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Photograph published 31st December 1918
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognize anyone in the images and have any stories and information to add please comment below.
On a wall at South Birmingham College, Digbeth Campus is this old advert for Melox Marvels - Pulbis Dog Food!
This is the Digbeth Campus of South Birmingham College. This section is the Grade II listed 224 - 225 High Street in Digbeth. Now a part of South Birmingham College, Digbeth Campus.
This particular building is 224 - 225 High Street, in Digbeth.
Building dated to circa 1860. Brick-built with stone dressings and a hipped slate roof with elaborate bracketted eaves. It has five storeys with seven bays to the front, an additional bay to the corner and seven bays to the left-hand return in Milk Street. To the ground floor there are, probably original, shopfronts. To the first, second and third floor are sash windows wiwth shoulders and keystones with incised decoration and brick arch soffits. To the third floor there are square sash windows.
Circa 1860. Polychromatic brick with stone dressings; slate roof. Five storeys; 7 bays plus the corner and another 7 bays on the left-hand return in Milk Street. Ground floor with apparently original shop fronts. Panelled pilasters supporting an entablature with boldly bracketed cornice. First, second and third floors with sash windows with shoulders and keystones with incised decoration and elaborately cut brick arch soffits and bold sills. Lavishly bracketted moulded cornice at second floor level. Fourth storey with square sash windows. Elaborate bracketted eaves cornice. The windows mostly blocked up.
224 - 225 High Street, Digbeth - Heritage Gateway
Pevsner describes it as a crusty brick block of shops and warehouse of 1869 by Thomas Fawdry, restored in 2003 as part of a bulky creative arts centre development by Nichol Thomas.
Published in the Birmingham Post on the 3rd of December 2009.
Looking at this here and in the paper, I'm wondering, why are there three doors that lead to no where? Was there a bridge here?
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German Reggae Magazine RIDDIM has published four full pages of my posters in their current issue. Nuff Respect to the folks at Riddim Magazine.
Art: Freestylee on music and art published in Irie Up Magazine
irieup.com/art-freestylee-on-music-and-art/
Peter Tosh - Steppin' Razor Documentary Trailer
Published article : Chora, a village of Amorgos island , Aegean sea
www.privatephotoreview.com/.../chora-a-village.../
January 2024
©All photographs on this site are copyright: ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams) 2011 – 2021 & GETTY IMAGES ®
No license is given nor granted in respect of the use of any copyrighted material on this site other than with the express written agreement of ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams). No image may be used as source material for paintings, drawings, sculptures, or any other art form without permission and/or compensation to ©DESPITE STRAIGHT LINES (Paul Williams)
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I would like to say a huge and heartfelt 'THANK YOU' to GETTY IMAGES, and the 49.534+ Million visitors to my FLICKR site.
***** Selected for sale in the GETTY IMAGES COLLECTION on Monday 6th January 2025
CREATIVE RF gty.im/2192120358 MOMENT ROYALTY FREE COLLECTION**
This photograph became my 6,987th frame to be selected for sale in the Getty Images collection and I am very grateful to them for this wonderful opportunity.
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Photograph taken at an altitude of Fifty eight metres at 06:44am on Tuesday 4th August 2020, of a Common wood pigeon (Columba palumbus), off Chessington Avenue in Bexleyheath, Kent, England.
Belonging to genus Columba, these are members of the Dove and pigeon family, and known in Southeast England as the Culver.
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Nikon D850 Focal length 600mm Shutter speed: 1/125s Aperture f/6.3 iso80 Image area FX (36 x 24) NEF RAW L (8256 x 5504). NEF RAW L (14 bit uncompressed) Image size L (8256 x 5504 FX). Focus mode AF-C focus. AF-C Priority Selection: Release. Nikon Back button focusing enabled. AF-S Priority selection: Focus. 3D Tracking watch area: Normal 55 Tracking points.AF-Area mode single point & 73 point switchable. Exposure mode: Shutter Priority mode. Matrix metering. Auto ISO sensitivity control on (Max iso 800/ Miniumum shutter speed 125). White blance on: Auto1. Colour space: RGB. Actve D-lighting: Normal. Vignette control: Normal. Nikon Distortion control: Enabled. Picture control: Auto (Sharpening A +1/Clarity A+1
Sigma 60-600mm f/4.5-6.3DG OS HSM SPORTS. Lee SW150 MKI filter holder with MK2 light shield and custom made velcro fitting for the Sigma lens. Lee SW150 circular polariser glass filter.Lee SW150 Filters field pouch.Nikon GP-1 GPS module. Hoodman HEYENRG round eyepiece oversized eyecup.Two Nikon EN-EL15a batteries (Priority to battery in Battery grip). Matin quick release neckstrap. My Memory 128GB Class 10 SDXC 80MB/s card. Lowepro Flipside 400 AW camera bag.
LATITUDE: N 51d 28m 28.03s
LONGITUDE: E 0d 8m 10.42s
ALTITUDE: 58.0m
RAW (TIFF) FILE: 130.00MB NEF: 90.0MB
PROCESSED (JPeg) FILE: 35.00MB
PROCESSING POWER:
Nikon D850 Firmware versions C 1.10 (9/05/2019) LD Distortion Data 2.018 (18/02/20) LF 1.00
HP 110-352na Desktop PC with AMD Quad-Core A6-5200 APU 64Bit processor. Radeon HD8400 graphics. 8 GB DDR3 Memory with 1TB Data storage. 64-bit Windows 10. Verbatim USB 2.0 1TB desktop hard drive. WD My Passport Ultra 1tb USB3 Portable hard drive. Nikon ViewNX-1 64bit Version 1.4.1 (18/02/2020). Nikon Capture NX-D 64bit Version 1.6.2 (18/02/2020). Nikon Picture Control Utility 2 (Version 2.4.5 (18/02/2020). Nikon Transfer 2 Version 2.13.5. Adobe photoshop Elements 8 Version 8.0 64bit.
Mark Brennae, CanWest News Service
Published: Wednesday, June 13, 2007 Article tools
OTTAWA — A one-week-old Ontario infant died from complications after undergoing a circumcision in a provincial hospital.
Information about the case was published in the April edition of Paediatric Child Health.
The baby, whose name has been withheld by the parents, passed away after his kidneys became enlarged to seven times their normal size.
The child was born at an unidentified Ontario hospital “sometime in the last three years,” said Dr. Jim Cairns, Ontario’s deputy chief coroner. “The family wants to keep this anonymous.”
No charges were ever laid and no legal action was ever taken in the case.
According to the Paediatric Child Health article, the boy was “bottlefed and was reported to be doing well when he was circumsized.”
Five hours later, the parents returned to their family doctor with the infant, who had become “irritable and had blue discolouration” below the belly button.
Doctors noticed the discolouration and slight swelling of the penis, but sent the child home.
Fourteen hours after the circumcision, according to Cairns, the child was brought to another hospital where doctors noted he was extremely irritable with marked swelling of the penis and bruising to the scrotum.
The child was then transferred to a paediatric centre, where his bladder was diagnosed, Cairns said, to “seven or eight times its normal size.”
The PlastiBell ring, which is used to hold back the foreskin after circumcision, was removed and drained and the child went into shock.
“If the PlastiBell had been taken off five hours after he got there, he would be alive,” said Cairns.
The child’s death was attributed to septic shock — “an overwhelming infection, leading to multi-organ failure,” Cairns said.
“Death is rare after circumcision,” said Cairns. “But complications can happen.”
The case was brought to Cairns’ attention because the circumstances of every death of an Ontario child under five years of age must be reviewed by the provincial coroner’s office.
This photo of rice growing in Southern Brazil has been published online in a Rice Today article, by the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), called Country Snapshots: Brazil, in Rice Today
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard published by C.T. They state on the divided back of the card that it is a genuine Curteich-Chicago 'C.T. Art-Colortone' postcard. (Reg. U.S. Patent Office).
I don't know why they bothered to patent it - the print quality is awful.
C.T. state on the back of the card that a One Cent stamp is required for postage. They also state:
'The Bridal Altar is one of the oldest
and most historic features in Mammoth
Cave.
Many couples have been married at
this spot'.
Mammoth Cave National Park
Mammoth Cave National Park is an American national park in west-central Kentucky, encompassing portions of Mammoth Cave, the longest-known cave system in the world.
Since the 1972 unification of Mammoth Cave with the even-longer system under Flint Ridge to the north, the official name of the system has been the Mammoth–Flint Ridge Cave System.
The park was established as a national park on the 1st. July 1941, and a World Heritage Site on the 27th. October 1981.
The Green River runs through the park. Mammoth Cave is the world's longest known cave system with more than 400 miles (640 km) of surveyed passageways. It is nearly twice as long as the second-longest cave system, Mexico's Sac Actun underwater cave.
The Geology of Mammoth Cave
Mammoth Cave developed in thick Mississippian-aged limestone strata capped by a layer of sandstone, which has made the system remarkably stable. New discoveries and connections add several miles to the cave's known length each year.
At one valley bottom in the southern region of the park, a massive sinkhole has developed. Known as Cedar Sink, the sinkhole features a small river entering one side and disappearing back underground at the other side.
Visiting Mammoth Cave
The National Park Service offers several cave tours to visitors. Some notable features of the cave, such as Grand Avenue, Frozen Niagara, and Fat Man's Misery, can be seen on lighted tours ranging from one to six hours in length.
Two tours, lit only by visitor-carried paraffin lamps, are popular alternatives to the electric-lit routes. Several "wild" tours venture away from the developed parts of the cave into muddy crawls and dusty tunnels.
The Echo River Tour, one of the cave's most famous attractions, took visitors on a boat ride along an underground river. The tour was discontinued for logistic and environmental reasons in the early 1990's.
Mammoth Cave in Prehistory
The story of human beings in relation to Mammoth Cave spans five thousand years. Several sets of Native American remains have been recovered from Mammoth Cave, or other nearby caves in the region, in both the 19th. and 20th. centuries. Most mummies found represent examples of intentional burial, with ample evidence of pre-Columbian funerary practice.
An exception to purposeful burial was discovered when in 1935 the remains of an adult male were discovered under a large boulder. The boulder had shifted and settled onto the victim, a pre-Columbian miner, who had disturbed the rubble supporting it.
The remains of the ancient victim were named "Lost John" and exhibited to the public into the 1970's, when they were interred in a secret location in Mammoth Cave for reasons of preservation as well as emerging political sensitivities with respect to the public display of Native American remains.
Research beginning in the late 1950's led by Patty Jo Watson, of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, has done much to illuminate the lives of the late Archaic and early Woodland peoples who explored and exploited caves in the region.
Preserved by the constant cave environment, dietary evidence yielded carbon dates enabling Watson to determine the age of the specimens. An analysis of their content allows determination of the relative content of plant and meat in the diet of either culture over a period spanning several thousand years. This analysis indicates a timed transition from a hunter-gatherer culture to plant domestication and agriculture.
Another technique employed in archaeological research at Mammoth Cave, was experimental archaeology, in which modern explorers were sent into the cave using the technology that was employed by the ancient cultures whose leftover implements lie discarded in many parts of the cave. The goal was to gain insight into the problems faced by the ancient people who explored the cave.
Ancient human remains and artifacts within the caves are protected by various federal and state laws. One of the most basic facts to be determined about a newly discovered artifact is its precise location and situation. Even slightly moving a prehistoric artifact contaminates it from a research perspective. Explorers are properly trained not to disturb archaeological evidence, and some areas of the cave remain out-of-bounds for even seasoned explorers, unless the subject of the trip is archaeological research on that area.
Besides the remains that have been discovered in the portion of the cave accessible through the Historic Entrance of Mammoth Cave, the remains of cane torches used by Native Americans, as well as other artifacts such as drawings, gourd fragments, and woven grass moccasin slippers are found in the Salts Cave section of the system in Flint Ridge.
Though there is undeniable proof of their existence and use of the cave, there is no evidence of further use past the archaic period. Experts and scientists have no answer as to why this is, making it one of the greatest mysteries of Mammoth Cave to this day.
Earliest Written History
The 31,000-acre (13,000 ha) tract known as the "Pollard Survey" was sold by indenture on the 10th. September 1791 in Philadelphia by William Pollard. 19,897 acres (8,052 ha) of the Pollard Survey between the North bank of Bacon Creek and the Green River were purchased by Thomas Lang, Jr..
Lang was a British American merchant from Yorkshire, England. He bought the land on the 3rd. June 1796 for £4,116, but the land was lost to a local county tax claim during the War of 1812.
Legend has it that the first European to visit Mammoth Cave was either John Houchin or his brother Francis Houchin, in 1797. While hunting, Houchin pursued a wounded bear to the cave's large entrance opening near the Green River.
Some Houchin Family tales have John Decatur "Johnny Dick" Houchin as the discoverer of the cave, but this is highly unlikely because Johnny Dick was only 10 years old in 1797, and was unlikely to be out hunting bears at such a tender age.
His father John is the more likely candidate from that branch of the family tree, but the most probable candidate for discoverer of Mammoth Cave is Francis "Frank" Houchin, whose land was much closer to the cave entrance than his brother John's.
There is also the argument that their brother Charles Houchin, who was known as a great hunter and trapper, was the man who shot the bear and chased it into the cave. The shadow over Charles's claim is the fact that he was residing in Illinois until 1801.
Contrary to this story is Brucker and Watson's 'The Longest Cave', which asserts that the cave was certainly known before that time. Caves in the area were certainly known before the discovery of the entrance to Mammoth Cave. Even Francis Houchin had a cave entrance on his land very near the bend in the Green River known as the Turnhole, which is less than a mile from the main entrance to Mammoth Cave.
The land containing this historic entrance was first surveyed and registered in 1798 under the name of Valentine Simons. Simons began exploiting Mammoth Cave for its saltpeter reserves.
Mammoth Cave in the 19th. Century
In partnership with Valentine Simon, various other individuals owned the land through the War of 1812, when Mammoth Cave's saltpeter reserves became significant due to the Jefferson Embargo Act of 1807 which prohibited all foreign trade.
The blockade starved the American military of saltpeter and therefore gunpowder. As a result, the domestic price of saltpeter rose and production based on nitrates extracted from caves such as Mammoth Cave became more lucrative.
In July 1812, the cave was purchased from Simon and other owners by Charles Wilkins and an investor from Philadelphia named Hyman Gratz. Soon the cave was being mined for calcium nitrate on an industrial scale, utilizing a labor force of 70 slaves to build and operate the soil leaching apparatus, as well as to haul the raw soil from deep in the cave to the central processing site.
A half-interest in the cave changed hands for ten thousand dollars (equivalent to over $150,000 in 2020). After the war when prices fell, the workings were abandoned and it became a minor tourist attraction centering on a Native American mummy discovered nearby.
When Wilkins died his estate's executors sold his interest in the cave to Gratz. In the spring of 1838, the cave was sold by the Gratz brothers to Franklin Gorin, who intended to operate Mammoth Cave purely as a tourist attraction, the bottom long having since fallen out of the saltpeter market.
Gorin was a slave owner, and used his slaves as tour guides. One of these slaves would make a number of important contributions to human knowledge of the cave, and become one of Mammoth Cave's most celebrated historical figures.
Stephen Bishop, an African-American slave and a guide to the cave during the 1840's and 1850's, was one of the first people to make extensive maps of the cave, and named many of the cave's features.
Stephen Bishop was introduced to Mammoth Cave in 1838 by Franklin Gorin. Gorin wrote, after Bishop's death:
"I placed a guide in the cave – the celebrated and
great Stephen, and he aided in making the discoveries.
He was the first person who ever crossed the Bottomless
Pit, and he, myself and another person whose name I have forgotten were the only persons ever at the bottom of
Gorin's Dome to my knowledge.
After Stephen crossed the Bottomless Pit, we discovered
all that part of the cave now known beyond that point. Previous to those discoveries, all interest centered in
what is known as the 'Old Cave' ... but now many of the
points are but little known, although as Stephen was wont
to say, they were 'grand, gloomy and peculiar'."
In 1839, Dr. John Croghan of Louisville bought the Mammoth Cave Estate, including Bishop and its other slaves from their previous owner, Franklin Gorin. Croghan briefly ran an ill-fated tuberculosis hospital in the cave in 1842-43, the vapors of which he believed would cure his patients. A widespread epidemic of tuberculosis ultimately claimed the life of Dr. Croghan in 1849.
Throughout the 19th. century, the fame of Mammoth Cave grew so much that the cave became an international sensation. As a result of the growing renown of the cave, the cave boasted famous visitors such as actor Edwin Booth (his brother, John Wilkes Booth, assassinated Abraham Lincoln in 1865), singer Jenny Lind (who visited the cave on the 5th. April 1851), and violinist Ole Bull who together gave a concert in one of the caves. Two chambers in the caves have since been known as "Booth's Amphitheatre" and "Ole Bull's Concert Hall".
By 1859, when the Louisville and Nashville Railroad opened its main line between these cities, Colonel Larkin J. Procter owned the Mammoth Cave Estate. He also owned the stagecoach line that ran between Glasgow Junction (Park City) and the Mammoth Cave Estate. This line transported tourists to Mammoth Caves until 1886, when he established the Mammoth Cave Railroad.
Early 20th. century: The Kentucky Cave Wars
The difficulties of farming life in the hardscrabble, poor soil of the cave-country influenced local owners of smaller nearby caves to see opportunities for commercial exploitation, particularly given the success of Mammoth Cave as a tourist attraction.
The "Kentucky Cave Wars" was a period of bitter competition between local cave owners for tourist money. Broad tactics of deception were used to lure visitors away from their intended destination to other private show caves. Misleading signs were placed along the roads leading to the Mammoth Cave. A typical strategy during the early days of automobile travel involved representatives (known as "cappers") of other private show caves hopping aboard a tourist's car's running board, and leading the passengers to believe that Mammoth Cave was closed, quarantined, caved in or otherwise inaccessible.
In 1906, Mammoth Cave became accessible by steamboat with the construction of a lock and dam at Brownsville, Kentucky.
In 1908, Max Kämper, a young German mining engineer, arrived at the cave by way of New York. Kämper had just graduated from technical college and his family had sent him on a trip abroad as a graduation present. Originally intending to spend two weeks at Mammoth Cave, Kämper spent several months.
With the assistance of Stephen Bishop, Kämper produced a remarkably accurate instrumental survey of many kilometers of Mammoth Cave, including many new discoveries. Reportedly, Kämper also produced a corresponding survey of the land surface overlying the cave: this information was to be useful in the opening of other entrances to the cave, as soon happened with the Violet City entrance.
The Croghan family suppressed the topographic element of Kämper's map, and it is not known to survive today, although the cave map portion of Kämper's work stands as a triumph of accurate cave cartography: not until the early 1960's and the advent of the modern exploration period would these passages be surveyed and mapped with greater accuracy.
Kämper returned to Berlin, and from the point of view of the Mammoth Cave country, disappeared entirely. It was not until the turn of the 21st. century that a group of German tourists, after visiting the cave, researched Kämper's family and determined his fate: the young Kämper was killed in trench warfare in the Great War on the 10th. December 1916 at the Battle of the Somme.
Famed French cave explorer Édouard-Alfred Martel visited the cave for three days in October 1912. Without access to the closely held survey data, Martel was permitted to make barometric observations in the cave for the purpose of determining the relative elevation of different locations. He identified different levels of the cave, and correctly noted that the level of the Echo River within the cave was controlled by that of the Green River on the surface.
Martel lamented the 1906 construction of the dam at Brownsville, pointing out that this made a full hydrogeologic study of the cave impossible. Among his precise descriptions of Mammoth Cave, Martel suggested that Mammoth Cave was connected to Salts and Colossal Caves: this would not be proven correct until 60 years after Martel's visit.
In the early 1920's, George Morrison created, via blasting, a number of entrances to Mammoth Cave on land not owned by the Croghan Estate. Absent the data from the Croghan's secretive surveys, performed by Kämper, Bishop, and others, which had not been published in a form suitable for determining the geographic extent of the cave, it was now conclusively shown that the Croghans had been for years exhibiting portions of Mammoth Cave which were not under land they owned. Lawsuits were filed and, for a time, different entrances to the cave were operated in direct competition with each other.
In the early 20th. century, Floyd Collins spent ten years exploring the Flint Ridge Cave System (the most important legacy of these explorations was the discovery of Floyd Collins' Crystal Cave and exploration in Salts Cave) before dying at Sand Cave, Kentucky, in 1925.
While exploring Sand Cave, Floyd dislodged a rock onto his leg while in a tight crawl-way and was unable to be rescued before dying of starvation. Attempts to rescue Collins created a mass media sensation; the resulting publicity would draw prominent Kentuckians to initiate a movement which would soon result in the formation of Mammoth Cave National Park.
The National Park Movement (1926–1941)
As the last of the Croghan heirs died, momentum grew among wealthy citizens of Kentucky for the establishment of Mammoth Cave National Park. Private citizens formed the Mammoth Cave National Park Association in 1924. The park was authorized on the 25th. May 1926.
Donated funds were used to purchase some farmsteads in the region, while other tracts within the proposed national park boundary were acquired by right of eminent domain. In contrast to the formation of other national parks in the sparsely populated American West, thousands of people were forcibly relocated in the process of forming Mammoth Cave National Park. Often eminent domain proceedings were bitter, with landowners paid what were considered to be inadequate sums. The resulting acrimony still resonates within the region to this day.
The New Entrance, closed to visitors since 1941, was reopened on the 26th. December 1951, becoming the entrance used for the beginning of the Frozen Niagara tour.
The longest cave (1954–1972)
By 1954, Mammoth Cave National Park's land holdings encompassed all lands within its outer boundary with the exception of two privately held tracts. One of these, the old Lee Collins farm, had been sold to Harry Thomas of Horse Cave, Kentucky, whose grandson, William "Bill" Austin, operated Collins Crystal Cave as a show cave in direct competition with the national park, which was forced to maintain roads leading to the property. Condemnation and purchase of the Crystal Cave property seemed only a matter of time.
In February 1954, a two-week expedition under the auspices of the National Speleological Society was organized at the invitation of Austin: this expedition became known as C-3, or the Collins Crystal Cave Expedition.
The C-3 expedition drew public interest, first from a photo essay published by Robert Halmi in the July 1954 issue of True Magazine, and later from the publication of a double first-person account of the expedition, 'The Caves Beyond: The Story of the Collins Crystal Cave Expedition' by Joe Lawrence, Jr. (then president of the National Speleological Society) and Roger Brucker.
The expedition proved conclusively that passages in Crystal Cave extended toward Mammoth Cave proper, at least exceeding the Crystal Cave property boundaries. However, this information was closely held by the explorers: it was feared that the National Park Service might forbid exploration were this known.
In 1955 Crystal Cave was connected by survey with Unknown Cave, the first connection in the Flint Ridge system.
Some of the participants in the C-3 expedition wished to continue their explorations past the conclusion of the C-3 Expedition, and organized as the Flint Ridge Reconnaissance. This organization was incorporated in 1957 as the Cave Research Foundation. The organization sought to legitimize the cave explorers' activity through the support of original academic and scientific research. Notable scientists who studied Mammoth Cave during this period include Patty Jo Watson.
In March 1961, the Crystal Cave property was sold to the National Park Service for $285,000. At the same time, the Great Onyx Cave property, the only other remaining private inholding, was purchased for $365,000. The Cave Research Foundation was permitted to continue their exploration through a Memorandum of Understanding with the National Park Service.
Colossal Cave was connected by survey to Salts Cave in 1960, and in 1961 Colossal-Salts cave was similarly connected to Crystal-Unknown cave, creating a single cave system under much of Flint Ridge. By 1972, the Flint Ridge Cave System had been surveyed to a length of 86.5 miles (139.2 km), making it the longest cave in the world.
During the 1960's, the Cave Research Foundation (CRF) exploration and mapping teams found passageways in the Flint Ridge Cave System that penetrated under Houchins Valley and came within 800 feet (240 m) of known passages in Mammoth Cave.
In 1972, CRF Chief Cartographer John Wilcox pursued an aggressive program to finally connect the caves, fielding several expeditions from the Flint Ridge side as well as exploring leads in Mammoth Cave.
On a July 1972 trip, deep in the Flint Ridge Cave System, Patricia Crowther—with her slight frame of 115 pounds (52 kg)—crawled through a narrow canyon later dubbed the "Tight Spot", which acted as a filter for larger cavers.
A subsequent trip past the Tight Spot on the 30th. August 1972, by Wilcox, Crowther, Richard Zopf, and Tom Brucker discovered the name "Pete H" inscribed on the wall of a river passage with an arrow pointing in the direction of Mammoth Cave. The name is believed to have been carved by Warner P. "Pete" Hanson, who was active in exploring the cave in the 1930's. Hanson had been killed in World War II. The passage was named Hanson's Lost River by the explorers.
Finally, on the 9th. September 1972, a six-person CRF team of Wilcox, Crowther, Zopf, Gary Eller, Stephen Wells, and Cleveland Pinnix (a National Park Service ranger) followed Hanson's Lost River downstream to discover its connection with Echo River in Cascade Hall of Mammoth Cave.
With this linking of the Flint Ridge and Mammoth Cave systems, the "Everest of Speleology" had been climbed. The integrated cave system contained 144.4 miles (232.4 km) of surveyed passages and had fourteen entrances.
Recent Discoveries
Further connections between Mammoth Cave and smaller caves or cave systems have followed, notably to Proctor/Morrison Cave beneath nearby Joppa Ridge in 1979.
Proctor Cave was discovered by Jonathan Doyle, a Union Army deserter during the Civil War, and was later owned by the Mammoth Cave Railroad, before being explored by the CRF. Morrison cave was discovered by George Morrison in the 1920's. This connection pushed the frontier of Mammoth exploration southeastward.
At the same time, discoveries made outside the park by an independent group called the Central Kentucky Karst Coalition or CKKC resulted in the survey of tens of miles in Roppel Cave east of the park.
Discovered in 1976, Roppel Cave was briefly on the list of the nation's longest caves before it was connected to the Proctor/Morrison's section of the Mammoth Cave System on the 10th. September 1983. The connection was made by two mixed parties of CRF and CKKC explorers. Each party entered through a separate entrance and met in the middle before continuing in the same direction to exit at the opposite entrance. The resulting total surveyed length was near 300 miles (480 km).
On the 19th. March 2005, a connection into the Roppel Cave portion of the system was surveyed from a small cave under Eudora Ridge, adding approximately three miles to the known length of the Mammoth Cave System.
The newly found entrance to the cave, now termed the "Hoover Entrance", had been discovered in September 2003, by Alan Canon and James Wells. Incremental discoveries since then have pushed the total to more than 400 miles (640 km).
It is certain that many more miles of cave passages await discovery in the region. Discovery of new natural entrances is a rare event: the primary mode of discovery involves the pursuit of side passages identified during routine systematic exploration of cave passages entered from known entrances.
Related and Nearby Caves
At least two other massive cave systems lie short distances from Mammoth Cave: the Fisher Ridge Cave System and the Martin Ridge Cave System.
The Fisher Ridge Cave System was discovered in January 1981 by a group of Michigan cavers associated with the Detroit Urban Grotto of the National Speleological Society. So far, the Fisher Ridge Cave System has been mapped to 125 miles (201 km).
In 1976, Rick Schwartz discovered a large cave south of the Mammoth Cave park boundary. This cave became known as the Martin Ridge Cave System in 1996, as new exploration connected the 3 nearby caves of Whigpistle Cave (Schwartz's original entrance), Martin Ridge Cave, and Jackpot Cave.
As of 2018, the Martin Ridge Cave System had been mapped to a length of 34 miles (55 km), and exploration continues.
Biology and Ecosystem
The following species of bats inhabit the caverns: Indiana bat, gray bat, little brown bat, big brown bat, and the eastern pipistrelle bat.
All together, these and more rare bat species such as the eastern small-footed bat had estimated populations of 9–12 million just in the Historic Section.
While these species still exist in Mammoth Cave, their numbers are now no more than a few thousand at best. Ecological restoration of this portion of Mammoth Cave, and facilitating the return of bats, is an ongoing effort. Not all bat species here inhabit the cave; the red bat is a forest-dweller, and is found underground only rarely.
Other animals which inhabit the caves include: two genera of crickets, a cave salamander two genera of eyeless cave fish, a cave crayfish, and a cave shrimp.
Common fossils of the cave include crinoids, blastoids, and gastropods. The Mississippian limestone has yielded fossils of more than a dozen species of shark. In 2020, scientists reported the discovery of part of a Saivodus Striatus, a species comparable in size to a modern great white shark.
The Mammoth Cave Name
The cave's name refers to the large width and length of the passages connecting to the Rotunda just inside the entrance. The name was used long before the extensive cave system was more fully explored and mapped, to reveal a mammoth length of passageways.
No fossils of the woolly mammoth have ever been found in Mammoth Cave, and the name of the cave has nothing to do with this extinct mammal.
Currently Available Tours
Currently (2022) available tours operating in Mammoth Cave are:
-- Accessible Tour
-- Cleaveland Avenue Tour
-- Discovery Self-Guided
-- Domes and Dripstones Tour
-- Extended Historic Tour
-- Frozen Niagara Tour
-- Gothic Avenue Tour
-- Grand Avenue Tour
-- Grand Historic Tour
-- Great Onyx Lantern Tour
-- Historic Tour
-- Mammoth Passage Tour
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Nikon D800E
SIGMA MACRO 70mm F2.8 EX DG for Nikon AF Mount
コムメリナ・エレクタ ‘グレイト・テキサス’
Commelina erecta L., 1753 ‘Great Texas’
(My Original Seedling & Selection)
Flower Size φ6cm
First published in Sp. Pl.: 41 (1753)
This species is accepted.
Confirmation Date: 07/28, 2024.
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Family: Commelinaceae (APG IV)
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Author:
Carl von Linnaeus (1707-1778)
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Publication:
Species Plantarum
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Collation:
1: 41
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Date of Publication:
1 May 1753
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The native range of this species is America, Tropical & S. Africa, Arabian Peninsula. It is a perennial or tuberous geophyte and grows primarily in the seasonally dry tropical biome. It is has environmental uses and social uses, as animal food and a medicine and for food.
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Native to:
Alabama, Angola, Argentina Northeast, Argentina Northwest, Arizona, Arkansas, Aruba, Bahamas, Belize, Benin, Bermuda, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil North, Brazil Northeast, Brazil South, Brazil Southeast, Brazil West-Central, Burkina, Burundi, Cameroon, Cape Provinces, Cape Verde, Cayman Is., Central African Repu, Chad, Colombia, Colorado, Congo, Costa Rica, Cuba, Delaware, District of Columbia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Florida, Free State, French Guiana, Gambia, Georgia, Ghana, Guatemala, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Gulf of Guinea Is., Guyana, Haiti, Honduras, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ivory Coast, Jamaica, Kansas, Kentucky, Kenya, KwaZulu-Natal, Leeward Is., Liberia, Louisiana, Malawi, Mali, Maryland, Mexico Central, Mexico Gulf, Mexico Northeast, Mexico Northwest, Mexico Southeast, Mexico Southwest, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Mozambique, Namibia, Nebraska, Netherlands Antilles, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, North Carolina, Northern Provinces, Oklahoma, Panamá, Paraguay, Pennsylvania, Peru, Puerto Rico, Rhode I., Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Somalia, South Carolina, South Dakota, Southwest Caribbean, Sudan, Suriname, Swaziland, Tanzania, Tennessee, Texas, Togo, Trinidad-Tobago, Turks-Caicos Is., Uganda, Uruguay, Venezuela, Venezuelan Antilles, Virginia, West Virginia, Windward Is., Wisconsin, Wyoming, Yemen, Zaïre, Zimbabwe
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Introduced into:
Bangladesh, Chile Central, Japan, Palestine, Spain
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Annotation:
nom. & typ. cons. prop.
Type-Protolog
Locality:Habitat in Virginia
Type Specimens:
CTP: Herb. Dillenius 63 (OXF-Dill. HE_77-88)
Type discussion:Hassemer, G., D. Iamonico & L. A. Funez. 2018. (2631) Proposal to conserve the name Commelina erecta (Commelinaceae) with a conserved type. Taxon 67(4): 810.
LT: Dillenius, Hort. Eltham. t. 77, f. 88 (1732); ; LT designated by Clarke, Monogr. Phan. 3: ? (1881)
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Lifeform: Hemicr. or tuber geophyte
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Homotypic Names:
Commelina erecta L. var. typica Fernald, Rhodora 42: 438 (1940), not validly publ.
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Publications:
----------------
POWO follows these authorities in accepting this name:
Acevedo-Rodríguez, P. & Strong, M.T. (2005). Monocotyledons and Gymnosperms of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 52: 1-415.
Akoègninou, A., van der Burg, W.J. & van der Maesen, L.J.G. (eds.) (2006). Flore Analytique du Bénin: 1-1034. Backhuys Publishers.
Brunel, J.F., Hiepo, P. & Scholz, H. (eds.) (1984). Flore Analytique du Togo Phanérogames: 1-751. GTZ, Eschborn.
Faden, R. (2012). Commelinaceae. Flora of Tropical East Africa: 1-244.
Figueiredo, E. & Smith, G.F. (2008). Plants of Angola. Strelitzia 22: 1-279. National Botanical Institute, Pretoria.
Gosline, G., Bidault, E., van der Burgt, X., Cahen, D., Challen, G., Condé, N., Couch, C., Couvreur, T.L.P., Dagallier, L.M.J., Darbyshire, I., Dawson, S., Doré, T.S., Goyder, D., Grall, A., Haba, P., Haba, P., Harris, D., Hind, D.J.N., Jongkind, & al. (2023). A Taxonomically-verified and Vouchered Checklist of the Vascular Plants of the Republic of Guinea. Nature, scientific data 10, Article number: 327: [1]-[12].
Govaerts, R. (1999). World Checklist of Seed Plants 3(1, 2a & 2b): 1-1532. MIM, Deurne.
Hassemer, G. (2018). Taxonomic and geographic notes on the neotropical Commelina (Commelinaceae). Webbia; Raccolta de Scritti Botanici 73: 23-53.
Hokche, O., Berry, P.E. & Huber, O. (eds.) (2008). Nuevo Catálogo de la Flora Vascular de Venezuela: 1-859. Fundación Instituto Botánico de Venezuela.
Idárraga-Piedrahita, A., Ortiz, R.D.C., Callejas Posada, R. & Merello, M. (eds.) (2011). Flora de Antioquia: Catálogo de las Plantas Vasculares 2: 1-939. Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín.
Jones, M. (1991). A checklist of Gambian plants: 1-33. Michael Jones, The Gambia College.
Knapp, W.M. & Naczi, R.F.C. (2021). Vascular plants of Maryland, USA. A comprehensive account of the state's botanical diversity. Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 113: 1-151.
López-Ferrari, A.R., Espejo-Serna, A. & Ceja-Romero, J. (2014). Flora de Veracruz 161: 1-127. Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticos, Xalapa, Veracruz.
Nelson Sutherland, C.H. (2008). Catálogo de las plantes vasculares de Honduras. Espermatofitas: 1-1576. SERNA/Guaymuras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Powell, A.M. & Worthington, R.D. (2018). Flowering plants of Trans-Pecos Texas and adjacent areas: 1-1444. BRIT Press.
Sarder, N.U. & Hassan, M.A. (eds.) (2018). Vascular flora of Chittagong and the Chittagong Hill Tracts 1: 1-897. Bangladesh National Herbarium, Dhaka.
Sita, P. & Moutsambote, J.-M. (2005). Catalogue des plantes vasculaires du Congo, ed. sept. 2005: 1-158. ORSTOM, Centre de Brazzaville.
Velayos, M., Aedo, C., Cabezas, F., de la Estrella, M., Barberá, P. & Fero, M. (eds.) (2014). Flora de Guinea Ecuatorial 11: 1-416. Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, Real jardín botánico, Madrid.
Walderley, M.G.L., Shepherd, G.J., Melhem, T.S. & Giulietti, A.M. (eds.) (2005). Flora Fanerogâmica do Estado de São Paulo 4: 1-392. Instituto de Botânica, São Paulo.
de Moura Júnior, E.G. & al. (2015). Updated checklist of aquatic macrophytes from Northern Brazil. Acta Amazonica 45: 111-132.
von Raab-Straube, E. & Raus, T. (eds.) (2015). Euro+Med-Checklist notulae, 4. Willdenowia 45: 119-129.
----------------
Catálogo de Plantas y Líquenes de Colombia:
Bernal, R., Gradstein, S.R. & Celis, M. (eds.). 2015. Catálogo de plantas y líquenes de Colombia. Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá. catalogoplantasdecolombia.unal.edu.co
Flora of West Tropical Africa
Fernald in Rnodora 42: 436-441 (1940)
J. K. Morton in J. Linn. Soc. 60: 183 (1967).
Sp. Pl. 41 (1753)
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Kew Backbone Distributions:
Acevedo-Rodríguez, P. & Strong, M.T. (2012). Catalogue of seed plants of the West Indies. Smithsonian Contributions to Botany 98: 1-1192.
Boudet, G., Lebrun, J.P. & Demange, R. (1986). Catalogue des plantes vasculaires du Mali: 1-465. Etudes d'Elevage et de Médecine Vétérinaire des Pays Tropicaux.
Brunel, J.F., Hiepo, P. & Scholz, H. (eds.) (1984). Flore Analytique du Togo Phanérogames: 1-751. GTZ, Eschborn.
Faden, R. (2012). Commelinaceae. Flora of Tropical East Africa: 1-244.
Gonzalez, F., Nelson Diaz, J. & Lowry, P. (1995). Flora Illustrada de San Andrés y Providencia: 1-281. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Colombia.
Hokche, O., Berry, P.E. & Huber, O. (eds.) (2008). Nuevo Catálogo de la Flora Vascular de Venezuela: 1-859. Fundación Instituto Botánico de Venezuela.
Jones, M. (1991). A checklist of Gambian plants: 1-33. Michael Jones, The Gambia College.
Sarder, N.U. & Hassan, M.A. (eds.) (2018). Vascular flora of Chittagong and the Chittagong Hill Tracts 1: 1-897. Bangladesh National Herbarium, Dhaka.
Sita, P. & Moutsambote, J.-M. (2005). Catalogue des plantes vasculaires du Congo, ed. sept. 2005: 1-158. ORSTOM, Centre de Brazzaville.
de Moura Júnior, E.G. & al. (2015). Updated checklist of aquatic macrophytes from Northern Brazil. Acta Amazonica 45: 111-132.
von Raab-Straube, E. & Raus, T. (eds.) (2015). Euro+Med-Checklist notulae, 4. Willdenowia 45: 119-129.
----------------
Flora of Somalia:
Flora Somalia, Vol 4, (1995) Author: by R. B. Faden [updated by M. Thulin 2008]
----------------
Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia:
Bernal, R., Gradstein, S.R., & Celis, M. (eds.). (2020). Catálogo de Plantas y Líquenes de Colombia. v1.1. Universidad Nacional de Colombia. Dataset/Checklist. doi.org/10.15472/7avdhn
Burkill HM. (1995). The useful plants of west tropical Africa, Vols. 1-3. The useful plants of west tropical Africa, Vols 1-3.
Diazgranados et al. (2021). Catalogue of plants of Colombia. Useful Plants and Fungi of Colombia project. In prep.
Diazgranados, M., Allkin, B., Black N., Cámara-Leret, R., Canteiro C., Carretero J., Eastwood R., Hargreaves S., Hudson A., Milliken W., Nesbitt, M., Ondo, I., Patmore, K., Pironon, S., Turner, R., Ulian, T. (2020). World Checklist of Useful Plant Species. Produced by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Knowledge Network for Biocomplexity.
FPI (2021). Food Plants International. fms.cmsvr.com/fmi/webd/Food_Plants_World?homeurl=https://...
GBIF.org (2021). GBIF species matching tool. www.gbif.org/tools/species-lookup
GRIN (2021). Germplasm Resources Information Network from the United States Department of Agriculture. www.ars-grin.gov
IUCN (2021). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2021-2. www.iucnredlist.org.
Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humbodlt (2014). Plantas alimenticias y medicinales nativas de Colombia. 2567 registros, aportados por: Castellanos, C. (Contacto del recurso), Valderrama, N. (Creador del recurso, Autor), Bernal, Y. (Autor), García, N. (Autor). i2d.humboldt.org.co/ceiba/resource.do?r=ls_colombia_magno...
Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt (2015). Listado de especies de Productos No Maderables del caribe colombiano. 366 registros, aportados por: Garcia, H. (Contacto del Recurso), López Camacho, R. (Creador del recurso), Espitia Palencia, L. (Proveedor del metadatos). Versión 2.0. i2d.humboldt.org.co/ceiba/resource.do?r=le_bst-caribe_pla...
Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt (2019). Lista de especies vedadas por la resolución 213 de 1977. 8256 especies. i2d.humboldt.org.co/ceiba/resource.do?r=le_plantasprioriz...
Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt. (2014). Plantas alimenticias y medicinales nativas de Colombia. 2567 registros, aportados por: Castellanos, C. (Contacto del recurso), Valderrama, N. (Creador del recurso, Autor), Bernal, Y. (Autor), García, N. (Autor). i2d.humboldt.org.co/ceiba/resource.do?r=ls_colombia_magno...
Medicinal Plant Names Services (MPNS) v.10 (2021); mpns.kew.org
PROTA (2021). Plants Resources of Tropical Africa. prota4u.org/database
Plants for malaria, plants for fever: Medicinal species in Latin America, a bibliographic survey: Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Ulian, T., Sacandé, M., Hudson, A., & Mattana, E. (2017). Conservation of indigenous plants to support community livelihoods: the MGU–Useful Plants Project. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 60:668-683.
Willis, K.J. (ed.) (2017). State of the World’s Plants 2017. Report. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
-----------------------------------
This name is Accepted by:
Brunel, J.F., Hiepo, P. & Scholz, H. (eds.) (1984). Flore Analytique du Togo Phanérogames: 1-751. GTZ, Eschborn.
Jones, M. (1991). A checklist of Gambian plants: 1-33. Michael Jones, The Gambia College.
Govaerts, R. (1999). World Checklist of Seed Plants 3(1, 2a & 2b): 1-1532. MIM, Deurne.
Sita, P. & Moutsambote, J.-M. (2005). Catalogue des plantes vasculaires du Congo , ed. sept. 2005: 1-158. ORSTOM, Centre de Brazzaville.
Walderley, M.G.L., Shepherd, G.J., Melhem, T.S. & Giulietti, A.M. (eds.) (2005). Flora Fanerogâmica do Estado de São Paulo 4: 1-392. Instituto de Botânica, São Paulo.
Acevedo-Rodríguez, P. & Strong, M.T. (2005). Monocotyledons and Gymnosperms of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands. Contributions from the United States National Herbarium 52: 1-415.
Akoègninou, A., van der Burg, W.J. & van der Maesen, L.J.G. (eds.) (2006). Flore Analytique du Bénin: 1-1034. Backhuys Publishers.
Nelson Sutherland, C.H. (2008). Catálogo de las plantes vasculares de Honduras. Espermatofitas: 1-1576. SERNA/Guaymuras, Tegucigalpa, Honduras.
Hokche, O., Berry, P.E. & Huber, O. (eds.) (2008). Nuevo Catálogo de la Flora Vascular de Venezuela: 1-859. Fundación Instituto Botánico de Venezuela.
Figueiredo, E. & Smith, G.F. (2008). Plants of Angola. Strelitzia 22: 1-279. National Botanical Institute, Pretoria.
Idárraga-Piedrahita, A., Ortiz, R.D.C., Callejas Posada, R. & Merello, M. (eds.) (2011). Flora de Antioquia: Catálogo de las Plantas Vasculares 2: 1-939. Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín.
Faden, R. (2012). Commelinaceae. Flora of Tropical East Africa: 1-244.
López-Ferrari, A.R., Espejo-Serna, A. & Ceja-Romero, J. (2014). Flora de Veracruz 161: 1-127. Instituto Nacional de Investigaciones sobre Recursos Bióticos, Xalapa, Veracruz.
Velayos, M., Aedo, C., Cabezas, F., de la Estrella, M., Barberá, P. & Fero, M. (eds.) (2014). Flora de Guinea Ecuatorial 11: 1-416. Consejo superior de investigaciones científicas, Real jardín botánico, Madrid.
von Raab-Straube, E. & Raus, T. (eds.) (2015). Euro+Med-Checklist notulae, 4. Willdenowia 45: 119-129.
de Moura Júnior, E.G. & al. (2015). Updated checklist of aquatic macrophytes from Northern Brazil. Acta Amazonica 45: 111-132.
Sarder, N.U. & Hassan, M.A. (eds.) (2018). Vascular flora of Chittagong and the Chittagong Hill Tracts 1: 1-897. Bangladesh National Herbarium, Dhaka.
Hassemer, G. (2018). Taxonomic and geographic notes on the neotropical Commelina (Commelinaceae). Webbia; Raccolta de Scritti Botanici 73: 23-53.
-----------------------------------
A perennial plant that grows naturally in the central and southeastern parts of the USA. I have an individual of Texas ancestry.
Place it in a bright half-day shade that avoids the west sun, not in the shade.
The flowers bloom for a long time, with a flowering period of May to October. The cool autumn has a darker flower color, and the flower color is slightly lighter in the hot season when the temperature exceeds 30 degrees Celsius.
It is a perennial plant, and if managed indoors in winter, rhizomes will remain, and in spring it will sprout again and bloom from early summer to late autumn.
If possible, replant with new soil every year to divide the stock. The reason is that continuous cropping disorders are likely to occur.
As fertilizer, a proper amount of slow-release fertilizer is applied as the main fertilizer, or 1000 diluted liquid chemical fertilizer is given once a week.
美國中南部～東南部に自生する多年草～宿根草。テキサスの系統が手許にあります。
置き場所は、あまり日蔭ではなく西日の避けられる明るい半日蔭に置きます。
開花期間が5～10月くらいまでと、長く花が咲きます。涼しい秋のほうが濃い色の花色になり、気温が30度を超える暑い時期は花色はやや薄くなります。
多年草で冬は屋内で管理すると根茎が残り、春にはまた芽が出て初夏～晩秋に開花します。
出来れば毎年新しい用土で株分けを兼ねて植え替えを行います。連作障害が出やすいのがその理由です。
肥料は元肥として緩効性肥料を適量施肥するか、液体化学肥料の1000希釈液を週に一度与えています。
Just keeping this here for as a backup and proof that at least one of >my pictures has been published.
And again
Boomerang aka A Secret Kept, a 2010 novel by Tatiana De Rosnay.
This is the Swedish cover. :)
Hey look! I got another article published over at DPS! It's not my image (I forgot to submit one lol). It's over here:
www.digital-photography-school.com/5-key-skills-for-the-m...
oh and of course the blog, as usual, where you can get more of the same...or better...is over at www.shotslot.net
Woohoo!!
Shot at three times life size with a Canon MPE-65mm macro lens back in March of 2009. I wanted to see how much my post processing skills had changed. Blog post here.
Published in the Jan/Feb 2011 edition of Nation Geographic Young Explore magazine, pages 10 and 11.
The Kaiser Permanente Center for Total Health is sending its Google Glass V1 back as part of the Explorer exchange program.
Published in: Google Glass rolls out a try-before-you-buy program
The classic front view!
Published at www.worldreviewer.com/experiences/mountains/table-mountai... and at www.capetown.travel/blog/entry/table_mountain_a_cape_town....
Also published at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_Mountain, matadortrips.com/top-15-adventure-towns-worldwide/ and at en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Cape_Town.
The Postcard
A postally unused carte postale published by L. B. of Dijon and distributed by Ch. Macé of Versailles. The card has a divided back.
The Gardens of Versailles
The Gardens of Versailles are situated to the west of the palace. They cover some 800 hectares (1,977 acres) of land, much of which is landscaped in the classic French formal garden style perfected here by André Le Nôtre.
Beyond the surrounding belt of woodland, the gardens are bordered by the urban areas of Versailles to the east and Le Chesnay to the north-east, by the National Arboretum de Chèvreloup to the north, the Versailles plain (a protected wildlife preserve) to the west, and by the Satory Forest to the south.
In 1979, the gardens along with the château were inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List due to its cultural importance during the 17th. and 18th. centuries.
The gardens are now one of the most visited public sites in France, receiving more than six million visitors a year.
The gardens contain 200,000 trees, 210,000 flowers planted annually, and feature meticulously manicured lawns and parterres, as well as many sculptures.
50 fountains containing 620 water jets, fed by 35 km. of piping, are located throughout the gardens. Dating from the time of Louis XIV and still using much of the same network of hydraulics as was used during the Ancien Régime, the fountains contribute to making the gardens of Versailles unique.
On weekends from late spring to early autumn, there are the Grandes Eaux - spectacles during which all the fountains in the gardens are in full play. Designed by André Le Nôtre, the Grand Canal is the masterpiece of the Gardens of Versailles.
In the Gardens too, the Grand Trianon was built to provide the Sun King with the retreat that he wanted. The Petit Trianon is associated with Marie-Antoinette, who spent time there with her closest relatives and friends.
The Du Bus Plan for the Gardens of Versailles
With Louis XIII's purchase of lands from Jean-François de Gondi in 1632 and his assumption of the seigneurial role of Versailles in the 1630's, formal gardens were laid out west of the château.
Claude Mollet and Hilaire Masson designed the gardens, which remained relatively unchanged until the expansion ordered under Louis XIV in the 1660's. This early layout, which has survived in the so-called Du Bus plan of c.1662, shows an established topography along which lines of the gardens evolved. This is evidenced in the clear definition of the main east–west and north–south axis that anchors the gardens' layout.
Louis XIV
In 1661, after the disgrace of the finance minister Nicolas Fouquet, who was accused by rivals of embezzling crown funds in order to build his luxurious château at Vaux-le-Vicomte, Louis XIV turned his attention to Versailles.
With the aid of Fouquet's architect Louis Le Vau, painter Charles Le Brun, and landscape architect André Le Nôtre, Louis began an embellishment and expansion program at Versailles that would occupy his time and worries for the remainder of his reign.
From this point forward, the expansion of the gardens of Versailles followed the expansions of the château.
(a) The First Building Campaign
In 1662, minor modifications to the château were undertaken; however, greater attention was given to developing the gardens. Existing bosquets (clumps of trees) and parterres were expanded, and new ones created.
Most significant among the creations at this time were the Versailles Orangerie and the "Grotte de Thétys". The Orangery, which was designed by Louis Le Vau, was located south of the château, a situation that took advantage of the natural slope of the hill. It provided a protected area in which orange trees were kept during the winter months.
The "Grotte de Thétys", which was located to the north of the château, formed part of the iconography of the château and of the gardens that aligned Louis XIV with solar imagery. The grotto was completed during the second building campaign.
By 1664, the gardens had evolved to the point that Louis XIV inaugurated the gardens with the fête galante called Les Plaisirs de L'Île Enchantée. The event, was ostensibly to celebrate his mother, Anne d'Autriche, and his consort Marie-Thérèse but in reality celebrated Louise de La Vallière, Louis' mistress.
Guests were regaled with entertainments in the gardens over a period of one week. As a result of this fête - particularly the lack of housing for guests (most of them had to sleep in their carriages), Louis realised the shortcomings of Versailles, and began to expand the château and the gardens once again.
(b) The Second Building Campaign
Between 1664 and 1668, there was a flurry of activity in the gardens - especially with regard to fountains and new bosquets; it was during this time that the imagery of the gardens exploited Apollo and solar imagery as metaphors for Louis XIV.
Le Va's enveloppe of the Louis XIII's château provided a means by which, though the decoration of the garden façade, imagery in the decors of the grands appartements of the king and queen formed a symbiosis with the imagery of the gardens.
With this new phase of construction, the gardens assumed the design vocabulary that remained in force until the 18th. century. Solar and Apollonian themes predominated with projects constructed at this time.
Three additions formed the topological and symbolic nexus of the gardens during this phase of construction: the completion of the "Grotte de Thétys", the "Bassin de Latone", and the "Bassin d'Apollon".
The Grotte de Thétys
Started in 1664 and finished in 1670 with the installation of the statuary, the grotto formed an important symbolic and technical component to the gardens. Symbolically, the "Grotte de Thétys" related to the myth of Apollo - and by association to Louis XIV.
It represented the cave of the sea nymph Thetis, where Apollo rested after driving his chariot to light the sky. The grotto was a freestanding structure located just north of the château.
The interior, which was decorated with shell-work to represent a sea cave, contained the statue group by the Marsy brothers depicting the sun god attended by nereids.
Technically, the "'Grotte de Thétys" played a critical role in the hydraulic system that supplied water to the garden. The roof of the grotto supported a reservoir that stored water pumped from the Clagny pond and which fed the fountains lower in the garden via gravity.
The Bassin de Latone
Located on the east–west axis is the Bassin de Latone. Designed by André Le Nôtre, sculpted by Gaspard and Balthazar Marsy, and constructed between 1668 and 1670, the fountain depicts an episode from Ovid's Metamorphoses.
Altona and her children, Apollo and Diana, being tormented with mud slung by Lycian peasants, who refused to let her and her children drink from their pond, appealed to Jupiter who responded by turning the Lycians into frogs.
This episode from mythology has been seen as a reference to the revolts of the Fronde, which occurred during the minority of Louis XIV. The link between Ovid's story and this episode from French history is emphasised by the reference to "mud slinging" in a political context.
The revolts of the Fronde - the word fronde also means slingshot - have been regarded as the origin of the use of the term "mud slinging" in a political context.
The Bassin d'Apollon
Further along the east–west axis is the Bassin d'Apollon. The Apollo Fountain, which was constructed between 1668 and 1671, depicts the sun god driving his chariot to light the sky. The fountain forms a focal point in the garden, and serves as a transitional element between the gardens of the Petit Parc and the Grand Canal.
The Grand Canal
With a length of 1,500 metres and a width of 62 metres, the Grand Canal, which was built between 1668 and 1671, prolongs the east–west axis to the walls of the Grand Parc. During the Ancien Régime, the Grand Canal served as a venue for boating parties.
In 1674 the king ordered the construction of Petite Venise (Little Venice). Located at the junction of the Grand Canal and the northern transversal branch, Little Venice housed the caravels and yachts that were received from The Netherlands and the gondolas and gondoliers received as gifts from the Doge of Venice.
The Grand Canal also served a practical role. Situated at a low point in the gardens, it collected water that drained from the fountains in the garden above. Water from the Grand Canal was pumped back to the reservoir on the roof of the Grotte de Thétys via a network of windmill- and horse-powered pumps.
The Parterre d'Eau
Situated above the Latona Fountain is the terrace of the château, known as the Parterre d'Eau. Forming a transitional element from the château to the gardens below, the Parterre d'Eau provided a setting in which the symbolism of the grands appartements synthesized with the iconography of the gardens.
In 1664, Louis XIV commissioned a series of statues intended to decorate the water feature of the Parterre d'Eau. The Grande Command, as the commission is known, comprised twenty-four statues of the classic quaternities and four additional statues depicting abductions from the classic past.
Evolution of the Bosquets
One of the distinguishing features of the gardens during the second building campaign was the proliferation of bosquets. Expanding the layout established during the first building campaign, Le Nôtre added or expanded on no fewer that ten bosquets between 1670 and 1678:
-- The Bosquet du Marais
-- The Bosquet du Théâtre d'Eau, Île du Roi
-- The Miroir d'Eau
-- The Salle des Festins (Salle du Conseil)
-- The Bosquet des Trois Fontaines
-- The Labyrinthe
-- The Bosquet de l'Arc de Triomphe
-- The Bosquet de la Renommée (Bosquet des Dômes)
-- The Bosquet de l'Encélade
-- The Bosquet des Sources
In addition to the expansion of existing bosquets and the construction of new ones, there were two additional projects that defined this era, the Bassin des Sapins and the Pièce d'Eau des Suisses.
-- The Bassin des Sapins
In 1676, the Bassin des Sapins, which was located north of the château below the Allée des Marmoset's was designed to form a topological pendant along the north–south axis with the Pièce d'Eau des Suisses located at the base of the Satory hill south of the château.
Later modifications in the gardens transformed this fountain into the Bassin de Neptune.
-- Pièce d'Eau des Suisses
Excavated in 1678, the Pièce d'Eau des Suisses - named after the Swiss Guards who constructed the lake - occupied an area of marshes and ponds, some of which had been used to supply water for the fountains in the garden.
This water feature, with a surface area of more than 15 hectares (37 acres), is the second largest - after the Grand Canal - at Versailles.
(c) The Third Building Campaign
Modifications to the gardens during the third building campaign were distinguished by a stylistic change from the natural aesthetic of André Le Nôtre to the architectonic style of Jules Hardouin Mansart.
The first major modification to the gardens during this phase occurred in 1680 when the Tapis Vert - the expanse of lawn that stretches between the Latona Fountain and the Apollo Fountain - achieved its final size and definition under the direction of André Le Nôtre.
Beginning in 1684, the Parterre d'Eau was remodelled under the direction of Jules Hardouin-Mansart. Statues from the Grande Commande of 1674 were relocated to other parts of the garden; two twin octagonal basins were constructed and decorated with bronze statues representing the four main rivers of France.
In the same year, Le Vau's Orangerie, located to south of the Parterrre d'Eau was demolished to accommodate a larger structure designed by Jules Hardouin-Mansart.
In addition to the Orangerie, the Escaliers des Cent Marches, which facilitated access to the gardens from the south, to the Pièce d'Eau des Suisses, and to the Parterre du Midi were constructed at this time, giving the gardens just south of the château their present configuration and decoration.
Additionally, to accommodate the anticipated construction of the Aile des Nobles - the north wing of the château - the Grotte de Thétys was demolished.
With the construction of the Aile des Nobles (1685–1686), the Parterre du Nord was remodelled to respond to the new architecture of this part of the château.
To compensate for the loss of the reservoir on top of the Grotte de Thétys and to meet the increased demand for water, Jules Hardouin-Mansart designed new and larger reservoirs situated north of the Aile des Nobles.
Construction of the ruinously expensive Canal de l'Eure was inaugurated in 1685; designed by Vauban it was intended to bring waters of the Eure over 80 kilometres, including aqueducts of heroic scale, but the works were abandoned in 1690.
Between 1686 and 1687, the Bassin de Latone, under the direction of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, was rebuilt. It is this final version of the fountain that one sees today at Versailles.
During this phase of construction, three of the garden's major bosquets were modified or created. Beginning with the Galerie des Antiques, this bosquet was constructed in 1680 on the site of the earlier and short-lived Galerie d'Eau. This bosquet was conceived as an open-air gallery in which antique statues and copies acquired by the Académie de France in Rome were displayed.
The following year, construction began on the Salle de Bal. Located in a secluded section of the garden west of the Orangerie, this bosquet was designed as an amphitheater that featured a cascade – the only one surviving in the gardens of Versailles. The Salle de Bal was inaugurated in 1685 with a ball hosted by the Grand Dauphin.
Between 1684 and 1685, Jules Hardouin-Mansart built the Colonnade. Located on the site of Le Nôtre's Bosquet des Sources, this bosquet featured a circular peristyle formed from thirty-two arches with twenty-eight fountains, and was Hardouin-Mansart's most architectural of the bosquets built in the gardens of Versailles.
(d) The Fourth Building Campaign
Due to financial constraints arising from the War of the League of Augsburg and the War of the Spanish Succession, no significant work on the gardens was undertaken until 1704.
Between 1704 and 1709, bosquets were modified, some quite radically, with new names suggesting the new austerity that characterised the latter years of Louis XIV's reign.
Louis XV
With the departure of the king and court from Versailles in 1715 following the death of Louis XIV, the palace and gardens entered an era of uncertainty.
In 1722, Louis XV and the court returned to Versailles. Seeming to heed his great-grandfather's admonition not to engage in costly building campaigns, Louis XV did not undertake the costly rebuilding that Louis XIV had.
During the reign of Louis XV, the only significant addition to the gardens was the completion of the Bassin de Neptune (1738–1741).
Rather than expend resources on modifying the gardens at Versailles, Louis XV - an avid botanist - directed his efforts at Trianon. In the area now occupied by the Hameau de la Reine, Louis XV constructed and maintained les Jardins Botaniques.
In 1761, Louis XV commissioned Ange-Jacques Gabriel to build the Petit Trianon as a residence that would allow him to spend more time near the Jardins Botaniques. It was at the Petit Trianon that Louis XV fell fatally ill with smallpox; he died at Versailles on the 10th. May 1774.
Louis XVI
Upon Louis XVI's ascension to the throne, the gardens of Versailles underwent a transformation that recalled the fourth building campaign of Louis XIV. Engendered by a change in outlook as advocated by Jean-Jacques Rousseau and the Philosophes, the winter of 1774–1775 witnessed a complete replanting of the gardens.
Trees and shrubbery dating from the reign of Louis XIV were felled or uprooted with the intent of transforming the French formal garden of Le Nôtre and Hardouin-Mansart into a version of an English landscape garden.
The attempt to convert Le Nôtre's masterpiece into an English-style garden failed to achieve its desired goal. Owing largely to the topology of the land, the English aesthetic was abandoned and the gardens replanted in the French style.
However, with an eye on economy, Louis XVI ordered the Palisades - the labour-intensive clipped hedging that formed walls in the bosquets - to be replaced with rows of lime trees or chestnut trees. Additionally, a number of the bosquets dating from the time of the Sun King were extensively modified or destroyed.
The most significant contribution to the gardens during the reign of Louis XVI was the Grotte des Bains d'Apollon. The rockwork grotto set in an English style bosquet was the masterpiece of Hubert Robert in which the statues from the Grotte de Thétys were placed.
Revolution
In 1792, under order from the National Convention, some of the trees in the gardens were felled, while parts of the Grand Parc were parcelled and dispersed.
Sensing the potential threat to Versailles, Louis Claude Marie Richard (1754–1821) – director of the Jardins Botaniques and grandson of Claude Richard – lobbied the government to save Versailles. He succeeded in preventing further dispersing of the Grand Parc, and threats to destroy the Petit Parc were abolished by suggesting that the parterres could be used to plant vegetable gardens, and that orchards could occupy the open areas of the garden.
These plans were never put into action; however, the gardens were opened to the public - it was not uncommon to see people washing their laundry in the fountains and spreading it on the shrubbery to dry.
Napoléon I
The Napoleonic era largely ignored Versailles. In the château, a suite of rooms was arranged for the use of the empress Marie-Louise, but the gardens were left unchanged, save for the disastrous felling of trees in the Bosquet de l'Arc de Triomphe and the Bosquet des Trois Fontaines. Massive soil erosion necessitated planting of new trees.
Restoration
With the restoration of the Bourbons in 1814, the gardens of Versailles witnessed the first modifications since the Revolution. In 1817, Louis XVIII ordered the conversion of the Île du Roi and the Miroir d'Eau into an English-style garden - the Jardin du Roi.
The July Monarchy; The Second Empire
While much of the château's interior was irreparably altered to accommodate the Museum of the History of France (inaugurated by Louis-Philippe on the 10th. June 1837), the gardens, by contrast, remained untouched.
With the exception of the state visit of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in 1855, at which time the gardens were a setting for a gala fête that recalled the fêtes of Louis XIV, Napoléon III ignored the château, preferring instead the château of Compiègne.
Pierre de Nolhac
With the arrival of Pierre de Nolhac as director of the museum in 1892, a new era of historical research began at Versailles. Nolhac, an ardent archivist and scholar, began to piece together the history of Versailles, and subsequently established the criteria for restoration of the château and preservation of the gardens, which are ongoing to this day.
Bosquets of the Gardens
Owing to the many modifications made to the gardens between the 17th. and the 19th. centuries, many of the bosquets have undergone multiple modifications, which were often accompanied by name changes.
Deux Bosquets - Bosquet de la Girondole - Bosquet du Dauphin - Quinconce du Nord - Quinconce du Midi
These two bosquets were first laid out in 1663. They were arranged as a series of paths around four salles de verdure and which converged on a central "room" that contained a fountain.
In 1682, the southern bosquet was remodeled as the Bosquet de la Girondole, thus named due to spoke-like arrangement of the central fountain. The northern bosquet was rebuilt in 1696 as the Bosquet du Dauphin with a fountain that featured a dolphin.
During the replantation of 1774–1775, both the bosquets were destroyed. The areas were replanted with lime trees and were rechristened the Quinconce du Nord and the Quinconce du Midi.
Labyrinthe - Bosquet de la Reine
In 1665, André Le Nôtre planned a hedge maze of unadorned paths in an area south of the Latona Fountain near the Orangerie. In 1669, Charles Perrault - author of the Mother Goose Tales - advised Louis XIV to remodel the Labyrinthe in such a way as to serve the Dauphin's education.
Between 1672 and 1677, Le Nôtre redesigned the Labyrinthe to feature thirty-nine fountains that depicted stories from Aesop's Fables. The sculptors Jean-Baptiste Tuby, Étienne Le Hongre, Pierre Le Gros, and the brothers Gaspard and Balthazard Marsy worked on these thirty-nine fountains, each of which was accompanied by a plaque on which the fable was printed, with verse written by Isaac de Benserade; from these plaques, Louis XIV's son learned to read.
Once completed in 1677, the Labyrinthe contained thirty-nine fountains with 333 painted metal animal sculptures. The water for the elaborate waterworks was conveyed from the Seine by the Machine de Marly.
The Labyrinthe contained fourteen water-wheels driving 253 pumps, some of which worked at a distance of three-quarters of a mile.
Citing repair and maintenance costs, Louis XVI ordered the Labyrinthe demolished in 1778. In its place, an arboretum of exotic trees was planted as an English-styled garden.
Rechristened Bosquet de la Reine, it would be in this part of the garden that an episode of the Affair of the Diamond Necklace, which compromised Marie-Antoinette, transpired in 1785.
Bosquet de la Montagne d'Eau - Bosquet de l'Étoile
Originally designed by André Le Nôtre in 1661 as a salle de verdure, this bosquet contained a path encircling a central pentagonal area. In 1671, the bosquet was enlarged with a more elaborate system of paths that served to enhance the new central water feature, a fountain that resembled a mountain, hence the bosquets new name: Bosquet de la Montagne d'Eau.
The bosquet was completely remodeled in 1704 at which time it was rechristened Bosquet de l'Étoile.
Bosquet du Marais - Bosquet du Chêne Vert - Bosquet des Bains d'Apollon - Grotte des Bains d'Apollon
Created in 1670, this bosquet originally contained a central rectangular pool surrounded by a turf border. Edging the pool were metal reeds that concealed numerous jets for water; a swan that had water jetting from its beak occupied each corner.
The centre of the pool featured an iron tree with painted tin leaves that sprouted water from its branches. Because of this tree, the bosquet was also known as the Bosquet du Chêne Vert.
In 1705, this bosquet was destroyed in order to allow for the creation of the Bosquet des Bains d'Apollon, which was created to house the statues had once stood in the Grotte de Thétys.
During the reign of Louis XVI, Hubert Robert remodeled the bosquet, creating a cave-like setting for the Marsy statues. The bosquet was renamed the Grotte des Bains d'Apollon.
Île du Roi - Miroir d'Eau - Jardin du Roi
Originally designed in 1671 as two separate water features, the larger - Île du Roi - contained an island that formed the focal point of a system of elaborate fountains.
The Île du Roi was separated from the Miroir d'Eau by a causeway that featured twenty-four water jets. In 1684, the island was removed and the total number of water jets in the bosquet was significantly reduced.
The year 1704 witnessed a major renovation of the bosquet, at which time the causeway was remodelled and most of the water jets were removed.
A century later, in 1817, Louis XVIII ordered the Île du Roi and the Miroir d'Eau to be completely remodeled as an English-style garden. At this time, the bosquet was rechristened Jardin du Roi.
Salle des Festins - Salle du Conseil - Bosquet de l'Obélisque
In 1671, André Le Nôtre conceived a bosquet - originally christened Salle des Festins and later called Salle du Conseil - that featured a quatrefoil island surrounded by a channel containing fifty water jets. Access to the island was obtained by two swing bridges.
Beyond the channel and placed at the cardinal points within the bosquet were four additional fountains. Under the direction of Jules Hardouin-Mansart, the bosquet was completely remodeled in 1706. The central island was replaced by a large basin raised on five steps, which was surrounded by a canal. The central fountain contained 230 jets that, when in play, formed an obelisk – hence the new name Bosquet de l'Obélisque.
Bosquet du Théâtre d'Eau - Bosquet du Rond-Vert
The central feature of this bosquet, which was designed by Le Nôtre between 1671 and 1674, was an auditorium/theatre sided by three tiers of turf seating that faced a stage decorated with four fountains alternating with three radiating cascades.
Between 1680 and Louis XIV's death in 1715, there was near-constant rearranging of the statues that decorated the bosquet.
In 1709, the bosquet was rearranged with the addition of the Fontaine de l'Île aux Enfants. As part of the replantation of the gardens ordered by Louis XVI during the winter of 1774–1775, the Bosquet du Théâtre d'Eau was destroyed and replaced with the unadorned Bosquet du Rond-Vert. The Bosquet du Théâtre d'Eau was recreated in 2014, with South Korean businessman and photographer Yoo Byung-eun being the sole patron, donating €1.4 million.
Bosquet des Trois Fontaines - Berceau d'Eau
Situated to the west of the Allée des Marmousets and replacing the short-lived Berceau d'Eau (a long and narrow bosquet created in 1671 that featured a water bower made by numerous jets of water), the enlarged bosquet was transformed by Le Nôtre in 1677 into a series of three linked rooms.
Each room contained a number of fountains that played with special effects. The fountains survived the modifications that Louis XIV ordered for other fountains in the gardens in the early 18th. century and were subsequently spared during the 1774–1775 replantation of the gardens.
In 1830, the bosquet was replanted, at which time the fountains were suppressed. Due to storm damage in the park in 1990 and then again in 1999, the Bosquet des Trois Fontaines was restored and re-inaugurated on the 12th. June 2004.
Bosquet de l'Arc de Triomphe
This bosquet was originally planned in 1672 as a simple pavillon d'eau - a round open expanse with a square fountain in the centre. In 1676, this bosquet was enlarged and redecorated along political lines that alluded to French military victories over Spain and Austria, at which time the triumphal arch was added - hence the name.
As with the Bosquet des Trois Fontaines, this bosquet survived the modifications of the 18th. century, but was replanted in 1830, at which time the fountains were removed.
Bosquet de la Renommée - Bosquet des Dômes
Built in 1675, the Bosquet de la Renommée featured a fountain statue of Fame. With the relocation of the statues from the Grotte de Thétys in 1684, the bosquet was remodelled to accommodate the statues, and the Fame fountain was removed.
At this time the bosquet was rechristened Bosquet des Bains d'Apollon. As part of the reorganisation of the garden that was ordered by Louis XIV in the early part of the 18th. century, the Apollo grouping was moved once again to the site of the Bosquet du Marais - located near the Latona Fountain - which was destroyed and was replaced by the new Bosquet des Bains d'Apollon.
The statues were installed on marble plinths from which water issued; and each statue grouping was protected by an intricately carved and gilded baldachin.
The old Bosquet des Bains d'Apollon was renamed Bosquet des Dômes due to two domed pavilions built in the bosquet.
Bosquet de l'Encélade
Created in 1675 at the same time as the Bosquet de la Renommée, the fountain of this bosquet depicts Enceladus, a fallen Giant who was condemned to live below Mount Etna, being consumed by volcanic lava.
From its conception, this fountain was conceived as an allegory of Louis XIV's victory over the Fronde. In 1678, an octagonal ring of turf and eight rocaille fountains surrounding the central fountain were added. These additions were removed in 1708.
When in play, this fountain has the tallest jet of all the fountains in the gardens of Versailles - 25 metres.
Bosquet des Sources - La Colonnade
Designed as a simple unadorned salle de verdure by Le Nôtre in 1678, the landscape architect enhanced and incorporated an existing stream to create a bosquet that featured rivulets that twisted among nine islets.
In 1684, Jules Hardouin-Mansart completely redesigned the bosquet by constructing a circular arched double peristyle. The Colonnade, as it was renamed, originally featured thirty-two arches and thirty-one fountains – a single jet of water splashed into a basin center under the arch.
In 1704, three additional entrances to the Colonnade were added, which reduced the number of fountains from thirty-one to twenty-eight. The statue that currently occupies the centre of the Colonnade - the Abduction of Persephone - (from the Grande Commande of 1664) was set in place in 1696.
Galerie d'Eau - Galerie des Antiques - Salle des Marronniers
Occupying the site of the Galerie d'Eau (1678), the Galerie des Antiques was designed in 1680 to house the collection of antique statues and copies of antique statues acquired by the Académie de France in Rome.
Surrounding a central area paved with colored stone, a channel was decorated with twenty statues on plinths, each separated by three jets of water.
The Galerie was completely remodeled in 1704 when the statues were transferred to Marly and the bosquet was replanted with horse chestnut trees - hence the current name Salle des Marronniers.
Salle de Bal
This bosquet, which was designed by Le Nôtre and built between 1681 and 1683, features a semi-circular cascade that forms the backdrop for a salle de verdure.
Interspersed with gilt lead torchères, which supported candelabra for illumination, the Salle de Bal was inaugurated in 1683 by Louis XIV's son, the Grand Dauphin, with a dance party.
The Salle de Bal was remodeled in 1707 when the central island was removed and an additional entrance was added.
Replantations of the Gardens
Common to any long-lived garden is replantation, and Versailles is no exception. In their history, the gardens of Versailles have undergone no less than five major replantations, which have been executed for practical and aesthetic reasons.
During the winter of 1774–1775, Louis XVI ordered the replanting of the gardens on the grounds that many of the trees were diseased or overgrown, and needed to be replaced.
Also, as the formality of the 17th.-century garden had fallen out of fashion, this replantation sought to establish a new informality in the gardens - that would also be less expensive to maintain.
This, however, was not achieved, as the topology of the gardens favored the Jardin à la Française over an English-style garden.
Then, in 1860, much of the old growth from Louis XVI's replanting was removed and replaced. In 1870, a violent storm struck the area, damaging and uprooting scores of trees, which necessitated a massive replantation program.
However, owing to the Franco-Prussian War, which toppled Napoléon III, and the Commune de Paris, replantation of the garden did not get underway until 1883.
The most recent replantations of the gardens were precipitated by two storms that battered Versailles in 1990 and then again in 1999. The storm damage at Versailles and Trianon amounted to the loss of thousands of trees - the worst such damage in the history of Versailles.
The replantations have allowed museum and governmental authorities to restore and rebuild some of the bosquets that were abandoned during the reign of Louis XVI, such as the Bosquet des Trois Fontaines, which was restored in 2004.
Catherine Pégard, the head of the public establishment which administers Versailles, has stated that the intention is to return the gardens to their appearance under Louis XIV, specifically as he described them in his 1704 description, Manière de Montrer les Jardins de Versailles.
This involves restoring some of the parterres like the Parterre du Midi to their original formal layout, as they appeared under Le Nôtre. This was achieved in the Parterre de Latone in 2013, when the 19th. century lawns and flower beds were torn up and replaced with boxwood-enclosed turf and gravel paths to create a formal arabesque design.
Pruning is also done to keep trees at between 17 and 23 metres (56 to 75 feet), so as not to spoil the carefully designed perspectives of the gardens.
Owing to the natural cycle of replantations that has occurred at Versailles, it is safe to state that no trees dating from the time of Louis XIV are to be found in the gardens.
Problems With Water
The marvel of the gardens of Versailles - then as now - is the fountains. Yet, the very element that animates the gardens, water, has proven to be the affliction of the gardens since the time of Louis XIV.
The gardens of Louis XIII required water, and local ponds provided an adequate supply. However, once Louis XIV began expanding the gardens with more and more fountains, supplying the gardens with water became a critical challenge.
To meet the needs of the early expansions of the gardens under Louis XIV, water was pumped to the gardens from ponds near the château, with the Clagny pond serving as the principal source.
Water from the pond was pumped to the reservoir on top of the Grotte de Thétys, which fed the fountains in the garden by means of gravitational hydraulics. Other sources included a series of reservoirs located on the Satory Plateau south of the château.
The Grand Canal
By 1664, increased demand for water necessitated additional sources. In that year, Louis Le Vau designed the Pompe, a water tower built north of the château. The Pompe drew water from the Clagny pond using a system of windmills and horsepower to a cistern housed in the Pompe's building. The capacity of the Pompe 600 cubic metres per day - alleviated some of the water shortages in the garden.
With the completion of the Grand Canal in 1671, which served as drainage for the fountains of the garden, water, via a system of windmills, was pumped back to the reservoir on top of the Grotte de Thétys.
While this system solved some of the water supply problems, there was never enough water to keep all of the fountains running in the garden in full-play all of the time.
While it was possible to keep the fountains in view from the château running, those concealed in the bosquets and in the farther reaches of the garden were run on an as-needed basis.
In 1672, Jean-Baptiste Colbert devised a system by which the fountaineers in the gardens would signal each other with whistles upon the approach of the king, indicating that their fountain needed to be turned on. Once the king had passed a fountain in play, it would be turned off and the fountaineer would signal that the next fountain could be turned on.
In 1674, the Pompe was enlarged, and subsequently referred to as the Grande Pompe. Pumping capacity was increased via increased power and the number of pistons used for lifting the water. These improvements increased the water capacity to nearly 3,000 cubic metres of water per day; however, the increased capacity of the Grande Pompe often left the Clagny pond dry.
The increasing demand for water and the stress placed on existing systems of water supply necessitated newer measures to increase the water supplied to Versailles. Between 1668 and 1674, a project was undertaken to divert the water of the Bièvre river to Versailles. By damming the river and with a pumping system of five windmills, water was brought to the reservoirs located on the Satory Plateau. This system brought an additional 72,000 cubic metres water to the gardens on a daily basis.
Despite the water from the Bièvre, the gardens needed still more water, which necessitated more projects. In 1681, one of the most ambitious water projects conceived during the reign of Louis XIV was undertaken.
Owing to the proximity of the Seine to Versailles, a project was proposed to raise the water from the river to be delivered to Versailles. Seizing upon the success of a system devised in 1680 that raised water from the Seine to the gardens of Saint-Germain-en-Laye, construction of the Machine de Marly began the following year.
The Machine de Marly was designed to lift water from the Seine in three stages to the Aqueduc de Louveciennes some 100 metres above the level of the river. A series of huge waterwheels was constructed in the river, which raised the water via a system of 64 pumps to a reservoir 48 metres above the river. From this first reservoir, water was raised an additional 56 metres to a second reservoir by a system of 79 pumps. Finally, 78 additional pumps raised the water to the aqueduct, which carried the water to Versailles and Marly.
In 1685, the Machine de Marly came into full operation. However, owing to leakage in the conduits and breakdowns of the mechanism, the machine was only able to deliver 3,200 cubic metres of water per day - approximately one-half the expected output. The machine was nevertheless a must-see for visitors. Despite the fact that the gardens consumed more water per day than the entire city of Paris, the Machine de Marly remained in operation until 1817.
During Louis XIV's reign, water supply systems represented one-third of the building costs of Versailles. Even with the additional output from the Machine de Marly, fountains in the garden could only be run à l'ordinaire - which is to say at half-pressure.
With this measure of economy, the fountains still consumed 12,800 cubic metres of water per day, far above the capacity of the existing supplies. In the case of the Grandes Eaux - when all the fountains played to their maximum - more than 10,000 cubic metres of water was needed for one afternoon's display.
Accordingly, the Grandes Eaux were reserved for special occasions such as the Siamese Embassy visit of 1685–1686.
The Canal de l'Eure
One final attempt to solve water shortage problems was undertaken in 1685. In this year it was proposed to divert the water of the Eure river, located 160 km. south of Versailles and at a level 26 m above the garden reservoirs.
The project called not only for digging a canal and for the construction of an aqueduct, it also necessitated the construction of shipping channels and locks to supply the workers on the main canal.
Between 9,000 to 10,000 troops were pressed into service in 1685; the next year, more than 20,000 soldiers were engaged in construction. Between 1686 and 1689, when the Nine Years' War began, one-tenth of France's military was at work on the Canal de l'Eure project.
However with the outbreak of the war, the project was abandoned, never to be completed. Had the aqueduct been completed, some 50,000 cubic metres of water would have been sent to Versailles - more than enough to solve the water problem of the gardens.
Today, the museum of Versailles is still faced with water problems. During the Grandes Eaux, water is circulated by means of modern pumps from the Grand Canal to the reservoirs. Replenishment of the water lost due to evaporation comes from rainwater, which is collected in cisterns that are located throughout the gardens and diverted to the reservoirs and the Grand Canal.
Assiduous husbanding of this resource by museum officials prevents the need to tap into the supply of potable water of the city of Versailles.
The Versailles Gardens In Popular Culture
The creation of the gardens of Versailles is the context for the film 'A Little Chaos', directed by Alan Rickman and released in 2015, in which Kate Winslet plays a fictional landscape gardener and Rickman plays King Louis XIV.
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La quinta edizione del festival organizzato da Wired Italia. Due lunghi fine settimana in cui vivere l’innovazione nell’economia, nella scienza, nella politica, nell’intrattenimento, nella cultura. Milano e Firenze si trasformano per un fine settimana nel luna park della scienza e della tecnologia. Oltre 150 relatori, performance artistiche, laboratori di stampa 3D, droni in volo, videogame, film, documentari, speed date sul lavoro, maratone di coding e workshop per tutte le età. A Milano da venerdì 26 a domenica 28 maggio ai Giardini Indro Montanelli.
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ore 12:00
Quando la tecnologia diventa un linguaggio
Speaker
Federico Ferri - Direttore Responsabile Sky Sport
Federico Ferri è da fine 2016 Direttore Responsabile di Sky Sport. Torinese, 39 anni, Federico Ferri è stato autore di alcuni dei più importanti prodotti della rete, da Sky Sport Tech, che porta la sua firma, al rinnovato storytelling di programmi di punta come Sky Calcio Live, Sky Calcio Club e Sky Calcio Show, fino ad alcuni format di successo molto apprezzati dal nostro pubblico e dalla critica sportiva, come “Buffa Racconta” e “Mister Condò”.
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ore 12:30
Sempre in prima linea
Speaker
Nadya Tolokonnikova - Fondatrice Pussy Riot
Nadežda Andreevna Tolokonnikova, anche nota come “Nadya Tolokno” è una artista e attivista politica russa. È tra le fondatrici del collettivo Pussy Riot, uno dei più importanti gruppi artisti degli ultimi anni che ha focalizzato la propria attività sulla violazione dei diritti umani in Russia e altrove. Nell’agosto 2012 è stata condannata a due anni di carcere in seguito alla performance anti Putin alla cattedrale di Cristo il Salvatore a Mosca. La protesta ha attirato l’attenzione e il supporto internazionale e l’adesione di personaggi quali Peter Gabriel, Sir Paul McCartney, Madonna, Bjork and Aung San Suu Kyi.
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ore 13:00
Sempre più in alto
Speaker
Gianmarco Tamberi - Atleta
Gianmarco Tamberi (Civitanova Marche, 1º giugno 1992) è un atleta italiano specializzato nel salto in alto, disciplina di cui è campione mondiale indoor a Portland 2016 e campione europeo ad Amsterdam 2016, nonché detentore del record italiano sia outdoor che indoor. In carriera vanta anche una medaglia di bronzo agli Europei juniores di Tallinn 2011.
È figlio dell’ex saltatore in alto e primatista italiano Marco Tamberi, suo attuale allenatore, e fratello di Gianluca, primatista italiano juniores del lancio del giavellotto, modello e attore.
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ore 13:30
10 cose da fare per fare prevenzione - In collaborazione con Airc
Speaker
Geppi Cucciari - Artista e Testimonial Airc
Ugo Pastorino -Dottore e Direttore Scientifico Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori
Geppi Cucciari (Cagliari, 18 agosto 1973) è un’attrice e comica italiana, nota sul piccolo schermo per la sua comicità e le capacità di recitazione.
Il dottor Ugo Pastorino nasce ad Albenga (SV) il 15 luglio 1954. Nel 1979 consegue la Laurea in Medicina e Chirurgia presso l’Università Statale di Milano (110/lode). Dall’ottobre 2014 è Direttore Scientifico della Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale dei Tumori.
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ore 14:30
Insta-star
Speaker
Beatrice Vendramin - Attrice
Attrice, cantante e modella sin da bambina Beatrice Vendramin è un vero e proprio punto di riferimento per la generazione Zeta. É una delle protagoniste di Alex&Co, la situation comedy di Disney dal successo strepitoso dove interpreta il ruolo di Emma. Nel 2016 debutta sul grande schermo a fianco di Giovanna Mezzogiorno e Margherita Buy in “Come Diventare grandi, nonostante i genitori” per la regia di Luca Lucini dove è un’adolescente alle prese con tutte le sfide che la sua giovane età porta con sè.
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ore 15:00
Mediocrazia
Speaker
Alain Deneault - Docente e scrittore
Alain Deneault è un docente e filosofo canadese. Ha scritto saggi sulle politiche governative, sui paradisi fiscali e sulla crisi del pensiero critico. Insegna Scienze Politiche presso l’Università di Montréal e collabora con la rivista Liberté.
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ore 15:30
EPCC@WNF
Speaker
Alessandro Cattelan - Conduttore Radio e Tv
Alessandro Cattelan (Tortona, 11 maggio 1980) è un conduttore televisivo, conduttore radiofonico, scrittore e attore e comico italiano. Presentatore di punta di Sky Italia, tra i suoi programmi di maggior successo vi sono X Factor ed E poi c’è Cattelan.
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ore 16:30
Lo chiamavano cinema italiano
Speaker
Gabriele Mainetti - Attore e Regista
Nato a Roma nel 1976, è attore, regista e produttore cinematografico. Inizia come attore per cinema e fiction, è al contempo un compositore musicale e ha scritto le musiche per molti dei suoi lavori. Come regista inizia con il cortometraggio Basette. Nel 2011 fonda la Goon Films, che raggiunge il successo con Tiger Boy. Vince numerosi premi. Nel 2015 la sua casa di produzione realizza il suo primo cortometraggio: Lo chiamavano Jeeg Robot che, con un budget basso, ottiene grandi incassi e vince 7 statuette al David di Donatello, tra cui quella di miglior regista.
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ore 17:30
Lo strano caso dei TheGiornalisti
Speaker
Tommaso Paradiso - Cantante Thegiornalisti
Tommaso Paradiso è autore e cantante della band Thegiornalisti, ha scritto numerosi testi per artisti italiani. Nato 33 anni fa a Roma, ha iniziato a suonare con alcune band della capitale. Nel 2009 nasce Thegiornalisti. Dopo il debutto nel 2011 col primo album, Vol. 1, seguito dal secondo disco Vecchio, il gruppo ha raggiunto la notorietà grazie all’album Fuoricampo, pubblicato nel 2014. In particolar modo, si sono fatti conoscere nel 2015 con il singolo Fine dell’estate.
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ore 18:15
La critica del giornalismo
Speaker
Ilaria D’Amico - Conduttrice Tv e Giornalista
Ilaria D’Amico è una conduttrice televisiva, giornalista sportiva italiana. Dal 2003 lavora in Sky. Ha frequentato giurisprudenza all’Università La Sapienza di Roma senza conseguire la laurea. La D’Amico raccontò in tv nel 2006 a Fabio Fazio che esordì, grazie all’amico di famiglia Renzo Arbore, in televisione nel 1997 con La giostra dei goal su Rai International, programma che ha condotto per sei edizioni.
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ore 18:45
Tecnologici per caso
Speaker
Federico Russo - Conduttore radio e tv e Musicista
Francesco Mandelli - Attore, Comico e Musicista
Federico Russo nasce a Firenze il 22 dicembre 1980.
Negli anni del liceo, dopo aver abbandonato la “promettente” carriera calcistica, fonda con il suo compagno di banco gli “Scrabbles”, gruppo del quale è cantante, con cui si esibisce in giro per la Toscana sognando Smashing Pumpkins, Rolling Stones, Modern Lovers, Led Zeppelin e tutto ciò che c’è di irraggiungibile!
Francesco Mandelli (Erba, 3 aprile 1979) è un attore, presentatore, autore e musicista, noto per aver esordito nel 1998 nei panni del Nongiovane. Su MTV ha scritto e partecipato a programmi di successo quali Tokusho, Videoclash, BlackBox e Lazarus. Il grande successo è stato raggiunto, assieme al socio Biggio, con I soliti idioti, giunto alla quarta serie e trasformato successivamente in film e in un libro.
Postcard published circa 1960's.
When launched in 1907 at Mare Island, in the burgeoning era of stream and the predecessors to the warships we know today, the construction of a steel barque for the US Navy must have seemed odd. The role, however, for the USS Intrepid was not as a vessel of war, but instead for training, which she did until 1912 when she became a receiving ship. She would fill that role, along with time as a barracks vessel, until being sold in 1921.
AT that point she was converted to the role of a barge, a capacity in which she would again enter the Navy as YSR-42, a sludge removal barge. Once that job was done, she would be sold again, and continued her barge service until 1954 when she went ashore on the Long Beach Peninsula, a grave she would never depart.
The reverse reads:
"Hull of former navy ship INTREPID wrecked on the Long Beach Peninsula in February 1954. It has since nearly disappeared in the sand.
Photo by Dick Powers.
Published by PHOTO'NEIL. Long Beach, Wash. 98631"
The Postcard
A Star Series postcard that was published by G. D. & D. of London. The card was printed in Bavaria.
The card was posted in Blackpool on Friday the 21st. June 1912 to:
Miss A. Ellis,
180, Cleveland Street,
Doncaster,
Yorks.
The message on the divided back of the card was as follows:
"Dear Ada,
Had a grand day
yesterday but showery
today.
We are having some
fun.
Love, Bert.
I will try and write that
letter on Sunday".
Blackpool
Blackpool is a seaside resort in Lancashire on the northwest coast of England. The town is by the Irish Sea, between the Ribble and Wyre rivers, and is 27 miles (43 km) north of Liverpool and 40 miles (64 km) northwest of Manchester.
At the 2011 census, Blackpool had a population of 139,720, making it the most populous settlement in Lancashire. It is home to the Blackpool Tower, which when built in 1894 was the tallest building in the British Empire.
Throughout the Medieval and Early Modern period, Blackpool was a coastal hamlet in Lancashire's Amounderness Hundred, and remained as such until the mid-18th. century, when it became fashionable in England to travel to the coast in the summer to improve well-being.
In 1781, visitors attracted to Blackpool's 7-mile (11 km) sandy beach were able to use a new private road, built by Thomas Clifton and Sir Henry Hoghton.
Stagecoaches began running to Blackpool from Manchester in the same year, and from Halifax in 1782. In the early 19th. century, Henry Banks and his son-in-law John Cocker erected new buildings in Blackpool, which increased its population from less than 500 in 1801 to over 2,500 in 1851. St John's Church in Blackpool was consecrated in 1821.
Blackpool rose to prominence as a major centre of tourism in England when a railway was built in the 1840's connecting it to the industrialised regions of northern England. The railway made it much easier and cheaper for visitors to reach Blackpool, triggering an influx of settlers.
By 1881, Blackpool was a booming resort with a population of 14,000 and a promenade complete with piers, fortune-tellers, public houses, trams, donkey rides, fish and chip shops, and theatres.
By 1901, the population of Blackpool was 47,000, by which time its place was cemented as the archetypal British seaside resort. By 1951, the town had grown to 147,000 people.
Shifts in tastes, combined with opportunities for British people to travel overseas, affected Blackpool's status as a leading resort in the late 20th. century. However its urban fabric and economy both remain relatively undiversified and firmly rooted in the tourism sector, and the borough's seafront continues to attract millions of visitors every year.
Blackpool's major attractions and landmarks include the Blackpool Tower, Blackpool Illuminations, Pleasure Beach, Blackpool Zoo, Sandcastle Water Park, the Winter Gardens and Blackpool Tramway, which is the UK's only surviving first-generation tramway.
Mary McCarthy
So what else happened on the day that Bert posted the card?
Well, the 21st. June 1912 marked the birth in Seattle, Washington of Mary Therese McCarthy. Mary was an American novelist, critic and political activist.
-- Mary McCarthy - The Early Years
Mary was born to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Martha Therese Preston. Mary was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the flu epidemic of 1918.
She and her brothers, Kevin, Preston, and Sheridan, were raised in very unhappy circumstances by her Catholic father's parents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, under the direct care of an uncle and aunt she remembered for harsh treatment and abuse.
When the situation became intolerable, she was taken in by her maternal grandparents in Seattle. Her maternal grandmother, Augusta Morganstern, was Jewish, and her maternal grandfather, Harold Preston, a prominent attorney and co-founder of the law firm Preston Gates & Ellis, was Presbyterian. Her brothers were sent to boarding school.
McCarthy credited her grandfather, who helped draft one of the nation's first Workmen's Compensation Acts, with helping form her liberal views. McCarthy explores the complex events of her early life in Minneapolis and her coming of age in Seattle in her memoir, 'Memories of a Catholic Girlhood'. Her younger brother, actor Kevin McCarthy, went on to star in such movies as 'Death of a Salesman' (1951) and 'Invasion of the Body Snatchers' (1956).
Under the guardianship of the Prestons, McCarthy studied at the Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart in Seattle and Annie Wright Seminary in Tacoma, and went on to graduate in 1933 with an A.B. cum laude from Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.
-- Mary McCarthy's Literary Career
Her debut novel, 'The Company She Keeps', received critical acclaim as a succès de scandale, depicting the social milieu of New York intellectuals of the late 1930's with unreserved frankness.
After building a reputation as a satirist and critic, McCarthy enjoyed popular success when the 1963 edition of her novel 'The Group' remained on the New York Times Best Seller list for almost two years. Her work is noted for its precise prose and its complex mixture of autobiography and fiction.
Her feud with fellow writer Lillian Hellman formed the basis for the play 'Imaginary Friends' by Nora Ephron. The feud had simmered since the late 1930's over ideological differences, particularly the questions of the Moscow Trials and of Hellman's support for the 'Popular Front' with Stalin.
McCarthy provoked Hellman in 1979 when she famously said on The Dick Cavett Show: "Every word Hellman writes is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'."
Hellman responded by filing a $2.5 million libel suit against McCarthy, which ended shortly after Hellman died in 1984. Observers of the trial noted the resulting irony of Hellman's defamation suit is that it brought significant scrutiny, and decline of Hellman's reputation, by forcing McCarthy and her supporters to prove that she had lied.
-- Mary McCarthy's Beliefs as an Adult
McCarthy left the Catholic Church as a young woman when she became an atheist. In her contrarian fashion, McCarthy treasured her religious education for the classical foundation it provided her intellect, while at the same time she depicted her loss of faith and her contests with religious authority as essential to her character.
In New York, she moved in 'fellow-travelling' Communist circles early in the 1930's, but by the latter half of the decade she repudiated Soviet-style Communism, expressing solidarity with Leon Trotsky after the Moscow Trials, and vigorously countering playwrights and authors she considered to be sympathetic to Stalinism.
As part of the Partisan Review circle and as a contributor to The Nation, The New Republic, Harper's Magazine, and The New York Review of Books, she garnered attention as a cutting critic.
During the 1940's and 1950's she became a liberal critic of both McCarthyism and Communism. She maintained her commitment to liberal critiques of culture and power to the end of her life, opposing the Vietnam War in the 1960's and covering the Watergate scandal hearings in the 1970's.
-- Mary McCarthy's Opposition to the Vietnam War
In 1967 and 1968, McCarthy travelled to North and South Vietnam, to report on the war from an anti-war perspective. She documented her observations in two books, 'Vietnam', and 'Hanoi'.
Interviewed after her first trip, she declared on British television that there was not a single documented case of the Viet Cong deliberately killing a South Vietnamese woman or child. She wrote favourably about the Viet Cong.
McCarthy visited North Vietnam in March 1968, only a month after the Tet Offensive created havoc in South Vietnam. In her book, 'Hanoi', McCarthy provides a rare English-language description of life in North Vietnam during Vietnam's war with the United States. McCarthy describes an orderly society, in which everyone pitched in to help with the war effort. North Vietnam received advance warning of most bombing attacks, and McCarthy regularly had to take cover from American bombs.
McCarthy's visits to Vietnam generated some controversy. During her visit to North Vietnam, McCarthy met briefly with U.S. Air Force officer James Risner, who was being held as a prisoner of war by North Vietnam at the time.
Years later, after his release, Risner attacked McCarthy as not having recognized that he had been tortured by the North Vietnamese while in custody.
-- The Personal Life of Mary McCarthy
Mary married four times. In 1933 she married Harald Johnsrud, an actor and would-be playwright.
Her best-known spouse was the writer and critic Edmund Wilson, whom she married in 1938 after leaving her lover Philip Rahv, and with whom she had a son, Reuel Wilson.
In 1946 she married Bowden Broadwater, who worked for the New Yorker.
In 1961, McCarthy married career diplomat James R. West.
Although she broke ranks with some of her Partisan Review colleagues when they swerved toward conservative politics after World War II, she carried on lifelong friendships with Dwight Macdonald, Nicola Chiaromonte, Philip Rahv, F. W. Dupee and Elizabeth Hardwick.
Most prized of all was her close friendship with Hannah Arendt, with whom she maintained a sizeable correspondence widely regarded for its intellectual rigor.
After Arendt's passing, McCarthy became Arendt's literary executor from 1976 until her own death in 1989. McCarthy taught at Bard College from 1946 to 1947, and once again between 1986 and 1989.
-- The Death of Mary McCarthy
Mary died at the age of 77 of lung cancer on the 25th. October 1989, at New York–Presbyterian Hospital in New York City.
-- Film Portrayal of Mary McCarthy
In the 2012 German movie Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy is portrayed by Janet McTeer.
This photograph was published in the Illustrated Chronicle on the 13th of October 1915.
During the Great War the Illustrated Chronicle published photographs of soldiers and sailors from Newcastle and the North East of England, which had been in the news. The photographs were sent in by relatives and give us a glimpse into the past.
The physical collection held by Newcastle Libraries comprises bound volumes of the newspaper from 1910 to 1925. We are keen to find out more about the people in the photographs. If you recognise anyone in the images please comment below.
Copies of this photograph may be ordered from us, for more information see: www.newcastle.gov.uk/tlt Please make a note of the image reference number above to help speed up your order.
Postcard photographer Fernand Fleury (FF) published the “Tout Paris” series of Parisian views with a particular interest in views of stations, railways and the Paris Métro, beginning in 1903. He employed the collotype method of printing, capable of producing sharp imagery which served him well when he launched the first of many series of locomotive portraits in the same year. The preference was for side-on or three quarter compositions giving them the appearance of record photos that conveyed little of the atmosphere of the steam railway. There are exceptions and these are the ones I seek out - the presence of a loco crew and maintenance workers (les cheminots) often animates an otherwise dull image. This example is a 4-6-0 express passenger locomotive belonging to the Chemin de Fer du Nord, built in 1923-24.
The Postcard
A postcard published by Sunny South Photographers, D.&W.,B. They state on the back of the card: 'British Manufacture Throughout'.
The card was posted in Curry Rivel on Thursday the 6th. July 1933 to:
Mrs. Goozee,
152, Leighton Road,
Kentish Town,
London NW.
The message on the back of the card was as follows:
"Curry Rivel.
My Dear Blanche & All,
Thought you would like a
card from us.
We are having grand weather,
but it's soon getting to
Saturday now.
We have had two days at
Weymouth, and yesterday we
went to Burnham for the day.
Hope you are all well.
Love from us both,
Midge".
Dachau Concentration Camp
So what else happened on the day that Midge posted the card?
Well, on the 6th. July 1933, the German National People's Party was dissolved.
The coalition government of the German National People's Party and the the National Socialist German Worker's Party (Nazi Party) established the first concentration camp to be built by Nazi Germany - Dachau.
Dachau opened on the 22nd. March 1933. The camp was initially intended to intern Hitler's political opponents who consisted of communists, social democrats, and other dissidents.
The camp was located in the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory northeast of the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 mi) northwest of Munich in the state of Bavaria, in southern Germany.
After its opening by Heinrich Himmler, its purpose was enlarged to include forced labor, and, eventually, the imprisonment of Jews, Romani, German and Austrian criminals, and, finally, foreign nationals from countries that Germany occupied or invaded.
The Dachau camp system grew to include nearly 100 sub-camps, which were mostly work camps or Arbeitskommandos, and were located throughout southern Germany and Austria.
The main camp was liberated by U.S. forces on the 29th. April 1945.
Prisoners lived in constant fear of brutal treatment and terror detention, including standing cells, floggings, the so-called tree or pole hanging, and standing at attention for extremely long periods in very cold weather.
There were 32,000 documented deaths at the camp, and thousands that were never documented. Approximately 10,000 of the 30,000 remaining prisoners were sick at the time of liberation.
General Overview
Dachau served as a prototype and model for the other German concentration camps that followed. Almost every community in Germany had members taken away to these camps. Newspapers continually reported:
"The removal of the enemies of
the Reich to concentration camps."
As early as 1935, a jingle went around:
"Lieber Herr Gott,
Mach mich stumm,
Das ich nicht nach Dachau komm".
This translates as:
"Dear God,
Make me dumb,
That I may not to Dachau come".
('Dumb' means 'Silent' in this context.)
The camp's layout and building plans were developed by Commandant Theodor Eicke, and were applied to all later camps. He devised a separate, secure camp near the command center, which consisted of living quarters, administration and army camps.
Eicke became the chief inspector for all concentration camps, responsible for organizing others according to his model.
The Dachau complex included the prisoners' camp which occupied approximately 5 acres, and the much larger area of SS training school including barracks, factories plus other facilities of around 20 acres.
The entrance gate used by prisoners carries the phrase "Arbeit macht frei" which translates as "Work shall set you free". This phrase was also used in several other concentration camps such as Theresienstadt and Auschwitz.
Dachau was the concentration camp that was in operation the longest, from March 1933 to April 1945, nearly all twelve years of the Nazi regime. Dachau's close proximity to Munich, where Hitler came to power and where the Nazi Party had its official headquarters, made Dachau a convenient location.
From 1933 to 1938, the prisoners were mainly German nationals detained for political reasons. After Kristallnacht, 30,000 male Jewish citizens were deported to concentration camps. More than 10,000 of them were interned in Dachau.
As the German military occupied other European states, citizens from across Europe were sent to concentration camps. Subsequently, the camp was used for prisoners of all sorts, from every nation occupied by the forces of the Third Reich.
In the postwar years, the camp continued in use. From 1945 through 1948, the camp was used by the Allies as a prison for SS officers awaiting trial.
After 1948, when hundreds of thousands of ethnic Germans were expelled from eastern Europe, it held Germans from Czechoslovakia until they could be resettled.
It also served as a military base for the United States, which maintained forces in the country. The camp finally closed in 1960. At the insistence of survivors, various memorials have been constructed and installed there.
Statistics vary but they are in the same general range. It will never be known exactly how many people were interned or murdered there, due to periods of disruption.
One source gives a general estimate of over 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 countries during Nazi rule, of whom two-thirds were political prisoners, including many Catholic priests, and nearly one-third were Jews.
25,613 prisoners are believed to have been murdered in the camp and almost another 10,000 in its subcamps, primarily from disease, malnutrition and suicide.
In late 1944, a typhus epidemic occurred in the camp caused by poor sanitation and overcrowding, and this caused more than 15,000 deaths. It was followed by an evacuation, in which large numbers of the prisoners died.
Toward the end of the war, death marches to and from the camp caused the deaths of numerous unrecorded prisoners.
After liberation, prisoners weakened beyond recovery by starvation continued to die. Two thousand cases of "the dread black typhus" had already been identified by the 3rd. May, and the U.S. Seventh Army was:
"Working day and night to alleviate
the appalling conditions at the camp".
Prisoners with typhus, a louse-borne disease with an incubation period from 12 to 18 days, were treated by the 116th. Evacuation Hospital, while the 127th. was the general hospital for the other illnesses.
Over the 12 years of use as a concentration camp, the Dachau administration recorded the intake of 206,206 prisoners and deaths of 31,951.
Crematoria were constructed to dispose of the deceased. Visitors may now walk through the buildings and view the ovens used to cremate bodies, which hid the evidence of many deaths.
It is claimed that in 1942, more than 3,166 prisoners in weakened condition were transported to Hartheim Castle near Linz, and were executed by poison gas because they were deemed unfit.
The gas chamber at Dachau bore a "Brausebad" sign, meaning "Shower Bath".
Between January and April 1945 11,560 detainees died at Dachau according to a U.S. Army report of 1945, though the Dachau administration registered 12,596 deaths from typhus at the camp over the same period.
Dachau was the third concentration camp to be liberated by British or American Allied forces.
History of the Camp
After the takeover of Bavaria on the 9th. March 1933, Heinrich Himmler, then Chief of Police in Munich, began to speak with the managers of an unused gunpowder and munitions factory.
Himmler toured the site to see if it could be used for quartering protective-custody prisoners. The concentration camp at Dachau was opened on the 22nd. March 1933, with the arrival of about 200 prisoners from Stadelheim Prison in Munich and the Landsberg fortress (where Hitler had written Mein Kampf during his own imprisonment).
Himmler announced that the camp could hold up to 5,000 people, and described it as "the first concentration camp for political prisoners" to be used to restore calm to Germany.
The press statement given at the opening stated:
"On Wednesday the first concentration camp is to be
opened in Dachau with an accommodation for 5000
people. All Communists and—where necessary—
Reichsbanner and Social Democratic functionaries who
endanger state security are to be concentrated here,
as in the long run it is not possible to keep individual
functionaries in the state prisons without overburdening
these prisons, and on the other hand these people
cannot be released because attempts have shown that
they persist in their efforts to agitate and organize as
soon as they are released."
Whatever the publicly stated purpose of the camp, the SS men who arrived there on the 11th. May 1933 were left in no illusion as to its real purpose by the speech that was given on that day by Johann-Erasmus Freiherr von Malsen-Ponickau:
"Comrades of the SS!
You all know what the Fuehrer has called us to do.
We have not come here for human encounters with
those pigs in there. We do not consider them human
beings, as we are, but as second-class people.
For years they have been able to continue their criminal
existence. But now we are in power. If those pigs had
come to power, they would have cut off all our heads.
Therefore we have no room for sentimentalism.
If anyone here cannot bear to see the blood of
comrades, he does not belong and had better leave.
The more of these pig dogs we strike down, the fewer
we need to feed."
Jehovah's Witnesses, homosexuals and emigrants were also sent to Dachau after the 1935 passage of the Nuremberg Laws which institutionalized racial discrimination.
In early 1937, the SS, using prisoner labor, initiated the construction of a large complex capable of holding 6,000 prisoners. The construction was completed in August 1938.
More political opponents, and over 11,000 German and Austrian Jews were sent to the camp after the annexation of Austria and the Sudetenland in 1938.
Sinti and Roma in the hundreds were sent to the camp in 1939, and over 13,000 prisoners were sent to the camp from Poland in 1940.
Representatives of the International Committee of the Red Cross inspected the camp in 1935 and in 1938, and documented the harsh conditions.
Investigation of the First Deaths in 1933
Shortly after the SS was commissioned to supplement the Bavarian police overseeing the Dachau camp, the first reports of prisoner deaths at Dachau began to emerge.
In April 1933, Josef Hartinger, an official from the Bavarian Justice Ministry, and physician Moritz Flamm, a part-time medical examiner, arrived at the camp to investigate the deaths in accordance with the Bavarian penal code.
The two men noted many inconsistencies between the injuries on the corpses and the camp guards' accounts of the deaths.
Over a number of months, Hartinger and Flamm uncovered clear evidence of murder, and compiled a dossier of charges against Hilmar Wäckerle, the SS commandant of Dachau, Werner Nürnbergk the camp doctor, and Josef Mutzbauer, the camp's chief administrator (Kanzleiobersekretär).
In June 1933, Hartinger presented the case to his superior, Bavarian State Prosecutor, Karl Wintersberger. Initially supportive of the investigation, Wintersberger became reluctant to submit the resulting indictment to the Justice Ministry, increasingly under the influence of the SS.
Hartinger accordingly reduced the scope of the dossier to the four clearest cases, and Wintersberger signed it, after first notifying Himmler as a courtesy.
The killings at Dachau suddenly stopped (temporarily); Wäckerle was transferred to Stuttgart and replaced by Theodor Eicke.
The indictment and related evidence reached the office of Hans Frank, the Bavarian Justice Minister, but was intercepted by Gauleiter Adolf Wagner and locked away in a desk, only to be discovered by the US Army.
In 1934, both Hartinger and Wintersberger were transferred to provincial positions. Dr. Flamm was no longer employed as a medical examiner, and was to survive two attempts on his life before his suspicious death in the same year.
Flamm's thoroughly gathered and documented evidence within Hartinger's indictment ensured that it achieved convictions of senior Nazis at the Nuremberg trials in 1947. Wintersberger's complicit behaviour is documented in his own evidence to the Pohl Trial.
Forced Labor
The prisoners of Dachau concentration camp originally were to serve as forced labor for a munition factory, and to expand the camp. It was used as a training center for the SS-Totenkopfverbände guards, and was a model for other concentration camps.
The camp was about 300 m × 600 m (1,000 ft × 2,000 ft) in rectangular shape. The prisoners' entrance was secured by an iron gate with the motto "Arbeit macht frei" ("Work will make you free"). This reflected Nazi propaganda, which described concentration camps as labor and re-education camps.
This was their original purpose, but the focus was soon shifted to using forced labor as a method of torture and murder. The original slogan was left on the gates.
As of 1938, the procedure for new arrivals occurred at the Schubraum, where prisoners had to hand over their clothing and possessions. One former Luxembourgian prisoner, Albert Theis, reflected about the room:
"There we were stripped of all our clothes.
Everything had to be handed over: money,
rings, watches. One was now stark naked".
The camp included an administration building that contained offices for the Gestapo trial commissioner, SS authorities, the camp leader and his deputies. These administration offices consisted of large storage rooms for the personal belongings of prisoners, the bunker, roll-call square where guards would also inflict punishment on prisoners (especially those who tried to escape).
There was also a canteen where prisoners served SS men with cigarettes and food, a museum containing plaster images of prisoners who suffered from bodily defects, the camp office, the library, the barracks, and the infirmary, which was staffed by prisoners who had previously held occupations such as physicians or army surgeons.
Operation Barbarossa
Over 4,000 Soviet prisoners of war were murdered by the Dachau commandant's guard at the SS shooting range located at Hebertshausen, two kilometers from the main camp, in the years 1941/1943. These murders were in clear violation of the provisions laid down in the Geneva Convention for prisoners of war.
The SS used the euphemism Sonderbehandlung ("Special Treatment") for these criminal executions. The first of these executions took place on the 25th. November 1941.
After 1942, the number of prisoners being held at the camp continued to exceed 12,000. Dachau originally held communists, leading socialists and other "enemies of the state", but over time, the Nazis began to send German Jews to the camp.
In the early years of imprisonment, Jews were offered permission to emigrate overseas if they "voluntarily" gave their property to enhance Hitler's public treasury.
Once Austria was annexed and Czechoslovakia was dissolved, the citizens of both countries became the next prisoners at Dachau.
In 1940, Dachau became filled with Polish prisoners, who continued to be the majority of the prisoner population until Dachau was officially liberated.
The prisoner enclosure at the camp was heavily guarded to ensure that no prisoners escaped. A 3-metre-wide (10 ft) no-man's land was the first marker of confinement for prisoners; an area which, upon entry, would elicit lethal gunfire from guard towers.
Guards tossed inmates' caps into this area, resulting in the death of the prisoners when they attempted to retrieve the caps. Despondent prisoners committed suicide by entering the zone.
A four-foot-deep and eight-foot-broad (1.2 × 2.4 m) creek, connected with the river Amper, lay on the west side between the "neutral-zone" and the electrically charged, and barbed wire fence which surrounded the entire prisoner enclosure.
In August 1944 a women's camp opened inside Dachau. The first shipment of women came from Auschwitz-Birkenau.
In the last months of the war, the conditions at Dachau deteriorated. As Allied forces advanced toward Germany, the Germans began to move prisoners from concentration camps near the front to more centrally located camps. They hoped to prevent the liberation of large numbers of prisoners.
Transports from the evacuated camps arrived continually at Dachau. After days of travel with little or no food or water, the prisoners arrived weak and exhausted, often near death. Typhus epidemics became a serious problem as a result of overcrowding, poor sanitary conditions, insufficient provisions, and the weakened state of the prisoners.
Owing to repeated transports from the front, the camp was constantly overcrowded, and the hygiene conditions were beneath human dignity. Starting from the end of 1944 up to the day of liberation, 15,000 people died, about half of all the prisoners held at Dachau.
Final Days of the Camp
As late as the 19th. April 1945, prisoners were sent to Dachau; on that date a freight train from Buchenwald with nearly 4,500 prisoners was diverted to Nammering.
SS troops and police confiscated food and water that local townspeople tried to give to the prisoners. Nearly three hundred dead bodies were ordered removed from the train, and carried to a ravine over 400 metres (1⁄4 mile) away.
The 524 prisoners who had been forced to carry the dead to this site were then shot by the guards, and buried along with those who had died on the train. Nearly 800 bodies went into this mass grave.
The train continued on to Dachau.
During April 1945, as U.S. troops drove deeper into Bavaria, the commander of Dachau suggested to Himmler that the camp be turned over to the Allies.
Himmler, in signed correspondence, prohibited such a move, adding that:
"No prisoners shall be allowed to
fall into the hands of the enemy
alive."
On the 24th. April 1945, just days before the U.S. troops arrived at the camp, the commandant and a strong guard forced between 6,000 and 7,000 surviving inmates on a death march from Dachau south to Eurasburg, then eastwards towards the Tegernsee. Any prisoners who could not keep up on the six-day march were shot. Many others died of exhaustion, hunger and exposure. Months later a mass grave containing 1,071 prisoners was found along the route.
Though at the time of liberation the death rate had peaked at 200 per day, after the liberation by U.S. forces the rate eventually fell to between 50 and 80 deaths per day.
In addition to the direct abuse of the SS and the harsh conditions, people died from typhus epidemics and starvation.
Between the years 1933 and 1945, more than 3.5 million Germans were imprisoned in such concentration camps or prison for political reasons.
Approximately 77,000 Germans were killed for one or another form of resistance by Special Courts, courts-martial, and the civil justice system. Many of these Germans had served in government, the military, or in civil positions, and these roles were thought to allow them to engage in subversion and conspiracy against the Nazis.
Organization of the Camp
Dachau was divided into two sections: the camp area and the crematorium. The crematorium was next to, but not directly accessible from within the camp, and was erected in 1942.
The camp area consisted of 32 barracks, including one for clergy imprisoned for opposing the Nazi regime, and one reserved for medical experiments.
The Dachau complex included other SS facilities beside the concentration camp—a leader school of the economic and civil service, the medical school of the SS, etc. The camp was originally called a "Protective Custody Camp," and occupied less than half of the area of the entire complex.
The courtyard between the prison and the central kitchen was used for the summary execution of prisoners. The camp was surrounded by an electrified barbed-wire fence, a ditch, and a wall with seven guard towers.
In early 1937, the SS, using prisoner labor, initiated construction of a large complex of buildings in the grounds of the original camp. The construction was completed in mid-August 1938, and the camp remained essentially unchanged and in operation until 1945. Dachau was therefore the longest running concentration camp of the Third Reich.
Medical Experimentation
Hundreds of prisoners suffered and died, or were executed in medical experiments conducted at Dachau, of which Sigmund Rascher was in charge.
Hypothermia experiments involved being immersed in vats of icy water, in some cases wearing Luftwaffe flying gear, or being strapped down naked outdoors in freezing temperatures.
Attempts at reviving the subjects included scalding baths, and forcing naked women to have sex with the unconscious victim.
There was extensive communication between the investigators and Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, regarding the experiments, although the original records of the experiments were destroyed in an attempt to conceal the atrocities.
During 1942, "high altitude" experiments were conducted. Victims were subjected to rapid decompression to pressures found at 4,300 metres (14,100 ft), and experienced spasmodic convulsions, agonal breathing, and eventual death.
Agonal breathing is when someone who is not getting enough oxygen is gasping for air. It is not true breathing - it is a natural reflex that happens when your brain is not getting the oxygen it needs to survive. Agonal breathing is a sign that a person is near death.
A Camp of Many Colours
The camp was originally designed for holding German and Austrian political prisoners and Jews, but in 1935 it began to be used also for ordinary criminals. Inside the camp there was a sharp division between the two groups of prisoners; those who were there for political reasons, and the "professional" criminals, who has been sent there by the criminal courts.
The political prisoners who had been arrested by the Gestapo and were there because they disagreed with Nazi Party policies, or with Hitler, naturally did not consider themselves criminals.
Dachau was used as the chief camp for Christian (mainly Catholic) clergy who were imprisoned for not conforming with the Nazi Party line.
Poles constituted the largest ethnic group in the camp during the war, followed by Russians, French, Yugoslavs, Jews, and Czechs.
Many Poles met their deaths with the "invalid trains" sent out from the camp; others were liquidated in the camp and given bogus death certificates. Some died of cruel punishment for misdemeanors—beaten to death or run to exhaustion.
The average number of Germans in the camp during the war was 3,000. Just before the liberation many German prisoners were evacuated, but 2,000 of these Germans died during the evacuation transport.
Prisoners were divided into categories. At first, they were classified by the nature of the crime for which they were accused, but eventually were classified by the specific authority-type under whose command a person was sent to camp.
-- Those who were there for political reasons wore a red tag.
-- "Professional" criminals wore a green tag.
-- Cri-Po prisoners arrested by the criminal police wore a brown badge.
-- "Work-shy and asocial" people sent by the welfare authorities or the Gestapo wore a black badge.
-- Jehovah's Witnesses arrested by the Gestapo wore a violet badge.
-- Homosexuals sent by the criminal courts wore a pink badge.
-- Emigrants arrested by the Gestapo wore a blue badge.
-- "Race polluters" arrested by the criminal court or Gestapo wore badges with a black outline.
-- Second-termers arrested by the Gestapo wore a bar matching the color of their badge.
-- "Idiots" wore a white armband with the label Blöd (Stupid).
-- Romani wore a black triangle.
-- Jews, whose incarceration in the Dachau concentration camp dramatically increased after Kristallnacht, wore a yellow badge, combined with another color.
The Priest Barracks of Dachau Concentration Camp
In an effort to counter the strength and influence of spiritual resistance, Nazi security services monitored clergy very closely.
Priests were frequently denounced, arrested and sent to concentration camps, often simply on the basis of being "Suspected of activities hostile to the State" or that there was "Reason to suppose that his dealings might harm society".
Despite SS hostility to religious observance, the Vatican and German bishops successfully lobbied the regime to concentrate clergy in one camp, and obtained permission to build a chapel for the priests to live communally and for time to be allotted to them for their religious and intellectual activity.
Priest Barracks at Dachau were established in Blocks 26, 28 and 30, though only temporarily. 26 became the international block, and 28 was reserved for Poles – the most numerous group.
Of a total of 2,720 clergy recorded as imprisoned at Dachau, the overwhelming majority, some 2,579 (or 95%) were Catholic. Among the other denominations, there were 109 Protestants, 22 Greek Orthodox, 8 Old Catholics and Mariavites and 2 Muslims.
R. Schnabel's 1966 investigation, 'Die Frommen in der Hölle' ("The Pious Ones in Hell") found an alternative total of 2,771, and included the fate all the clergy listed, with 692 noted as deceased and 336 sent out on "invalid trainloads" and therefore presumed dead.
Over 400 German priests were sent to Dachau. Total numbers incarcerated are difficult to ascertain, for some clergy were not recognised as such by the camp authorities, and some—particularly Poles—did not wish to be identified as such, fearing they would be mistreated.
Priest Friedrich Hoffman testified at the trial of former camp personnel. He stated that hundreds of priests died at the camp after being exposed to malaria during Nazi medical experiments.
The Nazis introduced a racial hierarchy—keeping Poles in harsh conditions, while favoring German priests. Poles arrived in December 1941, and a further 500 of mainly elderly clergy arrived in October the following year. Inadequately clothed for the bitter cold, of this group, only 82 survived.
A large number of Polish priests were chosen for Nazi medical experiments. In November 1942, 20 were given phlegmons. A phlegmon is an inflammation of soft tissue that spreads under the skin or inside the body. It is usually caused by an infection, and generally produces pus.
120 priests were used by Dr. Schilling for malaria experiments between July 1942 and May 1944.
Dachau Staff
The camp staff consisted mostly of male SS, although 19 female guards served at Dachau as well, most of them until liberation. Female guards were also assigned to the Augsburg Michelwerke, Bureau, Kaufering, Mühldorf, and Munich Agfa Camera Werke subcamps.
Several Norwegians worked as guards at the Dachau camp.
In the major Dachau war crimes case (United States of America v. Martin Gottfried Weiss et. al.), forty-two officials of Dachau were tried from November to December 1945.
All 42 were found guilty – thirty-six of the defendants were sentenced to death on the 13th. December 1945, of whom 23 were hanged on the 28th.–29th. May 1946, including the commandant, SS-Obersturmbannführer Martin Gottfried Weiss, SS-Obersturmführer Freidrich Wilhelm Ruppert and camp doctors Karl Schilling and Fritz Hintermeyer.
Camp commandant Weiss admitted in affidavit testimony that:
"Most of the deaths at Dachau during my administration
were due to typhus, TB, dysentery, pneumonia, pleurisy,
and body weakness brought about by lack of food."
His testimony also admitted to deaths by shootings, hangings and medical experiments.
Ruppert ordered and supervised the deaths of innumerable prisoners at Dachau main and subcamps, according to the War Crimes Commission official trial transcript. He testified about hangings, shootings and lethal injections, but did not admit to direct responsibility for any individual deaths.
An anonymous Dutch prisoner contended that British Special Operations Executive (SOE) agent Noor Inayat Khan was cruelly beaten by SS officer Wilhelm Ruppert before being shot from behind; the beating may have been the actual cause of her death.
Satellite Camps and Sub-Camps of Dachau
Satellite camps under the authority of Dachau were established in the summer and autumn of 1944 near armaments factories throughout southern Germany to increase war production.
Dachau alone had more than 30 large subcamps, and hundreds of smaller ones, in which over 30,000 prisoners worked almost exclusively on armaments.
Overall, the Dachau concentration camp system included 123 sub-camps and Kommandos which were set up in 1943 when factories were built near the main camp to make use of forced labor of the Dachau prisoners.
Of the 123 sub-camps, eleven of them were called Kaufering. All Kaufering sub-camps were set up to specifically build three underground factories (Allied bombing raids made it necessary for them to be underground) for a project called Ringeltaube (wood pigeon). This was planned to be the location in which the German jet fighter plane, Messerschmitt Me 262, was to be built.
In the last days of war, in April 1945, the Kaufering camps were evacuated and around 15,000 prisoners were sent up to the main Dachau camp. Typhus alone was estimated to have caused 15,000 deaths between December 1944 and April 1945:
"Within the first month after the arrival of the American
troops, 10,000 prisoners were treated for malnutrition
and kindred diseases. In spite of this, one hundred
prisoners died each day during the first month from
typhus, dysentery or general weakness".
As U.S. Army troops neared the Dachau sub-camp at Landsberg on the 27th. April 1945, the SS officer in charge ordered that 4,000 prisoners be murdered. The windows and doors of their huts were nailed shut. The buildings were then doused with gasoline and set afire. Prisoners who were naked or nearly so were burned to death, while some managed to crawl out of the buildings before dying.
Earlier that day, as Wehrmacht troops withdrew from Landsberg am Lech, townspeople hung white sheets from their windows. Infuriated SS troops dragged German civilians from their homes and hanged them from trees.
The Winding-Down of the Camps
As the Allies began to advance on Nazi Germany, the SS began to evacuate the first concentration camps in the summer of 1944. Thousands of prisoners were killed before the evacuation due to illness or being unable to walk. At the end of 1944, the overcrowding, the unhygienic conditions and the lack of food rations became disastrous. In November a typhus fever epidemic broke out that took thousands of lives.
In the second phase of the evacuation, in April 1945, Himmler gave direct evacuation routes for the remaining camps. Prisoners who were from the northern part of Germany were to be directed to the Baltic and North Sea coasts to be drowned.
The prisoners from the southern part were to be gathered in the Alps, which was the location in which the SS wanted to resist the Allies. On the 28th. April 1945, an armed revolt took place in the town of Dachau. Both former and escaped concentration camp prisoners, and a renegade Volkssturm (civilian militia) company took part. At about 8:30 am the rebels occupied the Town Hall. The SS gruesomely suppressed the revolt within a few hours.
Being fully aware that Germany was about to be defeated in World War II, the SS invested its time in removing evidence of the crimes it had committed in the concentration camps. They began destroying incriminating evidence in April 1945, and planned on murdering the prisoners using codenames "Wolke A-I" (Cloud A-1) and "Wolkenbrand" (Cloud fire).
However, these plans were not carried out. In mid-April, plans to evacuate the camp started by sending prisoners toward Tyrol. On the 26th. April, over 10,000 prisoners were forced to leave the Dachau concentration camp on foot, in trains, or in trucks. The largest group of some 7,000 prisoners was driven southward on a foot-march lasting several days. More than 1,000 prisoners did not survive this march. The evacuation transports cost many thousands of prisoners their lives.
The Liberation of Dachau
On the 26th. April 1945, prisoner Karl Riemer fled the Dachau concentration camp to get help from American troops, and on the 28th. April Victor Maurer, a representative of the International Red Cross, negotiated an agreement to surrender the camp to U.S. troops.
That night a secretly formed International Prisoners Committee took over the control of the camp. American units commanded by Lieutenant Colonel Felix L. Sparks were ordered to secure the camp. On the 29th. April Sparks led part of his battalion as they entered the camp over a side wall.
At about the same time, Brigadier General Henning Linden led the 222nd. Infantry Regiment including his aide, Lieutenant William Cowling, to accept the formal surrender of the camp from German Lieutenant Heinrich Wicker at an entrance between the camp and the compound for the SS garrison.
Linden was traveling with Marguerite Higgins and other reporters; as a result, Linden's detachment generated international headlines by accepting the surrender of the camp.
More than 30,000 Jews and political prisoners were freed, and ever since 1945, adherents of the 42nd. and 45th. Division have argued over which unit was the first to liberate Dachau.
Satellite Camps Liberation
The first Dachau sub-camp to be discovered by advancing Allied forces was Kaufering IV, by the 12th. Armored Division on the 27th. April 1945. Sub-camps subsequently liberated by the 12th. Armored Division included: Erpting, Schrobenhausen, Schwabing, Langerringen, Türkheim, Lauingen, Schwabach, and Germering.
During the liberation of the sub-camps surrounding Dachau, advance scouts of the U.S. Army's 522nd. Field Artillery Battalion liberated the 3,000 prisoners of the "Kaufering IV Hurlach" slave labor camp:
"They found the camp afire and a stack of some four
hundred bodies burning ... American soldiers then
went into Landsberg and rounded up all the male
civilians they could find and marched them out to
the camp.
The former commandant was forced to lie amidst a
pile of corpses. The male population of Landsberg
was then ordered to walk by, and ordered to spit on
the commandant as they passed.
The commandant was then turned over to a group
of liberated camp survivors".
The 522nd's personnel later discovered the survivors of a death march headed generally southwards from the Dachau main camp to Eurasburg, then eastwards towards the Austrian border on the 2nd. May, just west of the town of Waakirchen.
Weather at the time of liberation was unseasonably cool; on the 2nd. May, the area received a snowstorm with 10 centimetres (4 in) of snow at nearby Munich. Proper clothing was still scarce, and film footage from the time (as seen in The World at War) shows naked, gaunt people either wandering on snow or dead under it.
Due to the number of sub-camps over a large area that comprised the Dachau concentration camp complex, many Allied units have been officially recognized by the United States Army Center of Military History and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as liberating units of Dachau.
The Killing of Camp Guards at Dachau
A photograph taken by the U.S. Army on the 29th. April 1945 exists which appears to show an unauthorized execution of SS troops in a coal yard in the area of the Dachau concentration camp during its liberation—part of the Dachau liberation reprisals.
American troops killed some of the camp guards after they had surrendered. The number is disputed, as some were killed in combat, some while attempting to surrender, and others after their surrender was accepted. In 1989, Brigadier General Felix L. Sparks, the Colonel in command of a battalion that was present, stated:
"The total number of German guards killed at Dachau
during that day most certainly does not exceed fifty,
with thirty probably being a more accurate figure.
The regimental records of the 157th. Field Artillery
Regiment for that date indicate that over a thousand
German prisoners were brought to the regimental
collecting point.
Since my task force was leading the regimental attack,
almost all the prisoners were taken by the task force,
including several hundred from Dachau."
An Inspector General report resulting from a US Army investigation conducted between the 3rd. and 8th. May 1945 found that 21 plus "a number" of presumed SS men were killed, with others being wounded after their surrender had been accepted.
In addition, 25 to 50 SS guards were estimated to have been killed by the liberated prisoners. Lee Miller visited the camp just after liberation, and photographed several guards who were killed by soldiers or prisoners.
According to Sparks, court-martial charges were drawn up against him and several other men under his command, but General George S. Patton, who had recently been appointed military governor of Bavaria, chose to dismiss the charges.
Colonel Charles L. Decker, an acting deputy judge advocate, concluded in late 1945 that:
"While war crimes had been committed at Dachau
by Germany, certainly, there was no such systematic criminality among United States forces as pervaded
the Nazi groups in Germany."
American troops also forced local citizens to the camp to see for themselves the conditions there and to help bury the dead. Many local residents were shocked about the experience, and claimed no knowledge of the activities at the camp.
The Post-Liberation Easter
The 6th. May 1945 was the day of Pascha, Orthodox Easter. In a cell block used by Catholic priests to say daily Mass, several Greek, Serbian and Russian priests and one Serbian deacon, wearing makeshift vestments made from towels of the SS guard, gathered with several hundred Greek, Serbian and Russian prisoners to celebrate the Paschal Vigil. A prisoner described the scene:
"In the entire history of the Orthodox Church there
has probably never been an Easter service like the
one at Dachau in 1945.
Greek and Serbian priests together with a Serbian
deacon adorned the makeshift 'vestments' over their
blue and gray-striped prisoners' uniforms.
Then they began to chant, changing from Greek to
Slavic, and then back again to Greek.
The Easter Canon, the Easter Sticheras—everything
was recited from memory.
The Gospel—In the beginning was the Word—also
from memory. And finally, the Homily of Saint John—
also from memory.
A young Greek monk from the Holy Mountain stood
up in front of us and recited it with such infectious
enthusiasm that we shall never forget him as long as
we live. Saint John Chrysostomos himself seemed to
speak through him to us and to the rest of the world
as well!"
There is a Russian Orthodox chapel at the camp today, and it is well known for its icon of Christ leading the prisoners out of the camp gates.
After Liberation
Authorities worked night and day to alleviate conditions at the camp immediately following the liberation as an epidemic of black typhus swept through the prisoner population. Two thousand cases had already been reported by the 3rd. May.
By October of the same year the camp was being used by the U.S. Army as a place of confinement for war criminals, the SS and important witnesses. It was also the site of the Dachau Trials for German war criminals, a site chosen for its symbolism.
In 1948, the Bavarian government established housing for refugees on the site, and this remained for many years.
The Kaserne quarters and other buildings used by the guards were converted and served as the Eastman Barracks, an American military post. Since the closure of the Eastman Barracks in 1974, these areas are now occupied by the Bavarian Bereitschaftspolizei (rapid response police unit).
Deportation of Soviet Nationals
By January 1946, 18,000 members of the SS were being confined at the camp along with an additional 12,000 persons, including deserters from the Russian army and a number who had been captured in German Army uniform.
The occupants of two barracks rioted as 271 of the Russian deserters were to be loaded onto trains that would return them to Russian-controlled lands, as agreed at the Yalta Conference.
Inmates barricaded themselves inside two barracks. While the first was able to be cleared without too much trouble, those in the second building, set fire to it, tore off their clothing in an effort to frustrate the guards, and linked arms to resist being removed from the building.
Tear gas was used by the American soldiers before rushing the barrack, only for them to find that many had committed suicide. The American services newspaper Stars and Stripes reported:
“The GIs quickly cut down most of those who had
hanged themselves from the rafters. Those still
conscious were screaming in Russian, pointing first
at the guns of the guards, then at themselves,
begging to us to shoot.”
Ten of the soldiers were successful in their bid to commit suicide during the riot, while another 21 attempted suicide, apparently with razor blades. Many had "cracked heads" inflicted by 500 American guards, in the attempt to bring the situation under control.
Dachau in the Media
-- In his 2013 autobiography, 'Moose: Chapters from My Life', in the chapter entitled, "Dachau", author Robert B. Sherman chronicles his experiences as an American Army serviceman during the initial hours of Dachau's liberation.
-- In Lewis Black's first book, 'Nothing's Sacred', he mentions visiting the camp as part of his tour of Europe, and how it looked all cleaned up and spiffy, "like some delightful holiday camp", and only the crematorium building showed any sign of the horror that went on there.
-- In Maus, Vladek describes his time interned at Dachau, as well as other concentration camps. He describes the journey to Dachau in over-crowded trains, trading rations for other goods and favors to stay alive, and contracting typhus.
-- Frontline: "Memory of the Camps" (7 May 1985) is a 56-minute television documentary that addresses Dachau and other Nazi concentration camps.