title: Pelješac Bridge

text: In July 2009, the Croatian Government under Jadranka Kosor announced that, as part of the effort to reduce expenses during the economic crisis, the construction of the Pelješac Bridge was to proceed under a much slower timetable than originally planned. In November 2009, Kalmeta mentioned 2015 as the year of completion. The 2010 budget and road-building programme indicated that by the end of 2012, only 433.5 million HRK or €60 million would be invested in the bridge, which is less than a quarter of the total.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: After the 2011 Croatian parliamentary election, the new SDP-led government terminated the existing construction contract worth 1.94 billion HRK ( €259 million) for lack of funds in May 2012. At the same time, plans were made to use the bridge construction sites as new ferry docking sites. There was also discussion regarding how the cost and speed of the ferry solution would compare to that of the cancelled bridge, with the Minister of Maritime Affairs, Transport and Infrastructure claiming the ferrying would be less expensive and reasonably fast, as well as complete by 1 July 2013, which is when Croatia joined the European Union and when the new border regime could have become a problem.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: In 2012, the European Union granted Croatia a sum of €200,000 for a pre-feasibility study of the construction of the Pelješac Bridge. The study would examine not only the projected bridge, but also the solution of a closed road corridor across the hinterland of Neum. "The strategic aim of the Government is to effectively connect the territory of Croatia, which is also a goal of the EU, because the Croatian territory is to become a territory of the Union. This project should not be politicized, but rather we should see which action is most cost-effective", Minister of Foreign Affairs Vesna Pusić claimed. She also emphasized that the ratification of the Tuđman-Izetbegović treaty of 1996 (Neum Agreement) was not a condition to receive European funds for the construction of the bridge, but it would be no harm if it did happen.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The feasibility study prepared by Croatia to analyse the possible alternatives concluded that building a bridge would be the most favourable option as it scored highest in the multi-criteria (safety, impact on traffic, environmental impact) and cost-benefit analysis, compared to the other options; a highway corridor, a ferry connection or the construction of tunnels. The project was prepared in consultation with the authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The necessity to preserve Croatia's natural heritage was an essential criteria taken into consideration at all phases of the project's preparation.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The European Commission also had the project assessed before adoption independent experts in the framework of the Joint Assistance to Support Projects in European Regions (JASPERS) as regards its feasibility and economic viability.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: A French study suggested in December 2013 that the bridge is the most feasible solution, and Croatian Minister of Transport Siniša Hajdaš Dončić stated that the construction of the bridge would start in 2015. In July 2015, Croatia's government said that construction was likely to start in spring 2016.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: By 2016, the Croatian government was saying construction would go ahead with or without EU funds. Construction dates were further delayed by a formal complaint about tender documents.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The European Commission announced on 7 June 2017 that €357 million from Cohesion Policy funds will be made available for the bridge and the supporting infrastructure (tunnels, bypasses, viaducts and access roads), with completion scheduled for 2022. The EU contribution would amount to 85% of the total construction costs, aiming at benefiting tourism, trade, and territorial cohesion.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: Despite protests from Bosnian political actors, Croatian Minister of Regional Development Gabrijela Žalac as well as Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenković confirmed that the construction of the bridge would continue.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: On 15 September 2017, it was announced that China Road and Bridge Corporation, Austrian Strabag and Italian-Turkish consortium Astaldi/Içtas applied for a bridge construction tender. The Austrians offered the cost of HRK (), the Italian-Turkish offer was HRK (), while the Chinese offer was HRK (). On 15 January 2018, Hrvatske ceste made a formal decision according to which China Road and Bridge Corporation won the tender. In addition to the lowest price, CRBC also offered to complete the project six months faster than required. Construction had started by mid 2019, with the construction of the bridge pillars in October.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The idea that a large bridge should connect Pelješac with the mainland has caused concern among environmental activists in Croatia, who opposed it because of a potential damage to the sea life in the Bay of Mali Ston, as well as the mariculture. These risks and concerns were explicitly addressed by the constructors in the preliminary studies.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: In October 2015, the Croatian Ministry of Environment and Nature Protection issued a Decision, confirming that a cross-border consultation was carried out concerning the impact of the project on the environment of Bosnia and Herzegovina according to the Convention on Environmental Impact Assessment in a Transboundary Context. Bosnia and Herzegovina did not submit its observations or request an extension of the consultation's timeframe.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The idea is also opposed for various economic reasons: whether such a bridge is really necessary as opposed to making a different deal with Bosnia and Herzegovina, whether it is too expensive if built according to ecological demands, or whether it is best replaced with an undersea tunnel.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The idea of construction of an immersed tube instead as a more cost-effective design, not impeding access to Neum, was ridiculed and never accepted by the Croatian authorities.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: According to the news program "Dnevnik Nove TV", another possibility was a highway corridor through Bosnia and Herzegovina with high walls and strict surveillance.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: In the process of accession of Croatia to the European Union, the Croatian Government had claimed that a bridge would be a "prerequisite" for Croatia to enter the Schengen Area. The European Commission nevertheless stated in 2010 that this is only one of several options to handle the issue.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The construction of the bridge has also been opposed by various political actors in Bosnia and Herzegovina, mostly Bosniak, as it would, according to them, complicate its access to international waters. Several Bosnian politicians initially opposed the building of the bridge, originally planned to be only high, because it would have made it impossible for large ships to enter the harbor of Neum. Although the Neum harbor is not currently fit for commercial traffic, and most of the trade to and from Bosnia and Herzegovina goes through the Croatian port of Ploče, the several Bosnian politicians declared that a new one might be built in the future, and that the construction of the bridge would compromise this ambition.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: In August 2017, a group of unnamed Bosnian MPs wrote a letter to the High Representative of the EU for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Federica Mogherini of Italy, and to the High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina Valentin Inzko of Austria, claiming that Croatia is in violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and is "cutting off without permission" their country from international waters through the Pelješac Bridge project, calling upon Croatia "to stop attacking the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina as a maritime state and stop all activities on building an illegal and politically violent bridge project at the Komarna-Pelješac location." The Bosnian MPs noted that Bosnia and Herzegovina has never given formal consent, by the Council of Ministers nor by the Presidency, to the bridge project and its financing with EU funds.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: Croatia stated that the bridge is located exclusively within Croatian territory and Croatian territorial waters and that it is thus entitled under the international law of the sea to construct the bridge without requiring any consent from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Croatia also expressed commitment to fully respect the international rights enjoyed by other countries in the Pelješac peninsula, including the right of innocent passage enjoyed by all countries under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the right of Bosnia and Herzegovina to have unrestricted access to the high seas. Croatia also recalled that the foreseen height of the bridge (55 m, 180 ft) will allow the totality of the current Bosnian shipping to use the existing navigational route to transit under the bridge, and that in case any ship taller than would need to call on a port in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it could dock instead at the Croatian port of Ploče, in line with the 1995 Free Transit agreement.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia agreed on a border demarcation treaty in 1998. The treaty was signed by the two former presidents, Alija Izetbegović and Franjo Tuđman, but it was never ratified by the respective parliaments so, therefore, it had never entered into force. The agreement foresees a definition of the two countries' territory, in the area of Pelješac which is slightly different from what is shown on maps, since Croatia agreed to recognise the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzegovina over two small rock islands (Mali Školj and Veliki Školj) and the tip of the peninsula of Klek near Neum.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: On 17 October 2007, the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted an official position stating that "Bosnia and Herzegovina opposes the construction of the [Pelješac] Bridge until the issues related to the determination of the sea borderline between the two countries are resolved" and asking Croatia not to undertake any unilateral actions concerning the construction of the bridge. Bosnian MP Halid Genjac has stated that such official position has never been reverted and is thus still in force, while no official Bosnian body has given its express consent to the construction of the bridge. He argued that "the claims that Croatia is building a bridge on its territory are incorrect because the sea waters beneath the Pelješac Bridge are not and cannot be Croatian or internal waters, but international waters stretching from the territorial waters of Bosnia and Herzegovina to the open sea," Genjac argued.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The Bosniak member of the Presidency, Bakir Izetbegović, stated that he believed that Croatia should not proceed with the building of the bridge before the maritime border demarcation is agreed, based on the 2007 position of the Presidency, and that the agreement for the use of the port of Ploče has not been ratified yet either.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The Croat member of the Presidency, Dragan Čović continuously supports the construction of the Bridge and has stated that "problematizing the construction of Pelješac Bridge is not the official position of B&H. The official position of recent years has been in the sense of encouraging Croatia to continue with such an infrastructure project that is of great importance for B&H as well. In this case, it's about one party's (Party of Democratic Action) position and of a couple of individuals in that party. Croatia complied with all the set conditions."


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: The Serb member of the Presidency Mladen Ivanić stated that he supported the construction and that it was necessary to ensure that the maritime regime was such that ships could freely come to Neum.


title: Pelješac Bridge

text: President of Republika Srpska Milorad Dodik stated in August 2017 that Croatia had the right to build the Pelješac Bridge, adding that Bosniak parties were unnecessarily creating problems.


title: Przemyśl

text: Przemyśl (; ; ; ) is a city in southeastern Poland with 58,721 inhabitants, as of December 2021. In 1999, it became part of the Subcarpathian Voivodeship; it was previously the capital of Przemyśl Voivodeship.


title: Przemyśl

text: Przemyśl owes its long and rich history to the advantages of its geographic location. The city lies in an area connecting mountains and lowlands known as the Przemyśl Gate (Brama Przemyska), with open lines of transportation, and fertile soil. It also lies on the navigable San River. Important trade routes that connect Central Europe from Przemyśl ensure the city's importance. The Old Town of Przemyśl is listed as a Historic Monument of Poland.


title: Przemyśl

text: Different names in various languages have identified the city throughout its history. Selected languages include: ; ; ; (Peremyshl) and (Pshemysl); and (Pshemishl).


title: Przemyśl

text: Przemyśl is the second-oldest city (after Kraków) in southern Poland, dating back to the 8th century. It was the site of a fortified gord belonging to the "Ledzianie" (Lendians), a West Slavic tribe. In the 9th century, the fortified settlement and the surrounding region became part of Great Moravia. Most likely, the city's name dates back to the Moravian period. Also, archeological remains testify to the presence of a Christian monastic settlement as early as the 9th century.


title: Przemyśl

text: Upon the invasion of the Hungarian tribes into the heart of the Great Moravian Empire around 899, the local Lendians declared allegiance to the Hungarians. The region then became a site of contention between Poland, Kievan Rus and Hungary beginning in at least the 9th century, with Przemyśl along with other Cherven Grods, falling under the control of the Polans ("Polanie"), who would in the 10th century under the rule of Mieszko I establish the Polish state.


title: Przemyśl

text: When Mieszko I annexed the tribal area of Lendians in 970–980, Przemyśl became an important local centre on the eastern frontier of Piast's realm.


title: Przemyśl

text: The city was mentioned by Nestor the Chronicler, when in 981 it was captured by Vladimir I of Rus. In 1018, Przemyśl returned to Poland, and in 1031 it was retaken by Rus. Around the year 1069, Przemyśl again returned to Poland, after Bolesław II the Generous retook the town and temporarily made it his residence. In 1085, the town became the capital of a semi-independence Principality of Peremyshl under the lordship of Rus.


title: Przemyśl

text: The palatium complex including a Latin rotunda was built during the rule of the Polish king Bolesław I the Brave in the 11th century. Sometime before 1218, an Orthodox eparchy was founded in the city.


title: Przemyśl

text: In 1340, Przemyśl was retaken by the king Casimir III of Poland and again became part of the Kingdom of Poland as result of the Galicia–Volhynia Wars. Around this time, the first Latin Catholic diocese was founded in the city, and Przemyśl was granted a city charter based on Magdeburg rights, confirmed in 1389 by the king Władysław II Jagiełło. The city prospered as an important trade centre during the 16th century. Like nearby Lwów, the city's population consisted of a great number of nationalities, including Poles, Jews, Germans, Czechs, Armenians and Ruthenians. The long period of prosperity enabled the construction of public buildings such as the Renaissance town hall and the Old Synagogue of 1559. Also, a Jesuit college was founded in the city in 1617.


title: Przemyśl

text: The prosperity came to an end in the middle of the 17th century, caused by the invading Swedish army during the Deluge, and a general decline of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The city decline lasted for over a hundred years, and only at the end of the 18th century did it recover its former levels of population. In 1754, the Latin Catholic bishop founded Przemyśl's first public library, which was only the second public library in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, with Warsaw's Załuski Library founded 7 years earlier. Przemyśl's importance at that time was such that when Austria annexed eastern Galicia in 1772 the Austrians considered making Przemyśl their provincial capital, before deciding on Lwów. In the mid-18th century, Jews constituted 55.6% (1,692) of the population, Latin Catholic Poles 39.5% (1,202), and Greek Catholic Ruthenians 4.8% (147).


title: Przemyśl

text: In 1772, as a consequence of the First Partition of Poland, Przemyśl became part of the Austrian Empire, in what the Austrians called the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria. According to the Austrian census of 1830, the city was home to 7,538 people of whom 3,732 were Latin Catholic, 2,298 Jews and 1,508 were members of the Greek Catholic Church, a significantly larger number of Ruthenians than in most Galician cities. In 1804, a Ruthenian library was established in Przemyśl. By 1822, its collection had over 33,000 books and its importance for Ruthenians was comparable to that held by the Ossolineum library in Lwów for Poles. Przemyśl also became the center of the revival of Byzantine choral music in the Greek Catholic Church. Until eclipsed by Lviv in the 1830s, Przemyśl was the most important city in the Ruthenian cultural awakening in the nineteenth century. As the majority of Przemyśl's inhabitants were Poles, the city also became a center for the development of Polish culture and science, and Polish independence organizations also operated in Przemyśl. The greatest heyday of Polishness in Przemyśl dates back to 1860-1918, due to the granting of autonomy to Galicia.


title: Przemyśl

text: In 1861, the Galician Railway of Archduke Charles Louis built a connecting line from Przemyśl to Kraków, and east to Lwów. In the middle of the 19th century, due to the growing conflict between Austria and Russia over the Balkans, Austria grew more mindful of Przemyśl's strategic location near the border with the Russian Empire. During the Crimean War, when tensions mounted between Russia and Austria, a series of massive fortresses, in circumference, were built around the city by the Austrian military.


title: Przemyśl

text: In 1909, the Polish "Museum of the Przemyśl Land" was established in Przemyśl. It was an extremely important facility for the Polish population.


title: Przemyśl

text: The census of 1910, showed that the city had 54,078 residents. Latin Catholics were the most numerous 25,306 (46.8%), followed by Jews 16,062 (29.7%) and Greek Catholics 12,018 (22.2%). 87% of the city's inhabitants spoke Polish (all Poles spoke Polish, and most Jews were bilingual and communicated in Yiddish and Polish, but owing to the inability to declare Yiddish, almost all Jews declared Polish language.


title: Przemyśl

text: With technological progress in artillery during the second half of the 19th century, the old fortifications rapidly became obsolete. The longer range of rifled artillery necessitated the redesign of fortresses so that they would be larger and able to resist the newly available guns. To achieve this, between the years 1888 and 1914 Przemyśl was turned into a first-class fortress, the third-largest in Europe out of about 200 that were built in this period. Around the city, in a circle of circumference , 44 forts of various sizes were built. The older fortifications were modernised to provide the fortress with an internal defence ring. The fortress was designed to accommodate 85,000 soldiers and 956 cannons of all sorts, although eventually 120,000 soldiers were garrisoned there.


title: Przemyśl

text: In August 1914, at the beginning of the First World War, Russian forces defeated Austro-Hungarian forces in the opening engagements and advanced rapidly into Galicia. The Przemyśl fortress fulfilled its mission very effectively, helping to stop a 300,000-strong Russian army advancing upon the Carpathian Passes and Kraków, the Lesser Poland regional capital. The first siege was lifted by a temporary Austro-Hungarian advance. However, the Russian army resumed its advance and initiated a second siege of the fortress of Przemyśl in October 1914. This time relief attempts were unsuccessful. Due to lack of food and exhaustion of its defenders, the fortress surrendered on 22 March 1915. The Russians captured 126,000 prisoners and 700 big guns. Before the surrender, the complete destruction of all fortifications was carried out. The Russians did not linger in Przemyśl. A renewed offensive by the Central Powers recaptured the destroyed fortress on 3 June 1915. During the fighting around Przemyśl, both sides lost up to 115,000 killed, wounded, and missing.


title: Przemyśl

text: At the end of World War I, Przemyśl became disputed between renascent Poland and the West Ukrainian People's Republic. On 1 November 1918, a local provisional government was formed with representatives of Polish, Jewish, and Ruthenian inhabitants of the area. However, on 3 November, a Ukrainian military unit overthrew the government, arrested its leader and captured the eastern part of the city. The Ukrainian army was checked by a small Polish self-defence unit formed of World War I veterans. Also, numerous young Polish volunteers from Przemyśl's high schools, later to be known as Przemyśl Orlęta, "The Eaglets of Przemyśl" (in a similar manner to more famous Lwów Eaglets), joined the host. The battlefront divided the city along the river San, with the western borough of Zasanie held in Polish hands and the Old Town controlled by the Ukrainians. Neither Poles nor Ukrainians could effectively cross the San river, so both opposing parties decided to wait for a relief force from the outside. That race was won by the Polish reinforcements and the volunteer expeditionary unit formed in Kraków arrived in Przemyśl on 10 November 1918. When the subsequent Polish ultimatum to the Ukrainians remained unanswered, on 11–12 November the Polish forces crossed the San and forced out the outnumbered Ukrainians from the city in what became known as the 1918 Battle of Przemyśl.


title: Przemyśl

text: After the end of the Polish–Ukrainian War and the Polish–Bolshevik War that followed, the city became a part of the Second Polish Republic. Although the capital of the voivodship was in Lwów (see: Lwów Voivodeship), Przemyśl recovered its nodal position as a seat of local church administration, as well as the garrison of the 10th Military District of the Polish Army — a staff unit charged with organizing the defence of roughly 10% of the territory of pre-war Poland. As of 1931, Przemyśl had a population of 62,272 and was the biggest city in southern Poland between Kraków and Lwów.


title: Przemyśl

text: On 11–14 September 1939, during the invasion of Poland, which started World War II, the German and Polish armies fought the Battle of Przemyśl in and around the city. Afterwards the battle German "Einsatzgruppe I" entered the city to commit various atrocities against the population, and the "Einsatzgruppe zbV" entered to take over the Polish industry. The battle was followed by three days of massacres carried out by the German soldiers, police and "Einsatzgruppe I" against hundreds of Jews who lived in the city. In total, over 500 Jews were murdered in and around the city and the vast majority of the city's Jewish population was deported across the San River into the portion of Poland that was occupied by the Soviet Union.


title: Przemyśl

text: The border between the two invaders ran through the middle of the city along the San River until June 1941. German-occupied left-bank Przemyśl was part of the Kraków District of the General Government. Members of the "Einsatzgruppe I" co-formed the local German police unit. On November 10, 1939, the Germans carried out mass arrests of Poles in left-bank Przemyśl and the county, as part of the "Intelligenzaktion". Arrested Poles were detained in the local German police prison, and then deported to a prison in Kraków, from where they were eventually deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Soviet-occupied right-bank part of the city was incorporated to the Ukrainian SSR in the atmosphere of NKVD terror as thousands of Jews were ordered to be deported. It became part of the newly established Drohobych Oblast. In 1940, the city became an administrative center of Peremyshl Uyezd with the Peremyshl Fortified District established along the Nazi-Soviet frontier before the German attack against the USSR in 1941.


title: Przemyśl

text: The town's population increased due to a large influx of Jewish refugees from the General Government who sought to cross the border to Romania. It is estimated that by mid-1941 the Jewish population of the city had grown to roughly 16,500. In the Operation Barbarossa of 1941, the eastern Soviet-occupied part of the city was also occupied by Germany. On 20 June 1942, the first group of 1,000 Jews was transported from the Przemyśl area to the Janowska concentration camp, and on 15 July 1942 a Nazi ghetto was established for all Jewish inhabitants of Przemyśl and its vicinity – some 22,000 people altogether. Local Jews were given 24 hours to enter the ghetto. Jewish communal buildings, including the Tempel Synagogue and the Old Synagogue were destroyed; the New Synagogue, Zasanie Synagogue, and all commercial and residential real estate belonging to Jews were expropriated.


title: Przemyśl

text: The ghetto in Przemyśl was sealed off from the outside on 14 July 1942. By that time, there may have been as many as 24,000 Jews in the ghetto. On 27 July the Gestapo notified "Judenrat" about the forced resettlement program and posted notices that an ""Aktion"" (roundup for deportation to camps) was to be implemented involving almost all occupants. Exceptions were made for some essential, and Gestapo workers, who would have their papers stamped accordingly. On the same day, Major Max Liedtke, military commander of Przemyśl, ordered his troops to seize the bridge across the San river that connected the divided city, and halt the evacuation. The Gestapo were forced to give him permission to retain the workers performing service for the "Wehrmacht" (up to 100 Jews with families). For the actions undertaken by Liedtke and his adjutant Albert Battel in Przemyśl, Yad Vashem later named them "Righteous Among the Nations". The process of extermination of the Jews resumed thereafter. Until September 1943 almost all Jews were sent to the Auschwitz or Belzec extermination camps. The local branches of the Polish underground and the Żegota managed to save 415 Jews. According to a postwar investigation in German archives, 568 Poles were executed by the Germans for sheltering Jews in the area of Przemyśl, including Michał Kruk, hanged along with several others on 6 September 1943 in a public execution. Among the many Polish rescuers there, were the Banasiewicz, Kurpiel, Kuszek, Lewandowski, and Podgórski families.


title: Przemyśl

text: The Red Army retook the town from German forces on 27 July 1944. On 16 August 1945, a border agreement between the government of the Soviet Union and the Polish Provisional Government of National Unity, installed by the Soviets, was signed in Moscow. According to the so-called Curzon Line, the postwar eastern border of Poland has been established several kilometres to the east of Przemyśl.


title: Przemyśl

text: In the postwar period, the border ran only 15 kilometres to the east of the city, cutting it off from much of its economic hinterland. Due to the murder of Jews in the Nazi Holocaust and the postwar expulsion of Ukrainians (in the Operation Vistula or "akcja Wisła"), the city's population fell to 36,000, almost entirely Polish. However, the city welcomed thousands of Polish migrants from Kresy (Eastern Borderlands) who were expelled by the Soviets — their numbers restored the population of the city to its prewar level.


title: Przemyśl

text: On 11 July 2022, President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy conferred the honorary title of "Rescuer City" upon Przemyśl for the role the city played in helping Ukrainian refugees fleeing the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.


title: Przemyśl

text: The climate is warm-summer humid continental (Köppen: "Dfb"). Despite its location in southern Poland, its winters may be colder than at higher latitudes, especially in the north-west of the country due to continentality.


title: Przemyśl

text: Due to the long and rich history of the city, there are many sights in and around Przemyśl, of special interest to tourists, including the Old Town, which is listed as a Historic Monument of Poland, with the "Rynek", the main market square.


title: Stanley Tucci on screen and stage

text: Stanley Tucci is an American actor and filmmaker. Tucci is known for his performances in film, television and theatre.


title: Cottage

text: A cottage, during England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or "bordar") of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide some form of service to the manorial lord. However, in time cottage just became the general term for a small house. In modern usage, a cottage is usually a modest, often cosy dwelling, typically in a rural or semi-rural location and not necessarily in England. The cottage orné, often quite large and grand residences built by the nobility, dates back to a movement of "rustic" stylised cottages of the late 18th and early 19th century during the Romantic movement.


title: Cottage

text: In British English the term now denotes a small dwelling of traditional build, although it can also be applied to modern construction designed to resemble traditional houses ("mock cottages"). Cottages may be detached houses, or terraced, such as those built to house workers in mining villages. The tied accommodation provided to farm workers was usually a cottage, see cottage garden. In England the term holiday cottage now denotes a specialised form of residential let property, attracting various tax benefits to the owner.


title: Cottage

text: The holiday cottage exists in many cultures under different names. In American English, "cottage" is one term for such holiday homes, although they may also be called a "cabin", "chalet", or even "camp". In Australia, the term "cabin" is common, cottage usually referring to a smaller pre-modern period dwelling. In certain countries (e.g. Nordics, Baltics, and Russia) the term "cottage" has local synonyms: In Finnish "mökki", in Estonian "suvila", in Latvian "vasarnīca", in Livonian sõvvõkuodā, in Swedish "stuga", in Norwegian "hytte" (from the German word "Hütte"), in Czech or Slovak "chata" or "chalupa", in Russian "дача" ("dacha", which can refer to a vacation/summer home, often located near a body of water).


title: Cottage

text: In places such as Canada, "cottage" carries no connotations of size (compare with vicarage or hermitage).


title: Cottage

text: The word "cottage" (Medieval Latin "cotagium") derives from Old English "cot, cote" "hut" and Old French "cot" "hut, cottage", from Old Norse "kot" "hut" and related to Middle Low German "kotten" (cottage, hut). Examples of this may be found in 15th century manor court rolls. The house of the cottage bore the Latin name: ""domus"", while the barn of the cottage was termed ""grangia"".


title: Cottage

text: The word originally referred to a humble rural detached dwelling of a "cotter", a semi-independent resident of a manor who had certain residential rights from the lord of the manor, and who in the social hierarchy was a grade above the slave (mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086), who had no right of tenure and worked full-time to the orders of the lord. In the Domesday Book, they were referred to as "Coterelli". The cottage had a small amount of surrounding agricultural land, perhaps 2 or three acres, from which the resident gained his livelihood and sustenance. It was defined by its function of housing a cotter, rather than by its form, which varied, but it was certainly small and cheaply built and purely functional, with no non-essential architectural flourishes. It would have been built from the cheapest locally available materials and in the local style, thus in wheat-growing areas, it would be roofed in thatch, and in slate-rich locations, such as Cornwall, slates would be used for roofing. In stone-rich areas, its walls would be built of rubble stone, and in other areas, such as Devon, was commonly built from cob.


title: Cottage

text: In England from about the 18th century onwards, the development of industry led to the development of weavers' cottages and miners' cottages. Friedrich Engels cites 'Cottages' as a poor quality dwelling in his 1845 work "The Condition of the Working Class in England".


title: Cottage

text: Over the years various English Acts of Parliament removed the right of the cottager to hold land. According to John Lawrence Hammond and Barbara Hammond in their book "The Village Labourer", before the Enclosures Act the cottager was a farm labourer with land, and after the Enclosures Act the cottager was a farm labourer without land.


title: Cottage

text: In the law of England and Wales the definition of a cottage is "a small house or habitation without land". However, originally under an Elizabethan statute, the cottage had to be built with at least of land.


title: Cottage

text: The Welsh "Tŷ unnos" or "house in a night", was built by squatters on a plot of land defined by the throw of an axe from each corner of the property. In Welsh a cottage is known as "bwthyn" and its inhabitant "preswlydd".


title: Cottage

text: In Scotland the equivalent to cottager would be the crofter and the term for the building and its land would be croft.


title: Cottage

text: Irish cottages, known as , were historically the homes of farmworkers and labourers, but in recent years the term has assumed a romantic connotation especially when referring to cottages with thatched roofs (). These thatched cottages were once to be seen all over Ireland, but most have become dilapidated due to newer and modern developments. However, there has been a recent revival of restoring these old cottages, with people wanting a more traditional home. Today, thatched cottages are now mostly built for the tourist industry and many can be let out as accommodation.


title: Cottage

text: In popular modern culture, the term "cottage" is used in a more general and romantic context and can date from any era but the term is usually applied to pre-modern dwellings. Older, pre-Victorian cottages tend to have restricted height, and often have construction timber exposed, sometimes intruding into the living space. Modern renovations of such dwellings often seek to re-expose timber purlins, rafters, posts, etc. which have been covered, in an attempt to establish perceived historical authenticity.


title: Cottage

text: Older cottages are typically modest, often semi-detached or terraced, with only four basic rooms ("two up, two down"), although subsequent modifications can create more spacious accommodation. A labourer's or fisherman's one-roomed house, often attached to a larger property, is a particular type of cottage and is called a "penty". The term cottage has also been used for a larger house that is practical rather than pretentious: see Chawton Cottage.


title: Cottage

text: Although the "Oxford English Dictionary" states that the term "cottage" is used in North America to represent "a summer residence (often on a large and sumptuous scale) at a watering-place or a health or pleasure resort," most Americans expect a cottage, particularly a summer cottage, to be a relatively small, possibly unfinished house. Various editions of the quintessentially American "Webster's Dictionary" define it as "a small house; any modest country or suburban dwelling," (fifth edition) with the eleventh edition describing even a vacation cottage as "a usu. small house for vacation use."


title: Cottage

text: In North America, most buildings known as cottages are used for weekend or summer getaways by city dwellers. Cottage owners often rent their properties to tourists as a source of revenue. In Saint John, U.S. Virgin Islands, most cottages are vacation rentals used for weekend or summer getaways. In Michigan, a cottage normally means a summer residence farther north near or on a lake. An example of a colonial era cottage in North America is a small fieldstone house called Boelson Cottage in Fairmount Park, Philadelphia—one of the oldest extant houses within the city (c.1678–84).


title: Cottage

text: In the jargon of English-speaking Quebec's real-estate industry, a cottage is any two-storey house, as opposed to a bungalow. However, "cottages" in Eastern Canada are generally located next to lakes, rivers, or the ocean in forested areas. They are used as a place to spend holidays with friends and family; common activities include swimming, canoeing, waterskiing, fishing, hiking, and sailing. There are also many well-known summer colonies. Cottage living is one of the most popular tourist draws in Ontario, Canada, parts of which have come to be known as cottage country. This term typically refers to the north and south shores of Georgian Bay, Ontario; Muskoka, Ontario; Haliburton, Ontario; and the Kawartha Lakes, Ontario; but has also been used to describe several other Canadian regions. The practice of renting cottages has become widespread in these regions, especially with rising property taxes for waterfront property.


title: Cottage

text: What Eastern Canadians refer to as "cottages" (seasonal-use dwellings), are generally referred to as "cabins" in most of North America. This is most notable in the Midwest and the Western United States, and Western Canada. In much of Northern Ontario, New England, and upstate New York, a summer house near a body of water is known as a camp. In the 1960s and 1970s, the A-Frame house became a popular cottage style in North America.


title: Cottage

text: In the 1920s and 30s many gas stations were built in the style of Old World cottages. Comprising about a third of the stations built in the United States in those years, cottage-patterned facilities evoked a picturesque homeyness and were easier to gain approval for than the more stylized or attention-grabbing designs also commonly used at the dawn of the automobile era.


title: Cottage

text: In Australia, the term "cabin" or "shack" is commonly used for a small dwelling, the former more often for a place of residence or tourist accommodation and the latter for a simple recreational shelter, typically not continuously occupied. The term cottage usually refers to historic smaller residential buildings, commonly stone or brick, typically from Georgian or Victorian. More recently, cabins are often also referred to tiny houses, however, cabins are built at a permanent site on proper footings, while the term tiny house often implies that the dwelling is built on a trailer platform and can be relocated.


title: Cottage

text: "Statistics Finland" defines a cottage (, Finland Swedish: "stuga" or "villa") as "a residential building that is used as a holiday or free-time dwelling and is permanently constructed or erected on its site". Finnish cottages are traditionally built of logs but other wood constructions have become common. They are usually situated close to water and almost all have a sauna.


title: Cottage

text: There are 474,277 cottages in Finland (2005), a country with 187,888 lakes and 179,584 islands, including rental holiday cottages owned by hospitality companies but excluding holiday villages and buildings on garden allotments. Reports have 4,172 new cottages built in 2005. Most cottages are situated in the municipalities of Kuusamo (6,196 cottages on 1 January 2006), Kuopio (5,194), Ekenäs (Tammisaari – 5,053), Mikkeli (4,649), and Mäntyharju (4,630).


title: Cottage

text: The formal Swedish term for cottages is "fritidshus" (vacation house) or "stuga", of which there are 680.000 in Sweden (2007). According to Statistics Sweden, about 50% of the Swedish population has access to a vacation house. In everyday talk, Swedes refer to their cottages as "lantstället" (the country house) or "stugan" (the cottage). Most vacation houses in Sweden are to be found along the coasts and around the major cities. Prices vary a lot depending on location; a modern seaside house near Stockholm may cost 100 times as much as a simple cottage in the inner regions of northern Sweden.


title: Cottage

text: Until the end of World War II, only a small wealthy Swedish elite could afford vacation houses—often both a large seaside house and a hunting cabin up north. During the rapid urbanisation in the 1950s and 1960s, many families were able to retain their old farmhouses, village cottages, and fisherman cabins and convert them into vacation houses. In addition, economic growth made it possible even for low-income families to buy small lots in the countryside where they could erect simple houses. Former vacation houses near the large cities have gradually been converted into permanent homes as a result of urban sprawl.


title: Cottage

text: The traditional Swedish cottage is a simple paneled house made of wood and painted in red. They may contain 1–3 small bedrooms and also a small bathroom. In the combined kitchen and living room ("storstuga") there is usually a fireplace. Today, many cottages have been extended with "outdoor rooms" (semi-heated external rooms with glass walls and a thin roof) and large wood terraces. As a result of the friggebod reform in 1979, many cottage owners have built additional guesthouses on their lots.


title: Cottage

text: The formal Norwegian term for cottages is "hytte" or "fritidsbolig" (vacation house). In Norway, cabins are often built near leisure activities such as hunting, fishing, and outdoor life / outdoor sports, or in areas with particularly beautiful nature, such as in the woods, in the mountains, or by the sea. In the most attractive areas, it has become increasingly common with regulated fields where the cabins are very close together, in so-called "cabin villages". Chained cabins and holiday apartments are also being built here, similar to a normal city.


title: Cottage

text: The first known "cottages" were built in Russia in the 19th century, when British culture was popular. Today many large cities in Russia are surrounded by cottage villages. So it is legitimate to talk about the appearance of the term "Russian cottage" - a house, comparable in size to a British villa or even a mansion, and includes a corresponding piece of land.


title: Cottage

text: Much like in the rest of the world cottages in South Africa housed agricultural workers and their friends and families. A number of cottages were also constructed for fishermen along the West and South Coasts of the country throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Most cottages are single-storey two to four-roomed structures sometimes with an attic for storing supplies. Most cottages in the Western Cape area of South Africa have thatched roofs and stone or adobe walls which were traditionally whitewashed. A large number of the remaining cottages in the country are listed heritage sites.


title: County Championship

text: The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It became an official title in 1890. The competition consists of eighteen clubs named after, and representing historic counties, seventeen from England and one from Wales.


title: County Championship

text: The earliest known inter-county match was played in 1709. Until 1889, the concept of an unofficial county championship existed whereby various claims would be made by or on behalf of a particular club as the "Champion County", an archaic term which now has the specific meaning of a claimant for the unofficial title prior to 1890. In contrast, the term "County Champions" applies in common parlance to a team that has won the official title. The most usual means of claiming the unofficial title was by popular or press acclaim. In the majority of cases, the claim or proclamation was retrospective, often by cricket writers using reverse analysis via a study of known results. The unofficial title was not proclaimed in every season up to 1889 because in many cases there were not enough matches or there was simply no clear candidate. Having already been badly hit by the Seven Years' War, county cricket ceased altogether during the Napoleonic Wars and there was a period from 1797 to 1824 during which no inter-county matches took place. The concept of the unofficial title has been utilised "ad hoc" and relied on sufficient interest being shown.


title: County Championship

text: The "official" County Championship was constituted in a meeting at Lord's on 10 December 1889 which was called to enable club secretaries to determine the 1890 fixtures. While this was going on, representatives of the eight leading county clubs held a private meeting to discuss the method by which the county championship should in future be decided. The new competition began in the 1890 season and at first involved just the eight leading clubs: Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire. Subsequently, the championship has been expanded to 18 clubs by the additions at various times of Derbyshire, Durham, Essex, Glamorgan, Hampshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Somerset, Warwickshire and Worcestershire.


title: County Championship

text: It is difficult to know when the concept of a county championship originated. While early matches were often between teams named after counties, they were not the club teams the usage would imply today. Rowland Bowen states in his history that the earliest usage of the term "County Championship" occurred in 1837 re a match between Kent and Nottingham Cricket Club which for the purposes of that match was called Nottingham"shire". That may be so re the actual terminology but closer examination of the sources does indicate a much earlier expression of the idea.


title: County Championship

text: The earliest known inter-county match was in 1709 between Kent and Surrey but match results are unknown until the 1720s. The first time a source refers to the superiority of one county is in respect of a match between Edwin Stead's XI from Kent and Sir William Gage's XI from Sussex at Penshurst Park in August 1728. Stead's side won by an unknown margin and the source states that "this was the third time this summer that the Kent men have been too expert for those of Sussex". The following year, Gage's team "turned the scales" and defeated Stead's side, prompting a source to remark that "(the scale of victory) for some years past has been generally on the Kentish side". In 1730, a newspaper referred to the "Kentish champions".


title: County Championship

text: These statements indicate that inter-county matches had been played for many years previously and that there was keen rivalry with each team seeking ascendancy.


title: County Championship

text: Inter-county cricket was popular throughout the 18th century although the best team, such as Kent in the 1740s or Hampshire in the days of the Hambledon Club, was usually acknowledged as such by being matched against an "All England" team. There were a number of contemporary allusions to the best county including some in verse, such as one by a Kent supporter celebrating a victory over Hampshire in terms of "(we shall) bring down the pride of the Hambledon Club".


title: County Championship

text: Analysis of 18th century matches has identified a number of strong teams who actually or effectively proclaimed their temporal superiority. The most successful county teams were Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex, Surrey and Sussex. But there was often a crossover between town and county with some strong local clubs tending at times to represent a whole county. Examples are London, which often played against county teams and was in some respects almost a county club in itself; Slindon, which was for a few years in the 1740s effectively representative of Sussex as a county; Dartford, often representative of Kent; and the Hambledon Club, certainly representative of Hampshire and also perhaps of Sussex. Other good county teams in the 18th century were Berkshire, Essex and Middlesex.


title: County Championship

text: Using the same sort of reverse analysis, it is possible to compile a list of the most competitive teams from the recommencement of county cricket in 1825. Rowland Bowen published his ideas about this in the 1960s when he was the editor of the "Cricket Quarterly" periodical. He began by stating that Sussex was publicly acknowledged as the "best county" in the 1827 season when they played against All England in the roundarm trial matches, although the team's involvement in these matches had more to do with the fact that Sussex was the prime mover in the "roundarm revolution". Kent, which had a celebrated team at the time, has long been acknowledged as a champion county in most seasons of the 1840s but in other years there is no clear-cut contender.


title: County Championship

text: The middle years of the 19th century are the period of county club formation. So, when title "claims" were made on behalf of Sussex in 1826 and 1827, it was for the same loose association based on Brighton Cricket Club that had a successful season in 1792. But claims on behalf of Sussex from 1845 were by the Sussex county club, founded in 1839. A similar situation existed with both Kent and Surrey. Nottinghamshire is the only other claimant before the 1860s, starting in 1852, but all of its claims have been made by the county club which was founded in 1841.


title: County Championship

text: As the popularity of organised cricket grew throughout England, more county clubs came into contention and, by the mid-1860s, they included the short-lived Cambridgeshire, Hampshire, Lancashire, Middlesex and Yorkshire. At this time and into the 1870s, the press began to advocate some form of league system and various journals and individuals, including W. G. Grace, began publishing their views about who was the champion in a given season. Grace became interested after the Gloucestershire club was founded in 1870, with himself as captain, and laid several claims to the championship during the 1870s. In the 1870s, it became widely accepted that the side with fewest losses should be the champions. Various lists of unofficial champions began to be compiled by the contemporary press and others, but they are not usually in complete agreement.


title: County Championship

text: All "titles" claimed before 1864 are "strictly unofficial" and are based on (a) contemporary claims made by or on behalf of a particular team and recorded at the time; (b) reverse analysis performed by a writer who was trying to establish the best team in a given season by reference to the known fixtures and results. It must be stressed that the purpose of such lists when published has never been to ascribe any kind of ruling but rather to provoke discussion. No real credibility can be attached to such claims except to acknowledge that a team was especially strong over a number of years: e.g., Kent in the 1720s; London in the 1730s; Hampshire in the 1770s and 1780s; Sussex in the 1820s; Kent in the 1840s; and Surrey in the 1850s.


title: County Championship

text: From 1864 to 1889, the county championship title remained unofficial except that the idea was widely promoted by individuals in the contemporary press and that had not happened hitherto apart from occasional points of view. Each journalist tended to have his own ideas about the calculation method and the matches to be included, but there was a certain amount of consensus in the main, generally favouring the team with fewest defeats. The list below gives the champions quoted by the most prominent sources, including W. G. Grace (1864–1889), "Wisden Cricketers' Almanack" (1864–1889), "John Lillywhite's Cricketer's Companion" (1865–1884), "James Lillywhite's Cricketers' Annual" (1871–1889) and "" (1882–1889).


title: County Championship

text: The final tally over these 26 seasons was, therefore, Nottinghamshire (8 titles plus 7 shared); Gloucestershire (3/1); Surrey (3/1); Yorkshire (2/3); Lancashire (1/3); Middlesex (1/0).


title: County Championship

text: In 1873, player qualification rules came into force which required players to choose at the start of each season whether they would play for the county of their birth or their county of residence. Before this, it was quite common for a player to play for both counties during the course of a single season. Three meetings were held, and at the last of these, held at The Oval on 9 June 1873, the following rules were decided on:


title: County Championship

text: It was in the 1870s that newspapers began to print tables of inter-county results and then proclaim a champion on the basis of their chosen criteria. In Arthur Haygarth's "Scores and Biographies", reference is often made to "least matches lost" as a means of deciding the champion. This was a method that, in a modified form, permeated through to the official championship when one point was awarded for a win but one was deducted for a defeat. It was discontinued after 1909 as it was deemed to be inherently unsatisfactory and a points per win method replaced it in 1910.


title: County Championship

text: As Derek Birley describes, the papers did not use standard criteria and so there were several seasons in which any title must be considered "shared", as there was no universally recognised winner. With no consistency of approach, the issue inevitably led to argument, counter-arguments and confusion until the matter was taken in hand at the meeting of club secretaries in December 1889 where the official championship was constituted.


title: County Championship

text: In Roy Webber's "The County Cricket Championship", he asserts that the championship "is generally accepted as starting in the 1873 season but that is a convenient date decided upon many years later" because 1873 was "the first season in which rules of county qualification were in operation". Webber acknowledges the difficulties posed from 1873 to 1890 by varying programmes with some county clubs playing many more matches than others. For example, in 1874 when Derbyshire was held by some to have won the title, they played only four matches while Yorkshire played twelve. A list of champions for the period would be subjective and in most seasons there would be strongly competing claims. In general, it may be asserted that Gloucestershire with all three Grace brothers were the strongest team in most of the 1870s; Nottinghamshire were in the ascendancy from about 1879 to 1886; and then Surrey from 1887 through the start of the official championship in 1890.


title: County Championship

text: When the annual meeting of county club secretaries was held at Lord's on 10 December 1889, their purpose was to decide on a fixture programme for the 1890 season. As reported by "":


title: County Championship

text: "While the secretaries were engaged in making the fixtures the representatives of the eight leading counties – Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Lancashire, Kent, Middlesex, Gloucestershire, Yorkshire, and Sussex – held a private meeting to discuss the method by which the county championship should in future be decided. The meeting was, we understand, not quite unanimous, but a majority were in favour of ignoring drawn games altogether and settling the question of championship by wins and losses. As it was agreed to abide by the views of the majority, this decision was accepted as final.Subsequently representatives of the following eight minor counties – Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Leicestershire, Hampshire, Somersetshire, Staffordshire, Durham and Essex – held a similar meeting in private, and unanimously decided to apply the same rule to minor county cricket".


title: County Championship

text: The first-ever official cricket County Championship match began on 12 May 1890: Yorkshire beat Gloucestershire by eight wickets at Bristol. James Cranston (Gloucestershire) scored the first century in the competition. The final positions in 1890 were based on number of wins minus the number of losses. Later, a points system was introduced but it has been subject to several variations.


title: County Championship

text: In the 1891 season, Somerset competed in the championship and in 1895 Derbyshire, Essex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire all joined; the rules were changed so each side had to play at least 16 matches per season. Until World War II, counties played differing numbers of matches, except that all counties were required to play 28 matches in each season from 1929 to 1932 inclusive. When the championship resumed in 1946, teams played 26 matches per season, and the pattern of a fixed number of matches has continued since then, although the number has varied, but again there was an exception. From 1960 to 1962 inclusive, counties could choose whether to play 28 or 32 matches.


title: County Championship

text: The original points system was simply wins minus losses but with the expansion in 1895 the points system was modified so that the ratio of points to "finished games" (games minus draws) decided the final positions.


title: County Championship

text: In 1910 the system was modified again so that the order was based on ratio of matches won to matches played, while from 1911 to 1967 a variety of systems were used that generally relied on points for wins and for first innings leads in games left unfinished. Since 1968, the basis has been wins (increased from 10 points in 1968, to 12 in 1976, to 16 in 1981, then back down to 12 in 1999, up to 14 in 2004 and currently 16) and "bonus points", which are earned for scoring a certain number of runs or taking a certain number of wickets in the first 110 overs of each first innings (the number of overs has changed at various times, but has been 110 since 2010). In an effort to prevent early finishes, points have been awarded for draws since 1996. From 1974 to 1981 there was a limit of 200 overs for the first two innings; the team batting first were restricted to 100 overs and any unused overs were added to those allowed to the team batting second.


title: County Championship

text: An invitation in 1921 to Buckinghamshire was declined, due to lack of proper playing facilities, and an application by Devon in 1948 to join was rejected.


title: County Championship

text: In the 21st century, questions have been raised about the future of the County Championship in the light of the shaky financial structure of many counties, poor attendances and the rise of Twenty20 cricket. Doubts have been raised over many decades concerning the competition's viability, yet it still survives. "The Changing Face of Cricket" (1966) by Sir Learie Constantine and Denzil Batchelor, made negative predictions about county cricket.


title: County Championship

text: All matches prior to 1988 were scheduled for three days, normally of a nominal six hours each plus intervals, but often with the first two days lengthened by up to an hour and the final day shortened, so that teams with fixtures elsewhere on the following day could travel at sensible hours. The exception to this was the 1919 season, when there was an experiment with two-day matches played over longer hours, up to nine o'clock in the evening in mid-summer. This experiment was not repeated. From 1988 to 1992 some matches were played over four days, with each county playing six four-day and sixteen three-day games. From 1993 onwards, all matches have been scheduled for four days. In 2000, the championship adopted a two-divisional format with promotion and relegation each season. The ECB announced that, from 2017, Division One would contain eight teams and Division Two ten teams, with only one team being promoted from Division Two in 2016. The two-up, two-down arrangement applied for 2017 and 2018, but it was then decided to reverse the sizes of the divisions with effect from 2020, with three teams to be promoted and only one relegated at the end of the 2019 season.


title: County Championship

text: From 2016 to 2019 there was no mandatory toss, with the away side having the option to bowl first. If the away side declined to bowl first, the toss still took place. This regulation was introduced on an experimental basis for the 2016 season but retained from 2017 to 2019 after being judged a success in its objectives of making games last longer and encouraging spin bowling. The mandatory toss was reinstated from the 2020 season with the ECB taking the view that increased pitch penalties and changes to the seam of the ball would improve the balance between batting and bowling.


title: County Championship

text: The competition was not held in 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, being replaced by an abbreviated competition called the Bob Willis Trophy.


title: County Championship

text: In 2021 for one season only, there was a revised Championship format, with the aim of mitigating the impact of COVID-19. This consisted of three seeded groups of six teams playing home and away, after which the final three divisions were allocated, and the teams played the four teams they had not already played in their new division home and away. The top team in the top division at the end of the season were crowned Champions, with the top two teams in the top division going on to play for the Bob Willis Trophy in a five-day final at Lords.


title: County Championship

text: The county championship works on a points system, the winner being the team with most points in the first division. The points are currently awarded as follows, with a draw increasing to 8 points in 2021:


title: County Championship

text: Bonus points are collected for batting and bowling. These points can only be obtained from the first 110 overs of each team's first innings. The bonus points are retained regardless of the outcome of the match.


title: County Championship

text: If any sides have equal points, tie-breakers are applied in the following order: most wins, fewest losses, team achieving most points in contests between teams level on points, most wickets taken, most runs scored.


title: County Championship

text: Yorkshire have won the most County Championships with 32 outright titles and one shared. Three current first-class counties (Gloucestershire, Northamptonshire and Somerset) have never won the official title, although Gloucestershire had claim to three unofficial titles in the 1870s.


title: County Championship

text: There are two divisions, and promotion and relegation between them. Every county has experienced both divisions at some stage. For the 2020 and 2021 seasons, there was no promotion or relegation due to the revised formats brought around by the COVID-19 pandemic.


title: County Championship

text: Since the expansion of the Championship from 9 counties to 14 in 1895, the wooden spoon for finishing bottom has been 'won' by the teams shown in the table below. Lancashire, Middlesex, and Surrey have never finished bottom. Leicestershire have shared last place twice, with Hampshire and Somerset.


title: County Championship

text: A team has scored 800 or more runs in the County Championship on seven occasions, with Yorkshire holding the record for the highest score of 887 all out against Warwickshire in 1896.


title: County Championship

text: The County Championship has been sponsored since 2021 by Liverpool Victoria and titled the LV= County Championship.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Ryan Keith Zinke (; born November 1, 1961) is an American politician and businessman. Zinke, a member of the Republican Party, served in the Montana Senate from 2009 to 2013 and as the U.S. representative for Montana's at-large congressional district from 2015 to 2017. He was appointed United States Secretary of the Interior by President Donald Trump in 2017 and served until his resignation in 2019, which followed a series of ethics scandals.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke played college football at the University of Oregon and earned a Bachelor of Science degree in geology. He also has a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Science in global leadership. He was a U.S. Navy SEAL from 1986 until 2008, retiring with the rank of commander. The first Navy SEAL to be elected to the United States House of Representatives, Zinke formerly served as a member on the Natural Resources Committee and the Armed Services Committee. As a member of Congress, Zinke supported the use of ground troops in the Middle East to combat ISIS and opposed the Affordable Care Act, various environmental regulations, and the transfer of federal lands to individual states.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke was appointed as United States Secretary of the Interior by President Donald Trump. Zinke was confirmed on March 1, 2017, becoming the first Navy SEAL and the first Montanan since statehood to occupy a Cabinet position.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: As Secretary, Zinke opened some federal lands for oil, gas and mineral exploration and extraction. Zinke's actions as Secretary of the Interior raised ethical questions and were investigated by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General. In October 2018, the investigation into Zinke was referred to the Justice Department by Interior's inspector general. Trump announced on December 15, 2018, that Zinke would leave his post as of January 2, 2019, to be replaced by his deputy, David Bernhardt. Ultimately, the Inspector General's report concluded that Zinke had repeatedly violated ethical rules and then lied to investigators. His tenure as Secretary of the Interior was plagued by scandals, including his insistence that special flag poles be erected so that flags could be raised or lowered when he was in residence, spending over $200,000 of taxpayer money to do so. Zinke left his post at the Department of the Interior at end of 2018 after serving for two years amid mounting misconduct allegations related to his Whitefish corruption scandal.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke was born in Bozeman, Montana, and raised in Whitefish. He is the son of Jean Montana (Harlow) Petersen and Ray Dale Zinke, a plumber. He was a Boy Scout and earned his Eagle Scout award. He was a star athlete at Whitefish High School and accepted a football scholarship to the University of Oregon in Eugene; recruited as an outside linebacker, he switched to offense and was an undersized starting center for the Ducks of the Pac-10 under head coach Rich Brooks. Zinke earned a B.S. in geology in 1984 and graduated with honors. Zinke's intended career path was underwater geology. Despite never working as a geologist, Zinke publicly refers to himself as a geologist. Zinke later earned an M.B.A. from National University in 1993 and a Master of Science in global leadership from the University of San Diego in 2003.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke served as a U.S. Navy SEAL from 1986 to 2008, retiring at the rank of commander. Zinke graduated from Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training (BUD/S) class 136 in February 1986 and subsequently served with SEAL Team ONE. Following SEAL Tactical Training and completion of six month probationary period, he received the 1130 designator as a Naval Special Warfare Officer, entitled to wear the Special Warfare insignia also known as ""SEAL Trident"". Zinke completed a deployment to WESTPAC as platoon commander in 1988. His next assignment was as a First Phase Officer of BUD/S from 1988 until May 1991. In 1991, Zinke received orders to United States Naval Special Warfare Development Group (NSWDG) and completed a specialized selection and training course. Zinke served at the command till June 1993, during which time he planned, rehearsed and operated during classified operations. Zinke then served as a Plans officer for Commander in Chief, U.S. Naval Forces, Europe and served a second tour with NSWDG as team leader, ground force commander, task force commander and current operations officer from 1996 to 1999.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In the late 1990s, Zinke paid back the Navy $211 after improperly billing the government for personal travel expenses. Zinke's former commanding officer, now-retired Vice Admiral Albert M. Calland III, stated that as a result, Zinke received a June 1999 Fitness Report that blocked him from being promoted to a commanding officer position, or to the rank of captain. Zinke acknowledged the error but maintains that the incident did not adversely affect his career. His promotion from lieutenant commander to commander was approved the following year.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: From 1999 to 2001, Zinke served as executive officer for the Naval Special Warfare Unit Two and then as executive officer, Naval Special Warfare Center from 2001 to 2004. In 2004, Zinke was the deputy and acting commander of the Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force-Arabian Peninsula. Zinke's campaign website stated that he was "the deputy and acting commander" of Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force–Arabian Peninsula and "led a force of more than 3,500 Special Operations personnel in Iraq" in 2004. Retired Major General Michael S. Repass, who was Zinke's superior in Iraq, told "The New York Times" that these claims "might be a stretch" but that Zinke "did a good job" and was "a competent guy." Following his tours in Iraq, Zinke served "as the second-ranking officer (and briefly acting commander) of the main SEAL training center." In 2006, Zinke was selected to establish the Naval Special Warfare Advanced Training Command, serving as dean of the graduate school until his retirement from active duty in 2008. The graduate school had 250 educators, offering over 43 college-level courses to over 2,500 students annually at 15 different locations worldwide. He retired from the Navy in 2008.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2005, Zinke formed Continental Divide International, a property management and business development consulting company. Zinke's family members are officers of the company. In 2009, he formed the consulting company On Point Montana. Zinke served on the board of the oil pipeline company QS Energy (formerly Save the World Air) from 2012 to 2015. In November 2014, Zinke announced that he would pass Continental Divide to his family while remaining in an advisory role.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke was elected to the Montana Senate in 2008, serving from 2009 to 2013, representing the city of Whitefish. When he served in the state senate, he "was widely seen as a moderate Republican" but subsequently drifted to the right. Zinke was selected as chair of the Senate Education Committee and promoted technology in the classroom, rural access to education and local control over schools. He also served on the Senate Finance and Claims Committee. In his capacity as a Montana Senator, Zinke was also a member of the SEMA-supported State Automotive Enthusiast and Leadership Caucus, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers sharing an appreciation for automobiles.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2008, Zinke stated that he "support[s] increased coal production for electrical generation and believe[s] it can and should be done with adequate environmental safeguards," and that he "believe[s] the use of alternate energy sources and clean coal is preferred over petroleum based fuels." In 2010, Zinke signed a letter calling global warming "a threat multiplier for instability in the most volatile regions of the world" and stating that "the clean energy and climate challenge is America's new space race." The letter spoke of "catastrophic" costs and "unprecedented economic consequences" that would result from failing to act on climate change and asked then-President Obama and then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi to champion sweeping clean-energy and climate legislation.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke was the running mate of Montana gubernatorial candidate Neil Livingstone in the 2012 election. The Livingstone/Zinke ticket finished fifth out of seven in the Republican primary with 12,038 votes (8.8% of the vote).


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2012, Zinke founded the super PAC Special Operations for America (SOFA) to support Mitt Romney's presidential campaign in the 2012 election. The political action committee raised over $100,000 and paid $28,258 to Continental Divide International, Zinke's company, for fundraising consulting. Zinke appointed right-wing commentator Paul E. Vallely, a promoter of "birther" claims and other anti-Obama conspiracy theories, to the board of the super PAC. Zinke announced he was resigning as chairman of SOFA on September 30, 2013, with his friend, former Navy SEAL Gary Stubblefield taking his place. While Zinke's financial disclosure report for 2014 listed him as the chairman of the super PAC, the super PAC had been making independent expenditures in support of Zinke's campaign since November 20, 2013. In 2014, the Campaign Legal Center and Democracy 21 filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission regarding coordination between Zinke's campaign and the super PAC. As of December 2016, the FEC hadn't taken any action on the matter.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2013, Zinke hosted a radio show in which he engaged with and promoted fringe conspiratorial views, including birtherism (the contention that Obama was not born in the United States). Zinke said on the radio show that he was not sure whether Obama was a foreign citizen and called on Obama to release his college transcripts. Later, in 2016, as a congressman, Zinke appeared on the radio show "Where's Obama's Birth Certificate", known for its promotion of birther conspiracy theories.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In the spring of 2014, Zinke announced his candidacy for Montana's at-large congressional district, a seat vacated when its Republican incumbent Rep. Steve Daines successfully sought a seat in the U.S. Senate.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: During the Republican primary, Zinke attracted attention for referring to Hillary Rodham Clinton as "the real enemy" and the "anti-Christ." Zinke touted his anti-abortion credentials and received the endorsement of the Montana Right to Life Association.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke won the five-way Republican primary with 43,766 votes (33.25%) and faced Libertarian perennial candidate Mike Fellows and Democratic nominee John Lewis, a former state director for Democratic Sen. Max Baucus, in the general election.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In Congress, Zinke supported the deployment of U.S. ground troops to combat ISIS, "abandoning" the Affordable Care Act, and cutting regulations. He supported a Republican effort to repeal the estate tax.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke condemned the "anti-Semitic views" held by neo-Nazis planning a march in support of Richard B. Spencer in Whitefish, Montana in January 2017.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2015, Zinke voted for an amendment proposed by Democratic Rep. Dave Loebsack from Iowa's 2nd congressional district that provided for the expansion of the use of digital learning through the establishment of a competitive grant program to implement and evaluate the results of technology-based learning practices. The amendment passed 218–213.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke frequently voted in opposition to environmentalists on issues including coal extraction and oil and gas drilling. When President Trump opened nearly all U.S. coastal waters to extractive drilling, rescinding President Obama's protections, nearly a dozen coastal states protested. Zinke visited with the Florida governor and exempted only that coast from drilling.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke has shifted on the issue of climate change over time. In 2010, while in the state Senate, Zinke was one of nearly 1,200 state legislators who signed a letter to President Obama and Congress calling for "comprehensive clean energy jobs and climate change legislation." Since 2010, however, Zinke has repeatedly expressed doubt about anthropogenic climate change; in an October 2014 debate, Zinke stated: "it's not a hoax, but it's not proven science either." During Senate confirmation hearings on his nomination as Interior Secretary, Zinke said that humans "influence" climate change, but did not acknowledge the scientific consensus that human activity is the dominant cause of climate change.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke broke with most Republicans on the issue of transfers of federal lands to the states, calling such proposals "extreme" and voting against them. In July 2016, Zinke withdrew as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in protest of the portion of the party's draft platform which would require that certain public lands be transferred to state control. Zinke said that he endorses "better management of federal land" rather than transfers.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2016, Zinke ran unopposed in the Republican primary on June 7 and faced Democratic nominee and Superintendent of Public Instruction Denise Juneau in the general election on November 8. Zinke defeated Juneau with 56% of the vote.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Donald Trump Jr. recommended to his father that Zinke be chosen to be the Secretary of the Interior. Zinke was named as then-President-elect Donald Trump's nominee for United States Secretary of the Interior on December 13, 2016. His nomination was approved by the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in a 16–6 vote on January 31, 2017, and he was confirmed by the full Senate in a 68–31 vote on March 1. Among the U.S. Senators expressing support for Zinke's confirmation was Democratic Sen. Jon Tester from Montana. Zinke was sworn into office by Vice President Mike Pence on the same day.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: The day after his swearing-in, Zinke rode a United States Park Police horse named Tonto several blocks to the entrance of the Department of Interior's Main Interior Building to his official welcoming ceremony.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: On May 24, 2017, in the Montana special election to fill Zinke's vacated House seat, Republican nominee Greg Gianforte defeated Democratic nominee Rob Quist, with 49.7% of the vote to Quist's 44.1%.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: On his first full day in office, Zinke rescinded the policy implemented on January 19, 2017, the last day of the Obama administration, by outgoing Fish and Wildlife Service Director Daniel M. Ashe that banned the use of lead bullets and lead fishing tackle in national wildlife refuges. Zinke said: "Over the past eight years … hunting, and recreation enthusiasts have seen trails closed and dramatic decreases in access to public lands across the board. It worries me to think about hunting and fishing becoming activities for the land-owning elite. This package of secretarial orders will expand access for outdoor enthusiasts and also make sure the community's voice is heard." The regulation was meant to help prevent lead contamination of plants and animals.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: The move was opposed by the Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and other environmental groups. The rollback was praised by Senator Steve Daines from Montana, the National Rifle Association, and National Shooting Sports Foundation, as well as other "gun rights advocates, sportsmen's groups, conservatives and state wildlife agencies."


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In April 2017, Zinke began reviewing at least 27 national monuments to determine if any of the monuments could be reduced in size. In June 2017, Zinke recommended that Bears Ears National Monument boundaries be scaled back. In August, Zinke 2017 added the Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument and Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument to the planned list of monuments to be shrunk as well, while also calling for new management rules for multiple national monuments to decrease the number of actions that are prohibited within the monuments.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In December 2017, Trump signed executive proclamations that reduced Bears Ears National Monument by 85% and Grand Staircase–Escalante National Monument by almost 46%. These moves prompted several legal challenges. One day later, Zinke issued a report recommending that Trump also shrink two more national monuments—Gold Butte National Monument in Nevada and Cascade–Siskiyou National Monument in Oregon. Zinke also recommended changes to the management of six other national monuments. These changes were welcomed by Republicans such as Congressman Rob Bishop, the chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee, but condemned by Democrats and environmentalist groups such as the Natural Resources Defense Council and Sierra Club.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: After "The New York Times" took Zinke's Interior Department to court, it won and got 25,000 documents, of which 4,500 pages were related to Zinke's multi-monument review, and which showed the administration set out to increase coal, oil and gas mining access. The documents also showed that the Zinke administration's new map largely matched a map previously promoted by longtime Utah Senator Orrin Hatch, whose plan claimed it "would resolve all known mineral conflicts for SITLA [Utah School and Institutional Trust Lands Administration] within the Bears Ears… the real [beneficiaries] are Utah schoolchildren and the people of San Juan County," a claim disputed as hypocritical by the Utah Diné Bikéyah tribe.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In September 2017, it was reported that on June 26, Zinke had chartered a jet belonging to an oil industry executive for a flight from Las Vegas to Kalispell, Montana. Zinke had been in Las Vegas to make an announcement related to public lands and to deliver a speech to the National Hockey League's Vegas Golden Knights, an expansion franchise owned by William P. Foley, a major donor to Zinke's congressional campaigns. The chartered flight cost taxpayers $12,375. Costs for commercial flights between Las Vegas and Kalispell typically start at $300. Upon arrival in Kalispell, Zinke spent the night at his private residence before delivering remarks at the annual meeting of the Western Governors Association the next morning. Zinke and his staffers returned to Washington on a commercial flight the next day.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke used private aircraft and performed political duties in relation to an April 1 trip between St. Croix and St. Thomas in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Zinke had been in St. Croix on March 30 for an official meeting with Governor Kenneth Mapp during the day, and spent the night at a fundraiser for the Republican Party of the Virgin Islands, where donors of between $1,500 and $5,000 were allowed to have their pictures taken with Zinke. The following morning, Zinke took a private flight costing the government $3,150 to St. Thomas to celebrate the centennial of the Islands' handover to the United States by Denmark.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In December 2017, "Politico" reported that Zinke had booked government helicopters for more than $14,000 to travel in June and July 2017. One of these trips was the swearing-in ceremony of his successor in Congress; the Department of Interior defended the use of government helicopters instead of a two-hour car drive by saying Zinke would otherwise not be able to fully participate in the swearing-in ceremony. An Interior spokesperson also said to a "Politico" reporter inquiring about the expenses, "Shame on you for not respecting the office of a Member of Congress." Another of these trips was the use of a Park Police helicopter to have a horseback ride with Vice President Mike Pence; the Interior Department justified the use of the helicopter over the three-hour car drive by saying "the Secretary will be able to familiarize himself with the in-flight capabilities of an aircraft he is in charge of" and that Park Police staff would "provide an added measure of security to the Secretary during his travel." Zinke dismissed "Politico"'s reporting as "total fabrications and a wild departure of reality" but did not identify any inaccuracies in "Politico"s reporting.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In March 2018, the Associated Press reported that the Interior Department spent approximately $139,000 to upgrade three sets of double doors in Zinke's office. However, a spokesperson claimed Zinke was unaware of the relevant work contract.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In October 2017, the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) launched an investigation into Zinke's use of three charter flights during his tenure as Interior Secretary. In April 2018, OIG released its report, concluding that Zinke's chartered flight to give a speech to the June 2017 speech to the Las Vegas Golden Knights NHL team was authorized "without complete information" and that the speech was not official business because Zinke did not discuss the Interior Department or his role as Interior Secretary. OIG concluded that the two other charter flights, one to Alaska and the other to the U.S. Virgin Islands, "appeared to have been reasonable as related to official DOI business."


title: Ryan Zinke

text: The United States Office of Special Counsel launched a Hatch Act investigation into Zinke's meeting with the Vegas Golden Knights NHL team in October 2017.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In a March 2018 Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, Zinke said it was false that he had taken a "private "jet" anywhere," noting that the charter flights he took were on aircraft with "propellers", not "jet engines".


title: Ryan Zinke

text: As of October 30, 2018, Zinke has been referred to the Department of Justice for investigation by the OIG, including whether Zinke lied to the OIG regarding his involvement in reviewing a tribal casino project in Connecticut. The two Connecticut tribes claim that the Interior Department refused to sign off on the casino project after intense lobbying by MGM Resorts International and two Nevada Republican lawmakers. Zinke said he was interviewed twice by the OIG regarding the casino decision and that he was truthful both times. In late 2019, Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen stalled the probe into Zinke. Federal prosecutors had proposed to move forward with possible criminal charges against Zinke over his involvement in the casino deal. In doing so, Rosen also prevented the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General from making a report about the casino deal public.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Assuming his duties as Interior Secretary, Zinke ordered Interior Department officials to fly the official Secretarial Flag over the Main Interior Building whenever he was present in the building, and that of his deputy, David Bernhardt, whenever Zinke was away and Bernhardt the highest-ranking official present. According to "The Washington Post", "no one can remember [the flag ritual] ever happening in the federal government."


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In November 2017, it was announced that President Trump, on Zinke's advice, wanted to lift the import ban on elephant and other big-game trophies from Zambia and Zimbabwe to the United States. Zinke, a passionate hunter, justified himself against critics by saying that he had his best childhood memories of hunting with his father and that he was anxious to promote hunting for American families. Trump and Zinke received considerable criticism for the decision. Critics feared that lifting the import ban would trigger a wave of U.S. hunters, and that the decision would be a major blow to the survival of the elephant species. Two days later, President Trump put his decision on hold, saying that he wanted to better inform himself on the issue. During the year 2014, before the sitting ban was instituted by the Obama Administration, 671 elephants, 741 lions, 311 leopards, 1,412 Cape buffaloes and 32 rhinos were killed by U.S. hunters and shipped to the U.S.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2017, Zinke took steps to unwind a 2015 plan that protected the greater sage-grouse. The Interior Department sought to change sage grouse habitat management plans in 10 states in a way that could open the sage-grouse habitat to mineral extraction and grazing. These proposals were welcomed by the oil and gas industry and condemned by environmentalists. This expansion of livestock grazing in Nevada across of some of the highest priority sage-grouse habitat in the West was blocked by a federal judge in April 2021.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Under Zinke, the Interior Department adopted a restrictive interpretation of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, issuing a guidance document stating that the killing of birds "resulting from an activity is not prohibited by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act when the underlying purpose of that activity is not to take birds." The move was opposed by a bipartisan group of 17 former top Interior Department officials, including seven former heads of migratory bird management at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who served in each administrations from Nixon to Obama. In a letter sent to Zinke and members of Congress, the former officials wrote that "This legal opinion is contrary to the long-standing interpretation by every administration (Republican and Democrat) since at least the 1970s."


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In June 2017, Zinke called for the elimination of 4,000 jobs from the Interior Department and supported the White House proposal to cut the department's budget by 13.4%. The same month, Zinke ordered 50 Interior members of the Senior Executive Service to be reassigned, "forcing many into jobs for which they had little experience and that were in different locations." The scope of the move was unusual. One reassigned Interior senior executive, scientist Joel Clement, published an op-ed in "The Washington Post" saying that the reassignment was retaliation against him "for speaking out publicly about the dangers that climate change poses to Alaska Native communities." The moves prompted the Interior Departments' Office of Inspector General to launch a probe.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2017, Zinke gave a speech to the National Petroleum Council which said that one-third of Interior Department employees were disloyal to Trump and that "I got 30 percent of the crew that's not loyal to the flag." Zinke's remarks prompted objections from the Coalition to Protect America's National Parks, Public Lands Foundation and Association of Retired Fish and Wildlife Service Employees (which called the comments "simply ludicrous, and deeply insulting") and Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell, the ranking member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources (who said that Zinke had a "fundamental misunderstanding of the role" of the federal civil service).


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In 2018, Zinke proposed budget cuts to the Interior Department for fiscal year 2019, mostly from the Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and U.S. Geological Survey. Zinke's proposed budget would also cut the Land and Water Conservation Fund to $8 million (from $425 million in 2018).


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In August 2018, Zinke said that "environmental terrorist groups" were to blame for the wildfires in California, and that they had "nothing to do with climate change". Fire scientists and forestry experts reject that, attributing the increasingly destructive wildfires to heat and drought caused by climate change. Later that month, Zinke acknowledged that climate change did play a part in the wildfires. Zinke also stated that preventing removal of dead trees has increased the amount of flammable material and hurt timber salvaging.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In October 2018, FOIA requests revealed that Zinke's calendar, which was supposed to cover the Secretary of the Interior's activities, contained glaring omissions. Zinke met with lobbyists and business executives on a number of occasions. Reporting from September 2018 noted that the calendars of Zinke's activities were "so vaguely described... that the public is unable tell what he was doing or with whom he was meeting."


title: Ryan Zinke

text: On December 15, 2018, Donald Trump announced on Twitter that Zinke would leave "the Administration at the end of the year"; he later tweeted that he would name the new Secretary of the Interior the following week. According to "The Washington Post", Zinke had submitted his resignation the same morning. Zinke himself later posted a statement on Twitter, saying that "I cannot justify spending thousands of dollars defending myself and my family against false allegations…It is better for the President and Interior to focus on accomplishments rather than fictitious allegations." His resignation came just a week after the announcement that former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly's departure was announced.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke was facing several federal probes, including the "Montana land deal" in which a foundation of Zinke's and the chairman of energy firm Halliburton, David Lesar, were accused of wrongdoing in relation to a development project in Zinke's home town of Whitefish, Montana. The DOJ also was investigating his use of personal email.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In May 2020, Zinke criticized the investigations that led to his departure, stating they were politicized and that such investigations would result in only billionaires being able to afford to serve in a public office.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In January 2019, Zinke began a new job as the managing director of Artillery One, a cryptocurrency investment firm founded by investor Daniel Cannon, stating that he was "going to make Artillery One great again." In an interview, he stated that "I'm focused on cyber security, protection of infrastructure and emerging countries that can act as a test bed for new technologies. There is some suspicion that blockchain does not really work. We think it does and we want to showcase the utility and flexibility of the model." The company is working on a test bed project in Kosovo, where Zinke served during his time in the U.S. Navy. Zinke also took consulting jobs with several energy firms.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: In June 2021, Zinke officially announced his campaign for re-election to the U.S. House of Representatives. He sought election in Montana's 1st congressional district, which was reconstituted after the 2020 United States census Montana had been split between two districts from 1919 to 1993, and for the past two decades had been represented by a single member.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke narrowly defeated Democrat Monica Tranel to return to Congress. He will represent the western third of the state, including Missoula, Butte, Bozeman, Kalispell, and his hometown of Whitefish.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: Zinke married Lolita Hand on August 8, 1992. Both had been married before; Hand was a widow with a young daughter named Jennifer. He and Hand also have two children together: Wolfgang and Konrad.


title: Ryan Zinke

text: He splits his time among Washington, D.C.; Whitefish, Montana; and Santa Barbara, California, his wife's hometown. "Politico" reported that Zinke no longer resides at his Whitefish house and spends more time in Santa Barbara. Zinke is Missouri Synod Lutheran.


title: Governess

text: A governess is a largely obsolete term for a woman employed as a private tutor, who teaches and trains a child or children in their home. A governess often lives in the same residence as the children she is teaching. In contrast to a nanny, the primary role of a governess is teaching, rather than meeting the physical needs of children; hence a governess is usually in charge of school-aged children, rather than babies.


title: Governess

text: The position of governess used to be common in affluent European families before the First World War, especially in the countryside where no suitable school existed nearby and when parents preferred to educate their children at home rather than send them away to boarding school for months at a time—varied across time and countries. Governesses were usually in charge of girls and younger boys. When a boy was old enough, he left his governess for a tutor or a school.


title: Governess

text: Governesses are rarer now, except within large and wealthy households or royal families such as the Saudi royal family and in remote regions such as outback Australia. There has been a recent resurgence amongst wealthy families worldwide to employ governesses or full-time tutors. The reasons for this include personal security, the benefits of a tailored education, and the flexibility to travel or live in multiple locations.


title: Governess

text: Traditionally, governesses taught "the three Rs" (reading, writing, and arithmetic) to young children. They also taught the "accomplishments" expected of upper-class and middle-class women to the young girls under their care, such as French or another language, the piano or another musical instrument, and often painting (usually the more ladylike watercolours rather than oils) or poetry. It was also possible for other (usually male) teachers with specialist knowledge and skills to be brought in, such as a drawing master or dancing master.


title: Governess

text: The governess occupied a uniquely awkward position in the Victorian household, because she was neither a servant nor a member of the host family. She worked in the upper-class home of the landed gentry or aristocracy. She herself had a middle-class background and education, yet was paid for her services. As a sign of this social limbo, she frequently ate on her own, away from the rest of the family and servants. By definition, a governess was an unmarried woman who lived in someone else's home, which meant that she was subject to their rules. In any case, she had to maintain an impeccable reputation by avoiding anything which could embarrass or offend her employers. If a particular governess was young and beautiful, the lady of the house might well perceive a potential threat to her marriage and enforce the governess's social exclusion more rigorously. As a result of these various restrictions, the lifestyle of the typical Victorian governess was often one of social isolation and solitude, without the opportunity to make friends. The fact that her presence in the household was underpinned by an employment contract emphasized that she could never truly be part of the host family.