title: Organ trade

text: Impoverished donors' economic outcomes are no better than their health outcomes. A study of Indian donors found that while 96% of donors sold a kidney to pay off debts, 75% still required operative care that is not provided by the buyer. Donors in all countries often report weakness after surgery that leads to decreased employment opportunities, especially for those who make a living through physical labor.


title: Organ trade

text: Though many statutes regarding organ trade exist, law officials have failed to enforce these mandates successfully. One barrier to enforcement is a lack of communication between medical authorities and law enforcement agencies. Often, enforcement officials' access to information regarding individuals involved in illegal organ transplants is hindered by medical confidentiality regulations. Without the ability to review medical records and histories to build an effective case against perpetrators, officials cannot fully enforce organ trade laws. Many critics state that in order to prohibit illegal organ trading effectively, criminal justice agencies must collaborate with medical authorities to strengthen knowledge and enforcement of organ trade laws. Critics also support other criminal justice actions to meet this goal, such as prioritizing organ trafficking issues among local legislative bodies; multidisciplinary collaboration in cross-border offenses; and further police training in dealing with organ trafficking crimes.


title: Organ trade

text: There have been various portrayals of illegal organ trade and organ trafficking in the mass media over the past few decades. Many, such as the 1993 book "The Baby Train" by Jan Brunvand, are variations of the urban legend of an individual who wakes up in a hotel bathtub to discover that one of his or her kidneys has been removed. The 1977 novel "Coma" by Robin Cook, made into a movie by Michael Crichton, tells of unsuspecting medical patients who are put into a coma in order for their organs to be removed. In addition to books and films, stories of organ trafficking are often depicted through television, tabloid magazines, emails, and the Internet.


title: Organ trade

text: Many of the organ trafficking tales depicted in the media contain unsubstantiated claims. For example, the 1993 British/Canadian TV program "The Body Parts Business" made a number of claims about organ trafficking that later proved to be false. The program investigated alleged organ and tissue trafficking in Guatemala, Honduras, Argentina, and Russia. One episode discussed a man named Pedro Reggi, reporting that his corneas had been removed without his consent while he was hospitalized in a mental facility. Reggi later disputed this claim, saying that his corneas were still intact, and he had just been suffering from an acute eye infection.


title: Organ trade

text: Critics, such as Silke Meyer, argue that this sensationalized view of organ trafficking, often based in urban myth, distracts attention from the illegal organ trade. They call for increased scientific research on illegal organ trade, so that organ trafficking legends can be replaced by scientific fact. Meyer argues: "Only then will [organ trafficking] be taken seriously by all governments affected and will the results constitute a solid ground for the field of policy-making."


title: Organ trade

text: Various solutions have been proposed to staunch the flow of illegal organs around the globe. The primary strategy is to increase the supply of legally donated organs, thereby decreasing the demand that drives the illicit organ trade. One way to accomplish this goal is for states to implement policies of presumed consent. With presumed consent laws (also known as "opt out" laws), consent for organ donation is assumed upon death unless the individual previously "opted out" by submitting documentation. This is in contrast to "opt-in" organ donation policies, which assume that a deceased person would not have wished to donate unless they had previously notified the government of their intention to donate. Presumed consent policies have already been adopted in various countries, including Brazil, certain jurisdictions of the United States, and several European nations. Research shows a 25–30% increase in the amount of available organs in "opt-out" countries.


title: Organ trade

text: Another proposed method is to enact laws that would hold doctors accountable for not reporting suspected organ trafficking. Scheper-Hughes has written extensively on the issue of doctors knowingly performing illegal operations with illicit organs. She argues that though doctors might be violating doctor-patient privilege by reporting suspected organ trafficking, their legal obligation to the patient is superseded by public interest in ending medical violations of human rights. If accountability measures were imposed, doctors would be liable as accomplices if they knowingly performed operations with black market organs.


title: Organ trade

text: Personal health records for migrants can help to document information on detected missing organs, and even previously done surgeries. Some projects have been started to keep personal health records of immigrants. Detection of missing organs and associated surgeries is an important first step to detect illicit organ harvesting.


title: Organ trade

text: Many people in the United States believe that adopting a system for regulating organ trading similar to Iran's will help to decrease the national shortage of kidneys. They argue that the U.S. could adopt similar policies to promote accountability, ensure safety in surgical practices, employ vendor registries, and provide donors with lifetime care. They further argue that private insurance companies and the federal government would be invested in providing such care for donors, and that laws could be enacted to make long-term care an inviolable condition of any donation agreement.


title: Organ trade

text: The ethical debate of organ trade rests on whether or not people have an inherent right to sell their own organs and, if so, whether or not the potential harms of organ sales override that right. While in most democratic countries, there is an implied ethical right to what happens to your body, in the US this right was dictated by the Scheloendorff decision through the court's opinion by Justice Benjamin Cardozo,"Every human being of adult years and sound mind has a right to determine what shall be done with her own body"However, this autonomy is limited in organ trade as governments and some ethicist argue the potential harm of organ trade outweighs the rights of an individual. The closest legalized comparison of a right to bodily autonomy for financial gain would be prostitution. Currently 32 countries allow prostitution; none of them allow for the sale of an organ. Views on legalization of prostitution have often viewed it as a "necessary evil" and of prostitution can be legalized as long as the sex worker's human rights such as freedom of speech, travel, work, immigration, health insurance, and housing, are not deprived. Similarly, many argue that as long as the donors rights are respected and the trade is regulated, it would be ethically responsible for organ trade to exist.


title: Organ trade

text: Organ trade also raises ethical and legal concerns for healthcare providers towards the treatment of patient. Specifically, currently there is little to no guidance on how does the doctor–patient relationship change if the patient received an organ through illegal means. Further more, if organ trade is legalized, an obligation for a physician to respect the patients wish to sell an organ. In the US, there is controversy on whether organ donation wishes are legally enforceable. The primary law governing organ donation is the Uniform Anatomical Gift Act (UAGA). However, it is widely considered inadequate as it is up to each state to regulate and uphold this law, with enforcement varying between states for cadaver body donation. Further more, donor shortages still persists in the United States. To avoid lawsuits, providers would violate UAGA and side with the next of kin and ignore any preexisting organ donation requests. As such, if organ trade is legalized, there will need to be ethical consideration on if a physician has a duty to perform financially motivated organ transplants.


title: Organ trade

text: The main argument made in favor of legalized organ sales is that it would increase the number of organs available for transplantation. Although governments have implemented other initiatives to increase organ donation – such as public awareness campaigns, presumed consent laws, and the legal definition of brain death – the waitlist for vital organs continues to grow. Further more, cadaver organ transplantations have poorer clinical outcomes as compared with live organ donations. Legalizing payments for organs would encourage more people to donate their organs. Each organ sold on a market could potentially save the life (and improve the quality of life) of its recipient. For example, patients with kidney disease who receive a kidney transplant from a living donor typically live 7 to 15 years longer than those who depend on dialysis.


title: Organ trade

text: Economists generally lean in favor of legalizing organ markets. The consensus of American Economic Association members is that organ trade should be allowed, with 70% in favor and 16% opposed. Another literature review, looking at the publications of 72 economic researchers who have studied organ trade, reached a similar conclusion: 68% supported legalization of the organ trade, while only 21% opposed it.


title: Organ trade

text: Proponents also assert that organ sales ought to be legal because the procedure is relatively safe for donors. The short-term risk of donation is low – patients have a mortality rate of 0.03%, similar to that of certain elective cosmetic procedures such as liposuction. Moreover, they argue, the long-term risks are also relatively minimal. A 2018 systematic review found that kidney donors did not die earlier than non-donors. Donors did have a slightly increased risk of chronic kidney disease and pre-eclampsia (a condition sometimes seen in pregnancy). The review found no difference in the rates of diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, or mental illness. Multiple studies of American and Japanese donors found that they reported a higher quality of life than the average non-donor. Proponents of organ markets argue that, given the comparative safety of donating a kidney, individuals should be permitted to undergo this operation in exchange for payment.


title: Organ trade

text: Critics challenge this view of transplantation as being overly optimistic. Specifically, they cite research suggesting that individuals who "sell" their organs fare worse after the procedure than those who freely "donate" their organs. Kidney sellers are more likely to have renal problems after the operation (such as hypertension and chronic kidney disease), to report reduced overall health, and to suffer from psychological side effects such as depression. Opponents of markets usually ascribe these worse outcomes to the fact that kidney sellers are drawn from the ranks of the poor; if organ sales are permitted, most sellers will be poor and can expect the same dangerous consequences. Proponents of organ markets respond by blaming these bad outcomes on the fact that kidney sellers have been forced into the black market, with minimal oversight, follow-up care, or legal protections from abuse; thus in a regulated market in the developed world, kidney sellers could expect to see outcomes more akin to those of kidney donors


title: Organ trade

text: Many proponents argue for legalized organ sales on the grounds of autonomy. Individuals are generally free to buy or sell their possessions and their labor. Advocates of organ markets say that, likewise, people ought to be free to buy or sell organs as well. According to this perspective, prohibitions against selling organs are a paternalistic or moralistic intrusion upon individuals' freedom. Proponents acknowledge that, unlike selling a material possession such as a car, selling a kidney does carry some risk of harm. However, they note that people are able to undertake dangerous occupations (such as logging, soldiering, or surrogacy) which carry significant chance of bodily harm. If individuals are allowed to take on that risk in exchange for money, then they ought to be able to take on the risks of selling a kidney as well.


title: Organ trade

text: Other physicians and philosophers argue that legalization will remedy the abuses of the illicit trade in organs. The current ban on the sale of organs has driven both sellers and buyers into the black market, out of sight of the law. Criminal middlemen often take a large cut of the payment for the organ, leaving comparatively little money left for the donor. Because the mainstream medical establishment is barred from participating in the transplantation, the procedure typically occurs in substandard facilities and not according to best practices. Afterwards, the donors often do not receive important medical follow-up because they are afraid that their role in the crime will be discovered. There have also been reports of criminal gangs kidnapping people and illegally harvesting their organs for sale on the black market. Proponents of legalization argue that it will result in better medical care for donors and recipients alike, as well as larger payments to the donors.


title: Organ trade

text: Some critics challenge the proponents' assumptions that legalization will eliminate the black market for organs or its problems. For example, one scholar argues that once the organ trade became legalized in Iran, it did not end the under-the-table sales in organs. Instead, people made deals outside the government-sanctioned system to acquire organs from more desirable (i.e., healthier) donors.


title: Organ trade

text: Critics often argue that organ sales should remain prohibited because any market solution will take advantage of the poor. Specifically, they fear that a large financial incentive for donating organs will prove irresistible to individuals in extreme poverty: such individuals may feel like they have no choice but to agree to sell a kidney. Under these circumstances, the decision to sell cannot be regarded as truly voluntary. Consequently, it is appropriate for the government to protect poor people by prohibiting the sale of organs.


title: Organ trade

text: Critics of legalization argue that proponents exaggerate the impact that a market would have on the supply of organs. In particular, they note that legalized organ sales may “crowd out” altruistic donations. In other words, people who would otherwise give their organs to relatives may decline to do so, opting instead to purchase the organ (or rely on the government to buy one) for their relatives. Proponents of markets counter that while altruistic donations might decrease slightly if organ sales were legalized, this decrease would be more than offset by the influx of organs.


title: Organ trade

text: Legalization of human organ trading has been opposed by a variety of human rights groups. One such group is Organs Watch, which was established by Nancy Scheper-Hughes – a medical anthropologist who was instrumental in exposing illegal international organ-selling rings. Scheper-Hughes is famous for her investigations, which have led to several arrests due to people from developing countries being forced or fooled into organ donations. Like the World Health Organization, Organs Watch seeks to protect and benefit the poverty-stricken individuals who participate in the illegal organ trade out of necessity.


title: Organ trade

text: Some opponents of markets adopt a paternalistic stance that prohibits organ sales on the grounds that the government has a duty to prevent harm to its citizens. Unlike the "coercion by poverty" line of argumentation discussed above, these critics do not necessarily question the validity of the donors' consent. Rather, they say that the dangers posed by donating an organ are too great to allow a person to voluntarily undertake them in exchange for money. As noted previously, critics of organ sales cite research suggesting that kidney sellers suffer serious consequences of the operation, faring far worse than altruistic kidney donors. Even if one assumes that kidney sellers will have similar outcomes to donors in a regulated market, one cannot ignore the fact that a nephrectomy is an invasive procedure that – by definition – inflicts some injury upon the patient. These critics argue that the government has a duty to prevent these harms, even if the would-be seller is willing to undertake them.


title: Organ trade

text: A similar argument focuses on the fact that selling a kidney involves the loss of something unique and essentially irreplaceable on the part of the donor. Given the special value placed on bodily integrity in society, it is appropriate to outlaw the sale of body parts to protect that value.


title: Organ trade

text: Another criticism of legalized organ sales is that it objectifies human beings. This argument typically starts with the Kantian assumption that every human being is a creature of innate dignity, who must always be regarded as an end to itself and never just a means to an end. A market for organs would reduce body parts to commodities to be bought and sold. Critics argue that, by permitting such transactions, society would reduce the seller of the organ to an object of commerce – a mere means to an ends. Assigning a monetary value to a key organ is essentially assigning a value to its bearer, and putting a price on a human being violates his or her intrinsic dignity.


title: Organ trade

text: Proponents of organ sales claim that this line of argument confuses the kidney with the whole person; so long as the transaction is conducted in a way that minimizes risks to the donor and fairly compensates him or her, that person is not reduced to a means to an end.


title: Organ trade

text: Another argument against organ markets is that they will give rise to a pressure to sell organs which would harm all people (even those who did not participate directly in the market). Under the current ban on the organ trade, debtors and heads of families in the developed world face little pressure to sell their organs. If a person's creditors or dependents suggest that said person sell their kidney to raise money, they could refuse on the grounds that it is illegal. In contrast, if organ sales were legalized, a destitute individual could face pressure from family and creditors to sell a kidney – and possibly endure social consequences such as scorn or guilt if they declined. Legalizing organ sales would create this unwanted pressure (and attendant disapproval) for all poor individuals, regardless of whether or not they wished to sell their kidneys. Thus a legal prohibition on selling organs is warranted to protect poor people from this undesirable pressure.


title: Organ trade

text: Ethicists Charles A. Erin and John Harris have proposed a much more heavily regulated model for organ transactions. Under this scheme, would-be sellers of organs do not contract with would-be recipients. Instead, a government agency would be the sole buyer of organs, paying a standard price set by law and then distributing the organs to its citizens. This safeguard is designed to prevent unscrupulous buyers from taking advantage of potential donors and to ensure that the benefits of the increased organ supply are not limited to the rich. Moreover, participation in the market would be confined to citizens of the state where the market is located, to prevent the unilateral movement of organs from developing nations to the developed world. Erin and Harris's model has been endorsed by a number of prominent advocates of organ markets.


title: Organ trade

text: Many scholars advocate the implementation of a free market system to combat the organ shortage that helps drive illegal organ trade. The organ trade's illegal status creates a price ceiling for organs at zero dollars. This price ceiling affects supply and demand, creating a shortage of organs in the face of a growing demand. According to a report published by the Cato Institute, a US-based libertarian think tank, eliminating the price ceiling would eliminate the organ shortage. In the "Journal of Economic Perspectives," Nobel laureate Gary Becker and Julio Elias estimated that a $15,000 compensation would provide enough kidneys for everyone on the wait list. The government could pay the compensation to guarantee equality. This would save public money, as dialysis for kidney failure patients is far more expensive.


title: Organ trade

text: However, other critics argue that such a free market system for organ trade would encourage organ theft through murder and neglect of sick individuals for financial gain. Advocates for the free market of organs counter these claims by saying that murder for financial gain already happens; sanctions against such acts exist to minimize their occurrence; and with proper regulation and law enforcement, such incidents in a legal organ trade could be minimized as well.


title: Organ trade

text: The incentivized Kidney Donation Model (IKDM) exists as an intermediate between complete Free Market Model and Erin Harris Model, with strong government regulation and rewards with free market approach to donations. Currently in place in Turkey, Iran, in which a free organ market exists which "donations" between donor and recipients are allowed. However, the government also supplements this donation with incentives such as free/discounted medical health insurance, exemptions from co payments/contribution shares, priority when receiving an organ in the future, priority when finding a job, income tax exemptions for salaried employees, and free or discounted public utilities.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan (, Negeri Sembilan Malay: "Nogoghi Sombilan", "Nismilan") is a state in Malaysia which lies on the western coast of Peninsular Malaysia. It borders Selangor on the north, Pahang in the east, and Malacca and Johor to the south.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The name is believed to derive from the nine ("sembilan") villages or "nagari" in the Minangkabau language (now known as "luak") settled by the Minangkabau, a people originally from West Sumatra (in present-day Indonesia). Minangkabau features are still visible today in traditional architecture and the dialect of Malay spoken.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Unlike the hereditary monarchs of the other royal Malay states, the ruler of Negeri Sembilan is elected and is known as "Yang di-Pertuan Besar" instead of Sultan. The election of the Ruler is also unique. He is elected by the council of Undangs who lead the four biggest territories of Sungai Ujong, Jelebu, Johol, and Rembau, from the legitimate male members of the Pagaruyung Dynasty, with the surviving sons of the previous Yantuam coming first in the considerations but not being obligatory to be voted on, making it one of the more democratic monarchies.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The capital of Negeri Sembilan is Seremban. The royal capital is Seri Menanti in Kuala Pilah District. Other important towns are Port Dickson, Bahau and Nilai.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The name "Negeri Sembilan" is believed to derive from the nine ("sembilan") chiefdoms or "Nogoghi" in the Negeri Sembilan dialect (now known as "luak") settled by the Minangkabau. The size of Negeri Sembilan is now smaller than the original size of Negeri Sembilan.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The earliest inhabitants of Negeri Sembilan were the ancestors of the Semelai, Semai, Semang, and Jakun peoples, who lived either as hunter-gatherer nomads or as subsistence farmers.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Parameswara reportedly visited the settlement of Sening Ujong, which was located in what is now Seremban.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The Minangkabaus from Sumatra settled in what is today Negeri Sembilan in the 15th century under the protection of the Malacca Sultanate, and later under the protection of its successor, the Sultanate of Johor. They also brought their matrilineal custom, known as "Adat Perpatih", with them and made it the local custom.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The Linggi River along the western part of the state, and the Muar River were used as one of the main trade routes since the time of the Malacca Sultanate. With the Pahang River in just a walking distance to the east, the three rivers formed the Laluan Penarikan (Portage Route), which ensured easier access between the Strait of Malacca and the South China Sea.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: As Johor weakened in the 18th century, attacks by the Bugis forced the Minangkabaus to seek protection from their homeland. The Minangkabau ruler, Sultan Abdul Jalil, obliged by sending his near relative, Raja Mahmud, also known as Raja Melewar. When he arrived, he found that another royal, Raja Khatib had already established himself as ruler. He declared war against Raja Khatib and became the ruler of Negeri Sembilan. The Sultan of Johor confirmed his position by granting the title Yamtuan Seri Menanti (He Who is Highest Lord of the Seri Menanti) in 1773.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan, at the dawn of her establishment, was originally a loose confederation consisting of nine "luaks", hence the name. At the time of Raja Melewar's accession, it used to cover a larger area than its modern-day boundaries. Besides the entirety of modern day Negeri Sembilan, it also spanned parts of what is today Selangor, Malacca, Pahang and Johor. The original nine chiefdoms or domains in 1773 that made up the first incarnation of Negeri Sembilan and gave the state its name are namely Sungai Ujong, Jelebu, Rembau, Johol, Jelai, Ulu Pahang, Naning, Segamat and Klang. The latter four chiefdoms were annexed into neighbouring states in the 19th century. Naning was annexed into the Straits Settlement of Malacca in 1832 following the Naning War; Ulu Pahang became Bera region of Pahang, Segamat annexed into Johor and Klang became Kuala Langat region of Selangor.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: After Raja Melewar's death, a series of disputes arose over the succession. For a considerable period, the local nobles applied to the Minangkabau ruler in Sumatra for a ruler. However, competing interests supported different candidates, often resulting in instability and civil war.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: In 1874, the British intervened militarily in a leadership tussle in Sungai Ujong to preserve British economic interests, and placed the domain under the control of a British Resident. Jelebu followed in 1883 and Rembau in 1887. The formation of modern Negeri Sembilan began in 1889, when the Seri Menanti domain, under the rule of Tuanku Muhammad (son of Yamtuan Antah), combined with the domains of Tampin and Rembau, forming the "Seri Menanti Confederation" as a single political entity. The domains of Sungai Ujong and Jelebu joined this confederation in 1895, forming the state of Negeri Sembilan in its modern borders. Martin Lister became the new state's first Resident, and Negeri Sembilan became part of the Federated Malay States the same year.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The number of states within Negeri Sembilan has fluctuated over the years, the federation now consists of six states and a number of sub-states under their suzerainty.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan endured Japanese occupation in World War II between 1942 and 1945, joined the Federation of Malaya in 1948, and became a state of Malaysia in 1963.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: In the 1990s and 2000s, Seremban and Nilai attracted people who moved in from the overcrowded towns of the Klang Valley. These two cities also became the sites of new factories and industrial parks, accelerating the development of the state into modern times.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: On 9 September 2009, the Ministry of Housing and Local Government approved the state capital of Seremban's application to become a city (Bandar Raya), as it had attracted enough people to become large. In order for that to happen, its city council had to be merged with the Nilai Municipal Council. After several times when it was postponed, Seremban achieved the status of a city on 20 January 2020. Later that year on 9 November, Negeri Sembilan was subjected to the Movement Control Order lockdown due to increasing COVID-19 infections.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Facing the Strait of Malacca, Negeri Sembilan is one of the West Coast states of Peninsular Malaysia, and is specifically belong to the southern region, along with Malacca and Johor(although some sources define Negeri Sembilan as a central region state with Selangor and the federal territories of Kuala Lumpur and Putrajaya). Roughly the same size as Selangor, Negeri Sembilan wields a total land area of 6,686 km² (430 sq mi). It is the fourth smallest state in Malaysia by area as well as the second largest in the southern region behind Johor.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: On the administrative level, Negeri Sembilan consists of seven districts, namely Port Dickson, Seremban, Rembau, Kuala Pilah, Jelebu, Jempol and Tampin Districts, and further sectioned into 13 respective "luaks". The following "luaks" are Sungai Ujong, Rembau, Jelebu, Johol, Tampin, Ulu Muar, Terachi, Inas, Jempol, Gunung Pasir, Gemencheh, Air Kuning, and Linggi. Sungai Ujong, Rembau, Johol and Jelebu are governed by the "Undangs", thus they are known as the Luak Berundang. "Luaks" that surround Seri Menanti such as Terachi, Ulu Muar, Jempol, Gunung Pasir and Inas are collectively known as the Luak Tanah Mengandung. The "Luak" of Tampin is autonomous and is ruled by the Tunku Besar.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The topological profile of Negeri Sembilan is composed of two vast plains divided by a mountainous spine in the middle, well drained by various rivers. The Titiwangsa Mountains, the southernmost extension of the Tenasserim Hills and the wider Indo-Malayan Cordillera, spans for approximately 92 km through the middle of the state from the border tripoint with Pahang and Selangor near Kenaboi, Jelebu towards Tampin, close to the border with Malacca. For this reason, this results in the state being bisected into two regions, namely western Negeri Sembilan - consisting of Port Dickson, Seremban and Rembau Districts; and eastern Negeri Sembilan, which covers the districts of Jelebu, Kuala Pilah, Jempol and Tampin. The western half seems to be more developed and has an intricate and concentrated road network than the latter, which is much more rural. The Negri stretch of the Titiwangsa Mountains is also part of the Titiwangsa Forest Complex, a component of the Central Forest Spine conservation area that covers much of the heavily forested and mountainous interior of Peninsular Malaysia.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The state is mostly drained by the Linggi and Muar Rivers. The Linggi River basin constitutes much of western Negeri Sembilan, while the Muar River mostly flows through the state's eastern half. Both rivers are the major sources of water supply for much of the state's populace .


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The Constitution of Negeri Sembilan came into force on 26 March 1959. It is divided into two sections. The constitution establishes that the state's form of government is constitutional monarchy and the world's only elective monarchy for matrilineal society. The system was partially the basis for the federal monarchy.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The official constitutional title of the Ruler of the state are Duli Yang Maha Mulia Yang di-Pertuan Besar Negeri Sembilan, (currently Duli Yang Maha Mulia Yang di-Pertuan Besar Negeri Sembilan Darul Khusus Tuanku Muhriz ibni Almarhum Tuanku Munawir), Yang Teramat Mulia Undang of Sungei Ujong, Yang Teramat Mulia Undang of Jelebu, Yang Teramat Mulia Undang of Johol, Yang Teramat Mulia Undang of Rembau and Yang Teramat Mulia Tengku Besar Tampin and they holds office for life.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The state's constitution proclaims the Yang di-Pertuan Besar, Undang of Sungei Ujong, Undang of Jelebu, Undang of Johol, Undang of Rembau and Tengku Besar Tampin are vested with the Executive Power of the state, are the Head of the Religion of Islam in the state and are the fountain of all honour and dignity for the state. The current Yang di-Pertuan Besar is His Royal Highness Tuanku Muhriz ibni Almarhum Tuanku Munawir. His Royal Highness succeeds Almarhum Tuanku Jaafar Ibni Almarhum Tuanku Abdul Rahman who died on 27 December 2008.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Unlike Malaysia's eight other Royal Malay states, the Ruler of Negeri Sembilan is elected to his office by the territorial chiefs or Ruling Chiefs of the state. These Ruling Chiefs are titled Undang. Only four of the Undangs have the right to vote in the election for the Ruler of the State. They are:


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The Undang themselves cannot stand for election, and their choice of Ruler is limited to a male Muslim who is Malay and also a "lawfully begotten descendant of Raja Radin ibni Raja Lenggang".


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The State Executive Council consists of the Menteri Besar, who is its chairman, and ten other members. The Menteri Besar and the other members of the council are appointed by the Yang Di-Pertuan Besar from the members of the State Assembly of the governing party or coalition. The current Menteri Besar or Chief Minister of the state is Aminuddin Harun.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The unicameral Negeri Sembilan State Legislative Assembly is the state legislature of Negeri Sembilan. It consists of 36 members who represent single-member constituencies throughout the state. Elections are held no more than five years apart, and are usually conducted simultaneously with elections to the federal parliament.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan has a collective population of 1,098,500 as of 2015; the ethnic composition consisting of Malays 622,000 (56.6%) (mostly are Minangkabau descent), other Bumiputras 20,700 (1.9%), Chinese 234,300 (21.3%), Indian 154,000 (14%), Others 4,200 (0.4%), and Non Citizens 63,300 (5.8%). The state has the highest percentage of Indians when compared to other Malaysian states. Up until today the state is known as the strongholds of Adat Perpatih in Malaysia.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: According to the 2010 census, the population of Negeri Sembilan is 60.3% Muslim, 21.2% Buddhist, 13.4% Hindu, 2.4% Christian, 1.1% of unknown affiliation, 0.8% non-religious, 0.5% Taoist or Chinese religion follower, and 0.3% of followers of other religions.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Statistics from the 2010 Census indicate that 92.9% of the Chinese population in Negeri Sembilan is identified as Buddhists, with significant minority of adherents identifying as Christians (3.6%), Chinese folk religions (1.9%) and Muslims (0.8%). The majority of the Indian population are Hindus (89.0%), with a significant minorities of numbers identifying as Christians (5.0%), Muslims (3.2%) and Buddhists (1.4%). The non-Malay "Bumiputera" community are predominantly Atheists (39.7%), with significant minorities identifying as Christians (28.3%) and Muslims (20.2%). All Malays are Muslims.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan is a multiethnic state in which every ethnic group speaks their respective languages and dialects. The Negeri Sembilanese people speak a unique variety of Malay known as Negeri Sembilan Malay or in their native language as Baso Nogoghi. It is not closely related to other varieties of Malay in Peninsular Malaysia but more closely related with Malay varieties spoken in neighbouring Sumatra especially varieties of Minangkabau. Besides Malays, the Chinese community also speak their languages and dialects. Orang Asli peoples like Temuans speak a language closely related to Malay. Standard Malay is widely used throughout the state.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Tamil (mother tongue to Indian Tamils and Ceylon Tamils) is used as a lingua franca among the other minor Indian communities. Besides, a small number of Telugu, Malayalam and Punjabi exist in the towns of Negeri Sembilan.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The state's manufacturing sector contributes almost half of the state's gross domestic product (GDP), followed by services and tourism (40.3%), agriculture (6%), construction (2.2%) and mining (0.3%). Manufacturing activities include electrical supplies and electronics, textiles, furniture, chemicals, machinery, metal works and rubber products. The main industrial areas in Negeri Sembilan include Senawang, Bandar Sri Sendayan, Sungai Gadut, Bandar Enstek and Nilai in Seremban, Tanah Merah in Port Dickson and Chembong in Rembau. Notable companies also set up their plants in Negeri Sembilan, such as Kellogg's, Dutch Lady, Ajinomoto and Coca-Cola in Bandar Enstek, Hino Motors in Bandar Sri Sendayan, Yakult in Seremban 2, Samsung SDI, Onsemi and NXP Semiconductors in Senawang, and Nestlé in Chembong. Nestlé's Chembong plant is also the largest Milo manufacturer in the world, as well as the company's largest global centre of excellence.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan is mainly an agricultural state. However, the establishment of several industrial estates enhanced the manufacturing sector as a significant contributor to the state economy. Two districts in the western half of the state - Seremban and Port Dickson - have been gazetted as part of the Malaysia Vision Valley (MVV, Malay: "Lembah Wawasan Malaysia"), a 1530 sq km new growth corridor conceived from the joint venture between Sime Darby and both the federal and state governments in 2015 as part of the National Transformation Agenda, the National Physical Plan (NPP), the Eleventh Malaysia Plan (11MP) and the 2045 Negeri Sembilan Structural Plan, in order to evenly balancing the existing development in the neighbouring Klang Valley area, providing ample space for the southern extension of the Greater Kuala Lumpur area, as well as to transform Negeri Sembilan into a developed state by 2045. As of 2022, the MVV is now in its second iteration, and is still undergoing development. Meanwhile, districts east of the MVV - Rembau, Kuala Pilah, Tampin and Jempol - are yet to be developed into an agropolis, to boost foodstuff production in the state and national levels respectively.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The agricultural activity includes rubber and oil palm plantations, livestock, fruit orchards and vegetable farming. About 3,099 square kilometres are used for rubber and oil palm plantations.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The Minangkabau people brought along with them a cultural heritage which is still preserved and practised today as the "adat perpatih", a matrilineal system of inheritance and administration that is unique to the state, where the husband is the head of the household and inheritance passes from the mother to the daughter. The Minangkabaus in Negeri Sembilan are divided into twelve "suku" (clans). Each of these "suku" is led by a chief, known as the Lembaga. Each "suku" is broken down into subunits known as the Perut, where each of them are led by a chief, either known as a Buapak (male) or Ibu Soko (female). Both the "Buapak" and "Ibu Soko" play a vital role as people to refer to regarding the "adat" and religious matters among the subordinates of the "Perut", known as Anak Buah. Marriage between members of the same clan is forbidden. The twelve "suku" are known as the following, of which the names of each "suku" indicates the area where they hailed:


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan also has traditional music like the Caklempong, Dikir Rebana, Tumbuk Kalang, and Bongai.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: The musical instruments used to bear some semblance to Sumatra, the ancestral home of the Minangkabau people. Dances like the tarian lilin (candle dance) and rentak kuda (the beat of the horse) are popular in Negeri Sembilan and the coordinated movements of the dancers in their colorful costumes in the Tarian Piring and the upbeat tempo of Tarian Randai. Unlike modern dance, each beat, rhythm and movement in these dances combines to form a story, maybe of a bygone myth or simply a reflection of the lifestyles of another era.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: They are usually performed at traditional festivities, cultural events and dinner-cum-cultural shows.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: As in most other Asian cities, driving is the main choice in the state. there are three expressways serving the state, which are PLUS Highway, LEKAS Highway and Seremban–Port Dickson Highway. Public transportation covers a variety of transport modes such as bus, rail and taxi.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: For the bus services, it is operated by myBAS in the state. There are also free bus services in Seremban provided by the state government. Seremban has a main bus station which is Terminal One which connects Seremban with major places in Negeri Sembilan such as Kuala Pilah, Bahau, Rembau and Malaysia such as Alor Setar, Ipoh and Melaka. All bus companies that provide bus services are based here.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: For the rail services, Seremban Railway Station is the main station to the state capital - Seremban and part of the Klang Valley Integrated Transit System, while Gemas Railway Station in Tampin District is the interchange between West Coast and East Coast Line. The KTM Komuter, a commuter rail service, was introduced in 1995 as the first rail transit system to provide local rail services from Negeri Sembilan to Kuala Lumpur and the surrounding Klang Valley suburban areas. KTM Komuter's 175 km (109 mi) network in the Central Sector has 53 stations. It consists of two cross-city routes, namely the Port Klang Line (Tanjung Malim to Port Klang) and Seremban Line (Batu Caves to Pulau Sebang/Tampin).


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: There are no civil airports in the state, while the nearest airport, Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) at Sepang, Selangor can be accessed via shuttle bus between Nilai Komuter station to the airport.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Traditional Negeri Sembilan food is typically very hot and spicy, as one of the ingredients used is the "cili padi", one of the hottest types of chili peppers. "Masak lemak cili api", a type of "gulai" made with turmeric and "cili padi"-infused coconut milk ("santan"), is a trademark dish in the cuisine of the state. The Negeri Sembilanese are also known for their penchant for smoked foods (known as "salai" in Malay), with examples include "sembilang salai" (smoked catfish), "ayam salai" (smoked chicken), etc., and these are can also be cooked "masak lemak cili api"-style.


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: "Rendang", which is a rich dish of dry braised meat with herbs, spices and coconut milk, is also a well known fare in Negeri Sembilan, and there are variations of it according to the districts where the "rendang" originated, such as "rendang maman" from Gemencheh in Tampin District, made with "maman" leaves. Another Negeri Sembilan speciality is "lemang", glutinous rice cooked in coconut milk in a bamboo stem over an open fire. This is normally served with "rendang".


title: Negeri Sembilan

text: Negeri Sembilan has several tertiary education institutions. Most of these education institutions are concentrated in major towns in Negeri Sembilan. The list below represents public and private university based in Negeri Sembilan state:


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian IV (12 April 1577 – 28 February 1648) was King of Denmark and Norway and Duke of Holstein and Schleswig from 1588 until his death in 1648. His reign of 59 years, 330 days is the longest of Danish monarchs and Scandinavian monarchies.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: A member of the House of Oldenburg, Christian began his personal rule of Denmark in 1596 at the age of 19. He is remembered as one of the most popular, ambitious, and proactive Danish kings, having initiated many reforms and projects. Christian IV obtained for his kingdom a level of stability and wealth that was virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe. He engaged Denmark in numerous wars, most notably the Thirty Years' War (1618–1648), which devastated much of Germany, undermined the Danish economy, and cost Denmark some of its conquered territories.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: He rebuilt and renamed the Norwegian capital Oslo as "Christiania" after himself, a name used until 1925.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian was born at Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark on 12 April 1577 as the third child and eldest son of King Frederick II of Denmark–Norway and Sofie of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. He was descended, through his mother's side, from king John of Denmark, and was thus the first descendant of King John to assume the crown since the deposition of King Christian II.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: At the time, Denmark was still an elective monarchy, so in spite of being the eldest son Christian was not automatically heir to the throne. But Norway was an hereditary monarchy, and electing someone else would result in the end of the union of the crowns. However, in 1580, at the age of 3, his father had him elected Prince and successor to the throne of Denmark.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: At the death of his father on 4 April 1588, Christian was just 10 years old. He succeeded to the throne, but as he was still under-age a regency council was set up to serve as the trustees of the royal power while Christian was still growing up. It was led by chancellor Niels Kaas and consisted of the "Rigsraadet" council members Peder Munk (1534–1623), Jørgen Ottesen Rosenkrantz (1523–1596) and Christoffer Valkendorff (1525-1601). His mother Queen Dowager Sophie, 30 years old, had wished to play a role in the government, but was denied by the council. At the death of Niels Kaas in 1594, Jørgen Rosenkrantz took over leadership of the regency council.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian continued his studies at Sorø Academy where he had a reputation as a headstrong and talented student.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In 1595, the Council of the Realm decided that Christian would soon be old enough to assume personal control of the reins of government. On 17 August 1596, at the age of 19, Christian signed his haandfæstning (lit. "Handbinding" viz. curtailment of the monarch's power, a Danish parallel to the Magna Carta), which was an identical copy of his father's from 1559.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Twelve days later, on 29 August 1596, Christian IV was crowned at the Church of Our Lady in Copenhagen by the Bishop of Zealand, Peder Jensen Vinstrup (1549–1614). He was crowned with a new Danish Crown Regalia which had been made for him by Dirich Fyring (1580–1603), assisted by the Nuremberg goldsmith, Corvinius Saur.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: On 30 November 1597, he married Anne Catherine of Brandenburg, a daughter of Joachim Friedrich, Margrave of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian took an interest in many and varied matters, including a series of domestic reforms and improving Danish national armaments. New fortresses were constructed under the direction of Dutch engineers. The Royal Dano-Norwegian Navy, which in 1596 had consisted of but twenty-two vessels, in 1610 rose to sixty, some of them built after Christian's own designs. The formation of a national army proved more difficult. Christian had to depend mainly upon hired mercenary troops as was common practice in the times—well before the establishment of standing armies—augmented by native peasant levies recruited for the most part from the peasantry on the crown domains.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Up until the early 1620s, Denmark-Norway's economy profited from general boom conditions in Europe. This inspired Christian to initiate a policy of expanding Denmark-Norway's overseas trade as part of the mercantilist wave fashionable in Europe. He founded a number of merchant cities, and supported the building of factories. He also built a large number of buildings in Dutch Renaissance style.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: His sister Anne had married King James VI of Scotland, who succeeded to the English throne in 1603. To foster friendly relations between the two kingdoms, Christian paid a state visit to England in 1606. The visit was generally judged to be a success, although the heavy drinking indulged in by English and Danes alike caused some unfavourable comments: both Christian and James had an ability to consume great amounts of alcohol, while remaining lucid, which most of their courtiers did not share. Sir John Harington described an entertainment at Theobalds, a masque of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, as a drunken fiasco, where most of the players simply fell over from the effects of too much wine. The royal party went to Upnor Castle and had dinner aboard the "Elizabeth Jonas". At Gravesend, when the royal party was on his ship the "Admiral", Christian IV provided a firework display built on a small ship or lighter, which brought tears to eyes of King James, although the effect was somewhat spoiled because the show was held in daylight. After an exchange of gifts Christian sailed home, escorted by Robert Mansell with the "Vanguard" and the "Moon".


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian IV visited England again in August 1614, coming incognito to surprise his sister at Denmark House, accompanied only by Andrew Sinclair and a page. He had sailed with only three ships and captured some pirates during the voyage. More ships with his Danish courtiers arrived on 5 August. The diplomatic purpose of the visit was kept secret. The Venetian ambassador Antonio Foscarini heard that Anne of Denmark had written to him about a dispute with King James. Foscarini described Christian as, "above the average in height, dressed in the French fashion. His nature is warlike".


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Despite Christian's many efforts, the new economic projects did not return a profit. He looked abroad for new income. Christian IV's Expeditions to Greenland involved a series of voyages in the years 1605–1607 to Greenland and to Arctic waterways in order to locate the lost Eastern Norse Settlement and to assert Danish sovereignty over Greenland. The expeditions were unsuccessful, partly due to leaders lacking experience with the difficult Arctic ice and weather conditions. The pilot on all three trips was English explorer James Hall. An expedition to North America was commissioned in 1619. The expedition was captained by Dano-Norwegian navigator and explorer, Jens Munk. The ships, searching for the Northwest Passage, arrived in Hudson Bay landing at the mouth of Churchill River, settling at what is now Churchill, Manitoba. However, it was a disastrous voyage, with cold, famine, and scurvy killing most of the crew.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In 1618, Christian appointed Admiral Ove Gjedde to lead an expedition and establish a Danish colony in Ceylon. The expedition set sail in 1618, taking two years to reach Ceylon and losing more than half their crew on the way. Upon arriving in May 1620, the establishment of a colony in Ceylon failed, but instead the "Nayak" of Tanjore (now Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu) turned out to be interested in trading opportunities and a treaty was negotiated granting the Danes the village of Tranquebar (or Tarangamabadi) on India's south coast and the right to construct a "stone house" (Fort Dansborg) and levy taxes. The treaty was signed on 20 November 1620, establishing Denmark's first colony in India. Christian also assigned the privilege establishing the Danish East India Company.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In 1611, he first put his newly organised army to use. Despite the reluctance of "Rigsrådet", Christian initiated a war with Sweden for the supremacy of the Baltic Sea. It was later known as the Kalmar War because its chief operation was the Danish capture of Kalmar, the southernmost fortress of Sweden. Christian compelled King Gustavus Adolphus of Sweden to give way on all essential points at the resulting Treaty of Knäred of 20 January 1613. However, despite Denmark's greater strength, the gains of the war were not decisive.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: He now turned his attention to the Thirty Years' War in Germany. Here, his objectives were twofold: first, to obtain control of the great German rivers— the Elbe and the Weser— as a means of securing his dominion of the northern seas; and secondly, to acquire the secularised German Archdiocese of Bremen and Prince-Bishopric of Verden as appanages for his younger sons. He skillfully took advantage of the alarm of the German Protestants after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620, to secure co-adjutorship of the See of Bremen for his son Frederick (September 1621). A similar arrangement was reached in November at Verden. Hamburg was also induced to acknowledge the Danish overlordship of Holstein by the compact of Steinburg in July 1621.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian IV had obtained for his kingdom a level of stability and wealth that was virtually unmatched elsewhere in Europe. Denmark was funded by tolls on the Øresund and also by extensive war-reparations from Sweden. Denmark's intervention in the Thirty Years' War was aided by France and by Charles I of England, who agreed to help subsidise the war partly because Christian was the uncle of both the Stuart king and his sister Elizabeth of Bohemia through their mother, Anne of Denmark. Some 13,700 Scottish soldiers were to be sent as allies to help Christian IV under the command of General Robert Maxwell, 1st Earl of Nithsdale. Moreover, some 6000 English troops under Sir Charles Morgan also eventually arrived to bolster the defence of Denmark though it took longer for these to arrive than Christian hoped, not least due to the ongoing British campaigns against France and Spain. Thus Christian, as war-leader of the Lower Saxon Circle, entered the war with an army of only 20,000 mercenaries, some of his allies from Britain and a national army 15,000 strong, leading them as Duke of Holstein rather than as King of Denmark.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Despite the growing power of Roman Catholics in North Germany, and the threat to the Danish holdings in the Schleswig-Holstein duchies, Christian for a time stayed his hand. The urgent solicitations of other powers, and his fear that Gustavus Adolphus should supplant him as the champion of the Protestant cause, finally led him to enter the war on 9 May 1625. He also feared that Sweden could use a war to further expand their holdings in the Baltic Sea. Christian embarked on a military campaign which was later known in Denmark and Norway as "The Emperor War" (, ).


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: He had at his disposal from 19,000 to 25,000 men, and at first gained some successes but on 27 August 1626 he was routed by Johan Tzerclaes, Count of Tilly in the Battle of Lutter. Christian had not thoroughly planned the advance against the combined forces of the Holy Roman Emperor and the Catholic League, as promises of military support from the Netherlands and England did not materialise. In the summer of 1627 both Tilly and Albrecht von Wallenstein occupied the duchies and the whole peninsula of Jutland.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian now formed an alliance with Sweden on 1 January 1628, as he and Gustavus Adolphus shared the reluctance of German expansion in the Baltic region. Gustavus Adolphus pledged to assist Denmark with a fleet in case of need, and shortly afterwards a Swedo-Danish army and fleet compelled Wallenstein to raise the siege of Stralsund. Thus with the help of Sweden, the superior sea-power enabled Denmark to tide over her worst difficulties, and in May 1629 Christian was able to conclude peace with the emperor in the Treaty of Lübeck, without any diminution of territory. However, the treaty bound Christian not to interfere in the Thirty Years' War any further, removing any Danish obstacles when Gustavus Adolphus entered the war in 1630.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian's foreign policy did not suffer from lack of confidence following the Danish defeat in The Thirty Years' War. To compensate for lacking export revenues, and also in order to stifle the Swedish advances in the Thirty Years' War, Christian enacted a number of increases in the Sound Dues throughout the 1630s. Christian gained both in popularity and influence at home, and he hoped to increase his external power still further with the assistance of his sons-in-law, Corfitz Ulfeldt and Hannibal Sehested, who now came prominently forward.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Between 1629 and 1643 the European situation presented infinite possibilities to politicians with a taste for adventure. However, Christian was incapable of a consistent diplomatic policy. He would neither conciliate Sweden, henceforth his most dangerous enemy, nor guard himself against her by a definite system of counter-alliances. Christian contacted the Roman Catholic part of the Thirty Years' War, and offered to broker a deal with Sweden. However, his mediating was highly skewed in favour of the Holy Roman Emperor, and was a transparent attempt at minimising the Swedish influence in the Baltics. His Scandinavian policy was so irritating and vexatious that Swedish statesmen advocated for a war with Denmark, to keep Christian from interfering in the peace negotiations with the Holy Roman Emperor, and in May 1643, Christian faced another war against Sweden. The increased Sound Dues had alienated the Dutch, who turned to support Sweden.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Sweden was able, thanks to their conquests in the Thirty Years' War, to attack Denmark from the south as well as the east; the Dutch alliance promised to secure them at sea. In May 1643 the Swedish Privy Council decided upon war; on 12 December the Swedish Field Marshal Lennart Torstensson, advancing from Bohemia, crossed the southern frontier of Denmark; and by the end of January 1644 the whole peninsula of Jutland was in Swedish hands. This unexpected attack, conducted from first to last with consummate ability and lightning-like rapidity, had a paralysing effect upon Denmark.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In his sixty-sixth year he once more displayed something of the energy of his triumphant youth. Night and day he laboured to levy armies and equip fleets. Fortunately for him, the Swedish government delayed hostilities in Scania until February 1644, and the Danes were able to make adequate defensive preparations and save the important fortress of Malmö. The Danish fleet prevented Torstensson crossing from Jutland to Funen, and defeated the Dutch auxiliary fleet which came to Torstensson's assistance at the action of 16 May 1644. Another attempt to transport Torstensson and his army to the Danish islands by a large Swedish fleet was frustrated by Christian IV in person on 1 July 1644. On that day the two fleets encountered at the Battle of Colberger Heide. As Christian stood on the quarter-deck of the "Trinity" a cannon close by was exploded by a Swedish cannonball, and splinters of wood and metal wounded the king in thirteen places, blinding one eye and flinging him to the deck. But he was instantly on his feet again, cried with a loud voice that it was well with him, and set every one an example of duty by remaining on deck till the fight was over. Darkness at last separated the contending fleets; and the battle was drawn.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: The Danish fleet subsequently blockaded the Swedish ships in the Bay of Kiel. But the Swedish fleet escaped, and the annihilation of the Danish fleet by the combined navies of Sweden and the Netherlands, after an obstinate fight between Fehmarn and Lolland at the end of September, exhausted the military resources of Denmark and compelled Christian to accept the mediation of France and the Netherlands; and peace was finally signed with the Treaty of Brömsebro on 8 February 1645. Here Denmark had to cede Gotland, Ösel and (for thirty years) Halland, while Norway lost the two provinces Jämtland and Härjedalen, giving Sweden the supremacy of the Baltic Sea.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian IV spent more time in the kingdom of Norway than any other Oldenburg monarch and no Oldenburg king made such a lasting impression on the Norwegian people. He visited the country a number of times and founded four cities. He also established and took control over one silver mine (Kongsberg), one copper mine (Røros), and tried to make an iron plant with limited success in Eiker. He also restored and restructured the castle Akershus, where he invited the people of Norway to the official and age-old installment of the king in 1590, and again in 1610.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: When the king was busy overseeing the reparations and re-building of the fortress at Oslo, he lived in the country all summer, and at the same time tried to establish a centre for producing iron at Eiker, Buskerud. History tells he actually ruled the entire kingdom from this area in the summer of 1603.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In 1623, Christian again visited Norway for an entire summer, this time to oversee the foundation of Kongsberg. He was also present in the area in 1624, when Oslo burned in August of that year. The king was able to reach the area in a few weeks, being in Eiker. Over the years, fire had destroyed major parts of the city many times, as many of the city's buildings were built entirely of wood. After the fire in 1624 which lasted for three days, Christian IV decided that the old city should not be rebuilt again. He decided that the new town be rebuilt in the area below Akershus Fortress, a castle which later was converted into a palace and royal residence. His men built a network of roads in Akershagen and demanded that all citizens should move their shops and workplaces to the newly built city of Christiania.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: During the fourteenth century the Swedish kings tried to push the areas of their control towards the north, and contemporary maps depicted the now Norwegian coastal areas of Troms and Finnmark as a part of Sweden. The possibly boldest move of any Danish-Norwegian regent was to make a voyage to the Northern Lands to secure these lands under the Danish-Norwegian crown.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: After the Torstenson War, "Rigsrådet" took on an increasing role, under the leadership of Corfitz Ulfeldt and Hannibal Sehested. The last years of Christian's life were embittered by sordid differences with his sons-in-law, especially with Corfitz Ulfeldt.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: His personal obsession with witchcraft led to the public execution of some of his subjects during the Burning Times. He was responsible for several witch burnings, including 21 people in Iceland, and most notably the conviction and execution of Maren Spliid, who was victim of a witch hunt at Ribe and was burned at the Gallows Hill near Ribe on 9 November 1641.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: On 21 February 1648, at his earnest request, he was carried in a litter from Frederiksborg to his beloved Copenhagen, where he died a week later. He was buried in Roskilde Cathedral. The chapel of Christian IV had been completed 6 years before the King died.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian was reckoned a typical renaissance king, and excelled in hiring musicians and artists from all over Europe. Many English musicians were employed by him at several times, among them William Brade, John Bull and John Dowland. Dowland accompanied the king on his tours, and as he was employed in 1603, rumour has it he was in Norway as well. Christian was an agile dancer, and his court was reckoned the second most "musical" court in Europe, only ranking behind that of Elizabeth I of England. Christian maintained good contact with his sister Anne, who was married to King James. Christian asked Anne to request for him the services of Thomas Cutting, a lutenist employed by Arbella Stewart. His other sister, Elizabeth, was married to the Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg, and artists and musicians travelled freely between the courts.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian IV is renowned for his many city (town) foundations, and is most likely the Nordic head of state that can be accredited for the highest number of new cities in his realm. These towns/cities are:


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Furthermore, Christian is known for erecting many important buildings in his realm, including the observatory Rundetårn, the stock exchange Børsen, the Copenhagen fortress Kastellet, Rosenborg Castle, workers' district Nyboder"," the Copenhagen naval Holmen Church (Holmens Kirke), Proviantgården, a brewery, the Tøjhus Museum arsenal, and two Trinity Churches in Copenhagen and modern Kristianstad, now known as respectively Trinitatis Church and Holy Trinity Church. Christian converted Frederiksborg Castle to a Renaissance palace and completely rebuilt Kronborg Castle to a fortress. He also founded the Danish East India Company ("Asiatisk Kompagni") inspired by the similar Dutch company.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: When Christian was crowned king, Denmark-Norway held a supremacy over the Baltic Sea, which was lost to Sweden during the years of his reign. Nevertheless, Christian was one of the few kings from the House of Oldenburg that achieved a lasting legacy of popularity with both the Danish and Norwegian people. As such, he featured in the Danish national play "Elverhøj". Furthermore, his great building activities also furthered his popularity.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: Christian IV spoke Danish, German, Latin, French and Italian. Naturally cheerful and hospitable, he delighted in lively society; but he was also passionate, irritable and sensual. He had courage, a vivid sense of duty, an indefatigable love of work, and all the inquisitive zeal and inventive energy of a born reformer. His own pleasure, whether it took the form of love or ambition, was always his first consideration. His capacity for drink was proverbial: when he visited England in 1606, even the notoriously hard-drinking English Court were astonished by his alcohol consumption. In the heyday of his youth his high spirits and passion for adventure enabled him to surmount every obstacle with elan. But in the decline of life he reaped the bitter fruits of his lack of self-control, and sank into the grave a weary and brokenhearted old man.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: His first queen was Anne Catherine. They were married from 1597 to 1612. She died after bearing Christian seven children. In 1615, three years after her death, the king privately married Kirsten Munk, by whom he had twelve children.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In 1632, an English envoy to king Christian IV, then aged 55, primly remarked "Such is the life of that king: to drink all day and to lie with a whore every night".


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In the course of 1628, he discovered that his wife, Kirsten Munk, was having a relationship with one of his German officers. Christian had Munk placed under house arrest. She endeavoured to cover up her own disgrace by conniving at an intrigue between Vibeke Kruse, one of her discharged maids, and the king. In January 1630, the rupture became final and Kirsten retired to her estates in Jutland. Meanwhile, Christian openly acknowledged Vibeke as his mistress, and she bore him several more children.


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: With his second wife, Kirsten Munk, he had 12 children, though the youngest, Dorothea Elisabeth, was rumoured to be the daughter of Kirsten's lover, Otto Ludwig:


title: Christian IV of Denmark

text: In the 1621 Treaty of The Hague and Treaty of Bremen between Denmark-Norway and the Dutch Republic, Christian was styled "Lord Christian the Fourth, King of all Denmark and Norway, the Goths and the Wends, duke of Schleswig, Holstein, Stormarn, and Ditmarsh, count of Oldenburg and Delmenhorst, etc."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Glen Canyon Dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam on the Colorado River in northern Arizona, United States, near the town of Page. The high dam was built by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation (USBR) from 1956 to 1966 and forms Lake Powell, one of the largest man-made reservoirs in the U.S. with a capacity of more than . The dam is named for Glen Canyon, a series of deep sandstone gorges now flooded by the reservoir; Lake Powell is named for John Wesley Powell, who in 1869 led the first expedition to traverse the Colorado River's Grand Canyon by boat.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: A dam in Glen Canyon was studied as early as 1924, but these plans were initially dropped in favor of the Hoover Dam (completed in 1936) which was located in the Black Canyon. By the 1950s, due to rapid population growth in the seven U.S. and two Mexican states comprising the Colorado River Basin, the Bureau of Reclamation deemed the construction of additional reservoirs necessary. Contrary to popular belief, Lake Powell was not the result of negotiations over the controversial damming of the Green River within Dinosaur National Monument at Echo Park; the Echo Park Dam proposal was abandoned due to nationwide citizen pressure on Congress to do so. The Glen Canyon Dam remains a central issue for modern environmentalist movements. Beginning in the late 1990s, the Sierra Club and other organizations renewed the call to dismantle the dam and drain Lake Powell in Lower Glen Canyon. Today, Glen Canyon and Lake Powell are managed by the U.S. Department of the Interior within Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Since first filling to capacity in 1980, Lake Powell water levels have fluctuated greatly depending on water demand and annual runoff. The operation of Glen Canyon Dam helps ensure an equitable distribution of water between the states of the Upper Colorado River Basin (Colorado, Wyoming, and most of New Mexico and Utah) and the Lower Basin (California, Nevada and most of Arizona). During years of drought, Glen Canyon guarantees a water delivery to the Lower Basin states, without the need for rationing in the Upper Basin. In wet years, it captures extra runoff for future use. The dam is also a major source of hydroelectricity, averaging over 4 billion kilowatt hours per year. The long and winding Lake Powell, known for its scenic beauty and recreational opportunities including houseboating, fishing and water-skiing, attracts millions of tourists each year to the Glen Canyon National Recreation Area.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: In addition to its flooding of the scenic Glen Canyon, the dam's economic justification was questioned by some critics. It became "a catalyst for the modern environmental movement," and was one of the last dams of its size to be built in the United States. The dam has been criticized for the large evaporative losses from Lake Powell and its impact on the ecology of the Grand Canyon, which lies downstream; environmental groups continue to advocate for the dam's removal. Water managers and utilities state that the dam is a major source of renewable energy and provides a vital defense against severe droughts.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The Colorado River is the single largest source of water in the southwestern United States and northwest Mexico; however, before massive dam projects tamed the river in the 20th century, its flow was far from dependable. Annual discharge from the Colorado River and its tributaries ranges from , and 10-year averages may fluctuate as much as . Flooding, and the river's enormous silt or sediment load, created problems for settlements in the Lower Colorado River Valley and navigation on the lower portion of the river. During droughts, there was too little water available for irrigation. In 1904, the Colorado River was accidentally redirected after it damaged a canal gate in Mexico, causing the river to flood part of California's Imperial Valley and create the Salton Sea. After this catastrophe, California and Arizona began to call for a dam to control the tempestuous river.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: In 1922, six U.S. states signed the Colorado River Compact to officially allocate the flow of the Colorado River and its tributaries. Each half of the Colorado River Basin – the Upper Basin, comprising Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming – and the Lower Basin, with California and Nevada – was allotted of water annually, and a treaty between the U.S. and Mexico was signed in 1944 allocating to Mexico. The third lower basin state, Arizona, did not ratify the Compact until 1944 because it was concerned that California might seek to appropriate a portion of its share before it could be put to use.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The total, , was based on only thirty years of streamflow records starting in the late 1890s. It was believed to represent the annual flow as measured at Lee's Ferry, Arizona (the official dividing point of the upper and lower basins), downstream of present-day Glen Canyon Dam. As it turned out, the early 20th century was one of the wettest periods in the last 800 years. The dependable natural flow past Lees Ferry is now believed to be about .


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The general consensus among inhabitants of the Colorado River basin and government officials was that a high dam had to be built on the Colorado to control floods and provide carry-over water storage for times of drought. Possible locations for this dam were debated for years, and in fact the Bureau of Reclamation's first study for a dam at Glen Canyon was made in 1924, in addition to studies for locations at Black and Boulder Canyons lower on the Colorado, below Grand Canyon. These studies found that the lower Colorado sites had stronger foundation rock which might result in less reservoir seepage. The Glen Canyon site, furthermore, was so remote that delivering supplies and transporting workers there would be infeasible at the time. However, what really killed the first Glen Canyon proposal was the fact that it lies upstream of the Lee's Ferry dividing line, and thus would be considered the Upper Basin's water. With its substantial Congressional clout, California refused to allow the "virtual faucets" of a Colorado River dam "to be built in what amounted to hostile territory."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: With the Glen Canyon site out of the question, the initial need for a reservoir was realized in 1936 with the completion of Hoover Dam in Black Canyon, storing in the mammoth reservoir of Lake Mead. However, it was not able to weather the worst floods or droughts, and was filling with sediment at a rate that would render it useless in a few hundred years. But most importantly, Hoover only controlled the lower portion of the river. The Upper Basin states, whose rivers remained undammed, had no way to ensure they could fulfill their delivery obligation to the Lower Basin state while retaining enough water for their own use. Without storage reservoirs of their own, the Upper Basin states risked a "call" on the Colorado River during drought years: they would be forced to use less water in order to keep the river flowing to Lake Mead and California, the state with the most senior water rights.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: To provide water for the Upper Basin and ensure delivery to the Lower Basin, the Bureau of Reclamation proposed the Colorado River Storage Project, which would consist of a dam on the Colorado River at Glen Canyon, several dams on the Gunnison River and San Juan River, and a pair of dams to be built on the Green River, the Colorado's major upper tributary, at Echo Park and Split Mountain. The 1956 Colorado River Storage Project Act authorized the purposes of "regulating the flow of the Colorado River, storing water for beneficial consumptive use, providing for reclamation of arid and semi-arid lands, providing flood control, and generating hydropower."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The proposal for Glen Canyon Dam was most vocally supported by the state of Arizona, which wished to get Colorado River water to Phoenix and Tucson, located hundreds of miles away from the Colorado in the center of the state. Glen Canyon Dam would regulate river flow between Lee's Ferry and Lake Mead, where the Colorado drops some , allowing the future construction of two additional hydroelectric dams, at Marble Canyon and Bridge Canyon. These two dams would be partially inside Grand Canyon National Park. Glen, Marble and Bridge together would provide the power necessary to pump water to where it was needed in central Arizona. In 1963, Arizona's congressional delegation proposed these dams as part of the Central Arizona Project to accomplish these goals. The state of California opposed the project, as it would eliminate the "surplus" water in the Colorado (really the Upper Basin's yet unused supplies) it had gotten accustomed to using.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The Bureau of Reclamation, meanwhile, had recognized a more serious problem. Construction of the Storage Project, and allowing the Upper Basin to develop its water supplies, would tip the whole Colorado River system toward a structural water deficit, due to the fact that the Colorado River's average flow is less than what was apportioned in the 1922 Compact. The USBR predicted that by 2030 the annual water supply for the Lower Basin would fall by twenty-five percent, to . To make up for this deficit, the USBR incorporated these proposals with the "Pacific Southwest Water Plan" on January 21, 1964, in which power sales from Glen, Marble and Bridge (often called "cash register dams") would be used to fund a diversion of water from the wetter Pacific Northwest to the Colorado Basin. In addition to the proposed diversion of the Trinity River in Northern California, Marc Reisner wrote in "Cadillac Desert" that "in the Pacific Northwest there was a lot of suspicion that the Pacific Southwest Water Plan was merely a smokescreen for a much larger plan, long a gleam in the Colorado Basin's eye, to tap the Columbia River."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The Echo Park dam would be inside the federally protected Dinosaur National Monument and would submerge of scenic canyons – a move that alarmed environmentalists. The environmental organization Sierra Club, led by David Brower, was the most vocal opponent of Echo Park Dam, and fought a protracted battle against the Bureau of Reclamation, on the basis that "building the dam would not only destroy a unique wilderness area, but would set a terrible precedent for exploiting resources in America's national parks and monuments".


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The Bureau of Reclamation favored the Echo Park site over Glen Canyon, because its narrow canyons and high elevation (more than , as compared to at Glen Canyon) would lead to less evaporation. It said that building Echo Park Dam and a "low" Glen Canyon Dam would save of water per year over a "high" Glen Canyon Dam (which was ultimately the version to be built). While studying the figures, Brower discovered that the difference should be no more than . Although it is unclear whether the discrepancy was due to a miscalculation or intentional manipulation, Brower said "it would be a great mistake [to rely on the Bureau's figures] when they cannot add, subtract, multiply and divide."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: In the face of public scrutiny, and wishing to avoid more questions about the Colorado River Storage Project as a whole, the Bureau of Reclamation dropped the Echo Park proposal in 1954. However, even as construction began on the other the dams, the USBR was faced with more controversy; the "David and Goliath" drama of the Echo Park debate had shifted the American public's perception on big government projects and their environmental consequences. Echo Park was considered a victory for the American environmental movement, but it only happened in exchange for a dam upstream at Flaming Gorge, and increasing the size of the proposed dam at Glen Canyon to replace the storage that would have been provided by Echo Park. A common misconception is that the environmentalists were given a choice between damming Echo Park and damming Glen Canyon, but the USBR "had always planned to build a dam at Glen Canyon, regardless of the outcome of the Echo Park debate".


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Floyd Dominy, commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation, was a vital figure in pushing the project through Congress and convincing politicians to take a pro-dam stance, and to assuage rising public concerns. Dominy realized that the USBR had considerable political clout in Western states, due to the economic contributions of its water projects. Reisner wrote that "Dominy cultivated Congress as if he were tending prize-winning orchids  ... If some Senator was causing him trouble, money for his project could disappear mighty fast." With the necessary political support secured, the Colorado River Storage Project was authorized in April 1956, and groundbreaking of Glen Canyon Dam began in October of the same year.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: David Brower visited Glen Canyon shortly after the decision to build the dam, and "realized once he arrived that this was not a place for a reservoir". Glen Canyon's springs, side canyons, and intricately sculpted rock formations were home to such features as Music Temple and Cathedral in the Desert, a giant cave-like natural amphitheater with a waterfall at its center. The Colorado River flowed gently across the bottom of the canyon, in sharp contrast to the roaring rapids upstream in Cataract Canyon and downstream in the Grand Canyon. After his groundbreaking 1869 expedition, John Wesley Powell had named Glen Canyon for its characteristics: "So we have a curious ensemble of wonderful features – carved walls, royal arches, glens, alcove gulches, mounds and monuments. From which of these features shall we select a name? We decide to call it Glen Canyon." In addition to its variegated rock formations, Glen Canyon supported a rich riparian zone habitat on the numerous low river terraces formed by the Colorado River, with as many as 316 bird species, 79 plant species and 34 kinds of mammals.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: In 1963, when construction on the dam was well underway, the Sierra Club published a book on Glen Canyon, "The Place No One Knew", featuring photographs by Eliot Porter, and lamenting the loss of the canyon before most of the American public had a chance to visit, or were even aware of its existence. Though little known to most Americans before Porter's book, Glen Canyon had been visited by a handful of hikers and boaters (such as Powell's expedition), and some had even been interviewed by Brower. As said to Brower by writer Wallace Stegner, who had been to the canyon in 1947, "Echo doesn't hold a candle to Glen."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Emboldened by Echo Park and desperate to prevent the Grand Canyon from reaching the same fate as Glen, Brower and the Sierra Club directed attention towards the proposed Bridge and Marble dams. The Sierra Club launched an extensive publicity campaign to sway public opinion against the plan; in response to the USBR's argument that new reservoirs would open up the Grand Canyon to recreational boaters as Lake Powell had, a full-page advertisement in the "New York Times" ran the slogan: "Should we also flood the Sistine Chapel so tourists can float nearer the ceiling?" Faced with public outcry, the Bureau abandoned its Grand Canyon dams, effectively terminating most of the Pacific Southwest Water Plan, in 1968. The coal-fired Navajo Generating Station was built near Page, to make up for the electric power that was lost with the cancellation of the dam project. The Sierra Club lost its IRS tax-exempt status a day after the advertisement was released; ostensibly, this was due to its disruptive political activities. However, the group's membership more than doubled in the next three years, many of them citizens unhappy with the IRS's apparent overreach.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: As early as 1947, the Bureau of Reclamation had begun investigating two potential sites, both located in the narrow lower reaches of Glen Canyon shortly upstream of Lee's Ferry. The site originally favored by the USBR was just upstream, but the final decision was to build the dam upstream because of stronger foundation rock and easier access to gravel deposits on Wahweap Creek. Because the dam site lay in a remote, rugged area of the Colorado Plateau – more than from the closest paved road, U.S. Route 89 – a new road had to be constructed, branching off from US 89 north of Flagstaff, Arizona, and running through the dam site to its terminus at Kanab, Utah. Because of the isolated location, acquiring the land at the dam and reservoir sites was not particularly difficult, but there were a few disputes with ranchers and miners in the area (many of the Navajo Nation). Much of the land acquired for the dam was through an exchange with the Navajo, in which the tribe ceded Manson Mesa south of the dam site for a similar-sized chunk of land near Aneth, Utah, which the Navajo had long coveted.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: In the early stages of construction, the only way to cross Glen Canyon was a suspension footbridge made of chicken wire and metal grates. Vehicles had to make a journey in order to get from one side of the canyon to the other. A road link was urgently needed, in order to safely accommodate workers and heavy construction equipment. The contract for building the bridge was awarded to Peter Kiewit Sons and the Judson Pacific Murphy Co. for $4 million and construction began in late 1956, reaching completion on August 11, 1957. When finished, the steel arch Glen Canyon Bridge was itself a marvel of engineering: at long and rising above the river, it was the highest bridge of its kind in the United States and one of the highest in the world. The bridge soon became a major tourist attraction. The March 1959 issue of "LIFE" reported that "motorists [were] driving miles out of their way just to be thrilled by its dizzying height."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Workers moved to the dam site beginning in the mid-late 1950s; the construction camp started out as a haphazardly organized trailer park that grew with the workforce. During the construction of the Glen Canyon Bridge, the USBR also began planning a company town to house the workers. This resulted in the town of Page, Arizona, named for former Reclamation Commissioner John C. Page. By 1959, Page had a host of temporary buildings, electricity, and a small school serving workers' children. As the city grew, it gathered additional features, including numerous stores, a hospital, and even a jeweler. It was intended to serve a maximum population of eight thousand, accounting for the workers' families; the peak workforce would eventually exceed 2,500 in the busiest phases of construction. The engineer in charge of the project would be Lem F. Wylie, who had worked on Hoover Dam and had previously designed six other USBR dams.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Prior to and during construction, three separate grants were issued by the National Park Service to document and recover artifacts of historical cultures along the river. These went to University of Utah historian C. Gregory Crampton and anthropologist Jesse Jennings, and to the Museum of Northern Arizona. Crampton subsequently wrote several books and articles on his findings. The Museum of Northern Arizona funded an expedition by William Miller and Helmut Abt, in coordination with the Navajo Nation, to investigate historical artifacts. They discovered a petroglyph in the upper part of the canyon depicting the appearance of the Crab Nebula in 1054.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: In 1956, work began on the two diversion tunnels that would carry the Colorado River around the dam site during construction. Each of the tunnels was in diameter, with a combined capacity of ; the right-side tunnel was long and the left . The right tunnel would be used for carrying the Colorado's normal flow around the dam site, while the left tunnel, above the water, would only be used during floods. The lower reaches of the tunnels would later be used to form the lower ends of the dam's spillways. About of material would have to be excavated from the diversion tunnels.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: On October 15, 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower pressed a button on his desk in Washington, D.C., sending a telegraph signal that set off the first blast of dynamite at the portal of the right diversion tunnel. Drilling the tunnels through the porous Navajo sandstone abutting the dam site posed major problems for the excavation crews of the Mountain States Construction Company, which won the contract for the diversion tunnels in 1956. Transporting workers and equipment to the bottom of the canyon was extremely difficult. Initially, transport was done by barge from Wahweap Creek, but the fast current of the Colorado River could be dangerous. After a barge capsized, spilling tons of machinery into the river, a much safer cable-car system was installed. During excavation, the rock frequently broke apart or "slabbed" and collapsed into the tunnels, and metal bolts had to be drilled into the rock to secure it. The largest such event, on August 5, 1958, sent crashing down onto the upper portal of the left diversion tunnel.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Material dug out of the tunnels and the dam abutments on the canyon walls was used to build the two cofferdams to divert the Colorado River, which were complete in February 1960. The upper cofferdam was high, and it alone could store several million acre-feet of water to protect the dam site from flooding in the event that inflows exceeded the capacity of the diversion tunnels. On February 11, 1959, the right diversion tunnel was completed and began to carry the flow of the Colorado. The left tunnel was finished over three months later on May 19, 1959, slightly behind schedule.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: With the Colorado River safely diverted around the canyon, construction could begin on the actual concrete arch dam. The contract was given to the Merritt-Chapman & Scott Corporation for an "astoundingly low" $107,955,552, about $30 million less than USBR's own estimate. Then, right before construction began, about 750 workers organized a strike because of a wage reduction due to the completion of public facilities at Page. In December 1959, wages were raised by $4 a day, quelling the strikers. Concrete placement started on June 16, 1960, and started at a sluggish but growing pace. In 1962 the workforce topped out at nearly 2,500 employees laboring on the dam. Construction would ultimately claim eighteen lives and injure numerous other workers, but contrary to popular myth, no workers were buried alive in the concrete. Cement needed to make concrete for the dam came from the Phoenix Cement Company plant constructed for the purpose in Clarkdale, south of Flagstaff.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: A huge concrete plant capable of putting out 1,450 tons per hour was installed, and a pair of cableways with movable towers (with capacities of 50 and 25 tons respectively) spanned the canyon, carrying the concrete buckets to their final destinations on the steadily rising crest of the dam. The concrete was poured into modular high wooden blocks or "forms", the largest measuring up to by ; more than 3,000 of these blocks made up the main structure of the dam. Once the concrete cured, the wooden scaffolding was removed and shifted upwards to accommodate the next load of concrete. As more efficient methods of concrete pouring were installed, including conveyors and remotely controlled buckets, the workforce gradually decreased. By late 1962, concrete was being poured into the dam at a rate of per day even as the workforce was scaled down to about 1,500.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: At the beginning of 1963, the dam was high enough to begin impounding water; huge steel gates were closed over the right diversion tunnel on January 21, and Lake Powell began to rise. A minimal flow of was allowed through the dam, to prevent the Colorado River from drying up completely. On that day, David Brower confronted President John F. Kennedy in a last-ditch effort to delay Glen Canyon's inundation. Brower later said of that exchange: "On January 2, 1963, the last day on which the execution of one of the planet's greatest scenic antiquities could yet have been spared, the man who theoretically had the power to save the place did not. I was within a few feet of his desk in Washington that day and witnessed how the forces long at work had their way. So a steel gate dropped, choking off the flow of the canyon's carotid artery, and from that moment the canyon's life force ebbed quickly. A huge reservoir, absolutely not needed in this century, almost certainly not needed in the next, and conceivably never to be needed at all, began to fill."


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: Construction continued and on September 13, 1963, the dam was topped out. Work on the power plant and spillways began directly after the dam wall was complete. The spillway tunnels were excavated around both abutments of the dam, dropping steeply from their control gates on Lake Powell to merge with the lower ends of the diversion tunnels. This measure saved cost, but introduced a weak point where the two tunnels intersected. The upper ends of the diversion tunnels were then sealed with solid concrete. The first electricity was generated on September 4, 1964, with the power sent into the regional electric grid through a pair of long-distance transmission lines as far as Phoenix, Arizona and Farmington, New Mexico. It took two more years to complete all remaining aspects of the project. On September 22, 1966 Lady Bird Johnson gave the official dedication speech for Glen Canyon Dam, before a crowd of 3,000 people.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: With a capacity equal to almost two years' annual flow of the Colorado River, engineers were aware that Lake Powell would be difficult to fill, but more problems were encountered than expected. The original plan was to fill Lake Powell to above sea level, the minimum level necessary to generate hydroelectric power by late 1964, after which water would be released down to Lake Mead, with only the excess stored in Lake Powell. However, the spring runoff in 1963 was the lowest on record in ten years. By the beginning of 1964, Lake Powell had barely reached half the target level, and Lake Mead had seen a sharp decline. In March, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall ordered the filling halted and extra releases made to Lake Mead, to the consternation of the Upper Basin states. In May, Udall changed his mind yet again to lower releases, gambling that the spring runoff would be enough to raise Powell to minimum power pool by autumn, by which time power releases could begin, to prevent Lake Mead from falling below "its" minimum power pool. That gamble paid off, with Lake Powell barely inching over the mark on August 16, 1964.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: It took more than 17 years for Lake Powell to finally reach its full elevation of above sea level, which it crossed on June 22, 1980. One of the main reasons for this slow rise, in addition to the need to meet obligations to the Lower Basin, was the leakage of vast amounts of water into the porous Navajo Sandstone aquifer. Between 1963 and 1969, as much as leaked into the reservoir banks each year. Conversely, some of this "bank storage" flows back into the reservoir as springs and seeps when Lake Powell is low. Exactly how much of this water has potential to return to the reservoir, and how much "disappears" into the ground, is subject to debate.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: The Bureau of Reclamation projected that once Lake Powell filled, the total bank storage would stabilize at approximately , and henceforth would fluctuate depending on water levels in the reservoir. The actual loss was , twice the initial prediction, but river flow data indicates that further leakage after 1980 has been negligible. However, according to a 2013 study by hydrologist Thomas Myers for the Glen Canyon Institute, the reservoir continues to lose about each year due to leakage. According to USBR data for water year 2015 (a year when Lake Powell did not experience a significant overall gain or loss in volume), Lake Powell lost a total of to evaporation and only to leakage.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: During the El Niño winter of 1982–1983, the Bureau of Reclamation predicted an average runoff for the Colorado River basin based on snowpack measurements in the Rocky Mountains. However, snowfall during April and May was exceptionally heavy; this combined with a sudden rise in temperatures and unusual rainstorms in June to produce major flooding across the western United States. With Lake Powell nearly full, the USBR did not have enough time to draw down the reservoir to accommodate extra runoff. By mid-June, water was pouring into Lake Powell at over . Even with the power plant and river outlet works running at full capacity, Lake Powell continued to rise to the point where the spillways had to be opened. Other than a brief test in 1980, this was the only time the spillways had ever been used.


title: Glen Canyon Dam

text: At the beginning of June, dam operators opened the gates on the left spillway, sending , less than one-tenth of capacity, down the tunnel into the river below. After a few days, the entire dam suddenly began to shake violently. The spillway was closed down for inspections and workers discovered that the flow of water was causing cavitation – the explosive collapse of vacuum pockets in water moving at high speed – which was damaging the concrete lining and eroding the rock spillway tunnels from the upper ends of the diversion tunnels, which connect to the bottom of the reservoir. This was rapidly being destroyed by the cavitation and it was feared that a connection would be made to the bottom of Lake Powell, compromising the dam's foundation and causing the dam to fail.