title: On the Origin of Species

text: The sixth edition was published by Murray on 19 February 1872 as "The Origin of Species", with "On" dropped from the title. Darwin had told Murray of working men in Lancashire clubbing together to buy the fifth edition at 15 shillings and wanted it made more widely available; the price was halved to 7s 6d by printing in a smaller font. It includes a glossary compiled by W.S. Dallas. Book sales increased from 60 to 250 per month.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In the United States, botanist Asa Gray, an American colleague of Darwin, negotiated with a Boston publisher for publication of an authorised American version, but learnt that two New York publishing firms were already planning to exploit the absence of international copyright to print "Origin". Darwin was delighted by the popularity of the book, and asked Gray to keep any profits. Gray managed to negotiate a 5% royalty with Appleton's of New York, who got their edition out in mid-January 1860, and the other two withdrew. In a May letter, Darwin mentioned a print run of 2,500 copies, but it is not clear if this referred to the first printing only, as there were four that year.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The book was widely translated in Darwin's lifetime, but problems arose with translating concepts and metaphors, and some translations were biased by the translator's own agenda. Darwin distributed presentation copies in France and Germany, hoping that suitable applicants would come forward, as translators were expected to make their own arrangements with a local publisher. He welcomed the distinguished elderly naturalist and geologist Heinrich Georg Bronn, but the German translation published in 1860 imposed Bronn's own ideas, adding controversial themes that Darwin had deliberately omitted. Bronn translated "favoured races" as "perfected races", and added essays on issues including the origin of life, as well as a final chapter on religious implications partly inspired by Bronn's adherence to "Naturphilosophie". In 1862, Bronn produced a second edition based on the third English edition and Darwin's suggested additions, but then died of a heart attack. Darwin corresponded closely with Julius Victor Carus, who published an improved translation in 1867. Darwin's attempts to find a translator in France fell through, and the translation by Clémence Royer published in 1862 added an introduction praising Darwin's ideas as an alternative to religious revelation and promoting ideas anticipating social Darwinism and eugenics, as well as numerous explanatory notes giving her own answers to doubts that Darwin expressed. Darwin corresponded with Royer about a second edition published in 1866 and a third in 1870, but he had difficulty getting her to remove her notes and was troubled by these editions. He remained unsatisfied until a translation by Edmond Barbier was published in 1876. A Dutch translation by Tiberius Cornelis Winkler was published in 1860. By 1864, additional translations had appeared in Italian and Russian. In Darwin's lifetime, "Origin" was published in Swedish in 1871, Danish in 1872, Polish in 1873, Hungarian in 1873–1874, Spanish in 1877 and Serbian in 1878. By 1977, "Origin" had appeared in an additional 18 languages, including Chinese by Ma Chün-wu who added non-Darwinian ideas; he published the preliminaries and chapters 1–5 in 1902–1904, and his complete translation in 1920.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Page ii contains quotations by William Whewell and Francis Bacon on the theology of natural laws, harmonising science and religion in accordance with Isaac Newton's belief in a rational God who established a law-abiding cosmos. In the second edition, Darwin added an epigraph from Joseph Butler affirming that God could work through scientific laws as much as through miracles, in a nod to the religious concerns of his oldest friends. The "Introduction" establishes Darwin's credentials as a naturalist and author, then refers to John Herschel's letter suggesting that the origin of species "would be found to be a natural in contradistinction to a miraculous process":


title: On the Origin of Species

text: WHEN on board HMS "Beagle", as naturalist, I was much struck with certain facts in the distribution of the inhabitants of South America, and in the geological relations of the present to the past inhabitants of that continent. These facts seemed to me to throw some light on the origin of species—that mystery of mysteries, as it has been called by one of our greatest philosophers.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Darwin refers specifically to the distribution of the species rheas, and to that of the Galápagos tortoises and mockingbirds. He mentions his years of work on his theory, and the arrival of Wallace at the same conclusion, which led him to "publish this Abstract" of his incomplete work. He outlines his ideas, and sets out the essence of his theory:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: As many more individuals of each species are born than can possibly survive; and as, consequently, there is a frequently recurring struggle for existence, it follows that any being, if it vary however slightly in any manner profitable to itself, under the complex and sometimes varying conditions of life, will have a better chance of surviving, and thus be naturally selected. From the strong principle of inheritance, any selected variety will tend to propagate its new and modified form.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Starting with the third edition, Darwin prefaced the introduction with a sketch of the historical development of evolutionary ideas. In that sketch he acknowledged that Patrick Matthew had, unknown to Wallace or himself, anticipated the concept of natural selection in an appendix to a book published in 1831; in the fourth edition he mentioned that William Charles Wells had done so as early as 1813.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter I covers animal husbandry and plant breeding, going back to ancient Egypt. Darwin discusses contemporary opinions on the origins of different breeds under cultivation to argue that many have been produced from common ancestors by selective breeding. As an illustration of artificial selection, he describes fancy pigeon breeding, noting that "[t]he diversity of the breeds is something astonishing", yet all were descended from one species of rock pigeon. Darwin saw two distinct kinds of variation: (1) rare abrupt changes he called "sports" or "monstrosities" (example: Ancon sheep with short legs), and (2) ubiquitous small differences (example: slightly shorter or longer bill of pigeons). Both types of hereditary changes can be used by breeders. However, for Darwin the small changes were most important in evolution. In this chapter Darwin expresses his erroneous belief that environmental change is necessary to generate variation.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In Chapter II, Darwin specifies that the distinction between species and varieties is arbitrary, with experts disagreeing and changing their decisions when new forms were found. He concludes that "a well-marked variety may be justly called an incipient species" and that "species are only strongly marked and permanent varieties". He argues for the ubiquity of variation in nature. Historians have noted that naturalists had long been aware that the individuals of a species differed from one another, but had generally considered such variations to be limited and unimportant deviations from the archetype of each species, that archetype being a fixed ideal in the mind of God. Darwin and Wallace made variation among individuals of the same species central to understanding the natural world.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In Chapter III, Darwin asks how varieties "which I have called incipient species" become distinct species, and in answer introduces the key concept he calls "natural selection"; in the fifth edition he adds, "But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient."


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Owing to this struggle for life, any variation, however slight and from whatever cause proceeding, if it be in any degree profitable to an individual of any species, in its infinitely complex relations to other organic beings and to external nature, will tend to the preservation of that individual, and will generally be inherited by its offspring ... I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term of Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: He notes that both A. P. de Candolle and Charles Lyell had stated that all organisms are exposed to severe competition. Darwin emphasizes that he used the phrase "struggle for existence" in "a large and metaphorical sense, including dependence of one being on another"; he gives examples ranging from plants struggling against drought to plants competing for birds to eat their fruit and disseminate their seeds. He describes the struggle resulting from population growth: "It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms." He discusses checks to such increase including complex ecological interdependencies, and notes that competition is most severe between closely related forms "which fill nearly the same place in the economy of nature".


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter IV details natural selection under the "infinitely complex and close-fitting ... mutual relations of all organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life". Darwin takes as an example a country where a change in conditions led to extinction of some species, immigration of others and, where suitable variations occurred, descendants of some species became adapted to new conditions. He remarks that the artificial selection practised by animal breeders frequently produced sharp divergence in character between breeds, and suggests that natural selection might do the same, saying:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: But how, it may be asked, can any analogous principle apply in nature? I believe it can and does apply most efficiently, from the simple circumstance that the more diversified the descendants from any one species become in structure, constitution, and habits, by so much will they be better enabled to seize on many and widely diversified places in the polity of nature, and so be enabled to increase in numbers.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Historians have remarked that here Darwin anticipated the modern concept of an ecological niche. He did not suggest that every favourable variation must be selected, nor that the favoured animals were better or higher, but merely more adapted to their surroundings.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Darwin proposes sexual selection, driven by competition between males for mates, to explain sexually dimorphic features such as lion manes, deer antlers, peacock tails, bird songs, and the bright plumage of some male birds. He analysed sexual selection more fully in "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" (1871). Natural selection was expected to work very slowly in forming new species, but given the effectiveness of artificial selection, he could "see no limit to the amount of change, to the beauty and infinite complexity of the coadaptations between all organic beings, one with another and with their physical conditions of life, which may be effected in the long course of time by nature's power of selection". Using a tree diagram and calculations, he indicates the "divergence of character" from original species into new species and genera. He describes branches falling off as extinction occurred, while new branches formed in "the great Tree of life ... with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications".


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In Darwin's time there was no agreed-upon model of heredity; in Chapter I Darwin admitted, "The laws governing inheritance are quite unknown." He accepted a version of the inheritance of acquired characteristics (which after Darwin's death came to be called Lamarckism), and Chapter V discusses what he called the effects of use and disuse; he wrote that he thought "there can be little doubt that use in our domestic animals strengthens and enlarges certain parts, and disuse diminishes them; and that such modifications are inherited", and that this also applied in nature. Darwin stated that some changes that were commonly attributed to use and disuse, such as the loss of functional wings in some island-dwelling insects, might be produced by natural selection. In later editions of "Origin", Darwin expanded the role attributed to the inheritance of acquired characteristics. Darwin also admitted ignorance of the source of inheritable variations, but speculated they might be produced by environmental factors. However, one thing was clear: whatever the exact nature and causes of new variations, Darwin knew from observation and experiment that breeders were able to select such variations and produce huge differences in many generations of selection. The "observation" that selection works in domestic animals is not destroyed by lack of "understanding" of the underlying hereditary mechanism.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Breeding of animals and plants showed related varieties varying in similar ways, or tending to revert to an ancestral form, and similar patterns of variation in distinct species were explained by Darwin as demonstrating common descent. He recounted how Lord Morton's mare apparently demonstrated telegony, offspring inheriting characteristics of a previous mate of the female parent, and accepted this process as increasing the variation available for natural selection.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: More detail was given in Darwin's 1868 book on "The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication", which tried to explain heredity through his hypothesis of pangenesis. Although Darwin had privately questioned blending inheritance, he struggled with the theoretical difficulty that novel individual variations would tend to blend into a population. However, inherited variation could be seen, and Darwin's concept of selection working on a population with a range of small variations was workable. It was not until the modern evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s that a model of heredity became completely integrated with a model of variation. This modern evolutionary synthesis had been dubbed Neo Darwinian Evolution because it encompasses Charles Darwin's theories of evolution with Gregor Mendel's theories of genetic inheritance.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter VI begins by saying the next three chapters will address possible objections to the theory, the first being that often no intermediate forms between closely related species are found, though the theory implies such forms must have existed. As Darwin noted, "Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion, instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?" Darwin attributed this to the competition between different forms, combined with the small number of individuals of intermediate forms, often leading to extinction of such forms.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Another difficulty, related to the first one, is the absence or rarity of transitional varieties in time. Darwin commented that by the theory of natural selection "innumerable transitional forms must have existed," and wondered "why do we not find them embedded in countless numbers in the crust of the earth?" (For further discussion of these difficulties, see and Bernstein et al. and Michod.)


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The chapter then deals with whether natural selection could produce complex specialised structures, and the behaviours to use them, when it would be difficult to imagine how intermediate forms could be functional. Darwin said:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Secondly, is it possible that an animal having, for instance, the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the modification of some animal with wholly different habits? Can we believe that natural selection could produce, on the one hand, organs of trifling importance, such as the tail of a giraffe, which serves as a fly-flapper, and, on the other hand, organs of such wonderful structure, as the eye, of which we hardly as yet fully understand the inimitable perfection?


title: On the Origin of Species

text: His answer was that in many cases animals exist with intermediate structures that are functional. He presented flying squirrels, and flying lemurs as examples of how bats might have evolved from non-flying ancestors. He discussed various simple eyes found in invertebrates, starting with nothing more than an optic nerve coated with pigment, as examples of how the vertebrate eye could have evolved. Darwin concludes: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case."


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In a section on "organs of little apparent importance", Darwin discusses the difficulty of explaining various seemingly trivial traits with no evident adaptive function, and outlines some possibilities such as correlation with useful features. He accepts that we "are profoundly ignorant of the causes producing slight and unimportant variations" which distinguish domesticated breeds of animals, and human races. He suggests that sexual selection might explain these variations:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: I might have adduced for this same purpose the differences between the races of man, which are so strongly marked; I may add that some little light can apparently be thrown on the origin of these differences, chiefly through sexual selection of a particular kind, but without here entering on copious details my reasoning would appear frivolous.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter VII (of the first edition) addresses the evolution of instincts. His examples included two he had investigated experimentally: slave-making ants and the construction of hexagonal cells by honey bees. Darwin noted that some species of slave-making ants were more dependent on slaves than others, and he observed that many ant species will collect and store the pupae of other species as food. He thought it reasonable that species with an extreme dependency on slave workers had evolved in incremental steps. He suggested that bees that make hexagonal cells evolved in steps from bees that made round cells, under pressure from natural selection to economise wax. Darwin concluded:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Finally, it may not be a logical deduction, but to my imagination it is far more satisfactory to look at such instincts as the young cuckoo ejecting its foster-brothers, —ants making slaves, —the larvæ of ichneumonidæ feeding within the live bodies of caterpillars, —not as specially endowed or created instincts, but as small consequences of one general law, leading to the advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary, let the strongest live and the weakest die.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter VIII addresses the idea that species had special characteristics that prevented hybrids from being fertile in order to preserve separately created species. Darwin said that, far from being constant, the difficulty in producing hybrids of related species, and the viability and fertility of the hybrids, varied greatly, especially among plants. Sometimes what were widely considered to be separate species produced fertile hybrid offspring freely, and in other cases what were considered to be mere varieties of the same species could only be crossed with difficulty. Darwin concluded: "Finally, then, the facts briefly given in this chapter do not seem to me opposed to, but even rather to support the view, that there is no fundamental distinction between species and varieties."


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In the sixth edition Darwin inserted a new chapter VII (renumbering the subsequent chapters) to respond to criticisms of earlier editions, including the objection that many features of organisms were not adaptive and could not have been produced by natural selection. He said some such features could have been by-products of adaptive changes to other features, and that often features seemed non-adaptive because their function was unknown, as shown by his book on "Fertilisation of Orchids" that explained how their elaborate structures facilitated pollination by insects. Much of the chapter responds to George Jackson Mivart's criticisms, including his claim that features such as baleen filters in whales, flatfish with both eyes on one side and the camouflage of stick insects could not have evolved through natural selection because intermediate stages would not have been adaptive. Darwin proposed scenarios for the incremental evolution of each feature.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter IX deals with the fact that the geological record appears to show forms of life suddenly arising, without the innumerable transitional fossils expected from gradual changes. Darwin borrowed Charles Lyell's argument in "Principles of Geology" that the record is extremely imperfect as fossilisation is a very rare occurrence, spread over vast periods of time; since few areas had been geologically explored, there could only be fragmentary knowledge of geological formations, and fossil collections were very poor. Evolved local varieties which migrated into a wider area would seem to be the sudden appearance of a new species. Darwin did not expect to be able to reconstruct evolutionary history, but continuing discoveries gave him well-founded hope that new finds would occasionally reveal transitional forms. To show that there had been enough time for natural selection to work slowly, he cited the example of The Weald as discussed in "Principles of Geology" together with other observations from Hugh Miller, James Smith of Jordanhill and Andrew Ramsay. Combining this with an estimate of recent rates of sedimentation and erosion, Darwin calculated that erosion of The Weald had taken around 300 million years. The initial appearance of entire groups of well-developed organisms in the oldest fossil-bearing layers, now known as the Cambrian explosion, posed a problem. Darwin had no doubt that earlier seas had swarmed with living creatures, but stated that he had no satisfactory explanation for the lack of fossils. Fossil evidence of pre-Cambrian life has since been found, extending the history of life back for billions of years.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter X examines whether patterns in the fossil record are better explained by common descent and branching evolution through natural selection, than by the individual creation of fixed species. Darwin expected species to change slowly, but not at the same rate – some organisms such as "Lingula" were unchanged since the earliest fossils. The pace of natural selection would depend on variability and change in the environment. This distanced his theory from Lamarckian laws of inevitable progress. It has been argued that this anticipated the punctuated equilibrium hypothesis, but other scholars have preferred to emphasise Darwin's commitment to gradualism. He cited Richard Owen's findings that the earliest members of a class were a few simple and generalised species with characteristics intermediate between modern forms, and were followed by increasingly diverse and specialised forms, matching the branching of common descent from an ancestor. Patterns of extinction matched his theory, with related groups of species having a continued existence until extinction, then not reappearing. Recently extinct species were more similar to living species than those from earlier eras, and as he had seen in South America, and William Clift had shown in Australia, fossils from recent geological periods resembled species still living in the same area.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter XI deals with evidence from biogeography, starting with the observation that differences in flora and fauna from separate regions cannot be explained by environmental differences alone; South America, Africa, and Australia all have regions with similar climates at similar latitudes, but those regions have very different plants and animals. The species found in one area of a continent are more closely allied with species found in other regions of that same continent than to species found on other continents. Darwin noted that barriers to migration played an important role in the differences between the species of different regions. The coastal sea life of the Atlantic and Pacific sides of Central America had almost no species in common even though the Isthmus of Panama was only a few miles wide. His explanation was a combination of migration and descent with modification. He went on to say: "On this principle of inheritance with modification, we can understand how it is that sections of genera, whole genera, and even families are confined to the same areas, as is so commonly and notoriously the case." Darwin explained how a volcanic island formed a few hundred miles from a continent might be colonised by a few species from that continent. These species would become modified over time, but would still be related to species found on the continent, and Darwin observed that this was a common pattern. Darwin discussed ways that species could be dispersed across oceans to colonise islands, many of which he had investigated experimentally.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter XII continues the discussion of biogeography. After a brief discussion of freshwater species, it returns to oceanic islands and their peculiarities; for example on some islands roles played by mammals on continents were played by other animals such as flightless birds or reptiles. The summary of both chapters says:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: ... I think all the grand leading facts of geographical distribution are explicable on the theory of migration (generally of the more dominant forms of life), together with subsequent modification and the multiplication of new forms. We can thus understand the high importance of barriers, whether of land or water, which separate our several zoological and botanical provinces. We can thus understand the localisation of sub-genera, genera, and families; and how it is that under different latitudes, for instance in South America, the inhabitants of the plains and mountains, of the forests, marshes, and deserts, are in so mysterious a manner linked together by affinity, and are likewise linked to the extinct beings which formerly inhabited the same continent ... On these same principles, we can understand, as I have endeavoured to show, why oceanic islands should have few inhabitants, but of these a great number should be endemic or peculiar; ...


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Chapter XIII starts by observing that classification depends on species being grouped together in a "Taxonomy", a multilevel system of groups and sub-groups based on varying degrees of resemblance. After discussing classification issues, Darwin concludes:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: All the foregoing rules and aids and difficulties in classification are explained, if I do not greatly deceive myself, on the view that the natural system is founded on descent with modification; that the characters which naturalists consider as showing true affinity between any two or more species, are those which have been inherited from a common parent, and, in so far, all true classification is genealogical; that community of descent is the hidden bond which naturalists have been unconsciously seeking, ...


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Darwin discusses morphology, including the importance of homologous structures. He says, "What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include the same bones, in the same relative positions?" This made no sense under doctrines of independent creation of species, as even Richard Owen had admitted, but the "explanation is manifest on the theory of the natural selection of successive slight modifications" showing common descent. He notes that animals of the same class often have extremely similar embryos. Darwin discusses rudimentary organs, such as the wings of flightless birds and the rudiments of pelvis and leg bones found in some snakes. He remarks that some rudimentary organs, such as teeth in baleen whales, are found only in embryonic stages. These factors also supported his theory of descent with modification.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The final chapter, "Recapitulation and Conclusion", reviews points from earlier chapters, and Darwin concludes by hoping that his theory might produce revolutionary changes in many fields of natural history. He suggests that psychology will be put on a new foundation and implies the relevance of his theory to the first appearance of humanity with the sentence that "Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history." Darwin ends with a passage that became well known and much quoted:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us ... Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Darwin added the phrase "by the Creator" from the 1860 second edition onwards, so that the ultimate sentence begins "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one".


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Darwin's aims were twofold: to show that species had not been separately created, and to show that natural selection had been the chief agent of change. He knew that his readers were already familiar with the concept of transmutation of species from "Vestiges", and his introduction ridicules that work as failing to provide a viable mechanism. Therefore, the first four chapters lay out his case that selection in nature, caused by the struggle for existence, is analogous to the selection of variations under domestication, and that the accumulation of adaptive variations provides a scientifically testable mechanism for evolutionary speciation.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Later chapters provide evidence that evolution has occurred, supporting the idea of branching, adaptive evolution without directly proving that selection is the mechanism. Darwin presents supporting facts drawn from many disciplines, showing that his theory could explain a myriad of observations from many fields of natural history that were inexplicable under the alternative concept that species had been individually created. The structure of Darwin's argument showed the influence of John Herschel, whose philosophy of science maintained that a mechanism could be called a "vera causa" (true cause) if three things could be demonstrated: its existence in nature, its ability to produce the effects of interest, and its ability to explain a wide range of observations.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The "Examiner" review of 3 December 1859 commented, "Much of Mr. Darwin's volume is what ordinary readers would call 'tough reading;' that is, writing which to comprehend requires concentrated attention and some preparation for the task. All, however, is by no means of this description, and many parts of the book abound in information, easy to comprehend and both instructive and entertaining."


title: On the Origin of Species

text: While the book was readable enough to sell, its dryness ensured that it was seen as aimed at specialist scientists and could not be dismissed as mere journalism or imaginative fiction. Unlike the still-popular "Vestiges", it avoided the narrative style of the historical novel and cosmological speculation, though the closing sentence clearly hinted at cosmic progression. Darwin had long been immersed in the literary forms and practices of specialist science, and made effective use of his skills in structuring arguments. David Quammen has described the book as written in everyday language for a wide audience, but noted that Darwin's literary style was uneven: in some places he used convoluted sentences that are difficult to read, while in other places his writing was beautiful. Quammen advised that later editions were weakened by Darwin making concessions and adding details to address his critics, and recommended the first edition. James T. Costa said that because the book was an abstract produced in haste in response to Wallace's essay, it was more approachable than the big book on natural selection Darwin had been working on, which would have been encumbered by scholarly footnotes and much more technical detail. He added that some parts of "Origin" are dense, but other parts are almost lyrical, and the case studies and observations are presented in a narrative style unusual in serious scientific books, which broadened its audience.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: From his early transmutation notebooks in the late 1830s onwards, Darwin considered human evolution as part of the natural processes he was investigating, and rejected divine intervention. In 1856, his "big book on species" titled "Natural Selection" was to include a "note on Man", but when Wallace enquired in December 1857, Darwin replied; "You ask whether I shall discuss 'man';—I think I shall avoid whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices, though I fully admit that it is the highest & most interesting problem for the naturalist."


title: On the Origin of Species

text: On 28 March 1859, with his manuscript for the book well under way, Darwin wrote to Lyell offering the suggested publisher John Murray assurances "That I do not discuss origin of man".


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In the final chapter of "On the Origin of Species", "Recapitulation and Conclusion", Darwin briefly highlights the human implications of his theory:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: "In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Discussing this in January 1860, Darwin assured Lyell that "by the sentence [Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history] I show that I believe man is in same predicament with other animals. Many modern writers have seen this sentence as Darwin’s only reference to humans in the book; Janet Browne describes it as his only discussion there of human origins, while noting that the book makes other references to humanity.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Some other statements in the book are quietly effective at pointing out the implication that humans are simply another species, evolving through the same processes and principles affecting other organisms. For example, in Chapter III: "Struggle for Existence" Darwin includes "slow-breeding man" among other examples of Malthusian population growth. In his discussions on morphology, Darwin compares and comments on bone structures that are homologous between humans and other mammals.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Darwin's early notebooks discussed how non-adaptive characteristics could be selected when animals or humans chose mates, with races of humans differing over ideas of beauty. In his 1856 notes responding to Robert Knox's "The Races of Man: A Fragment", he called this effect sexual selection. He added notes on sexual selection to his "big book on species", and in mid-1857 he added a section heading "Theory applied to Races of Man", but did not add text on this topic.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In "On the Origin of Species", Chapter VI: "Difficulties on Theory", Darwin mentions this in the context of "slight and unimportant variations":


title: On the Origin of Species

text: I might have adduced for this same purpose the differences between the races of man, which are so strongly marked; I may add that some little light can apparently be thrown on the origin of these differences, chiefly through sexual selection of a particular kind, but without here entering on copious details my reasoning would appear frivolous."


title: On the Origin of Species

text: When Darwin published "The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex" twelve years later, he said that he had not gone into detail on human evolution in the "Origin" as he thought that would "only add to the prejudices against my views". He had not completely avoided the topic:


title: On the Origin of Species

text: It seemed to me sufficient to indicate, in the first edition of my 'Origin of Species,' that by this work 'light would be thrown on the origin of man and his history;' and this implies that man must be included with other organic beings in any general conclusion respecting his manner of appearance on this earth.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: He also said that he had "merely alluded" in that book to sexual selection differentiating human races.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The book aroused international interest and a widespread debate, with no sharp line between scientific issues and ideological, social and religious implications. Much of the initial reaction was hostile, in a large part because very few reviewers actually understood his theory, but Darwin had to be taken seriously as a prominent and respected name in science. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce wrote a review in "Quarterly Review" in 1860 where he disagreed with Darwin's 'argument'. There was much less controversy than had greeted the 1844 publication "Vestiges of Creation", which had been rejected by scientists, but had influenced a wide public readership into believing that nature and human society were governed by natural laws. The "Origin of Species" as a book of wide general interest became associated with ideas of social reform. Its proponents made full use of a surge in the publication of review journals, and it was given more popular attention than almost any other scientific work, though it failed to match the continuing sales of "Vestiges". Darwin's book legitimised scientific discussion of evolutionary mechanisms, and the newly coined term 'Darwinism' was used to cover the whole range of evolutionism, not just his own ideas. By the mid-1870s, evolutionism was triumphant.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: While Darwin had been somewhat coy about human origins, not identifying any explicit conclusion on the matter in his book, he had dropped enough hints about human's animal ancestry for the inference to be made, and the first review claimed it made a creed of the "men from monkeys" idea from "Vestiges". Human evolution became central to the debate and was strongly argued by Huxley who featured it in his popular "working-men's lectures". Darwin did not publish his own views on this until 1871.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The naturalism of natural selection conflicted with presumptions of purpose in nature and while this could be reconciled by theistic evolution, other mechanisms implying more progress or purpose were more acceptable. Herbert Spencer had already incorporated Lamarckism into his popular philosophy of progressive free market human society. He popularised the terms 'evolution' and 'survival of the fittest', and many thought Spencer was central to evolutionary thinking.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Scientific readers were already aware of arguments that species changed through processes that were subject to laws of nature, but the transmutational ideas of Lamarck and the vague "law of development" of "Vestiges" had not found scientific favour. Darwin presented natural selection as a scientifically testable mechanism while accepting that other mechanisms such as inheritance of acquired characters were possible. His strategy established that evolution through natural laws was worthy of scientific study, and by 1875, most scientists accepted that evolution occurred but few thought natural selection was significant. Darwin's scientific method was also disputed, with his proponents favouring the empiricism of John Stuart Mill's "A System of Logic", while opponents held to the idealist school of William Whewell's "Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences", in which investigation could begin with the intuitive idea that species were fixed objects created by design. Early support for Darwin's ideas came from the findings of field naturalists studying biogeography and ecology, including Joseph Dalton Hooker in 1860, and Asa Gray in 1862. Henry Walter Bates presented research in 1861 that explained insect mimicry using natural selection. Alfred Russel Wallace discussed evidence from his Malay archipelago research, including an 1864 paper with an evolutionary explanation for the Wallace line.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Evolution had less obvious applications to anatomy and morphology, and at first had little impact on the research of the anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley. Despite this, Huxley strongly supported Darwin on evolution; though he called for experiments to show whether natural selection could form new species, and questioned if Darwin's gradualism was sufficient without sudden leaps to cause speciation. Huxley wanted science to be secular, without religious interference, and his article in the April 1860 "Westminster Review" promoted scientific naturalism over natural theology, praising Darwin for "extending the domination of Science over regions of thought into which she has, as yet, hardly penetrated" and coining the term "Darwinism" as part of his efforts to secularise and professionalise science. Huxley gained influence, and initiated the X Club, which used the journal "Nature" to promote evolution and naturalism, shaping much of late-Victorian science. Later, the German morphologist Ernst Haeckel would convince Huxley that comparative anatomy and palaeontology could be used to reconstruct evolutionary genealogies.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The leading naturalist in Britain was the anatomist Richard Owen, an idealist who had shifted to the view in the 1850s that the history of life was the gradual unfolding of a divine plan. Owen's review of the "Origin" in the April 1860 "Edinburgh Review" bitterly attacked Huxley, Hooker and Darwin, but also signalled acceptance of a kind of evolution as a teleological plan in a continuous "ordained becoming", with new species appearing by natural birth. Others that rejected natural selection, but supported "creation by birth", included the Duke of Argyll who explained beauty in plumage by design. Since 1858, Huxley had emphasised anatomical similarities between apes and humans, contesting Owen's view that humans were a separate sub-class. Their disagreement over human origins came to the fore at the British Association for the Advancement of Science meeting featuring the legendary 1860 Oxford evolution debate. In two years of acrimonious public dispute that Charles Kingsley satirised as the "Great Hippocampus Question" and parodied in "The Water-Babies" as the "great hippopotamus test", Huxley showed that Owen was incorrect in asserting that ape brains lacked a structure present in human brains. Others, including Charles Lyell and Alfred Russel Wallace, thought that humans shared a common ancestor with apes, but higher mental faculties could not have evolved through a purely material process. Darwin published his own explanation in the "Descent of Man" (1871).


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Evolutionary ideas, although not natural selection, were accepted by German biologists accustomed to ideas of homology in morphology from Goethe's "Metamorphosis of Plants" and from their long tradition of comparative anatomy. Bronn's alterations in his German translation added to the misgivings of conservatives, but enthused political radicals. Ernst Haeckel was particularly ardent, aiming to synthesise Darwin's ideas with those of Lamarck and Goethe while still reflecting the spirit of "Naturphilosophie". Their ambitious programme to reconstruct the evolutionary history of life was joined by Huxley and supported by discoveries in palaeontology. Haeckel used embryology extensively in his recapitulation theory, which embodied a progressive, almost linear model of evolution. Darwin was cautious about such histories, and had already noted that von Baer's laws of embryology supported his idea of complex branching.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Asa Gray promoted and defended "Origin" against those American naturalists with an idealist approach, notably Louis Agassiz who viewed every species as a distinct fixed unit in the mind of the Creator, classifying as species what others considered merely varieties. Edward Drinker Cope and Alpheus Hyatt reconciled this view with evolutionism in a form of neo-Lamarckism involving recapitulation theory.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: French-speaking naturalists in several countries showed appreciation of the much-modified French translation by Clémence Royer, but Darwin's ideas had little impact in France, where any scientists supporting evolutionary ideas opted for a form of Lamarckism. The intelligentsia in Russia had accepted the general phenomenon of evolution for several years before Darwin had published his theory, and scientists were quick to take it into account, although the Malthusian aspects were felt to be relatively unimportant. The political economy of struggle was criticised as a British stereotype by Karl Marx and by Leo Tolstoy, who had the character Levin in his novel "Anna Karenina" voice sharp criticism of the morality of Darwin's views.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: There were serious scientific objections to the process of natural selection as the key mechanism of evolution, including Carl Nägeli's insistence that a trivial characteristic with no adaptive advantage could not be developed by selection. Darwin conceded that these could be linked to adaptive characteristics. His estimate that the age of the Earth allowed gradual evolution was disputed by William Thomson (later awarded the title Lord Kelvin), who calculated that it had cooled in less than 100 million years. Darwin accepted blending inheritance, but Fleeming Jenkin calculated that as it mixed traits, natural selection could not accumulate useful traits. Darwin tried to meet these objections in the fifth edition. Mivart supported directed evolution, and compiled scientific and religious objections to natural selection. In response, Darwin made considerable changes to the sixth edition. The problems of the age of the Earth and heredity were only resolved in the 20th century.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: By the mid-1870s, most scientists accepted evolution, but relegated natural selection to a minor role as they believed evolution was purposeful and progressive. The range of evolutionary theories during "the eclipse of Darwinism" included forms of "saltationism" in which new species were thought to arise through "jumps" rather than gradual adaptation, forms of orthogenesis claiming that species had an inherent tendency to change in a particular direction, and forms of neo-Lamarckism in which inheritance of acquired characteristics led to progress. The minority view of August Weismann, that natural selection was the only mechanism, was called neo-Darwinism. It was thought that the rediscovery of Mendelian inheritance invalidated Darwin's views.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: While some, like Spencer, used analogy from natural selection as an argument against government intervention in the economy to benefit the poor, others, including Alfred Russel Wallace, argued that action was needed to correct social and economic inequities to level the playing field before natural selection could improve humanity further. Some political commentaries, including Walter Bagehot's "Physics and Politics" (1872), attempted to extend the idea of natural selection to competition between nations and between human races. Such ideas were incorporated into what was already an ongoing effort by some working in anthropology to provide scientific evidence for the superiority of Caucasians over non-white races and justify European imperialism. Historians write that most such political and economic commentators had only a superficial understanding of Darwin's scientific theory, and were as strongly influenced by other concepts about social progress and evolution, such as the Lamarckian ideas of Spencer and Haeckel, as they were by Darwin's work. Darwin objected to his ideas being used to justify military aggression and unethical business practices as he believed morality was part of fitness in humans, and he opposed polygenism, the idea that human races were fundamentally distinct and did not share a recent common ancestry.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: The book produced a wide range of religious responses at a time of changing ideas and increasing secularisation. The issues raised were complex and there was a large middle ground. Developments in geology meant that there was little opposition based on a literal reading of Genesis, but defence of the argument from design and natural theology was central to debates over the book in the English-speaking world.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Natural theology was not a unified doctrine, and while some such as Louis Agassiz were strongly opposed to the ideas in the book, others sought a reconciliation in which evolution was seen as purposeful. In the Church of England, some liberal clergymen interpreted natural selection as an instrument of God's design, with the cleric Charles Kingsley seeing it as "just as noble a conception of Deity". In the second edition of January 1860, Darwin quoted Kingsley as "a celebrated cleric", and added the phrase "by the Creator" to the closing sentence, which from then on read "life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one". While some commentators have taken this as a concession to religion that Darwin later regretted, Darwin's view at the time was of God creating life through the laws of nature, and even in the first edition there are several references to "creation".


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Baden Powell praised "Mr Darwin's masterly volume [supporting] the grand principle of the self-evolving powers of nature". In America, Asa Gray argued that evolution is the secondary effect, or "modus operandi", of the first cause, design, and published a pamphlet defending the book in terms of theistic evolution, "Natural Selection is not inconsistent with Natural Theology". Theistic evolution became a popular compromise, and St. George Jackson Mivart was among those accepting evolution but attacking Darwin's naturalistic mechanism. Eventually it was realised that supernatural intervention could not be a scientific explanation, and naturalistic mechanisms such as neo-Lamarckism were favoured over natural selection as being more compatible with purpose.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Even though the book did not explicitly spell out Darwin's beliefs about human origins, it had dropped a number of hints about human's animal ancestry and quickly became central to the debate, as mental and moral qualities were seen as spiritual aspects of the immaterial soul, and it was believed that animals did not have spiritual qualities. This conflict could be reconciled by supposing there was some supernatural intervention on the path leading to humans, or viewing evolution as a purposeful and progressive ascent to mankind's position at the head of nature. While many conservative theologians accepted evolution, Charles Hodge argued in his 1874 critique "What is Darwinism?" that "Darwinism", defined narrowly as including rejection of design, was atheism though he accepted that Asa Gray did not reject design. Asa Gray responded that this charge misrepresented Darwin's text. By the early 20th century, four noted authors of "The Fundamentals" were explicitly open to the possibility that God created through evolution, but fundamentalism inspired the American creation–evolution controversy that began in the 1920s. Some conservative Roman Catholic writers and influential Jesuits opposed evolution in the late 19th and early 20th century, but other Catholic writers, starting with Mivart, pointed out that early Church Fathers had not interpreted Genesis literally in this area. The Vatican stated its official position in a 1950 papal encyclical, which held that evolution was not inconsistent with Catholic teaching.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Various alternative evolutionary mechanisms favoured during "the eclipse of Darwinism" became untenable as more was learned about inheritance and mutation. The full significance of natural selection was at last accepted in the 1930s and 1940s as part of the modern evolutionary synthesis. During that synthesis biologists and statisticians, including R. A. Fisher, Sewall Wright and J. B. S. Haldane, merged Darwinian selection with a statistical understanding of Mendelian genetics.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Modern evolutionary theory continues to develop. Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection, with its tree-like model of branching common descent, has become the unifying theory of the life sciences. The theory explains the diversity of living organisms and their adaptation to the environment. It makes sense of the geological record, biogeography, parallels in embryonic development, biological homologies, vestigiality, cladistics, phylogenetics and other fields, with unrivalled explanatory power; it has also become essential to applied sciences such as medicine and agriculture. Despite the scientific consensus, a religion-based political controversy has developed over how evolution is taught in schools, especially in the United States.


title: On the Origin of Species

text: Interest in Darwin's writings continues, and scholars have generated an extensive literature, the Darwin Industry, about his life and work. The text of "Origin" itself has been subject to much analysis including a variorum, detailing the changes made in every edition, first published in 1959, and a concordance, an exhaustive external index published in 1981. Worldwide commemorations of the 150th anniversary of the publication of "On the Origin of Species" and the bicentenary of Darwin's birth were scheduled for 2009. They celebrated the ideas which "over the last 150 years have revolutionised our understanding of nature and our place within it".


title: On the Origin of Species

text: In a survey conducted by a group of academic booksellers, publishers and librarians in advance of Academic Book Week in the United Kingdom, "On the Origin of Species" was voted the most influential academic book ever written. It was hailed as "the supreme demonstration of why academic books matter" and "a book which has changed the way we think about everything".


title: Makarov pistol

text: The Makarov pistol or PM () is a Soviet semi-automatic pistol. Under the project leadership of Nikolay Fyodorovich Makarov, it became the Soviet Union's standard military and Militsiya side arm in 1951.


title: Makarov pistol

text: Shortly after the Second World War, the Soviet Union reactivated its plans to replace the TT pistols and Nagant M1895 revolvers. The adoption of the future AK assault rifle relegated the pistol to a light, handy self-defense weapon. The TT was unsuited for such a role, as it was heavy and bulky. Also, the Tokarev pistols omitted a safety and magazines were deemed too easy to lose. As a result, in December 1945, two separate contests for a new service pistol were created, respectively for a 7.62mm and 9mm pistol. It was later judged that the new 9.2×18mm cartridge, designed by B. V. Semin, was the best round suited for the intended role. The lower pressures of the cartridge allowed practical straight blowback operation (reducing the cost and complexity of the weapon), while retaining low recoil and good stopping power.


title: Makarov pistol

text: Several engineers took part in the contest, including Korovin, Baryshev, Voyevodin, Simonov, Rakov, Klimov, Lobanov, Sevryugin, and Makarov. Special emphasis was placed on safety, user-friendliness, accuracy, weight, and dimensions. After stringent handling, reliability, and other tests, Makarov's design, influenced by the German Walther PP, stood out from the others through its sheer simplicity, excellent reliability, quick disassembly, and robustness. During April 1948, Makarov's pistol experienced 20 times fewer malfunctions than the competing Baryshev and Sevryugin counterparts, and had fewer parts. The pistol was therefore selected in 1949 for further development and optimization for mass production. Tooling was set up in the Izhevsk plant for production. After many major design changes and tweaks, the gun was formally adopted as the "9mm Pistolet Makarova", or "PM" in December 1951.


title: Makarov pistol

text: As the new standard issue sidearm of the USSR, the PM was issued to Non-commissioned officers, police, special forces, and tank and air crews. It remained in wide front-line service with Soviet military and police until and beyond the end of the USSR in 1991. Variants of the pistol remain in production in Russia, China, and Bulgaria. In the U.S., surplus Soviet and East German military Makarovs are listed as eligible curio and relic items by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, because the countries of manufacture, the USSR and the GDR, no longer exist.


title: Makarov pistol

text: In 2003, the Makarov PM was formally replaced by the PYa pistol in Russian service, although , large numbers of Makarov pistols are still in Russian military and police service. The PM is still the service pistol of many Eastern European and former Soviet republics. North Korea and Vietnam also use PMs as standard-issue pistols, however North Korea has since switched to the CZ-75 made locally as the BaekDuSan pistol.


title: Makarov pistol

text: Although various pistols had been introduced in Russian service to replace the Makarov, none have been able to entirely supplant it; the MP-443 Grach/PYa is technically the Russian military's standard sidearm but suffers from quality control and reliability issues. In September 2019, Rostec announced its Udav pistol went into mass production as the Makarov replacement. The Udav fires 9×21mm Gyurza rounds which are claimed to pierce 1.4 mm of titanium or 4 mm of steel at a 100 meters.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The PM is a medium-size, straight-blowback-action, all-steel construction, frame-fixed barrel handgun. In blowback designs, the only force holding the slide closed is that of the recoil spring; upon firing, the barrel and slide do not have to unlock, as do locked-breech-design pistols. Blowback designs are simple and more accurate than designs using a recoiling, tilting, or articulated barrel, but they are limited practically by the weight of the slide. The 9×18mm cartridge is a practical cartridge in blowback-operated pistols; producing a respectable level of energy from a gun of moderate weight and size. The PM is heavy for its size by modern US commercial handgun standards, largely because in a blowback pistol, the heavy slide provides greater inertia to delay opening of the breech until internal pressures have fallen to a safe level. Other, more powerful cartridges have been used in blowback pistol designs, but the Makarov is widely regarded as particularly well balanced in its design elements.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The general layout and field-strip procedure of the Makarov pistol is similar to that of the PP. However, designer N. Makarov and his team drastically simplified the construction of the pistol, improving reliability and reducing the part count to 27, not including the magazine. This allowed considerable ease of manufacture and servicing. All of the individual parts of the PM have been optimised for mass production, robustness and interchangeability, partially thanks to captured German tooling, technology, and machinery.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The chrome-lined, four-groove, 9.27mm caliber barrel is pressed and pinned to the frame through a precision-machined ring. The 7 kg recoil spring wraps around and is guided by the barrel. The spring-loaded trigger guard is pivoted down and swung to either side on the frame, allowing removal of the slide. The front sight is integrally machined into the slide, and a 3–4 mm wide textured strip is engraved on top of the slide in order to prevent aim-disturbing glare. The rear sight is dovetailed into the slide and multiple heights are available to adjust the impact point. The extractor is of an external spring-loaded type, and features a prominent flange preventing loss if a case should rupture. The breech face is deeply recessed in order to aid in extraction and ejection reliability. The stamped sheet steel slide-lock lever has a tail serving the purpose of ejector. The one-piece, wraparound bakelite or plastic grip is reinforced with steel inserts and has a detent inside the screw bushing preventing unscrewing during firing. The sheet-metal mainspring housed inside the grip panel powers the hammer in both the main and rebound stroke, the trigger and the disconnector, while its lower end is the heel and spring of the magazine catch. The sear spring also serves another function, powering the slide lock lever. Makarov pistol parts seldom break with normal usage, and are easily serviced using few tools.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The PM has a free-floating triangular firing pin, with no firing pin spring or firing pin block. This theoretically allows the possibility of accidental firing if the pistol is dropped on its muzzle. Designer Nikolay Makarov thought the firing pin of insufficient mass to constitute a major danger. The Makarov pistol is notable for the safety elements of its design, with a safety lever that simultaneously decocks and blocks the hammer from contacting the firing pin and returns the weapon to the long-trigger-pull mode of double action when that safety is engaged. When handled properly, the Makarov pistol has excellent security against accidental discharge caused by inadvertent pressure on the trigger, e.g., in carrying the weapon in dense brush or re-holstering it. However, the heavy trigger weight in double-action mode decreases first-shot accuracy. The Bulgarian-model Makarov pistol was approved for sale in the US state of California, having passed a state-mandated drop-safety test though the certification was not renewed and it has since been removed from the roster of approved handguns.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The PM has a DA/SA trigger mechanism. Engaging the manual safety simultaneously decocks the hammer if cocked, and prevents movement of slide, trigger and hammer. Both carrying with safety engaged, or with safety disengaged and hammer uncocked are considered safe. The DA trigger pull is heavy, requiring a strong squeeze, trading first shot accuracy for safety. Racking the slide, manually cocking the hammer or firing a cartridge all cock the hammer, setting the trigger for the next shot to single action. The PM is a semi-automatic firearm, therefore its rate of fire depends on how rapidly the shooter squeezes the trigger. Spent cartridges are ejected some 5.5–6 meters away to the shooter's right and rear. After firing the last round, the slide is held back by the slide stop lever/ejector. Magazines can be removed from the gun via the heel release, located on the bottom of the grip. After loading a fresh magazine, the slide can be released by pressing the lever on the left side of the frame or by racking the slide and releasing it; either action loads a cartridge into the chamber and readies the pistol to fire again.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The Makarov pistol was manufactured in several communist countries during the Cold War and afterwards; apart from the USSR itself, they were East Germany, Bulgaria, China, and post-reunification Germany, which also found itself with several thousand ex-GDR Makarov pistols.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The most widely known variant, the PMM ("Pistolet Makarova Modernizirovannyy" or Modernised Makarov pistol), was a redesign of the original gun. In 1990, a group of engineers reworked the original design, primarily by increasing the load for the cartridge. The result is a significant increase in muzzle velocity and generation of 25% more gas pressure. The PMM magazine holds 12 rounds, compared to the PM's eight rounds. Versions that held ten rounds were produced in greater quantities than the 12-round magazine. The PMM is able to use existing 9.2×18mm PM cartridges and has other minor modifications such as more ergonomic grip panels as well as flutes in the chamber that aid in extraction. As of 2015, it is—alongside MP-443 Grach—the service pistol of the Russian Airborne Troops.


title: Makarov pistol

text: A silenced version of the Makarov pistol, the PB, was developed for use by reconnaissance groups and the KGB, with a dedicated detachable suppressor.


title: Makarov pistol

text: An experimental variant of the Makarov pistol, the TKB-023, was designed with a polymer frame to reduce the weight and costs of the weapon. It had passed Soviet military trials but was never fielded, due to concerns about the polymer's capacities for long-term storage and use.


title: Makarov pistol

text: Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia have developed their own handgun designs chambering the 9×18mm round. Hungary developed the FEG PA-63, Poland the P-64 and the P-83 Wanad and Czechoslovakia the vz.82. While similar in operation (straight blowback), and chambered for the same round, these pistols are often found labeled at gun shows by some US gun retailers as "Polish Makarovs" and "Hungarian Makarovs". Nonetheless, these cosmetically similar designs are independent of the PM and have more in common with the Walther PP (which, in fact, was also a major influence on the original Russian Makarov).


title: Makarov pistol

text: A wide variety of aftermarket additions and replacements exist for the Makarov pistol, including replacement barrels, custom grips, custom finishes and larger sights with various properties to replace the notoriously small originals. A scope/light mount exists for the Makarov pistol but requires a threaded replacement barrel.


title: Makarov pistol

text: Baikal is a brand developed by IGP around which a series of shotgun products were designed from 1962. After the collapse of the USSR, commercial gun manufacture was greatly expanded under the Baikal brand.


title: Makarov pistol

text: During the 1990s, Baikal marketed various Makarov-derived handguns in the United States under the IJ-70 model. Included were handguns in both standard and high-capacity frames. They were available in .380 ACP in addition to the standard 9 mm Makarov round. Some minor modifications were made to facilitate importation into the United States, including the replacement of the rear fixed sight with an adjustable sight (only these Russian models marketed abroad feature an adjustable sight). A sporting version is the Baikal-442. The importation of these commercial models into the U.S. was later further restricted with the U.S. Government's importation ban on Russian firearms.


title: Makarov pistol

text: The Baikal IZH-79-8 is a modified version of the standard Makarov pistol, with an 8 mm barrel, modified to allow it to fire gas cartridges. These guns proved popular after the fall of the USSR, and were used in Eastern Europe for personal protection. However, unlike most gas firing guns, the body is made of standard Makarov-specification steel.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Thelonious Sphere Monk (, October 10, 1917 – February 17, 1982) was an American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and made numerous contributions to the standard jazz repertoire, including "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Chaser", "Ruby, My Dear", "In Walked Bud", and "Well, You Needn't". Monk is the second-most-recorded jazz composer after Duke Ellington.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk's compositions and improvisations feature dissonances and angular melodic twists and are consistent with his unorthodox approach to the piano, which combined a highly percussive attack with abrupt, dramatic use of switched key releases, silences, and hesitations.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk's distinct look included suits, hats, and sunglasses. He also had an idiosyncratic habit during performances: while other musicians continued playing, Monk would stop, stand up, and dance for a few moments before returning to the piano.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk is one of five jazz musicians to have been featured on the cover of "Time" (the others being Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington and Wynton Marsalis).


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Thelonious Sphere Monk was born two years after his sister Marion on October 10, 1917, in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, and was the son of Thelonious and Barbara Monk. His poorly written birth certificate misspelled his first name as "Thelious" or "Thelius". It also did not list his middle name, taken from his maternal grandfather, Sphere Batts. His brother, Thomas, was born in January 1920. In 1922, the family moved to the Phipps Houses, 243 West 63rd Street, in Manhattan, New York City; the neighborhood was known as San Juan Hill because of the many African-American veterans of the Spanish–American War who lived there (urban renewal displaced the long-time residents of the community, who saw their neighborhood replaced by the Amsterdam Housing Projects and Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, though the Phipps Houses remained). Monk started playing the piano at the age of six, taking lessons from a neighbor, Alberta Simmons, who taught him stride playing in the style of Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Eubie Blake. Monk's mother also taught him to play some hymns, and he would sometimes accompany her singing at church. He attended Stuyvesant High School, a public school for gifted students, but did not graduate.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: For two years, between about the ages 10 to 12, Monk's piano teacher was Austrian-born Simon Wolf, a pianist and violinist who studied under Alfred Megerlin, the first violinist and concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic. Monk learned to play pieces by composers such as Bach, Beethoven, Liszt, and Mozart, but was particularly drawn to pieces by Chopin and Rachmaninoff. The lessons were discontinued when it became clear that Monk's main focus was jazz music.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: At 17, Monk toured with an evangelist, playing the church organ, and in his late teens he began to find work playing jazz. In the early to mid-1940s, he was the house pianist at Minton's Playhouse, a Manhattan nightclub. Much of Monk's style (in the Harlem stride tradition) was developed while he performed at Minton's where he participated in after-hours cutting contests, which featured many leading jazz soloists of the time. Monk's musical work at Minton's was crucial in the formulation of bebop, which would be furthered by other musicians, including Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Christian, Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker, and, later, Miles Davis. Monk is believed to be the pianist featured on recordings Jerry Newman made around 1941 at the club. Monk's style at this time was later described as "hard-swinging," with the addition of runs in the style of Art Tatum. Monk's stated influences included Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, and other early stride pianists. According to the documentary "", Monk lived in the same neighborhood in New York City as Johnson and knew him as a teenager.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In March 1943, Monk reported for his Army Induction physical, but was labeled by the Army psychiatrist as "psychiatric reject" and not inducted into the Armed Forces during WWII.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Mary Lou Williams, who mentored Monk and his contemporaries, spoke of Monk's rich inventiveness in this period, and how such invention was vital for musicians, since at the time it was common for fellow musicians to incorporate overheard musical ideas into their own works without giving due credit. "So, the boppers worked out a music that was hard to steal. I'll say this for the 'leeches,' though: they tried. I've seen them in Minton's busily writing on their shirt cuffs or scribbling on the tablecloth. And even our own guys, I'm afraid, did not give Monk the credit he had coming. Why, they even stole his idea of the beret and bop glasses."


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In 1944, Monk cut his first commercial recordings with the Coleman Hawkins Quartet. Hawkins was one of the earliest established jazz musicians to promote Monk, and the pianist later returned the favor by inviting Hawkins to join him on a 1957 session with John Coltrane.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In 1947, Ike Quebec introduced Monk to Lorraine Gordon and her first husband, Alfred Lion, co-founder of Blue Note Records. From then on, Gordon preached his genius to the jazz world with unrelenting passion. Shortly after meeting Gordon and Lion, Monk made his first recordings as a leader for Blue Note (later anthologized on "Genius of Modern Music, Vol. 1"), which showcased his talents as a composer of original melodies for improvisation. Monk Blue Note Sessions were recorded between 1947 and 1952.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk married Nellie Smith in 1947, and on December 27, 1949 the couple had a son, T. S. Monk (called Toot), who became a jazz drummer. A daughter, Barbara (affectionately known as Boo-Boo), was born on September 5, 1953 and died of cancer in 1984.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In her autobiography, Gordon spoke of the utter lack of interest in Monk's recordings, which translated to poor sales. "I went to Harlem and those record stores didn't want Monk or me. I'll never forget one particular owner, I can still see him and his store on Seventh Avenue and 125th Street. 'He can't play lady, what are you doing up here? The guy has two left hands.' 'You just wait,' I'd say. 'This man's a genius, you don't know anything.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: For Alfred Lion, co-owner of Blue Note Records, sales were a secondary consideration. Michael Cuscuna relates that Alfred Lion told him that there were three people in his life that when he heard them, he just flipped and had to record everything they did. The first was Monk, the second was Herbie Nichols, and the third was Andrew Hill, where he didn’t care how much money he made or lost. He just had to record this music.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Due to Monk's reticence, Gordon became his mouthpiece to the public. In February 1948, she wrote to Ralph Ingersoll, the editor of the newspaper "PM," and described Monk as "a genius living here in the heart of New York, whom nobody knows". As a result, one of "PM"'s best writers visited Monk to do a feature on him, but Monk wouldn't speak to the reporter unless Gordon was in the room with him. In September of the same year, Lorraine approached Max Gordon, the owner and founder of the Village Vanguard and secured Monk his first gig there. Monk was showcased at the club for a week, but not a single person came.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In August 1951, New York City police searched a parked car occupied by Monk and his friend Bud Powell. They found narcotics in the car, presumed to have belonged to Powell. Monk refused to testify against his friend, so the police confiscated his New York City Cabaret Card. Without this, Monk was nominally unable to play in any New York venue where liquor was served. Although this severely restricted his ability to perform for several years, a coterie of musicians led by Randy Weston introduced Monk to Black-owned bars and clubs in Brooklyn that flouted the law, enabling the pianist to play little-advertised, one-night engagements throughout the borough with a modicum of regularity. Monk spent most of the early and mid-1950s composing and performing at theaters, outer borough clubs and out-of-town venues.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: After intermittent recording sessions for Blue Note from 1947 to 1952, Monk was under contract to Prestige Records for the following two years. With Prestige, he cut several highly significant, but at the time under-recognized, albums, including collaborations with the saxophonist Sonny Rollins and the drummers Art Blakey and Max Roach. In 1954, Monk participated in a Christmas Eve session, which produced most of the albums "Bags' Groove" and "Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants" by Davis. In his autobiography, "Miles", Davis claimed that the alleged anger and tension between them did not take place and that the claims of blows being exchanged were "rumors" and a "misunderstanding".


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In 1954, Monk paid his first visit to Paris. As well as performing at concerts, he recorded a solo piano session for French radio (later issued as an album by Disques Vogue). Backstage, Mary Lou Williams introduced him to Baroness Pannonica "Nica" de Koenigswarter, a member of the Rothschild family and a patroness of several New York City jazz musicians. She was a close friend for the rest of Monk's life: she "served as a surrogate wife right alongside Monk's equally devoted actual wife, Nellie" and "paid Monk's bills, dragged him to an endless array of doctors, put him and his family up in her own home and, when necessary, helped Nellie institutionalize him. In 1958, Monk and the baroness were stopped by the police in Delaware. When a small amount of marijuana was discovered, she took the rap for her friend and even served a few nights in jail."


title: Thelonious Monk

text: By the time of his signing to Riverside, Monk was highly regarded by his peers and by some critics, but his records remained poor sellers and his music was still regarded as too "difficult" for more mainstream acceptance. Indeed, with Monk's consent, Riverside had managed to buy out his previous Prestige contract for a mere $108.24. He willingly recorded two albums of jazz standards as a means of increasing his profile: "Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington" (1955) and "The Unique Thelonious Monk" (1956).


title: Thelonious Monk

text: On "Brilliant Corners", recorded in late 1956, Monk mainly performed his own music. The complex title track, which featured Rollins, was so difficult to play that the final version had to be edited together from multiple takes. The album, however, was largely regarded as the first commercial success for Monk.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: After having his cabaret card restored, Monk relaunched his New York career with a landmark six-month residency at the Five Spot Cafe in the East Village neighborhood of New York beginning in June 1957, leading a quartet with John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Wilbur Ware on bass, and Shadow Wilson on drums. Little of this group's music was documented owing to contractual problems: Coltrane was signed to Prestige at the time, but Monk refused to return to his former label. One studio session by the quartet was made for Riverside, three tunes which were not released until 1961 by the subsidiary label Jazzland along with outtakes from a larger group recording with Coltrane and Hawkins, those results appearing in 1957 as the album "Monk's Music". An amateur recording from the Five Spot (a later September 1958 reunion with Coltrane sitting in for Johnny Griffin) was issued on Blue Note in 1993; and a recording of the quartet performing at a Carnegie Hall concert on November 29 was recorded in high fidelity by Voice of America engineers, unearthed in the collection of the Library of Congress and released by Blue Note in 2005.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: "Crepuscule with Nellie," recorded in 1957, "was Monk's only, what's called through-composed composition, meaning that there is no improvising. It is Monk's concerto, if you will, and in some ways it speaks for itself. But he wrote it very, very carefully and very deliberately and really struggled to make it sound the way it sounds. [... I]t was his love song for Nellie," said the author of the "definitive Monk biography", Robin D. G. Kelley.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: The Five Spot residency ended Christmas 1957; Coltrane left to rejoin Davis's group, and the band was effectively disbanded. Monk did not form another long-term band until June 1958 when he began a second residency at the Five Spot, again with a quartet, this time with Griffin (Charlie Rouse later) on tenor, Ahmed Abdul-Malik on bass, and Roy Haynes on drums.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: On October 15, 1958, en route to a week-long engagement for the quartet at the Comedy Club in Baltimore, Maryland, Monk and de Koenigswarter were detained by police in Wilmington, Delaware. When Monk refused to answer questions or cooperate with the policemen, they beat him with a blackjack. Although they had authorization to search the vehicle and found narcotics in suitcases held in the trunk of the Baroness's car, Judge Christie of the Delaware Superior Court ruled that the unlawful detention of the pair, and the beating of Monk, rendered the consent to the search void as it was given under duress.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: After extended negotiations, Monk signed in 1962 with Columbia Records, one of the big four American record labels of the day. Monk's relationship with Riverside had soured over disagreements concerning royalty payments and had concluded with two European live albums; he had not recorded an album for Riverside since April 1960.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Working with producer Teo Macero on his debut for Columbia, the sessions in the first week of November had a lineup that had been with him for two years: tenor saxophonist Rouse (who worked regularly with Monk from 1959 to 1970), bassist John Ore, and drummer Frankie Dunlop. "Monk's Dream", his first Columbia album, was released in 1963.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Columbia's resources allowed Monk to receive more promotion than earlier in his career. "Monk's Dream" became the best-selling LP of his lifetime, and on February 28, 1964, he appeared on the cover of "Time" magazine, being featured in the article "The Loneliest Monk". The cover article was originally intended to run in November 1963, but it was delayed due to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. According to biographer Kelley, the 1964 "Time" appearance came because "Barry Farrell, who wrote the cover story, wanted to write about a jazz musician and almost by default Monk was chosen, because they thought Ray Charles and Miles Davis were too controversial. ... [Monk] wasn't so political. ...[O]f course, I challenge that [in the biography]," Kelley wrote.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk continued to record studio albums, including "Criss Cross", also in 1963, and "Underground", in 1968. But by the Columbia years his compositional output was limited, and only his final Columbia studio record, "Underground", featured a substantial number of new tunes, including his only time piece, "Ugly Beauty".


title: Thelonious Monk

text: As had been the case with Riverside, his period with Columbia contains multiple live albums, including "Miles and Monk at Newport" (1963), "Live at the It Club", and "Live at the Jazz Workshop", the latter two recorded in 1964, the last not being released until 1982. After the departure of Ore and Dunlop, the remainder of the rhythm section in Monk's quartet during the bulk of his Columbia period was Larry Gales on bass and Ben Riley on drums, both of whom joined in 1964. Along with Rouse, they remained with Monk for over four years, his longest-serving band.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In 1968, Monk, Gales, Rouse, and Riley played a concert at Palo Alto High School in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the invitation of a 16 year old student charged with organizing school dances. This resulted in the quartet's final recording, "Palo Alto" (2020).


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk had disappeared from the scene by the mid-1970s for health reasons and made only a small number of appearances during the final decade of his life. His last studio recordings as a leader were made in November 1971 for the English Black Lion label, near the end of a worldwide tour with the Giants of Jazz, a group which included Gillespie, Kai Winding, Sonny Stitt, Al McKibbon, and Art Blakey. Bassist McKibbon, who had known Monk for over twenty years and played on his final tour in 1971, later said: "On that tour, Monk said about two words. I mean literally maybe two words. He didn't say 'Good morning,' 'Goodnight,' 'What time?' Nothing. Why, I don't know. He sent word back after the tour was over that the reason he couldn't communicate or play was that Art Blakey and I were so ugly." A different side of Monk is revealed in Lewis Porter's biography, "John Coltrane: His Life and Music"; Coltrane states: "Monk is exactly the opposite of Miles [Davis]: he talks about music all the time, and he wants so much for you to understand that if, by chance, you ask him something, he'll spend hours if necessary to explain it to you." Blakey reports that Monk was excellent at both chess and checkers.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: The documentary film "" (1988) attributes Monk's quirky behavior to mental illness. In the film, Monk's son says that his father sometimes did not recognize him, and he reports that Monk was hospitalized on several occasions owing to an unspecified mental illness that worsened in the late 1960s. No reports or diagnoses were ever publicized, but Monk would often become excited for two or three days, then pace for days after that, after which he would withdraw and stop speaking. Doctors recommended electroconvulsive therapy as a treatment option for Monk's illness, but his family would not allow it; antipsychotics and lithium were prescribed instead. Other theories abound: Leslie Gourse, author of the book "Straight, No Chaser: The Life and Genius of Thelonious Monk" (1997), reported that at least one of Monk's psychiatrists failed to find evidence of manic depression (bipolar disorder) or schizophrenia. Another doctor maintains that Monk was misdiagnosed and prescribed drugs during his hospital stay that may have caused brain damage.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: As his health declined, Monk's last six years were spent as a guest in the Weehawken, New Jersey, home of his long-standing patron and friend, Pannonica de Koenigswarter, who nursed Monk during his final illness. She proved to be a steadfast presence, as did his own wife Nellie, especially as his life descended into further isolation. Monk did not play the piano during this time, even though one was present in his room, and he spoke to few visitors. He died of a stroke on February 17, 1982, and was buried in Ferncliff Cemetery (Grave 405, Hillcrest 1 section) at Hartsdale, New York.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: There have been numerous published references since the 1980s in Monk biographies purporting he attended the Juilliard School of Music, an error that continues to be disseminated in online biographies of Monk. At Monk’s funeral service in 1982, it was mentioned in his eulogy that he took classes in harmony and arrangement at Juilliard. In the 1988 documentary film "Thelonious Monk: Straight No Chaser", Samuel E. Wright narrates that "Monk began playing piano without formal training. Later, he took lessons and studied music theory at the Juilliard School of Music."


title: Thelonious Monk

text: The complete lack of documented evidence connecting Monk with attending Juilliard was noted by Monk biographer Thomas Fitterling in the first German edition of his Monk biography published in 1987. The Juilliard canard may have its early source in the fact that Monk’s sister Marion thought that her piano teacher, a Mr. Wolfe (sic), who briefly taught Thelonious around 1930, may have been connected to Juilliard as a teacher or student. In fact, the Monk family piano teacher had been trained by the concertmaster of the New York Philharmonic and has no known connection to Juilliard. Monk biographer Laurent de Wilde believed that the apocryphal Juilliard story may have stemmed from Monk’s late 1950s collaboration with Juilliard instructor Hall Overton. The main source of the Juilliard misunderstanding is probably that Monk participated in a music contest circa 1942–1943 at the Columbus Hill Community Center in his neighborhood, which had a Juilliard scholarship as the first prize. The teenage (he would have been 25) Monk entered the contest but placed second and thus failed to get the scholarship. According to Monk’s wife Nellie, when the prize winner later encountered Monk during a 1958 engagement and told him that Monk should rightfully have been awarded the Juilliard scholarship, Monk replied: "I'm glad I didn’t go to the conservatory. Probably would've ruined me."


title: Thelonious Monk

text: According to "Bebop: The Music and Its Players" author Thomas Owens, "Monk's usual piano touch was harsh and percussive, even in ballads. He often attacked the keyboard anew for each note, rather than striving for any semblance of legato. Often seemingly unintentional seconds embellish his melodic lines, giving the effect of someone playing while wearing work gloves. [...] He hit the keys with fingers held flat rather than in a natural curve, and held his free fingers high above the keys. [...] Sometimes he hit a single key with more than one finger, and divided single-line melodies between the two hands." In contrast with this unorthodox approach to playing, he could play runs and arpeggios with great speed and accuracy. He also had good finger independence, allowing him to play a melodic line and a trill simultaneously in his right hand.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk's style was not universally appreciated. For example, the poet and jazz critic Philip Larkin described him as "the elephant on the keyboard".


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Monk often used parts of whole tone scales, played either ascending or descending, and covering several octaves. He also had extended improvisations that featured parallel sixths (he also used these in the themes of some of his compositions). His solos also feature space and long notes. Unusually for a bebop-based pianist, as an accompanist and on solo performances he often employed a left-hand stride pattern. A further characteristic of his work as an accompanist was his tendency to stop playing, leaving a soloist with just bass and drums for support. Monk had a particular proclivity for the key of B flat. All of his many blues compositions, including "Blue Monk," "Misterioso," "Blues Five Spot," and "Functional," were composed in B flat; in addition, his signature theme, "Thelonious," largely consists of an incessantly repeated B-flat tone.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Comedian Felonious Munk and music producer Thelonious Martin both adopted stage names based on Monk's name. Other things named after Monk include punk rock band Thelonious Monster, the 2021 novel "Felonious Monk" by William Kotzwinkle, and the Cambridge, Massachusetts seafood-and-jazz restaurant Thelonious Monkfish, which later was renamed to The Mad Monkfish.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: The North Coast Brewing Company produces Brother Thelonious ale, the proceeds from which go towards jazz music education for young people.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: Colman Domingo's character in the HBO series "Euphoria", Ali, references Thelonious Monk's song "Blue Monk" and his legacy in the second episode of Season 2.


title: Thelonious Monk

text: In 1993, he was awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2006, he was awarded a special Pulitzer Prize for "a body of distinguished and innovative musical composition that has had a significant and enduring impact on the evolution of jazz".


title: Thelonious Monk

text: The Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz was established in 1986 by the Monk family and Maria Fisher. Its mission is to offer public school-based jazz education programs for young people around the globe, helping students develop imaginative thinking, creativity, curiosity, a positive self-image, and a respect for their own and others' cultural heritage. In addition to hosting an annual International Jazz Competition since 1987, the institute also helped, through its partnership with UNESCO, designate April 30, 2012, as the first annual International Jazz Day. It was renamed the Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz in 2019.


title: Billy Gunn

text: Monty Kip Sopp (born November 1, 1963), better known by his ring name Billy Gunn, although he is currently finding renewed popularity under the ring name Daddy Ass, is an American professional wrestler. He is currently signed to All Elite Wrestling (AEW) as a wrestler and coach. Gunn is best known for his appearances in the World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (WWF/E) from 1993 to 2004 and from 2012 to 2015. He also served as a coach on WWE's "Tough Enough" and was a trainer in NXT. He is also known for his appearances with Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) from 2005 to 2009.


title: Billy Gunn

text: Primarily a tag team wrestler, Gunn is an overall 11-time tag team champion in WWE with three different partners (with Bart Gunn as The Smoking Gunns, with Road Dogg as The New Age Outlaws, and with Chuck Palumbo as Billy and Chuck). He is also a one time WWF Intercontinental Champion and a two time WWF Hardcore Champion, giving him 14 total championships in WWE. He is the 1999 King of the Ring tournament winner, and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2019 as a member of D-Generation X.


title: Billy Gunn

text: After a stint as a professional bull rider in Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, Sopp left the profession in his early-20s in order to pursue a career as a professional wrestler. Trained by Jerry Grey, Sopp wrestled on the independent circuit for eight years (including a brief stint as enhancement talent for World Championship Wrestling (WCW) before signing a contract with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1993.


title: Billy Gunn

text: After weeks of vignettes, Sopp, under the name Billy Gunn, made his WWF debut on the May 17, 1993 episode of "Raw", teaming with his on-screen brother, Bart Gunn to defeat Tony Vadja and Glenn Ruth. The duo, now known as The Smoking Gunns, made their pay-per-view debut at King of the Ring, teaming with The Steiner Brothers to defeat Money Inc. and The Headshrinkers in an eight-man tag team match. At SummerSlam, the duo teamed with Tatanka to pick up a win against Bam Bam Bigelow and the Headshrinkers. On January 22, 1994, Gunn entered his first Royal Rumble match at the namesake event, but was eliminated by Diesel. In early 1995, the Gunns won their first Tag Team Championship by defeating the makeshift team of Bob Holly and 1-2-3 Kid. They held the title until WrestleMania XI, where they were defeated by the team of Owen Hart and Yokozuna. They won the titles again in September 1995.


title: Billy Gunn

text: On February 15, 1996, the Gunns vacated the title because Billy was in need of neck surgery. After Billy returned from hiatus, The Smoking Gunns won the Tag Team Title for the third time by defeating The Godwinns in May. After the match, The Godwinns' manager Sunny turned on her team in favor of the Gunns. On September 22 at In Your House: Mind Games, the Gunns lost the Tag Team Title to Owen Hart and The British Bulldog. After the match, Sunny abandoned The Gunns, saying that she would only manage title holders. Billy, frustrated with losing both the championship and Sunny, walked out on Bart, breaking up The Smoking Gunns.


title: Billy Gunn

text: After The Smoking Gunns disbanded, Gunn took some time off to nurse an injury. At WrestleMania 13, he defeated Flash Funk catching the attention of The Honky Tonk Man, who made Gunn his protégé. During this time, he adopted a new gimmick, Rockabilly, He would use this gimmick throughout much of 1997 and eventually had a short-lived feud with "The Real Double J" Jesse James. On the October 4, 1997 episode of "Shotgun Saturday Night", James realized both of their careers were going nowhere and suggested that they become a tag team. Gunn agreed and smashed a guitar over the Honky Tonk Man's head to solidify their new alliance.


title: Billy Gunn

text: James and Rockabilly were quickly rebranded as "Road Dogg" Jesse James and "Badd Ass" Billy Gunn, respectively, and their tag team was dubbed the New Age Outlaws. They quickly rose to the top of the tag team ranks and won the Tag Team Championship from the Legion of Doom on November 24. They also defeated the LOD in a rematch at .