title: Xochimilco

text: The Virgilio Uribe rowing course was built for the 1968 Olympics in one of the canals. It measures 2,000m long and wide. It is still used for canoeing, kayaking, and rowing.


title: Xochimilco

text: The borough contains 116 preschools, 128 primary schools, 48 middle schools, four technical high schools and 15 high schools that serve a student population of over 100,000 students. 4.6 percent of the population is illiterate, lower than the city average. The highest percentage of illiterate people consists of those over sixty years of age. The lowest is in the 15-19-year-old bracket.


title: Xochimilco

text: The Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana was established in 1974 in Xochimilco under Mexican president Luis Echeverría to meet the growing demand for public university education in the city. Currently, the institution has three campuses in the Federal District, in Azcapotzalco, Iztapalapa and Xochimilco and it is composed of several academic divisions. These divisions include the División de Ciencias y Artes para el Diseño, División de Ciencias Biológicas y de la Salud and the División de Ciencias Sociales y Humanidades. The institution offers about twenty bachelor's degrees, an equal number of master's and doctorate degrees as well as a number of certificate programs.


title: Xochimilco

text: The Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas (National School of Fine Arts) was originally established as the San Carlos Academy in the historic center of Mexico City during the late colonial era in 1781. The school became the most prestigious art academy in Mexico after Independence in the 19th century. In 1910, the school was incorporated into the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. In the 1970s, the school divided into an undergraduate and graduate division and in 1979, the undergraduate division moved to a new campus in Xochimilco, leaving the graduate studies at the traditional site in the historic center. ENAP remains as the country's largest and most prestigious art education institution.


title: Xochimilco

text: National public high schools of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) "Escuela Nacional Preparatoria" include:


title: Xochimilco

text: Public high schools of the "Instituto de Educación Media Superior del Distrito Federal" (IEMS) include:


title: Xochimilco

text: The Colegio Alemán Alexander von Humboldt has its Campus Sur/Campus Süd (formerly Campus Xochimilco) in the district. The Kindergarten and primary levels occupy the Plantel Tepepan in Colonia Tepepan and the secondary and preparatory levels occupy the Plantel La Noria in Colonia Huichapan (La Noria).


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome (officially the King County Stadium) was a multi-purpose stadium located in the Industrial District (later SoDo) neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, United States. Owned and operated by King County, it was best known as the home stadium of the Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL) and the Seattle Mariners of Major League Baseball (MLB); it was also home to the Seattle SuperSonics of the National Basketball Association (NBA) and additionally served as both the home outdoor and indoor venue for the Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League (NASL). The Kingdome measured wide from its inside walls.


title: Kingdome

text: The idea of constructing a covered stadium for a major league football or baseball team was first proposed to Seattle officials in 1959. Voters rejected separate measures to approve public funding for such a stadium in 1960 and 1966, but the outcome was different in 1968; King County voters approved the issue of $40 million in municipal bonds to construct the stadium. Construction began in 1972 and it opened in 1976 as the home of the Sounders and Seahawks. The Mariners moved in the following year, and the SuperSonics moved in the year after that, only to move back to the Seattle Center Coliseum in 1985. The stadium hosted several major sports events, including the Soccer Bowl in August 1976, the Pro Bowl in January 1977, the Major League Baseball All-Star Game in July 1979, the NBA All-Star Game in 1987, and the NCAA final Four in 1984, 1989, and 1995.


title: Kingdome

text: During the 1990s, the Seahawks' and Mariners' respective ownership groups began to question the suitability of the Kingdome as a venue for each team, threatening to relocate unless new, publicly funded stadiums were built. An issue was the fact that neither team saw their shared tenancy as profitable; both teams also questioned the integrity of the stadium's roof as highlighted by the collapse of ceiling tiles onto the seating area before a scheduled Mariners game in 1994. As a result, public funding packages for new, purpose-built stadiums for the Mariners and Seahawks were respectively approved in 1995 and 1997.


title: Kingdome

text: The Mariners moved to Safeco Field, now known as T-Mobile Park, midway through the 1999 season, and the Seahawks temporarily moved to Husky Stadium after the 1999 season. On March 26, 2000, the Kingdome was demolished by implosion. The Seahawks' new stadium, now known as Lumen Field, was built on the site and opened in 2002. King County finally paid off the bonds used to build and repair the Kingdome in 2015, fifteen years after its demolition.


title: Kingdome

text: In 1959, Seattle restaurateur David L. Cohn wrote a letter to the Seattle City Council suggesting the city needed a covered stadium for a major professional sports franchise. A domed stadium was thought to be a must because of Seattle's frequent rain. At the time, the city had Husky Stadium and Sick's Stadium for college football and minor league baseball, respectively, but both were deemed inadequate for a major league team.


title: Kingdome

text: In 1960, King County commissioners placed a $15 million bond issue measure on the ballot to fund construction of a stadium, but voters on November 8 defeated it with only 48 percent approval because of doubt the stadium could be built within that budget, and lack of a guarantee the city would have a team to play in the stadium. By 1966, the National Football League and the American League were both considering granting the city an expansion franchise, and as a result, the King County Council placed another bond issue measure on the ballot for a September vote. While it received 51.5 percent approval, it did not reach the 60 percent required to proceed; the requirement was due to a 1932 initiative that mandated a supermajority for tax levies over 40 mills.


title: Kingdome

text: In 1967, the American League granted Seattle an expansion franchise that would be known as the Seattle Pilots. The league clearly stated Sick's Stadium was not adequate as a major-league stadium, and stipulated that as a condition of being awarded the franchise, bonds had to be issued to fund construction of a domed stadium that had to be completed by 1970; additionally, the capacity at Sick's Stadium had to be expanded from 11,000 to 30,000 by Opening Day 1969, when the team was scheduled to begin playing. The Pilots were supposed to begin play in 1971 along with the Kansas City Royals. However, when Senator Stuart Symington of Missouri got wind of those plans, he demanded both teams begin play in 1969. The American League had birthed the Royals and Pilots as a result of the Kansas City Athletics moving to Oakland, and Symington would not accept the prospect of Kansas City waiting three years for baseball's return.


title: Kingdome

text: On February 13, 1968, King County voters approved the issue of $40 million in bonds to fund construction of the "King County Multipurpose Domed Stadium" with 62 percent in favor; it was part of the Forward Thrust group of bond propositions that, among other items, had a regional rapid transit system rejected. That year, a committee considered over 100 sites throughout Seattle and King County for the stadium; they unanimously decided the best site would be on the grounds of Seattle Center, site of the 1962 World's Fair. Community members decried the idea, claiming the committee was influenced by special interest groups.


title: Kingdome

text: The Pilots began play as planned in 1969, but Sick's Stadium proved to be a problematic venue for fans, media, and visiting players alike. The Pilots only drew 677,000 fans that season, not nearly enough to break even. It soon became apparent that the Pilots would not survive long enough to move to their new stadium without new ownership. It was also obvious that the timetable for a new stadium would have to be significantly advanced, as Sick's Stadium was completely unsuitable even for temporary use. However, a petition by stadium opponents brought the dome project to a halt. The Pilots' ownership group ran out of money by the end of the season, and with the stadium plans in limbo, the team was forced to declare bankruptcy. Despite efforts by Seattle-area businessmen to buy the team as well as an attempt to keep the team in Seattle through the court system, the Pilots were sold to Milwaukee businessman Bud Selig, who relocated the team to Milwaukee and renamed it the Milwaukee Brewers a week before the start of the 1970 season.


title: Kingdome

text: The push to build the domed stadium continued despite the lack of a major league sports team to occupy it. In May 1970 voters rejected the proposal to build the stadium at Seattle Center. From 1970 to 1972, the commission studied the feasibility and economic impact of building the stadium on King Street adjacent to Pioneer Square and the International District—a site that ranked at the bottom when the commission originally narrowed the field of possible sites in 1968. This drew sharp opposition primarily from the International District community, which feared the impact of the stadium on neighborhood businesses located east of the site. The King Street site was approved 8–1 by the county council in late 1971, and the groundbreaking ceremony in 1972 was held on November 2. Several protesters attended the ceremony, disrupted the speakers, and at one point threw mud balls at them.


title: Kingdome

text: In bidding for construction of the stadium, which had separate offers for the dome and the rest of the stadium, Donald M. Drake Construction Company of Portland, Oregon, was the winning contractor for both with respective bids of $28.9 million and $5.9 million. Peter Kiewit Sons Construction Company was the only other bidder, offering $30.57 million for the stadium and $5.8 million for the roof; the latter came with the caveat of the company using its own design consultant. To help alleviate tension between the International District community and county officials, Drake emphasized the hiring of minorities, with minorities eventually representing 13 percent of the workers at the site; a community center and a shelter were also built in the neighborhood. However, the stadium's construction encountered numerous issues; in January 1973, six support beams for the roof were toppled as one or two of them buckled, bringing down the others in a domino effect. By January 1974, the stadium reached 50 percent completion; only reaching 60 percent completion in July, it was clear that Drake would not reach the December deadline at that point. It was also apparent that Drake was ill-prepared to work on a project with such scale, with numerous errors, delays, and short-staffing slowing down construction. Efforts to renegotiate the contract failed, and on November 22, Drake stopped work on the Kingdome. The county fired Drake on December 10, bringing in Kiewit to finish construction on the stadium.


title: Kingdome

text: On December 5, 1974, the NFL awarded Seattle an expansion franchise to occupy the new stadium; the team was later named the Seattle Seahawks. Construction lasted another two years, and the stadium held an opening ceremony on March 27, 1976. It hosted its first professional sporting event two weeks later on April 9, an exhibition soccer game between the Seattle Sounders and New York Cosmos of the NASL. It set a record for the largest soccer audience in North America at 58,120. The stadium was finished at $20 million over budget, with part of the cost overrun covered by a $12.8 million out-of-court settlement in 1980 between the county and Drake's liability insurers.


title: Kingdome

text: Like virtually all other multi-purpose stadiums, the Kingdome featured AstroTurf artificial turf for its playing surface, with its baseball configuration featuring dirt sliding pits around each base. When it was constructed, artificial turf was considered a must because the roof was likely to inhibit the growth of natural grass, like the Astrodome's roof.


title: Kingdome

text: The AstroTurf surface was first replaced in July 1983 during the MLB All-Star break; Monsanto, the then-owner of AstroTurf, won the turf replacement contract over SuperTurf (then used by the Metrodome) with a bid of $1.2 million. By request of the Mariners and Seahawks, it was replaced again in October and December 1990 at a cost of $2.56 million; the previous surface was sold off thereafter, with 25 rolls of it sold to the Tacoma Dome for $108,200. A strip 40 feet by 4 inches was ripped off left field near second base during a field invasion by celebrating fans after the Mariners won the AL West tiebreaker game in 1995; it was replaced before the first Mariners home game in the ALDS.


title: Kingdome

text: Before the 1990 replacement, the AstroTurf surface was converted from baseball to football configuration via the covering of the infield with turf strips; a one-piece surface was placed over the infield after the conclusion of the Mariners season. The surface was attached together via both Velcro and Ziploc fasteners. After the 1990 replacement, separate surfaces were installed for each team; the Seahawks specifically wanted a stiffer variation of AstroTurf. The replacement surfaces were attached together via zippers.


title: Kingdome

text: The underlying base of the surface was asphalt, with the AstroTurf essentially consisting of a carpet on top of a pad with respective thicknesses of one-half inch and five-eights inch. Lumps, holes, and ridges were also present in the surface along with gaps within its seams. These factors combined to create a playing surface that was despised by both football and baseball players alike; after the 1998 season, a survey by the NFL Players Association found that 56.7 percent of Seahawks players rated the surface as "poor" or "fair", and was the worst-rated one in the AFC West.


title: Kingdome

text: Injuries from playing at the Kingdome and its contemporaries occurred more often compared to stadiums with natural grass. Of note, Seahawks running backs Sherman Smith and Curt Warner respectively suffered season-ending knee injuries in 1980 and 1984 during games at the Kingdome; additionally, the Kingdome's surface is partly blamed for Ken Griffey Jr.'s subsequent injuries and decline in performance after the Mariners traded him to the Cincinnati Reds at the end of the 1999 season.


title: Kingdome

text: The expansion Seattle Seahawks of the National Football League (NFL) played their first game ever on August 1, 1976, a preseason game against the San Francisco 49ers at the Kingdome in which they lost 27–20 before a crowd of 60,825. The Seahawks' first regular season game was against the St. Louis Cardinals at the Kingdome on September 12; they were defeated 30-24 with 58,441 in attendance. At the end of that season, the venue hosted the Pro Bowl, the NFL's all-star game, on January 17, 1977.


title: Kingdome

text: The Seahawks hosted "Monday Night Football" games at the Kingdome twelve times in their history and were 9–3 in those games. The Seahawks and the Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders played five Monday Night games in the Dome in the 1980s with Seattle holding a 3–2 edge including a 37–0 blowout victory in 1986. The next year, in 1987, Bo Jackson of the Los Angeles Raiders rushed for 221 yards, the most ever on MNF, and scored 2 touchdowns. One of his scores was a 91-yard touchdown and the other was a historic plowing into Seahawks high-profile rookie linebacker Brian "The Boz" Bosworth.


title: Kingdome

text: The Seahawks regularly sold out games at the Kingdome from its inception and throughout the 1980s; 117 consecutive regular-season home games were sold out between 1979 and 1993. However, after Ken Behring took over ownership of the team from the Nordstrom family in 1988, the team began to decline in performance; after winning the AFC West that year, it suffered a franchise-worst 2–14 record in 1992. Season ticket sales, which had reached 62,000 that year with a waiting list of 30,000, gradually decreased to 46,000 in 1995, with the team averaging 46,218 in attendance over five games at the Kingdome in 1994; as a result, the Seahawks began failing to sell out games, resulting in their blackout in the Seattle market. After the blackout of the October 24, 1993 game versus the New England Patriots, one more game was blacked out that year, with five games blacked out the following year; KING-TV, the main Seahawks television broadcaster at the time via the NFL on NBC, prevented further blackouts by purchasing all remaining unsold tickets for three games in 1993 and two games in 1994.


title: Kingdome

text: In the Seahawks' heyday, the Kingdome was known as one of the loudest stadiums in the league. Opposing teams were known to practice with jet engine sounds blaring at full blast to prepare for the painfully high decibel levels typical of Seahawks games. It was where Seahawks fans, who were long called "the 12th Man" and led the Seahawks to retire the number 12 in honor of them in 1984, made their reputation as one of the most ravenous fan bases in the NFL, a reputation that has carried over to what is now Lumen Field. The Kingdome's reputation contributed to the NFL's 1989 vote in favor of enacting a rule penalizing home teams for excessive crowd noise; it was especially loathed by Seahawks fans during preseason games, with fan displeasure throughout the league leading commissioner Pete Rozelle to soften enforcement of the rule before the start of the regular season. Raucous Seahawk fans at the Kingdome were also some of the earliest performers of The Wave.


title: Kingdome

text: The city of Seattle made numerous bids to host the Super Bowl during the Seahawks' tenure at the Kingdome. However, despite five bids over 12 years, the Kingdome was never awarded the opportunity to host a Super Bowl; its closest chance was in 1989 for Super Bowl XXVI, which was awarded to the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. In its 1982 bid for Super Bowl XIX, the Seattle City Council voted to give tax exemptions to the NFL if the league selected the Kingdome to host the game.


title: Kingdome

text: The Seahawks played their final game at the Kingdome on January 9, 2000, suffering a first-round playoff loss to the Miami Dolphins in their first playoff appearance since the 1988 season. The Dolphins scored a fourth-quarter touchdown to win 20–17; it marked the first home playoff loss for the Seahawks as well as the first road playoff win in 28 years for the Dolphins. It was the last NFL victory for Hall of Fame quarterback Dan Marino and head coach Jimmy Johnson, and it was also the last event the Kingdome ever hosted before its implosion. The Seahawks had an overall record of in the Kingdome, and were 2–1 in the postseason.


title: Kingdome

text: The first football (and college football by extension) game played in the Kingdome occurred just after it opened in 1976, when the Washington Huskies varsity team won 10–7 against a team of Husky alumni on May 1 before 20,470 fans. The Huskies looked into temporarily renting the Kingdome for the 1987 season when the north grandstand of Husky Stadium collapsed during construction on February 25; however, the Kingdome was ultimately not needed as the grandstand was completed in time for the team's first home game against the Stanford Cardinal on September 5.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome also hosted a game between the Washington State Cougars and USC Trojans on October 9, 1976. With 37,268 in attendance, USC running back Ricky Bell rushed for 346 yards and set the Pac-8 single-game rushing record; the Trojans won by nine points, In 1994, under then-new athletic director Rick Dickson, the Cougars flirted with the idea of hosting an additional home game at the Kingdome starting in 1997; however, the plan never came to fruition.


title: Kingdome

text: In the late 1970s, the Kingdome hosted both instances of a Pacific-10 Conference all-star game called the Challenge Bowl; the bowl, sponsored by the Olympia Brewing Company, pitted an all-star team of Pac-10 players against a similar team from another conference. The Pac-10 went undefeated with a 27–20 victory (as the Pac-8) over the Big Ten on January 15, 1978, and a 36–23 victory over the Big Eight on January 13, 1979.


title: Kingdome

text: During the same period, the University of Puget Sound Loggers and Pacific Lutheran University Lutes also faced off at the Kingdome twice; the Loggers won both contests, defeating the Lutes 23–21 on September 17, 1977, with 13,167 in attendance, and then defeating them again 27–14 on September 23, 1978, before a crowd of 8,329. The 1977 game set a series attendance record at the time.


title: Kingdome

text: The stadium also hosted the annual WIAA high school football state championships in an event called the Kingbowl from 1977 through 1994; the title games were moved to the Tacoma Dome in nearby Tacoma in 1995.


title: Kingdome

text: The Seattle and Tacoma Police Departments played a yearly game named the Bacon Bowl to raise money for charity from 1980 to 2005; the Kingdome hosted it from the beginning until 1982, then had a one-off in 1985 during a nine-year span in which the Tacoma Dome hosted the rest of the games. The Kingdome hosted the game again from 1992 to 1994 before it returned to the Tacoma Dome; the game came back for one final time in 1999 before the stadium was demolished.


title: Kingdome

text: Shortly after the Pilots' departure for Milwaukee, the city of Seattle, King County, and the state of Washington sued the American League, claiming a breach of contract. The league agreed to grant Seattle another franchise in exchange for dropping the lawsuit, and the team that would later be known as the Seattle Mariners was born.


title: Kingdome

text: The Mariners held their first game in franchise history at the Kingdome on April 6, 1977, as the visiting California Angels shut out the Mariners 7–0 in front of a sellout crowd of 57,762. The first pitch was a strike thrown by the Mariners' Diego Seguí to Jerry Remy. In the top of the first inning, Don Baylor registered the first hit at the stadium with a double that scored Remy, who had stolen second and third base after drawing a walk from Seguí. The Mariners' first batter, Dave Collins, struck out; however, the next batter, José Báez, singled for the franchise's first ever hit. The first home run at the venue was hit in the top of the third inning by Joe Rudi; designated hitter Juan Bernhardt scored the Mariners' first home run in their fifth game at the Kingdome on April 10. The Mariners had their first win at the Kingdome two games after the opener (they were also shut out in their second game), defeating the Angels 7–6 on April 8 via a walk-off double from Larry Milbourne. The venue hosted the All-Star Game on July 17, 1979.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome was somewhat problematic as a baseball venue. Foul territory was quite large, and seats in the upper deck as far as from home plate. Part of the problem was that the Kingdome was not a multipurpose stadium in the truest sense. Instead, it was built as a football stadium that could convert into a baseball stadium. For instance, most fans in the outfield seats on the 300 level were unable to see parts of right and center field; these areas were not part of the football playing field.


title: Kingdome

text: For most of the Mariners' first 18 years, their poor play (they did not have a winning season until 1991) combined with the Kingdome's design, led to poor attendance. Some writers and fans called it "the Tomb" (because of its gray concrete and lack of noise) and "Puget Puke." After their inaugural home opener, the Mariners didn't have another sellout for the next 1,018 home games until their 1990 home opener on April 13. At one point the Mariners covered seats in the upper decks in right and right-center with a tarp in order to make the stadium feel "less empty". Additionally, the Kingdome's acoustics created problems for stadium announcers, who had to deal with significant echo issues. However, when the team's fortunes began to change in the mid-1990s and they began drawing larger crowds, especially in the post-season, the noise created an electric atmosphere and gave the home team a distinct advantage similar to the effect on football games. The average attendance of 22,064 in 1995 was the lowest in three years with the removal of nine home games for the season, but when put in perspective, it was still higher compared to any of the Mariners' first 14 seasons.


title: Kingdome

text: Despite its cavernous interior, the Kingdome's field dimensions were relatively small. It had a reputation as a hitter's park, especially in the 1990s when Ken Griffey Jr., Edgar Martínez, Jay Buhner, Alex Rodriguez, and other sluggers played there.


title: Kingdome

text: The large number of in-play objects—speakers, roof support wires and streamers—contributed to an "arena baseball" feel. The Kingdome was somewhat improved in 1982 with the addition of a wall in right field nicknamed the "Walla Walla" (after the city in southeastern Washington); a nearly $100,000 Daktronics out-of-town scoreboard was later installed on it in 1990. In 1990 and 1991, the moving of home plate closer to the backstop, the addition of box seats down the third base line and the removal of a few rows of seats in left field reduced foul territory and made the outfield dimensions longer and asymmetrical.


title: Kingdome

text: In its early years, the outfield was symmetrical with a uniform wall height: deep in center, and short elsewhere. For the All-Star Game in 1979, center field was , power alleys were , and the foul lines were ; the unpadded wall was green with a top yellow stripe, approximately in height and did not have the power alley distances listed on it. Down the lines, the distance was also listed in fathoms (52.7 fm), presumably to maintain a nautical theme in line with the team name; however, this practice was ditched after the 1980 season. Like the Kingdome's contemporaries, the bullpens were located in foul territory adjacent to the baselines and the stands.


title: Kingdome

text: The longest game in the Kingdome took place on July 30, 1998, when the Cleveland Indians defeated the Mariners 9–8 in 17 innings via a three-run homer from Manny Ramirez off Bob Wells; Paul Shuey staved off a comeback by the Mariners in the bottom of the inning to end the game the next morning after five hours and 23 minutes.


title: Kingdome

text: The most noteworthy baseball game in the Kingdome's history took place on October 8, 1995; in the rubber game of the ALDS, the Mariners defeated the New York Yankees 6–5 in 11 innings in front of 57,411 raucous fans. In the bottom of the 11th, Martinez doubled to left, sending Joey Cora and Griffey home with the winning runs and vaulting the Mariners into the ALCS for the first time in franchise history.


title: Kingdome

text: On May 2, 1996, a game at the Kingdome between the Mariners and the Cleveland Indians was suspended in the bottom of the seventh inning because of a minor earthquake. The earthquake, estimated at a magnitude of 5.3 to 5.4, occurred during a pitching change as Indians' pitcher Orel Hershiser was walking off the mound following a home run by Edgar Martínez. After an inspection by engineers, the game was continued the next evening, resulting in a 6-4 win for the Indians.


title: Kingdome

text: Seguí, who retired from professional baseball after the 1977 season, was invited by the Mariners to throw the ceremonial last pitch after the final Mariners game at the Kingdome in 1999. However, while they were able to make the tickets and reservations for Seguí, a payment mix-up prevented him from boarding the flight out of Kansas City International Airport on the day of the game; the incident made him irate such that he refused to visit Seattle again until 2012, when he was invited as part of the Mariners' 35th anniversary celebration. Despite the disappointment from Seguí's son, then-Mariners first baseman David Segui, the ceremony went on as planned; David's son, then-seven-year-old Cory Segui, threw the last pitch to Bob Stinson, who was the Mariners' catcher in their first game.


title: Kingdome

text: In 1989, Griffey Jr. hit a home run in his first-ever plate appearance at the Kingdome on April 10. On June 27, 1999, Griffey Jr. hit the last home run ever at the Kingdome against the Texas Rangers. The Mariners played 1,755 games at the Kingdome, compiling an overall home record of during their 22½-season tenure there.


title: Kingdome

text: Besides the Mariners and Seahawks, the stadium also hosted the Seattle SuperSonics of the National Basketball Association (NBA) for seven seasons. The SuperSonics, having previously played at the Seattle Center Coliseum, announced on July 29, 1977, that they intended to move into the Kingdome for the 1978–79 season after the expiration of their contract with the city of Seattle, the owner of the Coliseum; the team pushed for a move to the Kingdome after the city balked at a $30 million plan to expand the Coliseum to 20,000 seats the previous year. On August 22, the King County Council voted 7–2 to approve a 17-year lease with the SuperSonics, with the agreement signed the following day. The following week, the council unanimously voted on August 29 to spend $1.5 million on improvements to the Kingdome in preparation for the team; the team would pay the same amount over the first seven years as part of the agreement. Additional terms of the agreement had the SuperSonics pay the county 10 percent of ticket sale proceeds (not including admissions taxes) and $2,539 in personnel costs per game; the county additionally kept all game concession and parking revenue. On the same day as the agreement signing, longtime Kingdome critic Frank Ruano filed a referendum petition in an attempt to halt the move, but he announced on September 17 that he would withdraw support from the petition for lack of support.


title: Kingdome

text: While the SuperSonics had played a few games at the Kingdome over the previous two seasons, their full-time tenancy required the addition of 5,000 portable stadium seats added onto the floor of the arena as well as additional scoreboards and a new basketball court. The center circle of the court was positioned over first base, with the court itself laid parallel and adjacent to the right-field seats; the portable seats were positioned across the court with one end hovering over home plate.


title: Kingdome

text: The first SuperSonics game in the Kingdome under the agreement was an exhibition game versus the Portland Trail Blazers on September 22, 1978. A few weeks later, a crowd of 15,219 watched as the SuperSonics defeated the Chicago Bulls, 104–86, on October 14 in their first regular-season game as a tenant. Captain Fred Brown and leading scorer Gus Williams helped lead the team to their first and only championship that season, defeating the Washington Bullets in the Finals and avenging their Finals loss to them the previous season. At the time, the Kingdome was known in the NBA for being the noisiest arena for basketball and for having the largest crowds, with stadium vendor Bill Scott ( Bill the Beerman) taking the duties as cheerleader.


title: Kingdome

text: In the 1979–80 season, the SuperSonics set an NBA record average attendance of 21,725 fans per game (since broken). The SuperSonics set the NBA single-game playoff attendance record at 39,457 during Game 4 of the 1978 NBA Finals; they set it again on April 15, 1980, during a conference semifinal game against the Milwaukee Bucks with an attendance record of 40,172 (also since broken). The Kingdome regular season, single-game attendance record of 38,067 was set on November 22, 1991, when the SuperSonics faced the Chicago Bulls.


title: Kingdome

text: While leaving a SuperSonics game on February 16, 1983, a 21-year-old man from Olympia fell off a ramp and plunged 47 feet to his death; this was despite the installation of signs warning about the chest-level barriers the previous year.


title: Kingdome

text: Logistics would be a problem throughout the team's tenure at the Kingdome because the Seahawks and Mariners had scheduling priority over them, especially during the playoffs when the Mariners were playing there at the same time in the spring. As part of the 1977 agreement, King County agreed to pay the SuperSonics $15,000 for each game (up to five) that was moved elsewhere because of booking issues. Even then, the scheduling priority meant that the SuperSonics would only play home playoff games at the Kingdome while the Mariners were on the road, with most of the games played at the Coliseum; the team even had to use Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the University of Washington for a few games when both the Kingdome and the Coliseum were unavailable.


title: Kingdome

text: Along with the scheduling issues, as with other multipurpose stadiums used by the NBA the Kingdome proved itself to be a less-than-ideal venue for basketball. Although the Kingdome's capacity allowed the SuperSonics to set attendance records, the vast space it afforded meant that it did not have the intimate environment of a dedicated arena; furthermore, fans were displeased about the poor sight lines and cold temperatures in the Kingdome. All these factors, plus dwindling attendance due to poor team performance towards the end of their tenancy at the Kingdome, led SuperSonics general manager Zollie Volchok to sign a 10-year contract with the city of Seattle in 1983, agreeing to have the team move back to the Coliseum after the 1984–85 season in exchange for upgrades there.


title: Kingdome

text: The SuperSonics faced the Phoenix Suns at the Kingdome on April 7, 1985, in their final game as a regular tenant, losing 110–125 with 5,672 in attendance. However, exemplifying the scheduling issues, it was not their final home game of the season; the SuperSonics were forced to play at the Tacoma Dome on April 11 because the Mariners hosted the Oakland Athletics at the Kingdome that day. By that point, the SuperSonics had an average attendance of 7,399, failing to surpass 10,000 seats sold in 29 of 37 games held at the Kingdome in their final season there.


title: Kingdome

text: Despite calling the Coliseum home again, the SuperSonics still played occasionally at the Kingdome over the next few years when large crowds were anticipated; as such, the SuperSonics hosted the 1987 NBA All-Star Game there, having previously hosted the 1974 game at the Coliseum before the Kingdome opened. However, SuperSonics owner Barry Ackerley, who had bought the team from Sam Schulman in October 1983 after the Coliseum deal was signed, started seeking a new arena for them in 1989; team president Bob Whitsitt claimed that the Coliseum was outdated and leaking. Ackerley proposed to build a new arena south of the Kingdome (where T-Mobile Park stands today), but the plan was initially rejected by King County because of objections from the Seahawks and Mariners over inadequate parking. The plan was eventually approved by the Seattle City Council 7–1 on May 30, 1990, but it was ultimately scrapped the following year on June 26 because of issues in financing it; as a compromise measure, the Coliseum was rebuilt as KeyArena during the 1994–95 season, with the SuperSonics playing home games at the Tacoma Dome instead of the closer Kingdome in the meantime. The SuperSonics played at KeyArena until they were controversially relocated to Oklahoma City by owner Clay Bennett after the 2007–08 season.


title: Kingdome

text: The SuperSonics played 303 games at the Kingdome in total, including 14 playoff games; they held an overall record of and a playoff record of at the stadium. Of those games, 20 of them had attendances of 30,000 or more.


title: Kingdome

text: The first men's college basketball game at the Kingdome was held on January 9, 1984, when the Washington Huskies defeated the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, 63–61, in the second overtime in front of 7,466 fans. The Huskies held their only other basketball game at the Kingdome more than a decade later, defeating the Old Dominion Monarchs 71–61 on December 22, 1994, with 4,187 in attendance.


title: Kingdome

text: The only women's basketball game at the Kingdome was held on December 6, 1979, when the Seattle Chieftains were crushed by the Soviet national team, 45–135, before 7,239 spectators.


title: Kingdome

text: The NCAA final Four of men's college basketball was held three times at the Kingdome, with the stadium hosting the 1984, 1989, and 1995 editions. The 1984 championship game saw the Georgetown Hoyas defeat the Houston Cougars, 84–75. Meanwhile, the 1989 championship game had the Michigan Wolverines beat the Seton Hall Pirates, 80–79, in overtime because of a controversial last-second foul call against the Pirates. Finally, with the 1995 championship game, the UCLA Bruins defeated the Arkansas Razorbacks, 89–78, to win their first championship since the retirement of coach John Wooden twenty years earlier in 1975.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome was not the first venue in Seattle to host the Final Four; Hec Edmundson Pavilion had previously hosted it in 1949 and 1952. However, the Kingdome is credited with helping shape the Final Four into an event with a stature comparable to that of the Super Bowl because of its large capacity. It was the only such capable venue on the West Coast of the United States; the last time a non-Seattle West Coast site hosted the game was when the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena hosted it in 1972. The 1995 edition was the last time that Seattle hosted a Final Four, and it will likely remain that way for the foreseeable future since the Kingdome's successors were not designed with a controlled environment in mind; it also remains the last time that the Final Four was held on the West Coast. The Final Four was not held again in the Western United States until 2017, when University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona, hosted it for the Phoenix area.


title: Kingdome

text: On February 18, 1979, the Harlem Globetrotters held an exhibition game at the Kingdome with close to 23,000 in attendance, of which around 3,500 were under 12 years old.


title: Kingdome

text: As a result of the boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics by the United States, the U.S. Olympic team faced off against a squad of NBA players in a six-game exhibition tournament called the "Gold Medal Series" that June. On June 20, the NBA All-Stars defeated the U.S. Olympic team, 78–76, before a crowd of 10,902; it was the only victory by the NBA squad in the tournament.


title: Kingdome

text: The Washington Interscholastic Activities Association (WIAA) held their 3A and 4A high school basketball state tournament five times at the Kingdome between 1993 and 1999. The boys' and girls' games were held simultaneously until the championship, at which point they took turns playing on a single court.


title: Kingdome

text: The Seattle Sounders of the North American Soccer League (NASL) were the first tenant to move into the Kingdome upon its opening, having played at Memorial Stadium for their first two seasons. As a result, they held the honor of hosting the first sporting event at the Kingdome with an exhibition game versus the New York Cosmos on April 9, 1976; the Cosmos defeated them 3–1 with 58,128 fans in attendance. Highlighting the secondary treatment of the Sounders, about 5,000 seats were not yet installed when the game occurred. Just weeks later, they hosted their first regular-season game in the Kingdome on April 26, defeating the Portland Timbers 1–0 via a Geoff Hurst penalty kick in the second overtime before 24,983 spectators.


title: Kingdome

text: The largest crowd to attend a Sounders match, regular or postseason, occurred on August 25, 1977, when 56,256 spectators watched as they defeated the Los Angeles Aztecs 1–0 in the second game of the Pacific Conference Final to advance to their first Soccer Bowl. The Sounders' regular-season attendance record was set on August 9, 1980, when the Cosmos defeated them 1–0 in front of 49,606 fans. Overall, the team drew an average attendance of 20,183 from 1975 to 1982, peaking in the 1980 season with an average attendance of 24,247.


title: Kingdome

text: Along with traditional soccer, the Sounders participated in NASL indoor soccer for the 1980–81 and 1981–82 seasons. However, the 1983 outdoor season proved to be a dire one for the Sounders; with the team's front office heavily cutting costly foreign players from the roster, the team suffered their worst season ever performance-wise, resulting in a record low average attendance of 8,181. That season additionally saw the smallest crowd to attend a Sounders game, with only 4,270 spectators on hand to witness their 3–1 victory over the Tulsa Roughnecks on July 27. With the cuts not enough to keep the team afloat, the owners ultimately elected to fold it that year on September 6; their final home game was a 3–2 victory over the San Diego Sockers on August 25 with 7,331 fans in attendance.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome hosted the NCAA Division I Men's Soccer Championship Finals twice in consecutive years. The final on December 17, 1984, featured the Clemson Tigers, coached by Dr. I. M. Ibrahim, and defending national champion Indiana Hoosiers, headed by coach Jerry Yeagley; 7,926 spectators watched as the Tigers won 2–1 in regulation to bring home their first national championship in soccer and deny the Hoosiers a third straight title. A year later, on December 14, 1985, a crowd of 5,986 watched as the UCLA Bruins defeated the American Eagles 1–0 after eight overtime periods to win their first national soccer championship; Bruin coach Sigi Schmid went on to coach the Seattle Sounders FC of Major League Soccer (MLS), a phoenix club of the NASL Sounders, from its inaugural season in 2009 to 2016.


title: Kingdome

text: A game of the 1976 U.S.A. Bicentennial Cup Tournament was held at the Kingdome on May 28, with Brazil defeating Team America 2–0 before 20,245 spectators.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome also hosted the NASL's championship game, the Soccer Bowl, between the Minnesota Kicks and the Toronto Metros-Croatia on August 28, 1976; the Metros-Croatia defeated the Kicks 3–0 before a crowd of 25,765, setting an NASL championship attendance record at the time.


title: Kingdome

text: A CONCACAF Championship qualifier for the 1978 FIFA World Cup was hosted at the Kingdome on October 20, 1976; the game, which saw the United States defeat Canada 2–0 before a crowd of 17,675, was the first instance of a World Cup qualifier that was held indoors.


title: Kingdome

text: A doubleheader featuring both the U.S. Olympic and national squads was held at the Kingdome on February 3, 1979. The U.S. Olympic team defeated the Canadian Olympic team 2–0 in the first game, while the Soviet national team defeated the U.S. national team 3–1 in the second game; 13,317 spectators were present for both games.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome was additionally considered in Seattle's bid to be a host city for the 1994 FIFA World Cup, but it was rejected in favor of Husky Stadium because of concerns over its indoor environment and its turf; the bid ultimately failed in part because of apprehension from the University of Washington.


title: Kingdome

text: Upon its opening, the Kingdome served as one of the main convention centers in Seattle alongside the Seattle Center Coliseum. During preliminary studies for the then-proposed Washington State Convention Center (now the Seattle Convention Center) in the early 1980s, a proposal to build it on the stadium's northern parking lot was floated, but it was never seriously considered and ultimately rejected by the convention center board in favor of building it in the Downtown area.


title: Kingdome

text: The largest crowd to attend a single event in the Kingdome came early, during an eight-day Billy Graham crusade in 1976. The Friday night edition on May 14 drew 74,000 and featured singer Johnny Cash; 5,000 were turned away. The stadium was also part of Seattle's bid to host the 1988 Republican National Convention, but it ultimately failed because of a scheduling conflict with the Mariners.


title: Kingdome

text: Country singer CW McCall performed 8 shows during the 4-day Custom Van, Truck, 4-Wheel Drive and Motorcycle Show, March 17-20, 1977.


title: Kingdome

text: Numerous rock concerts were held in the venue, despite significant echo and sound delay problems attributable to the structure's cavernous size.


title: Kingdome

text: By the 1990s, multi-purpose stadiums fell out of favor with the public, and the Kingdome's suitability as an NFL and MLB venue came into doubt as a result. Neither the Seahawks' nor the Mariners' respective ownership groups saw the shared stadium arrangement as economically feasible because the Kingdome was unable to meet the needs of both tenants; they also noted the lack of revenue-generating luxury suites prominent in newer stadiums. After several years of threats to relocate the Mariners because of poor attendance and revenue, then-owner Jeff Smulyan put the team up for sale on December 6, 1991; he subsequently received approval by MLB to sell the team to an ownership group led by Nintendo president Hiroshi Yamauchi on June 10, 1992. Almost immediately, the new ownership group began campaigning with local and state governments to secure public funding for a new baseball-only stadium. In March 1994, King County Executive Gary Locke appointed a task force to study the need for a baseball-only stadium.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome's roof had been problematic from the beginning because of a design flaw. With the stadium's limited budget compared to its contemporaries, its architects had the roof's acoustic ceiling tiles serve a dual purpose as forms to pour concrete over for the roof sections. They were firmly placed via six metal clips on their edges, but the effectiveness of the clips was weakened as moisture from the polyurethane insulation accumulated in the tiles because it lacked proper water vapor management. As a result, leaks were discovered in the roof three months before the stadium opened, and several attempts at repairs made the situation worse or were quickly undone.


title: Kingdome

text: In 1993, the county decided to strip off the outer roof coating and replace it with a special coating. Sandblasting failed to strip the old roof material off, and the contractor changed its method to pressure washing. This pressure-washing resulted in water seepage through the roof, and on July 19, 1994, four , waterlogged acoustic ceiling tiles fell into the seating area. The tiles fell while the Mariners were on the field preparing for a scheduled game against the Baltimore Orioles, a half-hour before the gates were to open for fans to enter the stadium. As a result, the Kingdome was closed for repairs.


title: Kingdome

text: The Mariners were forced to play the last 20 games of the 1994 season on the road after the players' union vetoed playing the "home" games at Cheney Stadium in Tacoma, BC Place Stadium in Vancouver, British Columbia, or a neutral site because the union's believed that its members should play only in major-league venues. The extended road trip could have lasted over two months, but it was shortened because of the 1994–95 Major League Baseball strike, which began on August 12 and ended up canceling the remainder of the 1994 MLB season; the strike also resulted in a delay to the start of the 1995 season. The Seahawks had to play both their two preseason home games and their first three regular-season home games of the 1994 season at nearby Husky Stadium.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome held a reopening ceremony the weekend of November 4–6, 1994, which culminated with the Seahawks returning to the stadium for a regular-season game against the Cincinnati Bengals. Repairing the roof ultimately cost US$51 million, and two construction workers lost their lives in a crane accident on August 17 during the repair. The incident also motivated plans to replace the stadium.


title: Kingdome

text: On September 19, 1995, King County voters defeated a ballot measure that would have funded the construction of a new baseball-only stadium for the Mariners. However, the following month, the Mariners made it to the MLB postseason for the first time and, on October 8, defeated the New York Yankees in the decisive fifth game of the 1995 ALDS on the heels of a walk-off game-winning double hit by Edgar Martínez. The Mariners' postseason run demonstrated that there was a fan base in Seattle that wanted the team to stay in town, and as a result, the Washington State Legislature approved a separate funding package for a new stadium on October 14.


title: Kingdome

text: In January 1996, Seahawks owner Ken Behring announced he was moving the team to Los Angeles and the team would play at Anaheim Stadium, which had recently been vacated as a football venue when the Los Angeles Rams moved to St. Louis. His rationale for the decision included unfounded safety concerns surrounding the seismic stability of the Kingdome. Behring went so far as to relocate team headquarters to Anaheim, California, but his plans were defeated when lawyers found out that the Seahawks could not break their lease on the Kingdome until 2005. As a result, Behring tried to sell the team. He found a potential buyer in Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who stipulated that a new publicly funded stadium had to be built as a condition of his purchase of the team. Allen funded a special election held on June 17, 1997, that featured a measure that would allocate public funding for a new stadium for the Seahawks on the Kingdome site. The measure passed, Allen officially purchased the team, and the Kingdome's fate was sealed.


title: Kingdome

text: Despite the intention of the Mariners to start playing at their new home at the beginning of the 1999 season, construction delays meant that installation of its retractable roof would not occur on time, leading to another sale threat by the team's owners. However, the team eventually agreed to play at the Kingdome from the start of the season until after the All-Star Game, with construction on the new home starting on March 8, 1997. Two years later, a sold-out crowd of 56,530 watched as the Mariners defeated the Texas Rangers 5–2 in their final game at the Kingdome on June 27, 1999; they played their first game at their new home, Safeco Field, nearly three weeks later on July 15.


title: Kingdome

text: Meanwhile, the Seahawks temporarily relocated to Husky Stadium following the 1999 season. To make way for construction of their new stadium, the Kingdome was stripped down and prepared for demolition. During the process, a security incident occurred on February 21, 2000, when a skateboarder disguised himself as a construction worker, climbed up onto the roof, and skated on it with two friends filming him on the nearby Alaskan Way Viaduct; demolition crews were unimpressed by the incident and implemented tighter security measures in response. On the morning of March 26, 2000 at 8:30 AM, the Kingdome was demolished by Controlled Demolition, Inc. via implosion, just one day short of 24 years after the stadium's opening; it set a record recognized by Guinness World Records for the largest building, by volume, ever by implosion. The Kingdome was the first large, domed stadium to be demolished in the United States; its demolition was also the first live event covered by ESPN Classic. The new stadium, Seahawks Stadium, eventually opened on July 20, 2002, in time for the beginning of the NFL season that year.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome was demolished before the debt issued to finance its construction was fully paid, and as of September 2010, residents of King County were still responsible for more than $80 million in debt on the demolished stadium. The debt was retired on March 2015, nine months ahead of the original bond maturity and 15 years after the stadium's demolition. The 2% of the 15.6% hotel/motel tax earmarked for the Kingdome debt no longer needed went instead to the county's 4Culture program for arts, heritage, and preservation.


title: Kingdome

text: Because of its versatility and its prominent position in the Seattle skyline for close to a quarter-century, the Kingdome was featured in numerous forms of media during and after its existence. On television, it served as the backdrop for a rescue in the 1978 TV movie "Most Deadly Passage" of NBC's "Emergency!" series, which featured the work of Seattle Medic One paramedics. It was also mentioned in 1992 with the airing of "Crushed", the sixteenth episode of the fifth season of ABC sitcom "Full House"; in the episode, guest star Tommy Page boasted to Jesse Katsopolis about playing there. The Kingdome was mentioned again in 1998 during the sixth season of NBC sitcom "Frasier", which was set in Seattle. In the sixth episode, "Secret Admirer", Martin describes Daphne's frustrating driving that repeatedly takes them right into various traffic delays, ending with them encountering traffic from the Kingdome. Furthermore, the Kingdome's demolition was featured on The History Channel's "Modern Marvels" series with their "Concrete" episode that first aired on May 31, 2000.


title: Kingdome

text: The Kingdome was not limited to just television mentions; numerous songs mentioned it in their lyrics. Rock band Foo Fighters mentioned it in the refrain of "New Way Home", which was featured on their 1997 album, "The Colour and the Shape". Rapper Macklemore also mentioned the Kingdome in "My Oh My", a 2011 song that paid tribute to Dave Niehaus, the longtime play-by-play announcer of the Mariners who had recently died; in it, he talks about growing up in Seattle and going to the Kingdome. The song mentions the Double in the Mariners–Yankees 1995 ALDS, and its accompanying music video also contains footage of the Kingdome's demolition.


title: Kingdome

text: With the rise of 3D computer graphics, video games started to depict the Kingdome as well. The Gran Turismo series of racing games on the PlayStation line of consoles featured the Kingdome in the Seattle Circuit race track, a street circuit based on the roads of Seattle. Seattle Circuit is featured in Gran Turismo 2, , Gran Turismo 4, Tourist Trophy, and Gran Turismo PSP. Despite the Kingdome's demolition occurring before the game was released, Gran Turismo 3: A-Spec still featured it in the track. The Kingdome also made an appearance in the 2007 RTS game "World in Conflict", in which it was destroyed by Soviet artillery during a Soviet invasion of Seattle in an alternate timeline.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Matthew Alexander Henson (August 8, 1866March 9, 1955) was an African American explorer who accompanied Robert Peary on seven voyages to the Arctic over a period of nearly 23 years. They spent a total of 18 years on expeditions together. He is best known for his participation in the 1908–1909 expedition that claimed to have reached the geographic North Pole on April 6, 1909. Henson said he was the first of their party to reach the pole.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Henson was born in Nanjemoy, Maryland, to sharecropper parents who were free Black Americans before the Civil War. He spent most of his early life in Washington, D.C., but left school at the age of twelve to work as a cabin boy. He later returned to Washington and worked as a salesclerk at a good department store. One of his customers was Robert Peary, who in 1887 hired him as a personal valet. At the time, Peary was working on the Nicaragua Canal.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Their first Arctic expedition together was in 1891–92. Henson served as a navigator and craftsman, and was known as Peary's "first man". Like Peary, he studied Inuit survival techniques.


title: Matthew Henson

text: During their 1908–09 expedition to Greenland, Henson was one of the six men – including Peary and four Inuit assistants – who claimed to have been the first to reach the geographic North Pole. In interviews, Henson identified as the first member of the party to reach what they believed was the pole. Their claim had gained widespread acceptance but in 1989, Wally Herbert published research that found that their expedition records were unreliable and indicated an implausibly high speed during their final rush for the pole, and that the men could have fallen short of the pole due to navigational errors.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Henson achieved a degree of fame as a result of participating in the expedition, and in 1912, he published a memoir titled "A Negro Explorer at the North Pole". As he approached old age, his exploits received renewed attention. In 1937, he was the first African American to be made a life member of The Explorers Club; in 1948 he was elevated to the club's highest level of membership. In 1944, Henson was awarded the Peary Polar Expedition Medal, and he was received at the White House by Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. In 1988, he and his wife were re-interred at Arlington National Cemetery. In 2000, Henson posthumously was awarded the Hubbard Medal by the National Geographic Society. In September 2021, the International Astronomical Union named a lunar crater after him.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Henson was born on August 8, 1866 on his parents' farm east of the Potomac River in Charles County, Maryland to sharecroppers who had been free people of color before the American Civil War. Matthew's parents were subjected to attacks by the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups, who terrorized southern freedmen and former free people of color after the Civil War.


title: Matthew Henson

text: To escape from racial violence in southern Maryland, the Henson family sold the farm in 1867 and moved to Georgetown, then still an independent town adjacent to the national capital. He had an older sister S., born in 1864, and two younger sisters Eliza and M. Matthew's mother died when Matthew was seven. His father Lemuel remarried to a woman named Caroline and had additional children with her, including daughters and a son.


title: Matthew Henson

text: After his father died, Matthew was sent to live with his uncle, who lived in Washington, D.C. (Georgetown was made part of Washington, DC in 1871.) The uncle paid for a few years of education for Matthew but soon died. Henson attended a Black public school for the next six years, during the last of which he took a summer job washing dishes in a restaurant. His early years were marked by one especially memorable event. When he was 10 years old, he went to a ceremony honoring Abraham Lincoln, the American president who had fought so hard to preserve the Union during the Civil War and had issued the proclamation that had freed slaves in the occupied Confederate states in 1863. At the ceremony, Matthew was greatly inspired by a speech given by Frederick Douglass, an escaped slave and renowned orator, the longtime leading figure in the Black American community. Douglass called upon Black people to vigorously pursue educational opportunities and battle racial prejudice.


title: Matthew Henson

text: At the age of 12, the youth made his way to Baltimore, Maryland, a busy port. He went to sea as a cabin boy on the merchant ship "Katie Hines," traveling to ports in China, Japan, Africa, and the Russian Arctic seas. The ship's leader, Captain Childs, took Henson under his wing and taught him to read and write.


title: Matthew Henson

text: While working at a Washington D.C. clothing store, B.H. Stinemetz and Sons, in November 1887, Henson met Commander Robert E. Peary. Learning of Henson's sea experience, Peary recruited him as an aide for his planned voyage and surveying expedition to Nicaragua, with four other men. Peary supervised 45 engineers on the canal survey in Nicaragua. Impressed with Henson's seamanship on that voyage, Peary recruited him as a colleague and he became "first man" in his expeditions.


title: Matthew Henson

text: After that, for more than 20 years, their expeditions were to the Arctic. Henson traded with the Inuit and mastered the Inuit language; they called him "Mahri-Pahluk." He was remembered as the only non-Inuit who became skilled in driving the dog sleds and in training dog teams in the Inuit way. He was a skilled craftsman, often coming up with solutions for what the team needed in the harsh Arctic conditions; they learned to build igloos out of snow, for mobile housing as they traveled. His and Peary's teams covered thousands of miles in dog sleds and reached the "Farthest North" point of any Arctic expedition until 1909.


title: Matthew Henson

text: In 1908–09, Peary mounted his eighth attempt to reach the North Pole. The expedition was large, as Peary planned to use his system of setting up cached supplies along the way. When he and Henson boarded his ship "Roosevelt", leaving Greenland on August 18, 1909, they were accompanied by


title: Matthew Henson

text: Peary selected Henson and four Inuit as part of the team of six men who would make the final run to the Pole. Before the goal was reached, Peary could no longer continue on foot and rode in a dog sled. Various accounts say he was ill, was exhausted, or had frozen toes. He sent Henson ahead as a scout.


title: Matthew Henson

text: The claim by Peary's team to have reached the North Pole was widely debated in newspapers at the time, as was the competing claim by Frederick Cook. The National Geographic Society, as well as, the Naval Affairs Subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives both credited Peary's team with having reached the North Pole. Others remained doubtful. A reassessment of Peary's notebook by British polar explorer Wally Herbert in 1988 found it "lacking in essential data", thus, renewing doubts about Peary's claim.


title: Matthew Henson

text: In 1912 Henson published a memoir about his arctic explorations, "A Negro Explorer at the North Pole". In this, he describes himself as a "general assistant, skilled craftsperson, interpreter, and laborer." He later collaborated with author Bradley Robinson on his 1947 biography, "Dark Companion", which told more about his life.


title: Matthew Henson

text: During the following decades, Admiral Peary received many honors for leading the expedition to the Pole, but Henson's contributions were largely ignored. In 1909 he was honored at dinners within the black community. Henson spent most of the next 30 years working on staff in the U.S. Customs House in New York, at the suggestion of Theodore Roosevelt.


title: Matthew Henson

text: He later gained renewed attention. In 1937 Henson was admitted as a member to the prestigious Explorers Club in New York City, and in 1948 he was made an honorary member, of whom there are only 20 per year. In 1944 Congress awarded him and five other Peary aides duplicates of the Peary Polar Expedition Medal, a silver medal given to Peary. Presidents Truman and Eisenhower both honored Henson before he died in 1955.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Henson died in the Bronx, New York on March 9, 1955 at the age of 88. He was buried at Woodlawn Cemetery and survived by his wife Lucy. After her death in 1968, she was buried with him. In 1988, both their bodies were moved for reinterment at Arlington National Cemetery, accompanied by a commemoration ceremony.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Henson married Eva Flint in 1891, but their marriage did not survive their long periods of separation, and they divorced in 1897. He later married Lucy Ross in New York City on September 7, 1907. They had no children.


title: Matthew Henson

text: During the extended expeditions to Greenland, Henson and Peary both took Inuit women as "country wives" and fathered children with them. With his concubine, known as Akatingwah, Henson fathered his only child, a son named Anauakaq, born in 1906. Anauakaq's children are Henson's only descendants. After 1909, Henson never saw Akatingwah or his son again; other explorers sometimes updated him about them. The existence of Henson's and Peary's descendants first was made public by French explorer and ethnologist Jean Malaurie who spent a year in Greenland in 1951–1952.


title: Matthew Henson

text: S. Allen Counter, a neuroscientist and director of the Harvard Foundation, had been interested in Henson's story and traveled in Greenland for research related to it. Learning of possible descendants of the explorers, he tracked down Henson's and Peary's sons, Anauakaq and Kali, respectively in 1986. By then the men were octogenarians. He arranged a visit for them the following year to the United States, where they met American relatives from both families and visited their fathers' graves. Anauakaq died in 1987. He and his wife Aviaq had five sons and a daughter, who have children of their own. While some still reside in Greenland, others have moved to Sweden or the United States.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Several Inuit family members returned to Washington, D.C., in 1988 for the ceremony of reinterment of Henson and his wife Lucy at Arlington National Cemetery. Counter had petitioned President Ronald Reagan for this honor to gain recognition of Henson's contributions to Arctic exploration. Counter wrote a book about his finding Anauakaq and Kali, his research on Henson's life and contributions, historical racial relations, and the Inuits' meeting with Henson and Peary relatives in the United States, entitled "North Pole Legacy: Black, White and Eskimo" (1991). The material was adapted and produced as a film documentary by the same name.


title: Matthew Henson

text: Matthew Henson's only descendants were the children of his Inuit son and their children. According to S. Allen Counter, in his lifetime Henson had identified families of two nieces as being part of his extended birth family. They were Virginia Carter Brannum, daughter of Henson's sister Eliza Henson Carter of Washington, D.C., and Olive Henson Fulton of Boston, daughter of his half-brother. In a 1988 article, Counter noted that these two women had letters and photographs certifying their kinship. They were the only family members to attend Henson's funeral in 1955, along with his widow Lucy Ross Henson. Counter later recommended to the United States Navy and the National Geographic Society that Audrey Mebane, daughter of Virginia Brannum, and Olive Henson Fulton be designated as family representatives for any ceremonies honoring Henson.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: First National Bank (FNB; ) is one of South Africa's "big four" banks. It is a division of FirstRand, a large financial services conglomerate, which trades on the Johannesburg Securities Exchange (JSE), under the symbol: FSR. FNB is also listed on the Botswana Stock Exchange under the symbol FNBB and is a constituent of the BSE Domestic Company Index.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: FNB is one of the three major divisions of the FirstRand Group, and the others being Rand Merchant Bank and Wesbank. First National Bank maintains banking subsidiaries which it owns wholly or in part, in Botswana, Mozambique, Namibia, South Africa, Eswatini, Tanzania, Zambia, Ghana, India, Lesotho and Guernsey. FNB is also actively pursuing expansion plans in Angola and Nigeria Media reports in May 2012, indicated that the bank is also making plans to expand into Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: FNB is the oldest bank in South Africa. It traces its origins back to the "Eastern triocrees Province Bank", which was formed in Grahamstown in 1838. At that time the bank financed the wool export boom in the district. By 1874, the bank had four branches – at Grahamstown, Middelburg, Cradock and Queenstown. Due to a recession the bank was bought out in 1874 by the Oriental Bank Corporation (OBC). However, as a result of financial difficulties that the Oriental Bank Corporation was experiencing in India, it decided to withdraw from South Africa and thus the "Bank of Africa" was formed in 1879 to take over the OBC's business in South Africa.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: At about the same time, the government of the South African Republic desired to create a local commercial bank, due to the discovery of gold in Barberton and the Witwatersrand. The government thus created a bank through a concession agreement. The task of the bank was to focus primarily on financing agricultural development. A state mint was also established as part of the concession. The "Nationale Bank der Zuid-Afrikaansche Republiek Beperk" (National Bank of the South African Republic Limited) was registered in Pretoria in 1891 and opened for business on 5 April of the same year. After the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Boer War in 1902, the name of this bank was changed to the "National Bank of South Africa Limited".


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: Due to another recession, the "Bank of Africa" was bought out by the "National Bank" in 1912, which had already bought out another bank, the "National Bank of the Orange River Colony" in 1910. The Natal Bank, which was founded in 1854 to fund the Natal Colony's sugar industry, also suffered financial difficulties and was taken over in 1914. By this time, the "National Bank" was now one of the strongest and largest banks in South Africa.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: However, by the early 1920s, the "National Bank" was suffering from bad debt and heavy losses. It consequently merged with the "Anglo-Egyptian Bank" and the "Colonial Bank" in 1925 to form Barclays Bank (Dominion, Colonial and Overseas). In 1971 Barclays restructured its operation and its South Africa operation was renamed "Barclays National Bank Limited".


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: Due to a disinvestment campaign against South Africa because of its apartheid policies, Barclays was forced to reduce its shareholding and sold its shareholding in the bank in 1986. The bank was renamed "First National Bank of Southern Africa Limited" in 1987 and became a wholly South African owned and controlled entity.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: In 1998, the financial services interests (which included their shareholding in First National Bank) of "Rand Merchant Bank Holdings" and Anglo-American Corporation were merged to form FirstRand, which is listed on the JSE Securities Exchange. In consequence, FNB became a wholly owned subsidiary of FirstRand Limited; it currently trades as a division of FirstRand Bank Limited.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: In 1999 the First National Bank was mentioned in the 'Ciex Report' that summarised a two-year long investigation into the theft of R26 billion from the state during the apartheid era. The investigators claimed that FNB unlawfully received hundreds of millions of Rands from the SARB. The money was disguised as 'lifeboats' for covering bad loans. True to 2017 the stolen funds have yet to be recovered.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: The FirstRand Group was established in 1998, by the merger of First National Bank of South Africa, Rand Merchant Bank and Momentum Insurance & Asset Management. FirstRand is listed as a "locally controlled bank" by the South African Reserve Bank, the national banking regulator. , the group had total assets valued at US$90.3+ billion (ZAR:698 billion) (2011) with subsidiaries in seven sub-Saharan countries and in Australia and India. Expansion plans in another six African countries are underway.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: During September 2015 it was reported in the Sunday Times that FNB stated "a small number" of safety deposit boxes where stolen from the Sunnyside branch in Pretoria.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: Later in the same year, 360 boxes were stolen in a daring overnight break-in at the Randburg, Johannesburg branch.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: On New Year's Eve, the third and final break-in occurred at the FNB Parktown branch. It was reported at the time that the value was approximately R1.7 Million out of 30 deposit boxes in the branch.


title: First National Bank (South Africa)

text: In 2018, reports surfaced that 60 victims were going ahead with a damages claim against First National Bank (South Africa) reported to amount to R121 Million.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The Byzantine Iconoclasm () were two periods in the history of the Byzantine Empire when the use of religious images or icons was opposed by religious and imperial authorities within the Orthodox Church and the temporal imperial hierarchy. The First Iconoclasm, as it is sometimes called, occurred between about 726 and 787, while the Second Iconoclasm occurred between 814 and 842. According to the traditional view, Byzantine Iconoclasm was started by a ban on religious images promulgated by the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian, and continued under his successors. It was accompanied by widespread destruction of religious images and persecution of supporters of the veneration of images. The Papacy remained firmly in support of the use of religious images throughout the period, and the whole episode widened the growing divergence between the Byzantine and Carolingian traditions in what was still a unified European Church, as well as facilitating the reduction or removal of Byzantine political control over parts of the Italian Peninsula.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction within a culture of the culture's own religious images and other symbols or monuments, usually for religious or political motives. People who engage in or support iconoclasm are called "iconoclasts", Greek for "breakers of icons" (), a term that has come to be applied figuratively to any person who breaks or disdains established dogmata or conventions. Conversely, people who revere or venerate religious images are derisively called "iconolaters" (). They are normally known as "iconodules" (), or "iconophiles" (). These terms were, however, not a part of the Byzantine debate over images. They have been brought into common usage by modern historians (from the seventeenth century) and their application to Byzantium increased considerably in the late twentieth century. The Byzantine term for the debate over religious imagery, ""iconomachy"," means "struggle over images" or "image struggle". Some sources also say that the Iconoclasts were against intercession to the saints and denied the usage of relics, however it is disputed.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Iconoclasm has generally been motivated theologically by an Old Covenant interpretation of the Ten Commandments, which forbade the making and worshipping of "graven images" (Exodus 20:4, Deuteronomy 5:8, see also Biblical law in Christianity). The two periods of iconoclasm in the Byzantine Empire during the 8th and 9th centuries made use of this theological theme in discussions over the propriety of images of holy figures, including Christ, the Virgin (or Theotokos) and saints. It was a debate triggered by changes in Orthodox worship, which were themselves generated by the major social and political upheavals of the seventh century for the Byzantine Empire.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Traditional explanations for Byzantine iconoclasm have sometimes focused on the importance of Islamic prohibitions against images influencing Byzantine thought. According to Arnold J. Toynbee, for example, it was the prestige of Islamic military successes in the 7th and 8th centuries that motivated Byzantine Christians to adopt the Islamic position of rejecting and destroying devotional and liturgical images. The role of women and monks in supporting the veneration of images has also been asserted. Social and class-based arguments have been put forward, such as that iconoclasm created political and economic divisions in Byzantine society; that it was generally supported by the Eastern, poorer, non-Greek peoples of the Empire who had to constantly deal with Arab raids. On the other hand, the wealthier Greeks of Constantinople and also the peoples of the Balkan and Italian provinces strongly opposed Iconoclasm. Re-evaluation of the written and material evidence relating to the period of Byzantine Iconoclasm by scholars including John Haldon and Leslie Brubaker has challenged many of the basic assumptions and factual assertions of the traditional account. Byzantine iconoclasm influenced the later Protestant reformation.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Christian worship by the sixth century had developed a clear belief in the intercession of saints. This belief was also influenced by a concept of hierarchy of sanctity, with the Trinity at its pinnacle, followed by the Virgin Mary, referred to in Greek as the Theotokos ("birth-giver of God") or "Meter Theou" ("Mother of God"), the saints, living holy men, women, and spiritual elders, followed by the rest of humanity. Thus, in order to obtain blessings or divine favour, early Christians, like Christians today,


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: would often pray or ask an intermediary, such as the saints or the Theotokos, or living fellow Christians believed to be holy, to intercede on their behalf with Christ. A strong sacramentality and belief in the importance of physical presence also joined the belief in intercession of saints with the use of relics and holy images (or icons) in early Christian practices.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Believers would, therefore, make pilgrimages to places sanctified by the physical presence of Christ or prominent saints and martyrs, such as the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Relics, or holy objects (rather than places), which were a part of the claimed remains of, or had supposedly come into contact with, Christ, the Virgin or a saint, were also widely utilized in Christian practices at this time. Relics, a firmly embedded part of veneration by this period, provided physical presence of the divine but were not infinitely reproducible (an original relic was required), and still usually required believers to undertake pilgrimage or have contact with somebody who had.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The use of images had greatly increased during this period, and had generated a growing opposition among many in the church, although the progress and extent of these views is now unclear. Images in the form of mosaics and paintings were widely used in churches, homes and other places such as over city gates, and had since the reign of Justinian I been increasingly taking on a spiritual significance of their own, and regarded at least in the popular mind as capable of possessing capacities in their own right, so that "the image acts or behaves as the subject itself is expected to act or behave. It makes known its wishes ... It enacts evangelical teachings, ... When attacked it bleeds, ... [and] In some cases it defends itself against infidels with physical force ...". Key artefacts to blur this boundary emerged in c. 570 in the form of miraculously created "acheiropoieta" or "images not made by human hands". These sacred images were a form of contact relic, which additionally were taken to prove divine approval of the use of icons. The two most famous were the Mandylion of Edessa (where it still remained) and the Image of Camuliana from Cappadocia, by then in Constantinople. The latter was already regarded as a palladium that had won battles and saved Constantinople from the Persian-Avar siege of 626, when the Patriarch paraded it around the walls of the city. Both were images of Christ, and at least in some versions of their stories supposedly made when Christ pressed a cloth to his face (compare with the later, western Veil of Veronica and Turin shroud). In other versions of the Mandylion's story it joined a number of other images that were believed to have been painted from the life in the New Testament period by Saint Luke or other human painters, again demonstrating the support of Christ and the Virgin for icons, and the continuity of their use in Christianity since its start. G. E. von Grunebaum has said "The iconoclasm of the eighth and ninth centuries must be viewed as the climax of a movement that had its roots in the spirituality of the Christian concept of the divinity."


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The events of the seventh century, which was a period of major crisis for the Byzantine Empire, formed a catalyst for the expansion of the use of images of the holy and caused a dramatic shift in responses to them. Whether the "acheiropoieta" were a symptom or cause, the late sixth to eighth centuries witnessed the increasing thinning of the boundary between images not made by human hands, and images made by human hands. Images of Christ, the Theotokos and saints increasingly came to be regarded, as relics, contact relics and "acheiropoieta" already were, as points of access to the divine. By praying before an image of a holy figure, the believer's prayers were magnified by proximity to the holy. This change in practice seems to have been a major and organic development in Christian worship, which responded to the needs of believers to have access to divine support during the insecurities of the seventh century. It was not a change orchestrated or controlled by the Church. Although the Quinisext council did not explicitly state that images should be prayed to, it was a legitimate source of Church authority that stated images of Christ were acceptable as a consequence of his human incarnation. Because Jesus manifested himself as human it was acceptable to make images of him just like it was acceptable to make images of the saints and other humans. The events which have traditionally been labelled 'Byzantine Iconoclasm' may be seen as the efforts of the organised Church and the imperial authorities to respond to these changes and to try to reassert some institutional control over popular practice.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The rise of Islam in the seventh century had also caused some consideration of the use of holy images. Early Islamic belief stressed the impropriety of iconic representation. Earlier scholarship tried to link Byzantine Iconoclasm directly to Islam by arguing that Byzantine emperors saw the success of the early Caliphate and decided that Byzantine use of images (as opposed to Islamic aniconism) had angered God. This does not seem entirely plausible however. The use of images had probably been increasing in the years leading up to the outbreak of iconoclasm. One notable change came in 695, when Justinian II put a full-faced image of Christ on the obverse of his gold coins. The effect on iconoclast opinion is unknown, but the change certainly caused Caliph Abd al-Malik to break permanently with his previous adoption of Byzantine coin types to start a purely Islamic coinage with lettering only. This appears more like two opposed camps asserting their positions (pro and anti images) than one empire seeking to imitate the other. More striking is the fact that Islamic iconoclasm rejected any depictions of living people or animals, not only religious images. By contrast, Byzantine iconomachy concerned itself only with the question of the holy presence (or lack thereof) of images. Thus, although the rise of Islam may have created an environment in which images were at the forefront of intellectual question and debate, Islamic iconoclasm does not seem to have had a direct causal role in the development of the Byzantine image debate; in fact Muslim territories became havens for iconophile refugees. However, it has been argued that Leo III, because of his Syrian background, could have been influenced by Islamic beliefs and practises, which could have inspired his first removal of images.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The goal of the iconoclasts was to restore the church to the strict opposition to images in worship that they believed characterized at the least some parts of the early church. Theologically, one aspect of the debate, as with most in Christian theology at the time, revolved around the two natures of Jesus. Iconoclasts believed that icons could not represent both the divine and the human natures of the Messiah at the same time, but only separately. Because an icon which depicted Jesus as purely physical would be Nestorianism, and one which showed Him as both human and divine would not be able to do so without confusing the two natures into one mixed nature, which was Monophysitism, all icons were thus heretical. Leo III did preach a series of sermons in which he drew attention to the excessive behaviour of the iconodules, which Leo III stated was in direct opposition to Mosaic Law as shown in the Second Commandment. However, no detailed writings setting out iconoclast arguments have survived; we have only brief quotations and references in the writings of the iconodules and the nature of Biblical law in Christianity has always been in dispute.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: A thorough understanding of the Iconoclast period in Byzantium is complicated by the fact that most of the surviving sources were written by the ultimate victors in the controversy, the iconodules. It is thus difficult to obtain a complete, objective, balanced, and reliably accurate account of events and various aspects of the controversy. The period was marked by intensely polarized debate amongst at least the clergy, and both sides came to regard the position of the other as heresy, and accordingly made efforts to destroy the writings of the other side when they had the chance. Leo III is said to have ordered the destruction of iconodule texts at the start of the controversy, and the records of the final Second Council of Nicaea record that books with missing pages were reported and produced to the council. Many texts, including works of hagiography and historical writing as well as sermons and theological writings, were undoubtedly "improved", fabricated or backdated by partisans, and the difficult and highly technical scholarly process of attempting to assess the real authors and dates of many surviving texts remains ongoing. Most iconoclastic texts are simply missing, including a proper record of the council of 754, and the detail of iconoclastic arguments have mostly to be reconstructed with difficulty from their vehement rebuttals by iconodules.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Major historical sources for the period include the chronicles of Theophanes the Confessor and the Patriarch Nikephoros, both of whom were ardent iconodules. Many historians have also drawn on hagiography, most notably the "Life of St. Stephen the Younger", which includes a detailed, but highly biased, account of persecutions during the reign of Constantine V. No account of the period in question written by an iconoclast has been preserved, although certain saints' lives do seem to preserve elements of the iconoclast worldview.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Major theological sources include the writings of John of Damascus, Theodore the Studite, and the Patriarch Nikephoros, all of them iconodules. The theological arguments of the iconoclasts survive only in the form of selective quotations embedded in iconodule documents, most notably the Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea and the "Antirrhetics" of Nikephoros.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: An immediate precursor of the controversy seems to have been a large submarine volcanic eruption in the summer of 726 in the Aegean Sea between the island of Thera (modern Santorini) and Therasia, probably causing tsunamis and great loss of life. Many, probably including Leo III, interpreted this as a judgment on the Empire by God, and decided that use of images had been the offense.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The classic account of the beginning of Byzantine Iconoclasm relates that sometime between 726 and 730 the Byzantine Emperor Leo III the Isaurian ordered the removal of an image of Christ, prominently placed over the Chalke Gate, the ceremonial entrance to the Great Palace of Constantinople, and its replacement with a cross. Fearing that they intended sacrilege, some of those who were assigned to the task were murdered by a band of iconodules. Accounts of this event (written significantly later) suggest that at least part of the reason for the removal may have been military reversals against the Muslims and the eruption of the volcanic island of Thera, which Leo possibly viewed as evidence of the Wrath of God brought on by image veneration in the Church.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Leo is said to have described mere image veneration as "a craft of idolatry." He apparently forbade the veneration of religious images in a 730 edict, which did not apply to other forms of art, including the image of the emperor, or religious symbols such as the cross. "He saw no need to consult the Church, and he appears to have been surprised by the depth of the popular opposition he encountered". Germanos I of Constantinople, the iconophile Patriarch of Constantinople, either resigned or was deposed following the ban. Surviving letters Germanos wrote at the time say little of theology. According to Patricia Karlin-Hayter, what worried Germanos was that the ban of icons would prove that the Church had been in error for a long time and therefore play into the hands of Jews and Muslims.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: This interpretation is now in doubt, and the debate and struggle may have initially begun in the provinces rather than in the imperial court. Letters survive written by the Patriarch Germanos in the 720s and 730s concerning Constantine, the bishop of Nakoleia, and Thomas of Klaudioupolis. In both sets of letters (the earlier ones concerning Constantine, the later ones Thomas), Germanos reiterates a pro-image position while lamenting the behavior of his subordinates in the church, who apparently had both expressed reservations about image worship. Germanos complains "now whole towns and multitudes of people are in considerable agitation over this matter". In both cases, efforts to persuade these men of the propriety of image veneration had failed and some steps had been taken to remove images from their churches. Significantly, in these letters, Germanos does not threaten his subordinates if they fail to change their behavior. He does not seem to refer to a factional split in the church, but rather to an ongoing issue of concern, and Germanos refers to Emperor Leo III, often presented as the original Iconoclast, as a friend of images. Germanos' concerns are mainly that the actions of Constantine and Thomas should not confuse the laity.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: At this stage in the debate, there is no clear evidence for an imperial involvement in the debate, except that Germanos says he believes that Leo III supports images, leaving a question as to why Leo III has been presented as the arch-iconoclast of Byzantine history. Almost all of the evidence for the reign of Leo III is derived from textual sources, the majority of which post-date his reign considerably, most notably the Life by Stephen the Younger and the Chronicle of Theophanes the Confessor. These important sources are fiercely iconophile and are hostile to the Emperor Constantine V (741–775). As Constantine's father, Leo also became a target. Leo's actual views on icon veneration remain obscure, but in any case, may not have influenced the initial phase of the debate.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: During this initial period, concern on both sides seems to have had little to do with theology and more with practical evidence and effects. There was initially no church council, and no prominent patriarchs or bishops called for the removal or destruction of icons. In the process of destroying or obscuring images, Leo is said to have ""confiscated valuable church plate, altar cloths, and reliquaries decorated with religious figures"", but he took no severe action against the former patriarch or iconophile bishops.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: In the West, Pope Gregory III held two synods at Rome and condemned Leo's actions, and in response, Leo confiscated papal estates in Calabria and Sicily, detaching them as well as Illyricum from Papal governance and placing them under the governance of the Patriarch of Constantinople.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Leo died in 741, and his son and heir, Constantine V (741–775), was personally committed to an anti-image position. Despite his successes as an emperor, both militarily and culturally, this has caused Constantine to be remembered unfavorably by a body of source material that is preoccupied with his opposition to image veneration. For example, Constantine is accused of being obsessive in his hostility to images and monks; because of this he burned monasteries and images and turned churches into stables, according to the surviving iconophile sources. In 754 Constantine summoned the Council of Hieria in which some 330 to 340 bishops participated and which was the first church council to concern itself primarily with religious imagery. Constantine seems to have been closely involved with the council, and it endorsed an iconoclast position, with 338 assembled bishops declaring, "the unlawful art of painting living creatures blasphemed the fundamental doctrine of our salvation--namely, the Incarnation of Christ, and contradicted the six holy synods. ... If anyone shall endeavor to represent the forms of the Saints in lifeless pictures with material colors which are of no value (for this notion is vain and introduced by the devil), and does not rather represent their virtues as living images in himself, etc. ... let him be anathema." This Council claimed to be the legitimate "Seventh Ecumenical Council", but its legitimacy is disregarded by both Orthodox and Catholic traditions as no patriarchs or representatives of the five patriarchs were present: Constantinople was vacant while Antioch, Jerusalem, and Alexandria were controlled by Muslims, and Rome did not send a representative.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The iconoclast Council of Hieria was not the end of the matter, however. In this period complex theological arguments appeared, both for and against the use of icons. Constantine himself wrote opposing the veneration of images, while John of Damascus, a Syrian monk living outside of Byzantine territory, became a major opponent of iconoclasm through his theological writings.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: It has been suggested that monasteries became secret bastions of icon support, but this view is controversial. A possible reason for this interpretation is the desire in some historiography on Byzantine Iconoclasm to see it as a preface to the later Protestant Reformation in western Europe, in which monastic establishments suffered damage and persecution. In opposition to this view, others have suggested that while some monks continued to support image veneration, many others followed church and imperial policy.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: The surviving sources accuse Constantine V of moving against monasteries, having relics thrown into the sea, and stopping the invocation of saints. Monks were forced to parade in the Hippodrome, each hand-in-hand with a woman, in violation of their vows. In 765 St Stephen the Younger was killed, and was later considered a martyr to the Iconophile cause. A number of large monasteries in Constantinople were secularised, and many monks fled to areas beyond effective imperial control on the fringes of the Empire.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Constantine's son, Leo IV (775–80), was less rigorous, and for a time tried to mediate between the factions. When he died, his wife Irene took power as regent for her son, Constantine VI (780–97). Though icon veneration does not seem to have been a major priority for the regency government, Irene called an ecumenical council a year after Leo's death, which restored image veneration. This may have been an effort to secure closer and more cordial relations between Constantinople and Rome.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Irene initiated a new ecumenical council, ultimately called the Second Council of Nicaea, which first met in Constantinople in 786 but was disrupted by military units faithful to the iconoclast legacy. The council convened again at Nicaea in 787 and reversed the decrees of the previous iconoclast council held at Constantinople and Hieria, and appropriated its title as Seventh Ecumenical Council. Thus there were two councils called the "Seventh Ecumenical Council," the first supporting iconoclasm, the second supporting icon veneration.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: Unlike the iconoclast council, the iconophile council included papal representatives, and its decrees were approved by the papacy. The Orthodox Church considers it to be the last genuine ecumenical council. Icon veneration lasted through the reign of Empress Irene's successor, Nikephoros I (reigned 802–811), and the two brief reigns after his.


title: Byzantine Iconoclasm

text: On October 13, 787 the Second Council of Nicaea decreed that 'venerable and holy images are to be dedicated in the holy churches of God, namely the image of our Lord and God and Saviour Jesus Christ, of our immaculate Lady the Holy Theotokos, and of the angels and all the saints. They are to be accorded the veneration of honor, not indeed the true worship paid to the divine nature alone, but in the same way, as this is accorded to the life-giving cross, the holy gospels, and other sacred offerings' (trans. Price, The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea [Liverpool 2018], 564-5, abbreviated).