title: Grand Admiral Thrawn

text: In 2016, Anthony Breznican of "Entertainment Weekly" called Thrawn a "fan favorite" and "one of the most significant characters to ever emerge from the Expanded Universe", and Brian Truitt of "USA Today" named the character "one of "Star Wars" fandom's favorite villains". Comicbook.com called Thrawn "arguably the most popular character in the "Star Wars Legends" universe" in 2017, and Linda Hansen-Raj wrote that the character "carries a lasting legacy as one of "Star Wars" greatest and most complex antagonists." In 2014, GamesRadar's Sam Ashurst called Thrawn "hugely popular amongst fans, partly because of his tactical genius, partly because of his progressive attitude to his employees but mainly due to the fact he's got a blue face" and "easily the coolest villain in the "Expanded Universe"", noting Thrawn's loss as one of the major consequences of Lucasfilm's abandonment of the old expanded universe for "". Emmet Asher-Perrin of "Tor.com" noted in 2016 that as "one of the most popular Expanded Universe villains" and "one of the most threatening antagonists that the "Star Wars" universe had on hand", the character's removal from canon continuity "had many fans crying foul".


title: Grand Admiral Thrawn

text: In 2008, Jesse Schedeen of IGN credited Thrawn and the "Thrawn" trilogy with "kickstarting" the "Star Wars" expanded universe", and in 2015 "Empire" suggested that Thrawn's character helped "revitalize and legitimise" the expanded universe when it was failing. Eric Goldman wrote for IGN in 2008, "Diabolical, brilliant and ruthless, Thrawn was an excellent "Star Wars" villain, following in the footsteps of the likes of Grand Moff Tarkin," adding that "his status as the highest ranking non-human in the Empire was a very interesting aspect". In 2006, Zahn called Thrawn and Mara Jade his favorite of the characters he created. Zahn said in July 2016, "A writer never knows which characters are going to click with the readers, and it was highly gratifying to me that Thrawn captured the imaginations of so many people over the past quarter century."


title: Grand Admiral Thrawn

text: The character has been on many "top" lists of "Star Wars" characters, praising his villainy and character. In a list of fifteen "Star Wars" villains, Schedeen placed Thrawn as second best, beaten by Darth Vader, focusing on his greatness as a commander and tactician. In 2008, IGN ranked him as the tenth best overall "Star Wars" character, noting his influence in the expanded universe, and UGO listed him as the third greatest expanded universe character the same year. "Empire" listed Thrawn fifth in their list of the 25 best of the more obscure "Star Wars" characters in 2015.


title: Grand Admiral Thrawn

text: In November 2016, Lars Mikkelsen was nominated for a 2017 Annie Award for Outstanding Achievement, Voice Acting in an Animated Feature Production for his portrayal of Thrawn on "Star Wars Rebels".


title: Grand Admiral Thrawn

text: An Admiral Thrawn 3 inch action figure was produced by Kenner/Hasbro as part of their 1998 "Power of the Force 2" Expanded Universe line. Another figure was released for the 2008 "Legacy Collection", bundled in a "Comic 2-Pack" with a Talon Karrde figure and a Dark Horse "Heir of the Empire" issue #1 comic. Two versions of Thrawn were produced for the "Star Wars Miniatures" collectible miniatures game: one for the 2005 "Universe" expansion, and a second for the 2009 "Imperial Entanglements" expansion. In 2010, Sideshow Collectibles released a sixth scale Thrawn figure, with a command chair as part of the deluxe version. A 6.75" Thrawn mini bust was produced by Gentle Giant in 2014. All representations of the character have included a pet ysalamir, except the 2009 miniature. Hasbro released a Thrawn action figure as part of its "Rebels" series of figures in 2016. In 2017, Hasbro released a 6" Thrawn figure as a part of its Black Series line, as well as a San Diego Comic Con version featuring enhanced packaging and accessories. In the same year, Funko released the "Star Wars Rebels" Grand Admiral Thrawn #170 POP! figurine as a "2017 Galactic Convention Exclusive" related to the 2017 "Star Wars" Celebration. Additionally, Lego released a Grand Admiral Thrawn minifigure, included in the 2017 set "The Phantom".


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg is an independent city in the Commonwealth of Virginia, United States. At the 2020 census, it had a population of 15,425. Located on the Virginia Peninsula, Williamsburg is in the northern part of the Hampton Roads metropolitan area. It is bordered by James City County on the west and south and York County on the east.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: English settlers founded Williamsburg in 1632 as Middle Plantation, a fortified settlement on high ground between the James and York rivers. The city functioned as the capital of the Colony and Commonwealth of Virginia from 1699 to 1780 and became the center of political events in Virginia leading to the American Revolution. The College of William & Mary, established in 1693, is the second-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and the only one of the nine colonial colleges in the South. Its alumni include three U.S. presidents as well as many other important figures in the nation's early history.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The city's tourism-based economy is driven by Colonial Williamsburg, the city's restored Historic Area. Along with nearby Jamestown and Yorktown, Williamsburg forms part of the Historic Triangle, which annually attracts more than four million tourists. Modern Williamsburg is also a college town, inhabited in large part by William & Mary students, faculty and staff.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Before English settlers arrived at Jamestown to establish the Colony of Virginia in 1607, the area that would become Williamsburg formed part of the territory of the Powhatan Confederacy. By the 1630s, English settlements had grown to dominate the lower (eastern) portion of the Virginia Peninsula, and Powhatan tribes had abandoned their nearby villages. Between 1630 and 1633, after the war that followed the Indian Massacre of 1622, English colonists constructed a defensive palisade across the peninsula and a settlement named Middle Plantation as a primary guard-station along the palisade.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Jamestown, the original capital of Virginia Colony, burned down during the events of Bacon's Rebellion in 1676. Once Governor William Berkeley had regained control, temporary government headquarters were established about away on the high ground at Middle Plantation, pending the rebuilding of the Statehouse at Jamestown. The members of the House of Burgesses discovered that the "temporary" location was both safer and more pleasant than Jamestown, which was humid and plagued with mosquitoes.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: A school of higher education had long been an aspiration of the colonists. An early attempt at Henricus failed after the Indian Massacre of 1622; the location at the outskirts of the developed part of the colony had left it vulnerable to attack. In the 1690s, the colonists again tried to establish a school. They commissioned Reverend James Blair, who spent several years in England lobbying, and finally obtained a royal charter for the desired new school. It was to be named the College of William & Mary in honor of the monarchs of the time. When Blair returned to Virginia, the new school was founded in a safe place, Middle Plantation, in 1693. Classes began in temporary quarters in 1694, and construction soon started on the College Building, a precursor to the Wren Building.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Four years later, in 1698, the rebuilt Statehouse in Jamestown burned down again, this time accidentally. The government again "temporarily" relocated to Middle Plantation, and in addition to the better climate now also enjoyed use of the college's facilities. The college students made a presentation to the House of Burgesses, and it was agreed in 1699 that the colonial capital would move to Middle Plantation permanently. A village was laid out and Middle Plantation was renamed Williamsburg in honor of King William III of England, befitting the town's newly elevated status.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: After Williamsburg's designation as the colony's capital, immediate provision was made for construction of a capitol building and for platting the city according to Theodorick Bland's survey. His design utilized the college's extant sites and the almost new Bruton Parish Church as focal points, and placed the new Capitol building opposite the college, with Duke of Gloucester Street connecting them.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Alexander Spotswood, who arrived in Virginia as lieutenant governor in 1710, had several ravines filled and streets leveled, and assisted in erecting additional college buildings, a church, and a magazine for the storage of arms. In 1722, Williamsburg was granted a royal charter as a "city incorporate" (now believed to be the oldest charter in the United States). It was actually a borough.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Middle Plantation was included in James City Shire when it was established in 1634, as the colony reached a total population of approximately 5,000. (James City and Virginia's other shires changed their names a few years later; James City Shire then became known as James City County). The middle ground ridge-line was essentially the dividing line with Charles River Shire, which was renamed York County after King Charles I () fell out of favor with the citizens of England. As Middle Plantation (and later Williamsburg) developed, the boundaries were adjusted slightly. For most of the colonial period, the border between the two counties ran down the center of Duke of Gloucester Street. During this time, and for almost 100 years after the 1776 formation both of the Commonwealth of Virginia and of the United States, despite practical complications, the town remained divided between the two counties.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg was the site of the first attempted canal in the United States. In 1771, Lord Dunmore, who was Virginia's last Royal Governor, announced plans to connect Archer's Creek, which leads to the James River, with Queen's Creek, leading to the York River. It would have formed a water route across the Virginia Peninsula, but was not completed. Remains of this canal are visible at the rear of the grounds behind the Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: In the 1770s, the first purpose-built psychiatric hospital in the United States, the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds, was founded in the city. Known in modern times as Eastern State Hospital, it was established by Act of the Virginia colonial legislature on June 4, 1770. The Act to "Make Provision for the Support and Maintenance of Ideots, Lunaticks, and other Persons of unsound Minds" authorized the House of Burgesses to appoint a 15-man Court Of Directors to oversee the hospital's operations and admissions. In 1771, contractor Benjamin Powell constructed a two-story building on Francis Street near the college, capable of housing 24 patients. The design included "yards for patients to walk and take the Air in" as well as provisions for a fence to keep the patients out of the town.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The Gunpowder Incident began in April 1775 as a dispute between Dunmore and Virginia colonists over gunpowder stored in the Williamsburg magazine. Fearing rebellion, Dunmore ordered royal marines to seize gunpowder from the magazine. Virginia militia led by Patrick Henry responded to the "theft" and marched on Williamsburg. A standoff ensued, with Dunmore threatening to destroy the city if attacked by the militia. The dispute was resolved when payment for the powder was arranged. This was an important precursor in the run-up to the American Revolution.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Following the Declaration of Independence from Britain, the American Revolutionary War broke out in 1776.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: On July 25, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed at Williamsburg and received with "applause under discharge of cannon and firing of small arms with illuminations [fireworks] in the evening".


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: During the war, Virginia's capital was moved again, in 1780, this time to Richmond at the urging of then-Governor Thomas Jefferson, who feared Williamsburg's location made it vulnerable to a British attack. Williamsburg remained a venue for many important conventions during the war.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg ceased to be the capital of the new Commonwealth of Virginia in 1780 and went into decline, although not to the degree Jamestown had. Another factor was travel: 18th- and early 19th-century transportation in the colony was largely by canals and navigable rivers. As it had been built on "high ground", Williamsburg was not sited on a major water-route, unlike many early U.S. communities. The railroads that began to be built in the 1830s also did not yet come through the city.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Despite Williamsburg's loss of the business activity involved in government, the College of William and Mary continued and expanded, as did the Public Hospital for Persons of Insane and Disordered Minds. The latter became known as Eastern State Hospital.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: At the outset of the American Civil War (1861–1865), enlistments in the Confederate Army depleted the College of William and Mary's student body and on May 10, 1861, the faculty voted to close the college for the duration of the war. The College Building served as a Confederate barracks and later as a hospital before being burned by Union forces in 1862.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The Williamsburg area saw combat in the spring of 1862 during the Peninsula Campaign, a Union effort to take Richmond from the east from a base at Fort Monroe. Throughout late 1861 and early 1862, the small contingent of Confederate defenders was known as the Army of the Peninsula, led by General John B. Magruder. He successfully created ruses to fool the invaders as to the size and strength of his forces, and deterred their attack. The subsequent slow Union movement up the peninsula gained valuable time for defenses to be constructed at the Confederate capital at Richmond.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: In early May 1862, after holding off Union troops for over a month, the defenders withdrew quietly from the Warwick Line (stretching across the Peninsula between Yorktown and Mulberry Island). As General George McClellan's Union forces crept up the Peninsula to pursue the retreating Confederate forces, a rear-guard force led by General James Longstreet and supported by General J. E. B. Stuart's cavalry blocked their westward progression at the Williamsburg Line. This was a series of 14 redoubts east of town, with earthen Fort Magruder (also known as Redoubt # 6) at the crucial junction of the two major roads leading to Williamsburg from the east. College of William and Mary President Benjamin S. Ewell oversaw the design and construction. He owned a farm in James City County, and had been commissioned as an officer in the Confederate Army after the college closed in 1861.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: At the Battle of Williamsburg on May 5, 1862, the defenders succeeded in delaying the Union forces long enough for the retreating Confederates to reach the outer defenses of Richmond.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: A siege of Richmond ensued, culminating in the Seven Days Battles (June to July 1862). McClellan's campaign failed to capture Richmond. Meanwhile, on May 6, 1862, Williamsburg had fallen to the Union. The college's Brafferton building operated for a time as quarters for the commanding officer of the Union garrison occupying the town. On September 9, drunken soldiers of the 5th Pennsylvania Cavalry set fire to the College Building, allegedly to prevent Confederate snipers from using it for cover. Williamsburg underwent much damage during the Union occupation, which lasted until September 1865.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: In 1881, Collis P. Huntington's Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad (C&O) built its Peninsula Extension through the area, eventually establishing six stations in Williamsburg and the surrounding area. The Peninsula Extension was good news for the farmers and merchants of the Virginia Peninsula, and they generally welcomed the railroad, which aided passenger travel and shipping. Williamsburg allowed tracks to be placed down Duke of Gloucester Street and even directly through the ruins of the capitol building. (They were later relocated, and Collis Huntington's real-estate arm, Old Dominion Land Company, donated the site to the forerunner of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities.)


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The railroad's main purpose was shipping eastbound West Virginia bituminous coal to Newport News. Using the new coal piers, coal was loaded aboard large colliers in the harbor of Hampton Roads for shipment to New England and to export destinations worldwide.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Due in no small part to President Ewell's efforts, education continued at the College of William and Mary, although teaching was temporarily suspended for financial reasons from 1882 to 1888. Ewell's efforts to restore the school and its programs during and after Reconstruction became legendary in Williamsburg and at the college, and were ultimately successful, with funding both from the U.S. Congress and from the Commonwealth of Virginia. In 1888, the college secured $10,000 from the General Assembly of the Commonwealth and established a normal school to educate teachers; in 1906, the General Assembly modified the college charter, took ownership of the college buildings and grounds, and assumed primary responsibility for funding it. Ewell remained in Williamsburg as President Emeritus of the college until his death in 1894.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Beginning in the 1890s, C&O land agent Carl M. Bergh, a Norwegian-American who had earlier farmed in the midwestern states, realized that eastern Virginia's gentler climate and depressed post-Civil War land prices would be attractive to his fellow Scandinavians who were farming in other northern parts of the country. He began sending out notices and selling land. Soon there was a substantial concentration of relocated Americans of Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish descent in the area. The location earlier known as Vaiden's Siding on the railroad just west of Williamsburg in James City County was renamed Norge. These citizens and their descendants found the local conditions favorable, and many became leading merchants, tradespersons, and farmers in the community. These transplanted Americans brought some new blood and enthusiasm to the old colonial capital area.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg remained a sleepy small town in the early 20th century. Some newer structures were interspersed with colonial-era buildings, but the town was much less progressive than Virginia's other, busier communities of similar size. Some local lore indicates that the residents liked it that way, as described in longtime Virginia Peninsula journalist, author and historian Parke S. Rouse Jr.'s work. On June 26, 1912, the Richmond "Times-Dispatch" newspaper ran an editorial that dubbed the town "Lotusburg", for "Tuesday was election day in Williamsburg but nobody remembered it. The clerk forgot to wake the electoral board, the electoral board could not arouse itself long enough to have the ballots printed, the candidates forgot they were running, the voters forgot they were alive."


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: But even if such complacency existed, one Episcopal priest dreamed of expanding and changing Williamsburg's future to give it a new major purpose, turning much of it into a massive living museum. In the early 20th century, the Reverend Dr. W. A. R. Goodwin of Williamsburg's Bruton Parish Church championed one of the nation's largest historic restorations. Initially, Goodwin just aimed to save his historic church building. This he had accomplished by 1907, in time for the 300th anniversary of the founding of the Episcopal Church in Virginia. But upon returning to Williamsburg in 1923 after serving a number of years in upstate New York, he realized that many of the other remaining colonial-era buildings were also in deteriorating condition.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Goodwin dreamed of a much larger restoration along the lines of what he had accomplished with his church. Of modest means, he sought support and financing from a number of sources before successfully attracting the interest and major financial support of Standard Oil heir and philanthropist John D. Rockefeller Jr. and his wife Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. Their combined efforts created Colonial Williamsburg, restoring much of downtown Williamsburg and developing a Historic Area celebrating the patriots and early history of America.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: In addition to Colonial Williamsburg, the city's railroad station was restored to become an intermodal passenger facility. In nearby James City County, the 1908 C&O Railway combination passenger and freight station at Norge was preserved and, with a donation from CSX Transportation, relocated in 2006 to a site at the Williamsburg Regional Library's Croaker Branch. Other landmarks outside the historic area include Carter's Grove and Gunston Hall.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: In 1932, a Catholic church was built to minister to students at the College of William & Mary. Old Saint Bede was made a national shrine, dedicated to Our Lady of Walsingham.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The third of three debates between Republican President Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter was held at Phi Beta Kappa Memorial Hall at The College of William & Mary on October 22, 1976. Perhaps in tribute to the historic venue, as well as to the United States Bicentennial celebration, both candidates spoke of a "new spirit" in America.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The 9th G7 summit took place in Williamsburg in 1983. The participants discussed the growing debt-crisis, arms control and greater cooperation between the Soviet Union and the G7 (subsequently the G8). At the end of the meeting, Secretary of State George P. Shultz read to the press a statement confirming the deployment of American Pershing II-nuclear rockets in West Germany later in 1983.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: On May 3, 2007, Britain's Queen Elizabeth II visited Jamestown and Williamsburg. She had previously visited Williamsburg in 1957. Many world leaders, including President George W. Bush, visited Jamestown to mark its 400th anniversary. The celebration began in part in 2005 with events leading up to the anniversary, and was celebrated statewide throughout 2007, though the official festivities took place during the first week of May.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: On February 5, 2009, President Barack Obama took his first trip aboard Air Force One to a House Democrats retreat in the city to attend and address their "Issues Conference".


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has an area of , of which is land and (1.8%) is water.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg stands upon a ridge on the Virginia Peninsula between the James and York Rivers. Queen's Creek and College Creek partly encircle the city. James City County is to the west and south and York County to the north and east. As with all cities in Virginia, Williamsburg is legally independent of both counties.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The city is on the I-64 corridor, southeast of Richmond and about northwest of Norfolk. It is in the northwest corner of Hampton Roads, the nation's 37th-largest metropolitan area, with a population of 1,576,370. Within Hampton Roads, Norfolk is recognized as the central business district, while the Virginia Beach seaside resort district and Williamsburg are primarily tourism centers.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg is in the humid subtropical climate zone, with cool to mild winters, and hot, humid summers. Due to the inland location, winters are slightly cooler and spring days slightly warmer than in Norfolk, though lows average cooler here due to the substantial urban buildup to the southeast. Snowfall averages per season, and the summer months tend to be slightly wetter. With a period of record dating only back to 1951, extreme temperatures range from on January 21, 1985, to on August 22, 1983, and June 26, 1952.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: "Note: the US Census treats Hispanic/Latino as an ethnic category. This table excludes Latinos from the racial categories and assigns them to a separate category. Hispanics/Latinos can be of any race."


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: As of the census of 2010, there were 14,068 people, 3,619 households, and 1,787 families residing in the city. The population density was 1,404.1 people per square mile (542.4/km). There were 3,880 housing units at an average density of 454.1 per square mile (175.4/km). The racial makeup of the city was 74.0% White, 14.0% Black or African American, 0.3% Native American, 5.7% Asian, 0.0% Pacific Islander, 2.5% from other races, and 3.5% from two or more races. 6.7% of the population were Hispanics or Latinos of any race.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: There were 3,619 households, out of which 16.5% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 37.2% were married couples living together, 9.6% had a female householder with no husband present, and 50.6% were non-families. 35.9% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.4% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.07 and the average family size was 2.66.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The age distribution was: 9.6% under the age of 18, 46.0% from 18 to 24, 17.7% from 25 to 44, 15.0% from 45 to 64, and 11.7% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 23 years. For every 100 females, there were 81.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 80.8 males.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The median income for a household in the city was $37,093, and the median income for a family was $52,358. Males had a median income of $28,625 versus $26,840 for females. The per capita income for the city was $18,483. 18.3% of the population and 9.3% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total population, 29.7% of those under the age of 18 and 5.5% of those 65 and older were living below the poverty line.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: A high proportion of Williamsburg residents derive a significant percentage of their annual income from investments, either in addition to or in lieu of income from work. This is because many retirees relocate to Williamsburg and typically draw income from investments such as 401(k) plans and the like.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The tourist volume of Colonial Williamsburg has attracted many related businesses to the area. Notable among these was Anheuser-Busch, which established large operations in James City County and York County just outside the city. The company operates a large brewery there. It also used to operate two theme parks near the brewery, Busch Gardens Williamsburg, and Water Country USA, but both properties were sold to private investors after foreign brewer InBev took over Anheuser-Busch in 2010. Anheuser-Busch also previously operated a commerce park, McLaw's Circle, and Kingsmill on the James, a gated residential neighborhood that contains a resort of the same name.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg has an outlet mall, Williamsburg Premium Outlets. A second outlet mall, Williamsburg Outlet Mall, closed in December 2013. Williamsburg Pottery Factory also has outlet stores.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: As with most of Virginia (the Northern Virginia/Washington D.C. metro area being a notable exception), Williamsburg is often associated with the larger American South. People who grew up in the Hampton Roads area have a unique Tidewater accent that differs from a stereotypical Southern accent. Vowels have a longer pronunciation than in a regular southern accent. For example, "house" is pronounced "hoose" in the Tidewater accent. Due to the strong military presence in the Tidewater Area, the Tidewater accent has been slowly dying out for years.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg is perhaps best known for its tourist and historical points of interest, the centerpiece of which is Colonial Williamsburg, essentially a living history museum, depicting the lifestyles and culture of the 18th-century colonial period. Major points of interest in this historic district include Virginia's first capitol building, the Governor's Palace, Bruton Parish Church (the oldest continually operating church in the United States), the Peyton Randolph House (home of Peyton Randolph, the first President of Continental Congress and rumored to be haunted) and The College of William & Mary.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Other highlights in the city include the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Museum, The Williamsburg Winery (Virginia's largest winery), the Williamsburg Botanical Garden, the National Center for State Courts and the Virginia Musical Museum. Williamsburg also has two major theme parks, Busch Gardens Williamsburg and Water Country USA, as well as Go-Karts Plus action park and two miniature golf courses. The Williamsburg Pottery Factory shopping complex visited by 3 million people annually is in nearby Lightfoot. "Artistic" and ornamental items are sold at the Market Square shops adjacent to the colonial area and at many stores on Richmond Road. Presidents Park was an educational attraction that displayed outdoor statue heads of all 43 presidents, each accompanied by a descriptive biographical plaque. In 2010, Presidents Park closed due to financial issues.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg is primarily served by two newspapers, "The Virginia Gazette" and "Williamsburg-Yorktown Daily".


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The "Gazette" is a biweekly, published in Williamsburg, and was the first newspaper to be published south of the Potomac River, starting in 1736. Its publisher was William Parks, who had similar ventures in Maryland. After his death in 1750, Parks's shop foreman William Hunter restarted the paper in 1751.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The "Daily Press", published in nearby Newport News, covers local, regional and national news. The College of William & Mary has two student newspapers; the student-fee-supported campus newspaper "The Flat Hat" and the independent campus newspaper "The Virginia Informer". William & Mary students produce many other publications and run their own radio station, WCWM. "Hampton Roads Magazine" is a bimonthly regional magazine for Williamsburg and the Hampton Roads area. Williamsburg is served by a variety of AM and FM radio stations, with towers around the Hampton Roads area.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg is served by the Norfolk–Portsmouth–Newport News designated market area (DMA), the nation's 42nd-largest, with 712,790 homes (0.64% of the total U.S.).


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Federally, Williamsburg is part of Virginia's 2nd congressional district, represented by Democrat Elaine Luria, elected in 2018.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: When Williamsburg received its charter in 1722, it had portions in both James City and York County. In 1870, the Virginia General Assembly changed the boundaries so that it was entirely within James City County.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: A year later, a new state constitution created the political entity known as an independent city, which is not located in any county. Williamsburg subsequently incorporated as a city in 1884 and separated from James City County, but continues to share several constitutional officers with James City County. The city also operates a joint school division with James City County, under a voluntary agreement that leaders revisit at planned intervals.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: As an independent city, Williamsburg has had a council-manager form of government since 1932. The city council elects the mayor, who presides over council meetings and serves as the city's Chief Elected Official. The city council consists of five members who serve staggered, four-year terms. It hires a city manager, comparable to a corporation's chief executive officer, who is usually a professionally trained public administrator and is charged with implementing the council's policies and directives and has broad administrative authority with strict rules prohibiting political interference in administrative matters.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: , Williamsburg's mayor is Douglas Pons, and the vice mayor is W. Pat Dent. Other city council members are Barbara Ramsey, Ted Maslin and Caleb Rogers. The city manager is Andrew O. Trivette.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The city now shares all constitutional officers, courts, and the Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools system (WJCC) with adjacent James City County, and is the county seat. Until 1998, the city had its own Sheriff's Office. It was consolidated with the James City County Sheriff's Office, becoming Williamsburg-James City County Sheriff's Office.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: As a college town, Williamsburg's large student population has also resulted in a few conflicts with the city government. For example, in addressing concerns of property values and noise complaints near campus, the council has undertaken initiatives to reduce student off-campus residential presence in the city by instituting a maximum occupancy rule of three unrelated persons for single-family dwellings, as well as a plan to buy rental houses with taxpayer dollars and resell them with the stipulation that the new owners must occupy them. Until July 1, 2007, the voting registrar, David Andrews, had interpreted Virginia law to exclude a high percentage of students, arguing that students should be registered where their parents live. The new voter registrar, Win Sowder, said she is registering students as she would "any other resident of the city. If they're living in the dorms for eight months out of the year, and have an address located within the city limits on a Virginia driver's license, they're entitled to register to vote."


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: In presidential elections, Williamsburg was a Republican-leaning city for most of the time from the 1950s to the 1980s. Between 1948 and 1988, it supported a Democratic presidential nominee once, during Lyndon Johnson's 1964 landslide victory. This changed in the 1990s when Democrat Bill Clinton won Williamsburg in both of his presidential campaigns. Due in part to Green Party candidate Ralph Nader's strong showing as a left-wing protest candidate in the college town, Republican George W. Bush secured a very narrow plurality in 2000.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Democrat John Kerry won the city by a single-digit margin over Bush in 2004. In the elections since then, Williamsburg has swung heavily to the Democrats, and has become one of the most Democratic areas of Hampton Roads and Virginia. Democrat Barack Obama swept Williamsburg by 29-point margins in both the 2008 and 2012 elections. In the 2016 election, Democrat Hillary Clinton beat Republican Donald Trump in Williamsburg by 45 points. Trump won 25% of the vote, the worst showing for a Republican in the city in over a century. Four years later, the city gave an equally massive victory to Joe Biden, who carried the county with 69% of the vote, the best showing for a Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The public school system, Williamsburg-James City County Public Schools, is jointly operated by the city of Williamsburg and James City County. The Williamsburg city limits is served by the following schools:


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Walsingham Academy is a private Catholic school serving pre-kindergarten through 12th grade. Other private schools include Williamsburg Christian Academy, Williamsburg Montessori School, and Providence Classical School.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: For the 2001–02 academic year, "Expansion Management Magazine" ranked the public school system among the top five school systems in the Commonwealth of Virginia and in the top 15% nationwide. There are also two regional Governor's Schools in the area that serve gifted and talented students.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The city has been the home to The College of William & Mary since its founding in 1693, making it America's second-oldest college (after Harvard University). Technically a university, William & Mary was also the first U.S. institution to have a Royal Charter, and the only one to have coat-of-arms from the College of Arms in London. The campus adjoins the Historic District, and the Wren Building at the head of Duke of Gloucester Street was one of the earliest restored by W. A. R. Goodwin and the family of John D. Rockefeller Jr. as they began creating Colonial Williamsburg. Over 70% of the college's students either work part-time or volunteer in the community. Students contribute over 300,000 hours of volunteer service to Williamsburg annually.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: There are also three community colleges, offering associate degrees and college transfer programs, within a 25-mile radius of Williamsburg: Thomas Nelson Community College, Paul D. Camp Community College, and Rappahannock Community College. A branch of Thomas Nelson Community College is just east of the city limits in James City County.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Williamsburg is located adjacent to Interstate 64 and U.S. Route 60, which connect the city with Richmond to the northwest and Norfolk to the southeast. State Route 199, officially named the Humelsine Parkway after a former Colonial Williamsburg president, surrounds the city in a semicircle. State Route 5 links the city with the James River Plantations along the north shore of the James River, Interstate 295 and Richmond. State Route 31 provides a route to Jamestown and the toll-free Jamestown Ferry. The Colonial Parkway provides a bucolic low-speed link to Jamestown and Yorktown, passing under Colonial Williamsburg in a tunnel. With the exception of buses, commercial vehicles are not allowed on the Parkway.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The community's public bus system, Williamsburg Area Transit Authority (WATA), has its central hub at the transportation center. A network of disabled-accessible transit bus routes serve the city, James City County, and most portions of York County adjacent to the Williamsburg area, with hourly service seven days a week, and half-hourly service on select routes during peak weekday hours. The routes operated by WATA include a loop around the William & Mary campus while classes are in session. The system also provides paratransit services and operates replica trolley buses at the Yorktown Riverfront attraction. WATA connects with the much larger Hampton Roads Transit (HRT) bus system at Lee Hall in northwestern Newport News and at the Williamsburg Transportation Center.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Walking is a major mode of transportation in Williamsburg, with about a fifth of people walking to work between 2006 and 2010. Walk Score, a website which algorithmically determines how friendly communities are to walkers, describes the city as "very walkable". With few exceptions, motorized traffic is not allowed on Duke of Gloucester Street, which passes through Colonial Williamsburg and the shopping district of Merchant's Square. The city is also increasingly bicycle-friendly, having built 48 miles of bicycle facilities in the area since 1992. Upon completion, the Virginia Capital Trail will provide a paved off-road path to Richmond for bicyclists and pedestrians via the Colonial Parkway.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The primary airport for the Virginia Peninsula is the Newport News/Williamsburg International Airport in Newport News, a twenty-minute drive from Williamsburg. Norfolk International Airport and Richmond International Airport also serve passengers from the city. Amtrak serves Williamsburg with three trains a day stopping at the Amtrak Station. The line runs west along the Virginia Peninsula to Richmond and points beyond. A high-speed rail connection at Richmond to both the Northeast Corridor and the Southeast High Speed Rail Corridor are also under study. Intercity bus services are provided by Greyhound.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: Waller Mill Reservoir is the main water source for the City of Williamsburg. A 350-acre lake holding 1.5 billion gallons of water, it has been in operation since 1945. The City owns a large percentage of the surrounding watershed. During drought, this source may be supplemented by groundwater from a well at Waller Mill and from raw (untreated) water from Newport News Waterworks under a long-term agreement.


title: Williamsburg, Virginia

text: The City provides wastewater services for residents and transports wastewater to the regional Hampton Roads Sanitation District treatment plants.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Elizabeth Turner (née Swann) is a fictional character in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" film series. She appears in "" (2003) and three of its sequels, "" (2006), "" (2007) and "" (2017). She is portrayed by Keira Knightley (and as a child by Lucinda Dryzek in the prologue of "The Curse of the Black Pearl"). She is known to use the alias "Elizabeth Turner", but this later becomes her married name when she weds Will Turner.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Elizabeth is the only child to Weatherby Swann, the love interest (later wife) to Will Turner, mother to Henry Turner and daughter-in-law to William “Bootstrap Bill” Turner.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Elizabeth is a spirited, intelligent, and independent-minded character whose beauty attracted Will Turner, James Norrington, Sao Feng, and Captain Jack Sparrow. Only Will Turner's affections were reciprocated, although she struggled with a subtle attraction and kiss with Sparrow, and a compassionate friendship with Norrington. Throughout the three films, she transforms from a young girl to a proper lady and finally into a courageous pirate. Elizabeth has always been fascinated by piracy, but she is often revolted by pirates' aggressive, wild nature. Even after becoming a pirate, Elizabeth retains her refined ways, as well as her loyalty and compassion for loved ones (including Will Turner, her father, and later, Jack Sparrow and James Norrington).


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Elizabeth adapts easily to piracy, having natural leadership abilities. She learns seamanship quickly and finds that she has an innate talent for battle strategy. She learns swordsmanship from Will and is soon capable of defending herself against multiple opponents, fighting with two swords simultaneously. She later uses a Chinese Jian sword and also carries a multitude of other weapons on her person including knives, firearms, and what appears to be a small grenade.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: She freely speaks her mind even if it offends others; for example, she calls a potentially dangerous enemy, Sao Feng, a coward. During her reign as Pirate King, Elizabeth proves to be a charismatic leader and inspires the other pirate lords to battle Cutler Beckett's fleet. Elizabeth's darker side is shown when she sacrifices Jack Sparrow to the Kraken so she and the crew can escape. However, she feels so guilty about it that she later helps rescue Sparrow from Davy Jones' Locker.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Following the film's prologue, Elizabeth Swann is about 19 years old in , 20 years old in , around 22 years old in , and roughly 31-35 years old in . Elizabeth is about 5' 7" tall with a slender figure, brown eyes, and dark blonde hair which later lightens to a sun-kissed blonde/brown. Having been raised in aristocratic society as a royal governor's daughter, Elizabeth is a refined and elegant young lady but also has a feisty and strong-willed personality. She is also beautiful, attracting the attention of most of the major male characters in the series.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: In "", she wears a dress style known as a Robe a L'Anglaise. As a young girl, she wears a blue dress in this style, and, eight years later, her father presents her with a gold-colored frock to wear at Commodore Norrington's promotion ceremony. Elizabeth is kidnapped wearing a long, floral cream-colored dressing gown, though Captain Barbossa later insists she wear a red dress, previously owned by another lady; she is forced to return it prior to walking the plank and being marooned on a deserted island, clad only in a long white chemise . After being rescued by Commodore Norrington, Elizabeth is loaned a Royal Navy uniform, the first time she is seen in men's attire. At Jack Sparrow's execution, she is once again fashionably attired, wearing a peach-colored gown and a picture hat.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: In "", as Elizabeth's character and circumstances change, so does her wardrobe. Although she is first seen in an elegant wedding gown and a long lace veil, Elizabeth later disguises herself as a cabin boy, wearing brown breeches, a white shirt, brown boots, a red waistcoat, a black belt, and a brown tricorne hat. She wears this garb throughout the film. Exposure to the sun tans her skin and lightens her hair.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: In "", Elizabeth first appears in Chinese peasant clothing and a coolie hat while paddling a small boat through Singapore's waters. She is forced to wear only a short robe upon entering Sao Feng's bathhouse. Later, Elizabeth wears a long armored coat while traveling. As a captive aboard Sao Feng's ship, Elizabeth has been dressed in a long red cheongsam, a sleeveless full-length blue overcoat (both probably silk), and a studded turquoise phoenix crown. She later dons Chinese battle dress. During her one-day on the island with Will, she is clad in a black tunic. In the scene set ten years later, she is wearing a long skirt and a double-breasted brocade waistcoat over a white puffy-sleeved shirt, probably cotton or linen.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Throughout the trilogy, Elizabeth Swann is portrayed as a spirited, intelligent, and independent-minded character who often chafes at the restrictions imposed on her gender and social rank. Early on in the first movie she often fantasizes about pirates and life at sea. This may have been fueled somewhat by her association with another character, Will Turner, who eleven-year-old Elizabeth met when she and her father, Governor Weatherby Swann were en route to Port Royal eight years earlier. Will, also about eleven, was found adrift at sea, the sole survivor of a pirate attack. During his rescue, Elizabeth briefly glimpsed a mysterious ship slipping into the mist—a vessel foreshadowing her destiny.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: The story continues eight years later, and Elizabeth is now a marriageable age. Back then, as matrimony was a common means to forge strategic political alliances and advantageous social connections rather than loving unions, she is expected to wed a respectable and prosperous man equal or superior to her in rank. Elizabeth prefers marrying for love, and she may secretly harbor feelings for Will Turner. But Will, a common blacksmith, is an unsuitable match for such a well-born lady. And although Will secretly loves Elizabeth, he knows his place and keeps his feelings deeply hidden. Governor Swann, meanwhile, desires that his daughter marry Commodore James Norrington, a respected Royal Navy officer who Elizabeth admires but does not love. Ironically, it is Norrington who sets events into motion that not only alter Elizabeth's fate, but also his own and Will's. During Norrington's marriage proposal, Elizabeth, whose tightly laced corset nearly suffocates her, faints and falls off a rampart and into the bay. Her unlikely rescuer, and the catalyst for her transformation from a demure lady into a daring pirate, is the notorious Captain Jack Sparrow, newly arrived in Port Royal to commandeer a ship. Despite Sparrow's gallant actions and against Elizabeth's protests, he is promptly jailed for piracy and sentenced to hang. That night, a pirate ship, the Black Pearl, raids Port Royal. It is the same ship Elizabeth spied in the fog eight years earlier. When she is taken hostage it is discovered that she possesses Will's gold medallion that she took from him after his rescue, fearing it marked him as a pirate. Invoking parley, Elizabeth negotiates with Captain Barbossa to leave Port Royal in exchange for the coin. He agrees but keeps her captive on a technicality after she identifies herself as Elizabeth "Turner", mistakenly believing her blood can break an ancient Aztec curse the pirates are under. Their true forms — immortal skeletons —can only be seen in moonlight.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Will's love for Elizabeth motivates his actions and helps drive the story; he will do anything to save her, including piracy. And though the peaceful and law-abiding Will despises pirates and distrusts Sparrow, he frees him, knowing only Sparrow can locate Isla de Muerta, the secret island where Elizabeth is being held. Will is unaware, however, that Jack Sparrow is the "Black Pearl's" former captain and that he has an ulterior motive for helping him: Turner blood and the gold medallion can break the Aztec curse—Sparrow intends to barter Will to Barbossa in exchange for the "Black Pearl".


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: When Will and Elizabeth escape Isla de Muerta, Barbossa pursues and captures their ship, sinking it. Will and the crew are thrown in the "Pearl's" brig, while Elizabeth and Sparrow are marooned on a deserted island. Elizabeth's feisty, self-sufficient nature propels her into taking action for their rescue by burning a cache of smugglers' rum. The towering smoke column is spotted by Commodore Norrington aboard "Dauntless". To rescue Will, Elizabeth convinces Norrington to attack Isla de Muerta by impulsively accepting his previous marriage proposal. The commodore doubts her sincerity, though Elizabeth apparently intends to honor her promise, sacrificing her own happiness to save Will. She says nothing about the curse while Sparrow provides the bearings to Isla de Muerta, setting his own plan into motion.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: At Isla de Muerta, Elizabeth frees Sparrow's crew from the "Pearl's" brig, naively believing they will rescue Will and Sparrow. Abiding by the pirate code that, "any man who falls behind, is left behind," they instead commandeer the "Black Pearl" and set sail, leaving a disgusted Elizabeth to rescue Will and Sparrow alone. As the navy battles the pirates, Sparrow duels Barbossa inside the treasure cave, while Elizabeth joins Will in fighting the remaining cursed crew. Sparrow fatally shoots Barbossa, who, upon reverting to mortal form as the curse is lifted, falls dead. The surviving now-mortal pirates surrender. Will, Elizabeth, and Sparrow are rescued, although Sparrow is later condemned to hang.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: In Port Royal, Elizabeth attends Sparrow's execution. Will, who has been pardoned, approaches and proclaims his love for her before attempting to rescue Sparrow. Will frees Sparrow, but they are quickly captured, though Norrington and Governor Swann are reluctant to arrest Will or resume Sparrow's execution. Elizabeth intervenes and declares her love for Will. Norrington releases Will and concedes Elizabeth's hand to him. Sparrow, meanwhile, falls off the rampart and into the bay just as the "Black Pearl" sails into view. He is hauled aboard, captain once again. Apparently impressed by the wily pirate, Norrington allows the "Black Pearl" one day's head start before giving chase.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: The film opens a year later, and Elizabeth is seen waiting at the altar where she and Will Turner were to be wed. Lord Cutler Beckett arrives with arrest warrants, bringing Will, who is shackled in irons. Elizabeth and Will are charged with aiding Sparrow's escape; the punishment is death. Former Commodore James Norrington is also implicated, although he has since resigned his commission and disappeared. Lord Beckett offers clemency if Will agrees to search for Jack Sparrow and bring him back his magical compass. Beckett, a ruthless East India Trading Company agent, is extending the company's monopolistic stronghold over the entire Caribbean. Honest merchants and traders are forced to pay exorbitant fees and surcharges to ply their goods in EITC-controlled ports, an action amounting to little more than legal piracy. With Jack's compass, Becket can eradicate all pirates, thus securing and expanding the company's territory and increasing its profits while consolidating his own power and wealth. Beckett implies he has a personal score to settle with Jack Sparrow, though it is never revealed in the series what this is. However, it is revealed that Beckett was responsible for branding Sparrow for piracy.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Once again, Elizabeth's freedom is dependent upon Will procuring Sparrow's help. Will finally locates Sparrow and the "Black Pearl" crew on Pelegosto hiding from the Kraken, a voracious leviathan controlled by Davy Jones, the mythical captain of the "Flying Dutchman" and ruler of the seas. Jones is hunting Sparrow to collect a blood debt, while Sparrow has been searching for the Dead Man's Chest containing Jones' beating heart. Whoever possesses the heart, controls Davy Jones and the oceans. Unfortunately, Sparrow's magic compass seems to fail him, though it may be pointing to something he unknowingly desires more than the Dead Man's Chest.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: When Elizabeth escapes jail and discovers Beckett is only pardoning Sparrow, she confronts Beckett at gunpoint, forcing him to validate a Letters of Marque to free Will. Disguised as a cabin boy, Elizabeth tricks a merchant crew into making port in Tortuga. She jumps ship and encounters Sparrow and Gibbs in a pub recruiting sailors in an attempt to pay off Sparrow's debt to Davy Jones, who demands one hundred souls in exchange for his. Another man applies — James Norrington, now a disgraced, drunken wretch. Blaming Sparrow for his ruination, Norrington attempts to shoot him, igniting a brawl, but Elizabeth knocks him out to save him. At the pier, Sparrow claims Will was press ganged into Davy Jones' crew, insisting he was blameless; Norrington is skeptical, but Elizabeth places her faith in Sparrow when he claims she can save Will by finding the Dead Man's Chest. Using his magical compass, she gets a bearing.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: On Isla Cruces, Jack, Elizabeth, and Norrington find the Dead Man's Chest. When Will arrives with Davy Jones' stolen key, Elizabeth learns that Sparrow tricked Will onto the "Dutchman". A conflict erupts: Will wants to kill Jones by stabbing the heart, freeing his father from Jones' servitude; Sparrow fears the Kraken will continue hunting him if Jones is dead; Norrington plots to barter back his naval career with the heart. As a triple threat duel erupts, Jones' crew arrive. Sparrow obtains the key and opens the chest, but it is Norrington who ultimately escapes with the heart and the Letters of Marque.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: The "Black Pearl" outruns the pursuing "Flying Dutchman". Undeterred, Jones summons the Kraken, but the crew temporarily fight it off. To save himself, Sparrow escapes in the remaining longboat, prompting Elizabeth to brand him a coward. But as Elizabeth once predicted, Sparrow, unable to desert his crew, heroically returns to rescue them, reaffirming her faith in him. During the Kraken's brief retreat, Jack orders all hands to abandon ship. Realizing that Sparrow is the Kraken's sole target, Elizabeth distracts him with a passionate kiss while handcuffing him to the mast. Insisting she has no regrets, her overwhelming guilt belies her true feelings. She tells the others that Sparrow stayed behind to aid their escape, unaware Will witnessed their encounter and mistakenly believes she loves Sparrow.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: The Kraken returns for a final assault, dragging the "Pearl" and Jack Sparrow to the Locker as the crew watches from the longboat. It is during this final battle that Sparrow's and Elizabeth's contrasting, yet also similar, underlying characters emerge: Jack shows heroism and loyalty by returning to the ship to save his crew; Elizabeth becomes more pirate-like to save herself and the others. Even Sparrow acknowledges this by calling her "pirate" in an almost admiring tone, as if praising her cleverness and heralding her passage into his realm.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Norrington arrives in Port Royal and presents the heart and the Letters of Marque to Cutler Beckett in a bid to reclaim his commission. Meanwhile, Will, Elizabeth, and the grieving crew make their way upriver to Tia Dalma, the voodoo priestess who helped Sparrow find the Dead Man's Chest. As the crew drink a somber toast to their fallen captain, Elizabeth is wracked with guilt over secretly sacrificing Sparrow to the Kraken. This reinforces Will's belief that Elizabeth loves Sparrow. He despondently comforts her, prompting Tia Dalma to ask if they are willing to rescue Sparrow and the "Pearl" from Davy Jones' Locker. When all say, "aye," Dalma says they will need a captain who knows those waters. Incredibly, a very alive Captain Barbossa descends the stairs.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Jack Sparrow, Captain Barbossa, and seven other pirate lords have been summoned to a Brethren Court at Shipwreck Island to address Lord Beckett's assault on piracy. Jack, eternally imprisoned aboard the "Black Pearl" in Davy Jones' Locker, lacks a successor and possesses one of the nine "pieces of eight" that each pirate lord carries and must bring to the meeting; Jack must attend. Elizabeth joins Will Turner, Captain Barbossa, Tia Dalma, and Sparrow's crew on a rescue mission, but they must first obtain a navigational chart leading to World's End, the gateway to the Locker. Each character also has a self-serving motive for retrieving Jack, and, to succeed, must maintain an uneasy alliance despite distrusting one another. For Elizabeth, it is an opportunity to alleviate her guilt for sacrificing Jack to the Kraken to spare herself and the crew.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: In Singapore, Sao Feng, the Pirate Lord of the South China Sea, provides the chart and a ship, but Will negotiates a secret accord with Feng: Jack Sparrow in exchange for the "Black Pearl". Unknown to Will, Elizabeth's lingering anguish over causing Jack's demise torments her, and during the voyage to World's End and Davy Jones Locker, she distances herself from Will. Though she claims everything will eventually be alright between them, her assurance seems uncertain and forced, leaving Will troubled and doubting her love for him. It is only when Will learns that Elizabeth sacrificed Jack to the Kraken that he comprehends her despair, though not why she concealed her actions. When Will confronts her, she says it was her burden to bear, though her secrecy has deeply wounded Will. If she makes choices alone, he asks, and they are unable to trust one another, then how can their relationship survive? Though Elizabeth apparently still cares for Will, her pain and guilt are unabated, and she despondently responds that he cannot trust her, and abruptly leaves. Their future together may be jeopardized if these issues remain unresolved. Meanwhile, as Jack and Barbossa squabble over who is the "Black Pearl's" captain, the crew navigate their way back to the living world. Before escaping the Locker, Elizabeth sees her father's soul being ferried to the "next world," murdered by Cutler Beckett; she vows to avenge his death.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: After returning to the living world, Will's clandestine bargain with Sao Feng is exposed. But Feng has already betrayed Will for another deal with Beckett. While Elizabeth may understand that Will's motive is to rescue his father, she does not believe it justifies double-crossing the "Pearl's" crew. When she insists he explain why he withheld this, Will retorts that it was his, "burden to bear." When Feng demands Elizabeth in exchange for the "Pearl", she agrees in order to protect the crew. Elizabeth ignores Will's protests, telling him, "You got us into this mess. If this is what frees us, then done!" As their rift widens, Will, secretly torn between saving his father and being with Elizabeth, fears she is slipping away. He laments later to Sparrow, "I'm losing her Jack."


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: When Jones attacks the "Empress", Feng, mortally wounded, hands over his "piece of eight" to Elizabeth and names her as captain and Pirate Lord of the South China Sea, mistakenly believing she is the sea goddess, Calypso. Elizabeth and her new crew are taken prisoner aboard the "Flying Dutchman" where she is reunited with Admiral Norrington, who is overjoyed she is alive. Elizabeth is hostile, however, accusing him of complicity in her father's murder, though Norrington denies knowing anything about the governor's death, and believed he returned to England. Elizabeth, hardly appeased, rebukes him for serving Lord Beckett, the man who ordered her father's murder. In the brig, Elizabeth encounters "Bootstrap" Bill Turner, who is gradually being absorbed into the ship's hull, losing his senses. He says Will cannot save both Elizabeth and himself—he will only choose her. Elizabeth finally understands Will's terrible dilemma and his motives: he must sacrifice one to save the other. That night, Norrington, shamed by his past deeds, frees Elizabeth and the crew. Elizabeth forgives Norrington, who again swears he was uninvolved in her father's death. She implores him to go with them, but he refuses to leave the ship. As she flees, he gives her one last kiss, saying, "Our fates have been entwined, Elizabeth, but never joined" hence acknowledging that they were never meant to be together. As Elizabeth and her crew escape to the towed "Empress", "Bootstrap" Bill Turner, his mind addled by Jones' cruel punishment, sounds an alarm and fatally stabs Norrington as he attempts to hold Bootstrap off. Elizabeth witnesses his murder and cries "James!"


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: The "Black Pearl" and the "Empress" race to Shipwreck Island for the Brethren Court. The pirate lords dispute how to oppose Beckett and the East India Trading Company; Elizabeth favors fighting while the Court prefers sequestering themselves inside the impenetrable Shipwreck Cove. This causes Sparrow to predict that confining themselves would likely result in them mass murdering each other. Jack unexpectedly breaks a stalemate to elect a pirate king by casting his ballot for Elizabeth; going to battle serves his own secret plan. "King" Elizabeth declares war. During a parley session with Beckett and Jones, Elizabeth tells the captive Will that having been aboard the "Dutchman", she now understands his burden, but fears that course (saving his father) is lost, though Will disagrees. Jack is exchanged for Will.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Whether Elizabeth's decision to declare war is brilliant or rash, her actions reflect her daring and bravery. As Beckett's fleet looms upon the horizon, Elizabeth, refusing to surrender or retreat, delivers a rousing speech. During the climatic sea battle, Will proposes to Elizabeth, claiming it may be their only chance to wed; Realizing how much she loves Will, Elizabeth orders Barbossa to marry them amidst the fighting. As the "Pearl" and the "Dutchman" clash, Elizabeth and Will board Jones' ship. When Jones mortally wounds Will, Jack relinquishes his bid for immortality to instead save Will, killing Jones. "Bootstrap" Bill Turner, having regained his senses, carves out his dead son's heart and places it in the Dead Man's Chest. Jack forces the grief-stricken Elizabeth to escape the ship with him as the "Dutchman" is sucked into the massive whirlpool. The ship quickly resurfaces with the resurrected Captain Will Turner at the helm and the crew restored to human form. With the "Flying Dutchman" now their ally, the pirates destroy Cutler Beckett's flagship "Endeavour", killing him, and causing the navy to retreat, thus ending the war.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: With Beckett finally vanquished and her father's death avenged, Elizabeth decides not to continue a life of piracy and to instead return to Port Royal.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Elizabeth bids Jack, Barbossa, and the pirates farewell before reuniting with Will for their "one day" on the nearby island where their marriage is consummated and their only child, Henry Turner, is conceived. Before returning to the "Flying Dutchman" at sunset for his ten years in the Netherworld, Will gives Elizabeth the Dead Man's Chest containing his beating heart for safekeeping. In a post-credits scene set ten years later, Elizabeth and Henry stand atop a cliff searching the horizon. As the sun sets, the Flying Dutchman appears with the Green Flash, Captain Will Turner aboard. Film dialogue and the leaflet inside the special edition 2-Disc DVD state that any captain of the "Flying Dutchman" is eternally bound to the ship, and may only step on land once every ten years.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Elizabeth Swann reunites with Will and Henry, after the Trident of Poseidon is destroyed, ending Will's curse that bound him to the "Flying Dutchman". In a post-credits scene, Elizabeth is seen sleeping next to Will, as the dark silhouette of an apparently resurrected Davy Jones enters the room. Will then awakens but, assuming that he was simply dreaming, goes back to sleep, oblivious to the water and barnacles at the foot of their bed.


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: According to actress Keira Knightley, Swann is "a 21st century girl trapped in an 18th century world. She . . . starts out as a damsel in distress and then kicks butt, so what's not to like?" While she appreciates her role, she was disappointed that her character did not carry a sword in "The Black Pearl": "I didn't have a sword. Am I angry about that? Yes, very! ... I asked every single day, anyone I could ask, if I could have a sword but I didn't get one." In the sequel "Dead Man's Chest", she added that, "we went off into a grungier look for her. That was really exciting actually, to take the character and make her grow up... I think they really liked the more action-based side of Elizabeth from the first film and apparently that's what little girls really responded to, so they decided to take her off in that direction". She adds she was relieved to finally be able to brandish a sword, although according to Knightley, most of her sword fighting scenes were cut. Knightley also stated how glad she was that by "At World's End", she was finally able to shed the elaborate dresses and only wear pirate's clothing: "Actually I am really glad, it's so hot in there it is unbelievable, and everybody else has got their proper pirate stuff on and I am a little less dressed than everyone else and I am very glad, so that's good. The rest of the time I've got kind of the Pirate look instead of the corset and frilly dresses."


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Behind-the-scenes footage included on the DVD and Blu-ray releases of "Dead Man's Chest" reveals that Knightley wore wigs when playing Elizabeth in that film, as her real hair had been cropped short at the time (she is shown rehearsing numerous scenes without her wig in several production featurettes).


title: Elizabeth Swann

text: Elizabeth Swann appears in the "Pirates of the Caribbean" world, Port Royal, of the Disney/Square Enix game "Kingdom Hearts II", voiced by Eliza Schneider in the English version (like the other original actors, Keira Knightley was unavailable due to filming "Dead Man's Chest" and "At World's End") and by Saori Yumiba in the Japanese version. She returns in Kingdom Hearts III with Schneider reprising the role. Elizabeth Swann also appears in the video game "" as well as "" as a playable character in both video games. Schneider also performs the voice of Elizabeth Swann again in the video game "" and in the video game adaptation of "". The character also appeared in "Pirates of the Caribbean Online". Elizabeth Swann is set to appear in the new racing game, Disney Speedstorm as a playable driver. Elizabeth Swann appears as a playable character in the video game "Disney Magic Kingdoms", wearing her pirate clothes from "Dead Man's Chest".


title: Elm

text: Elms are deciduous and semi-deciduous trees comprising the flowering plant genus Ulmus in the plant family Ulmaceae. They are distributed over most of the Northern Hemisphere, inhabiting the temperate and tropical-montane regions of North America and Eurasia, presently ranging southward in the Middle East to Lebanon and Israel, and across the Equator in the Far East into Indonesia.


title: Elm

text: Elms are components of many kinds of natural forests. Moreover, during the 19th and early 20th centuries, many species and cultivars were also planted as ornamental street, garden, and park trees in Europe, North America, and parts of the Southern Hemisphere, notably Australasia. Some individual elms reached great size and age. However, in recent decades, most mature elms of European or North American origin have died from Dutch elm disease, caused by a microfungus dispersed by bark beetles. In response, disease-resistant cultivars have been developed, capable of restoring the elm to forestry and landscaping.


title: Elm

text: The genus is hermaphroditic, having apetalous perfect flowers which are wind-pollinated. Elm leaves are alternate, with simple, single- or, most commonly, doubly serrate margins, usually asymmetric at the base and acuminate at the apex. The fruit is a round wind-dispersed samara flushed with chlorophyll, facilitating photosynthesis before the leaves emerge. The samarae are very light, those of British elms numbering around 50,000 to the pound (454 g). (Very rarely anomalous samarae occur with more than two wings.) All species are tolerant of a wide range of soils and pH levels but, with few exceptions, demand good drainage. The elm tree can grow to great height, often with a forked trunk creating a vase profile.


title: Elm

text: There are about 30 to 40 species of "Ulmus" (elm); the ambiguity in number results from difficulty in delineating species, owing to the ease of hybridization between them and the development of local seed-sterile vegetatively propagated microspecies in some areas, mainly in the Ulmus field elm ("Ulmus minor") group. Oliver Rackham describes "Ulmus" as the most critical genus in the entire British flora, adding that 'species and varieties are a distinction in the human mind rather than a measured degree of genetic variation'. Eight species are endemic to North America and three to Europe, but the greatest diversity is in Asia with approximately two dozen species. The oldest fossils of "Ulmus" are leaves dating Paleocene, found across the Northern Hemisphere.


title: Elm

text: The classification adopted in the List of elm species is largely based on that established by Brummitt. A large number of synonyms have accumulated over the last three centuries; their currently accepted names can be found in the list of Elm synonyms and accepted names.


title: Elm

text: Botanists who study elms and argue over elm identification and classification are called "pteleologists", from the Greek πτελέα (elm).


title: Elm

text: As part of the suborder urticalean rosids, they are distantly related to cannabis, mulberries, figs, hops, and nettles.


title: Elm

text: Elm propagation methods vary according to elm type and location, and the plantsman's needs. Native species may be propagated by seed. In their natural setting, native species, such as wych elm and European white elm in central and northern Europe and field elm in southern Europe, set viable seed in "favourable" seasons. Optimal conditions occur after a late warm spring. After pollination, seeds of spring-flowering elms ripen and fall at the start of summer (June); they remain viable for only a few days. They are planted in sandy potting soil at a depth of 1 cm, and germinate in three weeks. Slow-germinating American elm will remain dormant until the second season. Seeds from autumn-flowering elms ripen in the fall and germinate in the spring. Since elms may hybridize within and between species, seed propagation entails a hybridisation risk. In unfavourable seasons, elm seeds are usually sterile. Elms outside their natural range, such as English elm "U. minor" 'Atinia', and elms unable to pollinate because pollen sources are genetically identical, are sterile and are propagated by vegetative reproduction. Vegetative reproduction is also used to produce genetically identical elms (clones). Methods include the winter transplanting of root suckers; taking hardwood cuttings from vigorous one-year-old shoots in late winter, taking root cuttings in early spring; taking softwood cuttings in early summer; grafting; ground and air layering; and micropropagation. A bottom heat of 18 °C and humid conditions are maintained for hard- and softwood cuttings. The transplanting of root suckers remains the easiest most and commont propagation method for European field elm and its hybrids. For specimen urban elms, grafting to wych-elm rootstock may be used to eliminate suckering or to ensure stronger root growth. The mutant-elm cultivars are usually grafted, the "weeping" elms 'Camperdown' and 'Horizontalis' at , the dwarf cultivars 'Nana' and 'Jacqueline Hillier' at ground level. Since the Siberian elm is drought tolerant, in dry countries, new varieties of elm are often root-grafted onto this species.


title: Elm

text: Dutch elm disease (DED) devastated elms throughout Europe and much of North America in the second half of the 20th century. It derives its name "Dutch" from the first description of the disease and its cause in the 1920s by Dutch botanists Bea Schwarz and Christina Johanna Buisman. Owing to its geographical isolation and effective quarantine enforcement, Australia has so far remained unaffected by DED, as have the provinces of Alberta and British Columbia in western Canada.


title: Elm

text: DED is caused by a microfungus transmitted by two species of "Scolytus" elm-bark beetles, which act as vectors. The disease affects all species of elms native to North America and Europe, but many Asiatic species have evolved antifungal genes and are resistant. Fungal spores, introduced into wounds in the tree caused by the beetles, invade the xylem or vascular system. The tree responds by producing tyloses, effectively blocking the flow from roots to leaves. Woodland trees in North America are not quite as susceptible to the disease because they usually lack the root grafting of the urban elms and are somewhat more isolated from each other. In France, inoculation with the fungus of over 300 clones of the European species failed to find a single variety that possessed of any significant resistance.


title: Elm

text: The first, less aggressive strain of the disease fungus, "Ophiostoma ulmi", arrived in Europe from Asia in 1910, and was accidentally introduced to North America in 1928. It was steadily weakened by viruses in Europe and had all but disappeared by the 1940s. However, the disease had a much greater and longer-lasting impact in North America, owing to the greater susceptibility of the American elm, "Ulmus americana", which masked the emergence of the second, far more virulent strain of the disease "Ophiostoma novo-ulmi". It appeared in the United States sometime in the 1940s, and was originally believed to be a mutation of "O. ulmi". Limited gene flow from "O. ulmi" to "O. novo-ulmi" was probably responsible for the creation of the North American subspecies "O. novo-ulmi" subsp. "americana". It was first recognized in Britain in the early 1970s, believed to have been introduced via a cargo of Canadian rock elm destined for the boatbuilding industry, and rapidly eradicated most of the mature elms from western Europe. A second subspecies, "O. novo-ulmi" subsp. "novo-ulmi", caused similar devastation in Eastern Europe and Central This subspecies, which was introduced to North America, and like "O. ulmi", is thought to have originated in Asia. The two subspecies have now hybridized in Europe where their ranges have overlapped. The hypothesis that "O. novo-ulmi" arose from a hybrid of the original "O. ulmi" and another strain endemic to the Himalayas, "Ophiostoma himal-ulmi", is now discredited.


title: Elm

text: No sign indicates the current pandemic is waning, and no evidence has been found of a susceptibility of the fungus to a disease of its own caused by d-factors: naturally occurring virus-like agents that severely debilitated the original "O. ulmi" and reduced its sporulation.


title: Elm

text: Elm phloem necrosis (elm yellows) is a disease of elm trees that is spread by leafhoppers or by root grafts. This very aggressive disease, with no known cure, occurs in the Eastern United States, southern Ontario in Canada, and Europe. It is caused by phytoplasmas that infect the phloem (inner bark) of the tree. Infection and death of the phloem effectively girdles the tree and stops the flow of water and nutrients. The disease affects both wild-growing and cultivated trees.


title: Elm

text: Occasionally, cutting the infected tree before the disease completely establishes itself and cleanup and prompt disposal of infected matter has resulted in the plant's survival via stump sprouts.


title: Elm

text: Most serious of the elm pests is the elm leaf beetle "Xanthogaleruca luteola", which can decimate foliage, although rarely with fatal results. The beetle was accidentally introduced to North America from Europe. Another unwelcome immigrant to North America is the Japanese beetle "Popillia japonica". In both instances, the beetles cause far more damage in North America owing to the absence of the predators in their native lands. In Australia, introduced elm trees are sometimes used as food plants by the larvae of hepialid moths of the genus "Aenetus". These burrow horizontally into the trunk then vertically down. Circa 2000, the Asian Zig-zag sawfly "Aproceros leucopoda" appeared in Europe and North America, although in England, its impact has been minimal and it is no longer monitored.


title: Elm

text: One of the earliest of ornamental elms was the ball-headed graft narvan elm, "Ulmus minor" 'Umbraculifera', cultivated from time immemorial in Persia as a shade tree and widely planted in cities through much of south-west and central Asia. From the 18th century to the early 20th century, elms, whether species, hybrids, or cultivars, were among the most widely planted ornamental trees in both Europe and North America. They were particularly popular as a street tree in avenue plantings in towns and cities, creating high-tunnelled effects. Their quick growth and variety of foliage and forms, their tolerance of air-pollution, and the comparatively rapid decomposition of their leaf litter in the fall were further advantages.


title: Elm

text: In North America, the species most commonly planted was the American elm ("U. americana"), which had unique properties that made it ideal for such use - rapid growth, adaptation to a broad range of climates and soils, strong wood, resistance to wind damage, and vase-like growth habit requiring minimal pruning. In Europe, the wych elm ("U. glabra") and the field elm ("U. minor") were the most widely planted in the countryside, the former in northern areas including Scandinavia and northern Britain, the latter further south. The hybrid between these two, Dutch elm ("U. × hollandica"), occurs naturally and was also commonly planted. In much of England, the English elm later came to dominate the horticultural landscape. Most commonly planted in hedgerows, it sometimes occurred in densities over 1000/km. In south-eastern Australia and New Zealand, large numbers of English and Dutch elms, as well as other species and cultivars, were planted as ornamentals following their introduction in the 19th century, while in northern Japan Japanese elm ("U. davidiana" var. "japonica") was widely planted as a street tree. From about 1850 to 1920, the most prized small ornamental elm in parks and gardens was the 'Camperdown' elm ("U. glabra" 'Camperdownii'), a contorted, weeping cultivar of the wych elm grafted on to a nonweeping elm trunk to give a wide, spreading, and weeping fountain shape in large garden spaces.


title: Elm

text: In northern Europe, elms were, moreover, among the few trees tolerant of saline deposits from sea spray, which can cause "salt-burning" and die-back. This tolerance made elms reliable both as shelterbelt trees exposed to sea wind, in particular along the coastlines of southern and western Britain and in the Low Countries, and as trees for coastal towns and cities.


title: Elm

text: This "belle époque" lasted until the First World War, when as a consequence of hostilities, notably in Germany, whence at least 40 cultivars originated, and of the outbreak at about the same time of the early strain of DED, "Ophiostoma ulmi", the elm began its slide into horticultural decline. The devastation caused by the Second World War, and the demise in 1944 of the huge Späth nursery in Berlin, only accelerated the process. The outbreak of the new, three times more virulent, strain of DED "Ophiostoma novo-ulmi" in the late 1960s, brought the tree to its nadir.


title: Elm

text: Since around 1990, the elm has enjoyed a renaissance through the successful development in North America and Europe of cultivars highly resistant to DED. Consequently, the total number of named cultivars, ancient and modern, now exceeds 300, although many of the older clones, possibly over 120, have been lost to cultivation. Some of the latter, however, were by today's standards inadequately described or illustrated before the pandemic, and a number may survive, or have regenerated, unrecognised. Enthusiasm for the newer clones often remains low owing to the poor performance of earlier, supposedly disease-resistant Dutch trees released in the 1960s and 1970s. In the Netherlands, sales of elm cultivars slumped from over 56,000 in 1989 to just 6,800 in 2004, whilst in the UK, only four of the new American and European releases were commercially available in 2008.


title: Elm

text: Efforts to develop DED-resistant cultivars began in the Netherlands in 1928 and continued, uninterrupted by World War II, until 1992. Similar programmes were initiated in North America (1937), Italy (1978), and Spain (1986). Research has followed two paths:


title: Elm

text: In North America, careful selection has produced a number of trees resistant not only to DED, but also to the droughts and cold winters that occur within the continent. Research in the United States has concentrated on the American elm ("U. americana"), resulting in the release of DED-resistant clones, notably the cultivars 'Valley Forge' and 'Jefferson'. Much work has also been done into the selection of disease-resistant Asiatic species and cultivars.


title: Elm

text: In 1993, Mariam B. Sticklen and James L. Sherald reported the results of experiments funded by the U.S. National Park Service and conducted at Michigan State University in East Lansing that were designed to apply genetic engineering techniques to the development of DED-resistant strains of American elm trees. In 2007, A. E. Newhouse and F. Schrodt of the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse reported that young transgenic American elm trees had shown reduced DED symptoms and normal mycorrhizal colonization.


title: Elm

text: In Europe, the European white elm ("U. laevis") has received much attention. While this elm has little innate resistance to DED, it is not favoured by the vector bark beetles, thus only becomes colonized and infected when no other elms are available, a rare situation in western Europe. Research in Spain has suggested that it may be the presence of a triterpene, alnulin, which makes the tree bark unattractive to the beetle species that spread the disease. This possibility, though, has not been conclusively proven. More recently, field elms "Ulmus minor" highly resistant to DED have been discovered in Spain, and form the basis of a major breeding programme.


title: Elm

text: Owing to their innate resistance to DED, Asiatic species have been crossed with European species, or with other Asiatic elms, to produce trees that are both highly resistant to disease and tolerant of native climates. After a number of false dawns in the 1970s, this approach has produced a range of reliable hybrid cultivars now commercially available in North America and Europe. Disease resistance is invariably carried by the female parent.


title: Elm

text: Some of these cultivars, notably those with the Siberian elm ("Ulmus pumila") in their ancestry, lack the forms for which the iconic American elm and English elm were prized. Moreover, several exported to northwestern Europe have proven unsuited to the maritime climate conditions there, notably because of their intolerance of anoxic conditions resulting from ponding on poorly drained soils in winter. Dutch hybridizations invariably included the Himalayan elm ("Ulmus wallichiana") as a source of antifungal genes and have proven more tolerant of wet ground; they should also ultimately reach a greater size. However, the susceptibility of the cultivar 'Lobel', used as a control in Italian trials, to elm yellows has now (2014) raised a question mark over all the Dutch clones.


title: Elm

text: Several highly resistant "Ulmus" cultivars have been released since 2000 by the Institute of Plant Protection in Florence, most commonly featuring crosses of the Dutch cultivar 'Plantijn' with the Siberian elm to produce resistant trees better adapted to the Mediterranean climate.


title: Elm

text: Elms take many decades to grow to maturity, and as the introduction of these disease-resistant cultivars is relatively recent, their long-term performance and ultimate size and form cannot be predicted with certainty. The National Elm Trial in North America, begun in 2005, is a nationwide trial to assess strengths and weaknesses of the 19 leading cultivars raised in the US over a 10-year period; European cultivars have been excluded. Meanwhile, in Europe, American and European cultivars are being assessed in field trials started in 2000 by the UK charity Butterfly Conservation.


title: Elm

text: New York City's Central Park is home to about 1,200 American elm trees, which constitute over half of all trees in the park. The oldest of these elms were planted during the 1860s by Frederick Law Olmsted, making them among the oldest stands of American elms in the world. The trees are particularly noteworthy along the Mall and Literary Walk, where four lines of American elms stretch over the walkway forming a cathedral-like covering. A part of New York City's urban ecology, the elms improve air and water quality, reduce erosion and flooding, and decrease air temperatures during warm days.


title: Elm

text: While the stand is still vulnerable to DED, in the 1980s the Central Park Conservancy undertook aggressive countermeasures such as heavy pruning and removal of extensively diseased trees. These efforts have largely been successful in saving the majority of the trees, although several are still lost each year. Younger American elms that have been planted in Central Park since the outbreak are of the DED-resistant 'Princeton' and 'Valley Forge' cultivars.


title: Elm

text: Several rows of American elm trees that the National Park Service (NPS) first planted during the 1930s line much of the 1.9-mile-length (3 km) of the National Mall in Washington, DC. DED first appeared on the trees during the 1950s and reached a peak in the 1970s. The NPS used a number of methods to control the epidemic, including sanitation, pruning, injecting trees with fungicide, and replanting with DED-resistant cultivars. The NPS combated the disease's local insect vector, the smaller European elm bark beetle ("Scolytus multistriatus"), by trapping and by spraying with insecticides. As a result, the population of American elms planted on the Mall and its surrounding areas has remained intact for more than 80 years.


title: Elm

text: Elm wood is valued for its interlocking grain, and consequent resistance to splitting, with significant uses in wagon-wheel hubs, chair seats, and coffins. The bodies of Japanese "Taiko" drums are often cut from the wood of old elm trees, as the wood's resistance to splitting is highly desired for nailing the skins to them, and a set of three or more is often cut from the same tree. The elm's wood bends well and distorts easily. The often long, straight trunks were favoured as a source of timber for keels in ship construction. Elm is also prized by bowyers; of the ancient bows found in Europe, a large portion are elm. During the Middle Ages, elm was also used to make longbows if yew were unavailable.


title: Elm

text: The first written references to elm occur in the Linear B lists of military equipment at Knossos in the Mycenaean period. Several of the chariots are of elm (" πτε-ρε-ϝα ", "pte-re-wa"), and the lists twice mention wheels of elmwood. Hesiod says that ploughs in Ancient Greece were also made partly of elm.


title: Elm

text: Elm wood is also resistant to decay when permanently wet, and hollowed trunks were widely used as water pipes during the medieval period in Europe. Elm was also used as piers in the construction of the original London Bridge, but this resistance to decay in water does not extend to ground contact.


title: Elm

text: The Romans, and more recently the Italians, planted elms in vineyards as supports for vines. Lopped at 3 m, the elms' quick growth, twiggy lateral branches, light shade, and root suckering made them ideal trees for this purpose. The lopped branches were used for fodder and firewood. Ovid in his "Amores" characterizes the elm as "loving the vine": "ulmus amat vitem, vitis non deserit ulmum" (the elm loves the vine, the vine does not desert the elm), and the ancients spoke of the "marriage" between elm and vine.


title: Elm

text: The mucilaginous inner bark of the slippery elm ("Ulmus rubra") has long been used as a demulcent, and is still produced commercially for this purpose in the U.S. with approval for sale as a nutritional supplement by the Food and Drug Administration.


title: Elm

text: Elms also have a long history of cultivation for fodder, with the leafy branches cut to feed livestock. The practice continues today in the Himalaya, where it contributes to serious deforestation.


title: Elm

text: As fossil fuel resources diminish, increasing attention is being paid to trees as sources of energy. In Italy, the Istituto per la Protezione delle Piante is (2012) in the process of releasing to commerce very fast-growing elm cultivars, able to increase in height by more than 2 m (6 ft) per year.


title: Elm

text: Elm bark, cut into strips and boiled, sustained much of the rural population of Norway during the great famine of 1812. The seeds are particularly nutritious, containing 45% crude protein, and less than 7% fibre by dry mass.


title: Elm

text: Elm has been listed as one of the 38 substances that are used to prepare Bach flower remedies, a kind of alternative medicine.


title: Elm

text: Chinese elm ("Ulmus parvifolia") is a popular choice for bonsai owing to its tolerance of severe pruning.


title: Elm

text: In 1997, a European Union elm project was initiated, its aim to coordinate the conservation of all the elm genetic resources of the member states and, among other things, to assess their resistance to Dutch elm disease. Accordingly, over 300 clones were selected and propagated for testing.


title: Elm

text: Many elm trees of various kinds have attained great size or otherwise become particularly noteworthy.


title: Elm

text: Many artists have admired elms for the ease and grace of their branching and foliage, and have painted them with sensitivity. Elms are a recurring element in the landscapes and studies of, for example, John Constable, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Frederick Childe Hassam, Karel Klinkenberg, and George Inness.


title: Elm

text: In Greek mythology, the nymph Ptelea (Πτελέα, Elm) was one of the eight hamadryads, nymphs of the forest and daughters of Oxylos and Hamadryas. In his "Hymn to Artemis", poet Callimachus (third century BC) tells how, at the age of three, the infant goddess Artemis practised her newly acquired silver bow and arrows, made for her by Hephaestus and the Cyclopes, by shooting first at an elm, then at an oak, before turning her aim on a wild animal:


title: Elm

text: The first reference in literature to elms occurs in the "Iliad". When Eetion, father of Andromache, is killed by Achilles during the Trojan War, the mountain nymphs plant elms on his tomb ("περί δὲ πτελέας ἐφύτευσαν νύμφαι ὀρεστιάδες, κoῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχoιo").


title: Elm

text: Also in the "Iliad", when the River Scamander, indignant at the sight of so many corpses in his water, overflows and threatens to drown Achilles, the latter grasps a branch of a great elm in an attempt to save himself ("ὁ δὲ πτελέην ἕλε χερσὶν εὐφυέα μεγάλην".


title: Elm

text: The nymphs also planted elms on the tomb in the Thracian Chersonese of "great-hearted Protesilaus" ("μεγάθυμου Πρωτεσιλάου"), the first Greek to fall in the Trojan War. These elms grew to be the tallest in the known world, but when their topmost branches saw far off the ruins of Troy, they immediately withered, so great still was the bitterness of the hero buried below, who had been loved by Laodamia and slain by Hector. The story is the subject of a poem by Antiphilus of Byzantium (first century AD) in the Palatine Anthology:


title: Elm

text: Protesilaus had been king of Pteleos () in Thessaly, which took its name from the abundant elms () in the region.


title: Elm

text: Elms occur often in pastoral poetry, where they symbolise the idyllic life, their shade being mentioned as a place of special coolness and peace. In the first Idyll of Theocritus (third century BC), for example, the goatherd invites the shepherd to sit "here beneath the elm" ("δεῦρ' ὑπὸ τὰν πτελέαν") and sing. Beside elms, Theocritus places "the sacred water" ("") of the Springs of the Nymphs and the shrines to the nymphs.


title: Elm

text: Aside from references literal and metaphorical to the elm and vine theme, the tree occurs in Latin literature in the Elm of Dreams in the Aeneid. When the Sibyl of Cumae leads Aeneas down to the Underworld, one of the sights is the Stygian Elm:


title: Elm

text: Virgil refers to a Roman superstition ("vulgo") that elms were trees of ill-omen because their fruit seemed to be of no value. It has been noted that two elm-motifs have arisen from classical literature: (1) the 'Paradisal Elm' motif, arising from pastoral idylls and the elm-and-vine theme, and (2) the 'Elm and Death' motif, perhaps arising from Homer's commemorative elms and Virgil's Stygian Elm. Many references to elm in European literature from the Renaissance onwards fit into one or other of these categories.


title: Elm

text: There are two examples of "pteleogenesis" (:birth from elms) in world myths. In Germanic and Scandinavian mythology the first woman, Embla, was fashioned from an elm,


title: Elm

text: while in Japanese mythology Kamuy Fuchi, the chief goddess of the Ainu people, "was born from an elm impregnated by the Possessor of the Heavens".


title: Elm

text: The elm occurs frequently in English literature, one of the best known instances being in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream", where Titania, Queen of the Fairies, addresses her beloved Nick Bottom using an elm-simile. Here, as often in the elm-and-vine motif, the elm is a masculine symbol:


title: Elm

text: Another of the most famous kisses in English literature, that of Paul and Helen at the start of Forster's "Howards End", is stolen beneath a great wych elm.


title: Elm

text: The elm tree is also referenced in children's literature. "An Elm Tree and Three Sisters" by Norma Sommerdorf is a children's book about three young sisters who plant a small elm tree in their backyard.


title: Elm

text: The cutting of the elm was a diplomatic altercation between the kings of France and England in 1188, during which an elm tree near Gisors in Normandy was felled.


title: Elm

text: In politics, the elm is associated with revolutions. In England after the Glorious Revolution of 1688, the final victory of parliamentarians over monarchists, and the arrival from Holland, with William III and Mary II, of the Dutch elm hybrid, planting of this cultivar became a fashion among enthusiasts of the new political order.


title: Elm

text: In the American Revolution, the Liberty Tree was an American white elm in Boston, Massachusetts, in front of which, from 1765, the first resistance meetings were held against British attempts to tax the American colonists without democratic representation. When the British, knowing that the tree was a symbol of rebellion, felled it in 1775, the Americans took to widespread Liberty Elm planting, and sewed elm symbols on to their revolutionary flags. Elm planting by American Presidents later became something of a tradition.