title: Leicester Square

text: The square was laid out to the south of Leicester House and developed in the 1670s. The area was originally entirely residential, with properties laid out in a similar style to nearby Pall Mall. In 1687, the northern part of the square became part of the new parish of St Anne, Soho. The 7th Earl of Leicester took ownership of the property in 1728 and it was briefly the residence of Frederick, Prince of Wales, from 1742 until Leicester's death the following year. The poet Matthew Prior lived at what is now No. 21 around 1700 and artist William Hogarth resided at No 30 between 1733 and 1764, where he produced some of his best known works including "Gin Lane". The magistrate Thomas de Veil, later to found Bow Street Magistrates' Court, lived at No 40 between 1729 and 1737; this location is now the Odeon West End. The painter Joshua Reynolds lived at No 47 from 1760 until his death in 1792; this location is now Fanum House, once the Automobile Association head office.


title: Leicester Square

text: At the end of the 17th century, Lord Leicester's heir, Philip Sidney, 3rd Earl of Leicester, permitted a small amount of retail development in booths along the front of Leicester House. A statue of King George I was built on the square in 1760 following the coronation of his great-grandson, George III. The square remained fashionable throughout most of the 18th century, with notable residents including the architect James Stuart at No 35 from 1766 to 1788 and the painter John Singleton Copley at No. 28 from 1776 to 1783.


title: Leicester Square

text: Leicester House was intermittently inhabited during the mid-18th century, and was finally sold to the naturalist Ashton Lever in 1775. Lever turned the house into a museum with a significant amount of natural history objects. In turn, the square began to serve as a venue for popular entertainments. Brothels began to appear around Leicester Square during the century, and visitors could pay to watch the severed heads of traitors executed at Temple Bar through a telescope. Leicester House became home of a museum of natural curiosities called the Holophusikon in the 1780s. It was demolished in 1791–72 due to rising debts following the extinction of the Leicester peerage, and replaced by Leicester Place. That in turn was converted into a church in 1865 and is now the site of the Prince Charles Cinema.


title: Leicester Square

text: In 1790, a new Royal Opera House was proposed to be built in Leicester Square. The scheme was led by The Prince of Wales, Francis Russell, 5th Duke of Bedford and James Cecil, 1st Marquess of Salisbury and aimed to re-establish London as a centre for Italian opera and ballet, with an opera house to rival those in mainland Europe. The opera house was never built, as the royal patent needed at that time to license a theatre was refused. The plans for the original design are preserved in Sir John Soane's Museum, while a 1790 painting by William Hodges, which displays the finished design, belongs to the Museum of London.


title: Leicester Square

text: By the 19th century, Leicester Square was known as an entertainment venue, with many amusements peculiar to the era, including Wyld's Great Globe, which was built for The Great Exhibition of 1851 and housed a giant scale map of the Earth. The construction of New Coventry Street made it easier for traffic to access the square, resulting in private residences being replaced by shops, museums and exhibition centres. Savile House at No. 5–6, built in 1683 for Thomas Bruce, 2nd Earl of Ailesbury, had become a museum by this time, and was ultimately destroyed by fire in 1865. It was rebuilt as the Empire Theatre.


title: Leicester Square

text: Several foreign-owned hotels were established around the square, making it popular with visitors to London. Brunet's Hôtel at No. 25 was opened by Louis Brunet in 1800, later expanding to Nos. 24 and 26 during the following decade. It was bought by Francis Jaunay in 1815 known as Jaunay's Hôtel. The Hôtel Sablonière et de Provence opened at No. 17–18 in 1845 as the Hôtel de Provence, and renamed in 1869. It closed in 1919 and became a public house. The Cavour, at No. 20 at the southeast of the square, opened in 1864. It was badly damaged in World War II but subsequently restored.


title: Leicester Square

text: The Alhambra Theatre was built in 1854 on the east side of the square, dominating the site. It temporarily closed two years later when the original owner, Edward Clarke, became bankrupt, but then reopened in 1858 as the Alhambra Palace. It enjoyed a surge in popularity after Queen Victoria and family came to see "Black Eagle – The Horse of Beauty". It burned down in 1882, but reopened the following year. In the early 20th century, the theatre became a popular venue for ballet. It was demolished in 1936 and replaced by the Odeon Cinema. The Empire Theatre of Varieties opened in 1881 on the former site of Savile House, but had a troubled start, closing for a time, until the end of the decade. The theatre gained a reputation for high-class prostitutes frequenting the theatre, and in 1894 the London County Council ordered the promenade on the upper balcony to be remodelled. A young Winston Churchill, then a cadet at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, helped destroy canvas screens that had been erected to prevent access to the balcony. The theatre closed in 1927, to be replaced by the Empire Cinema.


title: Leicester Square

text: During the Winter of Discontent, where the incumbent Labour Party struggled to meet demands of trade unions and a shrinking economy, refuse collectors went on strike in January 1979. Leicester Square was turned into a "de facto" dump, earning it the nickname of "Fester Square". In the 1980s, the square was pedestrianised, cutting off all vehicular traffic. Access to the square for goods and deliveries is now controlled by specially designated marshals.


title: Leicester Square

text: By the start of the 21st century, Westminster City Council were concerned that the square was too dangerous at night, and wanted to demolish sections of it to encourage the growth of theatres and cinemas, and reduce popularity of nightclubs. In 2010, a major redevelopment of Leicester Square took place as part of a Great Outdoors scheme proposed by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson. The improvements included of granite paving and a water feature surrounding the Shakespeare statue. The square re-opened in May 2012 after 17 months' work at a total cost of £15.3 million. The Greater London Authority said the refurbishments would accommodate more than 1,000 new jobs. The re-opening coincided with the 2012 Summer Olympics later that year.


title: Leicester Square

text: In the middle of the square is a small park that was originally available for common use on Lammas Day (12 August), such as washing clothes and herding cattle. The Earl of Leicester was obliged to preserve these grounds, which were separated from the rest of the square with railings. In 1808, the garden was sold by the Leicester Estate to Charles Elmes for £210 (), who neglected to maintain it. Ownership changed hands a number of times during the first half of the 19th century, including Robert Barren following Elmes' death in 1822, John Inderwick in 1834, and Hyam Hyams and Edward Moxhay in 1839. Little maintenance was done and the garden deteriorated to the point of severe dilapidation.


title: Leicester Square

text: In 1848, the land was subject to the significant legal case of "Tulk v Moxhay". The plot's previous owner, Moxhay, had agreed upon a covenant not to erect buildings but the law would not allow buyers who were not "privy" to the initial contract to be bound by subsequent promises. The judge, Lord Cottenham, decided that future owners of land could be bound by promises to abstain from activity, subject to the doctrine of notice (actual or constructive). Otherwise, a buyer could (re-)sell land to himself to undermine an initial promise. James Wyld bought the assets of the garden from the Tulk and Moxhay's death estates in 1849 to erect the Great Globe, though buried the statue of George I under 12 feet of earth with the globe stuck on top. The statue was uncovered following the globe's demise, but by 1866 it had deteriorated due to vandalism and was sold for £16. Arguments continued about the fate of the garden, with Charles Augustus Tulk's heirs erecting a wooden hoarding around the property in 1873. These were quickly removed after the Master of the Rolls ordered that the land must be preserved for its original purpose.


title: Leicester Square

text: The garden was saved by the Member of Parliament (MP) Albert Grant, who purchased the park in 1874 for £11,060 and donated it to the Metropolitan Board of Works. The title deed for the square passed to the succeeding public bodies and is now in the ownership of the City of Westminster. After the purchase, the architect James Knowles redesigned the park. A statue of William Shakespeare surrounded by dolphins was constructed in the centre. The four corner gates of the park had one bust each of famous former residents in the square: the scientist Sir Isaac Newton designed by W. Calder Marshall; Sir Joshua Reynolds, the first President of the Royal Academy by H. Weekes; John Hunter, a pioneer of surgery, by T. Wooler; and William Hogarth, the painter, by J. Durham. Ownership transferred to Westminster City Council in 1933. The most recent addition was a bronze statue of film star and director Sir Charlie Chaplin, designed by sculptor John Doubleday in 1981. On the pavement were inscribed the distances in miles to several Commonwealth countries, including Canada, Kenya and Jamaica. After the Great Outdoors refurbishment of the square, only the statue of Shakespeare still remains.


title: Leicester Square

text: Leicester Square is the centre of London's cinema land, and one of the signs marking the square bears the legend "Theatreland". It contains the cinema with the largest screen and another with the most seats (over 1,600). The square is the prime location in London for film premieres and co-hosts the London Film Festival each year. Similar to Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, the square was surrounded by floor mounted plaques with film stars' names and cast handprints. During the 2010–2012 refurbishment, many of the plaques were removed, confusing tourists who still expected to find them there.


title: Leicester Square

text: The Leicester Square Theatre is based in nearby Leicester Place. It was constructed in 1955 as a church, before becoming the Notre Dame Hall, then the Cavern in the Town, a popular live music venue in the 1960s. In the 1970s, it was renamed back to the Notre Dame Hall, where the Sex Pistols played one of their first gigs at the club on 15 November 1976. It was converted into a theatre in 2002 as The Venue, and refurbished as the Leicester Square Theatre in 2008. In 2014, it began a production of a musical based on Oscar Wilde's "De Profundis".


title: Leicester Square

text: The square has been the home for "TKTS" (originally known as the Official London Half-Price Theatre Ticket Booth), since 1980. Tickets for theatre performances taking place around the West End that day and during the week are sold from the booth at a significant discount. The popularity of the booth has given rise to other booths and stores around the square that advertise half-price tickets for West End shows. The Official London Theatre Guide recommends avoiding these booths as they are not official and do not contain the Society of Ticket Agents & Retailers (STAR) logo.


title: Leicester Square

text: The square is home to the Hippodrome Casino. Following a £40m refurbishment in 2012, the premises can now accommodate 2,000 patrons.


title: Leicester Square

text: Global Radio has its headquarters on the east side of Leicester Square at No. 30, close to the Odeon. The building houses the radio stations Capital, Capital Xtra, Classic FM, Gold, Heart, LBC, Smooth Radio and Radio X.


title: Leicester Square

text: The Odeon Leicester Square, which dominates the east side of the square, hosts many film premieres. Opened in 1937, it has a capacity for 1,683 people, arranged in circle and stalls. The last 70mm film showing was "Armageddon" in 1998, after which the theatre began to use digital technology. The projection room still contains some of the original 1930s decor and normally houses two projectors. The Empire opened in 1962. It was previously the largest cinema on the square, but in 2013 it was subdivided to cater for an IMAX screen. The Odeon West End, on the south side, opened in 1930. It was not generally used for premieres and was earmarked for demolition in 2014, to be replaced by a ten-storey hotel including a two-screen cinema. Westminster City Council reported 400 new jobs would be available after the redevelopment. Vue West End, on the north side, near the north east corner, was the first cinema in Europe to show a 3D film with "Chicken Little" in 2006.


title: Leicester Square

text: A short distance from the west of the square, on the south side of Panton Street, is the Odeon Panton Street. The Prince Charles Cinema, to the north of the square opened in 1962 with a "satellite dish" design where the audience looks upwards to the stage. The cinema became known for showing pornographic and erotic films during the 1970s, including "Emmanuelle" (1974). It later became a favourite venue for showing cult films, including "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" (1975) and a sing-along version of "The Sound of Music" (1965), and marathon performances including all seven Muppet films back to back. Prices are considerably cheaper than the main cinemas in the square; in 2013 a ticket for a new release at the Prince Charles cost £10, compared to £24 at the Odeon.


title: Leicester Square

text: Due to the Leicester Square's long association with cinema, a film-themed sculpture trail entitled "Scenes in the Square" was installed. In February 2020, eight sculptures were installed which depict characters from the last 100 years of cinema including Laurel and Hardy, Mary Poppins, Batman, Bugs Bunny, Don Lockwood portrayed by Gene Kelly, Paddington Bear, Mr. Bean, and Wonder Woman. In September 2020, a statue of Harry Potter riding a Nimbus 2000 was installed, becoming the ninth statue in the exhibition. In June 2021, a statue of the Iron Throne from HBO TV series "Game of Thrones" was unveiled to mark 10 years since the release of the first episode.


title: Leicester Square

text: Leicester Square is one of several places in the West End that puts on events relating to the Chinese New Year. The celebrations are organised by the London Chinatown Chinese Association and held on the first Sunday during the new year period. Events include music, acrobatics and dancing. In 2015, the celebrations attracted more than 1,000 participants, becoming the largest of their kind in the UK. These included lion dances, a show of the Cultures of China and a drum show. A parade ran nearby through Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue.


title: Leicester Square

text: The Royal Dental Hospital and school was based at 40–41 from 1874 to 1901 and at 31–36 from 1901 to 1985, when the building was redeveloped as the Hampshire Hotel.


title: Leicester Square

text: The School of English operated on Leicester Square from 1992 until its closure in 2015. It taught over 25,000 students during its years of operation.


title: Leicester Square

text: The world's largest Lego store opened on 3, Swiss Court, Leicester Square in November 2016. The opening was marked by unveiling a high model of Big Ben made out of 200,000 Lego bricks.


title: Leicester Square

text: In 2022, Burger King announced it would open its first meat-free restaurant in Leicester Square. The restaurant is scheduled to operate from 14 March to 10 April.


title: Leicester Square

text: The main electrical substation for the West End is beneath the square. The electrical cables to the substation are in a large tunnel ending at Leicester Square, and originating in Wimbledon, at Plough Lane, behind the former Wimbledon F.C. football ground, before which the cables are above ground.


title: Leicester Square

text: In 1726, anatomist Nathaniel St André claimed to have delivered rabbits from Mary Toft, a woman who lived at No. 27 Leicester Square. The event was widely reported around London, attracting interest from King George I and Royal Society president Hans Sloane. Shortly afterwards, the woman was caught trying to buy a rabbit in secret, and the incident was uncovered as a hoax.


title: Leicester Square

text: Leicester Square is commemorated in the lyrics of the music hall song "It's a Long Way to Tipperary" along with nearby Piccadilly, which became popular with soldiers during World War I. During the war, British inmates of Ruhleben Prisoner of War camp mentioned the square in a song: "Shout this chorus all you can. We want the people there, to hear in Leicester Square, That we're the boys that never get downhearted." It is mentioned in the lyrics of several rock & pop band tracks, including the Rolling Stones' notorious "Cocksucker Blues", (1970) "Jeffrey Goes To Leicester Square" on Jethro Tull's album "Stand Up" (1969), "Emit Remmus" on the album "Californication" by the Red Hot Chili Peppers (1999), He's on the Phone (1995) by Saint Etienne and "Leicester Square" on Rancid's "Life Won't Wait" (1998). A verse in "Something About England" on the Clash's 1980 album "Sandinista!" refers back to "It's a Long Way to Tipperary", including a reference to Leicester Square.


title: Leicester Square

text: Leicester Square is one of a group of three on the British "Monopoly" board along with Coventry Street and Piccadilly. The board was set out by designers Victor Watson and Marge Phillips in the order of entertainment on a Saturday night: film at Leicester Square, meal in Coventry Street and hotel on Piccadilly.


title: Leicester Square

text: The word "Leicester" features the ending "cester" which is with rare exceptions spoken as a simplified pronunciation, so is counterintuitive, a quirk of British English. A report by Premier Inn said Leicester Square was the most mispronounced place in the UK by tourists, usually as "" ("Lie-chester") Square.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Polonophobia, also referred to as anti-Polonism, (), and anti-Polish sentiment are terms for negative attitudes, prejudices, and actions against Poles as an ethnic group, Poland as their country, and their culture. These include ethnic prejudice against Poles and persons of Polish descent, other forms of discrimination, and mistreatment of Poles and the Polish diaspora.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: This prejudice led to mass killings and genocide or it was used to justify atrocities both before and during World War II, most notably by the German Nazis and Ukrainian nationalists. While Soviet repressions and massacres of Polish citizens were ideologically motivated, the negative attitude of Soviet authorities to the Polish nation is well-attested.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Nazi Germany killed between 1.8 to 2.7 million ethnic Poles, 140,000 Poles were deported to Auschwitz where at least half of them perished.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Anti-Polish sentiment includes stereotyping Poles as unintelligent and aggressive, as thugs, thieves, alcoholics, and anti-Semites.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: According to Adam Leszczynski, the term "antypolonizm" was coined by journalist Edmund Osmańczyk in 1946. Osmańczyk condemned anti-Jewish violence in postwar Poland, and concluded:


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: A historic example of anti-Polish sentiment was "polakożerstwo" (in English, "the devouring of Poles") – a Polish term coined in the 19th century in relation to the dismemberment and annexation of Poland by Prussia, the Habsburg monarchy and Russia. "Polakożerstwo" described the forcible suppression of Polish culture, education and religion in historically Polish territories, and the gradual elimination of Poles from everyday life as well as from owning property. Anti-Polish policies were implemented by the German Empire under Otto von Bismarck, especially during the "Kulturkampf", and enforced up to the end of the First World War. Organized persecution of Poles raged in the territories annexed by Russia, mainly under Tsar Nicholas II. Historic actions inspired by anti-Polonism ranged from felonious acts motivated by hatred, to physical extermination of the Polish nation, the goal of which was to eradicate the Polish state. During World War II, when most of Polish society became the object of genocidal policies of Nazi Germany, anti-Polonism led to an unprecedented campaign of mass murder in German-occupied Poland. In the modern day, among those who often express their hostile attitude towards the Polish people are some Russian politicians and their far-right political parties who search for a new identity rooted in the defunct Russian Empire after the collapse of the Soviet Union.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In the Russian language, the term "mazurik" (), a synonym for "pickpocket", "petty thief", literally means "little Masovian". The word is an example how Vladimir Putin's liberal use of colloquialisms has been gaining media attention from abroad.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: The "Polish plumber" cliché may symbolize the threat of cheap labor from poorer European countries to "steal" low-paying jobs in wealthier parts of Europe. On the other hand, others associate it with affordability and dependability of European migrant workers.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Anti-Polish rhetoric combined with the condemnation of Polish culture was most prominent in the 18th-century Prussia during the partitions of Poland. However, anti-Polish propaganda begins with the Teutonic Order in the 14th century. It was a very important tool in the Order's attempt to conquer the Duchy of Lithuania which eventually failed because of Lithuania's Personal union with the Crown of the Kingdom of Poland and the Christianization of Lithuania to Catholicism. The first major thinker to openly call for the genocide of the Polish people was the 14th century German Dominican theologian Johannes von Falkenberg who on behalf of the Teutonic Order argued not only that Polish pagans should be killed, but that all Poles should be subject to genocide on the grounds that Poles were an inherently heretical race and that even the King of Poland, Jogaila a Christian convert, ought to be murdered. The assertion that Poles were heretical was largely politically motivated as the Teutonic Order desired to conquer Polish lands despite Christianity having become the dominant religion in Poland centuries prior.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Germany, becoming more and more permeated with Teutonic Prussianism, continued to pursue these tactics. For instance, David Blackbourn of Harvard University speaks of the scandalised writings of German intellectual Johann Georg Forster, who was granted a tenure at Vilnius University by the Polish Commission of National Education in 1784. Forster wrote of Poland's "backwardness" in a similar vein to "ignorance and barbarism" of southeast Asia. Such views were later repeated in the German ideas of Lebensraum and exploited by the Nazis. German academics between the 18th and 20th centuries attempted to project, in the difference between Germany and Poland, a "boundary between civilization and barbarism; high German Kultur and "primitive Slavdom"" (1793 racist diatribe by J.C. Schulz republished by the Nazis in 1941). Prussian officials, eager to secure Polish partition, encouraged the view that the Poles were culturally inferior and in need of Prussian tutelage. Such racist texts, originally published from the 18th century onwards, were republished by the German Reich prior to and after its invasion of Poland.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Frederick the Great of Prussia nourished a particular hatred and contempt for the Polish people. Following his conquest of Poland, he compared the Poles to "Iroquois" of Canada. In his all-encompassing anti-Polish campaign, even the nobility of Polish background living in Prussia were obliged to pay higher taxes than those of German heritage. Polish monasteries were viewed as "lairs of idleness" and their property often seized by Prussian authorities. The prevalent Catholicism among Poles was stigmatised. The Polish language was persecuted at all levels.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: After the Polish–Russian War in early 1600s, Poland was greatly antagonized by the Russians as the cause of chaos and tyranny in Russia. The future House of Romanov, who would found the Russian Empire after taken power from the Rurik dynasty, used a number of distortion activities, describing Poles as backward, cruel and heartless, praising the rebellion against Poles; and heavily centered around the Orthodox belief. When Tsardom of Russia invaded Poland at the Russo-Polish war of 1650s, the Russians caused a number of atrocities, and destroyed most of Eastern Poland, sometimes joining destruction with its Ukrainian ally led by Bohdan Khmelnytsky and the Swedes in the parallel Swedish invasion. The war was held as a Russian triumph for its attempt to destroy Poland.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Sweden, which developed anti-Polish sentiment due to previous Polish–Swedish wars in hope to gain territorial and political influence, as well as dispute with the Polish Crown because of Sigismund III Vasa, launched an invasion known as the Deluge. Swedish invaders, joined force with Russian invaders in the east, together destroyed Poland and took away many of the Polish national treasures, as well as causing atrocities against Poles. The Poles were treated very brutally by Swedes, and as a result, Poland lost its wealth and was reduced in its development. Similar to Russia, Sweden hailed the destruction of Poland as a national triumph.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: At 18th century, Russia as an empire attempted to make Poland disintegrate by using liberum veto, creating chaos and prevented reforms, as by Russian accords, was against the ideal of Imperial Russia's future plan to partition Poland. Russia often sent troops and carried out atrocities on Polish civilians. When Poland adopted its first ever Constitution of 3 May 1791, the first Constitution in Europe, Russia sent troops and brutally suppressed Polish people.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: When Poland lost the last vestiges of its independence in 1795 and remained partitioned for 123 years, ethnic Poles were subjected to discrimination in two areas: the Germanisation under Prussian and later German rule, and Russification in the territories annexed by Imperial Russia.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Being a Pole under the Russian occupation was in itself almost culpable – wrote Russian historian Liudmila Gatagova. – "Practically all of the Russian government, bureaucracy, and society were united in one outburst against the Poles." – "Rumor mongers informed the population about an order that had supposedly been given to kill [...] and take away their land." Polish culture and religion were seen as threats to Russian imperial ambitions. Tsarist Namestniks suppressed them on Polish lands by force. The Russian anti-Polish campaign, which included confiscation of Polish nobles' property, was waged in the areas of education, religion as well as language. Polish schools and universities were closed in a stepped-up campaign of russification. In addition to executions and mass deportations of Poles to Katorga camps, Tsar Nicholas I established an occupation army at Poland's expense.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: The fact that Poles, unlike the Russians, were overwhelmingly Roman Catholic gave impetus to their religious persecution. At the same time, with the emergence of Panslavist ideology, Russian writers accused the Polish nation of betraying their "Slavic family" because of their armed efforts aimed at winning independence. Hostility toward Poles was present in many of Russia's literary works and media of the time.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Pushkin, together with three other poets, published a pamphlet called "On the Taking of Warsaw" to celebrate the crushing of the revolt. His contribution to the frenzy of anti-Polish writing comprised poems in which he hailed the capitulation of Warsaw as a new "triumph" of imperial Russia.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In Prussia and later in Germany, Poles were forbidden to build homes, and their properties were targeted for forced buy-outs financed by the Prussian and subsequent German governments. Bismarck described Poles, as animals (wolves), that "one shoots if one can" and implemented several harsh laws aimed at their expulsion from traditionally Polish lands. The Polish language was banned from public use, and ethnically Polish children punished at school for speaking Polish. Poles were subjected to a wave of forceful evictions ("Rugi Pruskie"). The German government financed and encouraged settlement of ethnic Germans into those areas aiming at their geopolitical germanisation. The Prussian Landtag passed laws against Catholics.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Toward the end of World War I during Poland's fight for independence, Imperial Germany made further attempts to take control over the territories of Congress Poland, aiming at ethnic cleansing of up to 3 million Jewish and Polish people which was meant to be followed by a new wave of settlement by ethnic Germans. In August 1914, the German imperial army destroyed the city of Kalisz, chasing out tens of thousands of its Polish citizens.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: After Poland regained its independence as the Second Republic at the end of World War I, the question of new Polish borders could not have been easily settled against the will of her former long-term occupiers. Poles continued to be persecuted in the disputed territories, especially in Silesia. The German campaign of discrimination contributed to the Silesian Uprisings, where Polish workers were openly threatened with losing their jobs and pensions if they voted for Poland in the Upper Silesia plebiscite.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: At the Versailles Peace Conference of 1919, British historian and politician Lewis Bernstein Namier, who served as part of the British delegation, was seen as one of the biggest enemies of the newly independent Polish state in the British political sphere and in the newly-independent Poland. Namier modified the previously-proposed Curzon line by detaching the city of Lwów from Poland with a version called Curzon Line "A". It was sent to Soviet diplomatic representatives for acceptance. The earlier compromised version of Curzon line which was debated at the Spa Conference of 1920 was renamed Curzon Line "B".


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In the politics of inter-war Germany, anti-Polish feelings ran high. The American historian Gerhard Weinberg observed that for many Germans in the Weimar Republic, "Poland was an abomination", Poles were "an East European species of cockroach", Poland was usually described as a "Saisonstaat" (a state for a season), and Germans used the phrase "Polish economy" ("polnische Wirtschaft") for a situation of hopeless muddle. Weinberg noted that in the 1920s–30s, leading German politicians refused to accept Poland as a legitimate nation, and hoped instead to partition Poland, probably with the help of the Soviet Union. The British historian A. J. P. Taylor wrote in 1945 that National Socialism was inevitable because the Germans wanted "to repudiate the equality with the peoples of (central and) eastern Europe which had then been forced upon them" after 1918.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: During Stalin's Great Terror in the Soviet Union, a major ethnic cleansing operation, known as the Polish Operation, took place from about 25 August 1937 through 15 November 1938. According to Soviet NKVD archives, 111,091 Poles, and people accused of ties with Poland, were executed, and 28,744 were sentenced to Gulag labor camps, for a total of 139,835 Polish victims. This number constitutes 10 per cent of the officially persecuted persons during the entire Yezhovshchina period, with confirming NKVD documents. The prosecuted Polish families were accused of anti-Soviet activities.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Outside the Germans and Russians, the Lithuanians also developed a very strong anti-Polish hatred, partly due to historical grievances. For the Lithuanians, the Polish–Lithuanian War of 1920, which costed the capital Vilnius to be on Polish hand, cemented anti-Polish sentiment. Virtually throughout the inter-war, anti-Polish had been omnipresent in Lithuania, and Polish minority in Lithuania faced a very harsh repression by the Lithuanian authorities. The 1938 Polish ultimatum to Lithuania led to the establishment of relations, but it remained extremely difficult as Lithuania still refused to accept Vilnius as part of Poland.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Ukrainians were also another people with strong anti-Polish hostility. The Polish–Ukrainian War of 1919 resulted in Ukraine crippled militarily and, though Poland did assist Ukraine in the eventual conflict against the Bolsheviks, but was unable to prevent an eventual occupation by the Soviets. This had led to enmity against Poland by Ukrainian nationalists, which resulted in the establishment of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the beginning of Ukrainian problem in Poland. Assassinations of Polish officials by Ukrainian nationalists became increasingly frequent from 1930s onward.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Nazi propagandists stereotyped Poles as nationalists in order to portray Germans as victims and justify the invasion of Poland; the Gleiwitz incident was a Nazi false flag to show that Germany was under Polish attack, and the killing of Germans by Poles in "Bromberger Blutsonntag" and elsewhere was inflated to 58,000 to increase German hatred of Poles and justify the killing of Polish civilians.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In October 1939, Directive No.1306 of Nazi Germany's Propaganda Ministry stated: "It must be made clear even to the German milkmaid that Polishness equals subhumanity. Poles, Jews and Gypsies are on the same inferior level... This should be brought home as a "leitmotiv", and from time to time, in the form of existing concepts such as 'Polish economy', 'Polish ruin' and so on, until everyone in Germany sees every Pole, whether farm worker or intellectual, as vermin."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Historian Karol Karski writes that before World War II the Soviet authorities carried out a discreditation campaign against the Poles and describes Stalin as Polonophobe.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: During World War II Poles became the subject of ethnic cleansing on an unprecedented scale, including: Nazi German genocide in General Government, Soviet executions and mass deportations to Siberia from Kresy, as well as massacres of Poles in Volhynia, a campaign of ethnic cleansing carried out in today's western Ukraine by Ukrainian nationalists. Among the 100,000 people murdered in the "Intelligenzaktion" operations in 1939–1940, approximately 61,000 were members of the Polish intelligentsia. Millions of citizens of Poland, both ethnic Poles and Jews, died in German concentration camps such as Auschwitz. Unknown numbers perished in Soviet "gulags" and political prisons.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Reprisals against partisan activities were brutal; on one occasion 1,200 Poles were murdered in retaliation for the death of one German officer and two German officials. In August 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland's dead (including Polish Jews) at between 5.47 and 5.67 million (due to German actions) and 150,000 (due to Soviet), or around 5.62 and 5.82 million total.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Soviet policy following their 1939 invasion of Poland in World War II was ruthless, and sometimes coordinated with the Nazis (see: Gestapo-NKVD Conferences). Elements of ethnic cleansing included Soviet mass executions of Polish prisoners of war in the Katyn Massacre and at other sites, and the exile of up to 1.5 million Polish citizens, including the intelligentsia, academics, priests and Jewish Poles to forced-labor camps in Siberia.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In German and Soviet war propaganda, Poles were mocked as inept for their military techniques in fighting the war. Nazi fake newsreels and forged pseudo-documentaries claimed that the Polish cavalry "bravely but futilely" charged German tanks in 1939, and that the Polish Air Force was wiped out on the ground on the opening day of the war. Neither tale was true (see: Myths of the Polish September Campaign). German propaganda staged a Polish cavalry charge in their 1941 reel called "Geschwader Lützow".


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalists utilized the increasing racial segregation to foment anti-Polonism. Followers of Stepan Bandera (also called Banderovites) committed genocide on Poles in Volhynia at 1943. Lithuanian forces often clash with Polish forces throughout the World War II, and committed massacre on Poles with support from the Nazis.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Bernard Montgomery often assigned blame to the failure of his operations, such as Operation Market Garden, to the Polish troops under his command. Poland's relationship with the USSR during World War II was complicated. The main western Allies, the United States and the United Kingdom, understood the importance of the Soviet Union in defeating Germany, to the point of refusing to condemn Soviet propaganda which vilified their Polish ally. The western Allies were even willing to help cover up the Soviet massacre at Katyn.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Zofia Kossak-Szczucka, the Catholic co-founder of Zegota, the Polish resistance group which risked the German death penalty to save Jews, and who herself was sent to Auschwitz, stereotyped Jews as haters of Poles even as she characterized Poles who remained silent in the face of the Holocaust as complicit:


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Under Joseph Stalin, thousands of soldiers of Poland's underground eg. Home Army ("Armia Krajowa") and returning veterans of the Polish Armed Forces that had served with the western Allies were imprisoned, tortured by Soviet NKVD agents (see: W. Pilecki, Ł. Ciepliński) and murdered following staged trials like the infamous Trial of the Sixteen in Moscow, Soviet Union. A similar fate awaited the "cursed soldiers". At least 40,000 members of Poland's Home Army were deported to Russia.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In Britain after 1945, the British populace accepted the Polish servicemen who chose not to return to a Poland ruled by the communist regime in their decision to stay on in Britain. The Poles resident in Britain served under British command during the war, but as soon as the Soviets began to make gains on the Eastern Front both public opinion and the government turned increasingly pro-Soviet. Socialist supporters of the Soviet Union made the Poles out to be "warmongers", "anti-Semites" and "fascists". After the war, the trade unions and Labour party played on the fears among the public of there not being enough jobs, food and housing to incite anti-Polish sentiments.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: The myth that Poland had been conducting a genocide against ethnic Germans was invented in 1940 by German nationalist writer by embellishing the events of "Bloody Sunday". In 1961, a book was published in Germany entitled "Der Erzwungene Krieg" (The Forced War) by the American historical writer and Holocaust denier David Hoggan, which argued that Germany did not commit aggression against Poland in 1939, but was instead the victim of an Anglo-Polish conspiracy against the "Reich". Reviewers have often noted that Hoggan seems to have an obsessive hostility towards the Poles. His claims included that the Polish government treated Poland's German minority far worse than the German government under Adolf Hitler treated its Jewish minority. In 1964, much controversy was created when two German right-wing extremist groups awarded Hoggan prizes. In the 1980s, the German philosopher and historian Ernst Nolte claimed that in 1939 Poland was engaged in a campaign of genocide against its ethnic German minority, and has strongly implied that the German invasion in 1939, and all of the subsequent German atrocities in Poland during World War II were in essence justified acts of retaliation. Critics, such as the British historian Richard J. Evans, have accused Nolte of distorting the facts, and have argued that in no way was Poland committing genocide against its German minority.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: During the political transformation of the Soviet-controlled Eastern bloc in the 1980s, the traditional German anti-Polish feeling was again openly exploited in the East Germany against Solidarność. This tactic had become especially apparent in the "rejuvenation of 'Polish jokes,' some of which reminded listeners of the spread of such jokes under the Nazis."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: The expressions offensive to Poles are attributed to a number of non-Polish media in relation to . The most prominent is a continued reference by Western news media to "Polish death camps" and "Polish concentration camps". These phrases refer to the network of concentration camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland in order to facilitate the "Final Solution", but the wording suggests that the Polish people might have been involved. The Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Polish organizations around the world and all Polish governments since 1989, condemned the usage of such expressions, arguing that they suggest Polish responsibility for the camps. The American Jewish Committee stated in its 30 January 2005, press release: "This is not a mere semantic matter. Historical integrity and accuracy hang in the balance... Any misrepresentation of Poland's role in the Second World War, whether intentional or accidental, would be most regrettable and therefore should not be left unchallenged."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Cardinal Józef Glemp in his controversial and widely criticized speech delivered on 26 August 1989 (and retracted in 1991) argued that the outbursts of antisemitism are a "legitimate form of national self-defence against Jewish anti-Polonism." He "asked Jews who 'have great power over the mass media in many countries' to rein in their anti-Polonism because 'if there won't be anti-Polonism, there won't be such antisemitism among us'."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In November of the same year, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir said Poles “drink in (anti-Semitism) with their mother's milk.” Polish Prime Minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki said that “these blanket statements are the most destructive actions imaginable,” and that they “do irreparable harm” to people seeking Polish-Jewish reconciliation. Adam Michnik wrote for "The New York Times" that "almost all Poles react very sharply when confronted with the charge that Poles get their anti-Semitism 'with their mothers' milk'." Such verbal attacks – according to Michnik – are interpreted by anti-Semites as "proof of the international anti-Polish Jewish conspiracy".


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In "Rethinking Poles and Jews", Robert Cherry and Annamaria Orla-Bukowska said that anti-Polonism and anti-Semitism remain "grotesquely twinned into our own time. We cannot combat the one without combating the other."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: The term "anti-Polonism" is said to have been used for campaign purposes by political parties such as the League of Polish Families () or the defunct Self-Defence of the Republic of Poland () and organizations such as the Association against Anti-Polonism led by Leszek Bubel, leader of the Polish National Party and a former presidential candidate. Bubel was taken to court by a group of ten Polish intellectuals who filed a lawsuit against him for "violating the public good". Among the signatories were former Foreign Minister Władysław Bartoszewski and filmmaker Kazimierz Kutz.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: According to Polish historian Joanna Michlic, the term is used in Poland also as an argument against the self-critical intellectuals who discuss Polish-Jewish relations, accusing them of "anti-Polish positions and interests." For example, historian Jan T. Gross has been accused of being anti-Polish when he wrote about crimes such as the Jedwabne pogrom. In her view, the charge is "not limited to arguments that can objectively be classified as anti-Polish—such as equating the Poles with the Nazis—but rather applied to any critical inquiry into the collective past. Moreover, anti-Polonism is equated with anti-Semitism."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: For the 1994 anniversary of the Warsaw Uprising, a Polish "Gazeta Wyborcza" journalist, Michał Cichy, wrote a review of a collection of 1943 memoirs entitled "Czy ja jestem mordercą?" ("Am I a murderer?") by Calel Perechodnik, a Jewish ghetto policeman from Otwock and member of the "Chrobry II Battalion", alleging (as hearsay) that about 40 Jews were killed by a group of Polish insurgents during the 1944 Uprising. Unlike the book (later reprinted with factual corrections), the actual review by Cichy elicited protests, while selected fragments of his article were confirmed by three Polish historians. Prof. Tomasz Strzembosz accused Cichy of practicing a 'distinct type of racism,' and charged "Gazeta Wyborcza" editor Adam Michnik with 'cultivating a species of tolerance that is absolutely intolerant of antisemitism yet regards anti-Polonism and anti-goyism as something altogether natural'." Michnik responded to the controversy, praising the heroism of the AK by asking: "Is it an attack on Polish people when the past is being explored to seek the truth?". Cichy later apologized for the tone of his article.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Polish historian Adam Leszczyński states that "Antisemitism is an extensive doctrine with racist or religious grounds that led to the Holocaust. 'Antipolonism' is at best a generalized aversion to Poles."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: "Polish jokes" belong to a category of conditional jokes, meaning that their understanding requires knowledge of "what a Polish joke is." Conditional jokes depend on the audience's "affective" preference—on their likes and dislikes. Though these jokes might be understood by many, their success depends entirely on the negative disposition of the listener.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Presumably the first Polish jokes by German displaced persons fleeing war-torn Europe were brought to the United States in the late 1940s. These jokes were fueled by ethnic slurs disseminated by German National Socialist propaganda, which attempted to justify the Nazis' murdering of Poles by presenting them as ""dreck""—dirty, stupid and inferior. It is also possible that some early American "Polack" jokes from Germany were originally told before World War II in disputed border regions such as Silesia.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: There is debate as to whether the early "Polish jokes" brought to states such as Wisconsin by German immigrants relate directly to the wave of American jokes of the early 1960s. A "provocative critique of previous scholarship on the subject" has been made by British writer Christie Davies in "The Mirth of Nations", which suggests that "Polish jokes" did not originate in Nazi Germany but much earlier, as an outgrowth of regional jokes rooted in "social class differences reaching back to the nineteenth century." According to Davies, American versions of Polish jokes are an unrelated "purely American phenomenon" and do not express the "historical Old World hatreds of the Germans for the Poles. However, Hollywood in the 1960s and 1970s imported the subhuman-intelligence jokes about Poles from old Nazi propaganda."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: For decades, Polish Americans have been the subject of derogatory jokes originating in anti-immigrant stereotypes that had developed in the U.S. before the 1920s. During the Partitions of Poland, Polish immigrants came to the United States in considerable numbers, fleeing mass persecution at home. They were taking the only jobs available to them, usually requiring physical labor. The same ethnic and job-related stereotypes persisted even as Polish Americans joined the middle class in the mid-20th century. "The constant derision, often publicly disseminated through the mass media, caused serious identity crises, feeling of inadequacy, and low self-esteem for many Polish Americans." In spite of the plight of Polish people under Cold War communism, negative stereotypes about Polish Americans endured.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Since the late 1960s, Polish American organizations have made continuous effort to challenge the negative stereotyping of the Polish people once prevalent in American media. The Polish American Guardian Society has argued that NBC-TV used the tremendous power of TV to introduce and push subhuman intelligence jokes about Poles (that were worse than prior simple anti-immigrant jokes) using the repetitive big lie technique to degrade Poles. The play called “Polish Joke” by David Ives has resulted in a number of complaints by the Polonia in the US. The "Polish jokes" heard in the 1970s were particularly offensive, so much so that the Polish Ministry of Foreign Affairs approached the U.S. State Department about that, however unsuccessfully. The syndrome receded only after Cardinal Karol Wojtyła was elected Pope, and Polish jokes became passé. Gradually, Americans have developed a more positive image of their Polish neighbors in the following decades.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In 2014, a German speaker joked during the European Aquatics Championships that the Polish team would be coming back home in "our cars".


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Since the EU enlargement in 2004, where ten new countries joined in the single-largest expansion to date (Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia), the UK has experienced mass immigration from Poland (see Poles in the United Kingdom). It is estimated that the Polish British community has doubled in size since 2004; with Poland now having overtaken India as the largest foreign-born country of origin in 2015 (831,000 Poles to 795,000 Indian-born persons). Anti-Polish sentiment in the UK is often related to the issue of immigration. There have been some instances of anti-Polish sentiment and hostility towards Polish immigrants. The far-right British National Party argued for immigration from (Central and) Eastern Europe to be stopped and for Poles to be deported.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In 2007, Polish people living in London reported 42 ethnically motivated attacks against them, compared with 28 in 2004. The Conservative MP Daniel Kawczynski, of Polish origin himself, said that the increase in violence towards Poles is in part "a result of the media coverage by the BBC" whose reporters "won't dare refer to controversial immigration from other countries." Kawczynski voiced his criticism of the BBC in the House of Commons for "using the Polish community as a cat's paw to try to tackle the thorny issue of mass, unchecked immigration" only because against Poles "it's politically correct to do so."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In 2009, the Federation of Poles in Great Britain and the Polish Embassy in London with Barbara Tuge-Erecinska raised a number of formal complaints – including with the Press Complaints Commission – about news articles in the "Daily Mail", which the Federation claimed "displayed anti-Polish sentiment". The newspaper denied this was its intention, and the PCC brokered a settlement between the parties.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: "The Guardian" has been noted for a number of other controversies. On 14 October 2009, Nazi-hunter Efraim Zuroff alleged that: "the second world war narrative [...] has been distorted since independence and the transition to democracy to make it more palatable to their electorate and to minimize the role of local collaborators in Holocaust crimes." On 20 October 2009, "The Guardian"'s Jonathan Freedland said: "We are meant to be friendly towards the newest members of the European Union. But the truth is that several of these "emerging democracies" have reverted to a brand of ultra-nationalistic politics that would repel most voters in western Europe. It exists in Poland". In response to the above articles, Timothy Garton Ash wrote in the same paper on 23 December: "In my experience, the automatic equation of Poland with Catholicism, nationalism and antisemitism – and thence a slide to guilt by association with the Holocaust – is still widespread. This collective stereotyping does no justice to the historical record."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Also in 2008, the Polish ambassador sent an official protest to the Press Complaints Commission about "The Times". On 26 July 2008, Giles Coren published a comment piece with the ethnic slur 'Polack' used to describe Polish immigrants. He accused Poland of complicity in the six million Jewish deaths of The Holocaust, prompting not only an official letter of complaint to "The Times", but also an early day motion in the British parliament, followed by an editorial in "The Economist." The ambassador, Tuge-Erecinska, explained that the article was "unsupported by any basic historic or geographic knowledge," and that "the issue of Polish-Jewish relations has been unfairly and deeply falsified" by Coren's "aggressive remarks" and "contempt". Coren reacted by telling "The Jewish Chronicle": ""Fuck the Poles"". The case has been referred to the European Court of Human Rights. However, the case was unsuccessful as Poles are not classified as an ethnic minority. The editor of "The Jewish Chronicle", Stephen Pollard, commented on 6 August 2009: "There are few things more despicable than anti-Semitism, but here's one of them: using a false charge of anti-Semitism for political gain."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: On 6 October 2009, Stephen Fry was interviewed by Jon Snow on "Channel 4 News" as a signatory of a letter to then-Conservative Party leader David Cameron expressing concern about the party's relationship with the right-wing Polish Law and Justice Party in the European Parliament. During the interview, Fry stated: "There has been a history, let's face it, in Poland of a right-wing Catholicism which has been deeply disturbing for those of us who know a little history, and remember which side of the border Auschwitz was on..." The remark prompted a complaint from the Polish Embassy in London, as well as an editorial in "The Economist" and criticism from British Jewish historian David Cesarani. Fry has since posted an apology on his personal weblog, in which he stated: "It was a rubbishy, cheap and offensive remark that I have been regretting ever since... I take this opportunity to apologize now." On 30 October 2009, the Chief Rabbi of Poland, Michael Schudrich, complained about this new British political row playing on a "'false and painful stereotype that all Poles are antisemitic', whereas the truth was that the problem was around the same there as elsewhere in Europe."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In January 2014, a Polish man, whose helmet was emblazoned with the flag of Poland, claimed he was attacked by a group of fifteen men outside a pub in Dagenham, London. Photos were taken of him and his motorbike. The victim blamed xenophobic speeches of the Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: During the same month in Belfast there was seven attacks on Polish houses within ten days, in which stones and bricks were thrown at the windows.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Following the British referendum of EU membership, there were more cases of Polonophobic occurrences including anti-Polish leaflets distributed in Huntingdon and graffiti against the Polish Cultural Centre in Hammersmith.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Central and Eastern European pupils, including the Polish ones, have experienced increased levels of xenophobic bullying since the Brexit vote.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: The politician Yair Lapid claimed that his father's grandmother, who was killed in the Auschwitz concentration camp, "was murdered in Poland by Germans and Poles". Lapid also wrote that there were "Polish death camps" (see Polish death camps controversy).


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In a 2018 interview, Anna Azari, the Israeli ambassador to Poland, said that "We need to work to reduce anti-Semitism, but work is also needed for there to be less anti-Polish sentiment" and "Anti-Polonism occurs not only in Israel, but also in Jewish circles outside Israel."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In February 2019, Poland's prime minister Mateusz Morawiecki canceled plans for his country to send a delegation to a meeting in Jerusalem on Monday after the acting Israeli foreign minister, Israel Katz said that Poles "collaborated with the Nazis" and "sucked anti-Semitism with their mothers' milk." Zvi Bar, an Israeli brigadier general and politician, said that Katz was speaking as a 'student' of Yitzhak Shamir, "the father of Polish genetic theory" and said: "All right, there were Poles and Hungarians who collaborated, there were and are anti-Semitic Poles and Hungarians. But why generalize? Why be racist, why accuse these nations and attribute to them inherent anti-Semitic characteristics?


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: On 15 May 2019, Poland's Ambassador to Israel, Marek Magierowski, was spat on and attacked outside the Embassy of Poland, Tel Aviv by a 65-year-old Israeli architect, Arik Lederman, who was arrested following the assault. Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Emmanuel Nahshon said: "We express our fullest sympathy to the ambassador and our shock at the attack," while the suspect apologized and said he had been provoked earlier by a Polish Embassy employee using an anti-Semitic slur against him. The Polish embassy in turn disputed the man's account, and said it has CCTV evidence to disprove it.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: and Steven Levitan called "Something's Up There", which contained a controversial anti-Polish slur. The slur involved Marsh trying to convince the show's lone Polish-American character, Gary, to go bowling after work by saying: "Come on, it's in your blood, like kielbasa and collaborating with the Nazis." Fox later apologised on 20 November 2007. It vowed never to broadcast the line of dialogue again either in repeats and/or syndicated broadcasts. Fox stated that, "The line was delivered by a character who is known for being ignorant, clueless, and saying outlandish things. Allowing the line to remain in the show, however, demonstrated poor judgment, and we apologise to anyone who was offended."


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In August 2005, a series of allegedly organised attacks against Polish diplomats took place in Moscow, which prompted the then-Polish President Aleksander Kwaśniewski to call on the Russian Government to stop them. An employee with the Polish embassy in Moscow was hospitalised in serious condition after being assaulted in broad daylight near the embassy by unidentified men. Three days later, another Polish diplomat was beaten up near the embassy. The following day the Moscow correspondent for the Polish daily "Rzeczpospolita" was attacked and beaten up by a group of Russians. It is widely believed that the attacks were organized as revenge for the mugging of four Russian youth in a public park in Warsaw by a group of skinheads, several days earlier.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: The former "Solidarity" leader and Polish President Lech Wałęsa criticised the Lithuanian Government over discrimination against the Polish minority, which included the enforced Lithuanization of Polish surnames and the removal of bilingual Polish language street signs in municipalities with predominantly Polish-speaking population. In 2011, Wałęsa rejected Lithuania's Order of Vytautas the Great citing the mistreatment of the Polish minority.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: In his 2007 book "Heroes and Villains", in the context of bitter Polish-Ukrainian relations concerning the mutual massacres during World War II, David R. Marples asserted that (at the time of the writing of the book) there were "no Ukrainian organizations and press organs that specialize in anti-Polish propaganda. However different interpretations of these bitter World War II events have led to a sharp deterioration of the relations between the nations since 2015. In April 2017 the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance forbade the exhumation of Polish victims of the 1943 massacres of Poles in Volhynia and Eastern Galicia as part of the broader action of halting the legalization of Polish memorial sites in Ukraine, in a retaliation for the dismantling of a monument to UPA soldiers in Hruszowice, Eastern Poland.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Polish President Andrzej Duda expressed his concerns with appointment to high Ukrainian offices of people expressing nationalistic anti-Polish views. The Ukrainian foreign ministry stated that there is no general anti-Polish sentiment in Ukraine. In 2017, Polish Foreign Minister Witold Waszczykowski announced plans to bar Ukrainians with anti-Polish views, as a reaction to the disrespect to the Polish cemetery in Lviv following a Ukrainian accusation of Polish "occupation" in the city.


title: Anti-Polish sentiment

text: Following the accession of Poland to the European Union, Germany–Poland relations have improved. In 2016, Martin Schulz, a German Social Democrat, criticized the Duda's government in Poland and referred it as a "coup". This had led to criticism in Poland, although Polish government had downplayed the issue. In 2020, President of Poland Andrzej Duda accused German media of misinterpreting his words and the German government for being Polonophobe regarding coverage about 2020 Polish presidential election.


title: Dad joke

text: A dad joke is a short joke, typically a pun, presented as a one-liner or a question and answer, but not a narrative. Generally inoffensive, dad jokes are stereotypically told with sincere humorous intent, or to intentionally provoke a negative reaction to their overly-simplistic humor.


title: Dad joke

text: Many dad jokes may be considered anti-jokes, deriving humor from an intentionally not funny punchline.


title: Dad joke

text: A common type of dad joke goes as follows: A child will say to the father, "I'm hungry," to which the father will reply, "Hi, Hungry, I'm Dad."


title: Dad joke

text: While the exact origin of the term "dad joke" is unknown, a writer for the "Gettysburg Times" wrote an impassioned defence of the genre in June 1987 under the headline "Don't ban the 'Dad' jokes; preserve and revere them". The term "dad jokes" received mentions in the American sitcom "How I Met Your Mother" in 2008 and the Australian quiz show "Spicks and Specks" in 2009. In September 2019, Merriam-Webster added the phrase "dad joke" to the dictionary.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Helen Violet Bonham Carter, Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury, (15 April 1887 – 19 February 1969), known until her marriage as Violet Asquith, was a British politician and diarist. She was the daughter of H. H. Asquith, Prime Minister from 1908 to 1916, and she was known as Lady Violet, as a courtesy title, from her father's elevation to the peerage as Earl of Oxford and Asquith in 1925. Later she became active in Liberal politics herself, and was a leading opponent of appeasement. She stood for Parliament and became a life peer.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: She was also involved in arts and literature. Her diaries cover her father's premiership before and during the First World War and continue until the 1960s. She was Sir Winston Churchill's closest female friend, apart from his wife, and her grandchildren include the actress Helena Bonham Carter.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Violet Asquith was born in Hampstead, London, England, and grew up with politics, She lived in 10 Downing Street from 1908, when her father occupied it. She was educated at home by governesses, and later sent to Paris to improve her languages. In 1903 she attended a finishing school in Dresden.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Her mother, Helen Kelsall Melland, died of typhoid fever when Violet was four years old. Her stepmother from 1894 was Margot Tennant: their relationship was "stormy". Her four brothers were Raymond, Herbert, Arthur, and Cyril. Violet's best friend when she was young was Venetia Stanley, who later had an intense emotional relationship with her father.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Presented at court in 1905, Violet Asquith entered the social world of parties in her first London season. Sir Charles Tennant, 1st Baronet, Margot's father, hosted with his wife Marguerite a dance in Grosvenor Square for Violet and his granddaughter Frances Tennant, who married in 1912 Guy Lawrence Charteris and was mother of Ann Fleming. Guy's sister Cynthia was one of Violet's close friends, and married her brother Herbert in 1910.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: In October 1907 Violet had a proposal of marriage from Arnold Ward, a college friend of her brother Raymond. She turned it down. Sutherland suggests her parents were against the match: financial matters were probably a factor, and the Wards were Tories.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Raymond Asquith belonged to The Coterie. By 1908 this group of the younger generation was being noticed in social gossip, and a press story included Violet:


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Mrs. Raymond Asquith [...] was the leading spirit of the coterie of "Young Souls" which comprised as its members Lady Marjorie and Lady Violet Manners, Miss Cicely Horner, Miss Violet Asquith, and Miss Viola Tree.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Violet was close to Winston Churchill, promoted to the Liberal Cabinet in 1908: Churchill said later they were "practically engaged", and they were friends for life. He actually became engaged that year to Clementine Hozier, whom Violet thought "as stupid as an owl". In late August, between his engagement and his marriage, Churchill spent a holiday with the Asquith family at New Slains Castle on the Scottish coast. Some days after his departure, but while Arnold Ward remained a guest, Violet went out one evening, to look for a book left on the rocks. She was discovered after a search of several hours, lying uninjured but unconscious near the coastal path. Michael Shelden suggests Violet's experience may have been "an unhappy young woman's cry for attention".


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Violet became engaged to Archibald Gordon (Archie), son of John Hamilton-Gordon, 1st Marquess of Aberdeen and Temair and his wife Ishbel in 1909, after he had had a car accident and was on what became his deathbed.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Violet travelled to the Sudan, where her brother Arthur was in the civil service. On her return to the United Kingdom, she found that her good friend Olive MacLeod, sister of Flora MacLeod, had lost her fiancé Boyd Alexander, killed in Africa. Under Violet's influence, Olive played the part of a widow. She then travelled to visit Alexander's grave.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: In May 1912 Violet accompanied her father and step-mother on a Mediterranean cruise, aboard the "HMS Enchantress", with a party comprising mainly Churchill, members of his family, and his political entourage including Edward Marsh, but also Louis of Battenberg. That year she acquired a long-term correspondent, Matthew Nathan. In March 1913 she met Rupert Brooke, at a dinner given by Marsh to celebrate Brooke's Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge, with W. B. Yeats, Clementine Churchill and Cynthia Asquith. She was the chosen confidante of Marsh after Brooke's death in 1915.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Violet made an effort to befriend Ottoline Morrell, in 1913. Her house in Bedford Square offered conversation with Henry James, Wyndham Lewis and Desmond MacCarthy. Morrell found her own conversation dazzling rather than profound.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: On 16 January 1915, the ageing Henry James visited the Asquiths at Walmer Castle in Kent. Violet Asquith and her half-sister Elizabeth saw James's lapidary but orotund and halting conversation being treated without respect by Winston Churchill, who had not read his books. James referred, on leaving, to the "very encouraging experience to meet that young man". In February she saw off Rupert Brooke, who had become a friend and correspondent, sailing with his division bound for the Gallipoli campaign and death. Violet wrote in 1915 to Aubrey Herbert that Brooke's death was one of the greatest sorrows of her life; and according to Virginia Woolf, in 1916 she said that she had loved Brooke "as she had never loved any man". On 30 November 1915 Violet married Maurice Bonham-Carter, her father's principal private secretary.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Jackie Fisher the First Sea Lord, at odds with Churchill, the First Lord of the Admiralty, over the Gallipoli campaign, resigned on 15 May 1915. It set off a train of political events that led to the end of the Liberal Cabinet in favour of a coalition, the removal of Churchill, and then in 1916 Asquith's replacement as Prime Minister by Lloyd George. Bonham Carter influenced the later historiography of these events, clashing in particular with Robert Blake who adhered more to Lord Beaverbrook's account. Through her, Asquith's biographer Roy Jenkins was given access to family papers.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: The Liberal Party split between followers of Asquith and of Lloyd George. As it fell on hard times in the 1920s, Bonham Carter campaigned for her father at the 1920 Paisley by-election. That election was won, and she was asked to become a Liberal candidate herself. Lord Kilbracken was in favour, but she decided to give her children priority. She was active as President of the Women's Liberal Federation (1923–25, 1939–45) and was the first woman to serve as President of the Liberal Party (1945–47). She campaigned with Eleanor Rathbone for family allowances.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Bonham Carter spoke on many platforms in the 1920s and 1930s, and along with Winston Churchill (and others), she early saw the dangers of European fascism. She joined and animated a number of anti-fascist groups (such as "The Focus Group"), often in concert with Churchill, and spoke at their gatherings. In a 1938 speech she mocked Neville Chamberlain's dealings with Nazi Germany as the policy of "peace at any price that others can be forced to pay". After the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was created from Czechoslovakia on 15 March 1939, she supported Czechoslovakian refugees and those persecuted by the Nazis.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: In the 1945 general election Bonham Carter stood for Wells, coming third, while in 1951 she stood for the winnable seat of Colne Valley. As an old friend, Churchill arranged for the Conservatives to refrain from nominating a candidate for the constituency, giving her a clear run against Labour. She was nonetheless narrowly defeated. In the 1953 Coronation Honours she was appointed a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE). She continued to be a popular and charismatic speaker for Liberal candidates, including her son-in-law Jo Grimond, her son Mark, and Jeremy Thorpe, and she was a frequent broadcaster on current affairs programmes on radio and television.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: In the postwar years, Bonham Carter was an active supporter of the United Nations and the cause of European unity, advocating for Britain's entry into the Common Market. In the non-political sphere, she was also active in the arts, including serving as a Governor of the BBC from 1941 to 1946, and a Governor of the Old Vic (1945–69).


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: On 21 December 1964, Violet Bonham Carter was created a life peer as Baroness Asquith of Yarnbury in the County of Wiltshire, one of the first new Liberal peers in several decades. She became active in the House of Lords.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Lady Violet Bonham Carter died of a heart attack, aged 81, and was interred at St Andrew's Church, Mells, Somerset, near the home of her late brother, Raymond.


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: "Winston Churchill As I Knew Him" (1965) recounted how during the course of conversation at the dinner party at which they first met, Churchill concluded a thought with words to the effect that "Of course, we are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow worm".


title: Violet Bonham Carter

text: Violet Asquith married her father's Principal Private Secretary, Maurice Bonham Carter, in 1915. They had four children together:


title: Dwight Clark

text: Dwight Edward Clark (January 8, 1957 – June 4, 2018) was an American professional football player who was a wide receiver for nine seasons with the San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) from 1979 He was a member of San Francisco's first two Super Bowl championship teams.


title: Dwight Clark

text: He caught the winning touchdown pass thrown by quarterback Joe Montana in the NFC Championship Game in January 1982 against the Dallas Cowboys. The play, immortalized as "The Catch", propelled the 49ers to their first Super Bowl championship. Clark played college football at Clemson University and was selected by the 49ers in the tenth round of the 1979 NFL Draft. He served as the general manager of the 49ers from 1995 to 1998 and in the same capacity with the Cleveland Browns from 1999 to 2001.


title: Dwight Clark

text: Born on January 8, 1957, in Kinston, North Carolina, Clark graduated from Garinger High School in Charlotte, where he played quarterback. Clark talked about how he was nervous playing quarterback in high school. At , his first love was basketball, but he accepted a scholarship to play college football at Clemson University.


title: Dwight Clark

text: As a freshman, he was moved to wide receiver, because the team had recruited four other quarterbacks. As a sophomore, he was named the starter at strong safety, but he disliked the position and left school to go back to his hometown in Charlotte instead. He was unhappy and considered transferring to play basketball at Appalachian State University, until he was finally allowed to play offense. After returning to the team, he was a backup wide receiver and finished with five receptions for 99 yards and a 19.8-yard average.


title: Dwight Clark

text: As a junior, he was named a starter at wide receiver and was part of the team that qualified Clemson to the Gator Bowl, its first bowl game in 18 years. He was third on the team with 17 receptions for 265 yards and one touchdown.


title: Dwight Clark

text: In his senior season in 1978, the Tigers were won the Gator Bowl over Ohio State, and finished sixth in the final AP poll. He was second on the team with 11 receptions for 207 yards and 2 touchdowns, including a career-high 68-yard touchdown catch against the University of Maryland that helped the Tigers win the ACC Championship.


title: Dwight Clark

text: At Clemson, he wore #30, posting only 33 catches for 571 yards, 3 touchdowns and a 17.3-yard average (seventh in school history). Unheralded as a collegian playing alongside wide receiver Jerry Butler, Clark felt fortunate to get to


title: Dwight Clark

text: In 1988, he was inducted into the Clemson Hall of Fame. In 2018, he was inducted into the South Carolina Football Hall of Fame.


title: Dwight Clark

text: The San Francisco 49ers selected Clark with the first pick of the tenth round (249th overall) of the 1979 NFL Draft, even though some people in the organization questioned the selection at the time, considering he was seen as an undrafted free agent. New head coach Bill Walsh had visited Clemson to scout quarterback Steve Fuller, Clark's roommate. When the 49er contingent arrived on campus, Clark answered the phone by chance on his way out to play golf and was convinced to participate as Fuller's pass catcher at the workout, where Walsh was impressed with his


title: Dwight Clark

text: The 49ers were in 1978 and had the same record in 1979. But they soon greatly improved, winning the Super Bowl at the ends of the 1981 and 1984 seasons, and, starting in 1981, making the playoffs every year Clark was with them except 1982.


title: Dwight Clark

text: Clark tallied 506 catches for 6,750 yards and 48 touchdowns, along with 50 rushing yards in his nine NFL seasons with the 49ers. He led the NFL in receptions (60) during the strike-shortened 1982 season and made the Pro Bowl twice, in 1981 and 1982. "Sports Illustrated" writer Paul Zimmerman named Clark his Player of the Year for 1982.


title: Dwight Clark

text: In the , on January 10, 1982, against the Dallas Cowboys, the 49ers trailed with 58 seconds to play. On 3rd-and-3, Clark leaped and caught a 6-yard pass from quarterback Joe Montana in the back of the end zone to tie the score, and Ray Wersching's extra-point kick advanced the 49ers to Super Bowl XVI. That play, one of the most famous in the history of the NFL, has been immortalized as "The Catch". Clark finished the game with eight receptions for 120 yards and two touchdowns. During the 1981 season, Walsh had Montana practice that part of the play back in training camp. Montana said, "We'd never thrown the ball to Dwight on that play, at all." In the early 1990s, Clark's catch had become the most requested clip in the archives of NFL Films, which was charging up to $5,000 for its use.


title: Dwight Clark

text: After nine seasons with the 49ers, Clark retired following the 1987 season. He was a member of two Super Bowl-winning teams (XVI and XIX). To honor his contribution to 49ers, the club retired his #87 in 1988. He served as a team executive for the 49ers until 1998, when he resigned to become the first General Manager in the expansion era of the Cleveland Browns, after following Carmen Policy who would run the team under the ownership of Al Lerner. He was Executive Vice President and Director of Football Operations from On May 14, 2002, he resigned from his position with the Browns after new head coach Butch Davis requested the right to make personnel decisions. In the 2018 NFL Films' "Dwight Clark: A Football Life", he was quoted as saying that it was probably a mistake to have accepted the position. He would later return to North Carolina to run his real estate business.


title: Dwight Clark

text: Clark built his restaurant, Clark's By The Bay, the year he retired and decorated it with sports memorabilia including The Catch. Initially serving Cajun food, it later switched to prime rib and seafood. Located in Redwood City, California, the restaurant was sold in 1993.


title: Dwight Clark

text: Clark was the lead role in the 1993 direct-to-video comedy "Kindergarten Ninja". He also appeared in the video game "All-Pro Football 2K8". He joined Comcast SportsNet Bay Area in 2011 as an analyst for "49ers Postgame Live". In retirement, Clark expressed remorse about the end of Candlestick Park, saying that "It was a dump [but] it was our dump, so we could talk bad about it, but we didn't want anybody else to talk bad about it."


title: Dwight Clark

text: Clark dated Miss Universe Shawn Weatherly from 1978 to 1982. He later married Ashley Stone, whom he met during the summer of 1982. He had three children with Stone: a daughter, Casey, and two sons, Riley and Mac.


title: Dwight Clark

text: On March 19, 2017, Clark announced that he had been diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease. He stated that he believed he developed ALS as a result of playing football; he suffered three concussions during his playing career. "I've been asked if playing football caused this," Clark wrote. "I don't know for sure. But I certainly suspect it did. And I encourage the National Football League Players Association (NFLPA) and the NFL to continue working together in their efforts to make the game of football safer, especially as it relates to head trauma."


title: Dwight Clark

text: Clark died of the disease on June 4, 2018. At the time of his death, Clark lived in Whitefish, Montana, with his wife Kelly. He was the father-in-law of former NHL defenseman Peter Harrold. Clark had a close friendship with former 49ers owner Edward J. DeBartolo Jr. DeBartolo sent Clark to Japan in 2017 to bring back a three-month supply of the drug Radicava before it became available in the United States.


title: Hampster Dance

text: The Hampster Dance is one of the earliest Internet memes. Created in 1998 by Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte as a GeoCities page, the dance features rows of animated GIFs of hamsters and other rodents dancing in various ways to a sped-up sample from the song "Whistle-Stop", written and performed by Roger Miller for the 1973 Walt Disney Productions film "Robin Hood". In 2005, CNET named the Hampster Dance the number-one Web fad.


title: Hampster Dance

text: Canadian art student Deidre LaCarte (of Nanaimo, British Columbia) was in a competition with her best friend and sister to generate the most Web traffic when she created the Hampster Dance page with the free Geocities web service in August 1998. She named the site Hampton's Hamster House in homage to her pet hamster, "Hampton Hamster", who on the page declared his intent to become a "Web star."


title: Hampster Dance

text: The Hampster Dance site originally consisted of a single page with just four hamsters animated GIFs, repeated in rows by the dozens and with an infectious background tune that looped endlessly. At the time the page was created, embedding background music in HTML pages was a fairly novel browser feature. The clip, a nine-second looped WAV file, was a sped-up sample of Roger Miller's "Whistle Stop", a song written for the opening credits of the 1973 Disney animated feature film "Robin Hood".


title: Hampster Dance

text: From its creation in August 1998 to March 1999, the Hampster Dance site only recorded about 800 total visits (roughly four per day). In February 1999, word of the website spread by e-mail and early blogs. By March, the site gathered approximately 60,000 views in four days. Soon the site was even featured on bumper stickers and in a television commercial for Internet service provider EarthLink. A common office prank at that time was to set a co-worker's browser homepage to the Hampster Dance Web site, which led to televised news reports that furthered its notoriety to an international level. Fans of the site created variations on the original theme, using politicians such as Dan Quayle and Cynthia McKinney, as well as household objects such as Pez dispensers.


title: Hampster Dance

text: The original website was hosted on Geocities, and LaCarte failed to register the "hampsterdance.com" domain. With the continued popularity of the original site, an unauthorized duplicate website was hosted on "hampsterdance.com". LaCarte thus used the domains "hamsterdance.com", "hamsterdance2.com", and "hampsterdance2.com". In early 2000, the domain was transferred to humor business Nutty Sites for undisclosed reasons. In late 2001, LaCarte sold the "Hampster Dance" rights to Abatis International, who managed to acquire the original domain. The site later expanded, revealing the names of all four characters (Hampton, Dixie, Hado, and Fuzzy) and offering themed versions for birthdays, graduation, holidays, etc. The original website is no longer functional, but other sites inspired by the original still exist.


title: Hampster Dance

text: The popularity of the website led to the creation of a full song called "The Hampsterdance Song", which was produced by the Boomtang Boys and released on July 4, 2000. Disney did not allow the use of the actual "Whistle Stop" clip, so the Boomtang Boys created a sound-alike rerecording. The liner notes for the single include the statement "Includes elements of 'Whistle Stop' by Roger Miller." A cartoon video was produced for the single that introduced a cartoon "band" of four hamsters; though the song was solely credited to "Hampton the Hampster"; the band was later dubbed "Hampton and the Hampsters." The song reached number one on the Canadian Singles Chart while peaking at number 32 on the "RPM" charts. In Australia, "The Hampsterdance Song" was released in 2001 and reached number five on the ARIA Singles Chart. The song proved to be very successful on Radio Disney, where it became the station's all-time most played song and was later included on the compilation album "Radio Disney Ultimate Jams". LaCarte created an online store offering T-shirts and CDs of the fictional group's music. An Flash-animated series was planned by Nelvana, but never made it past the planning process. Prior to the release of "The Hampsterdance Song", a similar song featuring an unofficial sound-alike rendition of "Whistle Stop" was released as "Cognoscenti vs. Intelligentsia" and performed by the Cuban Boys. This version peaked at number 4 on the Christmas 1999 UK singles chart.


title: Hampster Dance

text: Following the relative success of "The Hampsterdance Song" single, an entire album featuring the fictional band titled "Hampsterdance: The Album" was released in 2000. Some follow-up singles from this album were moderately successful in Australia, such as "Thank God I'm a Country Boy" (a cover of the John Denver song, reaching number 12) and "Hampster Party" (reaching number 44). "Hampsterdance: The Album" was reissued with a shorter tracklist as "The Hampster Dance Party" in 2002. Later album releases were "Happy Times Ten" (2002), the compilation "Hampsterdance Hits" (2004), and "A Very Hampsterdance Christmas" (2008).


title: Hampster Dance

text: The direct-to-video animated film "How the Hampsters Saved Winter" was produced by Abatis International LLC and animated by Unreal Productions, located in New Jersey. The DVD was first released for sale on the Hampster Dance website on April 2, 2009, and was purchasable to as late as 2012. Bill Porfido, the owner of the franchise confirmed in an article that 2000 copies of the film were sold. After the film became unavailable for purchase on the website, the film was thought to be lost as no copies were made available elsewhere. However, four screenshots were featured via a game on the website called Hamster Hijinks. In 2022, the film was archived on the Lost Media Wiki and uploaded onto Youtube.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Grande Prairie is a city in northwest Alberta, Canada within the southern portion of an area known as Peace River Country. It is located at the intersection of Highway 43 (part of the CANAMEX Corridor) and Highway 40 (the Bighorn Highway), approximately northwest of Edmonton. The city is surrounded by the County of Grande Prairie No. 1.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Grande Prairie was the seventh-largest city in Alberta in 2016, with a population of 63,166, and was one of Canada's fastest growing cities between 2001 and 2006, and Canada's northernmost city with more than 50,000 people.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The city adopted the trumpeter swan as an official symbol due to its proximity to the migration route and summer nesting grounds of this bird. For that reason, Grande Prairie is sometimes nicknamed the "Swan City". The dinosaur has also emerged as an unofficial symbol of the city due to paleontology discoveries in the areas north and west of Grande Prairie.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The Grande Prairie area was historically known as Buffalo Plains, after the buffalo who would traverse the large prairie which lies to the north, east, and west of it. Émile Grouard, a Roman Catholic Priest, was the first to refer to the area as La Grande Prairie. In the 18th century, the prairie was occupied by bands of the Dane-zaa (Beaver) peoples, who began, in the early 19th century, trading with the North West Company at Dunvegan. The earliest recorded reference to the prairie was by Hudson Bay trader Samuel Black in 1824.


title: Grande Prairie

text: In 1880, as a result of the fur trade war between the Hudson Bay Company (which merged with the North West Company in 1821), and independent fur traders, centering around Dunvegan, a Hudson's Bay Company outpost called La Grande Prairie was established by George Kennedy. The post was established South of Dunvegan and north west of the present day city of Grande Prairie, south east of La Glace Lake, and west of what is now the Town of Sexsmith (the 1896 version of this building was moved and restored and now stands near the Grande Prairie Museum).


title: Grande Prairie

text: In the late 19th century, the prairie was settled by Cree and Iroquois from around Jasper and Lac Ste. Anne. When 17 townships were surveyed for homesteading in 1909, a land rush soon followed, with many settlers arriving over the Edson Trail. In 1910, the Grande Prairie Townsite was sub-divided. By 1912, it included a bank, hotel, post office, and land office, making it a district metropolis. In 1916, it became the terminus of the Edmonton, Dunvegan and British Columbia Railway from Edmonton.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The Edson Trail from Edson to Grande Prairie was opened in 1911 as a means for settlers to reach the Grande Prairie area. It was basically nothing more than a tract of clear cut bush and forest, and thus was a very difficult route for many settlers, especially during wet weather. Because of this, large scale settlement came late compared to other major farming regions further south in Canada. Grande Prairie was incorporated as a village by the Province of Alberta in 1914, but it was not until the arrival of the railway in 1916 that farmland quickly expanded as waves of settlers came into the Peace region.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The arrival of the railway and the increased settlement in the area drove up Grande Prairie's population past the 1,000 mark, allowing it to incorporate as a town on March 27, 1919. A local recession in the 1920s caused a temporary depopulation of Grande Prairie. But the population rebounded afterwards by the 1930s, by which time the population had reached 1,464. Settlement continued unabated even into the 1930s during the Dust Bowl era because the Peace Region was able to escape the severe drought conditions that plagued the Canadian Prairies further south at the time.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The Second World War saw the US and Canadian military establish Grande Prairie as a part of the Northwest Staging Route and for the construction of the Alaska Highway from Dawson Creek to Alaska. Although Dawson Creek was chosen as the major starting point of the construction of the Alaska Highway, Grande Prairie was a major stopover point for military aircraft during the war, and benefited economically from this.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Although Grande Prairie was well located in the southern edge of the Peace Country, it was competing with the towns of Peace River and Dawson Creek for the title of the most important centre of commerce and agriculture in the region until the late 1950s, when its population growth began to outstrip these towns as oil and natural gas exploration was underway in the Peace Region, especially since the first major discovery of oil further south in Leduc near Edmonton in 1947 and the construction of a large pulp mill south of the city in the early 1970s.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The construction and paving of Highway 43 (originally sections of Highways 2, 34, and 43 from the BC border to the Yellowhead Highway just west of Edmonton) in 1956 cut down on the travel time by road significantly, further enhancing Grande Prairie's accessibility and economic status.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The town of Grande Prairie was incorporated as a city in 1958. At that time, its population was approximately 7,600.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The opening of the Procter & Gamble kraft pulp mill in 1972 and the discovery of the Elmworth deep basin gas field spurred an economic boom. Grande Prairie's population went from just over 12,000 in the early 1970s to over 24,000 by the time the oil boom went bust in 1981.


title: Grande Prairie

text: In the five years from 2001 to 2006, Grande Prairie was one of the fastest-growing cities in Canada, growing from 37,000 to 47,000 people. After 2006, and with another recession, the population decreased slightly, followed by a slow increase to just over 69,000 by 2018.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Grande Prairie is located just north of the 55th parallel north, and is northwest of Edmonton, lying at an elevation of above sea level. The city is surrounded by farmland to the north, east, and west. To the south lies a vast boreal forest with aspen, tamarack, lodgepole pine, jack pine, and black spruce extending well into the foothills of the Canadian Rockies south and southwest of the city.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Bear Creek goes through the city from the northwest to the south end and is a tributary of the Wapiti River to the south. The Bear Creek Reservoir is the small body of water by Grande Prairie Regional College in the northwest part of the city, and is ringed by marshy wetland. The terrain immediately surrounding Grande Prairie is largely flat to gently rolling, but rises gradually to hilly terrain closer to the foothills to the south and southwest. On clear days, some peaks in the Rockies are visible to the southwest from Grande Prairie.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The city lies on the southern edge of aspen parkland, which is a transitional biome between boreal forest and prairie. The Peace River Country contains the northernmost area of aspen parkland in North America. However, much of the aspen parkland in the region has long since been destroyed by extensive farming and oil/gas drilling activity.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Grande Prairie has a northern continental climate typical of northwestern Alberta and northeastern British Columbia, classified as humid continental ("Dfb"), bordering closely on a subarctic climate ("Dfc") with old data under the Köppen climate classification. Winters are generally very cold with some mild spells. Summers are often fairly cool to pleasantly warm in the daytime, but nights can be cool despite the long summer days typical for its latitude. Hot days over are rare, occurring on average only two to three days a year, which is not unexpected this far north. Winter conditions can vary tremendously from year to year. Winters have been known to be mild enough to produce "brown Christmas" conditions, where little or no snow may fall until after Christmas due to unusually mild early winter conditions.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The average January temperature is , while the average July temperature is . However, temperatures as low as and as high as have been recorded; the extreme humidex and wind chill readings are , respectively. The city receives of precipitation annually, including of rain and of snow. Snowfall amounts, however, vary greatly from year to year. Being fairly close to the foothills of the Canadian Rockies, it can get quite windy in Grande Prairie, especially in the spring and fall. Chinooks may occur in and bring winter thaws to the Grande Prairie area.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Grande Prairie has 314 days with measureable sunshine per year on average, and just above 2,200 hours of bright sunshine or about 46.1% of possible sunshine, ranging from a low of 31.2% in November to a high of 59.1% in July.


title: Grande Prairie

text: Summers can bring thunderstorms, although they are not as frequent nor as severe as those further south in Central Alberta. Rainfall can vary from year to year, but the Peace Region is noted for never having experienced truly severe drought conditions more typical of Southern Alberta and neighbouring Saskatchewan. Tornadoes are rare but not unheard of in the Peace Region. A tornado struck the downtown area and east side of Grande Prairie on July 8, 2004. Although the tornado was considered a very weak one (F0-F1 on the Fujita scale) and the weather was not severe at the time, it was still strong enough to damage houses and flip vehicles. There were no casualties or deaths.


title: Grande Prairie

text: In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the City of Grande Prairie had a population of 64,141 living in 24,816 of its 27,551 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2016 population of 63,166. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2021.


title: Grande Prairie

text: In the 2016 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, the City of Grande Prairie had a population of 63,166 living in 23,676 of its 26,204 total private dwellings, a change of from its 2011 population of 55,655. With a land area of , it had a population density of in 2016.


title: Grande Prairie

text: The population of the City of Grande Prairie according to its 2015 municipal census was 68,556, a change of from its 2007 municipal census population of 50,227.


title: Grande Prairie

text: In the 2016 Census, 11.9% of residents were visible minorities, while 12.6% were aboriginal and 75.5% were white. The largest visible minority groups were Filipino (5.0%), Black (2.1%), South Asian (1.9%), and Chinese (0.8%).


title: Grande Prairie

text: As of 2016, 85.7% of residents claimed English as their first language. Other common mother tongues were Tagalog (2.9%), French (2.6%), German (1.1%) and Spanish (0.7%).


title: Grande Prairie

text: 58.5% of residents identified themselves as Christian at the time of the 2011 census while 39.2% indicated they had no religious affiliation. The largest denomination was Catholic (23.1%), followed by Other Christian (14.8%), United Church (6.0%), Anglican (5.3%), Pentecostal (3.4%), Lutheran (2.7%) and Baptist (2.1%). The largest non-Christian religion in Grande Prairie was Islam, making up 0.9% of the population.