title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Immediately after the atomic bombing, the Soviet Politburo took control of the atomic bomb project by establishing a special committee to oversee the development of nuclear weapons as soon as possible. On 9 April 1946, the Council of Ministers created KB–11 ('Design Bureau-11') that worked towards mapping the first nuclear weapon design, primarily based on the American approach and detonated with weapon-grade plutonium. From then on work on the program was carried out quickly, resulting in the first nuclear reactor near Moscow on 25 October 1946.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: From 1941 to 1946, the Soviet Union's Ministry of Foreign Affairs handled the logistics of the atomic bomb project, with Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov controlling the direction of the program. However, Molotov proved to be a weak administrator, and the program stagnated. In contrast to American military administration in their atomic bomb project, the Russians' program was directed by political dignitaries such as Molotov, Lavrentiy Beria, Georgii Malenkov, and Mikhail Pervukhin—there were no military members.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the program's leadership changed, when Stalin appointed Lavrentiy Beria on 22 August 1945. Beria is noted for leadership that helped the program to its final implementation.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The new Committee, under Beria, retained Georgii Malenkov and added Nikolai Voznesensky and Boris Vannikov, People's Commissar for Armament. Under the administration of Beria, the NKVD co-opted atomic spies of the Soviet Atomic Spy Ring into the Western Allied program, and infiltrated the German nuclear program whose scientists were later forced to work in Soviet nuclear efforts.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The nuclear and industrial espionages in the United States by American sympathisers of communism who were controlled by their "rezident" Russian officials in North America greatly aided the speed of the Soviet nuclear program from 1942–54. The willingness in sharing classified information to the Soviet Union by recruited American communist sympathizers increased when the Soviet Union faced possible defeat during the German invasion in World War II. The Russian intelligence network in the United Kingdom also played a vital role in setting up the spy rings in the United States when the Russian State Defense Committee approved resolution 2352 in September 1942.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: For this purpose, the spy Harry Gold, controlled by Semyon Semyonov, was used for a wide range of espionage that included industrial espionage in the American chemical industry and obtaining sensitive atomic information that was handed over to him by the British physicist Klaus Fuchs. Knowledge and further technical information that were passed by the American Theodore Hall, a theoretical physicist, and Klaus Fuchs had a significant impact on the direction of Russian development of nuclear weapons.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Leonid Kvasnikov, a Russian engineer turned KGB officer, was assigned for this special purpose and moved to New York City to coordinate such activities. Anatoli Yatzkov, another NKVD official in New York, was also involved in obtaining sensitive information gathered by Sergei Kournakov from Saville Sax.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: For example, Soviet work on methods of uranium isotope separation was altered when it was reported, to Kurchatov's surprise, that the Americans had opted for the Gaseous diffusion method. While research on other separation methods continued throughout the war years, the emphasis was placed on replicating U.S. success with gaseous diffusion. Another important breakthrough, attributed to intelligence, was the possibility of using plutonium instead of uranium in a fission weapon. Extraction of plutonium in the so-called "uranium pile" allowed bypassing of the difficult process of uranium separation altogether, something that Kurchatov had learned from intelligence from the Manhattan project.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: In 1945, the Soviet intelligence obtained rough blueprints of the first U.S. atomic device. Alexei Kojevnikov has estimated, based on newly released Soviet documents, that the primary way in which the espionage may have sped up the Soviet project was that it allowed Khariton to avoid dangerous tests to determine the size of the critical mass: "tickling the dragon's tail", as it was called in the U.S., consumed a good deal of time and claimed at least two lives; see Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The published Smyth Report of 1945 on the Manhattan Project was translated into Russian, and the translators noted that a sentence on the effect of "poisoning" of Plutonium-239 in the first (lithograph) edition had been deleted from the next (Princeton) edition by Groves. This change was noted by the Russian translators, and alerted the Soviet Union to the problem (which had meant that reactor-bred plutonium could not be used in a simple gun-type bomb like the proposed Thin Man).


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: One of the key pieces of information, which Soviet intelligence obtained from Fuchs, was a cross-section for D-T fusion. This data was available to top Soviet officials roughly three years before it was openly published in the "Physical Review" in 1949. However, this data was not forwarded to Vitaly Ginzburg or Andrei Sakharov until very late, practically months before publication. Initially both Ginzburg and Sakharov estimated such a cross-section to be similar to the D-D reaction. Once the actual cross-section become known to Ginzburg and Sakharov, the Sloika design become a priority, which resulted in a successful test in 1953.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: In the 1990s, with the declassification of Soviet intelligence materials, which showed the extent and the type of the information obtained by the Soviets from US sources, a heated debate ensued in Russia and abroad as to the relative importance of espionage, as opposed to the Soviet scientists' own efforts, in the making of the Soviet bomb. The vast majority of scholars agree that whereas the Soviet atomic project was first and foremost a product of local expertise and scientific talent, it is clear that espionage efforts contributed to the project in various ways and most certainly shortened the time needed to develop the atomic bomb.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Comparing the timelines of H-bomb development, some researchers came to the conclusion that the Soviets had a gap in access to classified information regarding the H-bomb at least between late 1950 and some time in 1953. Earlier, e.g., in 1948, Fuchs gave the Soviets a detailed update of the classical super progress, including an idea to use lithium, but did not explain it was specifically lithium-6. By 1951 Teller accepted the fact that the "classical super" scheme wasn't feasible, following results obtained by various researchers (including Stanislaw Ulam) and calculations performed by John von Neumann in late 1950.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Yet the research for the Soviet analogue of "classical super" continued until December 1953, when the researchers were reallocated to a new project working on what later became a true H-bomb design, based on radiation implosion. This remains an open topic for research, whether the Soviet intelligence was able to obtain any specific data on Teller-Ulam design in 1953 or early 1954. Yet, Soviet officials directed the scientists to work on a new scheme, and the entire process took less than two years, commencing around January 1954 and producing a successful test in November 1955. It also took just several months before the idea of radiation implosion was conceived, and there is no documented evidence claiming priority. It is also possible that Soviets were able to obtain a document lost by John Wheeler on a train in 1953, which reportedly contained key information about thermonuclear weapon design.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Early ideas of the fusion bomb came from espionage and internal Soviet studies. Though the espionage did help Soviet studies, the early American H-bomb concepts had substantial flaws, so it may have confused, rather than assisted, the Soviet effort to achieve nuclear capability. The designers of early thermonuclear bombs envisioned using an atomic bomb as a trigger to provide the needed heat and compression to initiate the thermonuclear reaction in a layer of liquid deuterium between the fissile material and the surrounding chemical high explosive. The group would realize that a lack of sufficient heat and compression of the deuterium would result in an insignificant fusion of the deuterium fuel.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Andrei Sakharov's study group at FIAN in 1948 came up with a second concept in which adding a shell of natural, unenriched uranium around the deuterium would increase the deuterium concentration at the uranium-deuterium boundary and the overall yield of the device, because the natural uranium would capture neutrons and itself fission as part of the thermonuclear reaction. This idea of a layered fission-fusion-fission bomb led Sakharov to call it the sloika, or layered cake. It was also known as the RDS-6S, or Second Idea Bomb. This second bomb idea was not a fully evolved thermonuclear bomb in the contemporary sense, but a crucial step between pure fission bombs and the thermonuclear "supers". Due to the three-year lag in making the key breakthrough of radiation compression from the United States the Soviet Union's development efforts followed a different course of action. In the United States they decided to skip the single-stage fusion bomb and make a two-stage fusion bomb as their main effort. Unlike the Soviet Union, the analog RDS-7 advanced fission bomb was not further developed, and instead, the single-stage 400-kiloton RDS-6S was the Soviet's bomb of choice.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The RDS-6S Layer Cake design was detonated on 12 August 1953, in a test given the code name by the Allies of "Joe 4". The test produced a yield of 400 kilotons, about ten times more powerful than any previous Soviet test. Around this time the United States detonated its first super using radiation compression on 1 November 1952, code-named Mike. Though the Mike was about twenty times greater than the RDS-6S, it was not a design that was practical to use, unlike the RDS-6S.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Following the successful launching of the RDS-6S, Sakharov proposed an upgraded version called RDS-6SD. This bomb was proved to be faulty, and it was neither built nor tested. The Soviet team had been working on the RDS-6T concept, but it also proved to be a dead end.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: In 1954, Sakharov worked on a third concept, a two-stage thermonuclear bomb. The third idea used the radiation wave of a fission bomb, not simply heat and compression, to ignite the fusion reaction, and paralleled the discovery made by Ulam and Teller. Unlike the RDS-6S boosted bomb, which placed the fusion fuel inside the primary A-bomb trigger, the thermonuclear super placed the fusion fuel in a secondary structure a small distance from the A-bomb trigger, where it was compressed and ignited by the A-bomb's x-ray radiation. The KB-11 Scientific-Technical Council approved plans to proceed with the design on 24 December 1954. Technical specifications for the new bomb were completed on 3 February 1955, and it was designated the RDS-37.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The RDS-37 was successfully tested on 22 November 1955 with a yield of 1.6 megaton. The yield was almost a hundred times greater than the first Soviet atomic bomb six years before, showing that the Soviet Union could compete with the United States. and would even exceed them in time.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The single largest problem during the early Soviet program was the procurement of raw uranium ore, as the Soviet Union had limited domestic sources at the beginning of their nuclear program. The era of domestic uranium mining can be dated exactly, to November 27, 1942, the date of a directive issued by the all-powerful wartime State Defense Committee. The first Soviet uranium mine was established in Taboshar, present-day Tajikistan, and was producing at an annual rate of a few tons of uranium concentrate by May 1943. Taboshar was the first of many officially secret Soviet closed cities related to uranium mining and production.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Demand from the experimental bomb project was far higher. The Americans, with the help of Belgian businessman Edgar Sengier in 1940, had already blocked access to known sources in Congo, South Africa, and Canada. In December 1944 Stalin took the uranium project away from Vyacheslav Molotov and gave to it to Lavrentiy Beria. The first Soviet uranium processing plant was established as the Leninabad Mining and Chemical Combine in Chkalovsk (present-day Buston, Ghafurov District), Tajikistan, and new production sites identified in relative proximity. This posed a need for labor, a need that Beria would fill with forced labor: tens of thousands of Gulag prisoners were brought to work in the mines, the processing plants, and related construction.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Domestic production was still insufficient when the Soviet F-1 reactor, which began operation in December 1946, was fueled using uranium confiscated from the remains of the German atomic bomb project. This uranium had been mined in the Belgian Congo, and the ore in Belgium fell into the hands of the Germans after their invasion and occupation of Belgium in 1940. In 1945, the Uranium enrichment through electromagnetic method under Lev Artsimovich also failed due to USSR's inability to build the parallel American Oak Ridge site and the limited power grid system could not produce the electricity for their program.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Further sources of uranium in the early years of the program were mines in East Germany (via the deceptively-named SAG Wismut), Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, Romania (the Băița mine near Ștei) and Poland. Boris Pregel sold 0.23 tonnes of uranium oxide to the Soviet Union during the war, with the authorisation of the U.S. Government.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Eventually, large domestic sources were discovered in the Soviet Union (including those now in Kazakhstan).


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The uranium for the Soviet nuclear weapons program came from mine production in the following countries,


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: RDS-1, the first Soviet atomic test was internally code-named "First Lightning" ("Первая молния", or Pervaya Molniya) August 29, 1949, and was code-named by the Americans as "Joe 1". The design was very similar to the first US "Fat Man" plutonium bomb, using a TNT/hexogen implosion lens design.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: On September 24, 1951, the 38.3 kiloton device RDS-2 was tested based on a tritium "boosted" uranium implosion device with a levitated core. This test was code named "Joe 2" by the CIA.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: RDS-3 was the third Soviet atomic bomb. On October 18, 1951, the 41.2 kiloton device was detonated - a boosted weapon using a composite construction of levitated plutonium core and a uranium-235 shell. Code named "Joe 3" in the USA, this was the first Soviet air-dropped bomb test. Released at an altitude of 10 km, it detonated 400 meters above the ground.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: RDS-4 represented a branch of research on small tactical weapons. It was a boosted fission device using plutonium in a "levitated" core design. The first test was an air drop on August 23, 1953, yielding 28 kilotons. In 1954, the bomb was also used during Snowball exercise in Totskoye, dropped by Tu-4 bomber on the simulated battlefield, in the presence of 40,000 infantry, tanks, and jet fighters. The RDS-4 comprised the warhead of the R-5M, the first medium-range ballistic missile in the world, which was tested with a live warhead for the first and only time on February 5, 1956


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: RDS-5 was a small plutonium based device, probably using a hollow core. Two different versions were made and tested.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: RDS-6, the first Soviet test of a hydrogen bomb, took place on August 12, 1953, and was nicknamed "Joe 4" by the Americans. It used a layer-cake design of fission and fusion fuels (uranium 235 and lithium-6 deuteride) and produced a yield of 400 kilotons. This yield was about ten times more powerful than any previous Soviet test. When developing higher level bombs, the Soviets proceeded with the RDS-6 as their main effort instead of the analog RDS-7 advanced fission bomb. This led to the third idea bomb which is the RDS-37.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: A much lower-power version of the RDS-4 with a 3-10 kiloton yield, the RDS-9 was developed for the T-5 nuclear torpedo. A 3.5 kiloton underwater test was performed with the torpedo on September 21, 1955.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The first Soviet test of a "true" hydrogen bomb in the megaton range was conducted on November 22, 1955. It was dubbed "RDS-37" by the Soviets. It was of the multi-staged, radiation implosion thermonuclear design called "Sakharov's "Third Idea"" in the USSR and the Teller–Ulam design in the USA.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The Tsar Bomba (Царь-бомба) was the largest, most powerful thermonuclear weapon ever detonated. It was a three-stage hydrogen bomb with a yield of about 50 megatons. This is equivalent to ten times the amount of all the explosives used in World War II combined. It was detonated on October 30, 1961, in the Novaya Zemlya archipelago, and was capable of approximately 100 megatons, but was purposely reduced shortly before the launch. Although weaponized, it was not entered into service; it was simply a demonstrative testing of the capabilities of the Soviet Union's military technology at that time. The heat of the explosion was estimated to potentially inflict third degree burns at 100 km distance of clear air.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Chagan was a shot in the Nuclear Explosions for the National Economy (also known as Project 7), the Soviet equivalent of the US "Operation Plowshare" to investigate peaceful uses of nuclear weapons. It was a subsurface detonation. It was fired on January 15, 1965. The site was a dry bed of the river Chagan at the edge of the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and was chosen such that the lip of the crater would dam the river during its high spring flow. The resultant crater had a diameter of 408 meters and was 100 meters deep. A major lake (10,000 m) soon formed behind the 20–35 m high upraised lip, known as "Chagan Lake" or "Balapan Lake".


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: During the Cold War, the Soviet Union created at least nine closed cities, known as Atomgrads, in which nuclear weapons-related research and development took place. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, all of the cities changed their names (most of the original code-names were simply the oblast and a number). All are still legally "closed", though some have parts of them accessible to foreign visitors with special permits (Sarov, Snezhinsk, and Zheleznogorsk).


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The Soviets started experimenting with nuclear technology in 1943 with very little regard of nuclear safety as there were no reports of accidents that were ever made public to learn from, and the public was kept in hidden about the radiation dangers. Many of the nuclear devices left behind radioactive isotopes which have contaminated air, water and soil in the areas immediately surrounding, downwind and downstream of the blast site. According to the records that the Russian government released in 1991, the Soviet Union tested 969 nuclear devices between 1949 and 1990— the more nuclear testing than any nation in the planet. Soviet scientists conducted the tests with little regard for environmental and public health consequences. The detrimental effects that the toxic waste generated by weapons testing and processing of radioactive materials are still felt to this day. Even decades later, the risk of developing various types of cancer, especially that of the thyroid and the lungs, continues to be elevated far above national averages for people in affected areas. Iodine-131, a radioactive isotope that is a major byproduct of fission-based weapons, is retained in the thyroid gland, and so poisoning of this kind is commonplace in impacted populations.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: The Soviets set off 214 nuclear devices in the open atmosphere between 1949 and 1962, the year the United Nations banned atmospheric tests worldwide. The billions of radioactive particles released into the air exposed countless people to extremely mutagenic and carcinogenic materials, resulting in a myriad of deleterious genetic maladies and deformities. The majority of these tests took place at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, or the Polygon, located in northeast of Kazakhstan. The testing at Semipalatinsk alone exposed hundreds of thousands of Kazakh citizens to the harmful effects, and the site continues to be one of the most highly irradiated places on the planet. When the earliest tests were being conducted, even the scientists had only a poor understanding of the medium-and long-term effects of radiation exposure— many did not notify each other of their work if they had serious accidents or expose of radiation. In fact, the Semipalatinsk was chosen as the primary site for open-air testing precisely because the Soviets were curious about the potential for lasting harm that their weapons held.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Contamination of air and soil due to atmospheric testing is only part of a wider issue. Water contamination due to improper disposal of spent uranium and decay of sunken nuclear-powered submarines is a major problem in the Kola Peninsula in northwest Russia. Although the Russian government states that the radioactive power cores are stable, various scientists have come forth with serious concerns about the 32,000 spent nuclear fuel elements that remain in the sunken vessels. There have been no major incidents other than the explosion and sinking of a nuclear-powered submarine in August 2000, but many international scientists are still uneasy at the prospect of the hulls eroding, releasing uranium into the sea and causing considerable contamination. Although the submarines pose an environmental risk, they have yet to cause serious harm to public health. However, water contamination in the area of the Mayak test site, especially at Lake Karachay, is extreme, and has gotten to the point where radioactive byproducts have found their way into drinking water supplies. It has been an area of concern since the early 1950s, when the Soviets began disposing of tens of millions of cubic meters of radioactive waste by pumping it into the small lake. Half a century later, in the 1990s, there are still hundreds of millions of curies of waste in the Lake, and at points contamination has been so severe that a mere half-hour of exposure to certain regions would deliver a dose of radiation sufficient to kill 50% of humans. Although the area immediately surrounding the lake is devoid of population, the lake has the potential to dry up in times of drought. Most significantly, in 1967, it dried up and winds carried radioactive dust over thousands of square kilometers, exposing at least 500,000 citizens to a range of health risks. To control dust, Soviet scientists piled concrete on top of the lake. Although this was effective in helping mediate the amount of dust, the weight of the concrete pushed radioactive materials into closer contact with standing underground groundwater. It is difficult to gauge the overall health and environmental effects of the water contamination at Lake Karachay because figures on civilian exposure are unavailable, making it hard to show causation between elevated cancer rates and radioactive pollution specifically from the lake.


title: Soviet atomic bomb project

text: Contemporary efforts to manage radioactive contamination in the former Soviet Union are few and far between. Public awareness of the past and present dangers, as well as the Russian government's investment in current cleanup efforts, are likely dampened by the lack of media attention STS and other sites have gotten in comparison to isolated nuclear incidents such as Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Chernobyl and Three-Mile Island. The domestic government's investment in cleanup measures seems to be driven by economic concerns rather than care for public health. The most significant political legislation in this area is a bill agreeing to turn the already contaminated former weapons complex Mayak into an international radioactive waste dump, accepting cash from other countries in exchange for taking their radioactive byproducts of nuclear industry. Although the bill stipulates that the revenue go towards decontaminating other test sites such as Semipalatinsk and the Kola Peninsula, experts doubt whether this will actually happen given the current political and economic climate in Russia.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: The Elements ( "Stoikheîa") is a mathematical treatise consisting of 13 books attributed to the ancient Greek mathematician Euclid in Alexandria, Ptolemaic Egypt 300 BC. It is a collection of definitions, postulates, propositions (theorems and constructions), and mathematical proofs of the propositions. The books cover plane and solid Euclidean geometry, elementary number theory, and incommensurable lines. "Elements" is the oldest extant large-scale deductive treatment of mathematics. It has proven instrumental in the development of logic and modern science, and its logical rigor was not surpassed until the 19th century.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Euclid's "Elements" has been referred to as the most successful and influential textbook ever written. It was one of the very earliest mathematical works to be printed after the invention of the printing press and has been estimated to be second only to the Bible in the number of editions published since the first printing in 1482, the number reaching well over one thousand. For centuries, when the quadrivium was included in the curriculum of all university students, knowledge of at least part of Euclid's "Elements" was required of all students. Not until the 20th century, by which time its content was universally taught through other school textbooks, did it cease to be considered something all educated people had read.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Geometry emerged as an indispensable part of the standard education of the English gentleman in the eighteenth century; by the Victorian period it was also becoming an important part of the education of artisans, children at Board Schools, colonial subjects and, to a rather lesser degree, women. The standard textbook for this purpose was none other than Euclid's "The Elements".


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Scholars believe that the "Elements" is largely a compilation of propositions based on books by earlier Greek mathematicians.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Proclus (412–485 AD), a Greek mathematician who lived around seven centuries after Euclid, wrote in his commentary on the "Elements": "Euclid, who put together the "Elements", collecting many of Eudoxus' theorems, perfecting many of Theaetetus', and also bringing to irrefragable demonstration the things which were only somewhat loosely proved by his predecessors".


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Pythagoras ( 570–495 BC) was probably the source for most of books I and II, Hippocrates of Chios ( 470–410 BC, not the better known Hippocrates of Kos) for book III, and Eudoxus of Cnidus ( 408–355 BC) for book V, while books IV, VI, XI, and XII probably came from other Pythagorean or Athenian mathematicians. The "Elements" may have been based on an earlier textbook by Hippocrates of Chios, who also may have originated the use of letters to refer to figures. Other similar works are also reported to have been written by Theudius of Magnesia, Leon, and Hermotimus of Colophon.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: In the 4th century AD, Theon of Alexandria produced an edition of Euclid which was so widely used that it became the only surviving source until François Peyrard's 1808 discovery at the Vatican of a manuscript not derived from Theon's. This manuscript, the Heiberg manuscript, is from a Byzantine workshop around 900 and is the basis of modern editions. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 29 is a tiny fragment of an even older manuscript, but only contains the statement of one proposition.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Although Euclid was known to Cicero, for instance, no record exists of the text having been translated into Latin prior to Boethius in the fifth or sixth century. The Arabs received the "Elements" from the Byzantines around 760; this version was translated into Arabic under Harun al Rashid ( 800). The Byzantine scholar Arethas commissioned the copying of one of the extant Greek manuscripts of Euclid in the late ninth century. Although known in Byzantium, the "Elements" was lost to Western Europe until about 1120, when the English monk Adelard of Bath translated it into Latin from an Arabic translation. A relatively recent discovery was made of a Greek-to-Latin translation from the 12th century at Palermo, Sicily. The name of the translator is not known other than he was an anonymous medical student from Salerno who was visiting Palermo in order to translate the Almagest to Latin. The Euclid manuscript is extant and quite complete.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Copies of the Greek text still exist, some of which can be found in the Vatican Library and the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The manuscripts available are of variable quality, and invariably incomplete. By careful analysis of the translations and originals, hypotheses have been made about the contents of the original text (copies of which are no longer available).


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Ancient texts which refer to the "Elements" itself, and to other mathematical theories that were current at the time it was written, are also important in this process. Such analyses are conducted by J. L. Heiberg and Sir Thomas Little Heath in their editions of the text.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Also of importance are the scholia, or annotations to the text. These additions, which often distinguished themselves from the main text (depending on the manuscript), gradually accumulated over time as opinions varied upon what was worthy of explanation or further study.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: The "Elements" is still considered a masterpiece in the application of logic to mathematics. In historical context, it has proven enormously influential in many areas of science. Scientists Nicolaus Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, Galileo Galilei, Albert Einstein and Sir Isaac Newton were all influenced by the "Elements", and applied their knowledge of it to their work. Mathematicians and philosophers, such as Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Alfred North Whitehead, and Bertrand Russell, have attempted to create their own foundational "Elements" for their respective disciplines, by adopting the axiomatized deductive structures that Euclid's work introduced.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: The austere beauty of Euclidean geometry has been seen by many in western culture as a glimpse of an otherworldly system of perfection and certainty. Abraham Lincoln kept a copy of Euclid in his saddlebag, and studied it late at night by lamplight; he related that he said to himself, "You never can make a lawyer if you do not understand what demonstrate means; and I left my situation in Springfield, went home to my father's house, and stayed there till I could give any proposition in the six books of Euclid at sight". Edna St. Vincent Millay wrote in her sonnet "", "O blinding hour, O holy, terrible day, When first the shaft into his vision shone Of light anatomized!". Albert Einstein recalled a copy of the "Elements" and a magnetic compass as two gifts that had a great influence on him as a boy, referring to the Euclid as the "holy little geometry book".


title: Euclid's Elements

text: The success of the "Elements" is due primarily to its logical presentation of most of the mathematical knowledge available to Euclid. Much of the material is not original to him, although many of the proofs are his. However, Euclid's systematic development of his subject, from a small set of axioms to deep results, and the consistency of his approach throughout the "Elements", encouraged its use as a textbook for about 2,000 years. The "Elements" still influences modern geometry books. Furthermore, its logical, axiomatic approach and rigorous proofs remain the cornerstone of mathematics.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: One of the most notable influences of Euclid on modern mathematics is the discussion of the parallel postulate. In Book I, Euclid lists five postulates, the fifth of which stipulates "If a line segment intersects two straight lines forming two interior angles on the same side that sum to less than two right angles, then the two lines, if extended indefinitely, meet on that side on which the angles sum to less than two right angles."


title: Euclid's Elements

text: This postulate plagued mathematicians for centuries due to its apparent complexity compared with the other four postulates. Many attempts were made to prove the fifth postulate based on the other four, but they never succeeded. Eventually in 1829, mathematician Nikolai Lobachevsky published a description of acute geometry (or hyperbolic geometry), a geometry which assumed a different form of the parallel postulate. It is in fact possible to create a valid geometry without the fifth postulate entirely, or with different versions of the fifth postulate (elliptic geometry). If one takes the fifth postulate as a given, the result is Euclidean geometry.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Many of Euclid's propositions were constructive, demonstrating the existence of some figure by detailing the steps he used to construct the object using a compass and straightedge. His constructive approach appears even in his geometry's postulates, as the first and third postulates stating the existence of a line and circle are constructive. Instead of stating that lines and circles exist per his prior definitions, he states that it is possible to 'construct' a line and circle. It also appears that, for him to use a figure in one of his proofs, he needs to construct it in an earlier proposition. For example, he proves the Pythagorean theorem by first inscribing a square on the sides of a right triangle, but only after constructing a square on a given line one proposition earlier.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: As was common in ancient mathematical texts, when a proposition needed proof in several different cases, Euclid often proved only one of them (often the most difficult), leaving the others to the reader. Later editors such as Theon often interpolated their own proofs of these cases.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Euclid's presentation was limited by the mathematical ideas and notations in common currency in his era, and this causes the treatment to seem awkward to the modern reader in some places. For example, there was no notion of an angle greater than two right angles, the number 1 was sometimes treated separately from other positive integers, and as multiplication was treated geometrically he did not use the product of more than 3 different numbers. The geometrical treatment of number theory may have been because the alternative would have been the extremely awkward Alexandrian system of numerals.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: The presentation of each result is given in a stylized form, which, although not invented by Euclid, is recognized as typically classical. It has six different parts: First is the 'enunciation', which states the result in general terms (i.e., the statement of the proposition). Then comes the 'setting-out', which gives the figure and denotes particular geometrical objects by letters. Next comes the 'definition' or 'specification', which restates the enunciation in terms of the particular figure. Then the 'construction' or 'machinery' follows. Here, the original figure is extended to forward the proof. Then, the 'proof' itself follows. Finally, the 'conclusion' connects the proof to the enunciation by stating the specific conclusions drawn in the proof, in the general terms of the enunciation.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: No indication is given of the method of reasoning that led to the result, although the "Data" does provide instruction about how to approach the types of problems encountered in the first four books of the "Elements". Some scholars have tried to find fault in Euclid's use of figures in his proofs, accusing him of writing proofs that depended on the specific figures drawn rather than the general underlying logic, especially concerning Proposition II of Book I. However, Euclid's original proof of this proposition, is general, valid, and does not depend on the figure used as an example to illustrate one given configuration.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Euclid's list of axioms in the "Elements" was not exhaustive, but represented the principles that were the most important. His proofs often invoke axiomatic notions which were not originally presented in his list of axioms. Later editors have interpolated Euclid's implicit axiomatic assumptions in the list of formal axioms.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: For example, in the first construction of Book 1, Euclid used a premise that was neither postulated nor proved: that two circles with centers at the distance of their radius will intersect in two points. Later, in the fourth construction, he used superposition (moving the triangles on top of each other) to prove that if two sides and their angles are equal, then they are congruent; during these considerations he uses some properties of superposition, but these properties are not described explicitly in the treatise. If superposition is to be considered a valid method of geometric proof, all of geometry would be full of such proofs. For example, propositions I.2 and I.3 can be proved trivially by using superposition.


title: Euclid's Elements

text: Mathematician and historian W. W. Rouse Ball put the criticisms in perspective, remarking that "the fact that for two thousand years [the "Elements"] was the usual text-book on the subject raises a strong presumption that it is not unsuitable for that purpose."


title: Euclid's Elements

text: It was not uncommon in ancient times to attribute to celebrated authors works that were not written by them. It is by these means that the apocryphal books XIV and XV of the "Elements" were sometimes included in the collection. The spurious Book XIV was probably written by Hypsicles on the basis of a treatise by Apollonius. The book continues Euclid's comparison of regular solids inscribed in spheres, with the chief result being that the ratio of the surfaces of the dodecahedron and icosahedron inscribed in the same sphere is the same as the ratio of their volumes, the ratio being


title: Euclid's Elements

text: The spurious Book XV was probably written, at least in part, by Isidore of Miletus. This book covers topics such as counting the number of edges and solid angles in the regular solids, and finding the measure of dihedral angles of faces that meet at an edge.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Henry Merritt Paulson Jr. (born March 28, 1946) is an American banker and financier who served as the 74th United States Secretary of the Treasury from 2006 to 2009. Prior to his role in the Department of the Treasury, Paulson was the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of major investment bank Goldman Sachs.


title: Henry Paulson

text: He served as Secretary of the Treasury, a key and highly influential Cabinet post, under President George W. Bush. Paulson served through the end of the Bush administration, leaving office on January 20, 2009. He is now the Chairman of the Paulson Institute, which he founded in 2011 to promote sustainable economic growth and a cleaner environment around the world, with an initial focus on the United States and China. He also works as Executive Chairman of the global fund, TPG Rise Climate.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson was born in Palm Beach, Florida, the son of Marianne (née Gallauer) and Henry Merritt Paulson, a wholesale jeweler. He was raised as a Christian Scientist on a farm in Barrington, Illinois. He has Norwegian, German, and English Canadian ancestry. Paulson attained the rank of Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America and is a recipient of the Distinguished Eagle Scout Award.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson was an athlete at Barrington High School, participating in wrestling and football. He graduated in 1964. Paulson went on to attend Dartmouth College, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1968 with a degree in English. At Dartmouth, he was a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon and he was an All-Ivy, All-East, and honorable mention All-American as an offensive lineman. Paulson received his Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard Business School in 1970. He was offered a Rhodes Scholarship following graduating from Dartmouth, but chose not to accept it.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson was Staff Assistant to the Assistant Secretary of Defense at The Pentagon from 1970 to 1972. He then worked for the administration of U.S. President Richard Nixon, serving as assistant to John Ehrlichman from 1972 to 1973.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson joined Goldman Sachs in 1974, working in the firm's Chicago office under James P. Gorter, covering large industrial companies in the Midwest. He became a partner in 1982. From 1983 until 1988, Paulson led the Investment Banking group for the Midwest Region, and became managing partner of the Chicago office in 1988. From 1990 to November 1994, he was co-head of Investment Banking, then Chief Operating Officer from December 1994 to June 1998, eventually succeeding Jon Corzine as chief executive. His compensation package, according to reports, was $37 million in 2005, and $16.4 million projected for 2006. His net worth has been estimated at over $700 million. Paulson earned an estimated $480 million in total compensation from Goldman Sachs.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson has personally built close relations with China during his career. In July 2008, "The Daily Telegraph" reported "Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson has intimate relations with the Chinese elite, dating from his days at Goldman Sachs when he visited the country more than 70 times."


title: Henry Paulson

text: Before becoming Treasury Secretary, he was required to liquidate all of his stock holdings in Goldman Sachs, valued at over $600 million in 2006, in order to comply with conflict-of-interest regulations. Due to a tax provision passed under President George H. W. Bush, Paulson was able to defer his capital gains tax, saving himself an estimated $50 million.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson was nominated on May 30, 2006, by U.S. President George W. Bush to succeed John Snow as the Treasury Secretary. On June 28, 2006, he was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate to serve in the position.<ref name="NYTAP/">"Senate Approves Paulson as Treasury Secretary", "The New York Times", Associated Press, 2006</ref> Paulson was sworn in at a ceremony held at the Treasury Department on the morning of July 10, 2006.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson identified the wide gap between the richest and poorest Americans as an issue on his list of the country's four major long-term economic issues to be addressed, highlighting the issue in one of his first public appearances as Secretary of Treasury.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson conceded that chances were slim for agreeing on a method to reform Social Security financing, but said he would keep trying to find bipartisan support for it.


title: Henry Paulson

text: He also helped to create the Hope Now Alliance to help struggling homeowners during the subprime mortgage crisis.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson was known to have persuaded President George W. Bush to allow him to spearhead U.S.-China relations and initiated and led the U.S.-China Strategic Economic Dialogue, a forum and mechanism under which the two countries addressed global areas of immediate and long-term strategic and economic interest. In spring 2007, Paulson warned an audience at the Shanghai Futures Exchange that China needed to free up capital markets to avoid losing potential economic growth, saying: "An open, competitive, and liberalized financial market can effectively allocate scarce resources in a manner that promotes stability and prosperity far better than governmental intervention." In September 2008, in light of the economic crisis experienced by the U.S. in the interim, Chinese leaders evidenced hesitation to follow Paulson's advice. When the U.S. needed to issue a huge volume of bonds to stabilize the financial market, it relied on China, the top holder of US debt.


title: Henry Paulson

text: In April 2007, he delivered an upbeat assessment of the economy, saying growth was healthy and the housing market was nearing a turnaround. "All the signs I look at" show "the housing market is at or near the bottom," Paulson said in a speech to a business group in New York. The U.S. economy is "very healthy" and "robust," Paulson said.


title: Henry Paulson

text: In August 2007, Secretary Paulson explained that U.S. subprime mortgage fallout remained largely contained due to the strongest global economy in decades.


title: Henry Paulson

text: As we work our way through this turbulence, our highest priority is limiting its impact on the real economy. We must maintain stable, orderly and liquid financial markets and our banks must continue to play their vital role of supporting the economy by making credit available to consumers and businesses. And we must of course focus on housing, which precipitated the turmoil in the capital markets, and is today the biggest downside risk to our economy. We must work to limit the impact of the housing downturn on the real economy without impeding the completion of the necessary housing correction. I will address each of these in turn. Regulators and policy makers are vigilant; we are not taking anything for granted.


title: Henry Paulson

text: In May 2008, "The Wall Street Journal" wrote that Paulson said U.S. financial markets are emerging from the credit crunch that many economists believe has pushed the country to the brink of recession. "I do believe that the worst is likely to be behind us," Paulson told the newspaper in an interview.


title: Henry Paulson

text: On July 20, 2008, after the failure of Indymac Bank, Paulson reassured the public by saying, "it's a safe banking system, a sound banking system. Our regulators are on top of it. This is a very manageable situation."


title: Henry Paulson

text: On August 10, 2008, Secretary Paulson told NBC's "Meet the Press" that he had no plans to inject any capital into Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. On September 7, 2008, both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac went into conservatorship.


title: Henry Paulson

text: On November 18, in testimony before the United States House Committee on Financial Services, Secretary Paulson told lawmakers,


title: Henry Paulson

text: There is no playbook for responding to turmoil we have never faced. We adjusted our strategy to reflect the facts of a severe market crisis always keeping focused on Congress's goal and our goal – to stabilize the financial system that is integral to the everyday lives of all Americans.


title: Henry Paulson

text: On November 20, 2008, during remarks at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Secretary Paulson said,


title: Henry Paulson

text: We are working through a severe financial crisis caused by many factors, including government inaction and mistaken actions, outdated U.S. and global financial regulatory systems, and by the excessive risk-taking of financial institutions. This combination of factors led to a critical stage this fall when the entire U.S. financial system was at risk. This should never happen again. The United States must lead global financial reform efforts, and we must start by getting our own house in order.


title: Henry Paulson

text: On March 31, 2008, Paulson released "The Department of the Treasury Blueprint for a Modernized Financial Regulatory Structure". In remarks announcing the release of the report, Paulson cited the need to overhaul the financial regulatory system, saying:


title: Henry Paulson

text: The support given by the Federal Reserve Board, under Ben Bernanke, and the US Treasury with Paulson at the helm, in the acquisition of Bear Stearns by J.P. Morgan and the $200bn facility made available to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac attracted a great deal of criticism in congress by both Republicans and Democrats. Paulson and Geithner made every effort to enable Barclays to acquire Lehman Brothers, including convincing other large Wall Street firms to commit their own funds to support the deal. In light of the recent Bear Stearns criticism, Paulson was against committing public funds towards a bailout, for fear of being labelled 'Mr Bailout'. When British regulators indicated they would not approve the purchase, Lehman went into bankruptcy, and Paulson and Geithner worked to contain the systemic impact.


title: Henry Paulson

text: "Well, as you know, we're working through a difficult period in our financial markets right now as we work off some of the past excesses. But the American people can remain confident in the soundness and the resilience of our financial system."


title: Henry Paulson

text: In the aftermath of Lehman's failure and the simultaneous purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, already fragile credit markets froze, so that companies that had nothing to do with banking but needed financing (e.g. General Electric) could not get daily funding requirements which had the effect of sending the US equity/bond markets into turmoil between September 15, 2008, and September 19, 2008.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson, acting as U.S. Treasury Secretary, caused outcries from both the Republican and Democratic Parties as well as the general populace as he tried to get the situation under control.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Through unprecedented intervention by the U.S. Treasury, Paulson led government efforts which he said were aimed at avoiding a severe economic slowdown. After the Dow Jones dropped 30% and turmoil ensued in the global markets, Paulson pushed through legislation authorizing the Treasury to use $700 billion to stabilize the financial system. Working with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, he influenced the decision to create a credit facility (bridge loan and warrants) of US$85 billion to American International Group so it would avoid filing bankruptcy, after having been told that AIG held teacher pension plans, 401k plans, $1.5 trillion in life insurance plans for Americans, and the French Finance Minister called to let Paulson know that AIG held the interests of many Eurozone countries.


title: Henry Paulson

text: On September 19, 2008, Paulson called for the U.S. government to use hundreds of billions of Treasury dollars to help financial firms clean up nonperforming mortgages threatening the liquidity of those firms. Because of his leadership and public appearances on this issue, the press labeled these measures the "Paulson financial rescue plan" or simply the Paulson Plan.


title: Henry Paulson

text: With the passage of H.R. 1424, Paulson became the manager of the United States Emergency Economic Stabilization fund.


title: Henry Paulson

text: As Treasury Secretary, he also sat on the newly established Financial Stability Oversight Board that oversaw the Troubled Assets Relief Program.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson agreed with Bernanke that the only way to unlock the frozen capital markets was to provide direct injections into financial institutions so investors would have confidence in these institutions. The government would take a non-voting share position, with 5% dividends for the first year on the money lent to the banks and 9% thereafter until the banks stabilized and could repay the government loans. According to the book "Too Big To Fail", Paulson, Bernanke, New York Federal Reserve Chairman Timothy Geithner, and FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair attended the meeting on October 13, 2008, at which this plan was presented to the CEOs of nine major banks.


title: Henry Paulson

text: "Time" named Paulson as a runner-up for its 2008 Person of the Year, saying, with reference to the global financial crisis, "if there is a face to this financial debacle, it is now his ..." before concluding that "given the ... realities he faced, there is no obviously better path [he] could have followed".


title: Henry Paulson

text: It has been pointed out that Paulson's plan could potentially have some conflicts of interest, since Paulson was a former CEO of Goldman Sachs, a firm that might benefit largely from the plan. Economic columnists called for more scrutiny of his actions. Questions remain about Paulson's interest, despite having no direct financial interest in Goldman, since he had sold his entire stake in the firm prior to becoming Treasury Secretary, pursuant to ethics law.


title: Henry Paulson

text: The Goldman Sachs benefit from the AIG bailout was recently estimated as US$12.9 billion and GS was the largest recipient of the public funds from AIG. Creating the collateralized debt obligations (CDOs) forming the basis of the current crisis was an active part of Goldman Sach's business during Paulson's tenure as CEO.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Opponents argued that Paulson remained a Wall Street insider who maintained close friendships with higher-ups of the bailout beneficiaries. Some time after the passage of a rewritten bill, the press reported that the Treasury was now proposing to use these funds ($700 billion) in ways other than what was originally intended in the bill.


title: Henry Paulson

text: After leaving his role as Treasury Secretary, Paulson spent a year at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University as a distinguished visiting fellow, and a fellow at the university's Bernard Schwartz Forum on Constructive Capitalism. His memoir, "On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System", was published by Hachette Book Group on February 1, 2010.


title: Henry Paulson

text: In September 2015, Paulson was awarded an honorary doctorate of laws and environmental policy by Washington College President and former FDIC Chair Sheila Bair.


title: Henry Paulson

text: In April 2016, he was one of eight former Treasury secretaries who called on the United Kingdom to remain a member of the European Union ahead of the June 2016 Referendum. In June, Paulson announced his support for the Never Trump movement and endorsed Hillary Clinton for the presidency. In his op-ed to "The Washington Post" Paulson wrote, "The GOP, in putting Trump at the top of the ticket, is endorsing a brand of populism rooted in ignorance, prejudice, fear and isolationism."


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson is a leader of the Climate Leadership Council, co-authoring along with James A. Baker III, Greg Mankiw, Martin Feldstein, Ted Halstead, George P. Shultz, Thomas F. Stephenson, and S. Robson Walton a carbon fee and dividend proposal for the United States in 2017 as a climate change mitigation policy.


title: Henry Paulson

text: On June 27, 2011, Paulson announced the formation of the Paulson Institute, a non-partisan, independent “think and do tank” dedicated to fostering a US-China relationship that serves to maintain global order in a rapidly evolving world. Paulson was also named as a senior fellow at the University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy. His five-year appointment took effect July 1, 2011.


title: Henry Paulson

text: In his memoirs, "On the Brink", Paulson describes his experiences as Treasury Secretary fending off the near-collapse of the U.S. economy during the Great Recession. His second book, "Dealing with China", details his career working with scores of China's top political and business leaders and witnessing the evolution of China's state-controlled capitalism. The book was chosen by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg for the Mark Zuckerberg book club.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson has been described as an avid nature lover. He has been a member of The Nature Conservancy for decades and was the organization's board chairman and co-chair of its Asia-Pacific Council. In that capacity, Paulson worked with former President of the People's Republic of China Jiang Zemin to preserve the Tiger Leaping Gorge in Yunnan. Paulson co-chaired a group called Risky Business that raised awareness of the projected economic impact of climate change. He is a long-time supporter of Rare (conservation organization) where his wife Wendy is the Chair Emerita.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson co-chairs the Aspen Economic Strategy Group with Erskine Bowles. He was the founding Chairman of the Advisory Board of the School of Economics and Management of Tsinghua University in Beijing.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Notable among the members of Bush's cabinet, Paulson has said he is a strong believer in the effect of human activity on global warming and advocates immediate action to decrease this effect.


title: Henry Paulson

text: During his tenure as CEO of Goldman Sachs, Paulson oversaw the corporate donation of on the forested Chilean side of Tierra del Fuego, bringing criticism from Goldman shareholder groups. He further donated to conservancy causes US$100 million of assets from his wealth, and has pledged his entire fortune for the same purpose upon his death.


title: Henry Paulson

text: He met his wife, Wendy Judge, a Wellesley College graduate, during his senior year. The couple have two adult children, sports-team owner Henry Merritt Paulson III, more commonly known as Merritt Paulson, and journalist Amanda Paulson, also a graduate of Dartmouth. The Paulsons became grandparents in June 2007. They maintain homes in both Chicago and Barrington Hills (a suburb of Chicago). In 2016, his wife expressed the importance of Christian Science teaching in their lives.


title: Henry Paulson

text: Paulson was portrayed by William Hurt in the 2011 HBO film "Too Big to Fail" and by James Cromwell in the 2009 BBC film "The Last Days of Lehman Brothers".


title: Henry Paulson

text: In the documentary film "Inside Job", Paulson is cited as one of the persons responsible for the economic meltdown of 2008 and named in "Time" as one of the "25 People to Blame for the Financial Crisis".


title: Henry Paulson

text: In September 2013, "Bloomberg Businessweek" released the documentary film "Hank: Five Years From the Brink", directed by Oscar-nominated Joe Berlinger and distributed by Netflix.


title: Pork rind

text: It can be rendered, fried in fat, baked, or roasted to produce a kind of pork cracklings (US) or scratchings (UK); these are served in small pieces as a snack or side dish. The frying renders much of the fat, making it much smaller.


title: Pork rind

text: Often a byproduct of the rendering of lard, it is also a way of making even the tough skin of a pig edible. In many ancient cultures, animal fats were the only way of obtaining oil for cooking and they were common in many people's diets until the industrial revolution made vegetable oils more common and more affordable.


title: Pork rind

text: Microwaveable pork rinds are sold in bags that resemble microwaveable popcorn and can be eaten still warm. Pickled pork rinds, though, are often enjoyed refrigerated and cold. Unlike the crisp and fluffy texture of fried pork rinds, pickled pork rinds are very rich and buttery, much like "foie gras".


title: Pork rind

text: For the large-scale production of commercial pork rinds, frozen, dried pork skin pellets are used. They are first rehydrated in water with added flavoring, and then fried in pork fat at . Cooking makes the rinds expand five times their original size and float on the oil surface. The rinds are then removed from the fat, flavored, and air-dried. Antioxidants may be added to improve stability.


title: Pork rind

text: Like many snack foods, pork rinds can be high in sodium and fat; however, they are low in carbohydrates and are sometimes considered an alternative snack food for those following a low-carbohydrate diet. According to "Men's Health", a serving contains nine times the protein and less fat than is found in a serving of potato chips, which are much higher in carbohydrates. They add that 43% of pork rind's fat is unsaturated, and most of that is oleic acid, the same healthy fat found in olive oil. Another 13% of its fat content is stearic acid, a type of saturated fat that is considered harmless because it does not raise cholesterol levels. Pork rinds are considered an incomplete source of protein because they contain very low amounts of some essential amino acids, including methionine, tryptophan, and histidine.


title: Pork rind

text: is a popular snack in Brazil, usually served in bite-sized chunks. It is also a common accompaniment to typical dishes such as feijoada and virado.


title: Pork rind

text: is the term for pork rinds in Colombia. Two kinds of exist: (exploded pork crackling), which has no meat in it and is similar to the lighter, commercial version; and , which is usually made with part of the pork meat attached to the skin. This makes for a crispy skin and a soft, juicy meat. It is traditionally served with beans, rice, fried eggs, Chorizo, ground meat, avocado, and ripe plantain and arepa in a typical plate called .


title: Pork rind

text: "Scrunchions" is a Newfoundland term for small pieces of pork rind or pork fatback fried until rendered and crispy. They are often used as a flavoring over other foods, such as salt fish and potatoes, and mainly used as a condiment for fish and brewis.


title: Pork rind

text: In Quebec, they are often called (Christ's ears) and are eaten almost exclusively as part of traditional meals.


title: Pork rind

text: are commonly served in homes or snack in bars and restaurants, little sodas (small restaurants with home-cooking flavor business) also adds in their menu or with and famous snack dish called .


title: Pork rind

text: Preparation could change from using pig fat as base, boiling and later frying, but many prefer using a wok-like pot and wood-fire cooking.


title: Pork rind

text: Mexico is one of the world's largest producers and consumers of pork rinds, known as . It may still have fat attached, called in Spanish or in central México.


title: Pork rind

text: It is commonly served in homes across Mexico. It can be served in a soup sometimes called (pork rind with chilli sauce) or (pork rind sauce). It is often served as an appetizer, or even offered as a snack at family reunions. However, can be purchased on the street and are usually eaten with hot sauce and lime juice.


title: Pork rind

text: One popular breakfast is , (also or just in some regions) cooked in green tomato or tomato salsa spiced with . If the liquid is drained, the pork rind can be used in tacos, either as fast food products or kitchen-made.


title: Pork rind

text: The dryness in pork rind pairs with humidity and softness in (diced tomato, avocado, onion, cilantro [coriander leaf], and chili mix) and both are often paired to fill a corn tortilla as taco.


title: Pork rind

text: A byproduct in frying rinds is the decanted residues in fryer called or (grounds). The process requires uniformly cooking rinds, and while the product dehydrates, it cracks, losing small pieces, which are collected afterwards and become a thick, fatty salsa, that can be mixed as an ingredient in other recipes or used for its flavor and fat in pan frying. The second byproduct in frying rinds is lard.


title: Pork rind

text: Another variety is , also called . These are similar to traditional , only made with fried flour leavened with baking soda, instead of fried pig skin. This variety also features a pinwheel shape. Like , this food is popular with street vendors. They are infrequently sold in Mexico, but tend to be a Mexican-American version of the popular .


title: Pork rind

text: In the Yucatan cuisine, it is often served along pork belly, known locally by the Maya word , blood sausage, and a spiced sausage made from pork entrails and habanero peppers known as .


title: Pork rind

text: Pork rinds is the North American name for fried or roasted skins of pigs. Pieces of fried meat, skin, or membrane produced as a byproduct of rendering lard are also called cracklings. Cracklings consist of either roasted or fried pork rind that has had salt rubbed into it and scored with a sharp knife: "a crackling offers a square of skin that cracks when you bite into it, giving way to a little pocket of hot fat and a salty layer of pork meat."


title: Pork rind

text: Cajun cracklings (or "cracklins") from Cajun cuisine (called in Louisiana French), are fried pieces of pork fat with a small amount of attached skin, flavored after frying with a mixture of peppery Cajun spices.


title: Pork rind

text: Pork rinds normally refers to a snack food commercially sold in plastic bags. They are made in a two-step process: pork skin is first rendered and dried, and then fried and puffed. These are also called by the Spanish name, , a term from Latin America.


title: Pork rind

text: Pork rinds sold in the United States are occasionally stained with a pink or purple spot. These edible marks are actually USDA stamps used on the skins to mark that they have been inspected. They are not harmful.


title: Pork rind

text: In 2003, sales of pork rinds experienced rapid growth, but they have dropped "by $31 million since 2004, when they reached $134 million, and now make up barely more than 1% of the salty snack market."


title: Pork rind

text: Pork Rinds were a favorite snack of President George H.W. Bush. In an interview in 1988, he admitted to liking pork rinds in much the same way that Ronald Reagan was known to enjoy jelly beans. His statement that he liked pork rinds caused an immediate sales spike and manufacturer Rudolph Foods Company had to have its employees work overtime to keep up with the demand.


title: Pork rind

text: "Zhīzhā" () is made from pork and are extremely popular in and only popularized in Qingdao, Shandong. It is a byproduct of lard. Lard is usually sold around US$1, but "zhīzhā" may be sold for about $30–40 and "huāzhī" for around $10.


title: Pork rind

text: (derived from the Spanish ; also spelled ) is usually bought from vendors as (i.e., appetizer dishes usually eaten with alcoholic beverages). It is also available in grocery stores, supermarkets, outdoor markets, sidewalk food vendors, and stores (small, home made stores). is prepared by deep-frying dried pork rinds and seasoning with salt. It is usually eaten with vinegar, hot vinegar (chopped chilies or soy sauce are added), or with , liver sauce, or (pickled green papaya). , which is made from chicken skin, and (lit. "flower ", from its distinctive shape) made of pig intestine, are also popular. It is also used as a topping for and and in preparing pork .


title: Pork rind

text: "Khæbh̄mū", or "khaep mu", (, (), as crispy pork rinds are known in Thai cuisine, are a speciality of the northern Thai city of Chiang Mai. One way of making "khaep mu" is to first cure the pork skin, with an attached layer of fat, in salt for several days, after which it is soaked in water for a couple of hours. This ensures that the fat cells will expand, resulting in a "puffed skin" after cooking. The slabs of belly fat are then slowly cooked at low heat in, preferably, lard but other animal fat and vegetable oil can also be used. Similar to a confit, the pork thus treated can be stored. The pork is then cut into smaller pieces and baked in an oven until perfectly crispy. Another method of making the pork rinds again involves salting the pork skin, but instead of soaking it, the skin is hung out to dry in the sun after which it is sliced and deep-fried twice. Yet another way to make this dish in Thailand is to first cut the pork skin into strips, then boil them in water after which they are thoroughly dried before being deep-fried.


title: Pork rind

text: Northern Thai people most often eat pork rinds together with different Thai chili pastes, such as "nam phrik num" (made with grilled green chili peppers) and "nam phrik ong" (made with dried chili peppers, tomato and minced pork). It can also be eaten as a snack, either on its own, or with "nam chim khaep mu", a dipping sauce made with lime juice, fresh chili peppers and a sweet chili paste. It can also figure as an accompaniment to Thai dishes such as "Nam ngiao" and the famous Thai salad "som tam" or used crushed as an ingredient, for instance in "sa makhuea", a northern Thai salad made with minced pork and Thai eggplant.


title: Pork rind

text: Pork rinds used to be a very common food in Vietnam before the Doi moi program in 1986. Due to various economic difficulties in the pre–Doi moi era, cooking oil and meat were still considered "luxury goods", and consequently fat liquid and pork rind became excellent replacements in Vietnamese daily meals. Nowadays with a better economic situation for the country, pork rind is no longer a substitute food, but rather a special component in many Vietnamese dishes, such as , noodle and snails (), noodle soup, etc. In Vietnamese, pork rind is called (lit. "dried piece of fat").


title: Pork rind

text: In most Slavic countries they are known as (as in the Czech Republic and Slovakia), (as in Russia or Ukraine), or "Čvarci" (as in Croatia, Serbia or Bosnia). Often they are mixed with lard as a type of spread, and served with bread. They are particularly popular in this form during celebrations when alcohol is to be consumed.


title: Pork rind

text: In Lithuania and Latvia they are mixed with boiled peas and served as a snack. This is called in Lithuanian and in Latvian (lit. "peas with cracklings"). They are also usually served with Lithuanian .


title: Pork rind

text: They are part of the traditional Czech dish , or potato dumplings with cracklings and sauerkraut. See the picture.


title: Pork rind

text: In Hungary, cracklings – – may be made from pork or goose skin. They are usually served with salt and bread, sometimes vegetables. Their consumption is at its peak during the season of pig slaughter, as it is then when pork rind is at its freshest. It is usually consumed as a breakfast or dinner food. A kind of biscuit, , is made with crackings.


title: Pork rind

text: In Romania they are known as . The outer layer of a pig's skin, known as , is usually served with salt and cut in thin slices of a few millimeters.


title: Pork rind

text: In Spain they are called . It was brought to South America where they got very famous. In Catalonia (Spain), a is each of the pieces of fried animal fat (especially of pork) that remain after pressing to extract the lard, so that they are golden and crunchy. They are sold by weight in salumerias in Catalonia, and in the Carnival time they are often also found in pastries. The is used as an appetizer, as a snack, and is essential to make the , a cake typical in Catalonia during different festivals. Some use them to make egg , since in Barcelona both products are strongly associated to Fat Thursday.


title: Pork rind

text: In Portugal they are called (same as in Brazil). They are a common addition to other cooked dishes, for the added flavor and fat content, or also enjoyed as a snack. Also used to make ("pork rind cake"), which is a traditional bread baked with bits of inside it.


title: Pork rind

text: In Denmark and Sweden "Flæskesvær"/"Fläsksvål" is a traditional snack served cold and dried (cf. "flæskesteg").


title: Pork rind

text: Pork scratchings is the British name for deep-fried, salted, crunchy pork rind with fat produced separately from the meat, eaten cold. Pork scratchings typically are heavy and hard, have a crispy layer of fat under the skin, and are flavoured only with salt. The pig hair is usually removed by quickly burning the skin of the pig before it is cut into pieces and cooked in hot fat. In comparison, Crackling is distinguished from normal pork rind in the United Kingdom by the fact that it is cut from a freshly roasted joint of pork (usually Pork loin or Belly pork), or the outside of a Pork chop, after the meat has finished cooking and is usually served warm or hot, before the fat on the underside of the roasted skin can finish cooling down and re-solidifying. Larger joints of pork from the leg or shoulder when roasted in the oven can produce an unevenly crackled rind due to the curvature of the joint: this can be rectified by removing the rind after the joint is cooked and resting, and laying it flat on a baking tray or directly on the oven shelf bars and further cooking at a high oven temperature or by using the grill setting.


title: Pork rind

text: Pork scratchings are sold as a snack food in a variety of common brands. Unlike the physically large, but relatively light bags of deep-fried skin without the fat sold around the world, in the UK they are sold in relatively small bags which usually weigh between 42 g and 90 g. and are eaten as an accompaniment to a pint of beer in a pub, just like crisps or peanuts. Scratchings can also be bought from butchers, supermarkets or newsagents. They have been taken to both the North and South Poles on various expeditions, because of their high energy content.


title: Pork rind

text: There are three distinct types. Traditional scratchings are made from shank rind and cooked just once. Pork crackling is also made from shoulder rind but is fried twice. It is first rendered at a low heat, and then cooked at a higher temperature for a less fatty, crispier result, or cut from roasted pork joints to produce heavier but less fatty results. A more recent development is the pork crunch, which is made from the back rind and again double-fried to become a large, puffy snack. Some supermarkets now sell just the layer of skin and fat (no meat), in a raw form for home grilling or roasting, or cooked and ready to eat from hot food counters. The term "crackling" is also often applied to a twice-cooked variety of pork scratchings.


title: José Altuve

text: José Carlos Altuve (; born May 6, 1990) is a Venezuelan professional baseball second baseman for the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball (MLB). The Astros signed Altuve as an amateur free agent in 2007, and he made his major league debut in 2011. A right-handed batter and thrower, as of 2017 he was the shortest active MLB player, at . His listed weight is . From 2014 to 2017, Altuve recorded at least 200 hits each season and led the American League (AL) in the category. He won three batting championships in that span.


title: José Altuve

text: An eight-time MLB All-Star, Altuve has been voted the starting second baseman for the AL in the All-Star Game five times; his eight selections with the Astros is a club record. In 2017, he won the AL Most Valuable Player Award, the Hank Aaron Award, and became a World Series champion with the Astros, each for the first time. In the same year, Altuve was "Sports Illustrated" co-Sportsperson of the Year with J. J. Watt of the NFL's Houston Texans for helping to lead relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Other awards Altuve received in 2017 were the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year, "The Sporting News" Major League Player of the Year (making him the fifth player to be selected in consecutive years), and "Baseball America" Major League Player of the Year. He has also won six Silver Slugger Awards (an American League record) and one Rawlings Gold Glove. After hitting an epic, pennant-winning walk-off two-run home run off Yankees closer Aroldis Chapman to end the 2019 American League Championship Series and send the Astros to their second World Series in three years, Altuve was awarded his first ALCS MVP.


title: José Altuve

text: In 2014, he became the first player in over 80 years to reach 130 hits and 40 stolen bases before the All-Star Game. That same season, he became the first Astro to win a batting title, leading the AL with a .341 average. He has twice led the AL in stolen bases. From Maracay, Venezuela, Altuve played for the Venezuelan national team in the 2017 World Baseball Classic (WBC). He holds the record for postseason home runs among second basemen and infielders with 23, which is second all-time in postseason history while being the fastest to do so in games played. He had 31 games with four hits from 2011 to 2021, the most among any player in that span in MLB, and he also has the most 3+ hit games in MLB since 2011 with over 160. As part of an era that has seen the Astros win two World Series titles and four pennants in six seasons, Altuve is widely regarded as one of the greatest Astros in franchise history, and one of the best second basemen of his generation.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve is a native of Maracay, Venezuela, and grew up there. At age seven, he met fellow future major leaguer Salvador Pérez, who became a catcher for the Kansas City Royals. The two competed together beginning in Maracay and many times in American League games.


title: José Altuve

text: At age 16, Altuve attended a Houston Astros tryout camp in Maracay. However, the team's scouts declined to allow him to participate because they decided he was too short and they suspected that he had lied about his age. The next day, with encouragement from his father, Altuve returned to the camp and produced his birth certificate. Al Pedrique, then a special assistant for the Astros, asked Altuve, "Can you play?" Altuve looked him in the eye and said, "I'll show you." Pedrique championed him to the front office, convincing them that he had the talent and strength to eventually play in the major leagues. The club gave him an evaluation, and, after he impressed team officials, they signed him to a contract as an undrafted free agent on March 6, 2007, with a $15,000 (USD, $ today) bonus.


title: José Altuve

text: After a strong 2007 season in the Venezuelan Summer League in which he hit .343, Altuve moved to the United States in 2008 and hit .284 in 40 games for the Greeneville Astros in the Rookie-level Appalachian League. He returned to Greeneville in 2009 and hit .324 with 21 stolen bases in just 45 games, earning him a spot on the league All-Star team, team most valuable player (MVP) honors, and a promotion to the Tri-City ValleyCats of the Class A-Short Season New York-Penn League for which he played in 21 games. He began 2010 with the Lexington Legends of the Class A South Atlantic League, hitting .308 with 39 steals and 11 home runs, earned a spot on the league all-star team, and then moved up to the Lancaster JetHawks in the Class A-Advanced California League and hit .276.


title: José Altuve

text: Returning to Lancaster for 2011, he hit .408 with 19 steals in 52 games. After being promoted to the Corpus Christi Hooks of the Class AA Texas League, he hit .361, giving him an overall line of .389 with 24 steals, 26 walks, and 40 strikeouts in 357 minor league at-bats that year. He was named the second baseman on "Baseball America"s 2011 Minor League All Star Team as well as the Houston Astros Minor League Player of the Year. Altuve was called up to the major league club in mid-summer, bypassing Class AAA level.


title: José Altuve

text: The Astros promoted Altuve to the major leagues for the first time on July 19, 2011. He represented the Astros at the 2011 All-Star Futures Game. He was named the second baseman on "Baseball America" 2011 Minor League All-Star team. On July 27, 2011, Altuve tied Russ Johnson for the Astros record for most consecutive games with a hit to start a career with 7.


title: José Altuve

text: On August 20, 2011, Altuve hit an inside-the-park home run, his first major league home-run. He became the first Astros player since Adam Everett in 2003 to hit an inside-the-park home run, the first Astros player to get his first major league home run on an inside-the-park home run since pitcher Butch Henry in 1992, and the first Astros player to lead off a game with an inside-the-park home run since Bill Doran in 1987. He batted .346 over his first 21 games before slumping a bit and ended the year with a .276 average. He also hit two home runs, stole seven bases, and posted a .358 slugging percentage in 221 at-bats.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve returned to Venezuela to play for Navegantes del Magallanes, based in Valencia, Carabobo, in the Venezuelan Winter League. He hit .339 with a .381 on-base percentage and a .455 slugging percentage. Altuve finished 2011 with 898 aggregated plate appearances, including 391 in the minors, 234 with Houston, and 273 with the Magallanes. Altuve had 82 hits in winter league, bringing his cumulative year-end count to 282.


title: José Altuve

text: On May 1, 2012, Altuve faced New York Mets reliever Jon Rauch, the tallest player in major league history at . The height difference is believed to be the biggest between pitcher and batter with the exception of a 1951 publicity stunt in which a Eddie Gaedel had one plate appearance for the St. Louis Browns. Altuve was the Astros' representative at the All-Star Game, played at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri. This was his first career selection.


title: José Altuve

text: On July 13, 2013, Altuve signed a four-year, $12.5 million extension that included two club options for 2018 and 2019 worth $6 and $6.5 million, respectively. The deal also included a $750,000 bonus to be received in 2013. At the time of the extension, Altuve was hitting .280 with 21 stolen bases, 15 doubles, and 28 RBI.


title: José Altuve

text: On June 29, 2014, Altuve stole two bases in a game against the Detroit Tigers. This made him the first MLB player since Ray Chapman in 1917 to steal two or more bases in four consecutive games. Altuve became the first MLB player since 1933 to have 130 hits and 40 stolen bases before the All-Star Break. Altuve was named to the 2014 All-Star Game. Coupled with his 2012 All-Star appearance in the Astros' final season as a National League team, Altuve is the only player in Major League history to represent both the American and National Leagues in the All-Star Game while still being a member of the same team.


title: José Altuve

text: On September 16, Altuve hit a single up the middle to break Craig Biggio's franchise single-season hit record of 210 hits. The Astros had 11 games remaining in the season at the time that Altuve broke the record. In 158 games, Altuve totaled 225 hits and a .341 batting average, both of which led the major leagues, and 56 stolen bases, which led the American League. He also hit 47 doubles, seven home runs, and 59 RBI. He became the first Astros player to win a batting title.


title: José Altuve

text: After the 2014 season, Altuve traveled to Japan to participate in the 2014 Major League Baseball Japan All-Star Series. He was named the GIBBY/This Year in Baseball Award winner as the Breakout Everyday Player of the Year. He won the first Silver Slugger Award of his career, as the top hitter among American League second basemen. He was also bestowed his first iteration of the Luis Aparicio Award, annually given to the Venezuelan judged to produce the best individual performance.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve was voted as the AL's starting second baseman for the MLB All-Star Game, edging Kansas City's Omar Infante by more than 600,000 votes. Altuve became the third Astro second baseman to be voted a starter, following Biggio and Jeff Kent.


title: José Altuve

text: On September 11, 2015, Altuve recorded his 800th career hit, surpassing Biggio for the fastest Astro player to reach 800 hits. In the final game of the season, Altuve went 3-for-5 to reach 200 hits for the second season in a row, which led the American League, while becoming both the first player in Astros history and Venezuelan to accumulate multiple 200-hit seasons. He also led the AL in stolen bases (38), and his .313 batting average was third best in the majors. He reached then-career highs with each of 15 home runs, .459 SLG, 86 runs scored, and 66 RBI. He led American League second basemen in fielding percentage (.993).


title: José Altuve

text: The Astros clinched a playoff berth on the final day of the season, securing their place in the AL Wild Card Game versus the New York Yankees. Thus, Altuve made the MLB playoffs for the first time in his career. The Astros defeated the Yankees, 3−0. Altuve drove in Jonathan Villar in the seventh inning versus Yankee reliever Dellin Betances for the final run of the contest. Next, the Astros faced the Royals in the American League Division Series (ALDS), but were eliminated in five games.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve was awarded his first career Rawlings Gold Glove Award for second base on November 10, 2015. He also received his second consecutive Silver Slugger Award.


title: José Altuve

text: For his performance in the month of June 2016, Altuve was named AL Player of the Month for the first time in his career. He had batted .420, six doubles, four home runs, 15 RBI, six stolen bases and 1.112 OPS (.492 OBP/.620 SLG) in 26 games. He became an All-Star selection for the fourth time of his career, and started for the second consecutive time.


title: José Altuve

text: On August 16, Altuve collected his 1,000th hit, setting the Astros' franchise record for fewest games to do so (786) after a three-hit night versus the St. Louis Cardinals. He also was the second-fastest among active players to do so, following Ichiro Suzuki (696 games).


title: José Altuve

text: In 161 games, Altuve had an MLB-leading 216 hits, an AL-leading .338 batting average, 30 stolen bases. He also found a power surge with 42 doubles (the second most of his career and his third straight season with 40+ doubles), a career-high 24 home runs, and a career-high 96 RBI. This marked his second batting title, the last being in 2014.


title: José Altuve

text: At the end of the season, Altuve was named "The Sporting News" Player of the Year, and the MLBPA Players Choice Awards for Major League Player of the Year, AL Outstanding Player, and Majestic Athletic Always Game Award. He placed third in the AL MVP voting, behind winner Mike Trout and Mookie Betts.


title: José Altuve

text: Voted as a starter in the All-Star Game at Marlins Park in Miami, Altuve batted leadoff and played second base. He served as the Astros' number three hitter during the 2017 season. Over two games versus the Baltimore Orioles and Philadelphia Phillies on July 23–24, he set the club record for hits in consecutive plate appearances with eight.


title: José Altuve

text: In July, Altuve hit .485 for the fifth-highest average in one month since 1961. Over 23 games, he accumulated 48 hits, 10 doubles, one triple, four home runs, 21 RBI, and 1.251 OPS. He carried a 19-game hitting streak from July 2 to 23. He also recorded five consecutive multi-hit games during the week of July 3–9, becoming the ninth player in MLB history to do so. His average set the Astros record for one calendar month—surpassing Richard Hidalgo's .476 average in September of 2000—and he won his second AL Player of the Month Award.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve concluded the 2017 campaign by playing in 153 contests with an MLB-leading and career-best .346 batting average, an AL-leading 204 hits, a major-league leading 30 infield hits, 39 doubles, 32 stolen bases, 24 home runs, and 84 RBI. He led all MLB hitters (140 or more plate appearances) in batting average against right-handers, at .344. The Astros finished with a 101−61 record, clinching the AL West division. Altuve became just the fifth hitter since integration in 1947 to record four straight 200-hit seasons, following Wade Boggs (1983−89), Kirby Puckett (1986−89), Suzuki (2001−2010), and Michael Young (2003−07). He also became the first hitter in Major League history to solely lead his respective league in hits for four years in a row while also collecting his third career batting title. Suzuki technically led the AL in hits from 2006 to 2010, but tied with Dustin Pedroia in 2008. Altuve led MLB in Wins Above Replacement (WAR, 8.3) for the first time in his career. He also led the American League in power-speed number (27.4). On September 19, he was announced as the recipient of MLB's Lou Gehrig Memorial Award for 2017, as the player "who best exemplifies the giving character" of Gehrig. With 1,250 career hits at the end of 2017, only Ty Cobb, Hank Aaron, and Pete Rose had accumulated more hits through their age-27 season.


title: José Altuve

text: In Game 1 of the ALDS against the Boston Red Sox, Altuve hit three home runs in a single game for the first time of his career while becoming the tenth player to hit three home runs in a single postseason game. The Astros faced the New York Yankees in the American League Championship Series (ALCS). After taking the first two games in Houston, with Altuve scoring the winning run in Game 2, Altuve and the Astros offense slumped as they lost all three middle games at Yankee Stadium. He hit a solo home run in a 4−0, Game 7 win in which the Astros advanced to their second World Series in franchise history, to face the National League pennant-winning Los Angeles Dodgers.


title: José Altuve

text: In Game 2 of the World Series, Altuve, along with two Astros teammates–Carlos Correa and George Springer—and two Dodgers players–Charlie Culberson and Yasiel Puig—all homered in extra innings as the Astros prevailed, 7−6. The five home runs accounted for the most hit in extra innings of any single game in major league history. Altuve homered in the bottom of the fifth inning of Game 5, tying the score 7–7, and hit a game-tying double in the eighth, before the Astros prevailed 13–12 in the bottom of the 10th inning with a walk-off single from Alex Bregman. The World Series went on for seven games, and the Astros prevailed for the first title in franchise history.


title: José Altuve

text: In the Astros' 18-game championship run, Altuve batted .310/.388/.634, 22 hits, 14 runs scored, seven home runs, 14 RBI, and nine extra-base hits. He established a franchise record for total hits in a postseason. Further, he tied the record for home runs by a second baseman in a single postseason, and hit the fourth-most among all players. Along with pitcher Justin Verlander, Altuve was named winner of the Babe Ruth Award as MVP of the 2017 postseason.


title: José Altuve

text: Prior to Game 2 of the World Series, Altuve was presented with the Hank Aaron Award, the first of his career, as the "most outstanding offensive performer" in the American League. It was the first time a Houston Astros player had won the prize. Next, he was named "The Sporting News" Major League Player of the Year for the second consecutive season, following Ted Williams (1941−42), Joe Morgan (1975−76), Albert Pujols (2008−09), and Miguel Cabrera (2012−13) as repeat winners in consecutive years of the honor given out since 1936. Other awards Altuve received in 2017 included "Baseball America"'s Major League Player of the Year award, becoming the first Venezuelan since Johan Santana in 2006 to receive the award bestowed since 1998. He was also the first second baseman and first Astro ever to win it. For the second consecutive season, he won the Players Choice Awards for Major League Player of the Year and AL Outstanding Player. He won his fourth consecutive and overall Silver Slugger Award at second base.


title: José Altuve

text: In 2019, Altuve's role in the 2017 World Series gained nationwide attention in the Houston Astros sign stealing scandal. With regard to his accused role of wearing a wire and stealing signs, Altuve said, "I'm not going to say to you that it was good — it was wrong. We feel bad, we feel remorse, like I said, the impact on the fans, the impact on the game — we feel bad." a


title: José Altuve

text: Allegations of a wire in 2019 were denied unequivocally by Major League Baseball. Peter Gammons noted in 2022 that when he talked to Altuve in 2020 about how players, coaches, and members in the organization believed that Altuve did not participate in the stealing, Altuve declined to talk about it. He stated that it would be a "betrayal of my teammates" to discuss the matter and asked that Gammons not write about it.


title: José Altuve

text: The Astros selected Altuve's option for 2018, worth a reported $6 million, on November 3, 2017. On November 16, Altuve was conferred the AL Most Valuable Player Award, only the second Astro to win the award, following Jeff Bagwell in 1994. Altuve became the tenth second baseman to be granted MVP, and was the shortest player to win since Phil Rizzuto, also 5' 6", in 1950. Altuve became the first player since Buster Posey in 2012—and the eighth player overall—to win a batting title, MVP and World Series in the same season. On December 5, Altuve and Houston Texans defensive end J. J. Watt were named co-winners of the "Sports Illustrated" Sportsperson of the Year Award for his efforts in leading the Astros to their first World Series title and aiding in the recovery of the Greater Houston area in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey. Altuve became the 18th Major League Baseball player to win the award in its 64-year history, and both the first Houston Astro and first Venezuelan player. He was also selected the 2017 Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year.


title: José Altuve

text: Prior to the 2018 season, "Sports Illustrated" ranked Altuve as the #2 player in baseball, trailing only Trout. On March 16, 2018, Altuve and the Astros agreed to a five-year, $151 million contract extension that would span the 2020–24 seasons. His current contract included a $6 million salary in 2018 and a $6.5 million team option in 2019. It was the largest contract in team history, and he became the sixth player to agree to a contract with an average annual value of $30 million per season or greater.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve reached 1,000 games played in his career on April 17, 2018, versus the Seattle Mariners. He became the 20th player to appear in 1,000 games for the Astros. Over three games versus the Cleveland Indians spanning May 25–27, he realized a base hit in each of 10 consecutive at bats, breaking his own club record of eight which he had set the year prior. The streak included three doubles, one triple, and one home run.


title: José Altuve

text: On July 8, 2018, Altuve was selected as the starting second baseman for the American League in the All-Star Game, collecting the most votes of any player with 4,849,630 votes. It was his 6th All-Star selection overall and his 5th consecutive appearance and 4th straight start. On July 29, Altuve was placed on the disabled list for the first time in his MLB career due to right knee discomfort. Plagued with a right knee injury, the Astros announced that Altuve would serve as the designated hitter for the remainder of the season. In 137 games, Altuve finished with a .316 average, 13 home runs, and 61 RBI.


title: José Altuve

text: With the Astros finishing the year 103-59, the team clinched the AL West again, sweeping the Cleveland Indians in 3 games before eventually falling to the Red Sox in the ALCS. On October 19, 2018, Altuve officially underwent surgery to repair a patella avulsion fracture in his right knee. On November 8, Altuve was awarded his fifth career Silver Slugger Award and his fifth consecutive award. Having won his fifth award at second base, it tied him with Robinson Canó for most awards for an American League second baseman and second most all-time behind Ryne Sandberg.


title: José Altuve

text: On April 9, 2019, Altuve hit his 100th career home run off New York Yankees pitcher Jonathan Loáisiga. He became the 16th player in Astros history to reach 100 home runs. On April 12, Altuve connected for his second career grand slam, and first since 2014, in a 10–6 win over the Seattle Mariners. Altuve would hit another home run off of Félix Hernández the next night, making it the fifth consecutive game with a home run and sixth home run in that span. Altuve was the first Astro to hit a home run in five consecutive games since Morgan Ensberg's franchise-record six consecutive games in 2006.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve was placed on the injured list on May 12 with a left hamstring strain, missing 35 games until returning versus the Cincinnati Reds on June 19. At the time, he had hit nine home runs, though his overall batting line was down from his career norm, at .243/.329/.472 (117 wRC+).


title: José Altuve

text: On July 2, 2019, Altuve doubled in the top of the seventh for his third of four hits in a 9–8 victory over the Colorado Rockies. His 142nd career three-hit game, Altuve passed Jeff Bagwell for second-most in Astros history, behind Craig Biggio (225). It was also Altuve's second straight game with at least three hits, a 6–1 victory over the Seattle Mariners on June 30. He hit his third career grand slam and second of the season on July 14, yielding the Astros a franchise record-breaking ninth grand slam in a single season.


title: José Altuve

text: During a contest versus the St. Louis Cardinals on July 28, Altuve homered off Dakota Hudson for his 1,500th career hit, one of three hits in a 6–2 win that afternoon, in his 1,190th career game. The only players in the divisional play era to reach the milestone faster were Suzuki, Wade Boggs, Kirby Puckett, Nomar Garciaparra, Tony Gwynn and Derek Jeter.


title: José Altuve

text: Altuve finished the regular season batting .298/.353/.550 with 31 home runs and 74 RBIs in 500 at bats.