title: History of astrology

text: By the 16th century BC the extensive employment of omen-based astrology can be evidenced in the compilation of a comprehensive reference work known as "Enuma Anu Enlil". Its contents consisted of 70 cuneiform tablets comprising 7,000 celestial omens. Texts from this time also refer to an oral tradition - the origin and content of which can only be speculated upon. At this time Babylonian astrology was solely mundane, concerned with the prediction of weather and political matters, and prior to the 7th century BC the practitioners' understanding of astronomy was fairly rudimentary. Astrological symbols likely represented seasonal tasks, and were used as a yearly almanac of listed activities to remind a community to do things appropriate to the season or weather (such as symbols representing times for harvesting, gathering shell-fish, fishing by net or line, sowing crops, collecting or managing water reserves, hunting, and seasonal tasks critical in ensuring the survival of children and young animals for the larger group). By the 4th century, their mathematical methods had progressed enough to calculate future planetary positions with reasonable accuracy, at which point extensive ephemerides began to appear.


title: History of astrology

text: Babylonian astrology developed within the context of divination. A collection of 32 tablets with inscribed liver models, dating from about 1875 BC, are the oldest known detailed texts of Babylonian divination, and these demonstrate the same interpretational format as that employed in celestial omen analysis. Blemishes and marks found on the liver of the sacrificial animal were interpreted as symbolic signs which presented messages from the gods to the king.


title: History of astrology

text: The gods were also believed to present themselves in the celestial images of the planets or stars with whom they were associated. Evil celestial omens attached to any particular planet were therefore seen as indications of dissatisfaction or disturbance of the god that planet represented. Such indications were met with attempts to appease the god and find manageable ways by which the god's expression could be realised without significant harm to the king and his nation. An astronomical report to the king Esarhaddon concerning a lunar eclipse of January 673 BC shows how the ritualistic use of substitute kings, or substitute events, combined an unquestioning belief in magic and omens with a purely mechanical view that the astrological event must have some kind of correlate within the natural world:


title: History of astrology

text: Ulla Koch-Westenholz, in her 1995 book "Mesopotamian Astrology", argues that this ambivalence between a theistic and mechanic worldview defines the Babylonian concept of celestial divination as one which, despite its heavy reliance on magic, remains free of implications of targeted punishment with the purpose of revenge, and so "shares some of the defining traits of modern science: it is objective and value-free, it operates according to known rules, and its data are considered universally valid and can be looked up in written tabulations". Koch-Westenholz also establishes the most important distinction between ancient Babylonian astrology and other divinatory disciplines as being that the former was originally exclusively concerned with mundane astrology, being geographically oriented and specifically applied to countries cities and nations, and almost wholly concerned with the welfare of the state and the king as the governing head of the nation. Mundane astrology is therefore known to be one of the oldest branches of astrology. It was only with the gradual emergence of horoscopic astrology, from the 6th century BC, that astrology developed the techniques and practice of natal astrology.


title: History of astrology

text: In 525 BC Egypt was conquered by the Persians so there is likely to have been some Mesopotamian influence on Egyptian astrology. Arguing in favour of this, historian Tamsyn Barton gives an example of what appears to be Mesopotamian influence on the Egyptian zodiac, which shared two signs – the Balance and the Scorpion, as evidenced in the Dendera Zodiac (in the Greek version the Balance was known as the Scorpion's Claws).


title: History of astrology

text: After the occupation by Alexander the Great in 332 BC, Egypt came under Hellenistic rule and influence. The city of Alexandria was founded by Alexander after the conquest and during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, the Ptolemaic scholars of Alexandria were prolific writers. It was in Ptolemaic Alexandria that Babylonian astrology was mixed with the Egyptian tradition of Decanic astrology to create Horoscopic astrology. This contained the Babylonian zodiac with its system of planetary exaltations, the triplicities of the signs and the importance of eclipses. Along with this it incorporated the Egyptian concept of dividing the zodiac into thirty-six decans of ten degrees each, with an emphasis on the rising decan, the Greek system of planetary Gods, sign rulership and four elements.


title: History of astrology

text: The decans were a system of time measurement according to the constellations. They were led by the constellation Sothis or Sirius. The risings of the decans in the night were used to divide the night into 'hours'. The rising of a constellation just before sunrise (its heliacal rising) was considered the last hour of the night. Over the course of the year, each constellation rose just before sunrise for ten days. When they became part of the astrology of the Hellenistic Age, each decan was associated with ten degrees of the zodiac. Texts from the 2nd century BC list predictions relating to the positions of planets in zodiac signs at the time of the rising of certain decans, particularly Sothis. The earliest Zodiac found in Egypt dates to the 1st century BC, the Dendera Zodiac.


title: History of astrology

text: Particularly important in the development of horoscopic astrology was the Greco-Roman astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy, who lived in Alexandria during Roman Egypt. Ptolemy's work the "Tetrabiblos" laid the basis of the Western astrological tradition, and as a source of later reference is said to have "enjoyed almost the authority of a Bible among the astrological writers of a thousand years or more". It was one of the first astrological texts to be circulated in Medieval Europe after being translated from Arabic into Latin by Plato of Tivoli (Tiburtinus) in Spain, 1138.


title: History of astrology

text: According to Firmicus Maternus (4th century), the system of horoscopic astrology was given early on to an Egyptian pharaoh named Nechepso and his priest Petosiris. The Hermetic texts were also put together during this period and Clement of Alexandria, writing in the Roman era, demonstrates the degree to which astrologers were expected to have knowledge of the texts in his description of Egyptian sacred rites:


title: History of astrology

text: This is principally shown by their sacred ceremonial. For first advances the Singer, bearing some one of the symbols of music. For they say that he must learn two of the books of Hermes, the one of which contains the hymns of the gods, the second the regulations for the king's life. And after the Singer advances the Astrologer, with a horologe in his hand, and a palm, the symbols of astrology. He must have the astrological books of Hermes, which are four in number, always in his mouth.


title: History of astrology

text: The conquest of Asia by Alexander the Great exposed the Greeks to the cultures and cosmological ideas of Syria, Babylon, Persia and central Asia. Greek overtook cuneiform script as the international language of intellectual communication and part of this process was the transmission of astrology from cuneiform to Greek. Sometime around 280 BC, Berossus, a priest of Bel from Babylon, moved to the Greek island of Kos in order to teach astrology and Babylonian culture to the Greeks. With this, what historian Nicholas Campion calls, "the innovative energy" in astrology moved west to the Hellenistic world of Greece and Egypt.


title: History of astrology

text: According to Campion, the astrology that arrived from the Eastern World was marked by its complexity, with different forms of astrology emerging. By the 1st century BC two varieties of astrology were in existence, one that required the reading of horoscopes in order to establish precise details about the past, present and future; the other being theurgic (literally meaning 'god-work'), which emphasised the soul's ascent to the stars. While they were not mutually exclusive, the former sought information about the life, while the latter was concerned with personal transformation, where astrology served as a form of dialogue with the Divine.


title: History of astrology

text: As with much else, Greek influence played a crucial role in the transmission of astrological theory to Rome. However, our earliest references to demonstrate its arrival in Rome reveal its initial influence upon the lower orders of society, and display concern about uncritical recourse to the ideas of Babylonian 'star-gazers'. Among the Greeks and Romans, Babylonia (also known as Chaldea) became so identified with astrology that 'Chaldean wisdom' came to be a common synonym for divination using planets and stars.


title: History of astrology

text: The first definite reference to astrology comes from the work of the orator Cato, who in 160 BC composed a treatise warning farm overseers against consulting with Chaldeans. The 2nd-century Roman poet Juvenal, in his satirical attack on the habits of Roman women, also complains about the pervasive influence of Chaldeans, despite their lowly social status, saying "Still more trusted are the Chaldaeans; every word uttered by the astrologer they will believe has come from Hammon's fountain, ... nowadays no astrologer has credit unless he has been imprisoned in some distant camp, with chains clanking on either arm".


title: History of astrology

text: One of the first astrologers to bring Hermetic astrology to Rome was Thrasyllus, who, in the first century CE, acted as the astrologer for the emperor Tiberius. Tiberius was the first emperor reported to have had a court astrologer, although his predecessor Augustus had also used astrology to help legitimise his Imperial rights. In the second century CE, the astrologer Claudius Ptolemy was so obsessed with getting horoscopes accurate that he began the first attempt to make an accurate world map (maps before this were more relativistic or allegorical) so that he could chart the relationship between the person's birthplace and the heavenly bodies. While doing so, he coined the term "geography".


title: History of astrology

text: Even though some use of astrology by the emperors appears to have happened, there was also a prohibition on astrology to a certain extent as well. In the 1st century CE, Publius Rufus Anteius was accused of the crime of funding the banished astrologer Pammenes, and requesting his own horoscope and that of then emperor Nero. For this crime, Nero forced Anteius to commit suicide. At this time, astrology was likely to result in charges of magic and treason.


title: History of astrology

text: Cicero's "De divinatione" (44 BCE), which rejects astrology and other allegedly divinatory techniques, is a fruitful historical source for the conception of scientificity in Roman classical Antiquity. The Pyrrhonist philosopher Sextus Empiricus compiled the ancient arguments against astrology in his book "Against the Astrologers."


title: History of astrology

text: Astrology was taken up enthusiastically by Islamic scholars following the collapse of Alexandria to the Arabs in the 7th century, and the founding of the Abbasid empire in the 8th century. The second Abbasid caliph, Al Mansur (754–775) founded the city of Baghdad to act as a centre of learning, and included in its design a library-translation centre known as "Bayt al-Hikma" 'Storehouse of Wisdom', which continued to receive development from his heirs and was to provide a major impetus for Arabic translations of Hellenistic astrological texts. The early translators included Mashallah, who helped to elect the time for the foundation of Baghdad, and Sahl ibn Bishr (a.k.a. "Zael"), whose texts were directly influential upon later European astrologers such as Guido Bonatti in the 13th century, and William Lilly in the 17th century. Knowledge of Arabic texts started to become imported into Europe during the Latin translations of the 12th century.


title: History of astrology

text: Amongst the important names of Arabic astrologers, one of the most influential was Albumasur, whose work "Introductorium in Astronomiam" later became a popular treatise in medieval Europe. Another was the Persian mathematician, astronomer, astrologer and geographer Al Khwarizmi. The Arabs greatly increased the knowledge of astronomy, and many of the star names that are commonly known today, such as Aldebaran, Altair, Betelgeuse, Rigel and Vega retain the legacy of their language. They also developed the list of Hellenistic lots to the extent that they became historically known as Arabic parts, for which reason it is often wrongly claimed that the Arabic astrologers invented their use, whereas they are clearly known to have been an important feature of Hellenistic astrology.


title: History of astrology

text: During the advance of Islamic science some of the practices of astrology were refuted on theological grounds by astronomers such as Al-Farabi (Alpharabius), Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen) and Avicenna. Their criticisms argued that the methods of astrologers were conjectural rather than empirical, and conflicted with orthodox religious views of Islamic scholars through the suggestion that the Will of God can be precisely known and predicted in advance. Such refutations mainly concerned 'judicial branches' (such as horary astrology), rather than the more 'natural branches' such as medical and meteorological astrology, these being seen as part of the natural sciences of the time.


title: History of astrology

text: For example, Avicenna's 'Refutation against astrology' "Resāla fī ebṭāl aḥkām al-nojūm", argues against the practice of astrology while supporting the principle of planets acting as the agents of divine causation which express God's absolute power over creation. Avicenna considered that the movement of the planets influenced life on earth in a deterministic way, but argued against the capability of determining the exact influence of the stars. In essence, Avicenna did not refute the essential dogma of astrology, but denied our ability to understand it to the extent that precise and fatalistic predictions could be made from it.


title: History of astrology

text: Whilst astrology in the East flourished following the break up of the Roman world, with Indian, Persian and Islamic influences coming together and undergoing intellectual review through an active investment in translation projects, Western astrology in the same period had become "fragmented and unsophisticated ... partly due to the loss of Greek scientific astronomy and partly due to condemnations by the Church."


title: History of astrology

text: Translations of Arabic works into Latin started to make their way to Spain by the late 10th century, and in the 12th century the transmission of astrological works from Arabia to Europe "acquired great impetus".


title: History of astrology

text: By the 13th century astrology had become a part of everyday medical practice in Europe. Doctors combined Galenic medicine (inherited from the Greek physiologist Galen - AD 129-216) with studies of the stars. By the end of the 1500s, physicians across Europe were required by law to calculate the position of the Moon before carrying out complicated medical procedures, such as surgery or bleeding.


title: History of astrology

text: Influential works of the 13th century include those of the British monk Johannes de Sacrobosco ( 1195–1256) and the Italian astrologer Guido Bonatti from Forlì (Italy). Bonatti served the communal governments of Florence, Siena and Forlì and acted as advisor to Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor. His astrological text-book "Liber Astronomiae" ('Book of Astronomy'), written around 1277, was reputed to be "the most important astrological work produced in Latin in the 13th century". Dante Alighieri immortalised Bonatti in his "Divine Comedy" (early 14th century) by placing him in the eighth Circle of Hell, a place where those who would divine the future are forced to have their heads turned around (to look backwards instead of forwards).


title: History of astrology

text: In medieval Europe, a university education was divided into seven distinct areas, each represented by a particular planet and known as the seven liberal arts. Dante attributed these arts to the planets. As the arts were seen as operating in ascending order, so were the planets in decreasing order of planetary speed: grammar was assigned to the Moon, the quickest moving celestial body, dialectic was assigned to Mercury, rhetoric to Venus, music to the Sun, arithmetic to Mars, geometry to Jupiter and astrology/astronomy to the slowest moving body, Saturn.


title: History of astrology

text: Medieval writers used astrological symbolism in their literary themes. For example, Dante's "Divine Comedy" builds varied references to planetary associations within his described architecture of Hell, Purgatory and Paradise, (such as the seven layers of Purgatory's mountain purging the seven cardinal sins that correspond to astrology's seven classical planets). Similar astrological allegories and planetary themes are pursued through the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.


title: History of astrology

text: Chaucer's astrological passages are particularly frequent and knowledge of astrological basics is often assumed through his work. He knew enough of his period's astrology and astronomy to write a "Treatise on the Astrolabe" for his son. He pinpoints the early spring season of the Canterbury Tales in the opening verses of the prologue by noting that the Sun "hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne". He makes the Wife of Bath refer to "sturdy hardiness" as an attribute of Mars, and associates Mercury with "clerkes". In the early modern period, astrological references are also to be found in the works of William Shakespeare and John Milton.


title: History of astrology

text: One of the earliest English astrologers to leave details of his practice was Richard Trewythian (b. 1393). His notebook demonstrates that he had a wide range of clients, from all walks of life, and indicates that engagement with astrology in 15th-century England was not confined to those within learned, theological or political circles.


title: History of astrology

text: During the Renaissance, court astrologers would complement their use of horoscopes with astronomical observations and discoveries. Many individuals now credited with having overturned the old astrological order, such as Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler, were themselves practicing astrologers.


title: History of astrology

text: At the end of the Renaissance the confidence placed in astrology diminished, with the breakdown of Aristotelian Physics and rejection of the distinction between the celestial and sublunar realms, which had historically acted as the foundation of astrological theory. Keith Thomas writes that although heliocentrism is consistent with astrology theory, 16th and 17th century astronomical advances meant that "the world could no longer be envisaged as a compact inter-locking organism; it was now a mechanism of infinite dimensions, from which the hierarchical subordination of earth to heaven had irrefutably disappeared". Initially, amongst the astronomers of the time, "scarcely anyone attempted a serious refutation in the light of the new principles" and in fact astronomers "were reluctant to give up the emotional satisfaction provided by a coherent and interrelated universe". By the 18th century the intellectual investment which had previously maintained astrology's standing was largely abandoned. Historian of science Ann Geneva writes:


title: History of astrology

text: The earliest recorded use of astrology in India is recorded during the Vedic period. Astrology, or "jyotiṣa" is listed as a Vedanga, or branch of the Vedas of the Vedic religion. The only work of this class to have survived is the "Vedanga Jyotisha", which contains rules for tracking the motions of the sun and the moon in the context of a five-year intercalation cycle. The date of this work is uncertain, as its late style of language and composition, consistent with the last centuries BC, albeit pre-Mauryan, conflicts with some internal evidence of a much earlier date in the 2nd millennium BC. Indian astronomy and astrology developed together. The earliest treatise on Jyotisha, the Bhrigu Samhita, was compiled by the sage Bhrigu during the Vedic era. The sage Bhirgu is also called the 'Father of Hindu Astrology', and is one of the venerated Saptarishi or seven Vedic sages. The Saptarishis are also symbolized by the seven main stars in the Ursa Major constellation.


title: History of astrology

text: The documented history of Jyotisha in the subsequent newer sense of modern horoscopic astrology is associated with the interaction of Indian and Hellenistic cultures through the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Kingdoms. The oldest surviving treatises, such as the Yavanajataka or the Brihat-Samhita, date to the early centuries AD. The oldest astrological treatise in Sanskrit is the "Yavanajataka" ("Sayings of the Greeks"), a versification by Sphujidhvaja in 269/270 AD of a now lost translation of a Greek treatise by Yavanesvara during the 2nd century AD under the patronage of the Indo-Scythian king Rudradaman I of the Western Satraps.


title: History of astrology

text: Written on pages of tree bark, the Samhita (Compilation) is said to contain five million horoscopes comprising all who have lived in the past or will live in the future. The first named authors writing treatises on astronomy are from the 5th century AD, the date when the classical period of Indian astronomy can be said to begin. Besides the theories of Aryabhata in the "Aryabhatiya" and the lost "Arya-siddhānta", there is the "Pancha-Siddhāntika" of Varahamihira.


title: History of astrology

text: The Chinese astrological system is based on native astronomy and calendars, and its significant development is tied to that of native astronomy, which came to flourish during the Han Dynasty (2nd century BC to 2nd century AD).


title: History of astrology

text: Chinese astrology has a close relation with Chinese philosophy (theory of three harmonies: heaven, earth and water) and uses the principles of yin and yang, and concepts that are not found in Western astrology, such as the "wu xing" teachings, the 10 Celestial stems, the 12 Earthly Branches, the lunisolar calendar (moon calendar and sun calendar), and the time calculation after year, month, day and "shichen" (時辰).


title: History of astrology

text: Astrology was traditionally regarded highly in China, and Confucius is said to have treated astrology with respect saying: "Heaven sends down its good or evil symbols and wise men act accordingly". The 60-year cycle combining the five elements with the twelve animal signs of the zodiac has been documented in China since at least the time of the Shang (Shing or Yin) dynasty (ca 1766 BC – ca 1050 BC). Oracle bones have been found dating from that period with the date according to the 60-year cycle inscribed on them, along with the name of the diviner and the topic being divined. Astrologer Tsou Yen lived around 300 BC, and wrote: "When some new dynasty is going to arise, heaven exhibits auspicious signs for the people".


title: History of astrology

text: The calendars of Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica are based upon a system which had been in common use throughout the region, dating back to at least the 6th century BC. The earliest calendars were employed by peoples such as the Zapotecs and Olmecs, and later by such peoples as the Maya, Mixtec and Aztecs. Although the Mesoamerican calendar did not originate with the Maya, their subsequent extensions and refinements to it were the most sophisticated. Along with those of the Aztecs, the Maya calendars are the best-documented and most completely understood.


title: History of astrology

text: The distinctive Mayan calendar used two main systems, one plotting the solar year of 360 days, which governed the planting of crops and other domestic matters; the other called the Tzolkin of 260 days, which governed ritual use. Each was linked to an elaborate astrological system to cover every facet of life. On the fifth day after the birth of a boy, the Mayan astrologer-priests would cast his horoscope to see what his profession was to be: soldier, priest, civil servant or sacrificial victim. A 584-day Venus cycle was also maintained, which tracked the appearance and conjunctions of Venus. Venus was seen as a generally inauspicious and baleful influence, and Mayan rulers often planned the beginning of warfare to coincide with when Venus rose. There is evidence that the Maya also tracked the movements of Mercury, Mars and Jupiter, and possessed a zodiac of some kind. The Mayan name for the constellation Scorpio was also 'scorpion', while the name of the constellation Gemini was 'peccary'. There is some evidence for other constellations being named after various beasts. The most famous Mayan astrological observatory still intact is the Caracol observatory in the ancient Mayan city of Chichen Itza in modern-day Mexico.


title: History of astrology

text: The Aztec calendar shares the same basic structure as the Mayan calendar, with two main cycles of 360 days and 260 days. The 260-day calendar was called Tonalpohualli and was used primarily for divinatory purposes. Like the Mayan calendar, these two cycles formed a 52-year 'century', sometimes called the Calendar Round.


title: Ramadan (calendar month)

text: Ramadan (, "") is the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, and the month in which the Quran is believed to be revealed to the Islamic prophet Muhammad.


title: Ramadan (calendar month)

text: Fasting during the month of Ramadan is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. The month is spent by Muslims fasting during the daylight hours from dawn to sunset. According to Islam, the Quran was sent down to the lowest heaven during this month, thus being prepared for gradual revelation by Jibreel to Muhammad. Therefore, Muhammad told his followers that the gates of Heaven would be open for the entire month and the gates of Hell (Jahannam) would be closed. The first three days of the next month, Shawwal, are spent in celebration and are observed as the "Festival of Breaking Fast" or Eid al-Fitr.


title: Ramadan (calendar month)

text: The Islamic calendar is a lunar one: months begin when the first crescent of a new moon is sighted. Consequently, the Islamic year is 10 to 11 days shorter than the solar year and contains no intercalation, Ramadan migrates throughout the seasons. The Islamic day starts after sunset. The estimated start and end dates for Ramadan, based on the Umm al-Qura calendar of Saudi Arabia, are:


title: Ramadan (calendar month)

text: Many Muslims insist on the local physical sighting of the moon to mark the beginning of Ramadan, but others use the calculated time of the new moon or the Saudi Arabian declaration to determine the start of the month. Since the new moon is not in the same state at the same time globally, the beginning and ending dates of Ramadan depend on what lunar sightings are received in each respective location. As a result, Ramadan dates vary in different countries, but usually only by a day. This is due to the cycle of the moon. The moon travels the same path all year round and when the moon is seen in the east, it is then seen traveling towards the west. All the countries around the world see the moon within a 24-hour period once spotted by one country in the east. Astronomical projections that approximate the start of Ramadan are available.


title: Ramadan (calendar month)

text: Ramadan is observed by Muslims during the entire lunar month by the same name. The month of religious observances consists of fasting and extra prayers. Some important historical events during this month are generally believed to include:


title: Ramadan (calendar month)

text: Laylat al-Qadr is observed during one of the last ten days of the month (typically the odd nights). Muslims believe that this night which is also known as "The Night of Power" is better than a thousand months. This is often interpreted as praying throughout this night is rewarded equally with praying for a thousand months (just over 83 years i.e., a lifetime). Many Muslims spend the entire night in prayer.


title: Ramadan (calendar month)

text: According to numerous hadiths Ramadan is one of the names of God in Islam, and as such it is prohibited to say only "Ramadan" in reference to the calendar month and that it is necessary to say the "month of Ramadan".


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippine Sea is a marginal sea of the Western Pacific Ocean east of the Philippine archipelago (hence the name), the largest in the world, occupying an estimated surface area of . The Philippine Sea Plate forms the floor of the sea. Its western border is the first island chain to the west, comprising the Ryukyu Islands in the northwest and Taiwan in the west. Its southwestern border comprises the Philippine islands of Luzon, Catanduanes, Samar, Leyte, and Mindanao. Its northern border comprises the Japanese islands of Honshu, Shikoku and Kyūshū. Its eastern border is the second island chain to the east, comprising the Bonin Islands and Iwo Jima in the northeast, the Mariana Islands (including Guam, Saipan, and Tinian) in the due east, and Halmahera, Palau, Yap and Ulithi (of the Caroline Islands) in the southeast. Its southern border is Indonesia's Morotai Island.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The sea has a complex and diverse undersea relief. The floor is formed into a structural basin by a series of geologic faults and fracture zones. Island arcs, which are actually extended ridges protruding above the ocean surface due to plate tectonic activity in the area, enclose the Philippine Sea to the north, east and south. The Philippine archipelago, Ryukyu Islands, and the Marianas are examples. Another prominent feature of the Philippine Sea is the presence of deep sea trenches, among them the Philippine Trench and the Mariana Trench, containing the deepest point on the planet.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippine Sea has the Philippines and Taiwan to the west, Japan to the north, the Marianas to the east and Palau to the south. Adjacent seas include the Celebes Sea which is separated by Mindanao and smaller islands to the south, the South China Sea which is separated by Philippines, and the East China Sea which is separated by the Ryukyu Islands.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The International Hydrographic Organization defines the Philippine Sea as "that area of the North Pacific Ocean off the Eastern coasts of the Philippine Islands", bounded as follows:


title: Philippine Sea

text: "On the west." By the eastern limits of the East Indian Archipelago, South China Sea and East China Sea.


title: Philippine Sea

text: "On the north." By the southeast coast of Kyushu, the southern and eastern limits of the Inland Sea and the south coast of Honshu Island.


title: Philippine Sea

text: By the ridge joining Japan to the Bonin, Volcano and Ladrone (Mariana) Islands, all these being included in the Philippine Sea.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippine Sea Plate forms the floor of the Philippine Sea. It subducts under the Philippine Mobile Belt which carries most of the Philippine archipelago and eastern Taiwan. Between the two plates is the Philippine Trench.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippine Sea has a marine territorial scope of over , and an EEZ of 2.2 million km. Attributed to an extensive vicariance and island integrations, the Philippines contains the highest number of marine species per unit area relative to the countries within the Indo-Malay-Philippines Archipelago, and has been identified as the epicenter of marine biodiversity. With its inclusion in the Coral Triangle, the Philippine Sea encompasses over 3,212 fish species, 486 coral species, 800 seaweed species, and 820 benthic algae species, wherein the Verde Island Passage is dubbed as "the center of the center of marine fish biodiversity". Within its territory, thirty-three endemic species of fish have been identified, including the blue-spotted angelfish (Chaetodontoplus caeruleopunctatus) and the sea catfish (Arius manillensis). The Philippine marine territory has also become a breeding and feeding ground for endangered marine species, such as the whale shark (Rhincodon typus), the dugong (Dugong dugon), and the megamouth shark (Megachasma pelagios). Within the South China Sea, Philippine scientists have discovered an abundant amount of marine life and species that have the potential to be biomedical advances for the Philippines as well.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Coral Triangle (also called the Indo-Malayan Triangle) is considered to be the global center of marine biodiversity. Its total oceanic area is approximately 2 million square kilometers. It encompasses the tropical waters of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and Solomon Islands. The Philippine islands, which lie at its apex, make up of it. The part of the Coral Triangle's coral reef area that lies within the Philippines ranges from to . It contains over 500 species of scleractinian or stony corals, and at least 12 endemic coral species.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Coral Triangle contains 75% of the world's coral species (around 600 species). It is home to over 2000 types of reef fish, and six of the world's seven species of marine turtles (the hawksbill, loggerhead, leatherback, green turtle, olive ridley, and sea turtle). There is no single causal explanation for the unusually high biodiversity found in the Coral Triangle, but most researchers have attributed it to geological factors such as plate tectonics.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippine Sea provides or supports the livelihoods of 120 million people, and is a source of food for the Philippine coastal communities and for millions more people worldwide. Whale-shark tourism in the Coral Triangle also provides a steady source of income for the surrounding community. The marine resources in the Coral Triangle have a high economic value, not only in the Philippines, but across the globe. The countries surrounding the Coral Triangle work to provide their people with technical assistance and other resources needed to promote conservation, sustainability, biodiversity, food security, sources of livelihood, and economic development.


title: Philippine Sea

text: Climate change is affecting the coastal ecosystem found in the Coral Triangle. It is contributing to rising sea levels and ocean acidification, thus endangering marine animals like fish and turtles. This has a negative effect on local sources of livelihood, such as fishing and tourism. It is also making the waters warmer, which endangers corals. Warmer water causes corals to absorb more carbon dioxide. This alters the water's pH balance, making it acidic, a condition to which the corals are not adapted, and in which they are ill-equipped to survive.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippine Sea hosts an exotic marine ecosystem. There are 421 of the 577 known species of corals in coastal waters, including 19 seagrass species and 30 species of mangrove, both of which contribute nutrients to coral systems. The Philippines also consists of 20 percent of the shellfish globally. Sea turtles, sharks, moray eels, octopuses, and sea snakes, along with numerous species of fish such as tuna can commonly be observed. Additionally, the Philippine Sea serves as spawning ground for Japanese eel, tuna, and different whale species.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippine Sea is a centre of marine biodiversity as well as a biodiversity hotspot. However, at least 418 species are being threatened because of unsustainable practices.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The rise in temperature change caused shifts in the marine ecosystems. which could cause corals to die due to changing sea temperature. As fish and other marine life rely on corals for sustenance and habitat, communities that rely on fishing are heavily affected as well. As the Philippine Sea is situated in a particularly active Western Pacific tropical cyclone basin, the physical damage caused by typhoons coming from the east can further destroy the marine habitats.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The first European to navigate the Philippine Sea was Ferdinand Magellan in 1521, who named it "Mar Filipinas" when he and his men were in the Mariana Islands prior to the exploration of the Philippines. Later it was discovered by other Spanish explorers from 1522 to 1565.


title: Philippine Sea

text: A historic battle between the naval fleets of the United States and Japan took place in the vicinity of the Philippine Sea. This was called The Battle of the Philippine Sea, and occurred near the Mariana Islands from 19 to 20 June 1944. It was also the largest carrier-to-carrier battle in history which featured the United States Fifth Fleet and the 1st Mobile Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy.


title: Philippine Sea

text: Aside from the navy, aerial activity was also present in the Battle of the Philippine Sea, as hundreds of aircraft from both countries fired at each other. The Americans indisputably won, and nicknamed the aerial war the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" due to the number of Japanese aircraft shot down.


title: Philippine Sea

text: Japan struggled to recover from the severe damages of its imperial navy and air strength suffered from the battle. This heavily attributed to the victory of the United States in the Battle of the Philippine Sea which was a vital part of the Americans' reclamation of the Philippines, and the Mariana Islands from Japan.


title: Philippine Sea

text: In 1989, the United States Department of Defense revealed the loss of a one-megaton nuclear bomb in the Philippine Sea during the 1965 Philippine Sea A-4 incident.


title: Philippine Sea

text: Following an escalation of the Spratly Islands dispute in 2011, various Philippine government agencies started using the designation "West Philippine Sea" to refer to parts of the South China Sea. However, a PAGASA spokesperson said that the sea east of the Philippine archipelago will continue to be called the Philippine Sea.


title: Philippine Sea

text: The Philippines depends on the Philippine Sea as one of the sources of its food, and for many people's livelihoods. In the Coral Triangle area, the Philippines harvests seaweeds, milkfish, shrimp, oyster, mussel, and live reef fish as aquaculture products. Fishermen catch many types of fish, including small pelagic, anchovy, sardine, mackerel, and tuna, among others.


title: Philippine Sea

text: Recent scientific expeditions have found that the Benham Rise (also known as the Philippine Rise) in the Philippine Sea has a diverse marine ecosystem that attracts migratory commercial fish like tuna, marlin and mackerel. The Benham Rise is a rich fishing ground for fishermen from Aurora, Quezon and Bicol. The Philippines Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources trains fishermen in sustainable-fishing techniques to prevent the destruction of coral formations, which could negatively affect the food chain that the migratory fish depend on. Migratory fish generally sell at high prices. For example, a single bluefin tuna from the Benham Rise can be sold at market for .


title: Jay R. Ferguson

text: Jay R. Ferguson (born July 25, 1974) is an American actor, known as Taylor Newton in "Evening Shade" (1990-1994), Stan Rizzo in "Mad Men" (2010–2015), and Ben Olinsky in "The Conners" (2018–present).


title: Jay R. Ferguson

text: In 1990 Ferguson played Ponyboy Curtis in the television adaptation of S. E. Hinton's novel "The Outsiders".


title: Jay R. Ferguson

text: His notable television roles include Taylor Newton in four seasons of the CBS sitcom "Evening Shade", Dr. Todd Hooper on "Judging Amy", Rich Connelly in the 2005 NBC television series "Surface", Agent Warren Russell on the Showtime series "Sleeper Cell", Stan Rizzo on the AMC series "Mad Men," and as Pat O'Neal, the father of the O'Neal family in the ABC series "The Real O'Neals".


title: Jay R. Ferguson

text: His film roles include Billy in "Higher Learning", Elmer Conway in "The Killer Inside Me", and Keith Clayton in "The Lucky One".


title: Jay R. Ferguson

text: In 2018, he played Chip Curry in the CBS sitcom "Living Biblically". Since 2018, he has played Darlene's boss (and eventual husband), Ben Olinsky, in "The Conners".


title: Data lake

text: A data lake is a system or repository of data stored in its natural/raw format, usually object blobs or files. A data lake is usually a single store of data including raw copies of source system data, sensor data, social data etc., and transformed data used for tasks such as reporting, visualization, advanced analytics and machine learning. A data lake can include structured data from relational databases (rows and columns), semi-structured data (CSV, logs, XML, JSON), unstructured data (emails, documents, PDFs) and binary data (images, audio, video). A data lake can be established "on premises" (within an organization's data centers) or "in the cloud" (using cloud services from vendors such as Amazon, Microsoft, or Google).


title: Data lake

text: James Dixon, then chief technology officer at Pentaho, coined the term by 2011 to contrast it with data mart, which is a smaller repository of interesting attributes derived from raw data. In promoting data lakes, he argued that data marts have several inherent problems, such as information siloing. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) said that data lakes could "put an end to data silos". In their study on data lakes they noted that enterprises were "starting to extract and place data for analytics into a single, Hadoop-based repository."


title: Data lake

text: Hortonworks, Google, Oracle, Microsoft, Zaloni, Teradata, Impetus Technologies, Cloudera, MongoDB, and Amazon Web Services all used the term by 2016.


title: Data lake

text: Many companies use cloud storage services such as Google Cloud Storage and Amazon S3 or a distributed file system such as Apache Hadoop distributed file system (HDFS). There is a gradual academic interest in the concept of data lakes. For example, Personal DataLake at Cardiff University is a new type of data lake which aims at managing big data of individual users by providing a single point of collecting, organizing, and sharing personal data.


title: Data lake

text: An earlier data lake (Hadoop 1.0) had limited capabilities with its batch-oriented processing (Map Reduce) and was the only processing paradigm associated with it. Interacting with the data lake meant one had to have expertise in Java with map reduce and higher-level tools like Apache Pig, Apache Spark and Apache Hive (which by themselves were originally batch-oriented).


title: Data lake

text: In June 2015, David Needle characterized "so-called data lakes" as "one of the more controversial ways to manage big data". PwC was also careful to note in their research that not all data lake initiatives are successful. They quote Sean Martin, CTO of Cambridge Semantics:


title: Data lake

text: They describe companies that build successful data lakes as gradually maturing their lake as they figure out which data and metadata are important to the organization.


title: Data lake

text: Another criticism is that the term "data lake" is not useful because it is used in so many different ways. It may be used to refer to, for example: any tools or data management practices that are not data warehouses; a particular technology for implementation; a raw data reservoir; a hub for ETL offload; or a central hub for self-service analytics.


title: Data lake

text: While critiques of data lakes are warranted, in many cases they apply to other data projects as well. For example, the definition of “data warehouse” is also changeable, and not all data warehouse efforts have been successful. In response to various critiques, McKinsey noted that the data lake should be viewed as a service model for delivering business value within the enterprise, not a technology outcome.


title: Water hammer

text: Hydraulic shock (colloquial: water hammer; fluid hammer) is a pressure surge or wave caused when a fluid in motion, usually a liquid but sometimes also a gas is forced to stop or change direction suddenly; a momentum change. This phenomenon commonly occurs when a valve closes suddenly at an end of a pipeline system, and a pressure wave propagates in the pipe.


title: Water hammer

text: This pressure wave can cause major problems, from noise and vibration to pipe rupture or collapse. It is possible to reduce the effects of the water hammer pulses with accumulators, expansion tanks, surge tanks, blowoff valves, and other features. The effects can be avoided by ensuring that no valves will close too quickly with significant flow, but there are many situations that can cause the effect.


title: Water hammer

text: Rough calculations can be made using the Zhukovsky (Joukowsky) equation, or more accurate ones using the method of characteristics.


title: Water hammer

text: In the 1st century B.C., Marcus Vitruvius Pollio described the effect of water hammer in lead pipes and stone tubes of the Roman public water supply.


title: Water hammer

text: The Alhambra, built by Nasrid Sultan Ibn al-Ahmar of Granada beginning AD1238, used a hydram to raise water. Through a first reservoir, filled by a channel from the Darro River, water emptied via a large vertical channel into a second reservoir beneath, creating a whirlpool that in turn propelled water through a much smaller pipe up six metres whilst most water drained into a second, slightly larger pipe.


title: Water hammer

text: In 1772, Englishman John Whitehurst built a hydraulic ram for a home in Cheshire, England. In 1796, French inventor Joseph Michel Montgolfier (1740–1810) built a hydraulic ram for his paper mill in Voiron. In French and Italian, the terms for "water hammer" come from the hydraulic ram: "coup de bélier" (French) and "colpo d'ariete" (Italian) both mean "blow of the ram". As the 19th century witnessed the installation of municipal water supplies, water hammer became a concern to civil engineers. Water hammer also interested physiologists who were studying the circulatory system.


title: Water hammer

text: Although it was prefigured in work by Thomas Young, the theory of water hammer is generally considered to have begun in 1883 with the work of German physiologist Johannes von Kries (1853–1928), who was investigating the pulse in blood vessels. However, his findings went unnoticed by civil engineers. Kries's findings were subsequently derived independently in 1898 by the Russian fluid dynamicist Nikolay Yegorovich Zhukovsky (1847–1921), in 1898 by the American civil engineer Joseph Palmer Frizell (1832–1910), and in 1902 by the Italian engineer Lorenzo Allievi (1856–1941).


title: Water hammer

text: Water flowing through a pipe has momentum. If the moving water is suddenly stopped - such as by closing a valve downstream of the flowing water, the pressure can rise suddenly with a resulting shock wave. In domestic plumbing this shock wave is experienced as a loud banging resembling a hammering noise. Water hammer can cause pipelines to break if the pressure is sufficiently high. Air traps or stand pipes (open at the top) are sometimes added as dampers to water systems to absorb the potentially damaging forces caused by the moving water.


title: Water hammer

text: For example, the water traveling along a tunnel or pipeline to a turbine in a hydroelectric generating stations may be slowed suddenly if a valve in the path is closed too quickly. If there is of tunnel of diameter full of water travelling at , that represents approximately of kinetic energy. This energy can be dissipated by a vertical surge shaft into which the water flows which is open at the top. As the water rises up the shaft its kinetic energy is converted into potential energy, avoiding sudden high pressure. At some hydroelectric power (HEP) stations, such as the Saxon Falls Hydro Power Plant In Michigan, what looks like a water tower is a surge drum.


title: Water hammer

text: In residential plumbing systems, water hammer may occur when a dishwasher, washing machine or toilet suddenly shuts off water flow. The result may be heard as a loud bang, repetitive banging (as the shock wave travels back and forth in the plumbing system), or as some shuddering.


title: Water hammer

text: "Steam hammer" can occur in steam systems when some of the steam condenses into water in a horizontal section of the piping. The steam forcing the liquid water along the pipe forms a "slug" which impacts a valve of pipe fitting, creating a loud hammering noise and high pressure. Vacuum caused by condensation from thermal shock can also cause a steam hammer.


title: Water hammer

text: On turbocharged internal combustion engines, a "gas hammer" can take place when the throttle is closed while the turbocharger is forcing air into the engine. There is no shockwave but the pressure can still rapidly increase to damaging levels or cause compressor surge. A pressure relief valve placed before the throttle prevents the air from surging against the throttle body by diverting it elsewhere, thus protecting the turbocharger from pressure damage. This valve can either recirculate the air into the turbocharger's intake (recirculation valve), or it can blow the air into the atmosphere and produce the distinctive hiss-flutter of an aftermarket turbocharger (blowoff valve).


title: Water hammer

text: Water hammer has caused accidents and fatalities, but usually damage is limited to breakage of pipes or appendages. An engineer should always assess the risk of a pipeline burst. Pipelines transporting hazardous liquids or gases warrant special care in design, construction, and operation. Hydroelectric power plants especially must be carefully designed and maintained because the water hammer can cause water pipes to fail catastrophically.


title: Water hammer

text: One of the first to successfully investigate the water hammer problem was the Italian engineer Lorenzo Allievi.


title: Water hammer

text: Water hammer can be analyzed by two different approaches—"rigid column theory", which ignores compressibility of the fluid and elasticity of the walls of the pipe, or by a full analysis that includes elasticity. When the time it takes a valve to close is long compared to the propagation time for a pressure wave to travel the length of the pipe, then rigid column theory is appropriate; otherwise considering elasticity may be necessary.


title: Water hammer

text: Below are two approximations for the peak pressure, one that considers elasticity, but assumes the valve closes instantaneously, and a second that neglects elasticity but includes a finite time for the valve to close.


title: Water hammer

text: where Δ"P" is the magnitude of the pressure wave (Pa), "ρ" is the density of the fluid (kg/m), "a" is the speed of sound in the fluid (m/s), and Δ"v" is the change in the fluid's velocity (m/s). The pulse comes about due to Newton's laws of motion and the continuity equation applied to the deceleration of a fluid element.


title: Water hammer

text: As the speed of sound in a fluid is formula_3, the peak pressure depends on the fluid compressibility if the valve is closed abruptly.


title: Water hammer

text: When the valve is closed slowly compared to the transit time for a pressure wave to travel the length of the pipe, the elasticity can be neglected, and the phenomenon can be described in terms of inertance or rigid column theory:


title: Water hammer

text: where "P" is the inlet pressure in psi, "V" is the flow velocity in ft/s, "t" is the valve closing time in seconds, and "L" is the upstream pipe length in feet.


title: Water hammer

text: Hence, we can say that the magnitude of the water hammer largely depends upon the time of closure, elastic components of pipe & fluid properties.


title: Water hammer

text: When a valve with a volumetric flow rate "Q" is closed, an excess pressure Δ"P" is created upstream of the valve, whose value is given by the Joukowsky equation:


title: Water hammer

text: The hydraulic impedance "Z" of the pipeline determines the magnitude of the water hammer pulse. It is itself defined by


title: Water hammer

text: where "V" is the fluid velocity inside pipe, formula_16 is the fluid density, "B" is the "equivalent" bulk modulus, and "f" is the Darcy–Weisbach friction factor.


title: Water hammer

text: Column separation is a phenomenon that can occur during a water-hammer event. If the pressure in a pipeline drops below the vapor pressure of the liquid, cavitation will occur (some of the liquid vaporizes, forming a bubble in the pipeline, keeping the pressure close to the vapor pressure). This is most likely to occur at specific locations such as closed ends, high points or knees (changes in pipe slope). When subcooled liquid flows into the space previously occupied by vapor the area of contact between the vapor and the liquid increases. This causes the vapor to condense into the liquid reducing the pressure in the vapor space. The liquid on either side of the vapor space is then accelerated into this space by the pressure difference. The collision of the two columns of liquid (or of one liquid column if at a closed end) causes a large and nearly instantaneous rise in pressure. This pressure rise can damage hydraulic machinery, individual pipes and supporting structures. Many repetitions of cavity formation and collapse may occur in a single water-hammer event.


title: Water hammer

text: Most water hammer software packages use the method of characteristics to solve the differential equations involved. This method works well if the wave speed does not vary in time due to either air or gas entrainment in a pipeline. The wave method (WM) is also used in various software packages. WM lets operators analyze large networks efficiently. Many commercial and non-commercial packages are available.


title: Water hammer

text: Software packages vary in complexity, dependent on the processes modeled. The more sophisticated packages may have any of the following features:


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Stephen Edward Schmidt (born September 28, 1970) is an American communications and public affairs strategist who worked on Republican political campaigns, including those of President George W. Bush, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Arizona Senator John McCain. Schmidt was the senior campaign strategist and advisor to McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. He pushed McCain to select Sarah Palin as his running mate, a choice which Schmidt came to regret.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: He was a vice chair at the public relations firm Edelman, where he advised CEOs and senior decision makers at Fortune 500 corporations, until he stepped down in July 2018, and became a political analyst for MSNBC.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt has been extremely critical of former President Donald Trump, and of the GOP for supporting him. In June 2018, Schmidt renounced the Republican Party as "fully the party of Trump". In early December 2020, he stated: "The Republican Party is an organized conspiracy for the purposes of maintaining power for self-interest, and the self-interest of its donor class ... It's no longer dedicated to American democracy."


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt is a founder of The Lincoln Project, a group founded to campaign against former President Trump. He resigned from the board in 2021 in the wake of the John Weaver sexual harassment scandal, claiming that he had only learned of the allegations in the previous month, though this claim was contradicted by a former Lincoln Project employee.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In a podcast on December 14, 2020, Schmidt announced that he planned to register as a member of the Democratic Party.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: The son of a schoolteacher and a telecommunications executive, Schmidt grew up in North Plainfield, New Jersey, where he became an Eagle Scout, a tight end on the high school football team, a two-year member of the National Honor Society, and senior class vice president. In 1988, he was one of two graduating seniors voted "most likely to succeed" by his classmates at North Plainfield High School. As a young boy, he distributed campaign materials for Democrat Bill Bradley's 1978 United States Senate election in New Jersey.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt attended the University of Delaware from 1988 through the spring of 1993, majoring in political science. During this time, he registered as a Republican. He left three credits short of graduation because he did not pass a math course; Schmidt has said that he has been diagnosed with a learning disability that makes higher math difficult for him. He joined the Delta Tau Delta fraternity, was a member of the campus Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) program, and did field work for Republican candidates in Delaware, sometimes wearing campaign buttons to class. Schmidt completed his final math course and received his degree in 2013.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In 1995, Schmidt managed the unsuccessful campaign for Kentucky Attorney General of Will T. Scott, who is formerly a Justice of the Kentucky Supreme Court. This Kentucky campaign's advertising strategy was featured in the second edition of "George Magazine".


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In 1998, Schmidt ran California State Senator Tim Leslie's unsuccessful race for lieutenant governor of California. Also that year, he was the communications director for California State Treasurer Matt Fong's unsuccessful campaign to unseat U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer. In 1999, he was the communications director for Lamar Alexander's presidential run, leaving in June when the campaign reduced its senior staff.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In 2001, he was the spokesman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, becoming the Communications Director by 2002.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt joined the Bush administration as a deputy assistant to the president and counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney. In 2004, he was a member of the senior strategic planning group, led by White House adviser Karl Rove, that ran President George W. Bush's re-election campaign; Schmidt oversaw the reelection "war room". In 2005 and 2006, he was the White House strategist responsible for the U.S. Supreme Court nominations of Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In 2006, Schmidt left the White House to become the campaign manager of the successful re-election campaign for California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. From there, he became a partner in Mercury Public Affairs, part of FleishmanHillard, in charge of Mercury's operations in California.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: On July 2, 2008, Schmidt was appointed to head up day-to-day operations of the McCain campaign in response to concerns that the campaign lacked coordination and a clear message. Rick Davis retained the formal title of "campaign manager".


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In 2022, Schmidt revealed he was deeply disillusioned with McCain by the end of the campaign and did not vote for him, and instead left his presidential vote blank.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: "The New York Times" described Schmidt's management as having transformed the McCain campaign into "an elbows-out, risk-taking, disciplined machine", crediting him with aggressive responses to press criticism and creative methods of manipulating the news cycle.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: "Time"'s Michael Scherer, in an opinion piece from September 15, 2008, relating to Schmidt's involvement with John McCain's presidential campaign, stated that Schmidt, the "lord of outrage, has a long and prosperous career ahead of him".


title: Steve Schmidt

text: On September 22, 2008, Schmidt accused "The New York Times" of bias against McCain in favor of his opponent, Barack Obama, calling the "Times" "a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day impugns the McCain campaign, attacks Senator McCain, attacks Governor (Sarah Palin)" and saying "Whatever The New York Times once was, it is today not by any standard a journalistic organization."


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt voiced his support for gay rights at a meeting of the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay Republican group. He said: "I just wanted to take a second to come by and pay my respect and the campaign's respect to your organization and to your group. Your organization is an important one in the fabric of our party."


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt said about his lesbian sister and her life partner: "On a personal level, my sister and her partner are an important part of my life and our children's life. I admire your group and your organization and I encourage you to keep fighting for what you believe in because the day is going to come."


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In February 2013, Schmidt, along with 74 other Republicans, co-signed an "amicus" brief to the Supreme Court of the United States in support of overturning Proposition 8. "The die is cast on this issue when you look at the percentage of younger voters who support gay marriage", he was quoted as saying. "As Dick Cheney said years ago, 'Freedom means freedom for everybody.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: While leading the 2008 John McCain presidential campaign, the McCain campaign states that "gay adoption is a state issue and does not endorse any federal legislation."


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In May 2018, when President Donald Trump moved the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, sparking violent Gaza border protests, Schmidt said Trump "has blood on his hands". The Embassy's opening coincided with the bloodiest day of the 2018 Gaza border protests, with more than 57 Palestinians killed. Despite initial violence after the decision, the United States under President Joe Biden has decided to keep the embassy in Jerusalem.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: On June 19, 2018, Schmidt formally withdrew from the GOP over Trump's policy of separating immigrant families at the U.S. border with Mexico. He also cited Republican leadership for their failure to challenge the policy. Schmidt said of Trump, "We have in America—right now, at this hour—to understand that you have a lawless president, a vile president, a corrupt president, a mean, cruel president, who is seeking to remake the world order."


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In June 2018, he tweeted: "the Republican Party ... is fully the party of Trump. It is corrupt, indecent and immoral. With the exception of a few Governors like Baker, Hogan and Kasich it is filled with feckless cowards who disgrace and dishonor the legacies of the party's greatest leaders ... Today the GOP has become a danger to our democracy and our values." During an August 2018 television appearance, he characterized Trumpism as follows:


title: Steve Schmidt

text: On December 14, 2020, Schmidt announced he was joining the Democratic Party on his podcast, "Battleground".


title: Steve Schmidt

text: On January 28, 2019, it was reported that Schmidt, along with Democratic consultant Bill Burton, had been hired to help shape a potential presidential run by former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. After Schultz decided to withdraw from the race, Schmidt returned to MSNBC.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt serves on the board of the nonprofit research organization, Just Capital, alongside Arianna Huffington, Deepak Chopra, and others.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In August 2018 Schmidt launched a podcast with Elise Jordan focused on the Trump presidency. Schmidt parted ways with the podcast when he walked out in the middle of an episode in which Jordan and executive producer Adam Levine questioned Schmidt about his role as adviser to potential 2020 presidential candidate Howard Schultz.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt is a founding member of The Lincoln Project, a Super PAC organized by former Republican operatives opposed to the re-election of Donald Trump in 2020, and supported the Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden. Schmidt and members of The Lincoln Project guest starred on Showtime's "" in 2020, giving viewers an insight to their strategies.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In January 2020, a person working for the digital advertising company Tusk raised concerns about John Weaver's pattern of sexual harassment to Lincoln Project executive Ron Steslow, who in turn notified other Lincoln Project officials. By June 2020, members of The Lincoln Project's leadership were informed in writing and in subsequent phone calls of at least 10 specific allegations of harassment against John Weaver. Two of these allegations involved Lincoln Project employees.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt released a statement on January 31, 2021, "No Lincoln Project employee, intern, or contractors ever made an allegation of inappropriate communication about John Weaver that would have triggered an investigation by HR or by an outside employment counsel. In other words, no human being ever made an allegation about any inappropriate sexualized communications about John Weaver ever."


title: Steve Schmidt

text: However, another former Lincoln Project employee told "The New York Times" that this was false, and Schmidt knew of the allegations in October 2020 "at the latest," and was present when Schmidt spoke about it. Other employees confirmed to the "Times" that Lincoln Project leadership was aware of the allegations even earlier than October.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In February 2021, Schmidt stepped down from his position on The Lincoln Project board and released a statement in which he disclosed he was sexually molested as a teen and apologized to another co-founder, Jennifer Horn, for tweeting her private correspondence with a reporter. He also stated he was stepping down from the board in order to make room for the appointment of a female board member as the first step to "reform and professionalize" The Lincoln Project.


title: Steve Schmidt

text: In 2022, Schmidt established a Substack account entitled, "The Warning". Using that platform, on May 8, 2022 he published the article, "No Books. No Money. Just the Truth." In it, he discussed the 2008 campaign to elect John McCain and revealed that, after Schmidt and the campaign personnel had effectively overcome coverage of a reported affair with a lobbyist, McCain told him that the report was correct, and that Schmidt wanted to acknowledge his participation in "public lying".


title: Steve Schmidt

text: Schmidt was portrayed by Woody Harrelson in the 2012 HBO film "Game Change". The film, based on chapters of the book of the same title by political journalists John Heilemann and Mark Halperin, focuses on the choice of Sarah Palin as John McCain's running mate in the 2008 United States presidential election. Schmidt is shown as pushing for the choice of Palin, then afterward conceding she was unqualified for the job, including that she had a limited knowledge of current affairs. Schmidt himself voiced his approval of the film, saying that "it tells the truth of the campaign" and that watching the film was tantamount to "an out-of-body experience".


title: Bill McKinney

text: William Denison McKinney (September 12, 1931 – December 1, 2011) was an American character actor. He played the sadistic mountain man in John Boorman's 1972 film "Deliverance" and appeared in seven Clint Eastwood films, most notably as Captain Terrill, the commander pursuing the last rebels to "hold out" against surrendering to the Union forces in "The Outlaw Josey Wales".


title: Bill McKinney

text: William Denison McKinney was born September 12, 1931, in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had an unsettled life as a child, moving 12 times. At the age of 19, he joined the Navy during the Korean War. He served two years on a mine sweeper in Korean waters, and was stationed at Port Hueneme in Ventura County, California. While on leave, he visited Los Angeles and decided he wanted to become an actor. Upon his discharge in 1954, he settled in California, attending acting school at the famous Pasadena Playhouse in 1957. His classmates included Dustin Hoffman and Mako Iwamatsu. During this time, McKinney supported himself by working as an arborist, trimming and taking down trees. He continued working in this field until the mid-1970s, by which time he was appearing in major films.


title: Bill McKinney

text: After the Pasadena Playhouse he moved onto Lee Strasberg's Actors Studio, making his movie debut in exploitation pic "She Freak" (1967). For 10 years he was a teacher at Cave Spring Middle School. He made his television debut in 1968 on an episode of "The Monkees" and attracted attention as Lobo in "Alias Smith and Jones". The film "Deliverance" (1972) proved to be his breakthrough.


title: Bill McKinney

text: McKinney's other films in the early 1970s included appearances in "Junior Bonner" (1972), "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" (1972) and "The Parallax View" (1974).


title: Bill McKinney

text: It was with Clint Eastwood that McKinney would become most associated, becoming part of Eastwood's stock company after they worked together in Michael Cimino's "Thunderbolt and Lightfoot" (1974).


title: Bill McKinney

text: He appeared in "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976) under Eastwood's direction. He appeared in six more Eastwood films including "The Gauntlet" (1977), "Every Which Way but Loose" (1978), "Any Which Way You Can" (1980) and "Pink Cadillac (1989)".


title: Bill McKinney

text: Other memorable roles include Jay Cobb, who is done in by John Wayne in Wayne's final film "The Shootist" (1976). He also appeared in such later films as "First Blood" (1982), "Back to the Future Part III" (1990) and "The Green Mile" (1999). He appeared in the TV movie "The Execution of Private Slovik" (1974) and guest-starred on such television shows as "Sara", "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles", "Starsky & Hutch", "The A-Team", "Hunter", "Murder, She Wrote", "Columbo: Swan Song" and "In The Heat of The Night".


title: Bill McKinney

text: McKinney took up singing in the late 1990s, eventually releasing an album of standards and country and western songs appropriately titled "Love Songs from Antri", reflecting Don Job's pronunciation of the infamous town featured in "Deliverance." One of his songs featured in the film "Undertow," directed by David Gordon Green. He voiced Jonah Hex in an episode of "" called "Showdown". He appeared in a cameo in "2001 Maniacs" (2005) and had a role in the Robin Hood–inspired horror film "Sherwood Horror" (2010).


title: Bill McKinney

text: On December 1, 2011, McKinney died from esophageal cancer at his home in San Fernando, California. He was 80. McKinney's death was announced on his Facebook page on the same day. The announcement read:


title: Bill McKinney

text: Today our dear Bill McKinney passed away at Valley Presbyterian Hospice. An avid smoker for 25 years of his younger life, he died of cancer of the esophagus. He was 80 and still strong enough to have filmed a Dorito's commercial 2 weeks prior to his passing, and he continued to work on his biography with his writing partner. Hopefully 2012 will bring a publisher for the wild ride his life was. He is survived by son Clinton, along with several ex-wives. R.I.P. Bill sept.12 1931 – dec. 1 2011" [sic].


title: Piaggio

text: Piaggio & C. SpA (Piaggio ) is an Italian motor vehicle manufacturer, which produces a range of two-wheeled motor vehicles and compact commercial vehicles under seven brands: Piaggio, Vespa, Gilera, Aprilia, Moto Guzzi, Derbi, and Scarabeo. Its corporate headquarters are located in Pontedera, Italy. The company was founded by Rinaldo Piaggio in 1884, initially producing locomotives and railway carriages.


title: Piaggio

text: Piaggio's subsidiaries employ a total of 7,053 employees and produced a total of 519,700 vehicles in 2014. The manufacturer has six research-and-development centers and operates in over 50 countries.


title: Piaggio

text: In 1882, Enrico Piaggio purchased land in Sestri Ponente (Genoa) to set up a timber yard. Two years later, in 1884, his 20-year-old son, (1864–1938), founded Piaggio & C. The company initially built locomotives and railway carriages but in 1917, towards the end of World War I, Rinaldo Piaggio turned to the military sector. To begin, the company produced MAS anti-submarine motorboats, aeroplanes and seaplanes under Ansaldo, Macchi, Caproni, and Dornier licenses but later progressed to vehicles constructed according to Piaggio's own drawings.


title: Piaggio

text: Between 1937 and 1939 Piaggio achieved 21 world records with its aircraft and engines built at the company's new factory in Pontedera, culminating in the four-engine Piaggio P.108 bomber.


title: Piaggio

text: Rinaldo died in 1938, by which time Piaggio was owned by multiple shareholders within the family, along with the entrepreneur . Management of the company passed to his sons Enrico and Armando.


title: Piaggio

text: By 1940 Piaggio was manufacturing trains, nautical fittings, aircraft engines, aeroplanes, trucks, trams, buses, funiculars and aluminium windows and doors. The Pontedera plant was destroyed by Allied bombing and production activities were relocated to the Biella area. After the war, Enrico Piaggio decided to diversify the company's activities outside the aeronautical industry to address a perceived need for a modern, affordable mode of transport for the Italian mass market. The first attempt, based on a small motorcycle made for parachutists, was known as the MP5 and nicknamed the "Paperino" (the Italian name for Donald Duck) because of its strange shape. Ultimately Enrico Piaggio did not like it and asked Corradino D'Ascanio to redesign it.


title: Piaggio

text: D'Ascanio, an aeronautical engineer responsible for the design and construction of the first modern helicopter by Agusta, was not naturally enthusiastic about motorcycles, judging them to be uncomfortable and bulky, with wheels that were difficult to change after a puncture. When asked to design a motorcycle for Ferdinando Innocenti, D'Ascanio had come up with a step through scooter design but D'Ascanio and Innocenti disagreed over use of a pressed steel frame rather than tubular, so D'Ascanio took his design to Piaggio. Innocenti would ultimately use D'Ascanio's original design for their Lambretta scooter.


title: Piaggio

text: Piaggio asked D'Ascanio to create a simple, robust and affordable vehicle. The motorcycle had to be easy to drive for both men and women, be able to carry a passenger, and not get its driver's clothes dirty. The engineer's drawings proved a significant departure from the Paperino. With the help of Mario D'Este he prepared the first Vespa project, manufactured at Piaggio newly-rebuilt Pontedera headquarters in April 1946. Piaggio launched the Vespa (Italian for "wasp") and within ten years more than a million units had been produced. The Italian language gained a new word, "vespare", meaning to go somewhere on a Vespa.


title: Piaggio

text: Vespa thrived until 1992 when Giovanni Alberto Agnelli, son of Antonella Bechi Piaggio and Umberto Agnelli, became CEO. Agnelli was very successful in expanding production and modernising the offer. He died unexpectedly of cancer in 1997, aged 33. In 1999 Morgan Grenfell Private Equity acquired Piaggio, but hopes for a quick sale were dashed by a failed joint venture in China. In Italy, Piaggio invested 15 million euros ($19.4 million) in a new motorcycle but dropped it after building a prototype. By the end of 2002, the company had run up 577 million Euros in debt on revenues of 945 million Euros, and booked a loss of 129 million Euros.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2003 Piaggio's debt was reduced by a 100 million Euro investment made by , a holding company of the Colaninno family. 150 million shares were also converted by creditor banks. Reflecting on his investment, said,


title: Piaggio

text: Colaninno became the new chairman of Piaggio, while Dr. Rocco Sabelli becoming the managing director. Sabelli redesigned the production line according to Japanese principles so that every Piaggio scooter could be made on any assembly line. Contrary to expectations, Mr. Colaninno did not fire a single worker—a move which helped seduce the company's skeptical unions. "Everyone in a company is part of the value chain," said Colaninno. All bonuses for blue-collar workers and management were based on the same criteria: profit margins and customer satisfaction. Air conditioning was installed in the factory for the first time, increasing productivity. He also gave the company's engineers, who had been idled by the company's financial crisis, deadlines for projects. They rolled out two world firsts in 2004: a gas-electric hybrid scooter and a sophisticated tilting scooter with two wheels in front and one in back to grip the road better.


title: Piaggio

text: One of Piaggio's problems Mr. Colaninno couldn't fix from the inside was its scale. Even though Piaggio was the European market leader, it was dwarfed by rivals Honda and Yamaha. A year after restoring Piaggio's health, Colaninno directed Piaggio's takeover of the Italian scooter and motorcycle manufacturer Aprilia, and with it the Aprilia-owned Moto Guzzi, a storied Italian manufacturer of motorcycles.


title: Piaggio

text: In 1956, with production of the millionth Vespa scooter, Italy had its first mass-produced motorised vehicle. Taking advantage of increased cash flow thanks to the success of the Vespa, Piaggio developed other products, including the 1957 Vespa 400, a compact passenger car.


title: Piaggio

text: In 1964 the aeronautical and motorcycle divisions of Piaggio split to become two independent companies as a result of the wide ownership by Fiat in Italian industry. The aeronautical division was named IAM Rinaldo Piaggio. The aircraft company Piaggio Aero was controlled by the family of Piero Ferrari, who still hold 10% of Ferrari.


title: Piaggio

text: In 1969 Piaggio purchased the motorcycle company Gilera, one of the oldest European motorcycle manufacturers (founded in 1909), famous for its sporting achievements and world titles in the Motorcycle World Championship.


title: Piaggio

text: In 1971 a steering wheel was added to the Piaggio Ape, a model first produced in 1948, culminating in the Ape Car. Four years later, in 1975, the company made the first prototype of an electric Ape.


title: Piaggio

text: In 1996, on the fiftieth anniversary of the first model, Vespa passed 15 million units produced and the new 4-stroke Vespa ET, the first completely new Vespa for 18 years, was launched. Piaggio was still in poor financial health but its brand recognition remained strong, boosted by the appearance of the ET4 in several Hollywood films.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2000 Piaggio and Vespa returned to the United States with the opening of the first Vespa Boutique in Los Angeles. In that same year the Piaggio Historical Museum was inaugurated in Pontedera. The museum showcases the Piaggio Historical Archive, one of the most comprehensive company archives on the industrial history of Italy.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2001 the Piaggio Group acquired Derbi-Nacional Motor SA, an historical Spanish brand founded in 1922 that had won 18 world titles and was a continental leader in the small displacement motorbike segment. In the same year Gilera returned to the Motorcycle World Championship and immediately won the world title in the 125 category with Manuel Poggiali.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2004, at the end of December, the final contract for the acquisition of the Aprilia-Moto Guzzi Group was signed. The most important European two-wheeler group is born.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2007 Piaggio Group officially arrives in Vietnam. The Vinh Phuc plant includes R&D, welding and painting activities, as well as final assembly of the scooters, with warehouse, testing, quality control and office areas.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2009 the Piaggio Mp3 Hybrid makes its debut on the market which was first hybrid scooter in the world, integrating the conventional low-environmental-impact internal combustion engine with a zero-emission electric motor and combining the advantages of the two power trains.


title: Piaggio

text: In Baramati (State of Maharashtra), in 2012, the Piaggio Group's new plant for the production of Vespa's for the local market was opened.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2013 the PADC – Piaggio Advanced Design Center opened in Pasadena (California, United States). The Vespa 946 was also launched this year, along with the new Vespa Primavera, the latest evolution of the "small body" family.


title: Piaggio

text: In 2013 Vespa's worldwide sales numbered almost 190,000 units; in 2004 the figure stood at 58,000. In ten years of continuous progression over 1.3 million new Vespas have reached the streets of the world. Since 1946 over 18 million Vespas have been produced and sold.


title: Piaggio

text: In September 2017 Foton and Piaggio agreed to form a joint venture to develop and produce light commercial vehicle. Based on Foton chassis the new vehicle was sold by Piaggio Commercial Vehicle division in Europe and in all markets around the world but not in China. The vehicle is intended to be a successor of the Piaggio Porter and production was planned to start in mid-2019 in Pontedera (Italy) with all components produced by Foton in China.


title: Piaggio

text: Piaggio's "cultural project" promotes the reconstruction and enhancement of the company's heritage and is composed by three initiatives: the Piaggio Foundation, the Historical Archives and the Piaggio Museum. In 2003 the Museum and Archives were recognised as the Best Corporate Museum and Archive by winning the Italian prize "Premio Impresa e Cultura".


title: Piaggio

text: In 2016, under the patronage of the Italian Ministry of Culture, Piaggio received the Corporate Art Award from pptArt for its Corporate Museum.


title: Piaggio

text: The new plug-in hybrid version of the Piaggio MP3 will be equipped with a 125 cc petrol engine and electric motor, which offers about and travels using battery power alone. This machine could be out in 2009.


title: Piaggio

text: Piaggio/Vespa are also developing hybrid electric scooters. There are two models in the works, based on the popular Vespa LX 50 and the beefier Piaggio X8 125.


title: Piaggio

text: At the Beijing Motor Show 2021, Piaggio unveiled the brand new electric scooter Piaggio 1. This model was produced in three versione: 1 base, 1+ and 1 Active.


title: Piaggio

text: The 1 base has a 1.4 kWh and 48V battery, a 1.2 kW engine, a torque of 85 Nm, a maximum speed of 45 km/h (it is therefore approved as a moped) and a range of 55 km.


title: Piaggio

text: The 1+ version differs in the battery that rises to 2.3 kWh and the autonomy that reaches 100 kilometers.


title: Piaggio

text: The 1 Active model has the same 2.3 kWh battery, but the engine has a maximum power of 2 kW, the torque goes to 95 Nm and the speed rises to 60 km/h (motorcycle homologation), the average range is 85 km.


title: Kim Sun-young (actress, born 1976)

text: Kim Sun-young (born April 10, 1976) is a South Korean actress. She has performed in a variety of popular dramas, including "Reply 1988" (2015), "Because This is My First Life" (2018), "Romance is a Bonus Book" (2019), "When the Camellia Blooms" (2019), "Vagabond" (2019), "Crash Landing On You" (2019), and "Backstreet Rookie" (2020). She won the Best Supporting Actress award at the Chunsa Film Art Awards and Wildflower Film Awards for her performance in "Communications and Lies". Kim has received the Best Supporting Actress Award at the 56th Baeksang Arts Awards for her role on "Crash Landing On You".


title: Kim Sun-young (actress, born 1976)

text: Kim debuted as a theatre actor in 1995 in the play "After the Play is Over". Though she debuted in films in 2005 with "She's on Duty", her television debut was in 2014 with a minor role in the MBC drama series "Hotel King".


title: ITV Granada

text: ITV Granada, formerly known as Granada Television, is the ITV franchisee for the North West of England and Isle of Man. From 1956 to 1968 it broadcast to both the north west and Yorkshire but only on weekdays as ABC Weekend Television was its weekend counterpart. Granada's parent company Granada plc later bought several other regional ITV stations and, in 2004, merged with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada Television was particularly noted by critics for the distinctive northern and "social realism" character of many of its network programmes, as well as the high quality of its drama and documentaries. In its prime as an independent franchisee, prior to its parent company merging with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc, it was the largest Independent Television producer in the UK, accounting for 25% of the total broadcasting output of the ITV network.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada Television was founded by Sidney Bernstein at Granada Studios on Quay Street in Manchester and is the only surviving franchisee of the original four Independent Television Authority franchisees from 1954. It covers Cheshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside, and parts of Derbyshire, Cumbria, North Yorkshire and North Wales. In 2009, the Isle of Man was transferred to Granada from Border.


title: ITV Granada

text: Broadcasting by Granada Television began on 3 May 1956 under the North of England weekday franchise, the fifth franchise to go to air. It was marked by a distinctive northern identity, and used a stylised letter "G" logo forming an arrow pointing north, often with the tagline "Granada: from the North". Granada plc merged with Carlton Communications to form ITV plc in 2004 after a duopoly had developed over the previous decade. The Granada name, as with those of the other former regional licence holders, is only referenced onscreen during regional news bulletins and the weeknight regional news magazine; ITV Broadcasting Limited operates the service with national ITV branding and continuity.


title: ITV Granada

text: The North West region is regarded as ITV's most successful franchise. Nine Granada programmes were listed in the BFI TV 100 in 2000. Some of its most notable programmes include "Sherlock Holmes", "Coronation Street", "Seven Up!", "The Royle Family", "The Jewel in the Crown", "Brideshead Revisited", "World in Action", "University Challenge" and "The Krypton Factor". Notable employees have included Paul Greengrass, Michael Apted, Mike Newell, Jeremy Isaacs, Andy Harries, Russell T Davies, Leslie Woodhead, Tony Wilson, Roland Joffe, Derek Granger, Gordon McDougall and Dan Walker.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada originated as Granada Theatres Ltd, which owned cinemas in the south of England. It was founded in Dover in 1930 by Sidney Bernstein and his brother Cecil; it was named after the Spanish city of Granada, which Sidney had visited on a holiday. The company was incorporated as Granada Ltd in 1934 and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1935; Granada Theatres Ltd became a subsidiary of the new company.


title: ITV Granada

text: In the 1950s, the Bernsteins became involved in commercial television, a competitor to the cinema chains, through the launch of ITV. Bernstein bid for the North of England franchise, which he believed would not affect the company's largely southern-based cinema chain. In 1954, the Independent Television Authority (ITA) awarded Granada the North of England contract for Monday to Friday, with ABC Weekend TV serving the same area on weekends. The companies used the ITA's Winter Hill and Emley Moor transmitters, covering Lancashire and the West and East Ridings of Yorkshire, including the major conurbations around Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford, Sheffield and Doncaster.


title: ITV Granada

text: Bernstein selected a base from Leeds and Manchester. Granada executive Victor Peers believed Manchester was the preferred choice even before executives toured the region to find a suitable site. Granada Studios, designed by architect Ralph Tubbs, was built on a site on Quay Street in Manchester city centre belonging to Manchester City Council, which the company bought for £82,000.


title: ITV Granada

text: The opening night featured "Meet The People" hosted by Quentin Reynolds and comedian Arthur Askey. Reynolds became inebriated before the broadcast and had to sober up.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada Television was broadcast by the ITA on VHF Channel 9 (405 lines, monochrome) from the Winter Hill transmitter starting on 3 May 1956, and from 3 November 1956 on VHF channel 10 (405 lines, monochrome) from the Emley Moor transmitter. The weekend programme service was provided by ABC Television covering both the North and Midlands regions. Following the 1968 franchise awards, Granada Television provided the programme service from Winter Hill for all seven days of the week, but lost the seven day service from Emley Moor to Yorkshire Television. With the national launch of the UHF 625 line colour television service for both BBC1 and ITV on 15 November 1969, the ITA commenced broadcasts of Granada Television on UHF channel 59 from Winter Hill, with high power relays subsequently put into service at Pendle Forest (channel 25 on 2 August 1971, the first UHF relay service to be operated by the ITA), Lancaster (channel 24 on 26 June 1972), Storeton (channel 25 in September 1979), and Saddleworth (channel 49 on 28 June 1984).


title: ITV Granada

text: Most ITV franchisees viewed their territories as stopgaps before winning a coveted London franchise. In contrast, Granada determined to develop a strong northern identity – northern voices, northern programmes, northern idents with phrases such as "Granada from the north", "From the north — Granada" and "Granadaland". Bernstein refused to employ anyone not prepared to live in or travel to Manchester and Jeremy Isaacs called him a "genial tyrant" as a result.


title: ITV Granada

text: Bernstein decided to build new studios rather than hiring space or converting old buildings, an approach favoured by the other ITV companies and by the BBC at its original Manchester studios. The investment in new studios in 1954 contributed to Granada struggling financially, and the company was close to insolvency by late 1956. All four ITA franchisees were expected to make losses in the first few years of operation, but Granada's was a significant sum of £175,000 (nearly £3.5m in 2011). When it first became profitable, it had the lowest profits of the quartet.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada sought the help of Associated-Rediffusion, the London weekday station, which agreed to underwrite Granada's debts in exchange for a percentage of its profits, without the consent of the ITA, who would have blocked it. Granada accepted the deal, but the popularity of ITV increased and profitability followed. Analysts questioned how Associated-Rediffusion, ABC and ATV were making annual profits of up to £2.7m by 1959 and yet Granada's profits were under £1m. With the increase in income, Granada tried to renegotiate the contract; Associated-Rediffusion refused, souring relations for many years. The deal was worth over £8m to Rediffusion. By the early 1960s Granada was established and its soap opera "Coronation Street" quickly became popular, as did inexpensive game shows such as "Criss Cross Quiz" and "University Challenge".


title: ITV Granada

text: In the 1968 franchise round, Granada's contract was changed from weekdays across the northern England region to the whole week in the northwest from Winter Hill transmitting station. Yorkshire was defined as a separate region and the contract awarded to Yorkshire Television, broadcasting from Emley Moor transmitting station; its transmissions could be received in parts of North Lincolnshire. Bernstein was angered by the decision to split "Granadaland", and claimed he would appeal to the United Nations. Granada Television was received in what is now Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Merseyside and Cheshire, the south of what is now Cumbria (then Lancashire, and smaller parts of Westmorland and Yorkshire) around Barrow-in-Furness, the High Peak district of Derbyshire (Glossop, Buxton) and parts of the Isle of Man. Parts of North Wales can receive only the Winter Hill transmissions (i.e. Granada) rather than HTV.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada retained its franchise in the 1980 franchise review, and invested in multimillion-pound dramatic serial productions such as "The Jewel in the Crown" and "Brideshead Revisited". By the late 1990s the UK commercial broadcasters were considered too small to compete in the global market, and the ITV franchises began to consolidate with the aim of creating a single company with a larger budget.


title: ITV Granada

text: The Broadcasting Act of 1990 instigated the 1991 franchise auction round, in which companies had to bid for the regions. Mersey Television, a company producing the Channel 4 soap opera "Brookside", bid £35m compared to Granada's £9m but Granada won as Mersey's package did not meet the 'quality threshold' applied by the Independent Television Commission. This requirement disadvantaged companies with no previous franchise experience. Granada owned popular television series such as "Coronation Street", which it threatened to sell to satellite TV if the franchise was lost. The government responded by relaxing the regulatory regime, so that ITV contractors could take over other companies, and Granada bought several companies. Some at the company considered ITV could survive only as a single merged entity to have sufficient resources to produce big-budget programmes, a concern that increased when BSkyB began to take ITV's viewing share, leading to less advertising revenue, the source of ITV's income.


title: ITV Granada

text: David Plowright, who had worked at Granada since 1957, resigned in 1992, citing the arrival of Gerry Robinson, who had tightened departmental budgets with an uncompromising business approach. Plowright had been the company's driving force, producing programmes such as "World in Action" and "Coronation Street", and promoting the Granada Studios Tour. His departure angered well-known media-industry figures; John Cleese sent Robinson a fax using "vitriolic language" that called him an "upstart caterer" (a reference to his past employment). John Birt, Harold Pinter and Alan Bennett all supported Plowright for his quality programming.


title: ITV Granada

text: The so-called "Big Five" ITV franchisees, Thames, LWT, Central, Granada, and Yorkshire were expected to take over the ten smaller franchises. Granada wanted to consolidate with Yorkshire and Tyne Tees to "counter the potential dominance of the south east", and the prospect of being taken over by Thames. Granada made a hostile bid for LWT in December 1993, but LWT believed Granada had "little to offer" despite having three times the market capitalisation; Granada, however, completed the take-over in 1994. Granada continued to expand by acquiring Yorkshire-Tyne Tees Television for £652m in 1997 and bought UNM's television assets for £1.75 billion in 2000 – by which it acquired Anglia and Meridian and some divisions of HTV – the remaining divisions passing to rival company Carlton due to competition laws. A year later, it acquired Border from Capital Radio Group.


title: ITV Granada

text: By 2002, Granada had established an effective duopoly of ITV with Carlton Television, owning all the ITV companies in England and Wales. The remaining franchises in Scotland, (Scottish and Grampian), UTV in Northern Ireland, and Channel in the Channel Islands, remained independent.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada was in a poor financial state and closed the Granada Studios Tour in 2001, citing decreasing visitor figures. The real reason was the decision to increase production of episodes for "Coronation Street" to five per week. Without access to that set, the highlight of the tour, the Granada Studios Tour venture was no longer viable. The company also closed Granada Film. The emergence of digital television cut ITV's viewing share, decreasing advertising revenue, which was already suffering from competition with the internet. The failure of ITV Digital cost Granada and Carlton losses estimated at over £1 billion reducing the company's value from 2001 to 2003.


title: ITV Granada

text: On 28 October 2002, in a network-wide relaunch, Granada was rebranded as ITV1 Granada. The Granada name was shown before regional programmes, but this has ceased; its name has all but disappeared from screens, as have all other ITV regional identities. Since rebranding, all continuity announcements are made from London. The Granada logo appeared at the end of its own programmes until 31 October 2004.


title: ITV Granada

text: Granada was permitted by the government to merge with Carlton on 2 February 2004 to form ITV plc. The move was a takeover by Granada, whose market capitalisation was double that of Carlton, at nearly £2 billion. Granada owned 68% of the shares and Carlton 32%; chairman designate Michael Green was ousted by shareholders and the majority of new board members originated from Granada. Carlton employees were subsumed in Granada operations or made redundant, with three out of four new departments led by Granada staff.


title: ITV Granada

text: From 1 November 2004, Granada productions were credited "Granada Manchester", the brand of the unified in-house production arm but on 21 September 2005, it was announced that Granada's name would no longer appear at the end of programmes. The in-house production arm was renamed ITV Productions. The change on 16 January 2006 coincided with a relaunch of ITV's on-screen graphics. Granada's name and logo were used at the end of programmes made for other networks, such as "University Challenge" for BBC Two, and old programmes shown on BSkyB channels Sky One, and the former Sky Two (now Sky Replay) and Sky Three (now Pick), until 2009.