title: Flushing, Queens

text: During the American Revolution, Flushing, along with most settlements in present-day Queens County, favored the British and quartered British troops, though one battalion of Scottish Highlanders is known to have been stationed at Flushing during the war. Following the Battle of Long Island, Nathan Hale, an officer in the Continental Army, was apprehended near Flushing Bay while on what was probably an intelligence gathering mission and was later hanged.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The 1785 Kingsland Homestead, originally the residence of a wealthy Quaker merchant, now serves as the home of the Queens Historical Society.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: During the 19th century, as New York City continued to grow in population and economic vitality, so did Flushing. Its proximity to Manhattan was critical in its transformation into a fashionable residential area. On April 15, 1837, the Village of Flushing was incorporated within the Town of Flushing. The official seal was merely the words, "Village of Flushing", surrounded by nondescript flowers. No other emblem or flag is known to have been used. The Village of Flushing included the neighbourhoods of Flushing Highlands, Bowne Park, Murray Hill, Ingleside, and Flushing Park.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The Flushing and North Side Railroad opened its Port Washington Branch to Flushing in 1854, providing access to Hunters Point on the East River shore. By the mid-1860s, Queens County had 30,429 residents. The Village of College Point was incorporated in 1867, and the Village of Whitestone was incorporated in 1868. The first free public high school in what is now New York City was established in Flushing in 1875. Flushing, then a small village, established a library in 1858, the oldest in Queens County and only slightly younger than the library of the City of Brooklyn (built in 1852).


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In 1898, although opposed to the proposal, the Town of Flushing (along with two other towns and other land of Queens County) was consolidated into the City of New York to form the new Borough of Queens. All towns, villages, and cities within the new borough were dissolved.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Local farmland continued to be subdivided and developed transforming Flushing into a densely populated neighborhood of New York City. A major factor in this was the Halleran real estate agency. From the American Civil War to the end of the 1930s its slogan “Ask Mr. Halleran!” could be seen in ads all over Long Island, and the phrase from its maps “So This Is Flushing” became a catchphrase.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The continued construction of bridges over the Flushing River and the development of other roads increased the volume of vehicular traffic into Flushing. In 1909, the Queensboro Bridge over the East River opened, connecting Queens County to midtown Manhattan. With the opening of Pennsylvania Station the next year, the Port Washington Branch, now part of the Long Island Rail Road, started running to midtown Manhattan. Broadway, a main roadway through Flushing, was widened and renamed Northern Boulevard. The Roosevelt Avenue Bridge over the Flushing River, which carries four lanes of traffic and the New York City Subway's elevated Flushing Line (), was the largest trunnion bascule bridge in the world when it was completed in 1927. The next year, the Main Street terminal of the Flushing subway line opened in downtown Flushing, giving the neighborhood direct subway access.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing was a forerunner of Hollywood, when the young American film industry was still based on the U.S. East Coast and Chicago. Decades later, the RKO Keith's movie palace would host vaudeville acts and appearances by the likes of Mickey Rooney, the Marx Brothers and Bob Hope.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In the 1970s, immigrants from Taiwan established a foothold in Flushing, whose demographic constituency had been predominantly non-Hispanic white, interspersed with a small Japanese community. Additionally, a large South Korean population also called Flushing home. The Taiwanese immigrants were the first wave of Chinese-speaking immigrants who spoke Mandarin (Taiwanese also spoken) rather than Cantonese to arrive in New York City. Many Taiwanese immigrants were additionally Hokkien and had relatives or connections to Fujian province in China, which led to large influxes of Fuzhounese Americans.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Over the years, many new non-Cantonese ethnic Chinese immigrants from different regions and provinces of China started to arrive in New York City and settled in Flushing through word of mouth. This wave of immigrants spoke Mandarin and various regional/provincial dialects. The early 1990s and 2000s brought a wave of Fuzhounese Americans and Wenzhounese immigrants, who mostly spoke Mandarin, and who settled in Flushing as well as Elmhurst. Flushing's Chinese population became diverse over the next few decades as people from different provinces started to arrive. Due to loosened emigration restrictions in mainland China, there has been a growing Northern Chinese population in Flushing. The regional food cuisines have led to Flushing being considered the "food mecca" for Chinese regional cuisine outside of Asia.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In the 21st century, Flushing has cemented its status as an international "melting pot", predominantly attracting immigrants from Asia, particularly from throughout the various provinces of China, but including newcomers from all over the world. Flushing Chinatown is centered around Main Street and the area to its west, most prominently along Roosevelt Avenue, which have become the primary nexus of Flushing Chinatown. However, Chinatown continues to expand southeastward along Kissena Boulevard and northward beyond Northern Boulevard. The Flushing Chinatown houses over 30,000 individuals born in China alone, the largest Chinatown by this metric outside Asia and one of the largest and fastest-growing Chinatowns in the world. In January 2019, the "New York Post" named Flushing as New York City's "most dynamic outer-borough neighborhood." Flushing is undergoing rapid gentrification by Chinese transnational entities.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Based on data from the 2010 United States Census, the population of Flushing was 72,008, an increase of 2,646 (3.8%) from the 69,362 counted in 2000. Covering an area of , the neighborhood had a population density of .


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The racial makeup of the neighborhood was 9.5% (6,831) White, 4.2% (3,016) African American, 0.1% (74) Native American, 69.2% (49,830) Asian, 0.1% (59) Pacific Islander, 0.2% (172) from other races, and 1.8% (1,303) from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 14.9% (10,723) of the population.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The entirety of Community Board 7, which comprises Flushing, College Point, and Whitestone, had 263,039 inhabitants as of NYC Health's 2018 Community Health Profile, with an average life expectancy of 84.3 years. This is longer than the median life expectancy of 81.2 for all New York City neighborhoods. Most inhabitants are middle-aged and elderly: 22% are between the ages of between 25 and 44, 30% between 45 and 64, and 18% over 65. The ratio of youth and college-aged residents was lower, at 17% and 7%, respectively.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: As of 2017, the median household income in Community Board 7 was $51,284. In 2018, an estimated 25% of Flushing and Whitestone residents lived in poverty, compared to 19% in all of Queens and 20% in all of New York City. One in seventeen residents (6%) were unemployed, compared to 8% in Queens and 9% in New York City. Rent burden, or the percentage of residents who have difficulty paying their rent, is 57% in Flushing and Whitestone, higher than the boroughwide and citywide rates of 53% and 51% respectively. Based on this calculation, , Flushing and Whitestone are considered to be high-income relative to the rest of the city and not gentrifying.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing Chinatown, or Mandarin Town is the world's largest and one of the fastest-growing Chinatowns, known as the "Chinese Times Square" or the "Chinese Manhattan". In Mandarin, Flushing is known as "Falasheng" (). The Chinatown of Flushing is centered around the intersection of Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue, and many of the area's Chinese businesses are located on the blocks around, or west of, Main Street. However, Chinatown continues to expand southeastward along Kissena Boulevard and northward beyond Northern Boulevard.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In the 1970s, a Chinese community established a foothold in the neighborhood of Flushing, whose demographic constituency had been predominantly non-Hispanic white. Taiwanese began the surge of immigration, followed by other groups of Chinese. A 1986 estimate by the Flushing Chinese Business Association approximated 60,000 Chinese in Flushing alone. By 1990, Asians constituted 41% of the population of the core area of Flushing, with Chinese in turn representing 41% of the Asian population. However, ethnic Chinese are constituting an increasingly dominant proportion of the Asian population as well as of the overall population in Flushing and its Chinatown. High rates of both legal and illegal immigration from Mainland China continue to spur the ongoing rise of the ethnic Chinese population in Flushing. According to a "Daily News" article in 2011, Flushing's Chinatown ranked as New York City's second largest Chinese community with 33,526 Chinese, surpassed only by the Brooklyn Chinatown (布鲁克林華埠), and larger than Manhattan's Chinatown. The growth of the business activity at the core of Downtown Flushing, dominated by the Flushing Chinatown, has continued to flourish despite the Covid-19 pandemic.Flushing now rivals Manhattan's Chinatown as a center of Chinese culture. The Lunar New Year Parade has become a growing annual celebration of Chinese New Year. In addition, several Chinese supermarkets such as Hong Kong Supermarket and New York Supermarket have locations in Flushing. The "World Journal", one of the largest Chinese-language newspapers outside China, is headquartered in adjacent Whitestone. Numerous other Chinese- and English-language publications are available in Flushing, including SinoVision, one of North America's largest Chinese language television networks.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The popular styles of Chinese cuisine are ubiquitously accessible in Flushing, including Hakka, Taiwanese, Shanghainese, Hunanese, Szechuan, Cantonese, Fujianese, Xinjiang, Zhejiang, and Korean Chinese cuisine. Even the relatively obscure Dongbei style of cuisine indigenous to Northeast China is now available in Flushing, as well as Mongolian cuisine and Uyghur cuisine. Varieties of Chinese spoken in Flushing include Mandarin Chinese, Fuzhou dialect, Min Nan (Hokkien), Wu Chinese (Wenzhounese, Shanghainese, Suzhou dialect, Hangzhou dialect), and Cantonese; in addition, the Mongolian language is now emerging. Given its rapidly growing status, the Flushing Chinatown has surpassed in size and population the original New York City Chinatown in the borough of Manhattan and this substantial growth has resulted in a commensurate rise in this Chinatown's cultural status.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In accompaniment with its rapid growth, Flushing in particular has witnessed the proliferation of highly competitive businesses touted as educational centers as well as non-profit organizations declaring the intent to educate the community. Some entities offer education in Mandarin, the most spoken Chinese variety in mainland China. A diverse array of social services geared toward assisting recent as well as established Chinese immigrants is readily available in Flushing. As of the 2020s, about 3/4 of the Asian population in the area are of Chinese descent making them the largest vast majority of the Asian population.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: There is a Koreatown which originated in Flushing, but has since spread eastward to Murray Hill, Bayside, Douglaston, and Little Neck in Queens, and also into Nassau County. The Koreatown has historically been centered around Union Street, with the later growth being concentrated around Northern Boulevard east of Union Street. As of the 2010 United States Census, the Korean population of Queens was 64,107.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In the 1980s, a continuous stream of Korean immigrants emerged into Flushing, many of whom began as workers in the medical field or Korean international students who had moved to New York City to find or initiate professional or entrepreneurial positions. They established a foothold on Union Street in Flushing between 35th and 41st Avenues, featuring restaurants and karaoke ("noraebang") bars, grocery markets, education centers and bookstores, banking institutions, offices, consumer electronics vendors, apparel boutiques, and other commercial enterprises. As the community grew in wealth and population and rose in socioeconomic status, Koreans expanded their presence eastward along Northern Boulevard, buying homes in more affluent and less dense neighborhoods in Queens and Nassau County. This expansion has led to the creation of an American "Meokjagolmok", or Korean "Restaurant Street", around the Murray Hill station. The eastward pressure to expand was also created by the inability to move westward due to the Flushing Chinatown on Main Street. Per the 2010 United States Census, the Korean population of Queens was 64,107, representing the largest municipality in the United States with a density of at least 500 Korean Americans per square mile. The Korean American population, consisting of 218,764 individuals in the New York metropolitan area, is the second largest population of ethnic Koreans outside Korea.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: "The Korea Times", a news organization based in Seoul, carries a significant presence in the Long Island Koreatown. The Long Island Koreatown features numerous restaurants that serve both traditional and/or regional Korean cuisine. Korean is spoken frequently alongside English and Chinese varieties, and retail signs employing the Hangul alphabet are ubiquitous. A significant array of social services toward assisting recent and established Korean immigrants is available in Koreatown. There is also a significant population of Korean-Chinese or Chinese-Koreans in Flushing who can speak Mandarin, Korean, and English.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The neighborhood of East Flushing, technically within Greater Flushing, also houses a substantial Chinese community along with most of Downtown Flushing. However, East Flushing also substantially includes Irish, Greek, Russian, Italian and Jewish communities, as well as communities of Indians, Sri Lankans, Malaysians, and Hispanics, mostly Colombians and Salvadorans. This neighborhood tends to be more diverse visibly than Downtown Flushing because of the more even distribution of the ethnicities of East Flushing residents resulting in more ethnic businesses catering to each community rather than the dominance of Chinese and to a lesser extent Korean businesses in Downtown Flushing.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The northeastern section of Flushing near Bayside continues to maintain large Italian and Greek presences that are reflected in its many Italian and Greek bakeries, grocery stores and restaurants. The northwest is a mix of Jews, Greeks, and Italians. Most of central Flushing is an ethnic mix of Whites, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: An area south of Franklin Avenue houses a concentration of Indian, Pakistani, Afghan, and Bangladeshi markets. This concentration of Indian American and other South Asian American businesses south of Franklin Avenue has existed since the late 1970s, one of the oldest Little India neighborhoods in North America. The Sri Maha Vallabha Ganapati Devasthanam (Sanskrit: श्री महावल्लभ गणपति देवस्थानम्, Tamil: ஸ்ரீ மகா வல்லப கணபதி தேவஸ்தானம்) at 45-57 Bowne Street in Flushing was the very first of the traditional Hindu temples in the Western Hemisphere. However, Indians are migrating eastward into neighborhoods in northeastern Queens and into Nassau County, as with many Chinese and Korean immigrants.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Broadway–Flushing, also known as North Flushing, is a residential area with many large homes. The name refers to the area served by the "Broadway" station of the Long Island Rail Road. The Broadway station is located immediately east of the location where the LIRR's Port Washington Branch crosses Northern Boulevard, which when the station was opened in 1866 was called "Broadway". Part of this area has been designated a State and Federal historic district due to the elegant, park-like character of the neighborhood. Much of the area has been rezoned by the City of New York to preserve the low density, residential quality of the neighborhood. Broadway-Flushing is approximately bounded by 29th Avenue to the north, Northern Boulevard and Crocheron Avenue to the south, 155th Street to the west, and 172nd Streets to the east.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Linden Hill is bound by 25th Avenue to Willets Point Boulevard to the north, 154th Street to the east, Northern Boulevard to the south and the Whitestone Expressway to the west.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Linden Hill was originally a rural estate owned by the Mitchell family. Ernest Mitchell owned an adjacent area known as Breezy Hill and his father owned the area now called Linden Hill. The two areas are sometimes referred to as Mitchell-Linden. A major change in the rural nature of Linden Hill occurred in the early 1950s. Neisloss Brothers with architect Benjamin Braunstein envisioned a cooperative project to be set on Linden Hill and landfill of an adjacent swamp which would provide middle-income housing to veterans of World War II and the Korean War under Section 213 of the Federal Housing Act of 1950. Gerace and Castagna with architects Samuel Paul and Seymour Jarmul subsequently developed the larger Linden Towers several years after this. Paul was additionally the architect of Embassy Arms. In total, 41 six-story buildings containing 3,146 apartments comprising the Linden Hill, Mitchell Gardens, Linden Towers, and Embassy Arms cooperatives were erected.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Once a primarily European-American neighborhood, Linden Hill is now a diverse mix of European-Americans, Asian-Americans and Latino-Americans. The Asian-American population has expanded markedly in the southern part of Linden Hill in the past decade (as it has throughout Flushing) and the Latino-American population has also grown noticeably. Conversely, the European-American population has lessened somewhat, though European-Americans still remain in great numbers north of Bayside Avenue, west of 149th Street.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Murray Hill is bounded by 150th Street to the west and 160th Street to the east and straddles ZIP Codes 11354, 11355, and 11358. Traditionally the home of families of Irish and Italian immigrants, many Korean and Chinese immigrants have moved into Murray Hill in recent years. Murray Hill within Flushing is often confused with the larger Murray Hill neighborhood on the East Side of Manhattan.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Before the area was developed for residential housing in 1889, Murray Hill was the location of several large nurseries owned by the King, Murray, and Parsons families. The Kingsland Homestead has been preserved as the home of the Queens Historical Society. The Voelker Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden is also located in Murray Hill. Comic strip artist Richard F. Outcault, the creator of "The Yellow Kid" and "Buster Brown", lived on 147th Street in Murray Hill.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Queensboro Hill in southern Flushing is bordered to the west by College Point Boulevard, to the north by Kissena Park and Kissena Corridor Park, to the south by Reeves Avenue and the Long Island Expressway, and to the east by Kissena Boulevard. Queensboro Hill is a part of ZIP Codes 11355 and 11367 and contains the NewYork–Presbyterian/Queens hospital. One of the leading churches is the Queensboro Hill Community Church, a multi-racial congregation of the Reformed Church in America. Turtle Playground serves the residents of this section of Flushing. This area is often referred to as South Flushing.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The Waldheim neighborhood, an estate subdivision in Flushing constructed primarily between 1875 and 1925, is bound by Sanford and Franklin Avenues on the north, 45th Avenue on the south, Bowne Street on the west and Parsons Boulevard on the east. The area is immediately southeast of the downtown Flushing commercial core, and adjacent to Kissena Park. a small district of upscale "in-town" suburban architecture. Waldheim, German for "home in the woods", is known for its large homes of varying architectural styles and is laid out in an unusual street pattern.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Waldheim was the home of some of Flushing's wealthiest residents until the 1960s. Notable residents include the Helmann family of condiment fame, the Steinway piano-making family, as well as A. Douglas Nash, who managed a nearby Tiffany glass plant. Starting in the 1980s, homes in Waldheim were destroyed by the Korean American Presbyterian Church of Queens, one of the area's largest land owners. In 2008, the city rezoned the neighborhood to help preserve the low-density, residential character of the neighborhood. As with the Broadway neighborhood, preservationists have been unable to secure designation as an Historic District by the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission, and , structures in Waldheim were still being torn down.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing is a religiously diverse community. Houses of worship in Flushing include the Dutch colonial epoch Quaker Meeting House, the historic Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Queens, St. Andrew Avellino Roman Catholic Church, St. George's Episcopal Church, the Free Synagogue of Flushing, the Congregation of Georgian Jews, St. Mel Roman Catholic Church, St. Michael's Catholic Church, St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Shrine Church, Holy Annunciation Russian Orthodox Church, St. John's Lutheran Church, Queensboro Hill Community Church, Hindu Temple Society of North America, and the Muslim Center of New York.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In 1657, while Flushing was still a Dutch settlement, a document known as the Flushing Remonstrance was created by Edward Hart, the town clerk, where some thirty ordinary citizens protested a ban imposed by Peter Stuyvesant, the director general of New Amsterdam, forbidding the harboring of Quakers. The Remonstrants cited the Flushing Town charter of 1645, which promised liberty of conscience.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing has many registered New York City Landmarks, several of which are also located on the National Register of Historic Places. Several city landmarks are located on the Queens Historical Society's Freedom Mile. Flushing Town Hall on Northern Boulevard is the headquarters of the Flushing Council on Culture and the Arts, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution, and houses a concert hall and cultural center. Other landmarks include the Bowne House, Kingsland Homestead, the Weeping Beech, Old Quaker Meeting House, Flushing High School, St. George's Church, the Lewis H. Latimer House, and the inside of the former RKO Keith's movie theater. The Flushing Armory, on Northern Boulevard, was formerly used by the National Guard.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: There are several other landmarks in Flushing, but outside the Freedom Mile. These include the Protestant Reformed Dutch Church of Flushing, the Fitzgerald/Ginsberg Mansion, on Bayside Avenue and the Voelker Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden. In addition, the Broadway-Flushing Historic District, Free Synagogue of Flushing, United States Post Office, and Main Street Subway Station (Dual System IRT) are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The Queens Botanical Garden is located on between College Point Boulevard and Main Street. It has been in operation continuously since its opening as an exhibit at the 1939 New York World's Fair, and has been at its current location since 1963. The Botanical Garden carries on Flushing's horticultural tradition that dates back to the area's 18th-century tree nurseries and seed farms.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Public parks and playgrounds in Flushing are supervised by the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing Meadows–Corona Park, an park, is the largest park in Queens. The site hosted two World's Fairs, in 1939–1940 and 1964–1965, and the park infrastructure reflects the construction undertaken for the Fairs. The northern part of the park contains Citi Field, home of the New York Mets of Major League Baseball; the field, opened in 2009, replaced the former Shea Stadium. To the south is the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center which is the home of the US Tennis Open.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Several attractions were originally developed for the World's Fairs in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. One of the most prominent is the Unisphere, the iconic 12-story-high stainless steel globe that served as the centerpiece for the 1964 New York World's Fair, which was made a city landmark. Additionally, there is a stone marker for the two 5,000-year Westinghouse Time Capsules made of special alloys buried in the park, chronicling 20th-century life in the United States, dedicated both in 1938 and 1965. Also in the park are the Queens Museum of Art which features a scale model of the City of New York, the largest architectural model ever built; Queens Theatre in the Park; the New York Hall of Science; and the Queens Zoo. The New York State Pavilion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2009.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing, College Point, and Whitestone are patrolled by the 109th Precinct of the NYPD, located at 37-05 Union Street. The 109th Precinct ranked 9th safest out of 69 patrol areas for per-capita crime in 2010. , with a non-fatal assault rate of 17 per 100,000 people, Flushing and Whitestone's rate of violent crimes per capita is less than that of the city as a whole. The incarceration rate of 145 per 100,000 people is lower than that of the city as a whole.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The 109th Precinct has a lower crime rate than in the 1990s, with crimes across all categories having decreased by 83.7% between 1990 and 2018. The precinct reported 6 murders, 30 rapes, 202 robberies, 219 felony assaults, 324 burglaries, 970 grand larcenies, and 126 grand larcenies auto in 2018.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: , preterm births and births to teenage mothers are less common in Flushing and Whitestone than in other places citywide. In Flushing and Whitestone, there were 63 preterm births per 1,000 live births (compared to 87 per 1,000 citywide), and 8 births to teenage mothers per 1,000 live births (compared to 19.3 per 1,000 citywide). Flushing and Whitestone have a higher than average population of residents who are uninsured. In 2018, this population of uninsured residents was estimated to be 14%, slightly higher than the citywide rate of 12%.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Flushing and Whitestone is , less than the city average. Thirteen percent of Flushing and Whitestone residents are smokers, which is lower than the city average of 14% of residents being smokers. In Flushing and Whitestone, 13% of residents are obese, 8% are diabetic, and 22% have high blood pressure—compared to the citywide averages of 22%, 8%, and 23% respectively. In addition, 15% of children are obese, compared to the citywide average of 20%.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Ninety-five percent of residents eat some fruits and vegetables every day, which is higher than the city's average of 87%. In 2018, 71% of residents described their health as "good," "very good," or "excellent," lower than the city's average of 78%. For every supermarket in Flushing and Whitestone, there are 6 bodegas.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The nearest major hospitals are NewYork–Presbyterian/Queens and Flushing Hospital Medical Center. NewYork–Presbyterian/Queens serves Flushing as well as surrounding communities with comprehensive medical care services. Numerous tertiary medical clinics also serve the residents of Flushing.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing is covered by multiple ZIP Codes. Downtown Flushing and western Murray Hill is covered by 11354; south Flushing, including Queensboro Hill and Waldheim, is included in 11355; and eastern Murray Hill and Broadway-Flushing fall within 11358. ZIP Codes 11356 and 11357, which are part of College Point and Whitestone respectively, also cover small parts of northern Flushing and Linden Hill. The United States Post Office operates three post offices nearby:


title: Flushing, Queens

text: ZIP Codes prefixed with 113 are administered from a sectional center at the Flushing Post Office. The 113-prefixed area extends west to Elmhurst and Jackson Heights; southwest to Ridgewood; south to Forest Hills; southeast to Fresh Meadows; and east to Bayside and Little Neck.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing and Whitestone generally have a similar rate of college-educated residents to the rest of the city . While 37% of residents age 25 and older have a college education or higher, 23% have less than a high school education and 40% are high school graduates or have some college education. By contrast, 39% of Queens residents and 43% of city residents have a college education or higher. The percentage of Flushing and Whitestone students excelling in math rose from 55% in 2000 to 78% in 2011, and reading achievement rose from 57% to 59% during the same time period.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing and Whitestone's rate of elementary school student absenteeism is less than the rest of New York City. In Flushing and Whitestone, 9% of elementary school students missed twenty or more days per school year, lower than the citywide average of 20%. Additionally, 86% of high school students in Flushing and Whitestone graduate on time, more than the citywide average of 75%.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing's public schools are operated by the New York City Department of Education. Flushing contains the following public elementary schools, which serve grades PK-5 unless otherwise indicated:


title: Flushing, Queens

text: On December 22, 1980, The Japanese School of New York moved from Jamaica Estates, Queens into Fresh Meadows, Queens, near Flushing. In 1991, the school moved to Yonkers in Westchester County, New York, before moving to Greenwich, Connecticut in 1992.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: As a result of the high number of Chinese and Korean immigrants with (Confucius) educationally orientated outlooks, there is a large number of cram schools (Buxiban and hagwon) located not only in Flushing, but also following Northern Blvd. west into Nassau County.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Queens College, founded in 1937, is a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), and is commonly misconstrued to be within Flushing neighborhood limits due to its Flushing mailing address. It is actually located in the nearby neighborhood of Kew Gardens Hills on Kissena Boulevard near the Long Island Expressway. The City University of New York School of Law was founded in 1983 adjacent to the Queens College campus, and was located at 65-21 Main Street in Kew Gardens Hills until 2012. It moved to Long Island City for the Fall 2012 Semester. The Law School operates Main Street Legal Services Corp., a legal services clinic.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Flushing contained the first public library in Queens, founded in 1858. Today, Queens Public Library contains five libraries in Flushing.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The largest of the libraries is the Flushing branch, located at the intersection of Kissena Boulevard and Main Street in Flushing's central business district. It is the busiest branch of the Queens Public Library, the highest-circulation system in the United States. This library has an auditorium for public events. The current building, designed by Polshek Partnership Architects, is the third to be built on the site—the first was a Carnegie library, built through a gift of Andrew Carnegie.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: In addition, the Auburndale, Hillcrest, and Pomonok libraries carry Flushing addresses but are not located in Flushing proper.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The n20G Nassau Inter-County Express bus route, which runs along Sanford Avenue and Northern Boulevard, terminates in Flushing.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: There is one New York City Subway station in Flushing, the Flushing–Main Street station at Main Street and Roosevelt Avenue, served by the . It is one of the busiest stations in the New York City Subway system


title: Flushing, Queens

text: Major highways that serve the area include the Van Wyck Expressway and Whitestone Expressway (Interstate 678), Grand Central Parkway, and Long Island Expressway (Interstate 495). Northern Boulevard (part of New York State Route 25A) extends from the Queensboro Bridge in Long Island City through Flushing into Nassau County. The Roosevelt Ave. Bridge over Flushing Creek was the largest fixed trunnion bascule type in the world when opened in 1927. However, it was decommissioned as a moving bridge when marine navigation was eliminated in the late 1930s.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: The political stature of Flushing appears to be increasing significantly, with many Chinese from Flushing becoming New York City Council members. Taiwan-born John Liu, former New York City Council member representing District 20, which includes Flushing and other northern Queens neighborhoods, was elected New York City Comptroller in November 2009. In 2018, Liu defeated incumbent Tony Avella to become the first of two Asian Americans in the New York State Senate.


title: Flushing, Queens

text: At the same time, Shanghai-born Peter Koo was elected to succeed Liu to assume this council membership seat. Additionally, in 2012 Flushing resident Grace Meng, a State Assembly Member, was elected to Congress as the first Asian-American member of the United States House of Representatives from the eastern United States.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Impeachment in the United States is the process by a legislature may bring charges against an officeholder for misconduct alleged to have been committed with a penalty of removal. Impeachment may also occur at the state level if the state or commonwealth has provisions for it under its constitution. Impeachment might also occur with tribal governments as well as at the local level of government.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The federal House of Representatives can impeach a party with a simple majority of the House members present or such other criteria as the House adopts in accordance with . This triggers a federal impeachment trial in the United States Senate, which can vote by a 2/3 majority to convict an official, removing them from office. The Senate can also further, with just a simple-majority vote, vote to bar an individual convicted in a senate impeachment trial from holding future federal office


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Most state legislatures can impeach state officials, including the governor, in accordance with their respective state constitution.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Impeachment proceedings are remedial rather than punitive in nature, and the remedy is limited to removal from office. Because all officers in the federal government are confirmed in the Senate, officers appointed under the Appointments Clause of the Constitution may also be disqualified from holding any other appointed office under the United States in the future. Because the process is not punitive, a party may also be subject to criminal or civil trial, prosecution, and conviction under the law after removal from office. Also because the conviction is not a punishment, the president is constitutionally precluded from granting a pardon to impeached and convicted persons.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The Constitution limits grounds of impeachment to "Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors", but does not itself define "high crimes and misdemeanors".


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The Constitution gives Congress the authority to impeach and remove "The President, Vice President, and all civil Officers of the United States" upon a determination that such officers have engaged in treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors. The Constitution does not articulate who qualifies as a "civil officer of the United States". Federal judges are subject to impeachment. Within the executive branch, any presidentially appointed "principal officer", including a head of an agency such as a Secretary, Administrator, or Commissioner, is a "civil officer of the United States" subject to impeachment. At the opposite end of the spectrum, lesser functionaries, such as federal civil service employees, do not exercise "significant authority", and are not appointed by the president or an agency head. These employees do not appear to be subject to impeachment, though that may be a matter of allocation of House floor debate time by the Speaker, rather than a matter of law.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The Senate has concluded that members of Congress (representatives and senators) are not "civil officers" for purposes of impeachment. As a practical matter, expulsion is effected by the simpler procedures of Article I, Section 5, which provides "Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members... Each House may determine the Rules of its Proceedings, punish its Members for disorderly Behavior, and, with the Concurrence of two thirds, expel a Member" (see List of United States senators expelled or censured and List of United States representatives expelled, censured, or reprimanded). This allows each House to expel its own members without involving the other chamber. In 1797, the House of Representatives impeached Senator William Blount of Tennessee.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The constitutional text is silent on whether an officer can be tried after the officer resigns or his/her term ends. However, when the issue has arisen, the House has been willing to impeach after resignation, and the Senate has been willing to try the official after resignation. In 1797, the Senate continued impeachment proceedings against William Blount even after he had been expelled from office, dismissing the proceedings only after determining that a Senator is not a "civil officer of the United States". In 1876, William W. Belknap was impeached by the House of Representatives hours after resigning as United States Secretary of War. The Senate held by a 37–29 vote that it had jurisdiction to try Belknap notwithstanding his resignation, but ultimately acquitted him after trial. The permissibility of trying a former official was a major issue in the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which commenced 20 days after Trump's term in office expired, although Trump's impeachment itself occurred while he was President. By a 55–45 vote, the Senate rejected a motion asserting that the trial was unconstitutional.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The Constitution does not limit the number of times an individual may be impeached. As of 2022, Donald Trump is the only federal officer to have been impeached more than once.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: At the federal level, the impeachment process is typically a three-step procedure. The first phase is typically an impeachment inquiry, though this is not a required stage. The two stages constitutionally required for removal are impeachment by the House of Representatives and trial by the United States Senate.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Impeachment proceedings may be requested by a member of the House of Representatives, either by presenting a list of the charges under oath or by asking for referral to the appropriate committee. The impeachment process may be requested by non-members. For example, when the Judicial Conference of the United States suggests a federal judge be impeached, a charge of actions constituting grounds for impeachment may come from a special prosecutor, the president, or state or territorial legislature, grand jury, or by petition. An impeachment proceeding formally begins with a resolution adopted by the full House of Representative.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: An impeachment resolution may first pass through a House committee before the full House vores on it. The type of impeachment resolution determines the committee to which it is referred. A resolution impeaching a particular individual is typically referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary. A resolution to authorize an investigation regarding impeachable conduct is referred to the House Committee on Rules, and then to the Judiciary Committee. The House Committee on the Judiciary, by majority vote, will determine whether grounds for impeachment exist (this vote is not law and is not required, US Constitution and US law).


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Either as part of the impeachment resolution or separately specific grounds and allegations of for impeachment will be outlined in one or more articles of impeachment.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The House debates the resolution and may at the conclusion consider the resolution as a whole or vote on each article of impeachment individually. A simple majority of those present and voting is required for each article for the resolution as a whole to pass. If the House votes to impeach, managers (typically referred to as "House managers", with a "lead House manager") are selected to present the case to the Senate. Recently, managers have been selected by resolution, while historically the House would occasionally elect the managers or pass a resolution allowing the appointment of managers at the discretion of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives. These managers are roughly the equivalent of the prosecution or district attorney in a standard criminal trial. Also, the House will adopt a resolution in order to notify the Senate of its action. After receiving the notice, the Senate will adopt an order notifying the House that it is ready to receive the managers. The House managers then appear before the bar of the Senate and exhibit the articles of impeachment. After the reading of the charges, the managers return and make a verbal report to the House.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Senate rules call for an impeachment trial to begin at 1 pm on the day after articles of impeachment are delivered to the Senate, except for Sundays. There is no timeframe requirement for when the managers must actually deliver the articles of impeachment to the Senate. On the set date, senators are sworn in for the impeachment trial.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The proceedings take the form of a trial, with the Senate having the right to call witnesses and each side having the right to perform cross-examinations. The House members, who are given the collective title of managers during the trial, present the prosecution case, and the impeached official has the right to mount a defense with his or her own attorneys as well. Senators must also take an oath or affirmation that they will perform their duties honestly and with due diligence. After hearing the charges, the Senate usually deliberates in private. The Constitution requires a two-thirds supermajority to convict a person being impeached. The Senate enters judgment on its decision, whether that be to convict or acquit, and a copy of the judgment is filed with the Secretary of State.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Upon conviction in the Senate, the official is automatically removed from office and may by a separate vote also be barred from holding future office. The Senate trial is not an actual criminal proceeding and more closely resembles a civil service termination appeal in terms of the contemplated deprivation. Therefore, the removed official may still be liable to criminal prosecution under a subsequent criminal proceeding. The president may not grant a pardon in the impeachment case, but may in any resulting federal criminal case (unless it is the president who is convicted and thus loses the pardon power). However, whether the president can self-pardon for criminal offenses is an open question, which has never been reviewed by a court.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Beginning in the 1980s with Harry E. Claiborne, the Senate began using "Impeachment Trial Committees" pursuant to Senate Rule XI. These committees presided over the evidentiary phase of the trials, hearing the evidence and supervising the examination and cross-examination of witnesses. The committees would then compile the evidentiary record and present it to the Senate; all senators would then have the opportunity to review the evidence before the chamber voted to convict or acquit. The purpose of the committees was to streamline impeachment trials, which otherwise would have taken up a great deal of the chamber's time. Defendants challenged the use of these committees, claiming them to be a violation of their fair trial rights as this did not meet the constitutional requirement for their cases to be "tried by the Senate". Several impeached judges, including District Court Judge Walter Nixon, sought court intervention in their impeachment proceedings on these grounds. In "Nixon v. United States" (1993), the Supreme Court determined that the federal judiciary could not review such proceedings, as matters related to impeachment trials are political questions and could not be resolved in the courts.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: In the case of impeachment of the president, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court presides over the trial. During the second impeachment trial of Donald Trump, some Senate Republicans argued that the Chief Justice was required to preside, even though Trump was no longer the President when the trial began. However, by a 55–45 vote, the Senate rejected a motion asserting that the trial was unconstitutional. The trial was presided over by President pro tempore Patrick Leahy.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The Constitution is silent about who would preside in the case of the impeachment of a vice president. It is doubtful the vice president would be permitted to preside over their own trial. As president of the Senate, the vice president would preside over other impeachments. If the vice president did not preside over an impeachment (of anyone besides the president), the duties would fall to the president pro tempore of the Senate.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: To convict an accused, "the concurrence of two thirds of the [senators] present" for at least one article is required. If there is no single charge commanding a "guilty" vote from two-thirds of the senators present, the defendant is acquitted and no punishment is imposed.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Conviction immediately removes the defendant from office. Following the vote on conviction, the Senate may by a separate vote also bar the individual from holding future federal office, elected or appointed. As the threshold for disqualification is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, the Senate has taken the position that disqualification votes only require a simple majority rather than a two-thirds supermajority. The Senate has used disqualification sparingly, as only three individuals have been disqualified from holding future office.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Conviction does not extend to further punishment, for example, loss of pension. After conviction by the Senate, "the Party convicted shall nevertheless be liable and subject to Indictment, Trial, Judgment and Punishment, according to Law" in the regular federal or state courts. However, the Former Presidents Act of 1958, which provides a pension and other benefits, does not extend to presidents who were removed from office following an impeachment conviction. Because of an amendment to that law in 2013, a former president who has been removed from office due to impeachment and conviction is still guaranteed lifetime Secret Service protection.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Of the 21 impeachments by the House, eight defendants were convicted and removed from office, four cases did not come to trial because the individuals had left office and the Senate did not pursue the case, and nine ended in acquittal. To date, every convicted official was a federal judge. Of the eight to have been convicted and removed, three were disqualified from ever holding federal office again by the Senate. One of the remaining five is former congressman Alcee Hastings (D-Florida), who was convicted and removed from office as a federal judge in 1989, but was not barred from holding federal office, only to be elected to the United States House of Representatives in 1992, a seat he held until his death on April 6, 2021.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: No president impeached by the House has been convicted by the Senate. In two cases, a Senate majority voted to convict an impeached president, but the vote fell short of the required two-thirds majority and therefore the impeached president was not convicted. The two instances where this happened were the Senate trial of Andrew Johnson in 1868 (where Johnson escaped conviction by one vote), and the second Senate trial of Donald Trump in 2021, where Trump missed conviction by 10 votes.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The following table lists federal officials who were impeached. Blue highlight indicates presidents of the United States.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: State legislatures can impeach state officials, including governors and judicial officers, in every state except Oregon. The court for the trial of impeachments may differ somewhat from the federal model—in New York, for instance, the Assembly (lower house) impeaches, and the State Senate tries the case, but the members of the seven-judge New York State Court of Appeals (the state's highest, constitutional court) sit with the senators as jurors as well. Impeachment and removal of governors has happened occasionally throughout the history of the United States, usually for corruption charges. At least eleven U.S. state governors have faced an impeachment trial; a twelfth, Governor Lee Cruce of Oklahoma, escaped impeachment by one vote in 1912. Several others, including Missouri's Eric Greitens in 2018, have resigned rather than face impeachment, when events seemed to make it inevitable. The most recent impeachment of a state governor occurred on January 14, 2009, when the Illinois House of Representatives voted 117–1 to impeach Rod Blagojevich on corruption charges; he was subsequently removed from office and barred from holding future office by the Illinois Senate on January 29. He was the eighth U.S. state governor to be removed from office.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The procedure for impeachment, or removal, of local officials varies widely. For instance, in New York a mayor is removed directly by the governor "upon being heard" on charges—the law makes no further specification of what charges are necessary or what the governor must find in order to remove a mayor.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: In 2018, the entire Supreme Court of Appeals of West Virginia was impeached, something that has been often threatened, but had never happened before.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Most states follow the same model as the United States federal government of having the lower chamber of their legislatures hold a vote to "impeach", thereby triggering an impeachment trial held in the upper chamber of their legislatures. However, several states do differ from the convention of holding the impeachment trial in the state legislature’s upper chamber. In a reverse, in Alaska it is the upper chamber of the legislature that votes to impeach while the lower chamber acts as the court of impeachment. In Missouri, after the lower chamber votes to impeach, an impeachment trial is held before a panel of seven judges (requiring a vote of five judges to convict). The members of the panel are selected by the upper legislative chamber, the Missouri State Senate. In Nebraska, which has a unicameral legislature, after the Nebraska Legislature votes to impeach, an impeachment trial takes place before the Nebraska Supreme Court. In Oklahoma, after an impeachment vote, both chambers of the Oklahoma Legislature act together as a court of impeachment in a joint session. In addition to all the members of its upper chamber, the state of New York's Court of the Trial of Impeachments also includes all seven members of the state's highest court, the New York Court of Appeals.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: Many tribal governments have impeachment, with tribes generally utilizing a similar bifurcated process to the federal government, having an impeachment vote be followed by an impeachment trial. Examples of tribal governments that have an impeachment process include the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, and Oglala Sioux.


title: Impeachment in the United States

text: The Iroquois (Haudenosaunee) Confederacy's Great Law of Peace, which predates the constitution of the United States, includes what amounts to an impeachment process through which clan mothers can remove and replace a sachem for misdeeds. This is unique in that only a tribe's women are allowed to remove a sachem through this process.


title: Tengwar

text: The Tengwar script is an artificial script, one of several scripts created by J. R. R. Tolkien, the author of "The Lord of the Rings".


title: Tengwar

text: Within the fictional context of Middle-earth, the Tengwar were invented by the Elf Fëanor, and used first to write the Elven tongues Quenya and Telerin. Later a great number of languages of Middle-earth were written using the Tengwar, including Sindarin. Tolkien used Tengwar to write English: most of Tolkien's Tengwar samples are actually in English.


title: Tengwar

text: According to J.R.R. Tolkien's "The War of the Jewels", edited by his son Christopher Tolkien, at the time Fëanor created his script, he introduced a change in terminology. He called a letter, a written representation of a spoken phoneme ("tengwë"), a "tengwa". Previously, any letter or symbol had been called a "sarat" (from "*sar" "incise"). The alphabet of Rúmil of Tirion, on which Fëanor supposedly based his own work, was known as Sarati. It later became known as "Tengwar of Rúmil".


title: Tengwar

text: The plural of "tengwa" is "tengwar", and this is the name by which Fëanor's writing system became known. Since, however, in commonly used modes, an individual "tengwa" was equivalent to a consonant, the term "tengwar" in the fiction became equivalent to "consonant sign", and the vowel signs were known as "ómatehtar". By loan-translation, the tengwar became known as "tîw" (singular "têw") in Sindarin, when they were introduced to Beleriand. The letters of the earlier alphabet native to Sindarin were called "cirth" (singular "certh", probably from "*kirte" "cutting", and thus semantically analogous to Quenya "sarat"). This term was loaned into exilic Quenya as "certa", plural "certar".


title: Tengwar

text: The sarati, a script developed by Tolkien in the late 1910s and described in "Parma Eldalamberon 13", anticipates many features of the tengwar: vowel representation by diacritics (which is found in many tengwar varieties); different tengwar shapes; and a few correspondences between sound features and letter shape features (though inconsistent).


title: Tengwar

text: Even closer to the tengwar is the Valmaric script, described in "Parma Eldalamberon 14", which Tolkien used from about 1922 to 1925. It features many tengwar shapes, the inherent vowel found in some tengwar varieties, and the tables in the samples V12 and V13 show an arrangement that is very similar to one of the primary tengwar in the classical Quenya "mode".


title: Tengwar

text: Jim Allan in his "An Introduction to Elvish" compared the tengwar with the "Universal Alphabet" by the London merchant Francis Lodwick of 1686, both on grounds of the correspondence between shape features and sound features, and of the actual letter shapes.


title: Tengwar

text: The tengwar script was probably developed in the late 1920s or in the early 1930s. "The Lonely Mountain Jar Inscription", the first published Tengwar sample, dates to 1937. The full explanation of the tengwar was published in Appendix E of "The Lord of the Rings" in 1955.


title: Tengwar

text: The "Mellonath Daeron Index of Tengwar Specimina" (DTS) lists most of the known samples of tengwar by Tolkien.


title: Tengwar

text: There are only a few known samples predating publication of "The Lord of the Rings" (many of them published posthumously):


title: Tengwar

text: The most notable characteristic of the tengwar script is that the shapes of the letters correspond to the distinctive features of the sounds they represent. The Quenya consonant system has five places of articulation: labial, dental, palatal, velar, and glottal. The velars distinguish between plain and labialized (that is, articulated with rounded lips, or followed by a sound). Each point of articulation, and the corresponding tengwa series, has a name in the classical Quenya mode. Dental sounds are called "Tincotéma" and are represented with the tengwar in column I. Labial sounds are called "Parmatéma", and represented by the column II tengwar; velar sounds are called "Calmatéma", represented by column III; and labialized velar sounds are called "Quessetéma", represented by the "tengwar" of column IV. Palatal sounds are called "Tyelpetéma" and have no tengwa series of their own, but are represented by column III letters with an added diacritic for following .


title: Tengwar

text: Similarly shaped letters reflect not only similar places of articulation, but also similar manners of articulation. In the classical Quenya mode, row 1 represents voiceless stops, row 2 voiced prenasalized stops, row 3 voiceless fricatives, row 4 voiceless prenasalized stops, row 5 nasal stops, and row 6 approximants.


title: Tengwar

text: Most letters are constructed by a combination of two basic shapes: a vertical stem (either long or short) and either one or two rounded bows (which may or may not be underscored, and may be on the left or right of the stem).


title: Tengwar

text: These principal letters are divided into four series ("témar") that correspond to the main places of articulation and into six grades ("tyeller") that correspond to the main manners of articulation. Both vary among modes.


title: Tengwar

text: Each series is headed by the basic signs composed of a vertical stem descending below the line, and a single bow. These basic signs represent the voiceless stop consonants for that series. For the classical Quenya mode, they are , , and , and the series are named "tincotéma", "parmatéma", "calmatéma", and "quessetéma", respectively; téma means "series" in Quenya.


title: Tengwar

text: In rows of the "general use", there are the following correspondences between letter shapes and manners of articulation:


title: Tengwar

text: In addition to these variations of the tengwar shapes, there is yet another variation, the use of stems that are extended both above and below the line. This shape may correspond to other consonant variations required. Except for some English abbreviations, it is not used in any of the better known tengwar modes, but it occurs in a Quenya mode where the tengwa Parma with extended stem is used for and the tengwa Calma with extended stem is used for . The tengwar with raised stems sometimes occur in glyph variants that look like extended stems, as seen in the inscription of the One Ring.


title: Tengwar

text: An example from the "parmatéma" (the signs with a closed bow on the right side) in the "general use" of the tengwar is:


title: Tengwar

text: In languages such as Quenya, which do not contain any voiced fricatives other than "v", the raised stem + doubled bow row is used for the common nasal+stop sequences ("nt", "mp", "nk", "nqu"). In such cases, the "w" sign in the previous paragraph is used for "v". In the mode of Beleriand, found on the door to Moria, the bottom "tyellë" is used for nasals (e.g., "vala" is used for ) and the fifth "tyellë" for doubled nasals ("" for ).


title: Tengwar

text: There are additional letters that do not have regular shapes. They may represent, e.g., , , and . Their use varies considerably from mode to mode. Some aficionados have added more letters not found in Tolkien's writings for use in their modes.


title: Tengwar

text: A "tehta" (Quenya "marking") is a diacritic placed above or below the tengwa. They can represent vowels, consonant doubling, or nasal sound.


title: Tengwar

text: As Tolkien explained in Appendix E of "The Lord of the Rings", the "tehtar" for vowels resemble Latin diacritics: circumflex (î) , acute (í) , dot (i) , left curl (ı̔) , and right curl (ı̓) . Long vowels, excepting , may be indicated by doubling the signs. Some languages from which is absent or in which compared to it appears sparsely, such as the Black Speech, use left curl for ; other languages swap the signs for and .


title: Tengwar

text: A vowel occurring alone is drawn on the vowel carrier, which resembles dotless i (ı) for a short vowel or dotless j (ȷ) for a long vowel.


title: Tengwar

text: Just as with any alphabetic writing system, every specific language written in tengwar requires a specific orthography, depending on the phonology of that language. These tengwar orthographies are usually called "modes". Some modes follow pronunciation, while others follow traditional orthography.


title: Tengwar

text: Some modes map the basic consonants to , , and (classical mode in chart at right), while others use them to represent , , and (general mode at right). The other main difference is in the fourth "tyellë" below, where those letters with raised stems and doubled bows can be either voiced fricatives, as in Sindarin (general mode at right), or nasalized stops, as in Quenya (classical mode).


title: Tengwar

text: In some modes, called "ómatehtar" (or "vowel tehtar") modes, the vowels are represented with diacritics called "tehtar" (Quenya for 'signs'; corresponding singular: "tehta", 'sign'). These ómatehtar modes can be loosely considered abjads rather than true alphabets. In some ómatehtar modes, the consonant signs feature an inherent vowel. These ómatehtar modes can be considered alphasyllabaries.


title: Tengwar

text: "Ómatehtar" modes can vary in that the vowel stroke can be placed either on top of the consonant preceding it, as in Quenya, or on the consonant following, as in Sindarin, English, and the notorious Black Speech inscription on the One Ring.


title: Tengwar

text: In the "full writing" modes, the consonants and the vowels are represented by Tengwar. Only one such mode is well known. It is called the "mode of Beleriand" and one can read it on the Doors of Durin.


title: Tengwar

text: Since the publication of the first official description of the Tengwar at the end of "The Lord of the Rings", others have created modes for other languages such as English, Spanish, German, Swedish, French, Finnish, Italian, Hungarian and Welsh. Modes have also been devised for other constructed languages; Esperanto and Lojban.


title: Tengwar

text: Tolkien had used multiple modes for English, including full writing and ómatehtar alphabetic modes, phonetic full modes and phonetic ómatehtar modes known from documents published after his death.


title: Tengwar

text: The contemporary de facto standard in the tengwar user community maps the tengwar characters onto the ISO 8859-1 character encoding following the example of the tengwar typefaces by Dan Smith. This implies a major flaw: If no corresponding tengwar font is installed, a string of nonsense characters appears.


title: Tengwar

text: Since there are not enough places in ISO 8859-1's 191 codepoints for all the signs used in tengwar orthography, certain signs are included in a "tengwar A" font which also maps its characters on ISO 8859-1, overlapping with the first font.


title: Tengwar

text: For each tengwar diacritic, there are four different codepoints that are used depending on the width of the character which bears it.


title: Tengwar

text: Other tengwar typefaces with this encoding include Johan Winge's Tengwar Annatar, Måns Björkman's Tengwar Parmaitë, Enrique Mombello's Tengwar Élfica or Michal Nowakowski's Tengwar Formal (note that most of these differ in details).


title: Tengwar

text: The following sample shows the first article of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights written in English, according to the traditional English orthography. It should look similar to the picture at the top of the page, but if no tengwar font is installed, it will appear as a jumble of characters because the corresponding ISO 8859-1 characters will appear instead.


title: Tengwar

text: j#¸ 9t&5# w`Vb%_ 6EO w6Y5 e7`V`V 2{( zèVj# 5% 2x%51T`Û 2{( 7v%1+- 4hR 7EO 2{$yYO2 y4% 7]F85^ 2{( z5^8I`B5$I( 2{( dyYj2 zE1 1yY6E2_ 5^( 5#4^(7 5% `C 8q7T1T W w74^(692^H --


title: Tengwar

text: A proposal has been made by Michael Everson to include the tengwar in the Unicode standard. The codepoints are subject to change; the range to U+160FF in the SMP is tentatively allocated for tengwar according to the current Unicode roadmap.


title: Tengwar

text: Tengwar are currently included in the unofficial ConScript Unicode Registry (CSUR), which assigns codepoints in the Private Use Area. Tengwar are mapped to the range U+E000 to U+E07F; see External links. The following Unicode sample (which repeats the one above) is meaningful when viewed under a typeface supporting tengwar glyphs in the area defined in the ConScript tengwar proposal.


title: Tengwar

text: Some typefaces that support this proposal are Everson Mono, Tengwar Telcontar, Constructium, Tengwar Formal Unicode, and FreeMonoTengwar (James Kass's Code2000 and Code2001 use an older, incompatible version of the proposal). The eight “Aux” variant fonts of Kurinto (Kurinto Text Aux, Book Aux, Sans Aux, etc.) also support Tengwar.


title: Tengwar

text: Tengwar has been used in Tolkien fandom since the publication of "The Lord of the Rings" in the 1950s.


title: Tengwar

text: Tengwar script appears in a bound volume in the Within Temptation music video for "Stand My Ground" (2004), though it appears to be a random selection of letters, with a Tehta vowel appearing about every five words or so. Many tengwar are also repeated for no apparent reason. Another instance of this stylistic use of tengwar is the computer game "" (1997); again the tengwar are used meaninglessly. Tengwar is also used in "Alone in the Dark", a comic book, as a typeface describing an arcane language.


title: Tengwar

text: With the exception of John Rhys-Davies, the actors playing the "Fellowship of the Ring" in The Lord of the Rings film trilogy have tattoos of the English word "nine" written in Quenya-mode tengwar.


title: Tengwar

text: Footballers such as Sergio Agüero and Fernando Torres have tattoos with their first name in Tengwar on their forearms.


title: Tengwar

text: For a list of linguistic material by Tolkien published in the journals "Parma Eldalamberon" and "Vinyar Tengwar", see bibliography in Elvish languages (Middle-earth).


title: Freedom in the World

text: Freedom in the World is a yearly survey and report by the U.S.-based non-governmental organization Freedom House that measures the degree of civil liberties and political rights in every nation and significant related and disputed territories around the world.


title: Freedom in the World

text: "Freedom in the World" was launched in 1973 by Raymond Gastil. It produces annual scores representing the levels of political rights and civil liberties in each state and territory, on a scale from 1 (most free) to 7 (least free). Depending on the ratings, the nations are then classified as "Free", "Partly Free", or "Not Free". The report is often used by researchers in order to measure democracy and correlates highly with several other measures of democracy such as the Polity data series.


title: Freedom in the World

text: The Freedom House rankings are widely reported in the media and used as sources by political researchers. Their construction and use has been evaluated by critics and supporters.


title: Freedom in the World

text: The rankings are from the "Freedom in the World" 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2021, surveys, each report covering the previous year. The average of each pair of ratings on political rights and civil liberties determines the overall status of "Free" (1.0–2.5), "Partly Free" (3.0–5.0), or "Not Free" (5.5–7.0).


title: Freedom in the World

text: An asterisk (*) indicates countries which are "electoral democracies". To qualify as an "electoral democracy", a state must have satisfied the following criteria:


title: Freedom in the World

text: An electoral democracy must have a score of 7 or more out of 12 in political rights subcategory A (Electoral Progress), an overall aggregate score of 20 in their political rights rating and an overall aggregate score of 30 in their civil liberties rating.


title: Freedom in the World

text: Freedom House's term "electoral democracy" differs from "liberal democracy" in that the latter also implies the presence of a substantial array of civil liberties. In the survey, all Free countries qualify as both electoral and liberal democracies. By contrast, some Partly Free countries qualify as electoral, but not liberal, democracies.


title: Freedom in the World

text: According to Freedom House, a quarter of all declines of freedom in the world in 2016 took place in Europe.


title: Freedom in the World

text: Sources: Country Status and ratings overview 1973–2016, Number and percentages of electoral democracies 1989–2016, "Freedom in the World 2018" report covering 2017.


title: Freedom in the World

text: There is some debate over the neutrality of Freedom House and the methodology used for the "Freedom in the World" report, which has been written by Raymond Gastil and his colleagues. The neutrality and biases of human-rights indices have been discussed in several publications by Kenneth A. Bollen. Bollen wrote that "Considered together these criticisms suggest that some nations may have been incorrectly rated on Gastil's measures. However, none of the criticisms have demonstrated a systematic bias in all the ratings. Most of the evidence consists of anecdotal evidence of relatively few cases. Whether there is a systematic or sporadic slant in Gastil's ratings is an open question" (Bollen, 1986, p. 586). The freedom index of "Freedom in the World" has a very strong and positive (at least an 80%) correlation with three other democracy-indices studied in Mainwaring (2001, p. 53).


title: Freedom in the World

text: In his 1986 study, Bollen discussed reviews of measurements of human rights, including the index reported in "Freedom in the World" (Bollen, 1986, p. 585). Criticisms of "Freedom in the World" during the 1980s were discussed by Gastil (1990), who stated that "generally such criticism is based on opinions about Freedom House rather than detailed examination of survey ratings", a conclusion disputed by Giannone. The definition of Freedom in Gastil (1982) and Freedom House (1990) emphasized liberties rather than the exercise of freedom, according to Adam Przeworski, who gave the following example: In the United States, citizens are free to form political parties and to vote, yet even in presidential elections only half of U.S. "citizens" vote; in the U.S., "the same two parties speak in a commercially sponsored unison", wrote .


title: Freedom in the World

text: Freedom House does not maintain a culture-bound view of freedom. The methodology of the survey is grounded in basic standards of political rights and civil liberties, derived in large measure from relevant portions of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These standards apply to all countries and territories, irrespective of geographical location, ethnic or religious composition, or level of economic development.


title: Freedom in the World

text: Mainwaring et alia (2001, p. 52) wrote that Freedom House's index had "two systematic biases: scores for leftist were tainted by political considerations, and changes in scores are sometimes driven by changes in their criteria rather than changes in real conditions." Nonetheless, when evaluated in Latin American countries yearly, Freedom House's index was very strongly and positively correlated with the index of Adam Przeworski and with the index of the authors themselves: They evaluated Pearson's coefficient of linear correlation between their index and Freedom House's index, which was 0.82; among these indices and the two others studied, the correlations were all between 0.80 and 0.86 (Mainwaring et alia, 2001, p. 53).


title: Freedom in the World

text: As previously quoted, Bollen criticized previous studies of "Freedom in the World" as anecdotal and inconclusive; they raised issues needing further study by scientific methods rather than anecdotes. Bollen studied the question of ideological bias using multivariate statistics. Using their factor-analytic model for human-rights measurements, Bollen and Paxton estimate that Gastil's method produces a bias of -0.38 standard deviations (s.d.) against Marxist–Leninist countries and a larger bias, +0.5 s.d., favoring Christian countries; similar results held for the methodology of Sussman (Bollen and Paxton, 2000, p. 585). In contrast, another method by a critic of "Freedom in the World" produced a bias for Leftist countries during the 1980s of at least +0.8 s.d., a bias that is "consistent with the general finding that political scientists are more favorable to leftist politics than is the general population" (Bollen and Paxton, p. 585).


title: Freedom in the World

text: Criticisms of the reception and uses of the "Freedom in the World" report have been noted by Diego Giannone:


title: Freedom in the World

text: In "Political and ideological aspects in the measurement of democracy: the Freedom House case" (2010) which reviewed changes to the methodology since 1990, Diego Giannone concluded that "because of the changes in methodology over time and the strict interconnection between methodological and political aspects, the FH data do not offer an unbroken and politically neutral time series, such that they should not be used for cross-time analyses even for the development of first hypotheses. The internal consistency of the data series is open to question."


title: Freedom in the World

text: On this topic, the Freedom House website replies that they have "made a number of modest methodological changes to adapt to evolving ideas about political rights and civil liberties. At the same time, the time series data are not revised retroactively, and any changes to the methodology are introduced incrementally in order to ensure the comparability of the ratings from year to year."


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: Raw is a brand of the American professional wrestling promotion WWE that was established on March 25, 2002. Brands are divisions of WWE's roster where wrestlers are assigned to perform on a weekly basis when a brand extension is in effect. Wrestlers assigned to Raw primarily appear on the brand's weekly television program, "Monday Night Raw", also referred to simply as "Raw". It is one of WWE's two main brands, along with SmackDown, collectively referred to as WWE's main roster. The brand was discontinued for a period between August 2011 and July 2016.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: In addition to Raw's main television program, less-utilized wrestlers also appear on the brand's supplementary show, "Main Event". Raw's wrestlers also perform on the branded and co-branded pay-per-view and livestreaming events. During the first brand split (2002–2011), Raw wrestlers also competed on the former supplementary show, "Heat", and on "ECW" under a talent exchange program with the former ECW brand, while during the second brand split (2016–present), the brand's wrestlers have appeared in the interbrand "Worlds Collide" and "Mixed Match Challenge" events. Additionally during the second split, Raw's cruiserweight wrestlers competed on "205 Live" when WWE's revived cruiserweight division was exclusive to Raw from 2016 to 2018 before 205 Live became its own brand.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: In early-to-mid-2002, then World Wrestling Federation (WWF) underwent a process they called the "brand extension". The WWF divided itself into two "de facto" wrestling promotions with separate rosters, storylines and authority figures. "Raw" and "SmackDown!" would host each division, give its name to the division and essentially compete against each other. The split came about as a result of the WWF purchasing their two biggest competitors, World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW); and the subsequent doubling of its roster and championships. The brand extension was publicly announced by Linda McMahon during a telecast of "Raw" on March 25 and became official the next day.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: At the time, this excluded the WWE Undisputed Championship and the original WWE Women's Championship as those WWE titles would be defended on both shows. In September 2002, then WWE Undisputed Champion Brock Lesnar refused to defend the title on "Raw", in effect causing his title to become exclusive to SmackDown. The following week on "Raw", Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff awarded a newly instated World Heavyweight Championship to Raw's designated number one contender Triple H. Because the WWE Undisputed Championship was now a SmackDown exclusive title, it was no longer referred to as "undisputed". Following this, the original WWE Women's Championship soon became a Raw exclusive title as well. As a result of the brand extension, an annual "draft lottery" was instituted to exchange members of each roster and generally refresh the lineups.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: Raw was the home brand for many top WWE stars including Triple H, Ric Flair, Batista, Randy Orton, Chris Benoit, Goldberg, Booker T, Chris Jericho, Christian, Shawn Michaels, John Cena, Kane, Trish Stratus, Lita and Stacy Keibler.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: The 2005 draft was held on the June 6 episode of "Raw". The first draft lottery pick was then WWE Champion John Cena, thus moving the WWE Championship to Raw and having two titles on the brand. Eventually, then World Heavyweight Champion Batista was drafted to SmackDown as the last draft pick, leaving only the WWE Championship on "Raw". In the 2008 draft lottery, CM Punk got drafted to Raw and then won the World Heavyweight Championship from Edge, who was a SmackDown wrestler. Triple H, who was the WWE Champion at the time, got drafted to SmackDown while Kane, who was the then ECW Champion, got drafted to Raw. After the draft lottery in 2009, the WWE Championship was brought back to Raw when Triple H was drafted from SmackDown while the World Heavyweight Championship was brought back to SmackDown when Edge defeated John Cena to win the title at Backlash.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: On the August 29, 2011, episode of "Raw", it was announced that performers from Raw and SmackDown were no longer exclusive to their respective brand. Subsequently, championships previously exclusive to one show or the other were available for wrestlers from any show to compete for—this would mark the end of the brand extension as all programming and live events featured the full WWE roster. In a 2013 interview with "Advertising Age", Stephanie McMahon explained that WWE's decision to end the brand extension was due to wanting their content to flow across television and online platforms.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: On May 25, 2016, it was announced that WWE would be reintroducing the brand split in July, with distinctive rosters for both Raw and SmackDown. On the July 11 episode of "Raw", Vince McMahon named Stephanie McMahon the Commissioner of "Raw". The draft took place on the live premiere of "SmackDown" on July 19, with the General Managers of the respective brands hand-picking the wrestlers for their brands. Raw's Commissioner Stephanie McMahon and General Manager Mick Foley created a new championship—the WWE Universal Championship. This championship would be exclusive to the Raw brand, as the WWE World Championship had become exclusive to the SmackDown brand. Clash of Champions was scheduled as the reintroduction of the cruiserweight division and the first Raw-exclusive pay-per-view since January 2007, whereas Elimination Chamber was scheduled as the final Raw-exclusive pay-per-view two years later. Subsequently, this saw all upcoming pay-per-views interbranded after WrestleMania 34.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: Beginning in December 2021, talents from Raw begin to appear on "NXT 2.0". Dave Meltzer of the "Wrestling Observer Radio" reported that a Raw-NXT crossover between their talents as a way to help boost NXT 2.0 ratings as both shows air on the USA Network.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: Initially, the WWE Undisputed Championship and the original WWE Women's Championship were available to both brands. The other championships were exclusive to the brand the champion was a part of. When the brand extension began, Raw received the Intercontinental Championship and the European Championship when their respective holders were drafted. In September 2002, the WWE Undisputed Championship became the WWE Championship again and was moved to SmackDown, prompting Raw General Manager Eric Bischoff to create the World Heavyweight Championship for Raw.<ref name="WWE/World"></ref> Shortly thereafter, Raw became the exclusive brand for the World Tag Team Championship, the Intercontinental Championship and the original WWE Women's Championship.


title: Raw (WWE brand)

text: On July 19, 2016, the brand extension was brought back and for the first time ever the draft was held on "SmackDown Live". Raw drafted the WWE Women's Championship, the United States Championship and the WWE Tag Team Championship. With the WWE Championship being defended exclusively on SmackDown, Stephanie McMahon and Mick Foley introduced the WWE Universal Championship to be Raw's world title. At Crown Jewel on October 31, 2019, SmackDown wrestler "The Fiend" Bray Wyatt won the WWE Universal Championship, thus taking the title to SmackDown. On the next night's episode of "SmackDown", WWE Champion Brock Lesnar quit SmackDown and moved to Raw, bringing the title with him. Soon after, Lesnar lost the WWE Championship to Drew McIntyre at WrestleMania 36. Randy Orton then defeated Drew McIntyre at Hell in a Cell 2020 to win the championship for the 10th time. However, McIntyre regained the championship on the November 16 episode of Raw.


title: Ambulance

text: An ambulance is a medically equipped vehicle which transports patients to treatment facilities, such as hospitals. Typically, out-of-hospital medical care is provided to the patient during the transport.


title: Ambulance

text: Ambulances are used to respond to medical emergencies by emergency medical services (EMS). For this purpose, they are generally equipped with flashing warning lights and sirens. They can rapidly transport paramedics and other first responders to the scene, carry equipment for administering emergency care and transport patients to hospital or other definitive care. Most ambulances use a design based on vans or pickup trucks. Others take the form of motorcycles, buses, limousines, aircraft and boats.


title: Ambulance

text: Generally, vehicles count as an ambulance if they can transport patients. However, it varies by jurisdiction as to whether a non-emergency patient transport vehicle (also called an ambulette) is counted as an ambulance. These vehicles are not usually (although there are exceptions) equipped with life-support equipment, and are usually crewed by staff with fewer qualifications than the crew of emergency ambulances. Conversely, EMS agencies may also have emergency response vehicles that cannot transport patients. These are known by names such as nontransporting EMS vehicles, fly-cars or response vehicles.


title: Ambulance

text: The term "ambulance" comes from the Latin word ""ambulare"" as meaning "to walk or move about" which is a reference to early medical care where patients were moved by lifting or wheeling. The word originally meant a moving hospital, which follows an army in its movements. Ambulances (Ambulancias in Spanish) were first used for emergency transport in 1487 by the Spanish forces during the siege of Málaga by the Catholic Monarchs against the Emirate of Granada. During the American Civil War vehicles for conveying the wounded off the field of battle were called ambulance wagons. Field hospitals were still called ambulances during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 and in the Serbo-Turkish war of 1876 even though the wagons were first referred to as ambulances about 1854 during the Crimean War.


title: Ambulance

text: The history of the ambulance begins in ancient times, with the use of carts to transport incurable patients by force. Ambulances were first used for emergency transport in 1487 by the Spanish, and civilian variants were put into operation during the 1830s. Advances in technology throughout the 19th and 20th centuries led to the modern self-powered ambulances.


title: Ambulance

text: Ambulances can be grouped into types depending on whether or not they transport patients, and under what conditions. In some cases, ambulances may fulfill more than one function (such as combining emergency ambulance care with patient transport:


title: Ambulance

text: In North America (US and Canada), there are four types of ambulances. There are Type I, Type II, Type III, and Type IV. Type I is based upon a heavy truck chassis-cab with a custom rear compartment that is often referred to as a "box" or "module." Type I ambulances are primarily used for Advanced Life Support (ALS), also referred to as Mobile Intensive Care Unit (MICU) in some jurisdictions, and rescue work. A Type II ambulance is based on a commercial heavy-duty van with few modifications except for a raised roof and a secondary air conditioning unit for the rear of the vehicle. These types of ambulances are primarily used for Basic Life Support (BLS) and transfer of patients but it is not uncommon to find them used for advanced life support and rescue. Type III is a van chassis-cab but with a custom-made rear compartment and has the same uses as Type I ambulances. Type IV is for smaller ad hoc patient transfer that use smaller utility vehicles in which passenger vehicles and trucks would have difficulty in traversing, such as large industrial complexes, commercial venues, and special events with large crowds; they generally do not fall under Federal Regulations.


title: Ambulance

text: Ambulances can be based on many types of vehicle although emergency and disaster conditions may lead to other vehicles serving as makeshift ambulances:


title: Ambulance

text: Ambulance design must take into account local conditions and infrastructure. Maintained roads are necessary for road-going ambulances to arrive on scene and then transport the patient to a hospital, though in rugged areas four-wheel drive or all-terrain vehicles can be used. Fuel must be available and service facilities are necessary to maintain the vehicle.


title: Ambulance

text: Methods of summoning (e.g. telephone) and dispatching ambulances usually rely on electronic equipment, which itself often relies on an intact power grid. Similarly, modern ambulances are equipped with two-way radios or cellular telephones to enable them to contact hospitals, either to notify the appropriate hospital of the ambulance's pending arrival, or, in cases where physicians do not form part of the ambulance's crew, to confer with a physician for medical oversight.


title: Ambulance

text: Ambulances often have two stages of manufacturing. The first is frequently the manufacture of light or medium truck chassis-cabs or full-size vans (or in some places, cars) such as Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota, or Ford. The second manufacturer (known as second stage manufacturer) modifies the vehicle (which is sometimes purchased incomplete, having no body or interior behind the driver's seat) and turns it into an ambulance by adding bodywork, emergency vehicle equipment, and interior fittings. This is done by one of two methods – either coachbuilding, where the modifications are started from scratch and built on to the vehicle, or using a modular system, where a pre-built 'box' is put on to the empty chassis of the ambulance, and then finished off.


title: Ambulance

text: Modern ambulances are typically powered by internal combustion engines, which can be powered by any conventional fuel, including diesel, gasoline or liquefied petroleum gas, depending on the preference of the operator and the availability of different options. Colder regions often use gasoline-powered engines, as diesels can be difficult to start when they are cold. Warmer regions may favor diesel engines, as they are more efficient and more durable. Diesel power is sometimes chosen due to safety concerns, after a series of fires involving gasoline-powered ambulances during the 1980s. These fires were ultimately attributed in part to gasoline's higher volatility in comparison to diesel fuel. The type of engine may be determined by the manufacturer: in the past two decades, Ford would only sell vehicles for ambulance conversion if they are diesel-powered. Beginning in 2010, Ford will sell its ambulance chassis with a gasoline engine in order to meet emissions requirements.


title: Ambulance

text: Many regions have prescribed standards which ambulances should, or must, meet in order to be used for their role. These standards may have different levels which reflect the type of patient which the ambulance is expected to transport (for instance specifying a different standard for routine patient transport than high dependency), or may base standards on the size of vehicle.


title: Ambulance

text: For instance, in Europe, the European Committee for Standardization publishes the standard CEN 1789, which specifies minimum compliance levels across the build of ambulance, including crash resistance, equipment levels, and exterior marking. In the United States, standards for ambulance design have existed since 1976, where the standard is published by the General Services Administration and known as KKK-A-1822. This standard has been revised several times, and is currently in version 'F' change notice #13, known as KKK-A-1822F. The National Fire Protection Association has also published a design standard, NFPA 1917, which offers an alternative to KKK-A-1822F. The Commission on Accreditation of Ambulance Services (CAAS) has published its Ground Vehicle Standard for Ambulances v2.0, effective July 2019. This standard is similar to the KKK-A-1822F and NFPA 1917–2019 specifications. The decision on which of the current (3) standards to require is left up to each individual state legislature or EMS director. Some states have no specific requirement, while others specify which standard is acceptable. Others, yet, allow the end user to decide which standard to comply to.


title: Ambulance

text: The move towards standardisation is now reaching countries without a history of prescriptive codes, such as India, which approved its first national standard for ambulance construction in 2013.


title: Ambulance

text: Ambulances, like other emergency vehicles, are required to operate in most weather conditions, including those during which civilian drivers often elect to stay off the road. Also, the ambulance crew's responsibilities to their patient often preclude their use of safety devices such as seat belts. Research has shown that ambulances are more likely to be involved in motor vehicle collisions resulting in injury or death than either fire trucks or police cars. Unrestrained occupants, particularly those riding in the patient-care compartment, are particularly vulnerable. When compared to civilian vehicles of similar size, one study found that on a per-accident basis, ambulance collisions tend to involve more people, and result in more injuries. An 11-year retrospective study concluded in 2001 found that although most fatal ambulance crashes in the United States occurred during emergency runs, they typically occurred on improved, straight, dry roads, during clear weather. Furthermore, paramedics are also at risk in ambulances while helping patients, as 27 paramedics died during ambulance trips in the US between 1991 and 2006.


title: Ambulance

text: In addition to the equipment directly used for the treatment of patients, ambulances may be fitted with a range of additional equipment which is used in order to facilitate patient care. This could include:


title: Ambulance

text: In parts of the world that lack a high level of infrastructure, ambulances are designed to meet local conditions, being built using intermediate technology. Ambulances can also be trailers, which are pulled by bicycles, motorcycles, tractors, or animals. Animal-powered ambulances can be particularly useful in regions that are subject to flooding. Motorcycles fitted with sidecars (or motorcycle ambulances) are also used, though they are subject to some of the same limitations as more traditional over-the-road ambulances. The level of care provided by these ambulances varies between merely providing transport to a medical clinic to providing on-scene and continuing care during transport.


title: Ambulance

text: The design of intermediate technology ambulances must take into account not only the operation and maintenance of the ambulance, but its construction as well. The robustness of the design becomes more important, as does the nature of the skills required to properly operate the vehicle. Cost-effectiveness can be a high priority.


title: Ambulance

text: Emergency ambulances are highly likely to be involved in hazardous situations, including incidents such as a road traffic collision, as these emergencies create people who are likely to be in need of treatment. They are required to gain access to patients as quickly as possible, and in many countries, are given dispensation from obeying certain traffic laws. For instance, they may be able to treat a red traffic light or stop sign as a yield sign ('give way'), or be permitted to break the speed limit. Generally, the priority of the response to the call will be assigned by the dispatcher, but the priority of the return will be decided by the ambulance crew based on the severity of the patient's illness or injury. Patients in significant danger to life and limb (as determined by triage) require urgent treatment by advanced medical personnel, and because of this need, emergency ambulances are often fitted with passive and active visual and/or audible warnings to alert road users.


title: Ambulance

text: Passive visual warnings are usually part of the design of the vehicle, and involve the use of high contrast patterns. Older ambulances (and those in developing countries) are more likely to have their pattern painted on, whereas modern ambulances generally carry retro-reflective designs, which reflects light from car headlights or torches. Popular patterns include 'checker board' (alternate coloured squares, sometimes called 'Battenburg', named after a type of cake), chevrons (arrowheads – often pointed towards the front of the vehicle if on the side, or pointing vertically upwards on the rear) or stripes along the side (these were the first type of retro-reflective device introduced, as the original reflective material, invented by 3M, only came in tape form). In addition to retro-reflective markings, some services now have the vehicles painted in a bright (sometimes fluorescent) yellow or orange for maximum visual impact, though classic white or red are also common. Fire department-operated ambulances are often painted red to match the fire apparatuses.


title: Ambulance

text: Another passive marking form is the word "ambulance" (or local language variant) spelled out in reverse on the front of the vehicle. This enables drivers of other vehicles to more easily identify an approaching ambulance in their rear view mirrors. Ambulances may display the name of their owner or operator, and an emergency telephone number for the ambulance service.


title: Ambulance

text: Ambulances may also carry an emblem (either as part of the passive warning markings or not), such as a Red Cross, Red Crescent or Red Crystal (collective known as the Protective Symbols). These are symbols laid down by the Geneva Convention, and all countries signatory to it agree to restrict their use to either (1) Military Ambulances or (2) the national Red Cross or Red Crescent society. Use by any other person, organization or agency is in breach of international law. The protective symbols are designed to indicate to all people (especially combatants in the case of war) that the vehicle is neutral and is not to be fired upon, hence giving protection to the medics and their casualties, although this has not always been adhered to. In Israel, Magen David Adom, the Red Cross member organization use a red Star of David, but this does not have recognition beyond Israeli borders, where they must use the Red Crystal.


title: Ambulance

text: The Star of Life is widely used, and was originally designed and governed by the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, because the Red Cross symbol is legally protected by both National and international law.