To attempt to answer the question 'what did Stirling Castle look like 700 years ago?', I am using this exceptionally fine piece of digital artwork created by Bob Marshall. Not only do I admire his artwork, but I appreciate the fact that he allows his work to be used for educational and social media purposes such as this. Bob is a full time 'Architectural Illustrator and Digital (3D) Reconstruction Artist' working for English Heritage.

 

So first of all, let's get orientated to the geography. This view is from more-or-less east. In the distance is the Flanders Moss and the line across it is the boundary of the King's deer park. The rocky outcrop on the left with a group of spectators standing on it, is still there, in the Old Town Cemetery (and is still a recognised view point!). These days the Esplanade is where the sunlit hill in the centre of the picture is and the burned area in front of the castle, where the siege tower can be seen, is now covered by the 18th century outer works. There is a suggestion that the Nether Bailey may not have been enclosed at that date.

 

So what's going on? The scene is the 1304 great siege of Stirling Castle. Bob Marshall points out that this picture is his visual interpretation of the siege and castle, and while a lot of research went into creating it, the fact is that we do not know much about what the castle looked like in the early 14th century (or for quite a long time thereafter for that matter).

 

Stirling changed hands several times during the Wars of Independence. It was undefended in 1296 when Edward I first captures it, but was surrender to the Scots following the Battle of Stirling Bridge the following year. A year later, following defeat at the Battle of Falkirk, the Scots surrendered the castle, however Robert Bruce besieged and captured it in 1299. It was still in Scottish hands 5 years later when the above scene took place.

 

I particularly admire the detail in this picture. The English camp at bottom left, has been set up in what is now the Old Town Cemetery and the Drummond Pleasure Ground. A number of trebuchets have been brought up to bombard the defences. The trebuchet crews are protected from arrows fired from the castle by timber screens. The timber built outer defences have been captured and burned, and trebuchets have then been moved up closer to the castle, which is also under attack from a sow (an armoured battering ram) and a mobile timber siege tower known as 'le berefry' - thought to be the same siege tower that took part in Edward I's siege of Bothwell Castle in 1301 (although I suspect it may not have actually been used here). Perhaps of most interest though, is what is believed to have been the greatest siege engine of the Middle Ages - Warwolf.

 

'Loup de Guerre' or Warwolf, was ordered by Edward I specifically for the Stirling siege and is said to have taken 445 workman to build. Once completed, it required 30 wagons to transport it to Stirling, where it took five master carpenters and 50 skilled workers over two months to assemble it. King Edward I ordered the lead sheets to be stripped from the roofs of all the churches as far away as St Andrews, and then transported to Stirling and melted down to fill its counterweight. Inside the castle, the garrison of only 140* men, under the command of William Oliphant, could only watch as Warwolf was assembled but eventually, realising the outcome was inevitable, they sought terms of surrender. Edward I however, was not in the least interested in the castle surrendering, until he had had the opportunity to try out his new toy! The garrison were sent back inside until Warwolf had been given a good work-out, whereupon the garrison were finally allowed out!

 

(*Various sources state that the castle was defended by 40 or even as few as 30 men against 'Proud Edward's army' in 1304 - which seems a bit improbable. There is a memorial to Sir William Oliphant built into a wall within the castle, which states that he had a garrison of 140, which seems much more likely.)

 

An interesting post script to all that, is the involvement of Robert Bruce, then Earl of Carrick and still 3 years from becoming King of Scots. As I mentioned above, he recaptured Stirling Castle from the English in 1299, but appears to have been assisting the English during the siege of 1304. This is not altogether remarkable, as Bruce had interests on both sides of the border and didn't want to lose either. His involvement on the English side in 1304 is indicated by the following letter, written by or on behalf of King Edward I no less:

 

“The king to the earl of Carrik, greetings.

 

We have well understood by your letters, which you send us by the bearer of the present, how you have arranged to cause our engines to be transported to Stirling; for which we are much obliged to you. And whereas you have informed us that you cannot find a waggon in the country able to carry the frame of the great engine which is with you, wherefore you wish that we should send someone to you who could find how the same frame could be conveyed by land; know that we will send some person to help you to do as soon as we well can do so.

 

But we charge you especially, that on no account do you desist from using all the pains and deliberation you can to cause the same frame to be carried to us, and stones, and all the other things appertaining to this engine, and to the other engines, as far as you can procure them. And for want of lead do not on any account desist from expediting the despatch of the said frame, and the timber, and the stones belonging to the said engine, and the others, together with all the lead which you can procure.”

 

Bruce was clearly transporting a war engine of great size to the siege of Stirling. The reference to the conveyance of stones in Edward's letter, 'appertaining to this engine', implies that the great engine conveyed by Bruce was a large trebuchet, which could well have been Warwolf. The eents referred to in the letter tally with Pierre Langtoft, who wrote that 'Loup de Guerre' broke down on the way to Stirling and had to be fixed. It seems Bruce repaired the monstrous contraption and had it sent on to the siege.

 

For other examples of Bob Marshall's remarkable work, including scenes from the great siege of 1304, visit: bobmarshall.co.uk/stirlingcastle/

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Mdina, Malta.

 

"Mdina Glass is a manufacturer of glassware, based in Malta. It was founded in 1968 by Michael Harris, a lecturer in industrial glass design at the Royal College of Art. Attracted by various government incentives offered by newly independent Malta, Eric Dobson and Michael Harris (Royal College of Art colleagues) ventured out to Mediterranean island from the UK with the aim of opening Malta's first ever glassware manufacturer. The company, Maltese Glass Industries (which soon changed to Mdina Glass), became an active glassmaking company in 1968. Mdina Glass was an instant success and soon the company was taking on local trainees to learn the craft. One of these trainees was Joseph Said, quickly impressing Harris and Dobson with his natural abilities in glassmaking. In 1971, two Italian maestros, the father and son team of Vincente and Ettore Boffo joined Mdina Glass to introduce Italian glassmaking techniques. Following independence from the UK in 1964, the Maltese government offered incentives for skilled workers and entrepreneurs from outside the island, in order to build up the industrial and commercial sectors of the economy. This included a 10-year tax holiday. Due to personal reasons, Harris left Mdina Glass in 1973, leaving Eric Dobson alone at the helm and by 1975, once promising trainee Joseph Said had climbed the ranks to become the company’s Production Manager, acting as a catalyst for a number of changes, revolutionising the way the company operated and what it produced. At the end of 1967 Harris and Eric Dobson, another lecturer from the RCA, imported glassmaking equipment to Malta, and set up Maltese Glass Industries. In 1985 Eric Dobson chose to relinquish control of Mdina Glass and return to the UK. The company wasn’t doing as well as it had done in previous years. Joseph Said took over and, under his control, the company went through some quick changes to remedy the commercial situation in challenging times. Said’s influence was evident by 1987 when Mdina Glass won the International Award for Tradition and Prestige in Brussels. Two years later, Mdina Glass presented a glass sculpture to the Maltese Prime Minister to commemorate the Bush – Gorbechev Malta summit. In 1992, the company won the Malta Achievement in Industry Award.

 

Further significant changes in glassmaking techniques, production processes and product range marked the 1990s. Basic raw materials were changed for those of a much higher quality. In 1990, Mdina Glass introduced lampworking techniques to Malta, and by 1995 its artisans were also honing their skills in applying the newly introduced fusion techniques to a whole new range of products. Harris trained a number of Maltese nationals as glassmakers, employing around 15 people when the firm became established.[1] His first apprentice, Joseph Said, took over Mdina Glass (as it became known) after Harris left in 1973.[2] Joseph Said’s children Olivia, Nevise, Pamela and Alan now form an integral part of the company, which employs around 50 people, from glassmakers, sales staff in the various outlets and administration. Olivia Said now holds the position of Production and Product Design Manager and has shown her passion for the craft by expanding the company’s range even further. In 2012 Mdina Glass was invited to participate in an exhibition at Harrods, London entitled ‘This Is Malta’. Mdina Glass has also won the National Artisan Award over two consecutive years."

   

Tula, Pyramid B, atlantes

 

Tula is a Mesoamerican archeological site, which was an important regional center which reached its height as the capital of the Toltec Empire between the fall of Teotihuacan and the rise of Tenochtitlan. It has not been well studied in comparison to these other two sites, and disputes remain as to its political system, area of influence and its relations with contemporary Mesoamerican cities, especially with Chichen Itza. The site is located in the city of Tula de Allende in the Tula Valley, in what is now the southwest of the Mexican state of Hidalgo, northwest of Mexico City. The archeological site consists of a museum, remains of an earlier settlement called Tula Chico as well as the main ceremonial site called Tula Grande. The main attraction is the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl which is topped by four, four metre high basalt columns carved in the shape of Toltec warriors. Tula fell around 1150, but it had significant influence in the following Aztec Empire, with its history written about heavily in myth. The feathered serpent god Quetzalcoatl is linked to this city, whose worship was widespread from central Mexico to Central America at the time the Spanish arrived.

 

The Tula site is important to the history of Mesoamerica, especially the central highlands of Mexico, but it is generally overshadowed by its predecessor Teotihuacan and one of its successors, Tenochtitlan. The name Tula is derived from the Nahuatl phrase Tollan Xicocotitlan, which means 'near the cattails'. However, the Aztecs applied the term Tollan to mean 'urban center', and it was also used to indicate other sites such as Teotihuacan, Cholula and Tenochtitlan. The inhabitants of Tula were called Toltecs, but that term was later broadened to mean an urban person, artisan or skilled worker. This was due to the high respect in which the indigenous peoples in the Valley of Mexico held the ancient civilization before the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire.

 

The modern archeological site is about 2000 meters above sea level and includes the ceremonial center of Tula Grande, and an area called Tula Chico. The city is aligned at 17 degrees east of true north, similar to structures at Teotihuacan although the first village was aligned with true north between 700-900CE. The ceremonial center of the city is located on a limestone outcropping, with steep banks on three sides, making it defensible. War and sacrifice are prominent themes at the site with images representing warriors such as jaguars and coyotes as well as eagles eating human hearts. There are also images of serpents eating skeletal figures and skulls in various areas. The main structures of the ceremonial center include two pyramids, including the one with the atlas figures, two main Mesoamerican ballcourts and several large buildings, one with a series of columns which faced a large plaza. The main ceremonial area has a number of architectural innovations that indicate societal changes. The large central plaza has space for 100,000 people. On three sides, there are long meeting halls with ceilings supported by columns all facing the plaza with over 1000 meters of benches, which have stone reliefs depicting warriors and others in procession. The architecture indicates a change from rituals performed by only a few people in closed spaces to large ceremonies to be viewed by many. These ceremonies were dominated by warriors.

 

The major attraction of the site is Pyramid B also called the Pyramid of Quetzalcoatl or of the Morning Star. It is a five-tiered structure similar to the Temple of the Warriors at Chichen Itza. At the top of Pyramid B are four massive columns each carved in the likeness of Toltec warriors which once supported the roof of the temple on top of the pyramid. Each warrior figure is of basalt, four meters high, with an atlatl or spear thrower, incense, a butterfly shaped chest plate and a back plate in the shape of a solar disk. A large vestibule fronts the pyramid and connects it to nearby buildings. Today this vestibule and building (Building C) are a space filled with broken columns. Building C is better known as the Burnt Palace named after evidence that it was burned. This pyramid is also surrounded by the Coatepantli or serpent wall, which was later the inspiration for a similar structure in Tenochtitlan.

 

(source: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tula_%28Mesoamerican_site%29)

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Built c. 1873.

 

Heritage protected by the City of Brantford and described by the city as one of the finest Gothic cottages in the city.

 

"As indicated on the Brantford Heritage Register listing for 108 Albion Street, the architectural style of the building is known as a “Brantford Cottage.” The Brantford Cottage was a style considered prominent from 1870 to 1920. It is a local iteration of the Ontario Cottage (1830-1900), which itself is a local adaptation of the Regency Cottage (1830-1900), which was brought to Ontario by retiring British officers and immigrating British merchants. These modest cottages appear to have been income properties for skilled workers (carpenters, painters, and teachers) who had the cottages built and then rented them out to other tradespeople.

 

The Brantford Cottage is generally 1.5 storeys with a centre-front gable roof line. A Brantford Cottage is often distinguished by its use of Brantford brick – a yellow or white sandstone brick (tawny beige when clean and grey when aged) and the ubiquitous front gable with a round or gothic window.

 

The dichromatic brick work is also unusual for a Brantford Cottage which is most characterized by yellow or white sandstone brick or later the more economical red brick used for later cottages. The subject building uses yellow colour brick for much of the accent areas, including above the front window arches, above the Gothic attic window, above the front door transom, and the ornamental raised brick accents on the front corners of the building (quoins). Of particular visual interest is the use of yellow brick in the raised decorative band below the roof line (the frieze panel section of the building) including the gable. A repetition of double stretcher brick (longer brick) also sits atop a single header brick (smaller brick) beneath this decorative band on the front building façade.

 

The vertical sidelight windows that frame the front door are also particularly unique because many Brantford Cottages do not have the sidelight windows; and they are rounded at the top and bottom which contribute to the overall vertical height and interest of the otherwise square massing plan of this cottage style." - info from the City of Brantford.

 

"Brantford (2021 population: 104,688) is a city in Ontario, Canada, founded on the Grand River in Southwestern Ontario. It is surrounded by Brant County but is politically separate with a municipal government of its own that is fully independent of the county's municipal government.

 

Brantford is situated on the Haldimand Tract, and is named after Joseph Brant, a Mohawk leader, soldier, farmer and slave owner. Brant was an important Loyalist leader during the American Revolutionary War and later, after the Haudenosaunee moved to the Brantford area in Upper Canada. Many of his descendants and other First Nations people live on the nearby Six Nations of the Grand River reserve south of Brantford; it is the most populous reserve in Canada.

 

Brantford is known as the "Telephone City" because the city's famous resident, Alexander Graham Bell, invented the first telephone at his father's homestead, Melville House, now the Bell Homestead, located in Tutela Heights south of the city. Brantford is also known as the birthplace and hometown of Wayne Gretzky and Phil Hartman." - info from Wikipedia.

 

Late June to early July, 2024 I did my 4th major cycling tour. I cycled from Ottawa to London, Ontario on a convoluted route that passed by Niagara Falls. During this journey I cycled 1,876.26 km and took 21,413 photos. As with my other tours a major focus was old architecture.

 

Find me on Instagram.

Checkpoint Charlie (or "Checkpoint C") was the best-known Berlin Wall crossing point between East Berlin and West Berlin during the Cold War (1947–1991), as named by the Western Allies.

 

East German leader Walter Ulbricht agitated and maneuvered to get the Soviet Union's permission to construct the Berlin Wall in 1961 to stop emigration and defection westward through the Border system, preventing escape across the city sector border from East Berlin into West Berlin. Checkpoint Charlie became a symbol of the Cold War, representing the separation of East and West. Soviet and American tanks briefly faced each other at the location during the Berlin Crisis of 1961. On 26 June 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy visited Checkpoint Charlie and looked from a platform onto the Berlin Wall and into East Berlin.

 

After the dissolution of the Eastern Bloc and the reunification of Germany, the American guard house at Checkpoint Charlie became a tourist attraction. It is now located in the Allied Museum in the Dahlem neighborhood of Berlin.

 

Background

By the early 1950s, the Soviet method of restricting emigration was emulated by most of the rest of the Eastern Bloc, including East Germany. However, in occupied Germany, until 1952, the lines between East Germany and the western occupied zones remained easily crossed in most places. Subsequently, the inner German border between the two German states was closed and a barbed-wire fence erected.

 

Even after closing of the inner German border officially in 1952, the city sector border in between East Berlin and West Berlin remained considerably more accessible than the rest of the border because it was administered by all four occupying powers. Accordingly, Berlin became the main route by which East Germans left for the West. Hence the Berlin sector border was essentially a "loophole" through which Eastern Bloc citizens could still escape.

 

The 3.5 million East Germans who had left by 1961 totaled approximately 20% of the entire East German population. The emigrants tended to be young and well educated. The loss was disproportionately great among professionals — engineers, technicians, physicians, teachers, lawyers and skilled workers.

 

Berlin Wall constructed

The brain drain of professionals had become so damaging to the political credibility and economic viability of East Germany that the resecuring of the Soviet imperial frontier was imperative. Between 1949 and 1961, over 2½ million East Germans fled to the West. The numbers increased during the three years before the Berlin Wall was erected, with 144,000 in 1959, 199,000 in 1960 and 207,000 in the first seven months of 1961 alone. The East German economy suffered accordingly.

 

On 13 August 1961, a barbed-wire barrier that would become the Berlin Wall separating East and West Berlin was erected by the East Germans. Two days later, police and army engineers began to construct a more permanent concrete wall. Along with the wall, the 830-mile (1336 km) zonal border became 3.5 miles (5.6 km) wide on its East German side in some parts of Germany with a tall steel-mesh fence running along a "death strip" bordered by mines, as well as channels of ploughed earth, to slow escapees and more easily reveal their footprints.

 

Checkpoint

Checkpoint Charlie was a crossing point in the Berlin Wall located at the junction of Friedrichstraße with Zimmerstraße and Mauerstraße (which for older historical reasons coincidentally means "Wall Street"). It is in the Friedrichstadt neighborhood. Checkpoint Charlie was designated as the single crossing point (on foot or by car) for foreigners and members of the Allied forces. (Members of the Allied forces were not allowed to use the other sector crossing point designated for use by foreigners, the Friedrichstraße railway station).

 

The name "Charlie" came from the letter C in the NATO phonetic alphabet; similarly for other Allied checkpoints on the Autobahn from the West: Checkpoint Alpha at Helmstedt and its counterpart Checkpoint Bravo at Dreilinden, Wannsee in the south-west corner of Berlin. The Soviets simply called it the Friedrichstraße Crossing Point (КПП Фридрихштрассе, KPP Fridrikhshtrasse). The East Germans referred officially to Checkpoint Charlie as the Grenzübergangsstelle ("Border Crossing Point") Friedrich-/Zimmerstraße.

 

As the most visible Berlin Wall checkpoint, Checkpoint Charlie was featured in movies and books. A famous cafe and viewing place for Allied officials, armed forces and visitors alike, Cafe Adler ("Eagle Café"), was situated right on the checkpoint.

 

The development of the infrastructure around the checkpoint was largely asymmetrical, reflecting the contrary priorities of East German and Western border authorities. During its 28-year active life, the infrastructure on the Eastern side was expanded to include not only the wall, watchtower and zig-zag barriers, but a multi-lane shed where cars and their occupants were checked. However, the Allied authority never erected any permanent buildings. A wooden shed used as the guard house was replaced during the 1980s by a larger metal structure, now displayed at the Allied Museum in western Berlin. Their reasoning was that they did not consider the inner Berlin sector boundary an international border and did not treat it as such.

 

Related incidents

Soon after the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961, a stand-off occurred between US and Soviet tanks on either side of Checkpoint Charlie. It began on 22 October as a dispute over whether East German border guards were authorized to examine the travel documents of a US diplomat based in West Berlin named Allan Lightner heading to East Berlin to watch an opera show there, since according to the agreement between all four Allied powers occupying Germany, there was to be free movement for Allied forces in Berlin and that no German military forces from either West Germany or East Germany were to be based in the city, and moreover the Western Allies did not (initially) recognise the East German state and its right to remain in its self-declared capital of East Berlin. Instead, Allied forces only recognised the authority of the Soviets over East Berlin rather than their East German allies. By 27 October, ten Soviet and an equal number of American tanks stood 100 yards apart on either side of the checkpoint. This stand-off ended peacefully on 28 October following a US-Soviet understanding to withdraw tanks and reduce tensions. Discussions between US Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and KGB[citation needed] spy Georgi Bolshakov played a vital role in realizing this tacit agreement.

 

Early escapes

The Berlin Wall was erected with great speed by the East German government in 1961, but there were initially many means of escape that had not been anticipated. For example, Checkpoint Charlie was initially blocked only by a gate, and a citizen of the GDR (East Germany) smashed a car through it to escape, so a strong pole was erected. Another escapee approached the barrier in a convertible, the windscreen removed prior to the event, and slipped under the barrier. This was repeated two weeks later, so the East Germans duly lowered the barrier and added uprights.

 

Death of Peter Fechter

On 17 August 1962, a teenaged East German, Peter Fechter, was shot in the pelvis by East German guards while trying to escape from East Berlin. His body lay tangled in a barbed wire fence as he bled to death in full view of the world's media. He could not be rescued from West Berlin because he was a few metres inside the Soviet sector. East German border guards were reluctant to approach him for fear of provoking Western soldiers, one of whom had shot an East German border guard just days earlier. More than an hour later, Fechter's body was removed by the East German guards. A spontaneous demonstration formed on the American side of the checkpoint, protesting against the action of the East and the inaction of the West.

 

A few days later, a crowd threw stones at Soviet buses driving towards the Soviet War Memorial, located in the Tiergarten in the British sector; the Soviets tried to escort the buses with armoured personnel carriers (APCs). Thereafter, the Soviets were only allowed to cross via the Sandkrug Bridge crossing (which was the nearest to Tiergarten) and were prohibited from bringing APCs. Western units were deployed in the middle of the night in early September with live armaments and vehicles, in order to enforce the ban.[citation needed]

 

Today: Tourist and memorial site

Although the wall was opened in November 1989 and the checkpoint booth removed on 22 June 1990, the checkpoint remained an official crossing for foreigners and diplomats until German reunification in October 1990.

 

Checkpoint Charlie has since become one of Berlin's primary tourist attractions, where some original remnants of the border crossing blend with reconstructed parts, memorial and tourist facilities.

 

The guard house on the American side was removed in 1990; it is now on display in the open-air museum of the Allied Museum in Berlin-Zehlendorf. A copy of the guard house and the sign that once marked the border crossing was reconstructed later on roughly the same site. It resembles the first guard house erected during 1961, behind a sandbag barrier toward the border. Over the years this was replaced several times by guard houses of different sizes and layouts (see photographs). The one removed in 1990 was considerably larger than the first one and did not have sandbags. Tourists used to be able to have their photographs taken for a fee with actors dressed as allied military police standing in front of the guard house but Berlin authorities banned the practice in November 2019 stating the actors had been exploiting tourists by demanding money for photos at the attraction.

 

The course of the former wall and border is now marked in the street with a line of cobblestones.

 

Former Berlin Wall marker

An open-air exhibition was opened during the summer of 2006. Gallery walls along Friedrichstraße and Zimmerstraße give information about escape attempts, how the checkpoint was expanded, and its significance during the Cold War, in particular the confrontation of Soviet and American tanks in 1961. Also, an overview of other important memorial sites and museums about the division of Germany and the wall is presented.

 

Developers demolished the East German checkpoint watchtower in 2000, to make way for offices and shops. The watchtower was the last surviving major original Checkpoint Charlie structure. The city tried to save the tower but failed, as it was not classified as a historic landmark.[citation needed] Yet, that development project was never realised. To this day,[when?] the area between Zimmerstraße and Mauerstraße/Schützenstraße (the East German side of the border crossing) remains vacant, providing space for a number of temporary tourist and memorial uses. New plans since 2017 for a hotel on the site stirred a professional and political debate about appropriate development of the area. After the final listing of the site as a protected heritage area in 2018, plans were changed towards a more heritage-friendly approach.

 

BlackBox Cold War Exhibition

The "BlackBox Cold War" exhibition has illuminated the division of Germany and Berlin since 2012. The free open-air exhibition offers original Berlin Wall segments and information about the historic site. However, the indoor exhibition (entrance fee required) illustrates Berlin's contemporary history with 16 media stations, a movie theatre and original objects and documents. It is run by the NGO Berliner Forum fuer Geschichte und Gegenwart e.V..

 

Checkpoint Charlie Museum

Near the location of the guard house is the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie. The "Mauermuseum - Museum Haus am Checkpoint Charlie" was opened on 14 June 1963[citation needed] in the immediate vicinity of the Berlin Wall. It shows photographs and fragments related to the separation of Germany. The border fortifications and the "assistance of the protecting powers" are illustrated. In addition to photos and documentation of successful escape attempts, the exhibition also showcases escape devices including a hot-air balloon, escape cars, chair lifts, and a mini-submarine.

 

From October 2004 until July 2005, the Freedom Memorial, consisting of original wall segments and 1,067 commemorative crosses, stood on a leased site.

 

The museum is operated by the Arbeitsgemeinschaft 13. August e. V., a registered association founded by Dr. Rainer Hildebrandt. The director is Alexandra Hildebrandt, the founder's widow. The museum is housed in part in the "House at Checkpoint Charlie" building by architect Peter Eisenman.[citation needed]

 

With 850,000 visitors in 2007, the Checkpoint Charlie Museum is one of the most visited museums in Berlin and in Germany.

 

In popular culture

Checkpoint Charlie figures in numerous Cold War-era espionage and political novels and films. Some examples:

 

James Bond (played by Roger Moore) passed through Checkpoint Charlie in the film Octopussy (1983) from West to East.

 

Checkpoint Charlie is featured in the opening scene of the 1965 film The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (starring Richard Burton and Claire Bloom), based on the John le Carré novel of the same name.

 

In the feature film Bridge of Spies, imprisoned American student Frederic Pryor is released at Checkpoint Charlie as part of a deal to trade Pryor and U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers for convicted Soviet spy Rudolf Abel. Pryor's release happens offscreen while the trade of Powers for Abel takes place at the Glienicke Bridge.

 

It was depicted in the opening scene of the film The Man from U.N.C.L.E.

 

The 1985 film Gotcha! includes a scene where the protagonist (Anthony Edwards) transits through Checkpoint Charlie into West Berlin.

 

Elvis Costello mentions Checkpoint Charlie in his hit song "Oliver's Army".

 

Trivia

At the border crossing from Hyder in Alaska, USA to Stewart in British Columbia, Canada, there is a humorous imitation of the Checkpoint Charlie sign with the inscription "You are leaving the American Sector" in English, French, and German, as well as a sign reading "Eastern Sektor" (Stewart is indeed located east of Hyder). Hyder is the only place in the USA that can be legally entered without any border control. However, border control is required for entry into Canada; the sign was erected in 2015 as a protest after the Canadian administration announced plans to close the border control at night.

The history of the Citroën «Facile à Fabriquer, Facile à Financer», or FAF for “easy to make, easy to finance”, could be traced back to the early post-war period. Introduced in 1948, the 2CV was adapted, re-bodied and modified throughout its entire career, in particular to cope with the harsh environments of developing countries. Although Citroën introduced the Mehari in 1968 to satisfy customers on the coast or in the countryside, its plastic bodywork was not robust enough for third world countries. However, the market potential was significant, and Citroën engineers had to find a solution. The FAF project is presented in 1978 at the Dakar Fair. While the mechanical base was still derived from the 2CV, the bodywork used a unique production method. Made of sheet metal rather than plastic, the parts were cut according to a pattern and then folded along the dotted lines to form the different parts. The FAFs were to be manufactured locally, by low-skilled workers in countries without an automotive industry. Numerous versions were proposed, but without any exceptional success. In 1979, the FAF A 4x4 was presented. Equipped with a «patrol» body, it is powered by the twin-cylinder engine of the Visa and was aimed at African armies, but also at the French and Portuguese armies to replace their ageing Jeeps. A very confidential series will be produced, without any contract ever being signed. The FAF we present to you is a civilian A 4x4. Exhibited at the Porte de Versailles 4x4 and outdoor car show in September 1983, it has an original decoration, reminiscent of the “Croisières Citroën” of the 1930s. Its aesthetic is reworked: headlight grills, fake grass floor mats, specific 6 stripes paint for example. With about 2,200 km on the odometer, a dogleg gearbox and the possibility of switching between two or four wheel drive, this rare A 4x4 has only one thing to look forward to: crossing dunes, deserts or forests.

 

l'Aventure Peugeot Citroën DS, la Vente Officielle

Aguttes

Estimated : € 15.000 - 20.000

Sold for € 28.500

 

Citroen Heritage

93600 Aulnay-sous-Bois

France

September 2021

Photo of the Jacob Henry Aley Mansion at 1505 North Fairview in Wichita, KS. This photo was taken about 1890. Note the newly planted tree (left). Construction on the house was started in April 1887 and completed later that same year at a cost of $25,000. This home is a confirmed design and build by William Henry Sternberg (1832-1906), who was originally from New York. True to Sternberg designs, this home features tall, fancy corbelled chimney flues where the decorative brick work continues on through the 2nd and 1st floors, highly decorative milled woodwork (both exterior and interior), a square porch above a triangular-shaped main entryway of the house (also seen on Sternberg Mansion and other Sternberg homes), a roofline that visually seems to be a "hodge-podge" of different pitches and shapes which add visual interest to the roofline, three main entries on the first level, usable / functional porches on the first and second floors, fish-scale shingles on the second floor and a 4th floor dormer at the very apex of the house with a window. Typically with Sternberg designs, rounded towers (and turrets - say over a rounded porch - as in the elegant Hatfield Residence @ 430 S. Seneca) appear on the left-side of the main entry of a house and square towers (or square projections) appear on the right side of the residence (when facing head on). Typically these square projections are on a 45 degree angle to the main structure. Although hard to discern from this photo, the dormer at the very apex of the roof has a row of windows in the rectangular area (see note in photo above).

 

Years before this house was built, Sternberg was promoting himself as both an “architect and builder” of homes, specifically “designing and drafting” services. Many persons have thought of Sternberg as just a contractor, but indeed his design and architecting services (that he did himself) were a substantial portion of his overall business. An advertisement for Sternberg, Hall & Co in the 1869 - 1870 Chenango County, New York Directory noted, “Being Architects and Builders themselves, they know just what is wanted for a house and how to prepare it. Give them your patronage if you would have everything in first-class style.” It is interesting to note that the advertisement listed "Architects" first and "Builders" second. As with most designers and architects common design themes can be seen throughout their works. Sternberg's unique mix of residential styles were just as well-loved in the 1800s as they are today and the common themes throughout his works make identification of them fairly easy. As Sternberg worked most of his life in the Wichita area, this particular style of Victorian architecture (although similar to Victorian-era styles) is unique and distinct to the Midwest. Some areas of the U.S. (like the south, the New England area or the southwest) have had long standing residential design trends that have helped to distinguish those areas. The Midwest is no different. Sternberg's particular residential designs help to distinguish Midwestern Victorian architecture from that of other areas of the country . . .

 

Mr. Aley was originally from New York and moved to Wichita where started a successful boot and shoe retail business. He also served as a Sedgwick County Commissioner. Today this house is a Local Landmark and is open for public historic tours.

 

Lumber for building in late 1800s was usually brought in from other areas of the country - especially the Pacific northwest. When "white people" started arriving in Kansas, the prairies were virtually devoid of trees except by streams and rivers. What lumber that was available was mostly cut down by the 1870s. When the transcontinental railroad was being constructed, photography crews followed along taking photos of not only the work but also capturing the hills and prairies in the background. Identical shots today taken from the same vantage points of where those railroad photographers took their photos in 1869 show that virtually all the trees on the prairie today have been cultivated - they are new since then and were not originally there. In the 1800s the prairies were horribly devoid of trees. Indians had a practice of burning the prairies in the early spring. The charred and blacked earth absorbed sunlight better and warmed the ground earlier in the Spring than it normally would have which allowed grasses to grow sooner and most importantly brought buffalo back sooner for grazing. This practice of burning may account for some of the lack of trees in the 1800s. When trees were cut down, the lumber was sawn and planed on location by a steam-powered saw mill. A steam-powered saw-mill was frequently a shoddy open-air shack with a large boiler in the middle which provided steam to a cylinder steam engine. Sometimes steam leaked from boilers or pipes (or both). Steam also blew from the governor as well as it blew from the steam exhaust, so the work was hot and humid. Cotton belts and pulleys connected the equipment and the area smelled like a mixture of fresh wood, grease, burning wood and steam. When a saw mill was in full operation the sawdust produced from the mill provided more than enough fuel to power the boiler. 99% of the lumber used to build the Aley Mansion above (except for a few replacement pieces added in later years) was cut from a steam-powered saw mill. When pieces of pre-cut lumber didn’t or wouldn't meet specifications the wood was hand-hewn with various hand tools including a broad-ax, an adze, a drawknife, a chisel and/or a hand saw. The wood used in the Aley Mansion is all “true dimensional” meaning that a 2 X 4 is really two full inches by a full four inches. A standard “2 X 4” today actually measures 1.5” X 3.5”. Remember that when this house was built there were no extension cords, electric jig saws, electric nail guns, bucket trucks, belt sanders or other convenient electric tools. This was all done with steam saws, pulleys, sweat, hand tools, square nails and lots of elbow grease. Sternberg had a reputation for only hiring the most highly skilled workers in a trade and his firm was widely known for having the best quality construction available.

 

Of note, since nails back in the 1800s were iron and easily rusted, window frames (which were subject to a lot of moisture) were not put together with any nails at all! Indeed window joints were joined together using a mortise and tenon joint and this arrangement was held together with wooden pegs. This type of construction can be seen today on any of the original windows of a Sternberg structure. This wooden-peg construction has held up quite well and can be seen on these windows today! The practice of using wooden pegs to hold construction joints together (holding joints together with wooden pegs) is really quite old and first starting migrating to the United States in the late 1700s. Prior to that it was being used in Europe (Germany, especially), Africa and the Carribbean islands. Timber framing of a building (although larger than window frames) is a similar technique of using a wood peg to hold a joint. The German term, "Fachwerk" literally means "framework" and "half-timbering", is the method of creating structures using heavy timbers jointed held together with wooden-pegged mortise and tenon joints. In architectural terms, "Half-timbering" is defined as: a latice of panels filled with a non-load bearing material of brick, clay or plaster, the frame is often exposed on the outside of the building. Carpenters (especially German) would peg joints together with an allowance of approximately an inch, enough room for the wood to move as it seasoned, then cut the pegs and drive the beam home fully into its socket. Half-timbered construction is also seen in the southern United States being brought into the region from highly skilled African slaves and the Carribbean islands. Creole plantations (very sturdy, durable and functional places of work) were frequently done in a half-timbered construction set on porous piles that went deep into the soil. The porous piles sucked water up into the walls of the home where the water then evaporated and kept the house surprisingly cool. So the use of wooden pegs to hold wooden joints together was a regional practice, depending on where the immigrants came from. W.H. Sternberg's father (Nicholas Sternberg) immigrated to the United States from Germany. Many of Sternberg's building techniques (including the use of wooden pegs to join wood joints) were without a doubt learned from years of working with his father who learned those same techniques from his father in Germany. In Europe, a cast system of laborers was generations-long and very difficult to overcome. So, in some ways the construction techniques used to build homes like the Aley Mansion in Wichita, KS are hundreds of years old and originated with craftsmen in Germany and other far away places. So in addition to popular design styles, Sternberg was bringing high quality German construction techniques to bear in the western frontier. That construction has held up remarkable well.

 

From the time he was 5 years old, W.H. Sternberg grew up cutting trees and working in his father’s saw mill. Later he owned his own his own lumber mill for many years. It’s been noted that no one knew the qualities of wood and woodworking techniques better than Sternberg. Sternberg selected only the very highest grade of original old forest lumber to build grand homes like the Aley Mansion. Regarding the quality of the wood used on the Sternberg Mansion, a newspaper article noted that “it is made of wood so hard it will not take a regular nail.” This very dense, high quality old-growth lumber is indeed unlike any lumber on the market today, just another reason these beautiful Victorian buildings deserve to be preserved and saved. The materials simply are not available that they can or ever will be re-made.

 

Your thoughts, comments, ideas or additional information about this residence are always welcome and appreciated!!

 

This photo is provided courtesy of the Wichita-Sedgwick County Historical Museum, (www.WichitaHistory.org).

Cranes and humans perform a variety of tasks in busy construction sites. While this crane, fitted with a crane mounted drill unit, stabilizes rebar recently set in concrete, skilled workers at right begin assembly of another rebar cage. These cages, weighing thousands of pounds, are essential to modern highway construction. No robots needed. When finished, the structure will look like the ones in background..

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex

 

The Giza pyramid complex (also called the Giza necropolis) in Egypt is home to the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx. All were built during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, between c. 2600 – c. 2500 BC. The site also includes several temples, cemeteries, and the remains of a workers' village.

 

The site is at the edge of the Western Desert, approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) west of the Nile River in the city of Giza, and about 13 km (8.1 mi) southwest of the city centre of Cairo. It forms the northernmost part of the 16,000 ha (160 km2; 62 sq mi) Pyramid Fields of the Memphis and its Necropolis UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1979. The pyramid fields include the Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur pyramid complexes, which were all built in the vicinity of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis.[1] Further Old Kingdom pyramid fields were located at the sites Abu Rawash, Zawyet El Aryan, and Meidum.

 

The Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khafre are the largest pyramids built in ancient Egypt, and they have historically been common as emblems of Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination They were popularised in Hellenistic times, when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is by far the oldest of the Ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence.

 

Literature on ancient Giza is vast; for an overview with further references, see Manuelian[3] or Lehner and Hawass.

 

Maadi settlements

The earliest settlement of the Giza plateau predates the pyramid complexes. Four jars from the Maadi culture were found at the foot of the Great Pyramid, likely from a disturbed earlier settlement. Further Maadi settlement near the site was uncovered during work on the Greater Cairo Wastewater Project. Recent reassessment of the radiocarbon dating puts the Maadi culture's eponymous settlement to c. 3800 – c. 3400 BC, which is also the likely maximum possible range for the Giza remains.

 

The Giza pyramid complex consists of the Great Pyramid (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu and constructed c. 2580 – c. 2560 BC), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren) a few hundred metres to the south-west, and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinos) a few hundred metres farther south-west. The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre. Along with these major monuments are a number of smaller satellite edifices, known as "queens" pyramids, causeways, and temples.[8] Besides the archaeological structures, the ancient landscape has also been investigated.

 

Khufu's complex

Khufu's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, now buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman; diabase paving and nummulitic limestone walls have been found but the site has not been excavated. The valley temple was connected to a causeway that was largely destroyed when the village was constructed. The causeway led to the Mortuary Temple of Khufu, which was connected to the pyramid. Of this temple, the basalt pavement is the only thing that remains. The king's pyramid has three smaller queen's pyramids associated with it and three boat pits.  The boat pits contained a ship, and the two pits on the south side of the pyramid contained intact ships when excavated. One of these ships, the Khufu ship, has been restored and was originally displayed at the Giza Solar boat museum, then subsequently moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

 

Khufu's pyramid still has a limited number of casing stones at its base. These casing stones were made of fine white limestone quarried at Tura.

 

Khafre's complex

Main articles: Pyramid of Khafre and Great Sphinx of Giza

Khafre's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, the Sphinx temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple yielded several statues of Khafre. Several were found in a well in the floor of the temple by Mariette in 1860. Others were found during successive excavations by Sieglin (1909–1910), Junker, Reisner, and Hassan. Khafre's complex contained five boat-pits and a subsidiary pyramid with a serdab. 

 

Khafre's pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu Pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction—it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume. Khafre's pyramid retains a prominent display of casing stones at its apex.

 

Menkaure's complex

Menkaure's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple once contained several statues of Menkaure. During the 5th Dynasty, a smaller ante-temple was added on to the valley temple. The mortuary temple also yielded several statues of Menkaure. The king's pyramid, completed c. 2510 BC, has three subsidiary or queen's pyramids.  Of the four major monuments, only Menkaure's pyramid is seen today without any of its original polished limestone casing

 

Sphinx

The Sphinx dates from the reign of king Khafre. During the New Kingdom, Amenhotep II dedicated a new temple to Hauron-Haremakhet and this structure was added onto by later rulers.

 

Tomb of Queen Khentkaus I

Main article: Pyramid of Khentkaus I

Khentkaus I was buried in Giza. Her tomb is known as LG 100 and G 8400 and is located in the Central Field, near the valley temple of Menkaure. The pyramid complex of Queen Khentkaus includes her pyramid, a boat pit, a valley temple, and a pyramid town.

 

Construction

Main article: Egyptian pyramid construction techniques

Most construction theories are based on the idea that the pyramids were built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. Disagreements arise over the feasibility of the different proposed methods by which the stones were conveyed and placed.

 

In building the pyramids, the architects might have developed their techniques over time. They would select a site on a relatively flat area of bedrock—not sand—which provided a stable foundation. After carefully surveying the site and laying down the first level of stones, they constructed the pyramids in horizontal levels, one on top of the other.

 

For the Great Pyramid, most of the stone for the interior seems to have been quarried immediately to the south of the construction site. The smooth exterior of the pyramid was made of a fine grade of white limestone that was quarried across the Nile. These exterior blocks had to be carefully cut, transported by river barge to Giza, and dragged up ramps to the construction site. Only a few exterior blocks remain in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), people may have taken the rest away for building projects in the city of Cairo.

 

To ensure that the pyramid remained symmetrical, the exterior casing stones all had to be equal in height and width. Workers might have marked all the blocks to indicate the angle of the pyramid wall and trimmed the surfaces carefully so that the blocks fit together. During construction, the outer surface of the stone was smooth limestone; excess stone has eroded over time.

 

New insights into the closing stages of the Great Pyramid building were provided by the recent find of Wadi el-Jarf papyri, especially the diary of inspector Merer, whose team was assigned to deliver the white limestone from Tura quarries to Giza. The journal was already published, as well as a popular account of the importance of this discovery.

 

Purpose

The pyramids of Giza and others are thought to have been constructed to house the remains of the deceased pharaohs who ruled Ancient Egypt. A portion of the pharaoh's spirit called his ka was believed to remain with his corpse. Proper care of the remains was necessary in order for the "former Pharaoh to perform his new duties as king of the dead". It is theorized the pyramid not only served as a tomb for the pharaoh, but also as a storage pit for various items he would need in the afterlife. "The people of Ancient Egypt believed that death on Earth was the start of a journey to the next world." The embalmed body of the King was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife.

 

Astronomy

The sides of all three of the Giza pyramids were astronomically oriented to the cardinal directions within a small fraction of a degree. According to the disputed Orion correlation theory, the arrangement of the pyramids is a representation of the constellation Orion.

 

Workers' village

The work of quarrying, moving, setting, and sculpting the huge amount of stone used to build the pyramids might have been accomplished by several thousand skilled workers, unskilled laborers and supporting workers. Bakers, carpenters, water carriers, and others were also needed for the project. Along with the methods used to construct the pyramids, there is also wide speculation regarding the exact number of workers needed for a building project of this magnitude. When Greek historian Herodotus visited Giza in 450 BC, he was told by Egyptian priests that "the Great Pyramid had taken 400,000 men 20 years to build, working in three-month shifts 100,000 men at a time." Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid.

 

The Giza pyramid complex is surrounded by a large stone wall, outside which Mark Lehner and his team discovered a town where the pyramid workers were housed. The village is located to the southeast of the Khafre and Menkaure complexes. Among the discoveries at the workers' village are communal sleeping quarters, bakeries, breweries, and kitchens (with evidence showing that bread, beef, and fish were dietary staples), a copper workshop, a hospital, and a cemetery (where some of the skeletons were found with signs of trauma associated with accidents on a building site). The metal processed at the site was the so-called arsenical copper. The same material was also identified among the copper artefacts from the "Kromer" site, from the reigns of Khufu and Khafre.

 

The workers' town appears to date from the middle 4th Dynasty (2520–2472 BC), after the accepted time of Khufu and completion of the Great Pyramid. According to Lehner and the AERA team:

 

The development of this urban complex must have been rapid. All of the construction probably happened in the 35 to 50 years that spanned the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure, builders of the Second and Third Giza Pyramids.

Using pottery shards, seal impressions, and stratigraphy to date the site, the team further concludes:

 

The picture that emerges is that of a planned settlement, some of the world's earliest urban planning, securely dated to the reigns of two Giza pyramid builders: Khafre (2520–2494 BC) and Menkaure (2490–2472 BC).

Radiocarbon data for the Old Kingdom Giza plateau and the workers' settlement were published in 2006, and then re-evaluated in 2011.

 

Cemeteries

As the pyramids were constructed, the mastabas for lesser royals were constructed around them. Near the pyramid of Khufu, the main cemetery is G 7000, which lies in the East Field located to the east of the main pyramid and next to the Queen's pyramids. These cemeteries around the pyramids were arranged along streets and avenues. Cemetery G 7000 was one of the earliest and contained tombs of wives, sons, and daughters of these 4th Dynasty rulers. On the other side of the pyramid in the West Field, the royals' sons Wepemnofret and Hemiunu were buried in Cemetery G 1200 and Cemetery G 4000, respectively. These cemeteries were further expanded during the 5th and 6th Dynasties.

 

West Field

Main article: Giza West Field

The West Field is located to the west of Khufu's pyramid. It is divided into smaller areas such as the cemeteries referred to as the Abu Bakr Excavations (1949–1950, 1950–1951, 1952, and 1953), and several cemeteries named based on the mastaba numbers such as Cemetery G 1000, Cemetery G 1100, etc. The West Field contains Cemetery G1000 – Cemetery G1600, and Cemetery G 1900. Further cemeteries in this field are: Cemeteries G 2000, G 2200, G 2500, G 3000, G 4000, and G 6000. Three other cemeteries are named after their excavators: Junker Cemetery West, Junker Cemetery East, and Steindorff Cemetery.

 

East Field

Main article: Giza East Field

The East Field is located to the east of Khufu's pyramid and contains cemetery G 7000. This cemetery was a burial place for some of the family members of Khufu. The cemetery also includes mastabas from tenants and priests of the pyramids dated to the 5th Dynasty and 6th Dynasty.

 

Cemetery GIS

This cemetery dates from the time of Menkaure (Junker) or earlier (Reisner), and contains several stone-built mastabas dating from as late as the 6th Dynasty. Tombs from the time of Menkaure include the mastabas of the royal chamberlain Khaemnefert, the King's son Khufudjedef (master of the royal largesse), and an official named Niankhre.

 

Central Field

Main article: Central Field, Giza

The Central Field contains several burials of royal family members. The tombs range in date from the end of the 4th Dynasty to the 5th Dynasty or even later.[

 

Tombs dating from the Saite and later period were found near the causeway of Khafre and the Great Sphinx. These tombs include the tomb of a commander of the army named Ahmose and his mother Queen Nakhtubasterau, who was the wife of Pharaoh Amasis II.

 

South Field

The South Field includes mastabas dating from the 1st Dynasty to 3rd Dynasty as well as later burials. Of the more significant of these early dynastic tombs are one referred to as "Covington's tomb", otherwise known as Mastaba T, and the large Mastaba V which contained artifacts naming the 1st Dynasty pharaoh Djet. Other tombs date from the late Old Kingdom (5th and 6th Dynasty). The south section of the field contains several tombs dating from the Saite period and later. 

 

Tombs of the pyramid builders

In 1990, tombs belonging to the pyramid workers were discovered alongside the pyramids, with an additional burial site found nearby in 2009. Although not mummified, they had been buried in mudbrick tombs with beer and bread to support them in the afterlife. The tombs' proximity to the pyramids and the manner of burial supports the theory that they were paid laborers who took pride in their work and were not slaves, as was previously thought. Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid. Most of the workers appear to have come from poor families. Specialists such as architects, masons, metalworkers, and carpenters were permanently employed by the king to fill positions that required the most skill.

 

Shafts

There are multiple burial-shafts and various unfinished shafts and tunnels located in the Giza complex that were discovered and mentioned prominently by Selim Hassan in his report Excavations at Giza 1933–1934. He states: "Very few of the Saitic [referring to the Saite Period) shafts have been thoroughly examined, for the reason that most of them are flooded."

 

Osiris Shaft

The Osiris Shaft is a narrow burial-shaft leading to three levels for a tomb and below it a flooded area. It was first mentioned by Hassan, and a thorough excavation was conducted by a team led by Hawass in 1999. It was opened to tourists in November 2017.

 

New Kingdom and Late Period

During the New Kingdom Giza was still an active site. A brick-built chapel was constructed near the Sphinx during the early 18th Dynasty, probably by King Thutmose I. Amenhotep II built a temple dedicated to Hauron-Haremakhet near the Sphinx. As a prince, the future pharaoh Thutmose IV visited the pyramids and the Sphinx; he reported being told in a dream that if he cleared the sand that had built up around the Sphinx, he would be rewarded with kingship. This event is recorded in the Dream Stele, which he had installed between the Sphinx's front legs.

 

During the early years of his reign, Thutmose IV, together with his wife Queen Nefertari, had stelae erected at Giza.

 

Pharaoh Tutankhamun had a structure built, which is now referred to as the king's resthouse.

 

During the 19th Dynasty, Seti I added to the temple of Hauron-Haremakhet, and his son Ramesses II erected a stela in the chapel before the Sphinx and usurped the resthouse of Tutankhamun. 

 

During the 21st Dynasty, the Temple of Isis Mistress-of-the-Pyramids was reconstructed. During the 26th Dynasty, a stela made in this time mentions Khufu and his Queen Henutsen.

 

Division of the 1903–1905 excavation of the Giza Necropolis

In 1903, rights to excavate the West Field and Pyramids of the Giza Necropolis were divided by three institutions from Italy, Germany, and the United States of America.

 

Background

Prior to the division of the Giza Plateau into three institutional concessions in 1903, amateur and private excavations at the Giza Necropolis had been permitted to operate. The work of these amateur archaeologists failed to meet high scientific standards. Montague Ballard, for instance, excavated in the Western Cemetery (with the hesitant permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Service) and neither kept records of his finds nor published them.

 

Italian, German, and American Concessions at Giza

In 1902, the Egyptian Antiquities Service under Gaston Maspero resolved to issue permits exclusively to authorized individuals representing public institutions. In November of that year, the Service awarded three scholars with concessions on the Giza Necropolis. They were the Italian Ernesto Schiaparelli from the Turin Museum, the German Georg Steindorff from the University of Leipzig who had funding from Wilhelm Pelizaeus, and the American George Reisner from the Hearst Expedition. Within a matter of months, the site had been divided between the concessionaires following a meeting at the Mena House Hotel involving Schiaparelli, Ludwig Borchardt (Steindorff's representative in Egypt), and Reisner.

 

Division of the West Field

By the turn of the 20th century, the three largest pyramids on the Giza plateau were considered mostly exhausted by previous excavations, so the Western Cemetery and its collection of private mastaba tombs were thought to represent the richest unexcavated part of the plateau. George Reisner's wife, Mary, drew names from a hat to assign three long east-west plots of the necropolis among the Italian, German, and American missions. Schiaparelli was assigned the southernmost strip, Borchardt the center, and Reisner the northernmost.

 

Division of the Pyramids

Rights to excavate the Pyramids were then also negotiated between Schiaparelli, Borchardt, and Reisner. Schiaparelli gained rights to excavate the Great Pyramid of Khufu along with its three associated queens' pyramids and most of its Eastern Cemetery. Borchardt received Khafre's pyramid, its causeway, the Sphinx, and the Sphinx's associated temples. Reisner claimed Menkaure's pyramid as well as its associated queens' pyramids and pyramid temple, along with a portion of Schiaparelli's Eastern Cemetery. Any future disputes were to be resolved by Inspector James Quibell, as per a letter from Borchardt to Maspero.

 

Immediate Aftermath

This arrangement lasted until 1905, when, under the supervision of Schiaparelli and Francesco Ballerini, the Italian excavations ceased at Giza. As the Italians were more interested in sites which might yield more papyri, they turned their concession of the southern strip of the Western Cemetery over to the Americans under Reisner.

 

Modern usage

In 1978, the Grateful Dead played a series of concerts later released as Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978. In 2007, Colombian singer Shakira performed at the complex to a crowd of approximately 100,000 people. The complex was used for the final draw of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2021 World Men's Handball Championship.

 

Egypt's Minister of Tourism unveiled plans for a €17,000,000 revamp of the complex by the end of 2021, in order to boost tourism in Egypt as well as make the site more accessible and tourist-friendly. According to Lonely Planet, the refurbishment includes a new visitors' centre, an environmentally-friendly electric bus, a restaurant (the 9 Pyramids Lounge), as well as a cinema, public toilets, site-wide signage, food trucks, photo booths, and free Wi-Fi. The new facility is part of a wider plan to renovate the 4,500 year old site.

Peter I commonly known as Peter the Great, was Tsar of all Russia from 1682, and the first Emperor of all Russia from 1721 until his death in 1725. He reigned jointly with his half-brother Ivan V until 1696. From this year, Peter was an absolute monarch who remained the ultimate authority. His methods were often harsh and autocratic.

 

Most of Peter's reign was consumed by long wars against the Ottoman and Swedish Empires. Despite initial difficulties, the wars were ultimately successful and led to expansion to the Sea of Azov and the Baltic Sea, thus laying the groundwork for the Imperial Russian Navy. His victory in the Great Northern War ended Sweden's era as a great power and its domination of the Baltic region while elevating Russia's standing to the extent it came to be acknowledged as an empire. Peter led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political systems with ones that were modern, scientific, Westernized, and based on radical Enlightenment.

 

In 1700, he introduced the Gregorian calendar but the Russian Orthodox Church was particularly resistant to this change; they wanted to maintain its distinct identity and avoid appearing influenced by Catholic practices.[citation needed] In 1703, he introduced the first Russian newspaper, Sankt-Peterburgskie Vedomosti, and ordered the civil script, a reform of Russian orthography largely designed by himself. He founded the city of Saint Petersburg on the shore of the Neva as a "window to the West" in May 1703. In 1712 Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg, where it remained – with only a brief interruption – until 1918. He promoted higher education and industrialization in the Russian Empire.

 

Peter had a great interest in plants, animals and minerals, in malformed creatures or exceptions to the law of nature for his cabinet of curiosities. He encouraged research of deformities, all along trying to debunk the superstitious fear of monsters. The Russian Academy of Sciences and the Saint Petersburg State University were founded in 1724, a year before his death.

 

Peter is primarily credited with the modernization of the country, transforming it into a major European power. His administrative reforms, creating a Governing Senate in 1711, the Collegium in 1717 and the Table of Ranks in 1722 had a lasting impact on Russia, and many institutions of the Russian government trace their origins to his reign.

 

Early life

Peter was named after the apostle. He grew up at Izmaylovo Estate and was educated from an early age by several tutors commissioned by his father, Tsar Alexis of Russia, most notably Nikita Zotov, Patrick Gordon, and Paul Menesius. On 29 January 1676, Alexis died, leaving the sovereignty to Peter's elder half-brother, the weak and sickly Feodor III of Russia. Throughout this period, the government was largely run by Artamon Matveev, an enlightened friend of Alexis, the political head of the Naryshkin family and one of Peter's greatest childhood benefactors.

 

This position changed when Feodor died in 1682. As Feodor did not leave any children, a dispute arose between the Miloslavsky family (Maria Miloslavskaya was the first wife of Alexis I) and Naryshkin family (Natalya Naryshkina was his second) over who should inherit the throne. He jointly ruled with his elder half-brother, Ivan V, until 1696. Ivan, was next in line but was chronically ill and of infirm mind. Consequently, the Boyar Duma (a council of Russian nobles) chose the 10-year-old Peter to become Tsar, with his mother as regent.

 

This arrangement was brought before the people of Moscow, as ancient tradition demanded, and was ratified. Sophia, one of Alexis' daughters from his first marriage, led a rebellion of the Streltsy (Russia's elite military corps) in April–May 1682. In the subsequent conflict, some of Peter's relatives and friends were murdered, including Artamon Matveyev, and Peter witnessed some of these acts of political violence.

 

The Streltsy made it possible for Sophia, the Miloslavskys (the clan of Ivan) and their allies to insist that Peter and Ivan be proclaimed joint Tsars, with Ivan being acclaimed as the senior. Sophia then acted as regent during the minority of the sovereigns and exercised all power. For seven years, she ruled as an autocrat. A large hole was cut in the back of the dual-seated throne used by Ivan and Peter. Sophia would sit behind the throne and listen as Peter conversed with nobles, while feeding him information and giving him responses to questions and problems. He lived at Preobrazhenskoye. This throne can be seen in the Kremlin Armoury in Moscow.

 

At the age of 16, Peter discovered an English boat on the estate, had it restored and learned to sail. He received a sextant, but did not know how to use the instrument. Therefore, he began a search for a foreign expert in the German Quarter. Peter befriended two Dutch carpenters, Frans Timmerman and Karsten Brandt, and several other foreigners in Russian service. Peter studied arithmetic, geometry, and military sciences. He was not interested in a musical education but seems to have liked fireworks and drumming.

 

Peter was not particularly concerned that others ruled in his name. He engaged in such pastimes as shipbuilding and sailing, as well as mock battles with his toy army. Peter's mother sought to force him to adopt a more conventional approach and arranged his marriage to Eudoxia Lopukhina in 1689. The marriage was a failure, and ten years later Peter forced his wife to become a nun and thus freed himself from the union.

 

By the summer of 1689, Peter, planned to take power from his half-sister Sophia, whose position had been weakened by two unsuccessful Crimean campaigns against the Crimean Khanate in an attempt to stop devastating Crimean Tatar raids into Russia's southern lands. When she learned of his designs, Sophia conspired with some leaders of the Streltsy, who continually aroused disorder and dissent. Peter, warned by others from the Streltsy, escaped in the middle of the night to the impenetrable monastery of Troitse-Sergiyeva Lavra; there he slowly gathered adherents who perceived he would win the power struggle. Sophia was eventually overthrown, with Peter I and Ivan V continuing to act as co-tsars. Peter forced Sophia to enter a convent, where she gave up her name and her position as a member of the royal family.

 

Still, Peter could not acquire actual control over Russian affairs. Power was instead exercised by his mother, Natalya Naryshkina. It was only when Natalya died in 1694 that Peter, then aged 22, became an independent sovereign. Formally, Ivan V was a co-ruler with Peter, though being ineffective. Peter became the sole ruler when Ivan died in 1696 without male offspring, two years later.

 

Peter grew to be extremely tall, especially for the time period, reportedly standing 6 ft 8 in (2.03 m). Peter had noticeable facial tics, and he may have suffered from petit mal seizures, a form of epilepsy. Meanwhile, he was a frequent guest in German quarter, where he met Anna and Willem Mons.

 

Ideology of Peter's reign

As a young man, Peter I adopted the Protestant model of existence in a pragmatic world of competition and personal success, which largely shaped the philosophy of his reformism. He perceived the Russian people as rude, unintelligent, stubborn in their sluggishness, a child, a lazy student. He highly appreciated the state's role in the life of society, saw it as an ideal instrument for achieving high goals, saw it as a universal institution for transforming people, with the help of violence and fear, into educated, conscious, law-abiding and useful to the whole society subjects.

 

He introduced into the concept of the autocrat's power the notion of the monarch's duties. He considered it necessary to take care of his subjects, to protect them from enemies, to work for their benefit. Above all, he put the interests of Russia. He saw his mission in turning it into a power similar to Western countries, and subordinated his own life and the lives of his subjects to the realization of this idea. Gradually penetrated the idea that the task should be solved with the help of reforms, which will be carried out at the autocrat's will, who creates good and punishes evil. He considered the morality of a statesman separately from the morality of a private person and believed that the sovereign in the name of state interests can go to murder, violence, forgery and deceit.

 

He went through the naval service, starting from the lowest ranks: bombardier (1695), captain (1696), colonel (1706), schout-bij-nacht (1709), vice-admiral (1714), admiral (1721). By hard daily work (according to the figurative expression of Peter the Great himself, he was simultaneously "forced to hold a sword and a quill in one right hand") and courageous behavior he demonstrated to his subjects his personal positive example, showed how to act, fully devoting himself to the fulfillment of duty and service to the fatherland.

 

Reign

Peter implemented sweeping reforms aimed at modernizing Russia. Heavily influenced by his advisors from Western Europe, Peter reorganized the Russian army along modern lines and dreamed of making Russia a maritime power. He faced much opposition to these policies at home but brutally suppressed rebellions against his authority, including by the Streltsy, Bashkirs, Astrakhan, and the greatest civil uprising of his reign, the Bulavin Rebellion.

 

Peter implemented social modernization in an absolute manner by introducing French and western dress to his court and requiring courtiers, state officials, and the military to shave their beards and adopt modern clothing styles. One means of achieving this end was the introduction of taxes for long beards and robes in September 1698.

 

In his process to westernize Russia, he wanted members of his family to marry other European royalty. In the past, his ancestors had been snubbed at the idea, but now, it was proving fruitful. He negotiated with Frederick William, Duke of Courland to marry his niece, Anna Ivanovna. He used the wedding in order to launch his new capital, St Petersburg, where he had already ordered building projects of westernized palaces and buildings. Peter hired Italian and German architects to design it.

 

As part of his reforms, Peter started an industrialization effort that was slow but eventually successful. Russian manufacturing and main exports were based on the mining and lumber industries. For example, by the end of the century Russia came to export more iron than any other country in the world.

 

To improve his nation's position on the seas, Peter sought more maritime outlets. His only outlet at the time was the White Sea at Arkhangelsk. The Baltic Sea was at the time controlled by Sweden in the north, while the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea were controlled by the Ottoman Empire and Safavid Empire respectively in the south.

 

Peter attempted to acquire control of the Black Sea, which would require expelling the Tatars from the surrounding areas. As part of an agreement with Poland that ceded Kiev to Russia, Peter was forced to wage war against the Crimean Khan and against the Khan's overlord, the Ottoman Sultan. Peter's primary objective became the capture of the Ottoman fortress of Azov, near the Don River. In the summer of 1695 Peter organized the Azov campaigns to take the fortress, but his attempts ended in failure.

 

Peter returned to Moscow in November 1695 and began building a large navy in Voronezh. He launched about thirty ships against the Ottomans in 1696, capturing Azov in July of that year.

 

Grand Embassy

Peter knew that Russia could not face the Ottoman Empire alone. In 1697, he traveled "incognito" to Western Europe on an 18-month journey with a large Russian delegation–the so-called "Grand Embassy". He used a fake name, allowing him to escape social and diplomatic events, but since he was far taller than most others, he could not fool anyone. One goal was to seek the aid of European monarchs, but Peter's hopes were dashed. France was a traditional ally of the Ottoman Sultan, and Austria was eager to maintain peace in the east while conducting its own wars in the west. Peter, furthermore, had chosen an inopportune moment: the Europeans at the time were more concerned about the War of the Spanish Succession over who would succeed the childless King Charles II of Spain than about fighting the Ottoman Sultan.

 

In Königsberg, the Tsar was apprenticed for two months to an artillery engineer. In July he met Sophia of Hanover at Coppenbrügge castle. She described him: "The tsar is a tall, handsome man, with an attractive face. He has a lively mind is very witty. Only, someone so well endowed by nature could be a little better mannered." Peter rented a ship in Emmerich am Rhein and sailed to Zaandam, where he arrived on 18 August 1697. He studied saw-mills, manufacturing and shipbuilding but left after a week. Through the mediation of Nicolaas Witsen, an expert on Russia, the Tsar was given the opportunity to gain practical experience in shipyard, belonging to the Dutch East India Company, for a period of four months, under the supervision of Gerrit Claesz Pool. The diligent and capable Tsar assisted in the construction of an East Indiaman ship Peter and Paul specially laid down for him. During his stay the Tsar engaged many skilled workers such as builders of locks, fortresses, shipwrights, and seamen—including Cornelis Cruys, a vice-admiral who became, under Franz Lefort, the Tsar's advisor in maritime affairs. Peter later put his knowledge of shipbuilding to use in helping build Russia's navy.

 

Peter felt that the ship's carpenters in Holland worked too much by eye and lacked accurate construction drawings. On 11 January 1698 (Old Style) Peter arrived at Victoria Embankment with four chamberlains, three interpreters, two clock makers, a cook, a priest, six trumpeters, 70 soldiers from the Preobrazhensky regiment, four dwarfs and a monkey. Peter stayed at 21 Norfolk Street, Strand and met with King William III and Gilbert Burnet, attended a session of the Royal Society, received a doctorate from Oxford University, trained a telescope on Venus at the Greenwich Observatory, and saw a Fleet Review by Royal Navy at Deptford. He studied the English techniques of city-building he would later use to great effect at Saint Petersburg. At the end of April 1698 he left after learning to make watches, carpenting coffins and posing for Sir Godfrey Kneller.

 

The Embassy next went to Leipzig, Dresden, Prague and Vienna. Peter spoke with Augustus II the Strong and Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor.[18] Peter's visit was cut short, when he was forced to rush home by a rebellion of the Streltsy. The rebellion was easily crushed before Peter returned home; of the Tsar's troops, only one was killed. Peter nevertheless acted ruthlessly towards the mutineers. Over one thousand two hundred of the rebels were tortured and executed, and Peter ordered that their bodies be publicly exhibited as a warning to future conspirators. The Streltsy were disbanded, some of the rebels were deported to Siberia, and the individual they sought to put on the Throne — Peter's half-sister Sophia — was forced to become a nun.

 

Peter's visits to the West impressed upon him the notion that European customs were in several respects superior to Russian traditions. He commanded all of his courtiers and officials to wear European clothing and cut off their long beards, causing his Boyars, who were very fond of their beards, great upset. Boyars who sought to retain their beards were required to pay an annual beard tax of one hundred rubles. Peter also sought to end arranged marriages, which were the norm among the Russian nobility, because he thought such a practice was barbaric and led to domestic violence, since the partners usually resented each other.

 

In 1698, Peter I instituted a beard tax to modernize Russian society. In the same year Peter sent a delegation to Malta, under boyar Boris Sheremetev, to observe the training and abilities of the Knights of Malta and their fleet. Sheremetev investigated the possibility of future joint ventures with the Knights, including action against the Turks and the possibility of a future Russian naval base. On 12 September 1698, Peter officially founded the first Russian Navy base, Taganrog on the Sea of Azov.

 

In 1699, Peter changed the date of the celebration of the new year from 1 September to 1 January. Traditionally, the years were reckoned from the purported creation of the World, but after Peter's reforms, they were to be counted from the birth of Christ. Thus, in the year 7207 of the old Russian calendar, Peter proclaimed that the Julian Calendar was in effect and the year was 1700. On the death of Lefort in 1699, Menshikov succeeded him as Peter's prime favourite and confidant. In 1701, the Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation was founded; for fifteen years, not only naval officers, but also surveyors, engineers, and gunners were educated there.

 

Great Northern War

First Winter Palace

Peter made a temporary peace with the Ottoman Empire that allowed him to keep the captured fort of Azov, and turned his attention to Russian maritime supremacy. He sought to acquire control of the Baltic Sea, which had been taken by the Swedish Empire a half-century earlier. Peter declared war on Sweden, which was at the time led by the young King Charles XII. Sweden was also opposed by Denmark–Norway, Saxony, and the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Preobrazhensky regiment took part in all major battles of the Great Northern War.

 

Russia was ill-prepared to fight the Swedes, and their first attempt at seizing the Baltic coast ended in disaster at the Battle of Narva in 1700. In the conflict, the forces of Charles XII, rather than employ a slow methodical siege, attacked immediately using a blinding snowstorm to their advantage. After the battle, Charles XII decided to concentrate his forces against the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, which gave Peter time to reorganize the Russian army. He invited Nicolaas Bidloo to organize a military hospital. In 1701, Peter the Great signed a decree on the opening of Moscow School of Mathematics and Navigation.

 

While the Poles fought the Swedes, Peter founded the city of Saint Petersburg on 29 June 1703, in Ingermanland (a province of the Swedish Empire that he had captured). It was named after his patron saint Saint Peter. He forbade the building of stone edifices outside Saint Petersburg, which he intended to become Russia's capital, so that all stonemasons could participate in the construction of the new city. Peter moved the capital to St. Petersburg in 1703. While the city was being built along the Neva he lived in a modest three-room log cabin (with a study but without a fire-place) which had to make room for the first version of the Winter palace. The first buildings which appeared were the Peter and Paul Fortress, a shipyard at the Admiralty and Alexander Nevsky Lavra.

 

Following several defeats, Polish King Augustus II the Strong abdicated in 1706. Swedish king Charles XII turned his attention to Russia, invading it in 1708. After crossing into Russia, Charles defeated Peter at Golovchin in July. In the Battle of Lesnaya, Charles suffered his first loss after Peter crushed a group of Swedish reinforcements marching from Riga. Deprived of this aid, Charles was forced to abandon his proposed march on Moscow.

 

Charles XII refused to retreat to Poland or back to Sweden and instead invaded Ukraine. Peter withdrew his army southward, employing scorched earth, destroying along the way anything that could assist the Swedes. Deprived of local supplies, the Swedish army was forced to halt its advance in the winter of 1708–1709. In the summer of 1709, they resumed their efforts to capture Russian-ruled Ukraine, culminating in the Battle of Poltava on 27 June. The battle was a decisive defeat for the Swedish forces, ending Charles' campaign in Ukraine and forcing him south to seek refuge in the Ottoman Empire. Russia had defeated what was considered to be one of the world's best militaries, and the victory overturned the view that Russia was militarily incompetent. In Poland, Augustus II was restored as King.

 

Peter, overestimating the support he would receive from his Balkan allies, attacked the Ottoman Empire, initiating the Russo-Turkish War of 1710. Peter's campaign in the Ottoman Empire was disastrous, and in the ensuing Treaty of the Pruth, Peter was forced to return the Black Sea ports he had seized in 1697. In return, the Sultan expelled Charles XII.

 

The Ottomans called him Mad Peter (Turkish: deli Petro), for his willingness to sacrifice large numbers of his troops in wartime. Peter I loved all sorts of rarities and curiosities. In 1704 Abram Petrovich Gannibal, a child with Ethiopian origin, was presented to him; in 1716 Peter took him to Paris.

 

In 1711, Peter established by decree a new state body known as the Governing Senate. Normally, the Boyar duma would have exercised power during his absence. Peter, however, mistrusted the boyars; he instead abolished the Duma and created a Senate of ten members. The Senate was founded as the highest state institution to supervise all judicial, financial and administrative affairs. Originally established only for the time of the monarch's absence, the Senate became a permanent body after his return. A special high official, the Ober-Procurator, served as the link between the ruler and the senate and acted, in Peter own words, as "the sovereign's eye". Without his signature no Senate decision could go into effect; the Senate became one of the most important institutions of Imperial Russia.

 

1712, Peter I issued a decree establishing an Engineering School in Moscow, which was supposed to recruit up to 150 students, and two-thirds of them were to consist of nobles.[31] Therefore, on 28 February 1714, he issued a decree calling for compulsory education, which dictated that all Russian 10- to 15-year-old children of the nobility, government clerks, and lesser-ranked officials must learn basic mathematics and geometry, and should be tested on the subjects at the end of their studies.

 

Peter's northern armies took the Swedish province of Livonia (the northern half of modern Latvia, and the southern half of modern Estonia), driving the Swedes out of Finland. In 1714 the Russian fleet won the Battle of Gangut. Most of Finland was occupied by the Russians.

 

In 1716, the Tsar visited Riga, and Danzig in January, Stettin, and obtained the assistance of the Electorate of Hanover and the Kingdom of Prussia fighting a war against Sweden at Wismar. He was forced to leave Mecklenburg. In Altona he met with Danish diplomats. He went on to Bad Pyrmont in May/June, because of an illness he stayed at this spa. He arrived in Amsterdam in December, where he bought some interesting collections: those of Frederik Ruysch, Levinus Vincent and Albertus Seba and paintings by Maria Sibylla Merian for his Kunstkamera. He visited a silk manufacture and a paper-mill, and learned to create paper and to spin silk. He visited Herman Boerhaave and Carel de Moor in Leiden and ordered two mercury thermometers from Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit and instruments from Musschenbroek. In April 1717 he continued his travel from Flushing to Brussels in the Austrian Netherlands and Dunkirk, Calais, Paris, where he obtained many books and proposed a marriage between his daughter and King Louis XV. Saint-Simon described him as "tall, well-formed and slim…with a look both bewildered and fierce." Via Reims, and Spa Peter travelled on to Maastricht, at that time one of the most important fortresses in Europe, where he was received by Daniël van Dopff, the commander of the fortress. He went back to Amsterdam and visited the Hortus Botanicus and left the city early September.

 

The Tsar's navy was powerful enough that the Russians could penetrate Sweden. Still, Charles XII refused to yield, and not until his death in battle in 1718 did peace become feasible. After the battle near Åland, Sweden made peace with all powers but Russia by 1720. In 1721, the Treaty of Nystad ended the Great Northern War. Russia acquired Ingria, Estonia, Livonia, and a substantial portion of Karelia. In turn, Russia paid two million Riksdaler and surrendered most of Finland. The Tsar retained some Finnish lands close to Saint Petersburg, which he had made his capital in 1712. Between 1713 and 1728, and from 1732 to 1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia.

 

Title

Following his victory in the Great Northern War, he adopted the title of emperor in 1721.

 

By the grace of God, the most excellent and great sovereign emperor Pyotr Alekseevich the ruler of all the Russias: of Moscow, of Kiev, of Vladimir, of Novgorod, Tsar of Kazan, Tsar of Astrakhan and Tsar of Siberia, sovereign of Pskov, great prince of Smolensk, of Tver, of Yugorsk, of Perm, of Vyatka, of Bulgaria and others, sovereign and great prince of the Novgorod Lower lands, of Chernigov, of Ryazan, of Rostov, of Yaroslavl, of Belozersk, of Udora, of Kondia and the sovereign of all the northern lands, and the sovereign of the Iverian lands, of the Kartlian and Georgian Kings, of the Kabardin lands, of the Circassian and Mountain princes and many other states and lands western and eastern here and there and the successor and sovereign and ruler.

 

Later years

In 1717, Alexander Bekovich-Cherkassky led the first Russian military expedition into Central Asia against the Khanate of Khiva. The expedition ended in complete disaster when the entire expeditionary force was slaughtered.

 

In 1718, Peter investigated why the formerly Swedish province of Livonia was so orderly. He discovered that the Swedes spent as much administering Livonia (300 times smaller than his empire) as he spent on the entire Russian bureaucracy. He was forced to dismantle the province's government.

 

To the end of 1717, the preparatory phase of administrative reform in Russia was completed. After 1718, Peter established colleges in place of the old central agencies of government, including foreign affairs, war, navy, expense, income, justice, and inspection. Later others were added, to regulate mining and industry. Each college consisted of a president, a vice-president, a number of councilors and assessors, and a procurator. Some foreigners were included in various colleges but not as president. Peter did not have enough loyal, talented or educated persons to put in full charge of the various departments. Peter preferred to rely on groups of individuals who would keep check on one another. Decisions depended on the majority vote.

 

Peter's last years were marked by further reform in Russia. On 22 October 1721, soon after peace was made with Sweden, he was officially proclaimed Emperor of All Russia. Some proposed that he take the title Emperor of the East, but he refused. Gavrila Golovkin, the State Chancellor, was the first to add "the Great, Father of His Country, Emperor of All the Russias" to Peter's traditional title Tsar following a speech by the archbishop of Pskov in 1721. Peter's imperial title was recognized by Augustus II of Poland, Frederick William I of Prussia, and Frederick I of Sweden, but not by the other European monarchs. In the minds of many, the word emperor connoted superiority or pre-eminence over kings. Several rulers feared that Peter would claim authority over them, just as the Holy Roman Emperor had claimed suzerainty over all Christian nations.

 

In 1722, Peter created a new order of precedence known as the Table of Ranks. Formerly, precedence had been determined by birth. To deprive the Boyars of their high positions, Peter directed that precedence should be determined by merit and service to the Emperor. The Table of Ranks continued to remain in effect until the Russian monarchy was overthrown in 1917.

 

The once powerful Persian Safavid Empire to the south was in deep decline. Taking advantage of the profitable situation, Peter launched the Russo-Persian War of 1722–1723, otherwise known as "The Persian Expedition of Peter the Great", which drastically increased Russian influence for the first time in the Caucasus and Caspian Sea region, and prevented the Ottoman Empire from making territorial gains in the region. After considerable success and the capture of many provinces and cities in the Caucasus and northern mainland Persia, the Safavids were forced to hand over territory to Russia, comprising Derbent, Shirvan, Gilan, Mazandaran, Baku, and Astrabad. Within twelve years all the territories were ceded back to Persia, now led by the charismatic military genius Nader Shah, as part of the Treaty of Resht, the Treaty of Ganja, and as the result of a Russo-Persian alliance against the Ottoman Empire, which was the common enemy of both.

 

Peter introduced new taxes to fund improvements in Saint Petersburg. He abolished the land tax and household tax and replaced them with a poll tax. The taxes on land and on households were payable only by individuals who owned property or maintained families. The new head taxes were payable by serfs and paupers. In 1725 the construction of Peterhof, a palace near Saint Petersburg, was completed. Peterhof (Dutch for "Peter's Court") was a grand residence, becoming known as the "Russian Versailles".

 

In the winter of 1723, Peter, whose overall health was never robust, began having problems with his urinary tract and bladder. In the summer of 1724, a team of doctors performed surgery releasing upwards of four pounds of blocked urine. Peter remained bedridden until late autumn. In the first week of October, restless and certain he was cured, Peter began a lengthy inspection tour of various projects. According to legend, in November, at Lakhta along the Gulf of Finland to inspect some ironworks, Peter saw a group of soldiers drowning near shore and, wading out into near-waist deep water, came to their rescue.

 

This icy water rescue is said to have exacerbated Peter's bladder problems and caused his death. The story, however, has been viewed with skepticism by some historians, pointing out that the German chronicler Jacob von Staehlin is the only source for the story, and it seems unlikely that no one else would have documented such an act of heroism. This, plus the interval of time between these actions and Peter's death seems to preclude any direct link.

 

In early January 1725, Peter was struck once again with uremia. Legend has it that before lapsing into unconsciousness Peter asked for a paper and pen and scrawled an unfinished note that read: "Leave all to ..." and then, exhausted by the effort, asked for his daughter Anna to be summoned.

 

Peter died between four and five in the morning 8 February 1725. An autopsy revealed his bladder to be infected with gangrene. He was fifty-two years, seven months old when he died, having reigned forty-two years. He is interred in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral, Saint Petersburg, Russia.

 

After the death of Peter I, there were immediately students who came to the Military College with a request to "leave science" under the pretext of "unconsciousness and incomprehensibility."

 

Religion

Peter did not believe in miracles and founded The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters, an organization that mocked the Orthodox and Catholic Church when he was eighteen. In January 1695, Peter refused to partake in a traditional Russian Orthodox ceremony of the Epiphany Ceremony, and would often schedule events for The All-Joking, All-Drunken Synod of Fools and Jesters to directly conflict with the Church. He often used the nickname Pakhom Mikhailov (Russian: Пахом Михайлов) among the ministers of religion who made up his relatively close circle of long-term drinking companions. He drank less than the others, deliberately getting the others drunk in order to listen to their drunken conversations.

 

Peter was brought up in the Russian Orthodox faith, but he had low regard for the Church hierarchy, which he kept under tight governmental control. The traditional leader of the Church was the Patriarch of Moscow. In 1700, when the office fell vacant, Peter refused to name a replacement, allowing the patriarch's coadjutor (or deputy) to discharge the duties of the office. Peter could not tolerate the patriarch exercising power superior to the tsar, as indeed had happened in the case of Philaret (1619–1633) and Nikon (1652–66). In 1716 he invited Theophan Prokopovich to come to the capital. In 1718 he ordered to translate the "Introduction to European History" (a work by Samuel Pufendorf); the Ecclesiastical Regulations of 1721 are based on it. The Church reform of Peter the Great therefore abolished the patriarchate, replacing it with a Holy Synod that was under the control of a Procurator, and the tsar appointed all bishops.

 

In 1721, Peter followed the advice of Prokopovich in designing the Holy Synod as a council of ten clergymen. For leadership in the Church, Peter turned increasingly to Ukrainians, who were more open to reform, but were not well loved by the Russian clergy. Peter implemented a law that stipulated that no Russian man could join a monastery before the age of fifty. He felt that too many able Russian men were being wasted on clerical work when they could be joining his new and improved army.

 

A clerical career was not a route chosen by upper-class society. Most parish priests were sons of priests and were very poorly educated and paid. The monks in the monasteries had a slightly higher status; they were not allowed to marry. Politically, the Church was impotent.

 

Marriages and family

Peter the Great had two wives, with whom he had fifteen children, three of whom survived to adulthood. Peter's mother selected his first wife, Eudoxia Lopukhina, with the advice of other nobles in 1689. This was consistent with previous Romanov tradition by choosing a daughter of a minor noble. This was done to prevent fighting between the stronger noble houses and to bring fresh blood into the family. He also had a mistress from Westphalia, Anna Mons.

 

Upon his return from his European tour in 1698, Peter sought to end his unhappy marriage. He divorced the Tsaritsa and forced her to join a convent. She had borne him three children, although only one, Alexei Petrovich, Tsarevich of Russia, had survived past his childhood.

 

Menshikov introduced him to Marta Helena Skowrońska, a Polish-Lithuanian peasant, and took her as a mistress some time between 1702 and 1704. Marta converted to the Russian Orthodox Church and was given the name Catherine. Though no record exists, Catherine and Peter married secretly between 23 Oct and 1 December 1707 in St. Petersburg. Peter valued Catherine and married officially, at Saint Isaac's Cathedral in Saint Petersburg on 19 February 1712.

 

His eldest child and heir, Alexei, was suspected of being involved in a plot to overthrow the Emperor. Alexei was tried and confessed under torture during questioning conducted by a secular court (count Tolstoy). He was convicted and sentenced to be executed. The sentence could only be carried out with Peter's signed authorization, and Alexei died in prison, as Peter hesitated before making the decision. Alexei's death most likely resulted from injuries suffered during his torture. Alexei's mother Eudoxia was punished. She was dragged from her home, tried on false charges of adultery, publicly flogged, and confined in monasteries while being forbidden to be talked to.

 

In 1724, Peter had his second wife, Catherine, crowned as Empress, although he remained Russia's actual ruler.

 

Issue

By his two wives, he had fifteen children: three by Eudoxia and twelve by Catherine. These included four sons named Pavel and three sons named Peter, all of whom died in infancy. Only three of his children survived to adulthood. He also had three grandchildren: Tsar Peter II and Grand Duchess Natalia by Alexei and Tsar Peter III by Anna.

 

Mistresses and illegitimate children

Princess Maria Dmitrievna Cantemirovna of Moldavia (1700–1754), daughter of Dimitrie Cantemir

Unnamed son (1722 - 1723?) – different sources say that the baby was stillborn or died before he was one year old.

Lady Mary Hamilton, Catherine I's lady in waiting of Scottish descent.

Miscarriage (1715)

Unnamed child (1717 - 1718?)

 

Legacy

Peter's legacy has always been a major concern of Russian intellectuals. Riasanovsky points to a "paradoxical dichotomy" in the black and white images such as God/Antichrist, educator/ignoramus, architect of Russia's greatness/destroyer of national culture, father of his country/scourge of the common man. Voltaire's 1759 biography gave 18th-century Russians a man of the Enlightenment, while Alexander Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" poem of 1833 gave a powerful romantic image of a creator-god. Slavophiles in mid-19th century deplored Peter's westernization of Russia.

 

Western writers and political analysts recounted "The Testimony" or secret will of Peter the Great. It supposedly revealed his grand evil plot for Russia to control the world via conquest of Constantinople, Afghanistan and India. It was a forgery made in Paris at Napoleon's command when he started his invasion of Russia in 1812. Nevertheless, it is still quoted in foreign policy circles.

 

The Communists executed the last Romanovs, and their historians such as Mikhail Pokrovsky presented strongly negative views of the entire dynasty. Stalin however admired how Peter strengthened the state, and wartime, diplomacy, industry, higher education, and government administration. Stalin wrote in 1928, "when Peter the Great, who had to deal with more developed countries in the West, feverishly built works in factories for supplying the army and strengthening the country's defenses, this was an original attempt to leap out of the framework of backwardness." As a result, Soviet historiography emphasizes both the positive achievement and the negative factor of oppressing the common people.

 

After the fall of Communism in 1991, scholars and the general public in Russia and the West gave fresh attention to Peter and his role in Russian history. His reign is now seen as the decisive formative event in the Russian imperial past. Many new ideas have merged, such as whether he strengthened the autocratic state or whether the tsarist regime was not statist enough given its small bureaucracy. Modernization models have become contested ground.

 

He initiated a wide range of economic, social, political, administrative, educational and military reforms which ended the dominance of traditionalism and religion in Russia and initiated its westernization. His efforts included secularization of education, organization of administration for effective governance, enhanced use of technology, establishing an industrial economy, modernization of the army and establishment of a strong navy.

 

Historian Y. Vodarsky said in 1993 that Peter, "did not lead the country on the path of accelerated economic, political and social development, did not force it to 'achieve a leap' through several stages.... On the contrary, these actions to the greatest degree put a brake on Russia's progress and created conditions for holding it back for one and a half centuries!" The autocratic powers that Stalin admired appeared as a liability to Evgeny Anisimov, who complained that Peter was, "the creator of the administrative command system and the true ancestor of Stalin."

 

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, "He did not completely bridge the gulf between Russia and the Western countries, but he achieved considerable progress in development of the national economy and trade, education, science and culture, and foreign policy. Russia became a great power, without whose concurrence no important European problem could thenceforth be settled. His internal reforms achieved progress to an extent that no earlier innovator could have envisaged."

 

While the cultural turn in historiography has downplayed diplomatic, economic and constitutional issues, new cultural roles have been found for Peter, for example in architecture and dress. James Cracraft argues:

 

The Petrine revolution in Russia—subsuming in this phrase the many military, naval, governmental, educational, architectural, linguistic, and other internal reforms enacted by Peter's regime to promote Russia's rise as a major European power—was essentially a cultural revolution, one that profoundly impacted both the basic constitution of the Russian Empire and, perforce, its subsequent development.

In popular culture

 

Peter has been featured in many histories, novels, plays, films, monuments and paintings. They include the poems The Bronze Horseman, Poltava and the unfinished novel The Moor of Peter the Great, all by Alexander Pushkin. The former dealt with The Bronze Horseman, an equestrian statue raised in Peter's honour. Aleksey Nikolayevich Tolstoy wrote a biographical historical novel about him, named Peter I, in the 1930s.

 

The 1922 German silent film Peter the Great directed by Dimitri Buchowetzki and starring Emil Jannings as Peter

In 1929 A.N. Tolstoy's play was true to the party line, depicting Peter as a tyrant who "suppressed everyone and everything as if he had been possessed by demons, sowed fear, and put both his son and his country on the rack."

The 1937–1938 Soviet film Peter the Great

The 1976 film How Czar Peter the Great Married Off His Moor, starring Aleksey Petrenko as Peter, and Vladimir Vysotsky as Abram Petrovich Gannibal, shows Peter's attempt to build the Baltic Fleet.

Peter was played by Jan Niklas and Maximilian Schell in the 1986 NBC miniseries Peter the Great.

The 2007 film The Sovereign's Servant depicts the unsavoury brutal side of Peter during the campaign.

A character based on Peter plays a major role in The Age of Unreason, a series of four alternate history novels written by American science fiction and fantasy author Gregory Keyes.

Peter is one of many supporting characters in Neal Stephenson's Baroque Cycle – mainly featuring in the third novel, The System of the World.

Peter was portrayed on BBC Radio 4 by Isaac Rouse as a boy, Will Howard as a young adult and Elliot Cowan as an adult in the radio plays Peter the Great: The Gamblers and Peter the Great: The Queen of Spades, written by Mike Walker and which were the last two plays in the first series of Tsar. The plays were broadcast on 25 September and 2 October 2016.

A verse in the "Engineers' Drinking Song" references Peter the Great:

There was a man named Peter the Great who was a Russian Tzar;

When remodeling his the castle put the throne behind the bar;

He lined the walls with vodka, rum, and 40 kinds of beers;

And advanced the Russian culture by 120 years!

 

Peter was played by Jason Isaacs in the 2020 'antihistory' Hulu series The Great.

Peter is featured as the leader of the Russian civilization in the computer game Sid Meier's Civilization VI.

Peter was played by Ivan Kolesnikov in the 2022 Russian historical documentary film Peter I: The Last Tsar and the First Emperor.

The Sasak make up the majority of the population of Lombok island in West Nusa Tenggara province. They live throughout almost the whole island, but the most densely populated areas are the fertile rice fields south of the famous Mount Rinjani.

Most Sasak are farmers, some are laborers, some are fishermen and some are craftsmen. Weavings and earthenware crafts made by skilled workers can be found in several villages.

 

Lombok Indonesia

 

By some definitions, construction workers may be engaged in manual labour as unskilled or semi-skilled workers. These workers begin by attending to general tasks such as digging, cleaning, and unloading equipment. As they acquire experience, they start to specialize in particular areas - for example, roofing, pipefitting, structural work, or carpentry.

In my small village skilled workers came from Bohemia in the -30ies. They are Catholic Christians and started a congregation here. One of the very first in my modern country. The photo shows their small and beautiful church.

Technician checks on the solar panels installed at the Lopburi Solar Power Plant. The 73-megawatt Lopburi Solar Farm is the largest solar photovoltaic project in the world. The power plant intends to add 11 megawatts of capacity by 2012 to bring the total to 84 megawatts. The Lopburi Solar Farm is integral to Thailand's efforts to generate energy from renewable sources.

 

Project Result:

Sun, Partnerships Power Thailand Solar Project

In Thailand, One of the World's Largest Solar Energy Farms

 

Read more on:

Thailand

Energy

Solar Power Project

Cloud Gate is a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor, that is the centerpiece of AT&T Plaza at Millennium Park in the Loop community area of Chicago, Illinois. The sculpture and AT&T Plaza are located on top of Park Grill, between the Chase Promenade and McCormick Tribune Plaza & Ice Rink. Constructed between 2004 and 2006, the sculpture is nicknamed "The Bean" because of its shape, a name Kapoor initially disliked, but later grew fond of. Kapoor himself even uses this title when referring to his work. Made up of 168 stainless steel plates welded together, its highly polished exterior has no visible seams. It measures 33 by 66 by 42 feet (10 by 20 by 13 m), and weighs 110 short tons (100 t; 98 long tons).

 

Kapoor's design was inspired by liquid mercury and the sculpture's surface reflects and distorts the city's skyline. Visitors are able to walk around and under Cloud Gate's 12-foot (3.7 m) high arch. On the underside is the "omphalos" (Greek for "navel"), a concave chamber that warps and multiplies reflections. The sculpture builds upon many of Kapoor's artistic themes, and it is popular with tourists as a photo-taking opportunity for its unique reflective properties.

 

The sculpture was the result of a design competition. After Kapoor's design was chosen, numerous technological concerns regarding the design's construction and assembly arose, in addition to concerns regarding the sculpture's upkeep and maintenance. Various experts were consulted, some of whom believed the design could not be implemented. Eventually, a feasible method was found, but the sculpture's construction fell behind schedule. It was unveiled in an incomplete form during the Millennium Park grand opening celebration in 2004, before being concealed again while it was completed. Cloud Gate was formally dedicated on May 15, 2006, and has since gained considerable popularity, both domestically and internationally.

 

Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor, CBE, RA (born 12 March 1954) is a British-Indian sculptor specializing in installation art and conceptual art. Born in Mumbai, Kapoor attended the elite all-boys Indian boarding school The Doon School, before moving to the UK to begin his art training at Hornsey College of Art and, later, Chelsea School of Art and Design.

 

His notable public sculptures include Cloud Gate (2006, also known as "The Bean") in Chicago's Millennium Park; Sky Mirror, exhibited at the Rockefeller Center in New York City in 2006 and Kensington Gardens in London in 2010; Temenos, at Middlehaven, Middlesbrough; Leviathan, at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2011; and ArcelorMittal Orbit, commissioned as a permanent artwork for London's Olympic Park and completed in 2012. In 2017, Kapoor designed the statuette for the 2018 Brit Awards.

 

An image of Kapoor features in the British cultural icons section of the newly designed British passport in 2015. In 2016, he was announced as a recipient of the LennonOno Grant for Peace.

 

Kapoor has received several distinctions and prizes, such as the Premio Duemila Prize at the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, the Turner Prize in 1991, the Unilever Commission for the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern, the Padma Bhushan by the Indian government in 2012, a knighthood in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to visual arts, an honorary doctorate degree from the University of Oxford in 2014. and the 2017 Genesis Prize for "being one of the most influential and innovative artists of his generation and for his many years of advocacy for refugees and displaced people".

 

Millennium Park is a public park located in the Loop community area of Chicago, operated by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs. The park, opened in 2004 and intended to celebrate the third millennium, is a prominent civic center near the city's Lake Michigan shoreline that covers a 24.5-acre (9.9 ha) section of northwestern Grant Park. Featuring a variety of public art, outdoor spaces and venues, the park is bounded by Michigan Avenue, Randolph Street, Columbus Drive and East Monroe Drive. In 2017, Millennium Park was the top tourist destination in Chicago and in the Midwest, and placed among the top ten in the United States with 25 million annual visitors.

 

Planning of the park, situated in an area occupied by parkland, the Illinois Central rail yards, and parking lots, began in October 1997. Construction began in October 1998, and Millennium Park was opened in a ceremony on July 16, 2004, four years behind schedule. The three-day opening celebrations were attended by some 300,000 people and included an inaugural concert by the Grant Park Orchestra and Chorus. The park has received awards for its accessibility and green design. Millennium Park has free admission, and features the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, the Lurie Garden, and various other attractions. The park is connected by the BP Pedestrian Bridge and the Nichols Bridgeway to other parts of Grant Park. Because the park sits atop parking garages, the commuter rail Millennium Station and rail lines, it is considered the world's largest rooftop garden. In 2015, the park became the location of the city's annual Christmas tree lighting.

 

Some observers consider Millennium Park the city's most important project since the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It far exceeded its originally proposed budget of $150 million. The final cost of $475 million was borne by Chicago taxpayers and private donors. The city paid $270 million; private donors paid the rest, and assumed roughly half of the financial responsibility for the cost overruns. The construction delays and cost overruns were attributed to poor planning, many design changes, and cronyism. Many critics have praised the completed park.

 

From 1852 until 1997, the Illinois Central Railroad owned a right of way between downtown Chicago and Lake Michigan, in the area that became Grant Park and used it for railroad tracks. In 1871, Union Base-Ball Grounds was built on part of the site that became Millennium Park; the Chicago White Stockings played home games there until the grounds were destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire. Lake Front Park, the White Stockings' new ball grounds, was built in 1878 with a short right field due to the railroad tracks. The grounds were improved and the seating capacity was doubled in 1883, but the team had to move after the season ended the next year, as the federal government had given the city the land "with the stipulation that no commercial venture could use it". Daniel Burnham planned Grant Park around the Illinois Central Railroad property in his 1909 Plan of Chicago. Between 1917 and 1953, a prominent semicircle of paired Greek Doric-style columns (called a peristyle) was placed in this area of Grant Park (partially recreated in the new Millennium Park). In 1997, when the city gained airspace rights over the tracks, it decided to build a parking facility over them in the northwestern corner of Grant Park. Eventually, the city realized that a grand civic amenity might lure private dollars in a way that a municipal improvement such as ordinary parking structure would not, and thus began the effort to create Millennium Park. The park was originally planned under the name Lakefront Millennium Park.

 

The park was conceived as a 16-acre (6.5 ha) landscape-covered bridge over an underground parking structure to be built on top of the Metra/Illinois Central Railroad tracks in Grant Park. The parks overall design was by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and gradually additional architects and artists such as Frank Gehry and Thomas Beeby were incorporated into the plan. Sponsors were sought by invitation only.

 

In February 1999, the city announced it was negotiating with Frank Gehry to design a proscenium arch and orchestra enclosure for a bandshell, as well as a pedestrian bridge crossing Columbus Drive, and that it was seeking donors to cover his work. At the time, the Chicago Tribune dubbed Gehry "the hottest architect in the universe"[19] in reference to the acclaim for his Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and they noted the designs would not include Mayor Richard M. Daley's trademarks, such as wrought iron and seasonal flower boxes. Millennium Park project manager Edward Uhlir said "Frank is just the cutting edge of the next century of architecture," and noted that no other architect was being sought. Gehry was approached several times by Skidmore architect Adrian Smith on behalf of the city. His hesitance and refusal to accept the commission was overcome by Cindy Pritzker, the philanthropist, who had developed a relationship with the architect when he won the Pritzker Prize in 1989. According to John H. Bryan, who led fund-raising for the park, Pritzker enticed Gehry in face-to-face discussions, using a $15 million funding commitment toward the bandshell's creation. Having Gehry get involved helped the city realize its vision of having modern themes in the park; upon rumors of his involvement the Chicago Sun-Times proclaimed "Perhaps the future has arrived", while the Chicago Tribune noted that "The most celebrated architect in the world may soon have a chance to bring Chicago into the 21st Century".

 

Plans for the park were officially announced in March 1998 and construction began in September of that year. Initial construction was under the auspices of the Chicago Department of Transportation, because the project bridges the railroad tracks. However, as the project grew and expanded, its broad variety of features and amenities outside the scope of the field of transportation placed it under the jurisdiction of the city's Public Buildings Commission.

 

In April 1999, the city announced that the Pritzker family had donated $15 million to fund Gehry's bandshell and an additional nine donors committed $10 million. The day of this announcement, Gehry agreed to the design request. In November, when his design was unveiled, Gehry said the bridge design was preliminary and not well-conceived because funding for it was not committed. The need to fund a bridge to span the eight-lane Columbus Drive was evident, but some planning for the park was delayed in anticipation of details on the redesign of Soldier Field. In January 2000, the city announced plans to expand the park to include features that became Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, the McDonald's Cycle Center, and the BP Pedestrian Bridge. Later that month, Gehry unveiled his new winding design for the bridge.

 

Mayor Daley's influence was key in getting corporate and individual sponsors to pay for much of the park. Bryan, the former chief executive officer (CEO) of Sara Lee Corporation who spearheaded the fundraising, says that sponsorship was by invitation and no one refused the opportunity to be a sponsor. One Time magazine writer describes the park as the crowning achievement for Mayor Daley, while another suggests the park's cost and time overages were examples of the city's mismanagement. The July 16–18, 2004, opening ceremony was sponsored by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

 

The community around Millennium Park has become one of the most fashionable and desired residential addresses in Chicago. In 2006, Forbes named the park's 60602 zip code as the hottest in terms of price appreciation in the country, with upscale buildings such as The Heritage at Millennium Park (130 N. Garland) leading the way for other buildings, such as Waterview Tower, The Legacy and Joffrey Tower. The median sale price for residential real estate was $710,000 in 2005 according to Forbes, also ranking it on the list of most expensive zip codes. The park has been credited with increasing residential real estate values by $100 per square foot ($1,076 per m2).

 

Millennium Park is a portion of the 319-acre (129.1 ha) Grant Park, known as the "front lawn" of downtown Chicago, and has four major artistic highlights: the Jay Pritzker Pavilion, Cloud Gate, the Crown Fountain, and the Lurie Garden. Millennium Park is successful as a public art venue in part due to the grand scale of each piece and the open spaces for display. A showcase for postmodern architecture, it also features the McCormick Tribune Ice Skating Rink, the BP Pedestrian Bridge, the Joan W. and Irving B. Harris Theater for Music and Dance, Wrigley Square, the McDonald's Cycle Center, the Exelon Pavilions, the AT&T Plaza, the Boeing Galleries, the Chase Promenade, and the Nichols Bridgeway.

 

Millennium Park is considered one of the largest green roofs in the world, having been constructed on top of a railroad yard and large parking garages. The park, which is known for being user friendly, has a very rigorous cleaning schedule with many areas being swept, wiped down or cleaned multiple times a day. Although the park was unveiled in July 2004, some features opened earlier, and upgrades continued for some time afterwards. Along with the cultural features above ground (described below) the park has its own 2218-space parking garage

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

Shaw Parish Registers commence in 1704. Local people used the chapel for Baptisms and Burials. For Marriages a certificate from either Oldham (3 miles) away or Prestwich (10+ miles) was required. A considerable distance on foot both for the Banns and the Marriage. By 1739, the chapel was inadequate for the growing population and a new stone chapel costing £1100 was built. At the time a skilled worker earned 1 shilling a day (£1 = 20 shillings), so this was a considerable sum for a small community. To raise money, Briefs or King's Letters were issued to authorise collections to be made at other churches. Prestwich collected £7 10s in 1735 and Milnrow Chapel raised 7s 10d. By 1778, the new chapel had serious structural defects. On Trinity Sunday 1791, Mr. Mashiter durst not preach for fear of the chapel falling. A new restored and enlarged chapel was reopened in 1800. This was used until the present church; Holy Trinity was built in 1870. In 1826, a poll was taken in Oldham and its townships about the rebuilding of Oldham Parish Church. Nobody in Crompton or Shaw voted in favour of rebuilding and the residents refused to pay the rate levied for the new Oldham church. In 1835, the township of Crompton was freed from its obligations to Oldham and Prestwich churches and a separate parish was created. This parish was the Old Shaw Parish but the township was Crompton.

St Georges Buildings

 

This block of flats is in Bourdon Street which is part of the Grosvenor Estate that was originally laid out in the 1770s. The flats were designed for artisans (skilled workers) and were built by Victorian people who aimed to improve conditions for the working classes. This block is an early example of this type of 'Philanthropic' housing dating from 1853. Other similar blocks were built in different parts of London. These flats were planned by Henry Roberts and built for the St George's Parochial Association that had been founded in 1849. The flats were built from stock brick with a flat roof. They originally had 4 storeys and a basement. The top floor was added in 1876.

  

Chinese „Garden of the recovered moon“, Recreation park Marzahn, Berlin

 

With 2,7 hectares it is the largest Chinese garden in Europe. It developed in closest cooperation with the twin city Peking: entire planning originates from Chinese hand, all building parts and even the impressive Thai Hu of stones was introduced. Execution of the work took over Chinese skilled workers.

Website: www.gruen-berlin.de/marz/index.php

 

Further pictures follow...

 

Larger Version (recommended)

Paris hier et aujourd’hui. Rue Jeanne d’Arc. This large complex of apartment buildings with narrow streets and arched entrances, named Cité Jeanne d’Arc, opened in 1884. There were 860 apartments housing more than 5,000 people, mostly the poor, unemployed, low-skilled workers, single women and delinquents. It soon turned into an unsanitary ghetto. By 1911 there was a demolition project but that never happened because of the First World War in 1914. By 1931, once again, demolition was planned and tenants were invited to leave, in return for compensation. However people continued to live there, free of charge. It soon became a hotbed of revolt and by 1934 inhabitants drew up barricades to protest evictions and the decay of the apartments and terrible sanitary conditions. Finally in 1938 demolition began. Rue du Docteur-Hutinel opened on this site and today apartment buildings continue to exist here.

八取物語 - 木造師傅知道先生 / 藝術在那裡在你的身邊 - 道在那裡在屎尿裡面

The story of the Eight Take - The wood makes skilled worker Mr. Knew / Art in there in yours side - Truth in there inside body waste

八取の物語 - ぼうっとしてい先生"知っている"先生をつくります / 芸術はそこにありますあなたの身の回り - 道はそこまで(へ)大便が小便をする中にあります

La historia de la toma ocho - La madera hace a Sr. Knew del trabajado cualificado / Arte adentro allí en el suyo lado - De la verdad basura de cuerpo del interior adentro allí

Die Geschichte des Nehmens acht - Das Holz bildet gelernter Arbeiter Herrn Knew / Kunst innen dort in Ihrem Seite - Der Wahrheit Innere-Körperausscheidung innen dort

L'histoire de la prise huit - Le bois fait M. Knew de travailleur qualifié / Art dedans là dans le vôtre côté - De vérité perte de corps d'intérieur dedans là

 

Anping Tainan Taiwan / Anping Tainan Taiwán / 台灣台南安平

 

向八取知道先生致敬 / Saluting to Mr. Knew

八取知道先生に向って敬意を表します / Saluting to Mr. Knew

Begrüßung zu Herrn Knew / Salutation à M. Knew

 

只記今朝笑 / 笑傲江湖-東方不敗

{ Only records smiles in the today / レコードだけが今日の笑顔 }

 

{View large size on fluidr}

  

{大員戀愛物語-安平追想曲2009}

{The Love story of Tayouan - Anping melody of the memorise 2009}

{La historia de amor de Tayouan - Melodía de Anping de la memorización 2009}

{大員の恋愛する物語 -安平は曲の2009を追憶します}

{Die Liebesgeschichte von Tayouan - Anping-Melodie merken 2009}

{Meurent Liebesgeschichte von Tayouan - Anping-Melodie merken 2009}

 

三國演義開卷詩 / 臨江仙詞

Romance of the Three Kingdoms open-book poem / The immortal of near river words

 

明朝狀元:楊慎

Poem Author:

Ming Dynasty foremost person in the field : Yang Shen

 

滾滾長江東逝水,浪花滔盡英雄,

East billowing Yangtze River passes the water, the spray inundates the completely heros,

 

是非成敗轉頭空,青山依舊在,幾度夕陽紅。

The right and wrong success or failure turns the head was nothing, the green hill, several days setting sun was as before red.

 

白髮漁樵江渚上,貫看秋月春風,

The white hair fishers and woodcutters on the river islet, Looks at the Autumn's moon and spring's winds every seasons,

 

一壺濁酒喜相逢,古今多少事,都付笑談中。

A pot muddy liquor happy chance meeting, ancient and modern how many matters, pays in the joke talks.

 

This shot on Los Feliz.

 

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I have a great experience for pre production. Since I came in LA, I have been working as a Camera Operator, Camera assistant, Key Grip and G/E for more than 60 shooting production. The reason why a lots of production call me on set is I could communicate with my team, then could find out the solution in limited time and has a patient for that. Also I have a knowledge for Final Cut Pro 7 and Premiere Pro. Which is involving principle color grading and data management skill. In addition, I can do photo shooting and editing. One of the thing is my photograph had shown on the Louvre Museum Digital display. Therefore, I would say I am a multi skilled worker.

 

Experience

・ARRI FLEX 16ST, 16SR, 16SR2, 16SR3, ALEXA

・CANON XH-A1, CANON EOS 60D, 7D, 5D Mark Ⅱ

・PANASONIC AJ-HDC27F, PANASONIC AG-AF105

・SONY F900, SONY FS700, SONY F3, SONY F5

・RED ONE, RED EPIC

・Blackmagic Cinema Camera

 

Languages

Japanese(Native), English(Limited working proficiency)

delighting "me" always

 

Picture: I suppose to focus my camera on the sculpture instead of on the pink lady. However, I was surprised when I got home with this result, my camera chosen to focus on pink lady! It is delighting me!!!

 

Canon, delighting you always...

 

Location: 798 Art Zone, Beijing. China

 

798 Art Zone (Chinese: 798艺术区; pinyin: 798 Yìshùqū), or Dashanzi Art District, is a part of Dashanzi in the Chaoyang District of Beijing that houses a thriving artistic community, among 50-year old decommissioned military factory buildings of unique architectural style. It is often compared with New York's Greenwich Village or SoHo.

The area is often called the 798 Art District or Factory 798 although technically, Factory #798 is only one of several structures within a complex formerly known as Joint Factory 718. The buildings are located inside alleys number 2 and 4 on Jiǔxiānqiáo Lù (酒仙桥路), south of the Dàshānziqiáo flyover (大山子桥).

 

Construction

   

798 Space gallery, Jan,2009. Old Maoist slogans are visible on the ceiling arches.

The Dashanzi factory complex began as an extension of the "Socialist Unification Plan" of military-industrial cooperation between the Soviet Union and the newly formed People's Republic of China. By 1951, 156 "joint factory" projects had been realized under that agreement, part of the Chinese government's first Five-Year Plan. However the People's Liberation Army still had a dire need of modern electronic components, which were produced in only two of the joint factories. The Russians were unwilling to undertake an additional project at the time, and suggested that the Chinese turn to East Germany from which much of the Soviet Union's electronics equipment was imported. So at the request of then-Premier Zhou Enlai, scientists and engineers joined the first Chinese trade delegation to East Germany in 1951, visiting a dozen factories. The project was greenlighted in early 1952 and a Chinese preparatory group was sent to East Berlin to prepare design plans. This project, which was to be the largest by East Germany in China, was then informally known as Project #157.

The architectural plans were left to the Germans, who chose a functional Bauhaus-influenced design over the more ornamental Soviet style, triggering the first of many disputes between the German and Russian consultants on the project. The plans, where form follows function, called for large indoor spaces designed to let the maximum amount of natural light into the workplace. Arch-supported sections of the ceiling would curve upwards then fall diagonally along the high slanted banks or windows; this pattern would be repeated several times in the larger rooms, giving the roof its characteristic sawtooth-like appearance. Despite Beijing's northern location, the windows were all to face north because the light from that direction would cast fewer shadows.

The chosen location was a 640,000 square metres area in Dashanzi, then a low-lying patch of farmland northeast of Beijing. The complex was to occupy 500,000 square metres, 370,000 of which were allocated to living quarters. It was officially named Joint Factory 718, following the Chinese government's method of naming military factories starting with the number 7. Fully funded by the Chinese side, the initial budget was enormous for the times: 9 million rubles or approximately 140 million RMB (US$17 million) at today's rates; actual costs were 147 million RMB.

Ground was broken in April 1954. Construction was marked by disagreements between the Chinese, Soviet and German experts, which led at one point to a six-month postponement of the project. The Germans' harshest critic was the Russian technology consultant in charge of Beijing's two Soviet-built electronics factories (714 and 738), who was also head consultant of the Radio Industrial Office of the Second Ministry of Machine Building Industry. The disputes generally revolved around the Germans' high but expensive quality standards for buildings and machines, which were called "over-engineering" by the Russians. Among such points of contention was the Germans' insistence, historical seismic data in hand, that the buildings be built to withstand earthquakes of magnitude 8 on the Richter scale, whereas the Chinese and Russians wanted to settle for 7. Communications expert Wang Zheng, head of Communications Industry in the Chinese Ministry of National Defense and supporter the East German bid from the start, ruled in favor of the Germans for this particular factory.

At the height of the construction effort, more than 100 East German foreign experts worked on the project. The resources of as many as 22 of their factories supplied the construction; at the same time, supply delays were caused by the Soviet Red Army's tremendous drain on East Germany's industrial production. The equipment was transported directly through the Soviet Union via the Trans-Siberian railway, and a 15 km track of railroad between Beijing Railway Station and Dongjiao Station was built especially to service the factory. Caltech-educated scientist Dr. Luo Peilin (罗沛霖), formerly head of the preparatory group in 1951-1953, was Head Engineer of Joint Factory 718 during its construction phase. Dr. Luo, now retired in Beijing, is remembered by his former colleagues as a dedicated perfectionist whose commitment to the obstacle-strewn project was a major factor of its eventual success.

[edit]Operation

 

Joint Factory 718 began production in 1957, amid a grandiose opening ceremony and display of Communist brotherhood between China and East Germany, attended by high officials of both countries. The first director was Li Rui (李瑞), who had been involved in the early negotiations in Berlin.

The factory quickly established a reputation for itself as one of the best in China. Through its several danwei or "work units", it offered considerable social benefits to its 10,000-20,000 workers, especially considering the relative poverty of the country during such periods as the Great Leap Forward. The factory boasted, among others:

the best housing available to workers in Beijing, providing fully furnished rooms to whole families for less than 1/30 of the workers' income;

diverse extracurricular activities such as social and sporting events, dancing, swimming, and training classes;

its own athletics, soccer, basketball and volleyball teams for men and women, ranked among the best in inter-factory competitions;

a brigade of German-made motorcycles, performing races and stunt demonstrations;

an orchestra that played not only revolutionary hymns, but also German-influenced classical Western music;

literary clubs and publications, and a library furnished with Chinese and foreign (German) books;

Jiuxianqiao hospital, featuring German equipment and offering the most advanced dental facilities in China.

The factory even had its own volunteer military reserves or jinweishi (近卫师), which numbered hundreds and were equipped with large-scale weapons and anti-aircraft guns.

Workers' skills were honed by frequent personnel exchanges, internships and training in cooperation with East Germany. Different incentives kept motivation high, such as rewards systems and "model worker" distinctions. At the same time, political activities such as Maoism study workshops kept the workers in line with Communist Party of China doctrine. During the Cultural revolution, propaganda slogans for Mao Zedong Thought were painted on the ceiling arches in bright red characters (where they remain today at the latter tenants' request).

Frequent VIP visits contributed to the festive atmosphere. Notable guests included Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and Kim Il-Sung.

The Joint Factory produced a wide variety of military and civilian equipment. Civilian production included acoustic equipment for Beijing's Workers' Stadium and Great Hall of the People, as well as all the loudspeakers on Tiananmen Square and Chang'an Avenue. Military components were also exported to China's Communist allies, and helped establish North Korea's wireless electronics industry.

  

One of the old machine tools in front of some contemporary art in Dec 2005

After 10 years of operation, Joint Factory 718 was split into more manageable components, such as sub-Factories 706, 707, 751, 761, 797 and 798. The first Head of sub-Factory 798 (the largest) was Branch Party Secretary Fu Ke (傅克), who played a major role in recruiting skilled workers from southern China and among returned overseas Chinese.

However, the factory came under pressure during Deng Xiaoping's reforms of the 1980s. Deprived of governmental support like many state-owned enterprises, it underwent a gradual decline and was eventually rendered obsolete. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, most sub-factories had ceased production, 60% of the workers had been laid off, and the remains of the management were reconstituted as a real-estate operation called "Seven-Star Huadian Science and Technology Group", charged with overseeing the industrial park and finding tenants for the abandoned buildings.

[edit]

 

The Dashanzi factory complex was vacated at around the time when most of Beijing's contemporary artist community was looking for a new home. Avant-garde art being frowned upon by the government, the community had traditionally existed on the fringes of the city. From 1984 to 1993, they worked in run-down houses near the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) in northwestern Beijing, until their eviction. They had then moved to the eastern Tongxian County (now Tongzhou District), more than an hour's drive from the city center.

Then in 1995, Beijing's Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA), looking for cheap, ample workshop space away from downtown, set up in the now defunct Factory 706. The temporary move became permanent and in 2000 Sui Jianguo(隋建国), Dean of the Department of Sculpture, located his own studio in the area. The cluttered sculpture workshops have always remained open for visitors to peek at the dozens of workers milling about.

In 2001, Texan Robert Bernell moved his Timezone 8 Art Books bookshop and publishing office (founded in 1997) into a former factory canteen; he was the first foreigner to move in. One of Timezone 8's early employees was fashion designer Xiao Li, who along her husband, performance artist Cang Xin, helped artists secure and rent spaces in the area.

Through word-of-mouth, artists and designers started trickling in, attracted to the vast cathedral-like spaces. Despite the lack of any conscious aesthetic in the Bauhaus-inspired style, which grounded architectural beauty in practical, industrial function, the swooping arcs and soaring chimneys had an uplifting effect on modern eyes, a sort of post-industrial chic. At the artists' requests, workers renovating the spaces preserved the prominent Maoist slogans on the arches, adding a touch of ironic "Mao kitsch" to the place.

Later that year, Mr. Tabata Yukihito from Japan's Tokyo Gallery set up Beijing Tokyo Art Projects (BTAP, 北京东京艺术工程) inside a 400-m² division of Factory 798's main area; this was the first renovated space featuring the high arched ceilings that would become synonymous with the Art District. BTAP's 2002 opening exhibition "Beijing Afloat" (curator: Feng Boyi), drew a crowd of over 1,000 people and marked the beginning of the popular infatuation with the area.

In 2002, designer artist Huang Rui (黄锐) and hutong photographer Xu Yong (徐勇) set up the 798 Space gallery (时态空间) next to BTAP. With its cavernous 1200-m² floor and multiple-arched ceilings at the center of Factory 798, it was and still is the symbolic center of the whole district. (Huang and Xu since designed at least seven spaces in the area and became the prime movers and de facto spokespersons of the District.) A glass-fronted café was set up in the former office section at the back of the 798 space, opening into a back alley now lined with studios and restaurants such as Huang's own At Café, and Cang Xin's #6 Sichuan restaurant, the area's "canteen".

In 2003, Lu Jie (卢杰) set up the Long March Foundation, an ongoing project for artistic re-interpretation of the historical Long March, inside the 25,000 Li Cultural Transmission Center (二万五千里文化传播中心). Around that time, Singapore-owned China Art Seasons (北京季节画廊) opened for display for pan-Asian art, and was one of several new galleries setting up at that time.

 

Source from: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/798_Art_Zone

As an avid, recreational cyclist, I congratulate and thank Saanich Public Works for the new Ansell Road cycling connector at McKenzie Avenue. In conjunction with the new, controlled crosswalk and dedicated bike lane along Larchwood, it's my opinion the project could not have been designed nor implemented better. The workmanship is of the highest standards and reflects upon the skilled workers who completed it.

The new crossing will make life better and safer for those of us choosing to ride it.

N.B. Note the cut-away curb for eastbound cyclists (UVic) and the shared pathway for westbound. Cool.

Coppicing used to be a way of life in Kent, employing thousands of skilled workers, tree-fellers and extractors, hurdle and stake makers, charcoal burners. Now a single subcontracted forest-man in a machine like this can coppice a wood in one day, progress?

The history of the Citroën «Facile à Fabriquer, Facile à Financer», or FAF for “easy to make, easy to finance”, could be traced back to the early post-war period. Introduced in 1948, the 2CV was adapted, re-bodied and modified throughout its entire career, in particular to cope with the harsh environments of developing countries. Although Citroën introduced the Mehari in 1968 to satisfy customers on the coast or in the countryside, its plastic bodywork was not robust enough for third world countries. However, the market potential was significant, and Citroën engineers had to find a solution. The FAF project is presented in 1978 at the Dakar Fair. While the mechanical base was still derived from the 2CV, the bodywork used a unique production method. Made of sheet metal rather than plastic, the parts were cut according to a pattern and then folded along the dotted lines to form the different parts. The FAFs were to be manufactured locally, by low-skilled workers in countries without an automotive industry. Numerous versions were proposed, but without any exceptional success. In 1979, the FAF A 4x4 was presented. Equipped with a «patrol» body, it is powered by the twin-cylinder engine of the Visa and was aimed at African armies, but also at the French and Portuguese armies to replace their ageing Jeeps. A very confidential series will be produced, without any contract ever being signed. The FAF we present to you is a civilian A 4x4. Exhibited at the Porte de Versailles 4x4 and outdoor car show in September 1983, it has an original decoration, reminiscent of the “Croisières Citroën” of the 1930s. Its aesthetic is reworked: headlight grills, fake grass floor mats, specific 6 stripes paint for example. With about 2,200 km on the odometer, a dogleg gearbox and the possibility of switching between two or four wheel drive, this rare A 4x4 has only one thing to look forward to: crossing dunes, deserts or forests.

 

l'Aventure Peugeot Citroën DS, la Vente Officielle

Aguttes

Estimated : € 15.000 - 20.000

Sold for € 28.500

 

Citroen Heritage

93600 Aulnay-sous-Bois

France

September 2021

The embroidered clothing has been a very coveted form of clothing which the women of Pakistan like very much. The SME is a major source of supply for these kind of clothing and which made at various in-house facilities and where the workers prepare these stuff. The development of clothing involves great hardship and very minutely the activity is performed by the KARIGARS (skilled workers) of this industry.

 

The occasion of wedding is the even which is specially considered for wearing the kind of clothing when and where the brides chose different colors and varieties of designs of embroidered clothing.

+++ DISCLAIMER +++

Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!

  

Some Background:

The Ki-38 fighter was designed by the Tachikawa Aircraft Company Limited (立川飛行機株式会社, Tachikawa Hikōki Kabushiki Kaisha) near Tokyo, an aircraft manufacturer in the Empire of Japan, specializing primarily in aircraft for the Imperial Japanese Army Air Force. The Ki-38 prototype was produced in response to a December 1937 specification for a successor to the popular fixed-gear Nakajima Ki-27 Nate. The specification called for a top speed of 500 km/h (310 mph), a climb rate of 5,000 m (16,000 ft) in five minutes and a range of 800 km (500 mi). Maneuverability was to be at least as good as that of Ki-27.

 

When first flown in early January 1939, the Ki-38 prototype was a disappointment. Japanese test pilots complained that it was less maneuverable than the Ki-27 Nate and not much faster. Even though the competition was eventually won by the Ki-43, service trials determined the aircraft to hold sufficient promise to warrant further work, leading to the adoption of an expanded and strengthened wing and a more refined Mitsubishi Ha-102 (Army Type 100 1,050hp Air Cooled Radial) 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine. During spring 1939, following the completion of further proving trials, an order for a pre-production batch of 25 aircraft was placed.

 

As a whole, the Ki-38 was an all-modern design consisting of all-metal skin and understructure construction with low-set monoplane wing appendages. The wings were straight in their general design with rounded tips and set well-forward of amidships. The engine was fitted to the extreme forward section of the fuselage in a traditional manner, powering a three-bladed propeller installation. Interestingly, the cockpit was also situated well-forward in the design, shortening the visual obstacle that was the engine compartment to some extent. However, views were still obstructed by the short engine housing to the front and the wings to the lower sides. The fuselage tapered at the rear to which a single vertical tail fin was affixed along with mid-mounted horizontal tailplanes. The undercarriage was retractable and of the "tail-dragger" arrangement consisting of two main single-wheeled landing gear legs and a fixed, diminutive tail wheel leg at the rear.

 

The series-production Ki-38-I was further modified to enhance its performance. These changes involved a major weight saving program, a slimmer and longer fuselage with bigger tail surfaces and a new, more streamlined bubble-style canopy that offered, even while bearing many struts, the pilot a very good all-round field of view.

 

In addition to good maneuverability, the Ki-38-I had a good top speed of more than 500 km/h (310 mph). The initial Ki-38 was armed with four 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Type 89 machine guns in the wings, but this soon turned out to be insufficient against armored Allied fighters and bombers. Quickly, the inner pair of weapons was, after just 50 aircraft, replaced with 12.7 mm (0.50 in) Ho-103 machine guns in the Ki-38-Ib (the initial version subsequently became the Ki-38-Ia), of which 75 were built. On board of the following Ki-38-Ic, the inner weapons were replaced with a pair of even heavier and more effective 20 mm (0.787 in) Ho-5 cannon, which required fairings for the ammunition under the wings and made this version easy to identify. The Ki-38-Ic became the most frequent variant, with 150 examples built.

 

All types also featured external hardpoints for a drop tank under the fuselage or a pair of bombs of up to 250 kg (550 lb) caliber under the wings. Late production aircraft were designated Ki-38-II. The pilot enjoyed a slightly taller canopy and a reflector gunsight in place of the earlier telescopic gunsight. The revised machines were also fitted with a 13 mm (0.51 in) armor plate for the pilot's head and back, and the aircraft's fuel tanks were coated in rubber to form a crude self-sealing tank. This was later replaced by a 3-layer rubber bladder, 8mm core construction, with 2mm oil-proof lamination. Some earlier aircraft were retrofitted with these elements, when available to the field workshops, and they dramatically improved the aircraft’s resilience to enemy fire. However, the bladder proved to be highly resistant only against light 7.7 mm (0.303 in) bullets but was not as effective against larger calibers. The Ki-38-II’s armament was the same as the Ki-38-Ic’s and 120 aircraft were built.

 

Ki-38 production started in November 1939 at the Tachikawa Hikoki KK and at the 1st Army Air Arsenal (Tachikawa Dai-Ichi Rikugun Kokusho) plants, also at Tachikawa. Although Tachikawa Hikoki successfully managed to enter into large-scale production of the Ki-38, the 1st Army Air Arsenal was less successful – hampered by a shortage of skilled workers, it was ordered to stop production after 49 Ki-38 were built, and Tachikawa ceased production of the Ki-38 altogether in favor of the Ki-43 in mid-1944.

 

Once it was identified and successfully distinguished from the IJA’s new Ki-43 “Oscar” and the IJN’s A6M “Zero” (Oscar), which both had very similar outlines, the Ki-38 received the Allied code name “Brad”. Even though it was not produced in the numbers of the Ki-43 or the A6M, the Ki-38 fought in China, Burma, the Malay Peninsula, New Guinea, the Philippines, South Pacific islands and the Japanese home islands. Like the Oscar and the Zero, the Ki-38 initially enjoyed air superiority in the skies of Malaya, Netherlands East Indies, Burma and New Guinea. This was partly due to the better performance of the Brad and partly due to the relatively small numbers of combat-ready Allied fighters, mostly the Curtiss P-36 Hawk, Curtiss P-40, Brewster Buffalo, Hawker Hurricane and Curtiss-Wright CW-21 in Asia and the Pacific during the first months of the war.

 

As the war progressed, however, the fighter suffered from the same weaknesses as its slower, fixed-gear Ki-27 "Nate" predecessor and the more advanced naval A6M Zero: light armor and less-than-effective self-sealing fuel tanks, which caused high casualties in combat. Its armament of four light machine guns also proved inadequate against the more heavily armored Allied aircraft. Both issues were more or less mended with improved versions, but the Ki-38 could never keep up with the enemy fighters’ development and potential. And as newer Allied aircraft were introduced, the Japanese were forced into a defensive war and most aircraft were flown by inexperienced pilots.

  

General characteristics:

Crew: 1

Length: 8.96 m (29 ft 4 in)

Wingspan: 10.54 m (34 ft 7 in)

Height: 3.03 m (9 ft 11 in)

Wing area: 17.32 m² (186.4 sq ft)

Empty weight: 2,158 kg (4,758 lb)

Gross weight: 2,693 kg (5,937 lb)

Max takeoff weight: 2,800 kg (6,173 lb)

 

Powerplant:

1× Mitsubishi Ha-102 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine with 1,050hp (755 kW),

driving a 3-bladed variable-pitch propeller

 

Performance

Maximum speed: 509 km/h (316 mph, 275 kn)

Cruise speed: 450 km/h (280 mph, 240 kn)

Range: 600 km (370 mi, 320 nmi)

Service ceiling: 10,000 m (33,000 ft)

Time to altitude: 2,000 m (6,600 ft) in 3 minutes 24 seconds

Wing loading: 155.4 kg/m2 (31.8 lb/sq ft)

Power/mass: 0.182 hp/lb (0.299 kW/kg)

 

Armament:

2× 20 mm (0.787 in) Ho-5 cannon with 150 rpg

2× 7.7 mm (0.303 in) Type 89 machine guns with 500 rpg

2× underwing hardpoints for single 30 kg (66 lb) or 2 × 250 kg (550 lb) bombs

1× ventral hardpoint for a 200 l (53 US gal; 44 imp gal) drop tank

  

The kit and its assembly:

I always thought that the French Bloch MB 150 had some early WWII Japanese look to it, and with this idea I recently procured a relatively cheap Heller kit for this conversion project that would yield the purely fictional Tachikawa Ki-38 for the IJA – even though the Ki-38 existed as a Kawasaki project and eventually became the Ki-45, so that the 38 as kitai number was never actively used.

 

The Heller MB 150 is a vintage kit, and it is not a good one. You get raised panel lines, poor details (the engine is a joke) and mediocre fit. If you want a good MB 150 in 1:72, look IMHO elsewhere.

For the Ki-38 I wanted to retain most of the hull, the first basic change was the integration of a cowling from a Japanese Mitsubishi Ha-102 two-row radial (left over from an Airfix Ki-46 “Dinah”), which also received a new three-blade propeller with a different spinner on a metal axis inside. The engine also received some more interior details, even though the spinner blocks most sight.

 

The next, more radical move was to replace the MB 150’s spinal cockpit fairing with a bubble canopy and a lowered back – I found a very old and glue-tinted canopy from a Matchbox A6M in the spares box, and it turned out to be very suitable for the Ki-38. However, cleaning the clear piece was quite challenging, because all raised struts had to be sanded away to get rid of the old glue and paint residues, and re-polishing it back to a more or less translucent state took several turns with ever finer sandpaper, polishing paste and soft polishing mops on a mini drill. The spine was re-created with 2C-putty and the canopy was blended into it and into the fuselage with several PSR turns.

 

Inside, I used a different pilot figure (which would later be hard to see, though), added a fuel tank behind the seat with some supporting struts and inserted a piece of styrene sheet to separate the landing gear well from the cockpit – OOB it’s simply open.

The landing gear was basically taken OOB, I just replaced the original tail skid with a wheel and modified the wheels with hub covers, because the old kit wants you to push them onto long axis’ with knobs at their tips so that they remain turnable. Meh!

The fairings under the guns in the wings (barrels scratched from the MB 150’s OOB parts) are conformal underwing fuel tanks from a late Seafire (Special Hobby kit).

  

Painting and markings:

The initial plan was a simple green/grey IJA livery, but the model looked SO much like an A6M that I rather decided to give it a more elaborate paint scheme. I eventually found an interesting camouflage on a Mitsubishi Ki-51 “Sonia” attack plane, even though without indications concerning its unit, time frame or theater of operations (even though I assume that it was used in the China-Burma-India theater): an overall light grey base, onto which opaque green contrast fields/stripes had been added, and the remaining light grey upper areas were overpainted with thin sinuous lines of the same green. This was adapted onto the Ki-38 with a basis in Humbrol 167 (RAF Barley Grey) and FS 34102 (Humbrol 117) for the green cammo. I also wanted to weather the model considerably, as a measure to hide some hardware flaws, so that a partial “primer coat” with Aluminum (Revell 99) was added to several areas, to shine through later. The yellow ID markings on the wings’ leading edges were painted with Humbrol 69. The propeller blades were painted with Humbrol 180, the spinner in a slightly lighter mix of 180 and 160.

Interior surfaces were painted with a dull yellowish green, a mix of Revell 16 and 42, just the inside of the landing gear covers became grey as the outside, in a fashion very similar to early Ki-43s.

 

The decals came form various sources, including a Hasegawa Ki-61 sheet for the unit markings and some stencils and hinomaru in suitable sizes from a generic roundel sheet.

 

Some dry-brushing with light grey was done to emphasize edges and details, and some soot stains were added with graphite to the exhausts and the guns. Finally, the kit was sealed with matt acrylic varnish, some more dry-brushing with aluminum was done, esp. around the cockpit, and position lights were added with translucent paint.

  

An unexpected result – I was not prepared that the modified MB 150 looks THAT much like a Mitsubishi A6M or the Ki-43! There’s even an Fw 190-ish feel to it, from certain angles. O.K., the canopy actually comes from a Zero and the cowling looks very similar, too. But the overall similarity is baffling, just the tail is the most distinguishing feature! However, due to the poor basis and the almost blind canopy donor, the model is far from stellar or presentable – but some in-flight shots look pretty convincing, and even the camouflage appears to be quite effective over wooded terrain.

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

The Tadeusz Kościuszko Monument, also known as the Tadeusz Kościuszko Memorial and the Thaddeus Kosciuszko Memorial, is an outdoor sculpture by artist Kazimierz Chodziński depicting Tadeusz Kościuszko, installed in the median of East Solidarity Drive, near Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, in the U.S. state of Illinois. The statue was created in 1904, and was originally located in Humboldt Park.

 

Andrzej Tadeusz Bonawentura Kościuszko (English: Andrew Thaddeus Bonaventure Kosciuszko; 4 or 12 February 1746 – 15 October 1817) was a Polish-Lithuanian military engineer, statesman, and military leader who then became a national hero in Poland, the United States, and Belarus. He fought in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth's struggles against Russia and Prussia, and on the U.S. side in the American Revolutionary War. As Supreme Commander of the Polish National Armed Forces, he led the 1794 Kościuszko Uprising.

 

Kościuszko was born in February 1746, in a manor house on the Mereczowszczyzna estate in Brest Litovsk Voivodeship, then Grand Duchy of Lithuania, a part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, now the Ivatsevichy District of Belarus.[8] At age 20, he graduated from the Corps of Cadets in Warsaw, Poland. After the start of the civil war in 1768, Kościuszko moved to France in 1769 to study. He returned to the Commonwealth in 1774, two years after the First Partition, and was a tutor in Józef Sylwester Sosnowski's household. In 1776, Kościuszko moved to North America, where he took part in the American Revolutionary War as a colonel in the Continental Army. An accomplished military architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of state-of-the-art fortifications, including those at West Point, New York. In 1783, in recognition of his services, the Continental Congress promoted him to brigadier general.

 

Upon returning to Poland in 1784, Kościuszko was commissioned as a major general in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth Army in 1789. After the Polish–Russian War of 1792 resulted in the Commonwealth's Second Partition, he commanded an uprising against the Russian Empire in March 1794 until he was captured at the Battle of Maciejowice in October 1794. The defeat of the Kościuszko Uprising that November led to Poland's Third Partition in 1795, which ended the Commonwealth. In 1796, following the death of Tsaritsa Catherine II, Kościuszko was pardoned by her successor, Tsar Paul I, and he emigrated to the United States. A close friend of Thomas Jefferson, with whom he shared ideals of human rights, Kościuszko wrote a will in 1798, dedicating his U.S. assets to the education and freedom of the U.S. slaves. Kościuszko eventually returned to Europe and lived in Switzerland until his death in 1817. The execution of his testament later proved difficult, and the funds were never used for the purpose he intended.

 

Kazimierz Chodziński (Casimir) (1861 – 1919 or 1921) was a Polish sculptor, and a student of Jan Matejko academy in Kraków. He sculpted over a hundred different statues in partitioned Poland, as well as some other European cities, such as Vienna. Around 1903-1910 he worked in the United States, where he designed, among others, the Tadeusz Kościuszko statue in Chicago in the Humboldt Park neighborhood and the General Casimir Pulaski statue in Washington, DC.

 

Kazimierz Chodziński was born in 1861 in Łańcut, Austrian Empire. His father was a painter. Chodziński worked as an artist, painting and sculpting, gathering resources that allowed him to enroll in Kraków School of Fine Arts in Austrian partition of Poland and study under the sculptor Walery Gadomski and the famous painter Jan Matejko. As a student, he won an art competition, sold his first serious work ("Egyptian Woman" ), and around 1881, obtained a government scholarship to study at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna under Edmund von Hellmer. He received a number of other awards and scholarships, finishing his studies in 1887.

 

Afterward he returned to Kraków, where he opened a studio specializing in sculptures for religious and monumental buildings. Later, he moved his studio to Warsaw (capital of the Congress Poland), due to better conditions for exporting his work.

 

Around 1903-1910 he worked in the United States, where he designed, among others, the Tadeusz Kościuszko statue in Chicago in the Humboldt Park there and the General Casimir Pulaski statue in Washington, DC.

 

Chodziński died in 1919 in Lviv (Lwów), then in the newly independent Second Polish Republic.

 

Selected works

Some of his most famous works include: "Egyptian Woman," "Old Man," "Boy," "Dancing Faun," "Joyous Life," "Lord of the World," "Czesnik and Regent," "Boy's Head," "Girl's Head," "Readying for the Ball," "Praying Prisoner".

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

The Karel Havlíček Monument is an outdoor monument and sculpture by Joseph Strachovsky commemorating Karel Havlíček Borovský, installed in the median of East Solidarity Drive, in Chicago's Northerly Island, in the U.S. state of Illinois. The statue was created in 1911 and installed in 1983.

 

Karel Havlíček Borovský was a Czech writer, poet, critic, politician, journalist, and publisher.

 

He lived and studied at the gymnasium in Německý Brod (today Havlíčkův Brod, named after Borovský), and his house on the main square is today the Havlíček Museum. In 1838 he moved to Prague to study philosophy at Charles University and, influenced by the revolutionary atmosphere before the Revolutions of 1848, decided on the objective of becoming a patriotic writer. He devoted himself to studying Czech and literature. After graduating he began studying theology because he thought the best way to serve the nation would be as a priest. He was expelled after one year for "showing too little indication for spiritual ministry".

 

After failing to find a teacher's job in Bohemia, he left for Moscow to work as a tutor in a Russian teacher's family: with a recommendation by Pavel Josef Šafařík. He became a Russophile and a Pan-Slav, but after recognizing the true reality of the Russian society he took the pessimistic view that "Pan-Slavism is a great, attractive but feckless idea". His memories of the Russian stay were published first in magazines and then as a book Obrazy z Rus (Pictures from Russia).

 

He returned to Bohemia in 1844, aged 24 and used his writing skills to criticize the fashion of embracing anything written in the recently reborn Czech language. He specifically aimed at a novel by Josef Kajetán Tyl. In 1846 Havlíček attained a position as editor of the Pražské noviny newspaper with the help of František Palacký.

 

In April 1848 he changed the name of the newspaper to Národní noviny (National News) and it became one of the first newspapers of the Revolutionary-era Czech liberals, and one of the most influential publications of 1848–1849. Národní noviny became popular especially for his sharp-tongued epigrams and its wit. Havlíček was concerned with the preparations of the Slavic Congress in Prague. In July 1848 he was elected as a member of the Austrian Empire Constituent Assembly in Vienna and later in Kroměříž. He eventually relinquished his seat to focus on journalism.

 

Havlíček was a "liberal nationalist" politically, but refused to allow a "party line" to inform his opinions. Often, he would criticize those that agreed with him as much as those that disagreed. He excoriated revolutionaries for their radicalism, but also advocated ideas like universal suffrage—a concept altogether too radical for most of his fellow liberals. He was a pragmatist, and had little patience for those that spent their time romanticizing the Czech nationality without helping it achieve political or cultural independence. He used much of the space in his newspapers to educate the people on important issues—stressing areas like economics, which were sorely neglected by other nationalist writers.

 

The Bohemian revolution was defeated in March 1849 with the dissolution of the Kroměříž assembly, but Havlíček continued to criticize the new regime. He was brought to court for his criticism (there was no freedom of the press in the Habsburg's territory) but was found not guilty by a sympathetic jury. Národní noviny had to cease publication in January 1850, but Havlíček did not end his activities. In May 1850 he began publishing the magazine Slovan in Kutná Hora. The magazine was a target of censorship from the start. It had to stop publication in August 1851, and Havlíček stood again at the court to answer on charges of dissent. Again, he was found not guilty by a sympathetic jury of Czech commoners.

 

Havlíček translated and introduced some satirical and critical authors into the Czech language culture including Nikolai Gogol (1842) and Voltaire (1851).

 

In the night of 16 December 1851, he was arrested by the police and forced into exile in Brixen, Austria (present-day Italy).[2] He was depressed from the exile, but continued writing and wrote some of his best work: Tyrolské elegie (Tyrolean Elegies), Křest svatého Vladimíra (The Baptism of St. Vladimir) and Král Lávra (King Lavra, based on the legend of Labraid Loingsech).

 

When he returned from Brixen in 1855, he learned that his wife had died a few days earlier. Most of his former friends, afraid of the Bach system, stood aloof from him. Only a few publicly declared support for him.

 

In 1856, Havlíček died of tuberculosis, aged 35. Božena Němcová put a crown of thorns on his head in the coffin. His funeral was attended by about 5,000 Czechs.

 

In 1911, a monument was raised to Havlíček in Chicago by Czech residents of the city in Douglass Park. The bronze statue by Joseph Strachovsky was cast by V. Mašek in Prague and shows Havlicek in a revolutionary pose, dressed in a full military uniform and a draped cape with his outstretched arm motioning the viewer to join him. The statue was moved to Solidarity Drive on today's Museum Campus in the vicinity of the Adler Planetarium in 1981.

 

In 1918, the new Rifle Regiment of the 3rd division of Czechoslovak legions in Russia was named the "Karel Havlíček Borovský regiment"

 

In 1925, a biographical film was released.

 

In 1945, the 20 Czechoslovak koruna banknote bore Havlíček's portrait.

 

Chicago is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388 in the 2020 census, it is the third-most populous city in the United States after New York City and Los Angeles. As the seat of Cook County, the second-most populous county in the U.S., Chicago is the center of the Chicago metropolitan area, which is often colloquially called "Chicagoland".

 

Located on the shore of Lake Michigan, Chicago was incorporated as a city in 1837 near a portage between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River watershed. It grew rapidly in the mid-19th century. In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed several square miles and left more than 100,000 homeless, but Chicago's population continued to grow. Chicago made noted contributions to urban planning and architecture, such as the Chicago School, the development of the City Beautiful Movement, and the steel-framed skyscraper.

 

Chicago is an international hub for finance, culture, commerce, industry, education, technology, telecommunications, and transportation. It has the largest and most diverse derivatives market in the world, generating 20% of all volume in commodities and financial futures alone. O'Hare International Airport is routinely ranked among the world's top six busiest airports by passenger traffic, and the region is also the nation's railroad hub. The Chicago area has one of the highest gross domestic products (GDP) of any urban region in the world, generating $689 billion in 2018. Chicago's economy is diverse, with no single industry employing more than 14% of the workforce.

 

Chicago is a major tourist destination. Chicago's culture has contributed much to the visual arts, literature, film, theater, comedy (especially improvisational comedy), food, dance, and music (particularly jazz, blues, soul, hip-hop, gospel, and electronic dance music, including house music). Chicago is home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and the Lyric Opera of Chicago, while the Art Institute of Chicago provides an influential visual arts museum and art school. The Chicago area also hosts the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and the University of Illinois Chicago, among other institutions of learning. Chicago has professional sports teams in each of the major professional leagues, including two Major League Baseball teams.

 

In the mid-18th century, the area was inhabited by the Potawatomi, an indigenous tribe who had succeeded the Miami and Sauk and Fox peoples in this region.

 

The first known permanent settler in Chicago was trader Jean Baptiste Point du Sable. Du Sable was of African descent, perhaps born in the French colony of Saint-Domingue (Haiti), and established the settlement in the 1780s. He is commonly known as the "Founder of Chicago."

 

In 1795, following the victory of the new United States in the Northwest Indian War, an area that was to be part of Chicago was turned over to the U.S. for a military post by native tribes in accordance with the Treaty of Greenville. In 1803, the U.S. Army constructed Fort Dearborn, which was destroyed during the War of 1812 in the Battle of Fort Dearborn by the Potawatomi before being later rebuilt.

 

After the War of 1812, the Ottawa, Ojibwe, and Potawatomi tribes ceded additional land to the United States in the 1816 Treaty of St. Louis. The Potawatomi were forcibly removed from their land after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago and sent west of the Mississippi River as part of the federal policy of Indian removal.

 

On August 12, 1833, the Town of Chicago was organized with a population of about 200. Within seven years it grew to more than 6,000 people. On June 15, 1835, the first public land sales began with Edmund Dick Taylor as Receiver of Public Monies. The City of Chicago was incorporated on Saturday, March 4, 1837, and for several decades was the world's fastest-growing city.

 

As the site of the Chicago Portage, the city became an important transportation hub between the eastern and western United States. Chicago's first railway, Galena and Chicago Union Railroad, and the Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1848. The canal allowed steamboats and sailing ships on the Great Lakes to connect to the Mississippi River.

 

A flourishing economy brought residents from rural communities and immigrants from abroad. Manufacturing and retail and finance sectors became dominant, influencing the American economy. The Chicago Board of Trade (established 1848) listed the first-ever standardized "exchange-traded" forward contracts, which were called futures contracts.

 

In the 1850s, Chicago gained national political prominence as the home of Senator Stephen Douglas, the champion of the Kansas–Nebraska Act and the "popular sovereignty" approach to the issue of the spread of slavery. These issues also helped propel another Illinoisan, Abraham Lincoln, to the national stage. Lincoln was nominated in Chicago for U.S. president at the 1860 Republican National Convention, which was held in a purpose-built auditorium called the Wigwam. He defeated Douglas in the general election, and this set the stage for the American Civil War.

 

To accommodate rapid population growth and demand for better sanitation, the city improved its infrastructure. In February 1856, Chicago's Common Council approved Chesbrough's plan to build the United States' first comprehensive sewerage system. The project raised much of central Chicago to a new grade with the use of jackscrews for raising buildings. While elevating Chicago, and at first improving the city's health, the untreated sewage and industrial waste now flowed into the Chicago River, and subsequently into Lake Michigan, polluting the city's primary freshwater source.

 

The city responded by tunneling two miles (3.2 km) out into Lake Michigan to newly built water cribs. In 1900, the problem of sewage contamination was largely resolved when the city completed a major engineering feat. It reversed the flow of the Chicago River so that the water flowed away from Lake Michigan rather than into it. This project began with the construction and improvement of the Illinois and Michigan Canal, and was completed with the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that connects to the Illinois River, which flows into the Mississippi River.

 

In 1871, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed an area about 4 miles (6.4 km) long and 1-mile (1.6 km) wide, a large section of the city at the time. Much of the city, including railroads and stockyards, survived intact, and from the ruins of the previous wooden structures arose more modern constructions of steel and stone. These set a precedent for worldwide construction. During its rebuilding period, Chicago constructed the world's first skyscraper in 1885, using steel-skeleton construction.

 

The city grew significantly in size and population by incorporating many neighboring townships between 1851 and 1920, with the largest annexation happening in 1889, with five townships joining the city, including the Hyde Park Township, which now comprises most of the South Side of Chicago and the far southeast of Chicago, and the Jefferson Township, which now makes up most of Chicago's Northwest Side. The desire to join the city was driven by municipal services that the city could provide its residents.

 

Chicago's flourishing economy attracted huge numbers of new immigrants from Europe and migrants from the Eastern United States. Of the total population in 1900, more than 77% were either foreign-born or born in the United States of foreign parentage. Germans, Irish, Poles, Swedes, and Czechs made up nearly two-thirds of the foreign-born population (by 1900, whites were 98.1% of the city's population).

 

Labor conflicts followed the industrial boom and the rapid expansion of the labor pool, including the Haymarket affair on May 4, 1886, and in 1894 the Pullman Strike. Anarchist and socialist groups played prominent roles in creating very large and highly organized labor actions. Concern for social problems among Chicago's immigrant poor led Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr to found Hull House in 1889. Programs that were developed there became a model for the new field of social work.

 

During the 1870s and 1880s, Chicago attained national stature as the leader in the movement to improve public health. City laws and later, state laws that upgraded standards for the medical profession and fought urban epidemics of cholera, smallpox, and yellow fever were both passed and enforced. These laws became templates for public health reform in other cities and states.

 

The city established many large, well-landscaped municipal parks, which also included public sanitation facilities. The chief advocate for improving public health in Chicago was John H. Rauch, M.D. Rauch established a plan for Chicago's park system in 1866. He created Lincoln Park by closing a cemetery filled with shallow graves, and in 1867, in response to an outbreak of cholera he helped establish a new Chicago Board of Health. Ten years later, he became the secretary and then the president of the first Illinois State Board of Health, which carried out most of its activities in Chicago.

 

In the 1800s, Chicago became the nation's railroad hub, and by 1910 over 20 railroads operated passenger service out of six different downtown terminals. In 1883, Chicago's railway managers needed a general time convention, so they developed the standardized system of North American time zones. This system for telling time spread throughout the continent.

 

In 1893, Chicago hosted the World's Columbian Exposition on former marshland at the present location of Jackson Park. The Exposition drew 27.5 million visitors, and is considered the most influential world's fair in history. The University of Chicago, formerly at another location, moved to the same South Side location in 1892. The term "midway" for a fair or carnival referred originally to the Midway Plaisance, a strip of park land that still runs through the University of Chicago campus and connects the Washington and Jackson Parks.

 

During World War I and the 1920s there was a major expansion in industry. The availability of jobs attracted African Americans from the Southern United States. Between 1910 and 1930, the African American population of Chicago increased dramatically, from 44,103 to 233,903. This Great Migration had an immense cultural impact, called the Chicago Black Renaissance, part of the New Negro Movement, in art, literature, and music. Continuing racial tensions and violence, such as the Chicago race riot of 1919, also occurred.

 

The ratification of the 18th amendment to the Constitution in 1919 made the production and sale (including exportation) of alcoholic beverages illegal in the United States. This ushered in the beginning of what is known as the gangster era, a time that roughly spans from 1919 until 1933 when Prohibition was repealed. The 1920s saw gangsters, including Al Capone, Dion O'Banion, Bugs Moran and Tony Accardo battle law enforcement and each other on the streets of Chicago during the Prohibition era. Chicago was the location of the infamous St. Valentine's Day Massacre in 1929, when Al Capone sent men to gun down members of a rival gang, North Side, led by Bugs Moran.

 

Chicago was the first American city to have a homosexual-rights organization. The organization, formed in 1924, was called the Society for Human Rights. It produced the first American publication for homosexuals, Friendship and Freedom. Police and political pressure caused the organization to disband.

 

The Great Depression brought unprecedented suffering to Chicago, in no small part due to the city's heavy reliance on heavy industry. Notably, industrial areas on the south side and neighborhoods lining both branches of the Chicago River were devastated; by 1933 over 50% of industrial jobs in the city had been lost, and unemployment rates amongst blacks and Mexicans in the city were over 40%. The Republican political machine in Chicago was utterly destroyed by the economic crisis, and every mayor since 1931 has been a Democrat.

 

From 1928 to 1933, the city witnessed a tax revolt, and the city was unable to meet payroll or provide relief efforts. The fiscal crisis was resolved by 1933, and at the same time, federal relief funding began to flow into Chicago. Chicago was also a hotbed of labor activism, with Unemployed Councils contributing heavily in the early depression to create solidarity for the poor and demand relief; these organizations were created by socialist and communist groups. By 1935 the Workers Alliance of America begun organizing the poor, workers, the unemployed. In the spring of 1937 Republic Steel Works witnessed the Memorial Day massacre of 1937 in the neighborhood of East Side.

 

In 1933, Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak was fatally wounded in Miami, Florida, during a failed assassination attempt on President-elect Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1933 and 1934, the city celebrated its centennial by hosting the Century of Progress International Exposition World's Fair. The theme of the fair was technological innovation over the century since Chicago's founding.

 

During World War II, the city of Chicago alone produced more steel than the United Kingdom every year from 1939 – 1945, and more than Nazi Germany from 1943 – 1945.

 

The Great Migration, which had been on pause due to the Depression, resumed at an even faster pace in the second wave, as hundreds of thousands of blacks from the South arrived in the city to work in the steel mills, railroads, and shipping yards.

 

On December 2, 1942, physicist Enrico Fermi conducted the world's first controlled nuclear reaction at the University of Chicago as part of the top-secret Manhattan Project. This led to the creation of the atomic bomb by the United States, which it used in World War II in 1945.

 

Mayor Richard J. Daley, a Democrat, was elected in 1955, in the era of machine politics. In 1956, the city conducted its last major expansion when it annexed the land under O'Hare airport, including a small portion of DuPage County.

 

By the 1960s, white residents in several neighborhoods left the city for the suburban areas – in many American cities, a process known as white flight – as Blacks continued to move beyond the Black Belt. While home loan discriminatory redlining against blacks continued, the real estate industry practiced what became known as blockbusting, completely changing the racial composition of whole neighborhoods. Structural changes in industry, such as globalization and job outsourcing, caused heavy job losses for lower-skilled workers. At its peak during the 1960s, some 250,000 workers were employed in the steel industry in Chicago, but the steel crisis of the 1970s and 1980s reduced this number to just 28,000 in 2015. In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. and Albert Raby led the Chicago Freedom Movement, which culminated in agreements between Mayor Richard J. Daley and the movement leaders.

 

Two years later, the city hosted the tumultuous 1968 Democratic National Convention, which featured physical confrontations both inside and outside the convention hall, with anti-war protesters, journalists and bystanders being beaten by police. Major construction projects, including the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis Tower, which in 1974 became the world's tallest building), University of Illinois at Chicago, McCormick Place, and O'Hare International Airport, were undertaken during Richard J. Daley's tenure. In 1979, Jane Byrne, the city's first female mayor, was elected. She was notable for temporarily moving into the crime-ridden Cabrini-Green housing project and for leading Chicago's school system out of a financial crisis.

 

In 1983, Harold Washington became the first black mayor of Chicago. Washington's first term in office directed attention to poor and previously neglected minority neighborhoods. He was re‑elected in 1987 but died of a heart attack soon after. Washington was succeeded by 6th ward alderperson Eugene Sawyer, who was elected by the Chicago City Council and served until a special election.

 

Richard M. Daley, son of Richard J. Daley, was elected in 1989. His accomplishments included improvements to parks and creating incentives for sustainable development, as well as closing Meigs Field in the middle of the night and destroying the runways. After successfully running for re-election five times, and becoming Chicago's longest-serving mayor, Richard M. Daley declined to run for a seventh term.

 

In 1992, a construction accident near the Kinzie Street Bridge produced a breach connecting the Chicago River to a tunnel below, which was part of an abandoned freight tunnel system extending throughout the downtown Loop district. The tunnels filled with 250 million US gallons (1,000,000 m3) of water, affecting buildings throughout the district and forcing a shutdown of electrical power. The area was shut down for three days and some buildings did not reopen for weeks; losses were estimated at $1.95 billion.

 

On February 23, 2011, Rahm Emanuel, a former White House Chief of Staff and member of the House of Representatives, won the mayoral election. Emanuel was sworn in as mayor on May 16, 2011, and won re-election in 2015. Lori Lightfoot, the city's first African American woman mayor and its first openly LGBTQ mayor, was elected to succeed Emanuel as mayor in 2019. All three city-wide elective offices were held by women (and women of color) for the first time in Chicago history: in addition to Lightfoot, the city clerk was Anna Valencia and the city treasurer was Melissa Conyears-Ervin.

 

On May 15, 2023, Brandon Johnson assumed office as the 57th mayor of Chicago.

 

Illinois is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Great Lakes to its northeast, the Mississippi River to its west, and the Wabash and Ohio rivers to its south. Its largest metropolitan areas are Chicago and the Metro East region of Greater St. Louis. Other metropolitan areas include Peoria and Rockford, as well as Springfield, its capital, and Champaign-Urbana, home to the main campus of the state's flagship university. Of the fifty U.S. states, Illinois has the fifth-largest gross domestic product (GDP), the sixth-largest population, and the 25th-largest land area.

 

Illinois has a highly diverse economy, with the global city of Chicago in the northeast, major industrial and agricultural hubs in the north and center, and natural resources such as coal, timber, and petroleum in the south. Owing to its central location and favorable geography, the state is a major transportation hub: the Port of Chicago has access to the Atlantic Ocean through the Great Lakes and Saint Lawrence Seaway and to the Gulf of Mexico from the Mississippi River via the Illinois Waterway. Chicago has been the nation's railroad hub since the 1860s, and its O'Hare International Airport has been among the world's busiest airports for decades. Illinois has long been considered a microcosm of the United States and a bellwether in American culture, exemplified by the phrase Will it play in Peoria?.

 

Present-day Illinois was inhabited by various indigenous cultures for thousands of years, including the advanced civilization centered in the Cahokia region. The French were the first Europeans to arrive, settling near the Mississippi and Illinois River in the 17th century in the region they called Illinois Country, as part of the sprawling colony of New France. Following U.S. independence in 1783, American settlers began arriving from Kentucky via the Ohio River, and the population grew from south to north. Illinois was part of the United States' oldest territory, the Northwest Territory, and in 1818 it achieved statehood. The Erie Canal brought increased commercial activity in the Great Lakes, and the small settlement of Chicago became one of the fastest growing cities in the world, benefiting from its location as one of the few natural harbors in southwestern Lake Michigan. The invention of the self-scouring steel plow by Illinoisan John Deere turned the state's rich prairie into some of the world's most productive and valuable farmland, attracting immigrant farmers from Germany and Sweden. In the mid-19th century, the Illinois and Michigan Canal and a sprawling railroad network greatly facilitated trade, commerce, and settlement, making the state a transportation hub for the nation.

 

By 1900, the growth of industrial jobs in the northern cities and coal mining in the central and southern areas attracted immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe. Illinois became one of America's most industrialized states and remains a major manufacturing center. The Great Migration from the South established a large community of African Americans, particularly in Chicago, who founded the city's famous jazz and blues cultures. Chicago became a leading cultural, economic, and population center and is today one of the world's major commercial centers; its metropolitan area, informally referred to as Chicagoland, holds about 65% of the state's 12.8 million residents.

 

Two World Heritage Sites are in Illinois, the ancient Cahokia Mounds, and part of the Wright architecture site. Major centers of learning include the University of Chicago, University of Illinois, and Northwestern University. A wide variety of protected areas seek to conserve Illinois' natural and cultural resources. Historically, three U.S. presidents have been elected while residents of Illinois: Abraham Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, and Barack Obama; additionally, Ronald Reagan was born and raised in the state. Illinois honors Lincoln with its official state slogan Land of Lincoln. The state is the site of the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield and the future home of the Barack Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.

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Dorothy Jones and Carrie Sprouse work to fit minute ordnance details under magnifying apparatus at the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C. April 20, 1943.

 

Washington, D.C. had “Rosies” at the Washington Navy Yard with influxes of women beginning in World War I, though they were nearly all in clerical or cleaning-type jobs. However in World War II, more than 3,000 women were hired at the gun factory into semi-skilled and skilled work with yet another wave during the Korean War of the early 1950s.

 

These included black women who were initially hired in the lowest grade jobs. However, during World War II, black women trained through the National Youth Administration were brought on into semi-skilled positions with a few moving up into skilled work such as machinist.

 

Most women left these jobs after each war, but some stayed on and made careers at the Naval Gun Factory (NGF)

 

The following are excerpts from History of the Washington Navy Yard Civilian Workforce: 1799-1962, by John G. Sharp that traces the history of women at the NGF:

 

Women Enter the Workforce

 

During World War I (1917-1918), NGF expanded in size and ran twenty- four hours each day, seven days a week. Because of the acute wartime shortage of civilian workers, the Navy looked to women and created the Yeoman “F” (Female) rating.

 

This new rating allowed for the first time thousands of women to volunteer for the wartime service.

 

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who created the Yeoman (F) rating, did so because it allowed the Navy to call up women specifically to relieve officers and men for sea duty, rather than as a substitute for male civilian employees who were serving in the armed forces.

 

This wartime experiment proved so successful that many women were kept on after the armistice as civilian employees.

 

Some like Nellie M. Stein and Ann Tapscott served as Yeoman (F) in the Naval Gun Factory for the duration of the war then immediately went to work as a civilian employee under the civil service as clerks in the same division. Tapscott later became a supervisor in the Accounting Department.

 

African –American women too began to enter the yard labor force during the war. Most of these new workers, such Mrs. Mabel Brown who began her 36 year career as a “Charwomen” (a title later changed to laborer), worked cleaning offices, laboratories and industrial spaces.

 

Their work was often hard and physically demanding, but the work was also steady and better compensated than most positions available to them in the private sector.

 

According to a memo in the Naval Records and Archives Administrations, Nellie Stein began her long federal career in 1912 as a Printers Assistant with the Government Printing Office. When war broke out, Stein volunteered for active duty as a Yeoman F and was stationed at the Naval Gun Factory.

 

After the Armistice, she was hired as “typewriter” at NGF. In 1932 Stein moved into the new Industrial Relations Division where she “constantly studied laws, directives, comptroller general decisions and books on personnel administration for 14 years.”

 

Stein and others like her often had to overcome a great deal of skepticism from her male supervisors and coworkers.

 

Here is one example of the challenges that Stein and other women faced in establishing a place for themselves in the Yard’s work force.

 

The memo stated, “Ordinarily the Personnel Officer would not recommend a Civil Service female employee to an administrative position. He would not so recommend women to be in complete charge of a division for he does not believe that women are emotionally equipped to meet the demands of such a position.”

 

Despite his considerable reservations, NGF’s Personnel Officer CDR. Davis did recommend Stein for the job and by the time of her retirement in 1948 Nellie Stein was NGF’s Assistant Personnel Officer (CAF-11), one of the highest graded positions at the factory.

 

By the 1920s, some factory organizations, such as the Accounting and Supply Departments, not only had large numbers of women but they in fact outnumbered men.

 

Women Ask for the Equal Pay

In 1919, the National Women’s Trade Union League asked Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, for the same pay as men working in the Yards.

 

The committee protested to the Secretary against rating women as seamstresses and flag makers in the Navy Yards at the pay of common laborers.

 

Sewing, the committee contented, was a skilled trade and none of the ratings for male skilled trades were as low. They also complained that seamstress and flag maker inspectors did not receive the same pay as men.

 

Despite this and other appeals, comparable pay did not become a reality for another four decades.

 

Women go to War at the Navy Yard and Gun Factory

 

WW II greatly expanded employment opportunities for women. While hundreds of thousands of men were being drafted into military service,

If vital war production was to continue, women were needed in the factories and offices.

 

In January 1943, Yard Commandant, Rear Admiral, Ferdinand L. Reichmuth invited the Washington press corps to tour the Yard. Here reporters from the two major papers could view first-hand the work that women were accomplishing at the Gun Factory and other locations.

 

This tour was the first time that the Yard had been opened to the press in over a year due to wartime security. Reporters were told there were now 1,400 female workers employed in ordnance manufacture. These new entrants ranged in age from 18 to 50.

 

They came from all walks of life having worked as housewives, dry-cleaners and laundry workers, beauticians, office workers, maids and one, Mrs. Arbutus Howlett, who was previously employed as a farmer.

 

As demand for labor grew NGF and other munitions producers advertised widely for Woman Ordnance Worker (WOW). The women working in ordnance production were classified into three grades: ordnance worker, ordnance operative and precision operative.

 

Entry-level pay was 57 cents per hour rising to a high of 108 cents per hour.

 

The world of the female employee was not free of stereotyping and bias. Most of these women worked long hours and also frequently worked Saturday and Sunday.

 

Captain J. R. Palmer, Production Officer, reflected some of the views of

the time, when he described the ideal female employee: “She is between 25 and 35 years of age, single and without local family connections.”

 

“She is a person who has to earn a living and is endowed with a natural mechanical bent and a high degree of adaptability. In her work-a-day world relationships with men in the shops she does not expect the small gallantries a man shows a woman in a social relationship.”

 

Captain Palmer went on to relate to the reporters: “Women are doing the work usually done by apprentices and some had sufficient skill to work as machinist.”

 

One top ranking officer summed up the contribution that female employees were making to the workforce as:

 

“These women are doing a grand job to win the war and win it as quickly as possible. They step into men’s places at the machines and keep them turning without a stop as the men go off to the fighting fronts. Today’s women workers at the Washington Navy Yard produce an ever growing flow of ordnance material.”

 

The Star reported the biggest problem for the new female workers was finding childcare.

 

One female reporter who actually worked in Gun Factory ordnance production took a more jaundiced view:

 

“Equal pay and promotions for women are one of the government standards of employment supported in writing by the Navy Department ....The Navy Yards themselves seem to be unaware of the fact; .... Navy Yard women start at $4.65 a day which with time and a half for the sixth day is $ 29.64 a week. Deduct the 20-percent withholding tax, and you find we luxuriate on $23 a week.”

 

“The highest pay women on production in our shop receive $6.95 a day, a peak she attained after two years of service at the yard. Men get as high as $22 a day.”

 

Many of the women working at the factory may have agreed with Mrs. Robert T. Withers, a milling machine operator in the Breech Mechanism Shop with over two years on the production line’s 4-12 shift: “I feel I am helping my husband and my country and keeping busy so that when this war is over I can be a housewife again.”

 

Women Ordnance Workers Once Again

 

The Korean War meant a heighten demand for NGF to increase munitions production. This combined with the loss of skilled workers to the reserve call-up motivated NGF to begin a serious effort to hire female ordnance workers. Starting in late 1950 NGF hired hundreds of women.

 

All of the new workers were given a two-week indoctrination course. Each new employee was provided practical shop training and instruction in how to operate the various machines and tools, how to read blue prints, and the use of measuring instruments.

 

Some like Mary L. Johnson had previous experience at NGF during WWII and were keen to return. “I worked here once before during the last war and I know something about the work. I honestly feel the work I am doing is important.”

 

Irene Hunter also had worked three years for NGF in World War II. She welcomed a chance to return, saying, “when I was notified that the NGF was hiring women to work on machines again, I quit my job with the picture company and came here. The work that I do is very exciting and takes steady nerves. I believe had I the opportunity, I would like to work here permanently.”

 

Kathleen Siggman, who previously had been a model, an assistant buyer of women’s apparel and worked in a private sector machine shop, was enthusiastic: “this is the best job I ever had!”

 

Daphene Dyer, a war bride from England, related; “I was born in England and spent the last war driving ambulances. That is why I could not go back to office work. I feel that the work I am doing here is essential for my new country and naturally I am anxious to do a job.”

 

In 1961, the last production runs were completed, shops were dismantled and cleaned, and forges and boilers banked. Over $200 million dollars of equipment such as machine tools, industrial cranes and barges were disposed of primarily to other government agencies.

 

By the beginning of 1962, NGF workers, who epitomized the rich heritage of the nation’s trade and craft traditions and who had served their country well in the all the major wars of the 20th century, said quiet goodbyes to their friends and shop mates.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLe4fB5

 

The photographer is unknown. The image is a World Wide Photo housed in the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection

 

This photo is part of a selection taken at the graduation of the first batch of newly skilled sewing machine operators in the TVET Reform Project pilot programme. They have just finished their off-the-job training and will now enter a ready made garments (RMG) factory for their on-the-job training.

 

The pilot focused on developing a model which demonstrates that underprivileged women and persons with disabilities can be mainstreamed into skills development programs, and that people with low formal education can become skilled workers.

 

The TVET Reform Project is working towards reforming technical and vocational education and training in Bangladesh. For more information please visit ilo.org/tvet. © ILO/Sarah-Jane Saltmarsh

 

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 IGO License. To view a copy of this license, visit creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/igo/deed.en_US.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex

 

The Giza pyramid complex (also called the Giza necropolis) in Egypt is home to the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx. All were built during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, between c. 2600 – c. 2500 BC. The site also includes several temples, cemeteries, and the remains of a workers' village.

 

The site is at the edge of the Western Desert, approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) west of the Nile River in the city of Giza, and about 13 km (8.1 mi) southwest of the city centre of Cairo. It forms the northernmost part of the 16,000 ha (160 km2; 62 sq mi) Pyramid Fields of the Memphis and its Necropolis UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1979. The pyramid fields include the Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur pyramid complexes, which were all built in the vicinity of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis.[1] Further Old Kingdom pyramid fields were located at the sites Abu Rawash, Zawyet El Aryan, and Meidum.

 

The Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khafre are the largest pyramids built in ancient Egypt, and they have historically been common as emblems of Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination They were popularised in Hellenistic times, when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is by far the oldest of the Ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence.

 

Literature on ancient Giza is vast; for an overview with further references, see Manuelian[3] or Lehner and Hawass.

 

Maadi settlements

The earliest settlement of the Giza plateau predates the pyramid complexes. Four jars from the Maadi culture were found at the foot of the Great Pyramid, likely from a disturbed earlier settlement. Further Maadi settlement near the site was uncovered during work on the Greater Cairo Wastewater Project. Recent reassessment of the radiocarbon dating puts the Maadi culture's eponymous settlement to c. 3800 – c. 3400 BC, which is also the likely maximum possible range for the Giza remains.

 

The Giza pyramid complex consists of the Great Pyramid (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu and constructed c. 2580 – c. 2560 BC), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren) a few hundred metres to the south-west, and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinos) a few hundred metres farther south-west. The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre. Along with these major monuments are a number of smaller satellite edifices, known as "queens" pyramids, causeways, and temples.[8] Besides the archaeological structures, the ancient landscape has also been investigated.

 

Khufu's complex

Khufu's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, now buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman; diabase paving and nummulitic limestone walls have been found but the site has not been excavated. The valley temple was connected to a causeway that was largely destroyed when the village was constructed. The causeway led to the Mortuary Temple of Khufu, which was connected to the pyramid. Of this temple, the basalt pavement is the only thing that remains. The king's pyramid has three smaller queen's pyramids associated with it and three boat pits.  The boat pits contained a ship, and the two pits on the south side of the pyramid contained intact ships when excavated. One of these ships, the Khufu ship, has been restored and was originally displayed at the Giza Solar boat museum, then subsequently moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

 

Khufu's pyramid still has a limited number of casing stones at its base. These casing stones were made of fine white limestone quarried at Tura.

 

Khafre's complex

Main articles: Pyramid of Khafre and Great Sphinx of Giza

Khafre's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, the Sphinx temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple yielded several statues of Khafre. Several were found in a well in the floor of the temple by Mariette in 1860. Others were found during successive excavations by Sieglin (1909–1910), Junker, Reisner, and Hassan. Khafre's complex contained five boat-pits and a subsidiary pyramid with a serdab. 

 

Khafre's pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu Pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction—it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume. Khafre's pyramid retains a prominent display of casing stones at its apex.

 

Menkaure's complex

Menkaure's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple once contained several statues of Menkaure. During the 5th Dynasty, a smaller ante-temple was added on to the valley temple. The mortuary temple also yielded several statues of Menkaure. The king's pyramid, completed c. 2510 BC, has three subsidiary or queen's pyramids.  Of the four major monuments, only Menkaure's pyramid is seen today without any of its original polished limestone casing

 

Sphinx

The Sphinx dates from the reign of king Khafre. During the New Kingdom, Amenhotep II dedicated a new temple to Hauron-Haremakhet and this structure was added onto by later rulers.

 

Tomb of Queen Khentkaus I

Main article: Pyramid of Khentkaus I

Khentkaus I was buried in Giza. Her tomb is known as LG 100 and G 8400 and is located in the Central Field, near the valley temple of Menkaure. The pyramid complex of Queen Khentkaus includes her pyramid, a boat pit, a valley temple, and a pyramid town.

 

Construction

Main article: Egyptian pyramid construction techniques

Most construction theories are based on the idea that the pyramids were built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. Disagreements arise over the feasibility of the different proposed methods by which the stones were conveyed and placed.

 

In building the pyramids, the architects might have developed their techniques over time. They would select a site on a relatively flat area of bedrock—not sand—which provided a stable foundation. After carefully surveying the site and laying down the first level of stones, they constructed the pyramids in horizontal levels, one on top of the other.

 

For the Great Pyramid, most of the stone for the interior seems to have been quarried immediately to the south of the construction site. The smooth exterior of the pyramid was made of a fine grade of white limestone that was quarried across the Nile. These exterior blocks had to be carefully cut, transported by river barge to Giza, and dragged up ramps to the construction site. Only a few exterior blocks remain in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), people may have taken the rest away for building projects in the city of Cairo.

 

To ensure that the pyramid remained symmetrical, the exterior casing stones all had to be equal in height and width. Workers might have marked all the blocks to indicate the angle of the pyramid wall and trimmed the surfaces carefully so that the blocks fit together. During construction, the outer surface of the stone was smooth limestone; excess stone has eroded over time.

 

New insights into the closing stages of the Great Pyramid building were provided by the recent find of Wadi el-Jarf papyri, especially the diary of inspector Merer, whose team was assigned to deliver the white limestone from Tura quarries to Giza. The journal was already published, as well as a popular account of the importance of this discovery.

 

Purpose

The pyramids of Giza and others are thought to have been constructed to house the remains of the deceased pharaohs who ruled Ancient Egypt. A portion of the pharaoh's spirit called his ka was believed to remain with his corpse. Proper care of the remains was necessary in order for the "former Pharaoh to perform his new duties as king of the dead". It is theorized the pyramid not only served as a tomb for the pharaoh, but also as a storage pit for various items he would need in the afterlife. "The people of Ancient Egypt believed that death on Earth was the start of a journey to the next world." The embalmed body of the King was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife.

 

Astronomy

The sides of all three of the Giza pyramids were astronomically oriented to the cardinal directions within a small fraction of a degree. According to the disputed Orion correlation theory, the arrangement of the pyramids is a representation of the constellation Orion.

 

Workers' village

The work of quarrying, moving, setting, and sculpting the huge amount of stone used to build the pyramids might have been accomplished by several thousand skilled workers, unskilled laborers and supporting workers. Bakers, carpenters, water carriers, and others were also needed for the project. Along with the methods used to construct the pyramids, there is also wide speculation regarding the exact number of workers needed for a building project of this magnitude. When Greek historian Herodotus visited Giza in 450 BC, he was told by Egyptian priests that "the Great Pyramid had taken 400,000 men 20 years to build, working in three-month shifts 100,000 men at a time." Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid.

 

The Giza pyramid complex is surrounded by a large stone wall, outside which Mark Lehner and his team discovered a town where the pyramid workers were housed. The village is located to the southeast of the Khafre and Menkaure complexes. Among the discoveries at the workers' village are communal sleeping quarters, bakeries, breweries, and kitchens (with evidence showing that bread, beef, and fish were dietary staples), a copper workshop, a hospital, and a cemetery (where some of the skeletons were found with signs of trauma associated with accidents on a building site). The metal processed at the site was the so-called arsenical copper. The same material was also identified among the copper artefacts from the "Kromer" site, from the reigns of Khufu and Khafre.

 

The workers' town appears to date from the middle 4th Dynasty (2520–2472 BC), after the accepted time of Khufu and completion of the Great Pyramid. According to Lehner and the AERA team:

 

The development of this urban complex must have been rapid. All of the construction probably happened in the 35 to 50 years that spanned the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure, builders of the Second and Third Giza Pyramids.

Using pottery shards, seal impressions, and stratigraphy to date the site, the team further concludes:

 

The picture that emerges is that of a planned settlement, some of the world's earliest urban planning, securely dated to the reigns of two Giza pyramid builders: Khafre (2520–2494 BC) and Menkaure (2490–2472 BC).

Radiocarbon data for the Old Kingdom Giza plateau and the workers' settlement were published in 2006, and then re-evaluated in 2011.

 

Cemeteries

As the pyramids were constructed, the mastabas for lesser royals were constructed around them. Near the pyramid of Khufu, the main cemetery is G 7000, which lies in the East Field located to the east of the main pyramid and next to the Queen's pyramids. These cemeteries around the pyramids were arranged along streets and avenues. Cemetery G 7000 was one of the earliest and contained tombs of wives, sons, and daughters of these 4th Dynasty rulers. On the other side of the pyramid in the West Field, the royals' sons Wepemnofret and Hemiunu were buried in Cemetery G 1200 and Cemetery G 4000, respectively. These cemeteries were further expanded during the 5th and 6th Dynasties.

 

West Field

Main article: Giza West Field

The West Field is located to the west of Khufu's pyramid. It is divided into smaller areas such as the cemeteries referred to as the Abu Bakr Excavations (1949–1950, 1950–1951, 1952, and 1953), and several cemeteries named based on the mastaba numbers such as Cemetery G 1000, Cemetery G 1100, etc. The West Field contains Cemetery G1000 – Cemetery G1600, and Cemetery G 1900. Further cemeteries in this field are: Cemeteries G 2000, G 2200, G 2500, G 3000, G 4000, and G 6000. Three other cemeteries are named after their excavators: Junker Cemetery West, Junker Cemetery East, and Steindorff Cemetery.

 

East Field

Main article: Giza East Field

The East Field is located to the east of Khufu's pyramid and contains cemetery G 7000. This cemetery was a burial place for some of the family members of Khufu. The cemetery also includes mastabas from tenants and priests of the pyramids dated to the 5th Dynasty and 6th Dynasty.

 

Cemetery GIS

This cemetery dates from the time of Menkaure (Junker) or earlier (Reisner), and contains several stone-built mastabas dating from as late as the 6th Dynasty. Tombs from the time of Menkaure include the mastabas of the royal chamberlain Khaemnefert, the King's son Khufudjedef (master of the royal largesse), and an official named Niankhre.

 

Central Field

Main article: Central Field, Giza

The Central Field contains several burials of royal family members. The tombs range in date from the end of the 4th Dynasty to the 5th Dynasty or even later.[

 

Tombs dating from the Saite and later period were found near the causeway of Khafre and the Great Sphinx. These tombs include the tomb of a commander of the army named Ahmose and his mother Queen Nakhtubasterau, who was the wife of Pharaoh Amasis II.

 

South Field

The South Field includes mastabas dating from the 1st Dynasty to 3rd Dynasty as well as later burials. Of the more significant of these early dynastic tombs are one referred to as "Covington's tomb", otherwise known as Mastaba T, and the large Mastaba V which contained artifacts naming the 1st Dynasty pharaoh Djet. Other tombs date from the late Old Kingdom (5th and 6th Dynasty). The south section of the field contains several tombs dating from the Saite period and later. 

 

Tombs of the pyramid builders

In 1990, tombs belonging to the pyramid workers were discovered alongside the pyramids, with an additional burial site found nearby in 2009. Although not mummified, they had been buried in mudbrick tombs with beer and bread to support them in the afterlife. The tombs' proximity to the pyramids and the manner of burial supports the theory that they were paid laborers who took pride in their work and were not slaves, as was previously thought. Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid. Most of the workers appear to have come from poor families. Specialists such as architects, masons, metalworkers, and carpenters were permanently employed by the king to fill positions that required the most skill.

 

Shafts

There are multiple burial-shafts and various unfinished shafts and tunnels located in the Giza complex that were discovered and mentioned prominently by Selim Hassan in his report Excavations at Giza 1933–1934. He states: "Very few of the Saitic [referring to the Saite Period) shafts have been thoroughly examined, for the reason that most of them are flooded."

 

Osiris Shaft

The Osiris Shaft is a narrow burial-shaft leading to three levels for a tomb and below it a flooded area. It was first mentioned by Hassan, and a thorough excavation was conducted by a team led by Hawass in 1999. It was opened to tourists in November 2017.

 

New Kingdom and Late Period

During the New Kingdom Giza was still an active site. A brick-built chapel was constructed near the Sphinx during the early 18th Dynasty, probably by King Thutmose I. Amenhotep II built a temple dedicated to Hauron-Haremakhet near the Sphinx. As a prince, the future pharaoh Thutmose IV visited the pyramids and the Sphinx; he reported being told in a dream that if he cleared the sand that had built up around the Sphinx, he would be rewarded with kingship. This event is recorded in the Dream Stele, which he had installed between the Sphinx's front legs.

 

During the early years of his reign, Thutmose IV, together with his wife Queen Nefertari, had stelae erected at Giza.

 

Pharaoh Tutankhamun had a structure built, which is now referred to as the king's resthouse.

 

During the 19th Dynasty, Seti I added to the temple of Hauron-Haremakhet, and his son Ramesses II erected a stela in the chapel before the Sphinx and usurped the resthouse of Tutankhamun. 

 

During the 21st Dynasty, the Temple of Isis Mistress-of-the-Pyramids was reconstructed. During the 26th Dynasty, a stela made in this time mentions Khufu and his Queen Henutsen.

 

Division of the 1903–1905 excavation of the Giza Necropolis

In 1903, rights to excavate the West Field and Pyramids of the Giza Necropolis were divided by three institutions from Italy, Germany, and the United States of America.

 

Background

Prior to the division of the Giza Plateau into three institutional concessions in 1903, amateur and private excavations at the Giza Necropolis had been permitted to operate. The work of these amateur archaeologists failed to meet high scientific standards. Montague Ballard, for instance, excavated in the Western Cemetery (with the hesitant permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Service) and neither kept records of his finds nor published them.

 

Italian, German, and American Concessions at Giza

In 1902, the Egyptian Antiquities Service under Gaston Maspero resolved to issue permits exclusively to authorized individuals representing public institutions. In November of that year, the Service awarded three scholars with concessions on the Giza Necropolis. They were the Italian Ernesto Schiaparelli from the Turin Museum, the German Georg Steindorff from the University of Leipzig who had funding from Wilhelm Pelizaeus, and the American George Reisner from the Hearst Expedition. Within a matter of months, the site had been divided between the concessionaires following a meeting at the Mena House Hotel involving Schiaparelli, Ludwig Borchardt (Steindorff's representative in Egypt), and Reisner.

 

Division of the West Field

By the turn of the 20th century, the three largest pyramids on the Giza plateau were considered mostly exhausted by previous excavations, so the Western Cemetery and its collection of private mastaba tombs were thought to represent the richest unexcavated part of the plateau. George Reisner's wife, Mary, drew names from a hat to assign three long east-west plots of the necropolis among the Italian, German, and American missions. Schiaparelli was assigned the southernmost strip, Borchardt the center, and Reisner the northernmost.

 

Division of the Pyramids

Rights to excavate the Pyramids were then also negotiated between Schiaparelli, Borchardt, and Reisner. Schiaparelli gained rights to excavate the Great Pyramid of Khufu along with its three associated queens' pyramids and most of its Eastern Cemetery. Borchardt received Khafre's pyramid, its causeway, the Sphinx, and the Sphinx's associated temples. Reisner claimed Menkaure's pyramid as well as its associated queens' pyramids and pyramid temple, along with a portion of Schiaparelli's Eastern Cemetery. Any future disputes were to be resolved by Inspector James Quibell, as per a letter from Borchardt to Maspero.

 

Immediate Aftermath

This arrangement lasted until 1905, when, under the supervision of Schiaparelli and Francesco Ballerini, the Italian excavations ceased at Giza. As the Italians were more interested in sites which might yield more papyri, they turned their concession of the southern strip of the Western Cemetery over to the Americans under Reisner.

 

Modern usage

In 1978, the Grateful Dead played a series of concerts later released as Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978. In 2007, Colombian singer Shakira performed at the complex to a crowd of approximately 100,000 people. The complex was used for the final draw of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2021 World Men's Handball Championship.

 

Egypt's Minister of Tourism unveiled plans for a €17,000,000 revamp of the complex by the end of 2021, in order to boost tourism in Egypt as well as make the site more accessible and tourist-friendly. According to Lonely Planet, the refurbishment includes a new visitors' centre, an environmentally-friendly electric bus, a restaurant (the 9 Pyramids Lounge), as well as a cinema, public toilets, site-wide signage, food trucks, photo booths, and free Wi-Fi. The new facility is part of a wider plan to renovate the 4,500 year old site.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex

 

The Giza pyramid complex (also called the Giza necropolis) in Egypt is home to the Great Pyramid, the Pyramid of Khafre, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, along with their associated pyramid complexes and the Great Sphinx. All were built during the Fourth Dynasty of the Old Kingdom of ancient Egypt, between c. 2600 – c. 2500 BC. The site also includes several temples, cemeteries, and the remains of a workers' village.

 

The site is at the edge of the Western Desert, approximately 9 km (5.6 mi) west of the Nile River in the city of Giza, and about 13 km (8.1 mi) southwest of the city centre of Cairo. It forms the northernmost part of the 16,000 ha (160 km2; 62 sq mi) Pyramid Fields of the Memphis and its Necropolis UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 1979. The pyramid fields include the Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur pyramid complexes, which were all built in the vicinity of Egypt's ancient capital of Memphis.[1] Further Old Kingdom pyramid fields were located at the sites Abu Rawash, Zawyet El Aryan, and Meidum.

 

The Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Khafre are the largest pyramids built in ancient Egypt, and they have historically been common as emblems of Ancient Egypt in the Western imagination They were popularised in Hellenistic times, when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is by far the oldest of the Ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence.

 

Literature on ancient Giza is vast; for an overview with further references, see Manuelian[3] or Lehner and Hawass.

 

Maadi settlements

The earliest settlement of the Giza plateau predates the pyramid complexes. Four jars from the Maadi culture were found at the foot of the Great Pyramid, likely from a disturbed earlier settlement. Further Maadi settlement near the site was uncovered during work on the Greater Cairo Wastewater Project. Recent reassessment of the radiocarbon dating puts the Maadi culture's eponymous settlement to c. 3800 – c. 3400 BC, which is also the likely maximum possible range for the Giza remains.

 

The Giza pyramid complex consists of the Great Pyramid (also known as the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu and constructed c. 2580 – c. 2560 BC), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren) a few hundred metres to the south-west, and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinos) a few hundred metres farther south-west. The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre. Along with these major monuments are a number of smaller satellite edifices, known as "queens" pyramids, causeways, and temples.[8] Besides the archaeological structures, the ancient landscape has also been investigated.

 

Khufu's complex

Khufu's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, now buried beneath the village of Nazlet el-Samman; diabase paving and nummulitic limestone walls have been found but the site has not been excavated. The valley temple was connected to a causeway that was largely destroyed when the village was constructed. The causeway led to the Mortuary Temple of Khufu, which was connected to the pyramid. Of this temple, the basalt pavement is the only thing that remains. The king's pyramid has three smaller queen's pyramids associated with it and three boat pits.  The boat pits contained a ship, and the two pits on the south side of the pyramid contained intact ships when excavated. One of these ships, the Khufu ship, has been restored and was originally displayed at the Giza Solar boat museum, then subsequently moved to the Grand Egyptian Museum.

 

Khufu's pyramid still has a limited number of casing stones at its base. These casing stones were made of fine white limestone quarried at Tura.

 

Khafre's complex

Main articles: Pyramid of Khafre and Great Sphinx of Giza

Khafre's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, the Sphinx temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple yielded several statues of Khafre. Several were found in a well in the floor of the temple by Mariette in 1860. Others were found during successive excavations by Sieglin (1909–1910), Junker, Reisner, and Hassan. Khafre's complex contained five boat-pits and a subsidiary pyramid with a serdab. 

 

Khafre's pyramid appears larger than the adjacent Khufu Pyramid by virtue of its more elevated location, and the steeper angle of inclination of its construction—it is, in fact, smaller in both height and volume. Khafre's pyramid retains a prominent display of casing stones at its apex.

 

Menkaure's complex

Menkaure's pyramid complex consists of a valley temple, a causeway, a mortuary temple, and the king's pyramid. The valley temple once contained several statues of Menkaure. During the 5th Dynasty, a smaller ante-temple was added on to the valley temple. The mortuary temple also yielded several statues of Menkaure. The king's pyramid, completed c. 2510 BC, has three subsidiary or queen's pyramids.  Of the four major monuments, only Menkaure's pyramid is seen today without any of its original polished limestone casing

 

Sphinx

The Sphinx dates from the reign of king Khafre. During the New Kingdom, Amenhotep II dedicated a new temple to Hauron-Haremakhet and this structure was added onto by later rulers.

 

Tomb of Queen Khentkaus I

Main article: Pyramid of Khentkaus I

Khentkaus I was buried in Giza. Her tomb is known as LG 100 and G 8400 and is located in the Central Field, near the valley temple of Menkaure. The pyramid complex of Queen Khentkaus includes her pyramid, a boat pit, a valley temple, and a pyramid town.

 

Construction

Main article: Egyptian pyramid construction techniques

Most construction theories are based on the idea that the pyramids were built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. Disagreements arise over the feasibility of the different proposed methods by which the stones were conveyed and placed.

 

In building the pyramids, the architects might have developed their techniques over time. They would select a site on a relatively flat area of bedrock—not sand—which provided a stable foundation. After carefully surveying the site and laying down the first level of stones, they constructed the pyramids in horizontal levels, one on top of the other.

 

For the Great Pyramid, most of the stone for the interior seems to have been quarried immediately to the south of the construction site. The smooth exterior of the pyramid was made of a fine grade of white limestone that was quarried across the Nile. These exterior blocks had to be carefully cut, transported by river barge to Giza, and dragged up ramps to the construction site. Only a few exterior blocks remain in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), people may have taken the rest away for building projects in the city of Cairo.

 

To ensure that the pyramid remained symmetrical, the exterior casing stones all had to be equal in height and width. Workers might have marked all the blocks to indicate the angle of the pyramid wall and trimmed the surfaces carefully so that the blocks fit together. During construction, the outer surface of the stone was smooth limestone; excess stone has eroded over time.

 

New insights into the closing stages of the Great Pyramid building were provided by the recent find of Wadi el-Jarf papyri, especially the diary of inspector Merer, whose team was assigned to deliver the white limestone from Tura quarries to Giza. The journal was already published, as well as a popular account of the importance of this discovery.

 

Purpose

The pyramids of Giza and others are thought to have been constructed to house the remains of the deceased pharaohs who ruled Ancient Egypt. A portion of the pharaoh's spirit called his ka was believed to remain with his corpse. Proper care of the remains was necessary in order for the "former Pharaoh to perform his new duties as king of the dead". It is theorized the pyramid not only served as a tomb for the pharaoh, but also as a storage pit for various items he would need in the afterlife. "The people of Ancient Egypt believed that death on Earth was the start of a journey to the next world." The embalmed body of the King was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife.

 

Astronomy

The sides of all three of the Giza pyramids were astronomically oriented to the cardinal directions within a small fraction of a degree. According to the disputed Orion correlation theory, the arrangement of the pyramids is a representation of the constellation Orion.

 

Workers' village

The work of quarrying, moving, setting, and sculpting the huge amount of stone used to build the pyramids might have been accomplished by several thousand skilled workers, unskilled laborers and supporting workers. Bakers, carpenters, water carriers, and others were also needed for the project. Along with the methods used to construct the pyramids, there is also wide speculation regarding the exact number of workers needed for a building project of this magnitude. When Greek historian Herodotus visited Giza in 450 BC, he was told by Egyptian priests that "the Great Pyramid had taken 400,000 men 20 years to build, working in three-month shifts 100,000 men at a time." Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid.

 

The Giza pyramid complex is surrounded by a large stone wall, outside which Mark Lehner and his team discovered a town where the pyramid workers were housed. The village is located to the southeast of the Khafre and Menkaure complexes. Among the discoveries at the workers' village are communal sleeping quarters, bakeries, breweries, and kitchens (with evidence showing that bread, beef, and fish were dietary staples), a copper workshop, a hospital, and a cemetery (where some of the skeletons were found with signs of trauma associated with accidents on a building site). The metal processed at the site was the so-called arsenical copper. The same material was also identified among the copper artefacts from the "Kromer" site, from the reigns of Khufu and Khafre.

 

The workers' town appears to date from the middle 4th Dynasty (2520–2472 BC), after the accepted time of Khufu and completion of the Great Pyramid. According to Lehner and the AERA team:

 

The development of this urban complex must have been rapid. All of the construction probably happened in the 35 to 50 years that spanned the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure, builders of the Second and Third Giza Pyramids.

Using pottery shards, seal impressions, and stratigraphy to date the site, the team further concludes:

 

The picture that emerges is that of a planned settlement, some of the world's earliest urban planning, securely dated to the reigns of two Giza pyramid builders: Khafre (2520–2494 BC) and Menkaure (2490–2472 BC).

Radiocarbon data for the Old Kingdom Giza plateau and the workers' settlement were published in 2006, and then re-evaluated in 2011.

 

Cemeteries

As the pyramids were constructed, the mastabas for lesser royals were constructed around them. Near the pyramid of Khufu, the main cemetery is G 7000, which lies in the East Field located to the east of the main pyramid and next to the Queen's pyramids. These cemeteries around the pyramids were arranged along streets and avenues. Cemetery G 7000 was one of the earliest and contained tombs of wives, sons, and daughters of these 4th Dynasty rulers. On the other side of the pyramid in the West Field, the royals' sons Wepemnofret and Hemiunu were buried in Cemetery G 1200 and Cemetery G 4000, respectively. These cemeteries were further expanded during the 5th and 6th Dynasties.

 

West Field

Main article: Giza West Field

The West Field is located to the west of Khufu's pyramid. It is divided into smaller areas such as the cemeteries referred to as the Abu Bakr Excavations (1949–1950, 1950–1951, 1952, and 1953), and several cemeteries named based on the mastaba numbers such as Cemetery G 1000, Cemetery G 1100, etc. The West Field contains Cemetery G1000 – Cemetery G1600, and Cemetery G 1900. Further cemeteries in this field are: Cemeteries G 2000, G 2200, G 2500, G 3000, G 4000, and G 6000. Three other cemeteries are named after their excavators: Junker Cemetery West, Junker Cemetery East, and Steindorff Cemetery.

 

East Field

Main article: Giza East Field

The East Field is located to the east of Khufu's pyramid and contains cemetery G 7000. This cemetery was a burial place for some of the family members of Khufu. The cemetery also includes mastabas from tenants and priests of the pyramids dated to the 5th Dynasty and 6th Dynasty.

 

Cemetery GIS

This cemetery dates from the time of Menkaure (Junker) or earlier (Reisner), and contains several stone-built mastabas dating from as late as the 6th Dynasty. Tombs from the time of Menkaure include the mastabas of the royal chamberlain Khaemnefert, the King's son Khufudjedef (master of the royal largesse), and an official named Niankhre.

 

Central Field

Main article: Central Field, Giza

The Central Field contains several burials of royal family members. The tombs range in date from the end of the 4th Dynasty to the 5th Dynasty or even later.[

 

Tombs dating from the Saite and later period were found near the causeway of Khafre and the Great Sphinx. These tombs include the tomb of a commander of the army named Ahmose and his mother Queen Nakhtubasterau, who was the wife of Pharaoh Amasis II.

 

South Field

The South Field includes mastabas dating from the 1st Dynasty to 3rd Dynasty as well as later burials. Of the more significant of these early dynastic tombs are one referred to as "Covington's tomb", otherwise known as Mastaba T, and the large Mastaba V which contained artifacts naming the 1st Dynasty pharaoh Djet. Other tombs date from the late Old Kingdom (5th and 6th Dynasty). The south section of the field contains several tombs dating from the Saite period and later. 

 

Tombs of the pyramid builders

In 1990, tombs belonging to the pyramid workers were discovered alongside the pyramids, with an additional burial site found nearby in 2009. Although not mummified, they had been buried in mudbrick tombs with beer and bread to support them in the afterlife. The tombs' proximity to the pyramids and the manner of burial supports the theory that they were paid laborers who took pride in their work and were not slaves, as was previously thought. Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid. Most of the workers appear to have come from poor families. Specialists such as architects, masons, metalworkers, and carpenters were permanently employed by the king to fill positions that required the most skill.

 

Shafts

There are multiple burial-shafts and various unfinished shafts and tunnels located in the Giza complex that were discovered and mentioned prominently by Selim Hassan in his report Excavations at Giza 1933–1934. He states: "Very few of the Saitic [referring to the Saite Period) shafts have been thoroughly examined, for the reason that most of them are flooded."

 

Osiris Shaft

The Osiris Shaft is a narrow burial-shaft leading to three levels for a tomb and below it a flooded area. It was first mentioned by Hassan, and a thorough excavation was conducted by a team led by Hawass in 1999. It was opened to tourists in November 2017.

 

New Kingdom and Late Period

During the New Kingdom Giza was still an active site. A brick-built chapel was constructed near the Sphinx during the early 18th Dynasty, probably by King Thutmose I. Amenhotep II built a temple dedicated to Hauron-Haremakhet near the Sphinx. As a prince, the future pharaoh Thutmose IV visited the pyramids and the Sphinx; he reported being told in a dream that if he cleared the sand that had built up around the Sphinx, he would be rewarded with kingship. This event is recorded in the Dream Stele, which he had installed between the Sphinx's front legs.

 

During the early years of his reign, Thutmose IV, together with his wife Queen Nefertari, had stelae erected at Giza.

 

Pharaoh Tutankhamun had a structure built, which is now referred to as the king's resthouse.

 

During the 19th Dynasty, Seti I added to the temple of Hauron-Haremakhet, and his son Ramesses II erected a stela in the chapel before the Sphinx and usurped the resthouse of Tutankhamun. 

 

During the 21st Dynasty, the Temple of Isis Mistress-of-the-Pyramids was reconstructed. During the 26th Dynasty, a stela made in this time mentions Khufu and his Queen Henutsen.

 

Division of the 1903–1905 excavation of the Giza Necropolis

In 1903, rights to excavate the West Field and Pyramids of the Giza Necropolis were divided by three institutions from Italy, Germany, and the United States of America.

 

Background

Prior to the division of the Giza Plateau into three institutional concessions in 1903, amateur and private excavations at the Giza Necropolis had been permitted to operate. The work of these amateur archaeologists failed to meet high scientific standards. Montague Ballard, for instance, excavated in the Western Cemetery (with the hesitant permission of the Egyptian Antiquities Service) and neither kept records of his finds nor published them.

 

Italian, German, and American Concessions at Giza

In 1902, the Egyptian Antiquities Service under Gaston Maspero resolved to issue permits exclusively to authorized individuals representing public institutions. In November of that year, the Service awarded three scholars with concessions on the Giza Necropolis. They were the Italian Ernesto Schiaparelli from the Turin Museum, the German Georg Steindorff from the University of Leipzig who had funding from Wilhelm Pelizaeus, and the American George Reisner from the Hearst Expedition. Within a matter of months, the site had been divided between the concessionaires following a meeting at the Mena House Hotel involving Schiaparelli, Ludwig Borchardt (Steindorff's representative in Egypt), and Reisner.

 

Division of the West Field

By the turn of the 20th century, the three largest pyramids on the Giza plateau were considered mostly exhausted by previous excavations, so the Western Cemetery and its collection of private mastaba tombs were thought to represent the richest unexcavated part of the plateau. George Reisner's wife, Mary, drew names from a hat to assign three long east-west plots of the necropolis among the Italian, German, and American missions. Schiaparelli was assigned the southernmost strip, Borchardt the center, and Reisner the northernmost.

 

Division of the Pyramids

Rights to excavate the Pyramids were then also negotiated between Schiaparelli, Borchardt, and Reisner. Schiaparelli gained rights to excavate the Great Pyramid of Khufu along with its three associated queens' pyramids and most of its Eastern Cemetery. Borchardt received Khafre's pyramid, its causeway, the Sphinx, and the Sphinx's associated temples. Reisner claimed Menkaure's pyramid as well as its associated queens' pyramids and pyramid temple, along with a portion of Schiaparelli's Eastern Cemetery. Any future disputes were to be resolved by Inspector James Quibell, as per a letter from Borchardt to Maspero.

 

Immediate Aftermath

This arrangement lasted until 1905, when, under the supervision of Schiaparelli and Francesco Ballerini, the Italian excavations ceased at Giza. As the Italians were more interested in sites which might yield more papyri, they turned their concession of the southern strip of the Western Cemetery over to the Americans under Reisner.

 

Modern usage

In 1978, the Grateful Dead played a series of concerts later released as Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978. In 2007, Colombian singer Shakira performed at the complex to a crowd of approximately 100,000 people. The complex was used for the final draw of the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations and the 2021 World Men's Handball Championship.

 

Egypt's Minister of Tourism unveiled plans for a €17,000,000 revamp of the complex by the end of 2021, in order to boost tourism in Egypt as well as make the site more accessible and tourist-friendly. According to Lonely Planet, the refurbishment includes a new visitors' centre, an environmentally-friendly electric bus, a restaurant (the 9 Pyramids Lounge), as well as a cinema, public toilets, site-wide signage, food trucks, photo booths, and free Wi-Fi. The new facility is part of a wider plan to renovate the 4,500 year old site.

During the period in which we lived in El Salvador, I recall visiting a town called Ilobasco which continues to hold it's distinct Salvadoran style of beautiful colorful painted pots, plates and miniature figurines by artisans who's inspiration has derived from every day customs and lifestyles. There's a good amount of pottery workshops throughout the township which one can stop by and catch a glimpse of the artisans at work and support their artistry by purchasing anything that's being made.

 

This is my recollection of the skilled workers in El Salvador and I'm reminded of the importance of their labor and how it's sustained the livelihood of the artisans. Having recently visited Puerto Rico with the family, I was hoping to walk away with an almost identical appreciation for the product development but after chatting with a few souvenir vendors in a number of small towns we visited, I was sad with the fact that there aren't many artisans left. There's only a handful and Jenny happened to be one of them.

 

If you're shopping for gifts in Old San Juan and randomly walk into the very few souvenir shops that haven't gone out of business and pay careful observation to what's being sold, you're likely to distinguish the gold sticker attached onto several of the pieces that clearly state where they were made and it should be no surprise that it reads "Made in China".

 

Jenny along with a long line of family members have been in the almost extinct business of carefully crafting by hand everything they sell. There was only a handful of people who I brought back souvenirs for and rather than aggravate myself in trying to find the "best" price for anything I hand in mind buying, my family and I purchased everything we needed from Jenny as a way to support her business and artistry.

 

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Big East-German card by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 247/69, 1969. Photo: Linke.

 

Caption: In the October days of the year 1969, we encountered the graceful Uta Schorn for the first time on the screen in the role of intern Renate in Verdacht auf einen Toten/Suspicion of a Dead (Rainer Bär, 1969). Moved from the classrooms of the Staatliche Schauspielschule Berlin by director Rainer Bär into the atmosphere of life on a large stud farm, the acting debutante secured with this role a permanent place with her future film and theatre audience.

In the youth clubs of the Deutsches Theater and the Volksbühne Berlin, Uta Schorn's decision was made to imitate her parents and also to climb the "Thespis cart". And so came after a well-passed high school graduation and acquisition of the skilled worker's letter as a gardener, the intake exam at the Staatliche Schauspielbühne Berlin. The young student later wants to try everything the stage offers, from the classical play to the musical. For now, however, it means for Uta Schorn to finish her studies with good results. So: toi, toi, toi.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

(for further pictures and information please go to the end of page and by clicking on the link my modest promises will be fulfilled!)

Parliament building

The original intention was to build two separate buildings for the Imperial Council and the House of Representatives of the by the February Patent 1861 established Reichsrat (Imperial Council). After the Compromise with Hungary, however, this plan was dropped and in the year 1869 the architect Theophil von Hansen by the Ministry of the Interior entrusted with the elaboration of the monumental project for a large parliament building. The first cut of the spade followed in June 1874, the foundation stone bears the date "2nd September 1874". At the same time was worked on the erection of the imperial museums, the Town Hall and the University. Theophil Hansen took - as already mentioned - well thought out and in a very meaningful way the style of the Viennese parliament building from ancient Greece; stem important constitutional terms but also from the Greek antiquity - such as "politics", "democracy" and others. Symbolic meaning had also that from nearly all crown lands of the monarchy materials have been used for the construction of the parliament building. Thus, the structure should symbolize the confluence of all the forces "of the in the in the Reichsrat represented kingdoms and countries" in the Vienna parliament building. With the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy ended the era of the multinational Parliament in Vienna.

Since November 1918, the building is the seat of the parliamentary bodies of the Republic of Austria, first the National Assembly and later the National Council in the until its destruction in 1945 remained unchanged session hall of the former Imperial Council holding meetings. During the Second World War, the parliament building was severely affected, about half of the building fabric were destroyed. On 7th February 1945 the portico by bombing suffered serious damage. Two columns were totally destroyed, the edge ceiling construction with the richly gilded coffered ceiling and a magnificent frieze painting, which was 121 meters long and 2 meters high and the most ideal and economic roles of the Parliament representing allegorically, were seriously damaged. During reconstruction, the rebuilding did not occur in the originally from Hansen originating features: instead of Pavonazzo marble for the wall plate cover Salzburg marble was used. The frieze painting initially not could be recovered, only in the 90s it should be possible to restore single surviving parts. In addition to destructions in the Chancellery Wing at the Ring Road as well as in the portico especially the Imperial Council tract was severely affected by the effects of war. The meeting room of the Imperial Council was completely burned out, in particular the figural jewelry as well as the ruined marble statues of Lycurgus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Sophocles, Socrates, Pericles and Demosthenes appearing hardly recoverable. In this circumstances, it was decided not to reconstruct the old Imperial Council hall, but a new hall with a businesslike but refined and convenient furnishing for the National Council of the Republic of Austria to build. During the reconstruction of the building in the years 1945 to 1956 efforts were also made the yet by Hansen envisaged technical independence further to develop and to perfect. Thus the parliament building now has an emergency generator, which ensures, any time, adequate electricity supply of the house in case of failure of the city network, and a variety of other technical facilities, which guarantee a high supply autonomy. Not only from basic considerations in the sense of seperation of powers but also from the possibility of an extraordinary emergency, is this a compelling need. National Council and the Federal Council as the elected representative bodies of the Austrian people must at all times - especially in case of disaster - the material conditions for their activity have guaranteed. This purpose serve the mentioned facilities and many others, sometimes very complicated ones and the persons entrusted with their maintenance. To the staff of the Parliamentary Administration therefore belong not only academics, stenographers, administrators, secretaries and officials of the room service as in each parliament, but also the with the maintenance of the infrastructure of the parliament building entrusted technicians and skilled workers.

Analogous to other parliaments was for years, even decades tried to acquire or to rent one or the other object near the Parliament building. Finally one was able in 1981 to start with a basic conversion or expansion of the house Reichsratsstrasse 9 under planning by the architect Prof. Dr. Sepp Stein, in this connection was given the order the parliament building through a tunnel with the house in the Reichsratsstrasse to connect. With this tunnel not only a connection for pedestrians should be established, but also a technical integration of the two houses. In the basement of the building in which in early 1985 could be moved in, confluences the road tunnel; furthermore it serves the accommodation of technical rooms as well as of the storage, preparation and staff rooms for a restauration, a main kitchen and a restaurant for about 130 people are housed on the ground floor. On the first floor are located dining rooms for about 110 people; workrooms for MPs are in the second, offices in the third to the sixth floor housed. Ten years after the house Reichsratsstrasse 9 another building could be purchased, the house Reichsratsstrasse 1, and, again under the planning leadership of architect Prof. Dr. Sepp Stein, adapted for the purposes of the Parliament. This house also through an in the basement joining under road tunnel with the Parliament building was connected. The basement houses storage rooms, the ground floor next to an "info-shop" where information materials concerning the Austrian Parlament can be obtained, the Parliament Post Office and the printery. In the six upper floors are offices and other work spaces for different departments of the Parliamentary Administration. The previously by these departments used rooms in the Parliament building were, after it was moved into the house Reichsratsstrasse in 1994, mostly the parliamentary clubs made available. Already in 1992 by the rental of rooms in a building in the Schenkenstraße for the parliamentary staff of the deputies office premises had been created.

Pallas Athene

Parliament Vienna

The 5.5 meter high monumental statue of Pallas Athena in front of the parliament building in Vienna gives not only the outside appearance of this building a striking sculptural accent, but has almost become a symbolic figure of the Austrian parliamentarism. The Danish architect Theophil Hansen, according to which draft in the years 1874-1884 the parliament building has been built, has designed this as a "work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk)"; thus, his planning also including the figural decoration of the building. The in front of the Parliament ramp to be built monumental fountain should according to Hansen's original planning be crowned of an allegoric representation of the Austria, that is, a symbolization of Austria. In the definitive, in 1878 by Hansen submitted figure program took its place Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The monumental statue was realized only after Hansen's death, but according to his design by sculptor Carl Kundmann in 1902.

Meeting room of the former House of Representatives

The meeting room of the former House of Representatives is largely preserved faithfully and now serves the meetings of the Federal Assembly as well as ceremonies and commemorative meetings of the National Council and the Federal Council. Architecturally, the hall is modeled on a Greek theater. Before the end wall is the presidium with the lectern and the Government Bench, in the semicircle the seats of the deputies are arranged. The from Carrara marble carved statues on the front wall - between the ​​of Unterberger marble manufactured columns and pilasters - represent Roman statesmen, the by Friedrich Eisenmenger realised frieze painting depicts the emergence of political life, and the pediment group above it should symbolize the daily routine.

Portico

The large portico, in its proportions recreating the Parthenon of the Acropolis of Athens, forms the central chamber of the parliament building and should according to the original intention serve as a meeting place between members of the House of Representatives and of the Imperial Council. Today it functions as a venue, such as for the annual reception of the President of the National Council and the President of the Federal Council for the Diplomatic Corps. When choosing materials for the parliament building, Theophil Hansen strove to use marbles and stones from the crown lands of the monarchy, thus expressing their attachment to their Parliament. For example, consist the 24 monolithic, that is, produced from one-piece, columns, each more than 16 tons of weight, of the great hypostyle hall of Adnet marble, the floor panels of Istrian karst marble. When in the last months of the Second World War the Parliament building was severely affected by bomb hits, also the portico suffered severe damage, and the two columns in the north-west corner of the hall were destroyed, the edge ceiling construction with the richly gilded coffered ceiling and below the ceiling running frieze painting by Eduard Lebiedzki have been severely damaged. The two destroyed columns in 1950 were replaced by two new ones, broken from the same quarry as the originals, but not exhibiting the same pattern. The parts of the Lebiedzki frieze which have been restorable only in the 90s could be restored.

www.wien-vienna.at/index.php?ID=1102

Global corporations have discovered the rich lime goo makes for great rocket fuel! The race is on the exploit the Agreon's natural resource for personal gain. With skilled workers highly sought after from many planets, it's likely you might see someone you recognise.

 

The mountain contains a black light to illuminate the alien barracks.

 

Plasmo's franchises are deploying to all major planetary systems, call today to find out how you can be a part of the interstellar grog syndicate!

 

Hope you like my biggest layout to date. It was too large to set up at home unless I clear the garage out. I had a little help from Taz-maniac, Bricktron and Intrastella on the left side of the display.

Underground parking area from Los Angeles.

 

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I have a great experience for pre production. Since I came in LA, I have been working as a Camera Operator, Camera assistant, Key Grip and G/E for more than 60 shooting production. The reason why a lots of production call me on set is I could communicate with my team, then could find out the solution in limited time and has a patient for that. Also I have a knowledge for Final Cut Pro 7 and Premiere Pro. Which is involving principle color grading and data management skill. In addition, I can do photo shooting and editing. One of the thing is my photograph had shown on the Louvre Museum Digital display. Therefore, I would say I am a multi skilled worker.

 

Experience

・ARRI FLEX 16ST, 16SR, 16SR2, 16SR3, ALEXA

・CANON XH-A1, CANON EOS 60D, 7D, 5D Mark Ⅱ

・PANASONIC AJ-HDC27F, PANASONIC AG-AF105

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Japanese(Native), English(Limited working proficiency)

Governor Charlie Baker, Lt. Governor Karyn Polito and Secretary of Education James Peyser join state and local officials to announce investments totaling more than $120 million to four public colleges and universities to renovate and expand campus facilities that further students’ skills in STEM fields during an event at Salem State University in Salem on April 13, 2022. Salem State University, Massasoit Community College, Springfield Technical Community College, and the University of Massachusetts Lowell will each receive $30 million for major capital projects that will modernize campus facilities to support STEM instruction and expand the number of skilled workers in key STEM occupations in the Commonwealth. The improvements will increase enrollment capacity in these programs by about 2,000 students. [Joshua Qualls/Governor’s Press Office]

S.Giorgio di Oleastreto, vista dell'Abside a Ovest.

La chiesa di S. Giorgio di Oleastreto la cui costruzione risale all’inizio del XII secolo è situata a 5 km dal territorio di Usini tra il Rio Mascari e il Rio Mannu , una posizione molto strategica per l’antico villaggio che vi sorgeva. Metterò in evidenza alcuni particolari di grande interesse, come la bella meridiana disegnata in basso, all’inizio della costruzione: ciò indica le conoscenze scientifiche dell’artefice, probabilmente lo stesso religioso della comunità, tanto che secondo me, ha a priori scelto l’orientamento in funzione anche della meridiana sulla facciata rivolta al Sud-Est, massima esposizione al sole per tutto l'anno, e l’interno, su una parete, una sorta di calendario dove sono segnate le presenze delle maestranze specializzate: forse in settimane o in mesi, piuttosto che in giorni.

Questi particolari dimostrano la grande importanza della determinazione del tempo per la comunità agricola dell’antico abitato.

 

San Giorgio di Oleastreto, View of the apse to the west.

The church of S. George Oleastreto which was built in the early twelfth century is located 5 km from the territory of Usini between the Rio Mascari and the Rio Mannu, a very strategic location in the ancient village that once stood there. I will highlight some details of great interest, such as the beautiful sundial drawn down at the beginning of construction: this indicates the scientific knowledge of the craftsman, probably the same religious community, so much so that in my opinion, has chosen the a priori 'orientation depending also on the sundial on the facade facing the Southeast, maximum exposure to the sun throughout the year, and the interior, on a wall, a sort of calendar where they are marked presences of skilled workers, perhaps in weeks or months rather than days.

These details show the great importance of determining the time for the farming community of the ancient town.

 

San Giorgio di Oleastreto, vista del ábside hacia el oeste.

La iglesia de S. George Oleastreto que fue construido a principios del siglo XII, se encuentra a 5 km desde el territorio de Usini entre el Río Mascari y el Río Mannu, una ubicación estratégica en el antiguo pueblo que una vez estuvo allí. Voy a destacar algunos detalles de gran interés, como el hermoso reloj de sol dispuesto en el inicio de la construcción: esto indica que el conocimiento científico de los artesanos, probablemente de la misma comunidad religiosa, hasta el punto de que, en mi opinión, ha elegido a priori 'orientación dependiendo también del reloj de sol en la fachada que da al Sudeste, la máxima exposición al sol durante todo el año, y el interior, en una pared, una especie de calendario en el que se marcan las presencias de los trabajadores calificados, tal vez en semanas o meses en lugar de días.

Estos datos muestran la gran importancia de determinar el momento de que la comunidad agrícola de la antigua ciudad

An unidentified woman operates a lathe at the Naval Gun Factory in Washington, D.C. The photo was published in the Washington Star April 9, 1951.

 

Washington, D.C. had “Rosies” at the Washington Navy Yard with influxes of women beginning in World War I, though they were nearly all in clerical or cleaning-type jobs. However in World War II, more than 3,000 women were hired at the gun factory into semi-skilled and skilled work with yet another wave during the Korean War of the early 1950s.

 

These included black women who were initially hired in the lowest grade jobs. However, during World War II, black women trained through the National Youth Administration were brought on into semi-skilled positions with a few moving up into skilled work such as machinist.

 

Most women left these jobs after each war, but some stayed on and made careers at the Naval Gun Factory (NGF)

 

The following are excerpts from History of the Washington Navy Yard Civilian Workforce: 1799-1962, by John G. Sharp that traces the history of women at the NGF:

 

Women Enter the Workforce

 

During World War I (1917-1918), NGF expanded in size and ran twenty- four hours each day, seven days a week. Because of the acute wartime shortage of civilian workers, the Navy looked to women and created the Yeoman “F” (Female) rating.

 

This new rating allowed for the first time thousands of women to volunteer for the wartime service.

 

Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels, who created the Yeoman (F) rating, did so because it allowed the Navy to call up women specifically to relieve officers and men for sea duty, rather than as a substitute for male civilian employees who were serving in the armed forces.

 

This wartime experiment proved so successful that many women were kept on after the armistice as civilian employees.

 

Some like Nellie M. Stein and Ann Tapscott served as Yeoman (F) in the Naval Gun Factory for the duration of the war then immediately went to work as a civilian employee under the civil service as clerks in the same division. Tapscott later became a supervisor in the Accounting Department.

 

African –American women too began to enter the yard labor force during the war. Most of these new workers, such Mrs. Mabel Brown who began her 36 year career as a “Charwomen” (a title later changed to laborer), worked cleaning offices, laboratories and industrial spaces.

 

Their work was often hard and physically demanding, but the work was also steady and better compensated than most positions available to them in the private sector.

 

According to a memo in the Naval Records and Archives Administrations, Nellie Stein began her long federal career in 1912 as a Printers Assistant with the Government Printing Office. When war broke out, Stein volunteered for active duty as a Yeoman F and was stationed at the Naval Gun Factory.

 

After the Armistice, she was hired as “typewriter” at NGF. In 1932 Stein moved into the new Industrial Relations Division where she “constantly studied laws, directives, comptroller general decisions and books on personnel administration for 14 years.”

 

Stein and others like her often had to overcome a great deal of skepticism from her male supervisors and coworkers.

 

Here is one example of the challenges that Stein and other women faced in establishing a place for themselves in the Yard’s work force.

 

The memo stated, “Ordinarily the Personnel Officer would not recommend a Civil Service female employee to an administrative position. He would not so recommend women to be in complete charge of a division for he does not believe that women are emotionally equipped to meet the demands of such a position.”

 

Despite his considerable reservations, NGF’s Personnel Officer CDR. Davis did recommend Stein for the job and by the time of her retirement in 1948 Nellie Stein was NGF’s Assistant Personnel Officer (CAF-11), one of the highest graded positions at the factory.

 

By the 1920s, some factory organizations, such as the Accounting and Supply Departments, not only had large numbers of women but they in fact outnumbered men.

 

Women Ask for the Equal Pay

In 1919, the National Women’s Trade Union League asked Secretary of the Navy, Josephus Daniels, for the same pay as men working in the Yards.

 

The committee protested to the Secretary against rating women as seamstresses and flag makers in the Navy Yards at the pay of common laborers.

 

Sewing, the committee contented, was a skilled trade and none of the ratings for male skilled trades were as low. They also complained that seamstress and flag maker inspectors did not receive the same pay as men.

 

Despite this and other appeals, comparable pay did not become a reality for another four decades.

 

Women go to War at the Navy Yard and Gun Factory

 

WW II greatly expanded employment opportunities for women. While hundreds of thousands of men were being drafted into military service,

If vital war production was to continue, women were needed in the factories and offices.

 

In January 1943, Yard Commandant, Rear Admiral, Ferdinand L. Reichmuth invited the Washington press corps to tour the Yard. Here reporters from the two major papers could view first-hand the work that women were accomplishing at the Gun Factory and other locations.

 

This tour was the first time that the Yard had been opened to the press in over a year due to wartime security. Reporters were told there were now 1,400 female workers employed in ordnance manufacture. These new entrants ranged in age from 18 to 50.

 

They came from all walks of life having worked as housewives, dry-cleaners and laundry workers, beauticians, office workers, maids and one, Mrs. Arbutus Howlett, who was previously employed as a farmer.

 

As demand for labor grew NGF and other munitions producers advertised widely for Woman Ordnance Worker (WOW). The women working in ordnance production were classified into three grades: ordnance worker, ordnance operative and precision operative.

 

Entry-level pay was 57 cents per hour rising to a high of 108 cents per hour.

 

The world of the female employee was not free of stereotyping and bias. Most of these women worked long hours and also frequently worked Saturday and Sunday.

 

Captain J. R. Palmer, Production Officer, reflected some of the views of

the time, when he described the ideal female employee: “She is between 25 and 35 years of age, single and without local family connections.”

 

“She is a person who has to earn a living and is endowed with a natural mechanical bent and a high degree of adaptability. In her work-a-day world relationships with men in the shops she does not expect the small gallantries a man shows a woman in a social relationship.”

 

Captain Palmer went on to relate to the reporters: “Women are doing the work usually done by apprentices and some had sufficient skill to work as machinist.”

 

One top ranking officer summed up the contribution that female employees were making to the workforce as:

 

“These women are doing a grand job to win the war and win it as quickly as possible. They step into men’s places at the machines and keep them turning without a stop as the men go off to the fighting fronts. Today’s women workers at the Washington Navy Yard produce an ever growing flow of ordnance material.”

 

The Star reported the biggest problem for the new female workers was finding childcare.

 

One female reporter who actually worked in Gun Factory ordnance production took a more jaundiced view:

 

“Equal pay and promotions for women are one of the government standards of employment supported in writing by the Navy Department ....The Navy Yards themselves seem to be unaware of the fact; .... Navy Yard women start at $4.65 a day which with time and a half for the sixth day is $ 29.64 a week. Deduct the 20-percent withholding tax, and you find we luxuriate on $23 a week.”

 

“The highest pay women on production in our shop receive $6.95 a day, a peak she attained after two years of service at the yard. Men get as high as $22 a day.”

 

Many of the women working at the factory may have agreed with Mrs. Robert T. Withers, a milling machine operator in the Breech Mechanism Shop with over two years on the production line’s 4-12 shift: “I feel I am helping my husband and my country and keeping busy so that when this war is over I can be a housewife again.”

 

Women Ordnance Workers Once Again

 

The Korean War meant a heighten demand for NGF to increase munitions production. This combined with the loss of skilled workers to the reserve call-up motivated NGF to begin a serious effort to hire female ordnance workers. Starting in late 1950 NGF hired hundreds of women.

 

All of the new workers were given a two-week indoctrination course. Each new employee was provided practical shop training and instruction in how to operate the various machines and tools, how to read blue prints, and the use of measuring instruments.

 

Some like Mary L. Johnson had previous experience at NGF during WWII and were keen to return. “I worked here once before during the last war and I know something about the work. I honestly feel the work I am doing is important.”

 

Irene Hunter also had worked three years for NGF in World War II. She welcomed a chance to return, saying, “when I was notified that the NGF was hiring women to work on machines again, I quit my job with the picture company and came here. The work that I do is very exciting and takes steady nerves. I believe had I the opportunity, I would like to work here permanently.”

 

Kathleen Siggman, who previously had been a model, an assistant buyer of women’s apparel and worked in a private sector machine shop, was enthusiastic: “this is the best job I ever had!”

 

Daphene Dyer, a war bride from England, related; “I was born in England and spent the last war driving ambulances. That is why I could not go back to office work. I feel that the work I am doing here is essential for my new country and naturally I am anxious to do a job.”

 

In 1961, the last production runs were completed, shops were dismantled and cleaned, and forges and boilers banked. Over $200 million dollars of equipment such as machine tools, industrial cranes and barges were disposed of primarily to other government agencies.

 

By the beginning of 1962, NGF workers, who epitomized the rich heritage of the nation’s trade and craft traditions and who had served their country well in the all the major wars of the 20th century, said quiet goodbyes to their friends and shop mates.

 

For more information and related images, see flic.kr/s/aHsmLe4fB5

 

Photo is probably by Ranny Routt. The image is courtesy of the D.C. Public Library Washington Star Collection © Washington Post.

  

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Hope you like my biggest layout to date. It was too large to set up at home unless I clear the garage out. I had a little help from Taz-maniac, Bricktron and Intrastella on the left side of the display.

(for further pictures and information please go to the end of page and by clicking on the link my modest promises will be fulfilled!)

Parliament building

The original intention was to build two separate buildings for the Imperial Council and the House of Representatives of the by the February Patent 1861 established Reichsrat (Imperial Council). After the Compromise with Hungary, however, this plan was dropped and in the year 1869 the architect Theophil von Hansen by the Ministry of the Interior entrusted with the elaboration of the monumental project for a large parliament building. The first cut of the spade followed in June 1874, the foundation stone bears the date "2nd September 1874". At the same time was worked on the erection of the imperial museums, the Town Hall and the University. Theophil Hansen took - as already mentioned - well thought out and in a very meaningful way the style of the Viennese parliament building from ancient Greece; stem important constitutional terms but also from the Greek antiquity - such as "politics", "democracy" and others. Symbolic meaning had also that from nearly all crown lands of the monarchy materials have been used for the construction of the parliament building. Thus, the structure should symbolize the confluence of all the forces "of the in the in the Reichsrat represented kingdoms and countries" in the Vienna parliament building. With the downfall of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy ended the era of the multinational Parliament in Vienna.

Since November 1918, the building is the seat of the parliamentary bodies of the Republic of Austria, first the National Assembly and later the National Council in the until its destruction in 1945 remained unchanged session hall of the former Imperial Council holding meetings. During the Second World War, the parliament building was severely affected, about half of the building fabric were destroyed. On 7th February 1945 the portico by bombing suffered serious damage. Two columns were totally destroyed, the edge ceiling construction with the richly gilded coffered ceiling and a magnificent frieze painting, which was 121 meters long and 2 meters high and the most ideal and economic roles of the Parliament representing allegorically, were seriously damaged. During reconstruction, the rebuilding did not occur in the originally from Hansen originating features: instead of Pavonazzo marble for the wall plate cover Salzburg marble was used. The frieze painting initially not could be recovered, only in the 90s it should be possible to restore single surviving parts. In addition to destructions in the Chancellery Wing at the Ring Road as well as in the portico especially the Imperial Council tract was severely affected by the effects of war. The meeting room of the Imperial Council was completely burned out, in particular the figural jewelry as well as the ruined marble statues of Lycurgus, Solon, Themistocles, Aristides, Sophocles, Socrates, Pericles and Demosthenes appearing hardly recoverable. In this circumstances, it was decided not to reconstruct the old Imperial Council hall, but a new hall with a businesslike but refined and convenient furnishing for the National Council of the Republic of Austria to build. During the reconstruction of the building in the years 1945 to 1956 efforts were also made the yet by Hansen envisaged technical independence further to develop and to perfect. Thus the parliament building now has an emergency generator, which ensures, any time, adequate electricity supply of the house in case of failure of the city network, and a variety of other technical facilities, which guarantee a high supply autonomy. Not only from basic considerations in the sense of seperation of powers but also from the possibility of an extraordinary emergency, is this a compelling need. National Council and the Federal Council as the elected representative bodies of the Austrian people must at all times - especially in case of disaster - the material conditions for their activity have guaranteed. This purpose serve the mentioned facilities and many others, sometimes very complicated ones and the persons entrusted with their maintenance. To the staff of the Parliamentary Administration therefore belong not only academics, stenographers, administrators, secretaries and officials of the room service as in each parliament, but also the with the maintenance of the infrastructure of the parliament building entrusted technicians and skilled workers.

Analogous to other parliaments was for years, even decades tried to acquire or to rent one or the other object near the Parliament building. Finally one was able in 1981 to start with a basic conversion or expansion of the house Reichsratsstrasse 9 under planning by the architect Prof. Dr. Sepp Stein, in this connection was given the order the parliament building through a tunnel with the house in the Reichsratsstrasse to connect. With this tunnel not only a connection for pedestrians should be established, but also a technical integration of the two houses. In the basement of the building in which in early 1985 could be moved in, confluences the road tunnel; furthermore it serves the accommodation of technical rooms as well as of the storage, preparation and staff rooms for a restauration, a main kitchen and a restaurant for about 130 people are housed on the ground floor. On the first floor are located dining rooms for about 110 people; workrooms for MPs are in the second, offices in the third to the sixth floor housed. Ten years after the house Reichsratsstrasse 9 another building could be purchased, the house Reichsratsstrasse 1, and, again under the planning leadership of architect Prof. Dr. Sepp Stein, adapted for the purposes of the Parliament. This house also through an in the basement joining under road tunnel with the Parliament building was connected. The basement houses storage rooms, the ground floor next to an "info-shop" where information materials concerning the Austrian Parlament can be obtained, the Parliament Post Office and the printery. In the six upper floors are offices and other work spaces for different departments of the Parliamentary Administration. The previously by these departments used rooms in the Parliament building were, after it was moved into the house Reichsratsstrasse in 1994, mostly the parliamentary clubs made available. Already in 1992 by the rental of rooms in a building in the Schenkenstraße for the parliamentary staff of the deputies office premises had been created.

Pallas Athene

Parliament Vienna

The 5.5 meter high monumental statue of Pallas Athena in front of the parliament building in Vienna gives not only the outside appearance of this building a striking sculptural accent, but has almost become a symbolic figure of the Austrian parliamentarism. The Danish architect Theophil Hansen, according to which draft in the years 1874-1884 the parliament building has been built, has designed this as a "work of art (Gesamtkunstwerk)"; thus, his planning also including the figural decoration of the building. The in front of the Parliament ramp to be built monumental fountain should according to Hansen's original planning be crowned of an allegoric representation of the Austria, that is, a symbolization of Austria. In the definitive, in 1878 by Hansen submitted figure program took its place Pallas Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom. The monumental statue was realized only after Hansen's death, but according to his design by sculptor Carl Kundmann in 1902.

Meeting room of the former House of Representatives

The meeting room of the former House of Representatives is largely preserved faithfully and now serves the meetings of the Federal Assembly as well as ceremonies and commemorative meetings of the National Council and the Federal Council. Architecturally, the hall is modeled on a Greek theater. Before the end wall is the presidium with the lectern and the Government Bench, in the semicircle the seats of the deputies are arranged. The from Carrara marble carved statues on the front wall - between the ​​of Unterberger marble manufactured columns and pilasters - represent Roman statesmen, the by Friedrich Eisenmenger realised frieze painting depicts the emergence of political life, and the pediment group above it should symbolize the daily routine.

Portico

The large portico, in its proportions recreating the Parthenon of the Acropolis of Athens, forms the central chamber of the parliament building and should according to the original intention serve as a meeting place between members of the House of Representatives and of the Imperial Council. Today it functions as a venue, such as for the annual reception of the President of the National Council and the President of the Federal Council for the Diplomatic Corps. When choosing materials for the parliament building, Theophil Hansen strove to use marbles and stones from the crown lands of the monarchy, thus expressing their attachment to their Parliament. For example, consist the 24 monolithic, that is, produced from one-piece, columns, each more than 16 tons of weight, of the great hypostyle hall of Adnet marble, the floor panels of Istrian karst marble. When in the last months of the Second World War the Parliament building was severely affected by bomb hits, also the portico suffered severe damage, and the two columns in the north-west corner of the hall were destroyed, the edge ceiling construction with the richly gilded coffered ceiling and below the ceiling running frieze painting by Eduard Lebiedzki have been severely damaged. The two destroyed columns in 1950 were replaced by two new ones, broken from the same quarry as the originals, but not exhibiting the same pattern. The parts of the Lebiedzki frieze which have been restorable only in the 90s could be restored.

www.wien-vienna.at/index.php?ID=1102

Opening on Amazon:

 

All people can create value—but for that to happen, we need to develop a people-centered, rather than a task-centered, economy. Today, we are very far from that. According to Gallup, of the five billion people on this planet aged fifteen or older, three billion work in some way. Most of them want full-time jobs, but only 1.3 billion have them. Of these, only 13 percent are fully engaged in their work, giving and receiving its full value. This terrible waste of human capacity and mismanagement of people’s desire to create value for each other is more than just very bad business. It is an insult to ourselves and to all human beings.

 

CHAPTER 5. Accelerating Towards a Jobless Future:

The Rise of the Machine and the Human Quest for Meaningful Work by Steve Jurvetson and Mo Islam

 

A New Paradigm

 

Let’s go far enough in the future where no one will debate the sweeping transition of time. There are infinite possible paths to this distant future, but we can imagine reasonable endpoints. This future will look like much of human history prior to the industrial and agricultural revolutions, where serfs and slaves did most of the labor-intensive work in the city-state economies. But while we hope the arc of the moral universe continues to bend towards justice, there will be a new paradigm in master and slave relationship between man and machine. The slaves of the future will be our machines.

 

There won’t be many jobs in the sense that we think of them for most people today. Machines will take over mechanically repetitive tasks. Humans will ever only need to do this type of work if they choose to, but they will not provide the most efficient means to complete these tasks. Even highly skilled workers, such as engineers, doctors, and scientists, will have their professions disrupted by automation and artificial intelligence. We will automate engineering, we will automate diagnosis, and we will automate discovery of scientific principles. In this future, where the marginal cost of labor is zero and where companies have reached new bounds of profit maximization, both the microeconomics of individual companies and the macroeconomics of the global economy will be completely upended. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs—food, shelter, health care, education—will be free for everyone forever. We won’t need to work to achieve the basic building blocks of sustainable civilization. The only important human need that will be amplified in this distant future even more than it is now is the desire for meaning.

 

Humanity’s Compounding Capacity to Compute

 

First, we will lay a framework for understanding why we believe this is a possible future. We are already on the trajectory to get us there—we have been since the dawn of the industrial age. Humanity’s capacity to compute has been constantly compounding. Incredibly, it can be explained through a simple and elegant model that, at first glance, may seem narrow in its explanatory power, but that tells a much deeper story. That model to describe this macrotrend begins with Moore’s Law. Moore’s Law is commonly reported as a doubling of transistor density every eighteen months. But unless you work for a chip company and focus on fab-yield optimization, you do not care about the transistor counts that Gordon Moore originally wrote about. When recast as a computational capability, Moore’s Law is no longer a transistor-centric metric.

 

What Moore observed in the belly of the early integrated circuit industry was a derivative metric, a refraction of a longer-term trend, a trend that begs various philosophical questions and predicts mind-bending futures. Ray Kurzweil’s abstraction of Moore’s Law shows computational power on a logarithmic scale and finds a double exponential curve that holds over 110 years! A straight line would represent a geometrically compounding curve of progress.

 

Figure 1: Ray Kurzweil’s abstraction of Moore’s Law. Each dot is a computer. (older version)

 

Through five paradigm shifts—such as electromechanical calculators and vacuum tube computers—the computational power that $1,000 buys has doubled every two years. For the past thirty years, it has been doubling every year.

 

Each dot is the frontier of computational price performance of the day. One machine was used in the 1890 census; one cracked the Nazi Enigma cipher in World War II; one predicted Eisenhower’s win in the 1956 presidential election. Many of them can be seen in the Computer History Museum. Each dot represents a human drama. Prior to Moore’s seminal paper in 1965, which presented what later became known as Moore’s Law, none of them even knew they were on a predictive curve. Each dot represents an attempt to build the best computer with the tools of the day. Of course, we use these computers to make better design software and manufacturing control algorithms. And so the progress continues.

 

Notice also that the pace of innovation is exogenous to the economy. The Great Depression and the world wars and various recessions do not introduce a meaningful change in the long-term trajectory of Moore’s Law. Certainly, the adoption rates, revenues, profits, and economic fates of the computer companies behind the various dots on the graph may go through wild oscillations, but the long-term trend emerges nevertheless.

 

In the modern era of accelerating change in the tech industry, it is hard to find even five-year trends with any predictive value, let alone trends that span the centuries. We would go further and assert that this is the most important graph ever conceived, and this is why it is so important as a foundation for understanding the future. We humans, regardless of external factors such as war, disease, and failing economies, have over vast periods of time doubled our capabilities to produce new technologies to propel us forward.

 

Accelerating Technological Progress

 

Moore’s law has set the bar for the accelerating pace of computation and innovation. How can we expect it to keep accelerating to get even faster now to the distant future we describe? All new technologies are combinations of technologies that already exist. Innovation does not occur in a vacuum; it is a combination of ideas from before. In any academic field, the advances today are built on a large edifice of history. This is why major innovations tend to be “ripe” and tend to be discovered at nearly the same time by multiple people. The compounding of ideas is the foundation of progress, something that was not so evident to the casual observer before the age of science. Science tuned the process parameters for innovation and became the best method for a culture to learn.

 

From this conceptual base comes the origin of economic growth and acceleration of technological change, as the combinatorial explosion of possible idea pairings grows exponentially as new ideas come into the mix, as dictated by Reed’s Law. It explains the innovative power of urbanization and networked globalization. And it explains why interdisciplinary ideas are so powerfully disruptive; it is like the differential immunity of epidemiology, whereby islands of cognitive isolation (e.g., academic disciplines) are vulnerable to disruptive memes hopping across them, in much the same way that South America was vulnerable to smallpox from Cortés and the Conquistadors. If disruption is what you seek, cognitive island hopping is good place to start, mining the interstices between academic disciplines.

 

It is the combinatorial explosion of possible innovation-pairings that creates economic growth, and it is about to go into overdrive. In recent years, we have begun to see the global innovation effects of a new factor: the Internet. People can exchange ideas as never before. Long ago, people were not communicating across continents; ideas were partitioned, and so the success of nations and regions pivoted on their own innovations. Richard Dawkins states that in biology it is genes which really matter, and we as people are just vessels for the conveyance of genes. It is the same with ideas or “memes.” We are the vessels that hold and communicate ideas, and now that pool of ideas percolates on a global basis more rapidly than ever before.

 

Rise of the Machines

 

Moore’s Law provides the model for us to understand humanity’s continuous compounding capacity to compute—with that we have accelerating technological progress driven by the combinatorial explosion of new ideas by ever-increasing sub-groups of cognitively diverse people becoming connected. However, the ramifications of this longer-term trend will start to become apparent in the very short term. We believe the greatest disruptor for job displacement caused by this accelerating innovation is the self-driving car.

 

In five years, it will be clear that the debate about the rise of the autonomous vehicle will have ended. Everyone will realize its ubiquity, especially as the first city pilots with autonomous vehicles begin rolling out. The Google car has already driven over a million miles without causing an accident. Automotive original equipment manufacturers and new companies are investing massive amounts of capital and engineering manpower to get to market with fully (Level 4) autonomous cars. The commercialization path of these self-driving cars, whether through an Uber-like on-demand service or through direct sales to consumers, is less important than the enormous impact they will have on the global job market. Using global employment data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), we find that by 2019, 5.7 percent of global employment will be in the transport, storage, and communication sector (See Figure 2). Moreover, the distribution of employment status data shows us that globally more than 60 percent of all workers lack any kind of employment contract, with most of them engaged in unpaid or family work in the developing world (See Figure 3). We find that, of workers worldwide who have a paid full-time job (excluding temporary workers), almost 20 percent drive as their form of employment today!

 

And autonomous vehicles are only the tip of the iceberg. As these systems transcend human comprehension, we will shift from traditional engineering to evolutionary algorithms and iterative learning algorithms such as deep learning and machine learning. While these techniques are powerful, the locus of learning shifts from the artifacts themselves to the process that created them. The beauty of compounding iterative algorithms (evolution, fractals, organic growth, art) derives from their irreducibility. And it empowers us to design complex systems that exceed human understanding, which we increasingly need to do at the cutting edge of software engineering. This process presents a plausible path to general artificial intelligence, or what Ray Kurzweil and others refer to as “strong A.I.” Danny Hillis summarizes succinctly in the conclusion from his programming primer The Pattern on the Stone: “We will not engineer an artificial intelligence; rather we will set up the right conditions under which an intelligence can emerge. The greatest achievement of our technology may well be creation of tools that allow us to go beyond engineering—that allow us to create more than we can understand.” Once we build these systems that surpass human understanding and that may even surpass human intelligence, the number of jobs that will be overhauled is unbounded—leading us to a future where no one will have to work.

 

Figure 2: Employment growth by sector, in which transport is one of the fasting growing.

 

Figure 3: Distribution of employment status, showing that only 40 percent of people have full-time jobs

 

Meaningful Work

 

Moore’s Law will drive human innovation forward and the collective global intelligence will create new forms of super artificial intelligence that can surpass human capabilities. This will completely disrupt our notion of jobs. Work is now the very thing that powers our global economy. But what happens when it no longer has to? Or at least, when most humans are no longer the aggregate primary drivers of global work, how will we find meaning in our lives? This existential phenomenon is one that will completely turn the current debate about the race against the machine on its head: the debate will no longer be about machines taking human jobs but instead about humans needing meaning in their work, even though it may no longer be for employment. The nature of jobs as we think about them today will dramatically change in the future, but humans will retain their thirst for deriving purpose from their actions. This is already becoming a major focus for employers now, as millennials entering the job market are interested in more than just salary, benefits, and job security to satisfy their work expectations. They want to be a part of something larger, to fulfill a mission that can really change the world. As we look to this distant future where employment isn’t necessary for most humans, finding meaning through non-traditional forms of work, whether hobbies, research, or entertainment will become paramount to sustaining a thriving civilization.

Dimitris Pikionis, an inspired architect, city planner, artist, set designer and thinker executed the landscaping of the archaeological area around the Acropolis, Philopappos' Hill and St. Demetrius Loumbardiaris between 1950-1957. He created two winding walks one of which accesses the Acropolis, whereas the other leads away from the Sacred Rock to an Anderon (plateau) on Philopappos' Hill, from which the monuments of the Acropolis can be best viewed. Pikionis constructed the Loumbardiaris kiosk with its pergola and the Anderon framed by semicircular benches and other marble seats, by drawing from ancient linear compositions. He integrated the remains of the ancient habitations which were revealed on the site. The construction was done without preplanning, on site, using skilled workers who shaped the surfaces of the paved walks using pitching chisels and a variety of pointed chisels. Pikionis himself organized the planting of trees in the specific area. He boosted the shrub vegetation and the planting of wild and domestic olive trees, even plants that the ancient people used in their temples such as pomegranate, laurel or myrtle trees.Pikionis' priority was to blend the natural and archaeological landscape, which classified his work as a creation of high aesthetics. He was awarded for this accomplishment and the Greek Ministry of Culture listed his work in 1996.

Secretary of the Army Dr. Mark T. Esper participated in the Regan National Defense Forum bipartisan annual event as a speaker in the A Defense Industrial & Innovation Base Workforce for the 21ST Century: Winning The Competition For Highly Skilled Workers Inside & Outside the Pentagon panel alongside California Congressman Ken Calvert, Ms. Marillyn Hewson, Chairman, President & CEO, Lockheed, and Florida Congresswoman Stephanie Murphy in Semi Valley, CA, Dec. 1, 2018. Mr. Mike Hammer from Fox News moderated the discussion. (U.S. Army photo by Staff Sgt. Nicole Mejia)