title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes also became involved in resolving the removal of the Ponca tribe from Nebraska to Indian Territory (present-day Oklahoma) because of a misunderstanding during the Grant administration. The tribe's problems came to Hayes's attention after its chief, Standing Bear, filed a lawsuit to contest Schurz's demand that they stay in Indian Territory. Overruling Schurz, Hayes set up a commission in 1880 that ruled the Ponca were free to return to their home territory in Nebraska or stay on their reservation in Indian Territory. The Ponca were awarded compensation for their land rights, which had been previously granted to the Sioux. In a message to Congress in February 1881, Hayes insisted he would "give to these injured people that measure of redress which is required alike by justice and by humanity."


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: In 1880, Hayes embarked on a 71-day tour of the Western United States, becoming the second sitting president to travel west of the Rocky Mountains. (Hayes's immediate predecessor, Ulysses Grant, visited Utah in 1875.) Hayes's traveling party included his wife and William T. Sherman, who helped organize the trip. Hayes began his trip in September 1880, departing from Chicago on the transcontinental railroad. He journeyed across the continent, ultimately arriving in California, stopping first in Wyoming and then Utah and Nevada, reaching Sacramento and San Francisco. By railroad and stagecoach, the party traveled north to Oregon, arriving in Portland, and from there to Vancouver, Washington. Going by steamship, they visited Seattle, and then returned to San Francisco. Hayes then toured several southwestern states before returning to Ohio in November, in time to cast a vote in the 1880 presidential election.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes and his wife Lucy were known for their policy of keeping an alcohol-free White House, giving rise to her nickname "Lemonade Lucy." The first reception at the Hayes White House included wine, but Hayes was dismayed at drunken behavior at receptions hosted by ambassadors around Washington, leading him to follow his wife's temperance leanings. Alcohol was not served again in the Hayes White House. Critics charged Hayes with parsimony, but Hayes spent more money (which came out of his personal budget) after the ban, ordering that any savings from eliminating alcohol be used on more lavish entertainment. His temperance policy also paid political dividends, strengthening his support among Protestant ministers. Although Secretary Evarts quipped that at the White House dinners, "water flowed like wine," the policy was a success in convincing prohibitionists to vote Republican.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes appointed two Associate Justices to the Supreme Court. The first vacancy occurred when David Davis resigned to enter the Senate during the election controversy of 1876. On taking office, Hayes appointed John Marshall Harlan to the seat. A former candidate for governor of Kentucky, Harlan had been Benjamin Bristow's campaign manager at the 1876 Republican convention, and Hayes had earlier considered him for attorney general. Hayes submitted the nomination in October 1877, but it aroused some dissent in the Senate because of Harlan's limited experience in public office. Harlan was nonetheless confirmed and served on the court for 34 years, voting (usually in the minority) for aggressive enforcement of the civil rights laws. In 1880, a second seat became vacant upon the resignation of Justice William Strong. Hayes nominated William Burnham Woods, a carpetbagger Republican circuit court judge from Alabama. Woods served six years on the Court, ultimately proving a disappointment to Hayes as he interpreted the Constitution in a manner more similar to that of Southern Democrats than to Hayes's own preferences.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes unsuccessfully attempted to fill a third vacancy in 1881. Justice Noah Haynes Swayne resigned with the expectation that Hayes would fill his seat by appointing Stanley Matthews, a friend of both men. Many senators objected to the appointment, believing that Matthews was too close to corporate and railroad interests, especially those of Jay Gould, and the Senate adjourned without voting on the nomination. The following year, when James A. Garfield entered the White House, he resubmitted Matthews's nomination to the Senate, which this time confirmed Matthews by one vote, 24 to 23. Matthews served for eight years until his death in 1889. His opinion in "Yick Wo v. Hopkins" in 1886 advanced his and Hayes's views on the protection of ethnic minorities' rights.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes declined to seek reelection in 1880, keeping his pledge not to run for a second term. He was gratified with the election of fellow Ohio Republican James A. Garfield to succeed him, and consulted with him on appointments for the next administration. After Garfield's inauguration, Hayes and his family returned to Spiegel Grove. In 1881, he was elected a companion of the Military Order of the Loyal Legion of the United States. He served as commander-in-chief (national president) of the Loyal Legion from 1888 until his death in 1893. Although he remained a loyal Republican, Hayes was not too disappointed in Democrat Grover Cleveland's election to the presidency in 1884, approving of Cleveland's views on civil service reform. He was also pleased at the progress of the political career of William McKinley, his army comrade and political protégé.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes became an advocate for educational charities and federal education subsidies for all children. He believed education was the best way to heal the rifts in American society and allow people to improve themselves. In 1887 Hayes was appointed to the Board of Trustees of Ohio State University, the school he helped found as governor of Ohio. He emphasized the need for vocational, as well as academic, education: "I preach the gospel of work," he wrote, "I believe in skilled labor as a part of education." He urged Congress, unsuccessfully, to pass a bill written by Senator Henry W. Blair that would have allowed federal aid for education for the first time. In 1889 Hayes gave a speech encouraging black students to apply for scholarships from the Slater Fund, one of the charities with which he was affiliated. One such student, W. E. B. Du Bois, received a scholarship in 1892. Hayes also advocated better prison conditions.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: In retirement, Hayes was troubled by the disparity between the rich and the poor, saying in an 1886 speech, "free government cannot long endure if property is largely in a few hands and large masses of people are unable to earn homes, education, and a support in old age." The next year, he recorded thoughts on that subject in his diary:


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes was greatly saddened by his wife's death in 1889. When she died, he wrote, "the soul had left [Spiegel Grove]". After Lucy's death, Hayes's daughter Fanny became his traveling companion, and he enjoyed visits from his grandchildren. In 1890, he chaired the Lake Mohonk Conference on the Negro Question, a gathering of reformers that met in upstate New York to discuss racial issues. Hayes died of complications of a heart attack at his home on January 17, 1893, at the age of 70. His last words were "I know that I'm going where Lucy is." President-elect Cleveland and Ohio Governor McKinley led the funeral procession that followed his body until Hayes was interred in Oakwood Cemetery.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: After the donation of his home to the state of Ohio for Spiegel Grove State Park, Hayes was reinterred there in 1915. The next year the Hayes Commemorative Library and Museum, the country's first presidential library, opened on the site, funded by contributions from the state of Ohio and Hayes's family.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Hayes had arbitrated and decided an 1878 dispute between Argentina and Paraguay in favor of Paraguay, giving Paraguay 60% of its current territory. This led to the naming of a province in the region after him: Presidente Hayes Department (capital: Villa Hayes); an official holiday: Laudo Hayes Firm Day, the anniversary of the decision, celebrated in Presidente Hayes province; a local soccer team: Club Presidente Hayes (also known as "Los Yanquis"), based in the national capital, Asuncion; a postage stamp, the design of which was chosen in a contest run by the U.S. Embassy; and even the granting of the wish of a young girl who came out of a coma—a trip to the Hayes Presidential Center in Fremont, Ohio.


title: Rutherford B. Hayes

text: Rutherford B. Hayes High School in Hayes's hometown of Delaware, Ohio, was named in his honor, as is Hayes Hall, built in 1893, at the Ohio State University. It is Ohio State's oldest remaining building, and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places on July 16, 1970, due to its front facade, which remains virtually untouched from its original appearance. Hayes knew the building would be named in his honor, but did not live to see it completed.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois Hitler (born Alois Schicklgruber; 7 June 1837 – 3 January 1903) was an Austrian civil servant in the customs service, and the father of Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois Schicklgruber was born out of wedlock. His mother was Maria Schicklgruber, but his biological father remains unknown. This uncertain parentage has led to claims that Alois's third wife, Klara (Adolf's mother), may have also been either Alois's first cousin once removed or his half-niece.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois married his first wife, Anna, in 1873. In 1876, Alois convinced the Austrian local authorities to acknowledge his deceased stepfather Johann Georg Hiedler as his biological father. This meant that Klara legally became Alois's first cousin once removed. Alois then legally changed his last name to that of his deceased stepfather Johann, but the authorities misspelled the last name as "Hitler" for unknown reasons.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Also in 1876, while Alois was still married to his second wife Franziska, he hired his relative Klara as a household servant, and began an affair with Klara. Their relationship continued in secrecy until Alois's second wife died and Klara became pregnant, which prompted Alois to marry her in 1885. According to a close friend, Alois was "awfully rough" with his wife Klara and "hardly ever spoke a word to her at home". Alois treated his children with similar contempt and often beat them.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois Hitler was born Alois Schicklgruber in the hamlet of Strones, a parish of Döllersheim in the Waldviertel of northwest Lower Austria; his mother was the 41-year-old unmarried peasant Maria Schicklgruber, whose family had lived in the area for generations. At his baptism in Döllersheim, the space for his father's name on the baptismal certificate was left blank and the priest wrote "illegitimate". His mother cared for Alois in a house she shared with her elderly father, Johannes Schicklgruber.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Sometime later, a man named Johann Georg Hiedler moved in with the Schicklgrubers. He married Maria when Alois was five, and Maria died when Alois was nine. By the age of 10, Alois had been sent to live with Johann Georg Hiedler's younger brother, Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, who owned a farm in the nearby village of Spital (south of Weitra). Alois attended elementary school and took lessons in shoemaking from a local cobbler. Growing up in the same household with Alois was Johanna, the mother of his future wife Klara.


title: Alois Hitler

text: At the age of 13, Alois left Johann Nepomuk Hiedler's farm in Spital and went to Vienna as an apprentice cobbler, working there for about five years. In response to a recruitment drive by the Austrian government offering employment in the civil service to people from rural areas, Alois joined the frontier guards (customs service) of the Austrian Finance Ministry in 1855 at the age of 18.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Historians have proposed various candidates as Alois's biological father: Johann Georg Hiedler, his younger brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler (or "Hüttler"), and Leopold Frankenberger (a purportedly Jewish man, whose existence has never been found to be documented). Johann Georg Hiedler became the stepfather of five-year-old Alois and many years later was posthumously declared the legal birth father of Alois.


title: Alois Hitler

text: According to historian Frank McDonough, the most plausible theory is that Johann Georg Hiedler was actually the birth father. But the birth father may alternatively have been his younger brother Johann Nepomuk Hiedler. Regardless of how Nepomuk was related to Alois, if at all, Nepomuk was certainly the maternal grandfather of Alois’s third wife (Adolf Hitler’s mother) Klara.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Historian Werner Maser suggests that Alois's biological father was not Johann Georg Hiedler, but rather Johann Nepomuk Hiedler, who raised Alois through adolescence and later willed to Alois a considerable portion of his life savings, although he never publicly admitted to being Alois's natural father. According to Maser, Nepomuk was a married farmer who had an affair with Maria Schicklgruber and then arranged to have his single brother Johann Georg Hiedler marry Alois's mother Maria to provide a cover for Nepomuk's desire to assist and care for Alois without upsetting his wife. If the theory is true, then Alois's third wife Klara was also Alois's half-niece, but Adolf Hitler biographer Joachim Fest believes that any attempts to pin down whether Johann Georg Hiedler or Johann Nepomuk Hiedler was Alois's father will "peter out in the obscurity of confused relationships marked by meanness, dullness, and rustic bigotry."


title: Alois Hitler

text: In 1931 Adolf Hitler ordered the "Schutzstaffel" (SS) to investigate the rumors regarding his ancestry, and they found no evidence of any Jewish ancestors. After the Nuremberg Laws came into effect in Nazi Germany, Hitler ordered the genealogist Rudolf Koppensteiner to publish a large illustrated genealogical tree showing his ancestry. This was published in the book "Die Ahnentafel des Führers" ("The Pedigree of the Leader") in 1937 and purported to show that Hitler's family were all Austrian Germans with no Jewish ancestry and that Hitler had an unblemished "Aryan" pedigree. Alois himself had claimed Johann Georg Hiedler was his biological father, and a priest accordingly amended Alois's birth certificate in 1876, which was considered certified proof for Hitler's ancestry; thus Hitler was considered a "pure" Aryan. 1876 was also the year when Alois hired 16-year-old Klara as a household servant.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Although Johann Georg Hiedler was considered the officially accepted paternal grandfather of Adolf Hitler by the Third Reich, the question of who his grandfather really was has caused much speculation, and the answer remains unknown. As German historian Joachim Fest wrote:


title: Alois Hitler

text: Following the war, Adolf Hitler's former lawyer, Hans Frank, claimed that Hitler told him in 1930 that one of his relatives was trying to blackmail him by threatening to reveal his alleged Jewish ancestry. Adolf Hitler asked Frank to find out the facts. Frank says he determined that at the time Maria Schicklgruber gave birth to Alois, she was working as a household cook in the town of Graz, that her employers were a Jewish family named Frankenberger, and that her child might have been conceived out of wedlock with the family's 19-year-old son, Leopold Frankenberger.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Opponents of the Frankenberger hypothesis have asserted that all Jews had been expelled from the province of Styria – which includes Graz – in the 15th century, and that they were not officially allowed to return until the 1860s, when Alois was around 30. Also, there is no evidence of a Frankenberger family living in Graz at that time. Scholars such as Ian Kershaw and Brigitte Hamann dismiss the Frankenberger hypothesis, which had only Frank's speculation to support it, as baseless.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Kershaw cites several stories circulating in the 1920s about Hitler's alleged Jewish ancestry, including one about a "Baron Rothschild" in Vienna in whose household Maria Schicklgruber had worked for some time as a servant. Kershaw discusses and also lists Hitler's family tree in his biography of Adolf Hitler and gives no support to the Frankenberger tale, saying "The fact that Adolf Hitler had no Jewish blood in his veins, seems, from what has been his whole manner, so blatant to me that it needs no further word". Further, Frank's story contains several inaccuracies and contradictions, such as the statement Frank had made that Maria Schicklgruber came from "Leonding near Linz", when in fact she came from the hamlet of Strones, near the village of Döllersheim.


title: Alois Hitler

text: In 2019, gender psychologist Leonard Sax published a paper titled "Aus den Gemeinden von Burgenland: revisiting the question of Adolf Hitler's paternal grandfather". Sax claims that Hamann, Kershaw, and other leading historians relied, either directly or indirectly, on a single source for the claim that no Jews were living in Graz prior to 1856: that source was the Austrian historian Nikolaus von Preradovich, who Sax showed was a fervent admirer of Adolf Hitler. Sax cited primary Austrian sources from the 1800s to demonstrate that there was in fact – "a small, now settled community" – of Jews living in Graz prior to 1856. Sax's article has been picked up by a number of news outlets and Sax was interviewed by Eric Metaxas on this topic, on Metaxas' TV show. Sax argued that one factor in Hitler's extreme antisemitism was "his intense need to prove" that he was not Jewish. British historian Richard J. Evans dismissed Sax's arguments and claims and stated: "Even if there were Jews living in Graz in the 1830s, at the time when Adolf Hitler’s father Alois was born, this does not prove anything at all about the identity of Hitler’s paternal grandfather." Evans argued that speculation about Hitler's ancestry persists "because some people have found his deep and murderous anti-Semitism hard to explain unless there were personal motives behind it... This seems to be the motivation for Dr. Leonard Sax, a psychiatrist, not a historian, making his claims".


title: Alois Hitler

text: Ron Rosenbaum suggests that Frank, who had turned against Nazism after 1945 but remained an anti-Semitic fanatic, made the claim that Hitler had Jewish ancestry as a way of proving that Hitler was a Jew and "not" an Aryan.


title: Alois Hitler

text: A genetic study that collected DNA of 38 living relatives of Hitler concluded that, with high probability, Hitler had E1b1b DNA haplogroup. An author of the study stated:


title: Alois Hitler

text: Initially Alois Schicklgruber made steady progress in the semi-military profession of customs official. The work involved frequent reassignments and he served in a variety of places across Austria. By 1860, after five years of service, he reached the rank of "Finanzwach-Oberaufseher" (Revenue guard Senior warden, analogous to an Army Corporal). By 1864, after special training and examinations, Schicklgruber had advanced to "provisorischer Amtsassistent" (provisional Office assistant, analogous to a provisional Second lieutenant) and was serving in Linz, Austria. He later became a "Zollamts-Official" (Inspector of customs, i.e. (First) Lieutenant) posted at Braunau am Inn in 1875. Then his career came suddenly to a nearly dead end when it took 17 years to his last promotion. In 1892, he eventually rose to "provisorischer" resp., and in 1894 to "definitiver Zolloberamts-Official" (definite Senior inspector of customs, i.e. Army captain). Schicklgruber (from 1877 under his new surname Hitler) could go no higher because he lacked the necessary school degrees.


title: Alois Hitler

text: As a rising young junior customs official, he used his birth name of Schicklgruber, but in mid-1876, 39 years old and well established in his career, he asked permission to use his stepfather's family name. He appeared before the parish priest in Döllersheim and asserted that his father was Johann Georg Hiedler, who had married his mother and now wished to legitimize him. Three relatives appeared with him as witnesses, one of whom was Johann Nepomuk, Hiedler's brother. The priest agreed to amend the birth certificate, the civil authorities automatically processed the church's decision and Alois Schicklgruber had a new name. The official change, registered at the government office in Mistelbach in 1877, transformed him into "Alois Hitler". It is not known who decided on the spelling of "Hitler" instead of "Hiedler". Johann Georg's brother was sometimes known by the surname "Hüttler".


title: Alois Hitler

text: Historian Bradley F. Smith states that Alois Schicklgruber openly admitted having been born out of wedlock before and after the name change. Alois may have been influenced to change his name for the sake of legal expediency. Historian Werner Maser claims that in 1876, Franz Schicklgruber, the administrator of Alois's mother's estate, transferred a large sum of money (230 gulden) to him.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Supposedly, Johann Georg Hiedler, who died in 1857, relented on his deathbed and left an inheritance to his illegitimate stepson (Alois) together with his surname. Some Schicklgrubers remain in the Waldviertel.


title: Alois Hitler

text: In early 1869, Alois Hitler had an affair with Thekla Penz (born 24 September 1844) of Leopoldstein, Arbesbach in the district of Zwettel, Lower Austria. This led to the birth of Theresia Penz on 31 October 1869. Thekla later married a man by the name of Horner, while Theresia married Johan Ramer and gave birth to at least six children, while living in the town of Schwertberg.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois Hitler was 36 years old in 1873 when he married for the first time. Anna Glasl-Hörer was a wealthy, 50-year-old daughter of a customs official. She was infirm when they married and was either an invalid or became one shortly afterwards.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Not long after marrying his first wife, Anna, Alois began an affair with Franziska "Fanni" Matzelsberger, one of the young female servants employed at the Pommer Inn, house number 219, in the town Braunau am Inn, where he was renting the top floor as a lodging. Smith states that Alois had numerous affairs in the 1870s, resulting in his wife initiating legal action; on 7 November 1880 Alois and Anna separated by mutual agreement but remained married. The 19-year-old Matzelsberger became the 43-year-old Hitler's mistress.


title: Alois Hitler

text: In 1876, four years before separating from Anna, he had hired Klara Pölzl as a household servant. She was the 16-year-old granddaughter of his step-uncle Nepomuk (who may also have been his biological father or uncle). If Nepomuk were Alois Hitler's biological father then Klara was Alois's half-niece; alternatively, if Johann Georg were Alois’s biological father then Klara was Alois’s first cousin once removed. Matzelsberger demanded that the "servant girl" Klara find another job, and Hitler sent Klara Pölzl away.


title: Alois Hitler

text: On 13 January 1882, Matzelsberger gave birth to Hitler's illegitimate son, also named Alois, but since they were not married, the child's last name was Matzelsberger, making him "Alois Matzelsberger". Alois Hitler kept Fanni Matzelsberger as his mistress while his lawful wife (Anna from whom he had separated) grew sicker and died on 6 April 1883. The next month, on 22 May at a ceremony in Braunau with fellow custom officials as witnesses, Alois, 45, married Matzelsberger, 21. He then legitimized his son as Alois Hitler Jr. The second child of Alois (Senior) and his wife Fanni was Angela, born on 28 July 1883.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois was secure in his profession and no longer an ambitious climber. Historian Alan Bullock described him as "hard, unsympathetic and short-tempered". His wife Fanni, still only 23, acquired a lung disorder and became too ill to function. She was moved to Ranshofen, a small village near Braunau. During the last months of Fanni's life, Klara Pölzl returned to Alois's home to look after the invalid and the two children (Alois Jr. and Angela). Fanni Hitler, the second wife of Alois Hitler, died in Ranshofen on 10 August 1884 at the age of 23. After Fanni’s death, Klara Pölzl remained in his home as housekeeper.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Pölzl was soon pregnant by Alois Hitler. Historian Bradley Smith writes that if Hitler had been free to do as he wished, he would have married Pölzl immediately in 1884, but because of the 1877 affidavit concerning his last name and paternity, Hitler was now legally Pölzl's first cousin once removed, too close to marry. He submitted an appeal to the church for a humanitarian waiver.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Permission from Rome arrived, and on 7 January 1885 a wedding was held at Hitler's rented rooms on the top floor of the Pommer Inn. A meal was served for the few guests and witnesses. Hitler then went to work for the rest of the day. Even Klara found the wedding to be a short ceremony. During their marriage, and consistent with Alois’s father perhaps being the same person as Klara’s maternal grandfather, Alois and Klara continued to address each other as “uncle” and “niece.”


title: Alois Hitler

text: On 17 May 1885, four months after the wedding, the new Frau Klara Hitler gave birth to her first child, Gustav. In 1886, she gave birth to a daughter, Ida. In 1887 Otto was born, but died days later. During the winter of 1887–1888, diphtheria struck the Hitler household, resulting in the deaths of both Gustav (8 December) and Ida (2 January).


title: Alois Hitler

text: On 20 April 1889, she gave birth to another son, future dictator of Nazi Germany, Adolf Hitler. Adolf was a sickly child, and his mother fretted over him. Alois was 51 when he was born, and had little interest in child-rearing; he left it all to his wife. When not at work he was either in a tavern or busy with his hobby, beekeeping. Alois was transferred from Braunau to Passau. He was 55, Klara 32, Alois Jr. 10, Angela 9, and Adolf was three years old.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Beginning on 1 August 1892, the family lived at Theresienstrasse 23 in Passau. One month after Alois accepted a better paying position in Linz, on 1 April 1893, his wife and the children moved to a second floor room at Kapuzinerstrasse 31 in Passau. Klara had just given birth to Edmund, so it was decided she and the children would stay in Passau for the time being. On 21 January 1896, Paula, Adolf's younger sister, was born. She was the last child of Alois Hitler and Klara Pölzl. Alois was often home with his family. He had five children ranging in age from infancy to 14. Edmund (the youngest of the boys) died of measles on 2 February 1900.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois wanted his son Adolf to seek a career in the civil service. However, Adolf had become so alienated from his father that he was repulsed by his wishes. He sneered at the thought of a lifetime spent enforcing petty rules. Alois tried to browbeat his son into obedience, while Adolf did his best to be the opposite of whatever his father wanted.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Robert G. L. Waite noted, "Even one of his closest friends admitted that Alois was 'awfully rough' with his wife [Klara] and 'hardly ever spoke a word to her at home'." If Alois was in a bad mood, he picked on the older children or Klara herself, in front of them. Alois's grandson, William Patrick Hitler said that he had heard from his father, Alois Jr., that Alois Hitler Sr. used to beat his children. After Hitler and his eldest son Alois Jr. had a climactic and violent argument, Alois Jr. left home, and the elder Alois swore he would never give the boy a penny of inheritance beyond what the law required. According to reports, Alois Hitler liked to lord it over his neighbors, and even beat his own family’s dog until it would wet the floor.


title: Alois Hitler

text: Alois has been described as "an authoritarian, overbearing, domineering husband and a stern, masterful, and often irritable father" and as a "strict, short-tempered patriarch who demanded unquestioning respect and obedience from his children and used the switch whenever his expectations were not met."


title: Alois Hitler

text: In February 1895, Alois Hitler purchased a house on a plot in Hafeld near Lambach, approximately southwest of Linz. The farm was called the "Rauscher Gut". He moved his family to the farm and retired on 25 June 1895 at the age of 58, after 40 years in the customs service.


title: Alois Hitler

text: On the morning of 3 January 1903, Alois went to the Gasthaus Wiesinger (no. 1 Michaelsbergstrasse, Leonding) as usual to drink his morning glass of wine. He was offered the newspaper and promptly collapsed. He was taken to an adjoining room and a doctor was summoned, but he died at the inn, probably from a pleural hemorrhage. Adolf Hitler, who was 13 when his father died, wrote in "Mein Kampf" that he died of a "stroke of apoplexy". In his book, "The Young Hitler I Knew", Hitler's childhood friend August Kubizek recalled, "When the fourteen-year-old (sic) son saw his dead father, he burst out into uncontrollable weeping."


title: Alois Hitler

text: On 28 March 2012, by the account of Kurt Pittertschatscher, the pastor of the parish, the tombstone marking Alois Hitler's grave and that of his wife Klara, in Town Cemetery in Leonding, was removed by a descendant. The descendant is said to be an elderly female relative of Alois Hitler's first wife, Anna, who has also given up any rights to the rented burial plot. The plot was covered in white gravel and a tree which has since been removed. It is not known whether the remains of Adolf Hitler's parents are still interred there.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Jennifer Ann Agutter (born 20 December 1952) is a British actress. She began her career as a child actress in 1964, appearing in "East of Sudan", "Star!", and two adaptations of "The Railway Children"—the BBC's 1968 television serial and the 1970 film version. She also starred in the critically acclaimed film "Walkabout" and the TV film "The Snow Goose" (both 1971), for which she won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actress in a Drama.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: She relocated to the United States in 1974 to pursue a Hollywood career and subsequently appeared in "Logan's Run" (1976), "Amy" (1981), "An American Werewolf in London" (1981), and "Child's Play 2" (1990). During the same period, Agutter continued appearing in high-profile British films, such as "The Eagle Has Landed" (1976), "Equus" (1977) (for which she won a BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role), and "The Riddle of the Sands" (1979). In 1981, she co-starred in "The Survivor", an Australian adaptation of the James Herbert novel by that name, and was nominated for an AACTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: After returning to Britain in the early 1990s to pursue family life, Agutter shifted her focus to television, and in 2000, she appeared in a television adaptation of "The Railway Children", this time taking on the role of the mother. She has continued to work steadily in British television drama, and since 2012 she has starred in the BBC's primetime ratings hit "Call the Midwife". She also made a return to Hollywood film-making in 2012, appearing in "The Avengers", and reprising her role in "" (2014). In 2022, Agutter once again returned to the world of "The Railway Children" by reprising her role from the 1970 film 52 years later in a sequel, "The Railway Children Return".


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter is married, and has one adult son. She supports several charitable causes, mostly ones related to cystic fibrosis, a condition from which her niece suffers, and for her service to those causes was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter was born on 20 December 1952 in Taunton, Somerset, England. She is the daughter of Derek Agutter (an entertainments manager in the British Army) and Catherine, and was raised Roman Catholic. She has Irish ancestry on her mother's side. As a child, she lived in Singapore, Dhekelia (Cyprus) and Kuala Lumpur (Malaya). She was discovered at Elmhurst Ballet School, a boarding school she attended from ages eight to sixteen, when a casting agent was looking for a young English-speaking girl for a film. She did not get that part, but he recommended her to the producers of "East of Sudan" (1964).


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter became known to television audiences for her role in the twice-weekly BBC series "The Newcomers". (She played Kirsty, the daughter of the new managing director of Eden Brothers, the fictional firm that is at the centre of the series.) Agutter could appear only during school holidays. At this stage of her career, she was listed in credits as “Jennifer”. In 1966, she portrayed a ballet pupil in Disney's film "Ballerina". In 1968, she was featured in the lavish big-budget 20th Century Fox film musical "Star!" which featured Julie Andrews as Gertrude Lawrence; Agutter played Lawrence's neglected daughter Pamela. Later, she played Roberta in a BBC adaptation of "The Railway Children" (1968) and in Lionel Jeffries's 1970 film of the book. She followed this with a more serious role in the thriller "I Start Counting" (1969). She also won an Emmy as supporting actress for her television role as Fritha in a British television adaptation of "The Snow Goose" (1971).


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter then moved into adult roles, beginning with "Walkabout" (1971), in which she played a teenaged schoolgirl who is lost with her younger brother in the Australian outback. She auditioned for the role in 1967, but funding problems delayed filming until 1969. The delay meant Agutter was 16 at the time of filming, which allowed the director to include nude scenes. Among them was a five-minute skinny-dipping scene, which was cut from the original US release. She said at the 2005 Bradford Film Festival at the National Media Museum that she was shocked by the film's explicitness, but remained on good terms with director Nicolas Roeg.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter moved to Hollywood at 21 and appeared in a number of films over the next decade, including "The Eagle Has Landed" (1976), "Logan's Run" (1976), "Equus" (1977), for which she won a BAFTA as Best Supporting Actress), "An American Werewolf in London" (1981), and an adaptation of the James Herbert novel "The Survivor" (1981). Agutter has commented that the innocence of the characters she played in her early films, combined with the costumes and nudity in later adult roles such as "Logan's Run", "Equus", and "An American Werewolf in London", are "perfect fantasy fodder".


title: Jenny Agutter

text: In 1990, Agutter returned to the UK to concentrate on family life and her focus shifted towards British television. During the 1990s, she was cast in an adaptation of Jeffrey Archer's novel "Not a Penny More, Not a Penny Less" and as the scandalous Idina Hatton in the BBC miniseries "The Buccaneers", inspired by Edith Wharton's unfinished 1938 book, and made guest appearances in television series such as "Red Dwarf" and "Heartbeat". In 2000, she starred in a third adaptation of "The Railway Children", produced by Carlton TV, this time playing the mother. Since then Agutter has had recurring roles in several television series including "Spooks", "The Invisibles", "Monday Monday" and "The Alan Clark Diaries". In 2012 Agutter resumed her Hollywood career, appearing as a member of the World Security Council in the blockbuster film "The Avengers"; she reprised her role in "" (2014). Since 2012, Agutter has played Sister Julienne in the BBC television drama series "Call the Midwife".


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter has appeared in numerous theatre productions since her stage debut in 1970, including stints at the National Theatre in 1972–73, the title role in a derivation of "Hedda Gabler" at the Roundhouse in 1980 and with the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1982–83, playing Alice in Arden of Faversham, Regan in King Lear and Fontanelle in Lear. In 1987–88, Agutter played the role of Pat Green in the Broadway production of the Hugh Whitemore play "Breaking the Code", about computer pioneer Alan Turing. In 1995 she was in an RSC production of "Love's Labour's Lost" staged in Tokyo. She is also a patron of the Shakespeare Schools Festival, a charity that enables school children in the UK to perform Shakespeare in professional theatres.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: In 2008, she also guest-starred in the "Doctor Who" audio drama "The Bride of Peladon" and played an outlawed scientist in "The Minister of Chance". She has appeared as a guest star character ("Fiona Templeton") in the Radio 4 comedy "Ed Reardon's Week".


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter appears on the 1990 Prefab Sprout song "Wild Horses", speaking the words "I want to have you".


title: Jenny Agutter

text: At a 1989 arts festival in Bath, Somerset, Agutter met Johan Tham, a Swedish hotelier who was a director of Cliveden Hotel in Buckinghamshire. They married in August 1990, and their son Jonathan was born on 25 December 1990. Agutter lives in London, but has a keen interest in Cornwall and once owned a second home there on the Trelowarren Estate, in one of the parishes on the Lizard peninsula.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: She was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours, for her charitable services.


title: Jenny Agutter

text: Agutter has been attached to several causes throughout her career. She has been involved in raising awareness of the illness cystic fibrosis, which she believes was responsible for the deaths of two of her siblings. Her niece has the disease. At Agutter's suggestion, an episode of "Call the Midwife" focused on cystic fibrosis. She has also worked in support of charities, in particular the Cystic Fibrosis Trust, of which she is a patron (she is also a carrier of the genetic mutation).


title: Jenny Agutter

text: In August 2014, Agutter was also one of 200 public figures who were signatories to a letter to "The Guardian" expressing their hope that Scotland would vote to remain part of the United Kingdom in September 2014's referendum on that issue.


title: Sphinx

text: A sphinx ( , , Boeotian: , plural sphinxes or sphinges) is a mythical creature with the head of a human, the body of a lion, and the wings of a falcon.


title: Sphinx

text: In Greek tradition, the sphinx has the head of a woman, the haunches of a lion, and the wings of a bird. She is mythicized as treacherous and merciless, and will kill and eat those who cannot answer her riddle. This deadly version of a sphinx appears in the myth and drama of Oedipus.


title: Sphinx

text: Unlike the Greek sphinx, which was a woman, the Egyptian sphinx is typically shown as a man (an androsphinx ()). In addition, the Egyptian sphinx was viewed as benevolent but having a ferocious strength similar to the malevolent Greek version. Both were thought of as guardians and often flank the entrances to temples.


title: Sphinx

text: In European decorative art, the sphinx enjoyed a major revival during the Renaissance. Later, the sphinx image, initially very similar to the original Ancient Egyptian concept, was exported into many other cultures, albeit they are often interpreted quite differently due to translations of descriptions of the originals, and through the evolution of the concept in relation to other cultural traditions.


title: Sphinx

text: Sphinx depictions are generally associated with architectural structures such as royal tombs or religious temples.


title: Sphinx

text: The word "sphinx" comes from the Greek Σφίγξ, associated by folk etymology with the verb σφίγγω ("sphíngō"), meaning "to squeeze", "to tighten up". This name may be derived from the fact that lions kill their prey by strangulation, biting the throat of prey and holding them down until they die. However, the historian Susan Wise Bauer suggests that the word "sphinx" was instead a Greek corruption of the Egyptian name "shesepankh", which meant "living image", and referred rather to the "statue" of the sphinx, which was carved out of "living rock" (rock that was present at the construction site, not harvested and brought from another location), than to the beast itself.


title: Sphinx

text: The largest and most famous sphinx is the Great Sphinx of Giza, situated on the Giza Plateau adjacent to the Great Pyramids of Giza on the west bank of the Nile River and facing east (). The sphinx is located southeast of the pyramids. While the date of its construction is not known for certain, the general consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx bears the likeness of the pharaoh Khafre, dating it to between 2600 and 2500 BC. However, a fringe minority of late 20th century geologists have claimed evidence of water erosion in and around the Sphinx enclosure which would prove that the Sphinx predates Khafre, at around 10,000 to 5000 BC, a claim that is sometimes referred to as the Sphinx water erosion hypothesis but which has little support among Egyptologists and contradicts other evidence.


title: Sphinx

text: What names their builders gave to these statues is not known. At the Great Sphinx site, a 1400 BC inscription on a stele belonging to the 18th dynasty pharaoh Thutmose IV lists the names of three aspects of the local sun deity of that period, "Khepera–Rê–Atum". Many pharaohs had their heads carved atop the guardian statues for their tombs to show their close relationship with the powerful solar deity Sekhmet, a lioness. Besides the Great Sphinx, other famous Egyptian sphinxes include one bearing the head of the pharaoh Hatshepsut, with her likeness carved in granite, which is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and the alabaster Sphinx of Memphis, currently located within the open-air museum at that site. The theme was expanded to form great avenues of guardian sphinxes lining the approaches to tombs and temples as well as serving as details atop the posts of flights of stairs to very grand complexes. Nine hundred sphinxes with ram heads (Criosphinxes), believed to represent Amon, were built in Thebes, where his cult was strongest. At Karnak, each Criosphinx is fronted by a full-length statue of the pharaoh. The task of these sphinxes was to hold back the forces of evil.


title: Sphinx

text: The Great Sphinx has become an emblem of Egypt, frequently appearing on its stamps, coins, and official documents.


title: Sphinx

text: The revived Mannerist sphinx of the late 15th century is sometimes thought of as the "French sphinx". Her coiffed head is erect and she has the breasts of a young woman. Often she wears ear drops and pearls as ornaments. Her body is naturalistically rendered as a recumbent lioness. Such sphinxes were revived when the "grottesche" or "grotesque" decorations of the unearthed "Domus Aurea" of Nero were brought to light in late 15th-century Rome, and she was incorporated into the classical vocabulary of arabesque designs that spread throughout Europe in engravings during the 16th and 17th centuries. Sphinxes were included in the decoration of the "loggia" of the Vatican Palace by the workshop of Raphael (1515–20), which updated the vocabulary of the Roman "grottesche".


title: Sphinx

text: The first appearances of sphinxes in French art are in the School of Fontainebleau in the 1520s and 1530s and she continues into the Late Baroque style of the French Régence (1715–1723). From France, she spread throughout Europe, becoming a regular feature of the outdoors decorative sculpture of 18th-century palace gardens, as in the Upper Belvedere Palace in Vienna, Sanssouci Park in Potsdam, La Granja in Spain, Branicki Palace in Białystok, or the late Rococo examples in the grounds of the Portuguese Queluz National Palace (of perhaps the 1760s), with ruffs and clothed chests ending with a little cape.


title: Sphinx

text: Sphinxes are a feature of the neoclassical interior decorations of Robert Adam and his followers, returning closer to the undressed style of the "grottesche". They had an equal appeal to artists and designers of the Romanticism and subsequent Symbolism movements in the 19th century. Most of these sphinxes alluded to the Greek sphinx and the myth of Oedipus, rather than the Egyptian, although they may not have wings.


title: Sphinx

text: In the Bronze Age, the Hellenes had trade and cultural contacts with Egypt. Before the time that Alexander the Great occupied Egypt, the Greek name, "sphinx", was already applied to these statues. The historians and geographers of Greece wrote extensively about Egyptian culture. Herodotus called the ram-headed sphinxes Criosphinxes and called the hawk-headed ones Hieracosphinxes.


title: Sphinx

text: There was a single "sphinx" in Greek mythology, a unique demon of destruction and bad luck. Apollodorus describes the sphinx as having a woman's face, the body and tail of a lion and the wings of a bird. Pliny the Elder mentions that Ethiopia produces plenty of sphinxes, with brown hair and breasts, corroborated by 20th-century archeologists. Statius describes her as a winged monster, with pallid cheeks, eyes tainted with corruption, plumes clotted with gore and talons on livid hands. Sometimes, the wings are specified to be those of an eagle, and the tail to be serpent-headed. According to Hesiod, the Sphinx was a daughter of Orthrus and an unknown she—either the Chimera, Echidna, or Ceto. According to Apollodorus and Lasus, she was a daughter of Echidna and Typhon.


title: Sphinx

text: The sphinx was the emblem of the ancient city-state of Chios, and appeared on seals and the obverse side of coins from the 6th century BC until the 3rd century AD.


title: Sphinx

text: The Sphinx is said to have guarded the entrance to the Greek city of Thebes, asking a riddle to travellers to allow them passage. The exact riddle asked by the Sphinx was not specified by early tellers of the myth, and was not standardized as the one given below until late in Greek history.


title: Sphinx

text: It was said in late lore that Hera or Ares sent the Sphinx from her Aethiopian homeland (the Greeks always remembered the foreign origin of the Sphinx) to Thebes in Greece where she asked all passersby the most famous riddle in history: "Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed and two-footed and three-footed?" She strangled and devoured anyone who could not answer. Oedipus solved the riddle by answering: "Man—who crawls on all fours as a baby, then walks on two feet as an adult, and then uses a walking stick in old age". By some accounts (but much more rarely), there was a second riddle: "There are two sisters: one gives birth to the other and she, in turn, gives birth to the first. Who are the two sisters?" The answer is "day and night" (both words—"ἡμέρα" and "νύξ", respectively—are feminine in Ancient Greek). This second riddle is also found in a Gascon version of the myth and could be very ancient.


title: Sphinx

text: Bested at last, the Sphinx then threw herself from her high rock and died; or, in some versions Oedipus killed her. An alternative version tells that she devoured herself. In both cases, Oedipus can therefore be recognized as a "liminal" or threshold figure, helping effect the transition between the old religious practices, represented by the death of the Sphinx, and the rise of the new, Olympian gods.


title: Sphinx

text: In Jean Cocteau's retelling of the Oedipus legend, "The Infernal Machine", the Sphinx tells Oedipus the answer to the riddle in order to kill herself so that she did not have to kill anymore, and also to make him love her. He leaves without ever thanking her for giving him the answer to the riddle. The scene ends when the Sphinx and Anubis ascend back to the heavens.


title: Sphinx

text: There are mythic, anthropological, psychoanalytic and parodic interpretations of the Riddle of the Sphinx, and of Oedipus's answer to it. Sigmund Freud describes "the question of where babies come from" as a riddle of the Sphinx.


title: Sphinx

text: A composite mythological being with the body of a lion and the head of a human being is present in the traditions, mythology and art of South and Southeast Asia. Variously known as "puruṣamr̥ga" (Sanskrit, "man-beast"), "purushamirugam" (Tamil, "man-beast"), "naravirala" (Sanskrit, "man-cat") in India, or as "nara-simha" (Sanskrit, "man-lion") in Sri Lanka, "manussiha" or "manutthiha" (Pali, "man-lion") in Myanmar, and "norasingh" (from Pali, "man-lion", a variation of the Sanskrit "nara-simha") or "thep norasingh" ("man-lion deity"), or "nora nair" in Thailand. Although, just like the "nara-simha", he has a head of a lion and the body of a human.


title: Sphinx

text: In contrast to the sphinxes in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, of which the traditions largely have been lost due to the discontinuity of the civilization, the traditions related to the "Asian sphinxes" are very much alive today. The earliest artistic depictions of "sphinxes" from the South Asian subcontinent are to some extent influenced by Hellenistic art and writings. These hail from the period when Buddhist art underwent a phase of Hellenistic influence. Numerous sphinxes can be seen on the gateways of Bharhut stupa, dating to the 1st century B.C.


title: Sphinx

text: In South India, the "sphinx" is known as "puruṣamr̥ga" (Sanskrit) or "purushamirugam" (Tamil), meaning "human-beast". It is found depicted in sculptural art in temples and palaces where it serves an apotropaic purpose, just as the "sphinxes" in other parts of the ancient world. It is said by the tradition, to take away the sins of the devotees when they enter a temple and to ward off evil in general. It is therefore often found in a strategic position on the gopuram or temple gateway, or near the entrance of the sanctum sanctorum.


title: Sphinx

text: The "puruṣamr̥ga" plays a significant role in daily as well as yearly ritual of South Indian Shaiva temples. In the shodhasha-upakaara (or sixteen honors) ritual, performed between one and six times at significant sacred moments through the day, it decorates one of the lamps of the diparadhana or lamp ceremony. And in several temples the "puruṣamr̥ga" is also one of the "vahana" or vehicles of the deity during the processions of the Brahmotsava or festival.


title: Sphinx

text: In Kanya Kumari district, in the southernmost tip of the Indian subcontinent, during the night of Shiva Ratri, devotees run 75 kilometres while visiting and worshiping at twelve Shiva temples. This Shiva Ottam (or Run for Shiva) is performed in commemoration of the story of the race between the Sphinx and Bhima, one of the heroes of the epic "Mahabharata".


title: Sphinx

text: The Indian conception of a sphinx that comes closest to the classic Greek idea is in the concept of the "Sharabha", a mythical creature, part lion, part man and part bird, and the form of Sharabha that god Shiva took on to counter Narasimha's violence.


title: Sphinx

text: In Sri Lanka the sphinx is known as "narasimha" or man-lion. As a sphinx, it has the body of a lion and the head of a human being, and is not to be confused with Narasimha, the fourth reincarnation of the deity Vishnu; this avatar or incarnation is depicted with a human body and the head of a lion. The "sphinx" narasimha is part of the Buddhist tradition and functions as a guardian of the northern direction and also was depicted on banners.


title: Sphinx

text: In Burma (Myanmar), the sphinx-like statue, with a human head and two lion hindquarters, is known as "Manussiha" ("manuthiha"). It is depicted on the corners of Buddhist stupas, and its legends tell how it was created by Buddhist monks to protect a new-born royal baby from being devoured by ogresses.


title: Sphinx

text: Nora Nair, Norasingh and Thep Norasingh are three of the names under which the "sphinx" is known in Thailand. They are depicted as upright walking beings with the lower body of a lion or deer, and the upper body of a human. Often they are found as female-male pairs. Here, too, the sphinx serves a protective function. It also is enumerated among the mythological creatures that inhabit the ranges of the sacred mountain Himapan.


title: Sphinx

text: Among the Egyptians, sphinxes were placed at the entrance of the temples to guard their mysteries, by warning those who penetrated within that they should conceal a knowledge of them from the uninitiated. Champollion said that the sphinx became successively the symbol of each of the gods. The placement of the sphinxes expressed the idea that all the gods were hidden from the people, and that the knowledge of them, guarded in the sanctuaries, was revealed to initiates only.


title: Sphinx

text: As a Masonic emblem, the sphinx has been adopted as a symbol of mystery, and as such often is found as a decoration sculptured in front of Masonic temples, or engraved at the head of Masonic documents.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying is the use of force, coercion, hurtful teasing or threat, to abuse, aggressively dominate or intimidate. The behavior is often repeated and habitual. One essential prerequisite is the perception (by the bully or by others) of an imbalance of physical or social power. This imbalance distinguishes bullying from conflict. Bullying is a subcategory of aggressive behavior characterized by hostile intent, imbalance of power and repetition over a period of time. Bullying is the activity of repeated, aggressive behavior intended to hurt another individual, physically, mentally or emotionally.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying can be done individually or by a group, called mobbing, in which the bully may have one or more followers who are willing to assist the primary bully or who reinforce the bully by providing positive feedback such as laughing. Bullying in school and the workplace is also referred to as "peer abuse". Robert W. Fuller has analyzed bullying in the context of rankism. The Swedish-Norwegian researcher Dan Olweus says bullying occurs when a person is "exposed, repeatedly and over time, to negative actions on the part of one or more other persons", and that negative actions occur "when a person intentionally inflicts injury or discomfort upon another person, through physical contact, through words or in other ways". Individual bullying is usually characterized by a person behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person.


title: Bullying

text: A bullying culture can develop in any context in which humans interact with each other. This may include school, family, the workplace, the home, and neighborhoods. The main platform for bullying in contemporary culture is on social media websites. In a 2012 study of male adolescent American football players, "the strongest predictor [of bullying] was the perception of whether the most influential male in a player's life would approve of the bullying behavior." A study by "The Lancet" Child & Adolescent Health in 2019 showed a relationship between social media use by girls and an increase in their exposure to bullying.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying may be defined in many different ways. In the United Kingdom, there is no legal definition of bullying, while some states in the United States have laws against it. Bullying is divided into four basic types of abuse – psychological (sometimes called emotional or relational), verbal, physical, and cyber.


title: Bullying

text: Behaviors used to assert such domination may include physical assault or coercion, verbal harassment, or threat, and such acts may be directed repeatedly toward particular targets. Rationalizations of such behavior sometimes include differences of social class, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, appearance, behavior, body language, personality, reputation, lineage, strength, size, or ability.


title: Bullying

text: The word "bully" was first used in the 1530s meaning "sweetheart", applied to either sex, from the , "lover, brother", probably diminutive of , "brother", of uncertain origin (compare with the German "buhle" "lover"). The meaning deteriorated through the 17th century through "fine fellow", "blusterer", to "harasser of the weak". This may have been as a connecting sense between "lover" and "ruffian" as in "protector of a prostitute", which was one sense of "bully" (though not specifically attested until 1706). The verb "to bully" is first attested in 1710.


title: Bullying

text: In the past, in American culture, the term has been used differently, as an exclamation/exhortation, in particular famously associated with Theodore Roosevelt and continuing to the present in the bully pulpit, Roosevelt's coining and also as faint/deprecating praise ("bully for him").


title: Bullying

text: Bullying has been classified by the body of literature into different types. These can be in the form of nonverbal, verbal, or physical behavior. Another classification is based on perpetrators or the participants involved, so that the types include individual and collective bullying. Other interpretation also cite emotional and relational bullying in addition to physical harm inflicted towards another person or even property. There is also the case of the more recent phenomenon called cyberbullying.


title: Bullying

text: Physical, verbal, and relational bullying are most prevalent in primary school and could also begin much earlier while continuing into later stages in individuals lives.


title: Bullying

text: Individual bullying tactics are perpetrated by a single person against a victim or victims. Individual bullying can be classified into four types outlined below:


title: Bullying

text: Physical bullying is any bullying that hurts someone's body or damages their possessions. Stealing, shoving, hitting, fighting, and intentionally destroying someone's property are types of physical bullying. Physical bullying is rarely the first form of bullying that a victim will experience. Often bullying will begin in a different form and later progress to physical violence. In physical bullying the main weapon the bully uses is his/her body, or some part thereof; or an object as a weapon when attacking his/her victim. Sometimes groups of young adults will target and alienate a peer because of some adolescent prejudice. This can quickly lead to a situation where they are being taunted, tortured, and "beaten up" by their classmates. Physical bullying will often escalate over time, and can lead to a detrimental or fatal ending, and therefore many try to stop it quickly to prevent any further escalation.


title: Bullying

text: Verbal bullying is one of the most common types of bullying. This is any bullying that is conducted by speaking, other use of the voice, or some form of body language and does not involve any physical contact. Bullying usually begins at this stage and includes any of the following:


title: Bullying

text: In verbal bullying, the main weapon the bully uses is voice. In many cases, verbal bullying is common in both genders, but girls are more likely to perform it. Girls, in general, are more subtle with insults than boys. Girls use verbal bullying, as well as social exclusion techniques, to dominate and control other individuals and show their superiority and power, often to try to impress someone they idolize. Many boys are subtle enough to use verbal techniques for domination when they want to avoid the trouble that can come with physically bullying someone else.


title: Bullying

text: Relational bullying (sometimes referred to as social aggression) is the type of bullying that uses relationships to hurt others. The term also denotes any bullying that is done with the intent to hurt somebody's reputation or social standing which can also link in with the techniques included in physical and verbal bullying. Relational bullying is a form of bullying common among youth, but particularly upon girls. Social exclusion (slighting or making someone feel "left out") is one of the most common types of relational bullying. Relational bullying can be used as a tool by bullies to both improve their social standing and control others. Unlike physical bullying which is obvious, relational bullying is not overt and can continue for a long time without being noticed.


title: Bullying

text: Cyberbullying is the use of technology to harass, threaten, embarrass, or target another person. When an adult is involved, it may meet the definition of cyber-harassment or cyberstalking, a crime that can have legal consequences and involve jail time. This includes bullying by use of email, instant messaging, social media websites (such as Facebook), text messages, and cell phones. It is stated that Cyberbullying is more common in secondary school than in primary school.


title: Bullying

text: Collective bullying tactics are employed by more than one individual against a victim or victims. Collective bullying is known as mobbing, and can include any of the individual types of bullying. Trolling behavior on social media, although generally assumed to be individual in nature by the casual reader, is sometime organized efforts by sponsored astroturfers.


title: Bullying

text: Mobbing refers to the bullying of an individual by a group, in any context, such as a family, peer group, school, workplace, neighborhood, community, or online. When it occurs as emotional abuse in the workplace, such as "ganging up" by co-workers, subordinates or superiors, to force someone out of the workplace through rumor, innuendo, intimidation, humiliation, discrediting, and isolation, it is also referred to as malicious, nonsexual, nonracial/racial, general harassment.


title: Bullying

text: Studies have shown that envy and resentment may be motives for bullying. Research on the self-esteem of bullies has produced equivocal results. While some bullies are arrogant and narcissistic, they can also use bullying as a tool to conceal shame or anxiety or to boost self-esteem: by demeaning others, the abuser feels empowered. Bullies may bully out of jealousy or because they themselves are bullied. Psychologist Roy Baumeister asserts that people who are prone to abusive behavior tend to have inflated but fragile egos. Because they think too highly of themselves, they are frequently offended by the criticisms and lack of deference of other people, and react to this disrespect with violence and insults.


title: Bullying

text: Researchers have identified other risk factors such as depression and personality disorders, as well as quickness to anger and use of force, addiction to aggressive behaviors, mistaking others' actions as hostile, concern with preserving self-image, and engaging in obsessive or rigid actions. A combination of these factors may also be causes of this behavior. In one study of youth, a combination of antisocial traits and depression was found to be the best predictor of youth violence, whereas video game violence and television violence exposure were not predictive of these behaviors.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying may also result from a genetic predisposition or a brain abnormality in the bully. While parents can help a toddler develop emotional regulation and control to restrict aggressive behavior, some children fail to develop these skills due to insecure attachment with their families, ineffective discipline, and environmental factors such as a stressful home life and hostile siblings. Moreover, according to some researchers, bullies may be inclined toward negativity and perform poorly academically. Dr. Cook says, "A typical bully has trouble resolving problems with others and also has trouble academically. He or she usually has negative attitudes and beliefs about others, feels negatively toward himself/herself, comes from a family environment characterized by conflict and poor parenting, perceives school as negative and is negatively influenced by peers."


title: Bullying

text: Contrarily, some researchers have suggested that some bullies are psychologically strongest and have high social standing among their peers, while their targets are emotionally distressed and socially marginalized. Peer groups often promote the bully's actions, and members of these peer groups also engage in behaviors, such as mocking, excluding, punching, and insulting one another as a source of entertainment. Other researchers also argued that a minority of the bullies, those who are not in-turn bullied, enjoy going to school, and are least likely to take days off sick.


title: Bullying

text: Research indicates that adults who bully have authoritarian personalities, combined with a strong need to control or dominate. It has also been suggested that a prejudicial view of subordinates can be a particularly strong risk factor.


title: Bullying

text: In a recent study, bullies showed lower school performance-related self-esteem than non-involved students. They also showed higher social self-esteem than victims of traditional bullying.


title: Bullying

text: Brain studies have shown that the section of the brain associated with reward becomes active when bullies are shown a video of someone inflicting pain on another.


title: Bullying

text: Often, bullying takes place in the presence of a large group of relatively uninvolved bystanders. In many cases, it is the bully's ability to create the illusion they have the support of the majority present that instills the fear of "speaking out" in protestation of the bullying activities being observed by the group. Unless the "bully mentality" is effectively challenged in any given group in its early stages, it often becomes an accepted, or supported, norm within the group.


title: Bullying

text: Unless action is taken, a "culture of bullying" is often perpetuated within a group for months, years, or longer.


title: Bullying

text: Bystanders who have been able to establish their own "friendship group" or "support group" have been found to be far more likely to opt to speak out against bullying behavior than those who have not.


title: Bullying

text: In addition to communication of clear expectations that bystanders should intervene and increasing individual self-efficacy, there is growing research to suggest interventions should build on the foundation that bullying is morally wrong.


title: Bullying

text: Dr. Cook says, "A typical victim is likely to be aggressive, lack social skills, think negative thoughts, experience difficulties in solving social problems, come from a negative family, school and community environments and be noticeably rejected and isolated by peers." Victims often have characteristics such as being physically and mentally weak, as well as being easily distraught emotionally. They may also have physical characteristics that make them easier targets for bullies such as being overweight or having some type of physical deformity. Boys are more likely to be victims of physical bullying while girls are more likely to be bullied indirectly.


title: Bullying

text: Low levels of self-esteem has been identified as a frequent antecedent of bullying victimization. Victims of traditional bullying tend to have lower global, social, body-related, and emotional self-esteem compared to uninvolved students.


title: Bullying

text: Victims of cyberbullying, on the other hand, may not have lower self-esteem scores than uninvolved students but might have higher body-related self-esteem than both victims of traditional bullying and bullies.


title: Bullying

text: It has also been shown that victims are more likely to employ self-defeating or self-deprecating humor intended to entertain others at the expense of themselves and their own feelings.


title: Bullying

text: The results of a meta-analysis conducted by Cook and published by the American Psychological Association in 2010 concluded the main risk factors for children and adolescents being bullied, and also for becoming bullies, are the lack of social problem-solving skills.


title: Bullying

text: Children who are bullied often show physical or emotional signs, such as: being afraid to attend school, complaining of headaches or a loss of appetite, a lack of interest in school activities, spending time with friends or family, reluctance to go out in public for fear they may encounter their bullies in public places other than school, and having an overall sense of sadness.


title: Bullying

text: Mona O'Moore of the Anti-Bullying Centre at Trinity College in Dublin, has written, "There is a growing body of research which indicates that individuals, whether child or adult, who are persistently subjected to abusive behavior are at risk of stress related illness which can sometimes lead to suicide"


title: Bullying

text: Those who have been the targets of bullying can develop long-term emotional and behavioral problems. Bullying can cause loneliness, depression, anxiety, lead to low self-esteem and increased susceptibility to illness. Bullying has also been shown to cause maladjustment in young children, and targets of bullying who were also bullies themselves exhibit even greater social difficulties. A mental health report also found that bullying was linked to eating disorders, anxiety, body dysmorphia and other negative psychological effects. Both victims and perpetrators have been shown to exhibit higher levels of loneliness.


title: Bullying

text: Even though there is evidence that bullying increases the risk of suicide, bullying alone does not cause suicide. Depression is one of the main reasons why kids who are bullied die by suicide. It is estimated that between 15 and 25 children die by suicide every year in the UK alone because they are being bullied. Certain groups seem to incur a higher risk for suicide, such as Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, Asian Americans, and LGBT people. When someone feels unsupported by family or friends, it can make the situation much worse for the victim.


title: Bullying

text: In a self-report study completed in New York by 9th through 12th graders, victims of bullying reported more depressive symptoms and psychological distress than those who did not experience bullying. All types of involvement in bullying among both boys and girls is associated with depression even a couple years later. Another study that followed up with Finnish teens two years after the initial survey showed that depression and suicidal ideation is higher with teens who are bullied than those who did not report experiencing bullying. A Dutch longitudinal study on elementary students reported that boys who are bully-victims, who play both roles of a victim and a bully, were more likely to experience depression or serious suicidal ideation than the other roles, victims or bullies only, while girls who have any involvement in bullying have a higher level of risk for depression. In a study of high school students completed in Boston, students who self reported being victims of bullying were more likely to consider suicide when compared to youth who did not report being bullied. The same study also showed a higher risk of suicidal consideration in youth who report being a perpetrator, victim, or victim-perpetrator. Victims and victim-bullies are associated with a higher risk of suicide attempts. The place where youth live also appears to differentiate their bullying experiences such that those living in more urban areas who reported both being bullied and bullying others appear to show higher risk of suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. A national survey given to American 6th through 10th grade students found that cyberbullying victims experience a higher level of depression than victims experiencing other forms of bullying. This can be related to the anonymity behind social media. If a teen is being bullied and is displaying symptoms of depression it should be questioned and interventions should be implemented. The Danish study showed that kids who are bullied talked to their parents and teachers about it and some reported a decrease in bullying or a stop in the bullying after a teacher or parent intervened. The study emphasizes the importance of implementing program-collaborations in schools to have programs and anti-bullying interventions in place to prevent and properly intervene when it occurs. The study also shows the importance of having parents and teachers talk to the bullies about their bullying behavior in order to provide the necessary support for those experiencing bullying.


title: Bullying

text: While some people find it very easy to ignore a bully, others may find it very difficult and reach a breaking point. There have been cases of apparent bullying suicides that have been reported closely by the media. These include the deaths of Ryan Halligan, Phoebe Prince, Dawn-Marie Wesley, Nicola Ann Raphael, Megan Meier, Audrie Pott, Tyler Clementi, Jamey Rodemeyer, Kenneth Weishuhn, Jadin Bell, Kelly Yeomans, Rehtaeh Parsons, Amanda Todd, Brodie Panlock, Jessica Haffer, Hamed Nastoh, Sladjana Vidovic, April Himes, Cherice Moralez and Rebecca Ann Sedwick. According to the suicide awareness voices for education, suicide is one of the leading causes of death for youth from 15 to 24 years old. Over 16 percent of students seriously consider suicide, 13 percent create a plan, and 8 percent have made a serious attempt.


title: Bullying

text: Some have argued that bullying can teach life lessons and instill strength. Helene Guldberg, a child development academic, sparked controversy when she argued that being a target of bullying can teach a child "how to manage disputes and boost their ability to interact with others", and that teachers should not intervene but leave children to respond to the bullying themselves. Others, however, have pointed out that this is only true for normal peer conflicts but not for bullying cases.


title: Bullying

text: The teaching of anti-bullying coping skills to children, carers and teachers has been found to be an effective long-term means of reducing bullying incidence rates and a valuable skill-set for individuals.


title: Bullying

text: Statistically controlling for age and pubertal status, results indicated that on average verbally bullied girls produced less testosterone, and verbally bullied boys produced more testosterone than their nonbullied counterparts.


title: Bullying

text: Research on the dark triad (narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy) indicate a correlation with bullying as part of evidence of the aversive nature of those traits.


title: Bullying

text: A bully may project his/her own feelings of vulnerability onto the target(s) of the bullying activity. Despite the fact that a bully's typically denigrating activities are aimed at the bully's targets, the true source of such negativity is ultimately almost always found in the bully's own sense of personal insecurity and/or vulnerability. Such aggressive projections of displaced negative emotions can occur anywhere from the micro-level of interpersonal relationships, all the way up through to the macro-level of international politics, or even international armed conflict.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying is abusive social interaction between peers which can include aggression, harassment, and violence. Bullying is typically repetitive and enacted by those who are in a position of power over the victim. A growing body of research illustrates a significant relationship between bullying and emotional intelligence (EI). Mayer et al., (2008) defines the dimensions of overall EI as "accurately perceiving emotion, using emotions to facilitate thought, understanding emotion, and managing emotion". The concept combines emotional and intellectual processes. Lower emotional intelligence appears to be related to involvement in bullying, as the bully and/or the victim of bullying. EI seems to play an important role in both bullying behavior and victimization in bullying; given that EI is illustrated to be malleable, EI education could greatly improve bullying prevention and intervention initiatives.


title: Bullying

text: Cyberbullying is any bullying done through the use of technology. This form of bullying can easily go undetected because of lack of authoritative (including parental) supervision. Because bullies can pose as someone else, it is the most anonymous form of bullying. Cyberbullying includes abuse using email, instant messaging, text messaging, websites, and social networking sites. Particular watchdog organizations have been designed to contain the spread of cyberbullying.


title: Bullying

text: Disabled people are disproportionately affected by bullying and abuse, and such activity has been cited as a hate crime. The bullying is not limited to those who are visibly disabled, such as wheelchair users or physically deformed such as those with a cleft lip, but also those with developmental disabilities such as autism and developmental coordination disorder.


title: Bullying

text: There is an additional problem that those with learning disabilities are often not as able to explain things to other people, so are more likely to be disbelieved or ignored if they do complain.


title: Bullying

text: Gay bullying and gay bashing designate direct or indirect verbal or physical actions by a person or group against someone who is gay or lesbian, or perceived to be so due to rumors or because they are considered to fit gay stereotypes. Gay and lesbian youth are more likely than straight youth to report bullying, as well as be bullied.


title: Bullying

text: Legal bullying is the bringing of a vexatious legal action to control and punish a person. Legal bullying can often take the form of frivolous, repetitive, or burdensome lawsuits brought to intimidate the defendant into submitting to the litigant's request, not because of the legal merit of the litigant's position, but principally due to the defendant's inability to maintain the legal battle. This can also take the form of Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP). It was partially concern about the potential for this kind of abuse that helped to fuel the protests against SOPA and PIPA in the United States in 2011 and 2012.


title: Bullying

text: In 2000, the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD) defined bullying as "the use of physical strength or the abuse of authority to intimidate or victimize others, or to give unlawful punishments".


title: Bullying

text: Some argue that this behaviour should be allowed, due to ways in which "soldiering" is different from other occupations. Soldiers expected to risk their lives should, according to them, develop strength of body and spirit to accept bullying.


title: Bullying

text: Parents who may displace their anger, insecurity, or a persistent need to dominate and control upon their children in excessive ways have been proven to increase the likelihood that their own children will in turn become overly aggressive or controlling towards their peers.


title: Bullying

text: The American Psychological Association advises on its website that parents who may suspect their own children may be engaging in bullying activities among their peers should carefully consider the examples which they themselves may be setting for their own children regarding how they typically interact with their own peers, colleagues, and children.


title: Bullying

text: The prison environment is known for bullying. An additional complication is the staff and their relationships with the inmates. Thus, the following possible bullying scenarios are possible:


title: Bullying

text: It is important to distinguish school bullying that per definition has the goal of harming the victim from normal peer conflict that is an inherent part of everyday school life and often promotes social development. Unlike normal conflict, bullying is a systematic and repeated abuse committed intentionally by another student who has more power (physical, social, or otherwise).


title: Bullying

text: Bullying can occur in nearly any part in or around the school building, although it may occur more frequently during physical education classes and activities such as recess. Bullying also takes place in school hallways, bathrooms, on school buses and while waiting for buses, and in classes that require group work and/or after school activities. Bullying in school sometimes consists of a group of students taking advantage of or isolating one student in particular and gaining the loyalty of bystanders who want to avoid becoming the next target. In the 2011 documentary "Bully", we see first hand the torture that kids go through both in school and while on the school bus. As the movie follows around a few kids we see how bullying affects them both at school as well as in their homes. While bullying has no age limit, these bullies may taunt and tease their target before finally physically bullying them. Bystanders typically choose to either participate or watch, sometimes out of fear of becoming the next target.


title: Bullying

text: Teachers play an important role in bullying prevention and intervention because they are the adults who spend most of their time with the students.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying can, however, also be perpetrated by teachers and the school system itself; there is an inherent power differential in the system that can easily predispose to subtle or covert abuse (relational aggression or passive aggression), humiliation, or exclusion—even while maintaining overt commitments to anti-bullying policies.


title: Bullying

text: In 2016, in Canada, a North American legal precedent was set by a mother and her son, after the son was bullied in his public school. The mother and son won a court case against the Ottawa-Carleton District School Board, making this the first case in North America where a school board has been found negligent in a bullying case for failing to meet the standard of care (the "duty of care" that the school board owes to its students). Thus, it sets a precedent of a school board being found liable in negligence for harm caused to a child, because they failed to protect a child from the bullying actions of other students. There has been only one other similar bullying case and it was won in Australia in 2013 ("Oyston v. St. Patricks College", 2013).


title: Bullying

text: Sexual bullying is "any bullying behaviour, whether physical or non-physical, that is based on a person's sexuality or gender. It is when sexuality or gender is used as a weapon by boys or girls towards other boys or girls – although it is more commonly directed at girls. It can be carried out to a person's face, behind their back or through the use of technology."


title: Bullying

text: Trans bashing is the act of victimizing a person physically, sexually, or verbally because they are transgender or transsexual. Unlike gay bashing, it is committed because of the target's actual or perceived gender identity, not sexual orientation.


title: Bullying

text: Workplace bullying occurs when an employee experiences a persistent pattern of mistreatment from others in the workplace that causes harm. Workplace bullying can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, psychological, physical abuse and humiliation. This type of workplace aggression is particularly difficult because, unlike the typical forms of school bullying, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society. Bullying in the workplace is in the majority of cases reported as having been perpetrated by someone in authority over the target. Bullies can also be peers, and occasionally can be subordinates.


title: Bullying

text: The first known documented use of "workplace bullying" is in 1992 in a book by Andrea Adams called "Bullying at Work: How to Confront and Overcome It".


title: Bullying

text: Research has also investigated the impact of the larger organizational context on bullying as well as the group-level processes that impact on the incidence, and maintenance of bullying behavior. Bullying can be covert or overt. It may be missed by superiors or known by many throughout the organization. Negative effects are not limited to the targeted individuals, and may lead to a decline in employee morale and a change in organizational culture. A Cochrane Collaboration systematic review has found very low quality evidence to suggest that organizational and individual interventions may prevent bullying behaviors in the workplace.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying in academia is workplace bullying of scholars and staff in academia, especially places of higher education such as colleges and universities. It is believed to be common, although has not received as much attention from researchers as bullying in some other contexts.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying has been identified as prominent in blue-collar jobs, including on oil rigs and in mechanic shops and machine shops. It is thought that intimidation and fear of retribution cause decreased incident reports. In industry sectors dominated by males, typically of little education, where disclosure of incidents are seen as effeminate, reporting in the socioeconomic and cultural milieu of such industries would likely lead to a vicious circle. This is often used in combination with manipulation and coercion of facts to gain favour among higher-ranking administrators.


title: Bullying

text: A culture of bullying is common in information technology (IT), leading to high sickness rates, low morale, poor productivity, and high staff-turnover. Deadline-driven project work and stressed-out managers take their toll on IT workers.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying in the legal profession is believed to be more common than in some other professions. It is believed that its adversarial, hierarchical tradition contributes towards this. Women, trainees and solicitors who have been qualified for five years or less are more affected, as are ethnic minority lawyers and lesbian, gay and bisexual lawyers.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying in the medical profession is common, particularly of student or trainee doctors and of nurses. It is thought that this is at least in part an outcome of conservative traditional hierarchical structures and teaching methods in the medical profession, which may result in a bullying cycle.


title: Bullying

text: Even though The American Nurses Association believes that all nursing personnel have the right to work in safe, non-abusive environments, bullying has been identified as being particularly prevalent in the nursing profession although the reasons are not clear. It is thought that relational aggression (psychological aspects of bullying such as gossiping and intimidation) are relevant. Relational aggression has been studied among girls but not so much among adult women.


title: Bullying

text: School teachers are commonly the subject of bullying but they are also sometimes the originators of bullying within a school environment.


title: Bullying

text: Children have been observed bullying anthropomorphic robots designed to assist the elderly. Their attacks start with blocking the robots' paths of movement and then escalate to verbal abuse, hitting and destroying the object. Seventy-five percent of the kids interviewed perceived the robot as "human-like" yet decided to abuse it anyway, while 35% of the kids who beat up the robot did so "for enjoyment".


title: Bullying

text: Bullying prevention is the collective effort to prevent, reduce and stop bullying. Many campaigns and events are designated to bullying prevention throughout the world. Bullying prevention campaigns and events include Anti-Bullying Day, Anti-Bullying Week, International Day of Pink, International STAND UP to Bullying Day and National Bullying Prevention Month. Anti-bullying laws in the U.S. have also been enacted in 23 of its 50 states, making bullying in schools illegal.


title: Bullying

text: Bullying is typically ongoing and not isolated behaviour. Common responses are to try to ignore it, to confront the bullies, or to turn to an authority figure.


title: Bullying

text: It can be important to address bullying behaviour early on, as it can be easier to control the earlier it is detected.


title: Bullying

text: Bystanders play an important role in responding to bullying, as doing nothing can encourage it to continue, while small steps that oppose the behaviour can reduce it.


title: Bullying

text: Authority figures can play an important role, such as parents or teachers in child or adolescent situations, or supervisors, human-resources staff or parent-bodies in workplace and volunteer settings. In the school context, teachers who set clear boundaries, communicate seriously that bullying behavior is unacceptable and will not be tolerated, and involve school administrators have been shown to reduce bullying. Discussing bullying and its consequences with the whole class is also an important intervention that not only reduces bullying, but also encourages other students to step in and stop bullying even before it reaches its full form. In general, authority figures can be influential in recognising and stopping bullying behaviour, and creating an environment that does not encourage or promote bullying.


title: Bullying

text: In many situations, authority figures are untrained and unqualified, do not know how to respond, and can make the situation worse.


title: Bullying

text: In some cases the authority figures even support the people doing the bullying, facilitating it continuing and increasing the isolation and marginalising of the target.


title: Bullying

text: Some of the most effective ways to respond are to recognise that harmful behaviour is taking place, and to create an environment where it will not continue.


title: Citric acid

text: Citric acid is an organic compound with the chemical formula HOC(COH)(CHCOH). It is a colorless weak organic acid. It occurs naturally in citrus fruits. In biochemistry, it is an intermediate in the citric acid cycle, which occurs in the metabolism of all aerobic organisms.


title: Citric acid

text: More than two million tons of citric acid are manufactured every year. It is used widely as an acidifier, as a flavoring, and a chelating agent.


title: Citric acid

text: A citrate is a derivative of citric acid; that is, the salts, esters, and the polyatomic anion found in solution. An example of the former, a salt is trisodium citrate; an ester is triethyl citrate. When part of a salt, the formula of the citrate anion is written as or .


title: Citric acid

text: Citric acid occurs in a variety of fruits and vegetables, most notably citrus fruits. Lemons and limes have particularly high concentrations of the acid; it can constitute as much as 8% of the dry weight of these fruits (about 47 g/L in the juices). The concentrations of citric acid in citrus fruits range from 0.005 mol/L for oranges and grapefruits to 0.30 mol/L in lemons and limes; these values vary within species depending upon the cultivar and the circumstances under which the fruit was grown.


title: Citric acid

text: Citric acid was first isolated in 1784 by the chemist Carl Wilhelm Scheele, who crystallized it from lemon juice.


title: Citric acid

text: Industrial-scale citric acid production first began in 1890 based on the Italian citrus fruit industry, where the juice was treated with hydrated lime (calcium hydroxide) to precipitate calcium citrate, which was isolated and converted back to the acid using diluted sulfuric acid. In 1893, C. Wehmer discovered "Penicillium" mold could produce citric acid from sugar. However, microbial production of citric acid did not become industrially important until World War I disrupted Italian citrus exports.


title: Citric acid

text: In 1917, The American food chemist James Currie discovered certain strains of the mold "Aspergillus niger" could be efficient citric acid producers, and the pharmaceutical company Pfizer began industrial-level production using this technique two years later, followed by Citrique Belge in 1929.


title: Citric acid

text: In this production technique, which is still the major industrial route to citric acid used today, cultures of "A. niger" are fed on a sucrose or glucose-containing medium to produce citric acid. The source of sugar is corn steep liquor, molasses, hydrolyzed corn starch, or other inexpensive, sugary solution. After the mold is filtered out of the resulting solution, citric acid is isolated by precipitating it with calcium hydroxide to yield calcium citrate salt, from which citric acid is regenerated by treatment with sulfuric acid, as in the direct extraction from citrus fruit juice.


title: Citric acid

text: In 1977, a patent was granted to Lever Brothers for the chemical synthesis of citric acid starting either from aconitic or isocitrate/alloisocitrate calcium salts under high pressure conditions; this produced citric acid in near quantitative conversion under what appeared to be a reverse, non-enzymatic Krebs cycle reaction.


title: Citric acid

text: Global production was in excess of 2,000,000 tons in 2018. More than 50% of this volume was produced in China. More than 50% was used as an acidity regulator in beverages, some 20% in other food applications, 20% for detergent applications, and 10% for applications other than food, such as cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, and in the chemical industry.


title: Citric acid

text: Citric acid can be obtained as an anhydrous (water-free) form or as a monohydrate. The anhydrous form crystallizes from hot water, while the monohydrate forms when citric acid is crystallized from cold water. The monohydrate can be converted to the anhydrous form at about 78 °C. Citric acid also dissolves in absolute (anhydrous) ethanol (76 parts of citric acid per 100 parts of ethanol) at 15 °C. It decomposes with loss of carbon dioxide above about 175 °C.


title: Citric acid

text: Citric acid is a tribasic acid, with pK values, extrapolated to zero ionic strength, of 3.128, 4.761, and 6.396 at 25 °C. The pK of the hydroxyl group has been found, by means of C NMR spectroscopy, to be 14.4.


title: Citric acid

text: The speciation diagram shows that solutions of citric acid are buffer solutions between about pH 2 and pH 8. In biological systems around pH 7, the two species present are the citrate ion and mono-hydrogen citrate ion. The SSC 20X hybridization buffer is an example in common use. Tables compiled for biochemical studies are available.


title: Citric acid

text: On the other hand, the pH of a 1 mM solution of citric acid will be about 3.2. The pH of fruit juices from citrus fruits like oranges and lemons depends on the citric acid concentration, with a higher concentration of citric acid resulting in a lower pH.


title: Citric acid

text: Acid salts of citric acid can be prepared by careful adjustment of the pH before crystallizing the compound. See, for example, sodium citrate.


title: Citric acid

text: The citrate ion forms complexes with metallic cations. The stability constants for the formation of these complexes are quite large because of the chelate effect. Consequently, it forms complexes even with alkali metal cations. However, when a chelate complex is formed using all three carboxylate groups, the chelate rings have 7 and 8 members, which are generally less stable thermodynamically than smaller chelate rings. In consequence, the hydroxyl group can be deprotonated, forming part of a more stable 5-membered ring, as in ammonium ferric citrate, ·2.


title: Citric acid

text: Citric acid can be esterified at one or more of its three carboxylic acid groups to form any of a variety of mono-, di-, tri-, and mixed esters.


title: Citric acid

text: Citrate is an intermediate in the citric acid cycle, also known as the TCA (TriCarboxylic Acid) cycle or the Krebs cycle, a central metabolic pathway for animals, plants, and bacteria. Citrate synthase catalyzes the condensation of oxaloacetate with acetyl CoA to form citrate. Citrate then acts as the substrate for aconitase and is converted into aconitic acid. The cycle ends with regeneration of oxaloacetate. This series of chemical reactions is the source of two-thirds of the food-derived energy in higher organisms. Hans Adolf Krebs received the 1953 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for the discovery.


title: Citric acid

text: Some bacteria (notably "E. coli") can produce and consume citrate internally as part of their TCA cycle, but are unable to use it as food because they lack the enzymes required to import it into the cell. After tens of thousands of evolutions in a minimal glucose medium that also contained citrate during Richard Lenski's Long-Term Evolution Experiment, a variant "E. coli" evolved with the ability to grow aerobically on citrate. Zachary Blount, a student of Lenski's, and colleagues studied these "Cit" "E. coli" as a model for how novel traits evolve. They found evidence that, in this case, the innovation was caused by a rare duplication mutation due to the accumulation of several prior "potentiating" mutations, the identity and effects of which are still under study. The evolution of the Cit trait has been considered a notable example of the role of historical contingency in evolution.


title: Citric acid

text: Citrate can be transported out of the mitochondria and into the cytoplasm, then broken down into acetyl-CoA for fatty acid synthesis, and into oxaloacetate. Citrate is a positive modulator of this conversion, and allosterically regulates the enzyme acetyl-CoA carboxylase, which is the regulating enzyme in the conversion of acetyl-CoA into malonyl-CoA (the commitment step in fatty acid synthesis). In short, citrate is transported into the cytoplasm, converted into acetyl-CoA, which is then converted into malonyl-CoA by acetyl-CoA carboxylase, which is allosterically modulated by citrate.


title: Citric acid

text: High concentrations of cytosolic citrate can inhibit phosphofructokinase, the catalyst of a rate-limiting step of glycolysis. This effect is advantageous: high concentrations of citrate indicate that there is a large supply of biosynthetic precursor molecules, so there is no need for phosphofructokinase to continue to send molecules of its substrate, fructose 6-phosphate, into glycolysis. Citrate acts by augmenting the inhibitory effect of high concentrations of ATP, another sign that there is no need to carry out glycolysis.