Who's in the Bonanza Cemetery

Bonanza Gravesites

 

AH SAM

Died 1894, Gunshot wound. - Shot by the Chinese cook at the Blacks Mine. Reported in the Silver Messenger, September 11, 1894.

AH YOUNG

Worked as a cook on the Stanley Gold Dredge. When he died of a heart attack, he was buried there, then exhumed and transported to the Bonanza graveyard. He received his residence paper #136652 from Helena, Montana.

ANDERSON, CHRIS

Native of Sweden. Approximately 53 years old. Died at Custer, Idaho on December 9, 1903.

BAIRD, EDWARD

Born, 1837 - Died June 3, 1897, Old timer in the area who had been a soldier. Died by his own hand, suicide by gunshot, as reported by the Silver Messenger June 3, 1897.

BARKER, MARTIN

Died in Custer, Idaho at the Nevada House on Monday, March 25, 1889 of spinal meningitis at age 35. He was a prospector on Sheep Mountain and Seafoam areas. Owned Vanity, Mountain King, Ella Day, MKH, and other claims. Born in Bash County, Kentucky.

BELLAMY, HARRY

Birthplace unknown. Born 1850 - Died at Custer, Idaho on December 2, 1912.

BENEFIEL, EMMA

Born 1843, wife of John R. Benefiel of Custer. Died on October 13, 1880.

BENERELLI, ELIZA

Died October 1880 at age (38 or 88). Buried in Bonanza.Sacred to the Memory of Eliza Emma, wife of J.R. Benerelli".

BURTON, ESTELLA M.

Born October 23, 1851. Died at Custer, Idaho on May 1, 1903.

BURTON, JAMES W.

Died November 21, 1895 at Custer, Idaho. Age 55. Was scratched while unloading a truck, consequently, he died of blood poisoning. He was a merchant, postmaster, and GAR of Lincolin Post #15 of Challis.

CAREY, MIKE

Born 1850 in Ireland - died at Custer, Idaho on October 21, 1897.

CEARLEY, JAMES L.

Born in North Carolina in 1839. Died at Custer, Idaho on March 17, 1902. Killed in an accident at the Lucky Boy Mine. Had nine children, served as a lieutenant of the volunteers in the Nez Pierce War.

CEARLEY, JAMES JR.

Born 1882 at Bonanza. Worked at Clayton Silver Mine. Died from Miner's Lung at Bonanza, Idaho on May 8, 1937. Died sitting in front of the small house at the lower end of Bonanza.

CENTAURAS, HENRY

Born in Hanover, Germany in 1847. Mined along the Salmon River from Sunbeam Dam to Burnt Creek. Made a stake and returned to Germany where it is reported the fortune was taken away by authorities. He returned to Idaho and started mining again to make another fortune. He died at Custer, Idaho on July 16, 1921.

CENTAUR AS, HERMAN

Born 1849 in Hanover, Germany. Died 1923.

CENTAURAS, MARGARET(MYERS)

Born in Hamburg, Germany on March 28, 1855. Came to the United States at age 17. Married Herman Centauras in 1878. Lived for 42 years in Custer County. Died of pneumonia on May 1, 1929 at Challis, Idaho. Taken to Bonanza Cemetery for burial.

CENTAURAS, MAY (MARY) Born October 23, 1883 - Died September 18, 1900 at age 17. Died of typhoid fever.

CERAMELINE, ANDREA

Born in Italy. Died July 8, 1910 when the air shaft to the Sunbeam mine plugged with ice and snow, Andrea climbed up from inside and placed a charge of black powder at the plug. He miscalculated the time necessary to reach safety and was killed in the explosion.

CEREGHINO, JOSEPH

Native of Italy. Born in 1848 - died at Bonanza, Idaho on October 31, 1905. Left three sisters living in Italy.

CLAUDE, JOSEPH

Born 1834. First mining death at Golconda Mine, by injuries due to falling rock on September 15, 1879. Buried one mile west of Bonanza.

CLAWSON, CALVIN C.

Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1840. Died at his home between Custer and Bonanza, Idaho on May 15, 1911. Had been a writer for the Silver Messenger under the non de plume of Graph; for 30 years. Crossed the plains with oxen teams in 1866. Came to Custer County in 1878.

CLAWSON, CZARINA (LLEWELLYN)

Born January 29, 1840 at Morgantown, West Virginia. Died at family home between Custer and Bonanza, Idaho on February 14, 1905. Was of Welsh descent.

CRAFTS, TREVOR

Born September 1881. His father owned Blacks Mine.

CROGEN, A.M.

Died 1896.

CROSS, JULIUS W.

Born October 1865 in Indiana. Died at Custer, Idaho on December 2, 1905.

DAVENPORT, ALICE LEONA

Born January 1928 - Died September 1935 in Hailey, Idaho from blood poisoning. This was caused from a cut on her foot or a black widow spider bite.

DAVIS, JOHN D.

Died February 14, 1904. Killed by a snowslide on the trail to the Charles Dickens Mine.

DeLAVILLIE, GODFREY POQUETTE

Native of Canada. Born in 1820. Died at Bonanza, Idaho on November 19, 1905 from injuries suffered in a fall at his sawmill on West Fork.

DUDLEY, JOHN P.

Born 1847 in Kentucky - Died March 14, 1907 at Custer, Idaho.

DUNN, MARGARET "BIDDY"

Born in Ireland in 1856. Came to the United States when she was two years old. Lived in Massachusetts, came to Custer in 1885, ran the Nevada House. Died November 9, 1908.

DUNN, WILLIAM Born 1843 - Died on July 6, 1907.

DUVALL,JOHN

Born 1833 in Missouri - Died August 1, 1890 at Custer, Idaho. He mined near Custer.

ERNST BABY

Was born and died 1899 in Bonanza. Child of George and Susie (Williams) Born 1843 - Died on July 6, 1907.

GEER, JASPER

Son of D. & M. Geer. Two years, five months and four days old.

GEER W.

Son of D.&; M. Geer. Four years and 9 months old.

HARDY, GEORGE

Born 1876 - died of suicide by knife at Custer, Idaho, August 5, 1902.

HARVEY, JOHN

Died 1917 at Custer, Idaho.

Born 1876 - died of suicide by knife at Custer, Idaho, August 5, 1902. Died 1917 at Custer, Idaho.

HARVEY, LOUISE

(French Louise)

Wife of John Harvey. Died from injuries sustained in a fall. - 1909 - (Some question on date of death, Silver Messenger mentions her at Thanksgiving 1911.)

HIENS, GEORGE

Died at Custer, Idaho on September 17, 1898

JOHNSON, KATHY

Born July 6, 1880 - Died 1891. The daughter of Peter and Annie (Ryan).

KNAPP, HENRY M.

Born 1823 in Florida. Died at Sunbeam, Idaho on December 2, 1909 of senility.

LAYTON, WILLIAM

(Banjo Bill) Birthplace and age unknown. Died at Custer, Idaho on October 20, 1897.

LAUNDRY, GEORGE

Birthplace and age unknown. Died at Custer, Idaho on March 3,1905.

LEE, JOHN H.

Born July 1847 in Illinois - Died January 24, 1888. Age 41 years and 6 months. Owned a store in Custer, had resided in Rockey Bar, Idaho earlier.

MacNAMER, TIMOTHY

Born in Baltimore, Maryland August 1829 - Died at Bonanza, Idaho on July 12, 1910.

McCULLOUGH, PETER

Native of Indiana. Born 1873 - Died in a snowslide at the Montana Mine on January 16, 1906.

McGOVERN, THOMAS

Born 1851 in Massachuests - Died November 19, 1909. Lived on the Yankee Fork thirty years, had claims on Fourth of July Creek named High Tariff, Union, Maggie and Dewey.

McMAHON, WILLIAM

Native of California. Born 1870 - Died in a snowslide at the Montana Mine on Mt. Estes on January 16, 1906.

McNAB, JOHN

Born 1852 in Texas - Died May 20, 1897.

MCNAUGHTON, CHARLES (THOMAS)

Born in Belfast, Ireland in 1867. Died at Custer, Idaho on March 6,1907.

MOORE, JOHN

Born December 16, 1840 - Died July 2, 1883. Mined at Loon Creek in the 1870's, mined at Stanley, sold the Yellow Jacket, Red Jacket, and Blue Jacket mining claims to A.P. Challis and Henry Sturkey.

MONROE TRIPLETS Died at birth in 1896. Their father was Dr. Monroe, second doctor in Custer.

MULLEN, JOHN

Born in Ireland in 1847. Came to the United States with his parents at the age of two years. Grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Died at Custer, Idaho on March 26, 1907.

MURPHY, WILLIAM

Birthdate unknown. Died December 12, 1900 - Suicide by gunshot. He borrowed the weapon from the McGowan's Saloon.

OLLSON, CHARLIE

Died September 5, 1880. He fell from the framework of the Custer Mill last Saturday morning, died at 6:00 p.m. Sunday evening. He was buried the next day, the funeral being well attended. The wounds that caused his death were compound committed fracture of both the right and left tibia fibula, and fracture of the base of the skull. Ollson resided in California a long time.

OLSEN, GEORGE

Birthplace unknown. Born 1877 - Died at Custer, Idaho on November 3, 1900. Has an iron bassinet around his grave.

PIERCE, CLIFFORD C.

Born 1908 in Montana, married Lucille (Shoemaker). Died January 26, 1992 in Andaconda, Montana. Ashes and memorial only.

PIERCE, CLIFFORD L.

Son of Clifford C. and Lucille Pierce. Died July 17, 1936.

PIERCE, JAMES CHESTER

Born November 2, 1873 - Died July 30, 1935 of suicide due to extremely painful cancer of the lower intestines. He had mentioned to his son that if I hadn't been a man in this country, I would have liked to have been a tree. Years later after the old man had died, a tree sprang from the exact spot where his heart was buried. To this day, his family half believe the tree is the fulfillment of the old man's wishes.

PIERCE, LUCILLE Wife of Clifford C. Died March 31, 1991.

PIERCE, SARA J.

Born January 1887 - Died August 22, 1953.

PIERCE, SHIRLEY MAE

Baby daughter of Clifford and Lucille Pierce who died November 29, 1935.

POQUETTE, JERRY

Lived across the river from Jerry's Creek. The creek had been named for him. Died November 29, 1905.

RAPP, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Born in Pennsylvania, 1841, operated a livery stable in Bonanza, had claims in Joe's Gulch near Stanley and was the postmaster in Stanley when he died on October 28, 1901.

REECE YOUNGEST BOY

Birthdate unkown - Died June 8, 1882 of scarlet fever.

RILEY, JAMES

Birthplace and age unknown. Died at Custer, Idaho on February 19, 1897.

ROMER, SILAS

Born in Ohio, July 1852 - Died October 4, 1903. He carried mail from Custer to Sunbeam, and on to Loon Creek area. When a child became sick at Sunbeam and needed medicine from Custer, Silas, against his better judgement, volunteered to make the trip. He made it to Custer but was caught by a snowslide on the return trip, and killed. The child is said to have recovered.

STEEL, JAMES E.J.

Born 1935 - Died March 4, 1880 of cold and fever. From Ohio.

STEEN, JOHN Worked for Morrison at Jordon Creek, owned the Morrison claim by 1895. Born 1862, St. Clair New Brunswick, Canada - Died of diabetes, June 12, 1900.

STRATTON, JACOB H.

Born 1836 - died July 11, 1906.

SULLIVAN CHILD

The two year old child of Mr. and Mrs. Michael Sullivan died at Custer, Idaho on March 15, 1889.

SWENSSON, F.O.

Sacred to the Memory of F.O. Swensson. Died November 1880.

SWENSSON, JOHANNA

Born 1842 in Sweden - Died September 28, 1880. Wife of F.O. Swensson, owner of Franklin Hotel. Service by Reverend J.F. Taylor.

TAYLOR, EDNA

Age 4, eldest child of J.F. Taylor and Rose D. Born 1875 - died 1879.

TAYLOR, JOHN

First natural death, abscess of the throat, (Yankee Fork Herald).

TERRY, MIKE

Born in China, buried in the Chinese section. While the coffin was being transported from Custer, it slipped off the wagon and slid down the hill. There it stayed until spring weather made it possible to retrieve the coffin and proceed with the burial.

TULLY, FRANCIS S.

Died October 1897, at Custer, Idaho.

TURNBULL. ANNA

Born in Ontario, Canada in 1852. Died at Bonanza, Idaho on November 20, 1894. Wife of James Turnbull. Age 42. Died in childbirth.

TURNBULL, THOMAS

Born 1878 - Died in Bonanza as a young man.

VARNEY, DUDLEY B. CAPTAIN

Born in New Hampshire in 1838. Died at Custer, Idaho on May 7, 1906. Was a member of the Jim Bridger expedition through the Big Horn and Yellowstone countries in 1864. Came to Loon Creek in 1869. Became one of the owners of the Montana Mine on Mt. Estes. Elected to Idaho Territorial Legislature from Lemhi County in 1878. Lived in Custer for many years. Received a spinal injury when a horse fell with him, that was ultimately the cause of his death.

WILSON, JACK J.

Born 1881 - died February 10, 1933 of sickness and old age.

WRIGHT, E.J. "BUCK"

Born in Ireland, 1858 - died in Custer, Idaho of suicide by morphine, on September 27, 1900.

  

Blackpool tower with 1934 Heritage Balloon tram 717

 

The Tower

 

The Blackpool Tower Company was founded by London-based Standard Contract & Debenture Corporation in 1890; it bought an aquarium on Central Promenade with the intention of building a replica Eiffel Tower on the site. John Bickerstaffe, a former mayor of Blackpool, was asked to become chairman of the new company, and its shares went on sale in July 1891. The Standard Corporation kept 30,000 £1 shares and offered £150,000 worth of shares to the public; initially only two-thirds were taken up, forcing the company to ask for more cash contributions from its existing shareholders, but the poor financial situation of the company, exacerbated by the falling share price, rendered it unable to pay. Bickerstaffe, to avoid the potential collapse of the venture, bought any available shares until his original holding of £500 amounted to £20,000. He also released the Standard Corporation from its share commitments. When the Tower opened in 1894, its success justified the investment of nearly £300,000, and the company made a £30,000 profit in 1896.

 

Two Lancashire architects, James Maxwell and Charles Tuke, designed the tower and oversaw the laying of its foundation stone on 29 September 1891. By the time the Tower finally opened on 14 May 1894, both men had died. Heenan & Froude, then of Manchester, were appointed structural engineers, supplying and constructing both the tower, the electric lighting and the steel front pieces for the aquariums. A new system of hydraulic riveting was used, based on the technology of Fielding & Platt of Gloucester.

 

The total cost for the design and construction of the tower and buildings was about £290,000. Five million Accrington bricks, 3,478 long tons (3,534 t) of steel and 352 long tons (358 t) of cast iron were used to construct the tower and base.

 

Unlike the Eiffel Tower, Blackpool Tower is not freestanding. Its base is hidden by the building that houses Blackpool Tower Circus. The building occupies a total of 6,040 square yards (1.25 acres; 5,050 m2). At the summit of the tower there is a flagpole where the height at the top measures 518 feet 9 inches (158.12 m) from the ground. A time capsule was buried under the foundation stone on 25 September 1891.

 

The tower's design was ahead of its time. As a writer for the BBC noted: "In heavy winds the building will gently sway, what a magnificent Victorian engineering masterpiece."

 

When the Tower opened, 3,000 customers took the first rides to the top. Tourists paid sixpence for admission, sixpence more for a ride in the lifts to the top, and a further sixpence for the circus. The first members of the public to ascend the tower had been local journalists in September 1893, using constructors' ladders. The top of the Tower caught fire in 1897, and the platform was seen on fire from up to fifty miles away.

 

The Tower was not painted properly during its first thirty years and became corroded, leading to discussions about demolishing it. However, it was decided to rebuild it instead, and all the steelwork in the structure was replaced and renewed between 1920 and 1924.

 

On 22 December 1894, Norwegian ship Abana was sailing from Liverpool to Savannah, Georgia, but was caught up in a storm, and mistook the recently built Blackpool Tower for a lighthouse. Abana was first seen off North Pier, and later drifted to Little Bispham where she was wrecked, and can still be seen at low tide. The ship's bell still hangs in St Andrews Church in Cleveleys.

 

In 1940, during the Second World War, the crow's nest was removed to allow the structure to be used as a Royal Air Force radar station known as 'RAF Tower',which proved unsuccessful.

 

A post box was opened at the top of the tower in 1949.The hydraulic lifts to the top of the tower were replaced in 1956–57 and the winding-gear replaced by electric.

 

The top of the tower was painted silver in 1977 as part of Queen Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee celebrations. A giant model of King Kong was placed on the side of the tower in 1984. In 1985, escapologist Karl Bartoni and his bride were married suspended in a cage from the tower.

 

The lifts and winding gear were again replaced in 1992. The same year the tower complex was renamed Tower World, and was opened by Diana, Princess of Wales. The tower is usually painted in dark red, except for its centenary year in 1994 when it was painted gold by abseiling painters. In 1998, a "Walk of Faith" glass floor panel was opened at the top of the tower. Made up of two sheets of laminated glass, it weighs half a tonne and is two inches thick. In October 2007, a laser beam installed on the Tower for the duration of the annual Illuminations was criticised by astronomer Sir Patrick Moore, presenter of television programme The Sky at Night, who said: "Light pollution is a huge problem. I am not saying we should turn all the lights out, that is not practical, but there are some things which are very unnecessary. The Blackpool Tower light is certainly something I do not think we should be doing. I very much oppose it." The beam could be seen 30 miles (48 km) away; Moore called for it to be stopped. The Centre for Astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston said the laser has added to a spiralling problem affecting astronomy.

 

The tower has transmitters for local FM station Radio Wave 96.5 and some non-broadcast services.

 

The tower continued to be owned by the Bickerstaffe family until 1964, when the Blackpool Tower Company was sold to EMI. Since then it has been owned by Trust House Forte, First Leisure, and Leisure Parcs Ltd, owned by Trevor Hemmings. In March 2010, it was announced that Blackpool Council had bought Blackpool Tower, and that the Merlin Entertainment Group would manage it and add various attractions, including a new Dungeon attraction, and a new observation deck called Blackpool Tower Eye would operate at the top of the tower.The company was also to manage the Blackpool Louis Tussauds waxwork museum, to be rebranded as Madame Tussauds.

 

the above text is taken from wikipedia

 

The Tram

 

717 was built by the English Electric Co., Preston, in December 1934 as one of a batch of 14 similar double deck trams. They were the latest in the streamlined family introduced by General Manager Walter Luff as part of a revolutionary five year modernisation plan which saw 116 brand new trams, of several different types, delivered during the years between 1933 and 1939. The double deck cars soon earned the name ‘Luxury Balloons’ due to their well appointed interiors and distinctive streamlined appearance.

 

This tram entered service on 15th December 1934, and the class were initially used all year round on the Promenade and Lytham Road routes. During the Second World War the Balloons were joined by 13 former open top ‘Luxury Dreadnoughts’ which were fitted with enclosed top deck covers to match, increasing the class to 27 cars. The Balloons were relegated to a seasonal role following the delivery of new trams from 1952 although they continued to see extensive use each year from Easter until the end of the autumn illuminations. Over the years the class have been much modified, and were renumbered 700 – 726 in 1968. However the type remained in regular use each summer until the Blackpool Tramway was fully upgraded as a modern Light Rail system in 2012 by which time they had reached the grand old age of 78!

 

Although no longer used in normal passenger service, Blackpool Transport Services Ltd. have retained a selection of Balloons as part of their Heritage fleet to recognise the service these trams have provided over nearly 80 years. These include tram 717, restored to its original appearance in 2008 thanks to a bequest from the late Philip R. Thorpe. In 2014 717 was name “Walter Luff” after the manager who introduced the streamlined fleet.

Key West (Spanish: Cayo Hueso) is an island in the Straits of Florida, within the U.S. state of Florida. Together with all or parts of the separate islands of Dredgers Key, Fleming Key, Sunset Key, and the northern part of Stock Island, it constitutes the City of Key West.

 

The Island of Key West is about 4 miles (6 kilometers) long and 1 mile (2 km) wide, with a total land area of 4.2 square miles (11 km2). It lies at the southernmost end of U.S. Route 1, the longest north–south road in the United States. Key West is about 95 miles (153 km) north of Cuba at their closest points. It is also 130 miles (210 km) southwest of Miami by air, about 165 miles (266 km) by road, and 106 miles (171 km) north-northeast of Havana.

 

The City of Key West is the county seat of Monroe County, which includes a majority of the Florida Keys and part of the Everglades. The total land area of the city is 5.6 square miles (14.5 km2). The official city motto is "One Human Family".

 

Key West is the southernmost city in the contiguous United States and the westernmost island connected by highway in the Florida Keys. Duval Street, its main street, is 1.1 miles (1.8 km) in length in its 14-block-long crossing from the Gulf of Mexico to the Straits of Florida and the Atlantic Ocean. Key West is the southern terminus of U.S. Route 1, State Road A1A, the East Coast Greenway and, before 1935, the Florida East Coast Railway. Key West is a port of call for many passenger cruise ships. The Key West International Airport provides airline service. Naval Air Station Key West is an important year-round training site for naval aviation due to the tropical weather, which is also the reason Key West was chosen as the site of President Harry S. Truman's Winter White House. The central business district is located along Duval Street and includes much of the northwestern corner of the island.

 

At various times before the 19th century, people who were related or subject to the Calusa and the Tequesta inhabited Key West. The last Native American residents of Key West were Calusa refugees who were taken to Cuba when Florida was transferred from Spain to Great Britain in 1763.

 

Cayo Hueso (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈkaʝo ˈweso]) is the original Spanish name for the island of Key West. It literally means "bone cay", cay referring to a low island or reef. It is said that the island was littered with the remains (bones) of prior native inhabitants, who used the isle as a communal graveyard. This island was the westernmost Key with a reliable supply of water.

 

Between 1763, when Great Britain took control of Florida from Spain, and 1821, when the United States took possession of Florida from Spain, there were few or no permanent inhabitants anywhere in the Florida Keys. Cubans and Bahamians regularly visited the Keys, the Cubans primarily to fish, while the Bahamians fished, caught turtles, cut hardwood timber, and salvaged wrecks. Smugglers and privateers also used the Keys for concealment. In 1766 the British governor of East Florida recommended that a post be set up on Key West to improve control of the area, but nothing came of it. During both the British and Spanish periods no nation exercised de facto control. The Bahamians apparently set up camps in the Keys that were occupied for months at a time, and there were rumors of permanent settlements in the Keys by 1806 or 1807, but the locations are not known. Fishermen from New England started visiting the Keys after the end of the War of 1812, and may have briefly settled on Key Vaca in 1818.

 

In 1815, the Spanish governor of Cuba in Havana deeded the island of Key West to Juan Pablo Salas, an officer of the Royal Spanish Navy Artillery posted in Saint Augustine, Florida. After Florida was transferred to the United States in 1821, Salas was so eager to sell the island that he sold it twice – first for a sloop valued at $575 to a General John Geddes, a former governor of South Carolina, and then to a U.S. businessman John W. Simonton, during a meeting in a Havana café on January 19, 1822, for the equivalent of $2,000 in pesos in 1821. Geddes tried in vain to secure his rights to the property before Simonton who, with the aid of some influential friends in Washington, was able to gain clear title to the island. Simonton had wide-ranging business interests in Mobile, Alabama. He bought the island because a friend, John Whitehead, had drawn his attention to the opportunities presented by the island's strategic location. John Whitehead had been stranded in Key West after a shipwreck in 1819 and he had been impressed by the potential offered by the deep harbor of the island. The island was indeed considered the "Gibraltar of the West" because of its strategic location on the 90-mile (140 km)–wide deep shipping lane, the Straits of Florida, between the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Mexico.

 

On March 25, 1822, Lt. Commander Matthew C. Perry sailed the schooner USS Shark to Key West and planted the U.S. flag, claiming the Keys as United States property. No protests were made over the American claim on Key West, so the Florida Keys became the de facto property of the United States.

 

After claiming the Florida Keys for the United States, Perry renamed Cayo Hueso (Key West) to Thompson's Island for Secretary of the Navy Smith Thompson, and the harbor Port Rodgers in honor of War of 1812 hero and President of the Navy Supervisors Board John Rodgers. In 1823, Commodore David Porter of the United States Navy West Indies Anti-Pirate Squadron took charge of Key West, which he ruled as military dictator under martial law. The United States Navy gave Porter the mission of countering piracy and the slave trade in the Key West area.

 

Soon after his purchase, John Simonton subdivided the island into plots and sold three undivided quarters of each plot to:

 

John Mountain and U.S. Consul John Warner, who quickly resold their quarter to Pardon C. Greene, who took up residence on the island. Greene is the only one of the four "founding fathers" to establish himself permanently on the island, where he became quite prominent as head of P.C. Greene and Company. He was a member of the city council and also served briefly as mayor. He died in 1838 at the age of 57.

John Whitehead, his friend who had advised him to buy Key West. John Whitehead lived in Key West for only eight years. He became a partner in the firm of P.C. Greene and Company from 1824 to 1827. A lifelong bachelor, he left the island for good in 1832. He came back only once, during the Civil War in 1861, and died the next year.

John Fleeming (nowadays spelled Fleming). John W.C. Fleeming was English-born and was active in mercantile business in Mobile, Alabama, where he befriended John Simonton. Fleeming spent only a few months in Key West in 1822 and left for Massachusetts, where he married. He returned to Key West in 1832 with the intention of developing salt manufacturing on the island but died the same year at the age of 51.

Simonton spent the winter in Key West and the summer in Washington, where he lobbied hard for the development of the island and to establish a naval base on the island, both to take advantage of the island's strategic location and to bring law and order to the town. He died in 1854.

 

The names of the four "founding fathers" of modern Key West were given to main arteries of the island when it was first platted in 1829 by William Adee Whitehead, John Whitehead's younger brother. That first plat and the names used remained mostly intact and are still in use today. Duval Street, the island's main street, is named after Florida's first territorial governor, William Pope Duval, who served between 1822 and 1834 as the longest-serving governor in Florida's U.S. history.

 

William Whitehead became chief editorial writer for the Enquirer, a local newspaper, in 1834. He preserved copies of his newspaper as well as copies from the Key West Gazette, its predecessor. He later sent those copies to the Monroe County clerk for preservation, which gives us a view of life in Key West in the early days (1820–1840).

 

In the 1830s, Key West was the richest city per capita in the United States.

 

In 1846, the city suffered severely from the 1846 Havana hurricane.

 

In 1852 the first Catholic Church, St. Mary's Star-Of-The-Sea, was built. The year 1864 became a landmark for the church in South Florida when five Sisters of the Holy Names of Jesus and Mary arrived from Montreal, Canada, and established the first Catholic school in South Florida. At the time it was called Convent of Mary Immaculate. The school is still operating today and is now known as Mary Immaculate Star of the Sea School.

 

During the American Civil War, while Florida seceded and joined the Confederate States of America, Key West remained in U.S. Union hands because of the naval base. Most locals were sympathetic to the Confederacy, however, and many flew Confederate flags over their homes. However, Key West was also home to a large free black population. This population grew during the war as more enslaved black people fled from their masters and came under the relative safety of the Union garrison there. Fort Zachary Taylor, constructed from 1845 to 1866, was an important Key West outpost during the Civil War. Construction began in 1861 on two other forts, East and West Martello Towers, which served as side armories and batteries for the larger fort. When completed, they were connected to Fort Taylor by railroad tracks for movement of munitions. Early in 1864, 900 men from the 2nd United States Colored Troops (USCT) arrived in Key West as replacements for the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteers. Many of these men would see action in southern Florida and the 2nd USCT would become "one of the most active" black regiments in Florida. Fort Jefferson, located about 68 miles (109 km) from Key West on Garden Key in the Dry Tortugas, served after the Civil War as the prison for Dr. Samuel A. Mudd, convicted of conspiracy for setting the broken leg of John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of President Abraham Lincoln.

 

In the 19th century, major industries included wrecking, fishing, turtling, and salt manufacturing. From 1830 to 1861, Key West was a major center of U.S. salt production, harvesting the commodity from the sea (via receding tidal pools) rather than from salt mines.[26] After the outbreak of the Civil War, Union troops shut down the salt industry after Confederate sympathizers smuggled the product into the South.[26] Salt production resumed at the end of the war, but the industry was destroyed by an 1876 hurricane and never recovered, in part because of new salt mines on the mainland.

 

During the Ten Years' War (an unsuccessful Cuban war for independence in the 1860s and 1870s), many Cubans sought refuge in Key West. Several cigar factories relocated to the city from Cuba, and Key West quickly became a major producer of cigars. A fire on April 1, 1886, that started at a coffee shop next to the San Carlos Institute and spread out of control, destroyed 18 cigar factories and 614 houses and government warehouses. Some factory owners chose not to rebuild and instead moved their operations to the new community of Ybor City in Tampa, leading to a slow decline in the cigar industry in Key West. Still, Key West remained the largest and wealthiest city in Florida at the end of the 1880s.

 

USS Maine sailed from Key West on her fateful visit to Havana, where she blew up and sank in Havana Harbor, igniting the Spanish–American War. Crewmen from the ship are buried in Key West, and the Navy investigation into the blast occurred at the Key West Customs House.

 

In October 1909, Key West was devastated by the 1909 Florida Keys hurricane. Further damage was suffered the following year in the 1910 Cuba hurricane.

 

Key West was relatively isolated until 1912, when it was connected to the Florida mainland via the Overseas Railway extension of Henry M. Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway (FEC). Flagler created a landfill at Trumbo Point for his railyards.

 

The 1919 Florida Keys hurricane caused catastrophic damage to the city.

 

On December 25, 1921, Manuel Cabeza was lynched by members of the Ku Klux Klan for living with a black woman.

 

Pan American Airlines was founded in Key West, originally to fly visitors to Havana, in 1926. The airline contracted with the United States Postal Service in 1927 to deliver mail to and from Cuba and the United States. The mail route was known as the Key West, Florida – Havana Mail Route.

 

The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 destroyed much of the Overseas Railway and killed hundreds of residents, including around 400 World War I veterans who were living in camps and working on federal road and mosquito-control projects in the Middle Keys. The FEC could not afford to restore the railroad.

 

The U.S. government then rebuilt the rail route as an automobile highway, completed in 1938, built atop many of the footings of the railroad. It became an extension of U.S. Route 1. The portion of U.S. 1 through the Keys is called the Overseas Highway. Franklin Roosevelt toured the road in 1939.

 

During World War II, more than 14,000 ships came through the island's harbor. The population, because of an influx of soldiers, sailors, laborers, and tourists, sometimes doubled or even tripled at times during the war.

 

Starting in 1946, US President Harry S. Truman established a working vacation home in Key West, the Harry S. Truman Little White House, where he would spend 175 days of his presidency.

 

In 1948, Key West suffered damage from two hurricanes within as many months, from the September 1948 Florida hurricane then the 1948 Miami hurricane.

 

Prior to the Cuban revolution of 1959, there were regular ferry and airplane services between Key West and Havana.

 

John F. Kennedy was to use "90 miles from Cuba" extensively in his speeches against Fidel Castro. Kennedy himself visited Key West a month after the resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

 

In 1982, the city of Key West briefly asserted independence as the Conch Republic as a protest over a United States Border Patrol blockade. This blockade was set up on US 1, where the northern end of the Overseas Highway meets the mainland at Florida City. A traffic jam of 17 miles (27 km) ensued while the Border Patrol stopped every car leaving the Keys, supposedly searching for illegal immigrants attempting to enter the mainland United States. This paralyzed the Florida Keys, which rely heavily on the tourism industry. Flags, T-shirts and other merchandise representing the Conch Republic are still popular souvenirs for visitors to Key West, and the Conch Republic Independence Celebration—including parades and parties—is celebrated annually, on April 23.

 

In 1998 Hurricane Georges damaged the city.

 

In 2017, Hurricane Irma caused substantial damage with wind and flooding, killing three people.

 

The Florida Keys are a coral cay archipelago off the southern coast of Florida, forming the southernmost part of the continental United States. They begin at the southeastern coast of the Florida peninsula, about 15 miles (24 km) south of Miami and extend in a gentle arc south-southwest and then westward to Key West, the westernmost of the inhabited islands, and on to the uninhabited Dry Tortugas. The islands lie along the Florida Straits, dividing the Atlantic Ocean to the east from the Gulf of Mexico to the northwest, and defining one edge of Florida Bay. The southern part of Key West is 93 miles (150 km) from Cuba. The Keys are located between about 24.3 and 25.5 degrees North latitude.

 

More than 95% of the land area lies in Monroe County, but a small portion extends northeast into Miami-Dade County, such as Totten Key. The total land area is 137.3 square miles (356 km2). At the 2010 census the population was 73,090, with an average density of 532.34 per square mile (205.54/km2), although much of the population is concentrated in a few areas of much higher density, such as the city of Key West, which has 32% of the Keys' total population. The 2014 Census population estimate was 77,136. The 2020 Census population estimate was 82,874.

 

The city of Key West is the county seat of Monroe County. The county consists of a section on the mainland which is almost entirely in Everglades National Park, and the Keys islands from Key Largo to Dry Tortugas National Park.

 

The Keys were originally inhabited by the Calusa and Tequesta tribes and were charted by Juan Ponce de León in 1513. De León named the islands Los Martires ("The Martyrs"), as they looked like suffering men from a distance. "Key" is derived from the Spanish word cayo, meaning small island. For many years, Key West was the largest town in Florida, and it grew prosperous on wrecking revenues. The isolated outpost was well located for trade with Cuba and the Bahamas and was on the main trade route from New Orleans. Improved navigation led to fewer shipwrecks, and Key West went into a decline in the late nineteenth century.

 

The Keys were long accessible only by water. This changed with the completion of Henry Flagler's Overseas Railway in the early 1910s. Flagler, a major developer of Florida's Atlantic coast, extended his Florida East Coast Railway down to Key West with an ambitious series of oversea railroad trestles. Three hurricanes disrupted the project in 1906, 1909, and 1910.

 

The strongest hurricane to strike the U.S. made landfall near Islamorada in the Upper Keys on Labor Day, Monday, September 2, 1935. Winds were estimated to have gusted to 200 mph (320 km/h), raising a storm surge more than 17.5 feet (5.3 m) above sea level that washed over the islands. More than 400 people were killed, though some estimates place the number of deaths at more than 600.

 

The Labor Day hurricane was one of only four hurricanes to make landfall at Category 5 strength on the U.S. coast since reliable weather records began (about 1850). The other storms were Hurricane Camille (1969), Hurricane Andrew (1992), and Hurricane Michael (2018).

 

In 1935, new bridges were under construction to connect a highway through the entire Keys. Hundreds of World War I veterans working on the roadway as part of a government relief program were housed in non-reinforced buildings in three construction camps in the Upper Keys. When the evacuation train failed to reach the camps before the storm, more than 200 veterans perished. Their deaths caused anger and charges of mismanagement that led to a Congressional investigation.

 

The storm also ended the 23-year run of the Overseas Railway; the damaged tracks were never rebuilt, and the Overseas Highway (U.S. Highway 1) replaced the railroad as the main transportation route from Miami to Key West.

 

One of the longest bridges when it was built, the Seven Mile Bridge connects Knight's Key (part of the city of Marathon in the Middle Keys) to Little Duck Key in the Lower Keys. The piling-supported concrete bridge is 35,862 ft (10,931 m) or 6.79 miles (10.93 km) long. The current bridge bypasses Pigeon Key, a small island that housed workers building Henry Flagler's Florida East Coast Railway in the 1900s, that the original Seven Mile Bridge crossed. A 2.2-mile (3.5 km) section of the old bridge remains for access to the island, although it was closed to vehicular traffic on March 4, 2008. The aging structure has been deemed unsafe by the Florida Department of Transportation. Costly repairs, estimated to be as much as $34 million, were expected to begin in July 2008. Monroe County was unable to secure a $17 million loan through the state infrastructure bank, delaying work for at least a year. On June 14, 2008, the old bridge section leading to Pigeon Key was closed to fishing as well. While still open to pedestrians—walking, biking and jogging—if the bridge were closed altogether, only a ferry subsidized by FDOT and managed by the county would transport visitors to the island.

 

After the destruction of the Keys railway by the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, the railroad bridges, including the Seven Mile Bridge, were converted to automobile roadways. This roadway, U.S. Highway 1, became the Overseas Highway that runs from Key Largo south to Key West. Today this highway allows travel through the tropical islands of the Florida Keys and the viewing of exotic plants and animals found nowhere else on the US mainland and the largest coral reef chain in the United States.

 

Following the Cuban Revolution, many Cubans emigrated to South Florida. Key West traditionally had strong links with its neighbor ninety miles south by water, and large numbers of Cubans settled there. The Keys still attract Cubans leaving their home country, and stories of "rafters" coming ashore are not uncommon.

 

In 1982, the United States Border Patrol established a roadblock and inspection points on US Highway 1, stopping all northbound traffic returning to the mainland at Florida City, to search vehicles for illegal drugs and undocumented immigrants. The Key West City Council repeatedly complained about the roadblocks, which were a major inconvenience for travellers, and hurt the Keys' important tourism industry.

 

After various unsuccessful complaints and attempts to get a legal injunction against the blockade failed in federal court in Miami, on April 23, 1982, Key West mayor Dennis Wardlow and the city council declared the independence of the city of Key West, calling it the "Conch Republic". After one minute of secession, he (as "Prime Minister") surrendered to an officer of the Key West Naval Air Station (NAS) and requested US$1,000,000,000 in "foreign aid".

 

The stunt succeeded in generating great publicity for the Keys' plight, and the inspection station roadblock was removed. The idea of the Conch Republic has provided a new source of revenue for the Keys by way of tourist keepsake sales, and the Conch Republic has participated in later protests.

 

The northern and central sections of the Florida Keys are the exposed portions of an ancient coral reef, the Key Largo Limestone. The northernmost island arising from the ancient reef formation is Elliott Key, in Biscayne National Park. North of Elliott Key are several small transitional keys, composed of sand built up around small areas of exposed ancient reef. Further north, Key Biscayne and places north are barrier islands, built up of sand. The islands in the southwestern part of the chain, from Big Pine Key to the Marquesas Keys, are exposed areas of Miami Limestone.

 

The Florida Keys have taken their present form as the result of the drastic changes in sea level associated with recent glaciations or ice ages. Beginning some 130,000 years ago the Sangamonian Stage raised sea levels about 25 feet (7.6 m) feet above the current level. All of southern Florida was covered by a shallow sea. Several parallel lines of reef formed along the edge of the submerged Florida Platform, stretching south and then west from the present Miami area to what is now the Dry Tortugas. This reef formed the Key Largo Limestone that is exposed on the surface from Soldier Key (midway between Key Biscayne and Elliott Key) to the southeast portion of Big Pine Key and the Newfound Harbor Keys. The types of coral that formed Key Largo Limestone can be identified on the exposed surface of these keys. Minor fluctuations in sea level exposed parts of the reef, subjecting it to erosion. Acidic water, which can result from decaying vegetation, dissolves limestone. Some of the dissolved limestone redeposited as a denser cap rock, which can be seen as outcrops overlying the Key Largo and Miami limestones throughout the Keys. The limestone that eroded from the reef formed oolites in the shallow sea behind the reef, and together with the skeletal remains of bryozoans, formed the Miami Limestone that is the current surface bedrock of the lower Florida peninsula and the lower keys from Big Pine Key to Key West. To the west of Key West the ancient reef is covered by recent calcareous sand. While the islands of the upper and middle keys, consisting of Key Largo Limestone, form a long narrow arc, the islands of the lower keys are perpendicular to the line of that arc. This configuration arose from an ancient tidal-bar system, in which tidal channels cut through a submerged oolitic deposit. The bars lithified into Miami Limestone, and with changes in sea level are presently exposed as the islands, while the channels between the bars now separate the islands.

 

Just offshore of the Florida Keys along the edge of the Florida Straits is the Florida Reef (also known as the Florida Reef Tract). The Florida Reef extends 170 miles (270 km) from Fowey Rocks just east of Soldier Key to just south of the Marquesas Keys. It is the third-largest barrier reef system in the world.

 

The climate and environment of the Florida Keys are closer to that of the Caribbean than the rest of Florida, though unlike the Caribbean's volcanic islands, the Keys were built by plants and animals. The Upper Keys islands are composed of sandy-type accumulations of limestone grains produced by plants and marine organisms. The Lower Keys are the remnants of large coral reefs, which became fossilized and exposed when the sea level dropped.

 

The natural habitats of the Keys are upland forests, inland wetlands and shoreline zones. Soil ranges from sand to marl to rich, decomposed leaf litter. In some places, "caprock" (the eroded surface of coral formations) covers the ground. Rain falling through leaf debris becomes acidic and dissolves holes in the limestone, where soil accumulates and trees root.

 

The Florida Keys have distinctive plant and animals species, some found nowhere else in the United States, as the Keys define the northern extent of their ranges. The climate also allows many imported plants to thrive. Some exotic species which arrived as landscape plants now invade and threaten natural areas.

 

The native flora of the Keys is diverse, including members of both temperate families, such as red maple (Acer rubrum), slash pine (Pinus elliottii var. densa) and oaks (Quercus spp.), growing at the southern end of their ranges, and tropical families, including mahogany (Swietenia mahagoni), gumbo limbo (Bursera simaruba), stoppers (Eugenia spp.), Jamaican dogwood (Piscidia piscipula), and many others, which grow only in tropical climates. Several types of palms are native to the Florida Keys, including the Florida thatch palm (Thrinax radiata), which grows to its greatest size in Florida on the islands of the Keys.

 

The Keys are also home to unique animal species, including the American crocodile, Key deer (protected by the National Key Deer Refuge), and the Key Largo woodrat. The Keys are part of the northernmost range of the American crocodile, which is found throughout the Neotropics. The Key Largo Woodrat is found only in the northern part of its namesake island and is a focus of management activities in Crocodile Lake National Wildlife Refuge. About 70 miles (110 km) west of Key West is Dry Tortugas National Park.

 

The waters surrounding the Keys are part of a protected area known as the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary.

 

U.S. Highway 1, the "Overseas Highway", runs over most of the inhabited islands of the Florida Keys. The islands are listed in order from southwest to north. Mile markers are listed for keys that the Overseas Highway runs across or near:

Dry Tortugas

Loggerhead Key

Marquesas Keys

Sunset Key

Wisteria Island

Key West (MM 0-4)

Fleming Key

Sigsbee Park (off to the north at MM 2¾)

Stock Island (MM 5)

Raccoon Key (off to the north at MM 5¼)

Boca Chica Key (MM 7-8)

Rockland Key (MM 9)

East Rockland Key (MM 9½)

Big Coppitt Key (MM 10)

Geiger Key (off to the south at MM 10¾)

Shark Key (off to the north at MM 11¼)

Saddlebunch Keys (MM 12-16)

Lower Sugarloaf Key (MM 17)

Park Key (MM 18)

Sugarloaf Key (MM 19-20)

Cudjoe Key (MM 21-23)

Knockemdown Key

Summerland Key (MM 24-25)

Ramrod Key (MM 27)

Middle Torch Key, Big Torch Key (off to the north at MM 27¾)

Little Torch Key (MM 28½)

Big Pine Key (MM 30-32)

No Name Key

Scout Key (MM 34-35), formerly known as West Summerland Key

Bahia Honda Key (MM 37-38)

Ohio Key (MM 38¾), also known as Sunshine Key

Missouri Key (MM 39¼)

Little Duck Key (MM 39¾)

 

The Seven Mile Bridge (MM 40-46¾) separates the Lower Keys from the Middle Keys:

Pigeon Key (off to the north near MM 45; access is at MM 46¾)

Knights Key (MM 47)

Vaca Key (MM 48-53)

Boot Key (off to the south at MM 48; bridge closed)

Fat Deer Key (MM 53¼-55)

Shelter Key (off to the south at MM 53¾)

Long Point Key (MM 56)

Crawl Key (MM 56½)

Grassy Key (MM 58-60)

 

(Knights, Vaca, Boot, Long Point, Crawl, and Grassy Keys, as well as most of Fat Deer Key, are incorporated in the city of Marathon. The remaining portion of Fat Deer Key and most of Shelter Key are part of Key Colony Beach.):

Duck Key (MM 61)

Conch Key (MM 62-63)

 

The Long Key Bridge (MM 63¼-65¼) separates the Middle Keys from the Upper Keys:

Long Key (MM 66-70), formerly known as Rattlesnake Key

Fiesta Key (off to the north at MM 70)

Craig Key (MM 72)

Lower Matecumbe Key (MM 74-77)

Lignumvitae Key

Indian Key

Indian Key Fill (MM 79)

Tea Table (MM 79½)

Upper Matecumbe Key (MM 80-83)

Windley Key (MM 85)

Plantation Key (MM 86-90)

 

(Lower Matecumbe through Plantation Keys are incorporated as Islamorada, Village of Islands. The "towns" of Key Largo, North Key Largo and Tavernier, all on the island of Key Largo, are not incorporated.):

Key Largo (MM 91-107)

Tavernier Key

Rodriguez Key

 

All keys north of Broad Creek are in Biscayne National Park and Miami-Dade County. The following are "true" Florida Keys (exposed ancient coral reefs):

Old Rhodes Key

Totten Key

Reid Key

Rubicon Keys

Adams Key

Elliott Key

 

The following are "transitional keys", made of exposed ancient reef surrounded by sand:

Sands Key

Boca Chita Key

Ragged Keys

Soldier Key

Key Biscayne is not one of the Florida Keys, but the southernmost of the barrier islands along the Atlantic coast of Florida.

 

(Linden is always seeking a new female model in his home area, some experience required, will pay, send message to Linden on Flickr messaging, you'll get lots of views, Linden's Flickr photos get 3 to 4 million views per year) (Texas metro coastal area).

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The above image is a freeze frame taken from video shot by Linden Hudson (amateur photographer).

 

Who is Linden Hudson?

 

CLASSICBANDS DOT COM said: “According to former roadie David Blayney in his book SHARP DRESSED MEN: sound engineer Linden Hudson co-wrote much of the material on the ZZ Top ELIMINATOR album.” (end quote)

 

(ZZ Top never opted to give Linden credit, which would have been THE decent thing to do. It would have helped Linden's career as well. The band and management worked ruthlessly to take FULL credit for the hugely successful album which Linden had spent a good deal of time working on. Linden works daily to tell this story. Also, the band did not opt to pay Linden, they worked to keep all the money and they treated Linden like dirt. It was abuse. Linden launched a limited lawsuit, brought about using his limited resources which brought limited results and took years. No one should treat the co-writer of their most successful album like this. It's just deeply fucked up.)

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Hear the original ZZ Top ELIMINATOR writing/rehearsal tapes made by Linden Hudson and Billy Gibbons at: youtu.be/2QZ8WUTaS18

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Read Linden's story of the making of the super-famous ZZ Top ELIMINATOR album at: www.flickr.com/people/152350852@N02/

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Follow this Wikipedia link and find Linden's name throughout the article & read the album songwriter credits about halfway down at: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliminator_%28album%29

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LICKLIBRARY DOT COM (2013 Billy Gibbons interview) ZZ TOP'S BILLY GIBBONS FINALLY ADMITTED: “the Eliminator sessions in 1983 were guided largely by another one of our associates, Linden Hudson, a gifted engineer, during the development of those compositions.” (end quote) (Gibbons admits this after 30 years, but offers Linden no apology or reparations for lack of credit/royalties)

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MUSICRADAR DOT COM (2013 interview with ZZ Top's guitarist Billy Gibbons broke 30 years of silence about Linden Hudson introducing synthesizers into ZZ Top's sound.) Gibbons said: “This was a really interesting turning point. We had befriended somebody who would become an influential associate, a guy named Linden Hudson. He was a gifted songwriter and had production skills that were leading the pack at times. He brought some elements to the forefront that helped reshape what ZZ Top were doing, starting in the studio and eventually to the live stage. Linden had no fear and was eager to experiment in ways that would frighten most bands. But we followed suit, and the synthesizers started to show up on record.” (once again, there was no apology from ZZ Top or Billy Gibbons after this revelation).

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TEXAS MONTHLY MAGAZINE (Dec 1996, By Joe Nick Patoski): "Linden Hudson floated the notion that the ideal dance music had 124 beats per minute; then he and Gibbons conceived, wrote, and recorded what amounted to a rough draft of an album before the band had set foot inside Ardent Studios."

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FROM THE BOOK: SHARP DRESSED MEN - ZZ TOP (By David Blayney) : "Probably the most dramatic development in ZZ Top recording approaches came about as Eliminator was constructed. What had gone on before evolutionary; this change was revolutionary. ZZ Top got what amounted to a new bandsman (Linden) for the album, unknown to the world at large and at first even to Dusty and Frank."

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CNET DOT COM: (question posed to ZZ Top): Sound engineer Linden Hudson was described as a high-tech music teacher on your highly successful "Eliminator" album. How much did the band experiment with electronic instruments prior to that album?

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THE HOUSTON CHRONICLE, MARCH 2018: "Eliminator" had a tremendous impact on us and the people who listen to us," says ZZ Top’s bass player. Common band lore points to production engineer Linden Hudson suggesting that 120 beats per minute was the perfect rock tempo, or "the people's tempo" as it came to be known.

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FROM THE BOOK: SHARP DRESSED MEN - ZZ TOP by David Blayney: (page 227): "...the song LEGS Linden Hudson introduced the pumping synthesizer effect."

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(Search Linden Hudson in the various ZZ Top Wikipedia pages which are related to the ELIMINATOR album and you will find bits about Linden. Also the main ZZ Top Wikipedia page mentions Linden. He's mentioned in at least 7 ZZ Top related Wikipedia pages.)

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FROM THE BOOK: SHARP DRESSED MEN - ZZ TOP By David Blayney: "Linden found himself in the position of being Billy's (Billy Gibbons, ZZ Top guitarist) closest collaborator on Eliminator. In fact, he wound up spending more time on the album than anybody except Billy. While the two of them spent day after day in the studio, they were mostly alone with the equipment and the ideas."

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FROM THE BOOK: BEER DRINKERS & HELL RAISERS: A ZZ TOP GUIDE (By Neil Daniels, released 2014): "Hudson reportedly had a significant role to play during the planning stages of the release (ELIMINATOR)."

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FROM THE BOOK: ZZ TOP - BAD AND WORLDWIDE (ROLLING STONE PRESS, WRITTEN BY DEBORAH FROST): "Linden was always doing computer studies. It was something that fascinated him, like studio technology. He thought he might understand the components of popular songs better if he fed certain data into his computer. It might help him understand what hits (song releases) of any given period share. He first found out about speed; all the songs he studied deviated no more than one beat from 120 beats per minute. Billy immediately started to write some songs with 120 beats per minute. Linden helped out with a couple, like UNDER PRESSURE and SHARP DRESSED MAN. Someone had to help Billy out. Dusty and Frank didn't even like to rehearse much. Their studio absence wasn't really a problem though. The bass and drum parts were easily played with a synthesizer or Linn drum machine." (end quote)

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FROM THE BOOK: "SHARP DRESSED MEN - ZZ TOP" BY DAVID BLAYNEY: "After his quantitative revelations, Linden informally but instantly became ZZ Top's rehearsal hall theoretician, producer, and engineer." (end quote)

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FROM THE BOOK: "ZZ TOP - BAD AND WORLDWIDE" (ROLLING STONE PRESS, BY DEBORAH FROST): "With the release of their ninth album, ELIMINATOR, in 1983, these hairy, unlikely rock heroes had become a pop phenomenon. This had something to do with the discoveries of a young preproduction engineer (Linden Hudson) whose contributions, like those of many associated with the band over the years, were never acknowledged."

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FROM THE BOOK: ​SHARP DRESSED MEN - ZZ TOP (By DAVID BLAYNEY) : "The integral position Linden occupied in the process of building El​iminator was demonstrated eloquently in the case of song Under Pressure. Billy and Linden, the studio wizards, did the whole song all in one afternoon without either the bass player or drummer even knowing it had been written and recorded on a demo tape. Linden synthesized the bass and drums and helped write the lyrics; Billy did the guitars and vocals."

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FROM THE BOOK: "TRES HOMBRES - THE STORY OF ZZ TOP" BY DAVID SINCLAIR (Writer for the Times Of London): "Linden Hudson, the engineer/producer who lived at Beard's house (ZZ's drummer) had drawn their attention to the possibilities of the new recording technology and specifically to the charms of the straight drumming pattern, as used on a programmed drum machine. On ELIMINATOR ZZ Top unveiled a simple new musical combination that cracked open a vast worldwide market.

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FROM THE BOOK: "SHARP DRESS MEN - ZZ TOP" BY DAVID BLAYNEY: "ELIMINATOR went on to become a multi-platinum album, just as Linden had predicted when he and Billy were setting up the 124-beat tempos and arranging all the material. Rolling Stone eventually picked the album as number 39 out of the top 100 of the 80's. Linden Hudson in a fair world shoud have had his name all over ELIMINATOR and gotten the just compensation he deserved. Instead he got ostracized."

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FROM THE BOOK: ​SHARP DRESSED MEN - ZZ TOP by DAVID BLAYNEY: "He (Linden) went back with the boys to 1970 when he was working as a radio disc jocky aliased Jack Smack. He was emcee for a show ZZ did around that time, and even sang an encore tune with the band, perhaps the only person ever to have that honor." (side note: this was ZZ Top's very first show).

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FROM THE BOOK: "SHARP DRESSED MEN - ZZ TOP" BY DAVID BLAYNEY: "Linden remained at Frank's (ZZ Top drummer) place as ZZ's live-in engineer throughout the whole period of ELIMINATOR rehearsals, and was like one of the family... as he (Linden) worked at the controls day after day, watching the album (ELIMINATOR) take shape, his hopes for a big step forward in his production career undoubtably soared. ELIMINATOR marked the first time that ZZ Top was able to rehearse an entire album with the recording studio gadgetry that Billy so loved. With Linden Hudson around all the time, it also was the first time the band could write, rehearse, and record with someone who knew the men and the machines. ZZ Top was free to go musically crazy, but also musically crazy like a fox. Linden made that possible too."

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FROM THE BOOK "ZZ TOP - BAD AND WORLDWIDE" (ROLLING STONE PRESS, BY DEBORAH FROST, WRITER FOR ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE): "... SHARP DRESSED MAN which employed Hudson's 120 beat-per-minute theory. The feel, the enthusiasm, the snappy beat and crisp clean sound propelled ELIMINATOR into the ears and hearts of 5 million people who previously could have cared less about the boogie band of RIO GRANDE MUD."

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THE GREATEST ROCK REBRAND OF ALL TIME (by Jason Miller): "Sound engineer Linden Hudson researched the tempos at which the most popular rock tracks in the charts had been recorded. His data showed that there was something very special about 120 beats to a minute. Gibbons decided to record pretty much the whole of ZZ Top’s new album at that tempo. The result? 1983’s Eliminator. It was named after Gibbons’ Ford Coupé; it had been created through a unique combination of creative collaboration and data mining. And it was about to take the world by storm."

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ULTIMATECLASSICROCK DOT COM: "This new melding of styles was encouraged by Hudson, who served as a kind of pre-producer for ​EL LOCO ... ... Hudson helped construct ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard's home studio, and had lived with him for a time. That led to these initial sessions, and then a closer collaboration on 1983's ​ELIMINATOR.

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FIREDOGLAKE DOT COM: "I like Billy Gibbons' guitar tone quite a lot, but I lost all respect for them after reading how badly they fucked over Linden Hudson (the guy who was the brains behind their move to include synthesizers and co-wrote most of their career-defining Eliminator record)."

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EMAIL FROM A ZZ TOP FAN TO LINDEN (One Of Many): "I write you today about broken hearts, one is mine and one is for you. I have been a ZZ Top fan since I was 6 years old. I purchased ELIMINATOR vinyl from Caldors in Connecticut with the $20 my grandma gave me for my birthday. I will spare the #1 fan epic saga of tee shirts, harassing Noreen at the fan club via phone weekly for years, over 40 shows attended. Posters, non stop conversation about the time I have spent idolizing this band, but more Billy G, as he has seemed to break free of the Lone Wolf shackles and it became more clear this was his baby. In baseball I was Don Mattingly's #1 fan, Hershel Walker in football, Billy Gibbons in music. What do these individuals have in common? They were role models. Not a DUI, not a spousal abuse, not a drug overdose, not a cheater. Until I read your web page. I read Blayney's book around 1992 or so, I was in middle school and I was familiar with your name for a long time. I didn't realize you suffered so greatly or that your involvement was so significant. It pains me to learn my idol not only cheated but did something so wrong to another being. I now know this is where tall tales and fun loving bullshit and poor morals and ethics are distinguished and where I would no longer consider myself to look up to Billy. I love to joke and I love credit but I have always prided myself on ethics and principles... I hold them dear. I wanted to say, the snippet of UNDER PRESSURE you played sounded very new wave and I may like it more than the finished product. Well that's all. You have reached ZZ Top's biggest fan and I can let others know. Bummer. Cheers and good luck. James."​

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VINYLSTYLUS DOT COM: Much of Eliminator was recorded at 124bpm, the tempo that considered perfect for dance music by the band’s associate Linden Hudson. An aspiring songwriter, former DJ and – at the time – drummer Frank Beard’s house-sitter, Hudson’s involvement in the recording of the album would come back to haunt them. Despite assisting Gibbons with the pre-production and developing of the material that would end up on both El Loco and Eliminator, his contribution wasn’t credited when either record was released.

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INFOMORY DOT COM: ‘Eliminator’ is a studio album of the American rock band ZZ Top. It was released on March 23, 1983 and topped the charts worldwide. Its lyrics were co-written by the band’s sound engineer Linden Hudson while the band denied it.

 

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An expanded vision of the electrical system brings an expanded horizon to your business

The EXP-1000 InTellect EXP Battery Charging System Tester marks the next generation of handheld analyzers. So revolutionary, it makes other electrical system diagnostic tools obsolete. Allowing you to diagnose every part of the electrical system, from the battery to the starter and alternator, more accurately and decisively than ever before.

This platform combines one of the largest, easiest-to-read displays in the industry with the full functions of an advanced analyzer, digital multimeter, and data management tool... all in the palm of your hand.

  

Features:

 

New Dynamic Conductance

Battery Testing Technology - Combines direct temperature measurement with deep scan technology to improve accuracy and decisiveness

Advanced electrical system diagnostics featuring Digital Signal Processing - Digital Signal Processing (DSP) creates a digitized picture of the measured alternator output voltage to analyze the amplitude level and frequency of the diode ripple pattern for improved accuracy and identification of open or shorted diodes and open phase conditions, (multiple diode failure or winding problems)

Enhanced starter testing - Fully diagnoses all parts of the starting system including current draw, starting time and circuit resistance

Temperature measurement compensation for improved decision making

Complete multimeter functionality with scope mode

Tests 6 and 12 volt batteries, 12 volt charging systems

DMM Function for Advanced Diagnostics:

AC/DC Volts

Temperature

AC/DC Amps

Ohm meter

Diode test

Scope mode

Volts/Amps mode

Patented Conductance Cable Drop Test - Interactive routines using dual cable sets for more effective analysis of voltage drop across ground circuit, starter system, alternator system, and generic system testing

Enhanced Communications Capabilities -IR printer option, Data card reader/writer for future upgrades

Superior User Interface

Large backlit graphical screen and icon-based user interface make diagnostics simple for the novice and experienced electrical technician

Alphanumeric keypad, arrow key scrolling and hot keys make the EXP-1000 as easy to use as a remote control or cell phone

Specifications:

 

Applications: Tests 6 and 12 volt batteries (including AGM, AGM Spiral and GEL batteries); 12 & 24 volt starting and charging systems

Power Requirements: (6) AA Alkaline batteries

Operating Range: 6 and 12 volt batteries

Test Leads: 305 cm / 10ft. cable with dual conductor Kelvin clamps

Housing Material: ABS plastic with Santoprene overmolds

Dimensions: 23 cm x 10.2 cm x 6.5 cm (9.5 in x 4 in x 2.5 in)

Carrying Case: Heavy–duty molded plastic

Languages: 24 Languages

Rating System Range: DIN 100–1000; EN 100–3000; IEC 100–1000; JIS By Part Number; SAE 100–3000

Display: 128 x 64 pixel graphics, backlit display

Temperature Compensation: Built–in temperature measurement when prompted by analyzer

Operating Temperature: 0-deg. C – 49-deg. C (32-deg. F – 120-deg. F)

 

WARRANTY: 1-Year Limited

 

Publication History

 

Black Widow is a superhero appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by editor Stan Lee, scripter Don Rico, and artist Don Heck, the character debuted as an enemy of Iron Man in Tales of Suspense #52 (1964). She reformed as a hero in The Avengers #30 (1966) and her most well-known design was introduced in The Amazing Spider-Man #86 (1970). Black Widow has been the main character in several comic issues since 1970, and she received her own Black Widow series in 1999. She has also frequently appeared as a supporting character in The Avengers and Daredevil.

 

Natalia Alianovna "Natasha Romanoff" Romanova (Russian: Наталья Альяновна "Наташа" Романова) is introduced as a spy for the Soviet Union until she defects to the United States. She subsequently joins the intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D., partners with Daredevil, and encounters a rival Black Widow in Yelena Belova. Though she has no distinct superpowers, she was augmented in the Red Room, a Soviet training facility, to increase her strength and reduce her aging. She has training in combat and espionage, and wields bracelets that fire electric shocks and project wires she uses to traverse skyscrapers.

 

Black Widow stories often explore her struggle to define her own identity as a spy and the trauma she endured from her life of training in the Red Room. Early stories emphasized her Soviet origin, portraying her superiors as evil and contrasting her with more noble American superheroes. Black Widow's status as a leading female character and femme fatale has influenced her portrayal.

 

Black Widow has been adapted into a variety of other media, including film, animated series, and video games. A version of the character was portrayed by Scarlett Johansson in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) franchise from her first appearance in Iron Man 2 (2010) to her final one in Black Widow (2021). Johansson's portrayal brought increased attention to the character and influenced Black Widow's depiction in comics.

 

1960s

 

A comic book cover depicting Iron Man fighting the Crimson Dynamo. Black Widow stands behind the Crimson Dynamo wearing a fur coat. A caption beside her reads "Introducing: the gorgeous new menace of... the Black Widow!"

 

Black Widow first appeared in Tales of Suspense #52 (1964) as an opponent of Iron Man. She was designed by artist Don Heck for a story plotted by Stan Lee and written by Don Rico under the pseudonym N. Korok. The character was portrayed as a seductress who was spying on Tony Stark for the Soviet government, making her one of several Soviet villains who faced Iron Man in the 1960s. She was infatuated with Tony Stark's looks and wealth and easily distracted by jewelry. Comics historian Brian Cronin has suggested that her name was a reference to Natasha Fatale from The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle and Friends.

 

Black Widow first took the role of a supervillain in Tales of Suspense #64 (1965) after the Soviet government gave her a costume and equipment when they forced her to continue working for them. Her first costume took the form of a blue bodysuit made primarily of fishnet-style webbing, a cape, and a mask designed to resemble the one used by Hawkeye. With the costume came her first use of tactical equipment, including gloves that let her adhere to walls and the weaponized bracelets that later became her primary weapon. She was the villain in five Iron Man stories, all within a span of twelve issues.

 

Black Widow next appeared as the villain in Avengers #29–30 (1966), where she manipulated Hawkeye, Power Man, and Swordsman into doing her bidding. At the end of the story, she reformed and allied with the Avengers, as her love for Hawkeye motivated her to switch sides after recovering from brainwashing by the Soviet government. This made her one of several Marvel Comics villains who become good by defecting from the Soviet Union to the United States, symbolizing a moral preference for American individualism over Soviet communism.

 

Black Widow's design underwent various changes as she appeared in the following issues of Avengers. The character's backstory was expanded in Avengers #43 (1967), when she discovered that the secret identity of the Red Guardian was her husband Alexei, who had been presumed dead. This story explained that it was because of his supposed death that she trained to be a spy. After her redemption, Black Widow became associated with the fictional intelligence agency S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

1970s

 

Black Widow went one year without being in any new comic books until she appeared in Avengers #76 (1970) to end her relationship with Hawkeye (then named Goliath), effectively making her an independent character. She then underwent a full redesign in The Amazing Spider-Man #86 (1970), where she was given the black costume and long red hair that became identified with her character.

 

John Romita Sr. designed the costume, basing it on the 1940s Miss Fury comic strip. Marvel followed this the same year with a series of Black Widow stories published in Amazing Adventures, which also published stories about the Inhumans. Marvel's first series to feature stories led by a female superhero, it portrayed Black Widow as a wealthy jet setter who doubled as a crime-fighter.

 

The first issues, written by Gary Friedrich and illustrated by Gene Colan, were about political issues. Writers Roy Thomas and then Gerry Conway moved it away from politics in favor of melodrama, developing the relationship between Black Widow and her father figure Ivan Petrovich. Amazing Adventures ran for eight issues before Black Widow was removed from the comic book so the Inhumans could have a standalone series.

 

As the writer for Daredevil, Conway introduced Black Widow as a supporting character and established a romance between her and Daredevil as "a way to re-energize the title". She joined the series in Daredevil #81 (1971). Colan illustrated the series with drawings of Black Widow that emphasized her acrobatics and long red hair. Conway credited Colan with creating the "first empowered sexy babe" in comics. This run allowed for deeper characterization for Black Widow, and she was given a last name, Romanoff, in issue #82 (1971).

 

Her story line in the series saw her framed for killing a supervillain, with Daredevil's friend Foggy Nelson leading the prosecution. Conway then moved the setting to San Francisco, and their relationship became the main focus of the series. The pairing was one Marvel had to handle carefully given potential backlash to an unmarried couple living together, having them live on separate floors and having Ivan live with them. Responding to criticism that his treatment of Black Widow was sexist, Conway reworked her role beginning in Daredevil #91 (1972), having her stand up for herself when she felt neglected by Daredevil. The series was retitled Daredevil and the Black Widow in the following issue.

 

Steve Gerber became the writer for Daredevil with issue #97 (1972), and he moved the focus away from Black Widow back to Daredevil's superhero activity in response to weak sales. Her name was dropped from the title after issue #107 (1973). She appeared in Avengers #111–112 (1973), but left the team almost immediately as she wished to return to Daredevil.

 

Tony Isabella became the writer for Daredevil with issue #118, and feeling that the relationship dynamic between Daredevil and Black Widow harmed both characters, he set out to split them apart. She departed from the series in issue #124 (1975), with the character leaving by saying that she felt overshadowed by Daredevil and that he robbed her of her independence.

 

When Isabella began writing The Champions, he included Black Widow as a member. Originally intended to be a duo of Iceman and Angel, editor Len Wein mandated several changes to The Champions, including the requirement of a female character. Besides his experience writing for Black Widow, Isabella used her in hope that continuing to work with her would prevent another writer from reuniting her with Daredevil.

 

The seventh issue of The Champions, "The Man Who Created the Black Widow", focused on Black Widow's backstory and introduced the villain Yuri Bezukhov, the son of Ivan Petrovich. Isabella wanted to continue this story by revealing Ivan to be Black Widow's biological father, but he left Marvel Comics after completing the issue. The Champions ended after 16 issues, and Black Widow was returned to Avengers in issue #173 (1978) during the "Korvac Saga". She returned to Daredevil as a supporting character in issues #155–165 (1978–1980).[26]

 

1980s

 

Black Widow was less prominent in the 1980s. She made an appearance in the anthology book Bizarre Adventures #25 (1981), as one of the superheroines leading a story written by Ralph Macchio and illustrated by Paul Gulacy under the issue's "Lethal Ladies" theme. The story followed Black Widow as she infiltrated a Soviet arms depot in South Africa led by her former instructor. Macchio moved away from elements he felt were reminiscent of James Bond, instead looking to the works of John le Carré for inspiration so readers "really didn't know who were the good guys and the bad guys".

 

Black Widow made another return to Daredevil beginning in issue #187 (1982), written by Frank Miller. She was redesigned during Miller's run, giving her a more casual and stronger appearance with a gray leotard and shorter hair. She also appeared in the shared books Marvel Two-in-One and Marvel Team-Up.

 

The anthology book Marvel Fanfare, issues #10–13 (1983–1984) featured Black Widow in her next solo story. Written by Macchio and illustrated by George Pérez with other artists, this story had her pursue Ivan on behalf of S.H.I.E.L.D. before discovering that he had been brainwashed. Macchio and Pérez had begun working on the story in 1978, but its intended publication was cancelled twice, in Marvel Premiere and then Marvel Spotlight. Macchio made it explicit in this run that Black Widow killed adversaries when necessary.

 

1990s

 

Black Widow appeared in three entries of the Marvel Graphic Novel line in the 1990s. Black Widow: The Coldest War (1990) is the 61st entry in the series, featuring Black Widow as she is tricked into believing that her husband is alive and is forced to work for the Soviet Union to save him. Punisher/Black Widow: Spinning Doomsday's Web (1992) is the 74th entry in the series and features Black Widow working with the Punisher to defeat Malum.

 

Daredevil/Black Widow: Abattoir (1993) is the 75th and final entry in the series, featuring Black Widow and Daredevil as they investigate the murders of telepaths. She then starred in separate graphic novel, Fury/Black Widow: Death Duty (1995). Although she shares the title with Nick Fury, he only briefly appears in the book, and she instead teams with Night Raven in his first appearance in Marvel's mainline continuity.

 

Black Widow returned to her black jumpsuit in the 1990s and began working alongside Iron Man during the run of writer John Byrne and artist Paul Ryan, beginning in Iron Man #269 (1991). She again became a member of the Avengers with its new roster in Avengers #343 (1992). This led to her becoming the leader of the Avengers for a period of time. Her association with the Avengers increased her prominence among Marvel superheroes, allowing for appearances in Captain America and Force Works.

 

Black Widow returned to Daredevil in issue #362 (1997), which had her become more vengeful as she responded to the Onslaught event that caused the apparent deaths of her allies in the Avengers. She reappeared in the new volume of the Avengers, but only infrequently as a guest character. Black Widow then starred in a three-issue arc, "The Fire Next Time", by writer Scott Lobdell and penciller Randy Green, in Journey into Mystery #517–519 (1998). At the same time, writer Kevin Smith had her return to Daredevil during the first storyline of its second volume. Black Widow's Marvel Fanfare story was reprinted as a single volume in 1999, titled Black Widow: Web of Intrigue.

 

A new character, Yelena Belova, took the moniker Black Widow beginning in Inhumans #5 (1999). The two Black Widows came into conflict in the limited series Black Widow published the same year, which was written by Devin Grayson and illustrated by J. G. Jones, running for three issues. The series was part of the Marvel Knights imprint and encompassed a single story, "The Itsy-Bitsy Spider". This was the first time a comic book series featured Black Widow as its sole main character; the only other title to do this was her standalone 1990 graphic novel.

 

2000s

 

Grayson wrote a second three-issue Black Widow miniseries featuring the Natasha and Yelena Black Widows in 2001, alongside co-writer Greg Rucka and artist Scott Hampton. Black Widow returned to Daredevil in its "The Widow" storyline (2004) by writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Alex Maleev. Richard K. Morgan wrote Black Widow: Homecoming in 2004 with Bill Sienkiewicz and Goran Parlov, simplifying Black Widow's backstory into a consistent series of events.

 

The series featured a more violent Black Widow and ran for six issues. Morgan then wrote another six-issue series, Black Widow: The Things They Say About Her, in 2006 with Sienkiewicz and Sean Phillips. This continued from the previous series and followed Black Widow as she went on the run from S.H.I.E.L.D. An alternate version of Black Widow was created for the Ultimate Universe in the 2000s, where she is a member of the Ultimates.

 

Black Widow: Deadly Origin ran in 2009–2010, written by Paul Cornell and illustrated by Tom Raney and John Paul Leon. The series followed Black Widow's history through flashbacks from different points in her life. The reimaginings of her earlier adventures had her wearing more modest costumes relative to her original appearances.

 

2010s

 

Black Widow became more widely known to the public after the character was adapted to film in Iron Man 2 (2010). The film's emphasis on her as a spy instead of a superhero influenced how she was portrayed in comics over the following years. With the character's popularity came additional publications, such as Black Widow and the Marvel Girls (2010), which was created by Salvador Espin, Veronica Gandini, Takeshi Miyazawa, and Paul Tobin.

 

Black Widow received a new volume, beginning with the "Name of the Rose" (2010) story arc. It was written by Marjorie Liu and illustrated by Daniel Acuña, the latter creating art influenced by film noir. The series was then transferred to writer Duane Swierczynski and artist Manuel Garcia for the "Kiss and Kill" story arc. Jim McCann wrote the Widowmaker limited series in 2010 with artist David López. The series was a crossover between Black Widow and the ongoing Hawkeye & Mockingbird series. Black Widow also appeared as a main character in Secret Avengers.

 

A new Black Widow series was published under the Marvel Now! branding in 2014, created by Nathan Edmondson and Phil Noto. This series returned to Grayson's characterization of Black Widow as more introspective than action-oriented. It was the longest running Black Widow series with 20 issues, ending in 2015 with the Secret Wars event. Black Widow: Forever Red, a young adult novel featuring the Marvel Cinematic Universe version of Black Widow, was written by Margaret Stohl and released in 2015.

 

The next volume of Black Widow was introduced in 2016, written by Mark Waid and illustrated by Chris Samnee. These stories followed the lead of the cinematic version, exploring her work with S.H.I.E.L.D. and her experiences in the Red Room. Waid's series ran for twelve issues. Horror writers Jen and Sylvia Soska wrote a Black Widow miniseries in 2019 with artist Flaviano, and Jody Houser wrote the five issue series Web of Black Widow the same year, with Stephen Mooney as its artist.

 

2020s

 

Ralph Macchio joined artist Simon Buonfantino in a return to Black Widow with Black Widow: Widow's Sting in 2020. The one-shot comic was written as a more traditional spy drama, using many of the genre's common tropes. Kelly Thompson began writing a Black Widow series the same year, with Elena Casagrande as the volume's artist. The series was split into three-story arcs: "The Ties that Bind" introduced a brainwashed Black Widow who believed she lived a domestic life as a mother,

 

"I Am the Black Widow" continued the story with her memory returned and a new team of sidekicks and partners fighting alongside her, and "Die by the Blade" concluded the 15-issue series with Black Widow and her team fighting a human-trafficking ring.

 

Black Widow's character underwent a major redesign in Venom #26 (2023) when she became the host of a symbiote. She was given a new costume designed by CAFU, based on the appearance of Venom. The symbiote version of Black Widow made appearances in Thunderbolts by Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing, and Geraldo Borges, and then in Black Widow & Hawkeye by writer Stephanie Phillips and artist Paolo Villaneli. As a symbiote host, Black Widow became a major character in the "Venom War" storyline. Her role in the story was introduced in the one shot Black Widow: Venomous, written by Erica Schultz and illustrated by Luciano Vecchio. She also appeared in a three-issue limited series, Venom War: Venomous, in late 2024, also created by Schultz and Vecchio.

 

Character Evolution

 

It is rumored that Black Widow is somehow related to the last ruling czars of Russia, but this has yet to be proven. Not much is known about Black Widow's history prior to World War II other than she was born as Natalia Romanova in Stalingrad, Russia to unknown parents. Nazis set fire to the building that Natasha and her parents were living in and her mother threw Natasha out of the window into the arms of a Russian soldier named Ivan Petrovitch, who was serving in the army at the time. Ivan took care of Natasha while she was growing up and later became her chauffeur.

 

After a youth spent traveling through war-torn Europe with Ivan and his company of troops, Natasha was recruited by the Red Room. Her masters there arranged a marriage with the hero pilot Alexei Shostakov, and soon with the help of Red Room brainwashing, Natasha became convinced she was an ordinary Russian housewife. When Alexei was (seemingly) killed, Natasha found she had a deep-rooted desire to serve her country and demanded the government let her serve in his place. She became the KGB's top agent.

 

Major Story Arcs

 

Young Natasha

 

For a while, Black Widow was trained and helped by Wolverine, who temporarily left his violent ways for her and cared very much about her well-being. Ivan also protected Natasha, until in 1941, when she was kidnapped by the Nazi Baron Strucker and was made an assassin for the Hand. However, she was taken back (against her will) by Ivan, Captain America, and Wolverine.

 

When Wolverine came back to America, Black Widow saved him from Hydra assassins and encountered him again when Ben Grimm and Carol Danvers stole the Red Storm project from Russia. She pursued them but was ordered to abort the mission. During this time, Widow fell in love with a somewhat brainwashed Bucky Barnes.

 

Agent of the USSR

 

One of her assignments was to infiltrate Stark Industries with her partner Boris Turgenov in the assassination of Anton Vanko. The Black Widow, however, had her plans foiled by Iron Man. Natasha was attracted to Tony Stark and decided to try and distract him so that her partner could destroy Stark’s plants. Soon after her partner Boris Turgenov and enemy, Anton Vanko died, Natasha decided to stay in America and act as an undercover spy in order to regain the favor of the K.G.B.

 

She faked sympathy in Tony Stark in order to steal his anti-gravity device. Natasha would be successful in stealing the device and used it to cause destruction. Eventually, Iron Man would be able to destroy his anti-gravity device but was unable to apprehend Natasha.

 

Hawkeye

 

Natasha would soon run into Hawkeye, who was a wanted man by mistake. She would sometimes use Hawkeye as he was attracted to her, and he would help her in some of her missions. Natasha was able to trick Hawkeye into stealing plans from Tony Stark. Hawkeye agreed to her plan and would eventually run into Iron Man. The two fought each other while Natasha watched from far away. However, one of Hawkeye’s arrows was reflected by Iron Man and it flew off and hit Natasha, knocking her unconscious.

 

After she woke up, the K.G.B. gave her orders to stop attacking Stark Industries and gave her a new target, the Williams Innovations. Natasha would again convince Hawkeye somehow into attacking the company. However, Hawkeye would encounter Spider-Man, who convinced him that he was doing the wrong thing. However, Natasha would somehow convince Hawkeye again into stealing the Stark plans again. While Hawkeye was on the mission, the K.G.B. came and kidnapped Natasha, bringing her back to Russia.

 

They designed a new costume for Natasha and new equipment. Natasha then returned to join Hawkeye in a battle against Iron Man. However, Iron Man would defeat them when he shocks Natasha with an electrical blast.

 

However, her attraction towards Hawkeye questioned her loyalty to Russia. Hawkeye refused to work with Black Widow and joined the Avengers. The K.G.B. once again kidnapped Natasha and brainwashed her into serving them again. They ordered her to attack the Avengers, but she freed herself from their brainwashing and reunited with Hawkeye. She became an ally of the Avengers, aiding them in many missions. However, she was not a full-time member as she did not respect the Avenger’s oath of non-killing.

 

Natasha later decided to join SHIELD to be their double agent and operative against the K.G.B. During a mission for S.H.I.E.L.D., Natasha discovered that Alexei Shostakov was in fact still alive and had become the Red Guardian. She and the Avengers fought Red Guardian and he died in battle. Distraught, she declined the Avengers' offer to make her an official member and abandoned her Black Widow alias for a while.

 

Relationship with Daredevil

 

Black Widow's relationship with Hawkeye ended when Natasha resumed her identity as the Black Widow. She told him that she wanted to pursue a solo career and had to break it off with him. She became an all-new Black Widow, changing her costume into an all-black color. She became a vigilante and fought against common criminals in New York. Eventually, Natasha would be reunited with Ivan when he comes to America, Ivan served as Natasha’s chauffeur and would occasionally give her advice. While working in New York, Natasha would encounter Daredevil. The two quickly teamed up and eventually developed a romantic relationship.

 

Natasha’s relationship with Foggy Nelson, Matt's partner, was never good, as he was brainwashed into prosecuting Natasha for the murder of the Scorpion. Natasha never forgave Foggy for that incident, even though she was proven innocent. Eventually, Matt and Natasha’s relationship would go so far to the point where Matt broke up with Karen Page. The new couple decided to move to San Francisco to start a new life there. They continued their duo-vigilante careers in the streets of San Francisco.

 

Natasha would pursue a career outside of crime-fighting and would try to become a fashion designer. However, she failed in this endeavor. This did not help her relationship with Matt, which had become a bit shaky. Natasha and Daredevil would later aid the Avengers in a battle against Magneto, and the two were offered memberships to the Avengers which they accepted.

 

However, Natasha soon realized that she was not a comfortable fit for a team while fighting the Lion God. Natasha quit the Avengers and reconciled with Matt. They continued their relationship for quite some time, but eventually, Natasha would break up with Matt because she felt he did not treat her equally on the battlefield. She would remain friends with Matt and continue to help him on occasion.

 

The Champions

 

She remained on the West Coast and briefly joined and led the Champions of Los Angeles, all the while having a romantic relationship with Hercules. The group was funded by Angel and achieved moderate success, but was eventually broken off due to bankruptcy. Shortly after the Champions had disbanded, Natasha and Hercules answered a summons from their former team the Avengers, and aided them in battling the nigh-omnipotent man-god Michael Korvac. Hercules and the Black Widow split up a short time later and Natasha went solo for a while.

 

Natasha was still widely known by the criminal underworld as one of Daredevil’s lovers. With this knowledge, Bullseye kidnapped Natasha, wanting to use her as bait to lure Daredevil into a trap. Natasha was able to free herself and aided Daredevil in defeating Bullseye. Later, an enemy of Natasha’s named Damon Dran captured Ivan in order to lure Black Widow into his trap. He had an army of female combatants. Damon Dran wanted to send a fake Black Widow to assassinate Nick Fury. Natasha defeated Dran's agents and told Fury about the attempted assassination saving Ivan before Dran's island was bombed by S.H.I.E.L.D.

 

Later, when The Hand wanted to steal and revive the body of Kirigi - a dead master warrior - Black Widow tried to thwart their plans but they poisoned her and she died, only to be restored to life again by Stone of the Chaste. After witnessing a strange interaction between Matt and his fiancee Heather Glenn, out of concern for Matt's mental health, Natasha visited Foggy Nelson.

 

He told Natasha that Matt was very depressed following the death of Elektra, but also alleged that Matt had ruined his fiancee Heather Glenn's career to force her to agree to marry him. The two decided to write forged notes to both Matt and Heather to make them break up (the truth of Heather and Matt's dispute was that Matt stopped Heather's business life after her company was corrupted by Kingpin's cohorts).

 

Natasha then teamed up with Daredevil to stop the Hand who were attempting to revive Elektra to serve as their new champion. During the battle, a desperate Daredevil himself attempts to revive Elektra's corpse but thinks his attempt has failed, and he leaves with Black Widow. Natasha however, knew that Elektra had been successfully revived, but she kept this information from Daredevil for his own good.

 

Heather Glenn was so upset by the breakup that she committed suicide. This made Natasha partly responsible for her death. Russian agents duped Natasha into doing their dirty work by building a model of Alexei Shostakov called a Life Model Decoy (LMD). They threatened to kill "Alexei" if she did not participate in their plans. When Natasha got what they needed, they revealed the truth and tried to kill her but she defeated them with Ivan’s help.

 

Natasha's brain was then reprogrammed into an agent called "Oktober" launching missiles to ignite World War III. Natasha was successful in launching the missiles. Iron Man, however, stopped the missiles from detonating and helped her capture the K.G.B. agent responsible for the reprogramming.

 

Joining the Avengers

 

Natasha returned to the Avengers and even though Black Knight was the leader on the field, she was leader in managing the team's plans. During this time, she was attracted to Captain America, but she ended up with Iron Man. Under her leadership of the team, they were all apparently killed in battle by Onslaught. She attempted to recruit new heroes, but failed and threatened legal action against her from Mary Stark Foundation and let go.

 

After Onslaught

 

Natasha believed herself to be the last Avenger and so operated alone, hunting down the Avengers' enemies Grey Gargoyle and the Masters Of Evil. She came across Daredevil again who was concerned with her mental state, but this only complicated his life because he was rebuilding his relationship with Karen Page.

 

Natasha wanted to reconcile their relationship, but she understood that Karen and Matt were trying to rebuild theirs, so left them their space. She even offered to help Karen when Mr. Fear framed her for murder. Later when the hero team the Thunderbolts were revealed to be the Masters of Evil in disguise, Natasha convinced them that other criminals had turned a new leaf and they managed to become real heroes.

 

Heroes Return

 

The Avengers returned from the alternate Universe they had been shunted off to and Natasha would sometimes help on their missions, though she felt she was responsible for their break up. Natasha worked for S.H.I.E.L.D. and shut down Freedom's Light, a terrorist group, and asked Iron Man's help in her infiltration of a forced-labor camp run by The Mandarin. Natasha then battled a man called Vindiktor, who claimed that he had diaries from her deceased mother and revealed that he was her brother. He died before he could confirm this, however.

 

When Daredevil believed that baby Karen was the Anti-Christ, Natasha protected the baby but was severely injured. In the end, Karen Page died protecting the child. Natasha revealed that she still loved Matt, though they were too far apart to become a couple again.

 

A Second Black Widow

 

Natasha came into competition with another Black Widow named Yelena Belova. Yelena was also trained in the “Red Room” and became obsessed with being the only Black Widow. They encountered each other on a mission where while attempting to retrieve the Endless Fury bioweapon. The two would eventually fight, afterward, Natasha and Yelena traded appearances in order for Yelena to realize that her superiors did not care if she died or lived. Despite the other Black Widow, Natasha remains as one of the greatest S.H.I.E.L.D. agents alive.

 

Civil War

 

After the incident involving the New Warriors in Stamford, Natasha was a supporter of the Superhuman Registration Act and worked with Iron Man’s group to capture rogue Super Heroes. After the death of Captain America, Natasha was assigned to transport Captain America’s shield. However, in doing so, she was attacked by Bucky Barnes. Bucky knocked Natasha unconscious and stole the shield.

 

It was revealed that Natasha and Bucky had a romantic relationship back when she was still training to become an operative. Shortly after this, Natasha was given a dull SHIELD job training agents by some angry officials. She was so angry she became a violent and resentful teacher. Natasha was overjoyed when Tony Stark took her out of this job so she could join the Avengers. While working for them she battled Ultron, alien symbiotes, and Doctor Doom.

 

She and the Falcon rescued Bucky from the Red Skull and brought him to S.H.I.E.L.D. There Bucky becomes the new Captain America, and she later helps him stop the Red Skull's plan to control America, in the process saving S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Sharon Carter. Natasha then started to date James again. She was later ordered by S.H.I.E.L.D. to help capture Hercules, but let him go because of her respect for the Greek god.

 

Secret Invasion

 

Natasha joined the Mighty Avengers as they traveled to the Savage Land to take a look at a crashed Skrull ship and together with the New Avengers, fought off a group of Skrulls that looked like different superheroes dressed in their old costumes. She and the Avengers later joined the final Skrull battle in Central Park. After this, she continued to date Captain America (James Barnes) and continued to be his partner, but no longer with the Mighty Avengers or with S.H.I.E.L.D. after it was shut down by Norman Osborn.

 

Dark Reign

 

Natasha was revealed to have been posing as Yelena Belova on Norman Osborn's Thunderbolts team, secretly working for Nick Fury. She helps Songbird escape the Thunderbolts and reunite with former teammates Fixer and Abner Jenkins. Wolverine entrusted Black Widow with what remained of the Muramasa Blade. She participated in his plan to be prepared for attacks by Weapon X members and left the sword exactly where Wolverine wanted it (Wolverine then used the sword to kill Omega Red).

 

Solo Again

 

After helping Maria Hill and Pepper Potts save Tony Stark's life, the Black Widow embarks on a new solo career. She immediately finds herself under attack from a hidden foe who uses robot minions to carry out an operation to steal a secret data storage chip she has implanted under her skin. Isolated from her friends and allies, Natasha has to rely on her wits and physical toughness to figure out the aims and identity of her foe and bring his cruel vendetta to an end. It turns out that Imus Champion had discovered the existence of the chip and wanted to blackmail Black Widow with it and provoke her into attacking and killing him so he can transplant his mind into a new body.

 

Black Widow tracks down Imus and transmits a virus with the secret intel data so that all computers that have received it will be destroyed. In the final fight with Imus, Natasha smashes the brain of Ivan that Imus had kept with him, but refuses to kill him and instead deletes his mind transfer data.

 

Widowmaker

 

Shortly after this, in the Widowmaker story arc, Natasha is framed in a plot targeting global spies. She is accused of assassinating US senator Whit Crane. The senator's son, Nick, is captured by a rival spy Fatale, who wants to know his source for implicating Natasha. Natasha steals Nick away from her and takes him to a secret CIA base to scare him into giving her his source instead.

 

The plan backfires when both of them are attacked. Natasha and Nick escape, but while in Poland they are attacked by Fantasma and Crimson Dynamo. Natasha takes down Crimson Dynamo, but then Fatale shows up and knocks out Fantasma. Fatale reveals that she was hired to kill Whit Crane but found he had already taken his own life and she needed to use Nick to track down who had actually paid for the hit. Nick gives them the name of a source 'Sadko' (not his true source of info), but when they arrive it's a trap wired with explosives and the two spies are forced to escape.

 

The conspiracy against spies turns out to be wider and Natasha encounters Mockingbird and Hawkeye on the same trail in Russia where they find many trainee spies and a SHIELD agent have been killed. Perun, Crimson Dynamo, Fantasma, and Sputnik show up to apprehend Hawkeye, believing him to be the Ronin behind the spy deaths. Discovering that this is merely a diversion, the three heroes and Dominic Fortune alert the true target - an ambassador in St Petersburg, Russia.

 

They next travel to Japan. Dominic and Mockingbird discover an amassing battle force on the Russian coast near the northern Japanese islands, while Natasha and Hawkeye track down 'the Madame' - an old Ninja working with the new Ronin to bring about this Russian attack. The four heroes meet up on the disputed island 'Iturup' where they meet the Ronin, who is revealed as Alexi Shostakov.

 

His plan was to kill off-world intelligence operatives leaving countries blind while he made his attack, and bring the four heroes to him so he could kill them. Shostakov sets off the volcano on the island, but Natasha and the others use the lava to defeat his forces. He is defeated when Natasha shows Fantasma his true plan and Fantasma then hypnotizes him into seeing Natasha's death, allowing the real Natasha to take him down.

 

The Longest Winter

 

Natasha and Bucky were looking for a sleeper agent of the Zephyr project, in a stasis container at a Vegas casino and when they got there they realized the agent had been awakened. They have a briefing in the morning with Jasper Sitwell who tells them about a former KGB agent named Nico Stanovich, who went into hiding and is perhaps the handler of the awoken sleeper agent. Bucky and Natasha head to Minnesota where they meet another former KGB agent of the same squad named Mikel Bulgakov.

 

They interrogate Bulgakov until he gives them the little info he knows about the sleepers' activation codes which he sold to some unknown buyers and the next sleeper. Bucky and Natasha go to the warehouse location and dispatch the agents in there. They get assaulted by a genetically modified gorilla with a chain gun and after a brief battle, the gorilla flies off. They head back for another briefing and find the activated sleeper, while Nick Fury gives them some intel on an infiltration mission at an auction.

 

Bucky starts a raid and him and Nat defeat the goons there and get more info on the buyer of the codes who also happened to buy a doom bot. They narrow down the possible people who want to use these agents and bot to start a war between the U.S. and Latveria to Lucia Von Bardas.

 

In order to get help and prevent a war, Bucky and Natasha infiltrate Dr. Doom's fortress who attacks them in confusion and dispatches Widow quickly. While Bucky and Dr. Doom deal with the Doombot and Arkady, Natasha is sent to investigate a simian research facility and she realizes the people there had left just a few hours ago.

 

Widow along with Dr. Doom and Winter Soldier, infiltrate Doom's missile silo where Lucia is at. While Bucky runs off to fight Dimitri, Natasha fights the gorilla soldiers and watches as Doom dismantles Von Bardas. She informs Bucky of some secret intel that Fury left behind about the code buyer.

 

Broken Arrow

 

Natasha is helping Bucky investigate and deal with the final sleeper agent. Novokov ends up managing to separate Widow from Bucky as she was his intended target.

 

Widow Hunt

 

Natasha is captured by Novokov and is reprogrammed back to her old ways. She is undercover as a ballet dancer and recaptured by Barnes and S.H.I.E.L.D. They manage to undo her first layer of programming but switches back to her old self again as she attacks an agent and kills him and takes his weapon. She kills more soldiers and aims at Fury, who puts up a fight. Natasha lines up the kill shot but the shot is blocked by Sitwell who ends up being killed by the storm of bullets. Natasha leaves and rejoins Novokov once more.

 

Leo and Widow are at a bomb site when Bucky invades. He manages to fight off both of them and defeat Novokov when S.H.I.E.L.D arrives. Leo attempts to use Natasha as a hostage but they are separated due to Hawkeye while Bucky shoots Leo. S.H.I.E.L.D manages to reconnect all of Widow's memories up until current day except for her memory of Bucky. Bucky is heartbroken by this outcome but finds solace that at least Natasha doesn't have to suffer anymore.

 

San Francisco

 

After her return, Natasha was kidnapped by an evil organization made up of some of Marvel's most villainous foes. For the next couple months she and a regular civilian named James were brainwashed and reprogrammed. The organization also used their DNA to create their clone son named Stevie. When Natasha woke, she believed herself to be a civilian, the wife of James, and the mother of Stevie. They lived like a normal family and no one had known that Natasha was gone until Clint noticed as a pedestrian on T.V. one day.

 

He teamed up with Bucky and the two went to investigate. On their watch, they concluded that Natasha's behavior was strange. Clint went in and introduced himself to more and when he reported back to Bucky, said that she seemed happy and wasn't sure what to do. Then, they learned that Yelena was undercover there in hopes to save Natasha.

 

The three partnered up and eventually saved Natasha, fighting the organization who had done this to her in the process. Natasha was distraught by all of this and, wanting the best for Stevie and James, had them live far away from her, without knowing her at all to protect them.

 

Natasha then partnered up with Yelena, Lucy Nguyen, Anya Corazon, and Kate Bishop to take down an evil group in San Fransisco before she learned that James and Stevie were in danger. She decided to go save them. Learning that, Bucky returned to San Fransisco and questioned her on why she looked for them. When she asked him about Stevie, Bucky reassured her that he was okay.

 

Then, Natasha was tipped off about a situation brewing, and she and her team - along with Bucky and Clint - decided to investigate. They went to a dance where Natasha and Bucky maintained their covers by dancing and the rest got into position. When Anya, Lucy, and Clint stopped responding to their comms, Natasha and Yelena investigated. Natasha saw that Clint was unconcious and realized that Bucky should've joined them by now. She was then faced with someone she used to know in Madripoor - someone she feared, named The Living Blade.

 

A flashback revealed that he had come after her and nearly killed her while she was on a mission in Madripoor. He injured her greatly and then left her alive, saying he'd be back. Facing him again in the present day, Natasha fought him off and told Yelena to run. Living Blade quickly outmatches Natasha before chopping her right arm off, being stopped by Hawkeye before he could kill her. Saving all those captured to be sold off by The Host, Nat and Clint find "The Starfish" a teen who can heal, who repays Widow by regenerating her arm back in place.

 

Natasha continues on and finds a tortured Apogee, who she frees as one-time pass. She finds the Living Blade defeating Yelena in battle, and in the ensuing rematch Natasha gets the upper hand. Surrounded by her friends and allies, Natasha spares Living Blade's life as he did her back in Madripoor. Realizing he is outmatched, her acquiesces.

 

Powers and Abilities

 

Natasha has taken a different version of the Super-Soldier Serum. This gave her physical abilities much like Captain America, though not as great as his. She possesses peak-level physiology, making her as strong, agile, fast, and durable as a female human can possibly be without being classified as superhuman. This also extends to her senses and immune system, which are similarly heightened to peak human level.

 

From a young age, Natasha was trained to become a martial artist the martial arts she knows are karate, judo, kenpo, jujutsu, ninjutsu, aikido, savate, Muay Thai, Sambo, and multiple styles of kung fu sharpshooter and acrobat, and has become a master of all of these skills. She has since become one of the top espionage operatives in the world. Natasha has also proven herself to be one of the best information gatherers in the Marvel Universe.

 

She is fluent in many different languages and is an expert computer programmer and hacker. She is an accomplished battle strategist and field commander, and has been the leader of the Avengers and even SHIELD on one occasion.

 

In the 2004 Black Widow mini-series, Natasha's background was retconned. She was subjected to biotechnological and psycho-technological enhancement. This answers the question as to why Natasha is still so youthful despite being born prior to World War II.

 

Paraphernalia

 

Despite its skin-tight appearance, the black catsuit that Natasha wears is made of a high-tech synthetic fabric that is resistant to high temperatures and even small-arms fire. It is further enhanced with tiny suction cups that allow her to cling to walls and even ceilings, much like her black widow spider namesake. She carries state-of-the-art versions of gear used by top modern spies, including stunners, tear-gas, a cable and a transmitter.

 

Natasha can quickly travel across rooftops and from building to building with a grappling hook and a retractable line called the Widow's Line. She also carries various types of weapons, ranging from melee to long distance. Her primary weapon is the 'Widow's Bite,' which is delivered via her wrist cartridges. They emit a potent electrical blast with a maximum power of around 30,000 volts.

 

⚡ Happy 🎯 Heroclix 💫 Friday! 👽

_____________________________

 

A year of the shows and performers of the Bijou Planks Theater.

 

Secret Identity: Natasha Romanoff

 

Publisher: Marvel

 

First appearance: Tales of Suspense #52 (April 1964)

 

Created by: Stan Lee (editor/plotter)

Don Rico (writer)

Don Heck (artist)

 

URF! HeroClix did Natasha no favors with this terrible sculpt and paint. We're getting close to the end of the HeroClix figures and now we're coming back to some of the ones we skipped over.

 

Black Widow has been seen in:

 

Labor Day 2018!

www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/29522109657/

 

In action in the Paprihaven story such as issue 1482!

www.flickr.com/photos/paprihaven/31804108157/

In France, the Decadent Movement could not withstand the loss of its leading figures. Many of those associated with the Decadent Movement became symbolists after initially associating freely with decadents. Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé were among those, though both had been associated with Baju's Le Décadent for a time.Others kept a foot in each camp. Albert Aurier wrote decadent pieces for Le Décadent and also wrote symbolist poetry and art criticism.Decadent writer Rachilde was staunchly opposed to a symbolist take over of Le Décadent even though her own one-act drama The Crystal Spider is almost certainly a symbolist work.[31] Others, once strong voices for decadence, abandoned the movement altogether. Joris-Karl Huysmans grew to consider Against Nature as the starting point on his journey into Roman Catholic symbolist work and the acceptance of hope.[7] Anatole Baju, once the self-appointed school-master of French decadence, came to think of the movement as naive and half-hearted, willing to tinker and play with social realities, but not to utterly destroy them. He left decadence for anarchy? Decadence, in contrast, actually belittles nature in the name of artistry. In Huysmans’ Against Nature, for instance, the main character Des Esseintes says of nature: “There is not one of her inventions, no matter how subtle or imposing it may be, which human genius cannot create . . . There can be no doubt about it: this eternal, driveling, old woman is no longer admired by true artists, and the moment has come to replace her by artifice.The Decadent Movement was a late 19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality. The visual artist Félicien Rops's body of work and Joris-Karl Huysmans's novel Against Nature (1884) are considered the prime examples of the decadent movement it first flourished in France and then spread throughout Europe and to the United States.The movement was characterized by self-disgust, sickness at the world, general skepticism, delighting in perversion, and employing crude humor and a belief in the superiority of human creativity over logic and the natural world.The concept of decadence dates from the eighteenth century, especially from the writings of Montesquieu, the Enlightenment philosopher who suggested that the decline (décadence) of the Roman Empire was in large part due to their moral decay and loss of cultural standards.When Latin scholar Désiré Nisard turned toward French literature, he compared Victor Hugo and Romanticism in general to the Roman decadence, men sacrificing their craft and their cultural values for the sake of pleasure. The trends that he identified, such an interest in description, a lack of adherence to the conventional rules of literature and art, and a love for extravagant language were the seeds of the Decadent Movement.The first major development in French decadence would come when writers Théophile Gautier and Charles Baudelaire used the word proudly, to represent a rejection of what they considered banal "progress." Baudelaire referred to himself as decadent in his 1857 edition of Les Fleurs du Mal and exalted the Roman decline as a model for modern poets to express their passion. He would later use the term decadence to include the subversion of traditional categories in pursuit of full, sensual expression. In his lengthy introduction to Baudelaire in the front of the 1868 Les Fleurs du Mal, Gautier at first rejects the application of the term decadent, as meant by the critic, but then works his way to an admission of decadence on Baudelaire's own terms: a preference for what is beautiful and what is exotic, an ease with surrendering to fantasy, and a maturity of skill with manipulating language.Though he was Belgian, Félicien Rops was instrumental in the development of this early stage of the Decadent Movement. A friend of Baudelaire,he was also a frequent illustrator of Baudelaire's writing, at the request of the author himself. Rops delighted in breaking artistic convention and shocking the public with his combination of (often graphic) with gruesome, fantastical horror. He was explicitly interested in the Satanic, and he frequently sought to portray the double-threat of Satan and Woman. At times, his only goal was the portrayal of a woman he'd observed debasing herself in the pursuit of her own pleasure. It has also been suggested that, no matter how horrific and perverse his images could be, Rops' invocation of supernatural elements was sufficient to keep Baudelaire situated in a spirtually-aware universe that maintained a cynical kind of hope, even if the poetry "requires a strong stomach."Their work was the worship of beauty disguised as the worship of evil.For both of them, mortality and all manner of corruptions were always on their mind.The ability of Rops to see and portray the same world as they did, made him a popular illustrator for other decadent authors.The concept of decadence lingered after that, but it wasn't until 1884 that Maurice Barrès referred to a particular group of writers as Decadents. He defined this group as those who had been influenced heavily by Baudelaire, though they were also influenced by Gothic novels and the poetry and fiction of Edgar Allan Poe. Many were associated with Symbolism, others with Aestheticism.The pursuit of these authors, according to Arthur Symons, was "a desperate endeavor to give sensation, to flash the impression of the moment, to preserve the very heat and motion of life," and their achievement, as he saw it, was "to be a disembodied voice, and yet the voice of a human soul."In his 1884 decadent novel À Rebours (English, Against Nature or Against the Grain), Joris-Karl Huysmans overthrew the past, subordinated nature to the human creative will, and suggested the primacy of but inherent disillusion in pleasure. He also identified likely candidates for the core of the Decadent Movement, which he seemed to view Baudelaire as sitting above: Paul Verlaine, Tristan Corbière, Theodore Hannon, and Stéphane Mallarmé. His character Des Esseintes hailed these writers for their creativity and their craftsmanship, suggesting that they filled him with "insidious delight" as they used a "secret language" to explore "twisted and precious ideas."Not only did Against Nature define an ideology and a literature, but it also created an influential perspective on visual art. The character of Des Esseintes explcitily heralded the work of Gustave Moreau, Jan Luyken, and Odilon Redon. None of these artists would have identified themselves as part of this movement. Nevertheless, the choice of these three established a decadent perspective on art which favored madness and irrationality, graphic violence, frank pessimism about cultural institutions, and a disregard for visual logic of the natural world. It has also been suggested that a dream vision that Des Esseintes describes is based the series of satanic encounters painted by Félicien Rops.Capitalizing on the momentum of Huysmans' work, Anatole Baju founded the magazine Le Décadent in 1886, an effort to define and organize the Decadent Movement in a formal way. This group of writers did not only look to escape the boredom of the banal, but they also sought to shock, scandalize, and subvert the expectations and values of society, believing that such freedom and creative experimentation would better humanity.Not everyone was comfortable with Baju and Le Décadent, even including some who had been published in its pages. Rival writer Jean Moréas published his Symbolist Manifesto, largely to escape association with the Decadent Movement, despite their shared heritage. Moréas and Gustave Kahn, among others, formed rival publications to reinforce the distinction.[19] Paul Verlaine embraced the label at first, applauding it as a brilliant marketing choice by Baju. After seeing his own words exploited and tiring of Le Décadent publishing works falsely attributed to Arthur Rimbaud, however, Verlaine came to sour on Baju personally, and he eventually rejected the label, as well.Decadence continue on in France, but it was limited largely to Anatole Baju and his followers, who refined their focus even further on perverse sexuality, material extravagance, and up-ending social expectations. Far-fetched plots were acceptable if they helped generate the desired moments of salacious experience or glorification of the morbid and grotesque. Writers who embraced the sort of decadence featured in Le Décadent include Albert Aurier, Rachilde, Pierre Vareilles, Miguel Fernandez, Jean Lorrain, and Laurent Tailhaide. Many of these authors did also publish symbolist works, however, and it unclear how strongly they would have identified with Baju as decadents.In France, the Decadent Movement is often said to have begun with either Joris-Karl Huysmans' Against Nature (1884) or Baudelaire's Les Fleur du Mal.[20] This movement essentially gave way to Symbolism when Le Décadent closed down in 1889 and Anatole Baju turned toward politics and became associated with anarchy.[7] A few, writers continued the decadent tradition, such as Octave Mirbeau, but Decadence was no longer a recognized movement, let alone a force in literature or artBeginning with the association of decadence with cultural decline, it is it not uncommon to associate decadence in general with transitional times and their associated moods of pessimism and uncertainty. In France, the heart of the Decadent Movement was during the 1880s and 1890s, the time of fin de siècle, or end-of-the-century gloom.[21] As part of that overall transition, many scholars of Decadence, such as David Weir, regard Decadence as a dynamic transition between Romanticism and Modernism, especially considering the decadent tendency to dehumanize and distort in the name of pleasure and fantasy.Symbolism has often confused with the Decadent Movement. Arthur Symons, a British poet and literary critic contemporary with the movement, at one time considered Decadence in literature to be a parent category that included both Symbolism and Impressionism, as rebellions against realism. He defined this common, decadent thread as, "an intense self-consciousness, a restless curiosity in research, an over-subtilizing refinement upon refinement, a spiritual and moral perversity." He referred to all such literature as, "a new and beautiful and interesting disease."[17] Later, however, he would go on to instead describe the Decadent Movement as an "interlude, half a mock interlude" that distracted critics from seeing and appreciating the larger and more important trend, which was the development of Symbolism.Only a year later, however, Jean Moréas wrote his Symbolist Manifesto to assert a difference between the symbolists with whom he allied himself and this the new group of decadents associated with Anatole Baju and Le Décadent.[19][14] Even after this, there was sufficient common ground of interest, method, and language to blur the lines more than the manifesto might have suggested.In the world of visual arts, it can be even more difficult to distinguish decadence from symbolism. In fact, Stephen Romer has referred to Félicien Rops, Gustave Moreau, and Fernand Khnopff as "Symbolist-Decadent painters and engravers.Nevertheless there are clear ideological differences between those who continued on as symbolists and those who have been called "dissidents" for remaining in the Decadent Movement.[24] Often, there was little doubt that Baju and his group were producing work that was decadent, but there is frequently more question about the work of the symbolists.In a website associated with Dr. Petra Dierkes-Thrun's Stanford University course, Oscar Wilde and the French Decadents (2014), a student named Reed created a blog post that is the basis for much of what follows.Both groups reject the primacy of nature, but what that means for them is very different. Symbolism uses extensive natural imagery as a means to elevate the viewer to a plane higher than the banal reality of nature itself, as when Stéphane Mallarmé mixes descriptions of flowers and heavenly imagery to create a transcendent moment in "Flowers.Symbolism treats language and imagery as devices that can only approximate meaning and merely evoke complex emotions and call the mind toward ideas it might not be able to comprehend. In the words of symbolist poet Stéphane Mallarmé:Languages are imperfect because multiple; the supreme language is missing... no one can utter words which would bear the miraculous stamp of Truth Herself Incarnate... how impossible it is for language to express things... in the Poet's hands... by the consistent virtue and necessity of an art which lives on fiction, it achieves its full efficacy.As Moréas would go on to assert in his manifest on symbolism, words and images serve to dress up the incomprehensible in such a way that it can be approached, if not understood.Decadence, on the other hand, sees no path to higher truth in words and images. Instead, books, poetry, and art itself as the creators of valid new worlds, thus the allegory of decadent Wilde’s Dorian Gray being poisoned by a book like a drug. Words and artifice are the vehicles for human creativity, and Huysmans suggests that the illusions of fantasy have their own reality: "The secret lies in knowing how to proceed, how to concentrate deeply enough to produce the hallucination and succeed in substituting the dream reality for the reality itself."Both groups are disillusioned with the meaning and truth offered by the natural world, rational thought, and ordinary society. Symbolism turns its eyes toward Greater Purpose or on the Ideal, using dreams and symbols to approach these esoteric primal truths. In Mallarme’s poem “Apparition”, for instance, the word “dreaming” appears twice, followed by “Dream” itself with a capital D. In “The Windows,” he speaks of this decadent disgust of contentment with comfort and an endless desire for the exotic. He writes: “So filled with disgust for the man whose soul is callous, sprawled in comforts where his hungering is fed.” In this continuing search for the spiritual, therefore, Symbolism has been predisposed to concern itself with purity and beauty and such mysterious imagery as those of fairies.Ultimately, the distinction may best be seen in their approach to art. Symbolism is an accumulation of “symbols” that are there not to present their content but to evoke greater ideas that their symbolism cannot expressly utter. According to Moréas, it is an attempt to connect the object and phenomena of the world to "esoteric primodial truths" that cannot ever be directly approach. Decadence, on the other hand, is an accumulation of signs or descriptions acting as detailed catalogs of human material riches as well as artifice. It was Oscar Wilde who perhaps lay this out most clearly in The Decay of Lying with the suggestion of three doctrines on art, here excerpted into a list:"Art never expresses anything but itself.""All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals.""Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.After which, he suggested a conclusion quite in cotrast to Moréas' search for shadow truth: "Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art." While the Decadent Movement, per se, was truly a French phenomenon, the impact was felt more broadly. Typically, the influence was felt as an interest in pleasure, an interest in experimental sexuality, and a fascination with the bizarre, all packaged with a somewhat trangressive spirit and an aesthetic that values material excess. Many were were also influenced by the Decadent Movement's aesthetic emphasis on art for its own sake.In Britain, influenced through general exposure but also direct contact, the leading figures associated with decadence were writer Oscar Wilde, poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, and illustrator Aubrey Beardsley, as well as other artists and writers associated with The Yellow Book. Others, such as Walter Pater, resisted association with the movement, even though their works seemed to reflect similar ideals.[34] While most of the influence was from figures such as Baudelaire and Verlaine, there was also very strong influence at times from more purely decadent members of the French movement, such as the influence that Huysmans and Rachilde had on Wilde, as seen explicitly in The Picture of Dorian Gray.[32][35] British decadents embraced the idea of creating art for its own sake, pursuing all possible desires, and seeking material excess.[33] At the same time, they were not shy about using the tools of decadence for social and political purpose. Beardsley had an explicit interest in the improvement of the social order and the role of art-as-experience in inspiring that transformation.[34] Oscar Wilde published an entire work exploring socialism as a liberating force: "Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly upon almost everybody."[36] Swinburne wrote explicitly addressed Irish-English politics in poetry, as when he wrote, "Thieves and murderers, hands yet red with blood and tongues yet black with lies | Clap and clamour--'Parnell spurs his Gladstone well!'"[37] In many of their personal lives, they also pursed decadent ideals. Wilde had a secret homosexual life.[32] Swinburne had an obsession with flagellation.The Decadent Movement reached into Russia primarily through exposure to the writings of Charles Baudelaire and Paul Verlaine. The earliest Russian adherents lacked idealism and focused on such decadent themes as subversion of morality, disregard for personal health, and living in blasphemy and sensual pleasure. Russian writers were especially drawn to the morbid aspects of decadence and in the fascination with death. Dmitry Merezhkovsky is through to be the first to clearly promote a Russian decadence that included the idealism that would eventually inspire the French symbolists to disassociate from the more purely materialistic Decadent Movement. The first Russian writers to achieve success as followers of this Decadent Movement included Konstanin Balmont, Fyodor Sologub, Valery Bryusov, and Zinaida Gippius. As they refined their craft beyond imitation of Baudelaire and Verlaine, most of these authors became much more clearly aligned with symbolism than with decadence.Some visual artists adhered to the Baju-esque late Decadent Movement approach to sexuality as purely an act of pleasure, often ensconced in a context of material luxury. They also shared the same emphasis on shocking society, purely for the scandal. Among them were Konstantin Somov, Nicolai Kalmakov, and Nikolai Feofilaktov.In Bohemia, Czech writers who were exposed to the work of the Decadent Movement saw in it the promise of a life they could never know. They were neither aristocrats nor bored bourgeoisie. They were poor and hungry for something better. The dreams of the decadents gave them that something better, but something that was hopelessly unattainable. It was that melancholy that drove their art. These Bohemian decadent writers included Karel Hlaváček, Arnošt Procházka, Jiří Karásek ze Lvovic, and Louisa Zikova. One Czech writer, Arthur Breisky, embraced the full spirit of Le Décadent with its exultation in material excess and a life of refinement and pleasure. From the Decadent Movement he learned the basic idea of a dandy, and his work is almost entirely focused on developing a philosophy in which the Dandy is the consummate human, surrounded by riches and elegance, theoretically above society, just as doomed to death and despair as they.Few prominent writers or artists in the United States were connected with the Decadent Movement. Those who were connected struggled to find an audience, for Americans were reluctant to see value for them in what they considered the art forms of fin de siècle France.Poet Francis Saltus Saltus was inspired by Charles Baudelaire, and his unpracticed style was occasionally compared to the French poet's more refined experimentation. He embraced the most debauched lifestyle of the French decadents and celebrated that life in his own poetry. At the time, mostly before Baju's Le Décadent, this frivolous poetry on themes of alcohol and depravity found little success and no known support from those who were part of the Decadent Movement.[42] The younger brother of Francis, writer Edgar Saltus had more success. He had some interaction with Oscar Wilde, and he valued decadence in his personal life. For a time, his work exemplified both the ideals and style of the movement, but a significant portion of his career was in traditional journalism and fiction that praised virtue.[43] At the time when he was flourishing, however, multiple contemporary critics, as well as other decadent writers, explcitily considered him one of them.[41] Writer James Huneker was exposed to the Decadent Movement in France and tried to bring it back with him to New York. He has been lauded to his dedication to this cause throughout his career, but it has also been suggested that, while he lived as a decadent and heralded their work, his own work was more frustrated, hopeles, and empty of the pleasure that had attracted him to the movement in the first place. Largely, he focused on cynically describing the impossibility of a true American decidance.Critical Studies.German doctor and social critic Max Nordau wrote a lengthy book entitled Degeneration (1892). It was an examination of decadence as a trend, and specifically attacked several people associated with the Decadent Movement, as well as other figures throughout the world who deviated from cultural, moral, or political norms. His language was colorful and vitriolic, often invoking the worship of Satan. What made the book a success was its suggestion of a medical diagnosis of "degeneration," a neuro-pathology that resulted in these behaviors. It also helped that the book named such figures as Oscar Wilde, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Paul Verlaine, and Maurice Barrès, members of the Decadent Movement who were in the public eye.In 1930 Italian art and literature critic Mario Praz completed a broad study of morbid and erotic literature, translated and published in English as The Romantic Agony (1933). The study included decadent writing (such as Baudelaire and Swinburne), but also anything else that he considered dark, grim, or sexual in some way. His study centered on the 18th and 19th Centuries. The danger of such literature, he believed it unnaturally elevated the instinctive bond between pain and pleasure and that, no matter the artists' intention, the essential role of art is to educate and teach culture.

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decadent_movement

Coles Bay.

Location: Tasmania, Australia.

Map: www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/pacific/australia/tasmania/

Population: 473.

Famous for: the main entrance point for visitors to the Freycinet National Park and its scenery and outdoor activities.

.

 

Facts about Tasmania:

Named after: Abel Tasman (1603-1659), a Dutch explorer.

Names of the island:

- Anthoonij van Diemenslandt/Anthony van Diemen's Land in 1642-1803.

- Van Diemen's Land in 1803-1856.

- Tasmania in 1856-today.

Nickname: Tas, pronounced Taz, and known colloquially as Tassie.

Area: 26,410 sq mi - almost as large as Ireland (27,133 sq mi).

Ranked: as the 26th biggest island in the world.

Population: 512,000.

Capital: Hobart, 217 000 inhabitants.

Highest Mountain: Mount Ossa, 5,305 feet (1617 metres).

Most famous animal: The Tasmanian devil.

.

 

History

 

33 000 BC-1642 AD

Tasmania was inhabited by an indigenous population, the Tasmanian Aborigines, for at least 35 000 ago. They arrived to Tasmania via a land bridge between the island and the mainland Australia during the last glacial period. The island is believed to have been joined to the mainland of Australia until the end of the last glacial period approximately 10,000 years ago. In 1990 AD, archaeologists excavated materials in the Warreen Cave in the Maxwell River valley of the southwest proving aboriginal occupation from as early as 34,000 BC making indigenous Tasmanians the southernmost population in the world during the Pleistocene era. The Pleistocene is the geological epoch which lasted from about 2,588,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the world's recent period of repeated glaciations.

 

Once the sea levels rose flooding the Bassian Plain, the people were left isolated from approximately 6,300 BC until the 17th century AD. The Aboriginal people who had migrated from mainland Australia became cut off from their cousins on the mainland. Because neither side had ocean sailing technology, the two groups were unable to maintain contact.

 

Some have claimed that because of the ocean divide, and unlike other populations around the world, the small population of Tasmania was not able to share any of the new technological advances being made by mainland groups such as barbed spears, bone tools of any kind, boomerangs, hooks, sewing, and the ability to start a fire thus making Aboriginal Tasmanians the simplest people on earth. It is claimed that they only possessed lit fires with the men entrusted in carrying embers from camp to camp for cooking and which could also be used to clear land and herd animals to aid in hunting practices. However, other scholars dispute that the Aboriginal Tasmanians did not have fire. A document from 1887 AD clearly describes fire lighting techniques used among Tasmanians. Another school of thought holds that because food was so abundant compared to mainland Australia, the Aboriginal people had no need for a better technology, pointing out that they did in fact originally possess bone tools which dropped out of use as the effort to make them began to exceed the benefit they provided.

 

It has been suggested that approximately 4,000 years ago, the Aboriginal Tasmanians largely dropped scaled fish from their diet and began eating more land mammals such as possums, kangaroos, and wallabies. They also switched from worked bone tools to sharpened stone tools. The significance of the disappearance of bone tools (believed to have been primarily used for fishing related activities) and fish in the diet is heavily debated. Some argue that it is evidence of a maladaptive society while others argue that the change was economic as large areas of scrub at that time were changing to grassland providing substantially increased food resources. Fish were never a large part of the diet, ranking behind shellfish and seals. Archaeological evidence indicates that around the time these changes took place the Tasmanian tribes began expanding their territories, a process that was still continuing when Europeans arrived.

 

Estimates made of the combined population of the Aboriginal people of Tasmania, before European arrival in Tasmania, are in the range of 3,000 to 15,000 people. Genetic studies have suggested much higher figures which is supported by oral traditions. A population as high as 100,000 can't be rejected out of hand. This is supported by carrying capacity data indicating greater resource productivity in Tasmania than the mainland. The Aboriginal Tasmanians were primarily nomadic people who lived in adjoining territories, moving based on seasonal changes in food supplies such as seafood, land mammals and native vegetables and berries. They socialised, intermarried and fought wars against other tribes.

 

The Paredarerme tribe (Oyster Bay) was estimated to be the largest Tasmanian tribe with ten bands totalling 700 to 800 people. The Paredarerme Tribe had good relations with the Big River tribe, with large congregations at favoured hunting sites inland and at the coast. Relations with the North Midlands tribe were mostly hostile. Generally, Paredarerme tribe bands migrated inland to the High Country for Spring and Summer and returned to the coast for Autumn and Winter, but not all people left their territory each year with some deciding to stay by the coast. Migrations provided a varied diet with plentiful seafood, seals and birds on the coast, and good hunting for kangaroos, wallabies and possums inland. The High Country also provided opportunities to trade for ochre with the North-west and North people, and to harvest intoxicating gum from Eucalyptus gunnii, found only on the plateau. The key determinant of camp sites was topography. The majority of camps were along river valleys, adjacent north facing hill slopes and on gentle slopes bordering a forest or marsh.

 

In 1642-1847

The first reported sighting of Tasmania by a European was on 24 November 1642 by the Dutch explorer Abel Tasman (1603-1659), who named the island Anthoonij van Diemenslandt/Anthony van Diemen's Land after his sponsor, the Governor of the Dutch East Indies. The name was later shortened to Van Diemen's Land by the British. Tasman did not encounter any of the Tasmanian Aborigines when he landed in 1642. Abel Tasman was also the first known European expedition to reach New Zealand and to sight the Fiji islands. His navigator François Visscher and his merchant Isaack Gilsemans mapped substantial portions of Australia, New Zealand and some Pacific Islands.

 

In 1772, a French exploratory expedition under Marc-Joseph Marion du Fresne visited Tasmania. At first, contact with the Aborigines was friendly; however the Aborigines became alarmed when another boat was dispatched towards the shore. It was reported that spears and stones were thrown and the French responded with musket fire killing at least one Aborigine and wounding several others. The Resolution under the English Captain Tobias Furneaux, part of an expedition led by Captain James Cook, had visited in 1773 but made no contact with the Tasmanian Aborigines although he left gifts in unoccupied shelters found on Bruny Island. Tobias Furneaux was the first Englishman to land in Tasmania at Adventure Bay.

 

The first known British contact with the Tasmanian Aborigines was on Bruny Island by Captain Cook in 1777. The contact was peaceful. More extensive contact between Tasmanian Aborigines and Europeans resulted when British and American seal hunters began visiting the islands in Bass Strait as well as the northern and eastern coasts of Tasmania from the late 1790s on. Shortly thereafter, by about 1800, sealers were regularly left on uninhabited islands in Bass Strait during the sealing season from November to May. The sealers established semi-permanent camps or settlements on the islands, which were close enough for the sealers to reach the main island of Tasmania in small boats and so make contact with the Aboriginal Tasmanians. Trading relationships developed between sealers and Tasmanian Aboriginal tribes. Hunting dogs became highly prized by the Aboriginal people, as were other exotic items such as flour, tea and tobacco. The Aboriginal people traded kangaroo skins for such goods. However, a trade in Aboriginal women soon developed. Many Tasmanian Aboriginal women were highly skilled in hunting seals, as well as in obtaining other foods such as sea-birds, and some Tasmanian tribes would trade their services and, more rarely, those of Aboriginal men to the sealers for the seal-hunting season. Others were sold on a permanent basis. Sealers engaged in raids along the coasts to abduct Aboriginal women and were reported to have killed Aboriginal men in the process.

 

By 1810, seal numbers had been greatly reduced by hunting so most seal hunters abandoned the area. However a small number of sealers, approximately fifty mostly renegade sailors, escaped convicts or ex-convicts, remained as permanent residents of the Bass Strait islands and some established families with Tasmanian Aboriginal women. A shortage of women available in trade resulted in abduction becoming common and in 1830, it was reported that at least fifty Aboriginal women were kept in slavery on the Bass Strait islands. The raids for and trade in Aboriginal women contributed to the rapid depletion of the numbers of Aboriginal women in the northern areas of Tasmania. By 1830, only three women survived in northeast Tasmania among 72 men.

 

In 1803, the island was colonised by the British as a penal colony with the name Van Diemen's Land and became part of the British colony of New South Wales. By the time of European contact, the Aboriginal people in Tasmania had nine major ethnic groups. At the time of British settlement in 1803, the indigenous population was estimated at between 5,000 and 10,000 people, but through persecution and disease much of the population was eradicated. Through the introduction of infectious diseases to which they had no immunity, war, persecution, and intermarriage, the population dwindled to 300 by 1833. In 1820, Tasmanian roads were first macadamised and carthorses began to replace bullocks. Van Diemen's Land was proclaimed a separate colony from New South Wales, with its own judicial establishment and Legislative Council, on 3 December 1825. The island was established as Van Diemen's Land in 1825. The demonym for Van Diemen's Land was Van Diemonian, though contemporaries used Vandemonian.

 

The Black War of 1828-1832 and the Black Line of 1830 were turning points in the relationship between the Tasmanian Aboriginals and European settlers. The Black War refers to the period of conflict between British colonists and Tasmanian Aborigines in the early nineteenth century. Many Tasmanian Aborigines were killed by the British in 1828-1832. In combination with epidemic impacts of introduced Eurasian infectious diseases, to which the Tasmanian Aborigines had no immunity, the conflict had such impact on the Tasmanian Aboriginal population that they were reported to have been exterminated. By 1876, the Tasmanian Aborigines with only Tasmanian Aborigine ancestors were commonly regarded as extinct and most of their culture and language lost to the world.

 

The Black Line was an event that occurred in 1830. After many years of conflict between British colonists and the Aborigines known as the Black War, Lieutenant-Governor George Arthur decided to remove all Aborigines from the settled areas in order to end the escalating raids upon settlers huts. He was also concerned to prevent the settlers from taking the law into their own hands and launching revenge attacks. To accomplish this, he called upon every able-bodied male colonist, convict or free, to form a human chain that then swept across the settled districts, moving south and east for several weeks in an attempt to corral the Aborigines on the Tasman Peninsula by closing off Eaglehawk Neck (the isthmus connecting the Tasman peninsula to the rest of the island) where Arthur hoped that they could live and maintain their culture and language. This action was only directed against Aborigines of the Big River and Oyster Bay tribes, since the conflict was only with these two tribes. The incident was seen as a costly fiasco since only two Aborigines were captured and three were killed. Even though many of the Aboriginal people managed to avoid capture during these events such as the Black War of 1828-1832 and the Black Line in 1830, they were shaken by the size of the campaigns against them. This brought them to a position whereby they were willing to surrender to Robinson and move to Flinders Island.

 

From 1830, small remnant groups surviving the Black War were relocated to Flinders Island and the Bass Strait Islands. Almost all of the indigenous population was relocated to Flinders Island by George Augustus Robinson. These 160 survivors were deemed to be safe from European settlers here, but conditions were poor and the relocation scheme was short lived. In 1847, after a campaign by the Aboriginal population against their Commandant, Henry Jeanneret, which involved a petition to Queen Victoria, the remaining 47 Aboriginals were again relocated, this time to Oyster Cove Station, an ex-convict settlement 35 miles south of Tasmania's capital, Hobart, where Truganini died in 1876. Truganini (1812–1876) is generally recognised as the last Tasmanian Aborigine with only Tasmanian Aborigine ancestors. Strong evidence suggests that the last survivor was another woman, Fanny Cochrane Smith (1834–1905), who was born at Wybalena and died in 1905. Today, Tasmanian Aboriginals have ancestors from Tasmanian Aboriginals and Europe, America or other parts of the world. A mixed European-Tasmanian descendants live on Flinders Island today. Much of their languages, local ecological knowledge and original cultures are now lost to Tasmania, perhaps with the exception of archaeological records plus historical records made at the time.

 

In 1800-1856

From the 1800s to the 1853 abolition of penal transportation, known simply as transportation, Van Diemen's Land was the primary penal colony for British convicts in Australia. Following the suspension of transportation to New South Wales, all transported British convicts were sent to Van Diemen's Land. In total, some 75,000 convicts were transported to Van Diemen's Land, or about 40% of all convicts sent to Australia. Male convicts served their sentences as assigned labour to free settlers or in gangs assigned to public works. Only the most difficult convicts, mostly re-offenders, were sent to the Tasman Peninsula prison known as Port Arthur. In 1856, the colony was granted responsible self-government with its own representative parliament, and the name of the island and colony was changed to Tasmania. The last penal settlement in Tasmania at Port Arthur finally closed in 1877.

 

In 1856-1901

The Colony of Tasmania, more commonly referred to simply as Tasmania, was a British colony that existed on the island of Tasmania from 1856 until 1901, when it federated together with the five other Australian colonies to form the Commonwealth of Australia. The possibility of the colony was established when the Westminster Parliament passed the Australian Colonies Government Act 1850, granting the right of legislative power to each of the six Australian colonies. The Colony suffered from economic fluctuations, but for the most part was prosperous, experiencing steady growth. With few external threats and strong trade links with the Empire, the Colony of Tasmania enjoyed many fruitful periods in the late 19th century, becoming a world-centre of shipbuilding. It raised a local defence force which eventually played a significant role in the Second Boer War in South Africa, and Tasmanian soldiers in that conflict won the first two Victoria Crosses awarded to Australians. Tasmanians voted in favour of federation with the largest majority of all the Australian colonies, and on 1 January 1901 the Colony of Tasmania became the Australian state of Tasmania.

  

In 1890-today

In 1890: the University of Tasmania opened at the Domain.

In 1891: Apsley Railway opened.

In 1898: electric street lighting began in Hobart.

In 1901: became the Australian state of Tasmania.

In 1912: Norwegian Roald Amundsen, first man to reach South Pole, arrived in Hobart on return from Antarctic expedition.

In 1920: visited by Prince of Wales, future King Edward VIII.

In 1954: Queen Elizabeth II became the first reigning monarch to visit the state, accompanied by Prince Phillip. As part of the 150th anniversary celebrations, she unveiled a monument to pioneer British settlers.

In 1980: Australian Maritime College opened at Beauty Point.

In 1986: archaeologists discovered Aboriginal rock paintings in South-West believed to be 20,000 years old.

In 2002: House and land boom began with East Coast blocks selling for almost three times the town's previous record.

In 2003: Tasmania's Mary Donaldson and Denmark's Crown Prince Frederik were engaged. They married later.

In 2011: The Museum of Old and New Art, known as MONA, opened to the public. Within 12 months, MONA became Tasmania's top tourism attraction.

In 2012: a writer for the Lonely Planet series of travel guides ranked Hobart as number seven of top ten cities to visit in 2013, citing MONA as a major tourist attraction in a small city, similar to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain.

 

Maps

Map 1: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tasmania_in_Australia.svg

Map 2: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Glamorgan_land_district_T...

Map 3: www.lonelyplanet.com/maps/pacific/australia/tasmania/

Map 4: www.colesbayretreat.com/tasmaniamap.pdf

 

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Sources:

1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmania

2. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_islands_by_area#Islands_25....

3. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coles_Bay,_Tasmania

4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tasmania

5. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tasmanian_Aborigines

6. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bassian_plain_14000_BP.jpg

7. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_War

8. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Line

9. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Diemens_Land

10. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Cochrane_Smith

The owner of the image above is Lc95.

Link: commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Freycinet_Coles_Bay_Richt...

The image above is free for anyone to use for any purpose, without any conditions, unless such conditions are required by law.

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Carew Castle is a castle in the civil parish of Carew in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The Carew family take their name from this site and have owned the castle for more than 900 years. It is leased to the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park for administration purposes.

 

The present castle, which replaced an earlier stone keep, is constructed almost entirely from the local Carboniferous limestone, except for some of the Tudor architectural features such as window frames, which are made from imported Cotswold stone. Although originally a Norman stronghold the castle maintains a mixture of architectural styles as modifications were made to the structure over successive centuries.

 

Entry to the inner ward is across a dry moat that had a barbican and gatehouse. The front of the castle had three D-shaped towers and crenelated walls. The rear of the castle has two large round towers. In the 16th century the northern defensive wall was converted into a Tudor range with ornate windows and long gallery.

 

The outer ward has earthworks that were built by Royalist defenders during the English Civil War in the 1640s.

 

The use of the site for military purposes extends back at least 2000 years.

 

The castle stands on a limestone bluff overlooking the Carew inlet, part of the tidal estuary that makes up the Milford Haven Waterway. The site must have been recognised as strategically useful from the earliest times, and recent excavations in the outer ward have discovered multiple defensive walls of an Iron Age fort.

 

The Norman castle has its origins in a stone keep built by Gerald de Windsor around the year 1100. Gerald was made castellan of Pembroke Castle by Arnulf of Montgomery in the first Norman invasion of Pembrokeshire. He married Nest, princess of Deheubarth around 1095. Nest brought the manor of Carew as part of her dowry, and Gerald cleared the existing fort to build his own castle on Norman lines. The original outer walls were timber, and only the keep was of stone. This still exists in the later structure as the "Old Tower".

 

Gerald's son William took the name "de Carew", and in the middle of the 12th century created an enclosure with stone walls incorporating the original keep, and a "Great Hall" inside it. The current high-walled structure with a complex of rooms and halls around the circumference was created in about 1270 by Nicholas de Carew (d.1297), concurrent with (and influenced by) the construction of the Edwardian castles in North Wales. At this time, the outer ward was also walled in.

 

The de Carews fell on hard times in the post-Black Death period and mortgaged the castle. It fell into the hands of Rhys ap Thomas, who made his fortune by strategically changing sides and backing Henry Tudor just before the battle of Bosworth.

 

Rewarded with lands and a knighthood, he extended the castle with luxurious apartments with many Tudor features in the late 15th century. An inner doorway is decorated with three coats of arms: those of Henry VII, his son Arthur and Arthur's wife Catherine of Aragon. This allegiance turned sour. Rhys' grandson Rhys ap Gruffudd fell out of favour and was executed by Henry VIII for treason in 1531. The castle thus reverted to the crown and was leased to various tenants. In 1558 it was acquired by Sir John Perrot, a Lord Deputy of Ireland, who completed the final substantial modifications of the castle. The Elizabethan plutocrat reconstructed the north walls to build a long range of domestic rooms.

 

Perrot subsequently fell out of favour and died imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1592. The castle reverted to the crown and was finally re-purchased by the de Carew family in 1607. In the Civil War, the castle was refortified by Royalists although south Pembrokeshire was strongly Parliamentarian. After changing hands three times, the south wall was pulled down to render the castle indefensible to Royalists. At the Restoration the castle was returned to the de Carews, who continued to occupy the eastern wing until 1686.

 

The castle was then abandoned and allowed to decay. Much of the structure was looted for building stone and for lime burning. Since 1984 Cadw has funded a substantial amount of restoration performed by the Pembrokeshire National Park Authority.

 

Carew (Welsh: Caeriw) is a village, parish and community on an inlet of Milford Haven in the former Hundred of Narberth, Pembrokeshire, West Wales, 4 miles (6.4 km) east of Pembroke. The eastern part of the parish is in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park.

 

The meaning of the name is unclear. In Welsh it could mean "fort on a hill" (Caer-rhiw), "fort by yews" (Caer-yw) or simply "forts" (Caerau). The village grew up to serve the nearby Norman castle. The parish includes several other villages and hamlets, including Carew Cheriton (around the parish church), Carew Newton, Milton, West Williamston, Sageston and Whitehill.

 

Textile mills gave Milton its name. In the 19th century, there was a carding mill downstream, a weaving mill by the bridge, and a fulling mill upstream.

 

West Williamston had an industrial history: limestone was quarried in the area for centuries; stone was cut from slot-shaped flooded quarries communicating with the haven, known locally as "docks". See examples at 51°42′29″N 4°50′35″W. These allowed stone to be dropped from the quarry faces directly into barges at the bottom. From there, stone was shipped to lime kilns all around the coast of North Pembrokeshire and Cardiganshire. A small quarry still operates north of Carew village. Besides limestone, anthracite was mined on a small scale for local consumption at Minnis Pit on the northeastern edge of the parish.

 

Typical of South Pembrokeshire, the parish has been predominantly English-speaking since the 12th century.

 

The village has its own elected community council and gives its name to an electoral ward of Pembrokeshire County Council.

 

The 13th century Norman castle is 170 metres (560 ft) west of the village. Carew Cross is at the roadside in the village, and is an important example of an 11th-century memorial Celtic cross, commemorating King Maredudd ab Edwin of Deheubarth (died 1035). The cross, 4 metres (13 ft) tall, is made from the local limestone. Similar to the Nevern cross, it consists of two parts, connected with a tenon joint. It is possibly inscribed, on the west face: MARGIT

EUT.RE

X.ETG.FILIUS

 

The parish church of St Mary is a Grade I listed building, dating from the 14th century. In the churchyard is the Old Mortuary Chapel, also Grade I listed.

 

The French Mill is a rare example of a tidal flour mill on a dam across the Carew inlet. The present building dates from the 18th century, but the French Mill was mentioned in 1476. The mill has not functioned since the 1930s, but its equipment is all still in place. It has two large undershot water wheels, driving seven sets of mill stones.

 

A number of other structures in Carew are noted by Coflein, including cottages and the bridge.

 

In 2017, Carew Cricket Club controversially declared in their final match against local rivals Cresselly to win the Pembroke County Cricket Club championship. Carew were subsequently demoted to a lower division as PCCC decided that they had not broken the rules but had not played within the spirit of cricket.

 

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and is otherwise surrounded by the sea.[note 1] Haverfordwest is the largest town and administrative headquarters of Pembrokeshire County Council.

 

The county is generally sparsely populated and rural, with an area of 200 square miles (520 km2) and a population of 123,400. After Haverfordwest, the largest settlements are Milford Haven (13,907), Pembroke Dock (9,753), and Pembroke (7,552). St Davids (1,841) is a city, the smallest by population in the UK. Welsh is spoken by 17.2 percent of the population, and for historic reasons is more widely spoken in the north of the county than in the south.

 

Pembrokeshire's coast is its most dramatic geographic feature, created by the complex geology of the area. It is a varied landscape which includes high sea cliffs, wide sandy beaches, the large natural harbour of Milford Haven, and several offshore islands which are home to seabird colonies. Most of it is protected by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, and can be hiked on the 190-mile (310 km) Pembrokeshire Coast Path. The interior of Pembrokeshire is relatively flat and gently undulating, with the exception of the Preseli Mountains in the north.

 

There are many prehistoric sites in Pembrokeshire, particularly in the Preseli Mountains. During the Middle Ages several castles were built by the Normans, such as Pembroke and Cilgerran, and St David's Cathedral became an important pilgrimage site. During the Industrial Revolution the county remained relatively rural, with the exception of Milford Haven, which was developed as a port and Royal Navy dockyard. It is now the UK's third-largest port, primarily because of its two liquefied natural gas terminals. The economy of the county is now focused on agriculture, oil and gas, and tourism.

 

Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years  and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave; in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales. There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.

 

There is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's Geography, written c. 150, mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".

 

Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey, and another near Wiston. Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.

 

Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.

 

Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae.  The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century.  In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943), daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.

 

Dyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111.  The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke":), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.  Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales.  In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240.  In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to introduce the English common law system to Wales, heralding 100 years of peace, but had little effect on those areas already established under the Marcher Lords, such as Cemais in the north of the county.

 

Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan.  Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.

 

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared. 

 

During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648.  On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.

 

In 1720, Emmanuel Bowen described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of 420,000 acres (1,700 km2). In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee.  People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies. After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke. From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle. In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be 345,600 acres (1,399 km2) with a population of 81,424.

 

It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.

 

Throughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole. There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Mountains and a number of military airfields. The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain. From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day. Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600. The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.

 

In 1972, a second reservoir for south Pembrokeshire, at Llys y Fran, was completed.

 

Pembrokeshire's tourism portal is Visit Pembrokeshire, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. In 2015 4.3 million tourists visited the county, staying for an average of 5.24 days, spending £585 million; the tourism industry supported 11,834 jobs. Many of Pembrokeshire's beaches have won awards, including Poppit Sands and Newport Sands. In 2018, Pembrokeshire received the most coast awards in Wales, with 56 Blue Flag, Green Coast or Seaside Awards. In the 2019 Wales Coast Awards, 39 Pembrokeshire beaches were recognised, including 11 awarded Blue Flag status.

 

The Pembrokeshire coastline is a major draw to tourists; in 2011 National Geographic Traveller magazine voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the second best in the world and in 2015 the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was listed among the top five parks in the world by a travel writer for the Huffington Post. Countryfile Magazine readers voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the top UK holiday destination in 2018, and in 2019 Consumers' Association members placed Tenby and St Davids in the top three best value beach destinations in Britain. With few large urban areas, Pembrokeshire is a "dark sky" destination. The many wrecks off the Pembrokeshire coast attract divers. The decade from 2012 saw significant, increasing numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, not seen since the 1960s, and now seen by some as an opportunity to encourage tourist sport fishing.

 

The county has a number of theme and animal parks (examples are Folly Farm Adventure Park and Zoo, Manor House Wildlife Park, Blue Lagoon Water Park and Oakwood Theme Park), museums and other visitor attractions including Castell Henllys reconstructed Iron Age fort, Tenby Lifeboat Station and Milford Haven's Torch Theatre. There are 21 marked cycle trails around the county.

 

Pembrokeshire Destination Management Plan for 2020 to 2025 sets out the scope and priorities to grow tourism in Pembrokeshire by increasing its value by 10 per cent in the five years, and to make Pembrokeshire a top five UK destination.

 

As the national sport of Wales, rugby union is widely played throughout the county at both town and village level. Haverfordwest RFC, founded in 1875, is a feeder club for Llanelli Scarlets. Village team Crymych RFC in 2014 plays in WRU Division One West. There are numerous football clubs in the county, playing in five leagues with Haverfordwest County A.F.C. competing in the Cymru Premier.

 

Triathlon event Ironman Wales has been held in Pembrokeshire since 2011, contributing £3.7 million to the local economy, and the county committed in 2017 to host the event for a further five years. Ras Beca, a mixed road, fell and cross country race attracting UK-wide competitors, has been held in the Preselis annually since 1977. The record of 32 minutes 5 seconds has stood since 1995. Pembrokeshire Harriers athletics club was formed in 2001 by the amalgamation of Cleddau Athletic Club (established 1970) and Preseli Harriers (1989) and is based in Haverfordwest.

 

The annual Tour of Pembrokeshire road-cycling event takes place over routes of optional length. The 4th Tour, in April 2015, attracted 1,600 riders including Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman and there were 1,500 entrants to the 2016 event. Part of Route 47 of the Celtic Trail cycle route is in Pembrokeshire. The Llys y Fran Hillclimb is an annual event run by Swansea Motor Club, and there are several other county motoring events held each year.

 

Abereiddy's Blue Lagoon was the venue for a round of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in 2012, 2013, and 2016; the Welsh Surfing Federation has held the Welsh National Surfing Championships at Freshwater West for several years, and Llys y Fran Country Park hosted the Welsh Dragonboat Championships from 2014 to 2017.

 

While not at major league level, cricket is played throughout the county and many villages such as Lamphey, Creselly, Llangwm, Llechryd and Crymych field teams in minor leagues under the umbrella of the Cricket Board of Wales.

 

Notable people

From mediaeval times, Rhys ap Gruffydd (c. 1132-1197), ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth, was buried in St Davids Cathedral. and Gerald of Wales was born c. 1146 at Manorbier Castle. Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) was born in 1457 at Pembroke Castle.

 

The pirate Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) (Welsh: Barti Ddu) was born in Casnewydd Bach, between Fishguard and Haverfordwest in 1682.

 

In later military history, Jemima Nicholas, heroine of the so-called "last invasion of Britain" in 1797, was from Fishguard, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton GCB, born in Haverfordwest, was killed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and Private Thomas Collins is believed to be the only Pembrokeshire man that fought in the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

 

In the arts, siblings Gwen and Augustus John were both born in Pembrokeshire, as was the novelist Sarah Waters; singer Connie Fisher grew up in Pembrokeshire. The actor Christian Bale was born in Haverfordwest.

 

Stephen Crabb, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales, was brought up in Pembrokeshire and is one of the county's two Members of Parliament, the other being Simon Hart,[90] who served as Secretary of State for Wales from 2019 to 2022.

Explosion, Stromboli Volcano, Italia

 

© Olivier Grunewald / Wild Wonders of Europe

 

After studying photography for advertising, French photographer Olivier Grunewald returned to his first loves, mountains, nature - the great oudoors. In 1988, he opened a “studio” in mid-air in order to follow professional climbers, work that won him the Prix de la Fondation de la Vocation in France, on which he bases his first book, Escalade Passion, published by Atlas. Since then, Olivier Grunewald, with his wife, Bernadette Gilbertas, have trotted the globe in quest of extraordinary landscapes, exceptional light and wildlife in all its forms. His photographic work has led him into situations rich in emotion, suspended by rope from a tropical forest’s tallest tree, down the gaping mouth of fuming volcanoes, or knee-deep in snow under the glow of the northern lights.

 

His coverage of nature and Eco-tourism in collaboration with his wife Bernadette Gilbertas, journalist and writer for nature and ecology, has appeard in a variety of French magazines such as The Figaro Magazine, VSD, Ca M’intéresse, Terre Sauvage, Grands Reportages, as well as in foreign presse (Airone, Focus, GEO, International Wildlife, National Geographic Magazine, ...). They have publihed numerous books, on Iceland, Autralia, Namibia, Western North America. Their last books "Nature" is published in France in October 2004, and « Canyons », in october 2005. and« Volcanoes » in september 2007.

Their photographic work on the seaturtles of French Guyana, which won a prize at the World Press Photo Awards in 1995, was published all over the world. In 2002, World Press Photo again rewarded their work with a second place in the Science and Technology category for his coverage of northern lights. Once again, in february 2004, the World press has given Olivier the 2nd price in nature category, for his report on Kamtchatka volcanoes.

  

www.wild-wonders.com

www.gitzo.com

I read in one of Aberdeen's local newspaper that a new plaque celebrating Bram Stokers first writings of Dracula on his visit to Cruden Bay while he stayed at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in the village is now on display, I decided to visit today myself to capture the plaque and archive here on my Flickr account, posting a few of the shots I captured today Sunday 10th Feb 2019.

 

News Paper item 8th February 2019.

A plaque has been installed at the north-east hotel where Bram Stoker began writing his most famous work.

 

The Dracula author arrived in Cruden Bay on a walking holiday in 1893 and a year later he checked into the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel.

 

Mr Stoker wrote a message in the guestbook. It read: “Second visit to Port Erroll. Delighted with everything & everybody & hope to come again to the Kilmarnock Arms.”

 

In 1896 he went back to the inn and began writing the early chapters of his novel on the mysterious Transylvanian aristocrat.

 

Nearby Slains Castle provided the inspiration for many of the scenes that ended up in the book.

 

Mike Shepherd from the Port Errol Heritage Group nominated the Bridge Street hotel for a plaque to help highlight the role it played in the early days of one of the greatest horror tales of all time.

 

The commemorative plate was placed on the hotel yesterday and Mr Shepherd was there to see it.

 

He said: “What’s great about is it is that first commemoration for Bram Stoker’s visit to Cruden Bay.

 

“There were quite a lot of people who didn’t realise there was a connection between Bram Stoker and the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel.”

 

Martin Taylor, owner and manager at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel, said having the plaque on the side of the building makes their links with Mr Stoker “official”.

 

The plaque is part of a Historic Environment Scotland scheme celebrating the lives of significant people by erecting plaques on the buildings where they lived or worked.

 

Stoker’s plaque is the 57th announced under the initiative since it began in 2012.

 

Caroline Clark, head of grants at Historic Environment Scotland, said: “This commemorative plaque highlights Bram Stocker’s connection to Scotland’s heritage.

 

“We hope that this will encourage fans of Bram Stoker to visit Cruden Bay and the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel – the hotel he stayed in while creating his most famous novel, Dracula.”

 

Historic Scotland Info

Aberdeenshire inn Bram Stoker stayed at while writing famous novel will house new plaque commemorating the author’s visits

 

The Scottish hotel that accommodated renowned Irish author Bram Stoker while he created Dracula will be recognised under Historic Environment Scotland’s 2018 Commemorative Plaque Scheme.

 

The annual scheme celebrates the lives of significant people by erecting plaques on the buildings where they lived or worked. Stoker’s plaque is the 57th announced under the scheme since it began in 2012. The plaque will be unveiled in the near future at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel.

 

Born near Dublin in 1847, Bram Stoker was a part-time writer for most of his life. Later in his career, for 11 months out of every year, he worked as the business manager at the Lyceum Theatre in London and as the personal manager for the famous English stage actor, Henry Irving. After 1894, he spent the other month on holiday in Cruden Bay - then known as Port Erroll - where he wrote his books.

 

He first discovered Cruden Bay on a walking holiday to Aberdeenshire in 1893, writing: "When first I saw the place I fell in love with it." He returned in 1894, booking into the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel and writing in the guest book: "Second visit to Port Erroll. Delighted with everything & everybody & hope to come again to the Kilmarnock Arms."

 

He checked-in again in 1895 with the aim of writing the early chapters of his definitive work, Dracula. The Transylvanian vampire, Count Dracula, rose from the page in the hotel known locally as 'the Killie'. Stoker returned to Aberdeenshire in 1896 to complete the later chapters.

 

New Slains Castle, with its dramatic cliff-top setting nearby, is believed to have acted as the visual palette to prompt the dramatic scenes set in the fictional 'Castle Dracula'. The castle contains a room that has a look-alike in the novel - the octagonal hall used as a reception room for visitors - with the following observation from the novel's protagonist, Jonathan Harker, containing a clue: "The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort."

  

Mike Shepherd, a member of the Port Erroll Heritage Group who nominated Stoker for a plaque to bring attention to the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel's role in the early days of the novel's creation, said:

 

"When the journalist Gordon Casely visited Cruden Bay in the 1960s to interview those who knew Bram Stoker, they told him they were immensely proud that the famous author had picked their village to write his books.

 

"Bram's special place is our special place. The new plaque is the first-ever celebration of the link between Bram Stoker and Cruden Bay. As such, it will provide a focus for that pride."

 

The remaining 13 successful plaque nominations under the 2018 Commemorative Plaque Scheme will be announced over the coming months.

  

Wikipedia -

 

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.

 

Early life

 

Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland.

 

His parents were Abraham Stoker (1799–1876) from Dublin and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (1818–1901), who was raised in County Sligo.

 

Stoker was the third of seven children, the eldest of whom was Sir Thornley Stoker, 1st Bt..

 

Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf and attended the parish church with their children, who were baptised there, and Abraham was a senior civil servant.

 

Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years." He was educated in a private school run by the Rev. William Woods.

 

After his recovery, he grew up without further serious illnesses, even excelling as an athlete (he was named University Athlete, participating in multiple sports) at Trinity College, Dublin, which he attended from 1864 to 1870. He graduated with a BA in 1870, and purchased his MA in 1875. Though he later in life recalled graduating "with honours in mathematics," this appears to have been a mistake.

 

He was auditor of the College Historical Society (the Hist) and president of the University Philosophical Society, where his first paper was on Sensationalism in Fiction and Society.

 

Early career

Stoker became interested in the theatre while a student through his friend Dr. Maunsell. While working for the Irish Civil Service, he became the theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, which was co-owned by Sheridan Le Fanu, an author of Gothic tales.

 

Theatre critics were held in low esteem, but he attracted notice by the quality of his reviews. In December 1876, he gave a favourable review of Henry Irving's Hamlet at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Irving invited Stoker for dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel where he was staying, and they became friends.

 

Stoker also wrote stories, and "The Crystal Cup" was published by the London Society in 1872, followed by "The Chain of Destiny" in four parts in The Shamrock. In 1876 while a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote the non-fiction book The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (published 1879) which remained a standard work.

 

Furthermore, he possessed an interest in art, and was a founder of the Dublin Sketching Club in 1879.

 

Lyceum Theatre

 

Bram Stoker's former home, Kildare Street, Dublin

In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of 1 Marino Crescent. She was a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde.

 

Stoker had known Wilde from his student days, having proposed him for membership of the university's Philosophical Society while he was president. Wilde was upset at Florence's decision, but Stoker later resumed the acquaintanceship, and after Wilde's fall visited him on the Continent.

 

The Stokers moved to London, where Stoker became acting manager and then business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, London, a post he held for 27 years. On 31 December 1879, Bram and Florence's only child was born, a son whom they christened Irving Noel Thornley Stoker.

 

The collaboration with Henry Irving was important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London's high society, where he met James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (to whom he was distantly related). Working for Irving, the most famous actor of his time, and managing one of the most successful theatres in London made Stoker a notable if busy man.

 

He was dedicated to Irving and his memoirs show he idolised him. In London Stoker also met Hall Caine, who became one of his closest friends – he dedicated Dracula to him.

 

In the course of Irving's tours, Stoker travelled the world, although he never visited Eastern Europe, a setting for his most famous novel. Stoker enjoyed the United States, where Irving was popular.

 

With Irving he was invited twice to the White House, and knew William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

 

Stoker set two of his novels there, using Americans as characters, the most notable being Quincey Morris. He also met one of his literary idols, Walt Whitman.

 

Stoker visited the English coastal town of Whitby in 1890, and that visit was said to be part of the inspiration for Dracula.

 

He began writing novels while working as manager for Henry Irving and secretary and director of London's Lyceum Theatre, beginning with The Snake's Pass in 1890 and Dracula in 1897.

 

During this period, Stoker was part of the literary staff of The Daily Telegraph in London, and he wrote other fiction, including the horror novels The Lady of the Shroud (1909) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).

 

He published his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving in 1906, after Irving's death, which proved successful] and managed productions at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

 

Before writing Dracula, Stoker met Ármin Vámbéry, a Hungarian writer and traveller. Dracula likely emerged from Vámbéry's dark stories of the Carpathian mountains.

 

Stoker then spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires.

 

The 1972 book In Search of Dracula by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally claimed that the Count in Stoker's novel was based on Vlad III Dracula.[12] At most however, Stoker borrowed only the name and "scraps of miscellaneous information" about Romanian history, according to one expert, Elizabeth Miller; further, there are no comments about Vlad III in the author's working notes.

 

Dracula is an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic but completely fictional diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to the story, a skill which Stoker had developed as a newspaper writer

 

At the time of its publication, Dracula was considered a "straightforward horror novel" based on imaginary creations of supernatural life. "It gave form to a universal fantasy . . . and became a part of popular culture."

 

Stoker was a deeply private man, but his almost sexless marriage, intense adoration of Walt Whitman, Henry Irving and Hall Caine, and shared interests with Oscar Wilde, as well as the homoerotic aspects of Dracula have led to scholarly speculation that he was a repressed homosexual who used his fiction as an outlet for his sexual frustrations.[16] In 1912, he demanded imprisonment of all homosexual authors in Britain: it has been suggested that this was due to self-loathing and to disguise his own vulnerability.

 

Possibly fearful, and inspired by the monstrous image and threat of otherness that the press coverage of his friend Oscar's trials generated, Stoker began writing Dracula only weeks after Wilde's conviction.

 

According to the Encyclopedia of World Biography, Stoker's stories are today included in the categories of "horror fiction", "romanticized Gothic" stories, and "melodrama."

 

They are classified alongside other "works of popular fiction" such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,394 which also used the "myth-making" and story-telling method of having multiple narrators telling the same tale from different perspectives, according to historian Jules Zanger. "'They can't all be lying,' thinks the reader."

 

The original 541-page typescript of Dracula was believed to have been lost until it was found in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania in the early 1980s It consisted of typed sheets with many emendations and handwritten on the title page was "THE UN-DEAD."

 

The author's name was shown at the bottom as Bram Stoker. Author Robert Latham remarked: "the most famous horror novel ever published, its title changed at the last minute.[

 

The typescript was purchased by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

 

Stoker's inspirations for the story, in addition to Whitby, may have included a visit to Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire, a visit to the crypts of St. Michan's Church in Dublin, and the novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.

 

Stoker's original research notes for the novel are kept by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia

 

A facsimile edition of the notes was created by Elizabeth Miller and Robert Eighteen-Bisang in 1998.

 

Death

 

After suffering a number of strokes, Stoker died at No. 26 St George's Square, London on 20 April 1912.

 

Some biographers attribute the cause of death to tertiary syphilis, others to overwork.

 

He was cremated, and his ashes were placed in a display urn at Golders Green Crematorium in north London. The ashes of Irving Noel Stoker, the author's son, were added to his father's urn following his death in 1961. The original plan had been to keep his parents' ashes together, but after Florence Stoker's death, her ashes were scattered at the Gardens of Rest.

 

Beliefs and philosophy

 

Stoker was raised a Protestant in the Church of Ireland. He was a strong supporter of the Liberal Party and took a keen interest in Irish affairs.

 

As a "philosophical home ruler," he supported Home Rule for Ireland brought about by peaceful means.

 

He remained an ardent monarchist who believed that Ireland should remain within the British Empire, an entity that he saw as a force for good. He was an admirer of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, whom he knew personally, and supported his plans for Ireland.

 

Stoker believed in progress and took a keen interest in science and science-based medicine. Some Stoker novels represent early examples of science fiction, such as The Lady of the Shroud (1909). He had a writer's interest in the occult, notably mesmerism, but despised fraud and believed in the superiority of the scientific method over superstition. Stoker counted among his friends J. W. Brodie-Innis, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and hired member Pamela Colman Smith as an artist for the Lyceum Theatre, but no evidence suggests that Stoker ever joined the Order himself.

I read in one of Aberdeen's local newspaper that a new plaque celebrating Bram Stokers first writings of Dracula on his visit to Cruden Bay while he stayed at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel in the village is now on display, I decided to visit today myself to capture the plaque and archive here on my Flickr account, posting a few of the shots I captured today Sunday 10th Feb 2019.

 

News Paper item 8th February 2019.

A plaque has been installed at the north-east hotel where Bram Stoker began writing his most famous work.

 

The Dracula author arrived in Cruden Bay on a walking holiday in 1893 and a year later he checked into the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel.

 

Mr Stoker wrote a message in the guestbook. It read: “Second visit to Port Erroll. Delighted with everything & everybody & hope to come again to the Kilmarnock Arms.”

 

In 1896 he went back to the inn and began writing the early chapters of his novel on the mysterious Transylvanian aristocrat.

 

Nearby Slains Castle provided the inspiration for many of the scenes that ended up in the book.

 

Mike Shepherd from the Port Errol Heritage Group nominated the Bridge Street hotel for a plaque to help highlight the role it played in the early days of one of the greatest horror tales of all time.

 

The commemorative plate was placed on the hotel yesterday and Mr Shepherd was there to see it.

 

He said: “What’s great about is it is that first commemoration for Bram Stoker’s visit to Cruden Bay.

 

“There were quite a lot of people who didn’t realise there was a connection between Bram Stoker and the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel.”

 

Martin Taylor, owner and manager at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel, said having the plaque on the side of the building makes their links with Mr Stoker “official”.

 

The plaque is part of a Historic Environment Scotland scheme celebrating the lives of significant people by erecting plaques on the buildings where they lived or worked.

 

Stoker’s plaque is the 57th announced under the initiative since it began in 2012.

 

Caroline Clark, head of grants at Historic Environment Scotland, said: “This commemorative plaque highlights Bram Stocker’s connection to Scotland’s heritage.

 

“We hope that this will encourage fans of Bram Stoker to visit Cruden Bay and the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel – the hotel he stayed in while creating his most famous novel, Dracula.”

 

Historic Scotland Info

Aberdeenshire inn Bram Stoker stayed at while writing famous novel will house new plaque commemorating the author’s visits

 

The Scottish hotel that accommodated renowned Irish author Bram Stoker while he created Dracula will be recognised under Historic Environment Scotland’s 2018 Commemorative Plaque Scheme.

 

The annual scheme celebrates the lives of significant people by erecting plaques on the buildings where they lived or worked. Stoker’s plaque is the 57th announced under the scheme since it began in 2012. The plaque will be unveiled in the near future at the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel.

 

Born near Dublin in 1847, Bram Stoker was a part-time writer for most of his life. Later in his career, for 11 months out of every year, he worked as the business manager at the Lyceum Theatre in London and as the personal manager for the famous English stage actor, Henry Irving. After 1894, he spent the other month on holiday in Cruden Bay - then known as Port Erroll - where he wrote his books.

 

He first discovered Cruden Bay on a walking holiday to Aberdeenshire in 1893, writing: "When first I saw the place I fell in love with it." He returned in 1894, booking into the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel and writing in the guest book: "Second visit to Port Erroll. Delighted with everything & everybody & hope to come again to the Kilmarnock Arms."

 

He checked-in again in 1895 with the aim of writing the early chapters of his definitive work, Dracula. The Transylvanian vampire, Count Dracula, rose from the page in the hotel known locally as 'the Killie'. Stoker returned to Aberdeenshire in 1896 to complete the later chapters.

 

New Slains Castle, with its dramatic cliff-top setting nearby, is believed to have acted as the visual palette to prompt the dramatic scenes set in the fictional 'Castle Dracula'. The castle contains a room that has a look-alike in the novel - the octagonal hall used as a reception room for visitors - with the following observation from the novel's protagonist, Jonathan Harker, containing a clue: "The Count halted, putting down my bags, closed the door, and crossing the room, opened another door which led into a small octagonal room lit by a single lamp, and seemingly without a window of any sort."

  

Mike Shepherd, a member of the Port Erroll Heritage Group who nominated Stoker for a plaque to bring attention to the Kilmarnock Arms Hotel's role in the early days of the novel's creation, said:

 

"When the journalist Gordon Casely visited Cruden Bay in the 1960s to interview those who knew Bram Stoker, they told him they were immensely proud that the famous author had picked their village to write his books.

 

"Bram's special place is our special place. The new plaque is the first-ever celebration of the link between Bram Stoker and Cruden Bay. As such, it will provide a focus for that pride."

 

The remaining 13 successful plaque nominations under the 2018 Commemorative Plaque Scheme will be announced over the coming months.

  

Wikipedia -

 

Abraham "Bram" Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author, best known today for his 1897 Gothic novel Dracula. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and business manager of the Lyceum Theatre in London, which Irving owned.

 

Early life

 

Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland.

 

His parents were Abraham Stoker (1799–1876) from Dublin and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (1818–1901), who was raised in County Sligo.

 

Stoker was the third of seven children, the eldest of whom was Sir Thornley Stoker, 1st Bt..

 

Abraham and Charlotte were members of the Church of Ireland Parish of Clontarf and attended the parish church with their children, who were baptised there, and Abraham was a senior civil servant.

 

Stoker was bedridden with an unknown illness until he started school at the age of seven, when he made a complete recovery. Of this time, Stoker wrote, "I was naturally thoughtful, and the leisure of long illness gave opportunity for many thoughts which were fruitful according to their kind in later years." He was educated in a private school run by the Rev. William Woods.

 

After his recovery, he grew up without further serious illnesses, even excelling as an athlete (he was named University Athlete, participating in multiple sports) at Trinity College, Dublin, which he attended from 1864 to 1870. He graduated with a BA in 1870, and purchased his MA in 1875. Though he later in life recalled graduating "with honours in mathematics," this appears to have been a mistake.

 

He was auditor of the College Historical Society (the Hist) and president of the University Philosophical Society, where his first paper was on Sensationalism in Fiction and Society.

 

Early career

Stoker became interested in the theatre while a student through his friend Dr. Maunsell. While working for the Irish Civil Service, he became the theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, which was co-owned by Sheridan Le Fanu, an author of Gothic tales.

 

Theatre critics were held in low esteem, but he attracted notice by the quality of his reviews. In December 1876, he gave a favourable review of Henry Irving's Hamlet at the Theatre Royal in Dublin. Irving invited Stoker for dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel where he was staying, and they became friends.

 

Stoker also wrote stories, and "The Crystal Cup" was published by the London Society in 1872, followed by "The Chain of Destiny" in four parts in The Shamrock. In 1876 while a civil servant in Dublin, Stoker wrote the non-fiction book The Duties of Clerks of Petty Sessions in Ireland (published 1879) which remained a standard work.

 

Furthermore, he possessed an interest in art, and was a founder of the Dublin Sketching Club in 1879.

 

Lyceum Theatre

 

Bram Stoker's former home, Kildare Street, Dublin

In 1878 Stoker married Florence Balcombe, daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel James Balcombe of 1 Marino Crescent. She was a celebrated beauty whose former suitor was Oscar Wilde.

 

Stoker had known Wilde from his student days, having proposed him for membership of the university's Philosophical Society while he was president. Wilde was upset at Florence's decision, but Stoker later resumed the acquaintanceship, and after Wilde's fall visited him on the Continent.

 

The Stokers moved to London, where Stoker became acting manager and then business manager of Irving's Lyceum Theatre, London, a post he held for 27 years. On 31 December 1879, Bram and Florence's only child was born, a son whom they christened Irving Noel Thornley Stoker.

 

The collaboration with Henry Irving was important for Stoker and through him he became involved in London's high society, where he met James Abbott McNeill Whistler and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (to whom he was distantly related). Working for Irving, the most famous actor of his time, and managing one of the most successful theatres in London made Stoker a notable if busy man.

 

He was dedicated to Irving and his memoirs show he idolised him. In London Stoker also met Hall Caine, who became one of his closest friends – he dedicated Dracula to him.

 

In the course of Irving's tours, Stoker travelled the world, although he never visited Eastern Europe, a setting for his most famous novel. Stoker enjoyed the United States, where Irving was popular.

 

With Irving he was invited twice to the White House, and knew William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt.

 

Stoker set two of his novels there, using Americans as characters, the most notable being Quincey Morris. He also met one of his literary idols, Walt Whitman.

 

Stoker visited the English coastal town of Whitby in 1890, and that visit was said to be part of the inspiration for Dracula.

 

He began writing novels while working as manager for Henry Irving and secretary and director of London's Lyceum Theatre, beginning with The Snake's Pass in 1890 and Dracula in 1897.

 

During this period, Stoker was part of the literary staff of The Daily Telegraph in London, and he wrote other fiction, including the horror novels The Lady of the Shroud (1909) and The Lair of the White Worm (1911).

 

He published his Personal Reminiscences of Henry Irving in 1906, after Irving's death, which proved successful] and managed productions at the Prince of Wales Theatre.

 

Before writing Dracula, Stoker met Ármin Vámbéry, a Hungarian writer and traveller. Dracula likely emerged from Vámbéry's dark stories of the Carpathian mountains.

 

Stoker then spent several years researching European folklore and mythological stories of vampires.

 

The 1972 book In Search of Dracula by Radu Florescu and Raymond McNally claimed that the Count in Stoker's novel was based on Vlad III Dracula.[12] At most however, Stoker borrowed only the name and "scraps of miscellaneous information" about Romanian history, according to one expert, Elizabeth Miller; further, there are no comments about Vlad III in the author's working notes.

 

Dracula is an epistolary novel, written as a collection of realistic but completely fictional diary entries, telegrams, letters, ship's logs, and newspaper clippings, all of which added a level of detailed realism to the story, a skill which Stoker had developed as a newspaper writer

 

At the time of its publication, Dracula was considered a "straightforward horror novel" based on imaginary creations of supernatural life. "It gave form to a universal fantasy . . . and became a part of popular culture."

 

Stoker was a deeply private man, but his almost sexless marriage, intense adoration of Walt Whitman, Henry Irving and Hall Caine, and shared interests with Oscar Wilde, as well as the homoerotic aspects of Dracula have led to scholarly speculation that he was a repressed homosexual who used his fiction as an outlet for his sexual frustrations.[16] In 1912, he demanded imprisonment of all homosexual authors in Britain: it has been suggested that this was due to self-loathing and to disguise his own vulnerability.

 

Possibly fearful, and inspired by the monstrous image and threat of otherness that the press coverage of his friend Oscar's trials generated, Stoker began writing Dracula only weeks after Wilde's conviction.

 

According to the Encyclopedia of World Biography, Stoker's stories are today included in the categories of "horror fiction", "romanticized Gothic" stories, and "melodrama."

 

They are classified alongside other "works of popular fiction" such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,394 which also used the "myth-making" and story-telling method of having multiple narrators telling the same tale from different perspectives, according to historian Jules Zanger. "'They can't all be lying,' thinks the reader."

 

The original 541-page typescript of Dracula was believed to have been lost until it was found in a barn in northwestern Pennsylvania in the early 1980s It consisted of typed sheets with many emendations and handwritten on the title page was "THE UN-DEAD."

 

The author's name was shown at the bottom as Bram Stoker. Author Robert Latham remarked: "the most famous horror novel ever published, its title changed at the last minute.[

 

The typescript was purchased by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

 

Stoker's inspirations for the story, in addition to Whitby, may have included a visit to Slains Castle in Aberdeenshire, a visit to the crypts of St. Michan's Church in Dublin, and the novella Carmilla by Sheridan Le Fanu.

 

Stoker's original research notes for the novel are kept by the Rosenbach Museum and Library in Philadelphia

 

A facsimile edition of the notes was created by Elizabeth Miller and Robert Eighteen-Bisang in 1998.

 

Death

 

After suffering a number of strokes, Stoker died at No. 26 St George's Square, London on 20 April 1912.

 

Some biographers attribute the cause of death to tertiary syphilis, others to overwork.

 

He was cremated, and his ashes were placed in a display urn at Golders Green Crematorium in north London. The ashes of Irving Noel Stoker, the author's son, were added to his father's urn following his death in 1961. The original plan had been to keep his parents' ashes together, but after Florence Stoker's death, her ashes were scattered at the Gardens of Rest.

 

Beliefs and philosophy

 

Stoker was raised a Protestant in the Church of Ireland. He was a strong supporter of the Liberal Party and took a keen interest in Irish affairs.

 

As a "philosophical home ruler," he supported Home Rule for Ireland brought about by peaceful means.

 

He remained an ardent monarchist who believed that Ireland should remain within the British Empire, an entity that he saw as a force for good. He was an admirer of Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone, whom he knew personally, and supported his plans for Ireland.

 

Stoker believed in progress and took a keen interest in science and science-based medicine. Some Stoker novels represent early examples of science fiction, such as The Lady of the Shroud (1909). He had a writer's interest in the occult, notably mesmerism, but despised fraud and believed in the superiority of the scientific method over superstition. Stoker counted among his friends J. W. Brodie-Innis, a member of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and hired member Pamela Colman Smith as an artist for the Lyceum Theatre, but no evidence suggests that Stoker ever joined the Order himself.

www.yahoo.com/news/taiwan-ex-president-china-nuclear-1045...

 

Taiwan’s Ex-President On China, Nuclear Power And ‘The Most Stupid Policy In The World’

 

Former Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou, interviewed on Nov. 23 in Taipei, said he wears this T-shirt, with the logo "Nuclear can help," because he believes nuclear plants can meet Taiwan's power needs with technology that's better for the environment.

 

TAIPEI, Taiwan ― Like much of the world, Ma Ying-jeou believes Taiwan is part of China, destined to eventually, someday, reunify with the mainland.

 

As president of the self-governing island from 2008 to 2016, he pushed for more trade to integrate the two economies. In 2015, Ma held a historic summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping, becoming the first Taiwanese leader to meet his Beijing counterpart since the Chinese Civil War ended in 1949.

 

Ma’s successor, Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen, takes a different view. Her Democratic Progressive Party believes Taiwan should remain a de facto sovereign nation. While China has grown more authoritarian under Xi, Taiwan ranks alongside countries like Iceland and Estonia for transparency and democratic openness, far ahead of the United States. And though Tsai has stopped short of triggering potential war by declaring independence or formally disavowing the country’s official title of “Republic of China,” her administration has hewn closely to the U.S. as the global superpower increasingly jockeys with Beijing for military and economic supremacy in Asia.

 

You might think then that Ma’s approach to his country’s energy problems would be to make Taiwan more dependent on China while Tsai would seek a system capable of withstanding whatever blockade or amphibious invasion the People’s Liberation Army might attempt.

 

You’d be wrong. Among the biggest policy differences between the Chinese nationalist Kuomintang and the Democratic Progressive Party is on what Taiwan’s two biggest parties want to do with the country’s four nuclear power plants.

 

An ardent supporter of atomic energy, Ma tried to complete construction on Taiwan’s fourth and most advanced nuclear power station to date, though he ultimately caved during an election year to anti-nuclear protesters’ demand to pause work on the plant.

 

Longmen Nuclear Power Plant, shown on Nov. 23, in New Taipei City, Taiwan. The plant has never opened.

 

After taking office in 2017, the Tsai administration went in the opposite direction, passing a law mandating the phaseout of all nuclear energy by 2025. The government aims to generate most of the highly industrialized republic’s electricity from fossil fuels, particularly natural gas and coal. Tsai had promised that wind and solar would help make up for the zero-carbon generation lost when the nuclear reactors shut down. But those renewables today generate a tiny sliver of Taiwan’s power, almost certainly putting even the government’s revised-down goals out of reach.

 

The debate over nuclear energy mirrors those in South Korea and Japan, but there’s an extra element at play here: Taiwan’s precarious statehood. Unlike those two East Asian neighbors, who represent themselves at the United Nations and can count on the U.S. military to defend them, most of the world recognizes China’s claim to Taiwan. And Washington remains committed, at least on paper, to its policy of “strategic ambiguity” as to whether and how it would fight to defend an island whose government it works with but does not formally recognize.

 

Despite all the punditry drawing parallels with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it’s impossible to definitively predict how a Chinese takeover of Taiwan might pan out.

 

But some things are certain. Taiwan has only a week’s worth of natural gas in storage, and a blockade like the one that followed a controversial visit last summer by then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would send gas barges scrambling away from Taiwanese ports. Coal similarly requires steady imports to the island. Same with oil. And while China can’t darken the sun or halt the wind, Taiwan has limited space and resources for solar panels, turbines and batteries, and their supply chains also overwhelmingly run through the mainland.

 

By contrast, nuclear reactors can pump out steady carbon-free electricity for two years or more without needing fresh uranium fuel.

 

I interviewed Ma toward the end of a two-week trip to Taiwan in November, during which I spoke with executives, activists and academics about what could happen if the government successfully ends atomic energy production in the next two years.

 

Professor Tsung-Kuang Yeh, a nuclear scientist at the National Tsing Hua University, has become an outspoken advocate of saving Taiwan's nuclear reactors since the current government's shutdown policy went into effect.

 

Among them was Tsung-kuang Yeh, a prominent nuclear engineer and professor at the National Tsing Hua University. He asked if I would be interested in meeting one-on-one with former President Ma to speak about this issue. On Nov. 23, two days before my return flight to New York, I drove with Yeh to the office in a glassy Taipei tower where Ma’s foundation is headquartered.

 

Ma’s assistant served boba milk tea and, after a few minutes, Ma strode into the conference room with a big grin as he pointed two index fingers at his chest. His blue T-shirt featured polar bears and the English words “Nuclear can help.”

 

We spoke for more than an hour. His staff had been hesitant about me asking about anything other than nuclear energy, but Ma answered every question, touching on his party’s authoritarian past, growing tensions with Beijing and why he doesn’t think Taiwan should be compared to Hong Kong.

 

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

 

I want to start with a question about what Taiwan is. Many of my readers in the U.S. might not have a full understanding of Taiwan’s status in the world, its statehood. There’s a book I read before coming here that compared Taiwan to Israel, the “Israel of the East,” a small country with powerful friends in the West, a world-class technology sector and military prowess.

 

But a comparison I have thought about a lot during my time here, and one that’s very close to my heart, is with Puerto Rico, an archipelago whose sovereignty is controlled by a nearby superpower and whose party politics revolve around questions of status. Where do you feel Taiwan falls between those two places? Are those similarities correct?

 

Usually the world sees Taiwan as a small country facing a big enemy. As you know, we had a civil war with the communists in the late 1940s. Eventually we lost the mainland and moved to Taiwan. In the last almost 70 years, we’ve built an economy which is unparalleled in many ways. Particularly in high technology. A lot of countries actually depend on the supply of [semiconductor] chips from Taiwan. In addition to that, we also showed the world that we’re able to build Taiwan and feed 23 million people and educate them. This is something we’re proud of. But, of course, we have encountered many difficulties: Our relationship with the mainland, our energy problems and a lot of others.

 

No matter what the problems and how difficult they are, I think we have accomplished a lot in the last 70 years, ever since we came here in 1949. We’re proud of our accomplishments, but we also understand the difficulties we’ve had.

 

Another country Taiwan is frequently compared to these days is Ukraine. Do you see that as a fair analogy?

 

Not quite, because Ukraine is connected with the Soviets by land. We’re separated from the Chinese mainland by the Taiwan Strait. It’s more than 100 nautical miles. On the one hand, this is part of our defense. On the other hand, in case we had military difficulties, we have no place to go. That is why wisdom is very important in dealing with a strong neighbor. We speak the same language. We have relatives over there. So we hope we can avoid a war. We have to make all the necessary preparations for war. But we have to try to avoid it and try to seek peace.

 

This is actually the essence of my administration from 2008 to 2016. Before that, we had very little contact with the mainland. When I became president, I tried to establish a relationship never before seen in this part of the world. We concluded 23 agreements with the mainland, covering almost all walks of life. Eventually I had an opportunity to meet with their leader, Mr. Xi Jinping, in Singapore, and we agreed we should solve our differences through peaceful means. I told him, ‘Listen, we’re building a great bridge of peace across the Taiwan Strait. As long as we follow the traffic rules, either side could use it.’ This is what I accomplished as president.

 

Unfortunately, after I stepped down, everything changed. Just giving you an example: An important newsmagazine, The Economist, in their editorial in 2015, they said the meeting between Taiwan and mainland Chinese leaders is the biggest concession the mainland Chinese made regarding the status of Taiwan.

 

That was 2015. Six years later, in 2021, the same magazine had as its cover story: Taiwan, the most dangerous place on Earth. What happened in the six years? Well, the change of government. The policy of the current government made us face this difficult situation.

 

Can you explain what the 1992 consensus is and what it means today?

 

The ’92 consensus is the consensus that binds the two sides together. Mainland China says there’s one China ― they’re that one China. We say the same. Both of us believe in the one-China principle but differ on its interpretation. So the ’92 consensus means one China, respective interpretations.

 

Of course, the current government in Taiwan does not accept that. They have an even more difficult situation with the mainland than we did in those years. The ’92 consensus is the very important common political basis for our relationship.

 

How would you summarize your interpretation of the ’92 consensus?

 

This concerns the respective constitution of the two sides. In our constitution, it says that currently China has two parts: Taiwan and the mainland. The mainland’s says the ’92 consensus is the compass of our relationship. Both sides attach a lot of importance to that concept, because either side of the Taiwan Strait maintains that there is only one China, and Taiwan is part of that China, though we differ on the interpretation.

 

You can see a comparison in the two Germanys before 1972. As you know, in 1972, the two sides of Germany reached an agreement. In English it’s called the [Basic Treaty]. In German, it’s Grundvertrag. That’s how they define each other. That agreement was able to maintain peaceful relations between the two sides in Germany, and eventually they were reunified in 1990.

 

We don’t know if we’ll be reunited with the mainland or not. But at least the existence of the ’92 consensus gives the two sides a reason to treat the other side peacefully.

 

Going off that ― and I only just learned this while I was here ― but the U.S. once proposed that Taiwan and China should have two separate seats at the U.N. At the time, Taiwanese leader Chiang Kai-shek said he didn’t want that and that reunification with the mainland would eventually happen. In hindsight, was that the right decision?

 

Reunification is still very far from us because we need to do a lot of things before we can do that. The most important thing is to maintain a peaceful relationship, otherwise nothing can be done. What I did from 2008 to 2016 was to build that basis of relationship. People asked me: Why didn’t you sign a peace treaty with the mainland? I said, I have signed 22 peace treaties. All these agreements, without peace, cannot be accomplished.

 

So, only one seat at the U.N. was still the appropriate pathway, you think?

 

We haven’t reached that point yet. The mainland would never allow Taiwan to become independent.

 

On the other hand, they want to incorporate Taiwan now. Obviously right now the people of Taiwan do not accept that either. It’s important for the two sides to at least maintain the kind of relationship I helped establish from 2008 to 2016, what I called a peaceful development relationship. Whether we can go from there to reunification is something else that takes time. But at least we have to make the relationship peaceful.

 

You were born in Hong Kong. Obviously the crackdown there since 2019 has changed a lot of people’s views about the reality of “one country, two systems.” Has what we’ve seen in the Special Administrative Region changed your view of what is possible with the mainland?

 

Hong Kong shouldn’t be a good example for Taiwan because Hong Kong used to be a British colony. Taiwan isn’t any other country’s colony.

 

In Hong Kong, before they were part of the mainland, they had freedom and rule of law, but they didn’t have democracy. This is very different from Taiwan. We have all three of these things in Taiwan.

 

You have called Taiwan under President Tsai an “illiberal democracy.” Can you explain that?

 

This idea is from Fareed Zakaria, who used to be a writer for Foreign Affairs, in a book called ”The Future of Freedom.” If a leader who was popularly elected but, once inaugurated, starts to end his own term or to criticize or squeeze the opposition party, then the country is no longer a liberal democracy. It becomes an illiberal democracy. I’m afraid Taiwan is going through that process.

 

You’re probably not aware, but about three years ago one of our TV news stations was shut down by the government.

 

Which one?

 

Chung T’ien Television. It was in 2020. [Taiwanese regulators declined to renew the pro-China station’s broadcast license over its alleged repeated airing of what the government called disinformation.]This is really incredible. No free or democratic country ever did that.

 

In December 2020, one of the professors in National Taiwan University was taken by the police to the police station and interrogated for about two to three hours because he criticized the government’s cultural policy. For me, this is unthinkable. It doesn’t sound like a democratic country. There are quite a few examples, which I assemble here. This is what Fareed Zakaria believes are symptoms of illiberal democracy.

 

ormer President Ma Ying-jeou said it takes time for people to understand the importance of nuclear energy. "Fortunately, in the last couple of years, the situation is getting much clearer and clearer, that the world cannot survive without nuclear power."

 

Taiwan has consistently scored above my own country, the United States, on rankings like the Freedom House, the Economist Intelligence Unit, the Bertelsmann Transformation Index and the Varieties of Democracy’s Liberal Democracy Index. In fact, three out of those four saw an increase in Taiwan’s ranking in the years since you left office. The fourth, BTI, stayed constant. So, what do you think that those scores are missing?

 

In the last couple of years, many people in the United States have considered that American democracy is also in crisis. Your people say this is no longer the United States of America, it’s the Divided States of America.

 

Again, do you think these rankings I listed are ignoring the incidents you’ve highlighted of illiberalism?

 

That’s right. When people have power, sometimes they abuse it. But they have to understand it takes many people’s efforts to have democracy. So they have to be very careful in using their power.

 

You held this historic meeting with Xi Jinping. What do you think is the biggest misconception people in the West have of the Chinese leader?

 

China, everybody knows, it’s a dictatorship. In dealing with mainland China, we certainly have to be careful. But we also have to be fully cognizant that there should be only one China, although we do have different conceptions of what that one China is. On that basis, the two sides can talk to each other and even make some progress on the relationship. The issue of reunification is not an easy one, and it takes many years to accomplish.

 

I’m sure you have read the book by Grant Addison, ”Destined for War.” He studied 12 or 16 cases of European countries to show that war is inevitable. I told him that in China, we had a history of 4,600 years, and 70% of the time China was unified. The other 30% it was divided. From unification to division, or from division to unification, it always took war.

 

We, as the offsprings of those ancient people, should be smarter than they are. We should learn how to solve disputes in a peaceful way. This is what I told Mr. Xi Jinping in Singapore, face to face. I told him that, where we sit with “one China, respective interpretations,” we will not interpret that as “two Chinas,” “one China, one Taiwan” or “Taiwan independence.” We do this not to please you. Rather, this is just not tolerated in our constitution. We have to find another way to accommodate each other’s differences in a peaceful way. I’m confident we can do this.

 

I want to switch to energy now. Nuclear power once provided more than half the electricity in Taiwan. Now it’s down to about 10%, and the government plans to phase it out completely by 2025. What do you see as the biggest motivator for the “nuclear-free homeland” policy we’re seeing implemented now?

 

If I understand correctly, the nuclear-free homeland idea came up when President Tsai Ing-wen was chairwoman of the DPP. So, 11 years ago. At the time, what happened in Fukushima [the 2011 disaster at the nuclear plant in Japan] really scared everyone. The DPP from the very beginning was opposed to nuclear power.

 

For a country like Taiwan, nuclear power is so important. We started using it about 40 years ago, and we’ve had a relatively good system. I don’t know if you have seen the report by the International Atomic Energy Agency [on countries’ “unit capacity factor,” a measure of how efficiently nuclear plant operators are running reactors]. There are 31 countries in the world that have nuclear power. We have actually been among the top five in the world for quite a while. That means we have actually outperformed at our plants at roughly 90%. This is something we’re proud of.

 

I met with President Tsai six years ago, after she was first elected. We had a meeting about the transition. I said, “You’ve got to understand, you plan to amass 20% of energy to renewables, but this is not possible.” Bloomberg Intelligence predicted Taiwan can do only about 9%. My economic minister said no more than 10%. But Tsai wants to have 20% by 2025. I think that’s not possible.

 

Her response was shocking. She said, “My energy expert told me it is possible.”

 

That’s convenient.

 

What happened next is, a year later, we had nationwide blackouts in 2017. So far we’ve had five of these big blackouts, precisely because we do have an electricity problem.

 

It was in 2014, when you were still president, that the fourth plant was mothballed. I imagine you intended that to be temporary?

 

The decision was made by me. The reason being, at the time, there was a big difference between the two parties. I thought, maybe we should make that decision sometime later. I thought, this is the right decision, at least to avoid the imminent clash between the two political parties.

 

We believe that after a while we may be able to do it again. But it takes time.

 

When you say “clash between the two parties,” do you mean you were concerned it would take an electoral toll on your party if you did not postpone the power plant?

 

Yes. There was a very acute clash between the two parties. At the time, people thought nuclear power was really dangerous. They didn’t understand we’ve done very, very well ever since we’ve had nuclear power.

 

So you were hoping that, in the two years, the KMT would be reelected and you could help educate people in the interim?

 

Yes. It takes time for people to understand how important nuclear power is. Fortunately, in the last couple of years, the situation is getting much clearer and clearer, that the world cannot survive without nuclear power. That’s the reason I wear this T-shirt.

 

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi had a similar message at the U.N. climate summit in Egypt just last week.

 

Earlier this week, I was on Lanyu, where a past KMT government decided to store low-level radioactive waste. Once the indigenous Tao people discovered what was going on at the facility, which I actually just visited yesterday, they protested, and it helped to fuel the anti-nuclear movement. What do you think that the government could have done differently back then? Was it a mistake to put the waste on Lanyu in the first place?

 

When we did it, it was more than 30 years ago. After 30 years, people there and elsewhere understand it’s not as risky as people thought. This is very important. People there certainly now hope the waste will stay so they continue to get the subsidies. We’re looking for other places in order to deposit the nuclear waste. But people understand it’s not as dangerous as they thought.

 

One of the arguments I’ve been hearing a lot from anti-nuclear people is that there’s not any room to store the waste. It makes me wonder if there’s enough room, then, for all the renewables you need to replace nuclear power. Do you think that there is enough room to keep what spent fuel you have and continue to produce nuclear energy?

 

The current government’s policy to develop renewable energy to replace nuclear power is, I think, the most stupid policy in the world. No country has done that. Why? Because nuclear power is considered green energy already.

 

We should use renewable energy to replace coal or natural gas. But not nuclear.

 

What do you think of the current government plan to become more dependent on liquefied natural gas? I know they’re building a new import terminal in Taoyuan County. What are your biggest concerns with that plan?

 

Just recently, when our president talked to the Nobel Prize-winning chemist Dr. Lee Yuan-tseh, the Nobel winner asked the president: “If you do this, what will happen in 2025?” Her answer was really shocking. She said, “Well, my term ends in 2024, so anything after that, I don’t know. I won’t be responsible.”

 

This is their problem: I don’t know whether they are fully aware. In Taiwan, we should develop renewable energy for sure. Actually, I was the person who pushed for the enactment of the 2009 Renewable Energy Development Act. But Taiwan’s natural conditions are not really that good for either solar or wind. Nuclear power is still very important to Taiwan. The percentage of nuclear should be at least 20% [of the national energy mix]. Renewables can hardly reach 20%. Maybe they can do 15%. I hope we can be able to have more nuclear energy that can better serve our country.

 

Taiwan is an economy that cannot just be stopped even temporarily without electricity.

 

The DPP was founded the same year as the Chernobyl disaster, so I’ve heard the argument that this has always been part of the party’s founding mythology. I’ve also heard the argument that the DPP perceives nuclear power as a partisan issue, something that the KMT pursued and which you must be against if you’re against the KMT.

 

In a way, it’s become the ideology of the DPP. They believed that this was a bad thing for Taiwan from the very beginning. But they fail to find out what else we can do if we lack the conditions to develop renewable energy. Certainly we’d be happy if we could develop as much renewable energy as the DPP thought they could. But it’s not the case.

 

When people say they’re afraid of earthquakes or afraid of Fukushima, what do you say? Like Japan, Taiwan sits within the seismic Ring of Fire. Is there something fundamentally different about Taiwan’s nuclear power plants that makes a situation like Fukushima unlikely here?

 

If you knew Fukushima, you’d understand there’s no single person who died out of contamination of radioactivity. Not a single one. This is also true in Taiwan. We have had nuclear power for more than 40 years. There’s no single person who’s died from radioactivity. But there are a few people who just don’t like the truth. There’s even some DPP politicians who keep finding some geological fault regarding the location of the nuclear power plant. I think it’s just very stupid.

 

Are you aware that nuclear power plant No. 4 was under their supervision and, because of the budgetary problems, Ms. Tsai actually increased their subsidy in order to make it work?

 

The DPP itself probably had an anti-nuclear ideology. But after so many years, people should understand this is really a myth. I don’t know why they still stick to it.

 

What about the hunger strike protest at the time, which had garnered a lot of attention?

 

You’re talking about the DPP politician? Lin Yi-hsiung?

 

Yes.

 

You have to understand, Mr. Lin has been deified. He’s been treated like a god. Whatever he says, people have to follow. That makes it even more difficult to solve the problem.

 

But I’m sure after so many years people are starting to understand nuclear power is no longer something very dangerous.

 

In hindsight, is there a way you wish you could have responded to those protests at the time? Could you have prevented him from being deified?

 

The reason why I mothballed the nuclear power plant was precisely because I wanted to avoid the forthcoming clash between the people. On the fourth nuclear power plant, we still had some work to do, so we could wait for a while. But after so many years, after so many debates, I think people now understand nuclear power isn’t that bad. If we really want to move Taiwan ahead, we have to use it.

 

I imagine nuclear power will be part of the KMT’s platform in two years.

 

Of course.

 

What would you say to a regular voter to persuade them? How prominent do you imagine the energy issues being in that campaign two years from now?

 

It’s now a little easier than before to convince people that we need nuclear power because renewables, as we said, do not come so easily. They have their own problems, too. We have to have an economy with multiple energies: renewables, coal, natural gas. They all should have their respective place in the energy picture. To get rid of nuclear power isn’t very feasible or smart. It has a lot to do with, as I said, ideology.

 

But if you look at what happened more than 10 years ago, even the current president asked the nuclear plant supervisor to work harder to achieve our target and offered to give more money to complete the construction. This is so political that it makes people think, “Don’t trust those politicians.”

 

Will the deployment of small modular reactors change perceptions and make it easier to build new nuclear reactors again?

 

I believe so, but it takes some time for the training and to help people understand SMRs. Our American friends may be able to help us with this. Then we wouldn’t have to build a big nuclear plant, which is not so welcome by the people living nearby.

 

We have several science parks, which are very important in our computer and other industries. For things like that, having the small reactors would make nuclear more marketable.

 

Some big manufacturers in Taiwan are looking at building small modular reactors abroad, maybe in the Philippines, with hopes that someday, if policy changes in Taiwan, they can bring the technology home. Are you concerned that that demonstrates a loss of economic competitiveness for Taiwan, especially as its neighbors, such as Japan, South Korea and China, embrace nuclear energy?

 

The general trend of the world is quite clear. If you look at what happened in South Korea and Japan, they have their own independent energy systems. Taiwan is the same.

 

Look at what happened in Germany. Germany was the country that led the fight against nuclear power after the Fukushima incident. They were supposed to phase out all of the nuclear power plants by the end of this year. But they’ll have some delays now to make sure they get through the winter. The Ukraine war makes it very clear that energy becomes a weapon. Germany learned that lesson. And this is even with a coalition government where the Green Party plays an important role, I think even the economic minister is a Green.

 

That’s right. Robert Habeck.

 

They have gone so far as to phase out later instead of sooner. This is something not so easy. Everybody learned something in the process.

 

I want to ask one more question related to Ukraine. Right now, as you said, Russia is waging war against Ukraine through what the Financial Times recently referred to as a “blackout blitz.” That’s both in terms of just bombing electrical infrastructure and limiting how much natural gas is flowing to Ukraine’s allies. Are you worried that increased reliance on natural gas could be used as a weapon against Taiwan?

 

Of course!

 

What do you say to people who say, “If war comes, we don’t want there to be a nuclear power plant that could be bombed”?

 

People in Taiwan have so far appreciated the lessons Ukraine has taught us, particularly concerning liquefied natural gas. As you know, under the DPP’s energy blueprint, LNG will occupy 50% of the energy mix. We import all the LNG from Middle East countries. We produce nothing.

 

That could become a very important weakness of our national security. Mainland China doesn’t even have to fire a shot. They could just announce: “Stop exporting LNG to Taiwan” and suddenly we cannot cook! It’s not a question of the military but of our households. It’s very important that we know we have to become a multi-energy country. Coal has to be reduced as much as possible. Natural gas, you cannot really let 50% of your energy supply depend on LNG.

 

You have had a very blunt attitude about what a military conflict would be like with China. The phrase you have used is: “The first fight would be the last.” I think all Taiwanese agree that war must be absolutely avoided. Do you really think defense is pointless? What role does energy play in deterrence?

 

Generally people in Taiwan now do not appreciate the problem of energy’s place in our national security. Maybe it’ll take a little while for them to understand. But we have to keep in mind that we can’t let energy like natural gas occupy 50% of the picture. We import 100% from abroad. That could kill us. Sooner or later, people will have to understand nuclear power is much more dependable than fossil fuels.

 

Is nuclear power a better deterrent than F-16s?

 

Look at what happened in Germany. When Germany said it wanted to phase out all the nuclear power plants by 2022, they seemed so confident it would happen. But it changed. And, I’m sure you know, the price of electricity in Germany is five times that of Taiwan.

 

If we depend so much on fossil fuel, we certainly will have the same problem. The price of electricity will go up 30%, maybe even 45%. What happened in the world over the past couple of years gradually made people appreciate that the role of nuclear energy is very different than what they thought before.

 

I’d like to end on a lighter note. What do you think is Taiwan’s greatest cultural export? Is there one thing you love particularly ― one food dish, one piece of music or art or a movie from Taiwan that you think the rest of the world should enjoy?

 

Ever since we started our relations with the mainland, the popular songs of the two sides have become an important part of life. One of our singers, Deng Lijun, actually occupied the minds of many, many mainland Chinese.

 

Nowadays, there’s another mainland Chinese singer, Hong Qi, a young man who wrote about a love affair in Xinjiang in a remote area. It’s been sung by several billion people. It’s really incredible. The cultural bonds of the two sides make it a very important element of our relationship.

 

When Taiwanese songs became very popular on the mainland, the name of the singer was Deng, like [the former Chinese leader responsible for reopening the country to global trade] Deng Xiaoping. They called the lady “small Deng” and him “Big Deng.” That’s the sort of thing that binds us together. We should continue to do that.

 

What is one phrase in Mandarin that you wish Americans knew?

 

I was told that on an occasion when mainland philosophers and educators met from different cultures, just like you asked, everyone was asked to pick just one sentence. Eventually the one that got the approval of almost everyone in Chinese was: 己所不欲，勿施於人。

 

“If you don’t want something, don’t force someone to do it.”

 

It’s something everyone believes is important. It’s from Confucius, someone who existed more than 2,500 years ago.

 

And yet relevant today still.

 

They give us many, many good lessons, even in areas of ecology. Mencius was also a disciple of Confucius and says you should not use fish nets that are so small that you cannot let all other species of fish go, that that will actually kill the fish.

 

When I studied the law of the sea at Harvard University, I understood that in the year 1990, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution that forbade the use of drift nets. You know what a drift net is? It’s a very big net that grabs almost everything, even seabirds. So they said no North Pacific countries should allow the fishing boats to use that. I looked at that and said, God, we had this 2,600 years ago. In the time of the Zhou dynasty, every fisherman, if he caught a small fish, he’d have to give it back to the sea. At the time, people were ecologically so advanced.

 

It feels like we’re relearning a lot now.

 

When I was the mayor of Taipei City, we were supposed to have a ceremony for Confucius every year on his birthday. I’d repeat that story and say, “Don’t believe that ancient people are stupid.” They are not. They have ideas that we do not have in our society about nature. This is something that shows how important and how great Chinese culture is.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 420. Photo: Warner Bros. Doris Day and Howard Keel in Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953).

 

American actress and singer Doris Day (1922-2019) sang with several big bands before going solo in 1947. In the 1950s, she made a series of popular film musicals, including Calamity Jane (1953) and The Pajama Game (1957). With Rock Hudson, she starred in the box office hit Pillow Talk (1959). On TV, she starred in the sitcom The Doris Day Show (1968-1973).

 

Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff was born in 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choirmaster. Her mother named her after her favourite silent film star, Doris Kenyon. She had two brothers, Richard, who died before she was born and Paul, a few years older. For many years it was uncertain whether she was born in 1922 or 1924, with Day herself reportedly believing her birth year was the latter and giving her age accordingly. It wasn't until 3 April 2017, her 95th, not 93rd, birthday, that her birth certificate was found by the Associated Press, which confirmed she was born in 1922. Her parents divorced while she was still a child and she lived with her mother. Like most little girls, Doris liked to dance. At fourteen, she formed a dance act with a boy, Jerry Doherty, and they won $500 in a local talent contest. She and Jerry took a brief trip to Hollywood to test the waters. They felt they could succeed, so she and Jerry returned to Cincinnati with the intention of packing and making a permanent move to Hollywood. Tragically, the night before Doris was to move to Hollywood, her car was hit by a train and she badly injured her right leg. The accident ended the possibility of a dancing career. She spent her next years wheelchair-bound, but during this time began singing along with the radio. Observing her daughter sing Alma decided Doris should have singing lessons. She engaged a teacher, Grace Raine. After three lessons, Raine told Alma that young Doris had "tremendous potential". Raine was so impressed that she gave Doris three lessons a week for the price of one. Years later, Day said that Raine had the biggest effect on her singing style and career. At age 17, Day had her first professional jobs as a vocalist, on the WLW radio program 'Carlin's Carnival', and in a local restaurant, Charlie Yee's Shanghai Inn. While performing for the radio, she was approached by bandleader Barney Rapp. He felt that her name, Kappelhoff, was too harsh and awkward and that she should change her name to something more pleasant. The name 'Day' was suggested by Rapp from one of the songs in Doris' repertoire, 'Day by Day'. She didn't like the name at first, feeling that it sounded too much like a burlesque performer. While she was performing in Barney Rapp's band, she met trombonist Al Jorden, and they married in 1941. The marriage was extremely unhappy and there were reports of Jordan's alcoholism and abuse of the young star. They divorced within two years, not long after the birth of their son Terrence Jorden called Terry. Despondent and feeling his life had little meaning after the much publicised divorce, Jorden later committed suicide. After working with Rapp, Day worked with bandleaders Jimmy James, Bob Crosby, and Les Brown. The years touring with Les Brown & His Band of Renown, she later called 'the happiest times in my life'. In 1941, Day appeared as a singer in three Soundies (three-minute film clips containing a song, dance and/or band or orchestral number) with the Les Brown band. Her first hit recording was 'Sentimental Journey' in 1945. It became an anthem of the desire of World War II demobilising troops to return home. In 1946, Doris married saxophone player and former child actor George Weidler, but this union lasted less than a year. After leaving Brown to embark on a solo career, she recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967. Day's agent talked her into taking a screen test at Warner Bros. The executives there liked what they saw and signed her to a contract. Her first starring role was in Romance on the High Seas (Michael Curtiz, Busby Berkeley, 1948), with Jack Carson and Janis Paige. The next year, she made two more films, My Dream Is Yours (Michael Curtiz, 1949) and It's a Great Feeling (David Butler, 1949). Audiences took to her beauty, terrific singing voice, and bubbly personality, and she turned in fine performances in the films she made - in addition to several hit records.

 

Doris Day made three films for Warner Bros. in 1950 and five more in 1951. She co-starred with Gordon MacRae in five nostalgic period musicals: Tea for Two (David Butler, 1950), The West Point Story (Roy Del Ruth, 1950) with James Cagney and Virginia Mayo, On Moonlight Bay (Roy Del Ruth, 1951), Starlift (Roy Del Ruth, 1951), and By the Light of the Silvery Moon (David Butler, 1953). Her most commercially successful film for Warner was I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), which broke box-office records of 20 years. The film is a musical biography of lyricist Gus Kahn, played by Danny Thomas. It was Day's fourth film directed by Michael Curtiz. One of her few dramatic roles was in Storm Warning (Stuart Heisler, 1951) with Ginger Rogers and Ronald Reagan. She briefly dated Ronald Reagan - with whom she also co-starred in The Winning Team (1952) - shortly after his divorce from Jane Wyman when she and Reagan were contract players at Warner Bros. Doris Day met and married Martin Melcher in 1951. He adopted her young son Terry and became her manager. In 1953, Doris starred in Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953), which was a major hit. She performed 'Secret Love' in the film, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Several more hits followed including Lucky Me (Jack Donohue, 1954), Love Me or Leave Me (Charles Vidor, 1955) with James Cagney. Alfred Hitchcock had seen her dramatic role in Storm Warning and choose her to play Jo McKenna opposite James Stewart in his re-make The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). In the film she sang the song 'Que Será, Será! (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)', which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became an evergreen. In 1959, Day entered her most successful phase as a film actress with a series of romantic comedies. Her best-known film is probably the first one, Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959) with Rock Hudson and Tony Randall. For her performance, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Leading Actress. She later co-starred with Hudson and Randall again in Lover Come Back (Delbert Mann, 1961), and Send Me No Flowers (Norman Jewison, 1964). In all three, Day and Hudson played love interests while Randall played Hudson's close friend.

 

Doris Day started out in the 1960s with the hit Please Don't Eat the Daisies (Charles Walters, 1960) in which her co-star was David Niven. In 1962, Day appeared with Cary Grant in the comedy That Touch of Mink (Delbert Mann, 1962), the first film in history ever to gross $1 million in one theatre (Radio City Music Hall). During 1960 and the 1962 to 1964 period, she ranked number one at the box office. Despite her successes at the box office, the late 1950s and early 1960s were a difficult period for Day. In 1958, her brother Paul had died. Around this time, her husband, who had also taken charge of her career, made deals for her to star in films she didn't really care about, which led to a bout with exhaustion. The 1960s weren't to be a repeat of the previous busy decade. She made fewer films, but the ones she did make were successful: Do Not Disturb (Ralph Levy, 1965) with Rod Taylor, and The Glass Bottom Boat (Frank Tashlin, 1966). By the late 1960s, the sexual revolution of the baby boomer generation had refocused public attitudes about sex. Times had changed, but Day's films had not. Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (Hy Averback, 1968) and With Six You Get Eggroll (Howard Morris, 1968) with Brian Keith, would be her final features. In 1968, her husband Martin Melcher suddenly died. Between 1956 and his death, he had produced 18 of her films. A shocked Day discovered she was millions of dollars in debt. Melcher and his business partner Jerome Bernard Rosenthal had squandered virtually all of her considerable earnings, but she was eventually awarded $22 million by the courts in a case against Rosenthal.

 

After Martin Melcher's death, Doris Day never made another film. She professed not to have known that he had negotiated a multimillion-dollar deal with CBS to launch her own TV series, The Doris Day Show, the following fall. Day hated the idea of performing on television, but felt obligated to do it and needed the work to help pay off her debts. The show became successful and lasted from 1968 until 1973. The Doris Day Show was a light and fluffy sitcom, which changed formats and producers almost every season. Originally it was about widow Doris Martin and her two young sons (Philip Brown and Todd Stark) who left the big city for the quiet and peace of her family's ranch, which was run by her dad Buck (Denver Pyle) and ranchhand Leroy (James Hampton). Later Doris, Buck, and sons Billy and Toby moved to San Francisco, where Doris got a job as a secretary to bumbling magazine publisher Michael Nicholson (McLean Stevenson). In Season Three, the Martin family moved into an apartment above the Paluccis' Italian restaurant, and Doris began writing features for Today's World magazine. Finally, the kids, family, Nicholson, the Paluccis' and all other cast members vanished, and Doris became a single staff writer for Today's World, where her new boss was Cy Bennett (John Dehner). After her series went off the air, Doris Day only made occasional TV appearances. She did two television specials, The Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff Special (1971) and Doris Day Today (1975). She also appeared on the John Denver TV show (1974). In 1976, she married for the fourth time, to Barry Comden, 12 years her junior. They had met at the Beverly Hills Old World Restaurant where he was the maitre d'. The couple divorced in 1982. Comden complained that Day preferred the company of her dogs more than him. From then on Doris devoted her life to animals. During the location filming of The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) she had seen how camels, goats, and other 'animal extras' in a marketplace scene were being treated. It began her lifelong commitment to prevent animal abuse. For years, she ran the Doris Day Animal League in Carmel, a resort town a little south of San Francisco. In the 1985–1986 season, Day returned to the screen with her own television talk show, Doris Day's Best Friends, on CBN. The network cancelled the show after 26 episodes, despite the worldwide publicity it received. Much of that came from her interview with Rock Hudson, in which a visibly ill Hudson was showing the first public symptoms of AIDS. Hudson would die from the syndrome a year later. Her son Terry Melcher had become a music producer and composer who worked with The Beach Boys, Bobby Darin, and The Byrds. With Terry and a partner, she co-owned the Cypress Inn in Carmel, a small inn built in a Mediterranean motif. Terry died of melanoma in 2004, aged 62. In June 2004 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. She did not attend the White House award ceremony because of her intense fear of flying. In 2006, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In a rare interview with The Hollywood Reporter on 4 April 2019, a day after her 97th birthday, Day talked about her work on the Doris Day Animal Foundation, founded in 1978. On the question of what her favourite film was, she answered Calamity Jane: "I was such a tomboy growing up, and she was such a fun character to play. Of course, the music was wonderful, too—'Secret Love,' especially, is such a beautiful song." As per her last wishes, there will be no funeral or graveside service. Doris Day will be cremated and her ashes scattered in Carmel.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 417. Photo: Warner Bros. Doris Day and Howard Keel in Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953).

 

American actress and singer Doris Day (1922-2019) sang with several big bands before going solo in 1947. In the 1950s, she made a series of popular film musicals, including Calamity Jane (1953) and The Pajama Game (1957). With Rock Hudson, she starred in the box office hit Pillow Talk (1959). On TV, she starred in the sitcom The Doris Day Show (1968-1973).

 

Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff was born in 1922, in Cincinnati, Ohio, to Alma Sophia (Welz), a housewife, and William Joseph Kappelhoff, a music teacher and choirmaster. Her mother named her after her favourite silent film star, Doris Kenyon. She had two brothers, Richard, who died before she was born and Paul, a few years older. For many years it was uncertain whether she was born in 1922 or 1924, with Day herself reportedly believing her birth year was the latter and giving her age accordingly. It wasn't until 3 April 2017, her 95th, not 93rd, birthday, that her birth certificate was found by the Associated Press, which confirmed she was born in 1922. Her parents divorced while she was still a child and she lived with her mother. Like most little girls, Doris liked to dance. At fourteen, she formed a dance act with a boy, Jerry Doherty, and they won $500 in a local talent contest. She and Jerry took a brief trip to Hollywood to test the waters. They felt they could succeed, so she and Jerry returned to Cincinnati with the intention of packing and making a permanent move to Hollywood. Tragically, the night before Doris was to move to Hollywood, her car was hit by a train and she badly injured her right leg. The accident ended the possibility of a dancing career. She spent her next years wheelchair-bound, but during this time began singing along with the radio. Observing her daughter sing Alma decided Doris should have singing lessons. She engaged a teacher, Grace Raine. After three lessons, Raine told Alma that young Doris had "tremendous potential". Raine was so impressed that she gave Doris three lessons a week for the price of one. Years later, Day said that Raine had the biggest effect on her singing style and career. At age 17, Day had her first professional jobs as a vocalist, on the WLW radio program 'Carlin's Carnival', and in a local restaurant, Charlie Yee's Shanghai Inn. While performing for the radio, she was approached by bandleader Barney Rapp. He felt that her name, Kappelhoff, was too harsh and awkward and that she should change her name to something more pleasant. The name 'Day' was suggested by Rapp from one of the songs in Doris' repertoire, 'Day by Day'. She didn't like the name at first, feeling that it sounded too much like a burlesque performer. While she was performing in Barney Rapp's band, she met trombonist Al Jorden, and they married in 1941. The marriage was extremely unhappy and there were reports of Jordan's alcoholism and abuse of the young star. They divorced within two years, not long after the birth of their son Terrence Jorden called Terry. Despondent and feeling his life had little meaning after the much publicised divorce, Jorden later committed suicide. After working with Rapp, Day worked with bandleaders Jimmy James, Bob Crosby, and Les Brown. The years touring with Les Brown & His Band of Renown, she later called 'the happiest times in my life'. In 1941, Day appeared as a singer in three Soundies (three-minute film clips containing a song, dance and/or band or orchestral number) with the Les Brown band. Her first hit recording was 'Sentimental Journey' in 1945. It became an anthem of the desire of World War II demobilising troops to return home. In 1946, Doris married saxophone player and former child actor George Weidler, but this union lasted less than a year. After leaving Brown to embark on a solo career, she recorded more than 650 songs from 1947 to 1967. Day's agent talked her into taking a screen test at Warner Bros. The executives there liked what they saw and signed her to a contract. Her first starring role was in Romance on the High Seas (Michael Curtiz, Busby Berkeley, 1948), with Jack Carson and Janis Paige. The next year, she made two more films, My Dream Is Yours (Michael Curtiz, 1949) and It's a Great Feeling (David Butler, 1949). Audiences took to her beauty, terrific singing voice, and bubbly personality, and she turned in fine performances in the films she made - in addition to several hit records.

 

Doris Day made three films for Warner Bros. in 1950 and five more in 1951. She co-starred with Gordon MacRae in five nostalgic period musicals: Tea for Two (David Butler, 1950), The West Point Story (Roy Del Ruth, 1950) with James Cagney and Virginia Mayo, On Moonlight Bay (Roy Del Ruth, 1951), Starlift (Roy Del Ruth, 1951), and By the Light of the Silvery Moon (David Butler, 1953). Her most commercially successful film for Warner was I'll See You in My Dreams (1951), which broke box-office records of 20 years. The film is a musical biography of lyricist Gus Kahn, played by Danny Thomas. It was Day's fourth film directed by Michael Curtiz. One of her few dramatic roles was in Storm Warning (Stuart Heisler, 1951) with Ginger Rogers and Ronald Reagan. She briefly dated Ronald Reagan - with whom she also co-starred in The Winning Team (1952) - shortly after his divorce from Jane Wyman when she and Reagan were contract players at Warner Bros. Doris Day met and married Martin Melcher in 1951. He adopted her young son Terry and became her manager. In 1953, Doris starred in Calamity Jane (David Butler, 1953), which was a major hit. She performed 'Secret Love' in the film, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Several more hits followed including Lucky Me (Jack Donohue, 1954), Love Me or Leave Me (Charles Vidor, 1955) with James Cagney. Alfred Hitchcock had seen her dramatic role in Storm Warning and choose her to play Jo McKenna opposite James Stewart in his re-make The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). In the film she sang the song 'Que Será, Será! (Whatever Will Be, Will Be)', which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song and became an evergreen. In 1959, Day entered her most successful phase as a film actress with a series of romantic comedies. Her best-known film is probably the first one, Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959) with Rock Hudson and Tony Randall. For her performance, she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Leading Actress. She later co-starred with Hudson and Randall again in Lover Come Back (Delbert Mann, 1961), and Send Me No Flowers (Norman Jewison, 1964). In all three, Day and Hudson played love interests while Randall played Hudson's close friend.

 

Doris Day started out in the 1960s with the hit Please Don't Eat the Daisies (Charles Walters, 1960) in which her co-star was David Niven. In 1962, Day appeared with Cary Grant in the comedy That Touch of Mink (Delbert Mann, 1962), the first film in history ever to gross $1 million in one theatre (Radio City Music Hall). During 1960 and the 1962 to 1964 period, she ranked number one at the box office. Despite her successes at the box office, the late 1950s and early 1960s were a difficult period for Day. In 1958, her brother Paul had died. Around this time, her husband, who had also taken charge of her career, made deals for her to star in films she didn't really care about, which led to a bout with exhaustion. The 1960s weren't to be a repeat of the previous busy decade. She made fewer films, but the ones she did make were successful: Do Not Disturb (Ralph Levy, 1965) with Rod Taylor, and The Glass Bottom Boat (Frank Tashlin, 1966). By the late 1960s, the sexual revolution of the baby boomer generation had refocused public attitudes about sex. Times had changed, but Day's films had not. Where Were You When the Lights Went Out? (Hy Averback, 1968) and With Six You Get Eggroll (Howard Morris, 1968) with Brian Keith, would be her final features. In 1968, her husband Martin Melcher suddenly died. Between 1956 and his death, he had produced 18 of her films. A shocked Day discovered she was millions of dollars in debt. Melcher and his business partner Jerome Bernard Rosenthal had squandered virtually all of her considerable earnings, but she was eventually awarded $22 million by the courts in a case against Rosenthal.

 

After Martin Melcher's death, Doris Day never made another film. She professed not to have known that he had negotiated a multimillion-dollar deal with CBS to launch her own TV series, The Doris Day Show, the following fall. Day hated the idea of performing on television, but felt obligated to do it and needed the work to help pay off her debts. The show became successful and lasted from 1968 until 1973. The Doris Day Show was a light and fluffy sitcom, which changed formats and producers almost every season. Originally it was about widow Doris Martin and her two young sons (Philip Brown and Todd Stark) who left the big city for the quiet and peace of her family's ranch, which was run by her dad Buck (Denver Pyle) and ranchhand Leroy (James Hampton). Later Doris, Buck, and sons Billy and Toby moved to San Francisco, where Doris got a job as a secretary to bumbling magazine publisher Michael Nicholson (McLean Stevenson). In Season Three, the Martin family moved into an apartment above the Paluccis' Italian restaurant, and Doris began writing features for Today's World magazine. Finally, the kids, family, Nicholson, the Paluccis' and all other cast members vanished, and Doris became a single staff writer for Today's World, where her new boss was Cy Bennett (John Dehner). After her series went off the air, Doris Day only made occasional TV appearances. She did two television specials, The Doris Mary Anne Kappelhoff Special (1971) and Doris Day Today (1975). She also appeared on the John Denver TV show (1974). In 1976, she married for the fourth time, to Barry Comden, 12 years her junior. They had met at the Beverly Hills Old World Restaurant where he was the maitre d'. The couple divorced in 1982. Comden complained that Day preferred the company of her dogs more than him. From then on Doris devoted her life to animals. During the location filming of The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) she had seen how camels, goats, and other 'animal extras' in a marketplace scene were being treated. It began her lifelong commitment to prevent animal abuse. For years, she ran the Doris Day Animal League in Carmel, a resort town a little south of San Francisco. In the 1985–1986 season, Day returned to the screen with her own television talk show, Doris Day's Best Friends, on CBN. The network cancelled the show after 26 episodes, despite the worldwide publicity it received. Much of that came from her interview with Rock Hudson, in which a visibly ill Hudson was showing the first public symptoms of AIDS. Hudson would die from the syndrome a year later. Her son Terry Melcher had become a music producer and composer who worked with The Beach Boys, Bobby Darin, and The Byrds. With Terry and a partner, she co-owned the Cypress Inn in Carmel, a small inn built in a Mediterranean motif. Terry died of melanoma in 2004, aged 62. In June 2004 she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by George W. Bush. She did not attend the White House award ceremony because of her intense fear of flying. In 2006, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In a rare interview with The Hollywood Reporter on 4 April 2019, a day after her 97th birthday, Day talked about her work on the Doris Day Animal Foundation, founded in 1978. On the question of what her favourite film was, she answered Calamity Jane: "I was such a tomboy growing up, and she was such a fun character to play. Of course, the music was wonderful, too—'Secret Love,' especially, is such a beautiful song." As per her last wishes, there will be no funeral or graveside service. Doris Day will be cremated and her ashes scattered in Carmel.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

My travels around the UK by car for three weeks with my son. June/July 2019 Wales.

 

Day Nine .. A Stop at Caernarfon making our way to Hirael where we are staying the night.

 

Caernarfon is a royal town, community, and port in Gwynedd, Wales.

 

Gwynedd’s county town, home to Wales’s most famous castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mighty Caernarfon Castle commands the lion’s share of attention, but the town’s narrow streets and stylishly redeveloped waterfront also merit a visit. The castle, built in the 13th century by Edward I as a royal palace and military fortress, was at the core of a medieval walled town. The Romans left their mark too – 1000 years earlier they constructed their fort of Segontium on the hill above (its foundations still exist). Other attractions include Welsh Highland Railway (which runs for 25 miles to Porthmadog), Hwylfan Fun Centre, Redline Indoor Karting and the scenic Lôn Eifion recreational cycle route. Waterside Doc Fictoria is home to Galeri (contemporary arts complex with theatre and cinema). The Caernarfon Record Office has archives of Gwynedd (documents, images, maps and newspapers) stretching back 400 years. Cae’r Gors at nearby Rhosgadfan was home of Kate Roberts, one of Wales’s most celebrated writers.

For More Info: www.visitsnowdonia.info/caernarfon

Either Robert Silverberg or Marion Zimmer Bradley is assumed to be the author of this novel. In 1959, publisher William Hamling launched Nightstand Books, an imprint for paperback original sex novels by authors working under house names. From 1961 on, Hamling's primary editor was Earl Kemp. Pseudonymous writers for Kemp/Hamling included Lawrence Block, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Harlan Ellison, Evan Hunter, Robert Silverberg and Donald E. Westlake. Hamling was one of the earliest publishers of gay-themed books.

The nation's 45th president will face complex fiscal and economic realities. In just eight years, interest on the national debt will become the third-largest "program" in the federal budget. What steps can the next president take to ensure we have the resources necessary to invest in critical areas of our economy? In this session, we heard directly from economic policy advisors to the presidential campaigns — Sam Clovis (right), National Co-Chair and Chief Policy Advisor, Donald J. Trump For President, Inc. and David Kamin, Economic Policy Advisor to Hillary For America — who will tell us how their candidates are preparing to address America’s unsustainable fiscal outlook and secure a strong economy of the future. Interviewed by John Harwood (left), chief Washington correspondent, CNBC, and political writer for The New York Times.

 

Watch the video: youtu.be/YYcMFotufQI

4519 MuzArhZg 6. Stela Kaija Srednje kraljevstvo 2055-1650 pr. Kr. Stela of Kay Middle Kingdom 2055-1650 B.C. 2015 S 2530 ArhMuzZg2_054a Archaeological Museum in Zagreb

  

Ancient Egypt was a civilization of ancient Northeastern Africa, concentrated along the lower reaches of the Nile River in what is now the modern country of Egypt. It is one of six civilizations globally to arise independently. Egyptian civilization coalesced around 3150 BC (according to conventional Egyptian chronology) with the political unification of Upper and Lower Egypt under the first pharaoh. The history of ancient Egypt occurred in a series of stable Kingdoms, separated by periods of relative instability known as Intermediate Periods: the Old Kingdom of the Early Bronze Age, the Middle Kingdom of the Middle Bronze Age and the New Kingdom of the Late Bronze Age.

 

Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power during the New Kingdom, in the Ramesside period where it rivalled the Hittite Empire, Assyrian Empire and Mitanni Empire, after which it entered a period of slow decline. Egypt was invaded or conquered by a succession of foreign powers, such as the Canaanites/Hyksos, Libyans, the Nubians, the Assyrians, Babylonians, the Achaemenid Persians, and the Macedonians in the Third Intermediate Period and the Late Period of Egypt. In the aftermath of Alexander the Great's death, one of his generals, Ptolemy Soter, established himself as the new ruler of Egypt. This Greek Ptolemaic Kingdom ruled Egypt until 30 BC, when, under Cleopatra, it fell to the Roman Empire and became a Roman province.

 

The success of ancient Egyptian civilization came partly from its ability to adapt to the conditions of the Nile River valley for agriculture. The predictable flooding and controlled irrigation of the fertile valley produced surplus crops, which supported a more dense population, and social development and culture. With resources to spare, the administration sponsored mineral exploitation of the valley and surrounding desert regions, the early development of an independent writing system, the organization of collective construction and agricultural projects, trade with surrounding regions, and a military intended to defeat foreign enemies and assert Egyptian dominance. Motivating and organizing these activities was a bureaucracy of elite scribes, religious leaders, and administrators under the control of a pharaoh, who ensured the cooperation and unity of the Egyptian people in the context of an elaborate system of religious beliefs.

 

The many achievements of the ancient Egyptians include the quarrying, surveying and construction techniques that supported the building of monumental pyramids, temples, and obelisks; a system of mathematics, a practical and effective system of medicine, irrigation systems and agricultural production techniques, the first known ships, Egyptian faience and glass technology, new forms of literature, and the earliest known peace treaty, made with the Hittites. Egypt left a lasting legacy. Its art and architecture were widely copied, and its antiquities carried off to far corners of the world. Its monumental ruins have inspired the imaginations of travelers and writers for centuries. A new-found respect for antiquities and excavations in the early modern period by Europeans and Egyptians led to the scientific investigation of Egyptian civilization and a greater appreciation of its cultural legacy.

I can't help but feel some sense of sadness when looking at the photos my mother had of her friend, Sheila. Hers seemed to be a great life, but it wasn't. Deep down, like many of us, Sheila felt lost, and insecure. That became especially evident later in her life.

 

Born Selma Cohen, Sheila had been a fat and rather unattractive, Jewish girl in New York City. She was a playmate of my mother's, and Mom was "hired" as a child to turn the temple lights on during the Sabbath times, since apparently orthodox Jews weren't allowed to do so. (Perhaps my Jewish friends can explain why?) Mom's payment would be in candy!

 

Mom said that once, she and Selma were talking and Selma made a crack saying Mom had a big nose. Having lost 50 lbs. and having a really good shape, which Selma didn't have at that time, Mom replied, "Yeah, but at least my _ _ s is in the right place!" Selma never did that again, and the friendship remained intact.

 

Eventually, Selma changed her name to Sheila, because she revamped not only her appearance, but was trying to remove some of her obvious ethnicity in order to fit in with a culture that was, as ever, anti-semitic. She thought that Sheila would be more gentile-like, I suppose.

 

She ended up falling in love with a man who was a writer for TV in California, and moving out there to live. The photos of them together were seemingly happy and they looked like they were having fun with each other, and with friends, but her letters said otherwise.

 

Decades later, I finally read a letter that my mother had saved. Sheila had written from a hospital room. She had tried unsuccessfully to commit suicide, and vowed to try again when they released her. She told my mother not to feel bad because she really didn't have the will to live anymore because her husband had told her he wasn't cut out for married life and wanted a divorce. There was no other woman; he just didn't want to be married...to anyone. She didn't want to go on without him. The letter arrived after Sheila got out, and had managed to finish what she intended to do. Her suicide letter was full of so much pain and hopelessness that I could hardly bear to hold it in my hands, knowing that the hand that wrote it belonged to the woman who would, soon after, murder herself. I took it to the sink and burned it, but I kept her photos- photos from a happier time.

 

Becoming Sheila was Selma's undoing. All she really wanted was to have a normal life, to be loved and have a home and family, like most women, and she thought becoming Sheila would give her what being Selma couldn't. The truth is that being Selma may have eventually brought her the stability she craved, while becoming Sheila destroyed who she really was. She was left fitting in with NO world.

 

The photo was badly faded. I wish I had been able to work on this several years ago, when it may have been in better shape, but I did my best to bring up the detail. I didn't want this lost woman to fade away into eternity with no remembrance. Here, Selma can be Sheila, and a happy moment can live forever. She deserves that.

This is me. I work on the web.

 

Or rather, I worked on the web, and one day, soon, I'll work on the web again. I got online in 1986 when my dad brought home a Mac 512 (a.k.a. FatMac). I did the BBS thing for a while, but was intrigued by something called the Internet. I got on to the net in 1987 when I started a job at AT&T. I did production of computer manuals about computer networks, and then I wrote manuals about computer networks. That put me in a good place to discover the web when Mosaic came out in early 1993. I made my first web site a couple of weeks later. There were about 100 web sites in the world at the time.

 

I still worked as a writer for a while, because there weren't enough people who knew they needed web sites yet, but by 1995, I was doing it full time, working on internal e-commerce. In 1996, I became the webmaster for the internal Bell Labs site when Bell Labs and Lucent split off from AT&T, and by 1998, I was working on the external Bell Labs site as well. I wrote a content management system for the two sites. I got in to usability testing. I was a small part of the nascent information architecture community. I was also doing some goofy side projects.

 

Come 2001, all hell broke loose in the telecom and Internet businesses, and like 80% of my co-workers at Lucent, I was deemed expendable. I started 2002 on the unemployment line, attending state-run classes run by chirpy people telling everyone about the wonderful opportunities they would have to retrain from their archaic skills to enter wonderful new hot businesses like web design. I went six months without a bite. I was bored. I taught myself PHP and MySQL. I started a weblog, the project I used to teach myself PHP and MySQL. I finally caught on with a tiny startup a couple of towns over. It was a lot of fun. I would have been more fun if they remembered to pay me regularly instead of going two or three months of me badgering them before I would get paid. When they tried to sneak out of town after getting evicted from their offices, they owed me lots of money. I was screwed. I took a couple of months off from the job search and got married.

 

Three weeks after I got married, I got a call from a recruiter. They had a job that sounded like a good fit. It was at Lucent. It was for someone to help maintain the internal and external Lucent and Bell Labs sites. Hell yes it was a good fit; it was my old job. I was desperate. I took the job.

 

My beautiful semantically-coded valid HTML Bell Labs site had been vandalized with a profusion of tables. My content management system had been abandoned. I was heartbroken, but spent the next few years working to reintroduce the ideas I had worked with so long. I had some success and some failure. Mostly I spent my time working with the finest code 1996 had to offer. The cognitive dissonance was hell, but the pay was good, and my co-workers were friends.

 

The telecom industry never really recovered from the fall in 2001. A wounded Lucent would up surrendering to the tender overtures of a suitor, Alcatel. And come the closing of the merger in December, 2006, my web work disappeared.

 

I've still been working for the successor company, but not on the web. My boss held on to me for a while because there were rumblings of a web project that I would be a good fit for. I worked on a project printing paychecks that took advantage of my superior perl and shell scripting skills (???). But the web project didn't come through, and as of early October, 2007, I'm looking for a new job.

 

I love the web. I can't imagine working for an extended period of time on something else, even though I'm coming out of exactly that. I feel unbelievably privileged to have had the opportunity to work on the web at such an early stage. It was like starting in radio in 1920 or something. I'm hoping there's a company out there that can harness this passion and take advantage of all the things I've learned. I never stop learning.

SpinaliS Apollo series chairs for Active Sitting:

www.spinalis-chairs.ca/spinalis-chairs/apollo/

 

"In 2014, I had a major surgery for cervical cancer and had difficulty getting my core muscles back and experienced numerous issues with back and neck pain. Between my job as a full-time artist (painter and photographer), old injuries and this surgery, I was struggling with neck stiffness and back pain. I am an active person and maintain my health through exercise, acupuncture, massage, chiropractic, but the thing that was causing me the biggest issue were the days I was working at my computer. I was looking for a solution and a more supportive chair, and I am happy to say that I found it with Spinalis. I have been using my Apollo chair since May 2017 and I must say it is the best chair I have ever owned. Not only has it helped with rectifying my posture as it pushes me upward and forward, it no longer allows me to lazily slouch while I am working. It is impossible to sit âbadlyâ in this chair and am at the point now where I am almost unable to tolerate other chairs, as most chairs have slant backs and offer limited to no lumbar support. The whole process from dealing with Zaneta, to ordering, to putting the chair together, was a breeze and a pleasure. Zaneta cares about her customers and has an undeniable passion for the product she represents. I would not hesitate to recommend the Spinalis chair to anyone who is looking for a healthier back and a healthier life. This chair is well worth the investment, it is an investment in your health and without it, you have nothing." says Brandy Saturley.

 

Source: www.facebook.com/brandy.saturley

 

Exploring the landscapes and popular culture of Canada, Canadian Visual Artist, Brandy Saturley

 

Brandy Saturley was born in Victoria, Canada in 1972. She is a prolific painter, travelling photographer, and multiple award winning Canadian artist. Saturley has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions at art fairs, in public and private art galleries, and in unique corporate venues across Canada.

 

âIn painting my goal is to create an initial visceral reaction and connection using something symbolically familiar that draws the viewer into the painting. As the viewer spends time with the painting the story unfolds as the details are discovered. Telling the story through the use of vivid colour and realistic details set on backgrounds of soft organic shapes and pattern. These paintings have been referred to as, 'Canadianism's on canvas or Canadian POP art'. I refer to my painting style as âCanadian Contemporary Realismâ, formed using a narrative process. With my compositions I focus on symbolism, dynamic structure, and a bold use of colour to communicate the story. My compositions are influenced by historical art, flags, sportswear, design, native culture, and the details of nature.â

 

DIALOGUE & DISCUSSION: Saturleyâs paintings of Canada, or âCanadianismsâ, began to gain exposure through group exhibitions in Victoria and Vancouver, then through live painting demonstrations at Canadaâs Sports Hall of Fame in Calgary, and in solo gallery shows in Edmonton and Victoria. The artwork has been written about and shared with many people through print, blogs, and websites including; Readerâs Digest: Our Canada Magazine, Forbes.com, AllHabs.net, Dennis-Kane.com, Puckstruck.com, GalleriesWest.ca, Canadianartjunkie.com, A Portrait of The Visual Arts in Canada, SALT Magazine, and Emboss Magazine. Paintings from this body of work have been purchased by the Colart Collection in Quebec. Saturley is also a contributing blog writer for ArtInCanada.com, and has written for ArtistsInCanada.com. Saturley's self-published works and portfolio are on file with ARTEXTE in Montreal, Canada.

 

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From my archives

George Frideric Handel in the decor of the Paris Opera by the sculptor Jean-Jules Salmson (1823-1902). Plaster model made in 1874.

At the request of an American writer for his new book I searched my archives for a picture taken in 2012. Meanwhile I found a series of photos taken in 'La Piscine', a historic Art Deco swimming pool converted into a museum in Roubaix (France). This hitherto unpublished photograph fascinated me again. Unfortunately at this moment I could not figure out the name of the sculpture and who was the sculptor.

 

Musée d'art et d'industrie André Diligent (La Piscine), Roubaix, France. www.roubaix-lapiscine.com/

 

Uit mijn archief

Georg Friedrich Händel in het decor van de Opera van Parijs in gips gemaakt in 1874 door de beeldhouwer Jean-Jules Salmson (1823-1902).

Op verzoek van een Amerikaanse schrijver zocht ik in mijn archief naar een in 2012 gemaakte foto voor zijn nieuw te schrijven boek. Ondertussen kwam ik een serie foto's tegen gemaakt in 'La Piscine', een historisch tot museum omgetoverd Art Deco zwembad in Roubaix (Frankrijk). Deze tot nu toe niet gepubliceerde foto fascineerde mij opnieuw.

  

A photo of my uncle Orlando by marriage sitting in his office (about 1963). He was a technical writer for IBM & Texas Instruments and some other companies. Married to my aunt Jari my dad's big sister. When my aunt passed away about 4 years ago a fantastic photo of him during WW2 had been lost or misplaced by the family when they were moving Aunt Jari’s belongings from her apartment. I have never forgotten about that photo. I REGRET I didn’t at least take a picture of it with my camera when I had the chance. If I remember correctly uncle Orlando was standing in front of a back drop that was a forest like setting and he’s standing there looking regal wearing a US Cavalry uniform with his riding breeches, knee high riding boots , riders gloves , while holding a riding crop. I could be wrong but I believe because of segregation in the military that Black soldiers that were in the Cavalry were in the 2nd Cavalry Div. He learned how to ride a horse without holding on to the rein while firing at a moving target with a .45

 

Well, That didn’t last long, none of the U.S. Cavalry was used over seas, he ended up in the Quartermasters as a truck driver delivering supplies and ammo over in North Africa & Italy & Sicily. Like so many friends and family where their dad or brother or uncle served during WW2 they didn’t say much about their time over seas. My uncle didn’t talk about it and didn’t display any commendations or photos out in the open. He especially did not like to watch war movies. He would not give an explanation he would just say,” I don’t watch that stuff “.

 

Something happened over in Sicily though during the war years and when I finally heard the story it kind of explained some of his actions through the years of knowing him. I was 15 at the time and I was camping out in my dads new Dodge Jamboree 18 footer motorhome sleeping in the top bunk parked on my uncles property not far from Sacramento, Calif. So he and my dad wanted to get away from the wives for a little bit, drink some wine and check out the new box on wheels. They sat at the table started talking. The curtain was pulled closed where I was supposed to be asleep in the bunk over the cab of the truck. My dad said, don't worry about him he’s sound asleep.

 

My uncle didn’t mean no disrespect but he said to my dad, "Man you cheatin’ this aint what camping is all about, all you did was buy a house on wheels. When you go camping you leave the comforts of home at home. They laughed, my dad said, "I did enough of that in the boy scouts and the air force. No this is how you do it". On the table at the rear of the motor home where they were sitting my uncle saw a couple of books I had left sitting out on the table, about German Tanks and fighting vehicles of WW2. He said, “ what’s your boy got here?” I could hear him flipping through the pages and then he stopped and i could hear him tapping with his finger on a page in the book pointing at a tank which I could not see, D’OH. He said to my dad,excitedly YOU SEE THAT? Look-a-here, LOOK-a-here…. SEE this tank right here? That thing scared the SHIT out of me ! We were in a wooded area off the main road and spotted this Kraut tank. We were waiting for the crew to come out after we saw some movement with the hatch opening and closing thinking maybe we could pick off the crew after they all climbed out of the tank. Man up until this time all the Kraut tanks I ever saw had a fixed gun that went up and down and a few short degrees left and right, this damn thing had a turret and we saw that turret start turning and got a glimpse of the gun on that thing and we got our asses OUT of there !! Our carbines were bb guns compared to that thing. He said I ‘ve been shot at while unloading supplies, but at least we could return fire and drop some Kraut a-holes, but you feel pretty helpless in a damn convoy when some Muther in a plane is gunning for ya. One time we got strafed by a German fighter…. My dad asked , “could you see what kind of plane it was ? was it a Stuka or a ME-109?” …. He said to my dad, “Louis I wasn’t trying to ID the Damn thing I was trying not to get my fool head blown off.” He said there was a convoy of trucks, jeeps and half tracks going the opposite direction and the guys on the half tracks had machine guns, they opened up those babies…. tat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat.... tracers flying through the air , but this wasn’t like in the movies man, not one of them brought that plane down. Here we are even though we got weapons but that KRAUT in the air has the upper hand and all we can do is jump outa of the vehicles & duck for cover.

 

So I ‘m laying there listening to this stuff he never really shared before that I know of, and I said to myself maybe that’s why he is always tense and a bundle of nerves behind the wheel of a car. He loved his Buick Rivieras but he drives them like grand pa behind the wheel. He was always super overly cautious when driving, only drove the freeway if he had too.

 

Imagine that. I leave a couple of books out on the table and he spills his guts to my dad about his experience in WW2. He said a whole lot more even though I was laying down pretending to be asleep up in the bunk bed, but in my head I was sitting on the edge of my seat hanging on every word. A lot of stuff he did talk about I rather not share out of respect to him and his family. All I can say now as I reflect on the things he shared with my dad as I ease dropped. There’s no way you can make this SHIT UP, I MEAN the stuff he shared is stuff you would like to turn off and not remember any more if you lived it. As I grew into manhood I could see just how that war erased who he use to be before the war. (Maybe for the better? who knows?) I will say this, I understand why he did not have close friends and did not trust most people and felt happiest with only family, a love of smoking pipes and drinking wine & eating gourmet cheeses, staying up late at night tinkering with old clocks and model trains. I don't mean any old clocks, he had all types of antique mantel clocks, wall clocks, cuckoo clocks, a grandfather clock and a Grandmother Clock. They all chimed on the hour and some on the half hour and usually they chimed 1 to 2 minutes of each other. 12 midnight was insane, when they all started sounding off. The only rooms with out clocks was his kids and the bath rooms. He died of natural causes in Oct. 2000

 

I DID think these 2 things he mentioned were very ironic during war time.

 

1. My uncle Orlando shared these comments made to him by one of the German POWs, I believe they were unloading off his truck at a temporary POW site. I can’t remember exactly what my uncles response to him was but I recall it was sarcastic and he said it to the POW in the few German words my uncle knew. (NOW mind you)This German soldier possibly an officer who is in the CUSTODY of American forces. He said to my uncle, “You Americans aren’t good fighters, you’re lazy, you’re undisciplined, you dress in a slovenly manner and we have far superior equipment & weapons. You won’t win this war”. Now maybe he said this because my uncle was Black and Hitler believed Germans were the Super race. But oddly enough he did not make any derogatory reference to my uncles ethnicity.

 

2. Even though my uncle was not a front line soldier he still saw more action then he cared to see. He said, the one thing that nearly killed him besides being shot at, was a Bee sting. He had no idea a person could have a sever allergic reaction to a Bee sting. Had to be taken to a field hospital coz his air way was restricted, he could barely breathe, tightness in his chest & felt extremely weak.

 

Just a couple of funny things I remember about him.

 

My dad had made mention about buying a few acres of land in Pahrump, Nevada and plopping down a double wide mobile home on it. Uncle Orlando said while cleaning out his pipe and sipping down his Ernest and Julio Gallo Wine, Oooh Louis, a Mobile-home?.... That's where people go to die!

 

When uncle Orlando and his Family lived in San Diego in the late 50s & early 60s he and my dad would drive down to Mexico and go to the bull fights. That was the only sport he liked. One time a co-worker was rattling off some names of Foot Ball players and their stats and was surprised my uncle had no clue to what he was talking about. So my uncle rattled off names of Bull Fighters like Carlos Arruza and many other's and their stats. And the co-worker was clueless as to what he was talking about.... my uncle shot back . For the love of God man I'm talking about Bull Fighters, What? you never been to a bull fight? So the co-worker was telling my uncle what he was missing by not following foot ball, golf and baseball. Orlando said , Good Grief man I rather watch grass grow!

From River writer for the [Dutch] October RR.

i was tagged by Beetabonk to write 16 things about myself.

 

1) born in da nang, vietnam in 1984. a middle child to a family of 3 daughters. Later, I enrolled in literary and then language classes which made me grow up always among females at home or school.

 

2) somehow, and don't ask me how, i grew up to be a black sheep with nicknames being "crazy" in middle & high schools and "psycho" in college.

 

3) have real big hair which results in nickname "mop" by two close beloveds.

 

4) used to be my family's pride with my academic records & awards till i dropped out of university.

 

5) i quit university against everybody's wish and despite my parents' bitter disappointment. Then I moved down to Saigon (Hochiminh City) with 3 million dong ($200) borrowed from a cousin to start a new life without friends, acquaintances, jobs nor a degree.

 

6) 2 years and now am a copywriter as a full timer (sometimes, makes me do up-yours) and a writer for a lifestyle magazine featuring celebrities as agents of change in Vietnam (dig). Also write and edit an online lifestyle mag. Being a translator sometimes. Scriptwriter occasionally doing TV shows and joining indie movie project with a dear friend. In all paths, I am green but by end of 2008, things started to rise. again.

 

7) 2008 was the worst time of my life so far and somehow, it managed to change me drastically. My Dad fell into coma in Feb. I started staying long cold somber painful nights sleeping on the cold ground waiting outside of ICU. Dead silence interrupted by emotionless beeps from machines and sudden cries and moans by those who just lost their loved ones was beyond words. The incident pushed me down into a dark hole where I felt absolutely flat. Suddenly nothing meant. [oh shut me up before it becomes whining) I've tried to get out since.

 

I think I did.

Yesterday was exactly one year after the day it all began.

 

8) There are a few things that I completely lose myself into: dancing, sex, photography. The last one is the trickiest as I can't take a photo of something I dont feel for. Friends think I am selfish not to take photos of them and make them look good. I just can't. Absolutely incapable when ppl pose.

 

9) Life is absolutely amazing. I learn about it everyday. I swallow it in a slow way. I use up four over five of my senses to enjoy everything around me. The taste interests me the least. I am very visual and easily amused by little pretty things. Music magically shapes my mood. Smells can wake up memories and fantasies. I am ridiculously tactile.

 

10) I suck at most things. I have all thumbs. I have no memory. The only capability that I am rather assured of is being inspiring. I don't know how. People've told me so. I guess cos I am fine goofing off sometimes and filled with thoughts and ideals some other times. Or maybe as I don't try hard to please anyone. Or, at the end of the day, I want to be better and want this world to be better.

 

11) I am self-indulgent. I can be corrupting and corrupted. Sometimes, I am carefree and many of those times were when I made stupid mistakes. I don't intend to go down. So I keep trying fighting.

 

12) I never regret quitting university and having no degree. But I do regret once cheating on my boyfriend. Oddly enough, lies and excuses are the things that disgust me the most. Much more than people being honest and truthful about how lame, how weak and stupid they are.

 

13) I want to see and embrace the big world before my time runs out. I assign it as a mission in life on myself.

 

14) There are a few people I am proud of. My two sisters and my best friends, Jake and Van. And some coming up to the test of time and shared experiences. Those as named are the ones who I confide in and believe in wherever they are, whichever phase of life they are in, whatever stupid things they are doing, I know they are wonderful souls.

 

15) I like strong stuff: extremely spicy food, coffee, alcohol, smoking, being the last one on the dance floor...to name a few. And I like the natural: breeze blowing in to my hair and ears and nape, summer rains on me on lips and cheeks, the smell of wood and burnt incense, warmth of the sun on skin, sincere smiles and from-the- heart laughs, genuine souls and colorful fireworks of authentic cultures, ...

 

16) My name is Chi. My screen name on Flickr is Chi. My screen name on Facebook is Chi. My Yahoo ID is Chi. My pen name is Chi.

     

Vintage postcard by News Productions, Baulmes and Stroud / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede, no. 56574, 1994. Photo: Sam Shaw. Darryl F. Zanuck on the set of The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Darryl F. Zanuck (uncredited), 1962). Caption: "The Longest Day". Daryl Zanuck [sic], Nomandie, 1964 [sic].

 

Darryl F. Zanuck (1902-1979) was an American film producer, studio owner, and screenwriter. He was the founder of Twentieth Century Pictures and was the long-time boss of Twentieth Century-Fox. The young Zanuck had risen through the ranks of the studio hierarchy on sheer will, overcoming every obstacle that confronted him. Considered one of the most powerful figures of the Hollywood studio system, Zanuck was the exception to the rule and directly contributed to the content of his films.

 

Darryl Francis Zanuck was born in Wahoo, Nebraska, in 1902. Zanuck was the offspring of the ill-fated marriage of the alcoholic night clerk in Wahoo, Nebraska's only hotel and the hotel owner's daughter. Both parents had abandoned him by the time he was thirteen years old. In 1917, he joined the Nebraska National Guard and fought in World War I on the Belgian and French fronts, when he was only fifteen. He had lied about his age to join the army. He also competed as a bantamweight in inter-military boxing matches. After some of his letters were published in the army newspaper Stars and Stripes, he tried to get a job as a writer. After several rejections, he finally managed to publish some stories in various magazines. In the early 1920s, he decided to work in the film industry. He sent stories to studios and managed to sell some of them. Zanuck turned his first published story for pulp magazine Physical Culture into a film scenario for actor William Russell. He sold his second to studio boss Irving Thalberg. He worked for a while as a writer for Mack Sennett, and in 1924 he left for the newly founded Warner Bros. where he wrote about forty scripts in five years under various pseudonyms. He was particularly strong in inventing plot lines. The scripts for the films about the German shepherd Rin Tin Tin were among his greatest successes. Thanks to his scripts, the police dog became the studio's main star. Soon, Zanuck began producing films as well, joining the management team in 1928. At the age of 26, he became the head of production at Warner Bros. in 1929. He earned a salary of $5,000 a week, a considerable sum at the time of the Great Depression. Partly under his leadership as Jack Warner's right-hand man, Warner Bros. made a fairly smooth transition from silent film to sound film. Thanks to him, successful films such as The Public Enemy (William A. Wellman, 1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (Mervyn LeRoy, 1932), and 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) were made and he initiated a series of genre films, respectively the gangster film, the social drama, and the modern musical, with which Warner Bros. built a reputation in the 1930s. Zanuck himself became known in those years as a womaniser who, despite being married, tried to seduce all the young women in the studio.

 

In 1933, Darryl F. Zanuck left Warner Bros. after it was made clear to him by the Warner Brothers that he could not advance at the studio and would always be considered an employee. Later that year, he started his own studio, Twentieth Century Pictures, financially supported by Louis B. Mayer and Joseph Schenck. In 1935, the studio acquired bankrupt Fox to form Twentieth Century-Fox, shrewdly acquiring Fox's theatrical network in the deal. Zanuck became the head of the new studio and was closely involved in the production and editing of the films produced by the studio. He also contributed ideas for stories and script changes and interfered with auditions. Under his leadership, Fox became one of the most important studios. In the first years, the studio managed to attract a group of talented actors, including Tyrone Power, who would become one of the most successful actors of his time, and actresses such as Betty Grable and singer Alice Faye, who would become especially successful in musicals. The studio's greatest success, however, came with child star Shirley Temple, whose films proved very popular with the general public. Temple would go on to become the biggest movie star of the decade based on ticket sales and would single-handedly bring in enough money to sustain the fledgling studio. At the beginning of the Second World War, the studio produced several expensive dramas and epics, such as The Mark of Zorro (Rouben Mamoulian, 1940) with Tyrone Power. The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) with Henry Fonda, and How Green Was My Valley (John Ford, 1941). Zanuck would remain in charge of Twentieth Century-Fox into the 1950s. Zanuck served in Europe during World War II, where, as a lieutenant colonel, he directed the documentary unit, among other things. As a result, he was absent from the studio for quite some time in the early 1940s. Upon his return, he resumed production and made several successful films, including war films such as A Walk in the Sun. He also recognised the importance of some socially engaged films such as Gentleman's Agreement (Elia Kazan, 1947), the first major American film to deal directly with anti-Semitism, and Pinky (Elia Kazan, 1949), which touched on the subject of racism. Zanuck even authorised the production of films that he knew would flop, but which he thought should be made anyway, such as The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943).

 

When television emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s and became a formidable competitor to film, Darryl F. Zanuck switched to showing films in a widescreen format, promoting a new widescreen process called Cinemascope, thus giving audiences a new visual experience. In 1956, Zanuck left his wife and the studio and moved to France, where he became an independent producer. Many of his films of the time were of poor quality and mainly intended to launch the careers of a succession of girlfriends, Bella Darvi, Juliette Gréco, Irina Demick, and Geneviève Gilles, without much success. The big exception was The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Darryl F. Zanuck (uncredited), 1962), an epic war film about the landing of Allied troops on the coast of Normandy on D-Day. The film had a very high budget and many film stars and eventually became a huge success. When Twentieth Century-Fox saw the success of Zanuck's The Longest Day, he was asked back to take over the reins. The studio was then in financial trouble because of Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1962), a historical epic whose costs had risen so high that it was almost impossible for the film to make a profit. Zanuck took over from Spyros Skouras, was elected president, and made his son Richard head of production. In 1969, Darryl became head of the board and his son president. Zanuck tried to make the studio profitable again in the 1960s by making other high-budget films. Despite successes such as The Sound of Music (Robert Wise, 1965) and Planet of the Apes (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968), there were also flops among them such as Doctor Dolittle (Richard Fleischer, 1967) and Star! (Robert Wise, 1968). Tora! Tora! Tora! (Richard Fleischer, 1970) ultimately cost him his career. The film was controversial because it wanted to give an honest sketch of the attack on Pearl Harbor in the period of the Vietnam War and also showed the failure of the United States, and became a big flop. Due to the lack of success, the studio fell into crisis in December 1970. Zanuck fired his own son and tried to maintain his own position in society. In May 1971, a few months after the film's release, Zanuck was forced to leave the studio. He was then the last of the so-called film moguls, the most important studio bosses of his time. Darryl F. Zanuck was married to actress Virginia Fox from 1924 to 1956. The couple had three children, including son Richard D. Zanuck, who later became a film producer, and daughter Darrilyn Zanuck DePineda. He suffered a long, and initially undiagnosed, battle with Alzheimer's Disease from the early 1970s. Zanuck died of pneumonia in 1979. He was 77 years old and is buried in Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery. Darryl F. Zanuck has won three Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Awards, a special Academy Award given irregularly to producers whose films have a consistently high quality.

 

Sources: David S. Smith (IMDb), Jack Backstreet (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch), and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

TODAY'S COMMENTARY Monday, May 9th 2005

Tina Brown: Voice for a New Creative Revolution

By Jack Myers

Four days before she announced the closing of her CNBC show, Tina Brown and I met for Lunch at Michael's where she talked about the difficult task of continuing her weekly CNBC program, Topic A with Tina Brown; writing her weekly Washington Post column; being a parent (with husband Sir Harry Evans) of two children (14 and 18); and writing her book Remembering Diana on the legacy of the Princess of Wales. Research for the book, which was acquired by Doubleday for $2 million, will require Tina to commute regularly between her native England and New York, where she has lived for the past twenty years.

Creative People Are Draining Out of New York

She's clearly enthusiastic about her book and is looking forward to spending more time in London. "London feels more creative today than New York," she shared with me over lunch. "Something like the Tribeca Film Festival is great and brings out the energy of New York but the creative action is moving out of New York. We're seeing the results of the mergers of the 1990s playing out in the culture. Money people are finally driving art out of the business. Media gatekeepers," she believes, "need to become more focused on creativity as an economic force. They need to encourage a real boutique atmosphere that supports creativity. Creative people are going underground; pulling up the castle doors; draining out of the city. We haven't had a crazy creative entrepreneur with a vision, like Ted Turner, in the media business for years." Tina is passionate about the challenges resulting from the "tremendous upheaval in our culture with people trying to figure out how they can be creative and smart and yet get around the numbers culture. Creative people feel they have to figure out ways to be creative in the middle of a major upheaval."

Getting the "Big Get"

Tina admitted she loved doing her CNBC show although audiences were comparatively small. "It allowed me to shed light on interesting stories that don't get light elsewhere and that's what I've always done. She acknowledged the frustrations of a low production budget for Topic A, a small "but fabulous and extremely talented" five-person support staff, and limited availability of studio and editing time for the weekly hour. "Even though I couldn't always get the 'big get' of the week, we had great guests -- Tony Blair, John McCain, George Clooney, Annette Benning, Les Moonves -- backed up by other interesting and intelligent people and a format that allowed guests to have a voice. TV requires 'names' but sometimes 'names' are the least interesting guests. The 'big get'- especially if it's a politician - is often saying boilerplate stuff and is not interesting. I'm more interested in content and useful information, and we had a core group of loyal viewers who really appreciated what we did each week. We got tremendous feedback and I think we did bring something different and intelligent to television. The final episode of Topic A will air on May 29, although Tina told me in a follow-up conversation that she expects to return to television. "I'm sure I'll come back. I'm not abandoning TV," she told me.

Panic in the News Business

I observed that Tina focused primarily on content related issues while her Topic A guests would often focus instead on business and marketing topics, and Tina agreed "people keep focusing on the numbers and they are making 'branding' a cult. When is thinking and nitty-gritty old-fashioned creative work going to re-emerge? It's time to re-focus on the non-selling part of the business. The outlets for creativity are shrinking."

Tina believes there is "panic" on the news side of the television business and "the networks are running for their lives," although she commends network TV dramas (her favorite current show is "24") and Fox News, which "has a clear identity and flair."

Sleepy Time for Magazines

"It's also a sleepy time for magazines as a force in the culture," says the soft-spoken publishing veteran. "You don't see magazine companies starting new edgy magazines. The magazines that are doing well are more marketing tools, like Lucky. You don't see magazine editorial making waves. It's the same reason," she observes, "that Broadway is full of Hollywood actors at the moment. They can't get the roles they want in films. Theater and book publishing are the last homes for edgy content."

Noting there are few outlets in television or magazines for long-form journalism other than Vanity Fair and The New Yorker, Tina commented "you have no place to write if you're a good writer and want to write long form narrative. There's no such thing as prestige success in America; just commercial success. There's plenty of photo work if you're a celebrity photographer, but few outlets for serious photo journalism. In television, it's a shame there isn't something like the BBC here. PBS is too timid and has had a loss of creative freedom. " On Topic A, she points out, "I could give historian Thomas Cahill ten-minutes to talk about the Pope rather than the thirty-seconds the news networks gave him, but it still isn't enough. Audiences are hungry for more serious journalism," she argues, noting the success of the Penn Literary Festival for International Writers where "the house was packed for every activity."

Table Hopping at Michael's

Our table was a favorite stop for several table-hoppers at Michael's including Hearst's Cathy Black, Peter Price, Jane Pauley, Esquire's Kevin O'Malley, Bobby Friedman, Gerry Byrne, Bill McGorry, Jake Weisbach of Miramax Books, and producer/novelist Holly Peterson holding a launch copy of WWDScoop. Much of our lunch conversation was about the Cream reunion at Albert Hall ("the Brits are more excited about Cream than the election"); Spamalot and Monty Python (we're both fans); our shared rock 'n roll passions (Steve Winwood, Traffic, Dylan, classic rock); her Vital Voices Global Partnership voluntary work; Tina's children and two cats; and her favorite current movies (The Great Wonderful, Ridley Scott's Kingdom of Heaven).

Tina is a creative icon whose star burned bright as a writer for New Statesman and as a 25-year old editor for the U.K.'s Tatler. She came to the U.S. in 1984 to edit Vanity Fair, where she pioneered quality celebrity journalism, became a publishing phenom and achieved her own degree of celebrity. After eight years at Vanity Fair Tina made a surprising move to The New Yorker, continuing to develop a cult-like group of writers who were given free reign to author lengthy journalistic pieces on diverse subjects. "I've always had the sensibility to shed light on interesting stuff that doesn't get visibility elsewhere," she says. "I miss matching writers to stories and I miss the narrative."

Talk Magazine

After leaving The New Yorker, she launched Talk magazine with publisher Ron Galotti and lead investor Miramax, headed by Harvey and Bob Weinstein. "It was a hairy experience," Tina laughs. "I learned to choose who you go into business with and to do more due diligence." She also noted that business realities overwhelm editorial logic. "It's much better to start quietly, do something like an out-of-town tryout for six issues, and have slow growth. But you need to hype the magazine with advertisers to get them interested. We were hoisted on our own expectations."

Ironically, she points out, the book company that quietly emerged from her venture with Miramax has been very successful with several best sellers and critically acclaimed books. Tina still feels "tremendous loyalty" to The New Yorker; believes Atlantic Monthly "is doing a good job and getting more buzz;" and enjoys The New Republic , which she reads online. She also recommends The Sun, a New York City weekly newspaper that "has really interesting stories and pays attention to culture." She's a loyal reader of articles written by Andrew Sullivan, Sidney Blumenthal, Adam Gopnik, Rick Hertzberg and Ken Auletta, among several others. Her favorite TV commentators are Chris Matthews ("terrific"), Tim Russert, John McLaughlin ("fascinated by his technique"), Keith Olberman ("droll, honest and low-key") and Greta Van Susteren.

The common characteristics among her favorites are their commitment to quality content, their focus on interesting stories, their insights on culture, and their creativity. Tina might someday return to magazine editing and promises to return to television, but it will be on her terms with a determination to let down the castle bridge and open the gates to talented creative people, giving them the opportunity to tell their stories in narrative form. "I have a literary obsession," she admits. "I miss long-form narrative story telling. This upheaval in the culture may last five years and there needs to be outlets for creative people."

  

Maharaja Fateh Singh Ji built this palace at Chittorgarh in the 19 Cent. A.D. In 1968 Department of Archaeology & Museums converted this beautiful palace in to museum, in order to preserve and highlight the heritage of this region.

 

The collection includes objects of stone age, 632 sculptures, 2061 coins, 125 paintings and 318 arms & weapons, 2 inscriptions, 55 terracotta figures, 18 metallic objects and 70 objects of art & craft.

______________________________

 

Chittorgarh Fort (Hindi/Rajasthani: चित्तौड दुर्ग Chittorgarh Durg) is the largest fort in India and the grandest in the state of Rajasthan. It is a World Heritage Site. The fort, plainly known as Chittor, was the capital of Mewar and is today situated several kilometres south of Bhilwara. It was initially ruled by Guhilot and later by Sisodias, the Suryavanshi clans of Chattari Rajputs, from the 7th century, until it was finally abandoned in 1568 after the siege by Emperor Akbar in 1567. It sprawls majestically over a hill 180 m in height spread over an area of 280 ha above the plains of the valley drained by the Berach River. The fort precinct with an evocative history is studded with a series of historical palaces, gates, temples and two prominent commemoration towers. These monumental ruins have inspired the imagination of tourists and writers for centuries.

 

The fort was sacked three times between the 15th and 16th centuries; in 1303 Allauddin Khilji defeated Rana Ratan Singh, in 1535 Bahadur Shah, the Sultan of Gujarat defeated Bikramjeet Singh and in 1567 Emperor Akbar defeated Maharana Udai Singh II who left the fort and founded Udaipur. Each time the men fought bravely rushing out of the fort walls charging the enemy but lost every time. Following these defeats, Jauhar was committed thrice by more than 13,000 ladies and children of the Rajput heroes who laid their lives in battles at Chittorgarh Fort, first led by Rani Padmini wife of Rana Rattan Singh who was killed in the battle in 1303, and later by Rani Karnavati in 1537 AD.

 

Thus, the fort represents the quintessence of tribute to the nationalism, courage, medieval chivalry and sacrifice exhibited by the Mewar rulers of Sisodia and their kinsmen and women and children, between the 7th and 16th centuries. The rulers, their soldiers, the women folk of royalty and the commoners considered death as a better option than dishonor in the face of surrender to the foreign invading armies.

 

GEOGRAPHY

Chittorgarh, located in the southern part of the state of Rajasthan, 233 km from Ajmer, midway between Delhi and Mumbai on the National Highway 8 (India) in the road network of Golden Quadrilateral. Chittorgarh is situated where National Highways No. 76 & 79 intersect.

 

The fort rises abruptly above the surrounding plains and is spread over an area of 2.8 km2. The highest elevation at the fort is 1,075 m. It is situated on the left bank of the Berach river (a tributary of the Banas River) and is linked to the new town of Chittorgarh (known as the 'Lower Town') developed in the plains after 1568 AD when the fort was deserted in light of introduction of artillery in the 16th century, and therefore the capital was shifted to more secure Udaipur, located on the eastern flank of Aravalli hill range. Mughal Emperor Akbar attacked and sacked this fort which was but one of the 84 forts of Mewar,but the capital was shifted to Aravalli hills where heavy artillery & cavalry were not effective. A winding hill road of more than 1 km length from the new town leads to the west end main gate, called Ram Pol, of the fort. Within the fort, a circular road provides access to all the gates and monuments located within the fort walls.

 

The fort that once boasted of 84 water bodies has only 22 of them now. These water bodies are fed by natural catchment and rainfall, and have a combined storage of 4 billion litres that could meet the water needs of an army of 50,000. The supply could last for four years. These water bodies are in the form of ponds, wells and step wells.

 

HISTORY

Chittorgarh Fort is considered to be the largest fort of India in terms of area. It is stated that the fort was constructed by the Mauryans during the 7th century AD and hence derives its name after the Mauryan ruler, Chitrangada Mori, as inscribed on coins of the period. Historical records show Chittorgarh fort as the capital of Mewar for 834 years. It was established in 734 AD by Bappa Rawal, founder ruler in the hierarchy of the Sisodia rulers of Mewar. It is also said that the fort was gifted to Bappa Rawal as part of Solanki princess’s dowry in the 8th century. The fort was looted and destroyed at the hands of Emperor Akbar in 1568 AD and subsequently never resettled but only refurbished in 1905 AD. Three important battles were fought for control of the fort; in 1303, Ala-ud-din Khilji besieged the fort; in 1535, Sultan of Gujarat Bahadur Shah besieged the fort; and in 1568, Mughal Emperor Akbar attacked the fort. Not that there were only defeats at the fort. Excluding the periods of siege, the fort had always remained in possession of the Sisodias of the Guhilot (or Gehlot/Guhila) clan of Rajputs, who descended from Bappa Rawal. There were also success stories of establishment of the fort and its reconstruction after every siege, before it was finally abandoned in 1568, all of which are narrated.

 

Chittor is cited in the Mahabharat epic. It is said that Bhima, the second of the Pandava brothers of Epic Mahabaharata fame, known for his mighty strength gave a powerful hit with his fist to the ground that resulted in water springing up to form a large reservoir. It is called Bhimlat kund, an artificial tank named after Bhima. Folk legend also mentions that Bhima started building the fort.

 

BAPPA RAWAL

The earliest history linked to the Bappa Rawal's fort is that of the Huna Kingdom of Sialkot (of Mihir Kula 515-540 AD) that was destroyed by Yashodharman. This was subsequently seized by a new dynasty of kshatriyas called Tak or Taxaka. According to historians, the Taxak Mori were the lords of Chittor from a very early period. After a few generations, the Guhilots supplanted them. From 725 to 735 AD, there were numerous defenders who appear to have considered the cause of Chittor their own, the Tak from Asirgarh. This race appears to have retained possession of Asirgarh for at least two centuries after this event and one of its chieftain Bappa Rawal was the most conspicuous leader in the lineage of Prithvi Raj. In the poems of Chandar he is called the "Standard, bearer, Tak of Asir."

 

SIEGE OF 1303

Ala ud din Khilji, Sultan of Delhi, rallied his forces against Mewar, in 1303 AD. The Chittorgarh fort was till then considered impregnable and grand, atop a natural hill. But his immediate reason for invading the fort was his obsessive desire to capture Rani Padmini, the unrivalled beautiful queen of Rana Ratan Singh and take her into his harem. The Rana, out of politeness, allowed the Khilji to view Padmini through a set of mirrors. But this viewing of Padmini further fired Khilji’s desire to possess her. After the viewing, as a gesture of courtesy, when the Rana accompanied the Sultan to the outer gate, he was treacherously captured. Khilji conveyed to the queen that the Rana would be released only if she agreed to join his harem. But the queen had other plans. She agreed to go to his camp if permitted to go in a Royal style with an entourage, in strict secrecy. Instead of her going, she sent 700 well armed soldiers disguised in litters and they rescued the Rana and took him to the fort. But Khilji chased them to the fort where a fierce battle ensued at the outer gate of the fort in which the Rajput soldiers were overpowered and the Rana was killed. Khilji won the battle on August 26, 1303. Soon thereafter, instead of surrendering to the Sultan, the royal Rajput ladies led by Rani Padmini preferred to die through the Rajput’s ultimate tragic rite of Jauhar (self immolation on a pyre). In revenge, Khilji killed thirty thousand Hindus. He entrusted the fort to his son Khizr Khan to rule and renamed the fort as 'Khizrabad'. He also showered gifts on his son by way of

 

a red canopy, a robe embroidered with gold and two standards one green and the other black and threw upon him rubies and emeralds.

 

He returned to Delhi after the fierce battle at the fort.

 

RANA HAMMIR & SUCCESSORS

Khizr Khan’s rule at the fort lasted till 1311 AD and due to the pressure of Rajputs he was forced to entrust power to the Sonigra chief Maldeva who held the fort for 7 years. Hammir Singh, usurped control of the fort from Maldeva by “treachery and intrigue” and Chittor once again regained its past glory. Hammir, before his death in 1364 AD, had converted Mewar into a fairly large and prosperous kingdom. The dynasty (and clan) fathered by him came to be known by the name Sisodia after the village where he was born. His son Ketra Singh succeeded him and ruled with honour and power. Ketra Singh’s son Lakha who ascended the throne in 1382 AD also won several wars. His famous grandson Rana Kumbha came to the throne in 1433 AD and by that time the Muslim rulers of Malwa and Gujarat had acquired considerable clout and were keen to usurp the powerful Mewar state.

 

RANA KUMBHA & CLAN

There was resurgence during the reign of Rana Kumbha in the 15th century. Rana Kumbha, also known as Maharana Kumbhakarna, son of Rana Mokal, ruled Mewar between 1433 AD and 1468 AD. He is credited with building up the Mewar kingdom assiduously as a force to reckon with. He built 32 forts (84 fortresses formed the defense of Mewar) including one in his own name, called Kumbalgarh. But his end came in 1468 AD at the hands of his own son Rana Udaysimha (Uday Singh I) who assassinated him to gain the throne of Mewar. This patricide was not appreciated by the people of Mewar and consequently his brother Rana Raimal assumed the reins of power in 1473. After his death in May 1509, Sangram Singh (also known as Rana Sanga), his youngest son, became the ruler of Mewar, which brought in a new phase in the history of Mewar. Rana Sanga, with support from Medini Rai (a Rajput chief of Alwar), fought a valiant battle against Mughal emperor Babar at Khanwa in 1527. He ushered in a period of prestige to Chittor by defeating the rulers of Gujarat and also effectively interfered in the matters of Idar. He also won small areas of the Delhi territory. In the ensuing battle with Ibrahim Lodi, Rana won and acquired some districts of Malwa. He also defeated the combined might of Sultan Muzaffar of Gujarat and the Sultan of Malwa. By 1525 AD, Rana Sanga had developed Chittor and Mewar, by virtue of great intellect, valour and his sword, into a formidable military state. But in a decisive battle that was fought against Babar on March 16, 1527, the Rajput army of Rana Sanga suffered a terrible defeat and Sanga escaped to one of his fortresses. But soon thereafter in another attack on the Chanderi fort the valiant Rana Sanga died and with his death the Rajput confederacy collapsed.

 

SIEGE OF 1534

Bahadur Shah who came to the throne in 1526 AD as the Sultan of Gujarat besieged the Chittorgarh fort in 1534. The fort was sacked and, once again the medieval dictates of chivalry determined the outcome. Following the defeat of the Rana, it is said 13,000 Rajput women committed jauhar (self immolation on the funeral pyre) and 3,200 Rajput warriors rushed out of the fort to fight and die.

 

SIEGE OF 1567

The final Siege of Chittorgarh came 33 years later, in 1567, when the Mughal Emperor Akbar invaded the fort. Akbar wanted to conquer Mewar, which was being ably ruled by Rana Uday Singh II, a fine prince of Mewar. To establish himself as the supreme lord of Northern India, he wanted to capture the renowned fortress of Chittor, as a precursor to conquering the whole of India. Shakti Singh, son of the Rana who had quarreled with his father, had run away and approached Akbar when the later had camped at Dholpur preparing to attack Malwa. During one of these meetings, in August 1567, Shakti Singh came to know from a remark made in jest by emperor Akbar that he was intending to wage war against Chittor. Akbar had told Shakti Singh in jest that since his father had not submitted himself before him like other princes and chieftains of the region he would attack him. Startled by this revelation, Shakti Singh quietly rushed back to Chittor and informed his father of the impending invasion by Akbar. Akbar was furious with the departure of Shakti Singh and decided to attack Mewar to humble the arrogance of the Ranas. In September 1567, the emperor left for Chittor, and on October 20, 1567, camped in the vast plains outside the fort. In the meantime, Rana Udai Singh, on the advice of his council of advisors, decided to go away from Chittor to the hills of Udaipur. Jaimal and Patta, two brave army chieftains of Mewar, were left behind to defend the fort along with 8,000 Rajput warriors under their command. Akbar laid siege to the fortress. The Rajput army fought valiantly and Akbar himself had narrowly escaped death. In this grave situation, Akbar had prayed for divine help for achieving victory and vowed to visit the shrine of the sufi saint Khwaja at Ajmer. The battle continued till February 23, 1568. On that day Jaymal was seriously wounded but he continued to fight with support from Patta. Jayamal ordered jauhar to be performed when many beautiful princesses of Mewar and noble matrons committed self-immolation at the funeral pyre. Next day the gates of the fort were opened and Rajput soldiers rushed out bravely to fight the enemies. Jayamal and Patta who fought bravely were at last killed in action. One figure estimates that 30,000 soldiers were killed in action. Akbar immediately repaired himself to Ajmer to perform his religious vow.

 

RETURN OF THE FORT TO MEWAR

But in 1616, Jehangir returned Chittor fort to the Rajputs, when Maharana Amar Singh was the chief of Mewar. However, the fort was not resettled though it was refurbished several centuries later in 1905 during British Raj.

 

PRECINCTS

The fort which is roughly in the shape of a fish has a circumference of 13 km with a maximum width of 3 km and it covers an area of 700 acres. The fort is approached through a zig zag and difficult ascent of more than 1 km from the plains, after crossing over a bridge made in limestone. The bridge spans the Gambhiri River and is supported by ten arches (one has a curved shape while the balance have pointed arches). Apart from the two tall towers, which dominate the majestic fortifications, the sprawling fort has a plethora of palaces and temples (many of them in ruins) within its precincts.

 

The 305 hectares component site, with a buffer zone of 427 hectares, encompasses the fortified stronghold of Chittorgarh, a spacious fort located on an isolated rocky plateau of approximately 2 km length and 155m width.

 

It is surrounded by a perimeter wall 4.5 kilometres long, beyond which a 45° hill slope makes it almost inaccessible to enemies. The ascent to the fort passes through seven gateways built by the Mewar ruler Rana Kumbha (1433- 1468) of the Sisodia clan. These gates are called, from the base to the hill top, the Paidal Pol, Bhairon Pol, Hanuman Pol, Ganesh Pol, Jorla Pol, Laxman Pol, and Ram Pol, the final and main gate.

 

The fort complex comprises 65 historic built structures, among them 4 palace complexes, 19 main temples, 4 memorials and 20 functional water bodies. These can be divided into two major construction phases. The first hill fort with one main entrance was established in the 5th century and successively fortified until the 12th century. Its remains are mostly visible on the western edges of the plateau. The second, more significant defence structure was constructed in the 15th century during the reign of the Sisodia Rajputs, when the royal entrance was relocated and fortified with seven gates, and the medieval fortification wall was built on an earlier wall construction from the 13th century.

 

Besides the palace complex, located on the highest and most secure terrain in the west of the fort, many of the other significant structures, such as the Kumbha Shyam Temple, the Mira Bai Temple, the Adi Varah Temple, the Shringar Chauri Temple, and the Vijay Stambh memorial were constructed in this second phase. Compared to the later additions of Sisodian rulers during the 19th and 20th centuries, the predominant construction phase illustrates a comparatively pure Rajput style combined with minimal eclecticism, such as the vaulted substructures which were borrowed from Sultanate architecture. The 4.5 km walls with integrated circular enforcements are constructed from dressed stone masonry in lime mortar and rise 500m above the plain. With the help of the seven massive stone gates, partly flanked by hexagonal or octagonal towers, the access to the fort is restricted to a narrow pathway which climbs up the steep hill through successive, ever narrower defence passages. The seventh and final gate leads directly into the palace area, which integrates a variety of residential and official structures. Rana Kumbha Mahal, the palace of Rana Kumbha, is a large Rajput domestic structure and now incorporates the Kanwar Pade Ka Mahal (the palace of the heir) and the later palace of the poetess Mira Bai (1498-1546). The palace area was further expanded in later centuries, when additional structures, such as the Ratan Singh Palace (1528–31) or the Fateh Prakash, also named Badal Mahal (1885-1930), were added. Although the majority of temple structures represent the Hindu faith, most prominently the Kalikamata Temple (8th century), the Kshemankari Temple (825-850) the Kumbha Shyam Temple (1448) or the Adbuthnath Temple (15th- 16th century), the hill fort also contains Jain temples, such as Shringar Chauri (1448) and Sat Bis Devri (mid-15th century) Also the two tower memorials, Kirti Stambh (13th-14th century) and Vijay Stambha (1433-1468), are Jain monuments. They stand out with their respective heights of 24m and 37m, which ensure their visibility from most locations of the fort complex. Finally, the fort compound is home to a contemporary municipal ward of approximately 3,000 inhabitants, which is located near Ratan Singh Tank at the northern end of the property.

 

GATES

The fort has total seven gates (in local language, gate is called Pol), namely the Padan Pol, Bhairon Pol, Hanuman Pol, Ganesh Pol, Jodla Pol, Laxman Pol and the main gate named the Ram Pol (Lord Rama's Gate). All the gateways to the fort have been built as massive stone structures with secure fortifications for military defense. The doors of the gates with pointed arches are reinforced to fend off elephants and cannon shots. The top of the gates have notched parapets for archers to shoot at the enemy army. A circular road within the fort links all the gates and provides access to the numerous monuments (ruined palaces and 130 temples) in the fort.

 

During the second siege, Prince Bagh Singh died at the Padan Pol in 1535 AD. Prince Jaimal of Badnore and his clansman Kalla were killed by Akbar at a location between the Bhairon Pol and Hanuman Pol in the last siege of the fort in 1567 (Kalla carried the wounded Jaimal out to fight). Chhatris, with the roof supported by corbeled arches, have been built to commemorate the spots of their sacrifice. Their statues have also been erected, at the orders of Emperor Akbar, to commemorate their valiant deaths. At each gate, cenotaphs of Jaimal (in the form of a statue of a Rajput warrior on horseback) and Patta have also been constructed. At Ram Pol, the entrance gate to the fort, a Chaatri was built in memory of the 15 year old Patta of Kelwa, who had lost his father in battle, and saw the sword yielding mother and wife on the battle field who fought valiantly and died at this gate. He led the saffron robed Rajput warriors, who all died fighting for Mewar’s honour. Suraj Pol (Sun Gate) provides entry to the eastern wall of the fort. On the right of Suraj Pol is the Darikhana or Sabha (council chamber) behind which lie a Ganesha temple and the zenana (living quarters for women). A massive water reservoir is located towards the left of Suraj Pol. There is also a peculiar gate, called the Jorla Pol (Joined Gate), which consists of two gates joined together. The upper arch of Jorla Pol is connected to the base of Lakshman Pol. It is said that this feature has not been noticed anywhere else in India. The Lokota Bari is the gate at the fort’s northern tip, while a small opening that was used to hurl criminals into the abyss is seen at the southern end.

 

VIJAY STAMBHA

The Vijay Stambha (Tower of Victory) or Jaya Stambha, called the symbol of Chittor and a particularly bold expression of triumph, was erected by Rana Kumbha between 1458 and 1468 to commemorate his victory over Mahmud Shah I Khalji, the Sultan of Malwa, in 1440 AD. Built over a period of ten years, it raises 37.2 metres over a 4.4 m2 base in nine stories accessed through a narrow circular staircase of 157 steps (the interior is also carved) up to the 8th floor, from where there is good view of the plains and the new town of Chittor. The dome, which was a later addition, was damaged by lightning and repaired during the 19th century. The Stamba is now illuminated during the evenings and gives a beautiful view of Chittor from the top.

 

KIRTI STAMBHA

Kirti Stambha (Tower of Fame) is a 22 metres high tower built on a 9.1 m base with 4.6 m at the top, is adorned with Jain sculptures on the outside and is older (probably 12th century) and smaller than the Victory Tower. Built by a Bagherwal Jain merchant Jijaji Rathod, it is dedicated to Adinath, the first Jain tirthankar (revered Jain teacher). In the lowest floor of the tower, figures of the various tirthankars of the Jain pantheon are seen in special niches formed to house them. These are digambara monuments. A narrow stairway with 54 steps leads through the six storeys to the top. The top pavilion that was added in the 15th century has 12 columns.

 

RANA KUMBHA PALACE

At the entrance gate near the Vijaya Stamba, Rana Kumbha's palace (in ruins), the oldest monument, is located. The palace included elephant and horse stables and a temple to Lord Shiva. Maharana Udai Singh, the founder of Udaipur, was born here; the popular folk lore linked to his birth is that his maid Panna DaiPanna Dhai saved him by substituting her son in his place as a decoy, which resulted in her son getting killed by Banbir. The prince was spirited away in a fruit basket. The palace is built with plastered stone. The remarkable feature of the palace is its splendid series of canopied balconies. Entry to the palace is through Suraj Pol that leads into a courtyard. Rani Meera, the famous poetess saint, also lived in this palace. This is also the palace where Rani Padmini, consigned herself to the funeral pyre in one of the underground cellars, as an act of jauhar along with many other women. The Nau Lakha Bandar (literal meaning: nine lakh treasury) building, the royal treasury of Chittor was also located close by. Now, across from the palace is a museum and archeological office. The Singa Chowri temple is also nearby.

 

FATEH PRAKASH PALACE

Located near Rana Khumba palace, built by Rana Fateh Singh, the precincts have modern houses and a small museum. A school for local children (about 5,000 villagers live within the fort) is also nearby.

 

GAUMUKH RESERVOIR

A spring feeds the tank from a carved cow’s mouth in the cliff. This pool was the main source of water at the fort during the numerous sieges.

 

PADMINI´S PALACE

Padmini's Palace or Rani Padmini's Palace is a white building and a three storied structure (a 19th-century reconstruction of the original). It is located in the southern part of the fort. Chhatris (pavilions) crown the palace roofs and a water moat surrounds the palace. This style of palace became the forerunner of other palaces built in the state with the concept of Jal Mahal (palace surrounded by water). It is at this Palace where Alauddin was permitted to glimpse the mirror image of Rani Padmini, wife of Maharana Rattan Singh. It is widely believed that this glimpse of Padmini's beauty besotted him and convinced him to destroy Chittor in order to possess her. Maharana Rattan Singh was killed and Rani Padmini committed Jauhar. Rani Padmini's beauty has been compared to that of Cleopatra and her life story is an eternal legend in the history of Chittor. The bronze gates to this pavilion were removed and transported to Agra by Akbar.

 

OTHER SIGHTS

Close to Kirti Sthamba is the Meera Temple, or the Meerabai Temple. Rana Khumba built it in an ornate Indo–Aryan architectural style. It is associated with the mystic saint-poet Mirabai who was an ardent devotee of Lord Krishna and dedicated her entire life to His worship. She composed and sang lyrical bhajans called Meera Bhajans. The popular legend associated with her is that with blessings of Krishna, she survived after consuming poison sent to her by her evil brother-in-law. The larger temple in the same compound is the Kumbha Shyam Temple (Varaha Temple). The pinnacle of the temple is in pyramid shape. A picture of Meerabai praying before Krishna has now been installed in the temple.

 

Across from Padmini’s Palace is the Kalika Mata Temple. Originally, a Sun Temple dated to the 8th century dedicated to Surya (the Sun God) was destroyed in the 14th century. It was rebuilt as a Kali temple.

 

Another temple on the west side of the fort is the ancient Goddess Tulja Bhavani Temple built to worship Goddess Tulja Bhavani is considered sacred. The Tope Khana (cannon foundry) is located next to this temple in a courtyard, where a few old cannons are still seen.

 

JAUHAR MELA

The fort and the city of Chittorgarh host the biggest Rajput festival called the "Jauhar Mela". It takes place annually on the anniversary of one of the jauhars, but no specific name has been given to it. It is generally believed that it commemorates Padmini’s jauhar, which is most famous. This festival is held primarily to commemorate the bravery of Rajput ancestors and all three jauhars which happened at Chittorgarh Fort. A huge number of Rajputs, which include the descendants of most of the princely families, hold a procession to celebrate the Jauhar. It has also become a forum to air one's views on the current political situation in the country.

 

WIKIPEDIA

Vintage postcard. Dan Aykroyd and Alexandra Paul in Dragnet (Tom Mankiewicz, 1987) with Tom Hanks. Caption: Where... on earth would Dan Aykroyd leave his Swiss penknife and will the pristine virgin Connie Swail ever find it for him? Find out in the action comedy film 'Dragnet' coming to your town soon.

 

Dan Aykroyd (1952) is a Canadian film actor and comedian who co-wrote Saturday Night Live, for which he won an Emmy Award. A true lover of the blues, he was a host of the radio show 'House of Blues' under the alias Elwood Blues. He would later use this name in the film The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980), in which he starred alongside John Belushi. He also starred in such comedies as Trading Places (John Landis, 1983) opposite Eddy Murphy, Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) with Bill Murray, and My Stepmother Is an Alien (Richard Benjamin, 1988) with Kim Basinger. In 1989, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his role in the drama Driving Miss Daisy (Bruce Beresford, 1989).

 

Daniel Edward Aykroyd was born in 1952 at The Ottawa Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario. He grew up in Ottawa, Canada's capital, where his father, Samuel Cuthbert Peter Hugh Aykroyd, a civil engineer, worked as a policy adviser to Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. His mother, Lorraine Hélène Marie (née Gougeon) was a secretary. His brother, Peter, was also an actor and is now a psychic researcher. Dan attended St. Pius X and St. Patrick's high schools, and studied criminology and sociology at Carleton University, but dropped out before completing his degree. He worked as a comedian in various Canadian nightclubs and ran an after-hours speakeasy, Club 505, in Toronto for several years. At 17, Aykroyd was a member of the cast of the short-lived Canadian sketch comedy series The Hart and Lorne Terrific Hour with Lorne Michaels. In 1973, he was a member of the Second City comedy troupe in both Toronto and Chicago. Aykroyd gained fame on the American late-night comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL). He was originally hired as a writer for the show but became a part of the cast before the series premiered. He appeared on the show for its first four seasons, from 1975 to 1979 and brought a unique sensibility to the show, combining youth, unusual interests, talent as an impersonator, and an almost lunatic intensity. He was known for his impersonations of celebrities such as Jimmy Carter, Vincent Price, Richard Nixon, and others. His recurring roles included Beldar, father of the Coneheads family; Fred Garvin – male prostitute; and high-bred but low-brow critic Leonard Pinth-Garnell. Aykroyd was a close friend and partner with fellow cast member John Belushi and shared some of the same sensibilities, Aykroyd was more reserved and less self-destructive. According to Aykroyd, their first meeting helped spark the Blues Brothers act. When they met in a club that Aykroyd frequented, he played a blues record in the background, and it stimulated a fascination with blues in Belushi, and it led to the creation of their Blues Brothers characters. Backed by such experienced professional R&B sidemen as lead guitarist Steve Cropper, saxman Lou Marini, trumpeter Alan Rubin, and bass guitarist Donald "Duck" Dunn, the Blues Brothers proved more than an SNL novelty. Taking off with the public as a legitimate musical act, they performed live gigs and in 1978 released the hit album 'Briefcase Full of Blues which eventually sold 3.5 million copies, and is one of the highest-selling blues albums of all time. The band was much further popularised in the film The Blues Brothers (John Landis, 1980) which Aykroyd co-wrote. A sequel, titled Blues Brothers 2000 (John Landis, 1998), featured John Goodman as Belushi's replacement.

 

After leaving SNL, Dan Aykroyd starred in a number of films, mostly comedies, with uneven results both commercially and artistically. His first three American feature films all co-starred Belushi. The first, 1941 (1979), directed by Steven Spielberg, was a box-office disappointment. The second, The Blues Brothers (1980), which he co-wrote with director John Landis, was a massive hit. The third, Neighbors (John G. Avildsen, 1981) had mixed critical reactions but was another box-office hit. One of his best-received performances was as a blueblood-turned-wretch in the comedy Trading Places (John Landis, 1983), in which he co-starred with fellow SNL alumnus Eddie Murphy and Jamie Lee Curtis. In the early 1980s, Aykroyd began work on a script for the film that eventually became Ghostbusters, inspired by his fascination with parapsychology and his belief in ghosts and their busting. The script initially included a much greater fantasy element, including time travel, but this was toned down substantially through work on the script with co-writer Harold Ramis and director Ivan Reitman. Aykroyd originally wrote the role of Dr. Peter Venkman with Belushi in mind but rewrote it for Bill Murray after Belushi's death. Ghostbusters (Ivan Reitman, 1984) became a huge success for Aykroyd, who also appeared as one of the lead actors. The film earned nearly US$300 million on a US$30 million budget. Aykroyd's next major film role was in the spy comedy film Spies Like Us (John Landis, 1985, which was co-conceived and co-written by Aykroyd. The other lead was again intended for Belushi but was instead given to SNL alumnus Chevy Chase. Dragnet (Tom Mankiewicz, 1987), in which Aykroyd co-starred with Tom Hanks and which he co-wrote, was both a homage and a satire of the previous Dragnet series, with Aykroyd playing Sgt. Joe Friday, a police officer whose law-and-order attitude is at odds with modern sensibilities. Aykroyd appeared in five films released in 1988, all of them critical and commercial failures. A sequel to Ghostbusters, Ghostbusters II, was released in 1989; Aykroyd and the other co-creators were reluctant to make another Ghostbusters film but succumbed to pressure from the film's studio, Columbia Pictures. The film, while considered inferior to the original, was another big hit, earning US$215 million. Aykroyd was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for Driving Miss Daisy (1989)]

 

Dan Aykroyd's directorial debut was Nothing but Trouble (Dan Aykroyd, 1991) starring Demi Moore, Chevy Chase, John Candy, and Aykroyd, sporting a bulbous prosthetic nose. The film was a critical and box-office flop. Aykroyd's other films in the 1990s were mostly similarly poorly received, including Coneheads (also based on an SNL skit), Exit to Eden, Blues Brothers 2000, and Getting Away with Murder. Three exceptions were My Girl (Howard Zieff, 1991), which starred Jamie Lee Curtis, and Macaulay Culkin, Tommy Boy (Peter Segal, 1995), and Grosse Pointe Blank (George Armitage, 1997), in which Aykroyd had a well-received role as a rival hitman. In 2001, he starred in the Woody Allen film The Curse of the Jade Scorpion. Most of his film roles since then have tended to be small character parts in big-budget productions, such as a signals analyst in Pearl Harbor (Michael Bay, 2001) and a neurologist in 50 First Dates (Peter Segal, 2004). In 2009, Aykroyd and Ramis wrote and appeared in Ghostbusters: The Video Game, which also featured Bill Murray. In 2010, he played the voice of the title character, Yogi Bear, in the live-action/CGI-animated film Yogi Bear (Eric Brevig, 2010). That same year, Aykroyd and Chevy Chase guest-starred in the Family Guy episode 'Spies Reminiscent of Us', a homage to Spies Like Us. Aykroyd was one of the executive producers of Ghostbusters (Paul Feig, 2016), a long-discussed reboot of the Ghostbusters franchise. Aykroyd had a cameo appearance in the film. In 2021 he reprised his role of Dr. Ray Stantz in Ghostbusters: Afterlife (Jason Reitman, 2021). Though Sony has not confirmed any further sequels to Afterlife, Aykroyd expressed interest in having the surviving three actors of the original Ghostbusters team continue to reprise their roles for as many sequels as possible while they were alive. Aykroyd was briefly engaged to actress Carrie Fisher, proposing to her on the set of The Blues Brothers. In the film, she appeared as the jilted girlfriend of John Belushi's character Jake Blues. Their engagement ended when she reconciled with her former boyfriend, musician Paul Simon. In 1983, Ackroyd married actress Donna Dixon. The couple met on the set of Doctor Detroit released the same year and appeared together in four additional films: Twilight Zone: The Movie (John Landis, a.o., 1983); Spies Like Us (John Landis, 1985); The Couch Trip (Michael Ritchie, 1988); and Exit to Eden (Garry Marshall, 1994). Together, they have three daughters, Belle, Stella and Danielle Aykroyd, who is known by her stage name, Vera Sola. The couple announced in 2022 that they were separating after 39 years of marriage, but would remain legally married. Dan received an honorary Doctorate from Carleton University in 1994 and was made a Member of the Order of Canada in 1998.

 

Sources: Gustaf Molin (IMDb), Wikipedia (English, German and Dutch), and IMDb.

 

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Pentre Ifan is the name of an ancient manor in the community and parish of Nevern, Pembrokeshire, Wales. It is 11 miles (18 km) from Cardigan, Ceredigion, and 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Newport, Pembrokeshire. Pentre Ifan contains and gives its name to the largest and best preserved neolithic dolmen in Wales.

 

The Pentre Ifan monument is a scheduled monument and is one of three Welsh monuments to have received legal protection under the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882. The dolmen is maintained and cared for by Cadw, the Welsh Historic Monuments Agency.

 

As it now stands, the Pentre Ifan Dolmen is a collection of seven principal stones. The largest is the huge capstone, 5 m (16 ft) long, 2.4 m (7.9 ft) width and 0.9 m (3.0 ft) thick. It is estimated to weigh 16 tonnes and rests on the tips of three other stones, some 2.5 m (8.2 ft) off the ground. There are six upright stones, three of which support the capstone. Of the remaining three, two portal stones form an entrance and the third, at an angle, appears to block the doorway.

 

The dolmen dates from around 3500 BC, and has traditionally been identified as a communal burial. Under this theory the existing stones formed the portal and main chamber of the tomb, which would originally have been covered by a large mound of stones about 30 m (98 ft) long and 17 m wide. Some of the kerbstones, marking the edge of the mound, have been identified during excavations. The stone chamber was at the southern end of the long mound, which stretched off to the north. Very little of the material that formed the mound remains. Some of the stones have been scattered, but at least seven are in their original position. An elaborate entrance façade surrounding the portal, which may have been a later addition. was built with carefully constructed dry stone walling. Individual burials are thought to have been made within the stone chamber, which would be re-used many times. No traces of bones were found in the tomb, raising the possibility that they were subsequently transferred elsewhere.

 

A major study by Cummings and Richards in 2014 produced a different explanation for the monument. They identify several distinctive attributes shared by the class of monument known as dolmens, all of which are particularly well exemplified at Pentre Ifan.

 

First, such monuments typically have a large capstone derived from a glacial erratic, far bigger than is required or sensible if the aim is to roof a chamber. Furthermore, the capstone has a flat underside. Sometimes, as here, this has been arrived at by splitting the rock; at other sites, such as Garn Turne, some 12 km to the south-west, it has been laboriously 'pecked' off using stone tools. The capstone is supported on the tapering tips of slender uprights. As at Pentre Ifan, there are often other stones within the group, but they play no part in holding up the capstone, and the resulting effect of the enormous stone appearing to float above the other stones would seem to be deliberate and desired. If these are the key elements of the monument then, it is argued, the stones were never designed to be buried within a mound, and they never formed a chamber to contain bones. What we see today is the monument as it was intended to be seen. It might therefore represent a more elaborate version of a standing stone. Its purpose could be simply to demonstrate the status and skill of the builders, or to add significance and gravitas to an already significant place.

 

The sheer size of the huge capstone that is supported by the larger dolmens makes it overwhelmingly likely that the stone was not brought in from elsewhere, but already stood as an independent glacial erratic on the same spot it now occupies. Evidence from the 1948 excavation is compatible with the idea of a large pit being dug at Pentre Ifan, to expose and work on the stone, perhaps splitting it to create a flat underside, It could then be levered vertically upwards a little at a time, using poles, ropes, and large numbers of people, and packed into place using a growing heap of boulders. Once at the required height, the supporting uprights could be introduced, and the boulders removed to leave only the uprights, and such other surrounding stones as were wanted.or for sacrificial ceremonies

 

Pentre Ifan was studied by early travellers and antiquarians, and rapidly became famous as an image of ancient Wales, from engravings of the romantic stones. George Owen wrote of it in enthusiastic terms in 1603, and Richard Tongue painted it in 1835.

 

The first United Kingdom legislation to protect ancient monuments was passed in 1882, and 'The Pentre Evan Cromlech' (as it was styled) was on the initial list of 68 protected sites – one of only three in Wales. On 8 June 1884, two years after the passing of the first Ancient Monuments Act, Augustus Pitt Rivers, Britain's first Inspector of Ancient Monuments, made a visit and produced sketch plans of the monument. The legal protection the Act gave was limited. It became an offence to remove stones or items from the site, but the owner of a monument was exempt from any prosecution. The Act however provided for the Commissioner of Works to become 'guardian' of a scheduled monument – in effect to own the monument, even though the land on which it stood remained in private ownership. Perhaps as result of Pitt Rivers' visit, this protection was put in place, and the Commissioner of Works and his various successor bodies have been guardians of Pentre Ifan ever since.

 

Archaeological excavations took place in 1936–37 and 1958–59, both led by William Francis Grimes. This identified rows of ritual pits which lay under the mound, and therefore must predate it. Kerbstones for the mound were also found, but not in a complete sequence, and aligned more to the pits than to the stone chamber. Very few items were found in the excavations, other than some flint flakes, and a small amount of Welsh (Western) pottery.

 

The dolmen is maintained and cared for by Cadw, the Welsh Historic Monuments Agency. The site is well kept, and entrance is free. It is about 11 miles (18 km) from Cardigan, and 3 miles (4.8 km) east of Newport, Pembrokeshire.

 

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and is otherwise surrounded by the sea.[note 1] Haverfordwest is the largest town and administrative headquarters of Pembrokeshire County Council.

 

The county is generally sparsely populated and rural, with an area of 200 square miles (520 km2) and a population of 123,400. After Haverfordwest, the largest settlements are Milford Haven (13,907), Pembroke Dock (9,753), and Pembroke (7,552). St Davids (1,841) is a city, the smallest by population in the UK. Welsh is spoken by 17.2 percent of the population, and for historic reasons is more widely spoken in the north of the county than in the south.

 

Pembrokeshire's coast is its most dramatic geographic feature, created by the complex geology of the area. It is a varied landscape which includes high sea cliffs, wide sandy beaches, the large natural harbour of Milford Haven, and several offshore islands which are home to seabird colonies. Most of it is protected by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, and can be hiked on the 190-mile (310 km) Pembrokeshire Coast Path. The interior of Pembrokeshire is relatively flat and gently undulating, with the exception of the Preseli Mountains in the north.

 

There are many prehistoric sites in Pembrokeshire, particularly in the Preseli Mountains. During the Middle Ages several castles were built by the Normans, such as Pembroke and Cilgerran, and St David's Cathedral became an important pilgrimage site. During the Industrial Revolution the county remained relatively rural, with the exception of Milford Haven, which was developed as a port and Royal Navy dockyard. It is now the UK's third-largest port, primarily because of its two liquefied natural gas terminals. The economy of the county is now focused on agriculture, oil and gas, and tourism.

 

Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years  and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave; in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales. There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.

 

There is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's Geography, written c. 150, mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".

 

Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey, and another near Wiston. Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.

 

Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.

 

Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae.  The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century.  In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943), daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.

 

Dyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111.  The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke":), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.  Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales.  In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240.  In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to introduce the English common law system to Wales, heralding 100 years of peace, but had little effect on those areas already established under the Marcher Lords, such as Cemais in the north of the county.

 

Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan.  Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.

 

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared. 

 

During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648.  On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.

 

In 1720, Emmanuel Bowen described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of 420,000 acres (1,700 km2). In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee.  People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies. After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke. From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle. In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be 345,600 acres (1,399 km2) with a population of 81,424.

 

It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.

 

Throughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole. There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Mountains and a number of military airfields. The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain. From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day. Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600. The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.

 

In 1972, a second reservoir for south Pembrokeshire, at Llys y Fran, was completed.

 

Pembrokeshire's tourism portal is Visit Pembrokeshire, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. In 2015 4.3 million tourists visited the county, staying for an average of 5.24 days, spending £585 million; the tourism industry supported 11,834 jobs. Many of Pembrokeshire's beaches have won awards, including Poppit Sands and Newport Sands. In 2018, Pembrokeshire received the most coast awards in Wales, with 56 Blue Flag, Green Coast or Seaside Awards. In the 2019 Wales Coast Awards, 39 Pembrokeshire beaches were recognised, including 11 awarded Blue Flag status.

 

The Pembrokeshire coastline is a major draw to tourists; in 2011 National Geographic Traveller magazine voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the second best in the world and in 2015 the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was listed among the top five parks in the world by a travel writer for the Huffington Post. Countryfile Magazine readers voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the top UK holiday destination in 2018, and in 2019 Consumers' Association members placed Tenby and St Davids in the top three best value beach destinations in Britain. With few large urban areas, Pembrokeshire is a "dark sky" destination. The many wrecks off the Pembrokeshire coast attract divers. The decade from 2012 saw significant, increasing numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, not seen since the 1960s, and now seen by some as an opportunity to encourage tourist sport fishing.

 

The county has a number of theme and animal parks (examples are Folly Farm Adventure Park and Zoo, Manor House Wildlife Park, Blue Lagoon Water Park and Oakwood Theme Park), museums and other visitor attractions including Castell Henllys reconstructed Iron Age fort, Tenby Lifeboat Station and Milford Haven's Torch Theatre. There are 21 marked cycle trails around the county.

 

Pembrokeshire Destination Management Plan for 2020 to 2025 sets out the scope and priorities to grow tourism in Pembrokeshire by increasing its value by 10 per cent in the five years, and to make Pembrokeshire a top five UK destination.

 

As the national sport of Wales, rugby union is widely played throughout the county at both town and village level. Haverfordwest RFC, founded in 1875, is a feeder club for Llanelli Scarlets. Village team Crymych RFC in 2014 plays in WRU Division One West. There are numerous football clubs in the county, playing in five leagues with Haverfordwest County A.F.C. competing in the Cymru Premier.

 

Triathlon event Ironman Wales has been held in Pembrokeshire since 2011, contributing £3.7 million to the local economy, and the county committed in 2017 to host the event for a further five years. Ras Beca, a mixed road, fell and cross country race attracting UK-wide competitors, has been held in the Preselis annually since 1977. The record of 32 minutes 5 seconds has stood since 1995. Pembrokeshire Harriers athletics club was formed in 2001 by the amalgamation of Cleddau Athletic Club (established 1970) and Preseli Harriers (1989) and is based in Haverfordwest.

 

The annual Tour of Pembrokeshire road-cycling event takes place over routes of optional length. The 4th Tour, in April 2015, attracted 1,600 riders including Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman and there were 1,500 entrants to the 2016 event. Part of Route 47 of the Celtic Trail cycle route is in Pembrokeshire. The Llys y Fran Hillclimb is an annual event run by Swansea Motor Club, and there are several other county motoring events held each year.

 

Abereiddy's Blue Lagoon was the venue for a round of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in 2012, 2013, and 2016; the Welsh Surfing Federation has held the Welsh National Surfing Championships at Freshwater West for several years, and Llys y Fran Country Park hosted the Welsh Dragonboat Championships from 2014 to 2017.

 

While not at major league level, cricket is played throughout the county and many villages such as Lamphey, Creselly, Llangwm, Llechryd and Crymych field teams in minor leagues under the umbrella of the Cricket Board of Wales.

 

Notable people

From mediaeval times, Rhys ap Gruffydd (c. 1132-1197), ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth, was buried in St Davids Cathedral. and Gerald of Wales was born c. 1146 at Manorbier Castle. Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) was born in 1457 at Pembroke Castle.

 

The pirate Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) (Welsh: Barti Ddu) was born in Casnewydd Bach, between Fishguard and Haverfordwest in 1682.

 

In later military history, Jemima Nicholas, heroine of the so-called "last invasion of Britain" in 1797, was from Fishguard, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton GCB, born in Haverfordwest, was killed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and Private Thomas Collins is believed to be the only Pembrokeshire man that fought in the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

 

In the arts, siblings Gwen and Augustus John were both born in Pembrokeshire, as was the novelist Sarah Waters; singer Connie Fisher grew up in Pembrokeshire. The actor Christian Bale was born in Haverfordwest.

 

Stephen Crabb, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales, was brought up in Pembrokeshire and is one of the county's two Members of Parliament, the other being Simon Hart,[90] who served as Secretary of State for Wales from 2019 to 2022.

This picture is #28 in the 100 Strangers Project - Round 2

 

Meet Clara

 

I met Clara at Bethesda - around the usual spot I have met most of the strangers on this project. Her elegant personality, the nose ring, and her eyes complemented by her blue denim shirt appealed as a potential subject. When I made my request her response was a "why not", despite the fact that she was about to start shopping and stepped out of the store for a few clicks.

 

Clara works at Paper Source and is also a writer for a nature app. Something about her made he come across as an creative person - maybe it was her simple yet stylish dressing, the way she communicated or just the lazy casual elegance. Her hobbies included crafts and binding books, I complimented her eyes and wondered if she received these frequently - "no not now but yes when I was younger" was the response - I find that difficult to believe though. When I asked her about her favorite memory she thought about her childhood and memories of her pet beaver eating Cheez-Its.

 

Our pictures were a little rushed since my camera malfunctioned initially, and Clara wanted to get back to shopping. But she was gracious to give me more than a few minutes I requested. Like many of the strangers she was completely at ease - I just hinted at the hand over head pose and she instantly knew what I was referring to (a classic go-to pose)

 

Thanks a lot Clara for your time - am sorry it took more than a few minutes. All the very best for your future.

 

Find out more about the project and see pictures taken by other photographers at the 100 Strangers Flickr Group page

For my other pictures on this project: 100 Strangers - Round 2.

For pictures from my prior attempt at 100 Strangers: 100 Strangers - Round 1.

Uploading these WAY late. Sorry. Moving to new PC after being on the same Win7-Pro machine for like 8+ years (I don't like change!), and it's been a mini-nightmare. Caught these a couple weeks ago at my local BNSF / Santa Fe yard.

 

====================

 

FYI.

 

These were shot with a 7.5mm fisheye lens because of the location, and poorly corrected so they look somewhat normal...

 

====================

 

Decided to head out to my local yard on a Saturday, got there at 9:30 and I was the only one out at the freight side platform. After a half hour I noticed someone down at the other end that I thought I recognized. Messaged him, and yep, it was him. My dude PasadenaSubColin.

 

We were both out there to just enjoy the day, me catching freights, and him freights & Metrolinks. He's a good dude to have around, as he lets me know when something cool is on its way into the yard, and I appreciate that he's all plugged into the grid to give the "heads up" when something's coming soon.

 

Well, this time I had, or rather found out, the "Heads Up" about 15 mins before he let me in on what would be the joke of the day. There apparently was a bicentennial engine coming through the depot today on its way to a RR museum in Perris, CA. The 5704!!!!! Big whoop.... One dude chatted me up asking if I knew when "IT" was supposed to come through. I had no idea what he was talking about and told him I don't follow trains. :-)

 

15-20 mins. later Colin messages me an FYI, that there's a "Special" train about to roll through. I've been in this situation before. I'm there benching graff, and all of the sudden 20 cars pull up and a bunch of "Railfans" jump out of their cars, run over, take a few photos of the "Special" car(s), engine or train, and when it's gone, they're gone. I feel like these are the people who only get out of bed when something "cool" is rolling through town. I really doubt they care about day-to-day operations of the RR. And honestly there's no way they give a shit about the graff.

 

Most people out at the tracks are cool, but there's a certain group of people who seem to have zero social skills when something "Special" is coming through, and we had at least one on this day. Some dude that kept walking past us, standing in my spot, like he was going to shoot from there when I got there at 9:30, and he got there at Noon. Walking past us by inches, and not saying a word, head down... Walking in front of cameras that were filming, hanging around my backpack and gear while I was like 30 feet away, just weird, un-cool shit. I'm not down with any of this. But I don't want to burn this spot as a bencher and didn't start any trouble, even though I wanted to punch this dude.. GRRR!

 

Will not be posting flicks of this special train car. Sorry. I saw it, I flicked it, but the whole experience was crap, and it was just one engine, big deal. I was there for the graff that you're seeing me post.

 

Was hot, no clouds, and at my end of the platform I had a 2ft. x 3ft. spot of slowly moving shade that was cast by one of the platform lights. After a while Colin and I were sharing this tiny moving spot of shade. No worries, we get along just fine.

 

BTW: PasadenaSubColin is a FOAMER!!!!!!!! ;-p

 

Managed to re-flick a few cars that I caught at the beginning of the month at the other end of the valley. Anyway........ I'll be back to try and ID these pieces soon. Might take me a little longer than usual as, like I said before, new computer, new crap to deal with..

 

Stay safe out there homies.

 

And..... As always, Thanks to the writers!

 

For freight graffiti slideshows/videos hit up my YouTube channel here: www.youtube.com/SilenceSeven

 

Please Subscribe to the YouTube, every little bit helps.

When i shot this photo i actually stepped back with a big smile on my face wondering how i managed to get myself into a situation where i would actually be taking a photo of an abortion (real or fake). Before you judge me because of the smile I had on my face when taking this photo please know that I'm not pro-abortion. I think choice is a good thing, abortion's not for me (never will be, I'm a man), but its safer to have a Doc do it than some guy you slip $30 back behind the local hardware store (or even the guy in this photo).

 

The smile on my face was due to the fact that I was taking a photo of something I NEVER thought I would take. I found it thrilling and very motivating.

 

So you might be wondering how I managed to get myself into a situation to shoot something like this. Well.... I was asked by some local filmmakers if i would be interested in taking some behind-the-scene shots while they filmed a short horror film, Afterbirth. The film was for a short 48 hour film contest in Vancouver, Bloodshots. Each filmmaker had 48 hours to write, shoot, and edit a horror film. I spent all day (8:00am Saturday till 2:15am Sunday) shooting stills. The crew and actors were a blast to work with.

 

The best part of the whole experiance was that i had access to a set, actors and lighting (well, lighting about 10% of the time that i needed it... working around someone else's lighting was a HUGE learning experience). The actors were a lot of fun to shot. They just carry on like i wasn't there or they'd pose when I'd signal to them.

 

I'll upload a few more shots from Afterbirth in the next few days. while your waiting, feel free to check out the movie on youtube: www.youtube.com/watch?v=VX8xY6UK2pE

 

One last thing, I'd like to thank Scott (the director), Mike (the writer) for asking me to shoot the stills. oh, and Fargol, for letting them know I'm a photographer.

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard bearing no publisher's name. The card was printed in Great Britain.

 

Foster Brothers

 

Foster Brothers (on the left) were clothing manufacturers, tailors and outfitters, based in Solihull.

 

Dewhurst

 

Dewhurst the Butchers chain was eventually disbanded in 1995 in the face of increasing competition from supermarket chains.

 

Dewhurst were one of the first to introduce the innovation of glass windows in its butchers' shops – previously meat had been exposed to the elements and pollution.

 

Wimpy

 

Note the Wimpy Bar further down on the left.

 

Wimpy is a fast-food chain originally founded in the United States. It found its success internationally, mainly in the UK and South Africa.

 

The chain was founded by Edward Gold as Wimpy Grills, with the chain in the United States hitting its peak with 26 locations in 1947.

 

In 1954, Gold signed a license with J. Lyons and Co. for them to operate Wimpy Bars across the United Kingdom. By 1977, there were only seven Wimpy locations in the US, which all folded following Gold's passing in that year.

 

Despite the brand's demise in the US, the chain peaked at 1,500 international locations the following year.

 

The company was sold to United Biscuits in 1977, and then to Grand Metropolitan in 1989. Grand Metropolitan began to phase out Wimpy Bars in the United Kingdom, rebranding many of them as Burger King (which it also owned). This was because Burger King had more brand recognition amongst consumers, and to strengthen market competition against McDonald's.

 

Wimpy was sold to Famous Brands in 2007. Famous Brands had operated the South African Wimpy franchise for a number of years, and the acquisition made it the parent company.

 

As of October 2021, the company remains headquartered in Johannesburg, South Africa where it has 459 outlets. This is followed by the United Kingdom with 71 outlets.

 

Wimpy History

 

The Wimpy brand was established in 1934 by Edward Gold, when he opened his first location in Bloomington, Indiana under the name Wimpy Grills. The name was inspired by the character of J. Wellington Wimpy from the Popeye cartoons.

 

Gold then opened units in five other Midwestern cities before opening the first Chicago area location in 1936. By 1947, the Chicago Tribune reported that the chain had 26 units, and expected to sell eight million hamburgers annually in the Chicago area.

 

In 1954, Gold sold a licence to J. Lyons and Co. to use the Wimpy name in the UK. Wimpy Grills Inc. of Chicago later formed a joint company with Lyons called Wimpy's International Inc. in 1957. Wimpy's International was based in Chicago and allowed the brand to operate Wimpy Grills in the rest of the world.

 

The joint company eventually grew to 1,500 locations, with Gold later selling his share to Lyons prior to his death.

 

Wimpy Grills Inc. of Chicago had 25 locations in the United States at its peak, but only seven locations remained at the time of his death in 1977. The chain vanished within the United States after Gold's death, because no one had purchased the rights and trademark to the Wimpy name from Gold's estate.

 

Wimpy in the UK

 

Lyons obtained a licence to use the Wimpy brand in the UK and, in 1954, the first Wimpy Bar was established at the Lyons Corner House in Coventry Street, London.

 

The bar began as a special fast food section within traditional Corner House restaurants, but the success soon led to the establishment of separate Wimpy restaurants serving only hamburger-based meals.

 

In a 1955 newspaper column, Art Buchwald, syndicated writer for the Washington Post, wrote about the recent opening of a "Wimpy's Hamburger Parlor" on Coventry Street and about the influence of American culture on the British:

 

"Food served at the table within ten minutes

of ordering and with atomic age efficiency. No

cutlery needed or given. Drinks served in a bottle

with a straw. Condiments in pre-packaged single-

serving packets."

 

In addition to Wimpy burgers and milkshakes, the British franchise served ham or sardine rolls called torpedoes, and sandwiched containing a cold frankfurter with pickled cucumber called Freddies.

 

During the 1970's Wimpy refused entry to women on their own after midnight on the assumption that they might be prostitutes.

 

In July 1977, the business was acquired by United Biscuits. By the end of the 1980's, Wimpy was beginning to lose ground to McDonald's, which had opened its first restaurant in the country in 1974.

 

Accordingly Wimpy management began to streamline the business by converting some of the traditional table service restaurants to counter service. United Biscuits sold its Wimpy business in 1989 to Grand Metropolitan (now Diageo).

 

At the time of the sale, there were 381 locations in the United Kingdom. Grand Metropolitan had acquired Burger King the previous year, and it began to convert the counter service restaurants to Burger King since the BK name had a greater global brand recognition.

 

In February 1990, the remaining 216 Wimpy table service restaurants were purchased in a management buyout. These were locations that were considered less desirable by Grand Metropolitan.

 

By the beginning of the 21st. century, most Wimpys were found in less desirable low-rent locations that primarily cater to pensioners and others on a fixed income, rather than the high street locations of former times. Another big change from earlier times was that most locations were now franchises and not company-owned operations.

 

Although Wimpy outlets have decreased in numbers in the United Kingdom, they are still found in many towns and cities, including Huddersfield, and at seafront/seasonal locations, such as Felixstowe, Clacton-on-Sea, Clarence Pier in Southsea, and Brean Leisure Park in Somerset. As of February 2022, 66 restaurants remain in the UK, serving amongst other items hamburgers, chicken and french fries.

 

The IRA Bombing

 

On 26 October 1981, Kenneth Howorth, an explosives officer with London's Metropolitan Police, was killed whilst attempting to defuse a bomb planted by the Provisional Irish Republican Army in the basement of Wimpy's in Oxford Street.

Explosion, Stromboli Volcano, Italia

 

© Olivier Grunewald / Wild Wonders of Europe

 

After studying photography for advertising, French photographer Olivier Grunewald returned to his first loves, mountains, nature - the great oudoors. In 1988, he opened a “studio” in mid-air in order to follow professional climbers, work that won him the Prix de la Fondation de la Vocation in France, on which he bases his first book, Escalade Passion, published by Atlas. Since then, Olivier Grunewald, with his wife, Bernadette Gilbertas, have trotted the globe in quest of extraordinary landscapes, exceptional light and wildlife in all its forms. His photographic work has led him into situations rich in emotion, suspended by rope from a tropical forest’s tallest tree, down the gaping mouth of fuming volcanoes, or knee-deep in snow under the glow of the northern lights.

 

His coverage of nature and Eco-tourism in collaboration with his wife Bernadette Gilbertas, journalist and writer for nature and ecology, has appeard in a variety of French magazines such as The Figaro Magazine, VSD, Ca M’intéresse, Terre Sauvage, Grands Reportages, as well as in foreign presse (Airone, Focus, GEO, International Wildlife, National Geographic Magazine, ...). They have publihed numerous books, on Iceland, Autralia, Namibia, Western North America. Their last books "Nature" is published in France in October 2004, and « Canyons », in october 2005. and« Volcanoes » in september 2007.

Their photographic work on the seaturtles of French Guyana, which won a prize at the World Press Photo Awards in 1995, was published all over the world. In 2002, World Press Photo again rewarded their work with a second place in the Science and Technology category for his coverage of northern lights. Once again, in february 2004, the World press has given Olivier the 2nd price in nature category, for his report on Kamtchatka volcanoes.

  

www.wild-wonders.com

www.gitzo.com

I have just started a free personal blog to showcase my five year project which is called:

 

MG HS (AS23) HISTORY & TIMELINE

  

It can be found here:

  

mghsas23historytimeline.webstarts.com

 

AND

 

A more condensed version here on FACEBOOK called:

MG HS (AS23) - HISTORY, TIPS, HOW-TO'S & OWNERSHIP

 

www.facebook.com/groups/262120953249062

  

It is dedicated to the MG HS, a fabulous SUV that I fell in love with at it's prototype stage and continued to admire upon first production release in 2018. The photograph above is of Emmy, my MG HS EXCLUSIVE DCT in Dynamic red Tri-coat with red sardana leather interior and my blog is the culmination of many years research.

  

I've communicated with owners from all around the world, and my blog is a dedicated and detailed history and timeline with 'how-to' features and information on the various worldwide specifications and news from 2018 to the present day.

  

It is a blog that I hope will be interesting to current and prospective owners alike, and I make nothing from it, I simply wish to enlighten and inform others about this excellent MG.

  

I've been an MG/Rover owner, club member, writer for over 40 years and two previous attempts to find a permanent platform for my blog have been scuppered, so hopefully this will be a permanent location.

 

All the best

 

Paul

The Postcard

 

A postally unused postcard that was published by the Manhattan Post Card Co. of New York City.

 

On the divided back of the card the publishers have printed:

 

"Brooklyn Bridge running over the

East River from Park Row in Manhattan

to Sands Street, Brooklyn.

Construction began in 1870; open to

traffic 1883; cost $21,000,000.

Total length 6,537 feet, width 85 feet."

 

Note the slight upward curve of the main span. The curve helps to dissipate the force of the weight of the people and vehicles on the bridge lengthways instead of downwards like on a linear bridge. The curve produces a horizontal thrust restrained by the abutments at either end. This means that the bridge can handle more weight without breaking.

 

Brooklyn Bridge

 

The Brooklyn Bridge is a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge. Opened on the 24th. May 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was the first fixed crossing of the East River.

 

It was also the longest suspension bridge in the world at the time of its opening, with a main span of 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m).

 

The bridge was designed by John A. Roebling. The project's chief engineer, his son Washington Roebling, contributed further design work, assisted by the latter's wife, Emily Warren Roebling.

 

Construction started in 1870, with the Tammany Hall-controlled New York Bridge Company overseeing construction, although numerous controversies and the novelty of the design prolonged the project over thirteen years.

 

Since opening, the Brooklyn Bridge has undergone several reconfigurations, having carried horse-drawn vehicles and elevated railway lines until 1950.

 

To alleviate increasing traffic flows, additional bridges and tunnels were built across the East River. Following gradual deterioration, the Brooklyn Bridge has been renovated several times, including in the 1950's, 1980's, and 2010's.

 

The Brooklyn Bridge is the southernmost of the four toll-free vehicular bridges connecting Manhattan Island and Long Island, with the Manhattan Bridge, the Williamsburg Bridge, and the Queensboro Bridge to the north. Only passenger vehicles and pedestrian and bicycle traffic are permitted.

 

A major tourist attraction since its opening, the Brooklyn Bridge has become an icon of New York City. Over the years, the bridge has been used as the location for various stunts and performances, as well as several crimes and attacks.

 

Description of Brooklyn Bridge

 

The Brooklyn Bridge, an early example of a steel-wire suspension bridge, uses a hybrid cable-stayed/suspension bridge design, with both vertical and diagonal suspender cables.

 

Its stone towers are neo-Gothic, with characteristic pointed arches. The New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT), which maintains the bridge, says that its original paint scheme was "Brooklyn Bridge Tan" and "Silver", although a writer for The New York Post states that it was originally entirely "Rawlins Red".

 

The Deck of the Brooklyn Bridge

 

To provide sufficient clearance for shipping in the East River, the Brooklyn Bridge incorporates long approach viaducts on either end to raise it from low ground on both shores.

 

Including approaches, the Brooklyn Bridge is a total of 6,016 feet (1,834 m) long. The main span between the two suspension towers is 1,595.5 feet (486.3 m) long, and 85 feet (26 m) wide.

 

The bridge elongates and contracts between the extremes of temperature from 14 to 16 inches. Navigational clearance is 127 ft (38.7 m) above mean high water. A 1909 Engineering Magazine article said that, at the center of the span, the height could fluctuate by more than 9 feet (2.7 m) due to temperature and traffic loads.

 

At the time of construction, engineers had not yet discovered the aerodynamics of bridge construction, and bridge designs were not tested in wind tunnels.

 

It was coincidental that the open truss structure supporting the deck is, by its nature, subject to fewer aerodynamic problems. This is because John Roebling designed the Brooklyn Bridge's truss system to be six to eight times stronger than he thought it needed to be.

 

However, due to a supplier's fraudulent substitution of inferior-quality cable in the initial construction, the bridge was reappraised at the time as being only four times as strong as necessary.

 

The Brooklyn Bridge can hold a total load of 18,700 short tons, a design consideration from when it originally carried heavier elevated trains.

 

An elevated pedestrian-only promenade runs in between the two roadways and 18 feet (5.5 m) above them. The path is 10 to 17 feet (3.0 to 5.2 m) wide. The iron railings were produced by Janes & Kirtland, a Bronx iron foundry that also made the United States Capitol dome and the Bow Bridge in Central Park.

 

The Cables of Brooklyn Bridge

 

The Brooklyn Bridge contains four main cables, which descend from the tops of the suspension towers and support the deck. Each main cable measures 15.75 inches (40.0 cm) in diameter, and contains 5,282 parallel, galvanized steel wires wrapped closely together. These wires are bundled in 19 individual strands, with 278 wires to a strand.

 

This was the first use of bundling in a suspension bridge, and took several months for workers to tie together. Since the 2000's, the main cables have also supported a series of 24-watt LED lighting fixtures, referred to as "necklace lights" due to their shape.

 

1,520 galvanized steel wire suspender cables hang downward from the main cables.

 

Brooklyn Bridge Anchorages

 

Each side of the bridge contains an anchorage for the main cables. The anchorages are limestone structures located slightly inland, measuring 129 by 119 feet (39 by 36 m) at the base and 117 by 104 feet (36 by 32 m) at the top.

 

Each anchorage weighs 60,000 short tons. The Manhattan anchorage rests on a foundation of bedrock, while the Brooklyn anchorage rests on clay.

 

The anchorages contain numerous passageways and compartments. Starting in 1876, in order to fund the bridge's maintenance, the New York City government made the large vaults under the bridge's Manhattan anchorage available for rent, and they were in constant use during the early 20th. century.

 

The vaults were used to store wine, as they maintained a consistent 60 °F (16 °C) temperature due to a lack of air circulation. The Manhattan vault was called the "Blue Grotto" because of a shrine to the Virgin Mary next to an opening at the entrance.

 

The vaults were closed for public use in the late 1910's and 1920's during the Great War and Prohibition, but were reopened thereafter.

 

When New York magazine visited one of the cellars in 1978, it discovered a fading inscription on a wall reading:

 

"Who loveth not wine, women and song,

he remaineth a fool his whole life long."

 

Leaks found within the vault's spaces necessitated repairs during the late 1980's and early 1990's. By the late 1990's, the chambers were being used to store maintenance equipment.

 

The Towers of the Brooklyn Bridge

 

The bridge's two suspension towers are 278 feet (85 m) tall, with a footprint of 140 by 59 feet (43 by 18 m) at the high water line.

 

They are built of limestone, granite, and Rosendale cement. The limestone was quarried at the Clark Quarry in Essex County, New York. The granite blocks were quarried and shaped on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, under a contract with the Bodwell Granite Company, and delivered from Maine to New York by schooner.

 

The Manhattan tower contains 46,945 cubic yards (35,892 m3) of masonry, while the Brooklyn tower has 38,214 cubic yards (29,217 m3) of masonry.

 

Each tower contains a pair of Gothic Revival pointed arches, through which the roadways run. The arch openings are 117 feet (36 m) tall and 33.75 feet (10.29 m) wide.

 

The Brooklyn Bridge Caissons

 

The towers rest on underwater caissons made of southern yellow pine. Both caissons contain interior spaces that were used by construction workers. The Manhattan side's caisson is slightly larger, measuring 172 by 102 feet (52 by 31 m) and located 78.5 feet (23.9 m) below high water, while the Brooklyn side's caisson measures 168 by 102 feet (51 by 31 m) and is located 44.5 feet (13.6 m) below high water.

 

The caissons were designed to hold at least the weight of the towers which would exert a pressure of 5 short tons per square foot when fully built, but the caissons were over-engineered for safety.

 

During an accident on the Brooklyn side, when air pressure was lost and the partially-built towers dropped full-force down, the caisson sustained an estimated pressure of 23 short tons per square foot with only minor damage. Most of the timber used in the bridge's construction, including in the caissons, came from mills at Gascoigne Bluff on St. Simons Island, Georgia.

 

The Brooklyn side's caisson, which was built first, originally had a height of 9.5 feet (2.9 m) and a ceiling composed of five layers of timber, each layer 1 foot (0.30 m) tall. Ten more layers of timber were later added atop the ceiling, and the entire caisson was wrapped in tin and wood for further protection against flooding.

 

The thickness of the caisson's sides was 8 feet (2.4 m) at both the bottom and the top. The caisson had six chambers: two each for dredging, supply shafts, and airlocks.

 

The caisson on the Manhattan side was slightly different because it had to be installed at a greater depth. To protect against the increased air pressure at that depth, the Manhattan caisson had 22 layers of timber on its roof, seven more than its Brooklyn counterpart had. The Manhattan caisson also had fifty 4-inch (10 cm)-diameter pipes for sand removal, a fireproof iron-boilerplate interior, and different airlocks and communication systems.

 

History of the Brooklyn Bridge

 

Proposals for a bridge between the then-separate cities of Brooklyn and New York had been suggested as early as 1800. At the time, the only travel between the two cities was by a number of ferry lines.

 

Engineers presented various designs, such as chain or link bridges, though these were never built because of the difficulties of constructing a high enough fixed-span bridge across the extremely busy East River.

 

There were also proposals for tunnels under the East River, but these were considered prohibitively expensive. The current Brooklyn Bridge was conceived by German immigrant John Augustus Roebling in 1852.

 

He had previously designed and constructed shorter suspension bridges, such as Roebling's Delaware Aqueduct in Lackawaxen, Pennsylvania, and the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge between Cincinnati, Ohio, and Covington, Kentucky.

 

In February 1867, the New York State Senate passed a bill that allowed the construction of a suspension bridge from Brooklyn to Manhattan.

 

Two months later, the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Company was incorporated. There were twenty trustees in total: eight each appointed by the mayors of New York and Brooklyn, as well as the mayors of each city and the auditor and comptroller of Brooklyn.

 

The company was tasked with constructing what was then known as the New York and Brooklyn Bridge. Alternatively, the span was just referred to as the "Brooklyn Bridge", a name originating in a 25th. January 1867 letter to the editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

 

The act of incorporation, which became law on the 16th. April 1867, authorized the cities of New York (now Manhattan) and Brooklyn to subscribe to $5 million in capital stock, which would fund the bridge's construction.

 

Roebling was subsequently named as the main engineer of the work, and by September 1867, he had presented a master plan of a bridge that would be longer and taller than any suspension bridge previously built.

 

It would incorporate roadways and elevated rail tracks, whose tolls and fares would provide the means to pay for the bridge's construction. It would also include a raised promenade that served as a leisurely pathway.

 

The proposal received much acclaim in both cities, and residents predicted that the New York and Brooklyn Bridge's opening would have as much of an impact as the Suez Canal, the first transatlantic telegraph cable, or the first transcontinental railroad.

 

By early 1869, however, some individuals started to criticize the project, saying either that the bridge was too expensive, or that the construction process was too difficult.

 

To allay concerns about the design of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge, Roebling set up a "Bridge Party" in March 1869, where he invited engineers and members of U.S. Congress to see his other spans. Following the bridge party in April, Roebling and several engineers conducted final surveys.

 

During these surveys, it was determined that the main span would have to be raised from 130 to 135 feet (40 to 41 m), requiring several changes to the overall design.

 

In June 1869, while conducting these surveys, Roebling sustained a crush injury to his foot when a ferry pinned it against a piling. After amputation of his crushed toes, he developed a tetanus infection that left him incapacitated and resulted in his death the following month.

 

Washington Roebling, John Roebling's 32-year-old son, was then hired to fill his father's role. When the younger Roebling was hired, Tammany Hall leader William M. Tweed also became involved in the bridge's construction because, as a major landowner in New York City, he had an interest in the project's completion.

 

The New York and Brooklyn Bridge Company - later known simply as the New York Bridge Company - was actually overseen by Tammany Hall, and it approved Roebling's plans and designated him as chief engineer of the project.

 

Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge

 

The Caissons

 

Construction of the Brooklyn Bridge began on the 2nd. January 2, 1870. The first work entailed the construction of two caissons, upon which the suspension towers would be built.

 

A caisson is a large watertight chamber, open at the bottom, from which the water is kept out by air pressure and in which construction work may be carried out under water.

 

The Brooklyn side's caisson was built at the Webb & Bell shipyard in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, and was launched into the river on the 19th. March 1870. Compressed air was pumped into the caisson, and workers entered the space to dig the sediment until it sank to the bedrock. As one sixteen-year-old from Ireland, Frank Harris, described the fearful experience:

 

"The six of us were working naked to the waist

in the small iron chamber with the temperature

of about 80 degrees Fahrenheit.

In five minutes the sweat was pouring from us,

and all the while we were standing in icy water

that was only kept from rising by the terrific

pressure. No wonder the headaches were

blinding."

 

Once the caisson had reached the desired depth, it was to be filled in with vertical brick piers and concrete. However, due to the unexpectedly high concentration of large boulders on the riverbed, the Brooklyn caisson took several months to sink to the desired depth.

 

Furthermore, in December 1870, its timber roof caught fire, delaying construction further. The "Great Blowout", as the fire was called, delayed construction for several months, since the holes in the caisson had to be repaired.

 

On the 6th. March 1871, the repairs were finished, and the caisson had reached its final depth of 44.5 feet (13.6 m); it was filled with concrete five days later. Overall, about 264 individuals were estimated to have worked in the caisson every day, but because of high worker turnover, the final total was thought to be about 2,500 men.

 

In spite of this, only a few workers were paralyzed. At its final depth, the caisson's air pressure was 21 pounds per square inch. Normal air pressure is 14.7 psi.

 

The Manhattan side's caisson was the next structure to be built. To ensure that it would not catch fire like its counterpart had, the Manhattan caisson was lined with fireproof plate iron.

 

It was launched from Webb & Bell's shipyard on the 11th. May 1871, and maneuvered into place that September.

 

Due to the extreme underwater air pressure inside the much deeper Manhattan caisson, many workers became sick with "the bends" - decompression sickness - during this work, despite the incorporation of airlocks (which were believed to help with decompression sickness at the time).

 

This condition was unknown at the time, and was first called "caisson disease" by the project physician, Andrew Smith. Between the 25th. January and the 31st. May 1872, Smith treated 110 cases of decompression sickness, while three workers died from the condition.

 

When iron probes underneath the Manhattan caisson found the bedrock to be even deeper than expected, Washington Roebling halted construction due to the increased risk of decompression sickness.

 

After the Manhattan caisson reached a depth of 78.5 feet (23.9 m) with an air pressure of 35 pounds per square inch, Washington deemed the sandy subsoil overlying the bedrock 30 feet (9.1 m) beneath to be sufficiently firm, and subsequently infilled the caisson with concrete in July 1872.

 

Washington Roebling himself suffered a paralyzing injury as a result of caisson disease shortly after ground was broken for the Brooklyn tower foundation.

 

His debilitating condition left him unable to supervise the construction in person, so he designed the caissons and other equipment from his apartment, directing the completion of the bridge through a telescope in his bedroom.

 

His wife, Emily Warren Roebling, not only provided written communications between her husband and the engineers on site, but also understood mathematics, calculations of catenary curves, strengths of materials, bridge specifications, and the intricacies of cable construction.

 

She spent the next 11 years helping supervise the bridge's construction, taking over much of the chief engineer's duties, including day-to-day supervision and project management.

 

The Towers of the Brooklyn Bridge

 

After the caissons were completed, piers were constructed on top of each of them upon which masonry towers would be built. The towers' construction was a complex process that took four years.

 

Since the masonry blocks were heavy, the builders transported them to the base of the towers using a pulley system with a continuous 1.5-inch (3.8 cm)-diameter steel wire rope, operated by steam engines at ground level.

 

The blocks were then carried up on a timber track alongside each tower and maneuvered into the proper position using a derrick atop the towers. The blocks sometimes vibrated the ropes because of their weight, but only once did a block fall.

 

Construction of the suspension towers started in mid-1872, and by the time work was halted for the winter in late 1872, parts of each tower had already been built. By mid-1873, there was substantial progress on the towers' construction.

 

The arches of the Brooklyn tower were completed by August 1874. The tower was substantially finished by December 1874, with the erection of saddle plates for the main cables at the top of the tower.

 

The last stone on the Brooklyn tower was raised in June 1875, and the Manhattan tower was completed in July 1876.

 

The work was dangerous: by 1876, three workers had died having fallen from the towers, while nine other workers were killed in other accidents.

 

By 1875, while the towers were being constructed, the project had depleted its original $5 million budget. Two bridge commissioners, one each from Brooklyn and Manhattan, petitioned New York state lawmakers to allot another $8 million for construction. Legislators authorized the money on condition that the cities would buy the stock of Brooklyn Bridge's private stockholders.

 

Work proceeded concurrently on the anchorages on each side. The Brooklyn anchorage broke ground in January 1873 and was substantially completed by August 1875.

 

The Manhattan anchorage was built in less time. Having started in May 1875, it was mostly completed by July 1876. The anchorages could not be fully completed until the main cables were spun, at which point another 6 feet (1.8 m) would be added to the height of each 80-foot (24 m) anchorage.

 

The Brooklyn Bridge Cables

 

The first temporary wire was stretched between the towers on the 15th. August 1876, using chrome steel provided by the Chrome Steel Company of Brooklyn. The wire was then stretched back across the river, and the two ends were spliced to form a traveler, a lengthy loop of wire connecting the towers, which was driven by a 30 horsepower (22 kW) steam hoisting engine at ground level.

 

The wire was one of two that were used to create a temporary footbridge for workers while cable spinning was ongoing. The next step was to send an engineer across the completed traveler wire in a boatswain's chair slung from the wire, to ensure it was safe enough.

 

The bridge's master mechanic, E. F. Farrington, was volunteered for this task, and an estimated crowd of 10,000 people on both shores watched him cross.

 

A second traveler wire was then stretched across the span. The temporary footbridge, located some 60 feet (18 m) above the elevation of the future deck, was completed in February 1877.

 

By December 1876, a steel contract for the permanent cables still had not been awarded. There was disagreement over whether the bridge's cables should use the as-yet-untested Bessemer steel, or the well-proven crucible steel.

 

Until a permanent contract was awarded, the builders ordered 30 short tons of wire in the interim, 10 tons each from three companies, including Washington Roebling's own steel mill in Brooklyn.

 

In the end, it was decided to use number 8 Birmingham gauge (approximately 4 mm or 0.165 inches in diameter) crucible steel, and a request for bids was distributed, to which eight companies responded.

 

In January 1877, a contract for crucible steel was awarded to J. Lloyd Haigh, who was associated with bridge trustee Abram Hewitt, whom Roebling distrusted.

 

The spinning of the wires required the manufacture of large coils of it which were galvanized but not oiled when they left the factory. The coils were delivered to a yard near the Brooklyn anchorage. There they were dipped in linseed oil, hoisted to the top of the anchorage, dried out and spliced into a single wire, and finally coated with red zinc for further galvanizing.

 

There were thirty-two drums at the anchorage yard, eight for each of the four main cables. Each drum had a capacity of 60,000 feet (18,000 m) of wire. The first experimental wire for the main cables was stretched between the towers on the 29th. May 29 1877, and spinning began two weeks later.

 

All four main cables had been strung by that July. During that time, the temporary footbridge was unofficially opened to members of the public, who could receive a visitor's pass; by August 1877 several thousand visitors from around the world had used the footbridge. The visitor passes ceased that September after a visitor had an epileptic seizure and nearly fell off.

 

As the wires were being spun, work also commenced on the demolition of buildings on either side of the river for the Brooklyn Bridge's approaches; this work was mostly complete by September 1877. The following month, initial contracts were awarded for the suspender wires, which would hang down from the main cables and support the deck. By May 1878, the main cables were more than two-thirds complete.

 

However, the following month, one of the wires slipped, killing two people and injuring three others. In 1877, Hewitt wrote a letter urging against the use of Bessemer steel in the bridge's construction. Bids had been submitted for both crucible steel and Bessemer steel; John A. Roebling's Sons submitted the lowest bid for Bessemer steel, but at Hewitt's direction, the contract was awarded to Haigh.

 

A subsequent investigation discovered that Haigh had substituted inferior quality wire in the cables. Of eighty rings of wire that were tested, only five met standards, and it was estimated that Haigh had earned $300,000 from the deception.

 

At this point, it was too late to replace the cables that had already been constructed. Roebling determined that the poorer wire would leave the bridge only four times as strong as necessary, rather than six to eight times as strong. The inferior-quality wire was allowed to remain, and 150 extra wires were added to each cable.

 

To avoid public controversy, Haigh was not fired, but instead was required to personally pay for higher-quality wire. The contract for the remaining wire was awarded to the John A. Roebling's Sons, and by the 5th. October 1878, the last of the main cables' wires went over the river.

 

After the suspender wires had been placed, workers began erecting steel crossbeams to support the roadway as part of the bridge's overall superstructure. Construction on the bridge's superstructure started in March 1879, but, as with the cables, the trustees initially disagreed on whether the steel superstructure should be made of Bessemer or crucible steel.

 

That July, the trustees decided to award a contract for 500 short tons of Bessemer steel to the Edgemoor Iron Works, based in Philadelphia. The trustees later ordered another 500 short tons of Bessemer steel. However, by February 1880 the steel deliveries had not started.

 

That October, the bridge trustees questioned Edgemoor's president about the delay in steel deliveries. Despite Edgemoor's assurances that the contract would be fulfilled, the deliveries still had not been completed by November 1881.

 

Brooklyn mayor Seth Low, who became part of the board of trustees in 1882, became the chairman of a committee tasked to investigate Edgemoor's failure to fulfill the contract. When questioned, Edgemoor's president stated that the delays were the fault of another contractor, the Cambria Iron Company, who were manufacturing the eyebars for the bridge trusses.

 

Further complicating the situation, Washington Roebling had failed to appear at the trustees' meeting in June 1882, since he had gone to Newport, Rhode Island. After the news media discovered this, most of the newspapers called for Roebling to be fired as chief engineer, except for the Daily State Gazette of Trenton, New Jersey, and the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.

 

Some of the longstanding trustees were willing to vouch for Roebling, since construction progress on the Brooklyn Bridge was still ongoing. However, Roebling's behavior was considered suspect among the younger trustees who had joined the board more recently.

 

Construction progress on the bridge itself was submitted in formal monthly reports to the mayors of New York and Brooklyn. For example, the August 1882 report noted that the month's progress included 114 intermediate cords erected within a week, as well as 72 diagonal stays, 60 posts, and numerous floor beams, bridging trusses, and stay bars.

 

By early 1883, the Brooklyn Bridge was considered mostly completed and was projected to open that June. Contracts for bridge lighting were awarded by February 1883, and a toll scheme was approved that March.

 

Opposition to the Bridge

 

There was substantial opposition to the bridge's construction from shipbuilders and merchants located to the north, who argued that the bridge would not provide sufficient clearance underneath for ships.

 

In May 1876, these groups, led by Abraham Miller, filed a lawsuit in the United States District Court against the cities of New York and Brooklyn.

 

In 1879, an Assembly Sub-Committee on Commerce and Navigation began an investigation into the Brooklyn Bridge. A seaman who had been hired to determine the height of the span, testified to the committee about the difficulties that ship masters would experience in bringing their ships under the bridge when it was completed.

 

Another witness, Edward Wellman Serrell, a civil engineer, said that the calculations of the bridge's assumed strength were incorrect.

 

However the Supreme Court decided in 1883 that the Brooklyn Bridge was a lawful structure.

 

The Opening of the Brooklyn Bridge

 

The Brooklyn Bridge was opened for use on the 24th. May 1883. Thousands of people attended the opening ceremony, and many ships were present in the East River for the occasion. Officially, Emily Warren Roebling was the first to cross the bridge.

 

The bridge opening was also attended by U.S. president Chester A. Arthur and New York mayor Franklin Edson, who crossed the bridge and shook hands with Brooklyn mayor Seth Low at the Brooklyn end. Abram Hewitt gave the principal address:

 

"It is not the work of any one man or of any one

age. It is the result of the study, of the experience,

and of the knowledge of many men in many ages.

It is not merely a creation; it is a growth. It stands

before us today as the sum and epitome of human

knowledge; as the very heir of the ages; as the

latest glory of centuries of patient observation,

profound study and accumulated skill, gained,

step by step, in the never-ending struggle of man

to subdue the forces of nature to his control and use."

 

Although Washington Roebling was unable to attend the ceremony (and rarely visited the site again), he held a celebratory banquet at his house on the day of the bridge opening.

 

Further festivity included a performance by a band, gunfire from ships, and a fireworks display. On that first day, a total of 1,800 vehicles and 150,300 people crossed the span.

 

Less than a week after the Brooklyn Bridge opened, ferry crews reported a sharp drop in patronage, while the bridge's toll operators were processing over a hundred people a minute. However, cross-river ferries continued to operate until 1942.

 

The bridge had cost US$15.5 million in 1883 dollars (about US$436,232,000 in 2021) to build, of which Brooklyn paid two-thirds. The bonds to fund the construction were not paid off until 1956.

 

An estimated 27 men died during the bridge's construction. Until the construction of the nearby Williamsburg Bridge in 1903, the Brooklyn Bridge was the longest suspension bridge in the world, 20% longer than any built previously.

 

At the time of opening, the Brooklyn Bridge was not complete; the proposed public transit across the bridge was still being tested, while the Brooklyn approach was being completed.

 

On the 30th. May 1883, six days after the opening, a woman falling down a stairway at the Brooklyn approach caused a stampede which resulted in at least twelve people being crushed and killed.

 

In subsequent lawsuits, the Brooklyn Bridge Company was acquitted of negligence. However, the company did install emergency phone boxes and additional railings, and the trustees approved a fireproofing plan for the bridge.

 

Public transit service began with the opening of the New York and Brooklyn Bridge Railway, a cable car service, on the 25th. September 1883.

 

On the 17th. May 1884, one of P. T. Barnum's most famous attractions, Jumbo the elephant, led a parade of 21 elephants over the Brooklyn Bridge. This helped to lessen doubts about the bridge's stability while also promoting Barnum's circus.

 

Brooklyn Bridge in the Late 19th. & Early 20th. Centuries

 

Movement across the Brooklyn Bridge increased in the years after it opened; a million people paid to cross in the first six months. The bridge carried 8.5 million people in 1884, its first full year of operation; this number doubled to 17 million in 1885, and again to 34 million in 1889.

 

Many of these people were cable car passengers. Additionally, about 4.5 million pedestrians a year were crossing the bridge for free by 1892.

 

The first proposal to make changes to the bridge was sent in only two and a half years after it opened; Linda Gilbert suggested glass steam-powered elevators and an observatory be added to the bridge and a fee charged for use, which would in part fund the bridge's upkeep and in part fund her prison reform charity.

 

This proposal was considered, but not acted upon. Numerous other proposals were made during the first fifty years of the bridge's life.

 

Trolley tracks were added in the center lanes of both roadways in 1898, allowing trolleys to use the bridge as well.

 

Concerns about the Brooklyn Bridge's safety were raised during the turn of the century. In 1898, traffic backups due to a dead horse caused one of the truss cords to buckle.

 

There were more significant worries after twelve suspender cables snapped in 1901, although a thorough investigation found no other defects.

 

After the 1901 incident, five inspectors were hired to examine the bridge each day, a service that cost $250,000 a year.

 

The Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company, which operated routes across the Brooklyn Bridge, issued a notice in 1905 saying that the bridge had reached its transit capacity.

 

Although a second deck for the Brooklyn Bridge was proposed, it was thought to be infeasible because doing so would overload the bridge's structural capacity.

 

Though tolls had been instituted for carriages and cable-car customers since the bridge's opening, pedestrians were spared from the tolls originally. However, by the first decade of the 20th. century, pedestrians were also paying tolls.

 

However tolls on all four bridges across the East River - the Brooklyn Bridge, as well as the Manhattan, Williamsburg, and Queensboro bridges to the north - were abolished in July 1911 as part of a populist policy initiative headed by New York City mayor William Jay Gaynor.

 

Ostensibly in an attempt to reduce traffic on nearby city streets, Grover Whalen, the commissioner of Plant and Structures, banned motor vehicles from the Brooklyn Bridge in 1922. The real reason for the ban was an incident the same year where two cables slipped due to high traffic loads.

 

Both Whalen and Roebling called for the renovation of the Brooklyn Bridge and the construction of a parallel bridge, although the parallel bridge was never built.

 

Brooklyn Bridge in Mid- to late 20th. Century

 

Upgrades to the Bridge

 

The first major upgrade to the Brooklyn Bridge commenced in 1948, when a contract for redesigning the roadways was awarded to David B. Steinman. The renovation was expected to double the capacity of the bridge's roadways to nearly 6,000 cars per hour, at a projected cost of $7 million.

 

The renovation included the demolition of both the elevated and the trolley tracks on the roadways and the widening of each roadway from two to three lanes, as well as the construction of a new steel-and-concrete floor.

 

In addition, new ramps were added to Adams Street, Cadman Plaza, and the Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) on the Brooklyn side, and to Park Row on the Manhattan side. The trolley tracks closed in March 1950 to allow for the widening work to occur.

 

During the construction project, one roadway at a time was closed, allowing reduced traffic flows to cross the bridge in one direction only. The widened south roadway was completed in May 1951, followed by the north roadway in October 1953. In addition, defensive barriers were added to the bridge as a safeguard against sabotage.

 

The restoration was finished in May 1954 with the completion of the reconstructed elevated promenade.

 

While the rebuilding of the span was ongoing, a fallout shelter was constructed beneath the Manhattan approach in anticipation of the Cold War. The abandoned space in one of the masonry arches was stocked with emergency survival supplies for a potential nuclear attack by the Soviet Union; these supplies were still in place half a century later.

 

A repainting of the bridge was announced in advance of its 90th. anniversary.

 

Deterioration and Late-20th. Century Repair

 

The Brooklyn Bridge gradually deteriorated due to age and neglect. While it had 200 full-time dedicated maintenance workers before World War II, that number had dropped to five by the late 20th. century, and the city as a whole only had 160 bridge maintenance workers.

 

In 1974, heavy vehicles such as vans and buses were banned from the bridge to prevent further erosion of the concrete roadway. A report in The New York Times four years later noted that the cables were visibly fraying, and that the pedestrian promenade had holes in it.

 

The city began planning to replace all the Brooklyn Bridge's cables at a cost of $115 million, as part of a larger project to renovate all four toll-free East River spans.

 

By 1980, the Brooklyn Bridge was in such dire condition that it faced imminent closure. In some places, half of the strands in the cables were broken.

 

In June 1981, two of the diagonal stay cables snapped, seriously injuring a pedestrian who later died. Subsequently, the anchorages were found to have developed rust, and an emergency cable repair was necessitated less than a month later after another cable developed slack.

 

Following the incident, the city accelerated the timetable of its proposed cable replacement, and it commenced a $153 million rehabilitation of the Brooklyn Bridge in advance of the 100th anniversary.

 

As part of the project, the bridge's original suspender cables installed by J. Lloyd Haigh were replaced by Bethlehem Steel in 1986, marking the cables' first replacement since construction. In a smaller project, the bridge was floodlit at night, starting in 1982 to highlight its architectural features.

 

Additional problems persisted, and in 1993, high levels of lead were discovered near the bridge's towers. Further emergency repairs were undertaken in mid-1999 after small concrete shards began falling from the bridge into the East River. The concrete deck had been installed during the 1950's renovations, and had a lifespan of about 60 years.

 

Brooklyn Bridge in the 21st. Century

 

The Park Row exit from the bridge's westbound lanes was closed as a safety measure after the September 11, 2001, attacks on the nearby World Trade Center. That section of Park Row was closed since it ran right underneath 1 Police Plaza, the headquarters of the New York City Police Department.

 

In early 2003, to save money on electricity, the bridge's "necklace lights" were turned off at night. They were turned back on later that year after several private entities made donations to fund the lights.

 

After the 2007 collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, public attention focused on the condition of bridges across the U.S. The New York Times reported that the Brooklyn Bridge approach ramps had received a "poor" rating during an inspection in 2007.

 

However, a NYCDOT spokesman said that the poor rating did not indicate a dangerous state but rather implied it required renovation. In 2010, the NYCDOT began renovating the approaches and deck, as well as repainting the suspension span.

 

Work included widening two approach ramps from one to two lanes by re-striping a new prefabricated ramp; seismic retrofitting; replacement of rusted railings and safety barriers; and road deck resurfacing. The work necessitated detours for four years.

 

At the time, the project was scheduled to be completed in 2014, but completion was later delayed to 2015, then again to 2017. The project's cost also increased from $508 million in 2010 to $811 million in 2016.

 

In August 2016, after the renovation had been completed, the NYCDOT announced that it would conduct a seven-month, $370,000 study to verify if the bridge could support a heavier upper deck that consisted of an expanded bicycle and pedestrian path.

 

As of 2016, about 10,000 pedestrians and 3,500 cyclists used the pathway on an average weekday. Work on the pedestrian entrance on the Brooklyn side was underway by 2017.

 

The NYCDOT also indicated in 2016 that it planned to reinforce the Brooklyn Bridge's foundations to prevent it from sinking, as well as repair the masonry arches on the approach ramps, which had been damaged by Hurricane Sandy in 2012.

 

In July 2018, the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission approved a further renovation of the Brooklyn Bridge's suspension towers and approach ramps. That December, the federal government gave the city $25 million in funding, which would contribute to a $337 million rehabilitation of the bridge approaches and the suspension towers. Work started in late 2019 and was scheduled to be completed in 2023.

 

Usage of the Brooklyn Bridge

 

Horse-drawn carriages have been allowed to use the Brooklyn Bridge's roadways since its opening. Originally, each of the two roadways carried two lanes of a different direction of traffic. The lanes were relatively narrow at only 8 feet (2.4 m) wide. In 1922, motor vehicles were banned from the bridge, while horse-drawn carriages were restricted from the Manhattan Bridge. Thereafter, the only vehicles allowed on the Brooklyn Bridge were horse-drawn.

 

By 1950, the main roadway carried six lanes of automobile traffic, three in each direction. It was then reduced to five lanes with the addition of a two-way bike lane on the Manhattan-bound side in 2021.

 

Because of the roadway's height (11 ft (3.4 m)) and weight (6,000 lb (2,700 kg)) restrictions, commercial vehicles and buses are prohibited from using the Brooklyn Bridge.

 

The weight restrictions prohibit heavy passenger vehicles such as pickup trucks and SUVs from using the bridge, though this is not often enforced in practice.

 

Formerly, rail traffic operated on the Brooklyn Bridge as well. Cable cars and elevated railroads used the bridge until 1944, while trolleys ran until 1950.

 

A cable car service began operating on the 25th. September 1883; it ran on the inner lanes of the bridge, between terminals at the Manhattan and Brooklyn ends.

 

Since Washington Roebling believed that steam locomotives would put excessive loads upon the structure of the Brooklyn Bridge, the cable car line was designed as a steam/cable-hauled hybrid.

 

They were powered from a generating station under the Brooklyn approach. The cable cars could not only regulate their speed on the 3.75% upward and downward approaches, but also maintain a constant interval between each other. There were 24 cable cars in total.

 

Initially, the service ran with single-car trains, but patronage soon grew so much that by October 1883, two-car trains were in use. The line carried three million people in the first six months, nine million in 1884, and nearly 20 million in 1885.

 

Patronage continued to increase, and in 1888, the tracks were lengthened and even more cars were constructed to allow for four-car cable car trains. Electric wires for the trolleys were added by 1895, allowing for the potential future decommissioning of the steam/cable system.

 

The terminals were rebuilt once more in July 1895, and, following the implementation of new electric cars in late 1896, the steam engines were dismantled and sold.

 

The Brooklyn Bridge Walkway

 

The Brooklyn Bridge has an elevated promenade open to pedestrians in the center of the bridge, located 18 feet (5.5 m) above the automobile lanes.

 

The path is generally 10 to 17 feet (3.0 to 5.2 m) wide, though this is constrained by obstacles such as protruding cables, benches, and stairways, which create "pinch points" at certain locations. The path narrows to 10 feet (3.0 m) at the locations where the main cables descend to the level of the promenade.

 

Further exacerbating the situation, these "pinch points" are some of the most popular places to take pictures. As a result, in 2016, the NYCDOT announced that it planned to double the promenade's width.

 

On the 14th. September 2021, the DOT closed off the inner-most car lane on the Manhattan-bound side with protective barriers and fencing to create a new bike path. Cyclists are now prohibited from the upper pedestrian lane.

 

Emergency Use of Brooklyn Bridge

 

While the bridge has always permitted the passage of pedestrians, the promenade facilitates movement when other means of crossing the East River have become unavailable.

 

During transit strikes by the Transport Workers Union in 1980 and 2005, people commuting to work used the bridge; they were joined by Mayors Ed Koch and Michael Bloomberg, who crossed as a gesture to the affected public.

 

Pedestrians also walked across the bridge as an alternative to suspended subway services following the 1965, 1977, and 2003 blackouts, and after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center.

 

During the 2003 blackouts, many crossing the bridge reported a swaying motion. The higher-than-usual pedestrian load caused this swaying, which was amplified by the tendency of pedestrians to synchronize their footfalls with a sway.

 

Several engineers expressed concern about how this would affect the bridge, although others noted that the bridge did withstand the event and that the redundancies in its design - the inclusion of the three support systems (suspension system, diagonal stay system, and stiffening truss) - make it probably the best secured bridge against such movements going out of control.

 

In designing the bridge, John Roebling had stated that the bridge would sag but not fall, even if one of these structural systems were to fail altogether.

 

Stunts Associated With Brooklyn Bridge

 

There have been several notable jumpers from the Brooklyn Bridge:

 

-- The first person was Robert Emmet Odlum, brother of women's rights activist Charlotte Odlum Smith, on the 19th. May 1885. He struck the water at an angle, and died shortly afterwards from internal injuries.

 

-- Steve Brodie supposedly dropped from underneath the bridge in July 1886 and was briefly arrested for it, although there is some doubt about whether he actually jumped.

 

-- Larry Donovan made a slightly higher jump from the railing a month afterward.

 

Other notable events have taken place on or near the bridge:

 

-- In 1919, Giorgio Pessi piloted what was then one of the world's largest airplanes, the Caproni Ca.5, under the bridge.

 

-- At 9:00 a.m. on the 19th. May 1977, artist Jack Bashkow climbed one of the towers for 'Bridging', which was termed a "media sculpture" by the performance group Art Corporation of America Inc.

 

Seven artists climbed the largest bridges connected to Manhattan in order to:

 

"Replace violence and fear

in mass media for one day".

 

When each of the artists had reached the tops of the bridges, they ignited bright-yellow flares at the same moment, resulting in rush hour traffic disruption, media attention, and the arrest of the climbers, though the charges were later dropped.

 

Called "The first social-sculpture to use mass-media as art” by conceptual artist Joseph Beuys, the event was on the cover of the New York Post, it received international attention, and received ABC Eyewitness News' 1977 Best News of the Year award.

 

John Halpern documented the incident in the film 'Bridging' (1977)

 

-- Halpern attempted another "Bridging" "social sculpture" in 1979, when he planted a radio receiver, gunpowder and fireworks in a bucket atop one of the Brooklyn Bridge towers.

 

The piece was later discovered by police, leading to his arrest for possessing a bomb.

 

-- In 1993, bridge jumper Thierry Devaux illegally performed eight acrobatic bungee jumps above the East River close to the Brooklyn tower.

 

-- On the 1st. October 2011, more than 700 protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement were arrested while attempting to march across the bridge on the roadway.

 

Protesters disputed the police account of the event, and claimed that the arrests were the result of being trapped on the bridge by the NYPD. The majority of the arrests were subsequently dismissed.

 

-- On the 22nd. July 2014, the two American flags on the flagpoles atop each tower were found to have been replaced by bleached-white American flags.

 

Initially, cannabis activism was suspected as a motive, but on the 12th. August 2014, two Berlin artists claimed responsibility for hoisting the two white flags, having switched the original flags with their replicas.

 

The artists said that the flags were meant to celebrate the beauty of public space and the anniversary of the death of German-born John Roebling, and they denied that it was an anti-American statement.

 

Brooklyn Bridge as a Suicide Spot

 

The first person to jump from the bridge with the intention of suicide was Francis McCarey in 1892.

 

A lesser-known early jumper was James Duffy of County Cavan, Ireland, who on the 15th. April 1895 asked several men to watch him jump from the bridge. Duffy jumped and was not seen again.

 

Additionally, the cartoonist Otto Eppers jumped and survived in 1910, and was then tried and acquitted for attempted suicide.

 

The Brooklyn Bridge has since developed a reputation as a suicide bridge due to the number of jumpers who do so intending to kill themselves, though exact statistics are difficult to find.

 

Crimes and Terrorism Associated With Brooklyn Bridge

 

-- In 1979, police disarmed a stick of dynamite placed under the Brooklyn approach, and an artist in Manhattan was later arrested for the act.

 

-- On the 1st. March 1994, Lebanese-born Rashid Baz opened fire on a van carrying members of the Chabad-Lubavitch Orthodox Jewish Movement, striking 16-year-old student Ari Halberstam and three others traveling on the bridge.

 

Halberstam died five days later from his wounds, and Baz was later convicted of murder. He was apparently acting out of revenge for the Hebron massacre of Palestinian Muslims a few days prior to the incident.

 

After initially classifying the killing as one committed out of road rage, the Justice Department reclassified the case in 2000 as a terrorist attack.

 

The entrance ramp to the bridge on the Manhattan side was subsequently dedicated as the Ari Halberstam Memorial Ramp.

 

-- In 2003, truck driver Lyman Faris was sentenced to 20 years in prison for providing material support to Al-Qaeda, after an earlier plot to destroy the bridge by cutting through its support wires with blowtorches was thwarted.

 

Brooklyn Bridge Anniversary Celebrations

 

-- The 50th.-anniversary celebrations on the 24th. May 1933 included a ceremony featuring an airplane show, ships, and fireworks, as well as a banquet.

 

-- During the centennial celebrations on the 24th. May 1983, President Ronald Reagan led a cavalcade of cars across the bridge.

 

A flotilla of ships visited the harbor, officials held parades, and Grucci Fireworks held a fireworks display that evening.

 

For the centennial, the Brooklyn Museum exhibited a selection of the original drawings made for the bridge.

 

Culture

 

The Brooklyn Bridge has had an impact on idiomatic American English. For example, references to "Selling the Brooklyn Bridge" abound in American culture, sometimes as examples of rural gullibility, but more often in connection with an idea that strains credulity.

 

George C. Parker and William McCloundy were two early 20th.-century con men who may have perpetrated this scam successfully on unwitting tourists, although the author of 'The Brooklyn Bridge: A Cultural History' wrote:

 

"No evidence exists that the bridge

has ever been sold to a 'gullible

outlander'".

 

However, anyone taken in by fraudsters is hardly likely to publicize the fact.

 

A popular tradition on Brooklyn Bridge is for couples to inscribe a date and their initials onto a padlock, attach it to the bridge, and throw the key into the water as a sign of their love.

 

The practice of attaching 'love locks' to the bridge is officially illegal in New York City, and in theory the NYPD can give violators a $100 fine.

 

NYCDOT workers periodically remove the love locks from the bridge at a cost of $100,000 per year.

 

Brooklyn Bridge in the Media

 

The bridge is often featured in wide shots of the New York City skyline in television and film, and has been depicted in numerous works of art.

 

Fictional works have used the Brooklyn Bridge as a setting; for instance, the dedication of a portion of the bridge, and the bridge itself, were key components in the 2001 film Kate & Leopold.

 

Furthermore, the Brooklyn Bridge has also served as an icon of America, with mentions in numerous songs, books, and poems.

 

Among the most notable of these works is that of American Modernist poet Hart Crane, who used the Brooklyn Bridge as a central metaphor and organizing structure for his second book of poetry, 'The Bridge' (1930).

 

The Brooklyn Bridge has also been lauded for its architecture. One of the first positive reviews was "The Bridge as a Monument", a Harper's Weekly piece written by architecture critic Montgomery Schuyler and published a week after the bridge's opening.

 

In the piece, Schuyler wrote:

 

"It so happens that the work which is likely to be

our most durable monument, and to convey some

knowledge of us to the most remote posterity, is a

work of bare utility; not a shrine, not a fortress, not

a palace, but a bridge."

 

Architecture critic Lewis Mumford cited the piece as the impetus for serious architectural criticism in the U.S. He wrote that in the 1920's the bridge was a source of joy and inspiration in his childhood, and that it was a profound influence in his adolescence.

 

Later critics regarded the Brooklyn Bridge as a work of art, as opposed to an engineering feat or a means of transport.

 

Not all critics appreciated the bridge, however. Henry James, writing in the early 20th. century, cited the bridge as an ominous symbol of the city's transformation into a "steel-souled machine room".

 

The construction of the Brooklyn Bridge is detailed in numerous media sources, including David McCullough's 1972 book 'The Great Bridge', and Ken Burns's 1981 documentary 'Brooklyn Bridge'.

 

It is also described in 'Seven Wonders of the Industrial World', a BBC docudrama series with an accompanying book, as well as in 'Chief Engineer: Washington Roebling, The Man Who Built the Brooklyn Bridge', a biography published in 2017.

Mark Updegrove, Susan Glasser and Peter Baker

 

On December 13th, 2022, the LBJ Presidential Library held an evening discussion with longtime national journalists Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, authors of the New York Times bestselling book The Divider: Trump in the White House, 2017-2021. Peter Baker is the chief White House correspondent for The New York Times and a political analyst for MSNBC. Susan Glasser is a staff writer for The New Yorker and a CNN global affairs analyst. Baker and Glass are married and live in Washington, D.C. LBJ Foundation president and CEO Mark K. Updegrove moderated the discussion.

 

LBJ Library photo by Brian Birzer

12/13/2022

Fishguard is a coastal town in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with a population of 3,400 (rounded to the nearest 100) as of the 2021 census. Modern Fishguard consists of two parts, Lower Fishguard and the "Main Town". Fishguard and Goodwick are twin towns with a joint Town Council.

 

Lower Fishguard is believed to be the site of the original hamlet from which modern Fishguard has grown. It is in a deep valley where the River Gwaun meets the sea, hence the Welsh name for Fishguard. It is a typical fishing village with a short tidal quay. The settlement stretches along the north slope of the valley.

 

The main town contains the parish church, the High Street and most of the modern development, and lies upon the hill to the south of Lower Fishguard, to which it is joined by a steep and winding road. The west part of the town that faces

Goodwick grew in the first decade of the 20th century with the development of Fishguard Harbour.

 

The English name Fishguard derives from Old Norse Fiskigarðr meaning "fish catching enclosure", cognate with Modern English fish + yard. In Welsh, Abergwaun means "the mouth of the River Gwaun", the name of the river referring to the high, wet, level ground of a marsh or moor.

 

Fishguard is within the historic Welsh cantref of Cemais, and part of the Welsh province of Dyfed, within the historic Principality of Deheubarth. The coasts of Wales were subject to Norse raids during the Viking Age, and in the latter part of the 10th century Norse trading posts and settlements emerged within Dyfed, with Fishguard established sometime between 950 and 1000 AD.

 

In 1078 Goodwick Moor, was the scene of a bloody battle in which Rhys, son of Owain ap Edwyn, was defeated and slain by Trahaearn ap Caradog (Brut y Tywysogion) in the Battle of Pwllgwdg,

 

The English place name indicates that there may have been a Scandinavian trading post, although no evidence has been found. However, the V-shaped stone structures of ancient fish traps can still be seen at low tide on both sides of the bay, and it is believed these were the foundations for wooden fences that would trap the fish as the tide went out. Other examples can be found around the country, and they probably date from Saxon times, though similar devices have been in use since Neolithic times.

 

Called Fiscard until the turn of the 19th century when the name was Anglicised, Fishguard was a marcher borough and in 1603 was described as one of five Pembrokeshire boroughs overseen by a portreeve. The Norman settlement lay along what is now High Street between the church at its north end and the remains of a Norman motte at its south end.

 

In 1912, Denys Corbett Wilson made the first flight between Britain and Ireland. Starting his journey from Hendon aerodrome on 17 April 1912, he eventually landed in Goodwick on 21 April having made a few unscheduled stops along the way. He then set off from a field near Harbour Village at 5:47 on 22 April and crash-landed 100 minutes later in Crane near Enniscorthy in County Wexford.

 

Lower Fishguard developed as a herring fishery and port, trading with Ireland, Bristol and Liverpool. In the late 18th century it had 50 coasting vessels, and exported oats and salt herring. In 1779, the port was raided by the privateer Black Prince, which bombarded the town when the payment of a £1,000 ransom was refused. As a result, Fishguard Fort was completed in 1781, overlooking Lower Fishguard. The port declined in the latter half of the 19th century.

 

Fishguard's ancient Royal Oak public house was the site of the signing of surrender after the Battle of Fishguard. This brief campaign, on 22–24 February 1797, is the most recent landing on British soil by a hostile foreign force, and thus is often referred to as the "last invasion of mainland Britain". A force of 1,400 French soldiers landed near Fishguard but surrendered two days later.

 

A 19th-century vicar of Fishguard, the Rev. Samuel Fenton MA, wrote the book The History of Pembrokeshire.

 

The ancient Parliamentary Borough of Fishguard was contributory to the Borough of Haverfordwest. During the Second World War, the Fishguard Bay Hotel was Station IXc of Special Operations Executive where submersibles were tested in Fishguard Bay.

 

Fishguard & Goodwick Golf Club was founded in 1921 and closed in the 1960s.

 

There are two tiers of local government covering Fishguard, at community (town) and county level: Fishguard and Goodwick Town Council and Pembrokeshire County Council. The town council is based at Fishguard Town Hall in Market Square.

 

Fishguard was an ancient parish. When parish and district councils were established in 1894, the parish of Fishguard was included in the Haverfordwest Rural District. In 1906 it was decided to create an urban district covering Fishguard, making it independent from the Haverfordwest Rural District Council. The whole parish of Fishguard was considered too large to be an urban district and so it was split into two parishes: Fishguard North covering the main built up area, to be governed by Fishguard Urban District Council, and Fishguard South which stayed in the Haverfordwest Rural District. These changes took effect on 1 April 1907. The first meeting of Fishguard Urban District Council was held on 8 April 1907 at the Town Hall, when John Robertson Richards, a Conservative, was appointed the first chairman of the council.

 

The urban district was enlarged in 1934 to include neighbouring Goodwick, becoming Fishguard and Goodwick Urban District. Fishguard and Goodwick Urban District was abolished under the Local Government Act 1972, with the area becoming part of the district of Preseli Pembrokeshire on 1 April 1974. A community covering the former urban district was established at the same time, with its council taking the name Fishguard and Goodwick Town Council. Preseli Pembrokeshire was abolished in 1996 to become part of a re-established Pembrokeshire.

 

The town is situated at the back of a north facing bay known as Fishguard Bay (Welsh: Bae Abergwaun) which offers protection from waves generated by prevailing westerly winds. It has a relatively mild climate due to its coastal position. The winds coming from the west or south-west have a determining influence on temperature and precipitation. There is an islet in Fishguard Bay, Needle Rock which reaches 131 feet (40 metres).

 

Wildlife around Fishguard is rich with a wide variety of colourful wild flowers and sea mammals including the grey seal, porpoises and dolphins. The local birdlife include Eurasian curlew, common redshank and sanderling regularly foraging in the lower Fishguard Harbour and European stonechat, great cormorant and northern fulmar can be seen from the coastal path.

 

According to the 2021 census, Fishguard had a population of roughly 3,400, 29.6% of the population being ale to speak Welsh. This compares with 39.8% in 2001, 58.9% in 1951 and 90.3% in 1901.

 

The largest ethnic group in Fishguard is White, making up 97.7% of the population, the county average. The second largest ethnic group is Asian/Asian British who make up 0.9% of the population, also the county average. The largest religious group is Christian with 47.3% of the population, lower than the county average of 48.8%. The second largest religious group is No religion with 43.2% of the population, roughly the county average.

 

Outside Fishguard there is a stone monument commemorating the signing of the Peace Treaty after the last invasion of Britain in 1797. Women dressed in Welsh costume are said to have startled the invaders. The 19th-century parish church of St Mary's contains a memorial stone to the heroine Jemima Nicholas, who helped repel the French invasion. There is also a Bi-Centenary memorial stone monument in West Street, Fishguard to commemorate the invasion. A tapestry was created in 1997 to commemorate the invasion and is on display to the public in Fishguard Town Hall.

 

There are more than 80 listed buildings in and around the town.

 

Fishguard has hotels and is the main shopping town of North Pembrokeshire with a market in the town hall on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

 

Fishguard has a Round Table doing community work including running the Fishguard & Goodwick Carnival and the Fishguard Autumn Festival.

 

The Gwaun Lodge of the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, is a charitable organisation within the community who host sponsored events and other community works throughout the year.

 

Fishguard has a 180-seat cinema/theatre called Theatr Gwaun which provides a venue for film, music and live theatre and hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1936 and 1986.

 

Fishguard is the terminus of the London to Fishguard Trunk Road (A40). A regular ferry operated by Stena Line leaves for Rosslare in Ireland from the port of Fishguard Harbour, Goodwick. Following the Brexit withdrawal agreement, freight traffic from Rosslare fell by 50% in January 2021.

 

Rail services are operated by Transport for Wales Rail from Fishguard Harbour and Fishguard and Goodwick railway stations on the West Wales line to Swansea and Cardiff. Through trains to London were withdrawn in 2004.

 

Starting in 1909 the fast Cunard liners from New York began anchoring at Fishguard to allow passengers to take a Great Western train to London, saving a few hours compared to Liverpool.

 

Lower Fishguard was used as "Llareggub" in the film of Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, starring Richard Burton, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter O'Toole. Many local people were involved in the production of this film as background characters. The film Moby Dick (starring Gregory Peck) was filmed there in 1955.

 

Fishguard and Goodwick Chamber of Trade and Tourism is a business support group.

 

Notable people

See Category:People from Fishguard

Richard Fenton (1747–1821), a Welsh lawyer, topographer and poet; retired and died in Fishguard

Jemima Nicholas (ca.1750–1832), armed only with a pitchfork, single-handedly captured 12 French soldiers in the Battle of Fishguard in 1797.

John Bowen (1815–1859), an Anglican bishop in Sierra Leone; born at nearby Court.

Willie Thomas (1866–1921), rugby player

Arthur Wade-Evans (1875–1964), clergyman and historian

Thomas James Stretch (1915-1973), clergyman and WW2 army chaplain

Glenys Cour MBE (born 1924), a Welsh artist known for painting, stained glass and collage

Sue Jones-Davies (born 1949), actress and singer, attended Fishguard County Secondary School during the 1960s.

Jonathan Lean (born 1952), retired as Dean of St Davids Cathedral in 2017.

Paula Craig MBE (born 1963), a former detective, cyclist, former runner, paratriathlete

Cerys Matthews MBE (born 1969), lead singer of Catatonia went to Ysgol Bro Gwaun.

Mark Delaney (born 1976), footballer, grew up in Fishguard.

 

Twinning

Fishguard is twinned with France Loctudy in Brittany, France.

 

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and is otherwise surrounded by the sea. Haverfordwest is the largest town and administrative headquarters of Pembrokeshire County Council.

 

The county is generally sparsely populated and rural, with an area of 200 square miles (520 km2) and a population of 123,400. After Haverfordwest, the largest settlements are Milford Haven (13,907), Pembroke Dock (9,753), and Pembroke (7,552). St Davids (1,841) is a city, the smallest by population in the UK. Welsh is spoken by 17.2 percent of the population, and for historic reasons is more widely spoken in the north of the county than in the south.

 

Pembrokeshire's coast is its most dramatic geographic feature, created by the complex geology of the area. It is a varied landscape which includes high sea cliffs, wide sandy beaches, the large natural harbour of Milford Haven, and several offshore islands which are home to seabird colonies. Most of it is protected by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, and can be hiked on the 190-mile (310 km) Pembrokeshire Coast Path. The interior of Pembrokeshire is relatively flat and gently undulating, with the exception of the Preseli Mountains in the north.

 

There are many prehistoric sites in Pembrokeshire, particularly in the Preseli Mountains. During the Middle Ages several castles were built by the Normans, such as Pembroke and Cilgerran, and St David's Cathedral became an important pilgrimage site. During the Industrial Revolution the county remained relatively rural, with the exception of Milford Haven, which was developed as a port and Royal Navy dockyard. It is now the UK's third-largest port, primarily because of its two liquefied natural gas terminals. The economy of the county is now focused on agriculture, oil and gas, and tourism.

 

Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years  and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave; in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales. There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.

 

There is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's Geography, written c. 150, mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".

 

Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey, and another near Wiston. Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.

 

Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.

 

Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae.  The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century.  In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943), daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.

 

Dyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111.  The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke":), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.  Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales.  In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240.  In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to introduce the English common law system to Wales, heralding 100 years of peace, but had little effect on those areas already established under the Marcher Lords, such as Cemais in the north of the county.

 

Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan.  Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.

 

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared. 

 

During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648.  On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.

 

In 1720, Emmanuel Bowen described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of 420,000 acres (1,700 km2). In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee.  People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies. After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke. From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle. In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be 345,600 acres (1,399 km2) with a population of 81,424.

 

It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.

 

Throughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole. There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Mountains and a number of military airfields. The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain. From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day. Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600. The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.

 

In 1972, a second reservoir for south Pembrokeshire, at Llys y Fran, was completed.

 

Pembrokeshire's tourism portal is Visit Pembrokeshire, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. In 2015 4.3 million tourists visited the county, staying for an average of 5.24 days, spending £585 million; the tourism industry supported 11,834 jobs. Many of Pembrokeshire's beaches have won awards, including Poppit Sands and Newport Sands. In 2018, Pembrokeshire received the most coast awards in Wales, with 56 Blue Flag, Green Coast or Seaside Awards. In the 2019 Wales Coast Awards, 39 Pembrokeshire beaches were recognised, including 11 awarded Blue Flag status.

 

The Pembrokeshire coastline is a major draw to tourists; in 2011 National Geographic Traveller magazine voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the second best in the world and in 2015 the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was listed among the top five parks in the world by a travel writer for the Huffington Post. Countryfile Magazine readers voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the top UK holiday destination in 2018, and in 2019 Consumers' Association members placed Tenby and St Davids in the top three best value beach destinations in Britain. With few large urban areas, Pembrokeshire is a "dark sky" destination. The many wrecks off the Pembrokeshire coast attract divers. The decade from 2012 saw significant, increasing numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, not seen since the 1960s, and now seen by some as an opportunity to encourage tourist sport fishing.

 

The county has a number of theme and animal parks (examples are Folly Farm Adventure Park and Zoo, Manor House Wildlife Park, Blue Lagoon Water Park and Oakwood Theme Park), museums and other visitor attractions including Castell Henllys reconstructed Iron Age fort, Tenby Lifeboat Station and Milford Haven's Torch Theatre. There are 21 marked cycle trails around the county.

 

Pembrokeshire Destination Management Plan for 2020 to 2025 sets out the scope and priorities to grow tourism in Pembrokeshire by increasing its value by 10 per cent in the five years, and to make Pembrokeshire a top five UK destination.

 

As the national sport of Wales, rugby union is widely played throughout the county at both town and village level. Haverfordwest RFC, founded in 1875, is a feeder club for Llanelli Scarlets. Village team Crymych RFC in 2014 plays in WRU Division One West. There are numerous football clubs in the county, playing in five leagues with Haverfordwest County A.F.C. competing in the Cymru Premier.

 

Triathlon event Ironman Wales has been held in Pembrokeshire since 2011, contributing £3.7 million to the local economy, and the county committed in 2017 to host the event for a further five years. Ras Beca, a mixed road, fell and cross country race attracting UK-wide competitors, has been held in the Preselis annually since 1977. The record of 32 minutes 5 seconds has stood since 1995. Pembrokeshire Harriers athletics club was formed in 2001 by the amalgamation of Cleddau Athletic Club (established 1970) and Preseli Harriers (1989) and is based in Haverfordwest.

 

The annual Tour of Pembrokeshire road-cycling event takes place over routes of optional length. The 4th Tour, in April 2015, attracted 1,600 riders including Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman and there were 1,500 entrants to the 2016 event. Part of Route 47 of the Celtic Trail cycle route is in Pembrokeshire. The Llys y Fran Hillclimb is an annual event run by Swansea Motor Club, and there are several other county motoring events held each year.

 

Abereiddy's Blue Lagoon was the venue for a round of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in 2012, 2013, and 2016; the Welsh Surfing Federation has held the Welsh National Surfing Championships at Freshwater West for several years, and Llys y Fran Country Park hosted the Welsh Dragonboat Championships from 2014 to 2017.

 

While not at major league level, cricket is played throughout the county and many villages such as Lamphey, Creselly, Llangwm, Llechryd and Crymych field teams in minor leagues under the umbrella of the Cricket Board of Wales.

 

Notable people

From mediaeval times, Rhys ap Gruffydd (c. 1132-1197), ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth, was buried in St Davids Cathedral. and Gerald of Wales was born c. 1146 at Manorbier Castle. Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) was born in 1457 at Pembroke Castle.

 

The pirate Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) (Welsh: Barti Ddu) was born in Casnewydd Bach, between Fishguard and Haverfordwest in 1682.

 

In later military history, Jemima Nicholas, heroine of the so-called "last invasion of Britain" in 1797, was from Fishguard, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton GCB, born in Haverfordwest, was killed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and Private Thomas Collins is believed to be the only Pembrokeshire man that fought in the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

 

In the arts, siblings Gwen and Augustus John were both born in Pembrokeshire, as was the novelist Sarah Waters; singer Connie Fisher grew up in Pembrokeshire. The actor Christian Bale was born in Haverfordwest.

 

Stephen Crabb, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales, was brought up in Pembrokeshire and is one of the county's two Members of Parliament, the other being Simon Hart,[90] who served as Secretary of State for Wales from 2019 to 2022.

As I was strolling on the beach, as part of my daily routine, I was attracted by this big camera and went to inquire about it.

I saw two men and a woman so I asked the woman what they were shooting. She told me that the Dutch TV is making a program about Iran and the threats of nuclear war, while not too many miles away from there, the people here in Israel, like myself on the Tel Aviv beach, are going about life as usual.

Ankie is a writer for the Dutch TV, she lives in Ramat HaSharon, north-east of Tel Aviv.

She was born in Holland...

(See more in the comments below.)

  

Ankie Spitzer recalled her husband's idealism and attitude towards the Olympics:

 

(While strolling in the Olympic Village)... he spotted members of the Lebanese team, and told (me) he was going to go and say hello to them... I said to him, "Are you out of your mind? They're from Lebanon!" Israel was in a state of war with Lebanon at the time. "Ankie," Andre said calmly, "that's exactly what the Olympics are all about. Here I can go to them, I can talk to them, I can ask them how they are. That's exactly what the Olympics are all about." So he went... towards this Lebanese team, and... he asked them "How were your results? I'm from Israel and how did it go?" And to my amazement, I saw that the (Lebanese) responded and they shook hands with him and they talked to him and they asked him about his results. I'll never forget, when he turned around and came back towards me with this huge smile on his face. "You see!" said Andre excitedly. "This is what I was dreaming about. I knew it was going to happen!" (Reeve 2001, pgs. 52-53)

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andre_Spitzer

Big Dutch collectors card.

 

American actress Shirley MacLaine (1934) is among Hollywood's most unique stars. With her auburn hair cut impishly short, she made her film debut in Hitchcock's black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955). She earned Oscar nominations for Some Came Running (1959), for Billy Wilder's The Apartment, and for Irma La Douce (1963). Later triumphs included Sweet Charity! (1969), The Turning Point (1977), Being There (1979) and Terms of Endearment (1983). And she's still going strong.

 

Shirley MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in 1934 in Richmond, USA. She was the daughter of drama coach and former actress Kathlyn MacLean Beaty and Ira O. Beaty, a professor of psychology and philosophy. Her younger brother, Warren Beatty, also grew up to be an important Hollywood figure as an actor/director/producer and screenwriter. MacLaine took dance lessons from age two, first performed publicly at age four, and at 16 went to New York, making her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in Me and Juliet (1953). When not scrambling for theatrical work, MacLaine worked as a model. Her big break came in 1954 when she was understudying Broadway actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game. Haney fractured her ankle, MacLaine replaced her and was spotted, and offered a movie contract by producer Hal Wallis. Her film debut was Alfred Hitchcock's black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955). Later that year, she co-starred opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the comedy Artists and Models (Frank Tashlin, 1955). In her next feature, Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson, 1956), she appeared as an Indian princess. The film was completed not too long before her daughter, Sachi Parker (born Stephanie), was born. Father was her husband Steve Parker, whom she had married in 1954 and would divorce in 1982.

 

Shirley MacLaine earned her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a pathetic tart who shocks a conservative town by showing up on the arm of young war hero Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (Vincente Minnelli, 1959). She then got the opportunity to show off her long legs and dancing talents in Can-Can (Walter Lang, 1960). Prior to that, she appeared in a bit part with Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and Peter Lawford in Oceans Eleven (Lewis Milestone, 1960). MacLaine, the only female member of the famed group, would later recount her experiences with them in her seventh book My Lucky Stars. In 1960, she won her second Oscar nomination for Billy Wilder's comedy/drama The Apartment, and the third nomination for Irma La Douce (Billy Wilder, 1963), both opposite Jack Lemmon. MacLaine's career was in high gear during the 1960s, with her appearing in everything from dramas to madcap comedies to musicals such as What a Way to Go! (J. Lee Thompson, 1964) and Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity! (1969). In addition to her screen work, she actively participated in Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and served as a Democratic Convention delegate. She was similarly involved in George McGovern's 1972 campaign.

 

Bored by sitting around on movie sets all day awaiting her scenes, Shirley MacLaine started writing down her thoughts and was thus inspired to add writing to her list of talents. She published her first book, Don't Fall Off the Mountain in 1970. She next tried her hand at series television in 1971, starring in the comedy Shirley's World (1971-72) as a globe-trotting photographer. The role reflected her real-life reputation as a world traveller, and these experiences resulted in her second book Don't Fall Off the Mountain and the documentary The Other Half of the Sky - A China Memoir (1975) which she scripted, produced, and co-directed with Claudia Weill. MacLaine returned to Broadway in 1976 with a spectacular one-woman show A Gypsy in My Soul, and the following year entered a new phase in her career playing a middle-aged former ballerina who regrets leaving dance to live a middle-class life in The Turning Point (Herbert Ross, 1977). It meant her fourth Best Actress Oscar nomination. MacLaine was also memorable starring as a lonely political wife opposite Peter Sellers' simple-minded gardener in Being There (Hal Asby, 1979), but did not again attract too much attention until she played the over-protective, eccentric widow Aurora Greenway in Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983). After 20 years in the film industry, she finally took home the Best Actress Oscar for this role. In 1983, she also published the candid Out on a Limb, bravely risking public ridicule by describing her experiences and theories concerning out-of-body travel and reincarnation.

 

Shirley MacLaine's film appearances were sporadic through the mid-'80s, although she did appear in a few television specials. In 1988, she came back strong with three great roles in Madame Sousatzka (John Schlesinger, 1988), Steel Magnolias (Herbert Ross, 1989), and particularly Postcards from the Edge (Mike Nichols, 1990), in which she played a fading star clinging to her own career while helping her daughter (Meryl Streep), a drug-addicted, self-destructive actress. Through the '90s, MacLaine specialized in playing rather crusty and strong-willed eccentrics, such as her title character in the comedy Guarding Tess (Hugh Wilson, 1994). In 1997, MacLaine stole scenes as a wise grande dame who helps pregnant, homeless Ricki Lake in Mrs. Winterbourne (Richard Benjamin, 1997), and the same year revived Aurora Greenway in The Evening Star (Robert Harling, 1997), the critically maligned sequel to Terms of Endearment. MacLaine's onscreen performances were few and far between in the first half of the next decade, but in 2005 she returned in relatively full force, appearing in three features. She took on a pair of grandmother roles in the comedy-dramas In Her Shoes (Curtis Hanson, 2005) and Rumor Has It... (Rob Reiner, 2005), and was a perfect fit for the part of Endora in the big-screen take on the classic sitcom Bewitched (Nora Ephron, 2005). In the coming years, McLaine would continue to give critically acclaimed performances in movies like Coco Chanel (Christian Duguay, 2008), Valentine's Day, (Garry Marshall, 2010), and Bernie (Richard Linklater, 2011). For a long time, MacLaine did seminars on her books, but in the mid-'90s stopped giving talks, claiming she did not want "to be anyone's guru." She does, however, continue writing and remains a popular writer. For 2015, four new films with her are announced or in pre-production.

 

Sources: AllMovie, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

I received five bound proof copies of Advice for Strays from my publisher yesterday. These are what will be sent to reviewers and other writers for them to read, so look a bit different to what the final book will look like. The central illustration is actually what the novel will look like.

 

I went a bit nuts when I saw these. OK, a lot nuts. Alright, the police may have been called, what with the ruckus I was causing in my lunatic excitement, but they were very understanding. Once I'd calmed down.

 

(OK, yes, I did link to Amazon there. Oops, I did it again. I'm hustling, what can I say? Girl's gotta make some sort of living.)

"Lester Aglar Walton, journalist, diplomat and civic leader, was born in St. Louis, Missouri, April 20, 1882 of working class parents and was a graduate of Sumner High School in St. Louis. …

 

Walton began his many faceted career as a golf writer on the St. Louis Star.From 1902 to 1906 he was general assignment and court reporter, and as such was the first African American to write for a daily paper in St. Louis. In 1906 he left St. Louis and moved to New York City, and by 1908 he was manager and theatrical editor for the New York Age(1908-1914 and again from 1917-1919). From 1922 to 1931 Walton was a special writer for the New York World. When the World folded he became feature writer for the New York Herald Tribune (1931), but resigned when the newspaper refused to give him a by-line. He returned to the New York Age in 1932 to serve as the newspaper's associate editor.

 

During his journalistic career Walton became interested in world affairs and several of his special writing assignments were abroad. The most noteworthy of these were as news correspondent at the Versailles Peace Conference in 1919 and at sessions of the International Liberian Committee in 1933….

 

During the late teens and early 1920's, Walton was active in the entertainment field. He worked as the manager of Harlem's Lafayette Theater from 1914 to 1916 and from 1919 to 1921, and was the dramatic lyricist for the theater. During World War I, as a member of the Military Entertainment Service, he supervised theatricals among African American soldiers. …

 

Walton's political career began in 1913 when he launched a movement, with the assistance of the Associated Press, for the spelling of the word Negro with a capital “N.” …

 

President Franklin Roosevelt appointed Walton as Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Liberia in 1933, a position he held until 1946. Among his accomplishments, he concluded significant treaties between the United States and Liberia, including the terms under which the American government established a United States Army base. Walton also negotiated with the Liberian government for the construction of a port in Monrovia and concluded commerce, navigation and aviation treaties."

 

Biographical material from New York Public Library Archives and Manuscripts, Lester A. Walton Papers.

 

An excellent article on the history of blacks on stage in the New York Times Magazine (subscription needed) talks extensively about Walton.

www.nytimes.com/2016/03/27/magazine/shuffle-along-and-the...

www.thebosl.com/en/latest-magazine-issue, Exclusive Interview with Duran Duran by Sonicity Fitzroy, senior writer for BOSL. Magazine in-world now. available online. Photo courtesy of BOSL.

Freshwater West (also known as Fresh West) is a beach near Castlemartin, Pembrokeshire in West Wales. It lies along the B4319 road and is part of the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Freshwater West, noted for its strong waves and currents, is one of Wales' top surfing locations. The Castlemartin MOD firing range is located nearby.

 

The rocky outcrop at the southern part of the bay near the car park is known as Little Furznip, which contains a seaweed-drying hut on the clifftop. Little Furznip divides Freshwater from Frainslake Bay to the south, and beyond that, Linney Head. During historical times the beach was used by smugglers. To the northwest along the coast is Gravel Bay, Black Cave, East Pickard Bay, West Pickard Bay, Guttle Hole, Parsonsquarry Bay and Sheep Island. The headland between Sheep Island in the northwest and Linney Head in the southeast consists primarily of red sandstones, which "form irregular, steep cliffs with fallen rocks at the back of beaches". Older Lower Palaeozoic mudstones and siltstones are situated towards the centre, and to both the north and the south are old red sandstones. Behind the bays are extensive dune fields such as Broomhill Burrows and Gupton Burrows and a river valley. The low cliffs on the south facing coast reach an elevation of 55 metres (180 ft), rising gently behind to 63 metres (207 ft).

 

The water at Freshwater West is part of the Pembrokeshire Marine SAC, and it also forms part of the Angle Peninsula Coast SSSI and is situated within Pembrokeshire Coast National Park. Strong currents come in from the northwest and southeast, and the beach has a tidal range of 6.5 metres (21 ft). At almost a mile long, Freshwater West flanked by extensive sand dunes and rock pools. The land in the area consists of dunes with fens, grassland, reedbeds, purple moor grass, rush pastures, and maritime cliffs, and is inhabited by wildlife such as waders, chough, overwintering northern lapwing, and grey seal. Despite its natural beauty, Freshwater West is unsuitable for bathing due to strong offshore swells and strong currents. There is an abundance of fossils in the area, and in 1921 some 50 were reported to have been discovered here.

 

The beach is popular with tourists and locals throughout the year, especially between March and October. Facilities at the beach include toilets, emergency telephone and car parking. From Easter onwards, an ice-cream or hot-dog van is usually in the main car park. There is the Castlemartin MOD firing range in the area which can be alarming and pose a hazard within a 12 miles (19 km) radius during peak firing. Freshwater has a thatched seaweed-drying hut, and there is an Iron Age burial chamber immediately to the north known as the "Devil's Quoit" which is situated in the field left of the main road out of Freshwater.

 

Freshwater West is one of the top surfing locations in Wales due to its consistent swell and strong waves. The beach regularly hosts surfing tournaments such as the Welsh National Surfing Championships with participants arriving from all over the world. Since 2010 it has had a lifeguard station which is active during the summer months.

 

As a filming location, Freshwater West featured extensively in the 2010 film Robin Hood starring Russell Crowe, which depicted the French invasion of southern England. Over 600 extras and 150 horses were used during the filming on the beach. It was also a filming location for the final two Harry Potter films; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 1 and Part 2. The beach scenes with Dobby the elf were filmed on the beach and "Shell Cottage" was constructed at the foot of the sand dunes. The cottage was removed after filming. Freshwater West was also used as a filming location in series four of BBC production, The Sarah Jane Adventures and the film The Thief of Bagdad.

 

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and is otherwise surrounded by the sea. Haverfordwest is the largest town and administrative headquarters of Pembrokeshire County Council.

 

The county is generally sparsely populated and rural, with an area of 200 square miles (520 km2) and a population of 123,400. After Haverfordwest, the largest settlements are Milford Haven (13,907), Pembroke Dock (9,753), and Pembroke (7,552). St Davids (1,841) is a city, the smallest by population in the UK. Welsh is spoken by 17.2 percent of the population, and for historic reasons is more widely spoken in the north of the county than in the south.

 

Pembrokeshire's coast is its most dramatic geographic feature, created by the complex geology of the area. It is a varied landscape which includes high sea cliffs, wide sandy beaches, the large natural harbour of Milford Haven, and several offshore islands which are home to seabird colonies. Most of it is protected by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, and can be hiked on the 190-mile (310 km) Pembrokeshire Coast Path. The interior of Pembrokeshire is relatively flat and gently undulating, with the exception of the Preseli Mountains in the north.

 

There are many prehistoric sites in Pembrokeshire, particularly in the Preseli Mountains. During the Middle Ages several castles were built by the Normans, such as Pembroke and Cilgerran, and St David's Cathedral became an important pilgrimage site. During the Industrial Revolution the county remained relatively rural, with the exception of Milford Haven, which was developed as a port and Royal Navy dockyard. It is now the UK's third-largest port, primarily because of its two liquefied natural gas terminals. The economy of the county is now focused on agriculture, oil and gas, and tourism.

 

Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years  and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave; in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales. There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.

 

There is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's Geography, written c. 150, mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".

 

Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey, and another near Wiston. Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.

 

Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.

 

Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae.  The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century.  In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943), daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.

 

Dyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111.  The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke":), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.  Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales.  In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240.  In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to introduce the English common law system to Wales, heralding 100 years of peace, but had little effect on those areas already established under the Marcher Lords, such as Cemais in the north of the county.

 

Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan.  Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.

 

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared. 

 

During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648.  On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.

 

In 1720, Emmanuel Bowen described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of 420,000 acres (1,700 km2). In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee.  People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies. After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke. From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle. In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be 345,600 acres (1,399 km2) with a population of 81,424.

 

It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.

 

Throughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole. There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Mountains and a number of military airfields. The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain. From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day. Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600. The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.

 

In 1972, a second reservoir for south Pembrokeshire, at Llys y Fran, was completed.

 

Pembrokeshire's tourism portal is Visit Pembrokeshire, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. In 2015 4.3 million tourists visited the county, staying for an average of 5.24 days, spending £585 million; the tourism industry supported 11,834 jobs. Many of Pembrokeshire's beaches have won awards, including Poppit Sands and Newport Sands. In 2018, Pembrokeshire received the most coast awards in Wales, with 56 Blue Flag, Green Coast or Seaside Awards. In the 2019 Wales Coast Awards, 39 Pembrokeshire beaches were recognised, including 11 awarded Blue Flag status.

 

The Pembrokeshire coastline is a major draw to tourists; in 2011 National Geographic Traveller magazine voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the second best in the world and in 2015 the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was listed among the top five parks in the world by a travel writer for the Huffington Post. Countryfile Magazine readers voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the top UK holiday destination in 2018, and in 2019 Consumers' Association members placed Tenby and St Davids in the top three best value beach destinations in Britain. With few large urban areas, Pembrokeshire is a "dark sky" destination. The many wrecks off the Pembrokeshire coast attract divers. The decade from 2012 saw significant, increasing numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, not seen since the 1960s, and now seen by some as an opportunity to encourage tourist sport fishing.

 

The county has a number of theme and animal parks (examples are Folly Farm Adventure Park and Zoo, Manor House Wildlife Park, Blue Lagoon Water Park and Oakwood Theme Park), museums and other visitor attractions including Castell Henllys reconstructed Iron Age fort, Tenby Lifeboat Station and Milford Haven's Torch Theatre. There are 21 marked cycle trails around the county.

 

Pembrokeshire Destination Management Plan for 2020 to 2025 sets out the scope and priorities to grow tourism in Pembrokeshire by increasing its value by 10 per cent in the five years, and to make Pembrokeshire a top five UK destination.

 

As the national sport of Wales, rugby union is widely played throughout the county at both town and village level. Haverfordwest RFC, founded in 1875, is a feeder club for Llanelli Scarlets. Village team Crymych RFC in 2014 plays in WRU Division One West. There are numerous football clubs in the county, playing in five leagues with Haverfordwest County A.F.C. competing in the Cymru Premier.

 

Triathlon event Ironman Wales has been held in Pembrokeshire since 2011, contributing £3.7 million to the local economy, and the county committed in 2017 to host the event for a further five years. Ras Beca, a mixed road, fell and cross country race attracting UK-wide competitors, has been held in the Preselis annually since 1977. The record of 32 minutes 5 seconds has stood since 1995. Pembrokeshire Harriers athletics club was formed in 2001 by the amalgamation of Cleddau Athletic Club (established 1970) and Preseli Harriers (1989) and is based in Haverfordwest.

 

The annual Tour of Pembrokeshire road-cycling event takes place over routes of optional length. The 4th Tour, in April 2015, attracted 1,600 riders including Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman and there were 1,500 entrants to the 2016 event. Part of Route 47 of the Celtic Trail cycle route is in Pembrokeshire. The Llys y Fran Hillclimb is an annual event run by Swansea Motor Club, and there are several other county motoring events held each year.

 

Abereiddy's Blue Lagoon was the venue for a round of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in 2012, 2013, and 2016; the Welsh Surfing Federation has held the Welsh National Surfing Championships at Freshwater West for several years, and Llys y Fran Country Park hosted the Welsh Dragonboat Championships from 2014 to 2017.

 

While not at major league level, cricket is played throughout the county and many villages such as Lamphey, Creselly, Llangwm, Llechryd and Crymych field teams in minor leagues under the umbrella of the Cricket Board of Wales.

 

Notable people

From mediaeval times, Rhys ap Gruffydd (c. 1132-1197), ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth, was buried in St Davids Cathedral. and Gerald of Wales was born c. 1146 at Manorbier Castle. Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) was born in 1457 at Pembroke Castle.

 

The pirate Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) (Welsh: Barti Ddu) was born in Casnewydd Bach, between Fishguard and Haverfordwest in 1682.

 

In later military history, Jemima Nicholas, heroine of the so-called "last invasion of Britain" in 1797, was from Fishguard, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton GCB, born in Haverfordwest, was killed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and Private Thomas Collins is believed to be the only Pembrokeshire man that fought in the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

 

In the arts, siblings Gwen and Augustus John were both born in Pembrokeshire, as was the novelist Sarah Waters; singer Connie Fisher grew up in Pembrokeshire. The actor Christian Bale was born in Haverfordwest.

 

Stephen Crabb, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales, was brought up in Pembrokeshire and is one of the county's two Members of Parliament, the other being Simon Hart,[90] who served as Secretary of State for Wales from 2019 to 2022.

My travels around the UK by car for three weeks with my son. June/July 2019 Wales.

 

Day Nine .. A Stop at Caernarfon making our way to Hirael where we are staying the night.

 

Caernarfon is a royal town, community, and port in Gwynedd, Wales.

 

Gwynedd’s county town, home to Wales’s most famous castle, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Mighty Caernarfon Castle commands the lion’s share of attention, but the town’s narrow streets and stylishly redeveloped waterfront also merit a visit. The castle, built in the 13th century by Edward I as a royal palace and military fortress, was at the core of a medieval walled town. The Romans left their mark too – 1000 years earlier they constructed their fort of Segontium on the hill above (its foundations still exist). Other attractions include Welsh Highland Railway (which runs for 25 miles to Porthmadog), Hwylfan Fun Centre, Redline Indoor Karting and the scenic Lôn Eifion recreational cycle route. Waterside Doc Fictoria is home to Galeri (contemporary arts complex with theatre and cinema). The Caernarfon Record Office has archives of Gwynedd (documents, images, maps and newspapers) stretching back 400 years. Cae’r Gors at nearby Rhosgadfan was home of Kate Roberts, one of Wales’s most celebrated writers.

For More Info: www.visitsnowdonia.info/caernarfon

St Govan's Chapel is a chapel located at St Govan's Head, Pembrokeshire in south west Wales.

 

Built into the side of a limestone cliff, the building measures 20 by 12 feet (6.1 m × 3.7 m) with walls constructed from limestone, and consists of two chambers, one in the front and one in the back. The majority of the chapel was built in the thirteenth century, although parts of it may date back further to the sixth century when Saint Govan, a monk moved into a cave located on the site of the chapel. One legend suggests that Saint Govan is buried underneath the chapel's altar, located at the east end of the building. The entrance to the building is via a doorway on the north side, low stone benches run along the north and south walls and an empty bell-cote is located at the west end. The slate roof is suspected to be a modern addition compared to the rest of the building.

 

The building is accessible from the clifftop by climbing down a set of 52 steps, although tourist organisations propagate the legend that when counted, the number of steps differs between going down and going back up.

 

The building was listed with Grade I status on 8 February 1996. The chapel is within the Castlemartin Military Training Area and is sometimes inaccessible because of military activity.

 

The chapel was used as a location in episode 1 of the third series of the BBC drama His Dark Materials.

 

Under the chapel is a huge cave system, Ogof Gofan, containing a "cathedral-like structure", accessible only by abseiling down the cliff. The cave was re-discovered in 1966, but it had been used by people for thousands of years, from when the sea was miles from the cave mouth.

 

Saint Govan (Welsh: Gofan; died 586) was a hermit who lived in a fissure on the side of coastal cliff near Bosherston, in the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, Wales. St. Govan's Chapel was built in the fissure in the 13th century on what is now known as St. Govan's Head.

 

One story says Govan was an Irish monk who travelled to Wales late in life to seek the friends and family of the abbot who had trained him, variously identified as Saint David or Saint Ailbe of Emly. Another story identifies Govan with Gawain, one of King Arthur's Knights of the Round Table;. In traditional Welsh, the name "Govan" means "Legendary Son of Caw". Caw- or Hueil mab Caw- was a Pictish rival of King Arthur. In other legends he is a thief.

 

Govan was set upon by pirates, from Ireland or the nearby Lundy Island. The cliff opened up and left a fissure just big enough for him to hide in until the pirates left. In gratitude, he decided to stay on along the cliff, probably to help warn the locals of the impending pirate attack if they were to return.

 

Govan lived within a small cave in the fissure of the cliff. This is now reached by a long flight of stone steps, the number of which is said to vary depending on whether one is ascending or descending.

 

The present small vaulted chapel of local limestone was built over the cave and dates from the 13th century although the site may have been of monastic importance since the 5th century. St Govan may be identified with Sir Gawain, one of King Arthur's knights, who entered into a state of retreat in his later years.

 

Originally, Govan caught fish and took water from two nearby springs. Both are now dry; one was where the medieval chapel now stands, the other, which was lower down the cliff, later became a holy well. A legend says St Govan's hand prints are imprinted on the floor of his cave and his body is buried under the chapel's altar. The cave was once a popular place for making wishes.

 

Another legend regarding St Govan concerns his silver bell. He is supposed to have kept the bell in the tower of the chapel. When the bell pealed, its sound was of perfect tone and clarity. But pirates who heard the sound left St Govan desolate when they stole the bell. Angels flew in and took it from the pirates and returned it to the hermit. To stop the pirates returning and taking it again, the angels encased the bell in a huge stone, that is, the Bell Rock which is found at the water's edge. The legend said that when St Govan "rang" the stone, its vigour had become a thousand times stronger.

 

Pembrokeshire is a county in the south-west of Wales. It is bordered by Carmarthenshire to the east, Ceredigion to the northeast, and is otherwise surrounded by the sea. Haverfordwest is the largest town and administrative headquarters of Pembrokeshire County Council.

 

The county is generally sparsely populated and rural, with an area of 200 square miles (520 km2) and a population of 123,400. After Haverfordwest, the largest settlements are Milford Haven (13,907), Pembroke Dock (9,753), and Pembroke (7,552). St Davids (1,841) is a city, the smallest by population in the UK. Welsh is spoken by 17.2 percent of the population, and for historic reasons is more widely spoken in the north of the county than in the south.

 

Pembrokeshire's coast is its most dramatic geographic feature, created by the complex geology of the area. It is a varied landscape which includes high sea cliffs, wide sandy beaches, the large natural harbour of Milford Haven, and several offshore islands which are home to seabird colonies. Most of it is protected by Pembrokeshire Coast National Park, and can be hiked on the 190-mile (310 km) Pembrokeshire Coast Path. The interior of Pembrokeshire is relatively flat and gently undulating, with the exception of the Preseli Mountains in the north.

 

There are many prehistoric sites in Pembrokeshire, particularly in the Preseli Mountains. During the Middle Ages several castles were built by the Normans, such as Pembroke and Cilgerran, and St David's Cathedral became an important pilgrimage site. During the Industrial Revolution the county remained relatively rural, with the exception of Milford Haven, which was developed as a port and Royal Navy dockyard. It is now the UK's third-largest port, primarily because of its two liquefied natural gas terminals. The economy of the county is now focused on agriculture, oil and gas, and tourism.

 

Human habitation of the region that is now Pembrokeshire extends back to between 125,000 and 70,000 years  and there are numerous prehistoric sites such as Pentre Ifan, and neolithic remains (12,000 to 6,500 years ago), more of which were revealed in an aerial survey during the 2018 heatwave; in the same year, a 1st-century Celtic chariot burial was discovered, the first such find in Wales. There may have been dairy farming in Neolithic times.

 

There is little evidence of Roman occupation in what is now Pembrokeshire. Ptolemy's Geography, written c. 150, mentioned some coastal places, two of which have been identified as the River Teifi and what is now St Davids Head, but most Roman writers did not mention the area; there may have been a Roman settlement near St Davids and a road from Bath, but this comes from a 14th-century writer. Any evidence for villas or Roman building materials reported by mediaeval or later writers has not been verified, though some remains near Dale were tentatively identified as Roman in character by topographer Richard Fenton in his Historical Tour of 1810. Fenton stated that he had "...reason to be of opinion that they had not colonized Pembrokeshire till near the decline of their empire in Britain".

 

Part of a possible Roman road is noted by CADW near Llanddewi Velfrey, and another near Wiston. Wiston is also the location of the first Roman fort discovered in Pembrokeshire, investigated in 2013.

 

Some artefacts, including coins and weapons, have been found, but it is not clear whether these belonged to Romans or to a Romanised population. Welsh tradition has it that Magnus Maximus founded Haverfordwest, and took a large force of local men on campaign in Gaul in 383 which, together with the reduction of Roman forces in south Wales, left a defensive vacuum which was filled by incomers from Ireland.

 

Between 350 and 400, an Irish tribe known as the Déisi settled in the region known to the Romans as Demetae.  The Déisi merged with the local Welsh, with the regional name underlying Demetae evolving into Dyfed, which existed as an independent petty kingdom from the 5th century.  In 904, Hywel Dda married Elen (died 943), daughter of the king of Dyfed Llywarch ap Hyfaidd, and merged Dyfed with his own maternal inheritance of Seisyllwg, forming the new realm of Deheubarth ("southern district"). Between the Roman and Norman periods, the region was subjected to raids from Vikings, who established settlements and trading posts at Haverfordwest, Fishguard, Caldey Island and elsewhere.

 

Dyfed remained an integral province of Deheubarth, but this was contested by invading Normans and Flemings who arrived between 1067 and 1111.  The region became known as Pembroke (sometimes archaic "Penbroke":), after the Norman castle built in the cantref of Penfro. In 1136, Prince Owain Gwynedd at Crug Mawr near Cardigan met and destroyed a 3,000-strong Norman/Flemish army and incorporated Deheubarth into Gwynedd.  Norman/Flemish influence never fully recovered in West Wales.  In 1138, the county of Pembrokeshire was named as a county palatine. Rhys ap Gruffydd, the son of Owain Gwynedd's daughter Gwenllian, re-established Welsh control over much of the region and threatened to retake all of Pembrokeshire, but died in 1197. After Deheubarth was split by a dynastic feud, Llywelyn the Great almost succeeded in retaking the region of Pembroke between 1216 and his death in 1240.  In 1284 the Statute of Rhuddlan was enacted to introduce the English common law system to Wales, heralding 100 years of peace, but had little effect on those areas already established under the Marcher Lords, such as Cemais in the north of the county.

 

Henry Tudor, born at Pembroke Castle in 1457, landed an army in Pembrokeshire in 1485 and marched to Cardigan.  Rallying support, he continued to Leicestershire and defeated the larger army of Richard III at the Battle of Bosworth Field. As Henry VII, he became the first monarch of the House of Tudor, which ruled England until 1603.

 

The Laws in Wales Act 1535 effectively abolished the powers of the Marcher Lords and divided the county into seven hundreds, roughly corresponding to the seven pre-Norman cantrefi of Dyfed. The hundreds were (clockwise from the northeast): Cilgerran, Cemais, Dewisland, Roose, Castlemartin, Narberth and Dungleddy and each was divided into civil parishes; a 1578 map in the British Library is the earliest known to show parishes and chapelries in Pembrokeshire. The Elizabethan era brought renewed prosperity to the county through an opening up of rural industries, including agriculture, mining and fishing, with exports to England and Ireland, though the formerly staple woollen industry had all but disappeared. 

 

During the First English Civil War (1642–1646) the county gave strong support to the Roundheads (Parliamentarians), in contrast to the rest of Wales, which was staunchly Royalist. In spite of this, an incident in Pembrokeshire triggered the opening shots of the Second English Civil War when local units of the New Model Army mutinied. Oliver Cromwell defeated the uprising at the Siege of Pembroke in July 1648.  On 13 August 1649, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland began when New Model Army forces sailed from Milford Haven.

 

In 1720, Emmanuel Bowen described Pembrokeshire as having five market towns, 45 parishes and about 4,329 houses, with an area of 420,000 acres (1,700 km2). In 1791 a petition was presented to the House of Commons concerning the poor state of many of the county's roads, pointing out that repairs could not be made compulsory by the law as it stood. The petition was referred to committee.  People applying for poor relief were often put to work mending roads. Workhouses were poorly documented. Under the Poor Laws, costs and provisions were kept to a minimum, but the emphasis was often on helping people to be self-employed. While the Poor Laws provided a significant means of support, there were many charitable and benefit societies. After the Battle of Fishguard, the failed French invasion of 1797, 500 French prisoners were held at Golden Hill Farm, Pembroke. From 1820 to 1878 one of the county's prisons, with a capacity of 86, was in the grounds of Haverfordwest Castle. In 1831, the area of the county was calculated to be 345,600 acres (1,399 km2) with a population of 81,424.

 

It was not until nearly the end of the 19th century that mains water was provided to rural south Pembrokeshire by means of a reservoir at Rosebush and cast iron water pipes throughout the district.

 

Throughout much of the 20th century (1911 to 1961) the population density in the county remained stable while it rose in England and Wales as a whole. There was considerable military activity in Pembrokeshire and offshore in the 20th century: a naval base at Milford Haven because German U-boats were active off the coast in World War I and, in World War II, military exercises in the Preseli Mountains and a number of military airfields. The wartime increase in air activity saw a number of aircraft accidents and fatalities, often due to unfamiliarity with the terrain. From 1943 to 1944, 5,000 soldiers from the United States Army's 110th Infantry Regiment were based in the county, preparing for D-Day. Military and industrial targets in the county were subjected to bombing during World War II. After the end of the war, German prisoners of war were accommodated in Pembrokeshire, the largest prison being at Haverfordwest, housing 600. The County of Pembroke War Memorial in Haverfordwest carries the names of 1,200 of those that perished in World War I.

 

In 1972, a second reservoir for south Pembrokeshire, at Llys y Fran, was completed.

 

Pembrokeshire's tourism portal is Visit Pembrokeshire, run by Pembrokeshire County Council. In 2015 4.3 million tourists visited the county, staying for an average of 5.24 days, spending £585 million; the tourism industry supported 11,834 jobs. Many of Pembrokeshire's beaches have won awards, including Poppit Sands and Newport Sands. In 2018, Pembrokeshire received the most coast awards in Wales, with 56 Blue Flag, Green Coast or Seaside Awards. In the 2019 Wales Coast Awards, 39 Pembrokeshire beaches were recognised, including 11 awarded Blue Flag status.

 

The Pembrokeshire coastline is a major draw to tourists; in 2011 National Geographic Traveller magazine voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the second best in the world and in 2015 the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park was listed among the top five parks in the world by a travel writer for the Huffington Post. Countryfile Magazine readers voted the Pembrokeshire Coast the top UK holiday destination in 2018, and in 2019 Consumers' Association members placed Tenby and St Davids in the top three best value beach destinations in Britain. With few large urban areas, Pembrokeshire is a "dark sky" destination. The many wrecks off the Pembrokeshire coast attract divers. The decade from 2012 saw significant, increasing numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna, not seen since the 1960s, and now seen by some as an opportunity to encourage tourist sport fishing.

 

The county has a number of theme and animal parks (examples are Folly Farm Adventure Park and Zoo, Manor House Wildlife Park, Blue Lagoon Water Park and Oakwood Theme Park), museums and other visitor attractions including Castell Henllys reconstructed Iron Age fort, Tenby Lifeboat Station and Milford Haven's Torch Theatre. There are 21 marked cycle trails around the county.

 

Pembrokeshire Destination Management Plan for 2020 to 2025 sets out the scope and priorities to grow tourism in Pembrokeshire by increasing its value by 10 per cent in the five years, and to make Pembrokeshire a top five UK destination.

 

As the national sport of Wales, rugby union is widely played throughout the county at both town and village level. Haverfordwest RFC, founded in 1875, is a feeder club for Llanelli Scarlets. Village team Crymych RFC in 2014 plays in WRU Division One West. There are numerous football clubs in the county, playing in five leagues with Haverfordwest County A.F.C. competing in the Cymru Premier.

 

Triathlon event Ironman Wales has been held in Pembrokeshire since 2011, contributing £3.7 million to the local economy, and the county committed in 2017 to host the event for a further five years. Ras Beca, a mixed road, fell and cross country race attracting UK-wide competitors, has been held in the Preselis annually since 1977. The record of 32 minutes 5 seconds has stood since 1995. Pembrokeshire Harriers athletics club was formed in 2001 by the amalgamation of Cleddau Athletic Club (established 1970) and Preseli Harriers (1989) and is based in Haverfordwest.

 

The annual Tour of Pembrokeshire road-cycling event takes place over routes of optional length. The 4th Tour, in April 2015, attracted 1,600 riders including Olympic gold medallist Chris Boardman and there were 1,500 entrants to the 2016 event. Part of Route 47 of the Celtic Trail cycle route is in Pembrokeshire. The Llys y Fran Hillclimb is an annual event run by Swansea Motor Club, and there are several other county motoring events held each year.

 

Abereiddy's Blue Lagoon was the venue for a round of the Red Bull Cliff Diving World Series in 2012, 2013, and 2016; the Welsh Surfing Federation has held the Welsh National Surfing Championships at Freshwater West for several years, and Llys y Fran Country Park hosted the Welsh Dragonboat Championships from 2014 to 2017.

 

While not at major league level, cricket is played throughout the county and many villages such as Lamphey, Creselly, Llangwm, Llechryd and Crymych field teams in minor leagues under the umbrella of the Cricket Board of Wales.

 

Notable people

From mediaeval times, Rhys ap Gruffydd (c. 1132-1197), ruler of the kingdom of Deheubarth, was buried in St Davids Cathedral. and Gerald of Wales was born c. 1146 at Manorbier Castle. Henry Tudor (later Henry VII) was born in 1457 at Pembroke Castle.

 

The pirate Bartholomew Roberts (Black Bart) (Welsh: Barti Ddu) was born in Casnewydd Bach, between Fishguard and Haverfordwest in 1682.

 

In later military history, Jemima Nicholas, heroine of the so-called "last invasion of Britain" in 1797, was from Fishguard, Lieutenant General Sir Thomas Picton GCB, born in Haverfordwest, was killed at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815 and Private Thomas Collins is believed to be the only Pembrokeshire man that fought in the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879.

 

In the arts, siblings Gwen and Augustus John were both born in Pembrokeshire, as was the novelist Sarah Waters; singer Connie Fisher grew up in Pembrokeshire. The actor Christian Bale was born in Haverfordwest.

 

Stephen Crabb, a former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions and Secretary of State for Wales, was brought up in Pembrokeshire and is one of the county's two Members of Parliament, the other being Simon Hart,[90] who served as Secretary of State for Wales from 2019 to 2022.

Author: Ellis, Edward Sylvester, 1840-1916

Title: Seth Jones; or, The Captives of the Frontier

Publisher: George Routledge and Sons

Publication Date: 1861

URL: archive.org/details/04282590.1601.emory.edu

 

Description and Synopsis:

The cover scene depicts a man taking a pail from a young woman. In the novel, this scene occurs when Seth Jones offers to help a pretty young woman named Ina with her chores (Ellis 13).

 

Further Notes:

American author, Edward Sylvester Ellis, had a prolific career. He wrote under many pseudonyms, making attribution of all of his works tricky. He wrote books for children and adults and became one of the best known American novelists of his time. Ellis mainly wrote about the American frontier, but he also dabbled in the genres of detective fiction and science fiction (Camp).

 

Works Cited:

Camp, Paul Eugen. "Edward S(ylvester) Ellis." American Writers for Children Before 1900. Ed. Glenn E. Estes. Detroit: Gale Research, 1985. Dictionary of Literary Biography. Vol. 42. Literature Resource Center. Web. 29 Jan. 2015. go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CH1200001115&v=2.1&...

 

- 1909 T212-1 Obak backs have a stylized Obak logo and may come with or without a frame. This card has the frame...

 

The Sacramento Solons were a minor league baseball team based in Sacramento, California. They played in the Pacific Coast League during several periods (1903, 1905, 1909–1914, 1918–1960, 1974–1976).

 

The team derived its name from Sacramento's status as capital of California. Solon was an early Greek lawmaker and the term "solons" was often used by journalists as a synonym for "senators." The team was also known at times as the Sacramento Sacts, an abbreviation of the name of the city, and the Sacramento Senators.

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Pat Flanagan

Dr. Sylvester S. Flanagan

Born: 3 July 1887 • Union / Symco, Wisconsin, USA

Died: 11 October 1970 at age 83 • Nelo, Wisconsin, USA

Height - Tall

Weight - Unknown

Position: Outfielder

Bats: Unknown • Throws: Right

- Full Name: Sylvester Simon Flanagan (he signed his name - S.S. Flanagan)

- Nicknames - Sib / Pat / Silent Pat / Steamer / Steamboat

- Employment: In 1918 he worked as a Dentist in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada

- His mother and father were both born in Ireland

- After his release from the US Army in 1918 he spent most of his life living in the Winnipeg / Charleswood, Manitoba area

 

Link to his Memorial - www.findagrave.com/memorial/55174452

 

Link to his minor league stats - www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=flanag...

 

Posted by Bob Lemke at 1:41 PM - Wednesday, October 14, 2009 - Tales of T212 #13 : S.S. Flannagan - "Flannagan," The Mystery Beaver - This player who appeared only in the 1910 Obak set, with his name misspelled as "Flannagan" is one of the few whom I never definitively identified in my years of Obak research. It was only years later, as I began actually writing this series, that I found out who he was from the SABR Minor Leagues database. My early notecard on Flannagan offered as possibilities James F. or Edward J., who had played the outfield and pitched, respectively, for the 1909 Vancouver Beavers of the Northwestern League. Neither played there in 1910. Since it is my impression that Obak made few, if any, errors such as producing a card for a player who wasn't on a particular team in the year the card was issued, I wasn't comfortable designating the card-guy Flanagan as either James or Edward. S.S. Flanagan (his full name is not recorded by SABR, nor any biographical details), played for Vancouver in both 1908 and 1910. He is not shown as playing anywhere in organized baseball in 1909. He had batted .351 for the Beavers in 1908, but his a career low of .209 in 1910 and was demoted to the Class D Union Assn. at Boise for 1911. He rebounded at Boise and hit .342. That earned him a call back to Class B play with Decatur of the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League for the remainder of his known pro career (1912-1915). END of Bob Lemke Blog...

 

I finally solved the mystery of who Pat Flanagan really was - on 26 March 2018...

 

(Emmons County Record, May 30, 1907) - The unwelcome news spread rapidly among baseball fans the early part of this week that Sylvester Flanagan ("Sib") who has been holding down the job on the third rubber for the local team this season, had accepted an offer to pitch the season for the Linton, (North Dakota,) club, of which Auber Wheatherby, formerly of this city, is manager. "Sib" received a check in advance payment of expenses Saturday and will leave the 26th to reach Linton in time to pitch the Decoration Day game.—New London, (Wis..) Press.

 

(Emmons County Record), August 29, 1907) - Sylvester Flanagan, the young man who has pitched for the Linton ball club this summer, left Monday morning from Bismarck by the N. P., enroute to his home at New London, Wis. "Sib" has made friends of everyone out here who became acquainted with him. Quiet and unassuming at all times and with the best of personal habits, he is a young man who secures the respect of everyone. And that has made good as a pitcher is shown by the fact that the Linton club won about three times as many games as it lost. The Record hopes that conditions will be such that the young man will be a resident of Linton and a member of the club next season.

 

(The Winnipeg Tribune August 21, 1908) - Sylvester Flanagan, better known as Silent Pat Flanagan Vancouver's sensational centre fielder, and the foremost slugger of the Northwestern league will accompany Ham Hyatt to the big leagues next year. Flanagan was sold to the Chicago White Sox of the American league, and will go up next spring. Several big league teams were after Flanagan, but he liked Chicago best and when Comiskey came through with the offer Manager Dickson accepted. Flanagan Is only twenty-one years old and he is only in his first season In organized baseball. He was formerly a pitcher and infielder, and played third base In the Michigan State League last fall.

 

(Sporting Life - 5 September 1908) - Players Purchased by the Major Clubs - Official List of American League Purchases of Young Players Given Out by the National Commission - By Chicago - From San Francisco, . R. H. Zeider, Harry Sutor; Des Moines, Arthur Bader, William Dyer; Vancouver, Flannagan; Wichita, James Scott; Pueblo, Walter Matticks.

 

(The Seattle star., January 18, 1909) - Dickson of Vancouver was bound in get Ed Flanagan. Early last season he signed a Symco, Wisconsin, player, supposedly Ed Flanagan. The player reported and it was not until after some weeks that It was found that he was Pat Flanagan Instead of Ed. Pat was told to stick around awhile. He stuck—and *sticked."

 

(The Washington herald., February 09, 1909,) The Chicago White Sox club will have three Pacific Coast players to try out this spring and they all look good in minor league company "Silent Paul" (Pat?) Flanagan the champion batter of the Northwestern League, Harry Sutor and Rollie Zeider.

 

(The Spokane press., March 08, 1909) - THEY NOTICE PAT. Special writers for the Chicago papers who are following the work of the White Sox have cast their eyes on Pat Flannagan, the champion batter of the Northwestern league and the pride of the Vancouver team. Flannagan is now with the White Sox and his work with the stick is making an early impression. If he can hold down his end as fielder he looks good for a permanent position on the team for this season.

 

(The Spokane press., March 24, 1909) - SAY PAT CAN'T STAY -

Reports from California indicate that Pat Flannagan will not be

fast enough for the company of the White Sox and will be returned to Vancouver. Flannagan lead the Northwestern league in hitting last season by a comfortable margin, but this season has not shown up as strong with the big stick. While he is playing fairly good ball it is claimed that he is not strong enough to displace others with the Sox this season. This means that Vancouver will again be a dangerous competitor for the pennant for with Flannagan in the game there is an ever present danger of some heart-breaking hits at the wrong

moment.

 

(The Evening statesman., April 10, 1909) - VANCOUVER, B. C., April 10 - Captain Lou Nordyke of the Vancouver baseball team, has practically decided on the lineup of the team that will again try to win the pennant in the Northwestern league this year Nordyke will play first base; Quigley will cover the second bag; Schornweber, shortstop; Smith or Brookins, third base: Gene Mahon, left field; Ed Flanagan, center fielder, and Ben Davis, right field. Vancouver has a good line of backstops from which to select a catcher. Donoban, an outfielder, is covering the ground like a mortgage in the outfield and he is causing no little amount of worry to the other players who are trying for outfield positions. Ed Flanagan, brother of "Silent Pat" Flanagan, the premier batsman of the Northwestern league last year, who was drafted by the Chicago White Sox gives promise of being a duplicate of his brother.

 

Edward (Ed) Joseph Flanagan / Flannagan

Birth: 06 June 1882 • Wisconsin

Death: 10 July 1957 • Washington, USA

Link to - Ed Flanagan's Minor League Stats - www.baseball-reference.com/register/player.fcgi?id=flanag...

 

(Sacramento Union, Number 65, 27 April 1909) - Flannagan Joins Team - Outfielder Flannagan, who was with the White Sox early this season when they visited California, and who originally came from the Vancouver club in the Northwestern league, will this week join Sacramento and play in the series against San Francisco. Flannagan is a young man and a comer—the kind Sacramento fans like to see on the team. It was his batting ability last year that gained him recognition from the White Sox management. In 130 games he went to bat 484 times and secured 170 hits, which makes him an average of .352, or a little better than anything the Coast league has seen this season. Flannagan will play Doyle’s place until the “Demon” gets through subbing at first, and will then probably succeed Adams.

 

(Sacramento Union, Number 94, 26 May 1909) - With Shinn on second and Flannagan at bat, it was mentioned that “Steamboat” sometimes hit when most needed. That was one of the “times.” It was a fly, but well placed, and Jimmie Shinn had no difficulty in reaching the rubber and .scoring the tying run.

 

(Sacramento Union, Number 128, 29 June 1909) - “Steamer” Flannagan is making about ten knots at present. Wait till the propeller gets a churning at that “up-north” gait.

 

(Sacramento Union, Number 133, 4 July 1909) - SEALS GRAB BATTLE OF TWIRLERS Melchoir’s Three-Bagger in Fifth Responsible for Winning Run. BAUM OPPOSES HENLEY Flannagan Finds Slivers Easy Picking, Gathering Three Singles. - One run beat Sacramento yesterday, when Henley was pitted against Baum in the best game of baseball the fans have seen since the series opened. Melchoir’s three-base hit to left field, which won the game, was entirely a lucky drive, however, and had almost as much chance to drop outside the line as inside. "Steamer’’ Flannagan had evidently formed a previous acquaintance with Henley, or else he had met pitchers made in the same mold. After fasting on nothing but four times at bat in the day previous, Sacramento’s right fielder gathered three clean ones off the Seal marvel, but failed to connect the fourth time when a drive would have given Doyle a fair opportunity of getting across the plate.

 

(Sacramento Union, Number 136, 7 July 1909) - Flanagan then popped one up in the infield, and while Hosp, Ross and Smith held a “get-together’’ meeting as to who should catch the ball, the “Steamer’’ steamed to first and the Demon ambled along to third. Gandil picked one on the gaziz and shot it at Howard, who juggled, Doyle scoring and Flannagan going to second. A minute later Flannagan was caught in an attempt to steal third base.

 

(Los Angeles Herald, Volume 37, Number 90, 30 December 1909) - It was announced four members of the Chicago Americans were sold to the San Francisco Pacific Coast league team. The men sold were Catcher Warring, formerly of the Guthrie, Okla.. team; Pitcher Harry Stewart of the Houston, Texas, team; Pitcher Frank Miller of Des Moines, and Outfielder Flannagan, a Pacific Coast product.

 

(Sacramento Union, Number 185, 25 August 1909) - “Steamboat” Flannagan stole two bases in one day. His trip to the swimming baths evidently did him good. He also hit often and hard.

 

(The Spokane press., February 21, 1910) - BEAVER SQUAD

Bob Brown announced the following training season squad for his 1910 Beavers: Catchers - Joe Sugden, Jim (James) Flanagan, Dick Boettiger, Fred Burridge, Howard Ladd, Doran and Pierce. Pitchers - Dode Brinker, Edward Erickson, Herve Jensen, Harry Gardner, Edward (Ed) Flanagan, Pat Jach, J. Clark, William Thlele, Fred Oass, Williamson, Skillman, Standridge, Haggin, Harry Bath and Morell. Infielders - James, Breen, Harry Scharnweber, Walter Sampson, Wally Smith and Broadbent. Outfielders - Cannon, Jack Clynes, Charles Swain, E.P. Tallant, Hassey, Pat Flanagan, Jimmie Adams and Crocker.

 

(The Sunday Oregonian., March 20, 1910) - BROWN GETS 'SILENT PAT' - Sylvester S. Flanagan; Champion Slugger, Goes to Vancouver. VANCOUVER. B. C. March 16. (Special.) Sylvester S. Flanagan, better known as "Silent Pat," the champion hitter of the Northwest League, two seasons ago, has been bought by Manager Brown, of the Beavers, from the San Francisco club, of the Coast League. "Pat" slugged the ball for a .354 average when with the Vancouver champions in 1908 and his coming back has caused wild rejoicing among the local fans. Flanagan will play center field for the Beavers, who report for Spring practice one week from Saturday.

 

(The Tacoma Times., June 27, 1910) - Pretty Game Goes To Vancouver in the 11th. - Pat Flanagan should be jailed for grand larceny for his work in center field.

 

(The Seattle star., July 28, 1910) - Painless Surgical Stuff Gives Beavers Game, 4 to 0— Then Silent Pat Flanagan tore off a dandy single. Brinker and James scoring on the blow, Streib sent a flyout to Adams, and as that guardian of the middle marshes booted it, Flanagan scored.

 

(Rock Island Argus., April 16, 1912) - Decatur, Ill., April 16. Manager Chic Fraser of the Decatur Three-Eye league club has announced the purchase of Outfielder Pat Flannagan from Indianapolis.

 

(The Daily Missoulian., October 17, 1912) - Pat Flanagan, last year with Boise, played sensationally for Decatur, Ill., in the Three-I( eye) league this season. He finished with'a batting average of .300.

 

(Evening Star, / Washington, D.C. November 17, 1913) - Flanagan Sold to Atlanta. DECATUR, Ill.. November 17.. Outfielder Sylvester Flanagan of the Decatur base ball club has been sold to the Atlanta club <of the Southern League for $500. Flanagan led the Three I League in hitting during the last season with a mark of .344.

 

(Rock Island Argus., November 18, 1913) - DECATUR OUTFIELDER SOLD TO ATLANTA - Outfielder Pat Flanagan of Decatur has been sold to the Atlanta club in the Southern league. The local baseball association received a message Saturday morning from Billy Smith, manager of that team, instructing the association to send the papers for the players and the check for $500 would be forwarded. Although Decatur fans will regret to see him go, they will be glad for Steamboat because of his advancement from a Class B to a Class A league, and they hope to see him make good.

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The following articles are not about the same Flannagan - this is - Link to Charlie Flannagan (St. Louis Browns / 1913) stats - www.baseball-reference.com/players/f/flanach01.shtml

 

(Sporting Life - 11 October 1913) - SHOULD KNOW BETTER - THE former major league player, Dick Cooley, who this year owned and managed the San Diego Club, of the Southern California League, has been set down by the National Commission for lack of good faith while virtually acting as agent for the St. Louis American Club. The facts are stated as follows: "Manager Cooley had a player named Flannagan, who was purchased by the St. Louis American Club. President Hedges, of St. Louis, sent Cooley a blank contract, instructing him to sign Flanagan to it under a fair salary. Flanagan was getting $80 a month at San Diego and Cooley advanced him to $250 with the St. Louis Club. The latter refused to stand for the big advance, and was backed up by the National Commission under the rule which allows an advance of only 25 per cent, for players sent up on trial. St. Louis settled with the player at the rate of $100 a month, which was sufficient, as he failed to make good and was let out very soon." Cooley's action in this case was doubly reprehensible, first, because as a veteran player and manager he must have known that the figures he inserted in this untried Class D player's contract were extremely excessive; and second, because as a magnate-manager he should have known the mandatory probationary contract rule of the National Agreement. Ignorance of Baseball law seems to be almost as prevalent among magnates as ignorance of the playing rules is among players.

 

1913 San Diego Bears

Classification: D

League: Southern California League

Record: N/A

Manager: Spencer Abbott

Location: San Diego, CA

 

(Los Angeles Herald, Number 137, 10 April 1917) - SUCCESSFUL MANAGERS MUST DEVELOP PLAYERS; CAN'T PURCHASE STARS - By FRED MITCHELL There is a tremendous amount of hokus-pokus among the minor leagues when it comes to selling or disposing of promising talent to the magnates of the big league clubs. It has come to be an art with some of the minor leaguers and main a magnate has been stung by some ingenious scheme of boosting up an indifferent plaver and marketing him. Dick Cooley, an ex-leaguer of high merit, came to be known a short time back as one the greatest of minor league David Harums. He had a club at San Diego in a tiny league, and they tell the story of how he worked off a mutt In great shape. I did not see this fellow but have heard a lot of stories about him. His name was Flannigan and he was a sailor off the coast. Local papers began to exude startling information about what a great ball player this fellow was—“ Steamer” Flannigan, capable of hitting ’em a mile, wonderfully fleet of foot and generally a second Ty Cobb. Now, this made it pretty strong, since Dick Cooley knows very well how good Ty Cobb is. Dick was ill one day at Detroit and couldn’t play in the game that day. A gink named Cobb was sent in to sub for him Cooley never got his job back after that. FLANNIGAN IS SENT TO ST. LOUIS CLUB - Well, feverish major league scouts sought Flannagan's release and Colonel Bob Hedges, proprietor of the Browns, beat the others to the great find. It is said that Cooley was sore at Hedge anyway and was glad to make the sale that way. Flannigan reported to the club in due course. Manager George Stovall used him a couple of times and threw up his hands in disgust. Flannigan in the meantime ate thrice daily on the eastern trip, gained eighteen pounds in weight and got into three ball games. Arriving at a seaport town, Flannigan would visit the waterfront, chat with all the sailors and barely get to the ball yard in time to see the game start. Cooley cleaned up $1500 on the sale. Flannigan got fat and than disappeared. He has never been heard of since. It is my opinion that young players to he used as a foundation for building up a ball club must be developed. They cannot be purchased for mere money.