title: 1900 (film)

text: 1900 (, "Twentieth Century") is a 1976 epic historical drama film directed by Bernardo Bertolucci and featuring an international ensemble cast including Robert De Niro, Gérard Depardieu, Dominique Sanda, Francesca Bertini, Laura Betti, Stefania Casini, Ellen Schwiers, Sterling Hayden, Alida Valli, Romolo Valli, Stefania Sandrelli, Donald Sutherland, and Burt Lancaster. Set in Bertolucci's ancestral region of Emilia, the film chronicles the lives and friendship of two men – the landowning Alfredo Berlinghieri (De Niro) and the peasant Olmo Dalcò (Depardieu) – as they witness and participate in the political conflicts between fascism and communism that took place in Italy in the first half of the 20th century. The film premiered out of competition at the 1976 Cannes Film Festival.


title: 1900 (film)

text: With a runtime of 317 minutes in its original version, "1900" is known for being one of the longest commercially released films ever made. Its great length led to its being presented in two parts when originally released in many countries, including Italy, East and West Germany, Denmark, Belgium, Norway, Sweden, Colombia, Pakistan and Japan. In other countries, such as the United States, a single edited-down version of the film was released. "1900" has become widely regarded as a cult classic, and has received several special edition home video releases from a variety of distributors. A restoration of the film premiered out of competition at the 74th Venice International Film Festival in 2017.


title: 1900 (film)

text: The film opens on 25 April 1945, the day Italy is liberated from the fascists. The peasants on an estate in Emilia-Romagna are shown attempting to join the partisans and place the owner of the estate, Alfredo Berlinghieri, under arrest. A middle-aged man named Attila and woman named Regina are seen attempting to flee the farm but are attacked by women labourers wielding pitchforks.


title: 1900 (film)

text: The narrative moves back to the start of the century. Both born on the day of the death of composer Giuseppe Verdi – 27 January 1901 – Alfredo Berlinghieri and Olmo Dalcò come from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Alfredo is from a family of wealthy landowners led by his popular grandfather (also called Alfredo or Alfredo the Elder) and grows up with his cousin Regina. Olmo is an illegitimate peasant born to an unmarried young woman who already has had several children. His grandfather, Leo, is the foreman and peasants' spokesman who carries out a duel of wits with the elder Alfredo which masks a deep-seated mutual respect. As Alfredo is somewhat rebellious and despises the falseness of his family, in particular his weak but abusive and cynical father Giovanni, he befriends Olmo, who has been raised as a socialist. During this time, Leo leads strikes against the unfair conditions on the farm.


title: 1900 (film)

text: The two are friends throughout their childhood, despite the social differences of their families, and spend much time in one another's company. Olmo enlists with the Italian army in 1917 during World War I and goes off to fight while Alfredo learns how to run his family's large plantation under the guidance of his father. Olmo returns from the war over a year later and his friendship with Alfredo continues. However, Giovanni, the "padrone" since the elder Alfredo's suicide, has hired Attila Mellanchini as his foreman. Taken with fascism in a similar way that Giovanni has been, Attila eventually incorporates his new belief system in his dealings with the Berlinghieri workers; he treats them cruelly, and wins Regina and Giovanni over to his side. In the 1920s, Olmo enters into a relationship with Anita, a down-to-earth woman who shares his enthusiasm for the cause of workers' rights. Together, Olmo and Anita lead several fervent protests against the landowners.


title: 1900 (film)

text: Following the death of Giovanni, Alfredo becomes the new "padrone" and marries Ada, a gorgeous, demure Frenchwoman. During the 1930s, he proves to be a weak "padrone", repeatedly bending to the whim of the fascists. Ada sinks into alcoholism when confronted with the reality of the emptiness of her marriage to Alfredo; she sympathises to some extent with the workers and despises Alfredo for his failure to stand up to Attila.


title: 1900 (film)

text: Meanwhile, Olmo's wife Anita dies in childbirth, but manages to bring another member into the community; a daughter whom Olmo names after his late wife. Olmo's daughter, Anita the Younger, grows into a young and resourceful teenager who is supportive of her father's socialist beliefs. As Olmo takes on his fateful role of leader among the poor farmers and their families, he clashes several times with Attila. The latter, whose psychopathic tendencies have been revealed via the murders of a cat and a small boy (the latter at Alfredo and Ada's wedding and for which Olmo was initially blamed), commits further atrocities such as killing the elderly Mrs. Pioppi in order to steal her land and home. However, he becomes a fresh target of ridicule at the hands of the peasants; led by Olmo, they take turns throwing manure at him after Attila tries to sell Olmo like a slave. Olmo flees to keep from being killed by the fascists, and Attila reacts to the humiliation by tearing up Olmo's house with his blackshirts before caging the peasants on the Berlinghieri compound and indiscriminately shooting them. Alfredo fires Attila, but discovers that Ada has already left him.


title: 1900 (film)

text: The story comes full circle when the power shifts after World War II in 1945, and the ruling class is at the mercy of the jovial yet bitter farm labourers. Attila and Regina, having been apprehended, are imprisoned in the Berlinghieri pigsty, and the women peasants cut off Regina's hair. Attila gleefully confesses to the murders he has committed over the years and is executed on the spot. Olmo returns to the farm in time to see Alfredo being brought before a workers' tribunal to stand trial. Many workers come forth and accuse Alfredo of letting them suffer in squalor while he profited from their labours, although he did not support fascism. Alfredo is sentenced to death, but his execution is prevented after Olmo explains that the "padrone" is dead, so Alfredo Berlinghieri is alive, suggesting that the social system has been overthrown with the end of the war. As soon as the verdict is reached, however, representatives and soldiers of the new government, which represents the Communist Party, Christian Democrats, the Action Party, Liberals, and Socialists arrive and call on the peasants to turn in their arms. Olmo convinces the peasants to do so, overcoming their scepticism. Alone with Olmo, Alfredo declares "The "padrone" is alive", indicating the struggle between the working and ruling classes is destined to continue.


title: 1900 (film)

text: The film ends with Alfredo and Olmo playfully tackling each other as they did in their childhood, then the scene suddenly jumps forward several years to the present day with the elderly Alfredo and Olmo walking along a railway track. Alfredo lies down in the center of the tracks as his younger self would do as a game while a train would run over the tracks, but Alfredo would emerge unharmed as he would lie perfectly still. Alfredo appears to lay himself across the tracks as a train approaches in a clear attempt at suicide as if he has chosen to end his life at that time. The final shot shows the train traveling over the younger Alfredo lying perfectly still in the center of the tracks.


title: 1900 (film)

text: The original director's cut of the film runs 317 minutes (5 hours, 17 minutes) and was released in two parts in Italy. Alberto Grimaldi, the film's producer, was contractually obligated to deliver a 195-minute (3 hour, 15 minute) version to Paramount Pictures for release in the United States and Canada. Bertolucci originally wanted to release the film in two parts, but, on Grimaldi's refusal, 20th Century Fox picked up distribution in the United States, dropping out only when Bertolucci declined to shorten the film by 80 minutes.


title: 1900 (film)

text: Grimaldi then locked Bertolucci out of the editing room and assembled a 180-minute cut. Bertolucci, horrified at Grimaldi's cut, decided to compromise. His 247-minute (4 hour, 7 minute) version was the one initially released in the United States. In 1987, the Bravo channel broadcast the uncut version with English-dubbed dialogue. Later in 1991, the film was restored to its original length and shown in a limited release. The film has been shown uncut on Sky Movies and Film 4.


title: 1900 (film)

text: When Bertolucci released his 317-minute version to theaters, the Motion Picture Association of America re-classified the film with an NC-17 rating; the 245-minute American cut, the other version officially available on video in the United States, still retained its R rating. In 2006, Paramount surrendered the NC-17 rating of the uncut version, then released it as unrated on DVD on 5 December 2006. This same uncut version was released on Blu-ray Disc in the U.S. by Olive Films on 15 May 2012.


title: 1900 (film)

text: "1900" won the 1977 Bodil Award for Best Non-American Film and received 2nd place in the National Society of Film Critics Award for Best Cinematography.


title: 1900 (film)

text: Paramount released the shorter version in America theatrically, and the version has received mixed reviews from American critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a 57% rating based on 21 reviews, with a weighted average of 6.1/10.


title: 1900 (film)

text: The music for the movie was composed by Ennio Morricone, who included several melodies from Verdi operas.


title: Discovery Family

text: Discovery Family is an American cable television channel co-owned by Warner Bros. Discovery and Hasbro Entertainment.


title: Discovery Family

text: The channel was originally launched by Discovery Communications on October 7, 1996 as Discovery Kids, a spin-off of Discovery Channel which primarily featured science and nature-themed programming aimed towards a youth audience. In 2010, Discovery Kids was relaunched as The Hub (later Hub Network) as part of a joint venture with Hasbro led by veteran executive Margaret Loesch. The relaunch pivoted the channel towards a general entertainment format, with dayparts targeting preschool, youth, and family audiences respectively. Some of its original programming would include adaptations of Hasbro-owned properties, such as "Family Game Night" and "".


title: Discovery Family

text: In 2014, Loesch stepped down, and the network was rebranded as Discovery Family; at this time, Discovery began programming the channel's primetime schedule with family-oriented factual programming (including Discovery library programs), while leaving Hasbro responsible for programming its daytime schedule as a minority partner.


title: Discovery Family

text: Discovery Communications launched Discovery Kids Channel on October 7, 1996, as part of a suite of four new digital cable channels that included Discovery Travel & Living, Discovery Civilization, and Science Channel. Upon its launch, the network primarily offered adventure, nature, and science-themed programs aimed towards a children's audience between ages 6 and 11. Marjorie Kaplan, the network's senior vice president, explained that the creation of Discovery Kids was influenced primarily by kids, who were watching its parent network's programming together with their parents.


title: Discovery Family

text: From 1996 to 2000, Discovery Kids was carried by only a select few cable television providers. In 2001, the channel was shortened to Discovery Kids and late in that year, it was carried in at least 15 million homes. In September 2001, a Canadian version of Discovery Kids was launched in partnership with Corus Entertainment.


title: Discovery Family

text: In December 2001, Discovery Kids announced a partnership with NBC, in which it would produce a new Saturday morning block for the network known as "Discovery Kids on NBC", beginning in September 2002. The block, which replaced a teen-oriented block consisting only of sitcoms, featured programming that met the U.S. Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) educational programming guidelines, including new original series (such as the reality television series "Endurance"), existing Discovery Kids programming, along with children's spin-offs of programs from sister networks, such as Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.


title: Discovery Family

text: With the launch of the new block, Discovery Kids also branched out into animated programming with the premieres of "Kenny the Shark" and "Tutenstein". In March 2006, Discovery declined to renew its contract with NBC for its Saturday morning block, citing a desire to focus exclusively on the Discovery Kids cable channel. Since the launch of the NBC block, Discovery Kids had grown its cable carriage to over 43 million homes. NBC would replace the Discovery Kids block with Qubo in September 2006.


title: Discovery Family

text: On April 30, 2009, toy manufacturer and multimedia company Hasbro announced that it would be forming a joint venture with Discovery Communications to relaunch Discovery Kids as a new family-oriented television channel, paying $300 million for 50% ownership of the network. Under the arrangement, Discovery would be in charge of handling advertising sales and distribution for the new service, while Hasbro would be involved in acquiring and producing programming. While educational series (including those carried over from Discovery Kids) were slated to be maintained on the schedule, plans called for new original programs based on Hasbro-owned franchises such as "G.I. Joe", "My Little Pony", "Transformers" and game shows adapted from its board game brands. Discovery Communications was looking for a business partner to draw the improved types of advertisers on the channel.


title: Discovery Family

text: In July 2009, the joint venture appointed veteran television executive Margaret Loesch as its chief executive officer; prior to this, Loesch had led Fox Kids, and served as president and CEO of Marvel Productions from 1984 to 1990, assisting in the production of several Hasbro-based cartoons such as "", "My Little Pony 'n Friends," and "The Transformers."


title: Discovery Family

text: In January 2010, Discovery and Hasbro announced that the new network would be known as The Hub; this was soon followed two months later with the announcement that The Hub would launch on October 10, 2010. The network's original imaging was developed by Troika Design Group and built around an emblem nicknamed the "hubble" – which was designed to embody a "catalyst of action and imagination". The final logo design was the result of a number of drafts by Troika designers, some of which had incorporated typography similar to Hasbro's logo.


title: Discovery Family

text: The relaunched channel, which would compete against established children services such as Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, and Nickelodeon, planned to continue targeting Discovery Kids' main demographic of children aged 2–12 (a market which staff felt was being abandoned by its competitors in favor of tweens) but also planned to feature a prime-time block with family-oriented programming; it was originally targeted at preteens and teenagers aged 9–14. Launch programming included the game show "Family Game Night", animated television series "Pound Puppies", "" – a new animated entry in the "My Little Pony" franchise developed by Lauren Faust, and "Deltora Quest" alongside reruns of the Jim Henson series "Fraggle Rock" and the preschool-oriented programs "Animal Mechanicals" and "The WotWots". The channel promised to keep the proportion of programs supplied from Hasbro to "less than 20%" of the total of its programming.


title: Discovery Family

text: The Children's Television Act (CTA) in the United States limits the commercial time during children's programming, and prohibits television broadcasters from airing advertisements for products associated with a program during or in timeslots adjacent to the show itself. During time slots that targeted preschool audiences (aired during a block branded as "HubBub"), The Hub was to broadcast six minutes of advertisements per hour, below 12 minutes per hour on weekdays, and 10.5 minutes per hour on weekends as mandated by the CTA. Additionally, it was planning to broadcast 10.5 minutes of advertisements per hour the rest of the day throughout the week, a policy upheld from its previous incarnation as Discovery Kids. The channel was planning to sell its advertising inventories to toy companies other than Hasbro as well; as reported by "Advertising Age" in May 2010, The Hub was even in talks with Mattel, one of Hasbro's major competitors in the toy industry. The channel, however, also planned to restrict certain categories of advertisements, including junk foods and "advertisers in the sugar category".


title: Discovery Family

text: There have been reported concerns that the channel would be exploited by Hasbro as a platform to plug its products. Ahead of the channel's relaunch as The Hub, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) called the whole project an "infomercial", and stated that they would be monitoring the channel. CCFC founder Susan Linn said "It will make a mockery of existing ad limits and the current prohibition of product placement in children's television" at the April 2009 announcement of the Discovery-Hasbro joint venture, and told "Los Angeles Times" that "[t]he notion of a toy company owning a television channel for the sole purpose of promoting their toys is egregious practice" in the days before the channel's relaunch. Loesch stated that The Hub's goal was to be "vibrant" and "diverse" in its programming, and that the channel would not purely be a marketing vehicle for Hasbro products. Loesch also said that Hasbro was partnering with Discovery Communications for the channel, and declared "we have programming from them and are using their DNA".


title: Discovery Family

text: To promote The Hub, sneak peeks of "Cosmic Quantum Ray", "The Twisted Whiskers Show", and "Family Game Night" aired on Science Channel, Animal Planet, and TLC respectively. Discovery Kids' relaunch as The Hub was preceded by a marathon of "Kenny the Shark" (broadcast under the @DK block), running from 6:00 to 10:00 a.m. ET. Immediately after, The Hub premiered with "Sneak Peak Sunday", a sampler lineup of programs set to air on the channel in the coming months. "The Twisted Whiskers Show" was the first program to air of the channel, followed by episodes of "Dennis and Gnasher", "Cosmic Quantum Ray", "Atomic Betty", and the network premiere of the 2004 film "".


title: Discovery Family

text: In a June 2011 debt filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Discovery Communications indicated that the channel may be worth less than recently believed, based on low viewership figures. The management of The Hub subsequently underwent a fair value analysis of the channel. A Discovery Communications spokesperson considered the action to be "a pro-forma accounting exercise", and noted that Discovery felt "very positive and encouraged by The Hub's early days' performance, and ability to grow its audience in the future."


title: Discovery Family

text: In March 2013, The Hub picked up "Stan Lee's Mighty 7", an animated pilot film that aired on February 1, 2014. The network also began to phase in an amended branding as the Hub Network. On January 13, 2014, Hub Network introduced an updated logo, along with a new imaging campaign, "Making Family Fun", which was developed by the Los Angeles-based agency Oishii Creative.


title: Discovery Family

text: On June 12, 2014, it was reported that Margaret Loesch would step down from her role as Hub Network president and CEO by the end of the year. On September 17, 2014, "The Wall Street Journal" reported that Discovery Communications was preparing to acquire a controlling stake in Hub Network from Hasbro and then retool it as Discovery Family. Along with Discovery's CFO Andrew Warren, Hasbro staff acknowledged that increasing competition in the children's media landscape – especially by subscription video-on-demand services such as Netflix – had an effect on the overall performance of the network and Hasbro's original content. As it was majority-owned by a competitor, other major toy companies such as Mattel refused to purchase advertising time on Hub Network, affecting its ability to air advertising that targeted its main audience; by 2014, the network had made only $9 million per year. Discovery staff was also unable to display a full commitment to Hub Network's operation, due to factors such as the troubled launch of the Oprah Winfrey Network. Believing that they had overvalued its stake in the venture, Hasbro decided to cede the operation of the network to Discovery so it could focus more on content, and its core toy business.


title: Discovery Family

text: Discovery and Hasbro publicly announced the planned rebranding on September 25, 2014, Hasbro's CEO Brian Goldner explained that Discovery Family would be the "next chapter" in its joint venture with Discovery, "[combining] highly rated award-winning storytelling around Hasbro's brands and Discovery's most popular non-fiction shows that appeal to both children and families alike." Following reports earlier in the year that Hub Network president Margaret Loesch would step down by the end of the year, Discovery acquired 10% of Hasbro's stake in the network, and Henry Schleiff replaced Loesch, who leads sister networks such as Destination America and Investigation Discovery.


title: Discovery Family

text: Hub Network was re-launched as Discovery Family on October 13, 2014 – just over four years since the original launch of The Hub. With these changes, Discovery Communications now held a 60% stake in the joint venture; Hasbro continued to hold a 40% stake in Discovery Family, and continued to program the network's daytime lineup with children's programming. Following the re-launch, the network's primetime lineup was replaced by reruns of family-oriented non-fiction programming from Discovery Channel's library. Henry Schleiff, who leads sister networks such as Destination America and Investigation Discovery, leads the re-launched network, with Tom Cosgrove (who previously served as CEO of Discovery Channel and Science) as general manager.


title: Discovery Family

text: In re-launching Hub Network, Discovery executives noted that there would be a larger emphasis on programming of interest to both children and their parents; Warren argued that since ABC Family had become, in his opinion, aimed towards teenage girls, there was a gap in the broadcasting industry for a new, family-oriented network. With these shifts in the network's operation, it was announced on October 7, 2014 that the "Transformers: Prime" follow-up ""–which was originally announced for Hub Network–would instead be picked up by Cartoon Network. Hasbro Studios president Stephen Davis felt that Cartoon Network was a more appropriate home for a "Transformers" series due to its male-oriented demographics, describing Hub Network's lineup as being "traditionally skewed towards girls". Other recent "Transformers" animated series preceding the original launch of The Hub also aired on Cartoon Network. Davis remarked that Hasbro was still "100% committed" to its joint venture with Discovery. Despite the move for "Robots in Disguise", fellow Hub Network "Transformers" series "" remained on Discovery Family for its third season.


title: Discovery Family

text: On February 7, 2022, Hasbro CFO Deborah Thomas stated that the company was exploring strategic alternatives for its stake in the channel, citing the growing shift towards cord cutting and streaming services. She noted that the channel had been a "terrific investment" that had "driven over a $1 billion in revenue for the company", but that there had been "changes" in the cable industry since. These discussions came ahead of the then-upcoming merger of Discovery Inc. with WarnerMedia to form Warner Bros. Discovery, a transaction which brought Discovery Family under common ownership with Cartoon Network. Following the merger, Discovery Family was placed under the oversight of Cartoon Network's president Michael Ouweleen.


title: Discovery Family

text: The channel's TV Everywhere app, Discovery Family Go, was discontinued on May 2, 2022. Its closure was only given about a week's warning. In August 2022, "Bloomberg" reported that Hasbro was considering selling or restructuring its entertainment assets (such as eOne). On September 24, 2022, the network's website was restructured to match its new look as a webpage on the Discovery website.


title: Discovery Family

text: The majority of Discovery Family's daytime programs are animated and live-action series tied to media franchises owned by Hasbro itself, with newer series produced through the Hasbro Studios and Entertainment One divisions, such as "Pound Puppies" and "Transformers: Rescue Bots". As the Hub Network, it also previously aired game shows tied to Hasbro's board games, such as "Family Game Night".


title: Discovery Family

text: One of the network's most noteworthy series has been "", an animated series produced as a part of the then-recent revival of Hasbro's My Little Pony franchise. The series not only became The Hub's highest-rated program within its target demographic of young girls, but attracted an unexpectedly significant cult following . Following the conclusion of the series on October 12, 2019, the animated spin-off series featuring its cast, "", premiered on Discovery Family on November 7, 2020.


title: Discovery Family

text: The Hatchery – a company co-founded by Margaret Loesch (who have served as the channel's president and CEO from 2009 until 2014) and Bruce Stein in 2003, and have its major stake acquired by American Greetings in 2004 – have supplied certain series to the channel, including "Dan Vs." and "". Aside from The Hatchery's productions, American Greetings have also supplied "Strawberry Shortcake's Berry Bitty Adventures" (part of the 2009 relaunch of Strawberry Shortcake, a property which was owned by AG until 2015), "The Twisted Whiskers Show", "Maryoku Yummy", and "" to the channel, having named Hasbro as the master toy licensee of Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake in 2008.


title: Discovery Family

text: The channel has also acquired new series unrelated to properties of Hasbro, The Hatchery and American Greetings, including "Animal Mechanicals", "The Aquabats! Super Show!", "Cosmic Quantum Ray", "Majors & Minors", "", "Secret Millionaires Club", and "SheZow".


title: Discovery Family

text: During its years as the Hub Network, the channel also aired reruns of other acquired series, such as "Fraggle Rock" and "", a collection of various Warner Bros. Animation series, such as "Batman Beyond", "", "", "Animaniacs", and "Tiny Toon Adventures", a few former Fox Kids shows such as "Goosebumps" and "", and various off-network sitcoms (at the end of the Hub Network's run, these included "Blossom", "Step by Step", and "Sister, Sister"); "Blossom", the only sitcom on Discovery Family's schedule, returned for a time in 2016. A limited amount of original Discovery Kids programming, such as "Adventure Camp" and "Flight 29 Down", remained on the lineup upon its launch as The Hub.


title: Discovery Family

text: Following the relaunch as Discovery Family in October 2014, Discovery began programming the channel's primetime schedule with family-oriented factual programming (including Discovery library programs), while leaving Hasbro responsible for programming its daytime schedule as a minority partner.


title: Discovery Family

text: The original programs commissioned for the channel in this timeslot include "Bake It Like Buddy", "From Wags to Riches with Bill Berloni", "My Dog's Crazy Animal Friends", "Reno, Set, Go!", "Secrets of America's Favorite Places" and burn-off the remaining episodes of season 9 of "Cake Boss".


title: Discovery Family

text: As of September 2018, approximately 55,238,000 American households (50.9% of households with television) receive Discovery Family.


title: Discovery Family

text: Discovery Family operates one feed nationally, and does not operate a timeshift feed for the west coast. A 1080i high-definition simulcast of the network was introduced alongside its re-launch as The Hub, with Dish Network, Verizon FiOS, and AT&T U-verse as the first to carry the HD feed.


title: Discovery Family

text: Based on numbers from Nielsen, "Variety" ranked Discovery Family as the 128th most-watched broadcast or cable network in the United States in 2021 based on total viewership.


title: Discovery Family

text: On March 31, 2016, the pan-EMEA version of Discovery World was re-launched as a regional version of Discovery Family. On September 14, 2017, a French version of Discovery Family was launched in France, until its shutdown on March 29, 2022.


title: Discovery Family

text: The pan-EMEA and French versions of Discovery Family never carried kid-oriented shows, as those supplying such programs to Discovery Family in the United States (including Hasbro) had pre-existing deals with other international networks.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Michael Farrand Bennet (born November 28, 1964) is an American attorney, businessman, and politician serving as the senior United States senator from Colorado, a seat he has held since 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, he was appointed to the seat when Senator Ken Salazar became Secretary of the Interior. Bennet previously worked as a managing director for the Anschutz Investment Company, chief of staff to Denver mayor (and his future Senate colleague) John Hickenlooper, and superintendent of Denver Public Schools.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet is the son of Douglas J. Bennet, a former State Department official and president of Wesleyan University. Early in his career, Bennet worked for Ohio Governor Richard Celeste. He received a Juris Doctor degree from Yale Law School, worked as a law clerk, and was counsel to the U.S. Deputy Attorney General during the administration of Bill Clinton.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet became superintendent of the Denver public school system in July 2005. He was appointed by Governor Bill Ritter to fill the U.S. Senate seat vacated by Ken Salazar when Salazar became Secretary of the Interior in January 2009. Bennet was elected in the 2010 Senate election, defeating Republican Ken Buck. He chaired the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) for the 2014 cycle and was reelected to the Senate in 2016 and 2022.


title: Michael Bennet

text: On May 2, 2019, Bennet announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination for president of the United States. He dropped out of the race on February 11, 2020, after a poor showing in the New Hampshire primary.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet was born in New Delhi, India. His mother is Susanne Christine Bennet (née Klejman), a retired elementary school librarian and Jewish Holocaust survivor who was born in 1938 in Warsaw, Poland, and immigrated to the United States with her family in 1950. Her parents survived imprisonment in the Warsaw Ghetto. His father is Douglas J. Bennet, who was born in New Jersey, and served as an aide to Chester Bowles, then the U.S. ambassador to India. Douglas Bennet ran the United States Agency for International Development under President Jimmy Carter, served as president and the CEO of National Public Radio (1983–93), and as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs in the Clinton administration (1993–95). His grandfather Douglas Bennet was an economic adviser in Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet grew up in Washington, D.C.; his father served as an aide to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, among other politicians. He was held back in second grade because of his dyslexia. He enrolled at St. Albans School, an elite all-boys preparatory school, and served as a page on Capitol Hill.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In 1987, Bennet earned his Bachelor of Arts in history from Wesleyan University, the alma mater of his father and grandfather. At Wesleyan he was a member of Beta Theta Pi. In 1993, Bennet earned his Juris Doctor from Yale Law School, where he was the editor-in-chief of the "Yale Law Journal".


title: Michael Bennet

text: From 1988 until 1990, when he left to attend Yale, he served as an aide to Ohio governor Richard Celeste. After law school he served as a law clerk for the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals and as an associate to Washington, D.C. attorney Lloyd Cutler. He then served as Counsel to the Deputy Attorney General during the Bill Clinton administration. His father, Douglas Bennet worked in the Clinton White House as well, as Assistant Secretary of State for International Organization Affairs. Following a stint as an assistant to the U.S. attorney in Connecticut, Bennet left the legal world and moved West. After briefly living in Montana, he moved with his fiancé to Colorado in 1997. Bennet worked for six years in Denver as managing director for the Anschutz Investment Company, where he led the reorganization of an oil company and helped consolidate three movie theater chains into the Regal Entertainment Group.


title: Michael Bennet

text: While working for Anschutz, Bennet befriended fellow Wesleyan alumnus John Hickenlooper, informally advising the latter's successful campaign for mayor of Denver. Moving back into public service, Bennet served for two years as Hickenlooper's Chief of Staff.


title: Michael Bennet

text: The Denver Board of Education selected Bennet as superintendent of Denver Public Schools on June 27, 2005, and he took office on July 1. He had no experience as a school administrator. Under Bennet's leadership, the Denver Public School system grew student enrollment, decreased dropout rates, and improved graduation rates and college enrollment. Those trends have continued since Bennet left the office. Bennet collaborated with educators and community members to develop the Denver Plan, a commitment to increase student success by focusing on higher expectations, better professional learning opportunities for educators, and deeper engagement with the community and stakeholders. Bennet and the City of Denver also partnered with private philanthropists to increase college enrollment and affordability for DPS graduates. The "Denver Post" said of his tenure, "Bennet has been a force—pushing reforms and steering the state's second-largest district to a culture of success."


title: Michael Bennet

text: In 2008 Bennet persuaded the Denver Board of Education to enter into a 30-year, $750 million financial bond transaction with variable interest rates designed to fluctuate as economic conditions changed. According to "The New York Times", "In short order, the transaction went awry because of stress in the credit markets, problems with the bond insurer and plummeting interest rates." As of 2010 the school system had paid $115 million in interest and other fees, at least $25 million more than it originally anticipated.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet was among the many officials whose names were circulated for United States Secretary of Education in the Obama administration, a position eventually filled by Arne Duncan. He and his wife were early Obama supporters during the 2008 Democratic primaries, and he was among those who advised Obama on education issues.


title: Michael Bennet

text: On January 3, 2009, Bennet was named by Colorado governor Bill Ritter to fill the seat in the United States Senate vacated by United States Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar on January 20. Ritter chose Bennet after interviewing several prominent Colorado Democrats, and Bennet took the job with the blessing of Hickenlooper. Upon taking office on January 21, 2009, he became the youngest senator in the 111th United States Congress for five days, until the appointment of Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and he said he would seek election at the end of Salazar's term in 2010.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In his January 2011 article in "Time" titled "Shaking Schools Up in an Already Tumultuous Year", Andrew J. Rotherham said of Bennet: "If the federal No Child Left Behind Act is modified this year, or if anything else of significance happens in Washington on education policy, this Colorado Democrat will be at the center of it."


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet ran for election for a full term as senator from Colorado in the 2010 election. On September 16, 2009, former Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff announced his campaign to challenge Bennet for the Democratic nomination. Bennet received endorsements from President Obama, U.S. Senator Mark Udall, and U.S. Representatives Betsy Markey, Jared Polis, and John Salazar of the Colorado congressional delegation. He raised $7 million and had a four-to-one cash advantage over Romanoff.


title: Michael Bennet

text: On August 10, 2010, Bennet defeated Romanoff in the primary and won his party's nomination, facing Republican candidate Ken Buck. The campaign became one of the most expensive in the country, with the candidates spending a reported $15 million combined, and outside groups another $30 million. Bennet portrayed Buck as an extremist conservative opposed to abortion and direct election of senators, while Buck and the groups supporting him characterized Bennet as a big-spending liberal.


title: Michael Bennet

text: On November 3, the day after polls closed, Bennet was declared the winner and Buck conceded. Bennet won by 851,590 votes (48.1%) to 822,731 (46.4%). He subsequently returned to Washington, D.C. in January 2011 to start a full six-year term. After the election, Obama said Bennet "perfectly reflects the qualities of the ruggedly independent state he has been chosen to serve."


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet was reelected to a second term on November 8, 2016, defeating the Republican nominee, El Paso County Commissioner Darryl Glenn. Bennet received 49% of the vote to Glenn's 46%. Following the election, Obama said Bennet was one of the "gifted Democratic politicians" who could lead the party in the future.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet was reelected to a third term in 2022, defeating the Republican nominee, businessman Joe O'Dea, who notably was critical of former President Donald Trump.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In the wake of the 2021 storming of the United States Capitol, Bennet called for the Twenty-fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution to be invoked to remove Trump from office.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet sits on the following committees and subcommittees in the 117th United States Congress (2021–2023).


title: Michael Bennet

text: Most of Bennet's positions are considered liberal. The American Conservative Union gave Bennet a 6% lifetime conservative rating in 2020.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet supports abortion rights and has voted to continue federal funding to Planned Parenthood. After "Roe v. Wade" was overturned in June 2022, Bennet said that the "radical majority on the Supreme Court demolished fifty years of precedent" and called it an "activist decision".


title: Michael Bennet

text: In March 2019, Bennet was one of 38 senators to sign a letter to United States Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue warning that dairy farmers "have continued to face market instability and are struggling to survive the fourth year of sustained low prices" and urging his department to "strongly encourage these farmers to consider the Dairy Margin Coverage program."


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet cosponsored the bipartisan STATES Act, proposed in the 115th U.S. Congress by senators Elizabeth Warren and Cory Gardner, which would exempt individuals or corporations in compliance with state cannabis laws from federal enforcement of the Controlled Substances Act. He also cosponsored the SAFE Banking Act in 2019, which would provide marijuana businesses with access to banking services.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In 2018 Bennet criticized the Trump administration for attempting to cherry-pick data to misinform the public on marijuana use. In response, the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy committed to be completely objective and dispassionate in its analysis of marijuana.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet cosponsored the Marijuana Freedom and Opportunity Act in 2018 and the Marijuana Justice Act in 2019, a pair of bills that would legalize cannabis at the federal level by removing it from the Controlled Substances Act. He opposed Colorado's Amendment 64 to legalize cannabis in 2012.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In December 2019, Bennet and Senator Mitt Romney proposed a universal basic income bill for children.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In 2009, Bennet co-sponsored the Solar Manufacturing Jobs Creation Act, legislation that would have provided a tax credit to support solar manufacturing in the U.S. The legislation was not enacted.


title: Michael Bennet

text: He was one of the handful of Democratic senators who have supported construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, voting for it in 2013, 2014, and 2015.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In February 2021, Bennet was one of seven Democratic senators to join Republicans in blocking a ban of hydraulic fracturing, commonly known as fracking.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In October 2017, Bennet was one of 19 senators to sign a letter to Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency Scott Pruitt questioning Pruitt's decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan, asserting that Pruitt used "mathematical sleights of hand to overstate the costs of industry compliance with the 2015 Rule and understate the benefits that will be lost if the 2017 repeal is finalized", and that science denial and math tricks fail to "satisfy the requirements of the law, nor will it slow the increase in frequency and intensity of extreme weather events, the inexorable rise in sea levels, or the other dire effects of global warming that our planet is already experiencing."


title: Michael Bennet

text: In November 2018, Bennet was one of 25 Democratic senators to cosponsor a resolution in response to findings of the Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Change report and National Climate Assessment. The resolution affirmed the senators' acceptance of the findings and their support for bold action to address climate change.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In March 2019, Bennet was an original cosponsor of a bipartisan bill intended to mandate that the Environmental Protection Agency declare per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances as hazardous substances that can be addressed with cleanup funds via the EPA Superfund law and require that polluters undertake or pay for remediation within a year of the bill's enaction.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In April 2019, Bennet was one of 12 senators to sign a bipartisan letter to top senators on the Appropriations Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development advocating that the Energy Department be granted maximum funding for carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS), arguing that American job growth could be stimulated by investment in capturing carbon emissions and expressing disagreement with President Trump's 2020 budget request to combine the two federal programs that do carbon capture research.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In September 2019, Bennet was one of eight senators to sign a bipartisan letter to congressional leadership requesting full and lasting funding of the Land and Water Conservation Act in order to aid national parks and public lands, benefit the $887 billion American outdoor recreation economy, and "ensure much-needed investment in our public lands and continuity for the state, tribal, and non-federal partners who depend on them."


title: Michael Bennet

text: In July 2017, Bennet co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act (s. 720), which permits U.S. states to enact laws that require contractors to sign a pledge saying they will not boycott goods from Israel, or their contracts will be terminated.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In March 2018, Bennet voted against tabling a resolution spearheaded by Bernie Sanders, Chris Murphy, and Mike Lee that would have required Trump to withdraw American troops either in or influencing Yemen within the next 30 days unless they were combating Al-Qaeda.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In November 2018, Bennet joined senators Chris Coons, Elizabeth Warren, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers in sending the Trump administration a letter raising concerns about the People's Republic of China's undue influence on media outlets and academic institutions in the United States. They wrote: "In American news outlets, Beijing has used financial ties to suppress negative information about the CCP. In the past four years, multiple media outlets with direct or indirect financial ties to China allegedly decided not to publish stories on wealth and corruption in the CCP. In one case, an editor resigned due to mounting self-censorship in the outlet's China coverage. Beijing has also sought to use relationships with American academic institutions and student groups to shape public discourse."


title: Michael Bennet

text: In April 2019, Bennet was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Trump about cutting aid to Central America. It encouraged Trump "to listen to members of your own Administration and reverse a decision that will damage our national security and aggravate conditions inside Central America," asserting that Trump had "consistently expressed a flawed understanding of U.S. foreign assistance" since becoming president and that he was "personally undermining efforts to promote U.S. national security and economic prosperity" by preventing the use of Fiscal Year 2018 national security funding. The senators argued that foreign assistance to Central American countries created less migration to the U.S. by helping to improve conditions in those countries.


title: Michael Bennet

text: On January 24, 2019, Bennet gave an impromptu 25-minute speech on the Senate floor in response to comments by Senator Ted Cruz. He questioned the authenticity of Cruz's concern about difficulties that the 2018–19 government shutdown was causing to first responders, recalling that in 2013 Cruz led a shutdown that lasted 16 days at a time when Colorado was experiencing flooding. In less than eight hours the speech became the most-watched Senate floor speech in C-SPAN history.


title: Michael Bennet

text: As of 2010, Bennet had earned a "C+" grade from the National Rifle Association for a mixed record regarding his votes for gun rights. In 2012, Bennet joined then Colorado Senator Mark Udall in asking for stricter gun control, in response to the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. After the shooting, Bennet said, "In Colorado, we support the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, we support the ability of people to hunt and recreate and to protect their families and homes, and we want to keep the wrong weapons out of the hands of the wrong people."


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet participated in the Chris Murphy gun control filibuster, demanding that gun laws be changed in the wake of the Orlando nightclub shooting. During his participation in the filibuster, Bennet talked about the 2012 Aurora, Colorado shooting, citing that as a response to the shooting, the state of Colorado closed gun sale loopholes and now requires background checks for any gun purchase.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In response to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, Bennet demanded universal background checks regarding gun sales and described the shooting as domestic terrorism.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In 2013, Bennet voted against a Senate Amendment 711 to S. 649 (The Safe Communities, Safe Schools Act of 2013), an amendment introduced by Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) that would have reinstated the federal assault weapons ban. The amendment was defeated 40–60 with one Republican, Mark Kirk, voting in favor and 16 Democrats (including independent Senator Angus King, who caucuses with Democrats) against. Also in 2013 Bennet voted to strengthen the background check system and to ban high-capacity magazines.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet voted in support of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act signed by President Barack Obama on March 23, 2010. In November 2009, when the bill was still working its way through Congress, Bennet said that he would support health care reform even if it meant losing the election. In 2016, describing the healthcare costs in western and central Colorado as among the highest in the United States, Bennet said he "didn't have answers" and called it "next to impossible" to fix the Affordable Care Act given partisan attitudes at that time.


title: Michael Bennet

text: As part of a group of Democrats proposing "more incremental steps to broaden health care coverage", as opposed to Bernie Sanders's push for "Medicare for All", Bennet and Senator Tim Kaine have proposed "Medicare X". Medicare X would "create a public option modeled after Medicare alongside private options on the ObamaCare marketplaces". In 2019 Bennet and Kaine reintroduced the latest version of the plan, which would also "expand access to tax credits."


title: Michael Bennet

text: In January 2019 during the 2018–19 United States federal government shutdown, Bennet was one of 34 senators to sign a letter to Commissioner of Food and Drugs Scott Gottlieb recognizing the efforts of the FDA to address the shutdown's effect on public health and employees while remaining alarmed "that the continued shutdown will result in increasingly harmful effects on the agency's employees and the safety and security of the nation's food and medical products."


title: Michael Bennet

text: In April 2019 Bennet and Senator Chuck Grassley's Advancing Care for Exceptional (ACE) Kids Act, legislation that creates an option for states and families to provide improved coordination of care for children with complex medical conditions, was signed into law.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In September 2009, Bennet cosponsored the DREAM Act (S. 729), which proposed amending the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 by giving residency to immigrants enrolled in higher education programs or serving in the military. In 2013, he was a member of the Gang of Eight, a bipartisan group of four Democratic and four Republican U.S. senators who introduced comprehensive immigration reform legislation. Their bill, the Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act of 2013, passed the U.S. Senate with a vote of 68–32, but stalled in the House due to opposition from the Republican majority. He later cosponsored the Dream Act of 2017. After President Trump ended the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, Bennet worked with a bipartisan group of senators to provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers with stronger border protections.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In August 2018, Bennet was one of 17 senators to sign a letter spearheaded by Kamala Harris to United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen demanding that the Trump administration take immediate action in attempting to reunite 539 migrant children with their families, citing each passing day of inaction as intensifying "trauma that this administration has needlessly caused for children and their families seeking humanitarian protection."


title: Michael Bennet

text: In June 2019, Bennet and six other Democratic senators led by Hawaii Senator Brian Schatz sent letters to the Government Accountability Office and the suspension and debarment official and inspector general at the US Department of Health and Human Services citing recent reports that showed "significant evidence that some federal contractors and grantees have not provided adequate accommodations for children in line with legal and contractual requirements" and urged the officials to determine whether federal contractors and grantees are in violation of contractual obligations or federal regulations and should thus face financial consequences.


title: Michael Bennet

text: In July 2019, following reports that the Trump administration intended to cease protecting spouses, parents and children of active-duty service members from deportation, Bennet was one of 22 senators led by Tammy Duckworth to sign a letter arguing that the protection gave service members the ability "to fight for the United States overseas and not worry that their spouse, children, or parents will be deported while they are away" and that its termination would both cause service members personal hardship and negatively affect their combat performance.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Also in July 2019, Markey and 15 other Senate Democrats introduced the Protecting Sensitive Locations Act, which would require, except in special circumstances, that ICE agents get approval from a supervisor before engaging in enforcement actions at sensitive locations, and that agents receive annual training in addition to reporting annually on enforcement actions in those locations.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet supports same-sex marriage. He lauded the Supreme Court's 2015 decision in "Obergefell v. Hodges" that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide, stating on his Senate website "Marriage is a fundamental right that same-sex couples deserve to enjoy, and now they will have the same rights and opportunities that the law grants to Susan [Bennet's spouse] and me."


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet is the author of legislation to direct resources to improve the sexual health of older Americans, including LGBTQ+ and rural senior populations. He is an original co-sponsor of the Equality Act.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet's 2020 presidential campaign began on May 2, 2019, when he officially declared his candidacy during an appearance on "CBS This Morning". Bennet was previously mentioned as a possible presidential candidate following his viral response to Senator Ted Cruz in January 2019. In February and March 2019 he traveled to early primary states such as Iowa and New Hampshire. In late March Bennet said he was "very inclined" to run for the presidency.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Following his announcement, Bennet campaigned in Iowa on May 5 and 11 and South Carolina on May 31. He qualified for the first set of debates on June 3, and appeared in the June 27 debate, receiving 8.1 minutes of airtime. He appeared in the second set of debates, on July 26 and 27, this time receiving 10.6 minutes of airtime. He failed to qualify for the remainder of the debates. He also failed to qualify for the Iowa and New Hampshire debate, making him the candidate to fail to qualify for a debate the most times (six).


title: Michael Bennet

text: Bennet received 164 votes in the Iowa caucuses, and 958 in the New Hampshire primary. He dropped out of the race on February 11, 2020, the night of the New Hampshire primary.


title: Michael Bennet

text: On October 26, 1997, Bennet married Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund attorney Susan Diane Daggett, in Marianna, Arkansas. They have three daughters and reside in Denver's Congress Park neighborhood.


title: Michael Bennet

text: Though not raised in an observant household, Bennet acknowledges his Jewish roots. He has said that he was "raised with two different heritages, one [that] was Jewish and one [that] was Christian," and that he believes in God.


title: Michael Bennet

text: On April 3, 2019, Bennet announced he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and underwent surgery later that month. Following the surgery, Bennet's office said the procedure was "completely successful" and that he requires no further treatment.


title: Fool's mate

text: In chess, the fool's mate is the checkmate delivered after the fewest possible moves from the game's starting position. It arises from the following moves, or similar:


title: Fool's mate

text: The fool's mate can be achieved only by Black, giving checkmate on the second move with the queen. The fool's mate received its name because it can occur only if White commits an extraordinary blunder. Even among rank beginners, this checkmate rarely occurs in practice.


title: Fool's mate

text: The mate is an illustration of the weakness shared by both players along the f- and g-s during the opening phase of the game. Black can be mated in a complementary situation, although this requires an additional move. A player may also suffer an early checkmate if the f- and g-pawns are advanced prematurely and the kingside is not properly defended, as shown in historical games recorded in chess literature.


title: Fool's mate

text: The fool's mate was named and described in "The Royal Game of Chess-Play", a 1656 text by Francis Beale that adapted the work of the early chess writer Gioachino Greco.


title: Fool's mate

text: Prior to the mid-19th century, there was not a prevailing convention as to whether White or Black moved first; according to Beale, the matter was to be decided in some prior contest or decision of the players' choice. In Beale's example, Black was the player to move first, with each player making two moves to various squares or "houses", after which White achieved checkmate.


title: Fool's mate

text: Beale's example can be paraphrased in modern terms (shown above), where White always moves first, algebraic notation is used, and Black delivers the fastest possible mate after each player makes two moves:


title: Fool's mate

text: There are eight distinct ways in which the fool's mate can be reached. In the sequence there are three independent points where one of two options may be chosen, resulting in formula_1 possibilities. White may alternate the order of movement of the f- and g-pawns, Black may play either e6 or e5, allowing the queen to move, and White may move their f-pawn to f3 or f4. Hooper and Whyld expressed this generalized sequence as 1. g4 e5 (or e6) 2. f3 (or f4) Qh4#.


title: Fool's mate

text: Mating patterns similar to the fool's mate can occur early in the game. Such patterns in historical games illustrate the weakness alongside the e1–h4 and e8–h5 diagonals early in the game. White can mate Black using a pattern that resembles the fool's mate, though it takes an extra turn.


title: Fool's mate

text: White can achieve a checkmate similar to the fool's mate. When the roles are reversed, however, White requires an extra third turn or half-move, known in computer chess as a ply. In both cases, the principle is the same: a player advances their f- and g-pawns such that the opponent's queen can mate along the unblocked diagonal. A board position illustrating White's version of the fool's mate—with White to mate—was given as a problem in "Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess", and also as an early example in a compendium of problems by László Polgár. The solution in Fischer's book bore the comment "Black foolishly weakened his King's defenses. This game took three moves!!" One possible sequence leading to the position is 1. e4 g5 2. d4 f6 3. Qh5.


title: Fool's mate

text: A possibly apocryphal variant of the fool's mate has been reported by several sources. The 1959 game 1. e4 g5 2. Nc3 f5?? 3. Qh5# has been attributed to Masefield and Trinka, although the first player's name has also been reported as Mayfield or Mansfield and the second player's name as Trinks or Trent. Further, a similar mate can occur in From's Gambit: 1. f4 e5 2. g3 exf4 .


title: Fool's mate

text: Opening up a flight square for the king at f8 with 6...Bg7 would have prolonged the game. White still wins with 7.Qf5! Nf6 8.Bh6 Bxh6 9.gxh7 Bxh1 (9...e6 opens another flight square at e7; then White checks with 10.Qg6+ Ke7) 10.Qg6+ Kf8 11.Qxh6+ Kf7 12.Nh3, but much slower than in the game.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Orb-weaver spiders are members of the spider family Araneidae. They are the most common group of builders of spiral wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens, fields, and forests. The English word "orb" can mean "circular", hence the English name of the group. Araneids have eight similar eyes, hairy or spiny legs, and no stridulating organs.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, including many well-known large or brightly colored garden spiders. With 3,108 species in 186 genera worldwide, the Araneidae comprise the third-largest family of spiders (behind the Salticidae and Linyphiidae). Araneid webs are constructed in a stereotypical fashion, where a framework of nonsticky silk is built up before the spider adds a final spiral of silk covered in sticky droplets.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Orb webs are also produced by members of other spider families. The long-jawed orb weavers (Tetragnathidae) were formerly included in the Araneidae; they are closely related, being part of the superfamily Araneoidea. The family Arkyidae has been split off from the Araneidae. The cribellate or hackled orb-weavers (Uloboridae) belong to a different group of spiders. Their webs are strikingly similar, but use a different kind of silk.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Generally, orb-weaving spiders are three-clawed builders of flat webs with sticky spiral capture silk. The building of a web is an engineering feat, begun when the spider floats a line on the wind to another surface. The spider secures the line and then drops another line from the center, making a "Y". The rest of the scaffolding follows with many radii of nonsticky silk being constructed before a final spiral of sticky capture silk.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: The third claw is used to walk on the nonsticky part of the web. Characteristically, the prey insect that blunders into the sticky lines is stunned by a quick bite, and then wrapped in silk. If the prey is a venomous insect, such as a wasp, wrapping may precede biting and/or stinging. Much of the orb-spinning spiders' success in capturing insects depends on the web not being visible to the prey, with the stickiness of the web increasing the visibility, thus decreasing the chances of capturing prey. This leads to a trade-off between the visibility of the web and the web's prey-retention ability.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Many orb-weavers build a new web each day. Most orb-weavers tend to be active during the evening hours; they hide for most of the day. Generally, towards evening, the spider consumes the old web, rests for about an hour, then spins a new web in the same general location. Thus, the webs of orb-weavers are generally free of the accumulation of detritus common to other species, such as black widow spiders.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Some orb-weavers do not build webs at all. Members of the genera "Mastophora" in the Americas, "Cladomelea" in Africa, and "Ordgarius" in Australia produce sticky globules, which contain a pheromone analog. The globule is hung from a silken thread dangled by the spider from its front legs. The pheromone analog attracts male moths of only a few species. These get stuck on the globule and are reeled in to be eaten. Both genera of bolas spiders are highly camouflaged and difficult to locate.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: In the "Araneus diadematus", variables such as wind, web support, temperatures, humidity, and silk supply all proved to be variables in web construction. When studied against the tests of nature, the spiders were able to decide what shape to make their web, how many capture spirals, or the width of their web. Though it could expected for these spiders to just know these things, it isn't well researched yet as to just how the arachnid knows how to change their web design based on their surroundings. Some scientists suggest that it could be through the spider's spatial learning on their environmental surroundings and the knowing of what will or won't work compared to natural behavioristic rules.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: The spiny orb-weaving spiders in the genera "Gasteracantha" and "Micrathena" look like plant seeds or thorns hanging in their orb-webs. Some species of "Gasteracantha" have very long, horn-like spines protruding from their abdomens.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: One feature of the webs of some orb-weavers is the stabilimentum, a crisscross band of silk through the center of the web. It is found in several genera, but "Argiope" – the yellow and banded garden spiders of North America – is a prime example. As orb-weavers age, they tend to have less production of their silk; many adult orb-weavers can then depend on their coloration to attract more of their prey. The band may be a lure for prey, a marker to warn birds away from the web, and a camouflage for the spider when it sits in the web. The stabilimentum may decrease the visibility of the silk to insects, thus making it harder for prey to avoid the web. The orb-web consists of a frame and supporting radii overlaid with a sticky capture spiral, and the silks used by orb-weaver spiders have exceptional mechanical properties to withstand the impact of flying prey. The orb-weaving spider "Zygiella x-notata" produces a unique orb-web with a characteristic missing sector, similar to other species of the "Zygiella" genus in the Araneidae family.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: During the Cretaceous, a radiation of angiosperm plants and their insect pollinators occurred. Fossil evidence shows that the orb web was in existence at this time, which permitted a concurrent radiation of the spider predators along with their insect prey. The capacity of orb–webs to absorb the impact of flying prey led orbicularian spiders to become the dominant predators of aerial insects in many ecosystems. Insects and spiders have comparable rates of diversification, suggesting they co-radiated, and the peak of this radiation occurred 100 Mya, before the origin of angiosperms. Vollrath and Selden (2007) make the bold proposition that insect evolution was driven less by flowering plants than by spider predation – particularly through orb webs – as a major selective force. On the other hand some analyses have yielded estimates as high as 265 Mya, with a large number (including Dimitrov et al 2016) intermediate between the two.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Most arachnid webs are vertical and the spiders usually hang with their heads downward. A few webs, such as those of orb-weavers in the genus "Metepeira", have the orb hidden within a tangled space of web. Some "Metepiera" species are semisocial and live in communal webs. In Mexico, such communal webs have been cut out of trees or bushes and used for living fly paper. In 2009, workers at a Baltimore wastewater treatment plant called for help to deal with over 100 million orb-weaver spiders, living in a community that managed to spin a phenomenal web that covered some 4 acres of a building, with spider densities in some areas reaching 35,176 spiders per cubic meter.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: The oldest known true orb-weaver is "Mesozygiella dunlopi", from the Lower Cretaceous. Several fossils provide direct evidence that the three major orb-weaving families, namely the Araneidae, Tetragnathidae, and Uloboridae, had evolved by this time, about 140 Mya. They probably originated during the Jurassic (). Based on new molecular evidence in silk genes, all three families are likely to have a common origin.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: The two superfamilies, Deinopoidea and Araneoidea, have similar behavioral sequences and spinning apparatuses to produce architecturally similar webs. The latter weave true viscid silk with an aqueous glue property, and the former use dry fibrils and sticky silk. The Deinopoidea (including the Uloboridae), have a cribellum – a flat, complex spinning plate from which the cribellate silk is released.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: They also have a calamistrum – an apparatus of bristles used to comb the cribellate silk from the cribellum. The Araneoidea, or the "ecribellate" spiders, do not have these two structures. The two groups of orb-weaving spiders are morphologically very distinct, yet much similarity exists between their web forms and web construction behaviors. The cribellates retained the ancestral character, yet the cribellum was lost in the escribellates. The lack of a functional cribellum in araneoids is most likely synapomorphic.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: If the orb-weaver spiders are a monophyletic group, the fact that only some species in the group lost a feature adds to the controversy. The cribellates are split off as a separate taxon that retained the primitive feature, which makes the lineage paraphyletic and not synonymous with any real evolutionary lineage. The morphological and behavioral evidence surrounding orb webs led to the disagreement over a single or a dual origin. While early molecular analysis provided more support for a monophyletic origin, other evidence indicates that orb-weavers evolved earlier phylogenetically than previously thought, and were extinct at least three times during the Cretaceous.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Araneid species either mate at the central hub of the web, where the male slowly traverses the web, trying not to get eaten, and when reaching the hub, mounts the female; or the male constructs a mating thread inside or outside the web to attract the female via vibratory courtship, and if successful, mating occurs on the thread.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: In the cannibalistic and polyandrous orb-web spider "Argiope bruennichi", the much smaller males are attacked during their first copulation and are cannibalized in up to 80% of the cases. All surviving males die after their second copulation, a pattern observed on other "Argiope" species. Whether a male survives his first copulation depends on the duration of the genital contact; males that jump off early (before 5 seconds) have a chance of surviving, while males that copulate longer (greater than 10 seconds) invariably die. Prolonged copulation, although associated with cannibalism, enhances sperm transfer and relative paternity.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: When males mated with a nonsibling female, the duration of their copulation was prolonged, and consequently the males were cannibalized more frequently. When males mated with a sibling female, they copulated briefly, thus were more likely to escape cannibalism. By escaping, their chance of mating again with an unrelated female likely would be increased. These observations suggest that males can adaptively adjust their investment based on the degree of genetic relatedness of the female to avoid inbreeding depression.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Sexual dimorphism refers to physical differences between males and females of the same species. One such difference can be in size.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Araneids often exhibit size dimorphism typically known as extreme sexual size dimorphism, due to the extent of differences in size. The size difference among species of Araneidae ranges greatly. Some females, such as those of the "Nephila pilipes", can be at least 9 times larger than the male, while others are only slightly larger than the male. The larger size female is typically thought to be selected through fecundity selection, the idea that bigger females can produce more eggs, thus more offspring. Although a great deal of evidence points towards the greatest selection pressure on larger female size, some evidence indicates that selection can favor small male size, as well.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Araneids also exhibit a phenomenon called sexual cannibalism, which is commonly found throughout the Araneidae. Evidence suggests a negative correlation between sexual size dimorphism and instances of sexual cannibalism. Other evidence, however, has shown that differences in cannibalistic events among araneids when having smaller or slightly larger males is advantageous.


title: Orb-weaver spider

text: Some evidence has shown that extreme dimorphism may be the result of males avoiding detection by the females. For males of these species, being smaller in size may be advantageous in moving to the central hub of a web so female spiders may be less likely to detect the male, or even if detected as prey to be eaten, the small size may indicate little nutritional value. Larger-bodied male araneids may be advantageous when mating on a mating thread because the thread is constructed from the edge of the web orb to structural threads or to nearby vegetation. Here larger males may be less likely to be cannibalized, as the males are able to copulate while the female is hanging, which may make them safer from cannibalism. In one subfamily of Araneid that uses a mating thread, Gasteracanthinae, sexual cannibalism is apparently absent despite extreme size dimorphism.


title: Northern England

text: Northern England, also known as the North of England, the North Country, or simply the North, is the northern area of England. It broadly corresponds to the former borders of Angle Northumbria, the Anglo-Scandinavian Kingdom of Jorvik, and the Celt Britonic Yr Hen Ogledd Kingdoms.


title: Northern England

text: The common governmental definition of the North is a grouping of three statistical regions: the North East, the North West, and Yorkshire and the Humber. These had a combined population of 14.9 million at the 2011 census, an area of and 17 cities.


title: Northern England

text: Northern England is culturally and economically distinct from both the Midlands and the South of England. The area's northern boundary is the border with Scotland, its western the border with Wales, and its eastern the North Sea; there are varying interpretations of where the southern border with the Midlands lies culturally; the Midlands is often also split by closeness to the North and the South.


title: Northern England

text: Many Industrial Revolution innovations began in Northern England, and its cities were the crucibles of many of the political changes that accompanied this social upheaval, from trade unionism to Manchester Liberalism. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the economy of the North was dominated by heavy industry such as weaving, shipbuilding, steel-making, and mining. Centuries of immigration, invasion, and labour have shaped Northern England's culture, and it has retained countless distinctive accents and dialects, music, arts, and cuisine.


title: Northern England

text: Industrial decline in the second half of the 20th century damaged the North, leading to greater deprivation than that of the South. Although urban renewal projects and the transition to a service economy have resulted in strong economic growth in parts of the North, the North–South divide remains in both the economy and culture of England.


title: Northern England

text: For government and statistical purposes, Northern England is defined as the area covered by the three statistical regions of England – North East England, North West England and Yorkshire and the Humber. This area consists of the ceremonial counties of Cheshire, Cumbria, County Durham, East Riding of Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, Northumberland, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Tyne and Wear and West Yorkshire, plus the unitary authority areas of North Lincolnshire and North East Lincolnshire.


title: Northern England

text: The historic counties ceased to be used for any administrative purpose in 1899 but remain important to some people, notably for county cricket.


title: Northern England

text: Some areas of Derbyshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and Staffordshire have Northern characteristics and include satellites of Northern cities. Towns in the High Peak borough of Derbyshire are included in the Greater Manchester Built-Up Area, as villages and hamlets there such as Tintwistle, Crowden and Woodhead were formerly in Cheshire before local government boundary changes in 1974, due to their close proximity to the city of Manchester, and before this the borough was considered to be part of the Greater Manchester Statutory City Region. More recently, the Chesterfield, North East Derbyshire, Bolsover, and Derbyshire Dales districts have joined with districts of South Yorkshire to form the Sheffield City Region, along with the Bassetlaw District of Nottinghamshire, although for all other purposes these districts still remain in their respective East Midlands counties. The geographer Danny Dorling includes most of the West Midlands and part of the East Midlands in his definition of the North, claiming that "ideas of a midlands region add more confusion than light". Conversely, more restrictive definitions also exist, typically based on the extent of the historical Northumbria, which exclude Cheshire and Lincolnshire.


title: Northern England

text: Personal definitions of the North vary greatly and are sometimes passionately debated. When asked to draw a dividing line between North and South, Southerners tend to draw this line further south than Northerners do. From the Southern perspective, Northern England is sometimes defined jokingly as the area north of the Watford Gap between Northampton and Leicester – a definition which would include much of the Midlands. Various cities and towns have been described as or promoted themselves as the "gateway to the North", including Crewe, Stoke-on-Trent, and Sheffield. For some in the northernmost reaches of England, the North starts somewhere in North Yorkshire around the River Tees – the Yorkshire poet Simon Armitage suggests Thirsk, Northallerton or Richmond – and does not include cities like Manchester and Leeds, nor the majority of Yorkshire. Northern England is not a homogeneous unit, and some have entirely rejected the idea that the North exists as a coherent entity, claiming that considerable cultural differences across the area overwhelm any similarities.


title: Northern England

text: Through the North of England run the Pennines, an upland chain sometimes referred to as "the backbone of England", which stretches from the Tyne Gap to the Peak District. Other uplands in the North include the Lake District with England's highest mountains, the Cheviot Hills adjoining the border with Scotland, and the North York Moors near the North Sea coastline. The geography of the North has been heavily shaped by the ice sheets of the Pleistocene era, which often reached as far south as the Midlands. Glaciers carved deep, craggy valleys in the central uplands, and, when they melted, deposited large quantities of fluvio-glacial material in lowland areas like the Cheshire and Solway Plains. On the eastern side of the Pennines, a former glacial lake forms the Humberhead Levels: a large area of fenland which drains into the Humber and which is very fertile and productive farmland.


title: Northern England

text: Much of the mountainous upland remains undeveloped, and of the ten national parks in England, five – the Peak District, the Lake District, the North York Moors, the Yorkshire Dales, and Northumberland National Park – are located partly or entirely in the North. The Lake District includes England's highest peak, Scafell Pike, which rises to , its largest lake, Windermere, and its deepest lake, Wastwater. Northern England is one of the most treeless areas in Europe, and to combat this the government plans to plant over 50 million trees in a new Northern Forest across the region.


title: Northern England

text: Uniquely for such a large urban belt in Europe, these cities are all as recent as the Industrial Revolution; most of them previously scattered villages. Vast urban areas have emerged along the coasts and rivers, and they run almost contiguously into each other in places. Near the east coast, trade fuelled the growth of major ports and settlements (Kingston upon Hull, Newcastle upon Tyne, Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland) to create multiple urban areas. Inland needs of trade and industry produced an almost continuous urbanisation from the Wirral Peninsula to Doncaster, taking in the cities of Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, and Sheffield, with a population of at least 7.6 million.


title: Northern England

text: Analysis by The Northern Way in 2006 found that 90% of the population of the North lived in and around: Liverpool, Central Lancashire, Manchester, Sheffield, Leeds, Hull and Humber Ports, Tees Valley and Tyne and Wear. At the 2011 census, 86% of the Northern population lived in urban areas as defined by the Office for National Statistics, compared to 82% for England as a whole.


title: Northern England

text: Peat is found in thick, plentiful layers across the Pennines and Scottish Borders, and there are many large coalfields, including the Great Northern, Lancashire and South Yorkshire Coalfields. Millstone grit, a distinctive coarse-grained rock used to make millstones, is widespread in the Pennines, and the variety of other rock types is reflected in the architecture of the region, such as the bright red sandstone seen in buildings in Chester, the cream-buff Yorkstone and the distinctive purple Doddington sandstone. These sandstones also mean that apart from the east coast, most of Northern England has very soft water, and this has influenced not just industry, but even the blends of tea enjoyed in the region.


title: Northern England

text: Rich deposits of iron ore are found in Cumbria and the North East, and fluorspar and baryte are also plentiful in northern parts of the Pennines. Salt mining in Cheshire has a long history, and both remaining rock salt mines in Great Britain are in the North: Winsford Mine in Cheshire and Boulby Mine in North Yorkshire, which also produces half of the UK's potash.


title: Northern England

text: Northern England has a cool, wet oceanic climate with small areas of subpolar oceanic climate in the uplands. Averaged across the entire region, Northern England is cooler, wetter and cloudier than England as a whole, and contains both England's coldest point (Cross Fell) and its rainiest point (Seathwaite Fell). Its temperature range and sunshine duration is similar to the UK average and it sees substantially less rainfall than Scotland or Wales. These averages disguise considerable variation across the region, due chiefly to the upland regions and adjacent seas.


title: Northern England

text: The prevailing winds across the British Isles are westerlies bringing moisture from the Atlantic Ocean; this means that the west coast frequently receives strong winds and heavy rainfall while the east coast lies in a rain shadow behind the Pennines. As a result, Teesside and the Northumbrian coast are the driest regions in the North, with around of rain per year, while parts of the Lake District receive over . Lowland regions in the more southern parts of Northern England such as Cheshire and South Yorkshire are the warmest, with average maximum July temperatures of over , while the highest points in the Pennines and Lake District reach only . The area has a reputation for cloud and fog – especially along its east coast, which experiences a distinctive sea fog known as fret – although the Clean Air Act 1956 and decline of heavy industry have seen sunshine duration increase in urban areas in recent years.


title: Northern England

text: The English spoken today in the North has been shaped by the area's history, and some dialects retain features inherited from Old Norse and the local Celtic languages. Dialects spoken in the North include Cumbrian (Cumbria), Geordie (Tyneside), Mackem (Wearside), Lancashire (Lancashire), Mancunian (Manchester), Northumbrian (Northumberland and Durham), Pitmatic (Great Northern Coalfield), Scouse (Liverpool) and Tyke (Yorkshire). Linguists have attempted to define a Northern dialect area, corresponding to the area north of a line that begins at the Humber estuary and runs up the River Wharfe and across to the River Lune in north Lancashire. This area corresponds roughly to the "sprachraum" of the Old English Northumbrian dialect, although the linguistic elements that defined this area in the past, such as the use of "doon" instead of "down" and substitution of an "ang" sound in words that end -"ong" ("lang" instead of "long"), are now prevalent only in the more northern parts of the region. As speech has changed, there is little consensus on what defines a "Northern" accent or dialect.


title: Northern England

text: Northern English accents have not undergone the – split, and a common shibboleth to distinguish them from Southern ones is the Northern use of the short a (the near-open front unrounded vowel) in words such as "bath" and "castle". On the opposite border, most Northern English accents can be distinguished from Scottish accents because they are non-rhotic, although some Lancashire and Northumberland accents remain rhotic. Other features common to many Northern English accents are the absence of the – split (so "put" and "putt" are homophones), the reduction of the definite article "the" to a glottal stop (usually represented in writing as "t" or occasionally "th", although it is often not pronounced as a /t/ sound) or its total elision, and the T-to-R rule that leads to the pronunciation of "t" as a rhotic consonant in phrases like "get up" ().


title: Northern England

text: The pronouns "thou" and "thee" survive in some Northern English dialects, although these are dying out outside very rural areas, and many dialects have an informal second-person plural pronoun: either "ye" (common in the North East) or "yous" (common in areas with historical Irish communities). Many dialects use "me" as a possessive ("me car") and some treat "us" likewise ("us cars") or use the alternative "wor" ("wor cars"). Possessive pronouns are also used to mark the names of relatives in speech (for example, a relative called Joan would be referred to as "our Joan" in conversation).


title: Northern England

text: With urbanisation, distinctive urban accents have arisen which often differ greatly from the historical accents of the surrounding rural areas and sometimes share features with Southern English accents. Northern English dialects remain an important part of the culture of the region, and the desire of speakers to assert their local identity has led to accents such as Scouse and Geordie becoming more distinctive and spreading into surrounding areas.


title: Northern England

text: The contrasting geography of Northern England is reflected in its literature. On the one hand, the wild moors and lakes have inspired generations of Romantic authors: the poetry of William Wordsworth and the novels of the Brontë sisters are perhaps the most famous examples of writing inspired by these elemental forces. Classics of children's literature such as "The Railway Children" (1906), "The Secret Garden" (1911) and "Swallows and Amazons" (1930) portray these largely untouched landscapes as worlds of adventure and transformation where their protagonists can break free of the restrictions of society. Modern poets such as the Poets Laureate Ted Hughes and Simon Armitage have found inspiration in the Northern countryside, producing works that take advantage of the sounds and rhythms of Northern English dialects.


title: Northern England

text: Meanwhile, the industrialising and urbanising cities of the North gave rise to many masterpieces of social realism. Elizabeth Gaskell was the first in a lineage of female realist writers from the North that later included Winifred Holtby, Catherine Cookson, Beryl Bainbridge and Jeanette Winterson. Many of the angry young men of post-war literature were Northern, and working-class life in the face of deindustrialisation is depicted in novels such as "Room at the Top" (1959), "Billy Liar" (1959), "This Sporting Life" (1960) and "A Kestrel for a Knave" (1968).


title: Northern England

text: There are no recognised minority languages in Northern England, although the Northumbrian Language Society campaigns to have the Northumbrian dialect recognised as a separate language. It is possible that traces of now-extinct Brythonic Celtic languages from the region survive in some rural areas in the Yan Tan Tethera counting systems traditionally used by shepherds.


title: Northern England

text: Contact between English and immigrant languages has given rise to new accents and dialects. For instance, the variety of English spoken by Poles in Manchester is distinct both from typical Polish-accented English and from Mancunian. At a local level, the diversity of immigrant communities means that some languages that are extremely rare in the country as a whole have strongholds in Northern towns: Bradford for instance has the largest proportion of Pashto speakers, while Manchester has most Cantonese speakers.


title: Northern England

text: During the ice ages, Northern England was buried under ice sheets, and little evidence remains of habitation – either because the climate made the area uninhabitable, or because glaciation destroyed most evidence of human activity. The northernmost cave art in Europe is found at Creswell Crags in northern Derbyshire, near modern-day Sheffield, which shows signs of Neanderthal inhabitation 50 to 60 thousand years ago, and of a more modern occupation known as the Creswellian culture around 12,000 years ago. Kirkwell Cave in Lower Allithwaite, Cumbria shows signs of the Federmesser culture of the Paleolithic, and was inhabited some time between 13,400 and 12,800 years ago.


title: Northern England

text: Significant settlement appears to have begun in the Mesolithic era, with Star Carr in North Yorkshire generally considered the most significant monument of this era. The Star Carr site includes Britain's oldest known house, from around 9000 BC, and the earliest evidence of carpentry in the form of a carved tree trunk from 11000 BC.


title: Northern England

text: The Lincolnshire and Yorkshire Wolds around the Humber Estuary were settled and farmed in the Bronze Age, and the Ferriby Boats – one of the best-preserved finds of the era – were discovered near Hull in 1937. In the more mountainous regions of the Peak District, hillforts were the main Bronze Age settlement and the locals were most likely pastoralists raising livestock.


title: Northern England

text: Roman histories name the Celtic tribe that occupied the majority of Northern England as the Brigantes, likely meaning "Highlanders". Whether the Brigantes were a unified group or a looser federation of tribes around the Pennines is debated, but the name appears to have been adopted by the inhabitants of the region, which was known by the Romans as Brigantia. Other tribes mentioned in ancient histories, which may have been part of the Brigantes or separate nations, are the Carvetii of modern-day Cumbria and the Parisi of east Yorkshire.


title: Northern England

text: The Brigantes allied with the Roman Empire during the Roman conquest of Britain: Tacitus records that they handed the resistance leader Caratacus over to the Empire in 51. Power struggles within the Brigantes made the Romans wary, and they were conquered in a war beginning in the 70s under the governorship of Quintus Petillius Cerialis. The Romans created the province of "Britannia Inferior" (Lower Britain) in the North, and it was ruled from the city of Eboracum (modern York). Eboracum and Deva Victrix (modern Chester) were the main legionary bases in the region, with other smaller forts including Mamucium (Manchester) and Cataractonium (Catterick). Britannia Inferior extended as far north as Hadrian's Wall, which was the northernmost border of the Roman Empire. Although the Romans invaded modern-day Northumberland and part of Scotland beyond it, they never succeeded in conquering the reaches of Britain beyond the River Tyne.


title: Northern England

text: After the end of Roman rule in Britain and the arrival of the Angles, Yr Hen Ogledd (the "Old North") was divided into rival kingdoms, Bernicia, Deira, Rheged and Elmet. Bernicia covered lands north of the Tees, Deira corresponded roughly to the eastern half of modern-day Yorkshire, Rheged to Cumbria, and Elmet to the western-half of Yorkshire. Bernicia and Deira were first united as Northumbria by Aethelfrith, a king of Bernicia who conquered Deira around the year 604. Northumbria then saw a Golden Age in cultural, scholarly and monastic activity, centred on Lindisfarne and aided by Irish monks. The north-west of England retains vestiges of a Celtic culture, and had its own Celtic language, Cumbric, spoken predominately in Cumbria until around the 12th century.


title: Northern England

text: Parts of the north and east of England were subject to Danish control (the Danelaw) during the Viking era, but the northern part of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria remained under Anglo-Saxon control. Under the Vikings, monasteries were largely wiped out, and the discovery of grave goods in Northern churchyards suggests that Norse funeral rites replaced Christian ones for a time. Viking control of certain areas, particularly around Yorkshire, is recalled in the etymology of many place names: the "thorpe" in town names such as Cleethorpes and Scunthorpe, the "kirk" in Kirklees and Ormskirk and the "by" of Whitby and Grimsby all have Norse roots.


title: Northern England

text: The 1066 defeat of the Norwegian king Harald Hardrada by the Anglo-Saxon Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Stamford Bridge near York marked the beginning of the end of Viking rule in England, and the almost immediate defeat of Godwinson at the hands of the Norman William the Conqueror at the Battle of Hastings was in turn the overthrow of the Anglo-Saxon order. The Northumbrian and Danish aristocracy resisted the Norman Conquest, and to put an end to the rebellion, William ordered the Harrying of the North. In the winter of 1069–1070, towns, villages and farms were systematically destroyed across much of Yorkshire as well as northern Lancashire and County Durham. The region was gripped by famine and much of Northern England was deserted. Chroniclers at the time reported a hundred thousand deaths – modern estimates place the total somewhere in the tens of thousands, out of a population of two million. When the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, much of Northern England was still recorded as wasteland, although this may have been in part because the chroniclers, more interested in manorial farmland, paid little attention to pastoral areas.


title: Northern England

text: Following Norman subjugation, monasteries returned to the North as missionaries sought to "settle the desert". Monastic orders such as the Cistercians became significant players in the economy of Northern England – the Cistercian Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire became the largest and richest of the Northern abbeys, and would remain so until the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Other Cistercian abbeys are at Rievaulx, Kirkstall and Byland. The 7th-century Whitby Abbey was Benedictine and Bolton Abbey, Augustinian. A significant Flemish immigration followed the conquest, which likely populated much of the desolated regions of Cumbria, and which was persistent enough that the town of Beverley in the East Riding of Yorkshire still had an ethnic enclave called Flemingate in the thirteenth century.


title: Northern England

text: During the Anarchy, Scotland invaded Northern England and took much of the land north of the Tees. In the 1139 peace treaty that followed, Prince Henry of Scotland was made Earl of Northumberland and kept the counties of Cumberland, Westmorland and Northumbria, as well as part of Lancashire. These reverted to English control in 1157, establishing for the most part the modern England–Scotland border. The region also saw violence during The Great Raid of 1322 when Robert the Bruce invaded and raided the whole of Northern England. There was also the Wars of the Roses, including the decisive Battle of Wakefield, although the modern-day conception of the war as a conflict between Lancashire and Yorkshire is anachronistic – Lancastrians recruited from across Northern England, including Yorkshire, even requiring mercenaries from Scotland and France, while the Yorkists drew most of their power from Southern England, Wales and Ireland. The Anglo-Scottish Wars also touched the region, and in just 400 years, Berwick-upon-Tweed – now the northernmost town in England – changed hands more than a dozen times. The wars also saw thousands of Scots settle south of the border, chiefly in the border counties and Yorkshire.


title: Northern England

text: After the English Reformation, the North saw several Catholic uprisings, including the , Bigod's Rebellion in Cumberland and Westmorland, and largest of all, the Yorkshire-based Pilgrimage of Grace, all against Henry VIII. His daughter Elizabeth I faced another Catholic rebellion, the Rising of the North. The region would become the centre of recusancy as prominent Catholic families in Cumbria, Lancashire and Yorkshire refused to convert to Protestantism. Royal power over the region was exercised through the Council of the North at King's Manor, York, which was founded in 1484 by Richard III. The Council existed intermittently for the next two centuries – its final incarnation was created in the aftermath of the Pilgrimage of Grace and was chiefly an institution for providing order and dispensing justice.


title: Northern England

text: Northern England was a focal point for fighting during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The border counties were invaded by Scotland in the Second Bishops' War, and at the 1640 Treaty of Ripon King Charles I was forced to temporarily cede Northumberland and County Durham to the Scots and pay to keep the Scottish armies there. To raise enough funds and ratify the final peace treaty, Charles had to call what became the Long Parliament, beginning the process that led to the First English Civil War. In 1641, the Long Parliament abolished the Council of the North for perceived abuses during the Personal Rule period. By the time war broke out in 1642, King Charles had moved his court to York, and Northern England was to become a major base of the Royalist forces until they were routed at the Battle of Marston Moor.