title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Chester Arthur Burnett (June 10, 1910January 10, 1976), better known by his stage name Howlin' Wolf, was an American blues singer and guitarist. He is regarded as one of the most influential blues musicians of all time. Over a four-decade career, he recorded in genres such as blues, rhythm and blues, rock and roll, and psychedelic rock. He also helped bridge the gap between Delta blues and Chicago blues. Born into poverty in Mississippi as one of six children, he went through a rough childhood where his mother kicked him out of her house, and he moved in with his great-uncle, who was particularly abusive. He then ran away to his father's house where he finally found a happy family, and in the early 1930s became a protégé of legendary Delta blues guitarist and singer, Charley Patton. He started a solo career in the Deep South, playing with other notable blues musicians of the era, and at the end of a decade had made a name for himself in the Mississippi Delta.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: After going through some legal issues and undergoing a particularly rough experience while serving in the Army, he moved to Chicago, Illinois, in adulthood and became successful. He started his recording career in 1951 after being heard singing by then 19-year-old Ike Turner, and then formed his own band in Chicago. Five of his songs managed to get on the "Billboard" national R&B charts, and he also released several albums in the 1960s and 1970s, and made several television performances as well. His studio albums include "The Howlin' Wolf Album" (1969), "Message to the Young" (1971), and "The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions" (1971). He released his final album "The Back Door Wolf" in 1973, and also made his last public performance in November 1975 with fellow blues legend B.B. King. After years of severely declining health, Burnett died in 1976, and was posthumously inducted in the Blues Hall of Fame in 1980, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1991.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: With a booming voice and imposing physical presence, he is one of the best-known Chicago blues artists. AllMusic has described him as "a primal, ferocious blues belter with a roster of classics rivaling anyone else, and a sandpaper growl of a voice that has been widely imitated". The musician and critic Cub Koda noted, "no one could match Howlin' Wolf for the singular ability to rock the house down to the foundation while simultaneously scaring its patrons out of its wits." Producer Sam Phillips recalled, "When I heard Howlin' Wolf, I said, 'This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies. Several of his songs, including "Smokestack Lightnin', "Killing Floor" and "Spoonful", have become blues and blues rock standards. "Smokestack Lightnin'" was selected for a Grammy Hall of Fame Award in 1999, and three of his songs were listed by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in its "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll". In 2011, "Rolling Stone" magazine ranked him number 54 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Chester Arthur Burnett was born on June 10, 1910, in White Station, Mississippi, to Gertrude Jones and Leon "Dock" Burnett. He would later say that his father was "Ethiopian", while Jones had Choctaw ancestry on her father's side. He was named for Chester A. Arthur, the 21st President of the United States. His physique garnered him the nicknames "Big Foot Chester" and "Bull Cow" as a young man: he was tall and often weighed close to 300 pounds (136 kg). The name "Howlin' Wolf" originated from Burnett's maternal grandfather, John Jones, who would admonish him for killing his grandmother's chicks from reckless squeezing by warning him that wolves in the area would come and get him; the family would continue this by calling Burnett "the Wolf". The blues historian Paul Oliver wrote that Burnett once claimed to have been given his nickname by his idol Jimmie Rodgers.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Burnett's parents separated when he was a year old. Dock, who had worked seasonally as a farm laborer in the Mississippi Delta, moved there permanently while Jones and Burnett moved to Monroe County. Jones and Burnett would sing together in the choir of the Life Boat Baptist Church near Gibson, Mississippi, and Burnett would later claim that he got his musical talent from her. Jones kicked Burnett out of the house during the winter when he was a child for unknown reasons. He then moved in with his great-uncle Will Young, who had a large household and treated him badly. While in the Young household he worked almost all day and did not receive an education at the school house. When he was thirteen, he killed one of Young's hogs in a rage after the hog had caused him to ruin his dress clothes; this enraged Young who then whipped him while chasing him on a mule. He then ran away and claimed to have walked barefoot to join his father, where he finally found a happy home with his father's large family. During this era he went by the name "John D." to dissociate himself from his past, a name by which several of his relatives would know him for the rest of his life. At the peak of his success, he returned from Chicago to see his mother in Mississippi and was driven to tears when she rebuffed him: she refused to take money offered by him, saying it was from his playing the "devil's music".


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: On January 15, 1928, at the age of 17, Burnett finally gathered enough money to buy his first guitar. It was the date that Burnett reportedly never forgot until "the day he died".


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In 1930, Burnett met Charley Patton, the most popular bluesman in the Mississippi Delta at the time. He would listen to Patton play nightly from outside a nearby juke joint. There he remembered Patton playing "Pony Blues", "High Water Everywhere", "A Spoonful Blues", and "Banty Rooster Blues". The two became acquainted, and soon Patton was teaching him guitar. Burnett recalled that "the first piece I ever played in my life was... a tune about hook up my pony and saddle up my black mare"—Patton's "Pony Blues". He also learned about showmanship from Patton: "When he played his guitar, he would turn it over backwards and forwards, and throw it around over his shoulders, between his legs, throw it up in the sky". Burnett would perform the guitar tricks he learned from Patton for the rest of his life. He played with Patton often in small Delta communities.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Burnett was influenced by other popular blues performers of the time, including the Mississippi Sheiks, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Ma Rainey, Lonnie Johnson, Tampa Red, Blind Blake, and Tommy Johnson. Two of the earliest songs he mastered were Jefferson's "Match Box Blues" and Leroy Carr's "How Long, How Long Blues". The country singer Jimmie Rodgers was also an influence. Burnett tried to emulate Rodgers's "blue yodel" but found that his efforts sounded more like a growl or a howl: "I couldn't do no yodelin', so I turned to howlin'. And it's done me just fine". His harmonica playing was modeled after that of Sonny Boy Williamson II, who taught him how to play when Burnett moved to Parkin, Arkansas, in 1933.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: During the 1930s, Burnett performed in the South as a solo performer and with numerous blues musicians, including Floyd Jones, Johnny Shines, Honeyboy Edwards, Sonny Boy Williamson II, Robert Johnson, Robert Lockwood, Jr., Willie Brown, Son House and Willie Johnson. By the end of the decade, he was a fixture in clubs, with a harmonica and an early electric guitar. It was around this time that Burnett got into some legal trouble in Hughes, Arkansas: While he was in town, he tried to protect a female acquaintance from an angry boyfriend, and the two men fought, with Burnett killing the man with a hoe. What happened after this is a matter of dispute; Burnett either fled the area, or did some jail time.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: On April 9, 1941, he was inducted into the U.S. Army and was stationed at several bases around the country. Years later, he stated that the plantation workers in the Delta had alerted military authorities because he refused to work in the fields. He was assigned to the 9th Cavalry Regiment, which was famous for being one of the unit's dubbed "Buffalo Soldiers". Burnett was first sent to Pine Bluff, Arkansas for basic training, and was given long hours performing menial work. Then after that, he was transferred to Camp Blanding, located in Jacksonville, Florida, where he was assigned to the kitchen patrol. In the day time, he would cook food for the enlisted soldiers, and at night he would play the guitar in the assembly room. Burnett was later sent to Fort Gordon, located in Georgia, and he would play his guitar on the steps of the mess hall, which is where a young James Brown, who came to the Fort nearly every day to earn money shining shoes and performing buck dances for the troops, first heard him play.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Burnett was then sent to a tutoring camp in Tacoma, Washington, where he was in charge of decoding communications. Because Burnett was functionally illiterate, having never received formal education, he was repeatedly beaten by the drill instructor for reading and spelling errors. Soon, Burnett began having uncontrollable shaking fits, dizzy spells, fainting, and also began experiencing mental confusion.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Burnett participated in the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941, where one of the earliest photographs of him was taken of him cleaning the frog of a horse's hoof. In 1943, He was evaluated at an Army mental hospital. In November 1943, Burnett was found unfit for duty and given an honorable discharge on November 3. Recalling his experiences in the Army years later, Burnett stated, "The Army ain’t no place for a black man," Jus’ couldn't take all that bossin’ around, I guess. The Wolf's his own boss."


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: He returned to his family, which had recently moved near West Memphis, Arkansas, and helped with the farming while also performing, as he had done in the 1930s, with Floyd Jones and others. In 1948 he formed a band, which included the guitarists Willie Johnson and Matt "Guitar" Murphy, the harmonica player Junior Parker, a pianist remembered only as "Destruction" and the drummer Willie Steele. Radio station KWEM in West Memphis began broadcasting his live performances, and he occasionally sat in with Williamson on KFFA in Helena, Arkansas.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In 1951, Ike Turner, who was a freelance talent scout, heard Howlin' Wolf in West Memphis. Turner brought him to record several songs for Sam Phillips at Memphis Recording Service (later renamed Sun Studio) and the Bihari brothers at Modern Records. Phillips praised his singing, saying, "God, what it would be worth on film to see the fervour in that man's face when he sang. His eyes would light up, you'd see the veins come out on his neck and, buddy, there was nothing on his mind but that song. He sang with his damn soul." Howlin' Wolf quickly became a local celebrity and began working with a band that included the guitarists Willie Johnson and Pat Hare. Sun Records had not yet been formed, so Phillips licensed his recording to Chess Records. Howlin' Wolf's first singles were issued by two different record companies in 1951: "Moanin' at Midnight"/"How Many More Years" released on Chess, "Riding in the Moonlight"/"Morning at Midnight," and "Passing By Blues"/"Crying at Daybreak" released on Modern's subsidiary RPM Records. In December 1951, Leonard Chess was able to secure Howlin' Wolf's contract, and at the urging of Chess, he relocated to Chicago in late 1952.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In Chicago, Howlin' Wolf assembled a new band and recruited the Chicagoan Jody Williams from Memphis Slim's band as his first guitarist. Within a year he had persuaded the guitarist Hubert Sumlin to leave Memphis and join him in Chicago; Sumlin's understated solos and surprisingly subtle phrasing perfectly complemented Burnett's huge voice. The lineup of the Howlin' Wolf band changed often over the years. He employed many different guitarists, both on recordings and in live performance, including Willie Johnson, Jody Williams, Lee Cooper, L.D. McGhee, Otis "Big Smokey" Smothers, his brother Little Smokey Smothers, Jimmy Rogers, Freddie Robinson, and Buddy Guy, among others. Burnett was able to attract some of the best musicians available because of his policy, unusual among bandleaders, of paying his musicians well and on time, even including unemployment insurance and Social Security contributions. With the exception of a couple of brief absences in the late 1950s, Sumlin remained a member of the band for the rest of Howlin' Wolf's career and is the guitarist most often associated with the Chicago Howlin' Wolf sound.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Howlin' Wolf had a series of hits with songs written by Willie Dixon, who had been hired by the Chess brothers in 1950 as a songwriter, and during that period the competition between Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf was intense. Dixon reported "Every once in a while Wolf would mention the fact that, 'Hey man, you wrote that song for Muddy. How come you won't write me one like that?' But when you'd write for him he wouldn't like it." So, Dixon decided to use reverse psychology on him, by introducing the songs to Wolf as written for Muddy, thus inducing Wolf to accept them.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In the 1950s, Howlin' Wolf had five songs on the "Billboard" national R&B charts: "Moanin' at Midnight", "How Many More Years", "Who Will Be Next", "Smokestack Lightning", and "I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)". His first LP, "Moanin' in the Moonlight", was released in 1959. As was standard practice in that era, it was a collection of previously released singles.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In the early 1960s, Howlin' Wolf recorded several songs that became his most famous, despite receiving no radio play: "Wang Dang Doodle", "Back Door Man", "Spoonful", "The Red Rooster" (later known as "Little Red Rooster"), "I Ain't Superstitious", "Goin' Down Slow", and "Killing Floor", many of which were written by Willie Dixon. Several became part of the repertoires of British and American rock groups, who further popularized them. Howlin' Wolf's second compilation album, "Howlin' Wolf" (often called "the rocking chair album", from its cover illustration), was released in 1962.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: During the blues revival in the 1950s and 1960s, black blues musicians found a new audience among white youths, and Howlin' Wolf was among the first to capitalize on it. He toured Europe in 1964 as part of the American Folk Blues Festival, produced by the German promoters Horst Lippmann and Fritz Rau. In 1965, he appeared on the popular television program "Shindig!" at the insistence of the Rolling Stones, whose recording of "Little Red Rooster" had reached number one in the UK in 1964. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Howlin' Wolf recorded albums with others, including "The Super Super Blues Band", with Bo Diddley and Muddy Waters; "The Howlin' Wolf Album", with psychedelic rock and free-jazz musicians like Gene Barge, Pete Cosey, Roland Faulkner, Morris Jennings, Louis Satterfield, Charles Stepney and Phil Upchurch; and "The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions", accompanied by the British rock musicians Eric Clapton, Steve Winwood, Ian Stewart, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts and others.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: "The Howlin' Wolf Album", like rival bluesman Muddy Waters's album "Electric Mud", was designed to appeal to the hippie audience. The album had an attention-getting cover: large black letters on a white background proclaiming "This is Howlin' Wolf's new album. He doesn't like it. He didn't like his electric guitar at first either." The album cover may have contributed to its poor sales. Chess co-founder Leonard Chess admitted that the cover was a bad idea, saying, "I guess negativity isn't a good way to sell records. Who wants to hear that a musician doesn't like his own music?"


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: "The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions", like Muddy Waters's London album, proved more successful with British audiences than American.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Wolf's last album was 1973's "The Back Door Wolf". Entirely composed of new material, it was recorded with musicians who regularly backed him on stage, including Hubert Sumlin, Detroit Junior, Andrew "Blueblood" McMahon, Chico Chism, Lafayette "Shorty" Gilbert and the bandleader Eddie Shaw. The album is shorter (a little more than 35 minutes) than any other he recorded, as a result of his declining health.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Wolf's last public performance was in November 1975 at the International Amphitheatre, located in Chicago. He shared the bill with B.B. King, Albert King, Luther Allison, and O.V. Wright. Wolf reportedly gave an "unforgettable" performance, even crawling across the stage during the song, "Crawling King Snake." The crowd gave him a five-minute standing ovation. When he got off the stage after the concert was over, a team of paramedics had to revive him.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Wolf is among the most influential blues musicians of the postwar years. He was at the forefront of transforming the rural acoustic blues of the South, to the electric, more urban blues of Chicago. When Wolf first formed his band in West Memphis, Arkansas, his sound was much more aggressive, with guitarist Willie Johnson's raucous, distorted guitar playing being the signature sound of his early recordings. When Wolf switched guitarists and added Hubert Sumlin to his lineup, his sound became less aggressive with Sumlin adding "angular riffing" and "wild soloing". He also adopted the backbeat that Chicago blues was mainly known for.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Although Sumlin was the main guitar player in Wolf's band, Wolf played a number of guitars himself throughout the years. He played a 1965 Epiphone Casino on his musical tour in Europe, a Fender Coronado, a Gibson Firebird V in the "Down in the Bottom" video recorded in 1966, a white Fender Stratocaster, a Teisco Tre-100, and he also played a Kay K-161 ThinTwin in his earlier years. The Kay K-161 ThinTwin is currently residing in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame located in Cleveland, Ohio.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Burnett was noted for his disciplined approach to his personal finances. Having already achieved a measure of success in Memphis, he described himself as "the onliest one to drive himself up from the Delta" to Chicago, which he did, in his own car on the Blues Highway and with $4,000 in his pocket, a rare distinction for a black bluesman of the time. Although functionally illiterate into his forties, Burnett eventually returned to school, first to earn a General Educational Development (GED) diploma and later to study accounting and other business courses to help manage his career.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Burnett met his future wife, Lillie Handley (1925–2001), when she attended one of his performances at a Chicago club. She and her family were urban and educated and were not involved in what was considered the unsavory world of blues musicians. Nevertheless, he was attracted to her as soon as he saw her in the audience. He immediately pursued her and won her over. According to those who knew them, the couple remained deeply in love until his death. Together, they raised two daughters Betty and Barbara, Lillie's daughters from an earlier relationship. West Coast rapper Skeme is his great nephew, who was born 14 years after his death.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: After he married Lillie, who was able to manage his professional finances, Burnett was so financially successful that he was able to offer band members not only a decent salary but benefits such as health insurance; this enabled him to hire his pick of available musicians and keep his band one of the best around. According to his stepdaughters, he was never financially extravagant (for instance, he drove a Pontiac station wagon rather than a more expensive, flashy car).


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: Burnett's health began declining in the late 1960s. He suffered his first heart attack in 1969 as he and Hubert Sumlin were traveling to a show at University of Chicago. He fell against the dashboard of the car he was riding in, and Sumlin, who was driving, pulled over and grabbed a two-by-four piece of wood that was lying in the road. Sumlin then rammed the wood into Burnett's back, which kick-started his heart. Three weeks later, while he was in Toronto for a gig, Burnett suffered additional heart and kidney problems, but refused an operation recommended by doctors, telling his wife that "he needed to keep working".


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In 1970, Burnett was involved in a serious car accident that sent him flying through the windshield, which caused extensive damage to his kidneys. For the rest of his life, he received dialysis treatments every three days, which was administered by his wife Lillie. In May that same year, while he was in the United Kingdom to record "The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions", his health problems worsened. A year later, Burnett suffered another heart attack, and his kidneys had failed. He also began suffering from high blood pressure as well. By May 1973, Burnett was back performing again. The bandleader, Eddie Shaw, was so concerned for Burnett's health that he limited him to performing six songs per concert.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In January 1976, Burnett checked into the Edward Hines Jr. Veterans Administration Hospital in Hines, Illinois, for kidney surgery. Three days before his death, a carcinoma was found in his brain. He died from a combination of the tumor, heart failure, and kidney disease on January 10, 1976, at the age of 65. He was buried in Oakridge Cemetery, outside Chicago, in a plot in Section 18, on the east side of the road. His gravestone has an image of a guitar and harmonica etched into it.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In 1980, Burnett was posthumously inducted into the Blues Foundation's Blues Hall of Fame. He was also inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence, and the Hall of Fame located in his hometown of West Point, Mississippi, in 1995.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: On September 17, 1994, the U.S. Postal Service issued a 29-cent commemorative postage stamp depicting Howlin' Wolf.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: On September 1, 2005, the Howlin' Wolf Blues Museum opened in West Point, Mississippi. The museum is located at 57 E. Westbrook Street, and an annual festival is held there.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: The Howlin' Wolf Foundation, a nonprofit corporation organized under the US tax code, section 501(c)(3), was established by Bettye Kelly to preserve and extend Howlin' Wolf's legacy. The foundation's mission and goals include the preservation of the blues music genre, scholarships to enable students to participate in music programs, and support for blues musicians and blues programs.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: In 1972, Howlin' Wolf was awarded an honorary doctor of arts degree from Columbia College in Chicago.


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: A Howlin' Wolf recording of "Smokestack Lightning" was selected for a Grammy Hall of Fame Award, an award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and have "qualitative or historical significance".


title: Howlin' Wolf

text: The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed three songs by Howlin' Wolf in its "500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll".


title: Winchester College

text: Winchester College is a public school (fee-charging independent day and boarding school) in Winchester, Hampshire, England. It was founded by William of Wykeham in 1382 and has existed in its present location ever since. It is the oldest of the nine schools considered by the Clarendon Commission. The school is currently undergoing a transition to become co-educational and to accept day pupils, having previously been a boys' boarding school for over 600 years.


title: Winchester College

text: The school was founded to provide an education for 70 scholars. Gradually numbers rose, a choir of 16 "quiristers" being added alongside paying pupils known as "commoners". Numbers expanded greatly in the 1860s with the addition of ten boarding houses. The scholars continue to live in the school's medieval buildings, which consist of two courtyards, a chapel, and a cloisters. A Wren-style classroom building named "School" was added in the 17th century. An art school ("museum"), science school, and music school were added at the turn of the 20th century. A war cloister was built as a memorial in 1924.


title: Winchester College

text: The school has maintained traditions including its mascot, the Trusty Servant; a set of "notions" forming a sort of private language; and a school song, "Domum". Its headmasters have included the bishops William Waynflete in the 15th century and George Ridding in the 19th century. Former pupils are known as Old Wykehamists.


title: Winchester College

text: Winchester College was founded in 1382 by William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester and Chancellor to both Edward III and Richard II, and the first 70 poor scholars entered the school in 1394. In the early 15th century the specific requirement was that scholars come from families where the income was less than five marks sterling (£3 6s 8d) "per annum"; in comparison, the contemporary reasonable living for a yeoman was £5 "per annum". It was founded in conjunction with New College, Oxford, for which it was designed to act as a feeder: the buildings of both colleges were designed by master mason William Wynford. This double foundation was the model for Eton College and King's College, Cambridge, some 50 years later.


title: Winchester College

text: At first only a small number of pupils other than scholars were admitted; by the 15th century the school had around 100 pupils in total, nominally the 70 scholars, 16 choirboys known as "quiristers", and the rest "commoners". Demand for places for commoners was high, and though at first restricted, numbers gradually rose. From the 1860s, ten boarding houses, each for up to sixty pupils, were added, greatly increasing the school's capacity. By 2020, the number of pupils had risen to 690.


title: Winchester College

text: According to its 1382 charter and final statutes (1400), the school is called in Latin ("St Mary's College, near Winchester"), or ("The College of the Blessed Mary of Winchester, near Winchester").


title: Winchester College

text: The college consists of an assemblage of buildings from medieval times to the present day. There are 94 listed buildings, set in grounds of some 250 acres, of which 100 acres are water meadows, 52 acres are playing fields, and 11 acres are formal gardens; the area includes St Catherine's Hill. The medieval buildings, representing most of the original foundation from the school's opening in 1394, include Outer Gate and Outer Court, Chamber Court, the chapel, and the Cloisters. These are built in flint with limestone facings and slate roofs. The chapel retains its original wooden fan-vaulted ceiling, designed by Hugh Herland, carpenter to Richard II. Little of the original medieval glass, designed by Thomas Glazier, survives, as it was scattered in the 1820s, but some is now housed in Thurburn's Chantry, at the back of the chapel, and in Fromond's Chantry, inside the Cloisters. The "School" building was constructed in 1683–1687 in Wren style, with a statue of the founder above the door by C. G. Cibber. The school was greatly extended in the 19th century with the addition of boarding houses for "commoners", paying pupils, as opposed to the scholars who continued to live in the medieval College. At the turn of the 20th century, a Music School, "Museum" (art school), and Science School, all architect-designed, were added. A hall big enough for the enlarged school, New Hall, was opened in 1961, accommodating the oak panelling removed from the Chapel in the 1874 refurbishment. In 1924, a War Cloister was constructed; it now serves as a memorial of the Wykehamists killed in the two World Wars.


title: Winchester College

text: The seventy scholars live in the original buildings, known as "College". The scholars are known as "Collegemen", and the schoolmaster in charge of them is called the Master in College. Collegemen wear black gowns, following the founding traditions of the school. Collegemen enjoy certain privileges compared to the Commoners, such as having open fires and being allowed to walk across Meads, the field outside School.


title: Winchester College

text: Every pupil at Winchester, apart from the Scholars, lives in a boarding house, chosen or allocated when applying to Winchester. It is here that he studies, eats and sleeps. Each house is presided over by a housemaster (who takes on the role in addition to teaching duties), assisted by house tutors. Houses compete against each other in school sports. Each house has an official name, usually based on the family name of the first housemaster, which is used mainly as a postal address. Each house also has an informal name, usually based on the name or nickname of an early housemaster. Each house also has a letter, in the order of their founding, to act as an abbreviation, especially on laundry tags. A member of a house is described by the informal name of the house with "-ite" suffixed, as "a Furleyite", "a Toyeite", "a Cookite" and so on. College does not have an informal name, although the abbreviation "Coll" is sometimes used; "X" (meaning, not one of the boarding houses) was originally used only on laundry tags.


title: Winchester College

text: Winchester has its own entrance examination, and does not use Common Entrance like other major public schools. Those wishing to enter a Commoner House make their arrangements with the relevant housemaster some two years before sitting the exam, usually sitting a test set by the housemaster and an interview. Those applying to College do not take the normal entrance examination but instead sit a separate, harder, exam called "Election": successful candidates may obtain, according to their performance, a scholarship, an exhibition or a Headmaster's nomination to join a Commoner House. Admission to College was historically coupled to remission of fees, but this has ceased; instead, means-tested bursaries of from 5% to 100% of the school fee are provided, according to need. From 2022, Winchester is admitting girls into the 6th form (year 12) as day pupils, with girls boarding from 2024. For 2022/23, the fee is £45,936 per annum (£15,312 per term) for boarding pupils and £33,990 per annum (£11,330 per term) for day pupils.


title: Winchester College

text: In addition to normal lessons, all boys throughout the school are required to attend a class called Division (known as "Div") which explores parts of history, literature, and politics that do not lead to external examinations; its purpose is to ensure a broad education.


title: Winchester College

text: From year 9, pupils study for at least nine GCSE and IGCSEs. Every pupil studies English, mathematics, Latin, French or German, and at least two sciences at this level, as well as "Div". Pupils then study three A-levels, "Div", and an Extended Project Qualification.


title: Winchester College

text: Winchester College is particularly known for its academic rigour. At A-Level, 41.7% of grades achieved were graded A*, and 76.3% of grades achieved were graded A* or A in 2022. 80.3% of GCSEs were graded 8 or 9 (A* equivalent), and 91.2% of grades achieved were graded 7, 8 or 9 (A*/A equivalent). Between 2010 and 2018, an average of 33% of leavers obtained places at Oxford or Cambridge.


title: Winchester College

text: Winchester College has its own game, Winchester College football (also known as "Win: Co: Fo:" or "Winkies"), played only at Winchester. It is played in the spring term with a competition between the school's houses; it is largely managed by the boys.


title: Winchester College

text: A distinctive Winchester version of Fives resembles Rugby Fives but with a buttress on the court. The buttress enables a skilful player to cause the ball to ricochet in an unexpected direction.


title: Winchester College

text: The school has an active rowing club called the Winchester College Boat Club which is based on the River Itchen. The club is affiliated to British Rowing (boat code WIN) and was twice winner of the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup (in 1949 and 1954) at the Henley Royal Regatta.


title: Winchester College

text: Pupils of the school in their second year are currently required to serve in the college's Combined Cadet Force.


title: Winchester College

text: The organisation was founded in 1860 as "The Winchester College Rifle Volunteer Corps" by various boys in their top year as a result of the perceived threat of Napoleon III after the Orsini plot, and remained entirely autonomous until it was taken over by the Second Master in 1868. It was enrolled as a Cadet Corps in the 1st Hants Volunteer Battalion. In 1908, the Officer Training Corps was established, and by 1914, through the request of the War Office that Senior Cadets be given appropriate training for the war effort, almost every student became involved in the Corps, though it was never explicitly compulsory. In the Second World War, it was renamed as "The Junior Training Corps", though its function was still to prepare boys for Officer responsibilities. Montgomery remarked on inspecting the Corps in 1946 that there was "latent leadership in all ranks". In 1948, the "Junior Training Corps" became known as the "Combined Cadet Force" (CCF) which incorporated RAF and RN sections. In 1963, "Alternative Service Activities" were introduced for boys who did not want to join the CCF. Pupils were made eligible to opt out of the CCF at the end of their second year after starting at the beginning of the year: this is still the school's policy.


title: Winchester College

text: The Trusty Servant is an emblematic figure in a painting at Winchester College, that serves as the school's unofficial mascot and the name of its alumni magazine. A painting of "The Trusty Servant" and accompanying verses both devised by the poet John Hoskins in 1579 hangs outside the college kitchen. The current version was painted by William Cave the Younger in 1809. The painting depicts a mythical creature with the body of a man, the head of a pig, with its snout closed with a padlock, the ears of an ass, the feet of a stag, and tools in his left hand. The verses are on the virtues that pupils of the college were supposed to have. The college arms are shown in the background of the painting.


title: Winchester College

text: A "notion" is a specialised term peculiar to Winchester College. The word notion is also used to describe traditions unique to the school. An example of a notion is "toytime", meaning homework, from the notion "toys", a wooden cubicle that serves as a pupil's workspace in a communal room, known as "mugging hall" in Commoner Houses or a "chamber" in College.


title: Winchester College

text: The school song is entitled "Domum" and is sung at the end of the summer term, known as Cloister Time. The origin of the song is unknown; it was described as "an old tradition" in the 1773 "History and Antiquities of Winchester".


title: Winchester College

text: The traditional tune was composed by John Reading. A new tune, by Malcolm Archer, was officially adopted by the school in about 2007.


title: Winchester College

text: According to legend, the text was written in the 17th century by a pupil who was confined for misconduct during the Whitsun holidays. (In one account, he was tied to a pillar.) It is said that he carved the words on the bark of a tree, which was thereafter called "Domum Tree", and cast himself into Logie (the river running through the school grounds). There is still a "Domum Cottage" in that area. The author of the text apparently wrongly treated "domum" as a neuter noun.


title: Winchester College

text: A "Domum Dinner" is held at the end of the summer term for leavers. It was formerly restricted to those former scholars of Winchester who were also scholars of New College, and distinguished guests. Until the reforms of the 19th century, there were three successive Election Dinners held during Election Week, culminating in a Domum Ball. Originally these festivities occurred around Whitsun, as suggested by references in the song to early summer such as "See the year, the meadow, smiling" and "Now the swallow seeks her dwelling".


title: Winchester College

text: As with other prominent public schools, a locomotive of the Southern Railway V Class was named after Winchester College. The second of the class, No. 901 "Winchester" was constructed by Southern at the nearby Eastleigh Works; it entered service in 1930. It was selected by the railway's new chief mechanical engineer Oliver Bulleid for rebuilding with a Lemaître multiple-jet blastpipe and wide-diameter chimney from 1939 onwards. Upon passing into British Railways ownership in 1948, it was renumbered 30901. It was withdrawn from service in 1962.


title: Winchester College

text: Current pupils of Winchester College are known as Wykehamists, in memory of the school's founder, William of Wykeham; former pupils are known as Old Wykehamists, or amongst themselves as Old Woks.


title: Winchester College

text: Fictional Old Wykehamists appear in over 50 novels, starting with Tobias Smollett's eponymous Peregrine Pickle in 1751.


title: Winchester College

text: In 1872, under the headmaster George Ridding, "tunding", beatings given by a prefect (a senior pupil), using a ground-ash across the shoulders, were still permitted. The matter became a national scandal, known as "the Tunding Row", when "an overzealous Senior Commoner Prefect" beat a pupil for refusing to attend a notions test. Ridding made matters worse by trying to defend the action. He eventually limited the prefects' power to beat, and forbade notions tests as a "disgraceful innovation".


title: Winchester College

text: The college knew in 1982 of allegations of sadomasochistic abuse of boys and young men attending summer camps run by the Iwerne Trust in the 1970s, "to ensure that future members of the establishment were committed Christians". These were known as "Bash camps" after the nickname of their founder, E. J. H. Nash. Neither the college nor the Trust reported these bare-buttocks beatings to the police. The perpetrator, John Smyth QC, now deceased, was warned off and moved to Zimbabwe and then South Africa where abuse continued. An independent review into the abuse, commissioned by the college, was published in January 2022.


title: Winchester College

text: In 2005, Winchester College was one of fifty of the country's leading independent schools found guilty of running an unlawful price-fixing cartel by the Office of Fair Trading. As a penalty, the schools paid for a trust fund to benefit the affected pupils. Winchester College, like Eton, received a fifty percent reduction in its penalty in return for its full cooperation.


title: Winchester College

text: In 2017 Winchester College suspended a member of the staff for providing students with information about questions on an upcoming public exam. The headmaster of Winchester confirmed that the school had treated the matter "very seriously" and that no boy was responsible for the "exam irregularity". The information was widely distributed, resulting in their papers being disallowed.


title: Infantry

text: Infantry is a military specialization which engages in ground combat on foot. Infantry generally consists of light infantry, mountain infantry, motorized infantry & mechanized infantry, airborne infantry, air assault infantry, and marine infantry. Although disused in modern times, heavy infantry also commonly made up the bulk of many historic armies. Infantry, cavalry, and artillery have traditionally made up the core of the combat arms professions of various armies, with the infantry almost always comprising the largest portion of these forces.


title: Infantry

text: In English, use of the term "infantry" began about the 1570s, describing soldiers who march and fight on foot. The word derives from Middle French "infanterie", from older Italian (also Spanish) "infanteria" (foot soldiers too inexperienced for cavalry), from Latin "īnfāns" (without speech, newborn, foolish), from which English also gets "infant". The individual-soldier term "infantryman" was not coined until 1837. In modern usage, foot soldiers of any era are now considered infantry and infantrymen.


title: Infantry

text: From the mid-18th century until 1881 the British Army named its infantry as numbered regiments "of Foot" to distinguish them from cavalry and dragoon regiments (see List of Regiments of Foot).


title: Infantry

text: Infantry equipped with special weapons were often named after that weapon, such as grenadiers for their grenades, or fusiliers for their "fusils".These names can persist long after the weapon speciality; examples of infantry units that retained such names are the Royal Irish Fusiliers and the Grenadier Guards.


title: Infantry

text: Dragoons were created as mounted infantry, with horses for travel between battles; they were still considered infantry since they dismounted before combat. However, if light cavalry was lacking in an army, any available dragoons might be assigned their duties; this practise increased over time, and dragoons eventually received all the weapons and training as both infantry and cavalry, and could be classified as both. Conversely, starting about the mid-19th century, regular cavalry have been forced to spend more of their time dismounted in combat due to the ever-increasing effectiveness of enemy infantry firearms. Thus most cavalry transitioned to mounted infantry. As with grenadiers, the "dragoon" and "cavalry" designations can be retained long after their horses, such as in the Royal Dragoon Guards, Royal Lancers, and King's Royal Hussars.


title: Infantry

text: Similarly, motorised infantry have trucks and other unarmed vehicles for non-combat movement, but are still infantry since they leave their vehicles for any combat. Most modern infantry have vehicle transport, to the point where infantry being motorised is generally assumed, and the few exceptions might be identified as modern "light infantry". Mechanised infantry go beyond motorised, having transport vehicles with combat abilities, armoured personnel carriers (APCs), providing at least some options for combat without leaving their vehicles. In modern infantry, some APCs have evolved to be infantry fighting vehicles (IFVs), which are transport vehicles with more substantial combat abilities, approaching those of light tanks. Some well-equipped mechanised infantry can be designated as "armoured infantry". Given that infantry forces typically also have some tanks, and given that most armoured forces have more mechanised infantry units than tank units in their organisation, the distinction between mechanised infantry and armour forces has blurred.


title: Infantry

text: The first military forces in history were infantry. In antiquity, infantry were armed with early melee weapons such as a spear, axe, or sword, or an early ranged weapon like a javelin, sling, or bow, with a few infantry men being expected to use both a melee and a ranged weapon. With the development of gunpowder, infantry began converting to primarily firearms. By the time of Napoleonic warfare, infantry, cavalry and artillery formed a basic triad of ground forces, though infantry usually remained the most numerous. With armoured warfare, armoured fighting vehicles have replaced the horses of cavalry, and airpower has added a new dimension to ground combat, but infantry remains pivotal to all modern combined arms operations.


title: Infantry

text: The first warriors, adopting hunting weapons or improvised melee weapons, before the existence of any organised military, likely started essentially as loose groups without any organisation or formation. But this changed sometime before recorded history; the first ancient empires (2500–1500 BC) are shown to have some soldiers with standardised military equipment, and the training and discipline required for battlefield formations and manoeuvres: regular infantry. Though the main force of the army, these forces were usually kept small due to their cost of training and upkeep, and might be supplemented by local short-term mass-conscript forces using the older irregular infantry weapons and tactics; this remained a common practice almost up to modern times.


title: Infantry

text: Before the adoption of the chariot to create the first mobile fighting forces , all armies were pure infantry. Even after, with a few exceptions like the Mongol Empire, infantry has been the largest component of most armies in history.


title: Infantry

text: In the Western world, from Classical Antiquity through the Middle Ages ( 8th century BC to 15th century AD), infantry are categorised as either heavy infantry or light infantry. Heavy infantry, such as Greek hoplites, Macedonian phalangites, and Roman legionaries, specialised in dense, solid formations driving into the main enemy lines, using weight of numbers to achieve a decisive victory, and were usually equipped with heavier weapons and armour to fit their role. Light infantry, such as Greek peltasts, Balearic slingers, and Roman velites, using open formations and greater manoeuvrability, took on most other combat roles: scouting, screening the army on the march, skirmishing to delay, disrupt, or weaken the enemy to prepare for the main forces' battlefield attack, protecting them from flanking manoeuvers, and then afterwards either pursuing the fleeing enemy or covering their army's retreat.


title: Infantry

text: After the fall of Rome, the quality of heavy infantry declined, and warfare was dominated by heavy cavalry, such as knights, forming small elite units for decisive shock combat, supported by peasant infantry militias and assorted light infantry from the lower classes. Towards the end of Middle Ages, this began to change, where more professional and better trained light infantry could be effective against knights, such as the English longbowmen in the Hundred Years' War. By the start of the Renaissance, the infantry began to return to a larger role, with Swiss pikemen and German Landsknechts filling the role of heavy infantry again, using dense formations of pikes to drive off any cavalry.


title: Infantry

text: Dense formations are vulnerable to ranged weapons. Technological developments allowed the raising of large numbers of light infantry units armed with ranged weapons, without the years of training expected for traditional high-skilled archers and slingers. This started slowly, first with crossbowmen, then hand cannoneers and arquebusiers, each with increasing effectiveness, marking the beginning of early modern warfare, when firearms rendered the use of heavy infantry obsolete. The introduction of musketeers using bayonets in the mid 17th century began replacement of the pike with the infantry square replacing the pike square.


title: Infantry

text: To maximise their firepower, musketeer infantry were trained to fight in wide lines facing the enemy, creating line infantry. These fulfilled the central battlefield role of earlier heavy infantry, using ranged weapons instead of melee weapons. To support these lines, smaller infantry formations using dispersed skirmish lines were created, called light infantry, fulfilling the same multiple roles as earlier light infantry. Their arms were no lighter than line infantry; they were distinguished by their skirmish formation and flexible tactics.


title: Infantry

text: The modern rifleman infantry became the primary force for taking and holding ground on battlefields as a element of combined arms. As firepower continued to increase, use of infantry lines diminished, until all infantry became light infantry in practice.


title: Infantry

text: Modern classifications of infantry have expanded to reflect modern equipment and tactics, such as motorised infantry, mechanised or armoured infantry, mountain infantry, marine infantry, and airborne infantry.


title: Infantry

text: Beyond main arms and armour, a infantryman's "military kit" generally includes combat boots, battledress or combat uniform, camping gear, heavy weather gear, survival gear, secondary weapons and ammunition, weapon service and repair kits, health and hygiene items, mess kit, rations, filled water canteen, and all other consumables each infantryman needs for the expected duration of time operating away from their unit's base, plus any special mission-specific equipment. One of the most valuable pieces of gear is the entrenching tool—basically a folding spade—which can be employed not only to dig important defences, but also in a variety of other daily tasks, and even sometimes as a weapon. Infantry typically have shared equipment on top of this, like tents or heavy weapons, where the carrying burden is spread across several infantrymen. In all, this can reach for each soldier on the march. Such heavy infantry burdens have changed little over centuries of warfare; in the late Roman Republic, legionaries were nicknamed "Marius' mules" as their main activity seemed to be carrying the weight of their legion around on their backs.


title: Infantry

text: When combat is expected, infantry typically switch to "packing light", meaning reducing their equipment to weapons, ammo, and bare essentials, and leaving the rest with their transport or baggage train, at camp or rally point, in temporary hidden caches, or even (in emergencies) discarding whatever may slow them down. Additional specialised equipment may be required, depending on the mission or to the particular terrain or environment, including satchel charges, demolition tools, mines, barbed wire, carried by the infantry or attached specialists.


title: Infantry

text: Historically, infantry have suffered high casualty rates from disease, exposure, exhaustion and privation — often in excess of the casualties suffered from enemy attacks. Better infantry equipment to support their health, energy, and protect from environmental factors greatly reduces these rates of loss, and increase their level of effective action. Health, energy, and morale are greatly influenced by how the soldier is fed, so militaries often standardised field rations, starting from hardtack, to US K-rations, to modern MREs.


title: Infantry

text: Communications gear has become a necessity, as it allows effective command of infantry units over greater distances, and communication with artillery and other support units. Modern infantry can have GPS, encrypted individual communications equipment, surveillance and night vision equipment, advanced intelligence and other high-tech mission-unique aids.


title: Infantry

text: Armies have sought to improve and standardise infantry gear to reduce fatigue for extended carrying, increase freedom of movement, accessibility, and compatibility with other carried gear, such as the US All-purpose Lightweight Individual Carrying Equipment (ALICE).


title: Infantry

text: Infantrymen are defined by their primary arms – the personal weapons and body armour for their own individual use. The available technology, resources, history, and society can produce quite different weapons for each military and era, but common infantry weapons can be distinguished in a few basic categories.


title: Infantry

text: Infantrymen often carry secondary or back-up weapons, sometimes called a sidearm or ancillary weapons. Infantry with ranged or pole weapons often carried a sword or dagger for possible hand-to-hand combat. The "pilum" was a javelin the Roman legionaries threw just before drawing their primary weapon, the "gladius" (short sword), and closing with the enemy line.


title: Infantry

text: Modern infantrymen now treat the bayonet as a backup weapon, but may also have handguns or pistols. They may also deploy anti-personnel mines, booby traps, incendiary or explosive devices defensively before combat.


title: Infantry

text: Infantry have employed many different methods of protection from enemy attacks, including various kinds of armour and other gear, and tactical procedures.


title: Infantry

text: The most basic is personal armour. This includes shields, helmets and many types of armour – padded linen, leather, lamellar, mail, plate, and kevlar. Initially, armour was used to defend both from ranged and close combat; even a fairly light shield could help defend against most slings and javelins, though high-strength bows and crossbows might penetrate common armour at very close range. Infantry armour had to compromise between protection and coverage, as a full suit of attack-proof armour would be too heavy to wear in combat.


title: Infantry

text: As firearms improved, armour for ranged defence had to be thicker and stronger. With the introduction of the heavy arquebus designed to pierce standard steel armour, it was proven easier to make heavier firearms than heavier armour; armour transitioned to be only for close combat purposes. Pikemen armour tended to be just steel helmets and breastplates, and gunners little or no armour. By the time of the musket, the dominance of firepower shifted militaries away from any close combat, and use of armour decreased, until infantry typically went without any armour.


title: Infantry

text: Helmets were added back during World War I as artillery began to dominate the battlefield, to protect against their fragmentation and other blast effects beyond a direct hit. Modern developments in bullet-proof composite materials like kevlar have started a return to body armour for infantry, though the extra weight is a notable burden.


title: Infantry

text: In modern times, infantrymen must also often carry protective measures against chemical and biological attack, including military gas masks, counter-agents, and protective suits. All of these protective measures add to the weight an infantryman must carry, and may decrease combat efficiency.


title: Infantry

text: Early crew-served weapons were siege weapons, like the ballista, trebuchet, and battering ram. Modern versions include machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and infantry mortars.


title: Infantry

text: Beginning with the development the first regular military forces, close-combat regular infantry fought less as unorganised groups of individuals and more in coordinated units, maintaining a defined tactical formation during combat, for increased battlefield effectiveness; such infantry formations and the arms they used developed together, starting with the spear and the shield.


title: Infantry

text: A spear has decent attack abilities with the additional advantage keeping opponents at distance; this advantage can be increased by using longer spears, but this could allow the opponent to side-step the point of the spear and close for hand-to-hand combat where the longer spear is near useless. This can be avoided when each spearman stays side by side with the others in close formation, each covering the ones next to him, presenting a solid wall of spears to the enemy that they cannot get around.


title: Infantry

text: Similarly, a shield has decent defence abilities, but is literally hit-or-miss; an attack from an unexpected angle can bypass it completely. Larger shields can cover more, but are also heavier and less manoeuvrable, making unexpected attacks even more of a problem. This can be avoided by having shield-armed soldiers stand close together, side-by-side, each protecting both themselves and their immediate comrades, presenting a solid shield wall to the enemy.


title: Infantry

text: The opponents for these first formations, the close-combat infantry of more tribal societies, or any military without regular infantry (so called "barbarians") used arms that focused on the individual – weapons using personal strength and force, such as larger swinging swords, axes, and clubs. These take more room and individual freedom to swing and wield, necessitating a more loose organisation. While this may allow for a fierce running attack (an initial shock advantage) the tighter formation of the heavy spear and shield infantry gave them a local manpower advantage where several might be able to fight each opponent.


title: Infantry

text: Thus tight formations heightened advantages of heavy arms, and gave greater local numbers in melee. To also increase their staying power, multiple rows of heavy infantrymen were added. This also increased their shock combat effect; individual opponents saw themselves literally lined-up against several heavy infantryman each, with seemingly no chance of defeating all of them. "Heavy infantry" developed into huge solid block formations, up to a hundred meters wide and a dozen rows deep.


title: Infantry

text: Maintaining the advantages of heavy infantry meant maintaining formation; this became even more important when two forces with heavy infantry met in battle; the solidity of the formation became the deciding factor. Intense discipline and training became paramount. Empires formed around their military.


title: Infantry

text: The organization of military forces into regular military units is first noted in Egyptian records of the Battle of Kadesh (). Soldiers were grouped into units of 50, which were in turn grouped into larger units of 250, then 1,000, and finally into units of up to 5,000 – the largest independent command. Several of these Egyptian "divisions" made up an army, but operated independently, both on the march and tactically, demonstrating sufficient military command and control organisation for basic battlefield manoeuvres. Similar hierarchical organizations have been noted in other ancient armies, typically with approximately 10 to 100 to 1,000 ratios (even where base 10 was not common), similar to modern sections (squads), companies, and regiments.


title: Infantry

text: The training of the infantry has differed drastically over time and from place to place. The cost of maintaining an army in fighting order and the seasonal nature of warfare precluded large permanent armies.


title: Infantry

text: The antiquity saw everything from the well-trained and motivated citizen armies of Greece and Rome, the tribal host assembled from farmers and hunters with only passing acquaintance with warfare and masses of lightly armed and ill-trained militia put up as a last ditch effort. Kushite king Taharqa enjoyed military success in the Near East as a result of his efforts to strengthen the army through daily training in long distance running.


title: Infantry

text: In medieval times the foot soldiers varied from peasant levies to semi-permanent companies of mercenaries, foremost among them the Swiss, English, Aragonese and German, to men-at-arms who went into battle as well-armoured as knights, the latter of which at times also fought on foot.


title: Infantry

text: The creation of standing armies—permanently assembled for war or defence—saw increase in training and experience. The increased use of firearms and the need for drill to handle them efficiently.


title: Infantry

text: The introduction of national and mass armies saw an establishment of minimum requirements and the introduction of special troops (first of them the engineers going back to medieval times, but also different kinds of infantry adopted to specific terrain, bicycle, motorcycle, motorised and mechanised troops) culminating with the introduction of highly trained special forces during the first and second World War.


title: Infantry

text: Naval infantry, commonly known as marines, are primarily a category of infantry that form part of the naval forces of states and perform roles on land and at sea, including amphibious operations, as well as other, naval roles. They also perform other tasks, including land warfare, separate from naval operations.


title: Infantry

text: Air force infantry and base defense forces, such as the Royal Air Force Regiment, Royal Australian Air Force Airfield Defence Guards, and Indonesian Air Force Paskhas Corps are used primarily for ground-based defense of air bases and other air force facilities. They also have a number of other, specialist roles. These include, among others, Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) defence and training other airmen in basic ground defense tactics.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" is a song recorded by Welsh singer Bonnie Tyler. It was written and produced by Jim Steinman, and released on Tyler's fifth studio album, "Faster Than the Speed of Night" (1983). The song was released as a single by CBS/Columbia in 1983.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The song became Tyler's biggest career hit, topping the UK Singles Chart, and becoming the fifth-best-selling single in 1983 in the United Kingdom. In the United States, the single spent four weeks at the top of the charts, keeping another Steinman penned song "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" by Air Supply from reaching the top spot (a song Tyler would later cover in 1995), and it was "Billboard"'s number-six song of the year for 1983. The song was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Worldwide, the single has sales in excess of 6 million copies and was certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) for sales of over 1 million copies after its release, updated to platinum in 2001 when the certification threshold changed. In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's third favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: After her contract with RCA Records ended in 1981, Tyler found a new manager in David Aspden. After seeing Meat Loaf perform "Bat Out of Hell" live on "The Old Grey Whistle Test", she approached Meat Loaf's producer, Jim Steinman, and asked him to be her producer. Tyler aimed to create an album utilizing the Wall of Sound production techniques of Phil Spector, and she believed that Steinman was the only person who could create the same sound, as Spector had mostly retired from the music business. Tyler visited Steinman in his apartment in New York in April 1982 with her manager, where she was presented with two tracks: "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" and "Goin' Through the Motions". She stated that had she not liked the songs Steinman played for her, he would have rejected Tyler's invitation to collaborate. She returned to his studio apartment weeks later, where Steinman and Rory Dodd performed "Total Eclipse of the Heart" for her. Steinman also hand-picked the recording band for the song, which included Dodd as a featured vocalist (the "Turn around..." refrain).


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The lyric "Turn around, bright eyes" had originally appeared in Steinman's 1969 college musical "The Dream Engine". Steinman had originally written the song's verse melody for his score to the 1980 film "A Small Circle of Friends".


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: "Total Eclipse of the Heart" had to be shortened for radio play. Tyler did not believe that the song was radio-friendly at its full length; the song was reduced from seven minutes and two seconds to four minutes and thirty seconds.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The power ballad became Tyler's highest-charting song in several countries, peaking at No. 1 in the United States, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United Kingdom. At its peak, it sold 60,000 copies per day and approximately 6 million copies in total. It won the Variety Club award in the UK for best single of 1983. The song also made number 82 of VH1's top 100 love songs.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Tyler told "Record Mirror" that she thought the song was about "someone who wants to love so badly she's lying there in complete darkness."


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Steinman said in an interview with "Playbill" about the inclusion of the song in his 1997 musical "Dance of the Vampires":with 'Total Eclipse of the Heart', I was trying to come up with a love song and I remembered I actually wrote that to be a vampire love song. Its original title was 'Vampires in Love' because I was working on a musical of "Nosferatu", the other great vampire story. If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark...He also told "People" magazine that he thought Tyler sounded like John Fogerty and wrote the song "to be a showpiece for her voice." Tyler described the song as "a challenge [to sing]," stating that she "[doesn't] like songs that anybody can sing. I like songs that need a lot of energy." After Steinman presented her with the song, she told "The Times", "I just had shivers right up my spine...I couldn't wait to actually get in and record it."


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: According to Meat Loaf, Steinman had written the song, along with "Making Love Out of Nothing at All", for Meat Loaf's album "Midnight at the Lost and Found"; however, Meat Loaf's record company refused to pay Steinman, and he wrote separate songs himself. "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was given to Bonnie Tyler and "Making Love Out of Nothing at All" to Air Supply. Tyler has denied this claim. "Meat Loaf was apparently very annoyed that Jim gave that to me," Tyler stated. "But Jim said he didn't write it for Meat Loaf, that he only finished it after meeting me." Steinman said to People magazine that he considered it "an aria to me, a wagnerian-like onslaught of sound and emotion. I wrote it to be a showpiece for her voice."


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In an interview with journalist Mick Wall shortly after the release of Meat Loaf's 2006 album "", Steinman stated: "I didn't write [Total Eclipse of the Heart] for anyone but Bonnie." Steinman believed that CBS were expecting him to write something similar to "It's a Heartache", but he had different ideas.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The music video for "Total Eclipse of the Heart" was directed by Russell Mulcahy and was filmed on location at the Holloway Sanatorium, a large Victorian Gothic hospital near Virginia Water, Surrey, England. The video features Bonnie Tyler clad in white, dreaming or fantasizing about her students in a boys' boarding school. Young men are seen dancing and participating in various school activities and singing in a choir.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The video received two nominations at the "Billboard" Video Music Awards in 1983 for Best Performance by a Female and Most Effective Use of Symbolism.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: A long-running urban legend is that the boy who appears throughout the video and who shakes Tyler's hand at the end is former Italian footballer Gianfranco Zola. In a 2012 interview, Zola confirmed that he did not appear in the video.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Since the song's release, Tyler has performed "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in all of her concerts. "I sing it much better now than I used to," she told "The Huffington Post". "I think my voice is probably not as husky as it was, I think it's mellowed a bit." The song was performed at the 26th Annual Grammy Awards, held at the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, on 28 February 1984.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Bonnie Tyler sang "Total Eclipse of the Heart" live on board a Royal Caribbean cruise ship during the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017, backed by DNCE.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Live recordings of Tyler performing the song have been released on her albums "Bonnie Tyler Live" (2006) and "Live in Germany 1993" (2011). Video performances have also been released on Tyler's DVDs, "Bonnie on Tour" (2006) and the DVD edition of "Live in Germany 1993".


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Mike DeGagne from AllMusic retrospectively described "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as "one of the finest ballads ever to hit radio." He noted the "lush instrumentation" and said that Tyler's voice "produced the perfect type of 'desperate lovelorn' effect to suit the romantic lyrics." He described Roy Bittan's piano playing as "dreamy" and described Tyler's voice as "wonderfully gritty." Donald A. Guarisco, also from AllMusic, retrospectively reviewed "Faster Than the Speed of Night" and noted the song as an "epic ballad", describing the whole album as "rock at its most melodramatic." Jim Beviglia from "American Songwriter" said that Tyler's raspy vocals helped to legitimize the "melodrama inherent in the lyrics," and described the song as a "garment-rending, chest-beating [and] emotionally exhausting ballad" that suits the throes of a turbulent relationship.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In a 2013 UK survey, the song came first in a list of most popular songs to sing in the shower, above songs by Justin Bieber, Robbie Williams, One Direction and Elton John. In 2015, the song was voted by the British public as the nation's third-favourite 1980s number one in a poll for ITV.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The song's lyrics compare an ended romance with an eclipse. The song often receives publicity during solar eclipses and lunar eclipses. "Total Eclipse of the Heart" received substantial media attention during the solar eclipse of 20 March 2015. Tyler's version received a 214% increase of Spotify streams throughout the day. A similar impact was experienced during the solar eclipse of 21 August 2017, when Nielsen Music reported a 503% increase in record sales. Around that time, the song hit number one on the iTunes chart.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Since the original release in 1983, Tyler has re-recorded the song several times for albums and subsequent single releases. Her first and most successful re-recording of the song was released in 2003. Tyler recorded a French/English duet version called "Si demain... (Turn Around)" with Kareen Antonn. It peaked at number one in France and Belgium. Tyler released another version of the song in 2004 as a duet with Peter Brocklehurst on his album "For You". A solo version of the recording was released on her studio album "Wings" the following year.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: BabyPinkStar recorded the song with Tyler in a punk/electronic remix version that was released as a single in the UK in January 2007. In 2009, Tyler released another version of the song with Welsh choral group Only Men Aloud! In 2011, Tyler re-recorded the song on an EP named after the song, released by Cleopatra Records. Her most recent recording of the song appears as a bonus track on her album "Rocks and Honey" (2013).


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In 2021, Tyler released a classical-dance version of the song which features on the album "Classical 80s Dance" by German producer Alex Christensen.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: English singer Nicki French released a hi-NRG remake of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in 1995, which was also a worldwide hit. It was included on her debut album, "Secrets" (1995). The song originally peaked at No. 54 on the UK Singles Chart in 1994, but reached No. 5 after being re-issued in 1995. In the United States, French's version peaked at No. 2 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, behind "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" by Bryan Adams and it garnered frequent airplay on AC radio. It enjoyed greater success in Australia, spending four nonconsecutive weeks at No. 2 behind "Here's Johnny!" by Hocus Pocus. Elsewhere, the cover reached number 13 in New Zealand, number 16 in Canada, and peaked within the top 10 of several European countries.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: French had made her first dance version recording of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" in 1994: she had purchased the Bonnie Tyler original as a teenager in 1983 and reacted negatively to the original suggestion that she (French) remake the song as a dance track — "I thought, no, it's too strong a song to go down the dance route. You know, it demeans it almost. But then I thought well, I'll give it a go. And as soon as I heard the track, I thought it actually does work." The singer had been performing in London bands since the age of 12 and was given the chance to record a version when she received a phone call from a fellow British musician. French's first recording of "Total Eclipse of the Heart", made with John Springate of the Glitter Band producing, came to the attention of Mike Stock and Matt Aitken, who produced their own recording of the song by French, and it was this version which appeared on the UK chart dated 15 October 1994 at No. 54. French would recall: "I just thought oh well that was great...I've [worked with] Mike Stock and Matt Aitken and it was a dream come true...we tried and I had a great time...And then about two months later I had a call out of the blue from Mike saying the buzz will not die down on this track so we're going to re-record the beginning...and we're going to re-release it at the beginning of 1995."


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: According to French, her remake of "Total Eclipse of the Heart" became popular in the UK and the US in distinct remixes: "the slower version was the one that actually took a hold in the UK, where originally they started with the fast one and then decided to go with the [remix which began] in the same vein as the Bonnie Tyler version [and then] sped up when the chorus came in...In the US it was the [remix] which was fast all the way through." The single earned French two awards at the 1995 Hi-NRG Music Awards, in the categories for "Single of the Year" and "Best Female Vocal Performance". In 1996, the song was named "Best Hi-NRG 12-inch of the Year" at the International Dance Music Awards in Miami.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The song's accompanying music video features French performing on a stage, in front of a giant, circular "moon" that occasionally draws up to eclipse itself. Smoke appear as "clouds" and she is backed up by a band and two female backup singers. Sometimes a dancer also performs in front of the "moon". An alternate video also exists, set to the slower version of the song.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: AllMusic editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine noted that French "had a unexpected hit single with her dance-club, house-inflected cover" of "Total Eclipse of the Heart". He added that "although it was treated like a novelty at first, the version was as effective as the original and was a deserved success." Larry Flick from "Billboard" stated that the singer "does a fair imitation of Bonnie Tyler on this bouncy hi-NRG/disco interpretation of the bombastic power ballad. U.K. and European punters already have warmly embraced this twirler, and odds are an even 50-50 for similar success here." "BuzzFeed" ranked French's version number 26 in their "The 101 Greatest Dance Songs of the '90s" list in 2017. Steve Baltin from "Cash Box" felt that in the new version, "only the radio edit retains the syrupy feel that made Tyler’s song such a smash. “Total Eclipse Of The Heart” seems like it would be an odd choice for a dance cover, and this version confirms that suspicion... but it’s still a hit." Robbie Daw from "Idolator" described it as a "simmering dance rendition". Music writer James Masterton wrote in his weekly UK chart commentary, that it "suffers from the inevitable dance beat tacked on and also the lack of Jim Steinman's bombastic production that made the track such an epic in the first place." Pan-European magazine "Music & Media" commented that "away is the sandpaper vocal of Bonny Tyler, the edge now comes from the dance context put into the ballad. Needless to say it's an upbeat song anno 1995. Top 10 in the UK."


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In 2003, Tyler re-recorded "Total Eclipse of the Heart" as a bilingual duet with French singer Kareen Antonn. The new version, titled "Si demain... (Turn Around)", features French lyrics written by Emmanuel Pribys. It was released on 19 December 2003 by Yanis Records and appears on Tyler's 14th studio album, "Simply Believe" (2004). The song achieved platinum certification in Belgium and France, topping the charts in both countries.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In 2003, Kareen Antonn wrote to Tyler asking if she would be willing to record a French-English duet version of the song that was re-arranged by Antonn's friend Emmanuel Pribys. Tyler's initial reaction was to decline the request because Antonn was an unknown artist, "but they didn't give up," Tyler continued, "they sent me a CD of her voice singing the song in French. I always listen to things because you never know!" Tyler was impressed by the demo recording, and asked to sing the song live with her to ensure that her voice was strong enough and not reliant on studio editing.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Tyler flew to Paris and recorded the song with Antonn in just a couple of hours. Their demo recording was sent to various French radio stations. She explained to BBC News that the single was released three weeks earlier than planned "after people heard it on the radio and went into the shops trying to buy it." "Si demain... (Turn Around)" was released in France on 19 December 2003, and a few weeks later in Belgium and Switzerland, and later included on her 2004 album "Simply Believe" and Antonn's self-titled solo album as well as several 2004 compilation albums such as "Le Meilleur des Voix", "NRJ Hit Music Only", "Fan 2", "Girls 2004", and "Duets".


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: After the unexpected success of the single, Antonn and Tyler decided to release another duet that they recorded; "Si tout s'arrête (It's a Heartache)" was released on 7 June 2004 but did not have the same success and peaked at number 12 on the week of its debut on the French SNEP Singles Chart. The song reached number 25 in Switzerland on 27 June 2004 and number seven in Belgium (Wallonia) on 3 July 2004.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The video was filmed in Québec, Canada. Behind-the-scenes footage was featured on Tyler's 2006 DVD "Bonnie on Tour".


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Antonn and Tyler sing while they are sitting in front of a snowed up chalet. Antonn has a puppy in her arms, while Tyler drinks a cup of coffee. We learn during the video that Antonn left her boyfriend by writing a split letter to him while he slept. She hitch hiked and was picked up by Tyler. At the end of the video, the two singers play with dogs in snow.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: "Si demain... (Turn Around)" is a bilingual pop rock song, recorded in English and French. Antonn sings all French verses, while Tyler sings all English passages. When one of them sings the verses, the other repeats "Je tourne en rond" (Tyler)/"Turn around" (Antonn) at the end of each one of these verses. In the chorus, while the first is entirely in French, the second is sung respectively in English by Tyler and in French by Antonn.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: "Si demain... (Turn Around)" was released on 19 December 2003, three weeks earlier than planned, due to a surge in demand following promotional radio airplay. Tyler and Antonn performed the song on various national TV networks in France, including TF1, M6 and France 3. In 2004, they recorded a second bilingual duet of "It's a Heartache" which charted in Belgium, France and Switzerland.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The song was generally well received by the musical critics. "Platine", a French magazine, asserted that with this duet, "Bonnie Tyler came back to the foreground" and said the song was particularly successful in France because in 2004 "a certain fashion for transborder duets". According to French chart expert Elia Habib, this hit single "cements the return of duets in which the language of Molière and that of Shakespeare intermingle successfully. Such a bi-lingual song had not approached the top of the charts since December 1994, when the duet "7 Seconds" by Youssou N'Dour and Neneh Cherry spent 16 weeks at the top." As for the official Ultratop 50 Belgian Chart Website, it stated: "With Kareen Antonn, a new revelation, Bonnie Tyler could experience a real come-back. They have gilded some Bonnie's old hits, put a touch of French and bingo !" "Music Actu" stated the song was "among the most popular singles of French public" when it was released and noted its good performances on the charts.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: On the French SNEP Singles Chart, the single debuted at number 25 on 21 December 2003. It reached the top ten two weeks later and became number one in its fifth week. The single regained the number one spot on three occasions during the ten weeks at number one. It remained on the chart for 25 weeks, achieved Platinum status for over 500,000 copies sold, and was the fourth best-selling single of 2004 in France. "Si demain... (Turn Around)" is the only female duet number one single since the creation of French Top 50. It is also the single which made the biggest drop from number one, dropping directly to number ten. It also gave Bonnie Tyler the record of the longest time gap between top ten singles in France. Eighteen years passed between her hit "If You Were a Woman (And I Was a Man)" which reached number six in 1986 and of "Si demain... (Turn Around)", hitting number one. The previous record, by Marc Lavoine, was 17 years old.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In Belgium (Wallonia), the song went to number one two weeks after its debut at number 21, and remained number one from 21 February to 10 April 2004, i.e. eight weeks. It stayed in the top 40 for 24 weeks. It was certified Platinum after eleven weeks on the chart. It was the second best-selling single of 2004 and totaled 31 weeks on the chart. In Switzerland, the single peaked at number seven for four weeks and remained on the chart for 34 weeks. "Si demain... (Turn Around)" was also broadcast on radio in Russia and Poland where it reached number one on local radios as well as on the main chart. The song was number six on the 2004 International List of French-speaking Music, compiled in collaboration with 122 radio stations throughout the world.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: As of August 2014, the song was the 26th best-selling single of the 21st century in France, with 508,000 units sold. However, when she participated in the French show "La Méthode Cauet", Kareen Antonn affirmed that the single, then still ranked on the French Singles Chart, had exceeded the 700,000 sold copies. Worldwide, the song has sold more than 2 million copies (physical sales and digital downloads).


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In 2004, Lucie and Sandy, two contestants of the French television show "Star Academy 4", covered this song on one of the Friday weekly shows.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: On 30 March 2004, on the Worldbest competition which brings together winners of various broadcasts of "Star Academy", the two finalists, Wilfred Le Bouthillier and Marie-Élaine Thibert, performed "Si demain... (Turn Around)", gaining the second place. In 2005, they released the single in Canada under the title "Et si demain"; their version differs from "Si demain... (Turn Around)" as a verse was removed and there are more refrains toward the end of the song. They also performed "Et si demain" on 18 September 2004, on the show "La Fureur" on SRC, and on 19 April 2004 on TVA. Le Bouthillier and Thibert's version was in turn covered by K4T and Luc St-Pierre on the Canadian TV show "Heure de Gloire".


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In 2007, Isabelle Delobel and Olivier Schoenfelder, two French professional figure skaters, carried out their performance to "Si demain...(Turn Around)" in "Stars sur glace", at the Palais omnisports de Paris-Bercy, broadcast on Paris Première (the song features on the programme of their 2006–2007 figure skating season).


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Cuban-American singer Lissette covered the song in Spanish as "Eclipse Total del Amor" in 1984, from her album "Caricatura", being her best hit in the Latin American charts. The secondary male voice was sung by Cuban-American singer Jon Secada.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: German electronic dance music producer Jan Wayne released his version in 2001. It peaked at No. 28 on the UK Singles Chart in 2003.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Mexican singer Yuridia covered the song in Spanish as "Eclipse Total del Amor" from her second studio album "Habla El Corazón" in 2006. The single peaked at number 36 on the "Billboard" Latin Pop Songs chart.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Irish boy band Westlife recorded a cover of the song on their 2006 album "The Love Album". The song was to be released as the album's second single but was cancelled due to their Love Tour conflicts. Three official remixes were produced for their version as well as a remix done by Jim Steinman, which was ultimately rejected by the record label but has since surfaced on the Internet. The song was released as a promotional single in 2007. The Sunset Strippers Radio Mix version of the song charted at number 210 on the Official Russian Top Radio Hits Chart on 26 February 2007. It was composed in the traditional verse–chorus form in Bb major, with Filan and Feehily's vocal ranging from the chords of C to C.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: Italian singer L'Aura covered the song in Italian as "Eclissi del cuore" from her third studio album "Sei come me" in 2010, which was not originally released as a single. One year later, a new version of the song, now a duet with fellow Italian singer Nek was officially released as a single, this duet peaking at number 6 on the Italian charts.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The hit musical comedy-drama series "Glee" reworked the song for its season one episode "Bad Reputation," recorded by cast members Lea Michele, Cory Monteith, Mark Salling, and special guest star Jonathan Groff as their characters Rachel Berry, Finn Hudson, Noah Puckerman, and Jesse St. James respectively. It was released as a single and reached number 17 in Canada, 28 in Australia, 9 in the UK, and 16 in the US. It appears in the soundtrack album "".


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: A parody of the song and music video were published in 2009, in what the fans and makers call a "literal video version", which is a type of video that replaces the original song lyrics with humorous lyrics describing the images in the video. "Time magazine" listed it as the 6th best viral video of 2009. This was also the 6th literal video produced by professional video editor David A. Scott Jr.; the singer who performed for this re-dub was Scott's friend Felisha Noble using the pseudonym Persephone Maewyn.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: In 2010, Tyler appeared in an advertisement for MasterCard, performing a short parody of the song with its noted new lyric "Turn around, Neville." She performed the original song in a similar advertisement for Westpac in 2012.


title: Total Eclipse of the Heart

text: The Marsh Family, a couple with four children in Faversham, Kent, produced a parody titled "Totally Fixed Where We Are" expressing the feelings of people under a third lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, which went viral in February 2021.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: The Mid-Autumn Festival (Chinese: / ), also known as the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival, is a traditional festival celebrated in Chinese culture. Similar holidays are celebrated in Japan (), Korea (), Vietnam (), and other countries in East and Southeast Asia.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: It is one of the most important holidays in Chinese culture; its popularity is on par with that of Chinese New Year. The history of the Mid-Autumn Festival dates back over 3,000 years. The festival is held on the 15th day of the 8th month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar with a full moon at night, corresponding to mid-September to early October of the Gregorian calendar. On this day, the Chinese believe that the Moon is at its brightest and fullest size, coinciding with harvest time in the middle of Autumn.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: Lanterns of all size and shapes, are carried and displayed – symbolic beacons that light people's path to prosperity and good fortune. Mooncakes, a rich pastry typically filled with sweet-bean, egg yolk, meat or lotus-seed paste, are traditionally eaten during this festival. The Mid-Autumn Festival is based on the legend of Chang'e, the Moon goddess in Chinese mythology.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: Traditions and myths surrounding the festival are formed around these concepts, although traditions have changed over time due to changes in technology, science, economy, culture, and religion. It's about well being together.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: The Chinese have celebrated the harvest during the autumn full moon since the Shang dynasty (c. 1600–1046 BCE). The term "mid-autumn" (中秋) first appeared in "Rites of Zhou", a written collection of rituals of the Western Zhou dynasty (1046–771 BCE). As for the royal court, it was dedicated to the goddess (). This is still true for Taoism and Chinese folk religion.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: The celebration as a festival only started to gain popularity during the early Tang dynasty (618–907 CE). One legend explains that Emperor Xuanzong of Tang started to hold formal celebrations in his palace after having explored the Moon-Palace.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: In the Northern Song Dynasty, the Mid Autumn Festival has become a popular folk festival, and officially designated the 15th day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar as the Mid Autumn Festival.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the mid autumn festival had become one of the main folk festivals in China. The Empress Dowager Cixi (late 19th century) enjoyed celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival so much that she would spend the period between the thirteenth and seventeenth day of the eighth month staging elaborate rituals.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: An important part of the festival celebration is Moon worship. The ancient Chinese believed in rejuvenation being associated with the Moon and water, and connected this concept to the menstruation of women, calling it "monthly water". The Zhuang people, for example, have an ancient fable saying the Sun and Moon are a couple and the stars are their children, and when the Moon is pregnant, it becomes round, and then becomes crescent after giving birth to a child. These beliefs made it popular among women to worship and give offerings to the Moon on this evening. In some areas of China, there are still customs in which "men do not worship the moon and the women do not offer sacrifices to the kitchen gods."


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: In China, the Mid-Autumn festival symbolizes the family reunion and on this day, all families will appreciate the Moon in the evening, because it is the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunisolar calendar, when the moon is at its fullest. There is a beautiful myth about the Mid-Autumn festival, that is Chang'e flying to the Moon.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: Offerings are also made to a more well-known lunar deity, Chang'e, known as the Moon Goddess of Immortality. The myths associated with Chang'e explain the origin of Moon worship during this day. One version of the story is as follows, as described in Lihui Yang's "Handbook of Chinese Mythology":


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: In the ancient past, there was a hero named Hou Yi who was excellent at archery. His wife was Chang'e. One year, the ten suns rose in the sky together, causing great disaster to the people. Yi shot down nine of the suns and left only one to provide light. An immortal admired Yi and sent him the elixir of immortality. Yi did not want to leave Chang'e and be immortal without her, so he let Chang'e keep the elixir. However, Peng Meng, one of his apprentices, knew this secret. So, on the fifteenth of August in the Chinese lunisolar calendar, when Yi went hunting, Peng Meng broke into Yi's house and forced Chang'e to give the elixir to him. Chang'e refused to do so. Instead, she swallowed it and flew into the sky. Since she loved her husband and hoped to live nearby, she chose the moon for her residence. When Yi came back and learned what had happened, he felt so sad that he displayed the fruits and cakes Chang'e liked in the yard and gave sacrifices to his wife. People soon learned about these activities, and since they also were sympathetic to Chang'e they participated in these sacrifices with Yi.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: “when people learned of this story, they burnt incense on a long altar and prayed to Chang'e, now the goddess of the Moon, for luck and safety. The custom of praying to the Moon on Mid-Autumn Day has been handed down for thousands of years since that time."


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: After the hero Houyi shot down nine of the ten suns, he was pronounced king by the thankful people. However, he soon became a conceited and tyrannical ruler. In order to live long without death, he asked for the elixir from Xiwangmu. But his wife, Chang'e, stole it on the fifteenth of August because she did not want the cruel king to live long and hurt more people. She took the magic potion to prevent her husband from becoming immortal. Houyi was so angry when discovered that Chang'e took the elixir, he shot at his wife as she flew toward the moon, though he missed. Chang'e fled to the moon and became the spirit of the moon. Houyi died soon because he was overcome with great anger. Thereafter, people offer a sacrifice to Chang'e on every fifteenth day of eighth month to commemorate Chang'e's action.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: The festival was a time to enjoy the successful reaping of rice and wheat with food offerings made in honor of the moon. Today, it is still an occasion for outdoor reunions among friends and relatives to eat mooncakes and watch the Moon, a symbol of harmony and unity. During a year of a solar eclipse, it is typical for governmental offices, banks, and schools to close extra days in order to enjoy the extended celestial celebration an eclipse brings. The festival is celebrated with many cultural or regional customs, among them:


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: A notable part of celebrating the holiday is the carrying of brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, or floating sky lanterns. Another tradition involving lanterns is to write riddles on them and have other people try to guess the answers ().


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: It is difficult to discern the original purpose of lanterns in connection to the festival, but it is certain that lanterns were not used in conjunction with Moon-worship prior to the Tang dynasty. Traditionally, the lantern has been used to symbolize fertility, and functioned mainly as a toy and decoration. But today the lantern has come to symbolize the festival itself. In the old days, lanterns were made in the image of natural things, myths, and local cultures. Over time, a greater variety of lanterns could be found as local cultures became influenced by their neighbors.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: As China gradually evolved from an agrarian society to a mixed agrarian-commercial one, traditions from other festivals began to be transmitted into the Mid-Autumn Festival, such as the putting of lanterns on rivers to guide the spirits of the drowned as practiced during the Ghost Festival, which is observed a month before. Hong Kong fishermen during the Qing dynasty, for example, would put up lanterns on their boats for the Ghost Festival and keep the lanterns up until Mid-Autumn Festival.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: Making and sharing mooncakes is one of the hallmark traditions of this festival. In Chinese culture, a round shape symbolizes completeness and reunion. Thus, the sharing and eating of round mooncakes among family members during the week of the festival signifies the completeness and unity of families. In some areas of China, there is a tradition of making mooncakes during the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival. The senior person in that household would cut the mooncakes into pieces and distribute them to each family member, signifying family reunion. In modern times, however, making mooncakes at home has given way to the more popular custom of giving mooncakes to family members, although the meaning of maintaining familial unity remains.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: Although typical mooncakes can be around a few centimetres in diameter, imperial chefs have made some as large as 8 meters in diameter, with its surface pressed with designs of Chang'e, cassia trees, or the Moon-Palace. One tradition is to pile 13 mooncakes on top of each other to mimic a pagoda, the number 13 being chosen to represent the 13 months in a full Chinese lunisolar year. The spectacle of making very large mooncakes continues in modern China.


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: According to Chinese folklore, a Turpan businessman offered cakes to Emperor Taizong of Tang in his victory against the Xiongnu on the fifteenth day of the eighth Chinese lunisolar month. Taizong took the round cakes and pointed to the moon with a smile, saying, "I'd like to invite the toad to enjoy the "hú" (胡) cake." After sharing the cakes with his ministers, the custom of eating these "hú" cakes spread throughout the country. Eventually these became known as mooncakes. Although the legend explains the beginnings of mooncake-giving, its popularity and ties to the festival began during the Song dynasty (906–1279 CE).


title: Mid-Autumn Festival

text: Another popular legend concerns the Han Chinese's uprising against the ruling Mongols at the end of the Yuan dynasty (1280–1368 CE), in which the Han Chinese used traditional mooncakes to conceal the message that they were to rebel on Mid-Autumn Day. Because of strict controls upon Han Chinese families imposed by the Mongols in which only 1 out of every 10 households was allowed to own a knife guarded by a Mongolian, this coordinated message was important to gather as many available weapons as possible.