title: Distillation

text: Short path distillation is a distillation technique that involves the distillate travelling a short distance, often only a few centimeters, and is normally done at reduced pressure. A classic example would be a distillation involving the distillate travelling from one glass bulb to another, without the need for a condenser separating the two chambers. This technique is often used for compounds which are unstable at high temperatures or to purify small amounts of compound. The advantage is that the heating temperature can be considerably lower (at reduced pressure) than the boiling point of the liquid at standard pressure, and the distillate only has to travel a short distance before condensing. A short path ensures that little compound is lost on the sides of the apparatus. The Kugelrohr apparatus is a kind of short path distillation method which often contains multiple chambers to collect distillate fractions.


title: Distillation

text: Some compounds have high boiling points as well as being air sensitive. A simple vacuum distillation system as exemplified above can be used, whereby the vacuum is replaced with an inert gas after the distillation is complete. However, this is a less satisfactory system if one desires to collect fractions under a reduced pressure. To do this a "cow" or "pig" adaptor can be added to the end of the condenser, or for better results or for very air sensitive compounds a Perkin triangle apparatus can be used.


title: Distillation

text: The Perkin triangle, has means via a series of glass or Teflon taps to allows fractions to be isolated from the rest of the still, without the main body of the distillation being removed from either the vacuum or heat source, and thus can remain in a state of reflux. To do this, the sample is first isolated from the vacuum by means of the taps, the vacuum over the sample is then replaced with an inert gas (such as nitrogen or argon) and can then be stoppered and removed. A fresh collection vessel can then be added to the system, evacuated and linked back into the distillation system via the taps to collect a second fraction, and so on, until all fractions have been collected.


title: Distillation

text: Zone distillation is a distillation process in a long container with partial melting of refined matter in moving liquid zone and condensation of vapor in the solid phase at condensate pulling in cold area. The process is worked in theory. When zone heater is moving from the top to the bottom of the container then solid condensate with irregular impurity distribution is forming. Then most pure part of the condensate may be extracted as product. The process may be iterated many times by moving (without turnover) the received condensate to the bottom part of the container on the place of refined matter. The irregular impurity distribution in the condensate (that is efficiency of purification) increases with the number of iterations.


title: Distillation

text: Zone distillation is the distillation analog of zone recrystallization. Impurity distribution in the condensate is described by known equations of zone recrystallization – with the replacement of the distribution co-efficient k of crystallization - for the separation factor α of distillation.


title: Distillation

text: Non-condensable gas can be expelled from the apparatus by the vapor of relatively volatile co-solvent, which spontaneously evaporates during initial pumping, and this can be achieved with regular oil or diaphragm pump.


title: Distillation

text: Interactions between the components of the solution create properties unique to the solution, as most processes entail non-ideal mixtures, where Raoult's law does not hold. Such interactions can result in a constant-boiling azeotrope which behaves as if it were a pure compound (i.e., boils at a single temperature instead of a range). At an azeotrope, the solution contains the given component in the same proportion as the vapor, so that evaporation does not change the purity, and distillation does not effect separation. For example, ethyl alcohol and water form an azeotrope of 95.6% at 78.1 °C.


title: Distillation

text: If the azeotrope is not considered sufficiently pure for use, there exist some techniques to break the azeotrope to give a pure distillate. This set of techniques are known as azeotropic distillation. Some techniques achieve this by "jumping" over the azeotropic composition (by adding another component to create a new azeotrope, or by varying the pressure). Others work by chemically or physically removing or sequestering the impurity. For example, to purify ethanol beyond 95%, a drying agent (or desiccant, such as potassium carbonate) can be added to convert the soluble water into insoluble water of crystallization. Molecular sieves are often used for this purpose as well.


title: Distillation

text: Immiscible liquids, such as water and toluene, easily form azeotropes. Commonly, these azeotropes are referred to as a low boiling azeotrope because the boiling point of the azeotrope is lower than the boiling point of either pure component. The temperature and composition of the azeotrope is easily predicted from the vapor pressure of the pure components, without use of Raoult's law. The azeotrope is easily broken in a distillation set-up by using a liquid–liquid separator (a decanter) to separate the two liquid layers that are condensed overhead. Only one of the two liquid layers is refluxed to the distillation set-up.


title: Distillation

text: High boiling azeotropes, such as a 20 percent by weight mixture of hydrochloric acid in water, also exist. As implied by the name, the boiling point of the azeotrope is greater than the boiling point of either pure component.


title: Distillation

text: To break azeotropic distillations and cross distillation boundaries, such as in the DeRosier Problem, it is necessary to increase the composition of the light key in the distillate.


title: Distillation

text: The boiling points of components in an azeotrope overlap to form a band. By exposing an azeotrope to a vacuum or positive pressure, it's possible to bias the boiling point of one component away from the other by exploiting the differing vapor pressure curves of each; the curves may overlap at the azeotropic point, but are unlikely to remain identical further along the pressure axis to either side of the azeotropic point. When the bias is great enough, the two boiling points no longer overlap and so the azeotropic band disappears.


title: Distillation

text: This method can remove the need to add other chemicals to a distillation, but it has two potential drawbacks.


title: Distillation

text: Under negative pressure, power for a vacuum source is needed and the reduced boiling points of the distillates requires that the condenser be run cooler to prevent distillate vapors being lost to the vacuum source. Increased cooling demands will often require additional energy and possibly new equipment or a change of coolant.


title: Distillation

text: Alternatively, if positive pressures are required, standard glassware can not be used, energy must be used for pressurization and there is a higher chance of side reactions occurring in the distillation, such as decomposition, due to the higher temperatures required to effect boiling.


title: Distillation

text: A unidirectional distillation will rely on a pressure change in one direction, either positive or negative.


title: Distillation

text: Pressure-swing distillation is essentially the same as the unidirectional distillation used to break azeotropic mixtures, but here both positive and negative pressures may be employed.


title: Distillation

text: This improves the selectivity of the distillation and allows a chemist to optimize distillation by avoiding extremes of pressure and temperature that waste energy. This is particularly important in commercial applications.


title: Distillation

text: One example of the application of pressure-swing distillation is during the industrial purification of ethyl acetate after its catalytic synthesis from ethanol.


title: Distillation

text: Large scale industrial distillation applications include both batch and continuous fractional, vacuum, azeotropic, extractive, and steam distillation. The most widely used industrial applications of continuous, steady-state fractional distillation are in petroleum refineries, petrochemical and chemical plants and natural gas processing plants.


title: Distillation

text: To control and optimize such industrial distillation, a standardized laboratory method, ASTM D86, is established. This test method extends to the atmospheric distillation of petroleum products using a laboratory batch distillation unit to quantitatively determine the boiling range characteristics of petroleum products.


title: Distillation

text: Industrial distillation is typically performed in large, vertical cylindrical columns known as distillation towers or distillation columns with diameters ranging from about and heights ranging from about or more. When the process feed has a diverse composition, as in distilling crude oil, liquid outlets at intervals up the column allow for the withdrawal of different "fractions" or products having different boiling points or boiling ranges. The "lightest" products (those with the lowest boiling point) exit from the top of the columns and the "heaviest" products (those with the highest boiling point) exit from the bottom of the column and are often called the bottoms.


title: Distillation

text: Industrial towers use reflux to achieve a more complete separation of products. Reflux refers to the portion of the condensed overhead liquid product from a distillation or fractionation tower that is returned to the upper part of the tower as shown in the schematic diagram of a typical, large-scale industrial distillation tower. Inside the tower, the downflowing reflux liquid provides cooling and condensation of the upflowing vapors thereby increasing the efficiency of the distillation tower. The more reflux that is provided for a given number of theoretical plates, the better the tower's separation of lower boiling materials from higher boiling materials. Alternatively, the more reflux that is provided for a given desired separation, the fewer the number of theoretical plates required. Chemical engineers must choose what combination of reflux rate and number of plates is both economically and physically feasible for the products purified in the distillation column.


title: Distillation

text: Such industrial fractionating towers are also used in cryogenic air separation, producing liquid oxygen, liquid nitrogen, and high purity argon. Distillation of chlorosilanes also enables the production of high-purity silicon for use as a semiconductor.


title: Distillation

text: Design and operation of a distillation tower depends on the feed and desired products. Given a simple, binary component feed, analytical methods such as the McCabe–Thiele method or the Fenske equation can be used. For a multi-component feed, simulation models are used both for design and operation. Moreover, the efficiencies of the vapor–liquid contact devices (referred to as "plates" or "trays") used in distillation towers are typically lower than that of a theoretical 100% efficient equilibrium stage. Hence, a distillation tower needs more trays than the number of theoretical vapor–liquid equilibrium stages. A variety of models have been postulated to estimate tray efficiencies.


title: Distillation

text: In modern industrial uses, a packing material is used in the column instead of trays when low pressure drops across the column are required. Other factors that favor packing are: vacuum systems, smaller diameter columns, corrosive systems, systems prone to foaming, systems requiring low liquid holdup, and batch distillation. Conversely, factors that favor plate columns are: presence of solids in feed, high liquid rates, large column diameters, complex columns, columns with wide feed composition variation, columns with a chemical reaction, absorption columns, columns limited by foundation weight tolerance, low liquid rate, large turn-down ratio and those processes subject to process surges.


title: Distillation

text: This packing material can either be random dumped packing ( wide) such as Raschig rings or structured sheet metal. Liquids tend to wet the surface of the packing and the vapors pass across this wetted surface, where mass transfer takes place. Unlike conventional tray distillation in which every tray represents a separate point of vapor–liquid equilibrium, the vapor–liquid equilibrium curve in a packed column is continuous. However, when modeling packed columns, it is useful to compute a number of "theoretical stages" to denote the separation efficiency of the packed column with respect to more traditional trays. Differently shaped packings have different surface areas and void space between packings. Both of these factors affect packing performance.


title: Distillation

text: Another factor in addition to the packing shape and surface area that affects the performance of random or structured packing is the liquid and vapor distribution entering the packed bed. The number of theoretical stages required to make a given separation is calculated using a specific vapor to liquid ratio. If the liquid and vapor are not evenly distributed across the superficial tower area as it enters the packed bed, the liquid to vapor ratio will not be correct in the packed bed and the required separation will not be achieved. The packing will appear to not be working properly. The height equivalent to a theoretical plate (HETP) will be greater than expected. The problem is not the packing itself but the mal-distribution of the fluids entering the packed bed. Liquid mal-distribution is more frequently the problem than vapor. The design of the liquid distributors used to introduce the feed and reflux to a packed bed is critical to making the packing perform to it maximum efficiency. Methods of evaluating the effectiveness of a liquid distributor to evenly distribute the liquid entering a packed bed can be found in references. Considerable work has been done on this topic by Fractionation Research, Inc. (commonly known as FRI).


title: Distillation

text: The goal of multi-effect distillation is to increase the energy efficiency of the process, for use in desalination, or in some cases one stage in the production of ultrapure water. The number of effects is inversely proportional to the kW·h/m of water recovered figure, and refers to the volume of water recovered per unit of energy compared with single-effect distillation. One effect is roughly 636 kW·h/m.


title: Distillation

text: There are many other types of multi-effect distillation processes, including one referred to as simply multi-effect distillation (MED), in which multiple chambers, with intervening heat exchangers, are employed.


title: Distillation

text: Carbohydrate-containing plant materials are allowed to ferment, producing a dilute solution of ethanol in the process. Spirits such as whiskey and rum are prepared by distilling these dilute solutions of ethanol. Components other than ethanol, including water, esters, and other alcohols, are collected in the condensate, which account for the flavor of the beverage. Some of these beverages are then stored in barrels or other containers to acquire more flavor compounds and characteristic flavors.


title: Rakesh Roshan

text: Rakesh Roshan (born 6 September 1949) is an Indian film producer, director, screenwriter, and actor who works in Hindi films. He is the son of Indian music director Roshan and Indian Bengali singer Ira Roshan. He had appeared in 84 films throughout the 1970s and 1980s until 1989. As an actor, he was mostly known for his supporting roles in big-budget films starring Sanjeev Kumar and Rajesh Khanna in the lead role. Later, he achieved fame for directing films with titles beginning with the letter "K" since 1987. As a filmmaker, his most notable work includes the drama "Khudgarz" (1987), the revenge drama "Khoon Bhari Maang" (1988), the comedy-drama "Kishen Kanhaiya" (1990), the crime thriller "Karan Arjun" (1995), the romance "Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai" (2000), the science fiction "Koi... Mil Gaya" (2003) and the superhero "Krrish" film series (20062013). Rakesh won the Filmfare Award for Best Director for directing the films; "Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai" and "Koi... Mil Gaya".


title: Rakesh Roshan

text: After his father's (Roshan) untimely death, Rakesh started his career as an assistant director to film maker Mohan Kumar in films like Anjaana starring Rajendra Kumar and Babita. Actor Rajendra Kumar referred him to some film makers and thus he was signed by Soodesh Kumar for Man Mandir starring Sanjeev Kumar and Waheeda Rehman. But he made his entry as an actor, making his debut in the 1970 film "Ghar Ghar Ki Kahani", in which he got a supporting role. He got very few solo hero films in his career. He got solo hero roles in more women-oriented films where the focus was more on the heroine, such as "Paraya Dhan" with Hema Malini, "Aankh Micholi" with Bharati, "Khubsoorat" with Rekha and "Kaamchor" with Jaya Prada. His few successful solo hero films, with the focus equally on both hero and heroine, were "Aankhon Aankhon Mein" with Rakhee, "Nafrat" with Yogita Bali, "Ek Kunwari Ek Kunwara" with Leena Chandavarkar, "Hamari Bahu Alka" with Bindiya Goswami and "Shubh Kaamna" with Rati Agnihotri. J. Om Prakash produced "Aankhon Aankhon Mein" with Rakesh in the lead. Later, J. Om Prakash directed "Aakraman", with Sanjeev Kumar in the lead, and had Rakesh in a supporting role, and then produced "Aakhir Kyun?", with Rajesh Khanna in the lead and Rakesh in a supporting role. Rakesh played supporting roles in a few successful films such as "Man Mandir" with Sanjeev Kumar in the lead, "Khel Khel Mein" with Rishi Kapoor in the lead, "Bullet" with Dev Anand as the hero, "Hatyara" with Vinod Khanna in the lead, "Dhongee" with Randhir Kapoor, "Khandaan" with Jeetendra and "Neeyat" with Shashi Kapoor as the lead hero. He played supporting roles regularly in films with Rajesh Khanna in the lead role and of those, "Chalta Purza" was a failure and the other three were blockbusters - "Dhanwan", "Awaaz" and "Aakhir Kyon?". The few multi-star cast films he was part of as the lead hero that were successful between 1977 and 1986 were "Devata", "Shriman Shrimati" and "Haathkadi", all of which had Sanjeev Kumar as the main lead hero and "Jaag Utha Insan" and "Ek Aur Sikander", which had Mithun Chakraborty in the main lead, and other hits such as "Dil Aur Deewaar", "Khatta Meetha", "Unees-Bees" (1980) and "Maqaar" (1986). Most of his other films as second lead hero or solo hero films between 1973 and 1990 were box office flops.


title: Rakesh Roshan

text: Rakesh set up his own production company, Filmkraft, in 1980 and their first production was "Aap Ke Deewane" (1980), which was a box office flop. His next venture was "Kaamchor", also produced by him, which became a hit, but the success of this film was attributed to its music and the heroine Jaya Prada. His next solo hero film "Shubh Kaamna", directed by K. Vishwanath, was a hit. He tried to re-launch himself as a lead hero with "Bhagwaan Dada" (1986), directed by J. Om Prakash and starring Rajinikanth as the main lead and himself in the second lead. But "Bhagwaan Dada" was a flop. Between 1984 and 1990 he only got supporting roles, with the exception of "Bahurani". The multi-star films where he was the second lead, such as "Maqaar" and "Ek Aur Sikander" were successful. His last film as a leading hero was "Bahurani", which was a woman-oriented film starring Rekha in the lead, which was directed by Manik Chatterjee and released in 1989.


title: Rakesh Roshan

text: He made his directorial debut with "Khudgarz" (1987), and went on to direct box office hits such as "Khoon Bhari Maang " (1988), "Kishen Kanhaiya" (1990), "Karan Arjun" (1995), and the Shahrukh Khan starrer "Koyla" (1997). However, his other directorial ventures flopped. During this time, from 1990 to 1999 he only acted occasionally in films, making guest appearances, and focused mostly on directing. He launched his son Hrithik's career as an actor with "Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai" (2000). Rakesh later revealed that this film was inspired by the storyline of Aradhana, starring Rajesh Khanna. This film, the highest grosser of 2000, entered the Limca Book of Records for the most awards won by a Bollywood film. He directed his son again in the 2003 science fiction film "Koi... Mil Gaya," (fetching him the Filmfare award 2004 for best director), and its sequel, the science fiction superhero film "Krrish" (2006), both of which were also very successful at the box office. In 2008, he produced the film "Krazzy 4". In 2010, he released a Bollywood meets Hollywood crossover film titled "Kites". Another version of this film was released internationally and known as "". This version was shorter, and mainly toned down the amount of musical numbers. His latest film as producer was "Kaabil", which released on 25 Jan 2017. The film stars Hrithik Roshan and Yami Gautam, and it grossed over Rs. 100 Crores at the box office.


title: Rakesh Roshan

text: On 21 January 2000, Roshan was shot at by two Budesh gang members near his office on Tilak Road at Santacruz West. The assailants fired two bullets at him, one of which hit him on the left arm, while the other grazed his chest. As the director fell to the ground, the assailants fled the scene. The assailants were later identified as Sunil Vithal Gaikwad and Sachin Kamble. The attack on Rakesh was not undertaken with the intent to kill, but to signal that the Shiv Sena could no longer protect its clients. Rakesh had stonewalled demands from Budesh for a percentage of the profits from the overseas sale of the Hindi all-time blockbuster; "Kaho Naa... Pyaar Hai".


title: Rakesh Roshan

text: As a director, Rakesh is known for making films with his son Hrithik Roshan and having music directed by his brother Rajesh Roshan. Other actors he has frequently collaborated with include Rekha, Madhuri Dixit, Anil Kapoor, Shah Rukh Khan, and Amrish Puri. As a director, his every film's name have starting with 'K'.


title: Against the Ice

text: Against the Ice is a 2022 historical survival film directed by Peter Flinth and written by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Joe Derrick, based on the true story recounted in "Two Against the Ice" by Ejnar Mikkelsen. It stars Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Charles Dance, and Heida Reed. The film was shot in Iceland and Greenland. "Against the Ice" premiered at the 72nd Berlin International Film Festival on February 15, 2022. It was released on Netflix on March 2, 2022, and received mixed reviews from critics.


title: Against the Ice

text: In 1909, Danish explorer Captain Ejnar Mikkelsen organizes an expedition to Shannon Island, East Greenland, from which he makes treks to recover the records of the ill-fated Denmark expedition. His first attempt is unsuccessful and a crewman loses toes to frostbite in the process, but on the trek Mikkelsen discovers a dead Denmark expedition member with a log and a map showing the location of a cairn built by his expedition. The only volunteer to accompany Mikkelsen on his second attempt is an inexperienced engineer named Iver Iversen, while the rest of the crew stays behind.


title: Against the Ice

text: Mikkelsen and Iversen lose two of their sled dogs in their first few days and gradually sacrifice the remaining dogs to provide food to the teams that remain. Later, they fight and kill a polar bear. After three months the explorers locate the cairn, which contains records that disprove the existence of the Peary Channel, thus showing that Greenland is a single island and that the United States has no claim in the Arctic. On their way back, Mikkelsen fears that they may not survive, so they build another cairn about 200 miles from Shannon Island in which they deposit the records from the Denmark expedition. Mikkelsen and Iversen finally return to Shannon Island to learn the rest of the crew have returned home, leaving them stranded. They are forced to spend two winters in a cabin with food and supplies while their crewmates struggle to mount a rescue mission.


title: Against the Ice

text: During their long isolation, the two men return to the cairn they built and retrieve the records. Meanwhile, their cabin is visited by would-be rescuers who find no sign of them. Later Mikkelsen hallucinates that his lover Naja Holm is with him, while Iversen imagines meeting his grandfather. Mikkelsen nearly kills Iversen with a rifle and the two men come very close to losing their sanity before being rescued in 1912. Their evidence from the Denmark expedition leads to American recognition of Greenland as a single island belonging to Denmark. An epilogue reveals that Mikkelsen married Naja a year later, that Iversen never set foot in the Arctic again, and that the two men remained friends for life.


title: Against the Ice

text: "Against the Ice" was a co-production between RVK Studios and Ill Kippers. It was directed by Danish director Peter Flinth, who worked with producer Baltasar Kormákur and cinematographer Torben Forsberg to shoot the film on location in Iceland and Greenland whilst using minimal green screens. The film is based on the Danish book "Two Against the Ice" by Ejnar Mikkelsen. On January 19, 2021, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Joe Cole, Charles Dance, and Heida Reed were confirmed to star. Flinth said he cast Cole as inexperienced crew member Iver Iversen due to the actor's unfamiliarity with Greenland. According to Coster-Waldau, the crew was once stranded on a glacier in Iceland during a storm. The actor suffered a concussion while filming the bear-fighting scene, which was shot using computer-generated imagery (CGI) and a heavyweight judo champion as a stuntman. Flinth had originally wanted to film the scene using a real polar bear.


title: Against the Ice

text: The film was watched for 30.73 million hours in its first five days, placing second on Netflix's top ten. From March 7 to March 13, the film was watched for 12.73 million hours, finishing third on the charts.


title: Against the Ice

text: Though the performances and cinematography received some praise, critics generally criticized the runtime, characters, dialogue, score, and historical accuracy. "The Hollywood Reporter"s David Rooney writes, "In the end, the most remarkable thing about "Against the Ice" is that a real-life story of two men at the mercy of the unforgiving elements, of hunger and illness, possible attack and encroaching madness, can be so curiously deprived of tension." "The Times" Ed Potton praised Coster-Waldau's performance.


title: Take On Me

text: "Take On Me" is a song by the Norwegian synth-pop band A-ha. The original version, recorded in 1984 and released in October of that same year, was produced by Tony Mansfield and remixed by John Ratcliff. The 1985 international hit version was produced by Alan Tarney for the group's debut studio album, "Hunting High and Low" (1985). The recording combines synth-pop with a varied instrumentation, including acoustic guitars, keyboards, and drums.


title: Take On Me

text: The original 1984 version "Take On Me" failed to chart in the United Kingdom, as did the second version in the first of its two 1985 releases. The second of those 1985 releases charted in September 1985, reaching number two on the UK Singles Chart in October. In the United States in October 1985 the single topped "Billboard"'s Hot 100, no doubt bolstered by the wide exposure on MTV of director Steve Barron's innovative music video featuring the band in a live-action pencil-sketch animation sequence. The video won six awards and was nominated for two others at the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards.


title: Take On Me

text: "Take On Me" originated from Pål Waaktaar's and Magne Furuholmen's previous band Bridges, who first composed a number called "The Juicy Fruit Song" when they were 15 and 16 years old. Initially the band felt the riff was too pop-oriented for their band, thus the first version of the song was more "punky" in an attempt to offset the riff. The first take of the song was inspired in part by Doors member Ray Manzarek and his "almost mathematical but very melodic, structured way of playing". Waaktaar considered the song too poppy for their intended dark style, but Furuholmen recalled thinking it was "quite catchy".


title: Take On Me

text: Soon after, Bridges disbanded. Waaktaar and Furuholmen relocated to London to try their hand in the music industry there, but returned to Norway after six months of disappointment. They were joined by their school friend, singer Morten Harket, who heard the song and said the keyboard riff had the character of a universal hit sound. The three and began working on demos, including a new version of the song, which was renamed "Lesson One" before it evolved into "Take On Me". In January 1983, the band returned to London in search of a recording contract. They intended the song to show off Harket's vocal range, which led to his vocals "doing this spiralling thing".


title: Take On Me

text: The band moved into an apartment in London and began contacting record companies and publishing houses. After a few meetings with various A&R personnel, they signed with the publishing house Lionheart. A-ha returned to Norway to earn some money; when they returned to London, they left Lionheart out of frustration. They decided to record new demos, and chose the studio of musician and producer John Ratcliff, intending to re-record five songs. The band signed with Ratcliff, who introduced them to manager Terry Slater. With this encouragement, the band managed to complete some songs, including "Take On Me". After a few meetings, Slater signed them with Warner Bros. Records UK.


title: Take On Me

text: The band met with producer Tony Mansfield, an expert in the use of the Fairlight CMI, who mixed the demos with electronic instrumentation. The sound was not what A-ha had hoped to achieve, and the album was remixed again. The band rushed to release "Take On Me" as a single in the United Kingdom but the single only charted at 137, the lowest-charted of all A-ha songs. After this, Warner Brothers' main office in the United States decided to invest in the band, and gave them the opportunity to re-record the song. The song was produced using the Roland Juno-60 synthesiser for the main riff, along with the Yamaha DX7 and PPG Wave synthesizers.


title: Take On Me

text: The instrumentation included a Yamaha DX7 and PPG Wave, with Furuholmen playing the main melody on a Roland Juno-60. A LinnDrum drum machine was used on the second and third releases, with acoustic cymbals and hi-hat overdubbed. Harket sang the lead vocal using a Neumann U47 microphone as well as a Neve microphone pre-amp and Neve equaliser.


title: Take On Me

text: In 2020, former Warner Brothers UK and Reprise executive Andrew Wickham appeared in A-ha's official anniversary documentary "A-ha: The Making of Take On Me", to explain how the song's success was due to several parties realising the band's true value. He detailed how the song finally became the worldwide smash hit still widely recognised today. In 1984, he was the international vice-president for Warner Bros Records America, and their A&R man in London. He said, "I got a call from Terry Slater... I couldn't believe my ears (at the band's audition) when I heard Morten Harket sing. I thought, how can somebody who looks like a film star sound like Roy Orbison? I thought, this is unbelievable."


title: Take On Me

text: Wickham immediately signed A-ha to Warner Brothers America, after learning several previous attempts had failed to make "Take On Me" a commercial success. The next release was not successful either and featured a very ordinary performance video. He authorised considerable investment in the band: on Slater's recommendation, renowned producer Alan Tarney was commissioned to refine the song. The new recording achieved a cleaner and more soaring sound and a coda section instead of the earlier quick fade-out; the song was soon completed and re-released in the UK, but the record label's office in London gave them little support, and the single flopped for the second time.


title: Take On Me

text: Wickham placed the band on high priority and applied a lateral strategy with further investment. Steve Barron directed a revolutionary rotoscoping animation music video which took six months to create, using professional artists. The single was released in the US one month after the music video, and immediately appeared in the "Billboard" Hot 100 and was a worldwide smash, reaching No. 1 in numerous countries.


title: Take On Me

text: AllMusic journalist Tim DiGravina described "Take On Me" as "a new wave classic laced with rushing keyboards, made emotionally resonant thanks to Morten Harket's touching vocal delicacy."


title: Take On Me

text: "Take On Me" is a synth-pop song that includes acoustic and electric guitars and keyboards, written at a very fast tempo of 169 beats per minute. The lyrics are a plea for love and constructed in a verse–chorus form with a bridge before the final chorus. The song is written in the key of A major with a chord progression of Bm7–E–A–D–E in the verse, A–C♯m7/G♯–F♯m–D in the chorus, and C♯m–G–C♯m–G–Bm–E in the bridge. Harket demonstrates a vocal range of over two and a half octaves. He sings the lowest pitch in the song, A (the tonic), at the beginning of the chorus, on the first syllable of the phrase "Take On Me". As the chorus progresses, Harket's voice hits ever higher notes, reaching a falsetto and hitting the song's highest note, E, (the dominant) at the end. "Rolling Stone" has thus noted the song as "having one of the hardest-to-sing choruses in pop history". A mix of a drum machine, the LinnDrum, acoustic guitars, and electronic instrumentation serves as the song's backing track.


title: Take On Me

text: The first release of "Take On Me" in 1984 includes a completely different recording; this mix was featured in the first video, which shows the band singing with a blue background.


title: Take On Me

text: The second video, directed by film director Steve Barron, is the far more widely recognised video for the song. It was filmed in 1985 at Kim's Cafe (now called Savoy Cafe) (corner of Wandsworth Road and Pensbury Place, London SW8), and on a sound stage in London. The video used a pencil-sketch animation and live-action combination called rotoscoping, in which the live-action footage is traced using a frame-by-frame process to give the characters realistic movements. Approximately 3,000 frames were rotoscoped, which took 16 weeks to complete. The idea of the video was suggested by Warner Bros executive Jeff Ayeroff, who was pivotal in making "Take on Me" a globally recognised music hit. The critical and commercial result was emphatic. In addition to an incalculably high view count from heavy rotation it received on MTV when it was originally released (as well as other music television channels), the music video has received more than 1.4 billion (1,483,559,293) views on YouTube and has received a 4K video restoration with more than 8.6 million likes.


title: Take On Me

text: The music video was remastered to 2160p (4K) in 2019 from the original 35mm film and released on YouTube, while retaining its original URL and upload date of January 6, 2010. On 17 February 2020, the music video reached one billion views on YouTube. Prior to that date, only four songs from the 20th century had reached that elusive mark ("November Rain" and "Sweet Child o' Mine" by Guns N' Roses, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" by Nirvana, and "Bohemian Rhapsody" by Queen) — making "Take On Me" the fifth video from that time period to do so, and the first Scandinavian act to achieve this.


title: Take On Me

text: The video's main theme is a romantic fantasy narrative. It begins with a montage of pencil drawings in a comic-book style representing motorcycle sidecar racing, in which the hero (Morten Harket) is pursued by two opponents (Philip Jackson and Alfie Curtis). It then cuts to a scene in a cafe, in which a young woman (Bunty Bailey) is reading the comic book. As the woman reads, the waitress brings her coffee and the bill. The comic's hero, after winning the race, seemingly winks at the woman from the page. His pencil-drawn hand suddenly reaches out of the comic book, inviting the woman into it. Once inside, she, too, appears in the pencil-drawn form as he sings to her and introduces her to his black-and-white world which features a sort of looking-glass portal where people and objects look real on one side and pencil-drawn on the other.


title: Take On Me

text: Back in the cafe, the waitress returns to find the woman missing. Believing the customer left without paying the bill, she angrily crumples the comic book and throws it into a bin. This causes the hero's two opposing racers to reappear as villains, one of them armed with a large pipe wrench. The racers smash the looking glass with the pipe wrench, trapping the woman in the comic book. The hero punches one of the thugs aside and retreats with the woman into a maze of paper. Arriving at a dead end, he tears a hole in the paper wall so that the woman can escape as the menacing opposing racers close in on him and they raise their pipe wrench to his face. The woman, now back in the real world and found lying beside the bin to the surprise of cafe guests and staff, retrieves the comic from the bin and runs home where she attempts to smooth out the creases to learn what happens next.


title: Take On Me

text: The next panel shows the hero, lying seemingly lifeless, and the woman begins to cry. However, he then wakes up and tries to break out of his comic-book frames. At the same time, his image appears in the woman's hallway, seemingly torn between real and comic form, hurling himself repeatedly left-and-right against the walls as he attempts to shatter his two-dimensional barrier. (This scene is largely patterned after a climactic scene in the 1980 film "Altered States".) He escapes from the comic book by becoming human and stands up. Smiling, the woman runs towards him.


title: Take On Me

text: At the 1986 MTV Video Music Awards, the video for "Take On Me" won six awards—Best New Artist in a Video, Best Concept Video, Most Experimental Video, Best Direction in a Video, Best Special Effects in a Video, and Viewer's Choice—and was nominated for two others, Best Group Video and Video of the Year. It was also nominated for Favorite Pop/Rock Video at the 13th American Music Awards in 1986.


title: Take On Me

text: The second music video was produced by Limelight Productions. The crew of the video were director Steve Barron, producer Simon Fields, cinematographer Oliver Stapleton, editor Richard Simpson from Rushes Film Editing, and animators Michael Patterson and Candace Reckinger.


title: Take On Me

text: The music video and song have often been referred to in cover versions, films, TV programmes and video games. The "Family Guy" episode "Breaking Out Is Hard to Do" includes a licensed, re-edited version of the video. Volkswagen created a television advertisement inspired by the video. The video was also one of the first to be made into a so-called literal music video. The visuals of the video were used as an homage for Paramore's music video for "Caught in the Middle". An incomplete list of pop-culture references can be found below.


title: Take On Me

text: "Take On Me" was originally released in 1984, mixed by Tony Mansfield, but failed to make an impact in the United Kingdom. This release peaked at no. 3 in Norway but failed to reach audiences abroad. The group re-recorded the song with the help of producer Alan Tarney, releasing the new version in 1985.


title: Take On Me

text: In the United States, Warner Bros. invested in the revolutionary second video for "Take On Me", which used Tarney's version of the song. The new video was released to dance clubs and television a month before the record was available in stores or played on the radio. Wide exposure on MTV helped propel the single to the top of "Billboard"'s Hot 100, reaching number one in the issue dated 19 October 1985 (its fifteenth week on the chart). It remained on the chart for twenty-seven weeks, and ranked ten in the 1985 year-end chart. As of June 2014, the song has sold 1,463,000 digital copies in the US after it became available for download in the digital era.


title: Take On Me

text: "Take On Me" was released for the third time in the United Kingdom in September 1985. The record debuted on the UK Singles Chart at no. 55 and in late October reached no. 2, where it remained for three consecutive weeks, held off the top spot by Britain's biggest single of the year, Jennifer Rush's "The Power of Love". On 14 August 2020 it was certified gold by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI).


title: Take On Me

text: In Norway, A-ha's native country, "Take On Me" re-entered the VG-lista singles chart, reaching a new peak of number one, a year after it was first released. The single was largely successful elsewhere, reaching the top of the Eurochart Hot 100 for nine weeks, topping the singles charts in 26 countries, including Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Switzerland, and reaching the top three in France and number two in Ireland.


title: Take On Me

text: Also in 2005, the song is featured in the ninth episode of season 4, titled "Breaking Out is Hard to Do", of "Family Guy". When Lois asks Chris to have a carton of milk, an animated hand invites Chris in and pulls him in as the song's intro starts to play. Once inside the animated pencil world, the group leader of a-ha, Morten Harket, sings the chorus. Like in the music video, two men are chasing them both. When Chris and Harket start running away from them to a dead end, Chris pushes against the wall, crashing behind a tray of eggs.


title: Take On Me

text: In the 2012 series finale of the TV show "Chuck", Jeff and Lester play the song in order to stop a bomb from detonating in a concert hall.


title: Take On Me

text: In 2013, the BBC did a visual parody of the music video for BBC Children in Need. To help promote the video, it features cameos from Sinitta, The Hairy Bikers, Cheryl Fergison, Sophie Raworth and Warwick Davis. In the same year, Pitbull released the single "Feel This Moment", featuring Christina Aguilera, which interpolates the synth riff of "Take On Me".


title: Take On Me

text: In the 2017, season 3 episode of The Leftovers, "G'day Melbourne," the song features prominently at various points, including in its original version during the episode credits.


title: Take On Me

text: In one of the scenes of the 2018 movie "Deadpool 2", in which Wade Wilson (alias "Deadpool") and his fiancée Vanessa meet again, an acoustic version of the song plays.


title: Take On Me

text: In the 2018 video game "Just Cause 4", there is an easter egg that pays tribute to the song's music video, which can be found on a half-built building in a town located on the Solis Island, west of Paso Ventoso. Going down to the second floor of the building, parts of the world will change to resemble pencil sketches on white paper, similar to the music video of the song.


title: Take On Me

text: In a 2020 episode of "The Simpsons" titled "The 7 Beer Itch", Homer realizes that he has romantic feelings for a character called Lily; "the two look into each other's eyes in a psychedelic mix of animated styles." It includes a rotoscope-style segment that references the music video of the song.


title: Take On Me

text: In the 2020 game "The Last of Us Part II", when Ellie finds a guitar in Seattle, she sings the song while playing the guitar. The song was later used in the official trailer for the "Last of Us" television show which is based on the game from 2013.


title: Take On Me

text: In the 2019, season 4 finale of "The Magicians", the cast sings the song in a style of a hymn to honor their deceased friend.


title: Take On Me

text: In the 2021 holiday season, an Amazon TV commercial has a family called "The Handbell Hammerschteins" playing the opening riff on handbells.


title: Take On Me

text: In 2022, in season 3 of the Japanese animated series , a modified version of the song and its animation style was featured on the intro of episode 11. In this scene, Kaguya was looking onto a poster then Miyuki's hands invites her inside.


title: Take On Me

text: In 2017, A-ha appeared on the television series "MTV Unplugged" and played and recorded acoustic versions of many of their popular songs for the album "MTV Unplugged – Summer Solstice" in Giske, Norway, including "Take On Me".


title: Take On Me

text: In 1998, ska punk band Reel Big Fish covered "Take On Me" for the film "BASEketball". The song was later released on the "BASEketball" soundtrack and the international version of their album "Why Do They Rock So Hard?" The band also performs the song at concerts. Reel Big Fish released a video clip for "Take On Me", directed by Jeff Moore, and features the band playing the song while walking down an aisle in the stadium, and playing a game of BASEketball interlaced with clips from the film. An alternative video for the song's international release that contained only the stadium aisle footage was also released. Reel Big Fish also included a live version of the song in their live album "Our Live Album Is Better than Your Live Album" and live DVD's "You're All in This Together" and "Reel Big Fish Live! In Concert!"


title: Take On Me

text: On 28 August 2000, British-Norwegian boy band A1 released a cover of "Take On Me" for their second studio album, "The A List". Despite being panned by music critics, who called it a "lame cover version" and a "note for note copy" that seems like "a re-release of the original"; it was commercially successful, topping the charts in the United Kingdom and Norway.


title: Take On Me

text: The music video was directed by Stuart Gosling. It features A1 entering the computer world by putting on virtual reality glasses after finding out about a deadly computer virus. After flying for a distance, they find the virus and destroy it, saving the world. The video was inspired by the 1982 live-action science fiction film "Tron".


title: Take On Me

text: On 27 August 2015, fellow Norwegian musician Kygo released a remixed version via iTunes to help promote the rollout of the Apple Music streaming service. His version foregoes the iconic keyboard riffs and instead features a new one. The style of his version has been described as tropical house. As of April 2021, the song has amassed more than 15 million listens on YouTube and 36 million listens on Spotify. The remix preserves Harket's original vocals (albeit with processing effects and a different arrangement).


title: Take On Me

text: A cover by D. A. Wallach was featured in the film "La La Land". Wallach makes an appearance as the lead singer of a 1980s pop cover band that features Sebastian Wilder, one of the film's two protagonists. The cover was released as part of the album "La La Land: The Complete Musical Experience".


title: Take On Me

text: American rock band Weezer included a cover version of the song in their 2019 covers compilation "The Teal Album". An accompanying music video was released on 12 February 2019, in which rock band Calpurnia—led by frontman Finn Wolfhard ("Mike" in the Netflix original series "Stranger Things"), here, playing a younger version of Weezer's own frontman, Rivers Cuomo. The video, set in 1985 in the "Cuomo Residence", shows Wolfhard (as Cuomo) and the rest of Calpurnia, lip-syncing to the song while "rehearsing" it in the residence's living room. Near the end of the video, Wolfhard is shown sitting at a desk in his bedroom, scribbling possible names for his new band on a page of a notebook (the name "Weezer" is shown as option No.3). He then turns the page to draw what would become Weezer's band logo. The video also features some scenes of Calpurnia playing, filmed with the rotoscoping technique that made the original A-ha video famous. The cover version, set one key lower than the original version (as in A-flat major), was also used in the closing scene of "", wherein Bikini Bottom was turned into a "sea snail refuge".


title: Take On Me

text: On 11 October 2019, the Dutch DJs Lucas & Steve released "Perfect", a single that greatly adopts on the music of "Take On Me". The single features on the vocals of the Dutch "X Factor" fifth season winner Haris Alagic known by the mononym Haris. Released on Spinnin' Records in the EDM and deephouse style, it was accompanied by an official music video. The song was greatly successful on the Dutch Singles Chart as well as on the Polish Airplay Chart and also appeared on the Tipparade of the Belgian charts. There was a successful "Perfect (LUM!X Remix)" released.


title: Integrated development environment

text: An integrated development environment (IDE) is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development. An IDE normally consists of at least a source code editor, build automation tools and a debugger. Some IDEs, such as NetBeans and Eclipse, contain the necessary compiler, interpreter, or both; others, such as SharpDevelop and Lazarus, do not.


title: Integrated development environment

text: The boundary between an IDE and other parts of the broader software development environment is not well-defined; sometimes a version control system or various tools to simplify the construction of a graphical user interface (GUI) are integrated. Many modern IDEs also have a class browser, an object browser, and a class hierarchy diagram for use in object-oriented software development.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Integrated development environments are designed to maximize programmer productivity by providing tight-knit components with similar user interfaces. IDEs present a single program in which all development is done. This program typically provides many features for authoring, modifying, compiling, deploying and debugging software. This contrasts with software development using unrelated tools, such as vi, GDB, GCC, or make.


title: Integrated development environment

text: One aim of the IDE is to reduce the configuration necessary to piece together multiple development utilities. Instead, it provides the same set of capabilities as one cohesive unit. Reducing setup time can increase developer productivity, especially in cases where learning to use the IDE is faster than manually integrating and learning all of the individual tools. Tighter integration of all development tasks has the potential to improve overall productivity beyond just helping with setup tasks. For example, code can be continuously parsed while it is being edited, providing instant feedback when syntax errors are introduced, thus allowing developers to debug code much faster and more easily with an IDE.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Some IDEs are dedicated to a specific programming language, allowing a feature set that most closely matches the programming paradigms of the language. However, there are many multiple-language IDEs.


title: Integrated development environment

text: While most modern IDEs are graphical, text-based IDEs such as Turbo Pascal were in popular use before the availability of windowing systems like Microsoft Windows and the X Window System (X11). They commonly use function keys or hotkeys to execute frequently used commands or macros.


title: Integrated development environment

text: IDEs initially became possible when developing via a console or terminal. Early systems could not support one, since programs were prepared using flowcharts, entering programs with punched cards (or paper tape, etc.) before submitting them to a compiler. Dartmouth BASIC was the first language to be created with an IDE (and was also the first to be designed for use while sitting in front of a console or terminal). Its IDE (part of the Dartmouth Time Sharing System) was command-based, and therefore did not look much like the menu-driven, graphical IDEs popular after the advent of the Graphical User Interface. However it integrated editing, file management, compilation, debugging and execution in a manner consistent with a modern IDE.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Maestro I is a product from Softlab Munich and was the world's first integrated development environment for software. Maestro I was installed for 22,000 programmers worldwide. Until 1989, 6,000 installations existed in the Federal Republic of Germany. Maestro was arguably the world leader in this field during the 1970s and 1980s. Today one of the last Maestro I can be found in the Museum of Information Technology at Arlington in Texas.


title: Integrated development environment

text: One of the first IDEs with a plug-in concept was Softbench. In 1995 "Computerwoche" commented that the use of an IDE was not well received by developers since it would fence in their creativity.


title: Integrated development environment

text: As of January 2021, the three IDEs whose download pages are most commonly searched for are Visual Studio, Eclipse and Android Studio.


title: Integrated development environment

text: The IDE editor usually provides syntax highlighting, it can show both the structures, the language keywords and the syntax errors with visually distinct colors and font effects.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Code completion is an important IDE feature, intended to speed up programming. Modern IDEs even have intelligent code completion.


title: Integrated development environment

text: An IDE is expected to provide integrated version control, in order to interact with source repositories.


title: Integrated development environment

text: IDEs are also used for debugging, using an integrated debugger, with support for setting breakpoints in the editor, visual rendering of steps, etc.


title: Integrated development environment

text: IDEs may provide support for code search. Code search has two different meanings. First, it means searching for class and function declarations, usages, variable and field read/write, etc. IDEs can use different kinds of user interface for code search, for example form-based widgets and natural-language based interfaces.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Second, it means searching for a concrete implementation of some specified functionality. This can be done both with formal or neural techniques.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Visual programming is a usage scenario in which an IDE is generally required. Visual Basic allows users to create new applications by moving programming, building blocks, or code nodes to create flowcharts or structure diagrams that are then compiled or interpreted. These flowcharts often are based on the Unified Modeling Language.


title: Integrated development environment

text: This interface has been popularized with the Lego Mindstorms system and is being actively perused by a number of companies wishing to capitalize on the power of custom browsers like those found at Mozilla. KTechlab supports flowcode and is a popular open-source IDE and Simulator for developing software for microcontrollers. Visual programming is also responsible for the power of distributed programming (cf. LabVIEW and EICASLAB software). An early visual programming system, Max, was modeled after analog synthesizer design and has been used to develop real-time music performance software since the 1980s. Another early example was Prograph, a dataflow-based system originally developed for the Macintosh. The graphical programming environment "Grape" is used to program qfix robot kits.


title: Integrated development environment

text: This approach is also used in specialist software such as Openlab, where the end-users want the flexibility of a full programming language, without the traditional learning curve associated with one.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Some IDEs support multiple languages, such as GNU Emacs based on C and Emacs Lisp; IntelliJ IDEA, Eclipse, MyEclipse or NetBeans, based on Java; MonoDevelop, based on C#; or PlayCode.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Support for alternative languages is often provided by plugins, allowing them to be installed on the same IDE at the same time. For example, Flycheck is a modern on-the-fly syntax checking extension for GNU Emacs 24 with support for 39 languages. Eclipse, and Netbeans have plugins for C/C++, Ada, GNAT (for example AdaGIDE), Perl, Python, Ruby, and PHP, which are selected between automatically based on file extension, environment or project settings.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Unix programmers can combine command-line POSIX tools into a complete development environment, capable of developing large programs such as the Linux kernel and its environment. In this sense, the entire Unix system functions as an IDE. The free software GNU tools (GNU Compiler Collection (GCC), GNU Debugger (GDB), and GNU make) are available on many platforms, including Windows. The pervasive Unix philosophy of "everything is a text stream" enables developers who favor command-line oriented tools to use editors with support for many of the standard Unix and GNU build tools, building an IDE with programs like


title: Integrated development environment

text: or Vim. Data Display Debugger is intended to be an advanced graphical front-end for many text-based debugger standard tools. Some programmers prefer managing makefiles and their derivatives to the similar code building tools included in a full IDE. For example, most contributors to the PostgreSQL database use make and GDB directly to develop new features. Even when building PostgreSQL for Microsoft Windows using Visual C++, Perl scripts are used as a replacement for make rather than relying on any IDE features. Some Linux IDEs such as Geany attempt to provide a graphical front end to traditional build operations.


title: Integrated development environment

text: On the various Microsoft Windows platforms, command-line tools for development are seldom used. Accordingly, there are many commercial and non-commercial products. However, each has a different design commonly creating incompatibilities. Most major compiler vendors for Windows still provide free copies of their command-line tools, including Microsoft (Visual C++, Platform SDK, .NET Framework SDK, nmake utility).


title: Integrated development environment

text: IDEs have always been popular on the Apple Macintosh's classic Mac OS and macOS, dating back to Macintosh Programmer's Workshop, Turbo Pascal, THINK Pascal and THINK C environments of the mid-1980s. Currently macOS programmers can choose between native IDEs like Xcode and open-source tools such as Eclipse and Netbeans. ActiveState Komodo is a proprietary multilanguage IDE supported on macOS.


title: Integrated development environment

text: Some features of IDEs can benefit from advances in AI. In particular, one can collect information from IDE actions across developers in order to augment IDE features. For instance, a data-driven approach to code completion results in intelligent code completion.


title: Integrated development environment

text: A web integrated development environment (Web IDE), also known as an Online IDE or Cloud IDE, is a browser based IDE that allows for software development or web development. A web IDE can be accessed from a web browser allowing for a portable work environment. A web IDE does not usually contain all of the same features as a traditional, or desktop, IDE, although all of the basic IDE features, such as syntax highlighting, are typically present.


title: Moa

text: Moa (order Dinornithiformes) are an extinct group of flightless birds formerly endemic to New Zealand. There were nine species (in six genera). The two largest species, "Dinornis robustus" and "Dinornis novaezelandiae", reached about 3.6 m (12 ft) in height with neck outstretched, and weighed about 230 kg (510 lb) while the smallest, the bush moa ("Anomalopteryx didiformis"), was around the size of a turkey. Estimates of the moa population when Polynesians settled New Zealand circa 1300 vary between 58,000 and approximately 2.5 million.


title: Moa

text: Moa are traditionally placed in the ratite group. However, their closest relatives have been found by genetic studies to be the flighted South American tinamous, once considered to be a sister group to ratites. The nine species of moa were the only wingless birds, lacking even the vestigial wings that all other ratites have. They were the largest terrestrial animals and dominant herbivores in New Zealand's forest, shrubland, and subalpine ecosystems until the arrival of the Māori, and were hunted only by the Haast's eagle. Moa extinction occurred within 100 years of human settlement of New Zealand, primarily due to overhunting.


title: Moa

text: The word "moa" is a Polynesian term for domestic fowl. The name was not in common use among the Māori by the time of European contact, likely because the bird it described had been extinct for some time, and traditional stories about it were rare. The earliest record of the name was by missionaries William Williams and William Colenso in January 1838; Colenso speculated that the birds may have resembled gigantic fowl. In 1912, Māori chief Urupeni Pūhara claimed that the moa's traditional name was "te kura" (the red bird).


title: Moa

text: Moa skeletons were traditionally reconstructed in an upright position to create impressive height, but analysis of their vertebral articulations indicates that they probably carried their heads forward, in the manner of a kiwi. The spine was attached to the rear of the head rather than the base, indicating the horizontal alignment. This would have let them graze on low vegetation, while being able to lift their heads and browse trees when necessary. This has resulted in a reconsideration of the height of larger moa. However, Māori rock art depicts moa or moa-like birds (likely geese or adzebills) with necks upright, indicating that moa were more than capable of assuming both neck postures.


title: Moa

text: No records survive of what sounds moa made, though some idea of their calls can be gained from fossil evidence. The trachea of moa were supported by many small rings of bone known as tracheal rings. Excavation of these rings from articulated skeletons has shown that at least two moa genera ("Euryapteryx" and "Emeus") exhibited tracheal elongation, that is, their trachea were up to 1 m (3 ft) long and formed a large loop within the body cavity. They are the only ratites known to exhibit this feature, which is also present in several other bird groups, including swans, cranes, and guinea fowl. The feature is associated with deep resonant vocalisations that can travel long distances.


title: Moa

text: The moa's closest relatives are small terrestrial South American birds called the tinamous, which can fly. Previously, the kiwi, the Australian emu, and cassowary were thought to be most closely related to moa.


title: Moa

text: Although dozens of species were described in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, many were based on partial skeletons and turned out to be synonyms. Currently, 11 species are formally recognised, although recent studies using ancient DNA recovered from bones in museum collections suggest that distinct lineages exist within some of these. One factor that has caused much confusion in moa taxonomy is the intraspecific variation of bone sizes, between glacial and interglacial periods (see Bergmann’s rule and Allen’s rule) as well as sexual dimorphism being evident in several species. "Dinornis" seems to have had the most pronounced sexual dimorphism, with females being up to 150% as tall and 280% as heavy as males—so much bigger that they were formerly classified as separate species until 2003. A 2009 study showed that "Euryapteryx curtus" and "E. gravis" were synonyms. A 2010 study explained size differences among them as sexual dimorphism. A 2012 morphological study interpreted them as subspecies, instead.


title: Moa

text: Analyses of ancient DNA have determined that a number of cryptic evolutionary lineages occurred in several moa genera. These may eventually be classified as species or subspecies; "Megalapteryx benhami" (Archey) is synonymised with "M. didinus" (Owen) because the bones of both share all essential characters. Size differences can be explained by a north–south cline combined with temporal variation such that specimens were larger during the Otiran glacial period (the last ice age in New Zealand). Similar temporal size variation is known for the North Island's "Pachyornis mappini". Some of the other size variation for moa species can probably be explained by similar geographic and temporal factors.


title: Moa

text: The earliest moa remains come from the Miocene Saint Bathans Fauna. Known from multiple eggshells and hind limb elements, these represent at least two already fairly large-sized species.


title: Moa

text: Because moa are a group of flightless birds with no vestiges of wing bones, questions have been raised about how they arrived in New Zealand, and from where. Many theories exist about the moa's arrival and radiation in New Zealand, but the most recent theory suggests that they arrived in New Zealand about 60 million years ago (Mya) and split from the "basal" (see below) moa species, "Megalapteryx", about 5.8 Mya instead of the 18.5 Mya split suggested by Baker et al. (2005). This does not necessarily mean there was no speciation between the arrival 60 Mya and the basal split 5.8 Mya, but the fossil record is lacking and most likely the early moa lineages existed, but became extinct before the basal split 5.8 Mya. The presence of Miocene-aged species certainly suggests that moa diversification began before the split between "Megalapteryx" and the other taxa.


title: Moa

text: The Oligocene Drowning Maximum event, which occurred about 22 Mya, when only 18% of present-day New Zealand was above sea level, is very important in the moa radiation. Because the basal moa split occurred so recently (5.8 Mya), it was argued that ancestors of the Quaternary moa lineages could not have been present on both the South and North Island remnants during the Oligocene drowning. This does not imply that moa were previously absent from the North Island, but that only those from the South Island survived, because only the South Island was above sea level. Bunce et al. (2009) argued that moa ancestors survived on the South Island and then recolonised the North Island about 2 My later, when the two islands rejoined after 30 My of separation. The presence of Miocene moa in the Saint Bathans fauna seems to suggest that these birds increased in size soon after the Oligocene Drowning Event, if they were affected by it at all.


title: Moa

text: Bunce et al. also concluded that the highly complex structure of the moa lineage was caused by the formation of the Southern Alps about 6 Mya, and the habitat fragmentation on both islands resulting from Pleistocene glacial cycles, volcanism, and landscape changes. The cladogram below is a phylogeny of Palaeognathae generated by Mitchell (2014) with some clade names after Yuri "et al." (2013). It provides the position of the moa (Dinornithiformes) within the larger context of the "ancient jawed" (Palaeognathae) birds:


title: Moa

text: The cladogram below gives a more detailed, species-level phylogeny, of the moa branch (Dinornithiformes) of the "ancient jawed" birds (Palaeognathae) shown above:


title: Moa

text: Analyses of fossil moa bone assemblages have provided detailed data on the habitat preferences of individual moa species, and revealed distinctive regional moa faunas:


title: Moa

text: A 'subalpine fauna' might include the widespread "D. robustus", and the two other moa species that existed in the South Island:


title: Moa

text: Significantly less is known about North Island paleofaunas, due to a paucity of fossil sites compared to the South Island, but the basic pattern of moa-habitat relationships was the same. The South Island and the North Island shared some moa species ("Euryapteryx gravis", "Anomalopteryx didiformis"), but most were exclusive to one island, reflecting divergence over several thousand years since lower sea level in the Ice Age had made a land bridge across the Cook Strait.


title: Moa

text: In the North Island, "Dinornis novaezealandiae" and "Anomalopteryx didiformis" dominated in high-rainfall forest habitat, a similar pattern to the South Island. The other moa species present in the North Island ("Euryapteryx gravis", "E. curtus", and "Pachyornis geranoides") tended to inhabit drier forest and shrubland habitats. "P. geranoides" occurred throughout the North Island. The distributions of "E. gravis" and "E. curtus" were almost mutually exclusive, the former having only been found in coastal sites around the southern half of the North Island.


title: Moa

text: About eight moa trackways, with fossilised moa footprint impressions in fluvial silts, have been found in the North Island, including Waikanae Creek (1872), Napier (1887), Manawatū River (1895), Marton (1896), Palmerston North (1911) (see photograph to left), Rangitīkei River (1939), and under water in Lake Taupō (1973). Analysis of the spacing of these tracks indicates walking speeds between 3 and 5 km/h (1.75–3 mph).


title: Moa

text: Their diet has been deduced from fossilised contents of their gizzards and coprolites, as well as indirectly through morphological analysis of skull and beak, and stable isotope analysis of their bones. Moa fed on a range of plant species and plant parts, including fibrous twigs and leaves taken from low trees and shrubs. The beak of "Pachyornis elephantopus" was analogous to a pair of secateurs, and could clip the fibrous leaves of New Zealand flax ("Phormium tenax") and twigs up to at least 8 mm in diameter.


title: Moa

text: Moa filled the ecological niche occupied in other countries by large browsing mammals such as antelope and llamas. Some biologists contend that a number of plant species evolved to avoid moa browsing. Divaracating plants such as "Pennantia corymbosa" (the kaikōmako), which have small leaves and a dense mesh of branches, and "Pseudopanax crassifolius" (the horoeka or lancewood), which has tough juvenile leaves, are possible examples of plants that evolved in such a way.


title: Moa

text: Like many other birds, moa swallowed gizzard stones (gastroliths), which were retained in their muscular gizzards, providing a grinding action that allowed them to eat coarse plant material. These stones were commonly smooth rounded quartz pebbles, but stones over long have been found among preserved moa gizzard contents. "Dinornis" gizzards could often contain several kilograms of stones. Moa likely exercised a certain selectivity in the choice of gizzard stones and chose the hardest pebbles.


title: Moa

text: The pairs of species of moa described as "Euryapteryx curtus" / "E. exilis", "Emeus huttonii" / "E. crassus", and "Pachyornis septentrionalis" / "P. mappini" have long been suggested to constitute males and females, respectively. This has been confirmed by analysis for sex-specific genetic markers of DNA extracted from bone material.


title: Moa

text: For example, before 2003, three species of "Dinornis" were recognised: South Island giant moa ("D. robustus"), North Island giant moa ("D. novaezealandiae"), and slender moa ("D. struthioides"). However, DNA showed that all "D. struthioides" were males, and all "D. robustus" were females. Therefore, the three species of "Dinornis" were reclassified as two species, one each formerly occurring on New Zealand's North Island ("D. novaezealandiae") and South Island ("D. robustus"); "D. robustus" however, comprises three distinct genetic lineages and may eventually be classified as many species, as discussed above.


title: Moa

text: Examination of growth rings in moa cortical bone has revealed that these birds were K-selected, as are many other large endemic New Zealand birds. They are characterised by having a low fecundity and a long maturation period, taking about 10 years to reach adult size. The large "Dinornis" species took as long to reach adult size as small moa species, and as a result, had fast skeletal growth during their juvenile years.


title: Moa

text: No evidence has been found to suggest that moa were colonial nesters. Moa nesting is often inferred from accumulations of eggshell fragments in caves and rock shelters, little evidence exists of the nests themselves. Excavations of rock shelters in the eastern North Island during the 1940s found moa nests, which were described as "small depressions obviously scratched out in the soft dry pumice". Moa nesting material has also been recovered from rock shelters in the Central Otago region of the South Island, where the dry climate has preserved plant material used to build the nesting platform (including twigs clipped by moa bills). Seeds and pollen within moa coprolites found among the nesting material provide evidence that the nesting season was late spring to summer.


title: Moa

text: Fragments of moa eggshell are often found in archaeological sites and sand dunes around the New Zealand coast. Thirty-six whole moa eggs exist in museum collections and vary greatly in size (from in length and wide). The outer surface of moa eggshell is characterised by small, slit-shaped pores. The eggs of most moa species were white, although those of the upland moa ("Megalapteryx didinus") were blue-green.


title: Moa

text: A 2010 study by Huynen et al. found that the eggs of certain species were fragile, only around a millimetre in shell thickness: "Unexpectedly, several thin-shelled eggs were also shown to belong to the heaviest moa of the genera "Dinornis", "Euryapteryx", and "Emeus", making these, to our knowledge, the most fragile of all avian eggs measured to date. Moreover, sex-specific DNA recovered from the outer surfaces of eggshells belonging to species of "Dinornis" and "Euryapteryx" suggest that these very thin eggs were likely to have been incubated by the lighter males. The thin nature of the eggshells of these larger species of moa, even if incubated by the male, suggests that egg breakage in these species would have been common if the typical contact method of avian egg incubation was used." Despite the bird's extinction, the high yield of DNA available from recovered fossilised eggs has allowed the moa's genome to be sequenced.


title: Moa

text: Studies of accumulated dried vegetation in the pre-human mid-late Holocene period suggests a low "Sophora microphylla" or Kōwai forest ecosystem in Central Otago that was used and perhaps maintained by moa, for both nesting material and food. Neither the forests nor moa existed when European settlers came to the area in the 1850s.


title: Moa

text: Before the arrival of human settlers, the moa's only predator was the massive Haast's eagle. New Zealand had been isolated for 80 million years and had few predators before human arrival, meaning that not only were its ecosystems extremely vulnerable to perturbation by outside species, but also the native species were ill-equipped to cope with human predators.


title: Moa

text: Polynesians arrived sometime before 1300, and all moa genera were soon driven to extinction by hunting and, to a lesser extent, by habitat reduction due to forest clearance. By 1445, all moa had become extinct, along with Haast's eagle, which had relied on them for food. Recent research using carbon-14 dating of middens strongly suggests that the events leading to extinction took less than a hundred years, rather than a period of exploitation lasting several hundred years as previously hypothesised.


title: Moa

text: Some authors have speculated that a few "Megalapteryx didinus" may have persisted in remote corners of New Zealand until the 18th and even 19th centuries, but this view is not widely accepted. Some Māori hunters claimed to be in pursuit of the moa as late as the 1770s; however, these accounts possibly did not refer to the hunting of actual birds as much as a now-lost ritual among South Islanders. Whalers and sealers recalled seeing monstrous birds along the coast of the South Island, and in the 1820s, a man named George Pauley made an unverified claim of seeing a moa in the Otago region of New Zealand.


title: Moa

text: An expedition in the 1850s under Lieutenant A. Impey reported two emu-like birds on a hillside in the South Island; an 1861 story from the "Nelson Examiner" told of three-toed footprints measuring between Tākaka and Riwaka that were found by a surveying party; and finally in 1878, the "Otago Witness" published an additional account from a farmer and his shepherd. An 80-year-old woman, Alice McKenzie, claimed in 1959 that she had seen a moa in Fiordland bush in 1887, and again on a Fiordland beach when she was 17 years old. She claimed that her brother had also seen a moa on another occasion.


title: Moa

text: Joel Polack, a trader who lived on the East Coast of the North Island from 1834 to 1837, recorded in 1838 that he had been shown "several large fossil ossifications" found near Mt Hikurangi. He was certain that these were the bones of a species of emu or ostrich, noting that "the Natives add that in times long past they received the traditions that very large birds had existed, but the scarcity of animal food, as well as the easy method of entrapping them, has caused their extermination". Polack further noted that he had received reports from Māori that a "species of Struthio" still existed in remote parts of the South Island.


title: Moa

text: Dieffenbach also refers to a fossil from the area near Mt Hikurangi, and surmises that it belongs to "a bird, now extinct, called Moa (or Movie) by the natives". 'Movie' is the first transcribed name for the bird. In 1839, John W. Harris, a Poverty Bay flax trader who was a natural-history enthusiast, was given a piece of unusual bone by a Māori who had found it in a river bank. He showed the fragment of bone to his uncle, John Rule, a Sydney surgeon, who sent it to Richard Owen, who at that time was working at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London.


title: Moa

text: Owen puzzled over the fragment for almost four years. He established it was part of the femur of a big animal, but it was uncharacteristically light and honeycombed. Owen announced to a skeptical scientific community and the world that it was from a giant extinct bird like an ostrich, and named it "Dinornis". His deduction was ridiculed in some quarters, but was proved correct with the subsequent discoveries of considerable quantities of moa bones throughout the country, sufficient to reconstruct skeletons of the birds.


title: Moa

text: In July 2004, the Natural History Museum in London placed on display the moa bone fragment Owen had first examined, to celebrate 200 years since his birth, and in memory of Owen as founder of the museum.


title: Moa

text: Since the discovery of the first moa bones in the late 1830s, thousands more have been found. They occur in a range of late Quaternary and Holocene sedimentary deposits, but are most common in three main types of site: caves, dunes, and swamps.


title: Moa

text: Bones are commonly found in caves or "tomo" (the Māori word for doline or sinkhole, often used to refer to pitfalls or vertical cave shafts). The two main ways that the moa bones were deposited in such sites were birds that entered the cave to nest or escape bad weather, and subsequently died in the cave and birds that fell into a vertical shaft and were unable to escape. Moa bones (and the bones of other extinct birds) have been found in caves throughout New Zealand, especially in the limestone/marble areas of northwest Nelson, Karamea, Waitomo, and Te Anau.


title: Moa

text: Moa bones and eggshell fragments sometimes occur in active coastal sand dunes, where they may erode from paleosols and concentrate in 'blowouts' between dune ridges. Many such moa bones antedate human settlement, although some originate from Māori midden sites, which frequently occur in dunes near harbours and river mouths (for example the large moa hunter sites at Shag River, Otago, and Wairau Bar, Marlborough).


title: Moa

text: Densely intermingled moa bones have been encountered in swamps throughout New Zealand. The most well-known example is at Pyramid Valley in north Canterbury, where bones from at least 183 individual moa have been excavated, mostly by Roger Duff of Canterbury Museum. Many explanations have been proposed to account for how these deposits formed, ranging from poisonous spring waters to floods and wildfires. However, the currently accepted explanation is that the bones accumulated slowly over thousands of years, from birds that entered the swamps to feed and became trapped in the soft sediment.


title: Moa

text: Many New Zealand and international museums hold moa bone collections. Auckland War Memorial Museum – Tāmaki Paenga Hira has a significant collection, and in 2018 several moa skeletons were imaged and 3D scanned to make the collections more accessible. There is also a major collection in Otago Museum in Dunedin.


title: Moa

text: Several remarkable examples of moa remains have been found which exhibit soft tissues (muscle, skin, feathers), that were preserved through desiccation when the bird died in a naturally dry site (for example, a cave with a constant dry breeze blowing through it). Most of these specimens have been found in the semiarid Central Otago region, the driest part of New Zealand. These include:


title: Moa

text: In addition to these specimens, loose moa feathers have been collected from caves and rock shelters in the southern South Island, and based on these remains, some idea of the moa plumage has been achieved. The preserved leg of "M. didinus" from the Old Man Range reveals that this species was feathered right down to the foot. This is likely to have been an adaptation to living in high-altitude, snowy environments, and is also seen in the Darwin’s rhea, which lives in a similar seasonally snowy habitat.


title: Moa

text: Moa feathers are up to long, and a range of colours has been reported, including reddish-brown, white, yellowish, and purplish. Dark feathers with white or creamy tips have also been found, and indicate that some moa species may have had plumage with a speckled appearance.


title: Moa

text: Occasional speculation – since at least the late 19th century, and as recently as 1993 and 2008 – has occurred that some moa may still exist, particularly in the wilderness of South Westland and Fiordland. The 1993 report initially interested the Department of Conservation, but the animal in a blurry photograph was identified as a red deer. Cryptozoologists continue to search for them, but their claims and supporting evidence (such as of purported footprints) have earned little attention from experts and are pseudoscientific. In 1880 Alice Mackenzie had a meeting with a large bird that she believed to be a takahē but when it was rediscovered in the 1940s, and Mackenzie saw what it looked like she knew she had seen something else.


title: Moa

text: The rediscovery of the takahē in 1948 after none had been seen since 1898 showed that rare birds can exist undiscovered for a long time. However, the takahē is a much smaller bird than the moa, and was rediscovered after its tracks were identified—yet no reliable evidence of moa tracks has ever been found, and experts still contend that moa survival is extremely unlikely, since they would have to be living unnoticed for over 500 years in a region visited often by hunters and hikers.


title: Moa

text: The creature has frequently been mentioned as a potential candidate for revival by cloning. Its iconic status, coupled with the facts that it only became extinct a few hundred years ago and that substantial quantities of moa remains exist, mean that it is often listed alongside such creatures as the dodo as leading candidates for de-extinction. Preliminary work involving the extraction of DNA has been undertaken by Japanese geneticist Ankoh Yasuyuki Shirota.


title: Moa

text: Interest in the moa's potential for revival was further stirred in mid-2014 when New Zealand Member of Parliament Trevor Mallard suggested that bringing back some smaller species of moa within 50 years was a viable idea. The idea was ridiculed by many, but gained support from some natural history experts.


title: Moa

text: Heinrich Harder portrayed moa being hunted by Māori in the classic German collecting cards about extinct and prehistoric animals, "Tiere der Urwelt", in the early 1900s.


title: Moa

text: Allen Curnow's poem, "The Skeleton of the Great Moa in the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch" was published in 1943.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Benjamín Arellano Félix (born 12 March 1952) is a Mexican former drug lord who alongside his brothers founded and led the Tijuana Cartel or "Arellano-Félix Organization” until his arrest in March 2002.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Benjamín Arellano Félix, who worked closely with his brothers, was one of Mexico's most powerful drug lords and the supplier of one-third of the U.S.'s cocaine. Benjamín had six brothers:


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Benjamín was first arrested on 18 June 1982, in Downey, California, for receiving 100 kilos of cocaine smuggled through the San Ysidro border. However, he escaped custody.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: The Arellano Félix brothers obtained their first big break in 1989, when they inherited the organization from their uncle, Miguel Ángel Félix Gallardo, after they showed early promise smuggling consumer electronics over the U.S.–Mexico border. By 1998, the Arellano brothers had been indicted in the U.S. for drug trafficking, and Ramón had been put on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Despite the brothers' audacity, they remained untouchable for 13 years. This was accomplished, in part, with large amounts of cash bribes to Mexican politicians and police commanders, at the cost of an estimated US$1 million per week.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Benjamín Arellano tried to clear his name after the 1993 murder of Cardinal Juan Jesús Posadas Ocampo, in which he had been implicated. That high-profile assassination brought international attention to his trafficking organization and, although this forced Benjamín to lie low and adopt false names, he continued to live in casual confidence, apparently unafraid of capture. He had a secret meeting with the Apostolic Nunciature to Mexico, Girolamo Prigione on December 1, 1993. Another of Benjamin's brothers, Francisco, was arrested soon afterward on drug charges, and Benjamín, Ramón, and Javier officially became fugitives.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: On 1 June 2000, the United States Department of the Treasury sanctioned Benjamín under the Foreign Narcotics Kingpin Designation Act (sometimes referred to simply as the "Kingpin Act"), for his involvement in drug trafficking, along with eleven other international criminals. The act prohibited U.S. citizens and companies from doing any kind of business activity with him, and virtually freezing all his assets in the U.S.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: The U.S. DEA learned that Benjamín's oldest daughter had a very recognizable and rare facial deformity, and that she was the "soft spot" in her father's violent life. By tracing her, they found her father. Benjamin was arrested on 9 March 2002 by the Mexican Army in the state of Puebla, Mexico. He had a $2 million USD bounty for his arrest.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Authorities are not sure where Benjamin's money went, beyond some real estate investments in Tijuana. Mexican officials say it has been invested in U.S. real estate, while their U.S. counterparts say much of it is hidden in cash in Mexico.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Benjamin was extradited to the United States on 29 April 2011 to face charges of trafficking cocaine into California. On January 4, 2012, he pleaded guilty to racketeering and conspiracy to launder money, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison on 2 April 2012.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: Some objects that were confiscated from him during his arrests are on display at the Museo del Enervante in Mexico City.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: In the 2017 Netflix and Univision series, "El Chapo", Carlos Hernán Romo plays Benjamín Avendaño (a fictionalized portrayal of Benjamín Arellano Félix).


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: A 2003 Mexican film, "El fin de los Arellano" ("The End of the Arellanos"), featured characters supposedly based on the Arellano brothers; however, its plot bore practically no resemblance to the actual events.


title: Benjamín Arellano Félix

text: The Arellano brothers were allegedly an inspiration for the two secondary characters of "the Obregón brothers", featured in the 2000 US film "Traffic".


title: History of Germany

text: The first concept of Germany as a region is traced to time of Julius Caesar, a Roman general and statesman who first referred to the unconquered area east of Rhine river as Germania and the tribes living there as Germani. Germani or Germanic tribes are now considered to be related to the Jastorf culture before expanding and interacting with the other peoples. In 9, the victory of Germanic tribes in the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest prevented annexation of Germania by the Roman Empire. Following the fall of Rome made by the Germanic tribes in 476 in the context of the Migration Period and foundation of their own kingdoms; the Franks, a West Germanic tribe, conquered the other West Germanic tribes and established the Frankish Empire. When the Frankish Empire was divided among Charles the Great's heirs in 843, the eastern part became East Francia being the first concept of Germany as a polity. In 962; Otto I of East Francia became the first Holy Roman Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, the second polity of Germany.


title: History of Germany

text: The period of the High Middle Ages saw several important developments within the German-speaking areas of Europe and the Germans began to settle in the East. The first was the establishment of the trading conglomerate known as the Hanseatic League, which was dominated by a number of German port cities along the Baltic and North Sea coasts. The second was the growth of a crusading element within German Christendom. This led to the establishment of the State of the Teutonic Order, established along the Baltic coast of what is today Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. This crusader state led to the Christianization of these regions, as well as an extension of Germanic culture and language eastward. Also during this period, German Emperors became embroiled in conflicts with the Catholic Church over various political issues, resulting in the Investiture Controversy. In future; the State of the Teutonic Order would become the Duchy of Prussia then Kingdom of Prussia being one member of the Holy Roman Empire and the German Confederation, leading the North German Confederation, and leading the unified Germany i.e. German Empire (1871-1918).


title: History of Germany

text: In the Late Middle Ages, the regional dukes, princes, and bishops gained power at the expense of the emperors. Martin Luther led the Protestant Reformation within the Catholic Church after 1517, as the northern and eastern states became Protestant, while most of the southern and western states remained Catholic. The two parts of the Holy Roman Empire clashed in the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which was ruinous to the twenty million civilians living in both parts. The Thirty Years' War brought tremendous destruction to Germany; more than 1/4 of the population in the German states were killed by the catastrophic war. The estates of the Holy Roman Empire attained a high extent of autonomy in the Peace of Westphalia, some of them being capable of their own foreign policies or controlling land outside of the Empire, the most important being Austria, Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony. With the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars from 1803 to 1815, feudalism fell away by reforms and the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire led by Austria at the time, France of Napoleon also established its German puppet state named Confederation of the Rhine. After French defeat, the German Confederation also led by Austria was established and included all German states and German-speaking lands. Thereafter liberalism and nationalism clashed with reaction. The German revolutions of 1848–49 failed. The Industrial Revolution modernized the German economy, led to the rapid growth of cities and the emergence of the socialist movement in Germany. Prussia, rivals of Austria, with its capital Berlin, grew in power. German universities became world-class centers for science and humanities, while music and art flourished. Prussia beat Austria and dissolve German Confederation to establish the North German Confederation led by Prussia in 1866. The unification of Germany (excluding Austria) was achieved under the leadership of the Chancellor Otto von Bismarck with the formation of the German Empire led by Prussia when most of German states in the South joined the North German Confederation after German victory over France in 1871. The founding of German Empire was also the founding of German Reich existing until German defeat in World War II. This resulted in the "Kleindeutsche Lösung" supported by Prussia, ("small Germany solution", Germany without Austria), rather than the "Großdeutsche Lösung" supported by Austria, ("greater Germany solution", Germany with Austria). In 1879, Germany and Austria (Austria-Hungary) became military allies, alliance of the two countries was later called the "Central Powers". The new "Reichstag", an elected parliament, had only a limited role in the imperial government. Germany joined the other powers in colonial expansion in Africa and the Pacific. Under Emperor Wilhelm II after Bismarck retired, Germany's foreign relations with Britain-France-Russia deteriorated.


title: History of Germany

text: Right before German engagement in World War I on 1 August 1914; Germany was one of greatest powers in the world with the first modern welfare system and big influence in all fields, as well as the dominant power on the European continent, and its GDP as well as rapidly expanding industry had even surpassed Britain's while provoking it in a naval arms race. Result of fact that Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia was World War I, in the context of bad relations between Austria and the Slavic peoples in the Balkans; Germany as a member of Central Powers had joined this worldwide conflict (1914–1918) against the Allied Powers. The Central Powers beat Russia on Eastern Front but they lost to the Allied Powers on 11 November 1918, because Germany had to keep a considerable amount of its armed forces in the Eastern while allies were disproportionately effective and facing consequence of US accession in the war. After the war, with the mistake of the Paris Peace Conference (1919–1920) organized by the winners, Germany was humiliated, was partly occupied, was forced to pay war reparations by the Treaty of Versailles, and was stripped of its colonies as well as significant territory along its borders. The German Revolution of 1918–19 put an end to the German Empire with the abdication of Wilhelm II on 9 November 1918 and established the Weimar Republic, an ultimately unstable parliamentary democracy. On 23 March 1933, Adolf Hitler-led Nazi Party, used the weak democracy and the economic hardships of the worldwide Great Depression from the USA along with popular resentment over the terms imposed on Germany after World War I to establish his totalitarian regime which was also called Nazi Germany. This regime made the extreme racism, especially antisemitism, a central tenet of its policies, and became increasingly aggressive with its territorial demands, threatening war if they were not met. Germany also quickly remilitarized to build its strong armed forces and did a socio-economic growth, then annexed Austria and the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia both in 1938. 1 September 1939, after taking rest of Czechoslovakia, the country launched invasion of Poland, which quickly grew into World War II with Germany being a member of Axis which included the Empire of Japan. Official final goal of Nazi Germany was establishment a totalitarian and racist "Greater Germanic Reich" in most of Europe with the satellite polities near Germany and the United Kingdom being an exception as it was planned to be ally. During the war, the Nazi regime established a systematic genocide program known as the Holocaust which killed 17 million people, including 6 million Jews (representing 2/3rd of the European Jewish population of 1933). Although Germany had military successes in North Africa and much of Europe against British Empire and its allies, beside Japanese successes; Germany still lost to the Allies due to successive defeats to the USSR in the Eastern Front from bloody Battle of Stalingrad as well as consequence of fact that US entered war while German allies-except Japan, were also disproportionately effective. Following the Allied invasion of Normandy in France in June 1944, the German armed forces was pushed back on all fronts until their final collapse on 8 May 1945. However; WWII weakened European colonialism and British-French powers, made both the US and USSR become only the 2 superpowers. Under occupation by the four Allies after the end of World War II in Europe leading to the fall of the Nazi regime, Austria was again completely made a separate entity becoming independent country in 1955, denazification efforts took place, Germany lost its eastern territories and Germans in Eastern Europe fled and were expelled, German territories were split up by the victorious powers. Axis finally lost, on 2 September 1945. With the rise of the geo-political conflict of the Allies after the war, their plan about founding a new German state failed at the time. After Allied occupation of entire Germany, on 23 May 1949, Federal Republic of Germany i.e. West Germany was founded in the US-UK-French zones named Trizone. On 7 October 1949, with the official founding of German Democratic Republic i.e. East Germany in Soviet zone, the two countries also appeared since the time. Germans also fled from East Germany into West Germany (including West Berlin), which experienced rapid economic expansion, and became a socio-economic superpower.