title: Russian Americans

text: World War I dealt a heavy blow to Russia. Between 1914 and 1918, starvation and poverty increased in all parts of Russian society, and soon many Russians questioned the War's purpose and the government's competency. The war intensified anti-Semitic sentiment. Jews were accused of disloyalty and expelled from areas in and near war zones. Furthermore, much of the fighting between Russia, and Austria and Germany took place in Western Russia in the Jewish Pale of Settlement. World War I uprooted half a million Russian Jews. Because of the upheavals of World War I, immigration dwindled between 1914 and 1917. But after the war, hundreds of thousands of Jews began leaving Europe and Russia again for the U.S., Israel and other countries where they hoped to start a new life.


title: Russian Americans

text: A large wave of Russians immigrated in the short time period of 1917–1922, in the wake of October Revolution and Russian Civil War. This group is known collectively as the White émigrés. The U.S. was the third largest destination for those immigrants, after France and Serbia. This wave is often referred to as the first wave, when discussing Soviet era immigration. The head of the Russian Provisional Government, Alexander Kerensky, was one of those immigrants.


title: Russian Americans

text: Since the immigrants were of the higher classes of the Russian Empire, they contributed significantly to American science and culture. Inventors Vladimir Zworykin, often referred to as "father of television", Alexander M. Poniatoff, the founder of Ampex, and Alexander Lodygin, arrived with this wave. The U.S. military benefited greatly with the arrival of such inventors as Igor Sikorsky (who invented the Helicopter and Aerosan), Vladimir Yourkevitch, and Alexander Procofieff de Seversky. Sergei Rachmaninoff and Igor Stravinsky are by many considered to be among the greatest composers ever to live in the United States of America. The novelist Vladimir Nabokov, the violinist Jasha Heifetz, and the actor Yul Brynner also left Russia in this period.


title: Russian Americans

text: As with first and second wave, if the White émigré left Russia to any country, they were still considered first or second wave, even if they ended up moving to another country, including the US at a later time. There was no 'strict' year boundaries, but a guideline to have a better understanding of the time period. Thus, 1917-1922 is a guideline. There are Russians who are considered second wave even if they arrived after 1922 up to 1948.


title: Russian Americans

text: During the Soviet era, emigration was prohibited, and limited to very few defectors and dissidents who immigrated to the United States of America and other Western Bloc countries for political reasons. Immigration to the U.S. from Russia was also severely restricted via the National Origins formula introduced by the U.S. Congress in 1921. The chaos and depression that plagued Europe following the conclusion of World War II drove many native Europeans to immigrate to the United States. After the war, there were about 7 million displaced persons ranging from various countries throughout continental Europe. Of these 7 million, 2 million were Russian citizens that were sent back to the U.S.S.R. to be imprisoned, exiled, or even executed having been accused of going against their government and country. Roughly 20,000 Russian citizens immigrated to the United States immediately following the conclusion of the war. Following the war, tensions between the United States and the then Soviet Union began to rise to lead to the U.S.S.R. placing an immigration ban on its citizens in 1952. The immigration ban effectively prevented any citizen or person under the U.S.S.R. from immigrating to the United States. This came after a large percentage of Russian immigrants left for the United States specifically leaving the U.S.S.R. embarrassed at the high percentage of Russian citizens emigrating. After the immigration ban was placed into effect, any Russian citizen that attempted to or planned to leave Russia was stripped of citizenship, barred from having any contact with any remaining relatives in the U.S.S.R., and would even make it illegal for that individual's name to be spoken. Some fled the Communist regime, such as Vladimir Horowitz in 1925 or Ayn Rand in 1926, or were deported by it, such as Joseph Brodsky in 1972, or Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in 1974, some were communists themselves, and left in fear of prosecution, such as NKVD operative Alexander Orlov who escaped the purge in 1938 or Svetlana Alliluyeva, daughter of Joseph Stalin, who left in 1967. Some were diplomats and military personnel who defected to sell their knowledge, such as the pilots Viktor Belenko in 1976 and Aleksandr Zuyev in 1989.


title: Russian Americans

text: Following the international condemnation of the Soviet reaction to Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair in 1970, the Soviet Union temporarily loosened emigration restrictions for Jewish emigrants, which allowed nearly 250,000 people leave the country, escaping covert antisemitism. Some went to Israel, especially at the beginning, but most chose the US as their destination, where they received the status of political refugees. This lasted for about a decade, until very early 1980s. Emigrants included the family of Google co-founder Sergey Brin, which moved to the US in 1979, citing the impossibility of an advanced scientific career for a Jew. By the 1970s, relations between the U.S.S.R. and the United States began to improve and the U.S.S.R. relaxed its immigration ban, permitting a few thousand citizens to immigrate to the United States. However, just as had happened 20 years prior, the U.S.S.R. saw hundreds of thousands of its citizens immigrate to the United States during the 70s. The Soviet Union then created the “diploma tax” which charged any person that had studied in Russia and was trying to emigrate a hefty fine. This was mainly done to deter Soviet Jews who tended to be scientists and other valued intellects from emigrating to Israel or the West. Due to the U.S.S.R. suppressing its citizens from fleeing the U.S.S.R., the United States passed the Jason-Vanik of 1974 penalized the U.S.S.R. The Jason-Vanik agreement was a part of the 1974 Trade Act. The agreement stipulated that the United States would review the record of human rights before permitting any special trade agreements with countries with non-market economies. As a result, the U.S.S.R. was pressured into allowing those citizens that wanted to flee the U.S.S.R. for the United States to do so, with a cap on the number of citizens allowed to leave per year. The Jason-Vanik agreement made it possible for the religious minorities of the U.S.S.R. such as Roman-Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and Jews to immigrate to the United States. This agreement effectively kept immigration from the U.S.S.R. to the United States open and as a result, from 1980 to 2008 some 1 million peoples immigrated from the former Soviet Union to the United States.


title: Russian Americans

text: The 1970s witnessed 51,000 Soviet Jews emigrate to the United States, a majority after the Trade Agreement of 1974 was passed. The majority of the Soviet Jews that emigrated to the United States went to Cleveland. Here, chain migration began to unfold as more Soviet Jews emigrated after the 1970s, concentrating in the eastern suburbs of Cleveland. The majority of Soviet Jews that had arrived were educated and held college degrees. These new immigrants would go onto work in important industrial businesses in the city such as BP America and General Electric Co. Other Russian and later post-Soviet immigrants found work in the Cleveland Orchestra or the Cleveland Institute of Music as professional musicians and singers.


title: Russian Americans

text: The slow Brezhnev stagnation of the 1970s and Mikhail Gorbachev's following political reforms since the mid-1980s prompted an increase of economic immigration to the United States, where artists and athletes defected or legally emigrated to the US to further their careers: ballet stars Mikhail Baryshnikov in 1974 and Alexander Godunov in 1979, composer Maxim Shostakovich in 1981, hockey star Alexander Mogilny in 1989 and the entire Russian Five later, gymnast Vladimir Artemov in 1990, glam metal band Gorky Park in 1987, and many others.


title: Russian Americans

text: With perestroika, a mass Jewish emigration restarted in 1987. The numbers grew very sharply, leading to the United States forbidding entry to those emigrating from the USSR on Israeli visa, starting October 1, 1989. Israel withheld sending visa invitations from the beginning of 1989 claiming technical difficulties. After that the bulk of Jewish emigration went to Israel, nearing a million people in the following decade. However, the conditions for Soviet refugees belonging to several religious minorities - including Jews, Baptists, Pentecostalists and Greek Catholics - were eased by the Lautenberg Amendment passed in 1989 and renewed annually. Those who could claim family reunion could apply for the direct US visa, and were still receiving the political refugee status in the early 1990s. 50,716 citizens of ex-USSR were granted political refugee status by the United States in 1990, 38,661 in 1991, 61,298 in 1992, 48,627 in 1993, 43,470 in 1994, 35,716 in 1995 with the trend steadily dropping to as low as 1,394 refugees accepted in 2003. For the first time in history, Russians became a notable part of illegal immigration to the United States.


title: Russian Americans

text: With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent transition to free market economy came hyperinflation and a series of political and economic crises of the 1990s, culminating in the financial crash of 1998. By mid-1993 between 39% and 49% of Russians were living in poverty, a sharp increase compared to 1.5% of the late Soviet era. This instability and bleak outcome prompted a large new wave of both political and economic emigration from Russia, and one of the major targets became the United States, which was experiencing an unprecedented stock market boom in 1995–2001.


title: Russian Americans

text: A notable part of the 1991—2001 immigration wave consisted of scientists and engineers who, faced with extremely poor job market at home coupled with the government unwilling to index fixed salaries according to inflation or even to make salary payments on time, left to pursue their careers abroad. This coincided with the surge of hi-tech industry in the United States, creating a strong brain drain effect. According to the National Science Foundation, there were 20,000 Russian scientists working in the United States in 2003, and the Russian software engineers were responsible for 30% of Microsoft products in 2002. Skilled professionals often command a significantly higher wage in the US than in Russia. The number of Russian migrants with university educations is higher than that of US natives and other foreign born groups.


title: Russian Americans

text: 51% of lawful Russian migrants obtain permanent residence from immediate family member of US citizens, 20% obtain it from the Diversity Lottery, 18% obtain it through employment, 6% are family sponsored, and 5% are refugee and asylum seekers.


title: Russian Americans

text: The Soviet Union was a sports empire, and many prominent Russian sportspeople found great acclaim and rewards for their skills in the United States. Examples are Alexander Ovechkin, Alexandre Volchkov, and Andrei Kirilenko. Nastia Liukin was born in Moscow, but came to America with her parents as a young child, and developed as a champion gymnast in the U.S.


title: Russian Americans

text: Apart from such settlements as Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, concentrations of Russian Americans can be found in Bergen County, New Jersey; Queens; Staten Island; Anchorage, Alaska; Baltimore; Boston; The Bronx; other parts of Brooklyn; Chicago; Cleveland; Detroit; Los Angeles; Beverly Hills; Miami; Milwaukee; Minneapolis; Palm Beach; Houston; Dallas; Orlando; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Portland, Oregon; Sacramento; San Francisco; Raleigh and Research Triangle Region North Carolina, and Seattle.


title: Seat belt

text: A seat belt (also known as a safety belt, or spelled seatbelt) is a vehicle safety device designed to secure the driver or a passenger of a vehicle against harmful movement that may result during a collision or a sudden stop. A seat belt reduces the likelihood of death or serious injury in a traffic collision by reducing the force of secondary impacts with interior strike hazards, by keeping occupants positioned correctly for maximum effectiveness of the airbag (if equipped), and by preventing occupants being ejected from the vehicle in a crash or if the vehicle rolls over.


title: Seat belt

text: When in motion, the driver and passengers are traveling at the same speed as the vehicle. If the vehicle suddenly stops or crashes, the occupants continue at the same speed the vehicle was going before it stopped. A seatbelt applies an opposing force to the driver and passengers to prevent them from falling out or making contact with the interior of the car (especially preventing contact with, or going through, the windshield). Seatbelts are considered primary restraint systems (PRSs), because of their vital role in occupant safety.


title: Seat belt

text: An analysis conducted in the United States in 1984 compared a variety of seat belt types alone and in combination with air bags. The range of fatality reduction for front seat passengers was broad, from 20% to 55%, as was the range of major injury, from 25% to 60%. More recently, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has summarized these data by stating "seat belts reduce serious crash-related injuries and deaths by about half." Most seatbelt malfunctions are a result of there being too much slack in the seatbelt at the time of the accident.


title: Seat belt

text: It has been suggested that although seat belt usage reduces the probability of death in any given accident, mandatory seat belt laws have little or no effect on the overall number of traffic fatalities because seat belt usage also disincentivizes safe driving behaviors, thereby increasing the total number of accidents. This idea, known as compensating-behavior theory, is not supported by the evidence.


title: Seat belt

text: In case of vehicle rollover in a US passenger car or SUV, from 1994 to 2004, wearing seat belt reduced the risk of fatalities or incapacitating injuries and increased the probability of no injury:


title: Seat belt

text: Seatbelts were invented by English engineer George Cayley, to use on his glider, in the mid-19th century.


title: Seat belt

text: In 1946, C. Hunter Shelden opened a neurological practice at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California. In the early 1950s, Shelden made a major contribution to the automotive industry with his idea of retractable seat belts. This came about from his care of the high number of head injuries coming through the emergency room. He investigated the early seat belts with primitive designs that were implicated in these injuries and deaths.


title: Seat belt

text: Nash was the first American car manufacturer to offer seat belts as a factory option, in its 1949 models. They were installed in 40,000 cars, but buyers did not want them and requested dealers to remove them. The feature was "met with insurmountable sales resistance" and Nash reported that after one year "only 1,000 had been used" by customers.


title: Seat belt

text: Ford offered seat belts as an option in 1955. These were not popular, with only 2% of Ford buyers choosing to pay for seatbelts in 1956.


title: Seat belt

text: To reduce the high level of injuries Shelden was seeing, he proposed, in late 1955, retractable seat belts, recessed steering wheels, reinforced roofs, roll bars, automatic door locks, and passive restraints such as air bags. Subsequently, in 1966, Congress passed the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act, requiring all automobiles to comply with certain safety standards.


title: Seat belt

text: Glenn W. Sheren, of Mason, Michigan, submitted a patent application on March 31, 1955, for an automotive seat belt and was awarded in 1958. This was a continuation of an earlier patent application that Sheren had filed on September 22, 1952.


title: Seat belt

text: However, the first modern three-point seat belt (the so-called "CIR-Griswold restraint") commonly used in consumer vehicles was patented in 1955 by the Americans Roger W. Griswold and Hugh DeHaven.


title: Seat belt

text: Saab introduced seat belts as standard equipment in 1958. After the Saab GT 750 was introduced at the New York Motor Show in 1958 with safety belts fitted as standard, the practice became commonplace.


title: Seat belt

text: Vattenfall, the Swedish national electric utility, did a study of all fatal, on-the-job accidents among their employees. The study revealed that the majority of fatalities occurred while the employees were on the road on company business. In response, two Vattenfall safety engineers, Bengt Odelgard and Per-Olof Weman, started to develop a seat belt. Their work was presented to Swedish manufacturer Volvo in the late 1950s, and set the standard for seat belts in Swedish cars. The three-point seatbelt was developed to its modern form by Swedish inventor Nils Bohlin for Volvo—who introduced it in 1959 as standard equipment. In addition to designing an effective three-point belt, Bohlin demonstrated its effectiveness in a study of 28,000 accidents in Sweden. Unbelted occupants sustained fatal injuries throughout the whole speed scale, whereas none of the belted occupants were fatally injured at accident speeds below 60 mph. No belted occupant was fatally injured if the passenger compartment remained intact. Bohlin was granted for the device.


title: Seat belt

text: The first compulsory seat belt law was put in place in 1970, in the state of Victoria, Australia, requiring their use by drivers and front-seat passengers. This legislation was enacted after trialing Hemco seatbelts, designed by Desmond Hemphill (1926–2001), in the front seats of police vehicles, lowering the incidence of officer injury and death. Mandatory seatbelt laws in the United States began to be introduced in the 1980s and faced opposition, with some consumers going to court to challenge the laws. Some cut seatbelts out of their cars.


title: Seat belt

text: A two-point belt attaches at its two endpoints. A simple strap was first used March 12, 1910, by pilot Benjamin Foulois, a pioneering aviator with the Aeronautical Division, U.S. Signal Corps, so he might remain at the controls during turbulence.


title: Seat belt

text: The Irvin Air Chute Company made the seat belt for use by professional race car driver Barney Oldfield when his team decided the daredevil should have a "safety harness" for the 1923 Indianapolis 500.


title: Seat belt

text: A lap belt is a strap that goes over the waist. This was the most common type of belt prior to legislation requiring three-point belts and is found in older cars. Coaches are equipped with lap belts (although many newer coaches have three-point belts), as are passenger aircraft seats.


title: Seat belt

text: University of Minnesota professor James J. (Crash) Ryan was the inventor of, and held the patent for, the automatic retractable lap safety belt. Ralph Nader cited Ryan's work in "Unsafe at Any Speed" and, in 1966, President Lyndon Johnson signed two bills requiring safety belts in all passenger vehicles starting in 1968.


title: Seat belt

text: Until the 1980s, three-point belts were commonly available only in the front outboard seats of cars; the back seats were often only fitted with lap belts. Evidence of the potential of lap belts to cause separation of the lumbar vertebrae and the sometimes-associated paralysis, or "seat belt syndrome" led to the progressive revision of passenger safety regulations in nearly all developed countries to require three-point belts, first in all outboard seating positions, and eventually in all seating positions in passenger vehicles. Since September 1, 2007, all new cars sold in the US require a lap and shoulder belt in the center rear seat.


title: Seat belt

text: In addition to regulatory changes, "seat belt syndrome" has led to a liability for vehicle manufacturers. One Los Angeles case resulted in a $45 million jury verdict against Ford; the resulting $30 million judgment (after deductions for another defendant who settled prior to trial) was affirmed on appeal in 2006.


title: Seat belt

text: A "sash" or shoulder harness is a strap that goes diagonally over the vehicle occupant's outboard shoulder and is buckled inboard of his or her lap. The shoulder harness may attach to the lap belt tongue, or it may have a tongue and buckle completely separate from those of the lap belt. Shoulder harnesses of this separate or semi-separate type were installed in conjunction with lap belts in the outboard front seating positions of many vehicles in the North American market starting at the inception of the shoulder belt requirement of the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 208 on January 1, 1968. However, if the shoulder strap is used without the lap belt, the vehicle occupant is likely to "submarine", or slide forward in the seat and out from under the belt, in a frontal collision. In the mid-1970s, three-point belt systems such as Chrysler's "Uni-Belt" began to supplant the separate lap and shoulder belts in American-made cars, though such three-point belts had already been supplied in European vehicles such as Volvo, Mercedes-Benz, and Saab for some years.


title: Seat belt

text: A three-point belt is a Y-shaped arrangement, similar to the separate lap and sash belts, but unified. Like the separate lap-and-sash belt, in a collision, the three-point belt spreads out the energy of the moving body over the chest, pelvis, and shoulders. Volvo introduced the first production three-point belt in 1959. The first car with a three-point belt was a Volvo PV 544 that was delivered to a dealer in Kristianstad on August 13, 1959. However, the first car model to have the three-point seat belt as a standard item was the 1959 Volvo 122, first outfitted with a two-point belt at initial delivery in 1958, replaced with the three-point seat belt the following year. The three-point belt was developed by Nils Bohlin who had earlier also worked on ejection seats at Saab. Volvo then made the new seat belt design patent open in the interest of safety and made it available to other car manufacturers for free.


title: Seat belt

text: The Belt-in-Seat (BIS) is a three-point harness with the shoulder belt attached to the seat itself, rather than to the vehicle structure. The first car using this system was the Range Rover Classic, which offered BIS as standard on the front seats from 1970. Some cars like the Renault Vel Satis use this system for the front seats. A General Motors assessment concluded seat-mounted three-point belts offer better protection especially to smaller vehicle occupants, though GM did not find a safety performance improvement in vehicles with seat-mounted belts versus belts mounted to the vehicle body.


title: Seat belt

text: Belt-in-Seat type belts have been used by automakers in convertibles and pillarless hardtops, where there is no "B" pillar to affix the upper mount of the belt. Chrysler and Cadillac are well known for using this design. Antique auto enthusiasts sometimes replace original seats in their cars with BIS-equipped front seats, providing a measure of safety not available when these cars were new. However, modern BIS systems typically use electronics that must be installed and connected with the seats and the vehicle's electrical system in order to function properly.


title: Seat belt

text: Five-point harnesses are typically found in child safety seats and in racing cars. The lap portion is connected to a belt between the legs and there are two shoulder belts, making a total of five points of attachment to the seat. A 4-point harness is similar, but without the strap between the legs, while a 6-point harness has two belts between the legs. In NASCAR, the 6-point harness became popular after the death of Dale Earnhardt, who was wearing a five-point harness when he suffered his fatal crash; as it was first thought that his belt had broken, and broke his neck at impact, some teams ordered a six-point harness in response.


title: Seat belt

text: Aerobatic aircraft frequently uses a combination harness consisting of a five-point harness with a redundant lap-belt attached to a different part of the aircraft. While providing redundancy for negative-g maneuvers (which lift the pilot out of the seat), they also require the pilot to un-latch two harnesses if it is necessary to parachute from a failed aircraft.


title: Seat belt

text: The purpose of locking retractors is to provide the seated occupant the convenience of some free movement of the upper torso within the compartment while providing a method of limiting this movement in the event of a crash. Starting in 1996, all passenger vehicle seatbelts must lock pre-crash meaning they have a locking mechanism in the retractor or in the latch plate. Seat belts are stowed on spring-loaded reels called "retractors" equipped with inertial locking mechanisms that stop the belt from extending off the reel during severe deceleration.


title: Seat belt

text: There are two main types of inertial seat belt locks. A webbing-sensitive lock is based on a centrifugal clutch activated by the rapid acceleration of the strap (webbing) from the reel. The belt can be pulled from the reel only slowly and gradually, as when the occupant extends the belt to fasten it. A sudden rapid pull of the belt—as in a sudden braking or collision event—causes the reel to lock, restraining the occupant in position. The first automatic locking retractor for seat belts and shoulder harnesses in the U.S. was the Irving "Dynalock" safety device. These "Auto-lock" front lap belts were optional on AMC cars with bucket seats in 1967.


title: Seat belt

text: A vehicle-sensitive lock is based on a pendulum swung away from its plumb position by rapid deceleration or rollover of the vehicle. In the absence of rapid deceleration or rollover, the reel is unlocked and the belt strap may be pulled from the reel against the spring tension of the reel. The vehicle occupant can move around with relative freedom while the spring tension of the reel keeps the belt taut against the occupant. When the pendulum swings away from its normal plumb position due to sudden deceleration or rollover, a pawl is engaged, the reel locks and the strap restrains the belted occupant in position. Dual-sensing locking retractors use both vehicle G-loading and webbing payout rate to initiate the locking mechanism.


title: Seat belt

text: Pretensioners preemptively tighten the belt to prevent the occupant from jerking forward in a crash. Mercedes-Benz first introduced pretensioners on the 1981 S-Class. In the event of a crash, a pretensioner will tighten the belt almost instantaneously. This reduces the motion of the occupant in a violent crash. Like airbags, pretensioners are triggered by sensors in the car's body, and many pretensioners have used explosively expanding gas to drive a piston that retracts the belt. Pretensioners also lower the risk of "submarining", which occurs when a passenger slides forward under a loosely fitted seat belt.


title: Seat belt

text: Some systems also pre-emptively tighten the belt during fast accelerations and strong decelerations, even if no crash has happened. This has the advantage that it may help prevent the driver from sliding out of position during violent evasive maneuvers, which could cause loss of control of the vehicle. These pre-emptive safety systems may "prevent" some collisions from happening, as well as reduce injuries in the event an actual collision occurs. Pre-emptive systems generally use electric pretensioners which can operate repeatedly and for a sustained period, rather than pyrotechnic pretensioners, which can only operate a single time.


title: Seat belt

text: Webclamps stop the webbing in the event of an accident and limit the distance the webbing can spool out (caused by the unused webbing tightening on the central drum of the mechanism). These belts also often incorporate an energy management loop ("rip stitching") in which a section of the webbing is looped and stitched with special stitching. The function of this is to "rip" at a predetermined load, which reduces the maximum force transmitted through the belt to the occupant during a violent collision, reducing injuries to the occupant.


title: Seat belt

text: A study demonstrated that standard automotive three-point restraints fitted with pyrotechnic or electric pretensioners were not able to eliminate all interior passenger compartment head strikes in rollover test conditions. Electric pretensioners are often incorporated on vehicles equipped with precrash systems; they are designed to reduce seat belt slack in a potential collision and assist in placing the occupants in a more optimal seating position. The electric pretensioners also can operate on a repeated or sustained basis, providing better protection in the event of an extended rollover or a multiple collision accident.


title: Seat belt

text: The inflatable seatbelt was invented by Donald Lewis and tested at the Automotive Products Division of Allied Chemical Corporation. Inflatable seatbelts have tubular inflatable bladders contained within an outer cover. When a crash occurs the bladder inflates with gas to increase the area of the restraint contacting the occupant and also shortening the length of the restraint to tighten the belt around the occupant, improving the protection. The inflatable sections may be shoulder-only or lap and shoulder. The system supports the head during the crash better than a web-only belt. It also provides side impact protection. In 2013, Ford began offering rear-seat inflatable seat belts on a limited set of models, such as the Explorer and Flex.


title: Seat belt

text: Seatbelts that automatically move into position around a vehicle occupant once the adjacent door is closed and/or the engine is started were developed as a countermeasure against low usage rates of manual seat belts, particularly in the United States. The 1972 Volkswagen ESVW1 Experimental Safety Vehicle presented passive seat belts. Volvo tried to develop a passive three point seatbelt. In 1973, Volkswagen announced they had a functional passive seat belt. The first commercial car to use automatic seat belts was the 1975 Volkswagen Golf.


title: Seat belt

text: Automatic seat belts received a boost in the United States in 1977 when Brock Adams, United States Secretary of Transportation in the Carter Administration, mandated that by 1983 every new car should have either airbags or automatic seat belts. There was strong lobbying against the passive restraint requirement by the auto industry. Adams was criticized by Ralph Nader, who said that the 1983 deadline was too late. The Volkswagen Rabbit also had automatic seat belts, and VW said that by early 1978, 90,000 cars had sold with them.


title: Seat belt

text: General Motors introduced a three-point non-motorized passive belt system in 1980 to comply with the passive restraint requirement. However, it was used as an active lap-shoulder belt because of unlatching the belt to exit the vehicle. Despite this common practice, field studies of belt use still showed an increase in wearing rates with this door-mounted system. General Motors began offering automatic seat belts on the Chevrolet Chevette. However, the company reported disappointing sales because of this feature. For the 1981 model year, the new Toyota Cressida became the first car to offer motorized automatic passive seatbelts.


title: Seat belt

text: A study released in 1978 by the United States Department of Transportation said that cars with automatic seat belts had a fatality rate of .78 per 100 million miles, compared with 2.34 for cars with regular, manual belts.


title: Seat belt

text: In 1981, Drew Lewis, the first Transportation Secretary of the Reagan Administration, influenced by studies done by the auto industry, dropped the mandate; the decision was overruled in a federal appeals court the following year, and then by the Supreme Court. In 1984, the Reagan Administration reversed its course, though in the meantime the original deadline had been extended; Elizabeth Dole, then Transportation Secretary, proposed that the two passive safety restraints be phased into vehicles gradually, from vehicle model year 1987 to vehicle model year 1990, when all vehicles would be required to have either automatic seat belts or driver side air bags. Though more awkward for vehicle occupants, most manufacturers opted to use less expensive automatic belts rather than airbags during this time period.


title: Seat belt

text: When driver side airbags became mandatory on all passenger vehicles in model year 1995, most manufacturers stopped equipping cars with automatic seat belts. Exceptions include the 1995–96 Ford Escort/Mercury Tracer and the Eagle Summit Wagon, which had automatic safety belts along with dual airbags.


title: Seat belt

text: Automatic belt systems generally offer inferior occupant crash protection. In systems with belts attached to the door rather than a sturdier fixed portion of the vehicle body, a crash that causes the vehicle door to open leaves the occupant without belt protection. In such a scenario, the occupant may be thrown from the vehicle and suffer greater injury or death.


title: Seat belt

text: Because many automatic belt system designs compliant with the US passive-restraint mandate did not meet the seatbelt anchorage requirements of Canada (CMVSS 210) — which were not weakened to accommodate automatic belts — vehicle models which had been eligible for easy importation in either direction across the US-Canada border when equipped with manual belts became ineligible for importation in either direction once the US variants obtained automatic belts and the Canadian versions retained manual belts. Two particular models affected were the Dodge Spirit and Plymouth Acclaim.


title: Seat belt

text: Automatic belt systems also present several operational disadvantages. Motorists who would normally wear seat belts must still fasten the manual lap belt, thus rendering redundant the automation of the shoulder belt. Those who do not fasten the lap belt wind up inadequately protected only by the shoulder belt. In a crash, without a lap belt, such a vehicle occupant is likely to "submarine" (be thrown forward under the shoulder belt) and be seriously injured. Motorized or door-affixed shoulder belts hinder access to the vehicle, making it difficult to enter and exit—particularly if the occupant is carrying items such as a box or a purse. Vehicle owners tend to disconnect the motorized or door-affixed shoulder belt to relieve the nuisance when entering and exiting the vehicle, leaving only a lap belt for crash protection. Also, many automatic seat belt systems are incompatible with child safety seats, or only compatible with special modifications.


title: Seat belt

text: Starting in 1971 and ending in 1972, the United States conducted a research project on seat belt effectiveness on a total of 40,000 vehicle occupants using car accident reports collected during that time. Of these 40,000 occupants, 18% were reported wearing lap belts, or two-point safety belts, 2% were reported wearing a three-point safety belt, and the remaining 80% were reported as wearing no safety belt. The results concluded that users of the two-point lap belt had a 73% lower fatality rate, a 53% lower serious injury rate, and a 38% lower injury rate than the occupants that were reported unrestrained. Similarly, users of the three-point safety belt had a 60% lower serious injury rate and a 41% lower rate of all other injuries. Out of the 2% described as wearing a three-point safety belt, no fatalities were reported.


title: Seat belt

text: This study and others led to the Restraint Systems Evaluation Program (RSEP), started by the NHTSA in 1975 to increase the reliability and authenticity of past studies. A study as part of this program used data taken from 15,000 tow-away accidents that involved only car models made between 1973 and 1975. The study found that for injuries considered “moderate” or worse, individuals wearing a three-point safety belt had a 56.5% lower injury rate than those wearing no safety belt. The study also concluded that the effectiveness of the safety belt did not differ with the size of a car. It was determined that the variation among results of the many studies conducted in the 1960s and 70s was due to the use of different methodologies, and could not be attributed to any significant variation in the effectiveness of safety belts.


title: Seat belt

text: Wayne State University’s Automotive Safety Research Group, as well as other researchers, are testing ways to improve seat belt effectiveness and general vehicle safety apparatuses. Wayne State’s Bioengineering Center uses human cadavers in their crash test research. The Center’s director, Albert King, wrote in 1995 that the vehicle safety improvements made possible since 1987 by the use of cadavers in research had saved nearly 8,500 lives each year, and indicated that improvements made to three-point safety belts save an average of 61 lives every year.


title: Seat belt

text: The New Car Assessment Program (NCAP) was put in place by the United States National Highway Traffic Safety Administration in 1979. The NCAP is a government program that evaluates vehicle safety designs and sets standards for foreign and domestic automobile companies. The agency developed a rating system and requires access to safety test results. , manufacturers are required to place an NCAP star rating on the automobile price sticker.


title: Seat belt

text: In 2004, The European New Car Assessment Program (Euro NCAP), started testing seat belts and whiplash safety on all test cars at the Thatcham Research Centre with crash test dummies.


title: Seat belt

text: Research and development efforts are ongoing to improve the safety performance of vehicle seatbelts. Some experimental designs include:


title: Seat belt

text: In 1955 (as a 1956 package), Ford offered lap only seat belts in the rear seats as an option within the "Lifeguard" safety package. In 1967, Volvo started to install lap belts in the rear seats. In 1972, Volvo upgraded the rear seat belts to a three-point belt.


title: Seat belt

text: In crashes, unbelted rear passengers increase the risk of belted front seat occupants' death by nearly five times.


title: Seat belt

text: As with adult drivers and passengers, the advent of seat belts was accompanied by calls for their use by child occupants, including legislation requiring such use. Generally, children using adult seat belts suffer significantly lower injury risk when compared to non-buckled children.


title: Seat belt

text: The UK extended compulsory seatbelt wearing to child passengers under the age of 14 in 1989. It was observed that this measure was accompanied by a 10% "increase" in fatalities and a 12% "increase" in injuries among the target population. In crashes, small children who wear adult seatbelts can suffer "seat-belt syndrome" injuries including severed intestines, ruptured diaphragms, and spinal damage. There is also research suggesting that children in inappropriate restraints are at significantly increased risk of head injury, one of the authors of this research said, "The early graduation of kids into adult lap and shoulder belts is a leading cause of child-occupant injuries and deaths."


title: Seat belt

text: As a result of such findings, many jurisdictions now advocate or require child passengers to use specially designed child restraints. Such systems include separate child-sized seats with their own restraints and booster cushions for children using adult restraints. In some jurisdictions, children below a certain size are forbidden to travel in front car seats."


title: Seat belt

text: In Europe, the US, and some other parts of the world, most modern cars include a seat-belt reminder light for the driver and some also include a reminder for the passenger, when present, activated by a pressure sensor under the passenger seat. Some cars will intermittently flash the reminder light and sound the chime until the driver (and sometimes the front passenger, if present) fasten their seatbelts.


title: Seat belt

text: In 2005, in Sweden, 70% of all cars that were newly registered were equipped with seat belt reminders for the driver. Since November 2014, seat belt reminders are mandatory for the driver's seat on new cars sold in Europe.


title: Seat belt

text: Two specifications define the standard of seat belt reminder: UN Regulation 16, Section 8.4 and the Euro NCAP assessment protocol (Euro NCAP, 2013).


title: Seat belt

text: The Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard № 208 (FMVSS 208) was amended by the NHTSA to require a seat belt/starter interlock system to prevent passenger cars from being started with an unbelted front-seat occupant. This mandate applied to passenger cars built after August 1973, i.e., starting with the 1974 model year. The specifications required the system to permit the car to be started only if the belt of an occupied seat were fastened after the occupant sat down, so pre-buckling the belts would not defeat the system.


title: Seat belt

text: The interlock systems used logic modules complex enough to require special diagnostic computers, and were not entirely dependable—an override button was provided under the hood of equipped cars, permitting one (but only one) "free" starting attempt each time it was pressed. However, the interlock system spurred severe backlash from an American public who largely rejected seat belts. In 1974, Congress acted to prohibit NHTSA from requiring or permitting a system that prevents a vehicle from starting or operating with an unbelted occupant, or that gives an audible warning of an unfastened belt for more than 8 seconds after the ignition is turned on. This prohibition took effect on 27 October 1974, shortly after the 1975 model year began.


title: Seat belt

text: In response to the Congressional action, NHTSA once again amended FMVSS 208, requiring vehicles to come with a seat belt reminder system that gives an audible signal for 4 to 8 seconds and a warning light for at least 60 seconds after the ignition is turned on if the driver's seat belt is not fastened. This is called a seat belt reminder (SBR) system. In the mid-1990s, the Swedish insurance company Folksam worked with Saab and Ford to determine the requirements for the most efficient seat belt reminder. One characteristic of the optimal SBR, according to the research, is that the audible warning becomes increasingly penetrating the longer the seat belt remains unfastened.


title: Seat belt

text: In 2001, Congress directed NHSTA to study the benefits of technology meant to increase the use of seat belts. NHSTA found that seat belt usage had increased to 73% since the initial introduction of the SBR system. In 2002, Ford demonstrated that seat belts were used more in Fords with seat belt reminders than in those without: 76% and 71% respectively. In 2007, Honda conducted a similar study and found that 90% of people who drove Hondas with seat belt reminders used a seat belt, while 84% of people who drove Hondas without seat belt reminders used a seat belt.


title: Seat belt

text: In 2003, the Transportation Research Board Committee, chaired by two psychologists, reported that "Enhanced SBRs" (ESBRs) could save an additional 1,000 lives a year. Research by the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety found that Ford's ESBR, which provides an intermittent chime for up to five minutes if the driver is unbelted, sounding for 6 seconds then pausing for 30, increased seat belt use by 5 percentage points. Farmer and Wells found that driver fatality rates were 6% lower for vehicles with ESBR compared with otherwise-identical vehicles without.


title: Seat belt

text: Starting with the 2020 model year, some Chevrolet cars will refuse to shift from Park to Drive for 20 seconds if the driver is unbuckled and the car is in "teen driver" mode. A similar feature was previously available on some General Motors fleet cars.


title: Seat belt

text: Observational studies of car crash morbidity and mortality, experiments using both crash test dummies and human cadavers indicate that wearing seat belts greatly reduces the risk of death and injury in the majority of car crashes.


title: Seat belt

text: This has led many countries to adopt mandatory seat belt wearing laws. It is generally accepted that, in comparing like-for-like accidents, a vehicle occupant not wearing a properly fitted seat belt has a significantly and substantially higher chance of death and serious injury. One large observation studying using US data showed that the odds ratio of crash death is 0.46 with a three-point belt when compared with no belt. In another study that examined injuries presenting to the ER pre- and post-seat belt law introduction, it was found that 40% more escaped injury and 35% more escaped mild and moderate injuries.


title: Seat belt

text: The effects of seat belt laws are disputed by those who observe that their passage did not reduce road fatalities. There was also concern that instead of legislating for a general protection standard for vehicle occupants, laws that required a particular technical approach would rapidly become dated as motor manufacturers would tool up for a particular standard that could not easily be changed. For example, in 1969 there were competing designs for lap and three-point seat belts, rapidly tilting seats, and airbags being developed. As countries started to mandate seat belt restraints the global auto industry invested in the tooling and standardized exclusively on seat belts, and ignored other restraint designs such as airbags for several decades


title: Seat belt

text: As of 2016, seat belt laws can be divided into two categories: primary and secondary. A primary seat belt law allows an officer to issue a citation for lack of seatbelt use without any other citation, whereas a secondary seat belt law allows an officer to issue a seat belt citation only in the presence of a different violation. In the United States, fifteen states enforce secondary laws, while 34 states, as well as the District of Columbia, American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, enforce primary seat belt laws. New Hampshire lacks both a primary and secondary seat belt law.


title: Seat belt

text: Some have proposed that the number of deaths was influenced by the development of risk compensation, which says that drivers adjust their behavior in response to the increased sense of personal safety wearing a seat belt provides.


title: Seat belt

text: In one trial subjects were asked to drive go-karts around a track under various conditions. It was found that subjects who started driving unbelted drove consistently faster when subsequently belted. Similarly, a study of habitual non-seatbelt wearers driving in freeway conditions found evidence that they had adapted to seatbelt use by adopting higher driving speeds and closer following distances.


title: Seat belt

text: A 2001 analysis of US crash data aimed to establish the effects of seatbelt legislation on driving fatalities and found that previous estimates of seatbelts effectiveness had been significantly overstated.


title: Seat belt

text: According to the analysis, seatbelts decreased fatalities by 1.35% for each 10% increase in seatbelt use. The study controlled for endogenous motivations of seat belt use, because that creates an artificial correlation between seat belt use and fatalities, leading to the conclusion that seatbelts cause fatalities. For example, drivers in high-risk areas are more likely to use seat belts and are more likely to be in accidents, creating a non-causal correlation between seatbelt use and mortality. After accounting for the endogeneity of seatbelt usage, Cohen and Einav found no evidence that the risk compensation effect makes seatbelt-wearing drivers more dangerous, a finding at variance with other research.


title: Seat belt

text: Other statistical analyses have included adjustments for factors such as increased traffic and age, and based on these adjustments, which results in a reduction of morbidity and mortality due to seat belt use. However, Smeed's law predicts a fall in accident rate with increasing car ownership and has been demonstrated independently of seat belt legislation.


title: Seat belt

text: In the US, six states—California, Florida, Louisiana, New Jersey, New York, and Texas—require seat belts on school buses.


title: Seat belt

text: School buses, which are much bigger in size than the average vehicle, allow for the mass transportation of students from place to place. The American School Bus Council states in a brief article saying that, "The children are protected like eggs in an egg carton—compartmentalized, and surrounded with padding and structural integrity to secure the entire container." (ASBC). Although school buses are considered safe for mass transit of students this will not guarantee that the students will be injury-free if an impact were to occur. Seatbelts in buses are sometimes believed to make recovering from a roll or tip harder for students and staff as they could be easily trapped in their own safety belts.


title: Seat belt

text: Australia has required lap/sash seat belts in new coaches since 1994. These must comply with Australian Design Rule 68, which requires the seat belt, seat and seat anchorage to withstand 20g deceleration and an impact by an unrestrained occupant to the rear.


title: Seat belt

text: In the United States, NHTSA has now required lap-shoulder seat belts in new "over-the-road" buses (includes most coaches) starting in 2016.


title: Seat belt

text: The use of seatbelts in trains has been investigated. Concerns about survival space intrusion in train crashes and increased injuries to unrestrained or incorrectly restrained passengers led the researchers to discourage the use of seat belts in trains.


title: Seat belt

text: All aerobatic aircraft and gliders (sailplanes) are fitted with four or five-point harnesses, as are many types of light aircraft and many types of military aircraft. The seatbelts in these aircraft have the dual function of crash protection and keeping the pilot(s) and crew in their seat(s) during turbulence and aerobatic maneuvers. Passenger aircraft are fitted with lap belts. Unlike road vehicles, passenger aircraft seat belts are not primarily designed for crash protection. In fact, their main purpose is to keep passengers in their seats during events such as turbulence. Many civil aviation authorities require a "fasten seat belt" sign in passenger aircraft that can be activated by a pilot during takeoff, turbulence, and landing. The International Civil Aviation Organization recommends the use of child restraints. Some airline authorities, including the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), permit the use of airline infant lap belts (sometimes known as an infant loop or belly belt) to secure an infant under two sitting on an adults lap.


title: International waters

text: The terms international waters or transboundary waters apply where any of the following types of bodies of water (or their drainage basins) transcend international boundaries: oceans, large marine ecosystems, enclosed or semi-enclosed regional seas and estuaries, rivers, lakes, groundwater systems (aquifers), and wetlands.


title: International waters

text: "International waters" is not a defined term in international law. It is an informal term, which sometimes refers to waters beyond the "territorial sea" of any country. In other words, "international waters" is sometimes used as an informal synonym for the more formal term high seas or, in Latin, "mare liberum" (meaning "free sea").


title: International waters

text: International waters (high seas) do not belong to any state's jurisdiction, known under the doctrine of 'mare liberum'. States have the right to fishing, navigation, overflight, laying cables and pipelines, as well as scientific research.


title: International waters

text: The Convention on the High Seas, signed in 1958, which has 63 signatories, defined "high seas" to mean "all parts of the sea that are not included in the territorial sea or in the internal waters of a State" and where "no State may validly purport to


title: International waters

text: subject any part of them to its sovereignty." The Convention on the High Seas was used as a foundation for the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), signed in 1982, which recognized exclusive economic zones extending from the baseline, where coastal states have sovereign rights to the water column and sea floor as well as the natural resources found there.


title: International waters

text: Ships sailing the high seas are generally under the jurisdiction of the flag state (if there is one); however when a ship is involved in certain criminal acts, such as piracy, any nation can exercise jurisdiction under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction. International waters can be contrasted with internal waters, territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.


title: International waters

text: UNCLOS also contains, in its part XII, special provisions for the protection of the marine environment, which, in certain cases, allow port States to exercise extraterritorial jurisdiction over foreign ships on the high seas if they violate international environmental rules (adopted by the IMO), such as the MARPOL Convention.


title: International waters

text: Other international treaties have opened up rivers, which are not traditionally international waterways.


title: International waters

text: In addition to formal disputes, the government of Somalia exercises little control de facto over Somali territorial waters. Consequently, much piracy, illegal dumping of waste and fishing without permit has occurred.


title: International waters

text: Addressing regional freshwater issues is the 1992 Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes (UNECE/Helsinki Water Convention)


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Anthem is an online multiplayer action role-playing video game developed by BioWare and published by Electronic Arts. The game was released worldwide for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on February 22, 2019.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Set on a fictional planet named Coda, players assume the role of Freelancers, heroic adventurers who wear powerful exosuits to defend humanity from the threats beyond their cities' walls. The game's title refers to the Anthem of Creation, a powerful and mysterious force responsible for most of the extraordinary technology, phenomena, and threats in the world. In the main narrative, the player's Freelancer is tasked with stopping the villainous Monitor from seizing control of the Anthem.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: "Anthem" received mixed reviews from critics, who criticized it for its grind and shallow gameplay, technical aspects, and story, although its combat, flight controls, and visuals received some praise. Despite some positive sales achievements, the game failed to meet commercial expectations. Although BioWare announced in February 2020 that they would be reinventing the core gameplay of "Anthem" as part of a long-term plan, all future development was ceased in February 2021.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: "Anthem" combines third-person shooter and action role-playing game elements in a "contiguous open world" shared with up to three other players. Each player takes the role of a Freelancer donning fully customizable exosuits called Javelins.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: "Anthem" features four unique Javelin variants which the player unlocks while progressing through the game. Each Javelin features unique attributes and abilities that encourage different styles of play and evoke classic role-playing game character archetypes. The Ranger is the Javelin players begin the game with, and is considered the "all-around master of combat"; the Colossus is the largest and slowest, but the most resilient and features a large shield to absorb attacks or hit enemies; the Interceptor is the fastest and most agile, specializing in quick close-quarters melee strikes; and the Storm is the least armored, but can remain airborne the longest, allowing it to attack from a distance with blasts of elemental energies.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Players can build relationships with various non-playable characters, but they cannot establish romantic relationships with them, as was common of previous BioWare games. The central meeting point of the game takes place in Fort Tarsis. It serves as a fortified settlement against the threats of the outside world and is the point where the player goes to receive new missions and freelance assignments. It is a melting pot where all the different factions of the game meet, including the Sentinels, Corvus, Cyphers, and Arcanists.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: The game features both single-player and co-operative multiplayer elements in a "shared world" that can have up to four squad members per team. Teams can fight beasts and marauders while exploring lost ruins and experiencing massive, world-altering occurrences, such as "Shaper Storms".


title: Anthem (video game)

text: "Anthem" is set on planet Coda littered with advanced technological relics which harness an omnipresent energy known as the Anthem of Creation. Unstable relics can spontaneously terraform sections of the planet, mutate wildlife, change the local climate, create portals, and spawn monstrous creatures. Extremely unstable artifacts can envelope a significant area with destructive energies, storms, and creatures, rendering them barren and deadly. Such events are known as Cataclysms. Human knowledge about the relics is limited, but its believed they were created by a godlike race called the Shapers, who abandoned the planet millennia ago for unknown reasons. The Anthem and the Shapers are revered by some as the source of all life.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Centuries before the start of the game, humanity was enslaved by a race of creatures called the Urgoth. A human named Helena Tarsis and her compatriots used Shaper technology to invent powerful exosuits to fight back. These exosuits became known as Javelins, and Tarsis sacrificed herself to overthrow the Urgoth, who have not been seen since. Over the centuries, Tarsis and her Legion of Dawn became heroic legends to humanity, which reestablished itself as a dominant race.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: In the nation of Bastion, most people live in fortified cities protected by Sentinels: Javelin pilots who act as the primary security and police force within the city walls. National security issues that require discretion and espionage are handled by Corvus, Bastion's intelligence and diplomatic agency. Beyond the cities is a frontier filled with dangerous creatures, exiled outlaws, a hostile insectoid race called Scars, and random disasters caused by unstable Shaper artifacts. Cities rely on Freelancers, a faction of altruistic Javelin-piloting mercenaries, to deal with these threats. In the field, Freelancers rely on the help of Cyphers, individuals who are naturally attuned to the Anthem and use resulting psychic gifts to remotely assist on missions and sense Anthem energy.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Ten years before the main campaign, an authoritarian faction called the Dominion attacked the city of Freemark, which was the Freelancers' primary base of operations. The Dominion wanted to access a Shaper relic beneath the city called the Cenotaph, believing it would grant them control over the Anthem. Their activation of the Cenotaph resulted in an explosion that annihilated Freemark and left an expanding Cataclysm in its place called the Heart of Rage.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: A famed Freelancer named Haluk rallies an army of Freelancers to enter the Heart of Rage and deactivate the Cenotaph. Among them is the player's unnamed character (voiced by Sarah Elmaleh), a rookie undertaking their first mission. Accompanying them is Faye, Haluk's Cypher and wife. Shortly into the mission, all the other Freelancers are killed, prompting Faye to call a retreat, with the player evacuating a wounded Haluk. The resounding failure causes people to lose faith in the Freelancers, whose ranks are decimated. Two years later, the player has settled in Fort Tarsis, a frontier city between the Heart of Rage and Antium, Bastion's capital. Partnered with a young Cypher named Owen, they make a living completing modest Freelancer contracts for the locals. Owen aspires to be a Freelancer, despite his psychic abilities being a hindrance to piloting a Javelin.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: An agent of Corvus named Tassyn hires the player to locate a spy who went missing while undercover with a smuggling gang called the Regulators. At a devastated Regulator hideout, they encounter a Dominion leader called the Monitor. The Monitor is a powerful Cypher, a skilled Javelin pilot, and participated in the assault on Freemark that created the Heart of Rage. The Monitor executes Tassyn's spy and takes a Shaper relic that they were hiding. Tassyn surmises that the Dominion is collecting relics for another attempt to reach the Cenotaph, and rehires the player to reach the Cenotaph first. She also notes that Haluk and Faye have spent the past two years developing a new plan to deactivate the Cenotaph, recruiting the pair to Tassyn's mission.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Faye and Haluk believe that the only Javelin able to survive the Heart of Rage is General Tarsis's legendary Javelin of Dawn. Within her tomb, the player's obtains Taris's signet, which acts as a key to the Fortress of Dawn- the site of her last stand and the Javelin of Dawn's resting place. At the Temple of Dawn, the player is challenged by trials of skill and resolve. After reenacting the last stand, an apparition of General Tarsis declares the player to possess the qualities of a Legionnaire of Dawn and grants access to her Javelin. Before the player can take possession of the Javelin of Dawn, their own Javelin freezes up. Owen appears and takes credit for sabotaging their Javelin so he can take the Javelin of Dawn for himself. He plans to accept the Monitor's offer to spare Fort Tarsis in exchange for assisting him with the Javelin of Dawn, and accuses the player of keeping him from his dream to be a Freelancer. Before Owen leaves in the Javelin of Dawn, Faye scans its unique shielding module, the Shield of Dawn, hoping that it can be duplicated so the player can enter the Heart of Rage with their own Javelin.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Haluk and Faye succeed in building a copy of the Shield of Dawn, but are unable to activate it. At the same time, Tassyn arrives to announce that the Dominion are nearing the Heart of Rage. Tassyn reveals that she hired the player at Faye's own request in order to replace Haluk's role as a Javelin pilot. Upset, Haluk flies his Javelin to the Fortress of Dawn to find a way to activate the Shield of Dawn, but is ambushed by the Dominion. The player arrives to find that Haluk was saved by Owen, who apologizes for his betrayal. As a peace offering, Owen gives up his own Shield of Dawn before leaving.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: After activating the Shield of Dawn on their Javelin, the player returns to the Heart of Rage, with Faye and Haluk providing remote support. The player discovers that the Monitor has built a conduit to merge with the Anthem, and is forced to fight him. After the Monitor dies, Faye uses her powers to deactivate the Cenotaph and close the Heart of Rage. While celebrating in Fort Tarsis, the player is pulled away by Tassyn to see the corpse of a Urgoth recently discovered and killed inside of Bastion's borders. Suspecting another crisis, the player is asked to be ready to help again.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Development of "Anthem" started in 2012, after the release of "Mass Effect 3", under the supervision of Casey Hudson, the executive producer of the original "Mass Effect" trilogy. Internally, the project was codenamed "Dylan" by BioWare, in reference to Bob Dylan in hopes that it would be a name that would be spoken about years later. The working title, up through 2017, was "Beyond".


title: Anthem (video game)

text: While BioWare did not have any strong ideas at the start of "Anthem"s development cycle, they knew they wanted an action game that players could play cooperatively, and which moved away from their "Mass Effect" and "Dragon Age" franchises. An early idea that focused the direction was the use robotic-enhanced exosuits, akin to Iron Man's, to be able to survive on a planet that acted as a Bermuda triangle that drew in all types of hazards and dangerous creatures to it, with the players having to survive these. It was initially started to be a kind of mission-driven survival game rather than a loot shooter: players would team up with friends, go onto missions fighting their way to and from the site, collecting resources to upgrade their suits; all while behind the scenes, BioWare could pull various world event triggers to keep players surprised and alert to these events. The idea was that players after completing these missions would be able to share their stories with others. This was the state of the game as it was presented during EA's Electronic Entertainment Expo 2014 event. A primary concern at the early stage was scaling-up the concept in gameplay, art, and technical feasibility within the Frostbite engine.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Around August 2014, Hudson believed the team at BioWare Edmonton was in a sufficiently good place to continue without his oversight, and left BioWare. Some inside the "Anthem" team were concerned, as Hudson's leadership on past games kept their team on point, in contrast to the current development efforts on both "Dragon Age: Inquisition" and ""s teams. After Hudson's departure, the team started to struggle on the scaling aspects that impacted other parts of the development. In early 2015, "Dragon Age"s writer David Gaider was assigned to the "Anthem" team to help with the story. Gaider drew the story back towards something more in common with "Mass Effect" and "Dragon Age", rather than pull away from those series. The narrative shifts put further strain on the artists and level designers to match with the story's direction. Gaider left BioWare in early 2016, and the story was brought back towards what the team had originally envisioned.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Furthermore, the team continued to struggle with the Frostbite engine, as EA's management under Patrick Söderlund wanted all its studios using the same technology. Frostbite was not originally designed for the purposes that the team had in mind for "Anthem". BioWare had difficulty transitioning some of the systems they had built for "Dragon Age" and "Mass Effect" into "Anthem" - leading to the team scrapping some of their gameplay concepts like survival and crafting. Some of the BioWare team familiar with Frostbite were moved to support the "FIFA" series in 2016 when it transitioned to the Frostbite Engine, leaving fewer to help with "Anthem". Four years into development, developers expressed concern that "Anthem" was nowhere close to the final production stages, and were facing similar issues with poor management of the project as had happened with "Dragon Age: Inquisition" and "Mass Effect Andromeda", as few concrete decisions were being made by the lead designers. Despite trying to distance themselves from Bungie's "Destiny", elements from that game, particularly related to the loot shooting aspects, started to appear into "Anthem"s gameplay as BioWare recognized that Bungie had greatly refined these elements.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Moving from 2016 to 2017, several events forced many of the decisions in "Anthem"s final design. As part of a holiday tradition in BioWare, one team provided the staff with a demo of their current project to play and test over the Christmas holidays, and 2016 was "Anthem"s turn. The Christmas demo had reached Söderlund by early 2017. He expressed great concern with its state in contrast to the previous 2014 teaser, and ordered several senior members to fly to Stockholm, Sweden to discuss how to improve the game with EA DICE, Frostbite's creators. Söderlund told BioWare to create a new demo in anticipation of E3, which BioWare considered would be the end of the game if the demo did not impress Söderlund. BioWare spent six weeks to produce the best looking demo to show Söderlund when he was to visit the studio in 2017 prior to E3. To put their best work forward, they added the flying aspect back that was added and removed several times over the course of development.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Söderlund was impressed with the demo, particularly the flying. That demo served as the basis for the game's reveal at E3 2017. Just weeks prior to E3, EA notified BioWare that their desired name for the game, "Beyond", would be too difficult to trademark. BioWare chose "Anthem", one of their backup names, instead. Separately, "Mass Effect Andromeda" shipped: the BioWare Austin office shifted from that to help with "Anthem", while EA shuttered the Montreal offices. "Andromeda" had several problems at launch, drawing BioWare staff to resolve these issues. The game was not as successful, which put more pressure on the quality of "Anthem". Even after resolving "Andromeda", there was tension between the Edmonton and Austin teams, in part due to the lack of concrete decisions on gameplay elements.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Around mid-2017, several BioWare staff departed the studio and one of the lead gameplay designers, Corey Gaspur, suddenly died. The game was to have transitioned from pre-production to production around June 2017 but as late as August, "Anthem" remained behind schedule. BioWare knew they would miss the expected Q4 2018 release. EA refused to allow the game to be delayed past March 2019. Around October 2017, Hudson returned as both the project lead and the new studio head. BioWare staff that had been working on a fourth "Dragon Age" game were moved to "Anthem", including Mark Darrah as executive producer. Darrah took control, focusing the team on releasing "Anthem" by EA's deadline and firming decisions on elements of the game. BioWare developers speaking anonymously with "Kotaku" stated that most of "Anthem" was effectively developed in the year prior to release due to Darrah's leadership and pressure from EA. Because elements of "Anthem" were changing quickly, factors like game balance and narrative cohesion were difficult to address before launch. This further stressed the staff at BioWare and there were a large number of departures from the studio across 2017 and 2018. Drew Karpyshyn worked on the game's writing before leaving in early 2018.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: EA CEO Andrew Wilson spoke on the state of "Anthem" in June 2019 during E3 2019, recognizing that the game had not reached the expectation EA had, but that EA still remains committed to improving the game. Wilson identified that the game generally ended up with two sets of players: those that are fans of BioWare and are expecting story-heavy content, and those that are fans of action-adventure games. Wilson said that, through playtesting, both sets of players were satisfied with "Anthem" up through about 30 hours of content, but afterwards the game had a diverging audience, with many of those BioWare fans finding the lack of story a disappointment. Wilson believed that BioWare will be able to evolve to find means to meet the expectations of both sets of players and will be able to improve "Anthem" in the long-term. In August 2019, following several months of delay, Bioware released the first timed act of "Anthem"s post-launch content, dubbed "Cataclysms", as part of a development plan to release three acts over a period of weeks. However, in September 2019, Bioware announced that plans for the remaining acts had been dropped and they would instead be delivering "seasonal updates" in order to improve core issues with the game. October 2019 saw the introduction of the first seasonal content launch, with heavy comparisons drawn between it and the prior Cataclysm event.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: In a blog update in February 2020, BioWare said that they would be ending seasonal updates as they looked to reboot the game, requiring a "substantial reinvention" of the core game, a move comparable to Square Enix's reworking of the 2010 release of "Final Fantasy XIV" to the 2013 revised version. Casey Hudson said in the post that BioWare wants to "reinvent the core gameplay loop with clear goals, motivating challenges and progression with meaningful rewards – while preserving the fun of flying and fighting in a vast science-fantasy setting." BioWare Austin studio director Christian Dailey stated in a blog post in May 2020 that an "incubation team" of about 30 were evaluating "Anthem"s rework.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: According to "Bloomberg News", the fate of "Anthem" rework was to be reviewed by Electronic Arts and BioWare's executives during the month of February 2021. BioWare announced on February 24, 2021 that they were discontinuing any future work on "Anthem", though will continue to support the live servers for the immediate future, while the developers on the game would be transitioned to "Mass Effect" and "Dragon Age" titles. "Bloomberg" reported that this decision partially led EA and BioWare to cancel the multiplayer elements that had been planned in "", instead focusing that game as a single-player experience.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Bioware announced Sarah Schachner as "Anthem"s composer on August 20, 2018. Schachner was inspired by the idea of fusing fantasy and science fiction sounds to represent "Anthem"s setting and story: "(Bioware) were clear from the start that they wanted the music to feel somewhere between "Avengers" and "Middle Earth". We talked about the duality of the ancient and futuristic feel of the world and the need for the music to have a sense of wonder and positivity. Not just darkness and danger. Outside of that, I was free to explore and it was really exciting to define the sound of a new [intellectual property]. People are hearing this stuff with a clean mental slate, so to speak." Several tracks feature vocalizations by Schachner processed through a vocoder and MIDI controller.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: The "Anthem-Original Soundtrack" was released on digital music services by Lakeshore Records and EA Games on February 22, 2019.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: BioWare Edmonton teased the game at E3 2014 during a developer diary video, only referring to as it "a new [intellectual property]" that they were developing as BioWare Montreal took the reins of "".


title: Anthem (video game)

text: On June 10, 2017, "Anthem" was formally announced with a cinematic reveal trailer during the EA Play pre-E3 press conference. On June 11, 2017, a six-minute gameplay trailer premiered during Microsoft's E3 press conference, running on Xbox One X.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: At E3 2017, when the game was announced, its intended release date was Q4 2018, but was pushed back in January 2018 to early 2019, in part to make space on EA's release schedule for a new "Battlefield" title in late 2018 release. According to Patrick Söderlund, EA's vice president, BioWare plans to support the game with new content and updates long after the game's release, and that its launch will be "the start of maybe a 10-year journey" for BioWare.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: A demo of the game was released for download on January 25, 2019 for pre-order customers, and on February 1 for the public. On February 14, 2019, a live-action short film/trailer called "Conviction" was released online, depicting a story which takes place before the game. The film was directed by Neill Blomkamp and produced by his independent Oats Studios. On February 15, 2019, Electronic Arts made the full-game available to Premium subscribers of their Origin Access subscription service, while both Origin Access Basic and EA Access (on Xbox One) subscribers had access to a 10-hour trial.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: "Anthem" was released worldwide on all platforms on February 22, 2019. For its Russian marketing campaign Electronics Arts and Russian consumer electronic retail chain M.video created commercial voiced by television host and naturalist Nikolay Drozdov and imitated television program "In the World of Animals". On September 13, 2019, the full game was added to Origin Access Basic and EA Access.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Reviewer Kallie Plagge from "GameSpot" said that ""Anthem" has good ideas but it struggles significantly with the execution." IGN's James Duggan said: ""Anthem" has energetic combat but it saves too much of what precious little content it has for the endgame, making playing through its mismatched story a tediously repetitive grind." Sam Loveridge from "GamesRadar+", was more critical of the game, saying that ""Anthem" is ultimately severely flawed, and very unfinished. There's half a good game in there, but it doesn't do enough to diminish the overall feeling of emptiness and repetition". Mike Williams from "USgamer" called the game a "frustrating experience", feeling that, aside from being tedious, the game lacked purpose and "ultimately doesn't feel like the best BioWare can do". "PC Gamer" said: ""Anthem"s disjointed story, boring loot, repetitive missions, and shallow endgame are all disappointing. At least it's pretty". EGM's Nick Plessas was more generous toward the game, saying: ""Anthem" is a beautiful car that is an absolute joy to drive...", despite saying that "...the wheels will periodically fall off". "Destructoid"s Chris Carter called the game a "fun experience" despite "some hard-to ignore faults".


title: Anthem (video game)

text: In spite of the mixed reception, "Anthem" received praise for its combat and flight. "GameSpot" described the flight as "freeing, serene and exhilarating all at once", despite being disappointed that the player will be "frequently forced to land or stay on the ground". "USgamer" was also fond of the flying experience, stating "Flying through massive tunnels, through monuments to the old civilizations, or simply through the trees of a forest is awe-inspiring". When mentioning the combat, IGN said that ""Anthem"s combat is initially strong, engaging, and unique, thanks in part to responsive flight controls that feel good on both controller and mouse and keyboard".


title: Anthem (video game)

text: Several critics noted long loading screens that could take up to 5 minutes or longer and could surpass the time necessary to complete an average in-game mission. The loading times were later improved as part of the game's day-one patch, among other improvements.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: "Anthem" topped retail sales charts in the UK during its first week of release, although its total launch week retail sales matched half of those of BioWare's previous game "Mass Effect: Andromeda". In Japan, "Anthem" reached the top of the sales charts with 78,000 copies sold at launch. In North America, according to NPD data tracking, "Anthem represents the second-highest launch month sales ever recorded for a BioWare developed game, trailing only the March 2012 release of "Mass Effect 3"". "Anthem" was at the top of PS4 downloaded video games via PlayStation Store by March 2019. SuperData reported that the game had earned over $100 million in digital revenue in February 2019, of which $3.5 million came from in-game purchases.


title: Anthem (video game)

text: "Anthem" failed to meet Electronic Arts' sales expectations. With a target set at 6 million copies to be sold by the end of March, EA CEO Andrew Wilson said "Anthem" did not reach the sales goal, while EA CFO Blake Jorgensen admitted that more money was expected to come from the game's microtransactions as well. In June 2019, Wilson reiterated how "Anthem" was not working as planned in keeping players engaged, although he stated that BioWare would continue to support the game.


title: John Inman

text: Frederick John Inman (28 June 1935 – 8 March 2007) was an English actor and singer best known for his role as Mr. Humphries in "Are You Being Served?", a British sitcom between 1972 and 1985, and was the only actor from that series to feature in the Australian Version.


title: John Inman

text: In 1976, Inman was named both BBC TV Personality of the Year and "TV Times" readers' Funniest Man on Television. He was also a well-known character actor in the United Kingdom as a pantomime dame.


title: John Inman

text: Inman was born in June 1935 in Preston, Lancashire, and was often said to be a cousin of actress Josephine Tewson, though she denied they are related. (They did, however, play half-siblings in the 1977 sitcom "Odd Man Out"). At the age of 12, Inman moved with his parents to Blackpool where his mother ran a boarding house, while his father owned a hairdressing business. As a child, he enjoyed dressmaking. He was educated at Cambridge House in Preston, and then a secondary modern school. Inman always wanted to be an actor, and his parents paid for him to have elocution lessons at the local church hall. At the age of 13 he made his stage debut in the Pavilion on Blackpool's South Pier, in a melodrama entitled "Freda". Aged 15, he took a job at the pier, making tea, clearing up and playing parts in plays.


title: John Inman

text: After leaving school, Inman worked for two years at Fox's, a gentlemen's outfitters in Blackpool, specialising in window dressing. Aged 17, he moved to London to join retailer Austin Reed in Regent Street. Four years later, he left Austin Reed to become a scenic artist with Kenneth Kendall's touring company at a theatre in Crewe, so that he could earn his Equity Card, required at the time for professional actors.


title: John Inman

text: Inman made his West End debut in the 1960s when he appeared in "Ann Veronica" at the Cambridge Theatre. He appeared as the pop singer Willie in Dennis Spencer's "What a Racket" at Manchester's Palace Theatre in December 1963 and appeared in Paula Stone's "How Now Brown Cow" at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, in late 1965. By 1975, his television fame was such that he was also a starring attraction in the long-running "Let's Get Laid" at London's Windmill Theatre. The same year he appeared in "Salad Days" at the Windmill, and as Lord Fancourt Babberley in "Charley's Aunt" at the Adelphi Theatre in 1979.


title: John Inman

text: During the sixties, Inman won a reputation alongside Barry Howard as one of the most celebrated Ugly Sister acts in pantomime and throughout later years established himself as one of the country's best-loved dames in such familiar pantomimes as "Mother Goose", "Babes in the Wood", "Aladdin" and "Jack and the Beanstalk". His other stage appearances included many summer shows and his own show, "Fancy Free", and "Pyjama Tops", "My Fat Friend" and "Bedside Manners".


title: John Inman

text: Inman made his television debut in 1965 in the sitcom "A Slight Case Of..." titled "The Enemy Within". In 1966, he appeared in two episodes of the BBC sitcom "Hugh and I". In 1970, he acted in one episode of the ITV sitcom "Two in Clover". In 1972, he was asked by David Croft to play a part in a "Comedy Playhouse" pilot called "Are You Being Served?". This was a sitcom set in a department store, written by Croft with Jeremy Lloyd, and based on the latter's experiences working at Simpsons of Piccadilly. Playing a minor role with only a few lines, he was soon asked to "camp it up", despite initial reluctance from the BBC to include such a camp character. The pilot was broadcast in September 1972. The broadcast was followed by the five episodes of the first series in early 1973. The first series was scheduled opposite "Coronation Street" on ITV and attracted little attention, though repeats later that year proved very successful.


title: John Inman

text: Inman played the sharp-tongued sales assistant Mr Wilberforce Claybourne Humphries and his earlier career in the clothes retail business was good preparation for this role in a menswear department. Inman developed a characteristic limp-wristed mincing walk, and a high-pitched catchphrase, "I'm free!", which soon entered popular culture. Inman reported that four or five members of the group Campaign for Homosexual Equality picketed one of his shows in protest as they believed his persona did not help their cause. Inman said: "They thought I was over exaggerating the gay character. But I don't think I do. In fact there are people far more camp than Mr. Humphries walking around this country. Anyway, I know for a fact that an enormous number of viewers like Mr. Humphries don't really care whether he's camp or not. So far from doing harm to the homosexual image, I feel I might be doing some good." Both Inman and David Croft stated that the character was "just a mother's boy", and that his sexual orientation was never explicitly stated. Inman continued to play in live shows after his success as Mr. Humphries, and began to incorporate camp mannerisms to those performances too, once saying "Even when I'm not playing Mr Humphries, say at a summer season, I camp it up a bit. If I don't the audience are disappointed".


title: John Inman

text: "Are You Being Served?" ran for 10 series until 1985. At its peak in 1979 it attracted British audiences of 22 million viewers while Inman's portrayal of Mr Humphries made him a household name. The series also became popular in the United States, where Inman became a gay cultural icon. Once, in San Francisco, a passing cyclist spotted Inman and fell off his bicycle in surprise, crying "Mr Humphries, I love you!"


title: John Inman

text: Between 1975 and 1977 DJM Records released five singles by Inman, usually in character as Mr Humphries. "Are You Being Served, Sir?" reached number 39 in the UK singles chart. He released an LP of the same name, and two further albums: "I'm Free" in 1977 and "With a Bit of Brass" in 1978. His


title: John Inman

text: single "Teddy Bears' Picnic" was regularly playlisted on BBC Radio 1/2 Saturday morning children's show "Ed Stewart's Junior Choice" in the late 1970s and included on the show's official BBC soundtrack album.


title: John Inman

text: From 1980 to 1981, Inman also played Mr Humphries in the Australian version of "Are You Being Served?", the only cast member of the original British series to do so. He made many appearances on BBC TV's long-running television show, "The Good Old Days".


title: John Inman

text: During the 69-episode, 13-year run of "Are You Being Served?", Inman also appeared in the 1977 film of the series, in which the characters visited the fictional Spanish holiday resort of "Costa Plonka." In "Odd Man Out" (1977), his own sitcom, Inman played the owner of a fish and chip shop who inherits half of a rock factory; and "Take a Letter, Mr. Jones" (1981), a sitcom in which Inman played Graham Jones, who is secretary to Rula Lenska's character Joan Warner.


title: John Inman

text: He made a cameo appearance in the film "The Tall Guy" (1989), and was one of five of the "Are You Being Served?" cast to be reunited in character for the sitcom "Grace & Favour" (titled "Are You Being Served? Again!" in the United States), which ran for twelve episodes in 1992 and 1993. Inman had a small part as Lady Capulet in the film "Shakespeare in Love" (1998) and appeared in the 1999 "French and Saunders" Christmas special. He appeared as Father Chinwag in the film "The Mumbo Jumbo" (2000).


title: John Inman

text: Inman toured Australia, starring in a number of productions including "Bedside Manners" (2003) and a revival of "Are You Being Served?" (2001) as a stage show at Twelfth Night Theatre, Brisbane. In 2004, he made additional television appearances in "Doctors" and "Revolver".


title: John Inman

text: He lived in a mews house in Little Venice in central London for 30 years. On 23 December 2005, Inman entered into a civil partnership at Westminster Register office with his partner of 33 years, Ron Lynch.


title: John Inman

text: Inman suffered from poor health in his later years. He was hospitalised with bronchitis in 1993, and collapsed on stage in 1995. He was admitted to Paddington's St Mary's Hospital in 2001 after suffering breathing difficulties and spent three days in intensive care.


title: John Inman

text: In December 2004, Inman was forced to cancel an appearance in a pantomime as he was suffering from a hepatitis A infection, contracted from contaminated food.


title: John Inman

text: Inman died early in the morning of 8 March 2007, aged 71, at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London, of an infection. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium after a funeral on 23 March 2007. Inman left nearly his entire estate, valued at more than £2.8M, to his civil partner Ron Lynch.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: New Brunswick is a city in and the seat of government of Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. The city is the home of Rutgers University. The city is both a regional commercial hub for central New Jersey and a prominent and growing commuter town for residents commuting to New York City within the New York metropolitan area. New Brunswick is on the Northeast Corridor rail line, southwest of Manhattan. The city is located on the southern banks of the Raritan River in the Raritan Valley region.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: For 2020, New Brunswick had a population of 55,266 residents, representing a 0.2% increase from the 55,181 people enumerated at the 2010 United States census, which in turn had reflected an increase of 6,608 (+13.6%) from the 48,573 counted in the 2000 Census. The Census Bureau's Population Estimates Program calculated that the city's population was 55,708 in 2021, ranking the city the 707th-most-populous in the country. Due to the concentration of medical facilities in the area, including Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and medical school, and Saint Peter's University Hospital, New Brunswick is known as both the "Hub City" and the "Healthcare City". The corporate headquarters and production facilities of several global pharmaceutical companies are situated in the city, including Johnson & Johnson and Bristol Myers Squibb. New Brunswick has evolved into a major center for the sciences, arts, and cultural activities.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: New Brunswick is noted for its ethnic diversity. At one time, one-quarter of the Hungarian population of New Jersey resided in the city, and in the 1930s one out of three city residents was Hungarian. The Hungarian community continues as a cohesive community, with the 3,200 Hungarian residents accounting for 8% of the population of New Brunswick in 1992. Growing Asian and Hispanic communities have developed around French Street near Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: The area around present-day New Brunswick was first inhabited by the Lenape Native Americans, whose Minisink Trail intersected the Raritan River and followed a route that would be taken by later colonial roads. The first European settlement at the site of New Brunswick was made in 1681. The settlement here was called "Prigmore's Swamp" (1681–1697), then known as "Inian's Ferry" (1691–1714). In 1714, the settlement was given the name New Brunswick, after the city of Braunschweig ("Brunswick" in Low German), in the state of Lower Saxony, now located in Germany. Braunschweig was an influential and powerful city in the Hanseatic League and was an administrative seat for the Duchy of Hanover. Shortly after the first settlement of New Brunswick in colonial New Jersey, George, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg and Elector of Hanover, became King George I of Great Britain. Alternatively, the city gets its name from King George II of Great Britain, the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: Centrally located between New York City and Philadelphia along an early thoroughfare known as the "King's Highway" and situated along the Raritan River, New Brunswick became an important hub for Colonial travelers and traders. New Brunswick was incorporated as a town in 1736 and chartered as a city in 1784. It was incorporated into a town in 1798 as part of the Township Act of 1798. It was occupied by the British in the winter of 1776–1777 during the Revolutionary War.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: The "Declaration of Independence" received one of its first public readings, by Colonel John Neilson in New Brunswick on July 9, 1776, in days following its promulgation by the Continental Congress. A bronze statue marking the event was dedicated on July 9, 2017, in Monument Square, in front of the Heldrich Hotel.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: The Trustees of Queen's College (now Rutgers University), founded in 1766, voted by a margin of ten to seven in 1771 to locate the young college in New Brunswick, selecting the city over Hackensack, in Bergen County, New Jersey. Classes began in 1771 with one instructor, one sophomore, Matthew Leydt, and several freshmen at a tavern called the 'Sign of the Red Lion' on the corner of Albany and Neilson Streets (now the grounds of the Johnson & Johnson corporate headquarters); Leydt would become the university's first graduate in 1774 when he was the only member of the graduating class. The Sign of the Red Lion was purchased on behalf of Queens College in 1771, and later sold to the estate of Jacob Rutsen Hardenbergh in 1791. Classes were held through the American Revolution in various taverns and boarding houses, and at a building known as "College Hall" on George Street, until Old Queens was completed and opened in 1811. It remains the oldest building on the Rutgers University campus. The Queen's College Grammar School (now Rutgers Preparatory School) was established also in 1766, and shared facilities with the college until 1830, when it located in a building (now known as Alexander Johnston Hall) across College Avenue from Old Queens. After Rutgers University became the state university of New Jersey in 1945, the Trustees of Rutgers divested itself of Rutgers Preparatory School, which relocated in 1957 to an estate purchased from the Colgate-Palmolive Company in Franklin Township in neighboring Somerset County.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: The New Brunswick Theological Seminary, founded in 1784 in New York, moved to New Brunswick in 1810, sharing its quarters with the fledgling Queen's College. (Queen's closed from 1810 to 1825 due to financial problems, and reopened in 1825 as Rutgers College.) The Seminary, due to overcrowding and differences over the mission of Rutgers College as a secular institution, moved to a tract of land covering located less than to the west, which it still occupies, although the land is now in the middle of Rutgers University's College Avenue Campus.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: New Brunswick was formed by royal charter on December 30, 1730, within other townships in Middlesex and Somerset counties and was reformed by royal charter with the same boundaries on February 12, 1763, at which time it was divided into north and south wards. New Brunswick was incorporated as a city by an act of the New Jersey Legislature on September 1, 1784.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: The existence of an African American community in New Brunswick dates back to the 18th century, when racial slavery was a part of life in the city and the surrounding area. Local slaveholders routinely bought and sold African American children, women, and men in New Brunswick in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century. In this period, the Market-House was the center of commercial life in the city. It was located at the corner of Hiram Street and Queen Street (now Neilson Street) adjacent to the Raritan Wharf. The site was a place where residents of New Brunswick sold and traded their goods which made it an integral part of the city's economy. The Market-House also served as a site for regular slave auctions and sales.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: By the late-eighteenth century, New Brunswick became a hub for newspaper production and distribution. "The Fredonian", a popular newspaper, was located less than a block away from the aforementioned Market-House and helped facilitate commercial transactions. A prominent part of the local newspapers were sections dedicated to private owners who would advertise their slaves for sale. The trend of advertising slave sales in newspapers shows that the New Brunswick residents typically preferred selling and buying slaves privately and individually rather than in large groups. The majority of individual advertisements were for female slaves, and their average age at the time of the sale was 20 years old, which was considered the prime age for childbearing. Slave owners would get the most profit from the women who fit into this category because these women had the potential to reproduce another generation of enslaved workers. Additionally, in the urban environment of New Brunswick, there was a high demand for domestic labor, and female workers were preferred for cooking and housework tasks.


title: New Brunswick, New Jersey

text: The New Jersey Legislature passed An Act for the Gradual Abolition of Slavery in 1804. Under the provisions of this law, children born to enslaved women after July 4, 1804, would serve their master for a term of 21 years (for girls) or a term of 25 years (for boys), and after this term, they would gain their freedom. However, all individuals who were enslaved before July 4, 1804, would continue to be slaves for life and would never attain freedom under this law. New Brunswick continued to be home to enslaved African Americans alongside a growing community of free people of color. The 1810 United States Census listed 53 free Blacks and 164 slaves in New Brunswick.