title: Markus Dupree

text: Dupree's adult film debut was "18 Year Old Pussy 14" with Devil's Film. Dupree was featured with fellow Russian adult performers Solne, Lara Page, Margo, Lana, Mary Rouge and Timo Hardy. In 2008 Dupree was featured in 8 films under the alias "Markus". In 2009 Dupree continued working with Devil's Film starring in 17 films over the course of the year. Dupree in 2010 signed with Evil Angel and 21sextury Network. Beginning in February 2010 Dupree starred in Devil's Film "University Gang Bang" series. From 2010 to 2011 Dupree's work jumped dramatically to 105 films in 2011. Dupree shot with TeenCoreClub and Woodman Entertainment as well as his continued work with Devil's Film. In 2012 Dupree made his debut with Kink.com starring in 11 films. From 2012 to 2014 Dupree shot 634 films.


title: Markus Dupree

text: In 2014 Dupree began seeing industry award success. At the 31st AVN Awards Dupree was nominated for three awards; Best Sex Scene in a Foreign-Shot Production for "Hose Monster 5," Best Sex Scene in a Foreign-Shot Production for his work in "Cayenne Loves Rocco" and Most Outrageous Sex Scene for "XXX Factory".


title: Markus Dupree

text: In 2015 Dupree starred in "Femmes de Footballeurs XXX" a French film by Marc Dorcel. His work was nominated for an AVN Award for Best Sex Scene in a Foreign-Shot Production at the 32nd AVN Awards.


title: Markus Dupree

text: In 2017 at the 34th AVN Awards Dupree won Best Double Penetration Sex Scene for his work in "Abella" with Mick Blue and Abella Danger. Dupree was also nominated for AVN Award for Male Performer of the Year. Dupree also won Most Outrageous Sex Scene for his work in "Holly Hendrix's Anal Experience." That same year he was nominated for Foreign Male Performer of the Year at the XBIZ Awards. In 2018 Dupree began directing films. In 2018 Dupree won AVN Male Performer Award.


title: Markus Dupree

text: As of April 2020, Dupree has starred in 1,942 films and been nominated for over three dozen industry awards.


title: History of Bengal

text: The history of Bengal is intertwined with the history of the broader Indian subcontinent and the surrounding regions of South Asia and Southeast Asia. It includes modern-day Bangladesh and the Indian states of West Bengal and Assam's Karimganj district, located in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent, at the apex of the Bay of Bengal and dominated by the fertile Ganges delta. The region was known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as "Gangaridai", a powerful kingdom whose war elephant forces led the withdrawal of Alexander the Great from India. Some historians have identified Gangaridai with other parts of India. The Ganges and the Brahmaputra rivers act as a geographic marker of the region, but also connects the region to the broader Indian subcontinent. Bengal, at times, has played an important role in the history of the Indian subcontinent.


title: History of Bengal

text: The area's early history featured a succession of Indian empires, internal squabbling, and a tussle between Hinduism and Buddhism for dominance. Ancient Bengal was the site of several major Janapadas (kingdoms), while the earliest cities date back to the Vedic period. A thalassocracy and an entrepôt of the historic Silk Road, ancient Bengal had strong trade links with Persia, Arabia and the Mediterranean that focused on its lucrative cotton muslin textiles. The region was a part of several ancient pan-Indian empires, including the Mauryans and Guptas. It was also a bastion of regional kingdoms. The citadel of Gauda served as capital of the Gauda Kingdom, the Buddhist Pala Empire (eighth to 11th century) and Sena Empire (11th–12th century). This era saw the development of Bengali language, script, literature, music, art and architecture.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Muslim conquest of the Indian subcontinent absorbed Bengal into the medieval Islamic and Persianate worlds. Between the 1204 and 1352, Bengal was a province of the Delhi Sultanate. This era saw the introduction of the taka as monetary currency, which has endured into the modern era. An independent Bengal Sultanate was formed in 1352 and ruled the region for two centuries, during which a distinct form of Islam based on Sufism and the Bengali language emerged and the region was known as a major trading nation in the world. The ruling elite also turned Bengal into the easternmost haven of Indo-Persian culture. The Sultans exerted influence in the Arakan region of Southeast Asia, where Buddhist kings copied the sultanate's governance, currency and fashion. A relationship with Ming China flourished under the sultanate.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Bengal Sultanate was notable for its Hindu aristocracy, including the rise of Raja Ganesha and his son Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah as usurpers. Hindus served in the royal administration as prime ministers and poets. Under the patronage of Sultans like Alauddin Hussain Shah, Bengali literature began replacing the strong influence of Sanskrit in the region. Hindu principalities included the Kingdom of Mallabhum, Kingdom of Bhurshut and Kingdom of Tripura; and the realm of powerful Hindu Rajas such as Pratapaditya, Kedar Ray and Raja Sitaram Ray.


title: History of Bengal

text: Following the decline of the sultanate, Bengal came under the suzerainty of the Mughal Empire, as its wealthiest province. Under the Mughals, Bengal Subah rose to global prominence in industries such as textile manufacturing and shipbuilding, its economy in the 18th century exceeding in size any of Europe's empires. This growth of manufacturing has been seen as a form of proto-industrialization, similar to that in western Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution. Bengal's capital Dhaka is said to contained over a million people.


title: History of Bengal

text: The gradual decline of the Mughal Empire led to quasi-independent states under the Nawabs of Bengal, subsequent to the Maratha invasions of Bengal, and finally the conquest by the British East India Company.


title: History of Bengal

text: The East India Company took control of the region from the late 18th century. The company consolidated their hold on the region following the battles of Battle of Plassey in 1757 and Battle of Buxar in 1764 and by 1793 took complete control of the region. Capital amassed from Bengal by the East India Company was invested in various industries such as textile manufacturing in Great Britain during the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution. Company policies in Bengal also led to the deindustrialization of the Bengali textile industry during Company rule. Kolkata (or Calcutta) served for many years as the capital of British controlled territories in India. The early and prolonged exposure to the British colonial administration resulted in the expansion of Western-style education, culminating in development of science, institutional education, and social reforms in the region, including what became known as the Bengali Renaissance. A hotbed of the Indian independence movement through the early 20th century, Bengal was partitioned during India's independence in 1947 along religious lines into two separate entities: West Bengal—a state of India—and East Bengal—a part of the newly created Dominion of Pakistan that later became the independent nation of Bangladesh in 1971.


title: History of Bengal

text: The exact origin of the word "Bangla" is unknown, though it is believed to be derived from the Dravidian-speaking tribe "Bang/Banga" that settled in the area around the year 1000 BCE. Other accounts speculate that the name is derived from "Venga" ("Bôngo"), which came from the Austric word "Bonga" meaning the Sun-god. According to the Mahabharata, the Puranas and the Harivamsha, Vanga was one of the adopted sons of King Vali who founded the Vanga Kingdom. It was either under Magadh or under Kalinga Rules except few years under Pals. The earliest reference to "Vangala" ("Bôngal") has been traced in the Nesari plates (805 CE) of Rashtrakuta Govinda III which speak of Dharmapala as the king of Vangala. The records of Rajendra Chola I of the Chola dynasty, who invaded Bengal in the 11th century, use the term "Vangaladesa".


title: History of Bengal

text: The term "Bangalah" is one of the precursors to the modern terms "Bengal" and "Bangla". "Bangalah" was the most widely used term for Bengal during the medieval and early modern periods. The Sultan of Bengal was styled as the "Shah of Bangalah". The Mughal province of Bengal was termed "Subah-i-Bangalah".


title: History of Bengal

text: An interesting theory of the origin of the name is provided by "Abu'l-Fazl" in his "Ain-i-Akbari". According to him, "[T]he original name of Bengal was Bung, and the suffix ""al"" came to be added to it from the fact that the ancient rajahs of this land raised mounds of earth 10 feet high and 20 in breadth in lowlands at the foot of the hills which were called "al". From this suffix added to the Bung, the name Bengal arose and gained currency".


title: History of Bengal

text: Stone Age tools found in the region indicate human habitation for over 20,000 years. Remnants of Copper Age settlements, including pit dwellings, date back 4,000 years. Bengal was settled by Austroasiatics, Tibeto-Burmans, Dravidians and Indo-Aryans in consecutive waves of migration. Archaeological evidence confirms that by the second millennium BCE, the Bengal delta was inhabited by rice-cultivating communities, with people living in systemically-aligned housing and producing pottery. Rivers such as the Ganges and Brahmaputra were used for transport while maritime trade flourished in the Bay of Bengal.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Iron Age saw the development of coinage, metal weapons, agriculture and irrigation. Large urban settlements formed in the middle of the first millennium BCE, when the Northern Black Polished Ware culture dominated the northern part of Indian subcontinent. Alexander Cunningham, the founder of the Archaeological Survey of India, identified the archaeological site of Mahasthangarh as the capital of the Pundra Kingdom mentioned in the "Rigveda".


title: History of Bengal

text: The ancient Bengal region features prominently in legendary history of India, Sri Lanka, Siam, Indonesia, Cambodia, Burma, Nepal, Tibet, China and Malaya. According to the Indian epic "Mahabharata", the Vanga Kingdom was located in Bengal. Vanga was described as a thalassocracy with colonies in Southeast Asia. According to Sri Lankan history, the first king of Sri Lanka was Prince Vijaya who led a fleet from India to conquer the island of Lanka. Prince Vijaya's ancestral home was Bengal.


title: History of Bengal

text: In the Greco-Roman world, accounts of the Gangaridai Kingdom are considered by historians to have referred to Bengal. At the time of Alexander the Great's invasion of India, the collective might of the Gangaridai and the Nanda Empire (Bihar) deterred the Greek army. The Gangaridai army was stated to have a war elephant cavalry of 6000 elephants. The archaeological sites of Wari-Bateshwar and Chandraketugarh are linked to the Gangaridai kingdom.


title: History of Bengal

text: In Ptolemy's world map, the emporium of Sounagoura (Sonargaon) was located in Bengal. Roman geographers also noted the existence of a large natural harbour in southeastern Bengal, corresponding to the present-day Chittagong region.


title: History of Bengal

text: Ancient Bengal was often divided between various kingdoms in Vedic Period. At times, the region was unified into a single realm; while it was also ruled by pan-Indian empires.


title: History of Bengal

text: The following table lists the geopolitical divisions of ancient Bengal. The table includes a list of corresponding modern regions, which formed the core areas of the geopolitical units. The territories of the geopolitical divisions expanded and receded through the centuries.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Nanda empire under Mahapadma Nanda extended to its peak. Mahapadma Nanda started imperial conquest of Bharatvarsh. He invaded and defeated local kingdoms of Bengal. The Nanda empire appears to have stretched from present-day Punjab in the west to Odisha and Bengal in the east.


title: History of Bengal

text: According to the Jain tradition, the Nanda minister subjugated the entire country up to the coastal areas.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Mauryan Empire unified most of the Indian subcontinent into one state for the first time and was one of the largest empires in subcontinental history. The empire was established by Chandragupta Maurya. Under Mauryan rule, the economic system benefited from the creation of a single efficient system of finance, administration, and security. The reign of Ashoka ushered an era of social harmony, religious transformation, and expansion of the sciences and of knowledge. Chandragupta Maurya's embrace of Jainism increased social and religious renewal and reform across his society, while Ashoka's embrace of Buddhism has been said to have been the foundation of the reign of social and political peace and non-violence across the subcontinent. Ashoka sponsored the spreading of Buddhist missionaries to various parts of Asia. The Mauryans built the Grand Trunk Road, one of Asia's oldest and longest major roads connecting the Indian subcontinent with Central Asia.


title: History of Bengal

text: Ancient Bengal was often ruled by dynasties based in the Magadha region, such as the Shunga dynasty and Kanva dynasty.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Gupta Empire is regarded as a golden age in subcontinental history. It was marked by extensive scientific and cultural advancements that crystallised the elements of what is generally known as Hindu culture. The Hindu numeral system, a positional numeral system, originated during Gupta rule and was later transmitted to the West through the Arabs. Early Hindu numerals had only nine symbols, until 600 to 800 CE, when a symbol for zero was developed for the numeral system. The peace and prosperity created under leadership of Guptas enabled the pursuit of scientific and artistic endeavours in the empire.


title: History of Bengal

text: Bengal was an important province of the Gupta Empire. The discovery of Gupta era coins across Bengal point to a monetised economy.


title: History of Bengal

text: King Shashanka is considered by some scholars to be the pioneering king of a unified Bengali state. Shashanka established a kingdom in the citadel of Gauda. His reign lasted between 590 and 625. The Bengali calendar traces its origin to Shashanka's reign.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Varman dynasty of Kamarupa ruled North Bengal and the Sylhet region. The area was a melting pot of the Bengali-Assamese languages.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Khadga dynasty was a Buddhist dynasty of eastern Bengal. One of the legacies of the dynasty is its gold coinage inscribed with the names of rulers such as Rajabhata.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Pala Empire (750–1120 CE) was a Bengali empire and the last Buddhist imperial power on the Indian subcontinent. The Palas were followers of the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools of Buddhism. Gopala I (750–770) was its first ruler. He came to power in 750 through an election by chieftains in Gauḍa. Gopala reigned from about 750–770 and consolidated his position by extending his control over all of Bengal.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Pala dynasty lasted for four centuries and ushered in a period of stability and prosperity in Bengal. They created many temples and works of art as well as supported the important ancient higher-learning institutions of Nalanda and Vikramashila. The Somapura Mahavihara built by Emperor Dharmapala is the greatest Buddhist monastery in the Indian subcontinent.


title: History of Bengal

text: The empire reached its peak under Emperor Dharmapala (770–810) and Devapala (810–850). Dharmapala extended the empire into the northern parts of the Indian subcontinent. According to Pala copperplate inscriptions, his successor Devapala exterminated the Utkalas, invade the Kamarupa Kingdom of Assam, shattered the pride of the Huna people and humbled the lords of Gurjara-Pratihara and the Rashtrakuta dynasty.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Chandra dynasty ruled southeastern Bengal and Arakan between the 10th and 11th centuries CE. The dynasty was powerful enough to withstand the Pala Empire to the northwest. The Chandra kingdom covered the Harikela region, which was known as the Kingdom of Ruhmi to Arab traders. The dynasty's realm was a bridge between India and Southeast Asia. During this period, the port of Chittagong developed banking and shipping industries. The last ruler of the Chandra Dynasty, Govindachandra, was defeated by the south Indian Emperor Rajendra Chola I of the maritime Chola dynasty in the 11th century.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Pala dynasty was replaced by the resurgent Hindu Sena dynasty which hailed from south India; they and their feudatories are referred to in history books as the "Kannada kings." In contrast to the Pala dynasty who championed Buddhism, the Sena dynasty were staunchly Hindu. They brought about a revival of Hinduism and cultivated Sanskrit literature in eastern India. They succeeded in bringing Bengal under one ruler during the 12th century. Vijaya Sena, second ruler of the dynasty, defeated the last Pala emperor, Madanapala, and established his reign formally. Ballala Sena, third ruler of the dynasty, was a scholar and philosopher king. He is said to have invited Brahmins from both south India and north India to settle in Bengal, and aid the resurgence of Hinduism in his kingdom. He married a Western Chalukya princess and concentrated on building his empire eastwards, establishing his rule over nearly all of Bengal and large areas of lower Assam. Ballala Sena made Nabadwip his capital.


title: History of Bengal

text: The fourth Sena king, Lakshmana Sena, son of Ballala Sena, was the greatest king of his line. He expanded the empire beyond Bengal into Bihar, Assam, Odisha and likely Varanasi. Lakshmana was later defeated by the nomadic Turkic Muslims and fled to eastern Bengal, where he ruled few more years. It is proposed by some Bengali authors that Jayadeva, the famous Sanskrit poet and author of Gita Govinda, was one of the "Pancharatnas" or "five Gems" of the court of Lakshmana Sena.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Deva dynasty was a Hindu dynasty of medieval Bengal that ruled over eastern Bengal after the collapse of Sena Empire. The capital of this dynasty was Bikrampur in present-day Munshiganj District of Bangladesh. The inscriptional evidences show that his kingdom was extended up to the present-day Comilla–Noakhali–Chittagong region. A later ruler of the dynasty "Ariraja-Danuja-Madhava" Dasharatha-Deva extended his kingdom to cover much of East Bengal. The Deva dynasty endured after Muslim conquests but eventually died out.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Islamic conquest of Bengal began with the capture of Gauda from the Sena dynasty in 1204. Led by Bakhtiar Khilji, an army of several thousand horsemen from the Ghurids overwhelmed Bengali Hindu forces during a blitzkrieg campaign. After victory, the Delhi Sultanate maintained a strong vigil on Bengal. Coins were inscribed in gold with the Sanskrit inscription "Gaudiya Vijaye", meaning "On the conquest of Gauda (Bengal)". Several governors of Delhi in Bengal attempted to break away and create an independent state. But the Delhi Sultanate managed to suppress Bengal's Muslim separatists for a century. Gradually, eastern Bengal was absorbed into Muslim rule by the 14th century, such as through the Conquest of Sylhet. Sufis played a role in the Islamic absorption of Bengal. During the Tughluq dynasty, the taka was introduced as the imperial currency.


title: History of Bengal

text: During the middle of the 14th century, three break away sultanates emerged in the Delhi Sultanate's province of Bengal. These included a realm led by Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah (and later his son) in Sonargaon; a realm led by Alauddin Ali Shah in Gauda (also called Lakhnauti); and a realm led by Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah in Satgaon. The Moroccan traveller Ibn Battuta visited Sonargaon during the reign of Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah. Ibn Battua also visited the Sufi leader Shah Jalal in Sylhet, who had earlier defeated the Hindu ruler Govinda.


title: History of Bengal

text: In 1352, Shamsuddin Ilyas Shah unified the three small sultanates in Bengal into a single government. Ilyas Shah proclaimed himself as the "Shah of Bangalah". His son Sikandar Shah defeated the Sultan of Delhi and secured recognition of Bengal's sovereignty after the Bengal Sultanate-Delhi Sultanate War. The largest mosque in India was built in Bengal to project the new sultanate's imperial ambitions. The sultans advanced civic institutions and became more responsive and "native" in their outlook. Considerable architectural projects were undertaken which induced the influence of Persian architecture, Arab architecture and Byzantine architecture in Bengal. The dynasty was a promoter of Indo-Persian culture. One of the sultans, Ghiyasuddin Azam Shah, kept a correspondence with the renowned Persian poet Hafez.


title: History of Bengal

text: The early Bengal Sultanate was notable for its diplomatic relationships. Embassies were sent to Ming China during the reign of Emperor Yongle. China responded by sending envoys, including the Treasure voyages; and mediating in regional disputes. There are also records of the sultans' relations with Egypt, Herat and some kingdoms in Africa.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Ilyas Shahi Dynasty was interrupted in 1414 by a native uprising but was restored by Nasiruddin Mahmud Shah in 1433.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Ilyas Shahi reign was interrupted by an uprising orchestrated by the sultan's premier Raja Ganesha, a Hindu aristocrat. Ganesha installed his son Jadu to the throne but his son was influenced to convert to Islam by the court's Sufi clergy. Jadu took the title of Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah. His reign saw native Bengali elements promoted in the court's culture. Bengali influences were incorporated into the kingdom's architecture. The Bengal Sultanate-Jaunpur Sultanate War ended after mediation from China and the Timurids. Jalaluddin Muhammad Shah also pursued the Reconquest of Arakan to reinstall Arakan's king to the throne after he had been deposed by Burmese forces.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Bengal Sultanate's territory reached its greatest extent under Alauddin Hussain Shah, founder of the Hussain Shahi dynasty. The dynasty is regarded by several historians as a golden age in which a syncretic Bengali culture evolved including elements of Muslim and Hindu traditions. For example, the Muslim sultan promoted the translation of Sanskrit epics like the "Ramayana" into the Bengali language. The promotion of Bengali literature under the dynasty led to Bengali replacing the strong influence of Sanskrit in the region.


title: History of Bengal

text: In the 16th century, the Mughal emperor Humayun was forced to take shelter in Persia as the conqueror Sher Shah Suri rampaged through the subcontinent. Bengal was brought under the control of the short-lived Suri Empire.


title: History of Bengal

text: An Afghan dynasty was the last royal house of the Bengal Sultanate. The capital of the dynasty was Sonargaon. The dynasty also ruled parts of Bihar and Orissa. Its eastern boundary was formed by the Brahmaputra River.


title: History of Bengal

text: A confederation of twelve zamindar families resisted the expansion of the Mughal Empire during the 16th and 17th centuries. The zamindars included Muslims and Hindus. They were led by the Muslim Rajput chief Isa Khan. The Baro-Bhuyans defeated the Mughal navy during several engagements in Bengal's rivers. Eventually, the Mughals subdued the zamindar rebellion and brought all of Bengal under imperial control.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Mughal absorption of Bengal began with the Battle of Ghaghra in 1529, in which the Mughal army was led by the first Mughal emperor Babur. The second Mughal emperor Humayun occupied the Bengali capital Gaur for six months. Following the collapse of the Bengal Sultanate in the Battle of Raj Mahal in 1576, the Bengal region was brought under Mughal control as the Bengal Subah.


title: History of Bengal

text: Subedars were the Mughal viceroys in Bengal. The Bengal Subah was part of a larger prosperous empire and shaped by imperial policies of pluralistic government. The Mughals built the provincial capital in Dhaka in 1610 with fortifications, gardens, tombs, palaces and mosques. Dhaka was also named in honour of Emperor Jahangir as Jahangirnagar. Shaista Khan's conquest of Chittagong in 1666 defeated the (Burmese) Kingdom of Arakan and reestablished Bengali control of the port city. The Chittagong Hill Tracts frontier region was made a tributary state of Mughal Bengal and a treaty was signed with the Chakma Circle in 1713.


title: History of Bengal

text: Members of the imperial family were often appointed to the position of Subedar. Man Singh I was the only Hindu subedar. One subedar was Prince Shah Shuja, who was the son of Emperor Shah Jahan. During the struggle for succession with his brothers Prince Aurangazeb, Prince Dara Shikoh and Prince Murad Baksh, Prince Shuja proclaimed himself as the Mughal Emperor in Bengal. He was eventually defeated by the army of Aurangazeb.


title: History of Bengal

text: By the 18th century, Mughal Bengal became a quasi-independent country under the nominal rule of the emperor in Delhi. The subedar was elevated to the status of a hereditary Nawab Nazim. The Nawabs maintained "de facto" control of Bengal while minting coins in the name of the emperor in Delhi.


title: History of Bengal

text: The dynasty was founded by the first Nawab of Bengal Murshid Quli Khan. Its other rulers included Sarfaraz Khan and Shuja-ud-Din Muhammad Khan.


title: History of Bengal

text: The dynasty was founded by Alivardi Khan. His grandson and successor Siraj-ud-daulah was the last independent Nawab of Bengal due to his defeat to British forces at the Battle of Plassey in 1757.


title: History of Bengal

text: Under the Mughal Empire, Bengal was an affluent province with a Muslim majority and Hindu minority. According to economic historian Indrajit Ray, it was globally prominent in industries such as textile manufacturing and shipbuilding. The capital Dhaka had a population exceeding a million people, and with an estimated 80,000 skilled textile weavers. It was an exporter of silk and cotton textiles, steel, saltpetre, and agricultural and industrial produce.


title: History of Bengal

text: Bengali farmers and agriculturalists were quick to adapt to profitable new crops between 1600 and 1650. Bengali agriculturalists rapidly learned techniques of mulberry cultivation and sericulture, establishing Bengal as a major silk-producing region of the world.


title: History of Bengal

text: Under Mughal rule, Bengal was a center of the worldwide muslin and silk trades. During the Mughal era, the most important center of cotton production was Bengal, particularly around its capital city of Dhaka, leading to muslin being called "daka" in distant markets such as Central Asia. Domestically, much of India depended on Bengali products such as rice, silks and cotton textiles. Overseas, Europeans depended on Bengali products such as cotton textiles, silks and opium; Bengal accounted for 40% of Dutch imports from Asia, for example, including more than 50% of textiles and around 80% of silks. From Bengal, saltpetre was also shipped to Europe, opium was sold in Indonesia, raw silk was exported to Japan and the Netherlands, and cotton and silk textiles were exported to Europe, Indonesia and Japan.


title: History of Bengal

text: Bengal had a large shipbuilding industry. Indrajit Ray estimates shipbuilding output of Bengal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries at 223,250 tons annually, compared with 23,061 tons produced in thirteen colonies in North America from 1769 to 1771.


title: History of Bengal

text: There were several Hindu states established in and around Bengal during the medieval and early modern periods. These kingdoms contributed a lot to the economic and cultural landscape of Bengal. Extensive land reclamation in forested and marshy areas were carried out and intrastate trade as well as commerce were highly encouraged. These kingdoms also helped introduce new music, painting, dancing and sculpture into Bengali art-forms as well as many temples were constructed during this period. Militarily, they served as bulwarks against Portuguese and Burmese attacks.


title: History of Bengal

text: These states includes the principalities of Maharaja Pratap Aditya of Jessore, Raja Sitaram Ray of Burdwan, Raja Krishnachandra Roy of Nadia Raj and Kingdom of Mallabhum. The Kingdom of Bhurshut was a medieval Hindu kingdom spread across what is now Howrah and Hooghly in the Indian state of West Bengal. Maharaja Rudranarayan consolidated the dynasty and expanded the kingdom and converted it into one of the most powerful Hindu kingdom of the time. His wife Maharani Bhavashankari defeated the Pathan resurgence in Bengal and her reign brought power, prosperity and grandeur to Bhurishrestha Kingdom. Their son, Maharaja Pratapnarayan, patronised literature and art, trade & commerce, as well as welfare of his subjects. Afterwards, Maharaja Naranarayan maintained the integrity and sovereignty of the kingdom by diplomatically averting the occupation of the kingdom by the Mughal forces. His son, Maharaja Lakshminarayan, failed to maintain the sovereignty of the kingdom due to sabotage from within. The Koch Bihar Kingdom in the northern Bengal, flourished during the period of 16th and the 17th centuries as well as weathered the Mughals and survived till the advent of the British. The Burdwan Raj founded by Maharaja Sangam Rai Kapoor was a "zamindari" estate that flourished from about 1657 to 1955, first under the Mughals and then under the British in the province of Bengal in British-India. At the peak of its prosperity in the 18th century, the estate extended to around of territory and even up to the early 20th century paid an annual revenue to the government in excess of 3,300,000 rupees.


title: History of Bengal

text: Bengal received many immigrants from West Asia, Central Asia, the Horn of Africa and North India during the sultanate and Mughal periods. Many came as refugees due to the Mongol invasions and conquests. Others found Bengal's fertile land suitable for economic production and commerce. The Arabs were among the earliest settlers, especially in coastal areas. Persians settled in Bengal to become clerics, missionaries, lawyers, teachers, soldiers, administrators and poets. An Armenian community from the Safavid Empire migrated to the region. There were also many Turkic immigrants. The Portuguese were the earliest Europeans to settle in Bengal.


title: History of Bengal

text: Many Arakanese escaped persecution in Burma and settled in southern Bengal during the 18th century. Many Manipuris settled in eastern Bengal during the 18th century after fleeing from conflict-ridden areas in Assam. The Marwari community continues to be influential in West Bengal's economic sectors. The Marwaris migrated from Rajasthan in western India. In Bangladesh, a Nizari Ismaili community with diverse origins continues to play a significant role in economic sectors.


title: History of Bengal

text: Around the early 18th century, the Maratha Empire led invasions of Bengal. The leader of the expedition was Maharaja Raghuji of Nagpur. Raghoji was able to annexe Odisha and parts of Bengal permanently as he successfully exploited the chaotic conditions prevailing in the region after the death of their Governor Murshid Quli Khan in 1727.


title: History of Bengal

text: During their raids, the Marathas killed close to 400,000 people in western Bengal and Bihar. This devastated Bengal's economy, as many of the people killed in the Maratha raids included merchants, textile weavers, silk winders, and mulberry cultivators. The Cossimbazar factory reported in 1742, for example, that the Marathas burnt down many of the houses along with weavers' looms. The plundering has been considered to be among the deadliest massacres in Indian history.


title: History of Bengal

text: The first European colonial settlement in Bengal was the Portuguese settlement in Chittagong. The settlement was established after the Bengal Sultanate granted permission to embassies from Portuguese India for the creation of a trading post. The Portuguese settlers in Chittagong included bureaucrats, merchants, soldiers, sailors, missionaries, slave traders and pirates. They controlled the port of Chittagong and forced all merchant ships to acquire a Portuguese trade licence. The Roman Catholic Church was established in Bengal by the Portuguese in Chittagong, when the first Vicar Apostolic was appointed in the port city.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Portuguese eventually came under the protection of the Kingdom of Mrauk U as the Bengal Sultanate lost control of the Chittagong region. In 1666, the Mughal conquest of Chittagong resulted in the expulsion of Portuguese and Arakanese forces in the port city. The Portuguese also migrated to other parts of Bengal, including Bandel and Dhaka.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Dutch East India Company operated a directorate in Bengal for nearly two centuries. The directorate later became a colony of the Dutch Empire in 1725. Dutch territories in Bengal were ceded to Britain by the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824. Dutch settlements in Bengal included the Dutch settlement in Rajshahi, the main Dutch port in Baliapal, as well as factories in Chhapra (saltpetre), Dhaka (muslin), Balasore, Patna, Cossimbazar, Malda, Mirzapur, Murshidabad, Rajmahal and Sherpur.


title: History of Bengal

text: Bengal once accounted for 40% of Dutch imports from Asia, particularly in terms of silk and muslin goods.


title: History of Bengal

text: The East India Company established its first settlements in Bengal around Hooghly during the 1630s. It received an official permission to trade from Mughal viceroy Shah Shuja in 1651. In 1689, the company attempted to take Chittagong and make it the headquarters of their Bengal trade but the English expedition found the port heavily defended. In 1696, the English built Fort William on the bank of the Hooghly River. Fort William served as the British headquarters in India for centuries. The area around Fort William eventually grew into the city of Calcutta. English factories were established throughout Bengal. The port in Fort William became one of the most important British naval bases in Asia from where expeditions were sent to China and Southeast Asia. The English language began to be used for commerce and government in Bengal.


title: History of Bengal

text: The French establishments in India included colonies and factories in Bengal. After permission from Mughal viceroy Shaista Khan in 1692, the French set up a settlement in Chandernagore. The French also had a large presence in Dhaka, where a neighbourhood called Farashganj developed in the old city. One of the notable properties of the French included the land of the Ahsan Manzil, where the French administrative building was located. The property was sold to Bengali aristocrats, who exchanged the property several times until it became the property of the Dhaka Nawab Family. The French built a garden in Tejgaon. Cossimbazar and Balasore also hosted French factories.


title: History of Bengal

text: The French took the side of Nawab Siraj-ud-Daulah during the Battle of Plassey in 1757. Eventually, the French presence in Bengal was only restricted to the colony of Chandernagore, which was administered by the governor in Pondicherry. After India's independence in 1947, a referendum in Chandernagore gave a mandate to end colonial rule. The French transferred sovereignty in 1952. In 1955, Chandernagore became part of the Indian state of West Bengal.


title: History of Bengal

text: The first settlement of the Danish East India Company in Bengal was established in Pipli in 1625. The Danish company later gained permission from Nawab Alivardi Khan to establish a trading post in Serampore in 1755. The first representative of the Danish crown was appointed in 1770. The town was named Fredericknagore. The Danish also operated colonies on the Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal. Territories in Bengal and the Bay of Bengal were part of Danish India until 1845, when Danish colonies were ceded to Britain.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Ostend Company of the Austrian Empire operated a settlement in Bankipur, Bengal during the 18th century.


title: History of Bengal

text: When the East India Company began strengthening the defences at Fort William (Calcutta), the Nawab, Siraj Ud Daulah, at the encouragement of the French, attacked. Under the leadership of Robert Clive, British troops and their local allies captured Chandernagore in March 1757 and seriously defeated the Nawab on 23 June 1757 at the Battle of Plassey, when the Nawab's soldiers betrayed him. The Nawab was assassinated in Murshidabad, and the British installed their own Nawab for Bengal and extended their direct control in the south. Chandernagore was restored to the French in 1763. The Bengalis attempted to regain their territories in 1765 in alliance with the Mughal Emperor Shah Alam II, but were defeated again at the Battle of Buxar (1765). The centre of Indian culture and trade shifted from Delhi to Calcutta when the Mughal Empire fell.


title: History of Bengal

text: Capital amassed from Bengal by the East India Company was invested in various industries such as textile manufacturing in Great Britain during the initial stages of the Industrial Revolution. Company policies in Bengal also led to the deindustrialization of the Bengali textile industry during Company rule.


title: History of Bengal

text: During the period of Company rule, a devastating famine occurred 1770, which killed an estimated 10 million. The famine devastated the region as well as the economy of the East India Company, forcing them to rely on subsidies from the British government, an act which would contribute to the American Revolution.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Indian Rebellion of 1857 replaced rule by the Company with the direct control of Bengal by the British Crown. Fort William continued to be the capital of British-held territories in India. The Governor of Bengal was concurrently the Governor-General of India for many years. In 1877, when Victoria took the title of "Empress of India", the British declared Calcutta the capital of the British Raj. The colonial capital developed in Calcutta's municipality, which served as the capital of India for decades. A centre of rice cultivation and the world's main source of jute fibre; Bengal was one of India's largest industrial centers. From the 1850s, industry was centered around the capital Calcutta. The railway was created in Britain in 1825. It was introduced in the United States in 1833, Germany in 1835, Italy in 1839, France in 1844 and Spain in 1848. The British government introduced the railway to Bengal in 1854. Several rail companies were established in Bengal during the 19th century, including the Eastern Bengal Railway and Assam Bengal Railway. The largest seaport in British Bengal was the Port of Calcutta, one of the busiest ports in the erstwhile British Empire. The Calcutta Stock Exchange was established in 1908. Other ports in Bengal included the Port of Narayanganj, the Port of Chittagong and the Port of Dhaka. Bengali ports were often free trade ports which welcomed ships from across the world. There was extensive shipping with British Burma. Two universities were established in Bengal during British rule, including the University of Calcutta and the University of Dacca. Numerous colleges and schools were established in each district. Most of the Bengali population nevertheless remained dependent on agriculture, and despite Bengali social and political leaders playing a major role in Indian political and intellectual activity, the province included some very undeveloped districts.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Bengal Presidency had the highest gross domestic product in British India. Bengal hosted the most advanced cultural centers in British India. A cosmopolitan, eclectic cultural atmosphere took shape. There were many anglophiles, including the Naib Nazim of Dhaka. A Portuguese missionary published the first book on Bengali grammar. A Hindu scholar produced a Bengali translation of the Quran. However, Bengalis were also divided by religion due to the political situation in the rest of India.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Bengal renaissance refers to a social reform movement during the 19th and early 20th centuries in the region of Bengal in undivided India during the period of British rule. Historian Nitish Sengupta describes it as having started with reformer and humanitarian Raja Ram Mohan Roy (1775–1833), and ended with Asia's first Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941). This flowering of religious and social reformers, scholars, and writers is described by historian David Kopf as "one of the most creative periods in Indian history".


title: History of Bengal

text: The Bengal Legislative Council was the principal lawmaking body in the province. It was created by the Indian Councils Act 1861 and reformed under the Indian Councils Act 1892, the Indian Councils Act 1909, the Government of India Act 1919 and the Government of India Act 1935. Initially an advisory council with mostly European members, native Bengali representation gradually increased in the early 20th century. In 1935, it became the upper house of the provincial legislature alongside the lower house in the Bengal Legislative Assembly. The Governor of Bengal, who was concurrently the Governor-General of India, often sat on the council.


title: History of Bengal

text: The British government argued that Bengal, being India's most populous province, was too large and difficult to govern. Bengal was divided by the British rulers for administrative purposes in 1905 into an overwhelmingly Hindu west (including present-day Bihar and Odisha) and a predominantly Muslim east (including Assam). Hindu – Muslim conflict became stronger through this partition. While Hindu Indians disagreed with the partition saying it was a way of dividing a Bengal which is united by language and history, Muslims supported it by saying it was a big step forward for Muslim society where Muslims will be majority and they can freely practice their religion as well as their culture. But owing to strong Hindu agitation, the British reunited East and West Bengal in 1912, and made Bihar and Orissa a separate province


title: History of Bengal

text: The short lived province of Eastern Bengal and Assam provided impetus to a growing movement for self-determination among British-Indian Muslim subjects. The All India Muslim League was created during a conference on liberal education hosted by the Nawab of Dhaka in Eastern Bengal and Assam. The Eastern Bengal and Assam Legislative Council was the lawmaking body of the province.


title: History of Bengal

text: Bengal played a major role in the Indian independence movement (including the Pakistan movement), in which revolutionary groups such as Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar were dominant. Bengalis also played a notable role in the Indian independence movement. Many of the early proponents of independence, and subsequent leaders in movement were Bengalis. Some notable freedom fighters from Bengal were Chittaranjan Das, Surendranath Banerjee, Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, Prafulla Chaki, Bagha Jatin, Khudiram Bose, Surya Sen, Binoy–Badal–Dinesh, Sarojini Naidu, Batukeshwar Dutt, Aurobindo Ghosh, Rashbehari Bose, M.N. Roy, Muzaffar Ahmed and many more. Some of these leaders, such as Netaji, did not subscribe to the view that non-violent civil disobedience was the only way to achieve Indian Independence, and allied with Japan to fight against the British. During the Second World War Netaji escaped to Germany from house arrest in India and there he founded the Indian Legion an army to fight against the British Government, but the turning of the war compelled him to come to South-East Asia and there he became the co-founder and leader of the Indian National Army (distinct from the army of British India) that challenged British forces in several parts of India. He was also the head of state of a parallel regime named 'The Provisional Government of Free India' or Arzi Hukumat-e-Azad Hind, that was recognised and supported by the Axis powers. Bengal was also the fostering ground for several prominent revolutionary organisations. A large number of Bengalis died in the independence struggle and many were exiled in Cellular Jail, the much dreaded prison located in Andaman.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Bengal Legislative Assembly was British India's largest legislature. It was created by the Government of India Act 1935 as the lower house of the provincial parliament. The assembly was elected on the basis of the so-called "separate electorate" system created by the Communal Award. Seats were reserved for different religious, social and professional communities. Major parties in the assembly included the All India Muslim League, the Farmers and Tenants Party, the Indian National Congress, the Swaraj Party and the Hindu Mahasabha. The Prime Minister of Bengal was a member of the assembly.


title: History of Bengal

text: Bengal was used as a base for Allied Forces during World War II. Bengal was strategically important during the Burma Campaign and Allied assistance to the Republic of China to fight off the Japanese invasions. The Imperial Japanese Air Force bombed Chittagong in April and May 1942; and Calcutta in December 1942. The Japanese aborted a planned invasion of Bengal from Burma. The Ledo Road was constructed between Bengal and China through Allied controlled areas in northern Burma to supply the forces led by Chiang Kai Shek. Units of the United States Armed Forces were stationed in Chittagong Airfield during the Burma Campaign 1944-1945. Commonwealth forces included troops from Britain, India, Australia and New Zealand.


title: History of Bengal

text: The Bengal famine of 1943 occurred during World War II and caused the death of an estimated 2.1–3 million people.


title: History of Bengal

text: The partition of Bengal in 1947 left a deep impact on the people of Bengal. The breakdown of Hindu-Muslim unity caused the All India Muslim League to demand the partition of India in line with the Lahore Resolution, which called for Bengal to be included in a Muslim-majority homeland. Hindu nationalists in Bengal were determined to make Hindu-majority districts a part of the Indian dominion. A majority of members in the Bengal Legislative Assembly voted to keep Bengal undivided. The Prime Minister of Bengal, supported by Hindu and Muslim politicians, proposed a United Bengal as a sovereign state. However, the Indian National Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha on one side and the Muslim League on the other forced the British viceroy Earl Mountbatten to partition Bengal along religious lines. As a result, Bengal was divided into the state of West Bengal of India and the province of East Bengal under Pakistan, renamed East Pakistan in 1955. The Sylhet region in Assam joined East Bengal after a referendum on 6 July 1947.


title: Capability Brown

text: Lancelot Brown (born c. 1715–16, baptised 30 August 1716 – 6 February 1783), more commonly known as Capability Brown, was an English gardener and landscape architect, who remains the most famous figure in the history of the English landscape garden style. He is remembered as "the last of the great English 18th-century artists to be accorded his due" and "England's greatest gardener".


title: Capability Brown

text: Unlike other architects including William Kent, he was a hands-on gardener and provided his clients with a full turnkey service, designing the gardens and park, and then managing their landscaping and planting. He is most famous for the landscaped parks of English country houses, many of which have survived reasonably intact. However, he also included in his plans "pleasure gardens" with flower gardens and the new shrubberies, usually placed where they would not obstruct the views across the park of and from the main facades of the house. Few of his plantings of "pleasure gardens" have survived later changes. He also submitted plans for much smaller urban projects, for example the college gardens along The Backs at Cambridge.


title: Capability Brown

text: Criticism of his style, both in his own day and subsequently, mostly centres on the claim that "he created 'identikit' landscapes with the main house in a sea of turf, some water, albeit often an impressive feature, and trees in clumps and shelterbelts," giving "a uniformity equating to authoritarianism" and showing a lack of imagination and even taste on the part of his patrons.


title: Capability Brown

text: He designed more than 170 parks, many of which survive. He was nicknamed "Capability" because he would tell his clients that their property had "capability" for improvement. His influence was so great that the contributions to the English garden made by his predecessors Charles Bridgeman and William Kent are often overlooked; even Kent's champion Horace Walpole allowed that Kent "was succeeded by a very able master".


title: Capability Brown

text: Lancelot Brown was the fifth child of a land agent and a chambermaid, born in the village of Kirkharle, Northumberland, and educated at a school in Cambo until he was 16. Brown's father, William Brown, had been Sir William Loraine’s land agent and his mother, Ursula (née Hall), had been in service at Kirkharle Hall. His eldest brother, John, became the estate surveyor and later married Sir William's daughter. His older brother George became a mason-architect.


title: Capability Brown

text: After school Lancelot worked as the head gardener's apprentice at Sir William Loraine's kitchen garden at Kirkharle Hall until he was 23. In 1739 he journeyed south to the port of Boston, Lincolnshire. Then he moved further inland, where his first landscape commission was for a new lake in the park at Kiddington Hall, Oxfordshire. He moved to Wotton Underwood House, Buckinghamshire, seat of Sir Richard Grenville.


title: Capability Brown

text: In 1741 Brown joined Lord Cobham's gardening staff as undergardener at Stowe Gardens, Buckinghamshire, where he worked under William Kent, one of the founders of the new English style of landscape garden. In 1742, at the age of 26, he was officially appointed Head Gardener, earning £25 () a year and residing in the western Boycott Pavilion.


title: Capability Brown

text: Brown remained at Stowe until 1750. He made the Grecian Valley at Stowe under William Kent's supervision. It is an abstract composition of landform and woodland. Lord Cobham let Brown take freelance work from his aristocratic friends, thus making him well known as a landscape gardener. As a proponent of the new English style Brown became immensely sought after by the landed families. By 1751, when Brown was beginning to be widely known, Horace Walpole wrote somewhat slightingly of Brown's work at Warwick Castle:


title: Capability Brown

text: By the 1760s, he was earning on average £6,000 () a year, usually £500 () for one commission. As an accomplished rider he was able to work fast, taking only an hour or so on horseback to survey an estate and rough out an entire design. In 1764, Brown was appointed King George III's Master Gardener at Hampton Court Palace, succeeding John Greening and residing at the Wilderness House. In 1767 he bought an estate for himself at Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire from the Earl of Northampton and was appointed High Sheriff of Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire for 1770, although his son Lance carried out most of the duties.


title: Capability Brown

text: It is estimated that Brown was responsible for more than 170 gardens surrounding the finest country houses and estates in Britain. His work endures at Belvoir Castle, Croome Court (where he also designed the house), Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harewood House, Highclere Castle, Appuldurcombe House, Milton Abbey (and nearby Milton Abbas village) and in traces at Kew Gardens and many other locations.


title: Capability Brown

text: His style of smooth undulating grass, which would run straight to the house, clumps, belts and scatterings of trees and his serpentine lakes formed by invisibly damming small rivers were a new style within the English landscape, a 'gardenless' form of landscape gardening, which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formally patterned styles.


title: Capability Brown

text: His landscapes were at the forefront of fashion. They were fundamentally different from what they replaced, the well-known formal gardens of England which were criticised by Alexander Pope and others from the 1710s. Starting in 1719, William Kent replaced these with more naturalistic compositions, which reached their greatest refinement in Brown's landscapes.


title: Capability Brown

text: At Hampton Court Brown encountered Hannah More in 1782 and she described his "grammatical" manner in her literary terms: ""'Now "there said he, pointing his finger, 'I make a comma, and there' pointing to another spot, 'where a more decided turn is proper, I make a colon; at another part, where an interruption is desirable to break the view, a parenthesis; now a full stop, and then I begin another subject'"." Brown's patrons saw the idealised landscapes he was creating for them in terms of the Italian landscape painters they admired and collected, as Kenneth Woodbridge first observed in the landscape at Stourhead, a "Brownian" landscape (with an un-Brownian circuit walk) in which Brown himself was not involved.


title: Capability Brown

text: Perhaps Brown's sternest critic was his contemporary Uvedale Price, who likened Brown's clumps of trees to "so many puddings turned out of one common mould." Russell Page, who began his career in the Brownian landscape of Longleat but whose own designs have formal structure, accused Brown of "encouraging his wealthy clients to tear out their splendid formal gardens and replace them with his facile compositions of grass, tree clumps and rather shapeless pools and lakes."


title: Capability Brown

text: Richard Owen Cambridge, the English poet and satirical author, declared that he hoped to die before Brown so that he could "see heaven before it was 'improved'." This was a typical statement reflecting the controversy about Brown's work, which has continued over the last 200 years. By contrast, a recent historian and author, Richard Bisgrove, described Brown's process as perfecting nature by "judicious manipulation of its components, adding a tree here or a concealed head of water there. His art attended to the formal potential of ground, water, trees and so gave to English landscape its ideal forms. The difficulty was that less capable imitators and less sophisticated spectators did not see nature perfected... they saw simply what they took to be nature."


title: Capability Brown

text: This deftness of touch was recognised in his own day; one anonymous obituary writer opined: "Such, however, was the effect of his genius that when he was the happiest man, he will be least remembered; so closely did he copy nature that his works will be mistaken." In 1772, Sir William Chambers (though he did not mention Brown by name) complained that the "new manner" of gardens "differ very little from common fields, so closely is vulgar nature copied in most of them."


title: Capability Brown

text: Capability Brown produced more than 100 architectural drawings, and his work in the field of architecture was a natural outgrowth of his unified picture of the English country house in its setting:


title: Capability Brown

text: "In Brown's hands the house, which before had dominated the estate, became an integral part of a carefully composed landscape intended to be seen through the eye of a painter, and its design could not be divorced from that of the garden"


title: Capability Brown

text: Humphry Repton observed that Brown ""fancied himself an architect"", but Brown's work as an architect is overshadowed by his great reputation as a designer of landscapes. Repton was bound to add: ""he was inferior to none in what related to the comfort, convenience, taste and propriety of design, in the several mansions and other buildings which he planned"." Brown's first country house project was the remodelling of Croome Court, Worcestershire, (1751–52) for the 6th Earl of Coventry, in which instance he was likely following sketches by the gentleman amateur Sanderson Miller.


title: Capability Brown

text: Fisherwick, Staffordshire, Redgrave Hall, Suffolk, and Claremont, Surrey, were classical, while at Corsham his outbuildings are in a Gothic vein, including the bathhouse. Gothic stable blocks and decorative outbuildings, arches and garden features constituted many of his designs. From 1771 he was assisted in the technical aspects by the master builder Henry Holland, and by Henry's son Henry Holland the architect, whose initial career Brown supported; the younger Holland was increasingly Brown's full collaborator and became Brown's son-in-law in 1773.


title: Capability Brown

text: Brown's reputation declined rapidly after his death, because the English Landscape style did not convey the dramatic conflict and awesome power of wild nature. A reaction against the harmony and calmness of Brown's landscapes was inevitable; the landscapes lacked the sublime thrill which members of the Romantic generation (such as Richard Payne Knight and Uvedale Price) looked for in their ideal landscape, where the painterly inspiration would come from Salvator Rosa rather than Claude Lorrain.


title: Capability Brown

text: During the 19th century he was widely criticised, but during the twentieth century his reputation rose again. Tom Turner has suggested that the latter resulted from a favourable account of his talent in Marie-Luise Gothein's "History of Garden Art" which predated Christopher Hussey's positive account of Brown in "The Picturesque" (1927). Dorothy Stroud wrote the first full monograph on Capability Brown, fleshing out the generic attributions with documentation from country house estate offices.


title: Capability Brown

text: Later landscape architects like William Gilpin would opine that Brown's 'natural curves' were as artificial as the straight lines that were common in French gardens. Brown's portrait by Nathaniel Dance, c. 1773, is conserved in the National Portrait Gallery, London. His work has often been favourably compared and contrasted ("the antithesis") to the œuvre of André Le Nôtre, the French "jardin à la française" landscape architect. He became both "rich and honoured and had 'improved' a greater acreage of ground than any landscape architect" who preceded him.


title: Capability Brown

text: A festival to celebrate the tercentenary of Brown's birth was held in 2016. The Capability Brown Festival 2016 published a large amount of new research on Brown's work and held over 500 events across Britain as part of the celebrations. Royal Mail issued a series of Landscape Stamps in his honour in August 2016.


title: Capability Brown

text: The Gardens Trust with support from Historic England, published "Vulnerability Brown: Capability Brown landscapes at risk" in October 2017 to review the issues facing the survival of these landscapes as well as suggested solutions.


title: Capability Brown

text: A commemorative fountain in Westminster Abbey’s cloister garth was dedicated for Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown after Evensong on Tuesday 29 May 2018 by the Dean of Westminster, the Very Reverend Dr John Hall. The fountain sits over an old monastic well in the garth. It was designed by Ptolemy Dean, the Abbey's Surveyor of the Fabric, and was developed with the assistance of gardener Alan Titchmarsh. The fountain was made in lead by sculptor Brian Turner.


title: Capability Brown

text: On 22 November 1744 he married in Stowe parish church, Bridget Wayet (affectionately called Biddy) from Boston, Lincolnshire.


title: Capability Brown

text: Her father was an alderman and landowner while her family had surveyors and engineers among its members. They had eight children: Bridget in 1746, Lancelot (known as Lance), William (who died young), John in 1751, a son in 1754 who died shortly afterwards, Anne who was born and died in 1756, Margaret (known as Peggy) in 1758 and Thomas in 1761.


title: Capability Brown

text: In 1768 he purchased the manor of Fenstanton in Huntingdonshire in East Anglia for £13,000 from Lord Northampton. This came with two manor houses, two villages and 2,668 acres of land. The property stayed in the family until it was sold in lots in 1870s and 1880s. Ownership of the property allowed him to stand for and serve as High Sheriff of Huntingdonshire from 1770 to 1771. He continued to work and travel until his sudden collapse and death on 6 February 1783, on the doorstep of his daughter Bridget Holland's house, at 6 Hertford Street, London while returning after a night out at Lord Coventry's.


title: Capability Brown

text: Horace Walpole wrote to Lady Ossory: ""Your dryads must go into black gloves, Madam, their father-in-law, Lady Nature’s second husband, is dead!"". Brown was buried in the churchyard of St. Peter and St. Paul, the parish church of Brown's small estate at Fenstanton Manor. He left an estate of approximately £40,000, which included property in Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire. His eldest daughter Bridget married the architect Henry Holland. Brown sent two of his sons to Eton. One of them, Lancelot Brown the younger, became the MP for Huntingdon. His son John joined the Royal Navy and rose to become an admiral.


title: Capability Brown

text: Many of Capability Brown's parks and gardens may still be visited today. A partial list of the landscapes he designed or worked on includes:


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The Tower of Babel was the subject of three paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder. The first, a miniature painted on ivory, was painted while Bruegel was in Rome and is now lost. The two surviving paintings, often distinguished by the prefix "Great" and "Little", are in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna and the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam respectively. Both are oil paintings on wood panels.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The Rotterdam painting is about half the size of the Vienna one. In broad terms they have exactly the same composition, but at a detailed level everything is different, whether in the architecture of the tower or in the sky and the landscape around the tower. The Vienna version has a group in the foreground, with the main figure presumably Nimrod, who was believed to have ordered the construction of the tower, although the Bible does not actually say this. In Vienna the tower rises at the edge of a large city, but the Rotterdam tower is in open countryside.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The paintings depict the construction of the Tower of Babel, which, according to the Book of Genesis in the Bible, was built by a unified, monolingual humanity as a mark of their achievement and to prevent them from scattering: "Then they said, 'Come, let us build ourselves a city, and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.'" (Genesis 11:4).


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: Bruegel's depiction of the architecture of the tower, with its numerous arches and other examples of Roman engineering, is deliberately reminiscent of the Roman Colosseum, which Christians of the time saw as a symbol of both hubris and persecution. Bruegel had visited Rome in 1552–1553. Back in Antwerp, he may have refreshed his memory of Rome with a series of engravings of the principal landmarks of the city made by the publisher of his own prints, Hieronymous Cock, for he incorporated details of Cock's engravings of Roman views in both surviving versions of the "Tower of Babel".


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The parallel of Rome and Babylon had a particular significance for Bruegel's contemporaries: Rome was the Eternal City, intended by the Caesars to last forever, and its decay and ruin were taken to symbolize the vanity and transience of earthly efforts. The Tower was also symbolic of the religious turmoil between the Catholic Church (which at the time conducted all services in Latin) and the polyglot Protestant religion that was increasingly popular in the Netherlands. The subject may have had a specific topicality, as the famous Polyglot Bible in six languages, a landmark in Biblical scholarship, was published in Antwerp in 1566. Although at first glance the tower appears to be a stable series of concentric pillars, upon closer examination it is apparent that none of the layers lies at a true horizontal. Rather the tower is built as an ascending spiral.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The workers in the painting have built the arches perpendicular to the slanted ground, thereby making them unstable, and a few arches can already be seen crumbling. The foundation and bottom layers of the tower had not been completed before the higher layers were constructed.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: Lucas van Valckenborch, a contemporary of Bruegel's, also painted the Tower of Babel in the 1560s and later in his career, possibly after seeing Bruegel's depiction. Both were part of a larger tradition of painting the tower during the 16th and 17th centuries.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The story of the Tower of Babel (like that in The Suicide of Saul, Bruegel's only other painting with an Old Testament subject) was interpreted as an example of pride punished, and that is no doubt what Bruegel intended his painting to illustrate. Moreover, the hectic activity of the engineers, masons and workmen points to a second moral: the futility of much human endeavour. Nimrod's doomed building was used to illustrate this meaning in Sebastian Brant's "Ship of Fools". Bruegel's knowledge of building procedures and techniques is considerable and correct in detail. The skill with which he has shown these activities recalls that his last commission, left unfinished at his death, was for a series of documentary paintings recording the digging of a canal linking Brussels and Antwerp.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: Both towers are shown partly-built with stone facings over a massive brick framework, a typical technique in Roman architecture, used in the Colosseum and other huge Roman buildings. Grand and formal architecture of this sort is not a usual interest of Bruegel in either paintings or drawings, although it was typical subject matter for many of his contemporaries. Nadine Orenstein, in discussing his only known drawing of buildings in Rome, concludes from the details taken from the Colosseum in both "Tower" paintings that he "must" have recorded them in drawings on his visit ten years before, but given the easy availability of prints this does not seem conclusive.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: There are no surviving drawings that are studies for this or any other of Bruegel's paintings. This is despite indications that Bruegel did make use of preparatory studies. Both "Tower" versions are full of the type of details which are likely to have been worked out in sketches first. Except for a lack of mountains, the paintings contain the main ingredients of the world landscape, a type of composition followed in many of Bruegel's earlier landscapes. The Vienna tower is built around a very steep small mountain, which can be seen protruding from the architecture at the centre near the ground and to the right higher up.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: On the Vienna painting, there is a stone block directly in front of the king which is signed and dated "Brvegel. FE. M.CCCCC.LXIII" (where Bruegel FE. is short for "Bruegel a fait en", French for "[painted] by Bruegel, in [1563]"). It was painted for the Antwerp banker Nicolaes Jonghelinck, one of Bruegel's best patrons, who owned no fewer than 16 of his paintings.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The painting of the miniature on ivory is described in a chapter of the Rudy Rucker novel "". However, the image of the painting that appears on p. 26 in the novel is of the 1563 oil painting on oak panel in the Vienna Kunsthistorisches Museum. (see p. 360 in Acknowledgments).


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The painting is also featured on the cover of Paul Graham's 2004 book, "Hackers & Painters". Artist Lothar Osterburg created a series of works influenced by "The Tower of Babel" under the title "Babel" (2015–7), which include photogravures, a stop-motion video, and a 28-foot sculpture installation built entirely from old books.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: They are briefly mentioned in 1997 video game "Shadowman", where Jaunty explains that Bruegel was shocked at how The Asylum resembled his paintings.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: In the 2005 video game "Shadow of the Colossus", The Shrine of Worship is clearly a reference to The tower of Babel, especially considering that the name of the main antagonist is Dormin, which is "Nimrod" spelled backwards.


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The painting also makes an appearance in the 2012 video game, "", in the zombie survival mode in the map, 'Green Run' on a wall in a section of the map (Town).


title: The Tower of Babel (Bruegel)

text: The 2016 video game "Let it Die" features a homage to the painting. Showing the in-game 'Tower of Barbs' with nearly identical features as the original work with a modern urban motif and Death standing in place of King Nimrod.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Luigi "Geno" Auriemma (born March 23, 1954) is an Italian-born American college basketball coach and, since 1985, the head coach of the University of Connecticut Huskies women's basketball team. , he has led UConn to 17 undefeated conference seasons (including eight consecutive), of which six were undefeated overall seasons, with 11 NCAA Division I national championships, the most in women's college basketball history, and has won eight national Naismith College Coach of the Year awards. Auriemma was the head coach of the United States women's national basketball team from 2009 through 2016, during which time his teams won the 2010 and 2014 World Championships, and gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Summer Olympics, going undefeated in all four tournaments. Auriemma was inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2006.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma emigrated with his family from Montella in Southern Italy to Norristown, Pennsylvania when he was seven years old, and he spent the rest of his childhood there. Auriemma had to teach himself how to speak the English language coming to the United States. After graduating from West Chester University of Pennsylvania in 1977, Auriemma was hired as an assistant coach at Saint Joseph's University, where he worked in 1978 and 1979. Prior to coaching at Saint Joseph's University he began his career coaching women's basketball at Bishop McDevitt HS in Wyncote Pennsylvania. He then took a two-year absence from college basketball, serving as an assistant coach at his former high school, Bishop Kenrick, before assuming an assistant coaching position with the University of Virginia Cavaliers women's team in 1981. Auriemma became a naturalized United States citizen in 1994 at the age of 40, noting in his autobiography that he finally decided to naturalize when his University of Connecticut team was slated to tour Italy that summer and he was concerned about potential problems, as he had never done any required national service in his birth country.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: For many years, Auriemma and his wife, Kathy, maintained a home in Avalon, New Jersey, to be near their parents in the Philadelphia area.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Prior to Auriemma's arrival in 1985, the Huskies Women's Basketball team had posted only one winning season in its history. The decision to hire Auriemma was part of the university's commitment to better fund women's sports. Auriemma's was the final interview scheduled by the search staff. Most of the other candidates were highly qualified, and most were female. One of those included in the interview process was Chris Dailey, who would become Auriemma's assistant and is currently the associate head coach. Dailey was identified as the candidate most likely to receive an offer if Auriemma turned down the position.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Connecticut quickly rose to prominence after Auriemma was hired in August 1985. After finishing 12–15 in Auriemma's first season (his only losing season), the Huskies notched their first-ever 20-win season, first conference title and first NCAA Tournament appearance. Connecticut has finished above .500 for 33 consecutive seasons, including six undefeated seasons (1994–95, 2001–02, 2008–09, 2009–10, 2013–14, and 2015–16) and three NCAA record streaks of 111, 90 and 70 consecutive wins. On December 21, 2010, Auriemma led UConn to its 89th consecutive victory, one more than the all-time NCAA men's wins record of 88 held by UCLA; the streak ended at 90 wins. The Huskies subsequently broke their own record with an astounding 111-game winning streak that began in 2014 and finally ended in 2017. They have also appeared in every NCAA Tournament since 1989–as of the end of the 2018–19 season, the third-longest active consecutive appearances streak in Division I.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: At the end of the 2014–15 season, Auriemma's record as a head coach was 917–134, for an 87.3 winning percentage. That winning percentage is the highest among Division I active coaches. His career at UConn also includes 20 seasons with 30 or more wins. UConn has won eleven national championships under Auriemma (1995, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2016) and made the Final Four 20 times (1991, 1995, 1996, 2000–2004, 2008–2019). Auriemma has also guided UConn to 21 conference regular season titles and 20 conference tournament titles. They lost 17 conference games in the last two decades of play in the Big East Conference, and have never lost a conference game since the old Big East reorganized as the American Athletic Conference in 2013.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: With the win in 2016, Auriemma passed UCLA men's coach John Wooden for most college basketball championships, and the Huskies became the first Division I women's basketball team to win four straight national championships.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: The team has been especially successful on its home court in the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion on the UConn campus in Storrs, Connecticut, and in the larger XL Center in Hartford; they tied an NCAA women's basketball record with 69 consecutive home wins between 2000 and 2003. That record was broken in 2011. The last home loss was to Villanova in the game that ended their 70-game winning streak. Moreover, between Auriemma's arrival and the close of the 2005 season, UConn won 295 games versus just 31 losses. The team set Big East Conference records for both single-game and season-long attendance.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma is also known for cultivating individual players, and the 13 multiple-All-America players—Rebecca Lobo, Jennifer Rizzotti, Kara Wolters, Nykesha Sales, Svetlana Abrosimova, Sue Bird, Swin Cash, Diana Taurasi, Tina Charles, Maya Moore, Stefanie Dolson, Bria Hartley and Breanna Stewart—whom Auriemma has coached have combined to win eight Naismith College Player of the Year awards, seven Wade Trophies, and nine NCAA basketball tournament Most Outstanding Player awards. (The UConn athletics website also notes that, through 2006–07, every recruited freshman who has finished her eligibility at UConn has graduated with a degree.)


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Since achieving its first #1 ranking in the 1994–95 season, UConn under Auriemma is 186–10 when playing as the nation's #1 team. At the end of the 2009–10 season, he had a record of 127–52 against top 25 opponents and a 57–35 record against top 10 opponents. He won his 600th game on New Year's Eve 2006, accomplishing the feat in 716 games, tying him with Phillip Kahler for the fastest women's basketball coach to reach that milestone. Auriemma won his 700th game on November 27, 2009 in 822 total games, becoming the fastest head coach to that milestone in the history of college basketball at any level, men or women. He is now one of eight active women's college basketball coaches to have 700 or more wins. Auriemma became the sixth coach in women's basketball history to reach 800 career victories on March 6, 2012, also reaching 800 career wins faster than any coach in the history of college basketball men or women at any division level in just 928 career games. On February 3, 2015, Auriemma notched his 900th victory in only 1,034 games, reaching this milestone also faster than any college coach in history. Auriemma was a member of the inaugural class (2006) of inductees to the University of Connecticut women's basketball Huskies of Honor recognition program.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma created controversy in 1998 when he arranged with Villanova coach Harry Perretta to orchestrate a shot at the beginning of their scheduled game. University of Connecticut's top player, Nykesha Sales, was two points short of breaking the team record for most points in a career when she ruptured her right Achilles tendon in the second to last game of the season against Notre Dame. When the following game against Villanova began, Villanova players allowed Connecticut to win the tip off and then pass the ball down to Sales who was standing underneath the basket. She laid the ball in to break the record. Connecticut players then stood back and allowed Villanova an uncontested layup of their own before beginning regular play.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: The rivalry between the Huskies and the University of Tennessee Lady Vols extended to Auriemma's relationship with Volunteers counterpart Pat Summitt, who retired in 2012 and died in 2016. The two, through print and broadcast media, were often at odds. At the end of the 2009–10 season, Auriemma had slightly surpassed Summitt among active Division I coaches for career winning percentage, with Auriemma at 85.8 and Summitt at 84.1. In 2007, Summitt, who believed Auriemma had used less-than-honorable tactics in his successful recruitment of Maya Moore, canceled the yearly game between the two programs.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Former UConn men's basketball coach Jim Calhoun has been called Auriemma's "unfriendly rival", and he once mocked the women's team's fan base as the "world's largest nursing home." When asked about their relationship in 2001, Auriemma said, "Jim has a problem with anyone else's success, not just ours. Do we get along? No, but we don't have to."


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma was named head coach of the US women's team that competed in the Junior World Championship in Brno, Czech Republic during July 2001. The team won its first five games, including a record-setting win against Mali. The 97–27 final score represented the largest margin of victory by a USA team in Junior World Championship history. The preliminary round results qualified the team for the medal rounds, where they faced the host team, the Czech Republic. With a home crowd cheering them on, the Czech team won 92–88 and went on to beat Russia 82–80 to win the gold medal. The US team beat Australia 77–72 to win the bronze medal. Diana Taurasi was the leading scorer for the US with 19.3 points per game, while Alana Beard was close behind with 18.0 points per game. Nicole Powell was the leading rebounder for the US, with seven rebounds per game.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma was named head coach of the US Women's National team in preparation for competition in the 2010 World Championships and 2012 Olympics. Because many team members were still playing in the WNBA until just prior to the World Championship, the team had only one day of practice with the entire team before leaving for Ostrava and Karlovy Vary, Czech Republic. Despite this the team won its first games against Greece by 26 points. The team continued to dominate with victory margins exceeding 20 points in the first five games. Several players shared scoring honors, with Swin Cash, Angel McCoughtry, Maya Moore, Diana Taurasi, Lindsay Whalen, and Sylvia Fowles all ending as high scorer in the first few games. The sixth game was against undefeated Australia — the USA jumped out to a 24-point lead and won 83–75. Team USA won its next two games by over 30 points, then faced the host team, the Czech Republic, in the championship game. They had a five-point lead at halftime, which was cut to three points, but the Czechs never got closer. Team USA won the championship and gold medal. At the 2012 Olympics, Auriemma's team went 8–0 and won the gold medal game over France 86–50. Their closest match of the Olympics – and the only game in which their margin of victory was less than 25 points – was an 86–73 win in the semi-finals over eventual Bronze Medal winner Australia.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma was again named head coach of the US Women's Basketball team for the 2014 FIBA World Championship for Women and the 2016 Summer Olympics. In the 2014 World Championship, his team went 6–0 and won the gold medal, outscoring their opponents 553–380 over the six games – an average margin of victory of almost 30 points per game.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: During the college basketball offseason, Auriemma serves as an analyst for games of the Women's National Basketball Association broadcast on the American cable television networks ESPN and ESPN2, in which he often critiques his former players.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma is close friends with former Saint Joseph's University basketball head coach Phil Martelli and his son, Mike Auriemma, attended and played basketball at Saint Joseph's.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma served as an assistant coach to the gold medalist 2000 U.S. Olympic Team. On April 15, 2009 he was selected to lead USA Basketball Women's National Team in the 2010 FIBA World Championship in the Czech Republic and the London 2012 Summer Olympics.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma is a member of the board of directors at Connecticut Children's Foundation, Inc. and hosts a charity series of events, Geno for the Kids, every year benefiting Connecticut Children's Medical Center.


title: Geno Auriemma

text: Auriemma has parlayed his heritage and his love of Italian cuisine into lines of wines and sauces along with several restaurants in Connecticut.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" is a song recorded by British-Australian singer Olivia Newton-John for her 1981 eleventh studio album of the same name. It was released as the album's lead single on 28 September 1981. The song was produced by John Farrar and written by Steve Kipner and Terry Shaddick, who had originally intended to offer it to Rod Stewart. The song had also been offered to Tina Turner by her manager Roger Davies, but when Turner declined, Davies gave the song to Newton-John, another of his clients.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" was an immediate smash hit, shipping two million copies in the United States, where it was certified Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), and spent 10 weeks at number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100. "Physical" ultimately became Newton-John's biggest hit and cemented her legacy as a pop superstar, a journey that began when she crossed over from her earlier country pop roots. The song's suggestive lyric, which even caused it to be banned in some markets, helped change Newton-John's longstanding clean-cut image, replacing it with a sexy, assertive persona that was strengthened with follow-up hits such as "Make a Move on Me", "Twist of Fate" and "Soul Kiss".


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" (originally "Let's Get Physical") was written by Terry Shaddick and Newton-John's longtime friend Steve Kipner, and initially was intended for a "macho male rock figure like Rod Stewart", according to Kipner. When Newton-John's then manager Lee Kramer accidentally heard the demo, he immediately sent the song to her, but initially she did not want to release the song, because it was "too cheeky". It was the first of several Newton-John releases written by Kipner.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: The song's guitar solo was performed by Steve Lukather, best known as a founding member of the American rock band Toto. "Physical" is written in the key of E minor with Newton-John's vocal range spanning from A3 to E5.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" was described by Mark Ellen of "Smash Hits" as "one of the most successful career-revivers in living memory". It is the most successful single of Newton-John's career and became her fifth (and last) number-one single on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. "Physical" stayed for 10 weeks on the top of Hot 100, from 21 November 1981 through 23 January 1982, out of a total of 26 weeks on the chart. It was the largest permanence at the time, becoming the most successful song on the "Billboard" in the 1980s. The song was very controversial due to the implied sexual content, being innovative and somewhat provocative for the time.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" has received positive reviews from music critics since release, with some of them calling it "good-naturedly sexy" and "an eighties gem". The song won a Grammy Award for Video of the Year and won the "Billboard" Award for Top Pop Single.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" rose to number one on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 in November 1981 and stayed there for 10 weeks (the most of any single in the 1980s), remaining until the second half of January 1982. It reached number two on the Radio & Records CHR/Pop Airplay chart on 27 November 1981, staying there for two weeks and remaining on the chart for 14 weeks. In terms of chart placement, "Physical" was Newton-John's most successful single in the United States, and her final single to reach the top spot. "Billboard" ranked the song as the number-one single of 1982 (since the chart year for 1982 actually began in November 1981). In Canada, the song was number one for five weeks beginning 19 December 1981, was on the Top 50 charts for 26 weeks, and was her sixth number-one song.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" was both preceded and followed in the number-one chart position by recordings by American duo Hall & Oates: "Private Eyes" was dethroned by "Physical" in November 1981 and "Physical" was supplanted by "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" the following January. "Physical" held Foreigner's "Waiting for a Girl Like You" at number two on the Hot 100 for nine weeks and "I Can't Go for That (No Can Do)" then held Foreigner at number two for a tenth and final consecutive week. "Physical" remained in the top ten for a total of 15 weeks, thus making it the longest run of 1981, as well as tying it for the longest run of the decade among number-one singles. "Physical" also peaked at number 28 on the Hot Soul Singles chart.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Physical" achieved great success around the world, reaching number seven in the United Kingdom, where it was certified Silver. However, the song was censored and even banned by some radio stations as a result of its sexually suggestive content, such as the line "There's nothing left to talk about, unless it's horizontally".


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: The accompanying music video for "Physical", directed by Brian Grant, features Newton-John in a tight leotard trying to make several overweight men lose weight. The men fail comically and Newton-John leaves the room to take a shower. When the men work out on their own, they suddenly transform into muscular, attractive men. A stylistic shot shows one muscular man glancing at his overweight self in a mirror. Newton-John is shocked when she returns and starts to flirt with them. Two of the men secretly go out, holding hands, implying they are gay. This surprises Newton-John, as does the sight of two more of the men leaving with their arms around each other. Finally, she finds that the last of the overweight men is heterosexual and they go off to play tennis together.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: The "Olivia Physical" music video collection, which contained "Physical", won a Grammy Award for Video of the Year in 1983. The video was featured on VH1's "Pop-Up Video" and was the first video to air on "Beavis and Butt-head."


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: "Billboard" ranked "Physical" number six on its "All Time Top 100" list, number one on its "Top 50 Sexiest Songs of All Time" list, and number one on its "Top 100 Songs of the 1980s" list.


title: Physical (Olivia Newton-John song)

text: A revamped bossa nova version of the song was released on the 2002 Newton-John album "(2)" as a bonus track, and this version replaced the original in Newton-John's tours. Her duet with Jane Lynch was included in the episode "Bad Reputation" of the television series "Glee". This version peaked at number 89 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in May 2010.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: The 29th Infantry Division (29th ID), also known as the "Blue and Gray Division", is an infantry division of the United States Army based in Fort Belvoir, Virginia. It is currently a formation of the U.S. Army National Guard and contains units from Virginia, Maryland, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina and West Virginia.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: Formed in 1917, the division deployed to France as a part of the American Expeditionary Force during World War I. Called up for service again in World War II, the division's 116th Regiment, attached to the First Infantry Division, was in the first wave of troops ashore during Operation Neptune, the landings in Normandy, France. It supported a special Ranger unit tasked with clearing strong points at Omaha Beach. The rest of the 29th ID came ashore later, then advanced to Saint-Lô, and eventually through France and into Germany.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: Following the end of World War II, the division saw frequent reorganizations and deactivations. Although the 29th did not see combat through most of the next 50 years, it participated in numerous training exercises throughout the world. It eventually saw deployments to Bosnia (SFOR10) and Kosovo (KFOR) as command elements, and units of the division continue to deploy to locations such as Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and to the War in Afghanistan as a part of the Global War on Terrorism's Operation Enduring Freedom, and also to the Iraq War, as a part of its Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation New Dawn. In recent years, the Division has continued answering the call supporting Operation Spartan Shield in forward deployed locations.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: In 2016, two separate elements of the 29th deployed overseas. In July more than 80 soldiers deployed in support of anti-ISIL operations (dubbed Operation Inherent Resolve by the U.S. government). In October, more than 450 29th soldiers deployed in support of Operation Spartan Shield.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: The 29th Division was first constituted on paper on 18 July 1917, three months after the American entry into World War I, in the U.S. Army National Guard. Troops came from Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, Virginia, and the District of Columbia. As the division was composed of men from states that had units that fought for both the North and South during the American Civil War, it was nicknamed the "Blue and Gray" division, after the blue uniforms of the Union and the gray uniforms of the Confederate armies. The division was organized as a unit on 25 August 1917 at Camp McClellan, Alabama. In January 1918, the Delaware units were relieved from assignment to the division.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: The division, commanded by Major General Charles Gould Morton, departed for the Western Front in June 1918 to join the American Expeditionary Force (AEF). The division's advance detachment reached Brest, France on 8 June. In late September, the 29th received orders to join the U.S. First Army's Meuse-Argonne Offensive as part of the French XVII Corps. During its 21 days in combat, the 29th Division advanced seven kilometers, captured 2,148 prisoners, and knocked out over 250 machine guns or artillery pieces. Thirty percent of the division became casualties—170 officers and 5,691 enlisted men were killed or wounded. Shortly thereafter the Armistice with Germany was signed on 11 November 1918, ending hostilities between the Central Powers and the Allied Powers. The division returned to the United States in May 1919. It demobilized on 30 May at Camp Dix, New Jersey,


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: The 29th was reconstituted in the National Guard in 1921, assigned to the III Corps, and allotted to the states of Maryland and Virginia, and the District of Columbia. New Jersey units that had been part of the 29th Division in World War I were assigned to the new 44th Division, that encompassed troops from New Jersey and New York. When 155 mm howitzers were returned to infantry divisions beginning in 1929, a formerly non-divisional unit from Pennsylvania was assigned to the division. The division trained as a unit during the 1935 First Army maneuvers at Fort Indiantown Gap, Pennsylvania, and during the 1939 First Army maneuvers at Manassas, Virginia.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: At the outbreak of World War II, the U.S. Army began buildup and reorganization of its fighting forces. The division was called into active service on 3 February 1941. Elements of the division were then sent to Fort Meade, Maryland for training. The 57th and 58th Infantry Brigades were inactivated as part of an army-wide removal of brigades from divisions. Instead, the core units of the division were its three infantry regiments, along with supporting units. On 12 March 1942, over three months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the subsequent American entrance into World War II, with this reorganization complete the division was redesignated as the 29th Infantry Division and began preparing for overseas deployment to Europe.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: The 29th Infantry Division, under the command of Major General Leonard Gerow, was sent to England on 5 October 1942 on . It was based throughout England and Scotland, where it immediately began training for an invasion of northern Europe across the English Channel. In May 1943 the division moved to the Devon–Cornwall peninsula and started conducting simulated attacks against fortified positions. At this time the division was assigned to V Corps of the U.S. First Army. In July the divisional commander, Major General Gerow, was promoted to command V Corps and Major General Charles Hunter Gerhardt assumed command of the division, remaining in this post for the rest of the war.


title: 29th Infantry Division (United States)

text: D-Day of Operation Neptune, the cross-channel invasion of Normandy, finally came on 6 June 1944. Neptune was the assault phase of the larger Operation Overlord, codename for the Allied campaign to liberate France from the Germans. The 29th Infantry Division sent the 116th Infantry to support the western flank of the veteran 1st Infantry Division's 16th Infantry at Omaha Beach. Omaha was known to be the most difficult of the five landing beaches, due to its rough terrain and bluffs overlooking the beach, which had been well fortified by its German defenders of the 352nd Infantry Division. The 116th Infantry was assigned four sectors of the beach; Easy Green, Dog Red, Dog White, and Dog Green. Soldiers of the 29th Infantry Division boarded a large number of attack transports for the D-Day invasion, among them landing craft, landing ship, tank, and landing ship, infantry ships and other vessels such as the , , and USS "Buncombe County".