effectively cancelled an exhibit created by the Simon Wiesenthal Center entitled "The People, The Book, The Land: The 3,500-year relationship between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel". The event was scheduled to run from 21 January through 30 January in Paris. Bokova cancelled the event after representatives of Arab states at UNESCO argued that its display would "harm the peace process".[119] The author of the exhibition, Professor Robert Wistrich of the Hebrew University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, called the cancellation an "appalling act", and characterized Bokova's decision as "an arbitrary act of total cynicism and, really, contempt for the Jewish people and its history". UNESCO amended the decision to cancel the exhibit within the year, and it quickly achieved popularity and was viewed as a great success.[120]
+On January 1, 2019, Israel formally left UNESCO in pursuance of the US withdrawal over the perceived continuous anti-Israel bias.
+On 13 October 2016, UNESCO passed a resolution on East Jerusalem that condemned Israel for "aggressions" by Israeli police and soldiers and "illegal measures" against the freedom of worship and Muslims' access to their holy sites, while also recognizing Israel as the occupying power. Palestinian leaders welcomed the decision.[121] While the text acknowledged the "importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls for the three monotheistic religions", it referred to the sacred hilltop compound in Jerusalem's Old City only by its Muslim name "Al-Haram al-Sharif", Arabic for Noble Sanctuary. In response, Israel denounced the UNESCO resolution for its omission of the words "Temple Mount" or "Har HaBayit", stating that it denies Jewish ties to the key holy site.[121][122] After receiving criticism from numerous Israeli politicians and diplomats, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Ayelet Shaked, Israel froze all ties with the organization.[123][124] The resolution was condemned by Ban Ki-moon and the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, who said that Judaism, Islam and Christianity have clear historical connections to Jerusalem and "to deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site.[125][126] "Al-Aqsa Mosque [or] Al-Haram al-Sharif" is also Temple Mount, whose Western Wall is the holiest place in Judaism."[127]. It was also rejected by the Czech Parliament which said the resolution reflects a "hateful anti-Israel sentiment",[128] and hundreds of Italian Jews demonstrated in Rome over Italy's abstention.[128] On 26 October, UNESCO approved a reviewed version of the resolution, which also criticized Israel for its continuous "refusal to let the body's experts access Jerusalem's holy sites to determine their conservation status".[129] Despite containing some softening of language following Israeli protests over a previous version, Israel continued to denounce the text.[130] The resolution refers to the site Jews and Christians refer to as the Temple Mount, or Har HaBayit in Hebrew, only by its Arab name — a significant semantic decision also adopted by UNESCO's executive board, triggering condemnation from Israel and its allies. U.S. Ambassador Crystal Nix Hines stated: "This item should have been defeated. These politicized and one-sided resolutions are damaging the credibility of UNESCO."[131]
+In October 2017, the United States and Israel announced they would withdraw from the organization, citing in-part anti-Israel bias.[132][133]
+In February 2011, an article was published in a Palestinian youth magazine in which a teenage girl described one of her four role-models as Adolf Hitler. In December 2011, UNESCO, which partly funded the magazine, condemned the material and subsequently withdrew support.[134]
+In 2012, UNESCO decided to establish a chair at the Islamic University of Gaza in the field of astronomy, astrophysics, and space sciences,[135] fueling controversy and criticism. Israel bombed the school in 2008 stating that they develop and store weapons there, which Israel restated in criticizing UNESCO's move.[136][137]
+The head, Kamalain Shaath, defended UNESCO, stating that "the Islamic University is a purely academic university that is interested only in education and its development".[138][139][140] Israeli ambassador to UNESCO Nimrod Barkan planned to submit a letter of protest with information about the university's ties to Hamas, especially angry that this was the first Palestinian university that UNESCO chose to cooperate with.[141] The Jewish organization B'nai B'rith criticized the move as well.[142]
+In 2013, UNESCO announced that the collection "The Life and Works of Ernesto Che Guevara" became part of the Memory of the World Register. US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen condemned this decision, saying that the organization acts against its own ideals:[143]
+This decision is more than an insult to the families of those Cubans who were lined up and summarily executed by Che and his merciless cronies but it also serves as a direct contradiction to the UNESCO ideals of encouraging peace and universal respect for human rights.
+UN Watch also condemned this selection by UNESCO.[144]
+In 2015, Japan threatened to halt funding for UNESCO over the organization's decision to include documents relating to the 1937 Nanjing massacre in the latest listing for its "Memory of the World" program.[145]
+In October 2016, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed that Japan's 2016 annual funding of ¥4.4 billion had been suspended although denied any direct link with the Nanjing document controversy.[146]
+The United States withdrew from UNESCO in 1984, citing the "highly politicized" nature of the organisation, its ostensible "hostility toward the basic institutions of a free society, especially a free market and a free press", as well as its "unrestrained budgetary expansion", and poor management under then Director General Amadou-Mahter M'Bow of Senegal.[147]
+On 19 September 1989, former U.S. Congressman Jim Leach stated before a Congressional subcommittee:[148]
+The reasons for the withdrawal of the United States from UNESCO in 1984 are well-known; my view is that we overreacted to the calls of some who wanted to radicalize UNESCO, and the calls of others who wanted the United States to lead in emasculating the UN system. The fact is UNESCO is one of the least dangerous international institutions ever created. While some member countries within UNESCO attempted to push journalistic views antithetical to the values of the west, and engage in Israel bashing, UNESCO itself never adopted such radical postures. The U.S. opted for empty-chair diplomacy, after winning, not losing, the battles we engaged in…  It was nuts to get out, and would be nuttier not to rejoin.
+Leach concluded that the record showed Israel bashing, a call for a new world information order, money management, and arms control policy to be the impetus behind the withdrawal; he asserted that before departing from UNESCO, a withdrawal from the IAEA had been pushed on him.[148] On 1 October 2003, the U.S. rejoined UNESCO.[147]
+On 12 October 2017, the United States notified UNESCO that it will again withdraw from the organization on 31 December 2018 and will seek to establish a permanent observer mission beginning in 2019. The Department of State cited "mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO".[132] Israel praised the withdrawal decision as "brave" and "moral".[147]
+The United States has not paid over $600 million in dues[149] since it stopped paying its $80 million annual UNESCO dues when Palestine became a full member in 2011. Israel and the US were among the 14 votes against the membership out of 194 member countries.[150]
+On May 25, 2016, the noted Turkish poet and human rights activist Zülfü Livaneli resigned as Turkey's only UNESCO goodwill ambassador. He highlighted human rights situation in Turkey and destruction of historical Sur district of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey, during fighting between the Turkish army and Kurdish militants as the main reasons for his resignation. Livaneli said: "To pontificate on peace while remaining silent against such violations is a contradiction of the fundamental ideals of UNESCO."[151]
+In 1981, UNESCO and the UN celebrated the Atatürk Centennial.
+UNESCO develops, maintains and disseminates, free of charge, two interrelated software packages for database management (CDS/ISIS [not to be confused with UK police software package ISIS]) and data mining/statistical analysis (IDAMS).[153]

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+The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO;[1] French: Organisation des Nations unies pour l'éducation, la science et la culture) is a specialised agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at contributing "to the building of peace, the eradication of poverty, sustainable development and intercultural dialogue through education, the sciences, culture, communication and information.[2][3] It is the successor of the League of Nations' International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation.[4]
+UNESCO has 193 member states and 11 associate members.[5] Based in Paris, France, most of its field offices are "cluster" offices that cover three or more countries; national and regional offices also exist.
+UNESCO seeks to build a culture of peace and inclusive knowledge societies through information and communication.[6] To that end, it pursues its objectives through five major program areas: education, natural sciences, social/human sciences, culture and communication/information. It sponsors projects related to literacy, technical training, education, the advancement of science, promoting independent media and freedom of the press, preserving regional and cultural history, and promoting cultural diversity.  UNESCO assists in translating and disseminating world literature, establishing international cooperation agreements to secure "World Heritage Sites" of cultural and natural importance, preserving human rights, and bridging the worldwide digital divide. It also launched and leads the Education For All movement and lifelong learning.
+UNESCO is a member of the United Nations Development Group,[7] a coalition of UN agencies and organisations aimed at fulfilling the Sustainable Development Goals.
+UNESCO and its mandate for international cooperation can be traced back to a League of Nations resolution on 21 September 1921, to elect a Commission to study feasibility.[8][9] This new body, the International Committee on Intellectual Cooperation (ICIC) was created in 1922. On 18 December 1925, the International Bureau of Education (IBE) began work as a non-governmental organization in the service of international educational development.[10] However, the onset of World War II largely interrupted the work of these predecessor organizations.[citation needed]
+After the signing of the Atlantic Charter and the Declaration of the United Nations, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education (CAME) began meetings in London which continued from 16 November 1942 to 5 December 1945. On 30 October 1943, the necessity for an international organization was expressed in the Moscow Declaration, agreed upon by China, the United Kingdom, the United States and the USSR. This was followed by the Dumbarton Oaks Conference proposals of 9 October 1944. Upon the proposal of CAME and in accordance with the recommendations of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO), held in San Francisco in April–June 1945, a United Nations Conference for the establishment of an educational and cultural organization (ECO/CONF) was convened in London 1–16 November 1945 with 44 governments represented. The idea of UNESCO was largely developed by Rab Butler, the Minister of Education for the United Kingdom, who had a great deal of influence in its development.[11] At the ECO/CONF, the Constitution of UNESCO was introduced and signed by 37 countries, and a Preparatory Commission was established.[12] The Preparatory Commission operated between 16 November 1945, and 4 November 1946—the date when UNESCO's Constitution came into force with the deposit of the twentieth ratification by a member state.[13]
+The first General Conference took place from 19 November to 10 December 1946, and elected Dr. Julian Huxley to Director-General.[14] The Constitution was amended in November 1954 when the General Conference resolved that members of the Executive Board would be representatives of the governments of the States of which they are nationals and would not, as before, act in their personal capacity.[15] This change in governance distinguished UNESCO from its predecessor, the ICIC, in how member states would work together in the organization's fields of competence. As member states worked together over time to realize UNESCO's mandate, political and historical factors have shaped the organization's operations in particular during the Cold War, the decolonization process, and the dissolution of the USSR.[citation needed]
+Among the major achievements of the organization is its work against racism, for example through influential statements on race starting with a declaration of anthropologists (among them was Claude Lévi-Strauss) and other scientists in 1950[16] and concluding with the 1978 Declaration on Race and Racial Prejudice.[17]
+In 1956, the Republic of South Africa withdrew from UNESCO saying that some of the organization's publications amounted to "interference" in the country's "racial problems".[18] South Africa rejoined the organization in 1994 under the leadership of Nelson Mandela.[citation needed]
+UNESCO's early work in the field of education included the pilot project on fundamental education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti, started in 1947.[19]
+This project was followed by expert missions to other countries, including, for example, a mission to Afghanistan in 1949.[20]
+In 1948, UNESCO recommended that Member States should make free primary education compulsory and universal.[21]
+In 1990, the World Conference on Education for All, in Jomtien, Thailand, launched a global movement to provide basic education for all children, youths and adults.[22]
+Ten years later, the 2000 World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, led member governments to commit to achieving basic education for all by 2015.[23]
+UNESCO's early activities in culture included the Nubia Campaign, launched in 1960.[24]
+The purpose of the campaign was to move the Great Temple of Abu Simbel to keep it from being swamped by the Nile after the construction of the Aswan Dam. During the 20-year campaign, 22 monuments and architectural complexes were relocated. This was the first and largest in a series of campaigns including Mohenjo-daro (Pakistan), Fes (Morocco), Kathmandu (Nepal), Borobudur (Indonesia) and the Acropolis (Greece).[citation needed]
+The organization's work on heritage led to the adoption, in 1972, of the Convention concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.[25]
+The World Heritage Committee was established in 1976 and the first sites inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1978.[26]
+Since then important legal instruments on cultural heritage and diversity have been adopted by UNESCO member states in 2003 (Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage[27]) and 2005 (Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions[28]).
+An intergovernmental meeting of UNESCO in Paris in December 1951 led to the creation of the European Council for Nuclear Research, which was responsible for establishing the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN)[29] later on, in 1954.
+Arid Zone programming, 1948–1966, is another example of an early major UNESCO project in the field of natural sciences.[30]
+In 1968, UNESCO organized the first intergovernmental conference aimed at reconciling the environment and development, a problem that continues to be addressed in the field of sustainable development. The main outcome of the 1968 conference was the creation of UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme.[31]
+In the field of communication, the "free flow of ideas by word and image" has been in UNESCO's constitution from its beginnings, following the experience of the Second World War when control of information was a factor in indoctrinating populations for aggression.[32]
+In the years immediately following World War II, efforts were concentrated on reconstruction and on the identification of needs for means of mass communication around the world. UNESCO started organizing training and education for journalists in the 1950s.[33]
+In response to calls for a "New World Information and Communication Order" in the late 1970s, UNESCO established the International Commission for the Study of Communication Problems,[34] which produced the 1980 MacBride report (named after the Chair of the Commission, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Seán MacBride).[35]
+The same year, UNESCO created the International Programme for the Development of Communication (IPDC), a multilateral forum designed to promote media development in developing countries.[36][37] In 1991, UNESCO's General Conference endorsed the Windhoek Declaration on media independence and pluralism, which led the UN General Assembly to declare the date of its adoption, 3 May, as World Press Freedom Day.[38] Since 1997, UNESCO has awarded the UNESCO / Guillermo Cano World Press Freedom Prize every 3 May. In the lead up to the World Summit on the Information Society in 2003 (Geneva) and 2005 (Tunis), UNESCO introduced the Information for All Programme.[citation needed]
+UNESCO admitted Palestine as a member in 2011.[39][40]
+Laws passed in the United States after Palestine applied for UNESCO and WHO membership in April 1989[41][42] mean that the US cannot contribute financially to any UN organisation that accepts Palestine as a full member.[43][44] As a result, the US withdrew its funding, which had accounted for about 22% of UNESCO's budget.[45] Israel also reacted to Palestine's admittance to UNESCO by freezing Israeli payments to UNESCO and imposing sanctions on the Palestinian Authority,[46] stating that Palestine's admittance would be detrimental "to potential peace talks".[47] Two years after they stopped paying their dues to UNESCO, the US and Israel lost UNESCO voting rights in 2013 without losing the right to be elected; thus, the US was elected as a member of the Executive Board for the period 2016–19.[48]  In 2019, Israel left UNESCO after 69 years of membership, with Israel's ambassador to the UN Danny Danon writing: "UNESCO is the body that continually rewrites history, including by erasing the Jewish connection to Jerusalem... it is corrupted and manipulated by Israel's enemies... we are not going to be a member of an organisation that deliberately acts against us".[49]
+UNESCO implements its activities through the five program areas: education, natural sciences, social and human sciences, culture, and communication and information.
+UNESCO does not accredit institutions of higher learning.[50]
+The UNESCO transparency portal has been designed to enable public access to information regarding Organization's activities, such as its aggregate budget for a biennium, as well as links to relevant programmatic and financial documents. These two distinct sets of information are published on the IATI registry, respectively based on the IATI Activity Standard and the IATI Organization Standard.
+There have been proposals to establish two new UNESCO lists. The first proposed list will focus on movable cultural heritage such as artifacts, paintings, and biofacts. The list may include cultural objects, such as the Jōmon Venus of Japan, the Mona Lisa of France, the Gebel el-Arak Knife of Egypt, The Ninth Wave of Russia, the Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük of Turkey, the David (Michelangelo) of Italy, the Mathura Herakles of India, the Manunggul Jar of the Philippines, the Crown of Baekje of South Korea, The Hay Wain of the United Kingdom and the Benin Bronzes of Nigeria. The second proposed list will focus on the world's living species, such as the komodo dragon of Indonesia, the panda of China, the bald eagle of North American countries, the aye-aye of Madagascar, the Asiatic lion of India, the kakapo of New Zealand, and the mountain tapir of Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.[67][68]
+UNESCO and its specialized institutions issue a number of magazines.
+The UNESCO Courier magazine states its mission to "promote UNESCO's ideals, maintain a platform for the dialogue between cultures and provide a forum for international debate". Since March 2006 it is available online, with limited printed issues. Its articles express the opinions of the authors which are not necessarily the opinions of UNESCO. There was a hiatus in publishing between 2012 and 2017.[69]
+In 1950, UNESCO initiated the quarterly review Impact of Science on Society (also known as Impact) to discuss the influence of science on society. The journal ceased publication in 1992.[70] UNESCO also published Museum International Quarterly from the year 1948.
+UNESCO has official relations with 322 international non-governmental organizations (NGOs).[71] Most of these are what UNESCO calls "operational"; a select few are "formal".[72]
+The highest form of affiliation to UNESCO is "formal associate", and the 22 NGOs[73] with formal associate (ASC) relations occupying offices at UNESCO are:
+The institutes are specialized departments of the organization that support UNESCO's programme, providing specialized support for cluster and national offices.
+UNESCO awards 22 prizes[85] in education, science, culture and peace:
+International Days observed at UNESCO is provided in the table given below[86]
+As of January 2019, UNESCO has 193 member states and 11 associate members.[88] Some members are not independent states and some members have additional National Organizing Committees from some of their dependent territories.[89] UNESCO state parties are the United Nations member states (except Liechtenstein, United States[90] and Israel[91]), as well as Cook Islands, Niue and Palestine.[92][93] The United States and Israel left UNESCO on 31 December 2018.[94]
+There has been no elected UNESCO Director-General from Southeast Asia, South Asia, Central and North Asia, Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, South Africa, Australia-Oceania, and South America since inception.
+The Directors-General of UNESCO came from West Europe (5), Central America (1), North America (2), West Africa (1), East Asia (1), and East Europe (1). Out of the 11 Directors-General since inception, women have held the position only twice. Qatar, the Philippines, and Iran are proposing for a Director-General bid by 2021 or 2025. There have never been a Middle Eastern or Southeast Asian UNESCO Director-General since inception. The ASEAN bloc and some Pacific and Latin American nations support the possible bid of the Philippines, which is culturally Asian, Oceanic, and Latin. Qatar and Iran, on the other hand, have fragmented support in the Middle East. Egypt, Israel, and Madagascar are also vying for the position but have yet to express a direct or indirect proposal. Both Qatar and Egypt lost in the 2017 bid against France.
+The list of the Directors-General of UNESCO since its establishment in 1946 is as follows:[95]
+This is the list of the sessions of the UNESCO General Conference held since 1946:[96]
+The 40th General Conference On 12th To 27 November 2019.
+Italy
+Netherlands
+Spain
+Switzerland
+Poland
+Russia
+Serbia
+Brazil
+Dominican Republic
+Uruguay
+Kyrgyzstan
+Philippines
+Pakistan
+South Korea
+Thailand
+Congo
+Guinea
+Ghana
+Kenya
+Namibia
+Senegal
+Togo
+UAE
+Tunisia
+France
+ Greece
+ Italy
+ Spain
+ United Kingdom
+Lithuania
+ Russia
+ Serbia
+ Slovenia
+Brazil
+ Haiti
+ Mexico
+ Nicaragua
+ Paraguay
+India
+ Iran
+ Malaysia
+ Pakistan
+ South Korea
+ Sri Lanka
+ Vietnam
+Cameroon
+ Ivory Coast
+ Ghana
+ Kenya
+ Nigeria
+ Senegal
+ South Africa
+Lebanon
+ Oman
+ Qatar
+ Sudan
+Germany
+ Netherlands
+ Sweden
+Albania
+ Estonia
+ Ukraine
+Argentina
+ Belize
+ Dominican Republic
+ El Salvador
+ Saint Kitts and Nevis
+ Trinidad and Tobago
+Bangladesh
+ China
+ India
+ Japan
+   Nepal
+ Turkmenistan
+Chad
+ Guinea
+ Mauritius
+ Mozambique
+ Togo
+ Uganda
+Algeria
+ Egypt
+ Kuwait
+ Morocco
+Austria
+ France
+ Italy
+ India
+ Spain
+ United Kingdom
+ United States
+Czech Republic
+ Montenegro
+ North Macedonia
+Russia
+Brazil
+ Cuba
+ Ecuador
+ Mexico
+Afghanistan
+ Indonesia
+ Pakistan
+ Papua New Guinea
+ South Korea
+ Thailand
+Angola
+ Ethiopia
+ Gabon
+ Gambia
+ Malawi
+ Mali
+ Namibia
+ Nigeria
+Jordan
+ Tunisia
+ United Arab Emirates
+UNESCO headquarters are located at Place de Fontenoy in Paris, France.
+UNESCO's field offices across the globe are categorized into four primary office types based upon their function and geographic coverage: cluster offices, national offices, regional bureaus and liaison offices.
+The following list of all UNESCO Field Offices is organized geographically by UNESCO Region and identifies the members states and associate members of UNESCO which are served by each office.[103]
+UNESCO has been the centre of controversy in the past, particularly in its relationships with the United States, the United Kingdom, Singapore and the former Soviet Union. During the 1970s and 1980s, UNESCO's support for a "New World Information and Communication Order" and its MacBride report calling for democratization of the media and more egalitarian access to information was condemned in these countries as attempts to curb freedom of the press. UNESCO was perceived as a platform for communists and Third World dictators to attack the West, in contrast to accusations made by the USSR in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[107] In 1984, the United States withheld its contributions and withdrew from the organization in protest, followed by the United Kingdom in 1985.[108] Singapore withdrew also at the end of 1985, citing rising membership fees.[109] Following a change of government in 1997, the UK rejoined. The United States rejoined in 2003, followed by Singapore on 8 October 2007.[110]
+Israel was admitted to UNESCO in 1949, one year after its creation. Israel has maintained its membership since 1949.
+In 2010, Israel designated the Cave of the Patriarchs, Hebron and Rachel's Tomb, Bethlehem as National Heritage Sites and announced restoration work, prompting criticism from the Obama administration and protests from Palestinians.[111] In October 2010, UNESCO's Executive Board voted to declare the sites as "al-Haram al-Ibrahimi/Tomb of the Patriarchs" and "Bilal bin Rabah Mosque/Rachel's Tomb" and stated that they were "an integral part of the occupied Palestinian Territories" and any unilateral Israeli action was a violation of international law.[112]
+UNESCO described the sites as significant to "people of the Muslim, Christian and Jewish traditions", and accused Israel of highlighting only the Jewish character of the sites.[113]
+Israel in turn accused UNESCO of "detach[ing] the Nation of Israel from its heritage", and accused it of being politically motivated.[114]
+The Rabbi of the Western Wall said that Rachel's tomb had not previously been declared a holy Muslim site.[115] Israel partially suspended ties with UNESCO. Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon declared that the resolution was a "part of Palestinian escalation".
+Zevulun Orlev, chairman of the Knesset Education and Culture Committee, referred to the resolutions as an attempt to undermine the mission of UNESCO as a scientific and cultural organization that promotes cooperation throughout the world.[116][117]
+On 28 June 2011, UNESCO's World Heritage Committee, at Jordan's insistence, censured[clarification needed] Israel's decision to demolish and rebuild the Mughrabi Gate Bridge in Jerusalem for safety reasons. Israel stated that Jordan had signed an agreement with Israel stipulating that the existing bridge must be dismantled for safety reasons; Jordan disputed the agreement, saying that it was only signed under U.S. pressure. Israel was also unable to address the UNESCO committee over objections from Egypt.[118]
+In January 2014, days before it was scheduled to open, UNESCO Director-General, Irina Bokova, "indefinitely postponed" and effectively cancelled an exhibit created by the Simon Wiesenthal Center entitled "The People, The Book, The Land: The 3,500-year relationship between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel". The event was scheduled to run from 21 January through 30 January in Paris. Bokova cancelled the event after representatives of Arab states at UNESCO argued that its display would "harm the peace process".[119] The author of the exhibition, Professor Robert Wistrich of the Hebrew University's Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism, called the cancellation an "appalling act", and characterized Bokova's decision as "an arbitrary act of total cynicism and, really, contempt for the Jewish people and its history". UNESCO amended the decision to cancel the exhibit within the year, and it quickly achieved popularity and was viewed as a great success.[120]
+On January 1, 2019, Israel formally left UNESCO in pursuance of the US withdrawal over the perceived continuous anti-Israel bias.
+On 13 October 2016, UNESCO passed a resolution on East Jerusalem that condemned Israel for "aggressions" by Israeli police and soldiers and "illegal measures" against the freedom of worship and Muslims' access to their holy sites, while also recognizing Israel as the occupying power. Palestinian leaders welcomed the decision.[121] While the text acknowledged the "importance of the Old City of Jerusalem and its walls for the three monotheistic religions", it referred to the sacred hilltop compound in Jerusalem's Old City only by its Muslim name "Al-Haram al-Sharif", Arabic for Noble Sanctuary. In response, Israel denounced the UNESCO resolution for its omission of the words "Temple Mount" or "Har HaBayit", stating that it denies Jewish ties to the key holy site.[121][122] After receiving criticism from numerous Israeli politicians and diplomats, including Benjamin Netanyahu and Ayelet Shaked, Israel froze all ties with the organization.[123][124] The resolution was condemned by Ban Ki-moon and the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, who said that Judaism, Islam and Christianity have clear historical connections to Jerusalem and "to deny, conceal or erase any of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions undermines the integrity of the site.[125][126] "Al-Aqsa Mosque [or] Al-Haram al-Sharif" is also Temple Mount, whose Western Wall is the holiest place in Judaism."[127]. It was also rejected by the Czech Parliament which said the resolution reflects a "hateful anti-Israel sentiment",[128] and hundreds of Italian Jews demonstrated in Rome over Italy's abstention.[128] On 26 October, UNESCO approved a reviewed version of the resolution, which also criticized Israel for its continuous "refusal to let the body's experts access Jerusalem's holy sites to determine their conservation status".[129] Despite containing some softening of language following Israeli protests over a previous version, Israel continued to denounce the text.[130] The resolution refers to the site Jews and Christians refer to as the Temple Mount, or Har HaBayit in Hebrew, only by its Arab name — a significant semantic decision also adopted by UNESCO's executive board, triggering condemnation from Israel and its allies. U.S. Ambassador Crystal Nix Hines stated: "This item should have been defeated. These politicized and one-sided resolutions are damaging the credibility of UNESCO."[131]
+In October 2017, the United States and Israel announced they would withdraw from the organization, citing in-part anti-Israel bias.[132][133]
+In February 2011, an article was published in a Palestinian youth magazine in which a teenage girl described one of her four role-models as Adolf Hitler. In December 2011, UNESCO, which partly funded the magazine, condemned the material and subsequently withdrew support.[134]
+In 2012, UNESCO decided to establish a chair at the Islamic University of Gaza in the field of astronomy, astrophysics, and space sciences,[135] fueling controversy and criticism. Israel bombed the school in 2008 stating that they develop and store weapons there, which Israel restated in criticizing UNESCO's move.[136][137]
+The head, Kamalain Shaath, defended UNESCO, stating that "the Islamic University is a purely academic university that is interested only in education and its development".[138][139][140] Israeli ambassador to UNESCO Nimrod Barkan planned to submit a letter of protest with information about the university's ties to Hamas, especially angry that this was the first Palestinian university that UNESCO chose to cooperate with.[141] The Jewish organization B'nai B'rith criticized the move as well.[142]
+In 2013, UNESCO announced that the collection "The Life and Works of Ernesto Che Guevara" became part of the Memory of the World Register. US Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen condemned this decision, saying that the organization acts against its own ideals:[143]
+This decision is more than an insult to the families of those Cubans who were lined up and summarily executed by Che and his merciless cronies but it also serves as a direct contradiction to the UNESCO ideals of encouraging peace and universal respect for human rights.
+UN Watch also condemned this selection by UNESCO.[144]
+In 2015, Japan threatened to halt funding for UNESCO over the organization's decision to include documents relating to the 1937 Nanjing massacre in the latest listing for its "Memory of the World" program.[145]
+In October 2016, Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida confirmed that Japan's 2016 annual funding of ¥4.4 billion had been suspended although denied any direct link with the Nanjing document controversy.[146]
+The United States withdrew from UNESCO in 1984, citing the "highly politicized" nature of the organisation, its ostensible "hostility toward the basic institutions of a free society, especially a free market and a free press", as well as its "unrestrained budgetary expansion", and poor management under then Director General Amadou-Mahter M'Bow of Senegal.[147]
+On 19 September 1989, former U.S. Congressman Jim Leach stated before a Congressional subcommittee:[148]
+The reasons for the withdrawal of the United States from UNESCO in 1984 are well-known; my view is that we overreacted to the calls of some who wanted to radicalize UNESCO, and the calls of others who wanted the United States to lead in emasculating the UN system. The fact is UNESCO is one of the least dangerous international institutions ever created. While some member countries within UNESCO attempted to push journalistic views antithetical to the values of the west, and engage in Israel bashing, UNESCO itself never adopted such radical postures. The U.S. opted for empty-chair diplomacy, after winning, not losing, the battles we engaged in…  It was nuts to get out, and would be nuttier not to rejoin.
+Leach concluded that the record showed Israel bashing, a call for a new world information order, money management, and arms control policy to be the impetus behind the withdrawal; he asserted that before departing from UNESCO, a withdrawal from the IAEA had been pushed on him.[148] On 1 October 2003, the U.S. rejoined UNESCO.[147]
+On 12 October 2017, the United States notified UNESCO that it will again withdraw from the organization on 31 December 2018 and will seek to establish a permanent observer mission beginning in 2019. The Department of State cited "mounting arrears at UNESCO, the need for fundamental reform in the organization, and continuing anti-Israel bias at UNESCO".[132] Israel praised the withdrawal decision as "brave" and "moral".[147]
+The United States has not paid over $600 million in dues[149] since it stopped paying its $80 million annual UNESCO dues when Palestine became a full member in 2011. Israel and the US were among the 14 votes against the membership out of 194 member countries.[150]
+On May 25, 2016, the noted Turkish poet and human rights activist Zülfü Livaneli resigned as Turkey's only UNESCO goodwill ambassador. He highlighted human rights situation in Turkey and destruction of historical Sur district of Diyarbakir, the largest city in Kurdish-majority southeast Turkey, during fighting between the Turkish army and Kurdish militants as the main reasons for his resignation. Livaneli said: "To pontificate on peace while remaining silent against such violations is a contradiction of the fundamental ideals of UNESCO."[151]
+In 1981, UNESCO and the UN celebrated the Atatürk Centennial.
+UNESCO develops, maintains and disseminates, free of charge, two interrelated software packages for database management (CDS/ISIS [not to be confused with UK police software package ISIS]) and data mining/statistical analysis (IDAMS).[153]

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+1 (one, also called unit, and unity) is a number, and a numerical digit used to represent that number in numerals. It represents a single entity, the unit of counting or measurement. For example, a line segment of unit length is a line segment of length 1. 1 is the smallest positive integer. It is also sometimes considered the first of the infinite sequence of natural numbers, followed by 2, although by other definitions 1 is the second natural number, following 0.
+The fundamental mathematical property of 1 is to be a multiplicative identity, meaning that any number multiplied by 1 returns that number. Most if not all properties of 1 can be deduced from this. In advanced mathematics, a multiplicative identity is often denoted 1, even if it is not a number. 1 is by convention not considered a prime number; although universal today, this was a matter of some controversy until the mid-20th century.
+The word one can be used as a noun, an adjective and a pronoun.[1]
+It comes from the English word an,[1] which comes from the Proto-Germanic root *ainaz.[1] The Proto-Germanic root *ainaz comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *oi-no-.[1]
+Compare the Proto-Germanic root *ainaz to Old Frisian an, Gothic ains, Danish en, Dutch een, German eins and Old Norse einn.
+Compare the Proto-Indo-European root *oi-no- (which means "one, single"[1]) to Greek oinos (which means "ace" on dice[1]), Latin unus (one[1]), Old Persian aivam, Old Church Slavonic -inu and ino-, Lithuanian vienas, Old Irish oin and Breton un (one[1]).
+One, sometimes referred to as unity,[2] is the first non-zero natural number. It is thus the integer after zero.
+Any number multiplied by one remains that number, as one is the identity for multiplication. As a result, 1 is its own factorial, its own square and square root, its own cube and cube root, and so on. One is also the result of the empty product, as any number multiplied by one is itself. It is also the only natural number that is neither composite nor prime with respect to division, but instead considered a unit (meaning of ring theory).
+The glyph used today in the Western world to represent the number 1, a vertical line, often with a serif at the top and sometimes a short horizontal line at the bottom, traces its roots back to the Brahmic script of ancient India, where it was a simple vertical line. It was transmitted to Europe via Arabic during the Middle Ages.
+In some countries, the serif at the top is sometimes extended into a long upstroke, sometimes as long as the vertical line, which can lead to confusion with the glyph for seven in other countries. Where the 1 is written with a long upstroke, the number 7 has a horizontal stroke through the vertical line.
+While the shape of the 1 character has an ascender in most modern typefaces, in typefaces with text figures, the character usually is of x-height, as, for example, in .
+Many older typewriters do not have a separate symbol for 1 and use the lowercase letter l instead. It is possible to find cases when the uppercase J is used, while it may be for decorative purposes.
+Mathematically, 1 is:
+Formalizations of the natural numbers have their own representations of 1. In the Peano axioms, 1 is the successor of 0, in Principia Mathematica it is defined as the set of all singletons (sets with one element), and in the Von Neumann cardinal assignment of natural numbers it is defined as the set {0}.
+In a multiplicative group or monoid, the identity element is sometimes denoted 1, but e (from the German Einheit, "unity") is also traditional. However, 1 is especially common for the multiplicative identity of a ring, i.e., when an addition and 0 are also present. When such a ring has characteristic n not equal to 0, the element called 1 has the property that n1 = 1n = 0 (where this 0 is the additive identity of the ring). Important examples are finite fields.
+By definition, 1 is the magnitude, absolute value, or norm of a unit complex number, unit vector, and a unit matrix (more usually called an identity matrix). Note that the term unit matrix is sometimes used to mean something quite different.
+By definition, 1 is the probability of an event that is almost certain to occur.
+In category theory, 1 is sometimes used to denote the terminal object of a category.
+In number theory, 1 is the value of Legendre's constant, which was introduced in 1808 by Adrien-Marie Legendre in expressing the asymptotic behavior of the prime-counting function. Legendre's constant was originally conjectured to be approximately 1.08366, but was proven to equal exactly 1 in 1899.
+Tallying is often referred to as "base 1", since only one mark – the tally itself – is needed. This is more formally referred to as a unary numeral system. Unlike base 2 or base 10, this is not a positional notation.
+Since the base 1 exponential function (1x) always equals 1, its inverse does not exist (which would be called the logarithm base 1 if it did exist).
+There are two ways to write the real number 1 as a recurring decimal: as 1.000..., and as 0.999....
+1 is the first figurate number of every kind, such as triangular number, pentagonal number and centered hexagonal number, to name just a few.
+In many mathematical and engineering problems, numeric values are typically normalized to fall within the unit interval from 0 to 1, where 1 usually represents the maximum possible value in the range of parameters.  Likewise, vectors are often normalized to give unit vectors, that is vectors of magnitude one, because these often have more desirable properties. Functions, too, are often normalized by the condition that they have integral one, maximum value one, or square integral one, depending on the application.
+Because of the multiplicative identity, if f(x) is a multiplicative function, then f(1) must equal 1.
+It is also the first and second number in the Fibonacci sequence (0 is the zeroth) and is the first number in many other mathematical sequences.
+The definition of a field requires that 1 must not be equal to 0. Thus, there are no fields of characteristic 1. Nevertheless, abstract algebra can consider the field with one element, which is not a singleton and is not a set at all.
+1 is the most common leading digit in many sets of data, a consequence of Benford's law.
+1 is the only known Tamagawa number for a simply connected algebraic group over a number field.
+The generating function that has all coefficients 1 is given by
+1
+1
+−
+x
+=
+1
++
+x
++
+x
+2
++
+x
+3
++
+…
+{\displaystyle {\frac {1}{1-x}}=1+x+x^{2}+x^{3}+\ldots }
+This power series converges and has finite value if and only if,
+|
+x
+|
+<
+1
+{\displaystyle |x|<1}
+.
+1 is by convention neither a prime number nor a composite number, but a unit (meaning of ring theory), like −1 and, in the Gaussian integers, i and −i. The fundamental theorem of arithmetic guarantees unique factorization over the integers only up to units. (For example, 4 = 22, but if units are included, is also equal to, say, (−1)6 × 123 × 22, among infinitely many similar "factorizations".)
+1 appears to meet the naïve definition of a prime number, being evenly divisible only by 1 and itself (also 1). As such, some mathematicians considered it a prime number as late as the middle of the 20th century, but mathematical consensus has generally and since then universally been to exclude it for a variety of reasons such as complicating the fundamental theorem of arithmetic and other theorems related to prime numbers. 1 is the only positive integer divisible by exactly one positive integer, whereas prime numbers are divisible by exactly two positive integers, composite numbers are divisible by more than two positive integers, and zero is divisible by all positive integers.
+In the philosophy of Plotinus and a number of other neoplatonists, The One is the ultimate reality and source of all existence.[6] Philo of Alexandria (20 BC – AD 50) regarded the number one as God's number, and the basis for all numbers ("De Allegoriis Legum," ii.12 [i.66]).

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+The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA /juːˈeɪfə/ yoo-AY-fə; French: Union des Associations Européennes de Football;[a] German: Vereinigung Europäischer Fußballverbände)[b] is the administrative body for association football, futsal and beach soccer in Europe, although several member states are primarily or entirely located in Asia. It is one of six continental confederations of world football's governing body FIFA. UEFA consists of 55 national association members.
+UEFA represents the national football associations of Europe, runs nation and club competitions including the UEFA European Championship, UEFA Nations League, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, and UEFA Super Cup, and controls the prize money, regulations, and media rights to those competitions.
+Henri Delaunay was the first general secretary and Ebbe Schwartz the first president. The current president is Aleksander Čeferin, a former Football Association of Slovenia president, who was elected as UEFA's seventh president at the 12th Extraordinary UEFA Congress in Athens in September 2016, and automatically became a vice-president of the world body FIFA.[3]
+UEFA was founded on 15 June 1954 in Basel, Switzerland after consultation between the Italian, French, and Belgian associations.[4] At the founding meeting, 25 members were present. However, 6 other associations which were not present were still recognised as founding members, bringing the total of founding associations to 31.[5] That number (not counting the six absent founders) doubled by the early 1990s as new associations were born out of the fragmentation of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia into their constituent states. Until 1959 the main headquarters were located in Paris, and later in Bern. In 1995, UEFA headquarters were transferred to Nyon, Switzerland.
+UEFA membership coincides for the most part with recognition as a sovereign country in Europe (48 out of 55 members are sovereign UN member states), although there are some exceptions. One UN member state (Monaco) and one UN observer state (Vatican City) are not members. Some UEFA members are not sovereign states, but form part of a larger recognised sovereign state in the context of international law. These include Northern Ireland, Scotland, England and Wales (countries of the United Kingdom), Gibraltar (British Overseas Territory), the Faroe Islands (constituent country within the Kingdom of Denmark), and Kosovo (state with limited recognition), however in the context of these countries government functions concerning sport tend to be carried at the territorial level coterminous with the UEFA member entity.
+Some UEFA members are transcontinental states (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Russia and Turkey) and others are considered part of Europe both culturally and politically (Armenia and Cyprus). Countries which had been members of the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) were also admitted to the European football association, particularly Israel (because it had been banned from the AFC group in 1974) and Kazakhstan. Additionally some UEFA member associations allow teams from outside their association's main territory to take part in their "domestic" competition. AS Monaco, for example, takes part in the French League (though a separate sovereign entity); Welsh clubs Cardiff City, Swansea City and Newport County A.F.C. participate in the English League; Derry City, situated in Northern Ireland, plays in the Republic of Ireland-based League of Ireland and the 7 native Liechtenstein teams play in the Swiss Leagues, as Liechtenstein has no own league and only a cup competition.
+There are several national teams within Europe that are not members of UEFA. Many of them are instead affiliated with CONIFA.
+National teams:
+Clubs:
+Defunct
+Intercontinental:
+Defunct
+Amateur:
+Defunct
+UEFA runs official international competitions in Europe and some countries of Northern, Southwestern and Central Asia for national teams and professional clubs, known as UEFA competitions, some of which are regarded as the world's most prestigious tournaments.
+UEFA is the organiser of two of the most prestigious competitions in international football: The UEFA European Championship and the UEFA Nations League. The main competition for men's national teams is the UEFA European Championship (also known as the Euro), started in 1958, with the first finals in 1960, and known as the European Nations Cup until 1964. The UEFA Nations League is the second tournament of UEFA and was introduced in 2018. The tournament largely replaced the international friendly matches previously played on the FIFA International Match Calendar. It will be played every two years.
+UEFA also runs national competitions at Under-21, Under-19 and Under-17 levels. For women's national teams, UEFA operates the UEFA Women's Championship for senior national sides as well as Women's Under-19 and Women's Under-17 Championships.
+UEFA also organised the UEFA–CAF Meridian Cup with CAF for youth teams in an effort to boost youth football. UEFA launched the UEFA Regions' Cup, for semi-professional teams representing their local region, in 1999. In futsal there is the UEFA Futsal Championship and UEFA Under-19 Futsal Championship. Despite the existence of UEFA's Futsal and Beach soccer committee, UEFA does not organise any beach soccer competitions. International and club beach soccer competitions for UEFA members are organised externally by Beach Soccer Worldwide.
+The Italian, German, Spanish, French and Russian[8] men's national teams are the sole teams to have won the European football championship in all categories.
+The top-ranked UEFA competition is the UEFA Champions League, which started in the 1992/93 season and gathers the top 1–4 teams of each country's league (the number of teams depend on that country's ranking and can be upgraded or downgraded); this competition was re-structured from a previous one that only gathered the top team of each country (held from 1955 to 1992 and known as the European Champion Clubs' Cup or simply the European Cup).
+A second, lower-ranked competition is the UEFA Europa League. This competition, for national knockout cup winners and high-placed league teams, was launched by UEFA in 1971 as a successor of both the former UEFA Cup and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup (also begun in 1955). A third competition, the UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, which had started in 1960, was absorbed into the UEFA Cup (now UEFA Europa League) in 1999.
+In December 2018, UEFA announced the creation of a third club competition, with a working title of Europa League 2 (UEL2) (The name was later decided as UEFA Europa Conference League) . The competition would feature 32 teams directly in 8 groups of 4, with a knockout round between the second placed teams in UEFA Europa Conference League and the third placed teams in the Europa League, leading to a final 16 knockout stage featuring the eight group winners. UEFA announced that the first edition of the competition begins in 2021 [9].
+In women's football UEFA also conducts the UEFA Women's Champions League for club teams. The competition was first held in 2001, and known as the UEFA Women's Cup until 2009.
+The UEFA Super Cup pits the winners of the Champions League against the winners of the Europa League (previously the winners of the Cup Winners' Cup), and came into being in 1973.[10][11][12]
+The UEFA Intertoto Cup was a summer competition, previously operated by several Central European football associations, which was relaunched and recognised as official UEFA club competition by UEFA in 1995.[13] The last Intertoto Cup took place in 2008.
+The European/South American Cup was jointly organised with CONMEBOL between the Champions League and the Copa Libertadores winners.[14]
+Only five teams[15][16] (Juventus, Ajax, Manchester United, Bayern Munich and Chelsea[17]) have won each of the three main competitions (European Cup/UEFA Champions League, European Cup Winners' Cup/UEFA Cup Winners' Cup and UEFA Cup/UEFA Europa League),[18] a feat that is no longer possible for any team that did not win the Cup Winners' Cup. There are currently eight teams throughout Europe that have won two of the three trophies; all but one have won the Cup Winners' Cup, four require a win in the Champions League and four require a UEFA Europa League win.
+Juventus of Italy was the first team in Europe—remaining the only one to date (2019)—to win all UEFA's official championships and cups[19] and, in commemoration of achieving that feat, have received The UEFA Plaque by the Union of European Football Associations on 12 July 1988.[20][21]
+UEFA's premier futsal competition is the UEFA Futsal Cup, a tournament started in 2001 which replaced the former Futsal European Clubs Championship. This event, despite enjoying a long and well-established tradition in the European futsal community, dating back to 1984, was never recognised as official by UEFA.
+Note: The UEFA Champions League sponsors are also sponsors of the UEFA Super Cup, UEFA Women's Champions League and the UEFA Youth League (excluding Heineken, which is replaced by EA Sports´s FIFA).
+Legend
+For each tournament, the flag of the host country and the number of teams in each finals tournament (in brackets) are shown.
+Notes
+Dissatisfied fans across Europe have referred to the organisation as UEFA mafia, including in Russia's top league,[32] in Bulgaria's top league,[33] and in a Champions League group stage match held in Sweden.[34] The term has also been covered for its use outside of stadiums, for example during a protest in Kosovo outside an EU building following the Serbia v Albania (UEFA Euro 2016 qualifying) match.[35]
+Following the 2015 FIFA corruption case, the current president of UEFA, Michel Platini, was also involved himself in the case. Swiss prosecutors accuse FIFA president Sepp Blatter of making a "disloyal payment" of $2m (£1.6m) to Mr Platini. Swiss attorney general, Michael Lauber, stated: "We didn't interview Mr Platini as a witness, that's not true. We investigated against him in between as a witness and an accused person".[36][37] Both Platini and Sepp Blatter are currently under formal investigation by FIFA's independent ethics committee.[citation needed] On 8 October 2015, Platini was provisionally suspended for 90 days from any football-related activity.[38]
+In 2019 UEFA's decision to host Europa League Cup final in Baku, Azerbaijan left one of the finalists, Arsenal, with a decision to withdraw their Armenian player Henrikh Mkhitaryan out of the competition due to safety concerns.[39]
+President
+Vice-presidents
+Members
+General secretary
+Deputy general secretary
+Treasurer
+Head of club competitions
+Head of national competitions
+Awards:
+Qualifications:
+Match:

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+The Soviet Union,[d] officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics[e] (USSR),[f] was a federal socialist state in Northern Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics,[g] in practice its government and economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian SFSR. Other major urban centers were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Tashkent, Alma-Ata and Novosibirsk. It was the largest country in the world by surface area,[18] spanning over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones and over 7,200 kilometers (4,500 mi) north to south. Its territory included much of Eastern Europe as well as part of Northern Europe and all of Northern and Central Asia. It had five climate zones such as tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains. Its diverse population was collectively known as Soviet people.
+The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government that had earlier replaced the monarchy. They established the Russian Soviet Republic[h], beginning a civil war between the Bolshevik Red Army and many anti-Bolshevik forces across the former Empire, among whom the largest faction was the White Guard. The disastrous distractive effect of the war and the Bolshevik policies led to 5 million deaths during the 1921–1922 famine in the region of Povolzhye. The Red Army expanded and helped local Communists take power, establishing soviets, repressing their political opponents and rebellious peasants through the policies of Red Terror and War Communism. In 1922, the Communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. The New Economic Policy (NEP) which was introduced by Lenin led to a partial return of a free market and private property, resulting in a period of economic recovery.
+Following Lenin's death in 1924, a troika and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all political opposition to his rule inside the Communist Party, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism, ended the NEP, initiating a centrally planned economy. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization, which led to a significant economic growth, but also created a man-made famine of 1932–1933 and expanded the Gulag labour camp system founded back in 1918. Stalin also fomented political paranoia and conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents of his from the Party through the mass arbitrary arrest of many people (military leaders, Communist Party members and ordinary citizens alike) who were then sent to correctional labor camps or sentenced to death.
+On 23 August 1939, after unsuccessful efforts to form an anti-fascist alliance with Western powers, the Soviets signed the non-aggression agreement with Nazi Germany. After the start of World War II, the formally neutral Soviets invaded and annexed territories of several Eastern European states, including eastern Poland and the Baltic states. In June 1941 the Germans invaded, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the cost of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin and won World War II in Europe on 9 May 1945. The territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged in 1947 as a result of a post-war Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, where the Eastern Bloc confronted the Western Bloc that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949.
+Following Stalin's death in 1953, a period known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchev Thaw occurred under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. The country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took an early lead in the Space Race with the first ever satellite and the first human spaceflight. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed when the Soviet Union deployed troops in Afghanistan in 1979. The war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters.
+In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to further reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing economic stagnation. The Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well. Central authorities initiated a referendum—boycotted by the Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova—which resulted in the majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the Union as a renewed federation. In August 1991, a coup d'état was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a high-profile role in facing down the coup, resulting in the banning of the Communist Party. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the remaining twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation (formerly the Russian SFSR) assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and is recognized as its continued legal personality.
+The USSR produced many significant social and technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first ministry of health, first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus. The country had the world's second-largest economy and the largest standing military in the world.[19][20][21] The USSR was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states. It was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
+The word soviet is derived from the Russian word sovet (Russian: совет), meaning "council", "assembly", "advice", "harmony", "concord",[note 1] ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti ("to inform"), related to Slavic věst ("news"), English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or" (which came to English through French), or the Dutch weten ("to know"; cf. wetenschap meaning "science"). The word sovietnik means "councillor".[22]
+Some organizations in Russian history were called council (Russian: совет). In the Russian Empire, the State Council which functioned from 1810 to 1917 was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905.[22]
+During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union which he initially named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia (Russian: Союз Советских Республик Европы и Азии, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Respublik Evropy i Azii).[23] Stalin initially resisted the proposal but ultimately accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), albeit all the republics began as socialist soviet and did not change to the other order until 1936. In addition, in the national languages of several republics, the word council or conciliar in the respective language was only quite late changed to an adaptation of the Russian soviet and never in others, e.g. Ukraine.
+СССР (in Latin alphabet: SSSR) is the abbreviation of USSR in Russian. It is written in Cyrillic alphabets. The Soviets used the Cyrillic abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning. Notably, both Cyrillic letters used have orthographically-similar (but transliterally distinct) letters in Latin alphabets. Because of widespread familiarity with the Cyrillic abbreviation, Latin alphabet users in particular almost always use the orthographically-similar Latin letters C and P (as opposed to the transliteral Latin letters S and R) when rendering the USSR's native abbreviation.
+After СССР, the most common short form names for the Soviet state in Russian were Советский Союз (transliteration: Sovetskiy Soyuz) which literally means Soviet Union, and also Союз ССР (transliteration: Soyuz SSR) which, after compensating for grammatical differences, essentially translates to Union of SSR's in English.
+In the English language media, the state was referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR. In other European languages, the locally translated short forms and abbreviations are usually used such as Union soviétique and URSS in French, or Sowjetunion and UdSSR in German. In the English-speaking world, the Soviet Union was also informally called Russia and its citizens Russians,[24] although that was technically incorrect since Russia was only one of the republics.[25] Such misapplications of the linguistic equivalents to the term Russia and its derivatives were frequent in other languages as well.
+With an area of 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), the Soviet Union was the world's largest country, a status that is retained by the Russian Federation.[26] Covering a sixth of Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America.[27] Two other successor states, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, rank among the top 10 countries by land area, and the largest country entirely in Europe, respectively. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and, except some areas in Central Asia, was much less populous. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
+The USSR had the world's longest border, like Russia, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), or 1 1⁄2 circumferences of Earth. Two-thirds of it was a coastline. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The country bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey from 1945 to 1991.
+The country's highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismoil Somoni Peak) in Tajikistan, at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The USSR also included most of the world's largest lakes; the Caspian Sea (shared with Iran), and Lake Baikal, the world's largest (by volume) and deepest freshwater lake that is also an internal body of water in Russia.
+Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the 1825 Decembrist revolt. Although serfdom was abolished in 1861, it was done on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but Tsar Nicholas II resisted attempts to move from absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.
+A spontaneous popular uprising in Petrograd, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, culminated in the February Revolution and the toppling of Nicholas II and the imperial government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government, which intended to conduct elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue fighting on the side of the Entente in World War I.
+At the same time, workers' councils, known in Russian as "Soviets", sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. On 7 November 1917, the Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, ending the rule of the Provisional Government and leaving all political power to the Soviets.[30] This event would later be officially known in Soviet bibliographies as the Great October Socialist Revolution. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers, though by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets ended involvement in the war and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
+A long and bloody Civil War ensued between the Reds and the Whites, starting in 1917 and ending in 1923 with the Reds' victory. It included foreign intervention, the execution of the former tsar and his family, and the famine of 1921, which killed about five million people.[31] In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established republics of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
+On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR[32] and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.[33] These two documents were confirmed by the first Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations,[34] Mikhail Kalinin, Mikhail Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petrovsky, and Alexander Chervyakov,[35] on 30 December 1922. The formal proclamation was made from the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre.
+An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country.[36] The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931.[37] After the economic policy of "War communism" during the Russian Civil War, as a prelude to fully developing socialism in the country, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s, and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax.
+From its creation, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks).[38] The stated purpose was to prevent the return of capitalist exploitation, and that the principles of democratic centralism would be the most effective in representing the people's will in a practical manner. The debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of the Ukrainian SSR, Lev Kamenev of the Russian SFSR, and Joseph Stalin of the Transcaucasian SFSR.
+On 1 February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the United Kingdom. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union. Despite the foundation of the Soviet state as a federative entity of many constituent republics, each with its own political and administrative entities, the term "Soviet Russia" – strictly applicable only to the Russian Federative Socialist Republic – was often applied to the entire country by non-Soviet writers and politicians.
+On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and outmanoeuvring his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the country and, by the end of the 1920s, established a totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.
+In 1928, Stalin introduced the first five-year plan for building a socialist economy. In place of the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the Revolution, it aimed to build Socialism in One Country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, rather than adhering to the "lead by example" policy advocated by Lenin,[39] forced collectivization of farms was implemented all over the country.
+Famines ensued as a result, causing deaths estimated at three to seven million; surviving kulaks were persecuted, and many were sent to Gulags to do forced labor.[40][41] Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s, the country developed a robust industrial economy in the years preceding World War II.
+Closer cooperation between the USSR and the West developed in the early 1930s. From 1932 to 1934, the country participated in the World Disarmament Conference. In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established when in November, the newly elected President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to recognize Stalin's Communist government formally and negotiated a new trade agreement between the two countries.[42] In September 1934, the country joined the League of Nations. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists, who were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.[43]
+In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new constitution that was praised by supporters around the world as the most democratic constitution imaginable, though there was some skepticism.[i] Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the detainment or execution of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. According to declassified Soviet archives, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people in 1937 and 1938, of whom 681,692 were shot.[45] Over those two years, there were an average of over one thousand executions a day.[46][j]
+In 1939, the Soviet Union made a dramatic shift toward Nazi Germany. Almost a year after Britain and France had concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the Soviet Union made agreements with Germany as well, both militarily and economically during extensive talks. The two countries concluded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement in August 1939. The former made possible the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland. In late November, unable to coerce the Republic of Finland by diplomatic means into moving its border 25 kilometres (16 mi) back from Leningrad, Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland. In the east, the Soviet military won several decisive victories during border clashes with the Empire of Japan in 1938 and 1939. However, in April 1941, the USSR signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with Japan, recognizing the territorial integrity of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.
+Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 starting what was known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War. The Red Army stopped the seemingly invincible German Army at the Battle of Moscow, aided by an unusually harsh winter. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, dealt a severe blow to Germany from which they never fully recovered and became a turning point in the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945. The German Army suffered 80% of its military deaths in the Eastern Front.[50] Harry Hopkins, a close foreign policy advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke on 10 August 1943 of the USSR's decisive role in the war.[k]
+In the same year, the USSR, in fulfilment of its agreement with the Allies at the Yalta Conference, denounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945[52] and invaded Manchukuo and other Japan-controlled territories on 9 August 1945.[53] This conflict ended with a decisive Soviet victory, contributing to the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.
+The USSR suffered greatly in the war, losing around 27 million people.[54] Approximately 2.8 million Soviet POWs died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions in just eight months of 1941–42.[55][56] During the war, the country together with the United States, the United Kingdom and China were considered the Big Four Allied powers,[57] and later became the Four Policemen that formed the basis of the United Nations Security Council.[58] It emerged as a superpower in the post-war period. Once denied diplomatic recognition by the Western world, the USSR had official relations with practically every country by the late 1940s. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the country became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions.
+During the immediate post-war period, the Soviet Union rebuilt and expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. It took effective control over most of the countries of Eastern Europe (except Yugoslavia and later Albania), turning them into satellite states. The USSR bound its satellite states in a military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955, and an economic organization, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon, a counterpart to the European Economic Community (EEC), from 1949 to 1991.[59] The USSR concentrated on its own recovery, seizing and transferring most of Germany's industrial plants, and it exacted war reparations from East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. It also instituted trading arrangements deliberately designed to favor the country. Moscow controlled the Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin.[m] Later, the Comecon supplied aid to the eventually victorious Communist Party of China, and its influence grew elsewhere in the world. Fearing its ambitions, the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, became its enemies. In the ensuing Cold War, the two sides clashed indirectly in proxy wars.
+Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Without a mutually agreeable successor, the highest Communist Party officials initially opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly through a troika headed by Georgy Malenkov. This did not last, however, and Nikita Khrushchev eventually won the ensuing power struggle by the mid-1950s. In 1956, he denounced Stalin's use of repression and proceeded to ease controls over the party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.
+Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a critically vital buffer zone for the forward defence of its western borders, in case of another major invasion such as the German invasion of 1941. For this reason, the USSR sought to cement its control of the region by transforming the Eastern European countries into satellite states, dependent upon and subservient to its leadership. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-Stalinist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956.
+In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the Soviet rapprochement with the West, and what Mao Zedong perceived as Khrushchev's revisionism, led to the Sino–Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Marxist–Leninist movement, with the governments in Albania, Cambodia and Somalia choosing to ally with China.
+During this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the USSR continued to realize scientific and technological exploits in the Space Race, rivaling the United States: launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957; a living dog named Laika in 1957; the first human being, Yuri Gagarin in 1961; the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; Alexei Leonov, the first person to walk in space in 1965; the first soft landing on the Moon by spacecraft Luna 9 in 1966; and the first Moon rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.[61]
+Khrushchev initiated "The Thaw", a complex shift in political, cultural and economic life in the country. This included some openness and contact with other nations and new social and economic policies with more emphasis on commodity goods, allowing a dramatic rise in living standards while maintaining high levels of economic growth. Censorship was relaxed as well. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive. In 1962, he precipitated a crisis with the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. An agreement was made with the United States to remove nuclear missiles from both Cuba and Turkey, concluding the crisis. This event caused Khrushchev much embarrassment and loss of prestige, resulting in his removal from power in 1964.
+Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of collective leadership ensued, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary, Alexei Kosygin as Premier and Nikolai Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, lasting until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent Soviet leader.
+In 1968, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia to halt the Prague Spring reforms. In the aftermath, Brezhnev justified the invasion along with the earlier invasions of Eastern European states by introducing the Brezhnev Doctrine, which claimed the right of the Soviet Union to violate the sovereignty of any country that attempted to replace Marxism–Leninism with capitalism.
+Brezhnev presided throughout détente with the West that resulted in treaties on armament control (SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) while at the same time building up Soviet military might.
+In October 1977, the third Soviet Constitution was unanimously adopted. The prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. The long period of Brezhnev's rule had come to be dubbed one of "standstill", with an ageing and ossified top political leadership. This period is also known as the Era of Stagnation, a period of adverse economic, political, and social effects in the country, which began during the rule of Brezhnev and continued under his successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.
+In late 1979, the Soviet Union's military intervened in the ongoing civil war in neighboring Afghanistan, effectively ending a détente with the West.
+Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in Beyond Oil that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit selling their oil, and resulted in the depletion of the country's hard currency reserves.[62]
+Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Yuri Andropov was 68 years old and Konstantin Chernenko 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected Mikhail Gorbachev. He made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, called perestroika. His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end the Cold War. In 1988, the USSR abandoned its war in Afghanistan and began to withdraw its forces. In the following year, Gorbachev refused to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet satellite states, which paved the way for the Revolutions of 1989. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain between the West and Soviet-controlled regions came down.
+At the same time, the Soviet republics started legal moves towards potentially declaring sovereignty over their territories, citing the freedom to secede in Article 72 of the USSR constitution.[63] On 7 April 1990, a law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of its residents voted for it in a referendum.[64] Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the "War of Laws". In 1989, the Russian SFSR convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected its chairman. On 12 June 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the Soviet laws. After a landslide victory of Sąjūdis in Lithuania, that country declared its independence restored on 11 March 1990.
+A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on 17 March 1991 in nine republics (the remainder having boycotted the vote), with the majority of the population in those republics voting for preservation of the Union. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost. In the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty, which would have turned the country into a much looser Union, was agreed upon by eight republics. The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état by hardline members of the government and the KGB who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Yeltsin was seen as a hero for his decisive actions, while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared the restoration of their full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example). Gorbachev resigned as general secretary in late August, and soon afterwards, the party's activities were indefinitely suspended—effectively ending its rule. By the fall, Gorbachev could no longer influence events outside Moscow, and he was being challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had been elected President of Russia in July 1991.
+The remaining 12 republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union. However, by December all except Russia and Kazakhstan had formally declared independence. During this time, Yeltsin took over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Moscow Kremlin. The final blow was struck on 1 December when Ukraine, the second-most powerful republic, voted overwhelmingly for independence. Ukraine's secession ended any realistic chance of the country staying together even on a limited scale.
+On 8 December 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), signed the Belavezha Accords, which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. While doubts remained over the authority of the accords to do this, on 21 December 1991, the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the accords. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned as the President of the USSR, declaring the office extinct. He turned the powers that had been vested in the presidency over to Yeltsin. That night, the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time, and the Russian tricolor was raised in its place.
+The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body, voted both itself and the country out of existence. This is generally recognized as marking the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning state, and the end of the Cold War.[65] The Soviet Army initially remained under overall CIS command but was soon absorbed into the different military forces of the newly independent states. The few remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased to function by the end of 1991.
+Following the dissolution, Russia was internationally recognized[66] as its legal successor on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed Soviet overseas properties as its own. Under the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, Russia also agreed to receive all nuclear weapons remaining in the territory of other former Soviet republics. Since then, the Russian Federation has assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations. Ukraine has refused to recognize exclusive Russian claims to succession of the USSR and claimed such status for Ukraine as well, which was codified in Articles 7 and 8 of its 1991 law On Legal Succession of Ukraine. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has continued to pursue claims against Russia in foreign courts, seeking to recover its share of the foreign property that was owned by the USSR.
+The dissolution was followed by a severe drop in economic and social conditions in post-Soviet states,[67][68] including a rapid increase in poverty,[69][70][71][72] crime,[73][74] corruption,[75][76] unemployment,[77] homelessness,[78][79] rates of disease,[80][81][82] demographic losses,[83] income inequality and the rise of an oligarchical class,[84][69] along with decreases in calorie intake, life expectancy, adult literacy, and income.[85] Between 1988/1989 and 1993/1995, the Gini ratio increased by an average of 9 points for all former socialist countries.[69] The economic shocks that accompanied wholesale privatization were associated with sharp increases in mortality. Data shows Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia saw a tripling of unemployment and a 42% increase in male death rates between 1991 and 1994.[86][87] In the following decades, only five or six of the post-communist states are on a path to joining the wealthy capitalist West while most are falling behind, some to such an extent that it will take over fifty years to catch up to where they were before the fall of the Soviet Bloc.[88][89]
+In summing up the international ramifications of these events, Vladislav Zubok stated: "The collapse of the Soviet empire was an event of epochal geopolitical, military, ideological, and economic significance."[90] Before the dissolution, the country had maintained its status as one of the world's two superpowers for four decades after World War II through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, military strength, economic strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially in space technology and weaponry.[91]
+The analysis of the succession of states for the 15 post-Soviet states is complex. The Russian Federation is seen as the legal continuator state and is for most purposes the heir to the Soviet Union. It retained ownership of all former Soviet embassy properties, as well as the old Soviet UN membership and permanent membership on the Security Council.
+Of the two other co-founding states of the USSR at the time of the dissolution, Ukraine was the only one that had passed similar to Russia's laws that it is a state-successor of both the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR.[92] Soviet treaties laid groundwork for Ukraine's future foreign agreements as well as they led to Ukraine agreeing to undertake 16.37% of debts of the Soviet Union for which it was going to receive its share of USSR's foreign property. Although it had a tough position at the time, due to Russia's position as a "single continuation of the USSR" that became widely accepted in the West as well as a constant pressure from the Western countries, allowed Russia to dispose state property of USSR abroad and conceal information about it. Due to that Ukraine never ratified "zero option" agreement that Russian Federation had signed with other former Soviet republics, as it denied disclosing of information about Soviet Gold Reserves and its Diamond Fund.[93][94] Dispute over former Soviet property and assets between two former republics is still ongoing:
+The conflict is unsolvable. We can continue to poke Kiev handouts in the calculation of "solve the problem", only it won't be solved. Going to a trial is also pointless: for a number of European countries this is a political issue, and they will make a decision clearly in whose favor. What to do in this situation is an open question. Search for non-trivial solutions. But we must remember that in 2014, with the filing of the then Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, litigation with Russia resumed in 32 countries.
+Similar situation occurred with restitution of cultural property. Although on 14 February 1992 Russia and other former Soviet republics signed agreement "On the return of cultural and historic property to the origin states" in Minsk, it was halted by Russian State Duma that had eventually passed "Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation" which made restitution currently impossible.[96]
+There are additionally four states that claim independence from the other internationally recognised post-Soviet states but possess limited international recognition: Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistria. The Chechen separatist movement of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria lacks any international recognition.
+During his rule, Stalin always made the final policy decisions. Otherwise, Soviet foreign policy was set by the Commission on the Foreign Policy of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or by the party's highest body the Politburo. Operations were handled by the separate Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was known as the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (or Narkomindel), until 1946. The most influential spokesmen were Georgy Chicherin (1872–1936), Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951), Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), Andrey Vyshinsky (1883–1954) and Andrei Gromyko (1909–1989). Intellectuals were based in the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.[97]
+The Communist leadership of the Soviet Union intensely debated foreign policy issues and change directions several times. Even after Stalin assumed dictatorial control in the late 1920s, there were debates, and he frequently changed positions.[106]
+During the country's early period, it was assumed that Communist revolutions would break out soon in every major industrial country, and it was the Soviet responsibility to assist them. The Comintern was the weapon of choice. A few revolutions did break out, but they were quickly suppressed (the longest lasting one was in Hungary)—the Hungarian Soviet Republic—lasted only from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919. The Russian Bolsheviks were in no position to give any help.
+By 1921, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin realized that capitalism had stabilized itself in Europe and there would not be any widespread revolutions anytime soon. It became the duty of the Russian Bolsheviks to protect what they had in Russia, and avoid military confrontations that might destroy their bridgehead. Russia was now a pariah state, along with Germany. The two came to terms in 1922 with the Treaty of Rapallo that settled long-standing grievances. At the same time, the two countries secretly set up training programs for the illegal German army and air force operations at hidden camps in the USSR.[107]
+Moscow eventually stopped threatening other states, and instead worked to open peaceful relationships in terms of trade, and diplomatic recognition. The United Kingdom dismissed the warnings of Winston Churchill and a few others about a continuing communist threat, and opened trade relations and de facto diplomatic recognition in 1922. There was hope for a settlement of the pre-war tsarist debts, but it was repeatedly postponed. Formal recognition came when the new Labour Party came to power in 1924.[108] All the other countries followed suit in opening trade relations. Henry Ford opened large-scale business relations with the Soviets in the late 1920s, hoping that it would lead to long-term peace. Finally, in 1933, the United States officially recognized the USSR, a decision backed by the public opinion and especially by US business interests that expected an opening of a new profitable market.[109]
+In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin ordered Communist parties across the world to strongly oppose non-communist political parties, labor unions or other organizations on the left. Stalin reversed himself in 1934 with the Popular Front program that called on all Communist parties to join together with all anti-Fascist political, labor, and organizational forces that were opposed to fascism, especially of the Nazi variety.[110][111]
+In 1939, half a year after the Munich Agreement, the USSR attempted to form an anti-Nazi alliance with France and Britain.[112] Adolf Hitler proposed a better deal, which would give the USSR control over much of Eastern Europe through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In September, Germany invaded Poland, and the USSR also invaded later that month, resulting in the partition of Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II.[113]
+There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislature represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the government represented by the Council of Ministers, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only legal party and the final policymaker in the country.[114]
+At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee, elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. In turn, the Central Committee voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952–1966), Secretariat and the General Secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the de facto highest office in the Soviet Union.[115] Depending on the degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country[116] (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941).[117] They were not controlled by the general party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism, demanding strict subordination to higher bodies, and elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above.[118]
+The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state mainly through its control over the system of appointments. All senior government officials and most deputies of the Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin (1941–1953) and Khrushchev (1958–1964) were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev, the party leader was prohibited from this kind of double membership,[119] but the later General Secretaries for at least some part of their tenure occupied the mostly ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal head of state. The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations.[120]
+However, in practice the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party.[121] Nor was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned.[122]
+The Supreme Soviet (successor of the Congress of Soviets and Central Executive Committee) was nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history,[123] at first acting as a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions made by the party. However, its powers and functions were extended in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, including the creation of new state commissions and committees. It gained additional powers relating to the approval of the Five-Year Plans and the government budget.[124] The Supreme Soviet elected a Presidium to wield its power between plenary sessions,[125] ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court,[126] the Procurator General[127] and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as the Council of People's Commissars), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society.[125] State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of the CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees, local Soviets and executive committees. While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary.[128]
+The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies) played an important role in Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Great Purge,[129] but was brought under strict party control after Stalin's death. Under Yuri Andropov, the KGB engaged in the suppression of political dissent and maintained an extensive network of informers, reasserting itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure,[130] culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high-ranking party officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[131]
+The constitution, which was promulgated in 1918, 1924, 1936 and 1977,[132] did not limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers[133] that represented executive and legislative branches of the government. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions, and no settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggles took place in the Politburo after the deaths of Lenin[134] and Stalin,[135] as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal,[136] itself due to a decision by both the Politburo and the Central Committee.[137] All leaders of the Communist Party before Gorbachev died in office, except Georgy Malenkov[138] and Khrushchev, both dismissed from the party leadership amid internal struggle within the party.[137]
+Between 1988 and 1990, facing considerable opposition, Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from the highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, the majority of whose members were directly elected in competitive elections held in March 1989. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, and much stronger than before. For the first time since the 1920s, it refused to rubber stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers.[139] In 1990, Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union, concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government,[140] now renamed the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR, to himself.[141]
+Tensions grew between the Union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and communist hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged a coup attempt. The coup failed, and the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power "in the period of transition".[142] Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, only remaining President for the final months of the existence of the USSR.[143]
+The judiciary was not independent of the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts (People's Court) and applied the law as established by the constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union used the inquisitorial system of Roman law, where the judge, procurator, and defence attorney collaborate to establish the truth.[144]
+Constitutionally, the USSR was a federation of constituent Union Republics, which were either unitary states, such as Ukraine or Byelorussia (SSRs), or federations, such as Russia or Transcaucasia (SFSRs),[114] all four being the founding republics who signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in December 1922. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were formed from parts of Russia's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan SSRs. In 1929, Tajikistan was split off from the Uzbekistan SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian SFSR was dissolved, resulting in its constituent republics of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan being elevated to Union Republics, while Kazakhstan and Kirghizia were split off from Russian SFSR, resulting in the same status.[145] In August 1940, Moldavia was formed from parts of Ukraine and Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (SSRs) were also admitted into the union which was not recognized by most of the international community and was considered an illegal occupation. Karelia was split off from Russia as a Union Republic in March 1940 and was reabsorbed in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below).[146]
+While nominally a union of equals, in practice the Soviet Union was dominated by Russians. The domination was so absolute that for most of its existence, the country was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as "Russia". While the RSFSR was technically only one republic within the larger union, it was by far the largest (both in terms of population and area), most powerful, most developed, and the industrial center of the Soviet Union. Historian Matthew White wrote that it was an open secret that the country's federal structure was "window dressing" for Russian dominance. For that reason, the people of the USSR were usually called "Russians", not "Soviets", since "everyone knew who really ran the show".[147]
+Under the Military Law of September 1925, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of three components, namely the Land Forces, the Air Force, the Navy, Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU), and the Internal Troops.[148] The OGPU later became independent and in 1934 joined the NKVD, and so its internal troops were under the joint leadership of the defense and internal commissariats. After World War II, Strategic Missile Forces (1959), Air Defense Forces (1948) and National Civil Defense Forces (1970) were formed, which ranked first, third, and sixth in the official Soviet system of importance (ground forces were second, Air Force Fourth, and Navy Fifth).
+The army had the greatest political influence. In 1989, there served two million soldiers divided between 150 motorized and 52 armored divisions. Until the early 1960s, the Soviet navy was a rather small military branch, but after the Caribbean crisis, under the leadership of Sergei Gorshkov, it expanded significantly. It became known for battlecruisers and submarines. In 1989 there served 500 000 men. The Soviet Air Force focused on a fleet of strategic bombers and during war situation was to eradicate enemy infrastructure and nuclear capacity. The air force also had a number of fighters and tactical bombers to support the army in the war. Strategic missile forces had more than 1,400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed between 28 bases and 300 command centers.
+In the post-war period, the Soviet Army was directly involved in several military operations abroad. These included the suppression of the uprising in East Germany (1953), Hungarian revolution (1956) and the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968). The Soviet Union also participated in the war in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989.
+In the Soviet Union, general conscription applied.
+At the end of the 1950s, with the help of engineers and technologies captured and imported from defeated Nazi Germany, the Soviets constructed the first satellite - Sputnik 1 and thus overtook the United States. This was followed by other successful satellites and experimental dogs were sent. On April 12, 1961, the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, was sent to the space. He once flew around the Earth and successfully landed in the Kazakh steppe. At that time, the first plans for space shuttles and orbital stations were drawn up in Soviet design offices, but in the end personal disputes between designers and management prevented this.
+The first big fiasco for the USSR was the landing on the moon by the Americans, when the Russians were not able to respond to the Americans in time with the same project. In the 1970s, more specific proposals for the design of the space shuttle began to emerge, but shortcomings, especially in the electronics industry (rapid overheating of electronics), postponed the program until the end of the 1980s. The first shuttle, the Buran, flew in 1988, but without a human crew. Another shuttle, Ptichka, eventually ended up under construction, as the shuttle project was canceled in 1991. For their launch into space, there is today an unused superpower rocket, Energia, which is the most powerful in the world.
+In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union managed to build the Mir orbital station. It was built on the construction of Salyut stations and its tasks were purely civilian and research. In the 1990s, when the US Skylab was shut down due to lack of funds, it was the only orbital station in operation. Gradually, other modules were added to it, including American ones. However, the technical condition of the station deteriorated rapidly, especially after the fire, so in 2001 it was decided to bring it into the atmosphere where it burned down.
+The Soviet Union adopted a command economy, whereby production and distribution of goods were centralized and directed by the government. The first Bolshevik experience with a command economy was the policy of War communism, which involved the nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate money circulation, private enterprises and free trade. After the severe economic collapse, Lenin replaced war communism by the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, legalizing free trade and private ownership of small businesses. The economy quickly recovered as a result.[149]
+After a long debate among the members of Politburo about the course of economic development, by 1928–1929, upon gaining control of the country, Stalin abandoned the NEP and pushed for full central planning, starting forced collectivization of agriculture and enacting draconian labor legislation. Resources were mobilized for rapid industrialization, which significantly expanded Soviet capacity in heavy industry and capital goods during the 1930s.[149] The primary motivation for industrialization was preparation for war, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalist world.[150] As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian economy into a great industrial power, leading the way for its emergence as a superpower after World War II.[151] The war caused extensive devastation of the Soviet economy and infrastructure, which required massive reconstruction.[152]
+By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively self-sufficient; for most of the period until the creation of Comecon, only a tiny share of domestic products was traded internationally.[153] After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, external trade rose rapidly. However, the influence of the world economy on the USSR was limited by fixed domestic prices and a state monopoly on foreign trade.[154] Grain and sophisticated consumer manufactures became major import articles from around the 1960s.[153] During the arms race of the Cold War, the Soviet economy was burdened by military expenditures, heavily lobbied for by a powerful bureaucracy dependent on the arms industry. At the same time, the USSR became the largest arms exporter to the Third World. Significant amounts of Soviet resources during the Cold War were allocated in aid to the other socialist states.[153]
+From the 1930s until its dissolution in late 1991, the way the Soviet economy operated remained essentially unchanged. The economy was formally directed by central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized in five-year plans. However, in practice, the plans were highly aggregated and provisional, subject to ad hoc intervention by superiors. All critical economic decisions were taken by the political leadership. Allocated resources and plan targets were usually denominated in rubles rather than in physical goods. Credit was discouraged, but widespread. The final allocation of output was achieved through relatively decentralized, unplanned contracting. Although in theory prices were legally set from above, in practice they were often negotiated, and informal horizontal links (e.g. between producer factories) were widespread.[149]
+A number of basic services were state-funded, such as education and health care. In the manufacturing sector, heavy industry and defence were prioritized over consumer goods.[155] Consumer goods, particularly outside large cities, were often scarce, of poor quality and limited variety. Under the command economy, consumers had almost no influence on production, and the changing demands of a population with growing incomes could not be satisfied by supplies at rigidly fixed prices.[156] A massive unplanned second economy grew up at low levels alongside the planned one, providing some of the goods and services that the planners could not. The legalization of some elements of the decentralized economy was attempted with the reform of 1965.[149]
+Although statistics of the Soviet economy are notoriously unreliable and its economic growth difficult to estimate precisely,[157][158] by most accounts, the economy continued to expand until the mid-1980s. During the 1950s and 1960s, it had comparatively high growth and was catching up to the West.[159] However, after 1970, the growth, while still positive, steadily declined much more quickly and consistently than in other countries, despite a rapid increase in the capital stock (the rate of capital increase was only surpassed by Japan).[149]
+Overall, the growth rate of per capita income in the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1989 was slightly above the world average (based on 102 countries).[citation needed] According to Stanley Fischer and William Easterly, growth could have been faster. By their calculation, per capita income in 1989 should have been twice higher than it was, considering the amount of investment, education and population. The authors attribute this poor performance to the low productivity of capital.[160] Steven Rosenfielde states that the standard of living declined due to Stalin's despotism. While there was a brief improvement after his death, it lapsed into stagnation.[161]
+In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to reform and revitalize the economy with his program of perestroika. His policies relaxed state control over enterprises but did not replace it by market incentives, resulting in a sharp decline in output. The economy, already suffering from reduced petroleum export revenues, started to collapse. Prices were still fixed, and the property was still largely state-owned until after the country's dissolution.[149][156] For most of the period after World War II until its collapse, Soviet GDP (PPP) was the second-largest in the world, and third during the second half of the 1980s,[162] although on a per-capita basis, it was behind that of First World countries.[163] Compared to countries with similar per-capita GDP in 1928, the Soviet Union experienced significant growth.[164]
+In 1990, the country had a Human Development Index of 0.920, placing it in the "high" category of human development. It was the third-highest in the Eastern Bloc, behind Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and the 25th in the world of 130 countries.[165]
+The need for fuel declined in the Soviet Union from the 1970s to the 1980s,[166] both per ruble of gross social product and per ruble of industrial product. At the start, this decline grew very rapidly but gradually slowed down between 1970 and 1975. From 1975 and 1980, it grew even slower,[clarification needed] only 2.6%.[167] David Wilson, a historian, believed that the gas industry would account for 40% of Soviet fuel production by the end of the century. His theory did not come to fruition because of the USSR's collapse.[168] The USSR, in theory, would have continued to have an economic growth rate of 2–2.5% during the 1990s because of Soviet energy fields.[clarification needed][169] However, the energy sector faced many difficulties, among them the country's high military expenditure and hostile relations with the First World.[170]
+In 1991, the Soviet Union had a pipeline network of 82,000 kilometres (51,000 mi) for crude oil and another 206,500 kilometres (128,300 mi) for natural gas.[171] Petroleum and petroleum-based products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a variety of manufactured goods, primarily machinery, arms and military equipment, were exported.[172] In the 1970s and 1980s, the USSR heavily relied on fossil fuel exports to earn hard currency.[153] At its peak in 1988, it was the largest producer and second-largest exporter of crude oil, surpassed only by Saudi Arabia.[173]
+The Soviet Union placed great emphasis on science and technology within its economy,[174] however, the most remarkable Soviet successes in technology, such as producing the world's first space satellite, typically were the responsibility of the military.[155] Lenin believed that the USSR would never overtake the developed world if it remained as technologically backward as it was upon its founding. Soviet authorities proved their commitment to Lenin's belief by developing massive networks, research and development organizations. In the early 1960s, the Soviets awarded 40% of chemistry PhDs to women, compared to only 5% in the United States.[175] By 1989, Soviet scientists were among the world's best-trained specialists in several areas, such as energy physics, selected areas of medicine, mathematics, welding and military technologies. Due to rigid state planning and bureaucracy, the Soviets remained far behind technologically in chemistry, biology, and computers when compared to the First World.
+Under the Reagan administration, Project Socrates determined that the Soviet Union addressed the acquisition of science and technology in a manner that was radically different from what the US was using. In the case of the US, economic prioritization was being used for indigenous research and development as the means to acquire science and technology in both the private and public sectors. In contrast, the USSR was offensively and defensively maneuvering in the acquisition and utilization of the worldwide technology, to increase the competitive advantage that they acquired from the technology while preventing the US from acquiring a competitive advantage. However, technology-based planning was executed in a centralized, government-centric manner that greatly hindered its flexibility. This was exploited by the US to undermine the strength of the Soviet Union and thus foster its reform.[176][177][178]
+Transport was a vital component of the country's economy. The economic centralization of the late 1920s and 1930s led to the development of infrastructure on a massive scale, most notably the establishment of Aeroflot, an aviation enterprise.[179] The country had a wide variety of modes of transport by land, water and air.[171] However, due to inadequate maintenance, much of the road, water and Soviet civil aviation transport were outdated and technologically backward compared to the First World.[180]
+Soviet rail transport was the largest and most intensively used in the world;[180] it was also better developed than most of its Western counterparts.[181] By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Soviet economists were calling for the construction of more roads to alleviate some of the burdens from the railways and to improve the Soviet government budget.[182] The street network and automotive industry[183] remained underdeveloped,[184] and dirt roads were common outside major cities.[185] Soviet maintenance projects proved unable to take care of even the few roads the country had. By the early-to-mid-1980s, the Soviet authorities tried to solve the road problem by ordering the construction of new ones.[185] Meanwhile, the automobile industry was growing at a faster rate than road construction.[186] The underdeveloped road network led to a growing demand for public transport.[187]
+Despite improvements, several aspects of the transport sector were still[when?] riddled with problems due to outdated infrastructure, lack of investment, corruption and bad decision-making. Soviet authorities were unable to meet the growing demand for transport infrastructure and services.
+The Soviet merchant navy was one of the largest in the world.[171]
+Excess deaths throughout World War I and the Russian Civil War (including the postwar famine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million,[188] some 10 million in the 1930s,[47] and more than 26 million in 1941–5. The postwar Soviet population was 45 to 50 million smaller than it would have been if pre-war demographic growth had continued.[54] According to Catherine Merridale, "... reasonable estimate would place the total number of excess deaths for the whole period somewhere around 60 million."[189]
+The birth rate of the USSR decreased from 44.0 per thousand in 1926 to 18.0 in 1974, mainly due to increasing urbanization and the rising average age of marriages. The mortality rate demonstrated a gradual decrease as well – from 23.7 per thousand in 1926 to 8.7 in 1974. In general, the birth rates of the southern republics in Transcaucasia and Central Asia were considerably higher than those in the northern parts of the Soviet Union, and in some cases even increased in the post–World War II period, a phenomenon partly attributed to slower rates of urbanistion and traditionally earlier marriages in the southern republics.[190] Soviet Europe moved towards sub-replacement fertility, while Soviet Central Asia continued to exhibit population growth well above replacement-level fertility.[191]
+The late 1960s and the 1970s witnessed a reversal of the declining trajectory of the rate of mortality in the USSR, and was especially notable among men of working age, but was also prevalent in Russia and other predominantly Slavic areas of the country.[192] An analysis of the official data from the late 1980s showed that after worsening in the late-1970s and the early 1980s, adult mortality began to improve again.[193] The infant mortality rate increased from 24.7 in 1970 to 27.9 in 1974. Some researchers regarded the rise as mostly real, a consequence of worsening health conditions and services.[194] The rises in both adult and infant mortality were not explained or defended by Soviet officials, and the Soviet government stopped publishing all mortality statistics for ten years. Soviet demographers and health specialists remained silent about the mortality increases until the late-1980s, when the publication of mortality data resumed, and researchers could delve into the real causes.[195]
+Under Lenin, the state made explicit commitments to promote the equality of men and women. Many early Russian feminists and ordinary Russian working women actively participated in the Revolution, and many more were affected by the events of that period and the new policies. Beginning in October 1918, the Lenin's government liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality (re-criminalized in the 1930s), permitted cohabitation, and ushered in a host of reforms.[196] However, without birth control, the new system produced many broken marriages, as well as countless out-of-wedlock children.[197] The epidemic of divorces and extramarital affairs created social hardships when Soviet leaders wanted people to concentrate their efforts on growing the economy. Giving women control over their fertility also led to a precipitous decline in the birth rate, perceived as a threat to their country's military power. By 1936, Stalin reversed most of the liberal laws, ushering in a pronatalist era that lasted for decades.[198]
+By 1917, Russia became the first great power to grant women the right to vote.[199] After heavy casualties in World War I and II, women outnumbered men in Russia by a 4:3 ratio.[200] This contributed to the larger role women played in Russian society compared to other great powers at the time.
+Anatoly Lunacharsky became the first People's Commissar for Education of Soviet Russia. In the beginning, the Soviet authorities placed great emphasis on the elimination of illiteracy. All left-handed kids were forced to write with their right hand in the Soviet school system.[201][202][203][204] Literate people were automatically hired as teachers.[citation needed] For a short period, quality was sacrificed for quantity. By 1940, Stalin could announce that illiteracy had been eliminated. Throughout the 1930s, social mobility rose sharply, which has been attributed to reforms in education.[205] In the aftermath of World War II, the country's educational system expanded dramatically, which had a tremendous effect. In the 1960s, nearly all children had access to education, the only exception being those living in remote areas. Nikita Khrushchev tried to make education more accessible, making it clear to children that education was closely linked to the needs of society. Education also became important in giving rise to the New Man.[206] Citizens directly entering the workforce had the constitutional right to a job and to free vocational training.
+The education system was highly centralized and universally accessible to all citizens, with affirmative action for applicants from nations associated with cultural backwardness. However, as part of the general antisemitic policy, an unofficial Jewish quota was applied[when?] in the leading institutions of higher education by subjecting Jewish applicants to harsher entrance examinations.[207][208][209][210] The Brezhnev era also introduced a rule that required all university applicants to present a reference from the local Komsomol party secretary.[211] According to statistics from 1986, the number of higher education students per the population of 10,000 was 181 for the USSR, compared to 517 for the US.[212]
+The Soviet Union was an ethnically diverse country, with more than 100 distinct ethnic groups. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. According to a 1990 estimate, the majority were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%).[213]
+All citizens of the USSR had their own ethnic affiliation. The ethnicity of a person was chosen at the age of sixteen[214] by the child's parents. If the parents did not agree, the child was automatically assigned the ethnicity of the father. Partly due to Soviet policies, some of the smaller minority ethnic groups were considered part of larger ones, such as the Mingrelians of Georgia, who were classified with the linguistically related Georgians.[215] Some ethnic groups voluntarily assimilated, while others were brought in by force. Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians shared close cultural ties, while other groups did not. With multiple nationalities living in the same territory, ethnic antagonisms developed over the years.[216][neutrality is disputed]
+Members of various ethnicities participated in legislative bodies. Organs of power like the Politburo, the Secretariat of the Central Committee etc., were formally ethnically neutral, but in reality, ethnic Russians were overrepresented, although there were also non-Russian leaders in the Soviet leadership, such as Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, Nikolai Podgorny or Andrei Gromyko. During the Soviet era, a significant number of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians migrated to other Soviet republics, and many of them settled there. According to the last census in 1989, the Russian "diaspora" in the Soviet republics had reached 25 million.[217]
+Ethnographic map of the Soviet Union, 1941
+Number and share of Ukrainians in the population of the regions of the RSFSR (1926 census)
+Number and share of Ukrainians in the population of the regions of the RSFSR (1979 census)
+In 1917, before the revolution, health conditions were significantly behind those of developed countries. As Lenin later noted, "Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice".[218] The Soviet principle of health care was conceived by the People's Commissariat for Health in 1918. Health care was to be controlled by the state and would be provided to its citizens free of charge, a revolutionary concept at the time. Article 42 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution gave all citizens the right to health protection and free access to any health institutions in the USSR. Before Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary, the Soviet healthcare system was held in high esteem by many foreign specialists. This changed, however, from Brezhnev's accession and Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as leader, during which the health care system was heavily criticized for many basic faults, such as the quality of service and the unevenness in its provision.[219] Minister of Health Yevgeniy Chazov, during the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, while highlighting such successes as having the most doctors and hospitals in the world, recognized the system's areas for improvement and felt that billions of Soviet rubles were squandered.[220]
+After the revolution, life expectancy for all age groups went up. This statistic in itself was seen by some that the socialist system was superior to the capitalist system. These improvements continued into the 1960s when statistics indicated that the life expectancy briefly surpassed that of the United States. Life expectancy started to decline in the 1970s, possibly because of alcohol abuse. At the same time, infant mortality began to rise. After 1974, the government stopped publishing statistics on the matter. This trend can be partly explained by the number of pregnancies rising drastically in the Asian part of the country where infant mortality was the highest while declining markedly in the more developed European part of the Soviet Union.[221]
+Under Lenin, the government gave small language groups their own writing systems.[222] The development of these writing systems was highly successful, even though some flaws were detected. During the later days of the USSR, countries with the same multilingual situation implemented similar policies. A serious problem when creating these writing systems was that the languages differed dialectally greatly from each other.[223] When a language had been given a writing system and appeared in a notable publication, it would attain "official language" status. There were many minority languages which never received their own writing system; therefore, their speakers were forced to have a second language.[224] There are examples where the government retreated from this policy, most notably under Stalin where education was discontinued in languages that were not widespread. These languages were then assimilated into another language, mostly Russian.[225] During World War II, some minority languages were banned, and their speakers accused of collaborating with the enemy.[226]
+As the most widely spoken of the Soviet Union's many languages, Russian de facto functioned as an official language, as the "language of interethnic communication" (Russian: язык межнационального общения), but only assumed the de jure status as the official national language in 1990.[227]
+Christianity and Islam had the highest number of adherents among the religious citizens.[228] Eastern Christianity predominated among Christians, with Russia's traditional Russian Orthodox Church being the largest Christian denomination. About 90% of the Soviet Union's Muslims were Sunnis, with Shias being concentrated in the Azerbaijan SSR.[228] Smaller groups included Roman Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and a variety of Protestant denominations (especially Baptists and Lutherans).[228]
+Religious influence had been strong in the Russian Empire. The Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed a privileged status as the church of the monarchy and took part in carrying out official state functions.[229] The immediate period following the establishment of the Soviet state included a struggle against the Orthodox Church, which the revolutionaries considered an ally of the former ruling classes.[230]
+In Soviet law, the "freedom to hold religious services" was constitutionally guaranteed, although the ruling Communist Party regarded religion as incompatible with the Marxist spirit of scientific materialism.[230] In practice, the Soviet system subscribed to a narrow interpretation of this right, and in fact utilized a range of official measures to discourage religion and curb the activities of religious groups.[230]
+The 1918 Council of People's Commissars decree establishing the Russian SFSR as a secular state also decreed that "the teaching of religion in all [places] where subjects of general instruction are taught, is forbidden. Citizens may teach and may be taught religion privately."[231] Among further restrictions, those adopted in 1929 included express prohibitions on a range of church activities, including meetings for organized Bible study.[230] Both Christian and non-Christian establishments were shut down by the thousands in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1940, as many as 90% of the churches, synagogues, and mosques that had been operating in 1917 were closed.[232]
+Under the doctrine of state atheism, there was a "government-sponsored program of forced conversion to atheism" conducted by the Communists.[233][234][235] The regime targeted religions based on state interests, and while most organized religions were never outlawed, religious property was confiscated, believers were harassed, and religion was ridiculed while atheism was propagated in schools.[236] In 1925, the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the propaganda campaign.[237] Accordingly, although personal expressions of religious faith were not explicitly banned, a strong sense of social stigma was imposed on them by the formal structures and mass media, and it was generally considered unacceptable for members of certain professions (teachers, state bureaucrats, soldiers) to be openly religious. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit it for the regime's own purposes; but their ultimate goal was to eliminate it. During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled. Believers were harassed and persecuted. Most seminaries were closed, and the publication of most religious material was prohibited. By 1941, only 500 churches remained open out of about 54,000 in existence before World War I.
+Convinced that religious anti-Sovietism had become a thing of the past, and with the looming threat of war, the Stalin regime began shifting to a more moderate religion policy in the late 1930s.[238] Soviet religious establishments overwhelmingly rallied to support the war effort during World War II. Amid other accommodations to religious faith after the German invasion, churches were reopened. Radio Moscow began broadcasting a religious hour, and a historic meeting between Stalin and Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Sergius of Moscow was held in 1943. Stalin had the support of the majority of the religious people in the USSR even through the late 1980s.[238] The general tendency of this period was an increase in religious activity among believers of all faiths.[239]
+Under Nikita Khrushchev, the state leadership clashed with the churches in 1958–1964, a period when atheism was emphasized in the educational curriculum, and numerous state publications promoted atheistic views.[238] During this period, the number of churches fell from 20,000 to 10,000 from 1959 to 1965, and the number of synagogues dropped from 500 to 97.[240] The number of working mosques also declined, falling from 1,500 to 500 within a decade.[240]
+Religious institutions remained monitored by the Soviet government, but churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques were all given more leeway in the Brezhnev era.[241] Official relations between the Orthodox Church and the government again warmed to the point that the Brezhnev government twice honored Orthodox Patriarch Alexy I with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.[242] A poll conducted by Soviet authorities in 1982 recorded 20% of the Soviet population as "active religious believers."[243]
+The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the USSR's existence. During the first decade following the revolution, there was relative freedom and artists experimented with several different styles to find a distinctive Soviet style of art. Lenin wanted art to be accessible to the Russian people. On the other hand, hundreds of intellectuals, writers, and artists were exiled or executed, and their work banned, such as Nikolay Gumilyov who was shot for alleged conspiring against the Bolshevik regime, and Yevgeny Zamyatin.[244]
+The government encouraged a variety of trends. In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time. As a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, films received encouragement from the state, and much of director Sergei Eisenstein's best work dates from this period.
+During Stalin's rule, the Soviet culture was characterized by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's works. Many writers were imprisoned and killed.[245]
+Following the Khrushchev Thaw, censorship was diminished. During this time, a distinctive period of Soviet culture developed, characterized by conformist public life and an intense focus on personal life. Greater experimentation in art forms was again permissible, resulting in the production of more sophisticated and subtly critical work. The regime loosened its emphasis on socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists of the novels of author Yury Trifonov concerned themselves with problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. Underground dissident literature, known as samizdat, developed during this late period. In architecture, the Khrushchev era mostly focused on functional design as opposed to the highly decorated style of Stalin's epoch.
+In the second half of the 1980s, Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost significantly expanded freedom of expression throughout the country in the media and the press.[246]
+Founded on 20 July 1924 in Moscow, Sovetsky Sport was the first sports newspaper of the Soviet Union.
+The Soviet Olympic Committee formed on 21 April 1951, and the IOC recognized the new body in its 45th session. In the same year, when the Soviet representative Konstantin Andrianov became an IOC member, the USSR officially joined the Olympic Movement. The 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki thus became first Olympic Games for Soviet athletes.
+The Soviet Union national ice hockey team won nearly every world championship and Olympic tournament between 1954 and 1991 and never failed to medal in any International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) tournament in which they competed.
+The advent[when?] of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession – in reality, the state paid many of these competitors to train on a full-time basis.[247] Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism.[248]
+A 1989 report by a committee of the Australian Senate claimed that "there is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games, certainly not a gold medal winner...who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. The Moscow Games might well have been called the Chemists' Games".[249]
+A member of the IOC Medical Commission, Manfred Donike, privately ran additional tests with a new technique for identifying abnormal levels of testosterone by measuring its ratio to epitestosterone in urine. Twenty percent of the specimens he tested, including those from sixteen gold medalists, would have resulted in disciplinary proceedings had the tests been official. The results of Donike's unofficial tests later convinced the IOC to add his new technique to their testing protocols.[250] The first documented case of "blood doping" occurred at the 1980 Summer Olympics when a runner[who?] was transfused with two pints of blood before winning medals in the 5000 m and 10,000 m.[251]
+Documentation obtained in 2016 revealed the Soviet Union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dated before the decision to boycott the 1984 Games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the program, along with suggestions for further enhancements. Dr. Sergei Portugalov of the Institute for Physical Culture prepared the communication, directed to the Soviet Union's head of track and field. Portugalov later became one of the leading figures involved in the implementation of Russian doping before the 2016 Summer Olympics.[252]
+Official Soviet environmental policy has always attached great importance to actions in which human beings actively improve nature. Lenin's quote "Communism is Soviet power and electrification of the country!" in many respects it summarizes the focus on modernization and industrial development. During the first five-year plan in 1928, Stalin proceeded to industrialize the country at all costs. Values such as environmental and nature protection have been completely ignored in the struggle to create a modern industrial society. After Stalin's death, they focused more on environmental issues, but the basic perception of the value of environmental protection remained the same.[253]
+The Soviet media has always focused on the vast expanse of land and the virtually indestructible natural resources. This made it feel that contamination and looting of nature were not a problem. The Soviet state also firmly believed that scientific and technological progress would solve all the problems. Official ideology said that under socialism environmental problems could easily be overcome, unlike capitalist countries, where they seemingly could not be solved. The Soviet authorities had an almost unwavering belief that man could transcend nature. However, when the authorities had to admit that there were environmental problems in the USSR in the 1980s, they explained the problems in such a way that socialism had not yet been fully developed; pollution in socialist society was only a temporary anomaly that would have been resolved if socialism had developed.[citation needed]
+The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was the first major accident at a civilian nuclear power plant, unparalleled in the world, when a large number of radioactive isotopes were released into the atmosphere. Radioactive doses have scattered relatively far. The main health problem after the accident was 4,000 new cases of thyroid cancer, but this led to a relatively low number of deaths (WHO data, 2005). However, the long-term effects of the accident are unknown. Another major accident is the Kyshtym disaster.[254]
+After the fall of the USSR, it was discovered that the environmental problems were greater than what the Soviet authorities admitted. The Kola Peninsula was one of the places with clear problems. Around the industrial cities of Monchegorsk and Norilsk, where nickel, for example, is mined, all forests have been killed by contamination, while the northern and other parts of Russia have been affected by emissions. During the 1990s, people in the West were also interested in the radioactive hazards of nuclear facilities, decommissioned nuclear submarines, and the processing of nuclear waste or spent nuclear fuel. It was also known in the early 1990s that the USSR had transported radioactive material to the Barents Sea and Kara Sea, which was later confirmed by the Russian parliament. The crash of the K-141 Kursk submarine in 2000 in the west further raised concerns.[255] In the past, there were accidents involving submarines K-19, K-8 or K-129.[citation needed]
+1918–1924  Turkestan3
+1918–1941  Volga German4
+1919–1990  Bashkir
+1920–1925  Kirghiz2
+1920–1990  Tatar
+1921–1990  Adjar
+1921–1945  Crimean
+1921–1991  Dagestan
+1921–1924  Mountain
+1921–1990  Nakhchivan
+1922–1991  Yakut
+1923–1990  Buryat1
+1923–1940  Karelian
+1924–1940  Moldavian
+1924–1929  Tajik
+1925–1992  Chuvash
+1925–1936  Kazak2
+1926–1936  Kirghiz
+1931–1991  Abkhaz
+1932–1992  Karakalpak
+1934–1990  Mordovian
+1934–1990  Udmurt
+1935–1943  Kalmyk
+1936–1944  Checheno-Ingush
+1936–1944  Kabardino-Balkar
+1936–1990  Komi
+1936–1990  Mari
+1936–1990  North Ossetian
+1944–1957  Kabardin
+1956–1991  Karelian
+1957–1990  Checheno-Ingush
+1957–1991  Kabardino-Balkar
+1958–1990  Kalmyk
+1961–1992  Tuva
+1990–1991  Gorno-Altai
+1991–1992  Crimean

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+The Soviet Union,[d] officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics[e] (USSR),[f] was a federal socialist state in Northern Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics,[g] in practice its government and economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was a one-party state governed by the Communist Party, with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian SFSR. Other major urban centers were Leningrad, Kiev, Minsk, Tashkent, Alma-Ata and Novosibirsk. It was the largest country in the world by surface area,[18] spanning over 10,000 kilometers (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones and over 7,200 kilometers (4,500 mi) north to south. Its territory included much of Eastern Europe as well as part of Northern Europe and all of Northern and Central Asia. It had five climate zones such as tundra, taiga, steppes, desert, and mountains. Its diverse population was collectively known as Soviet people.
+The Soviet Union had its roots in the October Revolution of 1917, when the Bolsheviks, headed by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Provisional Government that had earlier replaced the monarchy. They established the Russian Soviet Republic[h], beginning a civil war between the Bolshevik Red Army and many anti-Bolshevik forces across the former Empire, among whom the largest faction was the White Guard. The disastrous distractive effect of the war and the Bolshevik policies led to 5 million deaths during the 1921–1922 famine in the region of Povolzhye. The Red Army expanded and helped local Communists take power, establishing soviets, repressing their political opponents and rebellious peasants through the policies of Red Terror and War Communism. In 1922, the Communists were victorious, forming the Soviet Union with the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian, Ukrainian and Byelorussian republics. The New Economic Policy (NEP) which was introduced by Lenin led to a partial return of a free market and private property, resulting in a period of economic recovery.
+Following Lenin's death in 1924, a troika and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s. Stalin suppressed all political opposition to his rule inside the Communist Party, committed the state ideology to Marxism–Leninism, ended the NEP, initiating a centrally planned economy. As a result, the country underwent a period of rapid industrialization and forced collectivization, which led to a significant economic growth, but also created a man-made famine of 1932–1933 and expanded the Gulag labour camp system founded back in 1918. Stalin also fomented political paranoia and conducted the Great Purge to remove opponents of his from the Party through the mass arbitrary arrest of many people (military leaders, Communist Party members and ordinary citizens alike) who were then sent to correctional labor camps or sentenced to death.
+On 23 August 1939, after unsuccessful efforts to form an anti-fascist alliance with Western powers, the Soviets signed the non-aggression agreement with Nazi Germany. After the start of World War II, the formally neutral Soviets invaded and annexed territories of several Eastern European states, including eastern Poland and the Baltic states. In June 1941 the Germans invaded, opening the largest and bloodiest theater of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the cost of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad. Soviet forces eventually captured Berlin and won World War II in Europe on 9 May 1945. The territory overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Eastern Bloc. The Cold War emerged in 1947 as a result of a post-war Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe, where the Eastern Bloc confronted the Western Bloc that united in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949.
+Following Stalin's death in 1953, a period known as de-Stalinization and Khrushchev Thaw occurred under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev. The country developed rapidly, as millions of peasants were moved into industrialized cities. The USSR took an early lead in the Space Race with the first ever satellite and the first human spaceflight. In the 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed when the Soviet Union deployed troops in Afghanistan in 1979. The war drained economic resources and was matched by an escalation of American military aid to Mujahideen fighters.
+In the mid-1980s, the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to further reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika. The goal was to preserve the Communist Party while reversing economic stagnation. The Cold War ended during his tenure, and in 1989 Soviet satellite countries in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist regimes. This led to the rise of strong nationalist and separatist movements inside the USSR as well. Central authorities initiated a referendum—boycotted by the Baltic republics, Armenia, Georgia, and Moldova—which resulted in the majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the Union as a renewed federation. In August 1991, a coup d'état was attempted by Communist Party hardliners. It failed, with Russian President Boris Yeltsin playing a high-profile role in facing down the coup, resulting in the banning of the Communist Party. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the remaining twelve constituent republics emerged from the dissolution of the Soviet Union as independent post-Soviet states. The Russian Federation (formerly the Russian SFSR) assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and is recognized as its continued legal personality.
+The USSR produced many significant social and technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first ministry of health, first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus. The country had the world's second-largest economy and the largest standing military in the world.[19][20][21] The USSR was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states. It was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
+The word soviet is derived from the Russian word sovet (Russian: совет), meaning "council", "assembly", "advice", "harmony", "concord",[note 1] ultimately deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti ("to inform"), related to Slavic věst ("news"), English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or" (which came to English through French), or the Dutch weten ("to know"; cf. wetenschap meaning "science"). The word sovietnik means "councillor".[22]
+Some organizations in Russian history were called council (Russian: совет). In the Russian Empire, the State Council which functioned from 1810 to 1917 was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905.[22]
+During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union which he initially named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia (Russian: Союз Советских Республик Европы и Азии, tr. Soyuz Sovetskikh Respublik Evropy i Azii).[23] Stalin initially resisted the proposal but ultimately accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name to the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), albeit all the republics began as socialist soviet and did not change to the other order until 1936. In addition, in the national languages of several republics, the word council or conciliar in the respective language was only quite late changed to an adaptation of the Russian soviet and never in others, e.g. Ukraine.
+СССР (in Latin alphabet: SSSR) is the abbreviation of USSR in Russian. It is written in Cyrillic alphabets. The Soviets used the Cyrillic abbreviation so frequently that audiences worldwide became familiar with its meaning. Notably, both Cyrillic letters used have orthographically-similar (but transliterally distinct) letters in Latin alphabets. Because of widespread familiarity with the Cyrillic abbreviation, Latin alphabet users in particular almost always use the orthographically-similar Latin letters C and P (as opposed to the transliteral Latin letters S and R) when rendering the USSR's native abbreviation.
+After СССР, the most common short form names for the Soviet state in Russian were Советский Союз (transliteration: Sovetskiy Soyuz) which literally means Soviet Union, and also Союз ССР (transliteration: Soyuz SSR) which, after compensating for grammatical differences, essentially translates to Union of SSR's in English.
+In the English language media, the state was referred to as the Soviet Union or the USSR. In other European languages, the locally translated short forms and abbreviations are usually used such as Union soviétique and URSS in French, or Sowjetunion and UdSSR in German. In the English-speaking world, the Soviet Union was also informally called Russia and its citizens Russians,[24] although that was technically incorrect since Russia was only one of the republics.[25] Such misapplications of the linguistic equivalents to the term Russia and its derivatives were frequent in other languages as well.
+With an area of 22,402,200 square kilometres (8,649,500 sq mi), the Soviet Union was the world's largest country, a status that is retained by the Russian Federation.[26] Covering a sixth of Earth's land surface, its size was comparable to that of North America.[27] Two other successor states, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, rank among the top 10 countries by land area, and the largest country entirely in Europe, respectively. The European portion accounted for a quarter of the country's area and was the cultural and economic center. The eastern part in Asia extended to the Pacific Ocean to the east and Afghanistan to the south, and, except some areas in Central Asia, was much less populous. It spanned over 10,000 kilometres (6,200 mi) east to west across 11 time zones, and over 7,200 kilometres (4,500 mi) north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, taiga, steppes, desert and mountains.
+The USSR had the world's longest border, like Russia, measuring over 60,000 kilometres (37,000 mi), or 1 1⁄2 circumferences of Earth. Two-thirds of it was a coastline. Across the Bering Strait was the United States. The country bordered Afghanistan, China, Czechoslovakia, Finland, Hungary, Iran, Mongolia, North Korea, Norway, Poland, Romania, and Turkey from 1945 to 1991.
+The country's highest mountain was Communism Peak (now Ismoil Somoni Peak) in Tajikistan, at 7,495 metres (24,590 ft). The USSR also included most of the world's largest lakes; the Caspian Sea (shared with Iran), and Lake Baikal, the world's largest (by volume) and deepest freshwater lake that is also an internal body of water in Russia.
+Modern revolutionary activity in the Russian Empire began with the 1825 Decembrist revolt. Although serfdom was abolished in 1861, it was done on terms unfavorable to the peasants and served to encourage revolutionaries. A parliament—the State Duma—was established in 1906 after the Russian Revolution of 1905, but Tsar Nicholas II resisted attempts to move from absolute to a constitutional monarchy. Social unrest continued and was aggravated during World War I by military defeat and food shortages in major cities.
+A spontaneous popular uprising in Petrograd, in response to the wartime decay of Russia's economy and morale, culminated in the February Revolution and the toppling of Nicholas II and the imperial government in March 1917. The tsarist autocracy was replaced by the Russian Provisional Government, which intended to conduct elections to the Russian Constituent Assembly and to continue fighting on the side of the Entente in World War I.
+At the same time, workers' councils, known in Russian as "Soviets", sprang up across the country. The Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, pushed for socialist revolution in the Soviets and on the streets. On 7 November 1917, the Red Guards stormed the Winter Palace in Petrograd, ending the rule of the Provisional Government and leaving all political power to the Soviets.[30] This event would later be officially known in Soviet bibliographies as the Great October Socialist Revolution. In December, the Bolsheviks signed an armistice with the Central Powers, though by February 1918, fighting had resumed. In March, the Soviets ended involvement in the war and signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
+A long and bloody Civil War ensued between the Reds and the Whites, starting in 1917 and ending in 1923 with the Reds' victory. It included foreign intervention, the execution of the former tsar and his family, and the famine of 1921, which killed about five million people.[31] In March 1921, during a related conflict with Poland, the Peace of Riga was signed, splitting disputed territories in Belarus and Ukraine between the Republic of Poland and Soviet Russia. Soviet Russia had to resolve similar conflicts with the newly established republics of Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
+On 28 December 1922, a conference of plenipotentiary delegations from the Russian SFSR, the Transcaucasian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR approved the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR[32] and the Declaration of the Creation of the USSR, forming the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.[33] These two documents were confirmed by the first Congress of Soviets of the USSR and signed by the heads of the delegations,[34] Mikhail Kalinin, Mikhail Tskhakaya, Mikhail Frunze, Grigory Petrovsky, and Alexander Chervyakov,[35] on 30 December 1922. The formal proclamation was made from the stage of the Bolshoi Theatre.
+An intensive restructuring of the economy, industry and politics of the country began in the early days of Soviet power in 1917. A large part of this was done according to the Bolshevik Initial Decrees, government documents signed by Vladimir Lenin. One of the most prominent breakthroughs was the GOELRO plan, which envisioned a major restructuring of the Soviet economy based on total electrification of the country.[36] The plan became the prototype for subsequent Five-Year Plans and was fulfilled by 1931.[37] After the economic policy of "War communism" during the Russian Civil War, as a prelude to fully developing socialism in the country, the Soviet government permitted some private enterprise to coexist alongside nationalized industry in the 1920s, and total food requisition in the countryside was replaced by a food tax.
+From its creation, the government in the Soviet Union was based on the one-party rule of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks).[38] The stated purpose was to prevent the return of capitalist exploitation, and that the principles of democratic centralism would be the most effective in representing the people's will in a practical manner. The debate over the future of the economy provided the background for a power struggle in the years after Lenin's death in 1924. Initially, Lenin was to be replaced by a "troika" consisting of Grigory Zinoviev of the Ukrainian SSR, Lev Kamenev of the Russian SFSR, and Joseph Stalin of the Transcaucasian SFSR.
+On 1 February 1924, the USSR was recognized by the United Kingdom. The same year, a Soviet Constitution was approved, legitimizing the December 1922 union. Despite the foundation of the Soviet state as a federative entity of many constituent republics, each with its own political and administrative entities, the term "Soviet Russia" – strictly applicable only to the Russian Federative Socialist Republic – was often applied to the entire country by non-Soviet writers and politicians.
+On 3 April 1922, Stalin was named the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Lenin had appointed Stalin the head of the Workers' and Peasants' Inspectorate, which gave Stalin considerable power. By gradually consolidating his influence and isolating and outmanoeuvring his rivals within the party, Stalin became the undisputed leader of the country and, by the end of the 1920s, established a totalitarian rule. In October 1927, Zinoviev and Leon Trotsky were expelled from the Central Committee and forced into exile.
+In 1928, Stalin introduced the first five-year plan for building a socialist economy. In place of the internationalism expressed by Lenin throughout the Revolution, it aimed to build Socialism in One Country. In industry, the state assumed control over all existing enterprises and undertook an intensive program of industrialization. In agriculture, rather than adhering to the "lead by example" policy advocated by Lenin,[39] forced collectivization of farms was implemented all over the country.
+Famines ensued as a result, causing deaths estimated at three to seven million; surviving kulaks were persecuted, and many were sent to Gulags to do forced labor.[40][41] Social upheaval continued in the mid-1930s. Despite the turmoil of the mid-to-late 1930s, the country developed a robust industrial economy in the years preceding World War II.
+Closer cooperation between the USSR and the West developed in the early 1930s. From 1932 to 1934, the country participated in the World Disarmament Conference. In 1933, diplomatic relations between the United States and the USSR were established when in November, the newly elected President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, chose to recognize Stalin's Communist government formally and negotiated a new trade agreement between the two countries.[42] In September 1934, the country joined the League of Nations. After the Spanish Civil War broke out in 1936, the USSR actively supported the Republican forces against the Nationalists, who were supported by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.[43]
+In December 1936, Stalin unveiled a new constitution that was praised by supporters around the world as the most democratic constitution imaginable, though there was some skepticism.[i] Stalin's Great Purge resulted in the detainment or execution of many "Old Bolsheviks" who had participated in the October Revolution with Lenin. According to declassified Soviet archives, the NKVD arrested more than one and a half million people in 1937 and 1938, of whom 681,692 were shot.[45] Over those two years, there were an average of over one thousand executions a day.[46][j]
+In 1939, the Soviet Union made a dramatic shift toward Nazi Germany. Almost a year after Britain and France had concluded the Munich Agreement with Germany, the Soviet Union made agreements with Germany as well, both militarily and economically during extensive talks. The two countries concluded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and the German–Soviet Commercial Agreement in August 1939. The former made possible the Soviet occupation of Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Bessarabia, northern Bukovina, and eastern Poland. In late November, unable to coerce the Republic of Finland by diplomatic means into moving its border 25 kilometres (16 mi) back from Leningrad, Stalin ordered the invasion of Finland. In the east, the Soviet military won several decisive victories during border clashes with the Empire of Japan in 1938 and 1939. However, in April 1941, the USSR signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact with Japan, recognizing the territorial integrity of Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.
+Germany broke the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact and invaded the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 starting what was known in the USSR as the Great Patriotic War. The Red Army stopped the seemingly invincible German Army at the Battle of Moscow, aided by an unusually harsh winter. The Battle of Stalingrad, which lasted from late 1942 to early 1943, dealt a severe blow to Germany from which they never fully recovered and became a turning point in the war. After Stalingrad, Soviet forces drove through Eastern Europe to Berlin before Germany surrendered in 1945. The German Army suffered 80% of its military deaths in the Eastern Front.[50] Harry Hopkins, a close foreign policy advisor to Franklin D. Roosevelt, spoke on 10 August 1943 of the USSR's decisive role in the war.[k]
+In the same year, the USSR, in fulfilment of its agreement with the Allies at the Yalta Conference, denounced the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact in April 1945[52] and invaded Manchukuo and other Japan-controlled territories on 9 August 1945.[53] This conflict ended with a decisive Soviet victory, contributing to the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of World War II.
+The USSR suffered greatly in the war, losing around 27 million people.[54] Approximately 2.8 million Soviet POWs died of starvation, mistreatment, or executions in just eight months of 1941–42.[55][56] During the war, the country together with the United States, the United Kingdom and China were considered the Big Four Allied powers,[57] and later became the Four Policemen that formed the basis of the United Nations Security Council.[58] It emerged as a superpower in the post-war period. Once denied diplomatic recognition by the Western world, the USSR had official relations with practically every country by the late 1940s. A member of the United Nations at its foundation in 1945, the country became one of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, which gave it the right to veto any of its resolutions.
+During the immediate post-war period, the Soviet Union rebuilt and expanded its economy, while maintaining its strictly centralized control. It took effective control over most of the countries of Eastern Europe (except Yugoslavia and later Albania), turning them into satellite states. The USSR bound its satellite states in a military alliance, the Warsaw Pact, in 1955, and an economic organization, Council for Mutual Economic Assistance or Comecon, a counterpart to the European Economic Community (EEC), from 1949 to 1991.[59] The USSR concentrated on its own recovery, seizing and transferring most of Germany's industrial plants, and it exacted war reparations from East Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria using Soviet-dominated joint enterprises. It also instituted trading arrangements deliberately designed to favor the country. Moscow controlled the Communist parties that ruled the satellite states, and they followed orders from the Kremlin.[m] Later, the Comecon supplied aid to the eventually victorious Communist Party of China, and its influence grew elsewhere in the world. Fearing its ambitions, the Soviet Union's wartime allies, the United Kingdom and the United States, became its enemies. In the ensuing Cold War, the two sides clashed indirectly in proxy wars.
+Stalin died on 5 March 1953. Without a mutually agreeable successor, the highest Communist Party officials initially opted to rule the Soviet Union jointly through a troika headed by Georgy Malenkov. This did not last, however, and Nikita Khrushchev eventually won the ensuing power struggle by the mid-1950s. In 1956, he denounced Stalin's use of repression and proceeded to ease controls over the party and society. This was known as de-Stalinization.
+Moscow considered Eastern Europe to be a critically vital buffer zone for the forward defence of its western borders, in case of another major invasion such as the German invasion of 1941. For this reason, the USSR sought to cement its control of the region by transforming the Eastern European countries into satellite states, dependent upon and subservient to its leadership. Soviet military force was used to suppress anti-Stalinist uprisings in Hungary and Poland in 1956.
+In the late 1950s, a confrontation with China regarding the Soviet rapprochement with the West, and what Mao Zedong perceived as Khrushchev's revisionism, led to the Sino–Soviet split. This resulted in a break throughout the global Marxist–Leninist movement, with the governments in Albania, Cambodia and Somalia choosing to ally with China.
+During this period of the late 1950s and early 1960s, the USSR continued to realize scientific and technological exploits in the Space Race, rivaling the United States: launching the first artificial satellite, Sputnik 1 in 1957; a living dog named Laika in 1957; the first human being, Yuri Gagarin in 1961; the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova in 1963; Alexei Leonov, the first person to walk in space in 1965; the first soft landing on the Moon by spacecraft Luna 9 in 1966; and the first Moon rovers, Lunokhod 1 and Lunokhod 2.[61]
+Khrushchev initiated "The Thaw", a complex shift in political, cultural and economic life in the country. This included some openness and contact with other nations and new social and economic policies with more emphasis on commodity goods, allowing a dramatic rise in living standards while maintaining high levels of economic growth. Censorship was relaxed as well. Khrushchev's reforms in agriculture and administration, however, were generally unproductive. In 1962, he precipitated a crisis with the United States over the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. An agreement was made with the United States to remove nuclear missiles from both Cuba and Turkey, concluding the crisis. This event caused Khrushchev much embarrassment and loss of prestige, resulting in his removal from power in 1964.
+Following the ousting of Khrushchev, another period of collective leadership ensued, consisting of Leonid Brezhnev as General Secretary, Alexei Kosygin as Premier and Nikolai Podgorny as Chairman of the Presidium, lasting until Brezhnev established himself in the early 1970s as the preeminent Soviet leader.
+In 1968, the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact allies invaded Czechoslovakia to halt the Prague Spring reforms. In the aftermath, Brezhnev justified the invasion along with the earlier invasions of Eastern European states by introducing the Brezhnev Doctrine, which claimed the right of the Soviet Union to violate the sovereignty of any country that attempted to replace Marxism–Leninism with capitalism.
+Brezhnev presided throughout détente with the West that resulted in treaties on armament control (SALT I, SALT II, Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty) while at the same time building up Soviet military might.
+In October 1977, the third Soviet Constitution was unanimously adopted. The prevailing mood of the Soviet leadership at the time of Brezhnev's death in 1982 was one of aversion to change. The long period of Brezhnev's rule had come to be dubbed one of "standstill", with an ageing and ossified top political leadership. This period is also known as the Era of Stagnation, a period of adverse economic, political, and social effects in the country, which began during the rule of Brezhnev and continued under his successors Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko.
+In late 1979, the Soviet Union's military intervened in the ongoing civil war in neighboring Afghanistan, effectively ending a détente with the West.
+Two developments dominated the decade that followed: the increasingly apparent crumbling of the Soviet Union's economic and political structures, and the patchwork attempts at reforms to reverse that process. Kenneth S. Deffeyes argued in Beyond Oil that the Reagan administration encouraged Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil to the point where the Soviets could not make a profit selling their oil, and resulted in the depletion of the country's hard currency reserves.[62]
+Brezhnev's next two successors, transitional figures with deep roots in his tradition, did not last long. Yuri Andropov was 68 years old and Konstantin Chernenko 72 when they assumed power; both died in less than two years. In an attempt to avoid a third short-lived leader, in 1985, the Soviets turned to the next generation and selected Mikhail Gorbachev. He made significant changes in the economy and party leadership, called perestroika. His policy of glasnost freed public access to information after decades of heavy government censorship. Gorbachev also moved to end the Cold War. In 1988, the USSR abandoned its war in Afghanistan and began to withdraw its forces. In the following year, Gorbachev refused to interfere in the internal affairs of the Soviet satellite states, which paved the way for the Revolutions of 1989. With the tearing down of the Berlin Wall and with East and West Germany pursuing unification, the Iron Curtain between the West and Soviet-controlled regions came down.
+At the same time, the Soviet republics started legal moves towards potentially declaring sovereignty over their territories, citing the freedom to secede in Article 72 of the USSR constitution.[63] On 7 April 1990, a law was passed allowing a republic to secede if more than two-thirds of its residents voted for it in a referendum.[64] Many held their first free elections in the Soviet era for their own national legislatures in 1990. Many of these legislatures proceeded to produce legislation contradicting the Union laws in what was known as the "War of Laws". In 1989, the Russian SFSR convened a newly elected Congress of People's Deputies. Boris Yeltsin was elected its chairman. On 12 June 1990, the Congress declared Russia's sovereignty over its territory and proceeded to pass laws that attempted to supersede some of the Soviet laws. After a landslide victory of Sąjūdis in Lithuania, that country declared its independence restored on 11 March 1990.
+A referendum for the preservation of the USSR was held on 17 March 1991 in nine republics (the remainder having boycotted the vote), with the majority of the population in those republics voting for preservation of the Union. The referendum gave Gorbachev a minor boost. In the summer of 1991, the New Union Treaty, which would have turned the country into a much looser Union, was agreed upon by eight republics. The signing of the treaty, however, was interrupted by the August Coup—an attempted coup d'état by hardline members of the government and the KGB who sought to reverse Gorbachev's reforms and reassert the central government's control over the republics. After the coup collapsed, Yeltsin was seen as a hero for his decisive actions, while Gorbachev's power was effectively ended. The balance of power tipped significantly towards the republics. In August 1991, Latvia and Estonia immediately declared the restoration of their full independence (following Lithuania's 1990 example). Gorbachev resigned as general secretary in late August, and soon afterwards, the party's activities were indefinitely suspended—effectively ending its rule. By the fall, Gorbachev could no longer influence events outside Moscow, and he was being challenged even there by Yeltsin, who had been elected President of Russia in July 1991.
+The remaining 12 republics continued discussing new, increasingly looser, models of the Union. However, by December all except Russia and Kazakhstan had formally declared independence. During this time, Yeltsin took over what remained of the Soviet government, including the Moscow Kremlin. The final blow was struck on 1 December when Ukraine, the second-most powerful republic, voted overwhelmingly for independence. Ukraine's secession ended any realistic chance of the country staying together even on a limited scale.
+On 8 December 1991, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus (formerly Byelorussia), signed the Belavezha Accords, which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and established the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in its place. While doubts remained over the authority of the accords to do this, on 21 December 1991, the representatives of all Soviet republics except Georgia signed the Alma-Ata Protocol, which confirmed the accords. On 25 December 1991, Gorbachev resigned as the President of the USSR, declaring the office extinct. He turned the powers that had been vested in the presidency over to Yeltsin. That night, the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time, and the Russian tricolor was raised in its place.
+The following day, the Supreme Soviet, the highest governmental body, voted both itself and the country out of existence. This is generally recognized as marking the official, final dissolution of the Soviet Union as a functioning state, and the end of the Cold War.[65] The Soviet Army initially remained under overall CIS command but was soon absorbed into the different military forces of the newly independent states. The few remaining Soviet institutions that had not been taken over by Russia ceased to function by the end of 1991.
+Following the dissolution, Russia was internationally recognized[66] as its legal successor on the international stage. To that end, Russia voluntarily accepted all Soviet foreign debt and claimed Soviet overseas properties as its own. Under the 1992 Lisbon Protocol, Russia also agreed to receive all nuclear weapons remaining in the territory of other former Soviet republics. Since then, the Russian Federation has assumed the Soviet Union's rights and obligations. Ukraine has refused to recognize exclusive Russian claims to succession of the USSR and claimed such status for Ukraine as well, which was codified in Articles 7 and 8 of its 1991 law On Legal Succession of Ukraine. Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has continued to pursue claims against Russia in foreign courts, seeking to recover its share of the foreign property that was owned by the USSR.
+The dissolution was followed by a severe drop in economic and social conditions in post-Soviet states,[67][68] including a rapid increase in poverty,[69][70][71][72] crime,[73][74] corruption,[75][76] unemployment,[77] homelessness,[78][79] rates of disease,[80][81][82] demographic losses,[83] income inequality and the rise of an oligarchical class,[84][69] along with decreases in calorie intake, life expectancy, adult literacy, and income.[85] Between 1988/1989 and 1993/1995, the Gini ratio increased by an average of 9 points for all former socialist countries.[69] The economic shocks that accompanied wholesale privatization were associated with sharp increases in mortality. Data shows Russia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia saw a tripling of unemployment and a 42% increase in male death rates between 1991 and 1994.[86][87] In the following decades, only five or six of the post-communist states are on a path to joining the wealthy capitalist West while most are falling behind, some to such an extent that it will take over fifty years to catch up to where they were before the fall of the Soviet Bloc.[88][89]
+In summing up the international ramifications of these events, Vladislav Zubok stated: "The collapse of the Soviet empire was an event of epochal geopolitical, military, ideological, and economic significance."[90] Before the dissolution, the country had maintained its status as one of the world's two superpowers for four decades after World War II through its hegemony in Eastern Europe, military strength, economic strength, aid to developing countries, and scientific research, especially in space technology and weaponry.[91]
+The analysis of the succession of states for the 15 post-Soviet states is complex. The Russian Federation is seen as the legal continuator state and is for most purposes the heir to the Soviet Union. It retained ownership of all former Soviet embassy properties, as well as the old Soviet UN membership and permanent membership on the Security Council.
+Of the two other co-founding states of the USSR at the time of the dissolution, Ukraine was the only one that had passed similar to Russia's laws that it is a state-successor of both the Ukrainian SSR and the USSR.[92] Soviet treaties laid groundwork for Ukraine's future foreign agreements as well as they led to Ukraine agreeing to undertake 16.37% of debts of the Soviet Union for which it was going to receive its share of USSR's foreign property. Although it had a tough position at the time, due to Russia's position as a "single continuation of the USSR" that became widely accepted in the West as well as a constant pressure from the Western countries, allowed Russia to dispose state property of USSR abroad and conceal information about it. Due to that Ukraine never ratified "zero option" agreement that Russian Federation had signed with other former Soviet republics, as it denied disclosing of information about Soviet Gold Reserves and its Diamond Fund.[93][94] Dispute over former Soviet property and assets between two former republics is still ongoing:
+The conflict is unsolvable. We can continue to poke Kiev handouts in the calculation of "solve the problem", only it won't be solved. Going to a trial is also pointless: for a number of European countries this is a political issue, and they will make a decision clearly in whose favor. What to do in this situation is an open question. Search for non-trivial solutions. But we must remember that in 2014, with the filing of the then Ukrainian Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, litigation with Russia resumed in 32 countries.
+Similar situation occurred with restitution of cultural property. Although on 14 February 1992 Russia and other former Soviet republics signed agreement "On the return of cultural and historic property to the origin states" in Minsk, it was halted by Russian State Duma that had eventually passed "Federal Law on Cultural Valuables Displaced to the USSR as a Result of the Second World War and Located on the Territory of the Russian Federation" which made restitution currently impossible.[96]
+There are additionally four states that claim independence from the other internationally recognised post-Soviet states but possess limited international recognition: Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh, South Ossetia and Transnistria. The Chechen separatist movement of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria lacks any international recognition.
+During his rule, Stalin always made the final policy decisions. Otherwise, Soviet foreign policy was set by the Commission on the Foreign Policy of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, or by the party's highest body the Politburo. Operations were handled by the separate Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was known as the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs (or Narkomindel), until 1946. The most influential spokesmen were Georgy Chicherin (1872–1936), Maxim Litvinov (1876–1951), Vyacheslav Molotov (1890–1986), Andrey Vyshinsky (1883–1954) and Andrei Gromyko (1909–1989). Intellectuals were based in the Moscow State Institute of International Relations.[97]
+The Communist leadership of the Soviet Union intensely debated foreign policy issues and change directions several times. Even after Stalin assumed dictatorial control in the late 1920s, there were debates, and he frequently changed positions.[106]
+During the country's early period, it was assumed that Communist revolutions would break out soon in every major industrial country, and it was the Soviet responsibility to assist them. The Comintern was the weapon of choice. A few revolutions did break out, but they were quickly suppressed (the longest lasting one was in Hungary)—the Hungarian Soviet Republic—lasted only from 21 March 1919 to 1 August 1919. The Russian Bolsheviks were in no position to give any help.
+By 1921, Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin realized that capitalism had stabilized itself in Europe and there would not be any widespread revolutions anytime soon. It became the duty of the Russian Bolsheviks to protect what they had in Russia, and avoid military confrontations that might destroy their bridgehead. Russia was now a pariah state, along with Germany. The two came to terms in 1922 with the Treaty of Rapallo that settled long-standing grievances. At the same time, the two countries secretly set up training programs for the illegal German army and air force operations at hidden camps in the USSR.[107]
+Moscow eventually stopped threatening other states, and instead worked to open peaceful relationships in terms of trade, and diplomatic recognition. The United Kingdom dismissed the warnings of Winston Churchill and a few others about a continuing communist threat, and opened trade relations and de facto diplomatic recognition in 1922. There was hope for a settlement of the pre-war tsarist debts, but it was repeatedly postponed. Formal recognition came when the new Labour Party came to power in 1924.[108] All the other countries followed suit in opening trade relations. Henry Ford opened large-scale business relations with the Soviets in the late 1920s, hoping that it would lead to long-term peace. Finally, in 1933, the United States officially recognized the USSR, a decision backed by the public opinion and especially by US business interests that expected an opening of a new profitable market.[109]
+In the late 1920s and early 1930s, Stalin ordered Communist parties across the world to strongly oppose non-communist political parties, labor unions or other organizations on the left. Stalin reversed himself in 1934 with the Popular Front program that called on all Communist parties to join together with all anti-Fascist political, labor, and organizational forces that were opposed to fascism, especially of the Nazi variety.[110][111]
+In 1939, half a year after the Munich Agreement, the USSR attempted to form an anti-Nazi alliance with France and Britain.[112] Adolf Hitler proposed a better deal, which would give the USSR control over much of Eastern Europe through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In September, Germany invaded Poland, and the USSR also invaded later that month, resulting in the partition of Poland. In response, Britain and France declared war on Germany, marking the beginning of World War II.[113]
+There were three power hierarchies in the Soviet Union: the legislature represented by the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union, the government represented by the Council of Ministers, and the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), the only legal party and the final policymaker in the country.[114]
+At the top of the Communist Party was the Central Committee, elected at Party Congresses and Conferences. In turn, the Central Committee voted for a Politburo (called the Presidium between 1952–1966), Secretariat and the General Secretary (First Secretary from 1953 to 1966), the de facto highest office in the Soviet Union.[115] Depending on the degree of power consolidation, it was either the Politburo as a collective body or the General Secretary, who always was one of the Politburo members, that effectively led the party and the country[116] (except for the period of the highly personalized authority of Stalin, exercised directly through his position in the Council of Ministers rather than the Politburo after 1941).[117] They were not controlled by the general party membership, as the key principle of the party organization was democratic centralism, demanding strict subordination to higher bodies, and elections went uncontested, endorsing the candidates proposed from above.[118]
+The Communist Party maintained its dominance over the state mainly through its control over the system of appointments. All senior government officials and most deputies of the Supreme Soviet were members of the CPSU. Of the party heads themselves, Stalin (1941–1953) and Khrushchev (1958–1964) were Premiers. Upon the forced retirement of Khrushchev, the party leader was prohibited from this kind of double membership,[119] but the later General Secretaries for at least some part of their tenure occupied the mostly ceremonial position of Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet, the nominal head of state. The institutions at lower levels were overseen and at times supplanted by primary party organizations.[120]
+However, in practice the degree of control the party was able to exercise over the state bureaucracy, particularly after the death of Stalin, was far from total, with the bureaucracy pursuing different interests that were at times in conflict with the party.[121] Nor was the party itself monolithic from top to bottom, although factions were officially banned.[122]
+The Supreme Soviet (successor of the Congress of Soviets and Central Executive Committee) was nominally the highest state body for most of the Soviet history,[123] at first acting as a rubber stamp institution, approving and implementing all decisions made by the party. However, its powers and functions were extended in the late 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, including the creation of new state commissions and committees. It gained additional powers relating to the approval of the Five-Year Plans and the government budget.[124] The Supreme Soviet elected a Presidium to wield its power between plenary sessions,[125] ordinarily held twice a year, and appointed the Supreme Court,[126] the Procurator General[127] and the Council of Ministers (known before 1946 as the Council of People's Commissars), headed by the Chairman (Premier) and managing an enormous bureaucracy responsible for the administration of the economy and society.[125] State and party structures of the constituent republics largely emulated the structure of the central institutions, although the Russian SFSR, unlike the other constituent republics, for most of its history had no republican branch of the CPSU, being ruled directly by the union-wide party until 1990. Local authorities were organized likewise into party committees, local Soviets and executive committees. While the state system was nominally federal, the party was unitary.[128]
+The state security police (the KGB and its predecessor agencies) played an important role in Soviet politics. It was instrumental in the Great Purge,[129] but was brought under strict party control after Stalin's death. Under Yuri Andropov, the KGB engaged in the suppression of political dissent and maintained an extensive network of informers, reasserting itself as a political actor to some extent independent of the party-state structure,[130] culminating in the anti-corruption campaign targeting high-ranking party officials in the late 1970s and early 1980s.[131]
+The constitution, which was promulgated in 1918, 1924, 1936 and 1977,[132] did not limit state power. No formal separation of powers existed between the Party, Supreme Soviet and Council of Ministers[133] that represented executive and legislative branches of the government. The system was governed less by statute than by informal conventions, and no settled mechanism of leadership succession existed. Bitter and at times deadly power struggles took place in the Politburo after the deaths of Lenin[134] and Stalin,[135] as well as after Khrushchev's dismissal,[136] itself due to a decision by both the Politburo and the Central Committee.[137] All leaders of the Communist Party before Gorbachev died in office, except Georgy Malenkov[138] and Khrushchev, both dismissed from the party leadership amid internal struggle within the party.[137]
+Between 1988 and 1990, facing considerable opposition, Mikhail Gorbachev enacted reforms shifting power away from the highest bodies of the party and making the Supreme Soviet less dependent on them. The Congress of People's Deputies was established, the majority of whose members were directly elected in competitive elections held in March 1989. The Congress now elected the Supreme Soviet, which became a full-time parliament, and much stronger than before. For the first time since the 1920s, it refused to rubber stamp proposals from the party and Council of Ministers.[139] In 1990, Gorbachev introduced and assumed the position of the President of the Soviet Union, concentrated power in his executive office, independent of the party, and subordinated the government,[140] now renamed the Cabinet of Ministers of the USSR, to himself.[141]
+Tensions grew between the Union-wide authorities under Gorbachev, reformists led in Russia by Boris Yeltsin and controlling the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR, and communist hardliners. On 19–21 August 1991, a group of hardliners staged a coup attempt. The coup failed, and the State Council of the Soviet Union became the highest organ of state power "in the period of transition".[142] Gorbachev resigned as General Secretary, only remaining President for the final months of the existence of the USSR.[143]
+The judiciary was not independent of the other branches of government. The Supreme Court supervised the lower courts (People's Court) and applied the law as established by the constitution or as interpreted by the Supreme Soviet. The Constitutional Oversight Committee reviewed the constitutionality of laws and acts. The Soviet Union used the inquisitorial system of Roman law, where the judge, procurator, and defence attorney collaborate to establish the truth.[144]
+Constitutionally, the USSR was a federation of constituent Union Republics, which were either unitary states, such as Ukraine or Byelorussia (SSRs), or federations, such as Russia or Transcaucasia (SFSRs),[114] all four being the founding republics who signed the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in December 1922. In 1924, during the national delimitation in Central Asia, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan were formed from parts of Russia's Turkestan ASSR and two Soviet dependencies, the Khorezm and Bukharan SSRs. In 1929, Tajikistan was split off from the Uzbekistan SSR. With the constitution of 1936, the Transcaucasian SFSR was dissolved, resulting in its constituent republics of Armenia, Georgia and Azerbaijan being elevated to Union Republics, while Kazakhstan and Kirghizia were split off from Russian SFSR, resulting in the same status.[145] In August 1940, Moldavia was formed from parts of Ukraine and Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania (SSRs) were also admitted into the union which was not recognized by most of the international community and was considered an illegal occupation. Karelia was split off from Russia as a Union Republic in March 1940 and was reabsorbed in 1956. Between July 1956 and September 1991, there were 15 union republics (see map below).[146]
+While nominally a union of equals, in practice the Soviet Union was dominated by Russians. The domination was so absolute that for most of its existence, the country was commonly (but incorrectly) referred to as "Russia". While the RSFSR was technically only one republic within the larger union, it was by far the largest (both in terms of population and area), most powerful, most developed, and the industrial center of the Soviet Union. Historian Matthew White wrote that it was an open secret that the country's federal structure was "window dressing" for Russian dominance. For that reason, the people of the USSR were usually called "Russians", not "Soviets", since "everyone knew who really ran the show".[147]
+Under the Military Law of September 1925, the Soviet Armed Forces consisted of three components, namely the Land Forces, the Air Force, the Navy, Joint State Political Directorate (OGPU), and the Internal Troops.[148] The OGPU later became independent and in 1934 joined the NKVD, and so its internal troops were under the joint leadership of the defense and internal commissariats. After World War II, Strategic Missile Forces (1959), Air Defense Forces (1948) and National Civil Defense Forces (1970) were formed, which ranked first, third, and sixth in the official Soviet system of importance (ground forces were second, Air Force Fourth, and Navy Fifth).
+The army had the greatest political influence. In 1989, there served two million soldiers divided between 150 motorized and 52 armored divisions. Until the early 1960s, the Soviet navy was a rather small military branch, but after the Caribbean crisis, under the leadership of Sergei Gorshkov, it expanded significantly. It became known for battlecruisers and submarines. In 1989 there served 500 000 men. The Soviet Air Force focused on a fleet of strategic bombers and during war situation was to eradicate enemy infrastructure and nuclear capacity. The air force also had a number of fighters and tactical bombers to support the army in the war. Strategic missile forces had more than 1,400 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), deployed between 28 bases and 300 command centers.
+In the post-war period, the Soviet Army was directly involved in several military operations abroad. These included the suppression of the uprising in East Germany (1953), Hungarian revolution (1956) and the invasion of Czechoslovakia (1968). The Soviet Union also participated in the war in Afghanistan between 1979 and 1989.
+In the Soviet Union, general conscription applied.
+At the end of the 1950s, with the help of engineers and technologies captured and imported from defeated Nazi Germany, the Soviets constructed the first satellite - Sputnik 1 and thus overtook the United States. This was followed by other successful satellites and experimental dogs were sent. On April 12, 1961, the first cosmonaut, Yuri Gagarin, was sent to the space. He once flew around the Earth and successfully landed in the Kazakh steppe. At that time, the first plans for space shuttles and orbital stations were drawn up in Soviet design offices, but in the end personal disputes between designers and management prevented this.
+The first big fiasco for the USSR was the landing on the moon by the Americans, when the Russians were not able to respond to the Americans in time with the same project. In the 1970s, more specific proposals for the design of the space shuttle began to emerge, but shortcomings, especially in the electronics industry (rapid overheating of electronics), postponed the program until the end of the 1980s. The first shuttle, the Buran, flew in 1988, but without a human crew. Another shuttle, Ptichka, eventually ended up under construction, as the shuttle project was canceled in 1991. For their launch into space, there is today an unused superpower rocket, Energia, which is the most powerful in the world.
+In the late 1980s, the Soviet Union managed to build the Mir orbital station. It was built on the construction of Salyut stations and its tasks were purely civilian and research. In the 1990s, when the US Skylab was shut down due to lack of funds, it was the only orbital station in operation. Gradually, other modules were added to it, including American ones. However, the technical condition of the station deteriorated rapidly, especially after the fire, so in 2001 it was decided to bring it into the atmosphere where it burned down.
+The Soviet Union adopted a command economy, whereby production and distribution of goods were centralized and directed by the government. The first Bolshevik experience with a command economy was the policy of War communism, which involved the nationalization of industry, centralized distribution of output, coercive requisition of agricultural production, and attempts to eliminate money circulation, private enterprises and free trade. After the severe economic collapse, Lenin replaced war communism by the New Economic Policy (NEP) in 1921, legalizing free trade and private ownership of small businesses. The economy quickly recovered as a result.[149]
+After a long debate among the members of Politburo about the course of economic development, by 1928–1929, upon gaining control of the country, Stalin abandoned the NEP and pushed for full central planning, starting forced collectivization of agriculture and enacting draconian labor legislation. Resources were mobilized for rapid industrialization, which significantly expanded Soviet capacity in heavy industry and capital goods during the 1930s.[149] The primary motivation for industrialization was preparation for war, mostly due to distrust of the outside capitalist world.[150] As a result, the USSR was transformed from a largely agrarian economy into a great industrial power, leading the way for its emergence as a superpower after World War II.[151] The war caused extensive devastation of the Soviet economy and infrastructure, which required massive reconstruction.[152]
+By the early 1940s, the Soviet economy had become relatively self-sufficient; for most of the period until the creation of Comecon, only a tiny share of domestic products was traded internationally.[153] After the creation of the Eastern Bloc, external trade rose rapidly. However, the influence of the world economy on the USSR was limited by fixed domestic prices and a state monopoly on foreign trade.[154] Grain and sophisticated consumer manufactures became major import articles from around the 1960s.[153] During the arms race of the Cold War, the Soviet economy was burdened by military expenditures, heavily lobbied for by a powerful bureaucracy dependent on the arms industry. At the same time, the USSR became the largest arms exporter to the Third World. Significant amounts of Soviet resources during the Cold War were allocated in aid to the other socialist states.[153]
+From the 1930s until its dissolution in late 1991, the way the Soviet economy operated remained essentially unchanged. The economy was formally directed by central planning, carried out by Gosplan and organized in five-year plans. However, in practice, the plans were highly aggregated and provisional, subject to ad hoc intervention by superiors. All critical economic decisions were taken by the political leadership. Allocated resources and plan targets were usually denominated in rubles rather than in physical goods. Credit was discouraged, but widespread. The final allocation of output was achieved through relatively decentralized, unplanned contracting. Although in theory prices were legally set from above, in practice they were often negotiated, and informal horizontal links (e.g. between producer factories) were widespread.[149]
+A number of basic services were state-funded, such as education and health care. In the manufacturing sector, heavy industry and defence were prioritized over consumer goods.[155] Consumer goods, particularly outside large cities, were often scarce, of poor quality and limited variety. Under the command economy, consumers had almost no influence on production, and the changing demands of a population with growing incomes could not be satisfied by supplies at rigidly fixed prices.[156] A massive unplanned second economy grew up at low levels alongside the planned one, providing some of the goods and services that the planners could not. The legalization of some elements of the decentralized economy was attempted with the reform of 1965.[149]
+Although statistics of the Soviet economy are notoriously unreliable and its economic growth difficult to estimate precisely,[157][158] by most accounts, the economy continued to expand until the mid-1980s. During the 1950s and 1960s, it had comparatively high growth and was catching up to the West.[159] However, after 1970, the growth, while still positive, steadily declined much more quickly and consistently than in other countries, despite a rapid increase in the capital stock (the rate of capital increase was only surpassed by Japan).[149]
+Overall, the growth rate of per capita income in the Soviet Union between 1960 and 1989 was slightly above the world average (based on 102 countries).[citation needed] According to Stanley Fischer and William Easterly, growth could have been faster. By their calculation, per capita income in 1989 should have been twice higher than it was, considering the amount of investment, education and population. The authors attribute this poor performance to the low productivity of capital.[160] Steven Rosenfielde states that the standard of living declined due to Stalin's despotism. While there was a brief improvement after his death, it lapsed into stagnation.[161]
+In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev attempted to reform and revitalize the economy with his program of perestroika. His policies relaxed state control over enterprises but did not replace it by market incentives, resulting in a sharp decline in output. The economy, already suffering from reduced petroleum export revenues, started to collapse. Prices were still fixed, and the property was still largely state-owned until after the country's dissolution.[149][156] For most of the period after World War II until its collapse, Soviet GDP (PPP) was the second-largest in the world, and third during the second half of the 1980s,[162] although on a per-capita basis, it was behind that of First World countries.[163] Compared to countries with similar per-capita GDP in 1928, the Soviet Union experienced significant growth.[164]
+In 1990, the country had a Human Development Index of 0.920, placing it in the "high" category of human development. It was the third-highest in the Eastern Bloc, behind Czechoslovakia and East Germany, and the 25th in the world of 130 countries.[165]
+The need for fuel declined in the Soviet Union from the 1970s to the 1980s,[166] both per ruble of gross social product and per ruble of industrial product. At the start, this decline grew very rapidly but gradually slowed down between 1970 and 1975. From 1975 and 1980, it grew even slower,[clarification needed] only 2.6%.[167] David Wilson, a historian, believed that the gas industry would account for 40% of Soviet fuel production by the end of the century. His theory did not come to fruition because of the USSR's collapse.[168] The USSR, in theory, would have continued to have an economic growth rate of 2–2.5% during the 1990s because of Soviet energy fields.[clarification needed][169] However, the energy sector faced many difficulties, among them the country's high military expenditure and hostile relations with the First World.[170]
+In 1991, the Soviet Union had a pipeline network of 82,000 kilometres (51,000 mi) for crude oil and another 206,500 kilometres (128,300 mi) for natural gas.[171] Petroleum and petroleum-based products, natural gas, metals, wood, agricultural products, and a variety of manufactured goods, primarily machinery, arms and military equipment, were exported.[172] In the 1970s and 1980s, the USSR heavily relied on fossil fuel exports to earn hard currency.[153] At its peak in 1988, it was the largest producer and second-largest exporter of crude oil, surpassed only by Saudi Arabia.[173]
+The Soviet Union placed great emphasis on science and technology within its economy,[174] however, the most remarkable Soviet successes in technology, such as producing the world's first space satellite, typically were the responsibility of the military.[155] Lenin believed that the USSR would never overtake the developed world if it remained as technologically backward as it was upon its founding. Soviet authorities proved their commitment to Lenin's belief by developing massive networks, research and development organizations. In the early 1960s, the Soviets awarded 40% of chemistry PhDs to women, compared to only 5% in the United States.[175] By 1989, Soviet scientists were among the world's best-trained specialists in several areas, such as energy physics, selected areas of medicine, mathematics, welding and military technologies. Due to rigid state planning and bureaucracy, the Soviets remained far behind technologically in chemistry, biology, and computers when compared to the First World.
+Under the Reagan administration, Project Socrates determined that the Soviet Union addressed the acquisition of science and technology in a manner that was radically different from what the US was using. In the case of the US, economic prioritization was being used for indigenous research and development as the means to acquire science and technology in both the private and public sectors. In contrast, the USSR was offensively and defensively maneuvering in the acquisition and utilization of the worldwide technology, to increase the competitive advantage that they acquired from the technology while preventing the US from acquiring a competitive advantage. However, technology-based planning was executed in a centralized, government-centric manner that greatly hindered its flexibility. This was exploited by the US to undermine the strength of the Soviet Union and thus foster its reform.[176][177][178]
+Transport was a vital component of the country's economy. The economic centralization of the late 1920s and 1930s led to the development of infrastructure on a massive scale, most notably the establishment of Aeroflot, an aviation enterprise.[179] The country had a wide variety of modes of transport by land, water and air.[171] However, due to inadequate maintenance, much of the road, water and Soviet civil aviation transport were outdated and technologically backward compared to the First World.[180]
+Soviet rail transport was the largest and most intensively used in the world;[180] it was also better developed than most of its Western counterparts.[181] By the late 1970s and early 1980s, Soviet economists were calling for the construction of more roads to alleviate some of the burdens from the railways and to improve the Soviet government budget.[182] The street network and automotive industry[183] remained underdeveloped,[184] and dirt roads were common outside major cities.[185] Soviet maintenance projects proved unable to take care of even the few roads the country had. By the early-to-mid-1980s, the Soviet authorities tried to solve the road problem by ordering the construction of new ones.[185] Meanwhile, the automobile industry was growing at a faster rate than road construction.[186] The underdeveloped road network led to a growing demand for public transport.[187]
+Despite improvements, several aspects of the transport sector were still[when?] riddled with problems due to outdated infrastructure, lack of investment, corruption and bad decision-making. Soviet authorities were unable to meet the growing demand for transport infrastructure and services.
+The Soviet merchant navy was one of the largest in the world.[171]
+Excess deaths throughout World War I and the Russian Civil War (including the postwar famine) amounted to a combined total of 18 million,[188] some 10 million in the 1930s,[47] and more than 26 million in 1941–5. The postwar Soviet population was 45 to 50 million smaller than it would have been if pre-war demographic growth had continued.[54] According to Catherine Merridale, "... reasonable estimate would place the total number of excess deaths for the whole period somewhere around 60 million."[189]
+The birth rate of the USSR decreased from 44.0 per thousand in 1926 to 18.0 in 1974, mainly due to increasing urbanization and the rising average age of marriages. The mortality rate demonstrated a gradual decrease as well – from 23.7 per thousand in 1926 to 8.7 in 1974. In general, the birth rates of the southern republics in Transcaucasia and Central Asia were considerably higher than those in the northern parts of the Soviet Union, and in some cases even increased in the post–World War II period, a phenomenon partly attributed to slower rates of urbanistion and traditionally earlier marriages in the southern republics.[190] Soviet Europe moved towards sub-replacement fertility, while Soviet Central Asia continued to exhibit population growth well above replacement-level fertility.[191]
+The late 1960s and the 1970s witnessed a reversal of the declining trajectory of the rate of mortality in the USSR, and was especially notable among men of working age, but was also prevalent in Russia and other predominantly Slavic areas of the country.[192] An analysis of the official data from the late 1980s showed that after worsening in the late-1970s and the early 1980s, adult mortality began to improve again.[193] The infant mortality rate increased from 24.7 in 1970 to 27.9 in 1974. Some researchers regarded the rise as mostly real, a consequence of worsening health conditions and services.[194] The rises in both adult and infant mortality were not explained or defended by Soviet officials, and the Soviet government stopped publishing all mortality statistics for ten years. Soviet demographers and health specialists remained silent about the mortality increases until the late-1980s, when the publication of mortality data resumed, and researchers could delve into the real causes.[195]
+Under Lenin, the state made explicit commitments to promote the equality of men and women. Many early Russian feminists and ordinary Russian working women actively participated in the Revolution, and many more were affected by the events of that period and the new policies. Beginning in October 1918, the Lenin's government liberalized divorce and abortion laws, decriminalized homosexuality (re-criminalized in the 1930s), permitted cohabitation, and ushered in a host of reforms.[196] However, without birth control, the new system produced many broken marriages, as well as countless out-of-wedlock children.[197] The epidemic of divorces and extramarital affairs created social hardships when Soviet leaders wanted people to concentrate their efforts on growing the economy. Giving women control over their fertility also led to a precipitous decline in the birth rate, perceived as a threat to their country's military power. By 1936, Stalin reversed most of the liberal laws, ushering in a pronatalist era that lasted for decades.[198]
+By 1917, Russia became the first great power to grant women the right to vote.[199] After heavy casualties in World War I and II, women outnumbered men in Russia by a 4:3 ratio.[200] This contributed to the larger role women played in Russian society compared to other great powers at the time.
+Anatoly Lunacharsky became the first People's Commissar for Education of Soviet Russia. In the beginning, the Soviet authorities placed great emphasis on the elimination of illiteracy. All left-handed kids were forced to write with their right hand in the Soviet school system.[201][202][203][204] Literate people were automatically hired as teachers.[citation needed] For a short period, quality was sacrificed for quantity. By 1940, Stalin could announce that illiteracy had been eliminated. Throughout the 1930s, social mobility rose sharply, which has been attributed to reforms in education.[205] In the aftermath of World War II, the country's educational system expanded dramatically, which had a tremendous effect. In the 1960s, nearly all children had access to education, the only exception being those living in remote areas. Nikita Khrushchev tried to make education more accessible, making it clear to children that education was closely linked to the needs of society. Education also became important in giving rise to the New Man.[206] Citizens directly entering the workforce had the constitutional right to a job and to free vocational training.
+The education system was highly centralized and universally accessible to all citizens, with affirmative action for applicants from nations associated with cultural backwardness. However, as part of the general antisemitic policy, an unofficial Jewish quota was applied[when?] in the leading institutions of higher education by subjecting Jewish applicants to harsher entrance examinations.[207][208][209][210] The Brezhnev era also introduced a rule that required all university applicants to present a reference from the local Komsomol party secretary.[211] According to statistics from 1986, the number of higher education students per the population of 10,000 was 181 for the USSR, compared to 517 for the US.[212]
+The Soviet Union was an ethnically diverse country, with more than 100 distinct ethnic groups. The total population was estimated at 293 million in 1991. According to a 1990 estimate, the majority were Russians (50.78%), followed by Ukrainians (15.45%) and Uzbeks (5.84%).[213]
+All citizens of the USSR had their own ethnic affiliation. The ethnicity of a person was chosen at the age of sixteen[214] by the child's parents. If the parents did not agree, the child was automatically assigned the ethnicity of the father. Partly due to Soviet policies, some of the smaller minority ethnic groups were considered part of larger ones, such as the Mingrelians of Georgia, who were classified with the linguistically related Georgians.[215] Some ethnic groups voluntarily assimilated, while others were brought in by force. Russians, Belarusians, and Ukrainians shared close cultural ties, while other groups did not. With multiple nationalities living in the same territory, ethnic antagonisms developed over the years.[216][neutrality is disputed]
+Members of various ethnicities participated in legislative bodies. Organs of power like the Politburo, the Secretariat of the Central Committee etc., were formally ethnically neutral, but in reality, ethnic Russians were overrepresented, although there were also non-Russian leaders in the Soviet leadership, such as Joseph Stalin, Grigory Zinoviev, Nikolai Podgorny or Andrei Gromyko. During the Soviet era, a significant number of ethnic Russians and Ukrainians migrated to other Soviet republics, and many of them settled there. According to the last census in 1989, the Russian "diaspora" in the Soviet republics had reached 25 million.[217]
+Ethnographic map of the Soviet Union, 1941
+Number and share of Ukrainians in the population of the regions of the RSFSR (1926 census)
+Number and share of Ukrainians in the population of the regions of the RSFSR (1979 census)
+In 1917, before the revolution, health conditions were significantly behind those of developed countries. As Lenin later noted, "Either the lice will defeat socialism, or socialism will defeat the lice".[218] The Soviet principle of health care was conceived by the People's Commissariat for Health in 1918. Health care was to be controlled by the state and would be provided to its citizens free of charge, a revolutionary concept at the time. Article 42 of the 1977 Soviet Constitution gave all citizens the right to health protection and free access to any health institutions in the USSR. Before Leonid Brezhnev became General Secretary, the Soviet healthcare system was held in high esteem by many foreign specialists. This changed, however, from Brezhnev's accession and Mikhail Gorbachev's tenure as leader, during which the health care system was heavily criticized for many basic faults, such as the quality of service and the unevenness in its provision.[219] Minister of Health Yevgeniy Chazov, during the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, while highlighting such successes as having the most doctors and hospitals in the world, recognized the system's areas for improvement and felt that billions of Soviet rubles were squandered.[220]
+After the revolution, life expectancy for all age groups went up. This statistic in itself was seen by some that the socialist system was superior to the capitalist system. These improvements continued into the 1960s when statistics indicated that the life expectancy briefly surpassed that of the United States. Life expectancy started to decline in the 1970s, possibly because of alcohol abuse. At the same time, infant mortality began to rise. After 1974, the government stopped publishing statistics on the matter. This trend can be partly explained by the number of pregnancies rising drastically in the Asian part of the country where infant mortality was the highest while declining markedly in the more developed European part of the Soviet Union.[221]
+Under Lenin, the government gave small language groups their own writing systems.[222] The development of these writing systems was highly successful, even though some flaws were detected. During the later days of the USSR, countries with the same multilingual situation implemented similar policies. A serious problem when creating these writing systems was that the languages differed dialectally greatly from each other.[223] When a language had been given a writing system and appeared in a notable publication, it would attain "official language" status. There were many minority languages which never received their own writing system; therefore, their speakers were forced to have a second language.[224] There are examples where the government retreated from this policy, most notably under Stalin where education was discontinued in languages that were not widespread. These languages were then assimilated into another language, mostly Russian.[225] During World War II, some minority languages were banned, and their speakers accused of collaborating with the enemy.[226]
+As the most widely spoken of the Soviet Union's many languages, Russian de facto functioned as an official language, as the "language of interethnic communication" (Russian: язык межнационального общения), but only assumed the de jure status as the official national language in 1990.[227]
+Christianity and Islam had the highest number of adherents among the religious citizens.[228] Eastern Christianity predominated among Christians, with Russia's traditional Russian Orthodox Church being the largest Christian denomination. About 90% of the Soviet Union's Muslims were Sunnis, with Shias being concentrated in the Azerbaijan SSR.[228] Smaller groups included Roman Catholics, Jews, Buddhists, and a variety of Protestant denominations (especially Baptists and Lutherans).[228]
+Religious influence had been strong in the Russian Empire. The Russian Orthodox Church enjoyed a privileged status as the church of the monarchy and took part in carrying out official state functions.[229] The immediate period following the establishment of the Soviet state included a struggle against the Orthodox Church, which the revolutionaries considered an ally of the former ruling classes.[230]
+In Soviet law, the "freedom to hold religious services" was constitutionally guaranteed, although the ruling Communist Party regarded religion as incompatible with the Marxist spirit of scientific materialism.[230] In practice, the Soviet system subscribed to a narrow interpretation of this right, and in fact utilized a range of official measures to discourage religion and curb the activities of religious groups.[230]
+The 1918 Council of People's Commissars decree establishing the Russian SFSR as a secular state also decreed that "the teaching of religion in all [places] where subjects of general instruction are taught, is forbidden. Citizens may teach and may be taught religion privately."[231] Among further restrictions, those adopted in 1929 included express prohibitions on a range of church activities, including meetings for organized Bible study.[230] Both Christian and non-Christian establishments were shut down by the thousands in the 1920s and 1930s. By 1940, as many as 90% of the churches, synagogues, and mosques that had been operating in 1917 were closed.[232]
+Under the doctrine of state atheism, there was a "government-sponsored program of forced conversion to atheism" conducted by the Communists.[233][234][235] The regime targeted religions based on state interests, and while most organized religions were never outlawed, religious property was confiscated, believers were harassed, and religion was ridiculed while atheism was propagated in schools.[236] In 1925, the government founded the League of Militant Atheists to intensify the propaganda campaign.[237] Accordingly, although personal expressions of religious faith were not explicitly banned, a strong sense of social stigma was imposed on them by the formal structures and mass media, and it was generally considered unacceptable for members of certain professions (teachers, state bureaucrats, soldiers) to be openly religious. As for the Russian Orthodox Church, Soviet authorities sought to control it and, in times of national crisis, to exploit it for the regime's own purposes; but their ultimate goal was to eliminate it. During the first five years of Soviet power, the Bolsheviks executed 28 Russian Orthodox bishops and over 1,200 Russian Orthodox priests. Many others were imprisoned or exiled. Believers were harassed and persecuted. Most seminaries were closed, and the publication of most religious material was prohibited. By 1941, only 500 churches remained open out of about 54,000 in existence before World War I.
+Convinced that religious anti-Sovietism had become a thing of the past, and with the looming threat of war, the Stalin regime began shifting to a more moderate religion policy in the late 1930s.[238] Soviet religious establishments overwhelmingly rallied to support the war effort during World War II. Amid other accommodations to religious faith after the German invasion, churches were reopened. Radio Moscow began broadcasting a religious hour, and a historic meeting between Stalin and Orthodox Church leader Patriarch Sergius of Moscow was held in 1943. Stalin had the support of the majority of the religious people in the USSR even through the late 1980s.[238] The general tendency of this period was an increase in religious activity among believers of all faiths.[239]
+Under Nikita Khrushchev, the state leadership clashed with the churches in 1958–1964, a period when atheism was emphasized in the educational curriculum, and numerous state publications promoted atheistic views.[238] During this period, the number of churches fell from 20,000 to 10,000 from 1959 to 1965, and the number of synagogues dropped from 500 to 97.[240] The number of working mosques also declined, falling from 1,500 to 500 within a decade.[240]
+Religious institutions remained monitored by the Soviet government, but churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques were all given more leeway in the Brezhnev era.[241] Official relations between the Orthodox Church and the government again warmed to the point that the Brezhnev government twice honored Orthodox Patriarch Alexy I with the Order of the Red Banner of Labour.[242] A poll conducted by Soviet authorities in 1982 recorded 20% of the Soviet population as "active religious believers."[243]
+The culture of the Soviet Union passed through several stages during the USSR's existence. During the first decade following the revolution, there was relative freedom and artists experimented with several different styles to find a distinctive Soviet style of art. Lenin wanted art to be accessible to the Russian people. On the other hand, hundreds of intellectuals, writers, and artists were exiled or executed, and their work banned, such as Nikolay Gumilyov who was shot for alleged conspiring against the Bolshevik regime, and Yevgeny Zamyatin.[244]
+The government encouraged a variety of trends. In art and literature, numerous schools, some traditional and others radically experimental, proliferated. Communist writers Maxim Gorky and Vladimir Mayakovsky were active during this time. As a means of influencing a largely illiterate society, films received encouragement from the state, and much of director Sergei Eisenstein's best work dates from this period.
+During Stalin's rule, the Soviet culture was characterized by the rise and domination of the government-imposed style of socialist realism, with all other trends being severely repressed, with rare exceptions, such as Mikhail Bulgakov's works. Many writers were imprisoned and killed.[245]
+Following the Khrushchev Thaw, censorship was diminished. During this time, a distinctive period of Soviet culture developed, characterized by conformist public life and an intense focus on personal life. Greater experimentation in art forms was again permissible, resulting in the production of more sophisticated and subtly critical work. The regime loosened its emphasis on socialist realism; thus, for instance, many protagonists of the novels of author Yury Trifonov concerned themselves with problems of daily life rather than with building socialism. Underground dissident literature, known as samizdat, developed during this late period. In architecture, the Khrushchev era mostly focused on functional design as opposed to the highly decorated style of Stalin's epoch.
+In the second half of the 1980s, Gorbachev's policies of perestroika and glasnost significantly expanded freedom of expression throughout the country in the media and the press.[246]
+Founded on 20 July 1924 in Moscow, Sovetsky Sport was the first sports newspaper of the Soviet Union.
+The Soviet Olympic Committee formed on 21 April 1951, and the IOC recognized the new body in its 45th session. In the same year, when the Soviet representative Konstantin Andrianov became an IOC member, the USSR officially joined the Olympic Movement. The 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki thus became first Olympic Games for Soviet athletes.
+The Soviet Union national ice hockey team won nearly every world championship and Olympic tournament between 1954 and 1991 and never failed to medal in any International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) tournament in which they competed.
+The advent[when?] of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession – in reality, the state paid many of these competitors to train on a full-time basis.[247] Nevertheless, the IOC held to the traditional rules regarding amateurism.[248]
+A 1989 report by a committee of the Australian Senate claimed that "there is hardly a medal winner at the Moscow Games, certainly not a gold medal winner...who is not on one sort of drug or another: usually several kinds. The Moscow Games might well have been called the Chemists' Games".[249]
+A member of the IOC Medical Commission, Manfred Donike, privately ran additional tests with a new technique for identifying abnormal levels of testosterone by measuring its ratio to epitestosterone in urine. Twenty percent of the specimens he tested, including those from sixteen gold medalists, would have resulted in disciplinary proceedings had the tests been official. The results of Donike's unofficial tests later convinced the IOC to add his new technique to their testing protocols.[250] The first documented case of "blood doping" occurred at the 1980 Summer Olympics when a runner[who?] was transfused with two pints of blood before winning medals in the 5000 m and 10,000 m.[251]
+Documentation obtained in 2016 revealed the Soviet Union's plans for a statewide doping system in track and field in preparation for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. Dated before the decision to boycott the 1984 Games, the document detailed the existing steroids operations of the program, along with suggestions for further enhancements. Dr. Sergei Portugalov of the Institute for Physical Culture prepared the communication, directed to the Soviet Union's head of track and field. Portugalov later became one of the leading figures involved in the implementation of Russian doping before the 2016 Summer Olympics.[252]
+Official Soviet environmental policy has always attached great importance to actions in which human beings actively improve nature. Lenin's quote "Communism is Soviet power and electrification of the country!" in many respects it summarizes the focus on modernization and industrial development. During the first five-year plan in 1928, Stalin proceeded to industrialize the country at all costs. Values such as environmental and nature protection have been completely ignored in the struggle to create a modern industrial society. After Stalin's death, they focused more on environmental issues, but the basic perception of the value of environmental protection remained the same.[253]
+The Soviet media has always focused on the vast expanse of land and the virtually indestructible natural resources. This made it feel that contamination and looting of nature were not a problem. The Soviet state also firmly believed that scientific and technological progress would solve all the problems. Official ideology said that under socialism environmental problems could easily be overcome, unlike capitalist countries, where they seemingly could not be solved. The Soviet authorities had an almost unwavering belief that man could transcend nature. However, when the authorities had to admit that there were environmental problems in the USSR in the 1980s, they explained the problems in such a way that socialism had not yet been fully developed; pollution in socialist society was only a temporary anomaly that would have been resolved if socialism had developed.[citation needed]
+The Chernobyl disaster in 1986 was the first major accident at a civilian nuclear power plant, unparalleled in the world, when a large number of radioactive isotopes were released into the atmosphere. Radioactive doses have scattered relatively far. The main health problem after the accident was 4,000 new cases of thyroid cancer, but this led to a relatively low number of deaths (WHO data, 2005). However, the long-term effects of the accident are unknown. Another major accident is the Kyshtym disaster.[254]
+After the fall of the USSR, it was discovered that the environmental problems were greater than what the Soviet authorities admitted. The Kola Peninsula was one of the places with clear problems. Around the industrial cities of Monchegorsk and Norilsk, where nickel, for example, is mined, all forests have been killed by contamination, while the northern and other parts of Russia have been affected by emissions. During the 1990s, people in the West were also interested in the radioactive hazards of nuclear facilities, decommissioned nuclear submarines, and the processing of nuclear waste or spent nuclear fuel. It was also known in the early 1990s that the USSR had transported radioactive material to the Barents Sea and Kara Sea, which was later confirmed by the Russian parliament. The crash of the K-141 Kursk submarine in 2000 in the west further raised concerns.[255] In the past, there were accidents involving submarines K-19, K-8 or K-129.[citation needed]
+1918–1924  Turkestan3
+1918–1941  Volga German4
+1919–1990  Bashkir
+1920–1925  Kirghiz2
+1920–1990  Tatar
+1921–1990  Adjar
+1921–1945  Crimean
+1921–1991  Dagestan
+1921–1924  Mountain
+1921–1990  Nakhchivan
+1922–1991  Yakut
+1923–1990  Buryat1
+1923–1940  Karelian
+1924–1940  Moldavian
+1924–1929  Tajik
+1925–1992  Chuvash
+1925–1936  Kazak2
+1926–1936  Kirghiz
+1931–1991  Abkhaz
+1932–1992  Karakalpak
+1934–1990  Mordovian
+1934–1990  Udmurt
+1935–1943  Kalmyk
+1936–1944  Checheno-Ingush
+1936–1944  Kabardino-Balkar
+1936–1990  Komi
+1936–1990  Mari
+1936–1990  North Ossetian
+1944–1957  Kabardin
+1956–1991  Karelian
+1957–1990  Checheno-Ingush
+1957–1991  Kabardino-Balkar
+1958–1990  Kalmyk
+1961–1992  Tuva
+1990–1991  Gorno-Altai
+1991–1992  Crimean

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+The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.[11] Its members have a combined area of 4,233,255.3 km2 (1,634,469.0 sq mi) and an estimated total population of about 447 million. The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where members have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market;[12] enact legislation in justice and home affairs; and maintain common policies on trade,[13] agriculture,[14] fisheries and regional development.[15] Passport controls have been abolished for travel within the Schengen Area.[16] A monetary union was established in 1999, coming into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity (without precedent or comparison).[17][18]
+The EU and European citizenship were established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993.[19] The EU traces its origins to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), established, respectively, by the 1951 Treaty of Paris and 1957 Treaty of Rome. The original members of what came to be known as the European Communities were the Inner Six: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The Communities and their successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to their remit. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009.
+On 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom became the first member state to leave the EU.[20] Following a 2016 referendum, the UK signified its intention to leave and negotiated a withdrawal agreement. The UK is in a transitional phase until at least 31 December 2020, during which it remains subject to EU law and part of the EU single market and customs union. Before this, three territories of member states had left the EU or its forerunners, these being French Algeria (in 1962, upon independence), Greenland (in 1985, following a referendum) and Saint Barthélemy (in 2012).
+Containing in 2020 some 5.8% of the world population,[d] the EU (excluding the United Kingdom) had generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around US$15.5 trillion in 2019,[8] constituting approximately 18% of global nominal GDP.[22] Additionally, all EU countries have a very high Human Development Index according to the United Nations Development Programme. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[23] Through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the union has developed a role in external relations and defence. It maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7 and the G20. Due to its global influence, the European Union has been described as an emerging superpower.[24]
+The following timeline outlines the legal inception of the European Union (EU), from the post-war period until the union's founding and consolidation³ in 1993 and 2009, respectively. This integration ― also referred to as the European project or the construction of Europe (French: la construction européenne) ― involved treaty-based European cooperation in various policy areas, including the European Communities that were founded in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration.
+During the centuries following the fall of Rome in 476, several European states viewed themselves as translatio imperii ("transfer of rule") of the defunct Roman Empire: the Frankish Empire (481–843) and the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) were thereby attempts to resurrect Rome in the West.[e] This political philosophy of a supra-national rule over the continent, similar to the example of the ancient Roman Empire, resulted in the early Middle Ages in the concept of a renovatio imperii ("restoration of the empire"),[26] either in the forms of the Reichsidee ("imperial idea") or the religiously inspired Imperium Christianum ("christian empire").[27][28] Medieval Christendom[29][30] and the political power of the Papacy[31][32] are often cited as conducive to European integration and unity.
+In the oriental parts of the continent, the Russian Tsardom, and ultimately the Empire (1547–1917), declared Moscow to be Third Rome and inheritor of the Eastern tradition after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.[33] The gap between Greek East and Latin West had already been widened by the political scission of the Roman Empire in the 4th century and the Great Schism of 1054, and would be eventually widened again by the Iron Curtain (1945–1991).[34]
+Pan-European political thought truly emerged during the 19th century, inspired by the liberal ideas of the French and American Revolutions after the demise of Napoléon's Empire (1804–1815). In the decades following the outcomes of the Congress of Vienna, ideals of European unity flourished across the continent, especially in the writings of Wojciech Jastrzębowski,[35] Giuseppe Mazzini,[36] or Theodore de Korwin Szymanowski.[37] The term United States of Europe (French: États-Unis d'Europe) was used at that time by Victor Hugo during a speech at the International Peace Congress held in Paris in 1849:[38]
+A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood ... A day will come when we shall see ... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.
+During the interwar period, the consciousness that national markets in Europe were interdependent though confrontational, along with the observation of a larger and growing US market on the other side of the ocean, nourished the urge for the economic integration of the continent.[39] In 1920, advocating the creation of a European economic union, British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that "a Free Trade Union should be established ... to impose no protectionist tariffs whatever against the produce of other members of the Union."[40] During the same decade, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, one of the first to imagine of a modern political union of Europe, founded the Pan-Europa Movement.[41] His ideas influenced his contemporaries, among which then Prime Minister of France Aristide Briand. In 1929, the latter gave a speech in favour of a European Union before the assembly of the League of Nations, precursor of the United Nations.[42] In a radio address in March 1943, with war still raging, Britain's leader Sir Winston Churchill spoke warmly of "restoring the true greatness of Europe" once victory had been achieved, and mused on the post-war creation of a "Council of Europe" which would bring the European nations together to build peace.[43][44]
+After World War II, European integration was seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism which had devastated parts of the continent.[45] In a speech delivered on 19 September 1946 at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, Winston Churchill went further and advocated the emergence of a United States of Europe.[46] The 1948 Hague Congress was a pivotal moment in European federal history, as it led to the creation of the European Movement International and of the College of Europe, where Europe's future leaders would live and study together.[47]
+It also led directly to the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949, the first great effort to bring the nations of Europe together, initially ten of them. The Council focused primarily on values—human rights and democracy—rather than on economic or trade issues, and was always envisaged as a forum where sovereign governments could choose to work together, with no supra-national authority. It raised great hopes of further European integration, and there were fevered debates in the two years that followed as to how this could be achieved.
+But in 1952, disappointed at what they saw as the lack of progress within the Council of Europe, six nations decided to go further and created the European Coal and Steel Community, which was declared to be "a first step in the federation of Europe".[48] This community helped to economically integrate and coordinate the large number of Marshall Plan funds from the United States.[49] European leaders Alcide De Gasperi from Italy, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman from France, and Paul-Henri Spaak from Belgium understood that coal and steel were the two industries essential for waging war, and believed that by tying their national industries together, future war between their nations became much less likely.[50] These men and others are officially credited as the founding fathers of the European Union.
+In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community (EEC) and established a customs union. They also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for co-operation in developing nuclear energy. Both treaties came into force in 1958.[50]
+The EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC and they shared the same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein (Hallstein Commission) and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand (Armand Commission) and then Étienne Hirsch. Euratom was to integrate sectors in nuclear energy while the EEC would develop a customs union among members.[51][52]
+During the 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power. Nevertheless, in 1965 an agreement was reached and on 1 July 1967 the Merger Treaty created a single set of institutions for the three communities, which were collectively referred to as the European Communities.[53][54] Jean Rey presided over the first merged Commission (Rey Commission).[55]
+In 1973, the Communities were enlarged to include Denmark (including Greenland, which later left the Communities in 1985, following a dispute over fishing rights), Ireland, and the United Kingdom.[56] Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum. In 1979, the first direct elections to the European Parliament were held.[57]
+Greece joined in 1981, Portugal and Spain following in 1986.[58] In 1985, the Schengen Agreement paved the way for the creation of open borders without passport controls between most member states and some non-member states.[59] In 1986, the European flag began to be used by the EEC[60] and the Single European Act was signed.
+In 1990, after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the former East Germany became part of the Communities as part of a reunified Germany.[61]
+The European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty—whose main architects were Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand—came into force on 1 November 1993.[19][62] The treaty also gave the name European Community to the EEC, even if it was referred as such before the treaty. With further enlargement planned to include the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Cyprus and Malta, the Copenhagen criteria for candidate members to join the EU were agreed upon in June 1993. The expansion of the EU introduced a new level of complexity and discord.[63] In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU.
+In 2002, euro banknotes and coins replaced national currencies in 12 of the member states. Since then, the eurozone has increased to encompass 19 countries. The euro currency became the second largest reserve currency in the world. In 2004, the EU saw its biggest enlargement to date when Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined the Union.[64]
+In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became EU members. The same year, Slovenia adopted the euro,[64] followed in 2008 by Cyprus and Malta, by Slovakia in 2009, by Estonia in 2011, by Latvia in 2014, and by Lithuania in 2015.
+On 1 December 2009, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force and reformed many aspects of the EU. In particular, it changed the legal structure of the European Union, merging the EU three pillars system into a single legal entity provisioned with a legal personality, created a permanent President of the European Council, the first of which was Herman Van Rompuy, and strengthened the position of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.[65][66]
+In 2012, the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe."[67][68] In 2013, Croatia became the 28th EU member.[69]
+From the beginning of the 2010s, the cohesion of the European Union has been tested by several issues, including a debt crisis in some of the Eurozone countries, increasing migration from Africa and Asia, and the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU.[70] A referendum in the UK on its membership of the European Union was held in 2016, with 51.9% of participants voting to leave.[71] The UK formally notified the European Council of its decision to leave on 29 March 2017, initiating the formal withdrawal procedure for leaving the EU; following extensions to the process, the UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020, though most areas of EU law will continue to apply to the UK for a transition period lasting until the end of 2020 at the earliest.[72]
+As of 1 February 2020[update], the population of the European Union was about 447 million people (5.8% of the world population).[73][74] In 2015, 5.1 million children were born in the EU-28 corresponding to a birth rate of 10 per 1,000, which is 8 births below the world average.[75] For comparison, the EU-28 birth rate had stood at 10.6 in 2000, 12.8 in 1985 and 16.3 in 1970.[76] Its population growth rate was positive at an estimated 0.23% in 2016.[77]
+In 2010, 47.3 million people who lived in the EU were born outside their resident country. This corresponds to 9.4% of the total EU population. Of these, 31.4 million (6.3%) were born outside the EU and 16.0 million (3.2%) were born in another EU member state. The largest absolute numbers of people born outside the EU were in Germany (6.4 million), France (5.1 million), the United Kingdom (4.7 million), Spain (4.1 million), Italy (3.2 million), and the Netherlands (1.4 million).[78] In 2017, approximately 825,000 people acquired citizenship of a member state of the European Union. The largest groups were nationals of Morocco, Albania, India, Turkey and Pakistan.[79] 2.4 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2017.[80][81]
+The EU contains about 40 urban areas with populations of over one million. The largest metropolitan area in the EU is Paris.[82] These are followed by Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Rhine-Ruhr, Rome, and Milan, all with a metropolitan population of over 4 million.[83]
+The EU also has numerous polycentric urbanised regions like Rhine-Ruhr (Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf et al.), Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht et al.), Frankfurt Rhine-Main (Frankfurt), the Flemish Diamond (Antwerp, Brussels, Leuven, Ghent et al.) and Upper Silesian area (Katowice, Ostrava et al.).[82]
+The European Union has 24 official languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish. Important documents, such as legislation, are translated into every official language and the European Parliament provides translation for documents and plenary sessions.[89][90][91]
+Due to the high number of official languages, most of the institutions use only a handful of working languages.[92] The European Commission conducts its internal business in three procedural languages: English, French, and German. Similarly, the Court of Justice of the European Union uses French as the working language,[93] while the European Central Bank conducts its business primarily in English.[94][95]
+Even though language policy is the responsibility of member states, EU institutions promote multilingualism among its citizens.[h][96] English is the most widely spoken language in the EU, being understood by 51% of the EU population when counting both native and non-native speakers.[97] German is the most widely spoken mother tongue (18% of the EU population), and the second most widely understood foreign language, followed by French (13% of the EU population). In addition, both are official languages of several EU member states. More than half (56%) of EU citizens are able to engage in a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.[98]
+A total of twenty official languages of the EU belong to the Indo-European language family, represented by the Balto-Slavic,[i] the Italic,[j] the Germanic,[k] the Hellenic,[l] and the Celtic[m] branches. Only four languages, namely Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian (all three Uralic), and Maltese (Semitic), are not Indo-European languages.[99] The three official alphabets of the European Union (Cyrillic, Latin, and modern Greek) all derive from the Archaic Greek scripts.[3][100]
+Luxembourgish (in Luxembourg) and Turkish (in Cyprus) are the only two national languages that are not official languages of the EU. On 26 February 2016 it was made public that Cyprus has asked to make Turkish an official EU language, in a “gesture” that could help solve the division of the country.[101] Already in 2004, it was planned that Turkish would become an official language when Cyprus reunites.[102]
+Besides the 24 official languages, there are about 150 regional and minority languages, spoken by up to 50 million people.[99] Catalan, Galician and Basque are not recognised official languages of the European Union but have semi-official status in one member state (Spain): therefore, official translations of the treaties are made into them and citizens have the right to correspond with the institutions in these languages.[103][104] The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ratified by most EU states provides general guidelines that states can follow to protect their linguistic heritage. The European Day of Languages is held annually on 26 September and is aimed at encouraging language learning across Europe.[105]
+The EU has no formal connection to any religion. The Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union[106] recognises the "status under national law of churches and religious associations" as well as that of "philosophical and non-confessional organisations".[107]
+The preamble to the Treaty on European Union mentions the "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe".[107] Discussion over the draft texts of the European Constitution and later the Treaty of Lisbon included proposals to mention Christianity or a god, or both, in the preamble of the text, but the idea faced opposition and was dropped.[108]
+Christians in the European Union are divided among members of Catholicism (both Roman and Eastern Rite), numerous Protestant denominations (Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed forming the bulk of this category), and the Eastern Orthodox Church. In 2009, the EU had an estimated Muslim population of 13 million,[109] and an estimated Jewish population of over a million.[110] The other world religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism are also represented in the EU population.
+According to new polls about religiosity in the European Union in 2015 by Eurobarometer, Christianity is the largest religion in the European Union, accounting for 71.6% of the EU population. Catholics are the largest Christian group, accounting for 45.3% of the EU population, while Protestants make up 11.1%, Eastern Orthodox make up 9.6%, and other Christians make up 5.6%.[4]
+Eurostat's Eurobarometer opinion polls showed in 2005 that 52% of EU citizens believed in a god, 27% in "some sort of spirit or life force", and 18% had no form of belief.[111] Many countries have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years.[112] The countries where the fewest people reported a religious belief were Estonia (16%) and the Czech Republic (19%).[111] The most religious countries were Malta (95%, predominantly Catholic) as well as Cyprus and Romania (both predominantly Orthodox) each with about 90% of citizens professing a belief in their respective god. Across the EU, belief was higher among women, older people, those with religious upbringing, those who left school at 15 or 16, and those "positioning themselves on the right of the political scale".[111]
+Through successive enlargements, the European Union has grown from the six founding states (Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) to the current 27. Countries accede to the union by becoming party to the founding treaties, thereby subjecting themselves to the privileges and obligations of EU membership. This entails a partial delegation of sovereignty to the institutions in return for representation within those institutions, a practice often referred to as "pooling of sovereignty".[113][114]
+To become a member, a country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, defined at the 1993 meeting of the European Council in Copenhagen. These require a stable democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law; a functioning market economy; and the acceptance of the obligations of membership, including EU law. Evaluation of a country's fulfilment of the criteria is the responsibility of the European Council.[115] Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty provides the basis for a member to leave the Union. Two territories have left the Union: Greenland (an autonomous province of Denmark) withdrew in 1985;[116] the United Kingdom formally invoked Article 50 of the Consolidated Treaty on European Union in 2017, and became the only sovereign state to leave when it withdrew from the EU in 2020.
+There are six countries that are recognised as candidates for membership: Albania, Iceland, North Macedonia,[n] Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey,[117] though Iceland suspended negotiations in 2013.[118] Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are officially recognised as potential candidates,[117] with Bosnia and Herzegovina having submitted a membership application.
+The four countries forming the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) are not EU members, but have partly committed to the EU's economy and regulations: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, which are a part of the single market through the European Economic Area, and Switzerland, which has similar ties through bilateral treaties.[119][120] The relationships of the European microstates, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City include the use of the euro and other areas of co-operation.[121] The following 27 sovereign states (of which the map only shows territories situated in and around Europe) constitute the European Union:[122]
+The EU's member states cover an area of 4,233,262 square kilometres (1,634,472 sq mi).[p] The EU's highest peak is Mont Blanc in the Graian Alps, 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft) above sea level.[123] The lowest points in the EU are Lammefjorden, Denmark and Zuidplaspolder, Netherlands, at 7 m (23 ft) below sea level.[124]
+The landscape, climate, and economy of the EU are influenced by its coastline, which is 65,993 kilometres (41,006 mi) long.
+65,993 km (41,006 mi) coastline dominates the European climate (Natural Park of Penyal d'Ifac, Spain)
+Mont Blanc in the Alps is the highest peak in the EU
+The Danube (pictured in Budapest), is the longest river in the European Union
+Repovesi National Park in Finland, where there are some 187,888 lakes larger than 500 square metres (5,382 sq ft)
+Including the overseas territories of France which are located outside the continent of Europe, but which are members of the union, the EU experiences most types of climate from Arctic (north-east Europe) to tropical (French Guiana), rendering meteorological averages for the EU as a whole meaningless. The majority of the population lives in areas with a temperate maritime climate (North-Western Europe and Central Europe), a Mediterranean climate (Southern Europe), or a warm summer continental or hemiboreal climate (Northern Balkans and Central Europe).[125]
+The EU's population is highly urbanised, with some 75% of inhabitants living in urban areas as of 2006. Cities are largely spread out across the EU with a large grouping in and around the Benelux.[126]
+The EU operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making,[127][128] and according to the principles of conferral (which says that it should act only within the limits of the competences conferred on it by the treaties) and of subsidiarity (which says that it should act only where an objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states acting alone). Laws made by the EU institutions are passed in a variety of forms.[129] Generally speaking, they can be classified into two groups: those which come into force without the necessity for national implementation measures (regulations) and those which specifically require national implementation measures (directives).[130]
+Constitutionally, the EU bears some resemblance to both a confederation and a federation,[131][132] but has not formally defined itself as either. (It does not have a formal constitution: its status is defined by the Treaty of European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). It is more integrated than a traditional confederation of states because the general level of government widely employs qualified majority voting in some decision-making among the member states, rather than relying exclusively on unanimity.[133][134] It is less integrated than a federal state because it is not a state in its own right: sovereignty continues to flow 'from the bottom up', from the several peoples of the separate member states, rather than from a single undifferentiated whole. This is reflected in the fact that the member states remain the 'masters of the Treaties', retaining control over the allocation of competences to the Union through constitutional change (thus retaining so-called Kompetenz-kompetenz); in that they retain control of the use of armed force; they retain control of taxation; and in that they retain a right of unilateral withdrawal from the Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. In addition, the principle of subsidiarity requires that only those matters that need to be determined collectively are so determined.
+The European Union has seven principal decision-making bodies, its institutions: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors. Competence in scrutinising and amending legislation is shared between the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, while executive tasks are performed by the European Commission and in a limited capacity by the European Council (not to be confused with the aforementioned Council of the European Union). The monetary policy of the eurozone is determined by the European Central Bank. The interpretation and the application of EU law and the treaties are ensured by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The EU budget is scrutinised by the European Court of Auditors. There are also a number of ancillary bodies which advise the EU or operate in a specific area.
+EU policy is in general promulgated by EU directives, which are then implemented in the domestic legislation of its member states, and EU regulations, which are immediately enforceable in all member states. Lobbying at EU level by special interest groups is regulated to try to balance the aspirations of private initiatives with public interest decision-making process[135]
+The European Parliament is one of three legislative institutions of the EU, which together with the Council of the European Union is tasked with amending and approving the Commission's proposals.
+The 705 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are directly elected by EU citizens every five years on the basis of proportional representation. MEPs are elected on a national basis and they sit according to political groups rather than their nationality. Each country has a set number of seats and is divided into sub-national constituencies where this does not affect the proportional nature of the voting system.[136]
+In the ordinary legislative procedure, the European Commission proposes legislation, which requires the joint approval of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to pass. This process applies to nearly all areas, including the EU budget. The Parliament is the final body to approve or reject the proposed membership of the Commission, and can attempt motions of censure on the Commission by appeal to the Court of Justice. The President of the European Parliament (currently David Sassoli) carries out the role of speaker in Parliament and represents it externally. The President and Vice-Presidents are elected by MEPs every two and a half years.[137]
+The European Council gives political direction to the EU. It convenes at least four times a year and comprises the President of the European Council (currently Charles Michel), the President of the European Commission and one representative per member state (either its head of state or head of government). The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (currently Josep Borrell) also takes part in its meetings. It has been described by some as the Union's "supreme political authority".[138] It is actively involved in the negotiation of treaty changes and defines the EU's policy agenda and strategies.
+The European Council uses its leadership role to sort out disputes between member states and the institutions, and to resolve political crises and disagreements over controversial issues and policies. It acts externally as a "collective head of state" and ratifies important documents (for example, international agreements and treaties).[139]
+Tasks for the President of the European Council are ensuring the external representation of the EU,[140] driving consensus and resolving divergences among member states, both during meetings of the European Council and over the periods between them.
+The European Council should not be mistaken for the Council of Europe, an international organisation independent of the EU based in Strasbourg.
+The European Commission acts both as the EU's executive arm, responsible for the day-to-day running of the EU, and also the legislative initiator, with the sole power to propose laws for debate.[141][142][143] The Commission is 'guardian of the Treaties' and is responsible for their efficient operation and policing.[144] It operates de facto as a cabinet government,[citation needed] with 27 Commissioners for different areas of policy, one from each member state, though Commissioners are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.
+One of the 27 is the President of the European Commission (Jean-Claude Juncker for 2014–2019), appointed by the European Council, subject to the Parliament's approval. After the President, the most prominent Commissioner is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who is ex-officio a Vice-President of the Commission and is also chosen by the European Council.[145] The other 26 Commissioners are subsequently appointed by the Council of the European Union in agreement with the nominated President. The 27 Commissioners as a single body are subject to approval (or otherwise) by vote of the European Parliament.
+The Council of the European Union (also called the "Council"[146] and the "Council of Ministers", its former title)[147] forms one half of the EU's legislature. It consists of a government minister from each member state and meets in different compositions depending on the policy area being addressed. Notwithstanding its different configurations, it is considered to be one single body.[148] In addition to its legislative functions, the Council also exercises executive functions in relations to the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
+In some policies, there are several member states that ally with strategic partners within the Union. Examples of such alliances include the Visegrad Group, Benelux, the Baltic Assembly, the New Hanseatic League, and the Craiova Group.
+The EU had an agreed budget of €120.7 billion for the year 2007 and €864.3 billion for the period 2007–2013,[150] representing 1.10% and 1.05% of the EU-27's GNI forecast for the respective periods. In 1960, the budget of the then European Economic Community was 0.03% of GDP.[151]
+In the 2010 budget of €141.5 billion, the largest single expenditure item is "cohesion & competitiveness" with around 45% of the total budget.[152] Next comes "agriculture" with approximately 31% of the total.[152] "Rural development, environment and fisheries" takes up around 11%.[152] "Administration" accounts for around 6%.[152] The "EU as a global partner" and "citizenship, freedom, security and justice" bring up the rear with approximately 6% and 1% respectively.[152]
+The Court of Auditors is legally obliged to provide the Parliament and the Council (specifically, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council) with "a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions".[153] The Court also gives opinions and proposals on financial legislation and anti-fraud actions.[154] The Parliament uses this to decide whether to approve the Commission's handling of the budget.
+The European Court of Auditors has signed off the European Union accounts every year since 2007 and, while making it clear that the European Commission has more work to do, has highlighted that most of the errors take place at national level.[155][156] In their report on 2009 the auditors found that five areas of Union expenditure, agriculture and the cohesion fund, were materially affected by error.[157] The European Commission estimated in 2009 that the financial effect of irregularities was €1,863 million.[158]
+EU member states retain all powers not explicitly handed to the European Union. In some areas the EU enjoys exclusive competence. These are areas in which member states have renounced any capacity to enact legislation. In other areas the EU and its member states share the competence to legislate. While both can legislate, member states can only legislate to the extent to which the EU has not. In other policy areas the EU can only co-ordinate, support and supplement member state action but cannot enact legislation with the aim of harmonising national laws.[159]
+That a particular policy area falls into a certain category of competence is not necessarily indicative of what legislative procedure is used for enacting legislation within that policy area. Different legislative procedures are used within the same category of competence, and even with the same policy area.
+The distribution of competences in various policy areas between Member States and the Union is divided in the following three categories:
+The EU is based on a series of treaties. These first established the European Community and the EU, and then made amendments to those founding treaties.[161] These are power-giving treaties which set broad policy goals and establish institutions with the necessary legal powers to implement those goals. These legal powers include the ability to enact legislation[q] which can directly affect all member states and their inhabitants.[r] The EU has legal personality, with the right to sign agreements and international treaties.[162]
+Under the principle of supremacy, national courts are required to enforce the treaties that their member states have ratified, and thus the laws enacted under them, even if doing so requires them to ignore conflicting national law, and (within limits) even constitutional provisions.[s]
+The direct effect and supremacy doctrines were not explicitly set out in the European Treaties but were developed by the Court of Justice itself over the 1960s, apparently under the influence of its then most influential judge, Frenchman Robert Lecourt[163]
+The judicial branch of the EU—formally called the Court of Justice of the European Union—consists of two courts: the Court of Justice and the General Court.[164]
+The Court of Justice primarily deals with cases taken by member states, the institutions, and cases referred to it by the courts of member states.[165] Because of the doctrines of direct effect and supremacy, many judgments of the Court of Justice are automatically applicable within the internal legal orders of the member states.
+The General Court mainly deals with cases taken by individuals and companies directly before the EU's courts,[166] and the European Union Civil Service Tribunal adjudicates in disputes between the European Union and its civil service.[167] Decisions from the General Court can be appealed to the Court of Justice but only on a point of law.[168]
+The treaties declare that the EU itself is "founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities ... in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail."[169]
+In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty gave legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The charter is a codified catalogue of fundamental rights against which the EU's legal acts can be judged. It consolidates many rights which were previously recognised by the Court of Justice and derived from the "constitutional traditions common to the member states."[170] The Court of Justice has long recognised fundamental rights and has, on occasion, invalidated EU legislation based on its failure to adhere to those fundamental rights.[171]
+Signing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a condition for EU membership.[t] Previously, the EU itself could not accede to the Convention as it is neither a state[u] nor had the competence to accede.[v] The Lisbon Treaty and Protocol 14 to the ECHR have changed this: the former binds the EU to accede to the Convention while the latter formally permits it.
+The EU is independent from the Council of Europe, although they share purpose and ideas,  especially on the rule of law, human rights and democracy. Furthermore, the European Convention on Human Rights and European Social Charter, as well as the source of law for the Charter of Fundamental Rights are created by the Council of Europe. The EU has also promoted human rights issues in the wider world. The EU opposes the death penalty and has proposed its worldwide abolition. Abolition of the death penalty is a condition for EU membership.[172]
+The main legal acts of the EU come in three forms: regulations, directives, and decisions. Regulations become law in all member states the moment they come into force, without the requirement for any implementing measures,[w] and automatically override conflicting domestic provisions.[q] Directives require member states to achieve a certain result while leaving them discretion as to how to achieve the result. The details of how they are to be implemented are left to member states.[x] When the time limit for implementing directives passes, they may, under certain conditions, have direct effect in national law against member states.
+Decisions offer an alternative to the two above modes of legislation. They are legal acts which only apply to specified individuals, companies or a particular member state. They are most often used in competition law, or on rulings on State Aid, but are also frequently used for procedural or administrative matters within the institutions. Regulations, directives, and decisions are of equal legal value and apply without any formal hierarchy.[173]
+The European Ombudsman was established by the Maastricht Treaty. The ombudsman is elected by the European Parliament for the length of the Parliament's term, and the position is renewable.[174] Any EU citizen or entity may appeal to the ombudsman to investigate an EU institution on the grounds of maladministration (administrative irregularities, unfairness, discrimination, abuse of power, failure to reply, refusal of information or unnecessary delay).[175] Emily O'Reilly is the current ombudsman since 2013.[176]
+The borders inside the Schengen Area between Germany and Austria
+Europol Headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands
+Eurojust Headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands
+Seat of Frontex in Warsaw, Poland
+Since the creation of the EU in 1993, it has developed its competencies in the area of justice and home affairs; initially at an intergovernmental level and later by supranationalism. Accordingly, the Union has legislated in areas such as extradition,[177] family law,[178] asylum law,[179] and criminal justice.[180] Prohibitions against sexual and nationality discrimination have a long standing in the treaties.[y] In more recent years, these have been supplemented by powers to legislate against discrimination based on race, religion, disability, age, and sexual orientation.[z] By virtue of these powers, the EU has enacted legislation on sexual discrimination in the work-place, age discrimination, and racial discrimination.[aa]
+The Union has also established agencies to co-ordinate police, prosecutorial and immigrations controls across the member states: Europol for co-operation of police forces,[181] Eurojust for co-operation between prosecutors,[182] and Frontex for co-operation between border control authorities.[183] The EU also operates the Schengen Information System[16] which provides a common database for police and immigration authorities. This co-operation had to particularly be developed with the advent of open borders through the Schengen Agreement and the associated cross border crime.
+Foreign policy co-operation between member states dates from the establishment of the Community in 1957, when member states negotiated as a bloc in international trade negotiations under the EU's common commercial policy.[184] Steps for a more wide-ranging co-ordination in foreign relations began in 1970 with the establishment of European Political Cooperation which created an informal consultation process between member states with the aim of forming common foreign policies. In 1987 the European Political Cooperation was introduced on a formal basis by the Single European Act. EPC was renamed as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) by the Maastricht Treaty.[185]
+The aims of the CFSP are to promote both the EU's own interests and those of the international community as a whole, including the furtherance of international co-operation, respect for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.[186] The CFSP requires unanimity among the member states on the appropriate policy to follow on any particular issue. The unanimity and difficult issues treated under the CFSP sometimes lead to disagreements, such as those which occurred over the war in Iraq.[187]
+The coordinator and representative of the CFSP within the EU is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy who speaks on behalf of the EU in foreign policy and defence matters, and has the task of articulating the positions expressed by the member states on these fields of policy into a common alignment. The High Representative heads up the European External Action Service (EEAS), a unique EU department[188] that has been officially implemented and operational since 1 December 2010 on the occasion of the first anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.[189] The EEAS will serve as a foreign ministry and diplomatic corps for the European Union.[190]
+Besides the emerging international policy of the European Union, the international influence of the EU is also felt through enlargement. The perceived benefits of becoming a member of the EU act as an incentive for both political and economic reform in states wishing to fulfil the EU's accession criteria, and are considered an important factor contributing to the reform of European formerly Communist countries.[191]:762 This influence on the internal affairs of other countries is generally referred to as "soft power", as opposed to military "hard power".[192]
+The predecessors of the European Union were not devised as a military alliance because NATO was largely seen as appropriate and sufficient for defence purposes.[193] 21 EU members are members of NATO[194] while the remaining member states follow policies of neutrality.[195] The Western European Union, a military alliance with a mutual defence clause, was disbanded in 2010 as its role had been transferred to the EU.[196]
+France is the only member officially recognised as a nuclear weapon state holding a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Most EU member states opposed the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty.[197]
+Following the Kosovo War in 1999, the European Council agreed that "the Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and the readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO". To that end, a number of efforts were made to increase the EU's military capability, notably the Helsinki Headline Goal process. After much discussion, the most concrete result was the EU Battlegroups initiative, each of which is planned to be able to deploy quickly about 1500 personnel.[198]
+EU forces have been deployed on peacekeeping missions from middle and northern Africa to the western Balkans and western Asia.[199] EU military operations are supported by a number of bodies, including the European Defence Agency, European Union Satellite Centre and the European Union Military Staff.[200] Frontex is an agency of the EU established to manage the cooperation between national border guards securing its external borders. It aims to detect and stop illegal immigration, human trafficking and terrorist infiltration. In 2015 the European Commission presented its proposal for a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency having a stronger role and mandate along with national authorities for border management. In an EU consisting of 27 members, substantial security and defence co-operation is increasingly relying on collaboration among all member states.[201]
+The European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department, or "ECHO", provides humanitarian aid from the EU to developing countries. In 2012, its budget amounted to €874 million, 51% of the budget went to Africa and 20% to Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Pacific, and 20% to the Middle East and Mediterranean.[202]
+Humanitarian aid is financed directly by the budget (70%) as part of the financial instruments for external action and also by the European Development Fund (30%).[203] The EU's external action financing is divided into 'geographic' instruments and 'thematic' instruments.[203] The 'geographic' instruments provide aid through the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI, €16.9 billion, 2007–2013), which must spend 95% of its budget on official development assistance (ODA), and from the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), which contains some relevant programmes.[203] The European Development Fund (EDF, €22.7 billion for the period 2008–2013 and €30.5 billion for the period 2014–2020) is made up of voluntary contributions by member states, but there is pressure to merge the EDF into the budget-financed instruments to encourage increased contributions to match the 0.7% target and allow the European Parliament greater oversight.[203][204]
+In 2016, the average among EU countries was 0.4% and five had met or exceeded the 0.7% target: Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom.[205] If considered collectively, EU member states are the largest contributor of foreign aid in the world.[206][207]
+The EU uses foreign relations instruments like the European Neighbourhood Policy which seeks to tie those countries to the east and south of the European territory of the EU to the Union. These countries, primarily developing countries, include some who seek to one day become either a member state of the European Union, or more closely integrated with the European Union. The EU offers financial assistance to countries within the European Neighbourhood, so long as they meet the strict conditions of government reform, economic reform and other issues surrounding positive transformation. This process is normally underpinned by an Action Plan, as agreed by both Brussels and the target country.
+International recognition of sustainable development as a key element is growing steadily. Its role was recognized in three major UN summits on sustainable development: the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa; and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in Rio de Janeiro. Other key global agreements are the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). The SDGs recognize that all countries must stimulate action in the following key areas - people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership - in order to tackle the global challenges that are crucial for the survival of humanity.
+EU development action is based on the European Consensus on Development, which was endorsed on 20 December 2005 by EU Member States, the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission.[208] It is applied from the principles of Capability approach and Rights-based approach to development.
+Partnership and cooperation agreements are bilateral agreements with non-member nations.[209]
+The European Union is the largest exporter in the world[213] and as of 2008 the largest importer of goods and services.[214][215] Internal trade between the member states is aided by the removal of barriers to trade such as tariffs and border controls. In the eurozone, trade is helped by not having any currency differences to deal with amongst most members.[216]
+The European Union Association Agreement does something similar for a much larger range of countries, partly as a so-called soft approach ('a carrot instead of a stick') to influence the politics in those countries.
+The European Union represents all its members at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and acts on behalf of member states in any disputes. When the EU negotiates trade related agreement outside the WTO framework, the subsequent agreement must be approved by each individual EU member state government.[216]
+The European Union has concluded free trade agreements (FTAs)[217] and other agreements with a trade component with many countries worldwide and is negotiating with many others.[218]
+As a political entity the European Union is represented in the World Trade Organization (WTO). EU member states own the estimated second largest after the United States (US$105 trillion) net wealth in the world, equal to around 20% (~€60 trillion) of the US$360 trillion (~€300 trillion)[219] global wealth.[220]
+19 member states have joined a monetary union known as the eurozone, which uses the euro as a single currency. The currency union represents 342 million EU citizens.[221] The euro is the second largest reserve currency as well as the second most traded currency in the world after the United States dollar.[222][223][224]
+Of the top 500 largest corporations in the world measured by revenue in 2010, 161 had their headquarters in the EU.[225] In 2016, unemployment in the EU stood at 8.9%[226] while inflation was at 2.2%, and the current account balance at −0.9% of GDP. The average annual net earnings in the European Union was around €24,000 (US$30,000)[227] in 2015.
+There is a significant variation in Nominal GDP per capita within individual EU states. The difference between the richest and poorest regions (281 NUTS-2 regions of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) ranged, in 2017, from 31% (Severozapaden, Bulgaria) of the EU28 average (€30,000) to 253% (Luxembourg), or from €4,600 to €92,600.[228]
+Two of the original core objectives of the European Economic Community were the development of a common market, subsequently becoming a single market, and a customs union between its member states. The single market involves the free circulation of goods, capital, people, and services within the EU,[221] and the customs union involves the application of a common external tariff on all goods entering the market. Once goods have been admitted into the market they cannot be subjected to customs duties, discriminatory taxes or import quotas, as they travel internally. The non-EU member states of Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland participate in the single market but not in the customs union.[119] Half the trade in the EU is covered by legislation harmonised by the EU.[229]
+Free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchases and buying of shares between countries.[230] Until the drive towards economic and monetary union the development of the capital provisions had been slow. Post-Maastricht there has been a rapidly developing corpus of ECJ judgements regarding this initially neglected freedom. The free movement of capital is unique insofar as it is granted equally to non-member states.
+The free movement of persons means that EU citizens can move freely between member states to live, work, study or retire in another country. This required the lowering of administrative formalities and recognition of professional qualifications of other states.[231]
+The free movement of services and of establishment allows self-employed persons to move between member states to provide services on a temporary or permanent basis. While services account for 60–70% of GDP, legislation in the area is not as developed as in other areas. This lacuna has been addressed by the recently passed Directive on services in the internal market which aims to liberalise the cross border provision of services.[232] According to the Treaty the provision of services is a residual freedom that only applies if no other freedom is being exercised.
+The creation of a European single currency became an official objective of the European Economic Community in 1969. In 1992, having negotiated the structure and procedures of a currency union, the member states signed the Maastricht Treaty and were legally bound to fulfil the agreed-on rules including the convergence criteria if they wanted to join the monetary union. The states wanting to participate had first to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
+In 1999 the currency union started, first as an accounting currency with eleven member states joining. In 2002, the currency was fully put into place, when euro notes and coins were issued and national currencies began to phase out in the eurozone, which by then consisted of 12 member states. The eurozone (constituted by the EU member states which have adopted the euro) has since grown to 19 countries.[233][ab]
+The euro, and the monetary policies of those who have adopted it in agreement with the EU, are under the control of the European Central Bank (ECB).[234] The ECB is the central bank for the eurozone, and thus controls monetary policy in that area with an agenda to maintain price stability. It is at the centre of the European System of Central Banks, which comprehends all EU national central banks and is controlled by its General Council, consisting of the President of the ECB, who is appointed by the European Council, the Vice-President of the ECB, and the governors of the national central banks of all 27 EU member states.[235]
+The European System of Financial Supervision is an institutional architecture of the EU's framework of financial supervision composed by three authorities: the European Banking Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority. To complement this framework, there is also a European Systemic Risk Board under the responsibility of the ECB. The aim of this financial control system is to ensure the economic stability of the EU.[236]
+To prevent the joining states from getting into financial trouble or crisis after entering the monetary union, they were obliged in the Maastricht treaty to fulfil important financial obligations and procedures, especially to show budgetary discipline and a high degree of sustainable economic convergence, as well as to avoid excessive government deficits and limit the government debt to a sustainable level.
+The European Commission working sectors are: Aeronautics, automotive, biotechnology, chemicals, construction, cosmetics, defense, electronics, firearms, food and drink, gambling, healthcare, maritime, mechanics, medical, postal, raw materials, space, textile, tourism, toys and Social economy (Societas cooperativa Europaea).
+In 2006, the EU-27 had a gross inland energy consumption of 1,825 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe).[237] Around 46% of the energy consumed was produced within the member states while 54% was imported.[237] In these statistics, nuclear energy is treated as primary energy produced in the EU, regardless of the source of the uranium, of which less than 3% is produced in the EU.[238]
+The EU has had legislative power in the area of energy policy for most of its existence; this has its roots in the original European Coal and Steel Community. The introduction of a mandatory and comprehensive European energy policy was approved at the meeting of the European Council in October 2005, and the first draft policy was published in January 2007.[239]
+The EU has five key points in its energy policy: increase competition in the internal market, encourage investment and boost interconnections between electricity grids; diversify energy resources with better systems to respond to a crisis; establish a new treaty framework for energy co-operation with Russia while improving relations with energy-rich states in Central Asia[240] and North Africa; use existing energy supplies more efficiently while increasing renewable energy commercialisation; and finally increase funding for new energy technologies.[239]
+In 2007, EU countries as a whole imported 82% of their oil, 57% of their natural gas[241] and 97.48% of their uranium[238] demands. There is a strong dependence on Russian energy that the EU has been attempting to reduce.[242]
+The EU is working to improve cross-border infrastructure within the EU, for example through the Trans-European Networks (TEN). Projects under TEN include the Channel Tunnel, LGV Est, the Fréjus Rail Tunnel, the Öresund Bridge, the Brenner Base Tunnel and the Strait of Messina Bridge. In 2010 the estimated network covers: 75,200 kilometres (46,700 mi) of roads; 78,000 kilometres (48,000 mi) of railways; 330 airports; 270 maritime harbours; and 210 internal harbours.[243][244]
+Rail transport in Europe is being synchronised with the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), an initiative to greatly enhance safety, increase efficiency of trains and enhance cross-border interoperability of rail transport in Europe by replacing signalling equipment with digitised mostly wireless versions and by creating a single Europe-wide standard for train control and command systems.
+The developing European transport policies will increase the pressure on the environment in many regions by the increased transport network. In the pre-2004 EU members, the major problem in transport deals with congestion and pollution. After the recent enlargement, the new states that joined since 2004 added the problem of solving accessibility to the transport agenda.[245] The Polish road network was upgraded such as the A4 autostrada.[246]
+The Galileo positioning system is another EU infrastructure project. Galileo is a proposed Satellite navigation system, to be built by the EU and launched by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Galileo project was launched partly to reduce the EU's dependency on the US-operated Global Positioning System, but also to give more complete global coverage and allow for greater accuracy, given the aged nature of the GPS system.[247]
+The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the long lasting policies of the European Community.[248] The policy has the objectives of increasing agricultural production, providing certainty in food supplies, ensuring a high quality of life for farmers, stabilising markets, and ensuring reasonable prices for consumers.[ad] It was, until recently, operated by a system of subsidies and market intervention. Until the 1990s, the policy accounted for over 60% of the then European Community's annual budget, and as of 2013[update] accounts for around 34%.[249]
+The policy's price controls and market interventions led to considerable overproduction. These were intervention stores of products bought up by the Community to maintain minimum price levels. To dispose of surplus stores, they were often sold on the world market at prices considerably below Community guaranteed prices, or farmers were offered subsidies (amounting to the difference between the Community and world prices) to export their products outside the Community. This system has been criticised for under-cutting farmers outside Europe, especially those in the developing world.[250] Supporters of CAP argue that the economic support which it gives to farmers provides them with a reasonable standard of living.[250]
+Since the beginning of the 1990s, the CAP has been subject to a series of reforms. Initially, these reforms included the introduction of set-aside in 1988, where a proportion of farm land was deliberately withdrawn from production, milk quotas and, more recently, the 'de-coupling' (or disassociation) of the money farmers receive from the EU and the amount they produce (by the Fischler reforms in 2004). Agriculture expenditure will move away from subsidy payments linked to specific produce, toward direct payments based on farm size. This is intended to allow the market to dictate production levels.[248] One of these reforms entailed the modification of the EU's sugar regime, which previously divided the sugar market between member states and certain African-Caribbean nations with a privileged relationship with the EU.[251]
+The EU operates a competition policy intended to ensure undistorted competition within the single market.[ae]
+The Competition Commissioner, currently Margrethe Vestager, is one of the most powerful positions in the Commission, notable for the ability to affect the commercial interests of trans-national corporations.[citation needed] For example, in 2001 the Commission for the first time prevented a merger between two companies based in the United States (GE and Honeywell) which had already been approved by their national authority.[252] Another high-profile case against Microsoft, resulted in the Commission fining Microsoft over €777 million following nine years of legal action.[253]
+The EU seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.7% in September 2018.[254] The euro area unemployment rate was 8.1%.[254] Among the member states, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in the Czech Republic (2.3%), Germany and Poland (both 3.4%), and the highest in Spain (14.9%) and Greece (19.0 in July 2018).[254]
+The EU has long sought to mitigate the effects of free markets by protecting workers rights and preventing social and environmental dumping. To this end it has adopted laws establishing minimum employment and environmental standards. These included the Working Time Directive and the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. The EU has also sought to coordinate the social security and health systems of member states to facilitate individuals exercising free movement rights and to ensure they maintain their ability to access social security and health services in other member states.
+The European Social Charter is the main body that recognizes the social rights of European citizens.
+A European unemployment insurance has been proposed among others by the commissioner of Jobs Nicolas Schmit.[255]
+Since 2019 there is a European Commissioner for Equality; a European Institute for Gender Equality has existed since 2007.
+Housing, youth, childhood, Functional diversity or elderly care are supportive competencies of the European Union and can be financed by the European Social Fund.
+Structural Funds and Cohesion Funds are supporting the development of underdeveloped regions of the EU. Such regions are primarily located in the states of central and southern Europe.[256][257] Several funds provide emergency aid, support for candidate members to transform their country to conform to the EU's standard (Phare, ISPA, and SAPARD), and support to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS). TACIS has now become part of the worldwide EuropeAid programme.
+Demographic transition to a society of aging population, low fertility-rates and depopulation of non-metropolitan regions is tackled within this policies.
+In 1957, when the EEC was founded, it had no environmental policy.[258] Over the past 50 years, an increasingly dense network of legislation has been created, extending to all areas of environmental protection, including air pollution, water quality, waste management, nature conservation, and the control of chemicals, industrial hazards, and biotechnology.[259] According to the Institute for European Environmental Policy, environmental law comprises over 500 Directives, Regulations and Decisions, making environmental policy a core area of European politics.[260]
+European policy-makers originally increased the EU's capacity to act on environmental issues by defining it as a trade problem.[261]
+Trade barriers and competitive distortions in the Common Market could emerge due to the different environmental standards in each member state.[262] In subsequent years, the environment became a formal policy area, with its own policy actors, principles and procedures. The legal basis for EU environmental policy was established with the introduction of the Single European Act in 1987.[260]
+Initially, EU environmental policy focused on Europe. More recently, the EU has demonstrated leadership in global environmental governance, e.g. the role of the EU in securing the ratification and coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol despite opposition from the United States. This international dimension is reflected in the EU's Sixth Environmental Action Programme,[263] which recognises that its objectives can only be achieved if key international agreements are actively supported and properly implemented both at EU level and worldwide. The Lisbon Treaty further strengthened the leadership ambitions.[264] EU law has played a significant role in improving habitat and species protection in Europe, as well as contributing to improvements in air and water quality and waste management.[260]
+Mitigating climate change is one of the top priorities of EU environmental policy. In 2007, member states agreed that, in the future, 20% of the energy used across the EU must be renewable, and carbon dioxide emissions have to be lower in 2020 by at least 20% compared to 1990 levels.[265] The EU has adopted an emissions trading system to incorporate carbon emissions into the economy.[266] The European Green Capital is an annual award given to cities that focuses on the environment, energy efficiency, and quality of life in urban areas to create smart city.
+In the Elections to the European Parliament in 2019, the green parties increased their power, possibly because of the rise of post materialist values.[267]
+Proposals to reach a zero carbon economy in the European Union by 2050 were suggested in 2018 - 2019. Almost all member states supported that goal at an EU summit in June 2019. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Poland disagreed.[268]
+Basic education is an area where the EU's role is limited to supporting national governments. In higher education, the policy was developed in the 1980s in programmes supporting exchanges and mobility. The most visible of these has been the Erasmus Programme, a university exchange programme which began in 1987. In its first 20 years, it supported international exchange opportunities for well over 1.5 million university and college students and became a symbol of European student life.[269]
+There are similar programmes for school pupils and teachers, for trainees in vocational education and training, and for adult learners in the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013. These programmes are designed to encourage a wider knowledge of other countries and to spread good practices in the education and training fields across the EU.[270][271] Through its support of the Bologna Process, the EU is supporting comparable standards and compatible degrees across Europe.
+Scientific development is facilitated through the EU's Framework Programmes, the first of which started in 1984. The aims of EU policy in this area are to co-ordinate and stimulate research. The independent European Research Council allocates EU funds to European or national research projects.[272] EU research and technological framework programmes deal in a number of areas, for example energy where the aim is to develop a diverse mix of renewable energy to help the environment and to reduce dependence on imported fuels.[273]
+The EU has no major competences in the field of health care and Article 35 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union affirms that "A high level of human health protection shall be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies and activities". The European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Consumers seeks to align national laws on the protection of people's health, on the consumers' rights, on the safety of food and other products.[274][275][276]
+All EU and many other European countries offer their citizens a free European Health Insurance Card which, on a reciprocal basis, provides insurance for emergency medical treatment insurance when visiting other participating European countries.[277] A directive on cross-border healthcare aims at promoting co-operation on health care between member states and facilitating access to safe and high-quality cross-border healthcare for European patients.[278][279][280]
+The EU has some of the highest levels of life expectancy in the world, with Spain, Italy, Sweden, France, Malta, Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Greece all among the world's top 20 countries with the highest life expectancy.[281] In general, life expectancy is lower in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe.[282] In 2018, the EU region with the highest life expectancy was Madrid, Spain at 85.2 years, followed by the Spanish regions of La Rioja and Castilla y León both at 84.3 years, Trentino in Italy at 84.3 years and Île-de-France in France at 84.2 years. The overall life expectancy in the EU in 2018 was 81.0 years, higher than the World average of 72.6 years.[283]
+Cultural co-operation between member states has been an interest of the EU since its inclusion as a community competency in the Maastricht Treaty.[284] Actions taken in the cultural area by the EU include the Culture 2000 seven-year programme,[284] the European Cultural Month event,[285] and orchestras such as the European Union Youth Orchestra.[286] The European Capital of Culture programme selects one or more cities in every year to assist the cultural development of that city.[287]
+Association football is by far the most popular sport in the European Union by the number of registered players. The other sports with the most participants in clubs are tennis, basketball, swimming, athletics, golf, gymnastics, equestrian sports, handball, volleyball and sailing.[288]
+Sport is mainly the responsibility of the member states or other international organisations, rather than of the EU. There are some EU policies that have affected sport, such as the free movement of workers, which was at the core of the Bosman ruling that prohibited national football leagues from imposing quotas on foreign players with European citizenship.[289]
+The Treaty of Lisbon requires any application of economic rules to take into account the specific nature of sport and its structures based on voluntary activity.[290] This followed lobbying by governing organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, due to objections over the application of free market principles to sport, which led to an increasing gap between rich and poor clubs.[291] The EU does fund a programme for Israeli, Jordanian, Irish, and British football coaches, as part of the Football 4 Peace project.[292]
+The flag used is the Flag of Europe, which consists of a circle of 12 golden stars on a blue background. Originally designed in 1955 for the Council of Europe, the flag was adopted by the European Communities, the predecessors of the present Union, in 1986. The Council of Europe gave the flag a symbolic description in the following terms,[293] though the official symbolic description adopted by the EU omits the reference to the "Western world":[294]
+Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars symbolise the peoples of Europe in a form of a circle, the sign of union. The number of stars is invariably twelve, the figure twelve being the symbol of perfection and entirety.
+United in Diversity was adopted as the motto of the Union in the year 2000, having been selected from proposals submitted by school pupils.[295] Since 1985, the flag day of the Union has been Europe Day, on 9 May (the date of the 1950 Schuman declaration). The anthem of the Union is an instrumental version of the prelude to the Ode to Joy, the 4th movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's ninth symphony. The anthem was adopted by European Community leaders in 1985 and has since been played on official occasions.[296]
+Besides naming the continent, the Greek mythological figure of Europa has frequently been employed as a personification of Europe. Known from the myth in which Zeus seduces her in the guise of a white bull, Europa has also been referred to in relation to the present Union. Statues of Europa and the bull decorate several of the Union's institutions and a portrait of her is seen on the 2013 series of Euro banknotes. The bull is, for its part, depicted on all residence permit cards.[297]
+Charles the Great, also known as Charlemagne (Latin: Carolus Magnus) and later recognised as Pater Europae ("Father of Europe"),[298][299][300] has a symbolic relevance to Europe. The Commission has named one of its central buildings in Brussels after Charlemagne and the city of Aachen has since 1949 awarded the Charlemagne Prize to champions of European unification.[301] Since 2008, the organisers of this prize, in conjunction with the European Parliament, have awarded the Charlemagne Youth Prize in recognition of similar efforts by young people.[302]
+Media freedom is a fundamental right that applies to all member states of the European Union and its citizens, as defined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as well as the European Convention on Human Rights.[303]:1 Within the EU enlargement process, guaranteeing media freedom is named a "key indicator of a country's readiness to become part of the EU".[304]
+The majority of media in the European Union are national-oriented. Some EU-wide media focusing on European affairs have emerged since the early 1990s, such as Euronews, EUobserver, EURACTIV or Politico Europe.[305][306] ARTE is a public Franco-German TV network that promotes programming in the areas of culture and the arts. 80% of its programming are provided in equal proportion by the two member companies, while the remainder is being provided by the European Economic Interest Grouping ARTE GEIE and the channel's European partners.[307]
+The MEDIA Programme of the European Union has supported the European popular film and audiovisual industries since 1991. It provides support for the development, promotion and distribution of European works within Europe and beyond.[308]
+The European Union has had a significant positive economic impact on most member states.[309] According to a 2019 study of the member states who joined from 1973 to 2004, "without European integration, per capita incomes would have been, on average, approximately 10% lower in the first ten years after joining the EU."[309] Greece was the exception reported by the study, which analysed up to 2008, "to avoid confounding effects from the global financial crisis".[309]
+The European Union has contributed to peace in Europe, in particular by pacifying border disputes.[310][311]
+The European Union has contributed to the spread of democracy, in particular by encouraging democratic reforms in aspiring Eastern European member states after the collapse of the USSR.[312][313] Thomas Risse wrote in 2009, "there is a consensus in the literature on Eastern Europe that the EU membership perspective had a huge anchoring effects for the new democracies."[313] However, R. Daniel Keleman argues that over time, the EU has proved beneficial to leaders who are overseeing democratic backsliding, as the EU is reluctant to intervene in domestic politics, gives the authoritarians funds which they can use to strengthen their regimes, and because freedom of movement within the EU allows dissenting citizens to leave their backsliding countries.[314]
+Official:
+Overviews and data:
+News and interviews:
+Educational resources:

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+The European Union (EU) is a political and economic union of 27 member states that are located primarily in Europe.[11] Its members have a combined area of 4,233,255.3 km2 (1,634,469.0 sq mi) and an estimated total population of about 447 million. The EU has developed an internal single market through a standardised system of laws that apply in all member states in those matters, and only those matters, where members have agreed to act as one. EU policies aim to ensure the free movement of people, goods, services and capital within the internal market;[12] enact legislation in justice and home affairs; and maintain common policies on trade,[13] agriculture,[14] fisheries and regional development.[15] Passport controls have been abolished for travel within the Schengen Area.[16] A monetary union was established in 1999, coming into full force in 2002, and is composed of 19 EU member states which use the euro currency. The EU has often been described as a sui generis political entity (without precedent or comparison).[17][18]
+The EU and European citizenship were established when the Maastricht Treaty came into force in 1993.[19] The EU traces its origins to the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC) and the European Economic Community (EEC), established, respectively, by the 1951 Treaty of Paris and 1957 Treaty of Rome. The original members of what came to be known as the European Communities were the Inner Six: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany. The Communities and their successors have grown in size by the accession of new member states and in power by the addition of policy areas to their remit. The latest major amendment to the constitutional basis of the EU, the Treaty of Lisbon, came into force in 2009.
+On 31 January 2020, the United Kingdom became the first member state to leave the EU.[20] Following a 2016 referendum, the UK signified its intention to leave and negotiated a withdrawal agreement. The UK is in a transitional phase until at least 31 December 2020, during which it remains subject to EU law and part of the EU single market and customs union. Before this, three territories of member states had left the EU or its forerunners, these being French Algeria (in 1962, upon independence), Greenland (in 1985, following a referendum) and Saint Barthélemy (in 2012).
+Containing in 2020 some 5.8% of the world population,[d] the EU (excluding the United Kingdom) had generated a nominal gross domestic product (GDP) of around US$15.5 trillion in 2019,[8] constituting approximately 18% of global nominal GDP.[22] Additionally, all EU countries have a very high Human Development Index according to the United Nations Development Programme. In 2012, the EU was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.[23] Through the Common Foreign and Security Policy, the union has developed a role in external relations and defence. It maintains permanent diplomatic missions throughout the world and represents itself at the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the G7 and the G20. Due to its global influence, the European Union has been described as an emerging superpower.[24]
+The following timeline outlines the legal inception of the European Union (EU), from the post-war period until the union's founding and consolidation³ in 1993 and 2009, respectively. This integration ― also referred to as the European project or the construction of Europe (French: la construction européenne) ― involved treaty-based European cooperation in various policy areas, including the European Communities that were founded in the 1950s in the spirit of the Schuman Declaration.
+During the centuries following the fall of Rome in 476, several European states viewed themselves as translatio imperii ("transfer of rule") of the defunct Roman Empire: the Frankish Empire (481–843) and the Holy Roman Empire (962–1806) were thereby attempts to resurrect Rome in the West.[e] This political philosophy of a supra-national rule over the continent, similar to the example of the ancient Roman Empire, resulted in the early Middle Ages in the concept of a renovatio imperii ("restoration of the empire"),[26] either in the forms of the Reichsidee ("imperial idea") or the religiously inspired Imperium Christianum ("christian empire").[27][28] Medieval Christendom[29][30] and the political power of the Papacy[31][32] are often cited as conducive to European integration and unity.
+In the oriental parts of the continent, the Russian Tsardom, and ultimately the Empire (1547–1917), declared Moscow to be Third Rome and inheritor of the Eastern tradition after the fall of Constantinople in 1453.[33] The gap between Greek East and Latin West had already been widened by the political scission of the Roman Empire in the 4th century and the Great Schism of 1054, and would be eventually widened again by the Iron Curtain (1945–1991).[34]
+Pan-European political thought truly emerged during the 19th century, inspired by the liberal ideas of the French and American Revolutions after the demise of Napoléon's Empire (1804–1815). In the decades following the outcomes of the Congress of Vienna, ideals of European unity flourished across the continent, especially in the writings of Wojciech Jastrzębowski,[35] Giuseppe Mazzini,[36] or Theodore de Korwin Szymanowski.[37] The term United States of Europe (French: États-Unis d'Europe) was used at that time by Victor Hugo during a speech at the International Peace Congress held in Paris in 1849:[38]
+A day will come when all nations on our continent will form a European brotherhood ... A day will come when we shall see ... the United States of America and the United States of Europe face to face, reaching out for each other across the seas.
+During the interwar period, the consciousness that national markets in Europe were interdependent though confrontational, along with the observation of a larger and growing US market on the other side of the ocean, nourished the urge for the economic integration of the continent.[39] In 1920, advocating the creation of a European economic union, British economist John Maynard Keynes wrote that "a Free Trade Union should be established ... to impose no protectionist tariffs whatever against the produce of other members of the Union."[40] During the same decade, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, one of the first to imagine of a modern political union of Europe, founded the Pan-Europa Movement.[41] His ideas influenced his contemporaries, among which then Prime Minister of France Aristide Briand. In 1929, the latter gave a speech in favour of a European Union before the assembly of the League of Nations, precursor of the United Nations.[42] In a radio address in March 1943, with war still raging, Britain's leader Sir Winston Churchill spoke warmly of "restoring the true greatness of Europe" once victory had been achieved, and mused on the post-war creation of a "Council of Europe" which would bring the European nations together to build peace.[43][44]
+After World War II, European integration was seen as an antidote to the extreme nationalism which had devastated parts of the continent.[45] In a speech delivered on 19 September 1946 at the University of Zürich, Switzerland, Winston Churchill went further and advocated the emergence of a United States of Europe.[46] The 1948 Hague Congress was a pivotal moment in European federal history, as it led to the creation of the European Movement International and of the College of Europe, where Europe's future leaders would live and study together.[47]
+It also led directly to the founding of the Council of Europe in 1949, the first great effort to bring the nations of Europe together, initially ten of them. The Council focused primarily on values—human rights and democracy—rather than on economic or trade issues, and was always envisaged as a forum where sovereign governments could choose to work together, with no supra-national authority. It raised great hopes of further European integration, and there were fevered debates in the two years that followed as to how this could be achieved.
+But in 1952, disappointed at what they saw as the lack of progress within the Council of Europe, six nations decided to go further and created the European Coal and Steel Community, which was declared to be "a first step in the federation of Europe".[48] This community helped to economically integrate and coordinate the large number of Marshall Plan funds from the United States.[49] European leaders Alcide De Gasperi from Italy, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman from France, and Paul-Henri Spaak from Belgium understood that coal and steel were the two industries essential for waging war, and believed that by tying their national industries together, future war between their nations became much less likely.[50] These men and others are officially credited as the founding fathers of the European Union.
+In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and West Germany signed the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community (EEC) and established a customs union. They also signed another pact creating the European Atomic Energy Community (Euratom) for co-operation in developing nuclear energy. Both treaties came into force in 1958.[50]
+The EEC and Euratom were created separately from the ECSC and they shared the same courts and the Common Assembly. The EEC was headed by Walter Hallstein (Hallstein Commission) and Euratom was headed by Louis Armand (Armand Commission) and then Étienne Hirsch. Euratom was to integrate sectors in nuclear energy while the EEC would develop a customs union among members.[51][52]
+During the 1960s, tensions began to show, with France seeking to limit supranational power. Nevertheless, in 1965 an agreement was reached and on 1 July 1967 the Merger Treaty created a single set of institutions for the three communities, which were collectively referred to as the European Communities.[53][54] Jean Rey presided over the first merged Commission (Rey Commission).[55]
+In 1973, the Communities were enlarged to include Denmark (including Greenland, which later left the Communities in 1985, following a dispute over fishing rights), Ireland, and the United Kingdom.[56] Norway had negotiated to join at the same time, but Norwegian voters rejected membership in a referendum. In 1979, the first direct elections to the European Parliament were held.[57]
+Greece joined in 1981, Portugal and Spain following in 1986.[58] In 1985, the Schengen Agreement paved the way for the creation of open borders without passport controls between most member states and some non-member states.[59] In 1986, the European flag began to be used by the EEC[60] and the Single European Act was signed.
+In 1990, after the fall of the Eastern Bloc, the former East Germany became part of the Communities as part of a reunified Germany.[61]
+The European Union was formally established when the Maastricht Treaty—whose main architects were Helmut Kohl and François Mitterrand—came into force on 1 November 1993.[19][62] The treaty also gave the name European Community to the EEC, even if it was referred as such before the treaty. With further enlargement planned to include the former communist states of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as Cyprus and Malta, the Copenhagen criteria for candidate members to join the EU were agreed upon in June 1993. The expansion of the EU introduced a new level of complexity and discord.[63] In 1995, Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined the EU.
+In 2002, euro banknotes and coins replaced national currencies in 12 of the member states. Since then, the eurozone has increased to encompass 19 countries. The euro currency became the second largest reserve currency in the world. In 2004, the EU saw its biggest enlargement to date when Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia joined the Union.[64]
+In 2007, Bulgaria and Romania became EU members. The same year, Slovenia adopted the euro,[64] followed in 2008 by Cyprus and Malta, by Slovakia in 2009, by Estonia in 2011, by Latvia in 2014, and by Lithuania in 2015.
+On 1 December 2009, the Lisbon Treaty entered into force and reformed many aspects of the EU. In particular, it changed the legal structure of the European Union, merging the EU three pillars system into a single legal entity provisioned with a legal personality, created a permanent President of the European Council, the first of which was Herman Van Rompuy, and strengthened the position of the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy.[65][66]
+In 2012, the EU received the Nobel Peace Prize for having "contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy, and human rights in Europe."[67][68] In 2013, Croatia became the 28th EU member.[69]
+From the beginning of the 2010s, the cohesion of the European Union has been tested by several issues, including a debt crisis in some of the Eurozone countries, increasing migration from Africa and Asia, and the United Kingdom's withdrawal from the EU.[70] A referendum in the UK on its membership of the European Union was held in 2016, with 51.9% of participants voting to leave.[71] The UK formally notified the European Council of its decision to leave on 29 March 2017, initiating the formal withdrawal procedure for leaving the EU; following extensions to the process, the UK left the European Union on 31 January 2020, though most areas of EU law will continue to apply to the UK for a transition period lasting until the end of 2020 at the earliest.[72]
+As of 1 February 2020[update], the population of the European Union was about 447 million people (5.8% of the world population).[73][74] In 2015, 5.1 million children were born in the EU-28 corresponding to a birth rate of 10 per 1,000, which is 8 births below the world average.[75] For comparison, the EU-28 birth rate had stood at 10.6 in 2000, 12.8 in 1985 and 16.3 in 1970.[76] Its population growth rate was positive at an estimated 0.23% in 2016.[77]
+In 2010, 47.3 million people who lived in the EU were born outside their resident country. This corresponds to 9.4% of the total EU population. Of these, 31.4 million (6.3%) were born outside the EU and 16.0 million (3.2%) were born in another EU member state. The largest absolute numbers of people born outside the EU were in Germany (6.4 million), France (5.1 million), the United Kingdom (4.7 million), Spain (4.1 million), Italy (3.2 million), and the Netherlands (1.4 million).[78] In 2017, approximately 825,000 people acquired citizenship of a member state of the European Union. The largest groups were nationals of Morocco, Albania, India, Turkey and Pakistan.[79] 2.4 million immigrants from non-EU countries entered the EU in 2017.[80][81]
+The EU contains about 40 urban areas with populations of over one million. The largest metropolitan area in the EU is Paris.[82] These are followed by Madrid, Barcelona, Berlin, Rhine-Ruhr, Rome, and Milan, all with a metropolitan population of over 4 million.[83]
+The EU also has numerous polycentric urbanised regions like Rhine-Ruhr (Cologne, Dortmund, Düsseldorf et al.), Randstad (Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague, Utrecht et al.), Frankfurt Rhine-Main (Frankfurt), the Flemish Diamond (Antwerp, Brussels, Leuven, Ghent et al.) and Upper Silesian area (Katowice, Ostrava et al.).[82]
+The European Union has 24 official languages: Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Irish, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Slovak, Slovene, Spanish, and Swedish. Important documents, such as legislation, are translated into every official language and the European Parliament provides translation for documents and plenary sessions.[89][90][91]
+Due to the high number of official languages, most of the institutions use only a handful of working languages.[92] The European Commission conducts its internal business in three procedural languages: English, French, and German. Similarly, the Court of Justice of the European Union uses French as the working language,[93] while the European Central Bank conducts its business primarily in English.[94][95]
+Even though language policy is the responsibility of member states, EU institutions promote multilingualism among its citizens.[h][96] English is the most widely spoken language in the EU, being understood by 51% of the EU population when counting both native and non-native speakers.[97] German is the most widely spoken mother tongue (18% of the EU population), and the second most widely understood foreign language, followed by French (13% of the EU population). In addition, both are official languages of several EU member states. More than half (56%) of EU citizens are able to engage in a conversation in a language other than their mother tongue.[98]
+A total of twenty official languages of the EU belong to the Indo-European language family, represented by the Balto-Slavic,[i] the Italic,[j] the Germanic,[k] the Hellenic,[l] and the Celtic[m] branches. Only four languages, namely Hungarian, Finnish, Estonian (all three Uralic), and Maltese (Semitic), are not Indo-European languages.[99] The three official alphabets of the European Union (Cyrillic, Latin, and modern Greek) all derive from the Archaic Greek scripts.[3][100]
+Luxembourgish (in Luxembourg) and Turkish (in Cyprus) are the only two national languages that are not official languages of the EU. On 26 February 2016 it was made public that Cyprus has asked to make Turkish an official EU language, in a “gesture” that could help solve the division of the country.[101] Already in 2004, it was planned that Turkish would become an official language when Cyprus reunites.[102]
+Besides the 24 official languages, there are about 150 regional and minority languages, spoken by up to 50 million people.[99] Catalan, Galician and Basque are not recognised official languages of the European Union but have semi-official status in one member state (Spain): therefore, official translations of the treaties are made into them and citizens have the right to correspond with the institutions in these languages.[103][104] The European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ratified by most EU states provides general guidelines that states can follow to protect their linguistic heritage. The European Day of Languages is held annually on 26 September and is aimed at encouraging language learning across Europe.[105]
+The EU has no formal connection to any religion. The Article 17 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union[106] recognises the "status under national law of churches and religious associations" as well as that of "philosophical and non-confessional organisations".[107]
+The preamble to the Treaty on European Union mentions the "cultural, religious and humanist inheritance of Europe".[107] Discussion over the draft texts of the European Constitution and later the Treaty of Lisbon included proposals to mention Christianity or a god, or both, in the preamble of the text, but the idea faced opposition and was dropped.[108]
+Christians in the European Union are divided among members of Catholicism (both Roman and Eastern Rite), numerous Protestant denominations (Anglicans, Lutherans, and Reformed forming the bulk of this category), and the Eastern Orthodox Church. In 2009, the EU had an estimated Muslim population of 13 million,[109] and an estimated Jewish population of over a million.[110] The other world religions of Buddhism, Hinduism, and Sikhism are also represented in the EU population.
+According to new polls about religiosity in the European Union in 2015 by Eurobarometer, Christianity is the largest religion in the European Union, accounting for 71.6% of the EU population. Catholics are the largest Christian group, accounting for 45.3% of the EU population, while Protestants make up 11.1%, Eastern Orthodox make up 9.6%, and other Christians make up 5.6%.[4]
+Eurostat's Eurobarometer opinion polls showed in 2005 that 52% of EU citizens believed in a god, 27% in "some sort of spirit or life force", and 18% had no form of belief.[111] Many countries have experienced falling church attendance and membership in recent years.[112] The countries where the fewest people reported a religious belief were Estonia (16%) and the Czech Republic (19%).[111] The most religious countries were Malta (95%, predominantly Catholic) as well as Cyprus and Romania (both predominantly Orthodox) each with about 90% of citizens professing a belief in their respective god. Across the EU, belief was higher among women, older people, those with religious upbringing, those who left school at 15 or 16, and those "positioning themselves on the right of the political scale".[111]
+Through successive enlargements, the European Union has grown from the six founding states (Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands) to the current 27. Countries accede to the union by becoming party to the founding treaties, thereby subjecting themselves to the privileges and obligations of EU membership. This entails a partial delegation of sovereignty to the institutions in return for representation within those institutions, a practice often referred to as "pooling of sovereignty".[113][114]
+To become a member, a country must meet the Copenhagen criteria, defined at the 1993 meeting of the European Council in Copenhagen. These require a stable democracy that respects human rights and the rule of law; a functioning market economy; and the acceptance of the obligations of membership, including EU law. Evaluation of a country's fulfilment of the criteria is the responsibility of the European Council.[115] Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty provides the basis for a member to leave the Union. Two territories have left the Union: Greenland (an autonomous province of Denmark) withdrew in 1985;[116] the United Kingdom formally invoked Article 50 of the Consolidated Treaty on European Union in 2017, and became the only sovereign state to leave when it withdrew from the EU in 2020.
+There are six countries that are recognised as candidates for membership: Albania, Iceland, North Macedonia,[n] Montenegro, Serbia, and Turkey,[117] though Iceland suspended negotiations in 2013.[118] Bosnia and Herzegovina and Kosovo are officially recognised as potential candidates,[117] with Bosnia and Herzegovina having submitted a membership application.
+The four countries forming the European Free Trade Association (EFTA) are not EU members, but have partly committed to the EU's economy and regulations: Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway, which are a part of the single market through the European Economic Area, and Switzerland, which has similar ties through bilateral treaties.[119][120] The relationships of the European microstates, Andorra, Monaco, San Marino, and Vatican City include the use of the euro and other areas of co-operation.[121] The following 27 sovereign states (of which the map only shows territories situated in and around Europe) constitute the European Union:[122]
+The EU's member states cover an area of 4,233,262 square kilometres (1,634,472 sq mi).[p] The EU's highest peak is Mont Blanc in the Graian Alps, 4,810.45 metres (15,782 ft) above sea level.[123] The lowest points in the EU are Lammefjorden, Denmark and Zuidplaspolder, Netherlands, at 7 m (23 ft) below sea level.[124]
+The landscape, climate, and economy of the EU are influenced by its coastline, which is 65,993 kilometres (41,006 mi) long.
+65,993 km (41,006 mi) coastline dominates the European climate (Natural Park of Penyal d'Ifac, Spain)
+Mont Blanc in the Alps is the highest peak in the EU
+The Danube (pictured in Budapest), is the longest river in the European Union
+Repovesi National Park in Finland, where there are some 187,888 lakes larger than 500 square metres (5,382 sq ft)
+Including the overseas territories of France which are located outside the continent of Europe, but which are members of the union, the EU experiences most types of climate from Arctic (north-east Europe) to tropical (French Guiana), rendering meteorological averages for the EU as a whole meaningless. The majority of the population lives in areas with a temperate maritime climate (North-Western Europe and Central Europe), a Mediterranean climate (Southern Europe), or a warm summer continental or hemiboreal climate (Northern Balkans and Central Europe).[125]
+The EU's population is highly urbanised, with some 75% of inhabitants living in urban areas as of 2006. Cities are largely spread out across the EU with a large grouping in and around the Benelux.[126]
+The EU operates through a hybrid system of supranational and intergovernmental decision-making,[127][128] and according to the principles of conferral (which says that it should act only within the limits of the competences conferred on it by the treaties) and of subsidiarity (which says that it should act only where an objective cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states acting alone). Laws made by the EU institutions are passed in a variety of forms.[129] Generally speaking, they can be classified into two groups: those which come into force without the necessity for national implementation measures (regulations) and those which specifically require national implementation measures (directives).[130]
+Constitutionally, the EU bears some resemblance to both a confederation and a federation,[131][132] but has not formally defined itself as either. (It does not have a formal constitution: its status is defined by the Treaty of European Union and the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union). It is more integrated than a traditional confederation of states because the general level of government widely employs qualified majority voting in some decision-making among the member states, rather than relying exclusively on unanimity.[133][134] It is less integrated than a federal state because it is not a state in its own right: sovereignty continues to flow 'from the bottom up', from the several peoples of the separate member states, rather than from a single undifferentiated whole. This is reflected in the fact that the member states remain the 'masters of the Treaties', retaining control over the allocation of competences to the Union through constitutional change (thus retaining so-called Kompetenz-kompetenz); in that they retain control of the use of armed force; they retain control of taxation; and in that they retain a right of unilateral withdrawal from the Union under Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union. In addition, the principle of subsidiarity requires that only those matters that need to be determined collectively are so determined.
+The European Union has seven principal decision-making bodies, its institutions: the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the Court of Justice of the European Union, the European Central Bank and the European Court of Auditors. Competence in scrutinising and amending legislation is shared between the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament, while executive tasks are performed by the European Commission and in a limited capacity by the European Council (not to be confused with the aforementioned Council of the European Union). The monetary policy of the eurozone is determined by the European Central Bank. The interpretation and the application of EU law and the treaties are ensured by the Court of Justice of the European Union. The EU budget is scrutinised by the European Court of Auditors. There are also a number of ancillary bodies which advise the EU or operate in a specific area.
+EU policy is in general promulgated by EU directives, which are then implemented in the domestic legislation of its member states, and EU regulations, which are immediately enforceable in all member states. Lobbying at EU level by special interest groups is regulated to try to balance the aspirations of private initiatives with public interest decision-making process[135]
+The European Parliament is one of three legislative institutions of the EU, which together with the Council of the European Union is tasked with amending and approving the Commission's proposals.
+The 705 Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) are directly elected by EU citizens every five years on the basis of proportional representation. MEPs are elected on a national basis and they sit according to political groups rather than their nationality. Each country has a set number of seats and is divided into sub-national constituencies where this does not affect the proportional nature of the voting system.[136]
+In the ordinary legislative procedure, the European Commission proposes legislation, which requires the joint approval of the European Parliament and the Council of the European Union to pass. This process applies to nearly all areas, including the EU budget. The Parliament is the final body to approve or reject the proposed membership of the Commission, and can attempt motions of censure on the Commission by appeal to the Court of Justice. The President of the European Parliament (currently David Sassoli) carries out the role of speaker in Parliament and represents it externally. The President and Vice-Presidents are elected by MEPs every two and a half years.[137]
+The European Council gives political direction to the EU. It convenes at least four times a year and comprises the President of the European Council (currently Charles Michel), the President of the European Commission and one representative per member state (either its head of state or head of government). The High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (currently Josep Borrell) also takes part in its meetings. It has been described by some as the Union's "supreme political authority".[138] It is actively involved in the negotiation of treaty changes and defines the EU's policy agenda and strategies.
+The European Council uses its leadership role to sort out disputes between member states and the institutions, and to resolve political crises and disagreements over controversial issues and policies. It acts externally as a "collective head of state" and ratifies important documents (for example, international agreements and treaties).[139]
+Tasks for the President of the European Council are ensuring the external representation of the EU,[140] driving consensus and resolving divergences among member states, both during meetings of the European Council and over the periods between them.
+The European Council should not be mistaken for the Council of Europe, an international organisation independent of the EU based in Strasbourg.
+The European Commission acts both as the EU's executive arm, responsible for the day-to-day running of the EU, and also the legislative initiator, with the sole power to propose laws for debate.[141][142][143] The Commission is 'guardian of the Treaties' and is responsible for their efficient operation and policing.[144] It operates de facto as a cabinet government,[citation needed] with 27 Commissioners for different areas of policy, one from each member state, though Commissioners are bound to represent the interests of the EU as a whole rather than their home state.
+One of the 27 is the President of the European Commission (Jean-Claude Juncker for 2014–2019), appointed by the European Council, subject to the Parliament's approval. After the President, the most prominent Commissioner is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, who is ex-officio a Vice-President of the Commission and is also chosen by the European Council.[145] The other 26 Commissioners are subsequently appointed by the Council of the European Union in agreement with the nominated President. The 27 Commissioners as a single body are subject to approval (or otherwise) by vote of the European Parliament.
+The Council of the European Union (also called the "Council"[146] and the "Council of Ministers", its former title)[147] forms one half of the EU's legislature. It consists of a government minister from each member state and meets in different compositions depending on the policy area being addressed. Notwithstanding its different configurations, it is considered to be one single body.[148] In addition to its legislative functions, the Council also exercises executive functions in relations to the Common Foreign and Security Policy.
+In some policies, there are several member states that ally with strategic partners within the Union. Examples of such alliances include the Visegrad Group, Benelux, the Baltic Assembly, the New Hanseatic League, and the Craiova Group.
+The EU had an agreed budget of €120.7 billion for the year 2007 and €864.3 billion for the period 2007–2013,[150] representing 1.10% and 1.05% of the EU-27's GNI forecast for the respective periods. In 1960, the budget of the then European Economic Community was 0.03% of GDP.[151]
+In the 2010 budget of €141.5 billion, the largest single expenditure item is "cohesion & competitiveness" with around 45% of the total budget.[152] Next comes "agriculture" with approximately 31% of the total.[152] "Rural development, environment and fisheries" takes up around 11%.[152] "Administration" accounts for around 6%.[152] The "EU as a global partner" and "citizenship, freedom, security and justice" bring up the rear with approximately 6% and 1% respectively.[152]
+The Court of Auditors is legally obliged to provide the Parliament and the Council (specifically, the Economic and Financial Affairs Council) with "a statement of assurance as to the reliability of the accounts and the legality and regularity of the underlying transactions".[153] The Court also gives opinions and proposals on financial legislation and anti-fraud actions.[154] The Parliament uses this to decide whether to approve the Commission's handling of the budget.
+The European Court of Auditors has signed off the European Union accounts every year since 2007 and, while making it clear that the European Commission has more work to do, has highlighted that most of the errors take place at national level.[155][156] In their report on 2009 the auditors found that five areas of Union expenditure, agriculture and the cohesion fund, were materially affected by error.[157] The European Commission estimated in 2009 that the financial effect of irregularities was €1,863 million.[158]
+EU member states retain all powers not explicitly handed to the European Union. In some areas the EU enjoys exclusive competence. These are areas in which member states have renounced any capacity to enact legislation. In other areas the EU and its member states share the competence to legislate. While both can legislate, member states can only legislate to the extent to which the EU has not. In other policy areas the EU can only co-ordinate, support and supplement member state action but cannot enact legislation with the aim of harmonising national laws.[159]
+That a particular policy area falls into a certain category of competence is not necessarily indicative of what legislative procedure is used for enacting legislation within that policy area. Different legislative procedures are used within the same category of competence, and even with the same policy area.
+The distribution of competences in various policy areas between Member States and the Union is divided in the following three categories:
+The EU is based on a series of treaties. These first established the European Community and the EU, and then made amendments to those founding treaties.[161] These are power-giving treaties which set broad policy goals and establish institutions with the necessary legal powers to implement those goals. These legal powers include the ability to enact legislation[q] which can directly affect all member states and their inhabitants.[r] The EU has legal personality, with the right to sign agreements and international treaties.[162]
+Under the principle of supremacy, national courts are required to enforce the treaties that their member states have ratified, and thus the laws enacted under them, even if doing so requires them to ignore conflicting national law, and (within limits) even constitutional provisions.[s]
+The direct effect and supremacy doctrines were not explicitly set out in the European Treaties but were developed by the Court of Justice itself over the 1960s, apparently under the influence of its then most influential judge, Frenchman Robert Lecourt[163]
+The judicial branch of the EU—formally called the Court of Justice of the European Union—consists of two courts: the Court of Justice and the General Court.[164]
+The Court of Justice primarily deals with cases taken by member states, the institutions, and cases referred to it by the courts of member states.[165] Because of the doctrines of direct effect and supremacy, many judgments of the Court of Justice are automatically applicable within the internal legal orders of the member states.
+The General Court mainly deals with cases taken by individuals and companies directly before the EU's courts,[166] and the European Union Civil Service Tribunal adjudicates in disputes between the European Union and its civil service.[167] Decisions from the General Court can be appealed to the Court of Justice but only on a point of law.[168]
+The treaties declare that the EU itself is "founded on the values of respect for human dignity, freedom, democracy, equality, the rule of law and respect for human rights, including the rights of persons belonging to minorities ... in a society in which pluralism, non-discrimination, tolerance, justice, solidarity and equality between women and men prevail."[169]
+In 2009, the Lisbon Treaty gave legal effect to the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union. The charter is a codified catalogue of fundamental rights against which the EU's legal acts can be judged. It consolidates many rights which were previously recognised by the Court of Justice and derived from the "constitutional traditions common to the member states."[170] The Court of Justice has long recognised fundamental rights and has, on occasion, invalidated EU legislation based on its failure to adhere to those fundamental rights.[171]
+Signing the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) is a condition for EU membership.[t] Previously, the EU itself could not accede to the Convention as it is neither a state[u] nor had the competence to accede.[v] The Lisbon Treaty and Protocol 14 to the ECHR have changed this: the former binds the EU to accede to the Convention while the latter formally permits it.
+The EU is independent from the Council of Europe, although they share purpose and ideas,  especially on the rule of law, human rights and democracy. Furthermore, the European Convention on Human Rights and European Social Charter, as well as the source of law for the Charter of Fundamental Rights are created by the Council of Europe. The EU has also promoted human rights issues in the wider world. The EU opposes the death penalty and has proposed its worldwide abolition. Abolition of the death penalty is a condition for EU membership.[172]
+The main legal acts of the EU come in three forms: regulations, directives, and decisions. Regulations become law in all member states the moment they come into force, without the requirement for any implementing measures,[w] and automatically override conflicting domestic provisions.[q] Directives require member states to achieve a certain result while leaving them discretion as to how to achieve the result. The details of how they are to be implemented are left to member states.[x] When the time limit for implementing directives passes, they may, under certain conditions, have direct effect in national law against member states.
+Decisions offer an alternative to the two above modes of legislation. They are legal acts which only apply to specified individuals, companies or a particular member state. They are most often used in competition law, or on rulings on State Aid, but are also frequently used for procedural or administrative matters within the institutions. Regulations, directives, and decisions are of equal legal value and apply without any formal hierarchy.[173]
+The European Ombudsman was established by the Maastricht Treaty. The ombudsman is elected by the European Parliament for the length of the Parliament's term, and the position is renewable.[174] Any EU citizen or entity may appeal to the ombudsman to investigate an EU institution on the grounds of maladministration (administrative irregularities, unfairness, discrimination, abuse of power, failure to reply, refusal of information or unnecessary delay).[175] Emily O'Reilly is the current ombudsman since 2013.[176]
+The borders inside the Schengen Area between Germany and Austria
+Europol Headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands
+Eurojust Headquarters in The Hague, Netherlands
+Seat of Frontex in Warsaw, Poland
+Since the creation of the EU in 1993, it has developed its competencies in the area of justice and home affairs; initially at an intergovernmental level and later by supranationalism. Accordingly, the Union has legislated in areas such as extradition,[177] family law,[178] asylum law,[179] and criminal justice.[180] Prohibitions against sexual and nationality discrimination have a long standing in the treaties.[y] In more recent years, these have been supplemented by powers to legislate against discrimination based on race, religion, disability, age, and sexual orientation.[z] By virtue of these powers, the EU has enacted legislation on sexual discrimination in the work-place, age discrimination, and racial discrimination.[aa]
+The Union has also established agencies to co-ordinate police, prosecutorial and immigrations controls across the member states: Europol for co-operation of police forces,[181] Eurojust for co-operation between prosecutors,[182] and Frontex for co-operation between border control authorities.[183] The EU also operates the Schengen Information System[16] which provides a common database for police and immigration authorities. This co-operation had to particularly be developed with the advent of open borders through the Schengen Agreement and the associated cross border crime.
+Foreign policy co-operation between member states dates from the establishment of the Community in 1957, when member states negotiated as a bloc in international trade negotiations under the EU's common commercial policy.[184] Steps for a more wide-ranging co-ordination in foreign relations began in 1970 with the establishment of European Political Cooperation which created an informal consultation process between member states with the aim of forming common foreign policies. In 1987 the European Political Cooperation was introduced on a formal basis by the Single European Act. EPC was renamed as the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) by the Maastricht Treaty.[185]
+The aims of the CFSP are to promote both the EU's own interests and those of the international community as a whole, including the furtherance of international co-operation, respect for human rights, democracy, and the rule of law.[186] The CFSP requires unanimity among the member states on the appropriate policy to follow on any particular issue. The unanimity and difficult issues treated under the CFSP sometimes lead to disagreements, such as those which occurred over the war in Iraq.[187]
+The coordinator and representative of the CFSP within the EU is the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy who speaks on behalf of the EU in foreign policy and defence matters, and has the task of articulating the positions expressed by the member states on these fields of policy into a common alignment. The High Representative heads up the European External Action Service (EEAS), a unique EU department[188] that has been officially implemented and operational since 1 December 2010 on the occasion of the first anniversary of the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon.[189] The EEAS will serve as a foreign ministry and diplomatic corps for the European Union.[190]
+Besides the emerging international policy of the European Union, the international influence of the EU is also felt through enlargement. The perceived benefits of becoming a member of the EU act as an incentive for both political and economic reform in states wishing to fulfil the EU's accession criteria, and are considered an important factor contributing to the reform of European formerly Communist countries.[191]:762 This influence on the internal affairs of other countries is generally referred to as "soft power", as opposed to military "hard power".[192]
+The predecessors of the European Union were not devised as a military alliance because NATO was largely seen as appropriate and sufficient for defence purposes.[193] 21 EU members are members of NATO[194] while the remaining member states follow policies of neutrality.[195] The Western European Union, a military alliance with a mutual defence clause, was disbanded in 2010 as its role had been transferred to the EU.[196]
+France is the only member officially recognised as a nuclear weapon state holding a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council. Most EU member states opposed the Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty.[197]
+Following the Kosovo War in 1999, the European Council agreed that "the Union must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and the readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises without prejudice to actions by NATO". To that end, a number of efforts were made to increase the EU's military capability, notably the Helsinki Headline Goal process. After much discussion, the most concrete result was the EU Battlegroups initiative, each of which is planned to be able to deploy quickly about 1500 personnel.[198]
+EU forces have been deployed on peacekeeping missions from middle and northern Africa to the western Balkans and western Asia.[199] EU military operations are supported by a number of bodies, including the European Defence Agency, European Union Satellite Centre and the European Union Military Staff.[200] Frontex is an agency of the EU established to manage the cooperation between national border guards securing its external borders. It aims to detect and stop illegal immigration, human trafficking and terrorist infiltration. In 2015 the European Commission presented its proposal for a new European Border and Coast Guard Agency having a stronger role and mandate along with national authorities for border management. In an EU consisting of 27 members, substantial security and defence co-operation is increasingly relying on collaboration among all member states.[201]
+The European Commission's Humanitarian Aid and Civil Protection department, or "ECHO", provides humanitarian aid from the EU to developing countries. In 2012, its budget amounted to €874 million, 51% of the budget went to Africa and 20% to Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and Pacific, and 20% to the Middle East and Mediterranean.[202]
+Humanitarian aid is financed directly by the budget (70%) as part of the financial instruments for external action and also by the European Development Fund (30%).[203] The EU's external action financing is divided into 'geographic' instruments and 'thematic' instruments.[203] The 'geographic' instruments provide aid through the Development Cooperation Instrument (DCI, €16.9 billion, 2007–2013), which must spend 95% of its budget on official development assistance (ODA), and from the European Neighbourhood and Partnership Instrument (ENPI), which contains some relevant programmes.[203] The European Development Fund (EDF, €22.7 billion for the period 2008–2013 and €30.5 billion for the period 2014–2020) is made up of voluntary contributions by member states, but there is pressure to merge the EDF into the budget-financed instruments to encourage increased contributions to match the 0.7% target and allow the European Parliament greater oversight.[203][204]
+In 2016, the average among EU countries was 0.4% and five had met or exceeded the 0.7% target: Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Sweden and the United Kingdom.[205] If considered collectively, EU member states are the largest contributor of foreign aid in the world.[206][207]
+The EU uses foreign relations instruments like the European Neighbourhood Policy which seeks to tie those countries to the east and south of the European territory of the EU to the Union. These countries, primarily developing countries, include some who seek to one day become either a member state of the European Union, or more closely integrated with the European Union. The EU offers financial assistance to countries within the European Neighbourhood, so long as they meet the strict conditions of government reform, economic reform and other issues surrounding positive transformation. This process is normally underpinned by an Action Plan, as agreed by both Brussels and the target country.
+International recognition of sustainable development as a key element is growing steadily. Its role was recognized in three major UN summits on sustainable development: the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa; and the 2012 UN Conference on Sustainable Development (UNCSD) in Rio de Janeiro. Other key global agreements are the Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (United Nations, 2015). The SDGs recognize that all countries must stimulate action in the following key areas - people, planet, prosperity, peace and partnership - in order to tackle the global challenges that are crucial for the survival of humanity.
+EU development action is based on the European Consensus on Development, which was endorsed on 20 December 2005 by EU Member States, the Council, the European Parliament and the Commission.[208] It is applied from the principles of Capability approach and Rights-based approach to development.
+Partnership and cooperation agreements are bilateral agreements with non-member nations.[209]
+The European Union is the largest exporter in the world[213] and as of 2008 the largest importer of goods and services.[214][215] Internal trade between the member states is aided by the removal of barriers to trade such as tariffs and border controls. In the eurozone, trade is helped by not having any currency differences to deal with amongst most members.[216]
+The European Union Association Agreement does something similar for a much larger range of countries, partly as a so-called soft approach ('a carrot instead of a stick') to influence the politics in those countries.
+The European Union represents all its members at the World Trade Organization (WTO), and acts on behalf of member states in any disputes. When the EU negotiates trade related agreement outside the WTO framework, the subsequent agreement must be approved by each individual EU member state government.[216]
+The European Union has concluded free trade agreements (FTAs)[217] and other agreements with a trade component with many countries worldwide and is negotiating with many others.[218]
+As a political entity the European Union is represented in the World Trade Organization (WTO). EU member states own the estimated second largest after the United States (US$105 trillion) net wealth in the world, equal to around 20% (~€60 trillion) of the US$360 trillion (~€300 trillion)[219] global wealth.[220]
+19 member states have joined a monetary union known as the eurozone, which uses the euro as a single currency. The currency union represents 342 million EU citizens.[221] The euro is the second largest reserve currency as well as the second most traded currency in the world after the United States dollar.[222][223][224]
+Of the top 500 largest corporations in the world measured by revenue in 2010, 161 had their headquarters in the EU.[225] In 2016, unemployment in the EU stood at 8.9%[226] while inflation was at 2.2%, and the current account balance at −0.9% of GDP. The average annual net earnings in the European Union was around €24,000 (US$30,000)[227] in 2015.
+There is a significant variation in Nominal GDP per capita within individual EU states. The difference between the richest and poorest regions (281 NUTS-2 regions of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics) ranged, in 2017, from 31% (Severozapaden, Bulgaria) of the EU28 average (€30,000) to 253% (Luxembourg), or from €4,600 to €92,600.[228]
+Two of the original core objectives of the European Economic Community were the development of a common market, subsequently becoming a single market, and a customs union between its member states. The single market involves the free circulation of goods, capital, people, and services within the EU,[221] and the customs union involves the application of a common external tariff on all goods entering the market. Once goods have been admitted into the market they cannot be subjected to customs duties, discriminatory taxes or import quotas, as they travel internally. The non-EU member states of Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein and Switzerland participate in the single market but not in the customs union.[119] Half the trade in the EU is covered by legislation harmonised by the EU.[229]
+Free movement of capital is intended to permit movement of investments such as property purchases and buying of shares between countries.[230] Until the drive towards economic and monetary union the development of the capital provisions had been slow. Post-Maastricht there has been a rapidly developing corpus of ECJ judgements regarding this initially neglected freedom. The free movement of capital is unique insofar as it is granted equally to non-member states.
+The free movement of persons means that EU citizens can move freely between member states to live, work, study or retire in another country. This required the lowering of administrative formalities and recognition of professional qualifications of other states.[231]
+The free movement of services and of establishment allows self-employed persons to move between member states to provide services on a temporary or permanent basis. While services account for 60–70% of GDP, legislation in the area is not as developed as in other areas. This lacuna has been addressed by the recently passed Directive on services in the internal market which aims to liberalise the cross border provision of services.[232] According to the Treaty the provision of services is a residual freedom that only applies if no other freedom is being exercised.
+The creation of a European single currency became an official objective of the European Economic Community in 1969. In 1992, having negotiated the structure and procedures of a currency union, the member states signed the Maastricht Treaty and were legally bound to fulfil the agreed-on rules including the convergence criteria if they wanted to join the monetary union. The states wanting to participate had first to join the European Exchange Rate Mechanism.
+In 1999 the currency union started, first as an accounting currency with eleven member states joining. In 2002, the currency was fully put into place, when euro notes and coins were issued and national currencies began to phase out in the eurozone, which by then consisted of 12 member states. The eurozone (constituted by the EU member states which have adopted the euro) has since grown to 19 countries.[233][ab]
+The euro, and the monetary policies of those who have adopted it in agreement with the EU, are under the control of the European Central Bank (ECB).[234] The ECB is the central bank for the eurozone, and thus controls monetary policy in that area with an agenda to maintain price stability. It is at the centre of the European System of Central Banks, which comprehends all EU national central banks and is controlled by its General Council, consisting of the President of the ECB, who is appointed by the European Council, the Vice-President of the ECB, and the governors of the national central banks of all 27 EU member states.[235]
+The European System of Financial Supervision is an institutional architecture of the EU's framework of financial supervision composed by three authorities: the European Banking Authority, the European Insurance and Occupational Pensions Authority and the European Securities and Markets Authority. To complement this framework, there is also a European Systemic Risk Board under the responsibility of the ECB. The aim of this financial control system is to ensure the economic stability of the EU.[236]
+To prevent the joining states from getting into financial trouble or crisis after entering the monetary union, they were obliged in the Maastricht treaty to fulfil important financial obligations and procedures, especially to show budgetary discipline and a high degree of sustainable economic convergence, as well as to avoid excessive government deficits and limit the government debt to a sustainable level.
+The European Commission working sectors are: Aeronautics, automotive, biotechnology, chemicals, construction, cosmetics, defense, electronics, firearms, food and drink, gambling, healthcare, maritime, mechanics, medical, postal, raw materials, space, textile, tourism, toys and Social economy (Societas cooperativa Europaea).
+In 2006, the EU-27 had a gross inland energy consumption of 1,825 million tonnes of oil equivalent (toe).[237] Around 46% of the energy consumed was produced within the member states while 54% was imported.[237] In these statistics, nuclear energy is treated as primary energy produced in the EU, regardless of the source of the uranium, of which less than 3% is produced in the EU.[238]
+The EU has had legislative power in the area of energy policy for most of its existence; this has its roots in the original European Coal and Steel Community. The introduction of a mandatory and comprehensive European energy policy was approved at the meeting of the European Council in October 2005, and the first draft policy was published in January 2007.[239]
+The EU has five key points in its energy policy: increase competition in the internal market, encourage investment and boost interconnections between electricity grids; diversify energy resources with better systems to respond to a crisis; establish a new treaty framework for energy co-operation with Russia while improving relations with energy-rich states in Central Asia[240] and North Africa; use existing energy supplies more efficiently while increasing renewable energy commercialisation; and finally increase funding for new energy technologies.[239]
+In 2007, EU countries as a whole imported 82% of their oil, 57% of their natural gas[241] and 97.48% of their uranium[238] demands. There is a strong dependence on Russian energy that the EU has been attempting to reduce.[242]
+The EU is working to improve cross-border infrastructure within the EU, for example through the Trans-European Networks (TEN). Projects under TEN include the Channel Tunnel, LGV Est, the Fréjus Rail Tunnel, the Öresund Bridge, the Brenner Base Tunnel and the Strait of Messina Bridge. In 2010 the estimated network covers: 75,200 kilometres (46,700 mi) of roads; 78,000 kilometres (48,000 mi) of railways; 330 airports; 270 maritime harbours; and 210 internal harbours.[243][244]
+Rail transport in Europe is being synchronised with the European Rail Traffic Management System (ERTMS), an initiative to greatly enhance safety, increase efficiency of trains and enhance cross-border interoperability of rail transport in Europe by replacing signalling equipment with digitised mostly wireless versions and by creating a single Europe-wide standard for train control and command systems.
+The developing European transport policies will increase the pressure on the environment in many regions by the increased transport network. In the pre-2004 EU members, the major problem in transport deals with congestion and pollution. After the recent enlargement, the new states that joined since 2004 added the problem of solving accessibility to the transport agenda.[245] The Polish road network was upgraded such as the A4 autostrada.[246]
+The Galileo positioning system is another EU infrastructure project. Galileo is a proposed Satellite navigation system, to be built by the EU and launched by the European Space Agency (ESA). The Galileo project was launched partly to reduce the EU's dependency on the US-operated Global Positioning System, but also to give more complete global coverage and allow for greater accuracy, given the aged nature of the GPS system.[247]
+The Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) is one of the long lasting policies of the European Community.[248] The policy has the objectives of increasing agricultural production, providing certainty in food supplies, ensuring a high quality of life for farmers, stabilising markets, and ensuring reasonable prices for consumers.[ad] It was, until recently, operated by a system of subsidies and market intervention. Until the 1990s, the policy accounted for over 60% of the then European Community's annual budget, and as of 2013[update] accounts for around 34%.[249]
+The policy's price controls and market interventions led to considerable overproduction. These were intervention stores of products bought up by the Community to maintain minimum price levels. To dispose of surplus stores, they were often sold on the world market at prices considerably below Community guaranteed prices, or farmers were offered subsidies (amounting to the difference between the Community and world prices) to export their products outside the Community. This system has been criticised for under-cutting farmers outside Europe, especially those in the developing world.[250] Supporters of CAP argue that the economic support which it gives to farmers provides them with a reasonable standard of living.[250]
+Since the beginning of the 1990s, the CAP has been subject to a series of reforms. Initially, these reforms included the introduction of set-aside in 1988, where a proportion of farm land was deliberately withdrawn from production, milk quotas and, more recently, the 'de-coupling' (or disassociation) of the money farmers receive from the EU and the amount they produce (by the Fischler reforms in 2004). Agriculture expenditure will move away from subsidy payments linked to specific produce, toward direct payments based on farm size. This is intended to allow the market to dictate production levels.[248] One of these reforms entailed the modification of the EU's sugar regime, which previously divided the sugar market between member states and certain African-Caribbean nations with a privileged relationship with the EU.[251]
+The EU operates a competition policy intended to ensure undistorted competition within the single market.[ae]
+The Competition Commissioner, currently Margrethe Vestager, is one of the most powerful positions in the Commission, notable for the ability to affect the commercial interests of trans-national corporations.[citation needed] For example, in 2001 the Commission for the first time prevented a merger between two companies based in the United States (GE and Honeywell) which had already been approved by their national authority.[252] Another high-profile case against Microsoft, resulted in the Commission fining Microsoft over €777 million following nine years of legal action.[253]
+The EU seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 6.7% in September 2018.[254] The euro area unemployment rate was 8.1%.[254] Among the member states, the lowest unemployment rates were recorded in the Czech Republic (2.3%), Germany and Poland (both 3.4%), and the highest in Spain (14.9%) and Greece (19.0 in July 2018).[254]
+The EU has long sought to mitigate the effects of free markets by protecting workers rights and preventing social and environmental dumping. To this end it has adopted laws establishing minimum employment and environmental standards. These included the Working Time Directive and the Environmental Impact Assessment Directive. The EU has also sought to coordinate the social security and health systems of member states to facilitate individuals exercising free movement rights and to ensure they maintain their ability to access social security and health services in other member states.
+The European Social Charter is the main body that recognizes the social rights of European citizens.
+A European unemployment insurance has been proposed among others by the commissioner of Jobs Nicolas Schmit.[255]
+Since 2019 there is a European Commissioner for Equality; a European Institute for Gender Equality has existed since 2007.
+Housing, youth, childhood, Functional diversity or elderly care are supportive competencies of the European Union and can be financed by the European Social Fund.
+Structural Funds and Cohesion Funds are supporting the development of underdeveloped regions of the EU. Such regions are primarily located in the states of central and southern Europe.[256][257] Several funds provide emergency aid, support for candidate members to transform their country to conform to the EU's standard (Phare, ISPA, and SAPARD), and support to the Commonwealth of Independent States (TACIS). TACIS has now become part of the worldwide EuropeAid programme.
+Demographic transition to a society of aging population, low fertility-rates and depopulation of non-metropolitan regions is tackled within this policies.
+In 1957, when the EEC was founded, it had no environmental policy.[258] Over the past 50 years, an increasingly dense network of legislation has been created, extending to all areas of environmental protection, including air pollution, water quality, waste management, nature conservation, and the control of chemicals, industrial hazards, and biotechnology.[259] According to the Institute for European Environmental Policy, environmental law comprises over 500 Directives, Regulations and Decisions, making environmental policy a core area of European politics.[260]
+European policy-makers originally increased the EU's capacity to act on environmental issues by defining it as a trade problem.[261]
+Trade barriers and competitive distortions in the Common Market could emerge due to the different environmental standards in each member state.[262] In subsequent years, the environment became a formal policy area, with its own policy actors, principles and procedures. The legal basis for EU environmental policy was established with the introduction of the Single European Act in 1987.[260]
+Initially, EU environmental policy focused on Europe. More recently, the EU has demonstrated leadership in global environmental governance, e.g. the role of the EU in securing the ratification and coming into force of the Kyoto Protocol despite opposition from the United States. This international dimension is reflected in the EU's Sixth Environmental Action Programme,[263] which recognises that its objectives can only be achieved if key international agreements are actively supported and properly implemented both at EU level and worldwide. The Lisbon Treaty further strengthened the leadership ambitions.[264] EU law has played a significant role in improving habitat and species protection in Europe, as well as contributing to improvements in air and water quality and waste management.[260]
+Mitigating climate change is one of the top priorities of EU environmental policy. In 2007, member states agreed that, in the future, 20% of the energy used across the EU must be renewable, and carbon dioxide emissions have to be lower in 2020 by at least 20% compared to 1990 levels.[265] The EU has adopted an emissions trading system to incorporate carbon emissions into the economy.[266] The European Green Capital is an annual award given to cities that focuses on the environment, energy efficiency, and quality of life in urban areas to create smart city.
+In the Elections to the European Parliament in 2019, the green parties increased their power, possibly because of the rise of post materialist values.[267]
+Proposals to reach a zero carbon economy in the European Union by 2050 were suggested in 2018 - 2019. Almost all member states supported that goal at an EU summit in June 2019. The Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, and Poland disagreed.[268]
+Basic education is an area where the EU's role is limited to supporting national governments. In higher education, the policy was developed in the 1980s in programmes supporting exchanges and mobility. The most visible of these has been the Erasmus Programme, a university exchange programme which began in 1987. In its first 20 years, it supported international exchange opportunities for well over 1.5 million university and college students and became a symbol of European student life.[269]
+There are similar programmes for school pupils and teachers, for trainees in vocational education and training, and for adult learners in the Lifelong Learning Programme 2007–2013. These programmes are designed to encourage a wider knowledge of other countries and to spread good practices in the education and training fields across the EU.[270][271] Through its support of the Bologna Process, the EU is supporting comparable standards and compatible degrees across Europe.
+Scientific development is facilitated through the EU's Framework Programmes, the first of which started in 1984. The aims of EU policy in this area are to co-ordinate and stimulate research. The independent European Research Council allocates EU funds to European or national research projects.[272] EU research and technological framework programmes deal in a number of areas, for example energy where the aim is to develop a diverse mix of renewable energy to help the environment and to reduce dependence on imported fuels.[273]
+The EU has no major competences in the field of health care and Article 35 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union affirms that "A high level of human health protection shall be ensured in the definition and implementation of all Union policies and activities". The European Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Consumers seeks to align national laws on the protection of people's health, on the consumers' rights, on the safety of food and other products.[274][275][276]
+All EU and many other European countries offer their citizens a free European Health Insurance Card which, on a reciprocal basis, provides insurance for emergency medical treatment insurance when visiting other participating European countries.[277] A directive on cross-border healthcare aims at promoting co-operation on health care between member states and facilitating access to safe and high-quality cross-border healthcare for European patients.[278][279][280]
+The EU has some of the highest levels of life expectancy in the world, with Spain, Italy, Sweden, France, Malta, Ireland, Netherlands, Luxembourg, and Greece all among the world's top 20 countries with the highest life expectancy.[281] In general, life expectancy is lower in Eastern Europe than in Western Europe.[282] In 2018, the EU region with the highest life expectancy was Madrid, Spain at 85.2 years, followed by the Spanish regions of La Rioja and Castilla y León both at 84.3 years, Trentino in Italy at 84.3 years and Île-de-France in France at 84.2 years. The overall life expectancy in the EU in 2018 was 81.0 years, higher than the World average of 72.6 years.[283]
+Cultural co-operation between member states has been an interest of the EU since its inclusion as a community competency in the Maastricht Treaty.[284] Actions taken in the cultural area by the EU include the Culture 2000 seven-year programme,[284] the European Cultural Month event,[285] and orchestras such as the European Union Youth Orchestra.[286] The European Capital of Culture programme selects one or more cities in every year to assist the cultural development of that city.[287]
+Association football is by far the most popular sport in the European Union by the number of registered players. The other sports with the most participants in clubs are tennis, basketball, swimming, athletics, golf, gymnastics, equestrian sports, handball, volleyball and sailing.[288]
+Sport is mainly the responsibility of the member states or other international organisations, rather than of the EU. There are some EU policies that have affected sport, such as the free movement of workers, which was at the core of the Bosman ruling that prohibited national football leagues from imposing quotas on foreign players with European citizenship.[289]
+The Treaty of Lisbon requires any application of economic rules to take into account the specific nature of sport and its structures based on voluntary activity.[290] This followed lobbying by governing organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA, due to objections over the application of free market principles to sport, which led to an increasing gap between rich and poor clubs.[291] The EU does fund a programme for Israeli, Jordanian, Irish, and British football coaches, as part of the Football 4 Peace project.[292]
+The flag used is the Flag of Europe, which consists of a circle of 12 golden stars on a blue background. Originally designed in 1955 for the Council of Europe, the flag was adopted by the European Communities, the predecessors of the present Union, in 1986. The Council of Europe gave the flag a symbolic description in the following terms,[293] though the official symbolic description adopted by the EU omits the reference to the "Western world":[294]
+Against the blue sky of the Western world, the stars symbolise the peoples of Europe in a form of a circle, the sign of union. The number of stars is invariably twelve, the figure twelve being the symbol of perfection and entirety.
+United in Diversity was adopted as the motto of the Union in the year 2000, having been selected from proposals submitted by school pupils.[295] Since 1985, the flag day of the Union has been Europe Day, on 9 May (the date of the 1950 Schuman declaration). The anthem of the Union is an instrumental version of the prelude to the Ode to Joy, the 4th movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's ninth symphony. The anthem was adopted by European Community leaders in 1985 and has since been played on official occasions.[296]
+Besides naming the continent, the Greek mythological figure of Europa has frequently been employed as a personification of Europe. Known from the myth in which Zeus seduces her in the guise of a white bull, Europa has also been referred to in relation to the present Union. Statues of Europa and the bull decorate several of the Union's institutions and a portrait of her is seen on the 2013 series of Euro banknotes. The bull is, for its part, depicted on all residence permit cards.[297]
+Charles the Great, also known as Charlemagne (Latin: Carolus Magnus) and later recognised as Pater Europae ("Father of Europe"),[298][299][300] has a symbolic relevance to Europe. The Commission has named one of its central buildings in Brussels after Charlemagne and the city of Aachen has since 1949 awarded the Charlemagne Prize to champions of European unification.[301] Since 2008, the organisers of this prize, in conjunction with the European Parliament, have awarded the Charlemagne Youth Prize in recognition of similar efforts by young people.[302]
+Media freedom is a fundamental right that applies to all member states of the European Union and its citizens, as defined in the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights as well as the European Convention on Human Rights.[303]:1 Within the EU enlargement process, guaranteeing media freedom is named a "key indicator of a country's readiness to become part of the EU".[304]
+The majority of media in the European Union are national-oriented. Some EU-wide media focusing on European affairs have emerged since the early 1990s, such as Euronews, EUobserver, EURACTIV or Politico Europe.[305][306] ARTE is a public Franco-German TV network that promotes programming in the areas of culture and the arts. 80% of its programming are provided in equal proportion by the two member companies, while the remainder is being provided by the European Economic Interest Grouping ARTE GEIE and the channel's European partners.[307]
+The MEDIA Programme of the European Union has supported the European popular film and audiovisual industries since 1991. It provides support for the development, promotion and distribution of European works within Europe and beyond.[308]
+The European Union has had a significant positive economic impact on most member states.[309] According to a 2019 study of the member states who joined from 1973 to 2004, "without European integration, per capita incomes would have been, on average, approximately 10% lower in the first ten years after joining the EU."[309] Greece was the exception reported by the study, which analysed up to 2008, "to avoid confounding effects from the global financial crisis".[309]
+The European Union has contributed to peace in Europe, in particular by pacifying border disputes.[310][311]
+The European Union has contributed to the spread of democracy, in particular by encouraging democratic reforms in aspiring Eastern European member states after the collapse of the USSR.[312][313] Thomas Risse wrote in 2009, "there is a consensus in the literature on Eastern Europe that the EU membership perspective had a huge anchoring effects for the new democracies."[313] However, R. Daniel Keleman argues that over time, the EU has proved beneficial to leaders who are overseeing democratic backsliding, as the EU is reluctant to intervene in domestic politics, gives the authoritarians funds which they can use to strengthen their regimes, and because freedom of movement within the EU allows dissenting citizens to leave their backsliding countries.[314]
+Official:
+Overviews and data:
+News and interviews:
+Educational resources: