title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Geographically, the Arabian Peninsula includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Yemen, as well as the southern portions of Iraq and Jordan. The largest of these is Saudi Arabia. In the classical era, the southern portions of modern-day Syria, Jordan, and the Sinai Peninsula were also considered parts of Arabia (see Arabia Petraea).


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Arabian Peninsula formed as a result of the rifting of the Red Sea between 56 and 23 million years ago, and is bordered by the Red Sea to the west and southwest, the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the northeast, the Levant and Mesopotamia to the north and the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean to the southeast. The peninsula plays a critical geopolitical role in the Arab world and globally due to its vast reserves of oil and natural gas.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Before the modern era, the region was divided into primarily four distinct regions: the Central Plateau (Najd and Al-Yamama), South Arabia (Yemen, Hadhramaut and Oman), Al-Bahrain (Eastern Arabia or Al-Hassa), and the Hejaz (Tihamah for the western coast), as described by Ibn al-Faqih.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: During the Hellenistic period, the area was known as "Arabia" or "Aravia" (). The Romans named three regions with the prefix "Arabia", encompassing a larger area than the current term "Arabian Peninsula":


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Arab inhabitants used a north–south division of Arabia: Al Sham-Al Yaman, or Arabia Deserta-Arabia Felix. Arabia Felix had originally been used for the whole peninsula, and at other times only for the southern region. Because its use became limited to the south, the whole peninsula was simply called Arabia. Arabia Deserta was the entire desert region extending north from Arabia Felix to Palmyra and the Euphrates, including all the area between Pelusium on the Nile and Babylon. This area was also called Arabia and not sharply distinguished from the peninsula.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Arabs and the Ottoman Empire considered the west of the Arabian Peninsula region where the Arabs lived 'the land of the Arabs' – Bilad al-'Arab (Arabia), and its major divisions were the bilad al-Sham (Levant), bilad al-Yaman (Yemen), and Bilad al-'Iraq (Iraq). The Ottomans used the term Arabistan in a broad sense for the region starting from Cilicia, where the Euphrates river makes its descent into Syria, through Palestine, and on through the remainder of the Sinai and Arabian peninsulas.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: "The provinces of Arabia were:" Al Tih, the Sinai peninsula, Hedjaz, Asir, Yemen, Hadramaut, Mahra and Shilu, Oman, Hasa, Bahrain, Dahna, Nufud, the Hammad, which included the deserts of Syria, Mesopotamia and Babylonia.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Arabian Peninsula is located in the continent of Asia and is bounded by (clockwise) the Persian Gulf on the northeast, the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman on the east, the Arabian Sea on the southeast, the Gulf of Aden, Guardafui Channel and Somali Sea on the south, the Bab-el-Mandeb strait on the southwest and the Red Sea, which is located on the southwest and west. The northern portion of the peninsula merges with the Syrian Desert with no clear borderline, although the northern boundary of the peninsula is generally considered to be the northern borders of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The most prominent feature of the peninsula is desert, but in the southwest, there are mountain ranges, which receive greater rainfall than the rest of the peninsula. Harrat ash Shaam is a large volcanic field that extends from northwestern Arabia into Jordan and southern Syria.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Peninsula's constituent countries are (clockwise from north to south) Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on the east, Oman on the southeast, Yemen on the south, and Saudi Arabia at the center. The island country of Bahrain lies just off the east coast of the Peninsula. Due to Yemen's jurisdiction over the Socotra Archipelago, the Peninsula's geopolitical outline faces the Guardafui Channel and the Somali Sea to the south.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The six countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC).


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia covers the greater part of the Peninsula. The majority of the population of the Peninsula lives in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. The Peninsula contains the world's largest reserves of oil. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are economically the wealthiest in the region. Qatar, the only peninsular country in the Persian Gulf on the larger peninsula, is home to the Arabic-language television station Al Jazeera and its English-language subsidiary Al Jazeera English. Kuwait, on the border with Iraq, is an important country strategically, forming one of the main staging grounds for coalition forces mounting the United States–led 2003 invasion of Iraq.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Though historically lightly populated, political Arabia is noted for a high population growth rate – as the result of both very strong inflows of migrant labor as well as sustained high birth rates. The population tends to be relatively young and heavily skewed gender ratio dominated by males. In many states, the number of South Asians exceeds that of the local citizenry. The four smallest states (by area), which have their entire coastlines on the Persian Gulf, exhibit the world's most extreme population growth, roughly tripling every 20 years. In 2014, the estimated population of the Arabian Peninsula was 77,983,936 (including expatriates). The Arabian Peninsula is known for having one of the most uneven adult sex ratios in the world, with females in some regions (especially the east) constituting only a quarter of vicenarians and tricenarians.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Geologically, this region is perhaps more appropriately called the Arabian subcontinent because it lies on a tectonic plate of its own, the Arabian Plate, which has been moving incrementally away from the rest of Africa (forming the Red Sea) and north, toward Asia, into the Eurasian Plate (forming the Zagros Mountains). The rocks exposed vary systematically across Arabia, with the oldest rocks exposed in the Arabian-Nubian Shield near the Red Sea, overlain by earlier sediments that become younger towards the Persian Gulf. Perhaps the best-preserved ophiolite on Earth, the Semail Ophiolite, lies exposed in the mountains of the UAE and northern Oman.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Arabia has few lakes or permanent rivers. Most areas are drained by ephemeral watercourses called wadis, which are dry except during the rainy season. Plentiful ancient aquifers exist beneath much of the peninsula, however, and where this water surfaces, oases form (e.g. Al-Hasa and Qatif, two of the world's largest oases) and permit agriculture, especially palm trees, which allowed the peninsula to produce more dates than any other region in the world. In general, the climate is extremely hot and arid, although there are exceptions. Higher elevations are made temperate by their altitude, and the Arabian Sea coastline can receive surprisingly cool, humid breezes in summer due to cold upwelling offshore. The peninsula has no thick forests. Desert-adapted wildlife is present throughout the region.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: According to NASA's Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellite data (2003–2013) analysed in a University of California, Irvine (UCI)-led study published in Water Resources Research on 16 June 2015, the most over-stressed aquifer system in the world is the Arabian Aquifer System, upon which more than 60 million people depend for water. Twenty-one of the thirty seven largest aquifers "have exceeded sustainability tipping points and are being depleted" and thirteen of them are "considered significantly distressed".


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: A plateau more than high extends across much of the Arabian Peninsula. The plateau slopes eastwards from the massive, rifted escarpment along the coast of the Red Sea, to the shallow waters of the Persian Gulf. The interior is characterised by "cuestas" and valleys, drained by a system of "wadis". A crescent of sand and gravel deserts lies to the east.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: There are mountains at the eastern, southern and northwestern borders of the peninsula. Broadly, the ranges can be grouped as follows:


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: From the Hejaz southwards, the mountains show a steady increase in altitude westward as they get nearer to Yemen, and the highest peaks and ranges are all located in Yemen. The highest, Jabal An-Nabi Shu'ayb or Jabal Hadhur of the Haraz subrange of the Sarawat range, is high. By comparison, the Tuwayr, Shammar and Dhofar generally do not exceed in height.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Not all mountains in the peninsula are visibly within ranges. Jebel Hafeet in particular, on the border of the UAE and Oman, measuring between , is not within the Hajar range, but may be considered an outlier of that range.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Most of the Arabian Peninsula is unsuited to agriculture, making irrigation and land reclamation projects essential. The narrow coastal plain and isolated oases, amounting to less than 1% of the land area, are used to cultivate grains, coffee and tropical fruits. Goat, sheep, and camel husbandry is widespread elsewhere throughout the rest of the Peninsula. Some areas have a summer humid tropical monsoon climate, in particular the Dhofar and Al Mahrah areas of Oman and Yemen. These areas allow for large scale coconut plantations. Much of Yemen has a tropical monsoon rain influenced mountain climate. The plains usually have either a tropical or subtropical arid desert climate or arid steppe climate. The sea surrounding the Arabian Peninsula is generally tropical sea with a very rich tropical sea life and some of the world's largest, undestroyed and most pristine coral reefs. In addition, the organisms living in symbiosis with the Red Sea coral, the protozoa and zooxanthellae, have a unique hot weather adaptation to sudden rise (and fall) in sea water temperature. Hence, these coral reefs are not affected by coral bleaching caused by rise in temperature as elsewhere in the indopacific coral sea. The reefs are also unaffected by mass tourism and diving or other large scale human interference. However, some reefs were destroyed in the Persian Gulf, mostly caused by phosphate water pollution and resultant increase in algae growth as well as oil pollution from ships and pipeline leakage.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The fertile soils of Yemen have encouraged settlement of almost all of the land from sea level up to the mountains at . In the higher elevations, elaborate terraces have been constructed to facilitate grain, fruit, coffee, ginger and khat cultivation. The Arabian peninsula is known for its rich oil, i.e. petroleum production due to its geographical location.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The history of the Arabian Peninsula goes back to the beginnings of human habitation in Arabia up to 130,000 years ago. However, a fossilized "Homo sapiens" finger bone was found at Al Wusta in the Nefud Desert, which indicates that the first human migration out of Africa to Arabia might date back to approximately 90,000 years ago. Nevertheless, the stone tools from the Middle Paleolithic age along with fossils of other animals discovered at Ti's al Ghadah, in northwestern Saudi Arabia, might imply that hominids migrated through a "Green Arabia" between 300,000 and 500,000 years ago. Acheulean tools found in Saffaqah, Riyadh Region reveal that hominins lived in the Arabian Peninsula as recently as 188,000 years ago. However, 200,000-year-old stone tools were discovered at Shuaib Al-Adgham in the eastern Al-Qassim Province, which would indicate that many prehistoric sites, located along a network of rivers, had once existed in the area.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: There is evidence that human habitation in the Arabian Peninsula dates back to about 106,000 to 130,000 years ago. The harsh climate historically prevented much settlement in the pre-Islamic Arabian peninsula, apart from a small number of urban trading settlements, such as Mecca and Medina, located in the Hejaz in the west of the peninsula.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Archaeology has revealed the existence of many civilizations in pre-Islamic Arabia (such as the Thamud), especially in South Arabia. South Arabian civilizations include the Sheba, the Himyarite Kingdom, the Kingdom of Awsan, the Kingdom of Ma'īn and the Sabaean Kingdom. From 106 AD to 630 AD northwestern Arabia was under the control of the Roman Empire, which renamed it Arabia Petraea. Central Arabia was the location of the Kingdom of Kinda in the 4th, 5th and early 6th centuries. Eastern Arabia was home to the Dilmun civilization. The earliest known events in Arabian history are migrations from the peninsula into neighbouring areas.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Arabian peninsula has long been accepted as the original "Urheimat" of the Semitic languages by a majority of scholars.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The seventh century saw the rise of Islam as the peninsula's dominant religion. The Islamic prophet Muhammad was born in Mecca in about 570 and first began preaching in the city in 610, but migrated to Medina in 622. From there he and his companions united the tribes of Arabia under the banner of Islam and created a single Arab Muslim religious polity in the Arabian peninsula.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Muhammad established a new unified polity in the Arabian peninsula which under the subsequent Rashidun and Umayyad Caliphates saw a century of rapid expansion of Arab power well beyond the Arabian peninsula in the form of a vast Muslim Arab Empire with an area of influence that stretched from the northwest Indian subcontinent, across Central Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, southern Italy, and the Iberian Peninsula, to the Pyrenees.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: With Muhammad's death in 632, disagreement broke out over who would succeed him as leader of the Muslim community. Umar ibn al-Khattab, a prominent companion of Muhammad, nominated Abu Bakr, who was Muhammad's intimate friend and collaborator. Others added their support and Abu Bakr was made the first caliph. This choice was disputed by some of Muhammad's companions, who held that Ali ibn Abi Talib, his cousin and son-in-law, had been designated his successor. Abu Bakr's immediate task was to avenge a recent defeat by Byzantine (or Eastern Roman Empire) forces, although he first had to put down a rebellion by Arab tribes in an episode known as the Ridda wars, or "Wars of Apostasy".


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Following Muhammad's death in 632, Abu Bakr became leader of the Muslims as the first Caliph. After putting down a rebellion by the Arab tribes (known as the Ridda wars, or "Wars of Apostasy"), Abu Bakr attacked the Byzantine Empire. On his death in 634, he was succeeded by Umar as caliph, followed by Uthman ibn al-Affan and Ali ibn Abi Talib. The period of these first four caliphs is known as "al-khulafā' ar-rāshidūn": the Rashidun or "rightly guided" Caliphate. Under the Rashidun Caliphs, and, from 661, their Umayyad successors, the Arabs rapidly expanded the territory under Muslim control outside of Arabia. In a matter of decades Muslim armies decisively defeated the Byzantine army and destroyed the Persian Empire, conquering huge swathes of territory from the Iberian peninsula to India. The political focus of the Muslim world then shifted to the newly conquered territories.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Nevertheless, Mecca and Medina remained the spiritually most important places in the Muslim world. The Qur'an requires every able-bodied Muslim who can afford it, as one of the five pillars of Islam, to make a pilgrimage, or Hajj, to Mecca during the Islamic month of Dhu al-Hijjah at least once in his or her lifetime. The Masjid al-Haram (the Grand Mosque) in Mecca is the location of the Kaaba, Islam's holiest site, and the Masjid al-Nabawi (the Prophet's Mosque) in Medina is the location of Muhammad’s grave; as a result, from the 7th century, Mecca and Medina became the pilgrimage destinations for large numbers of Muslims from across the Islamic world.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: Despite its spiritual importance, in political terms Arabia soon became a peripheral region of the Islamic world, in which the most important medieval Islamic states were based at various times in such far away cities as Damascus, Baghdad, and Cairo.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: However, from the 10th century (and, in fact, until the 20th century) the Hashemite Sharifs of Mecca maintained a state in the most developed part of the region, the Hejaz. Their domain originally comprised only the holy cities of Mecca and Medina but in the 13th century it was extended to include the rest of the Hejaz. Although, the Sharifs exercised at most times independent authority in the Hejaz, they were usually subject to the suzerainty of one of the major Islamic empires of the time. In the Middle Ages, these included the Abbasids of Baghdad, and the Fatimids, Ayyubids, and Mamluks of Egypt.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The provincial Ottoman Army for Arabia (Arabistan Ordusu) was headquartered in Syria, which included Palestine, the Transjordan region in addition to Lebanon (Mount Lebanon was, however, a semi-autonomous mutasarrifate). It was put in charge of Syria, Cilicia, Iraq, and the remainder of the Arabian Peninsula. The Ottomans never had any control over central Arabia, also known as the Najd region.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The emergence of what was to become the Saudi royal family, known as the Al Saud, began in Najd in central Arabia in 1744, when Muhammad bin Saud, founder of the dynasty, joined forces with the religious leader Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, founder of the Wahhabi movement, a strict puritanical form of Sunni Islam. The Emirate of Diriyah established in the area around Riyadh rapidly expanded and briefly controlled most of the present-day territory of Saudi Arabia, sacking Karbala in 1802, and capturing Mecca in 1803.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Damascus Protocol of 1914 provides an illustration of the regional relationships. Arabs living in one of the existing districts of the Arabian peninsula, the Emirate of Hejaz, asked for a British guarantee of independence. Their proposal included all Arab lands south of a line roughly corresponding to the northern frontiers of present-day Syria and Iraq. They envisioned a new Arab state, or confederation of states, adjoining the southern Arabian Peninsula. It would have comprised Cilicia – İskenderun and Mersin, Iraq with Kuwait, Syria, Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate, Jordan, and Palestine.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: In the modern era, the term bilad al-Yaman came to refer specifically to the southwestern parts of the peninsula. Arab geographers started to refer to the whole peninsula as 'jazirat al-Arab', or the peninsula of the Arabs.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The railway was started in 1900 at the behest of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II and was built largely by the Turks, with German advice and support. A public subscription was opened throughout the Islamic world to fund the construction. The railway was to be a waqf, an inalienable religious endowment or charitable trust.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The major developments of the early 20th century were the Arab Revolt during World War I and the subsequent collapse and partitioning of the Ottoman Empire. The Arab Revolt (1916–1918) was initiated by the Sherif Hussein ibn Ali with the aim of securing independence from the ruling Ottoman Empire and creating a single unified Arab state spanning from Aleppo in Syria to Aden in Yemen. During World War I, the Sharif Hussein entered into an alliance with the United Kingdom and France against the Ottomans in June 1916.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: These events were followed by the foundation of Saudi Arabia under King Abdulaziz Ibn Saud. In 1902, Ibn Saud had captured Riyadh. Continuing his conquests, Abdulaziz subdued Al-Hasa, Jabal Shammar, Hejaz between 1913 and 1926 founded the modern state of Saudi Arabia. The Saudis absorbed the Emirate of Asir, with their expansion only ending in 1934 after a war with Yemen. Two Saudi states were formed and controlled much of Arabia before Ibn Saud was even born. Ibn Saud, however, established the third Saudi state.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The second major development has been the discovery of vast reserves of oil in the 1930s. Its production brought great wealth to all countries of the region, with the exception of Yemen.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The North Yemen Civil War was fought in North Yemen between royalists of the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen and factions of the Yemen Arab Republic from 1962 to 1970. The war began with a coup d'état carried out by the republican leader, Abdullah as-Sallal, which dethroned the newly crowned Muhammad al-Badr and declared Yemen a republic under his presidency. The Imam escaped to the Saudi Arabian border and rallied popular support.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The royalist side received support from Saudi Arabia, while the republicans were supported by Egypt and the Soviet Union. Both foreign irregular and conventional forces were also involved. The Egyptian President, Gamal Abdel Nasser, supported the republicans with as many as 70,000 troops. Despite several military moves and peace conferences, the war sank into a stalemate. Egypt's commitment to the war is considered to have been detrimental to its performance in the Six-Day War of June 1967, after which Nasser found it increasingly difficult to maintain his army's involvement and began to pull his forces out of Yemen.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: By 1970, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia recognized the republic and a truce was signed. Egyptian military historians refer to the war in Yemen as their Vietnam.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: In 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait. The invasion of Kuwait by Iraqi forces led to the 1990–91 Gulf War. Egypt, Qatar, Syria and Saudi Arabia joined a multinational coalition that opposed Iraq. Displays of support for Iraq by Jordan and Palestine resulted in strained relations between many of the Arab states. After the war, a so-called "Damascus Declaration" formalized an alliance for future joint Arab defensive actions between Egypt, Syria, and the GCC member states.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The Arab Spring reached Yemen in January 2011. People of Yemen took to the street demonstrating against three decades of rule by President Ali Abdullah Saleh. The demonstration led to cracks in the ruling General People's Congress (GPC) and Saleh's Sanhani clan. Saleh used tactics of concession and violence to save his presidency. After numerous attempts, Saleh accepted the Gulf Cooperation Council's mediation. He eventually handed power to Vice President Hadi, who was sworn in as President of Yemen on 25 February 2012. Hadi launched a national dialogue to address new constitutional, political and social issues. The Houthi movement, dissatisfied with the outcomes of the national dialogue, launched an offensive and stormed the Yemeni capital Sanaa on 21 September 2014. In response, Saudi Arabia launched a military intervention in Yemen in March 2015. The civil war and subsequent military intervention and blockade caused a famine in Yemen.


title: Arabian Peninsula

text: The extraction and refining of oil and gas are the major industrial activities in the Arabian Peninsula. The region also has an active construction sector, with many cities reflecting the wealth generated by the oil industry. The service sector is dominated by financial and technical institutions, which, like the construction sector, mainly serve the oil industry. Traditional handicrafts such as carpet-weaving are found in rural areas of Arabia.


title: Google Street View

text: Google Street View is a technology featured in Google Maps and Google Earth that provides interactive panoramas from positions along many streets in the world. It was launched in 2007 in several cities in the United States, and has since expanded to include cities and rural areas worldwide. Streets with Street View imagery available are shown as blue lines on Google Maps.


title: Google Street View

text: Google Street View displays interactively panoramas of stitched VR photographs. Most photography is done by car, but some is done by tricycle, camel, boat, snowmobile, underwater apparatus, and on foot.


title: Google Street View

text: Street View had its inception in 2001 with the Stanford CityBlock Project, a Google-sponsored Stanford University research project. The project ended in June 2006, and its technology was folded into StreetView.


title: Google Street View

text: Street View is available as a component of Google Maps and Google Earth, as a web application, and as a mobile application for Android and iOS. Originally, Google Maps used Adobe Flash for Street View. Google overhauled Google Maps in 2013. The newer version uses JavaScript extensively and provides a JavaScript application programming interface. At the time of their release, the new Google Maps and Street View were measured slower than the old version in various setups. A user can switch to the old version of Google Maps, which is especially useful when Google Maps is more sluggish than usual.


title: Google Street View

text: The drag-and-drop Pegman icon is the primary user interface element used by Google to connect Maps to Street View. Its name comes from its resemblance to a clothespeg. When not in use, Pegman sits atop the Google Maps zoom controls. Occasionally Pegman "dresses up" for special events or is joined by peg friends in Google Maps. When dragged into Street View near Area 51, he becomes a flying saucer, and when dragged near the Florida Keys, he becomes a mermaid. When viewing older views, the Pegman in the minimap changes to Doc Brown from "Back to the Future".


title: Google Street View

text: Google announced in May 2017 that it had captured more than of Street View imagery across 83 countries. Maps also include panoramic views taken underwater such as in West Nusa Tenggara underwater coral, in the Grand Canyon, inside museums, and Liwa Desert in United Arab Emirates, which is viewed from camelback. In a ten-day trek with Apa Sherpa, Google documented Khumbu, Nepal with its Mount Everest, Sherpa communities, monasteries and schools.


title: Google Street View

text: Google also added landmarks in Egypt, including the Pyramids of Giza, Cairo Citadel, Saqqara, Monastery of Saint Mina, and the Citadel of Qaitbay in the 9 September 2014 release.


title: Google Street View

text: In June 2022, Google announced the company is relaunching their Street View service in India. The announcement came six years after the feature was banned in India over security concerns. The company has partnered with local technology businesses Tech Mahindra and Genesys to aid in the relaunch of the service. , the service is live in 10 cities in India.


title: Google Street View

text: Google Street View will blur houses for any user who makes a request, in addition to the automatic blurring of faces and licence plates. Privacy advocates have objected to Google Street View, pointing to views found to show men leaving strip clubs, protesters at an abortion clinic, sunbathers in bikinis, and people engaging in activities, visible from public property, which they do not wish to be seen publicly. Another concern is the height of the cameras, and in at least two countries, Japan and Switzerland, Google has had to lower the height of its cameras so as to not peer over fences and hedges. The service also allows users to flag inappropriate or sensitive imagery for Google to review and remove.


title: Google Street View

text: Police Scotland received an apology for wasting police time in 2014 from a local business owner in Edinburgh who in 2012 had staged a fake murder for the Google camera car by lying in the road "while his colleague stood over him with a pickaxe handle". In May 2010, it was revealed that Google had collected and stored payload data from unencrypted Wi-Fi connections as part of Street View.


title: Google Street View

text: The concerns have led to Google not providing or suspending the service in countries around the world.


title: Google Street View

text: Imagery obtained from Google Street View has been used intensively for research purposes across a range of disciplines, e.g. quantifying greenery, health studies, and assessing cycling conditions.


title: Google Street View

text: Fine-art photographers have selected images for use in their own work. Although the images may be pixelated, the colours muddy, and the perspective warped, the photographs have been published in book form and exhibited in art galleries, such as the work of Jon Rafman at the Saatchi Gallery, London. In his personal appreciation of Street View material, Rafman sees images which evoke the "gritty urban life" depicted in American street photography and the images commissioned by the Farm Security Administration. He also invokes the "decisive moment" esthetic of Henri Cartier-Bresson "as if I were a photojournalist responding instantaneously to an emerging event".


title: Google Street View

text: Michael Wolf won an honourable mention in Daily Life in the 2011 World Press Photo competition for some of his work using Google Street View.


title: Google Street View

text: Mishka Henner was short-listed for the 2013 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in November 2012 for his series 'No Man's Land', which depicts sex workers at rural roadside locations.


title: Google Street View

text: Swedish programmer Anton Wallén developed a game called GeoGuessr, which places players into a Google Street View and has them guess its location. In 2022, competitive players went viral, prompting a New York Times feature on top players.


title: Google Street View

text: Canadian artist Sylvia Grace Borda worked in conjunction with John M. Lynch between 2013 and 2014 to insert the first staged tableaux into the Google Street View engine. Their efforts won them the Lumen Prize in 2016. Borda has continued independently to author in the Google Street View engine and in 2017 created the tableaux series the "Kissing Project".


title: Fox Corporation

text: Fox Corporation (stylized in all-caps as FOX Corporation) is a publicly traded American mass media company operated and controlled by media mogul Rupert Murdoch and headquartered at 1211 Avenue of the Americas in New York City. Incorporated in Delaware, it was formed in 2019 as a result of the acquisition of 21st Century Fox by the Walt Disney Company; the remaining assets that were not acquired by Disney were spun off from 21st Century Fox as Fox Corporation. Its stock began trading on March 19, 2019. The company is controlled by the Murdoch family via a family trust with 39.6% ownership share.


title: Fox Corporation

text: Rupert Murdoch is chairman, while his son Lachlan Murdoch is executive chairman and CEO. Fox Corp. deals primarily in the television broadcast, news, and sports broadcasting industries. They include the Fox Broadcasting Company, Fox Television Stations, Fox News, Fox Business, the national operations of Fox Sports, and others. Its sister company under Murdoch's control, News Corp, holds his print interests and other media assets.


title: Fox Corporation

text: The company name traces back through a series of mergers and demergers to the Fox Film Corporation founded by William Fox on February 1, 1915.


title: Fox Corporation

text: On December 14, 2017, The Walt Disney Company announced its intent to acquire the motion picture, cable entertainment, and direct broadcast satellite divisions of 21st Century Fox, including 20th Century Fox, for $52.4 billion. The remainder of the company would form a so-called "New Fox", maintaining control of assets such as Fox's television network and broadcast stations (which Disney, already owning ABC, would be legally unable to own due to an FCC policy known as the "dual network rule", which prohibits mergers between the top broadcast networks), Fox News, the national operations of Fox Sports, and the 20th Century Fox studio lot, which would be leased to Disney for seven years. Fox's regional sports networks were also included in the sale, but were later divested by order of the Department of Justice, on the grounds that the Fox regional networks' combination with Disney's 80% ownership of ESPN would make Disney too dominant in the cable sports market.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In May 2018, it was confirmed that Lachlan Murdoch, rather than James Murdoch, would take charge of the New Fox company.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In mid-2018, NBCUniversal's parent company Comcast instigated bidding wars over both the Fox assets Disney planned to purchase, and the British broadcaster Sky plc (a company which 21st Century Fox held a stake in, and was planning to acquire the remainder). In July 2018, Fox agreed to an increase of Disney's offer to $71.3 billion to fend off Comcast's counter-bid. British regulators ordered that a blind auction be held for Sky's assets, which was won by Comcast.


title: Fox Corporation

text: On October 10, 2018, it was reported that in preparation for the impending completion of the sale, the new, post-merger organizational structure of "New Fox" would be implemented by January 1, 2019. On November 14, 2018, it was revealed that the new independent company will maintain the original Fox name. On January 7, 2019, Fox Corporation's registration statement was filed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.


title: Fox Corporation

text: On January 11, 2019, Fox stated in a securities filing that it had no plans to bid on its former regional sports networks; they would instead go to a consortium led by Sinclair Broadcast Group, with Fox Corporation continuing to license the FSN name to those stations until Sinclair developed a new brand (the networks would eventually become Bally Sports). On March 12, 2019, Disney announced that the sale would be completed by March 20, 2019. On March 19, 2019, Fox Corporation officially began trading on the S&P 500, replacing 21st Century Fox on the index. Republican politician and former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan also joined Fox Corporation's board at this time.


title: Fox Corporation

text: Fox Corporation began operating separately on March 19, 2019. Chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch led a town hall meeting three days later, indicating that stock would be issued to the corporation's employees based on longevity.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In May 2019, via the Fox Sports division, Fox Corporation acquired a 4.99% stake in Canadian online gambling operator The Stars Group for $236 million. As a result, it was also announced that the companies would co-develop sports betting products for the U.S. market under the branding Fox Bet.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In early July 2019, Fox Entertainment announced the formation of SideCar, with executives led by Gail Berman. SideCar is a content development unit for Fox and other outlets.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In August 2019, Fox Corporation acquired Credible Labs for $397 million and animation studio Bento Box Entertainment for $50 million.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In September 2021, Fox Corporation acquired TMZ from WarnerMedia in a deal worth about $50 million with TMZ being operated under the Fox Entertainment division.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In December 2021, Fox Corporation acquired the film and television production studio MarVista Entertainment.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In September 2022, Fox Corporation announced the launch of Fox Entertainment Studios. This is the company's first venture into entirely in-house television production. The studio debuted its first show, Monarch, on September 11, 2022. Fox also announced that Fox Entertainment would re-enter the international distribution business by launching a sales unit called Fox Entertainment Global.


title: Fox Corporation

text: In October 14, 2022, it was announced that, under the instruction of Rupert Murdoch, a special committee had been established to explore a potential merger of Fox and News Corp, bringing the two companies back together after the former 21st Century Fox was spun-off from News Corp in 2013.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Giovanni Giorgio Moroder (, ; born 26 April 1940) is an Italian composer, songwriter, and record producer. Dubbed the "Father of Disco", Moroder is credited with pioneering euro disco and electronic dance music. His work with synthesizers had a large influence on several music genres such as Hi-NRG, Italo disco, new wave, house and techno music.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: When in Munich in the 1970s, Moroder started his own record label called Oasis Records, which several years later became a subdivision of Casablanca Records. He is the founder of the former Musicland Studios in Munich, a recording studio used by many artists including the Rolling Stones, Electric Light Orchestra, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Queen and Elton John. He produced singles for Donna Summer during the mid-to-late 1970s disco era, including "Love to Love You Baby", "I Feel Love", "Last Dance", "MacArthur Park", "Hot Stuff", "Bad Girls", "Dim All the Lights", "No More Tears (Enough Is Enough)", and "On the Radio". During this period, he also released many albums, including the synthesizer-driven "From Here To Eternity" (1977) and "E=MC" (1979).


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder produced the recording artist Suzi Lane and her disco album and charting number one single "Ooh La La". She had a second minor classic single "Harmony" on Elektra Records in 1979. He began to compose film soundtracks and scores, including "Midnight Express", "American Gigolo", "Superman III", "Scarface", "The NeverEnding Story", and the 1984 restoration of "Metropolis". Moroder's work on the film "Midnight Express" (1978), which contained the international hit "Chase", won him the Academy Award for Best Original Score and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. He also produced a number of electronic disco songs for the Three Degrees, two albums for Sparks, and a handful of songs on Bonnie Tyler's album "Bitterblue" as well as her 1985 single "Here She Comes". In 1990, he composed "Un'estate italiana", the official theme song of the 1990 FIFA World Cup.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder has created a score of songs for many performers including David Bowie, Kylie Minogue, Irene Cara, Janet Jackson, Madleen Kane, Melissa Manchester, Blondie, Japan and France Joli. Moroder has stated that the work of which he is most proud is Berlin's "Take My Breath Away", which earned him the Academy Award for Best Original Song and the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song in 1986; he had earned the same awards in 1983 for "Flashdance... What a Feeling" (as well as the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score for all of his work on "Flashdance"). In addition to the three Academy Awards and four Golden Globes, Moroder has also received four Grammy Awards, two People's Choice Awards, and more than 100 Golden and Platinum discs. In 2004, he was inducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Giovanni Giorgio Moroder was born on 26 April 1940 in Urtijëi (Urtijëi in Ladin, known in Italian as "Ortisei" and in German as "St. Ulrich in Gröden") to Ladin parents in South Tyrol in what was then the Kingdom of Italy. His birth name is Giovanni Giorgio, though as a child his mother called him Hansjörg (), a German version of his two first names, while he was growing up they lived in a mixed Ladin-, German- and Italian-speaking environment in South Tyrol in northern Italy. Artist Ulrich Moroder is one of his three brothers. His father was a hotel concierge.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: He began teaching himself to play guitar, at age 15, inspired by Paul Anka's "Diana". At age 18, he began touring Europe as a professional musician. He performed at night, and during the day, made recordings with two Revox recorders. Around age 25 he moved to his aunt in Berlin, working as a sound engineer. Ricky Shayne's single "Ich sprenge alle Ketten" ("I bust all the chains"), composed by then-unknowns Moroder and Michael Holm, became a German hit. The second hit was Moroder's and Holm's cover of Sir Douglas Quintet's single, "Mendocino". After 2 years in Berlin, Moroder moved to Munich.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder made his first steps in music in the Scotch Club in Aachen and then released a few singles under the name "Giorgio" beginning in 1963 after moving to Berlin, singing in Italian, Spanish, English, and German.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In 1968, he moved to Munich and came to prominence when "Looky Looky" was awarded a gold disc in 1970. He then founded the Musicland Studios in the early 1970s. Often collaborating with lyricist Pete Bellotte, Moroder had a number of hits in his own name including "Son of My Father" in 1972, a No. 1 hit in the UK for Chicory Tip, before releasing the synthesizer-driven "From Here to Eternity", a chart hit in 1977. That same year he co-wrote and produced the Donna Summer hit single "I Feel Love", the first track in the Hi-NRG genre. The following year he released "Chase", the theme from the film "Midnight Express". These songs achieved some chart success in the United Kingdom, the United States and across Europe, and everywhere disco-mania was spreading. The score for "Midnight Express" featured "Chase"; which brought his first Academy Award for Best Original Score in 1979.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder released "E=MC²" in 1979. He released three albums between 1977 and 1979 under the name Munich Machine. He composed and produced two film soundtrack albums: the first for "Foxes", and the second for "American Gigolo" (both 1980). A double album of the "Foxes" soundtrack was released on the disco label Casablanca Records which includes Donna Summer's hit single "On the Radio", which Moroder produced and co-wrote. The "Foxes" soundtrack contains a song titled "Bad Love", written and performed by Cher and produced by Moroder. The "American Gigolo" soundtrack featured the Moroder-produced "Call Me" by Blondie, a US and UK number one hit. The combined club play of the album's tracks was number two for five weeks on the disco/dance charts. He wrote the soundtrack of the movie "Cat People" (1982), including the hit single "Cat People (Putting Out Fire)" featuring David Bowie, and produced the soundtrack for the film "Scarface" (1983). During its initial release, the album was only available in a few countries and strictly through import in the United States. Moroder-produced tracks included "Scarface (Push It to the Limit)" by Paul Engemann, "Rush Rush" by Debbie Harry and "She's on Fire" by Amy Holland.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In 1984, Moroder compiled a new restoration and edit of the silent film "Metropolis" (1927) and provided it with a contemporary soundtrack. This soundtrack includes seven pop music tracks from Pat Benatar, Jon Anderson, Adam Ant, Billy Squier, Loverboy, Bonnie Tyler and Freddie Mercury. He integrated the original intertitles into the film as subtitles as a means of improving continuity. Since the original speed was unknown this choice was controversial. Known as the "Moroder version", it sparked debate among film buffs, with outspoken critics and supporters of the film falling into equal camps. Most critics agree that, the opinion of film purists aside, Moroder's version was a welcome addition. In 1984, Moroder worked with Philip Oakey of the Human League to make the album "Philip Oakey & Giorgio Moroder", which was a UK singles chart hit with "Together in Electric Dreams", title track to the 1984 film "Electric Dreams". The same year saw him collaborating with Kajagoogoo frontman Limahl for their worldwide hit "The NeverEnding Story".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In 1986, Moroder collaborated with his protégé Harold Faltermeyer (of "Axel F") and lyricist Tom Whitlock to create the score for the film "Top Gun" (1986) which included Kenny Loggins' hit "Danger Zone" and Berlin's "Take My Breath Away". He wrote the theme song to the film "Over the Top", "Meet Me Half Way", also performed by Loggins. In 1987, Moroder produced and co-wrote Falco's song "Body Next to Body". Moroder wrote the official theme songs, "Reach Out", for the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics, and "Hand in Hand", for the 1988 Seoul Olympics and "Un'estate italiana" for the 1990 FIFA World Cup. On 12 March 1992 Moroder released his fourteenth studio album, "Forever Dancing", his last solo project for years and he took a long hiatus in 1993. For two decades he released no new albums, focusing largely on remixes and visual art during most of the 1990s and early 2000s. With Daniel Walker he produced a soundtrack for Leni Riefenstahl's last film "Impressionen unter Wasser". His song "Forever Friends" has been featured in the Olympic Games in Beijing 2008.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In 2012, Moroder returned to music with the theme music for Google's "Racer". Moroder contributed to Daft Punk's 2013 studio album "Random Access Memories", admitting that he was a fan of their song "One More Time" before working with the group. His voice and story are on the album track "Giorgio by Moroder". On the track he states, "My name is Giovanni Giorgio, but everybody calls me Giorgio." In summer 2013, he DJ'd at the Red Bull Music Academy in New York.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In 2014, Moroder reworked an old classic from the 1960s called "Doo Bee Doo" (2014 version), which was used in the Volkswagen 2014 Super Bowl commercial, "Wings". He also announced that he was planning to work with electro-pop producer Madeon and American singer Lana Del Rey. On 9 June 2014, Adult Swim released a new Hi-NRG Disco single by Moroder (named "Giorgio's Theme"). Moroder also remixed Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga's rendition of "I Can't Give You Anything but Love".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder's solo studio album, "Déjà Vu", was released in 2015. It features collaborations with Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears, Sia, Charli XCX, Mikky Ekko, Foxes and Matthew Koma, among others. On 16 January, the collaboration with Kylie Minogue, "Right Here, Right Now", was leaked to the internet ahead of its official release. The song, along with a video teaser, was officially released on 20 January 2015 and on 18 April 2015 reached number one on the US Dance Club Songs, becoming Moroder's first chart-topper in 15 years. In March 2015, Moroder supported Minogue during the Australian leg of her Kiss Me Once Tour. Moroder and Sia collaborated in May 2015 on the title track from Moroder's LP "Déjà Vu".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In September 2015, Moroder was featured on Kylie Minogue's EP "Kylie + Garibay" on the song "Your Body". In 2016, he and Raney Shockne wrote and composed the music to the video game "Tron RUN/r". The soundtrack album was released on 31 May 2016. In October 2016, Moroder produced "One More Day" for Sistar, a Korean girl group. They debuted the song live on 8 October, at Korea's DMC Festival 2016, with Moroder being present in the audience. The music video for the song was released on 22 November, alongside the official digital release of the track. 2021 saw Moroder return to the studio with Duran Duran, co-writing and producing two tracks, "Tonight United" and "Beautiful Lies" for their October 2021 album release Future Past".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder has won three Academy Awards: Best Original Score for "Midnight Express" (1978); Best Song for "Flashdance...What a Feeling", from the film "Flashdance" (1983) and Best Song for "Take My Breath Away", from "Top Gun" (1986). Moroder also won two of his four Grammy Awards for "Flashdance": Best Album or Original Score Written for a Motion Picture or a Television Special and Best Instrumental Composition for the track "Love Theme from Flashdance". The third was awarded for Best Dance Recording for the song "Carry On".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder also won four Golden Globes: two Best Original Score for "Midnight Express" and "Flashdance... What a Feeling", and two Best Original Song for "Flashdance... What a Feeling" and "Take My Breath Away".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: On 20 September 2004, Moroder was honored at the Dance Music Hall of Fame ceremony, held in New York, when he was inducted for his achievements and contributions as a producer. In 2005, Moroder was named a "Commendatore Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana", and in 2010 Bolzano awarded him the "Grande Ordine al Merito della Provincia autonoma di Bolzano". In 2011, he was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the World Soundtrack Academy. In 2014, Moroder won his fourth Grammy Award for Daft Punk's "Random Access Memories" (Album of the Year).


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: The British alternative rock duo Curve covered "I Feel Love" in 1992. The song was later included on the double CD compilation "The Way of Curve", released in 2004. Bronski Beat covered "I Feel Love" and "Love to Love You Baby" for their debut album "The Age of Consent" (1984). "On Fire", the second single from rapper Lil Wayne's seventh studio album "Rebirth", contains allusions from Amy Holland's song "She's on Fire" and was inspired in its entirety by "Scarface". "Push It", the second single from rapper Rick Ross' debut album "Port of Miami", samples "Scarface (Push It to the Limit)" and the story of the video has a very similar theme to the film "Scarface". It was produced by J. R. Rotem.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: His song "Tears" was sampled and used as the basis of the DJ Shadow song "Organ Donor" on his 1996 album "Endtroducing...". Canadian hip hop group Swollen Members sampled the song in "Fuel Injected" and "Meltdown". It also appears on the song "Tragedy" by RZA. The main melody and chord progression form the basis of "Marz" by folk musician John Grant and "Only Light" by Australian ska band the Cat Empire. Hip hop duo Mobb Deep used a sample from the song "Tony's Theme" in their song G.O.D. Pt. III. His song "E=MC²" was sampled and used for J. Dilla's song of the same title. One of his early compositions, "Doo-Bee-Doo-Bee-Doo" from 1969, was featured for many years in silent sketches on "The Benny Hill Show" as part of a medley that also included "Mah Nà Mah Nà", a 4/4 adaptation of Ludwig van Beethoven's "Für Elise", and "Gimme Dat Ding".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: The theme from "Midnight Express" was sampled by hip hop duo OutKast for their song "Return of the Gangsta", and by hip-hop producer J Dilla for "Phantom of the Synths", a beat later used by MF Doom for "Gazzillion Ear" and by Jay Electronica for "Dimethyltryptamine".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: "Chase" was used as the entrance theme music for the professional wrestling tag team the Midnight Express throughout the early 1980s as well as in a number of montage videos for NBC's Major League Baseball coverage and CBS's coverage of the NBA. Art Bell also used "Chase" as the theme for his late-night talk radio programs Coast to Coast AM and Midnight in the Desert.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder's opening theme from the 1983 film "Scarface" is sampled by Nas and Mobb Deep for the track "It's Mine". "Leopard Tree Dream" from "Cat People" is sampled by Cannibal Ox in the song "Iron Galaxy." "The Legend of Babel" theme from the "Metropolis" soundtrack was covered by DJ Dado. British electronica musician Little Boots covered "Love Kills", which was written in collaboration with Freddie Mercury. "Future Lovers", a song from American recording artist Madonna's 2005 album "Confessions on a Dance Floor", has a bass line inspired by Donna Summer's Moroder-produced hit "I Feel Love". Furthermore, Madonna opened her 2006 Confessions Tour with a medley of "Future Lovers" and "I Feel Love". The version of "Live To Tell" Madonna performed on The Confessions Tour heavily samples Moroder's song "Tears". Suns of Arqa's album "Technomor" includes the track "Moroder Vibe" which contains elements of "I Feel Love". Underworld's 1999 album, "Beaucoup Fish", contains a song titled "Shudder/King of Snake", which contains an interpolation of the bass line from "I Feel Love".


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In 2013, a dance club opened in Hollywood's Standard Hotel name after Moroder, called Georgio's. Moroder even visited it and for the first time saw people dancing to his music, stating: “I never saw people dancing to my music. I was too busy working. I was always in the studio. I never took the coca.”


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: In February 2016, Shooter Jennings, the son of outlaw country singer Waylon Jennings, released a tribute album entitled "Countach (For Giorgio)", his seventh studio album. Shooter Jennings stated that Moroder's music from the movies "Midnight Express" (1978), "Cat People" (1982) and "The NeverEnding Story" (1984) had a major influence on him as a child which "...set the foundation for the music of my entire life."


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Before his career reboot with Daft Punk, Moroder dedicated decades to his personal hobbies/projects. He designed a car with Marcello Gandini and ex-Lamborghini personnel, the Cizeta-Moroder V16T. Also in a 2013 interview, he spoke about architectural design of a pyramid-like apartment that was supposed to take place in Dubai. It was never built. Other projects included creating his own cognac liquor and getting involved with digital and neon art and putting on shows.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: Moroder currently lives in Beverly Hills, California. He was married to Francisca Gutierrez from 1990 until her death in 2022, and they have a son, Alessandro.


title: Giorgio Moroder

text: He is a friend of Michael Holm, with whom he composed the 1973 album "Spinach 1" under the moniker "Spinach". Holm's song "Giorgio und ich" is dedicated to Moroder.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Édith Piaf (, , ; born Édith Giovanna Gassion, ; December 19, 1915– October 10, 1963) was a French singer, lyricist and actress. Noted as France's national chanteuse, she was one of the country's most widely known international stars.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Piaf's music was often autobiographical, and she specialized in chanson réaliste and torch ballads about love, loss and sorrow. Her most widely known songs include "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "L'Accordéoniste" (1940), and "Padam, padam..." (1951).


title: Édith Piaf

text: Since her death in 1963, several biographies and films have studied her life, including 2007's "La Vie en rose". Piaf has become one of the most celebrated performers of the 20th century.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Despite numerous biographies, much of Piaf's life is unknown. She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville, Paris. Her birth certificate states that she was born on December 19, 1915 at the Hôpital Tenon, a hospital located in the 20th arrondissement.


title: Édith Piaf

text: She was named Édith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed 2 months before Édith's birth for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity. Piaf – slang for "sparrow" – was a nickname she received 20 years later.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Louis Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944), Édith's father, was a street performer of acrobatics from Normandy with a past in the theatre. He was the son of Victor Alphonse Gassion (1850–1928) and Léontine Louise Descamps (1860–1937), known as Maman Tine, a "madam" who ran a brothel in Bernay in Normandy.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Her mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard, better known professionally as Line Marsa (1895–1945), was a singer and circus performer born in Italy of French descent on her father's side and of Italian and Kabyle on her mother's. Her parents were Auguste Eugène Maillard (1866–1912) and Emma (Aïcha) Saïd Ben Mohammed (1876–1930), daughter of Said ben Mohammed (1827–1890), an acrobat born in Mogador and Marguerite Bracco (1830–1898), born in Murazzano in Italy.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Piaf's mother abandoned her at birth, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha). When her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, he took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Bernay, Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. The bordello had two floors and seven rooms, and the prostitutes were not very numerous – "about ten poor girls", as she later described. In fact, five or six were permanent while a dozen others would join the brothel during market days and other busy days. The sub-mistress of the brothel was called "Madam Gaby" and Piaf considered her almost like family since she became godmother of Denise Gassion, Piaf's half-sister born in 1931.


title: Édith Piaf

text: From the age of three to seven, Piaf was allegedly blind as a result of keratitis. According to one of her biographers, she recovered her sight after her grandmother's prostitutes pooled money to accompany her on a pilgrimage honouring Saint Thérèse of Lisieux. Piaf claimed this was the result of miraculous healing.


title: Édith Piaf

text: In 1929, at age 14, she was taken by her father to join him in his acrobatic street performances all over France, where she first began to sing in public. At the age of 15, Piaf met , who may have been her half-sister, and who became a companion for most of her life. Together they toured the streets singing and earning money for themselves. With the additional money Piaf earned as part of an acrobatic trio, she and Mômone were able to rent their own place; Piaf took a room at Grand Hôtel de Clermont (18 , 18th arrondissement of Paris), working with Mômone as a street singer in Pigalle, Ménilmontant, and the Paris suburbs (cf. the song "Elle fréquentait la rue Pigalle").


title: Édith Piaf

text: In 1932, she met and fell in love with Louis Dupont. Within a very short time, he moved into their small room, where the three lived despite Louis' and Mômone's dislike for each other. Louis was never happy with the idea of Piaf's roaming the streets and continually persuaded her to take jobs he found for her. She resisted his suggestions until she became pregnant and worked for a short while making wreaths in a factory.


title: Édith Piaf

text: In February 1933, the 17-year-old Piaf gave birth to her daughter, Marcelle (nicknamed Cécelle) at the Hôpital Tenon. Like her mother, Piaf found it difficult to care for the child and had little parenting knowledge. She rapidly returned to street singing, until the summer of 1933, when she started performing at Juan-les-Pins, Rue Pigalle.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Following an intense quarrel over her behavior, Piaf left Louis Dupont (Marcelle's father) taking Mômone and Marcelle with her. The three stayed at the Hôtel Au Clair de Lune, Rue André-Antoine. During this time, Marcelle was often left alone in the room while Piaf and Mômone were out on the streets or at the club singing. Dupont eventually came and took Marcelle away, saying that if Édith wanted the child, she must come home. Like her own mother, Piaf decided not to come home, though she did pay for childcare. Marcelle died of meningitis at age two.


title: Édith Piaf

text: In 1935, Piaf was discovered in the Pigalle area of Paris by nightclub owner Louis Leplée, whose club Le Gerny's off the Champs-Élysées was frequented by the upper and lower classes alike. He persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness, which, combined with her height of only , inspired him to give her the nickname that would stay with her for the rest of her life and serve as her stage name, "La Môme Piaf" (Paris slang meaning "The Waif Sparrow" or "The Little Sparrow"). Leplée taught her the basics of stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign leading up to her opening night, attracting the presence of many celebrities, including actor and singer Maurice Chevalier. The bandleader that evening was Django Reinhardt, with his pianist, Norbert Glanzberg. Her nightclub gigs led to her first two records produced that same year, with one of them penned by Marguerite Monnot, a collaborator throughout Piaf's life and one of her favourite composers.


title: Édith Piaf

text: On April 6, 1936, Leplée was murdered. Piaf was questioned and accused as an accessory, but acquitted. Leplée had been killed by mobsters with previous ties to Piaf. A barrage of negative media attention now threatened her career. To rehabilitate her image, she recruited Raymond Asso, with whom she would become romantically involved. He changed her stage name to "Édith Piaf", barred undesirable acquaintances from seeing her, and commissioned Monnot to write songs that reflected or alluded to Piaf's previous life on the streets.


title: Édith Piaf

text: In 1940, Piaf co-starred in Jean Cocteau's successful one-act play "Le Bel Indifférent". The German occupation of Paris did not stop her career; she began forming friendships with prominent people, including Chevalier and poet Jacques Bourgeat. She wrote the lyrics of many of her songs and collaborated with composers on the tunes. Spring 1944 saw the first cooperation and a love affair with Yves Montand in the Moulin Rouge.


title: Édith Piaf

text: In 1947, she wrote the lyrics to the song "Mais qu'est-ce que j'ai ?" (music by Henri Betti) for Yves Montand. She contributed greatly to the revolutionizing of the cabaret-genre. Within a year, he became one of the most famous singers in France. She broke off their relationship when he had become almost as popular as she was.


title: Édith Piaf

text: During this time, she was in great demand and very successful in Paris as France's most popular entertainer. After the war, she became known internationally, touring Europe, the United States, and South America. In Paris, she gave Atahualpa Yupanqui (Héctor Roberto Chavero) – a central figure in the Argentine folk music tradition – the opportunity to share the scene, making his debut in July 1950. She helped launch the career of Charles Aznavour in the early 1950s, taking him on tour with her in France and the United States and recording some of his songs. At first she met with little success with American audiences, who expected a gaudy spectacle and were disappointed by Piaf's simple presentation. After a glowing 1947 review in the "New York Herald Tribune" by the influential New York critic Virgil Thomson, himself a contributor to international avant-garde culture, her popularity grew to the point where she eventually appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show" eight times, and at Carnegie Hall twice (1956 and 1957).


title: Édith Piaf

text: Piaf wrote and performed her signature song, "La Vie en rose", in 1945 and it was voted a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1998.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Bruno Coquatrix's famous Paris Olympia music hall is where Piaf achieved lasting fame, giving several series of concerts at the hall, the most famous venue in Paris, between January 1955 and October 1962. Excerpts from five of these concerts (1955, 1956, 1958, 1961, 1962) were issued on record and on CD, and have never been out of print. In the 1961 concerts, promised by Piaf in an effort to save the venue from bankruptcy, she first sang "Non, je ne regrette rien". In April 1963, Piaf recorded her last song, "L'Homme de Berlin".


title: Édith Piaf

text: Piaf's career and fame gained momentum during the German occupation of France. She performed in various nightclubs and brothels, which flourished between 1940-1945. Various top Paris brothels, including Le Chabanais, Le Sphinx, One Two Two, La rue des Moulins, and Chez Marguerite, were reserved for German officers and collaborating Frenchmen. Piaf was invited to take part in a concert tour to Berlin, sponsored by the German officials, together with artists such as Loulou Gasté, Raymond Souplex, Viviane Romance and Albert Préjean. In 1942, she was able to afford a luxury flat in a house in the fancy 16th arrondissement of Paris (today rue Paul-Valéry). She lived above the L'Étoile de Kléber, a famous nightclub and bordello close to the Paris Gestapo headquarters.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Piaf was deemed to have been a traitor and collaborator. She had to testify before a purge panel, as there were plans to ban her from appearing on radio transmissions. However, her secretary Andrée Bigard, a member of the Résistance, spoke in her favour after the Liberation. According to Bigard, she performed several times at prisoner-of-war camps in Germany and was instrumental in helping a number of prisoners escape. Piaf was very popular among Nazis; therefore, she was able to help those living difficult times. In fact, at the beginning of World War II, she worked professionally with Michel Emer, a famous Jewish musician whose song "L'Accordéoniste" was soon adored by many. Piaf paid for Emer's way into France before German occupation. He lived in France in safety until the liberation. Piaf was quickly back in the singing business and in December 1944, she went on stage for the Allied forces together with Montand in Marseille.


title: Édith Piaf

text: At age 17 Piaf had a daughter, Marcelle, who died aged two. Piaf neither wanted nor had other children.


title: Édith Piaf

text: The love of Piaf's life, the married boxer Marcel Cerdan, died in a plane crash in October 1949, while flying from Paris to New York City to meet her. Cerdan's Air France flight, on a Lockheed Constellation, crashed in the Azores, killing everyone on board, including noted violinist Ginette Neveu. Piaf and Cerdan's affair made international headlines, as Cerdan was the former middleweight world champion and a legend in France in his own right.


title: Édith Piaf

text: In 1951, Piaf was seriously injured in a car crash along with Charles Aznavour, breaking her arm and two ribs, and thereafter had serious difficulties arising from morphine and alcohol addictions. Two more near-fatal car crashes exacerbated the situation. Jacques Pills, a singer, took her into rehabilitation on three different occasions to no avail.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Piaf married Jacques Pills (real name René Ducos), her first husband, in 1952 (her matron of honour was Marlene Dietrich) and divorced him in 1957. In 1962, she wed Théo Sarapo (Theophanis Lamboukas), a singer, actor, and former hairdresser who was born in France of Greek descent. Sarapo was 20 years her junior. The couple sang together in some of her last engagements.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Piaf lived mainly in Belleville, Paris, with her father from 1915 to 1931. From 1934 to 1941, she lived at 45 rue de Chézy in Neuilly-sur-Seine; she lived alone from 1941 to 1952 and with Jacques Pills from 1952 to 1956. She continued to live there alone from 1956 to 1959. In her final years, she lived at 23 rue Édouard Nortier in Neuilly-sur-Seine – alone from 1959 to 1962 and with Théo Sarapo from 1962 until her death in 1963.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Years of alcohol abuse alongside copious amounts of medications, initially for rheumatoid arthritis and later insomnia, took their toll on Piaf's health. A series of car accidents only exacerbated her addictions and she eventually underwent a series of surgeries for a stomach ulcer in 1959. Coupled with a deteriorating liver and the need for a blood transfusion, by 1962 she had lost a significant amount of weight, reaching a low of 30 kg (66 pounds). Piaf drifted in and out of consciousness for several months. She died at age 47 on October 10, 1963, at her villa on the French Riviera in Plascassier (Grasse). The cause of death is believed to be liver failure due to liver cancer and cirrhosis, though no autopsy was performed.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Her last words were "Every damn thing you do in this life, you have to pay for." It is said that Sarapo drove her body back to Paris secretly so that fans would think she had died in her hometown. Her old friend Jean Cocteau died the very next day; it was reported that he had a heart attack on hearing of Piaf's death.


title: Édith Piaf

text: She is buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris next to her daughter Marcelle, where her grave is among the most visited. Buried in the same grave are her father, Louis-Alphonse Gassion, and Théo (Lamboukas) Sarapo. The name inscribed at the foot of the tombstone is Famille Gassion-Piaf. Her name is engraved on the side as "Madame Lamboukas dite Édith Piaf".


title: Édith Piaf

text: Although she was denied a funeral Mass by Cardinal Maurice Feltin since she had remarried after divorce in the Orthodox Church, her funeral procession drew tens of thousands of mourners onto the streets of Paris, and the ceremony at the cemetery was attended by more than 100,000 fans. Charles Aznavour recalled that Piaf's funeral procession was the only time since the end of World War II that he saw Parisian traffic come to a complete stop. On October 10th, 2013, fifty years after her death, the Roman Catholic Church recanted and gave Piaf a memorial Mass in the St. Jean-Baptiste Church in Belleville, Paris, the parish into which she was born.


title: Édith Piaf

text: Since 1963, the French media have continually published magazines, books, plays, television specials and films about the star often on the anniversary of her death. In 1973, the Association of the Friends of Édith Piaf was formed, followed by the inauguration of the Place Édith Piaf in Belleville in 1981. Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Georgievna Karachkina named a small planet, 3772 Piaf, in her honor.


title: Édith Piaf

text: A concert at The Town Hall in New York City commemorated the 100th anniversary of Piaf's birth on 19 December 2015. Hosted by Robert Osborne and produced by Daniel Nardicio and Andy Brattain, it featured Little Annie, Gay Marshall, Amber Martin, Marilyn Maye, Meow Meow, Elaine Paige, Molly Pope, Vivian Reed, Kim David Smith, and Aaron Weinstein.


title: Édith Piaf

text: The following titles are compilations of Piaf's songs and not reissues of the titles released while Piaf was active.


title: John Milton

text: John Milton (9 December 1608 – 8 November 1674) was an English poet and intellectual. His 1667 epic poem "Paradise Lost", written in blank verse and including over ten chapters, was written in a time of immense religious flux and political upheaval. It addressed the fall of man, including the temptation of Adam and Eve by the fallen angel Satan and God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden. "Paradise Lost" is widely considered one of the greatest works of literature ever written, and it elevated Milton's widely-held reputation as one of history's greatest poets. He also served as a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under its Council of State and later under Oliver Cromwell.


title: John Milton

text: Writing in English, Latin, and Italian, Milton achieved global fame and recognition during his lifetime; his celebrated "Areopagitica" (1644), written in condemnation of pre-publication censorship, is among history's most influential and impassioned defences of freedom of speech and freedom of the press. His desire for freedom extended beyond his philosophy and was reflected in his style, which included his introduction of new words (coined from Latin and Ancient Greek) to the English language. He was the first modern writer to employ unrhymed verse outside of the theatre or translations.


title: John Milton

text: Milton is described as the "greatest English author" by biographer William Hayley, and he remains generally regarded "as one of the preeminent writers in the English language", though critical reception has oscillated in the centuries since his death often on account of his republicanism. Samuel Johnson praised "Paradise Lost" as "a poem which...with respect to design may claim the first place, and with respect to performance, the second, among the productions of the human mind", though he (a Tory) described Milton's politics as those of an "acrimonious and surly republican". Milton was revered by poets such as William Blake, William Wordsworth, and Thomas Hardy.


title: John Milton

text: Phases of Milton's life parallel the major historical and political divisions in Stuart Britain at the time. In his early years, Milton studied at Christ's College at the University of Cambridge, one of the world's most prestigious universities, and then travelled, wrote poetry mostly for private circulation, and launched a career as pamphleteer and publicist under Charles I's increasingly autocratic rule and Britain's breakdown into constitutional confusion and ultimately civil war. While once considered dangerously radical and heretical, Milton contributed to a seismic shift in accepted public opinions during his life that ultimately elevated him to public office in England. The Restoration of 1660 and his loss of vision later deprived Milton much of his public platform, but he used the period to develop many of his major works.


title: John Milton

text: Milton's views developed from extensive reading, travel, and experience that began with his days as a student at Cambridge in the 1620s and continued through the English Civil War, which started in 1642 and continued through 1651. By the time of his death in 1674, Milton was impoverished and on the margins of English intellectual life but famous throughout Europe and unrepentant for political choices that placed him at odds with governing authorities.


title: John Milton

text: John Milton was born in Bread Street, London, on 9 December 1608, the son of composer John Milton and his wife Sarah Jeffrey. The senior John Milton (1562–1647) moved to London around 1583 after being disinherited by his devout Catholic father Richard "the Ranger" Milton for embracing Protestantism. In London, the senior John Milton married Sarah Jeffrey (1572–1637) and found lasting financial success as a scrivener. He lived in and worked from a house on Bread Street, where the Mermaid Tavern was located in Cheapside. The elder Milton was noted for his skill as a musical composer, and this talent left his son with a lifelong appreciation for music and friendships with musicians such as Henry Lawes.


title: John Milton

text: The prosperity of Milton's father allowed his eldest son to obtain a private tutor, Thomas Young, a Scottish Presbyterian with a MA from the University of St. Andrews. Young's influence also served as the poet's introduction to religious radicalism. After Young's tutorship, Milton attended St Paul's School in London, where he began the study of Latin and Greek; the classical languages left an imprint on both his poetry and prose in English (he also wrote in Latin and Italian).


title: John Milton

text: Milton's first datable compositions are two psalms written at age 15 at Long Bennington. One contemporary source is "Brief Lives" of John Aubrey, an uneven compilation including first-hand reports. In the work, Aubrey quotes Christopher, Milton's younger brother: "When he was young, he studied very hard and sat up very late, commonly till twelve or one o'clock at night". Aubrey adds, "His complexion exceeding faire—he was so faire that they called him the Lady of Christ's College."


title: John Milton

text: In 1625, Milton gained entry to Christ's College at the University of Cambridge, where he graduated with a BA in 1629, ranking fourth of 24 honours graduates that year in the University of Cambridge. Then preparing to become an Anglican priest, Milton then pursued his Master of Arts degree at Cambridge, which he received on 3 July 1632.


title: John Milton

text: Milton may have been rusticated (suspended) in his first year at Cambridge for quarrelling with his tutor, Bishop William Chappell. He was certainly at home in London in the Lent Term 1626; there he wrote "Elegia Prima", his first Latin elegy, to Charles Diodati, a friend from St Paul's. Based on remarks of John Aubrey, Chappell "whipt" Milton. This story is now disputed, though certainly Milton disliked Chappell. Historian Christopher Hill notes that Milton was apparently rusticated, and that the differences between Chappell and Milton may have been either religious or personal. It is also possible that, like Isaac Newton four decades later, Milton was sent home from Cambridge because of the plague, which impacted Cambridge significantly in 1625.


title: John Milton

text: At Cambridge, Milton was on good terms with Edward King; he later dedicated "Lycidas" to him. Milton also befriended Anglo-American dissident and theologian Roger Williams. Milton tutored Williams in Hebrew in exchange for lessons in Dutch. Despite developing a reputation for poetic skill and general erudition, Milton suffered from alienation among his peers during his time at Cambridge. Having once watched his fellow students attempting comedy upon the college stage, he later observed, "they thought themselves gallant men, and I thought them fools".


title: John Milton

text: Milton also was disdainful of the university curriculum, which consisted of stilted formal debates conducted in Latin on abstruse topics. His own corpus is not devoid of humour, notably his sixth prolusion and his epitaphs on the death of Thomas Hobson. While at Cambridge, he wrote a number of his well-known shorter English poems, including "On the Morning of Christ's Nativity", "Epitaph on the admirable Dramaticke Poet, W. Shakespeare" (his first poem to appear in print), "L'Allegro", and "Il Penseroso".


title: John Milton

text: Upon receiving his M.A. in 1632, Milton retired to Hammersmith, his father's new home since the previous year. He also lived at Horton, Berkshire, from 1635 and undertook six years of self-directed private study. Hill argues that this was not retreat into a rural idyll; Hammersmith was then a "suburban village" falling into the orbit of London, and even Horton was becoming deforested and suffered from the plague. He read both ancient and modern works of theology, philosophy, history, politics, literature, and science in preparation for a prospective poetical career. Milton's intellectual development can be charted via entries in his commonplace book (like a scrapbook), now in the British Library. As a result of such intensive study, Milton is considered to be among the most learned of all English poets. In addition to his years of private study, Milton had command of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, and Italian from his school and undergraduate days; he also added Old English to his linguistic repertoire in the 1650s while researching his "History of Britain", and probably acquired proficiency in Dutch soon after.


title: John Milton

text: Milton continued to write poetry during this period of study; his "Arcades" and "Comus" were both commissioned for masques composed for noble patrons, connections of the Egerton family, and performed in 1632 and 1634 respectively. "Comus" argues for the virtuousness of temperance and chastity. He contributed his pastoral elegy "Lycidas" to a memorial collection for one of his fellow-students at Cambridge. Drafts of these poems are preserved in Milton's poetry notebook, known as the Trinity Manuscript because it is now kept at Trinity College, Cambridge.


title: John Milton

text: In May 1638, accompanied by a manservant, Milton embarked upon a tour of France and Italy for 15 months that lasted until July or August 1639. His travels supplemented his study with new and direct experience of artistic and religious traditions, especially Roman Catholicism. He met famous theorists and intellectuals of the time, and was able to display his poetic skills. For specific details of what happened within Milton's "grand tour", there appears to be just one primary source: Milton's own "Defensio Secunda". There are other records, including some letters and some references in his other prose tracts, but the bulk of the information about the tour comes from a work that, according to Barbara Lewalski, "was not intended as autobiography but as rhetoric, designed to emphasise his sterling reputation with the learned of Europe."


title: John Milton

text: He first went to Calais and then on to Paris, riding horseback, with a letter from diplomat Henry Wotton to ambassador John Scudamore. Through Scudamore, Milton met Hugo Grotius, a Dutch law philosopher, playwright, and poet. Milton left France soon after this meeting. He travelled south from Nice to Genoa, and then to Livorno and Pisa. He reached Florence in July 1638. While there, Milton enjoyed many of the sites and structures of the city. His candour of manner and erudite neo-Latin poetry earned him friends in Florentine intellectual circles, and he met the astronomer Galileo who was under house arrest at Arcetri, as well as others. Milton probably visited the Florentine Academy and the Accademia della Crusca along with smaller academies in the area, including the Apatisti and the Svogliati.


title: John Milton

text: He left Florence in September to continue to Rome. With the connections from Florence, Milton was able to have easy access to Rome's intellectual society. His poetic abilities impressed those like Giovanni Salzilli, who praised Milton within an epigram. In late October, Milton attended a dinner given by the English College, Rome, despite his dislike for the Society of Jesus, meeting English Catholics who were also guests—theologian Henry Holden and the poet Patrick Cary. He also attended musical events, including oratorios, operas, and melodramas. Milton left for Naples toward the end of November, where he stayed only for a month because of the Spanish control. During that time, he was introduced to Giovanni Battista Manso, patron to both Torquato Tasso and to Giambattista Marino.


title: John Milton

text: Originally, Milton wanted to leave Naples in order to travel to Sicily and then on to Greece, but he returned to England during the summer of 1639 because of what he claimed in "Defensio Secunda" were "sad tidings of civil war in England." Matters became more complicated when Milton received word that his childhood friend Diodati had died. Milton in fact stayed another seven months on the continent, and spent time at Geneva with Diodati's uncle after he returned to Rome. In "Defensio Secunda", Milton proclaimed that he was warned against a return to Rome because of his frankness about religion, but he stayed in the city for two months and was able to experience Carnival and meet Lukas Holste, a Vatican librarian who guided Milton through its collection. He was introduced to Cardinal Francesco Barberini who invited Milton to an opera hosted by the Cardinal. Around March, Milton travelled once again to Florence, staying there for two months, attending further meetings of the academies, and spending time with friends. After leaving Florence, he travelled through Lucca, Bologna, and Ferrara before coming to Venice. In Venice, Milton was exposed to a model of Republicanism, later important in his political writings, but he soon found another model when he travelled to Geneva. From Switzerland, Milton travelled to Paris and then to Calais before finally arriving back in England in either July or August 1639.


title: John Milton

text: On returning to England where the Bishops' Wars presaged further armed conflict, Milton began to write prose tracts against episcopacy, in the service of the Puritan and Parliamentary cause. Milton's first foray into polemics was "Of Reformation touching Church Discipline in England" (1641), followed by "Of Prelatical Episcopacy", the two defences of Smectymnuus (a group of Presbyterian divines named from their initials; the "TY" belonged to Milton's old tutor Thomas Young), and "The Reason of Church-Government Urged against Prelaty". He vigorously attacked the High-church party of the Church of England and their leader William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, with frequent passages of real eloquence lighting up the rough controversial style of the period, and deploying a wide knowledge of church history.


title: John Milton

text: He was supported by his father's investments, but Milton became a private schoolmaster at this time, educating his nephews and other children of the well-to-do. This experience and discussions with educational reformer Samuel Hartlib led him to write his short tract "Of Education" in 1644, urging a reform of the national universities.


title: John Milton

text: In June 1642, Milton paid a visit to the manor house at Forest Hill, Oxfordshire, and, aged 34, married the 17-year-old Mary Powell. The marriage got off to a poor start as Mary did not adapt to Milton's austere lifestyle or get along with his nephews. Milton found her intellectually unsatisfying and disliked the royalist views she had absorbed from her family. It is also speculated that she refused to consummate the marriage. Mary soon returned home to her parents and did not come back until 1645, partly because of the outbreak of the Civil War.


title: John Milton

text: In the meantime, her desertion prompted Milton to publish a series of pamphlets over the next three years arguing for the legality and morality of divorce beyond grounds of adultery. (Anna Beer, one of Milton's most recent biographers , points to a lack of evidence and the dangers of cynicism in urging that it was not necessarily the case that the private life so animated the public polemicising.) In 1643, Milton had a brush with the authorities over these writings, in parallel with Hezekiah Woodward, who had more trouble. It was the hostile response accorded the divorce tracts that spurred Milton to write "Areopagitica; A speech of Mr. John Milton for the Liberty of Unlicenc'd Printing, to the Parlament of England", his celebrated attack on pre-printing censorship. In "Areopagitica", Milton aligns himself with the parliamentary cause, and he also begins to synthesize the ideal of neo-Roman liberty with that of Christian liberty. Milton also courted another woman during this time; we know nothing of her except that her name was Davis and she turned him down. However, it was enough to induce Mary Powell into returning to him which she did unexpectedly by begging him to take her back. She bore him two daughters in quick succession following their reconciliation.


title: John Milton

text: With the Parliamentary victory in the Civil War, Milton used his pen in defence of the republican principles represented by the Commonwealth. "The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates" (1649) defended the right of the people to hold their rulers to account, and implicitly sanctioned the regicide; Milton's political reputation got him appointed Secretary for Foreign Tongues by the Council of State in March 1649. His main job description was to compose the English Republic's foreign correspondence in Latin and other languages, but he also was called upon to produce propaganda for the regime and to serve as a censor.


title: John Milton

text: In October 1649, he published "Eikonoklastes", an explicit defence of the regicide, in response to the "Eikon Basilike", a phenomenal best-seller popularly attributed to Charles I that portrayed the King as an innocent Christian martyr. A month later the exiled Charles II and his party published the defence of monarchy "Defensio Regia pro Carolo Primo", written by leading humanist Claudius Salmasius. By January of the following year, Milton was ordered to write a defence of the English people by the Council of State. Milton worked more slowly than usual, given the European audience and the English Republic's desire to establish diplomatic and cultural legitimacy, as he drew on the learning marshalled by his years of study to compose a riposte.


title: John Milton

text: On 24 February 1652, Milton published his Latin defence of the English people "Defensio pro Populo Anglicano", also known as the "First Defence". Milton's pure Latin prose and evident learning exemplified in the "First Defence" quickly made him a European reputation, and the work ran to numerous editions. He addressed his "Sonnet 16" to 'The Lord Generall Cromwell in May 1652' beginning "Cromwell, our chief of men...", although it was not published until 1654.


title: John Milton

text: In 1654, Milton completed the second defence of the English nation "Defensio secunda" in response to an anonymous Royalist tract ""Regii Sanguinis Clamor ad Coelum Adversus Parricidas Anglicanos"" [The Cry of the Royal Blood to Heaven Against the English Parricides], a work that made many personal attacks on Milton. The second defence praised Oliver Cromwell, now Lord Protector, while exhorting him to remain true to the principles of the Revolution. Alexander Morus, to whom Milton wrongly attributed the "Clamor" (in fact by Peter du Moulin), published an attack on Milton, in response to which Milton published the autobiographical "Defensio pro se" in 1655. Milton held the appointment of Secretary for Foreign Tongues to the Commonwealth Council of State until 1660, although after he had become totally blind, most of the work was done by his deputies, Georg Rudolph Wecklein, then Philip Meadows, and from 1657 by the poet Andrew Marvell.


title: John Milton

text: By 1652, Milton had become totally blind; the cause of his blindness is debated but bilateral retinal detachment or glaucoma are most likely. His blindness forced him to dictate his verse and prose to amanuenses who copied them out for him; one of these was Andrew Marvell. One of his best-known sonnets, "When I Consider How My Light is Spent", titled by a later editor, John Newton, ""On His Blindness"", is presumed to date from this period.


title: John Milton

text: Cromwell's death in 1658 caused the English Republic to collapse into feuding military and political factions. Milton, however, stubbornly clung to the beliefs that had originally inspired him to write for the Commonwealth. In 1659, he published "A Treatise of Civil Power", attacking the concept of a state-dominated church (the position known as Erastianism), as well as "Considerations touching the likeliest means to remove hirelings", denouncing corrupt practises in church governance. As the Republic disintegrated, Milton wrote several proposals to retain a non-monarchical government against the wishes of parliament, soldiers, and the people.


title: John Milton

text: Upon the Restoration in May 1660, Milton, fearing for his life, went into hiding, while a warrant was issued for his arrest and his writings were burnt. He re-emerged after a general pardon was issued, but was nevertheless arrested and briefly imprisoned before influential friends intervened, such as Marvell, now an MP. Milton married for a third and final time on 24 February 1663, marrying Elizabeth (Betty) Minshull, aged 24, a native of Wistaston, Cheshire. He spent the remaining decade of his life living quietly in London, only retiring to a cottage during the Great Plague of London—Milton's Cottage in Chalfont St. Giles, his only extant home.


title: John Milton

text: During this period, Milton published several minor prose works, such as the grammar textbook "Art of Logic" and a "History of Britain". His only explicitly political tracts were the 1672 "Of True Religion", arguing for toleration (except for Catholics), and a translation of a Polish tract advocating an elective monarchy. Both these works were referred to in the Exclusion debate, the attempt to exclude the heir presumptive from the throne of England—James, Duke of York—because he was Roman Catholic. That debate preoccupied politics in the 1670s and 1680s and precipitated the formation of the Whig party and the Glorious Revolution.


title: John Milton

text: Milton died on 8 November 1674 and was buried in the church of St Giles-without-Cripplegate, Fore Street, London. However, sources differ as to whether the cause of death was consumption or gout. According to an early biographer, his funeral was attended by "his learned and great Friends in London, not without a friendly concourse of the Vulgar." A monument was added in 1793, sculpted by John Bacon the Elder.


title: John Milton

text: Mary Powell died on 5 May 1652 from complications following Deborah's birth. Milton's daughters survived to adulthood, but he always had a strained relationship with them.


title: John Milton

text: On 12 November 1656, Milton was married to Katherine Woodcock at St Margaret's, Westminster. She died on 3 February 1658, less than four months after giving birth to her daughter Katherine, who also died.


title: John Milton

text: Milton married for a third time on 24 February 1663 to Elizabeth Mynshull or Minshull (1638–1728), the niece of Thomas Mynshull, a wealthy apothecary and philanthropist in Manchester. The marriage took place at St Mary Aldermary in the City of London. Despite a 31-year age gap, the marriage seemed happy, according to John Aubrey, and lasted more than 12 years until Milton's death. (A plaque on the wall of Mynshull's House in Manchester describes Elizabeth as Milton's "3rd and Best wife".) Samuel Johnson, however, claims that Mynshull was "a domestic companion and attendant" and that Milton's nephew Edward Phillips relates that Mynshull "oppressed his children in his lifetime, and cheated them at his death".


title: John Milton

text: His nephews, Edward and John Phillips (sons of Milton's sister Anne), were educated by Milton and became writers themselves. John acted as a secretary, and Edward was Milton's first biographer.


title: John Milton

text: Milton's poetry was slow to see the light of day, at least under his name. His first published poem was "On Shakespeare" (1630), anonymously included in the Second Folio edition of William Shakespeare's plays in 1632. An annotated copy of the First Folio has been suggested to contain marginal notes by Milton. Milton collected his work in "1645 Poems" in the midst of the excitement attending the possibility of establishing a new English government. The anonymous edition of "Comus" was published in 1637, and the publication of "Lycidas" in 1638 in "Justa Edouardo King Naufrago" was signed J. M. Otherwise. The 1645 collection was the only poetry of his to see print until "Paradise Lost" appeared in 1667.


title: John Milton

text: Milton's "magnum opus", the blank-verse epic poem "Paradise Lost", was composed by the blind and impoverished Milton from 1658 to 1664 (first edition), with small but significant revisions published in 1674 (second edition). As a blind poet, Milton dictated his verse to a series of aides in his employ. It has been argued that the poem reflects his personal despair at the failure of the Revolution yet affirms an ultimate optimism in human potential. Some literary critics have argued that Milton encoded many references to his unyielding support for the "Good Old Cause".


title: John Milton

text: On 27 April 1667, Milton sold the publication rights for "Paradise Lost" to publisher Samuel Simmons for £5 (equivalent to approximately £770 in 2015 purchasing power), with a further £5 to be paid if and when each print run sold out of between 1,300 and 1,500 copies. The first run was a quarto edition priced at three shillings per copy (about £23 in 2015 purchasing power equivalent), published in August 1667, and it sold out in eighteen months.


title: John Milton

text: Milton followed up the publication "Paradise Lost" with its sequel "Paradise Regained", which was published alongside the tragedy "Samson Agonistes" in 1671. Both of these works also reflect Milton's post-Restoration political situation. Just before his death in 1674, Milton supervised a second edition of "Paradise Lost", accompanied by an explanation of "why the poem rhymes not", and prefatory verses by Andrew Marvell. In 1673, Milton republished his "1645 Poems", as well as a collection of his letters and the Latin prolusions from his Cambridge days.


title: John Milton

text: An unfinished religious manifesto, "De doctrina christiana", probably written by Milton, lays out many of his heterodox theological views, and was not discovered and published until 1823. Milton's key beliefs were idiosyncratic, not those of an identifiable group or faction, and often they go well beyond the orthodoxy of the time. Their tone, however, stemmed from the Puritan emphasis on the centrality and inviolability of conscience. He was his own man, but he was anticipated by Henry Robinson in "Areopagitica".


title: John Milton

text: While Milton's beliefs are generally considered to be consistent with Protestant Christianity, Stephen Fallon argues that by the late 1650s, Milton may have at least toyed with the idea of monism or animist materialism, the notion that a single material substance which is "animate, self-active, and free" composes everything in the universe: from stones and trees and bodies to minds, souls, angels, and God. Fallon claims that Milton devised this position to avoid the mind-body dualism of Plato and Descartes as well as the mechanistic determinism of Hobbes. According to Fallon, Milton's monism is most notably reflected in "Paradise Lost" when he has angels eat (5.433–439) and apparently engage in sexual intercourse (8.622–629) and the "De Doctrina", where he denies the dual natures of man and argues for a theory of Creation "ex Deo".


title: John Milton

text: Milton was a "passionately individual Christian Humanist poet." He appears on the pages of seventeenth century English Puritanism, an age characterized as "the world turned upside down." He was a Puritan and yet was unwilling to surrender conscience to party positions on public policy. Thus, Milton's political thought, driven by competing convictions, a Reformed faith and a Humanist spirit, led to enigmatic outcomes.Milton’s apparently contradictory stance on the vital problems of his age, arose from religious contestations, to the questions of the divine rights of kings. In both the cases, he seems in control, taking stock of the situation arising from the polarization of the English society on religious and political lines. He fought with the Puritans against the Cavaliers i.e. the King’s party, and helped win the day. But the very same constitutional and republican polity, when tried to curtail freedom of speech, Milton, given his humanistic zeal, wrote "Areopagitica" . . . ["sic"] "Areopagitica" was written in response to the Licensing Order, in November 1644.