title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 1987, he acquired Gulf Insurance. The next year, he paid $1.5 billion for Primerica, the parent company of Smith Barney and the A. L. Williams insurance company. In 1989, he acquired Drexel Burnham Lambert's retail brokerage outlets. In 1992, he paid $722 million to buy a 27% share of Travelers Insurance, which had gotten into trouble because of bad real estate investments.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 1993 he reacquired his old Shearson brokerage (now Shearson Lehman) from American Express for $1.2 billion. By the end of the year, he had completely taken over Travelers Corp in a $4 billion stock deal and officially began calling his corporation Travelers Group Inc. In 1996 he added to his holdings, at a cost of $4 billion, the property and casualty operations of Aetna Life & Casualty. In September 1997 Weill acquired Salomon Inc., the parent company of Salomon Brothers Inc. for over $9 billion in stock.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In April 1998, Travelers Group announced an agreement to undertake the $76 billion merger between Travelers and Citicorp, and the merger was completed on October 8, 1998. The possibility remained that the merger would run into problems connected with federal law. Ever since the Glass–Steagall Act, banking and insurance businesses had been kept separate. Weill and John S. Reed bet that Congress would soon pass legislation overturning those regulations, which Weill, Reed and a number of businesspeople considered not in their interest.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: To speed up the process, they recruited to the Board of Directors former President Gerald Ford (Republican) and former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin (who served during the Democratic Clinton Administration) whom Weill was close to. With both Democrats and Republicans on their side, the law was taken down in less than two years. Many European countries, for instance, had already torn down the firewall between banking and insurance. During a two-to-five-year grace period allowed by law, Citigroup could conduct business in its merged form; should that period have elapsed without a change in the law, Citigroup would have had to spin off its insurance businesses. Weill's office holds a wood etching of him engraved with the words "The Shatterer of Glass–Steagall". Weill denies that the repeal of Glass–Steagall played a role in the recent financial crisis.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 1998, Weill was the recipient of "FinancialWorld Magazine"s CEO of the Year Award and received the same honor from "ChiefExecutive Magazine" in 2002.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 2001, Weill became a Class A director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. Class A directors are those elected by Federal Reserve member banks. Also in 2001, Weill established several offshore enterprises, including one through which he owned his yacht. These entities were identified in the Panama Papers.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 2002, the company was hit by the wave of Wall Street managerial restructuring that followed the stock market downturn of 2002. In 2003, Weill sold 5.6 million shares of Citigroup back to the financial institution for nearly $264 million and relinquished the title of CEO to Charles O. Prince. He remained Chairman of Citigroup until 2006.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: On July 25, 2012, Weill apparently reversed course on the financial supermarket. "What we should probably do is go and split up investment banking from banking, have banks be deposit takers, have banks make commercial loans and real estate loans, have banks do something that's not going to risk the taxpayer dollars, that's not too big to fail," Weill said on CNBC. "If they want to hedge what they're doing with their investments, let them do it in a way that's going to be mark-to-market so they're never going to be hit."


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: Weill married Joan Mosher on June 20, 1955. The couple lives in Sonoma, California. They have two adult children, Marc Weill (formerly married to news anchor E. D. Hill) and Jessica Weill Bibliowicz, and four grandchildren.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: Weill served as a Cornell Trustee for many years, and in 1998 he endowed Cornell's medical school, now known as the Weill Cornell Medical College. As chairman of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College and an emeritus member of the Board of Trustees of Cornell University, Weill orchestrated a $400 million donation to Cornell, of which he and his wife personally contributed $250 million. In June 2007, he endowed the Weill Institute for Cell and Molecular Biology at Cornell, housed in a new life science building named Weill Hall. On September 10, 2013, Joan and Sandy Weill and the Weill Family Foundation announced a $100 million gift to Weill Cornell. Weill is Chairman of the Board of Overseers of Weill Cornell Medical College and Weill Cornell Graduate School of Medical Sciences, having joined the board in 1982 and becoming chair in 1995. Weill Cornell established the first American medical school overseas in Doha, Qatar, in 2001. This was made possible through a special partnership between Weill Cornell and the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development. Weill Cornell's inaugural class in Qatar graduated in 2008. Weill also serves on the Board of Governors of Sidra, a 380-bed speciality teaching hospital was scheduled to open in 2014 in Qatar. Sidra is supported by a $9 billion endowment from the Qatar Foundation. In addition, he is a Trustee of New York-Presbyterian Hospital; a Trustee of Hospital for Special Surgery; and a member of the Executive Council of the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In May 2003, he received the Baruch Medal for Business and Civic Leadership, presented by Baruch College for his work in public education and his accomplishments in business.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: Long a proponent of education, Weill instituted a joint program with the New York City Board of Education in 1980 that created the Academy of Finance, which trains high school students for careers in financial services. He serves as Founder and Chairman of the NAF, which oversees more than 100,000 students in 617 career-themed academies of finance, hospitality and tourism, information technology, engineering, and health sciences, in 35 states, as well as the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Ninety-nine percent of NAF's students graduate, with eighty-seven percent going on to post-secondary education – often as the first in their families to attend college. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo appointed Weill as a member of his New York Education Reform Commission. Weill has received honorary degrees from Howard University, Hofstra University, University of New Haven, The New School, and Sonoma State University.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: He previously served as the Chairman of the Board of Carnegie Hall until 2016, and is an avid champion of classical music in the United States. Since 1986, one of the three performance halls in Carnegie Hall has been named after Weill and his wife, Joan and Sanford I. Weill Recital Hall. The 1997 recipient of the New York State Governor's Art Award, Weill has been Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Hall since 1991. For Weill's 70th birthday, Carnegie Hall raised a record $60 million in one evening through a generous $30 million match by Weill and his wife for the Weill Music Institute, which established broad-reaching music education programs. Weill is also chairman of the Green Music Center Board of Advisors at Sonoma State University and a director of the Lang Lang International Music Foundation.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 1997, Weill received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. His Golden Plate was presented by Awards Council member General Colin Powell.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In September 2006, Joan and Sanford Weill Hall was dedicated at the University of Michigan. The building is home to the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. Weill donated $5 million towards the construction of the building and an additional $3 million to endow the position of the dean of the school.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: Joan and Sanford Weill have been co-chairs, of the annual "Louis Marshall Award Dinner", for most of the past decade (2000–2010).


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 2002, the Joan Weill Adirondack Library and Joan Weill Student Center were dedicated at Paul Smith's College.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: The Weills are recipients of the 2009 Carnegie Medal of Philanthropy Award. Sanford I. Weill was the 2015 recipient of the Carnegie Hall Medal of Excellence.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 2010, the Weills bought a 362-acre estate in Sonoma County, California. In March 2011, the Weills announced a $12 million gift to Sonoma State University, providing the funds to complete the Donald and Maureen Green Music Center concert hall for a fall 2012 opening. The facility, inspired by Seiji Ozawa Hall at Tanglewood, has been named the Joan and Sanford I. Weill Hall. "We love to be involved in the communities where we spend time," Sandy Weill commented to an interviewer.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 2011, Rambam Medical Center in Haifa, Israel and the American Friends of the Rambam Medical Center announced that Joan and Weill and the Weill Family Foundation made a donation of $10 million. In addition, the money was intended to support the Israeli-Palestinian Friendship Center and enable the hospital to better serve patients from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank by making residential hostel facilities available to their families while providing advanced medical training to Palestinian residents, fellows, and nursing staff.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In September 2013, Weill and his wife wrote an op-ed for CNBC stating that philanthropy goes beyond just money. "For us, philanthropy is much more than just writing a check. It's donating your time, energy, experience, and intellect to the causes and organizations you are passionate about."


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 2015, Joan Weill offered an additional $20 million to Paul Smith's College, but only if it changed its name to Joan Weill-Paul Smith's College, a change that would have violated the terms of the devise of the school's real property, which required that the school be "forever known" as Paul Smith's College of Arts and Sciences. Paul Smith's applied to the New York Supreme Court for a release from the naming clause of the donor's will, arguing that its continued financial survival depended on receipt of Mrs. Weill's $20 million gift. Notwithstanding that argument, there was considerable opposition to the requested name change from alumni and others. The college was originally funded by the will of Paul Smith's son, Phelps Smith, who specified that the institution should be "forever known" by his father's name. In light of the potential donation, the college petitioned to be released from the will's conditions, but their appeal was denied by Judge Ellis.


title: Sanford I. Weill

text: In 2016 Sandy and Joan Weill announced a $185 million contribution to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) for a new neuroscience institute. At the time, the gift was the largest donation in the school's history. The Weill Institute for Neurosciences is housed in a $316 million facility at UCSF's Mission Bay campus. The Weills hope the institute will develop more effective treatments for such diseases as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, multiple sclerosis, sleep disorders, autism, and other brain-related ailments. In 2019, the Weills pledged an additional $106 million for neuroscience research at UCSF, Berkeley, and the University of Washington. The Weills are among Berkeley's top benefactors, with the couple contributing over $52 million in fiscal year 2020 alone; Weill Hall is named in their honor.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The culture of Ireland includes language, literature, music, art, folklore, cuisine, and sport associated with Ireland and the Irish people. For most of its recorded history, Irish culture has been primarily Gaelic (see Gaelic Ireland). It has also been influenced by Anglo-Norman, English and Scottish culture. The Anglo-Normans invaded Ireland in the 12th century, and the 16th/17th century conquest and colonisation of Ireland saw the emergence of Tudor English culture repurposed in an Irish style. The Plantation of Ulster also introduced Scottish elements mostly confined to Northern Ireland.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Today, there are often notable cultural differences between those of Catholic and Protestant (especially Ulster Protestant) background, and between travellers and the settlers population. Due to large-scale emigration from Ireland, Irish culture has a global reach and festivals such as Saint Patrick's Day and Halloween are celebrated all over the world. Irish culture has to some degree been inherited and modified by the Irish diaspora, which in turn has influenced the home country. Though there are many unique aspects of Irish culture, it shares substantial traits with those of Britain, other English-speaking countries, other predominantly Catholic European countries, and the other Celtic nations.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: As archaeological evidence from sites such as the Céide Fields in County Mayo and Lough Gur in County Limerick demonstrates, the farm in Ireland is an activity that goes back to the Neolithic, about 6,000 years ago. Before this, the first settlers of the island of Ireland after the last Ice Age were a new wave of cavemen and the Mesolithic period. In historic times, texts such as the Táin Bó Cúailinge show a society in which cows were represented a primary source of wealth and status. Little of this had changed by the time of the Norman invasion of Ireland in the 12th century. Giraldus Cambrensis portrayed a Gaelic society in which cattle farming and transhumance was the norm.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The Normans replaced traditional clan land management (Brehon Law) with the manorial system of land tenure and social organisation. This led to the imposition of the village, parish and county over the native system of townlands. In general, a parish was a civil and religious unit with a manor, a village and a church at its centre. Each parish incorporated one or more existing townlands into its boundaries. With the gradual extension of English feudalism over the island, the Irish county structure came into existence and was completed in 1610.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: These structures are still of vital importance in the daily life of Irish communities. Apart from the religious significance of the parish, most rural postal addresses consist of house and townland names. The village and parish are key focal points around which sporting rivalries and other forms of local identity are built and most people feel a strong sense of loyalty to their native county, a loyalty which also often has its clearest expression on the sports field.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: With the Tudor Elizabethan English conquest in the 16th-17th centuries, the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, and the organized plantations of English Tudor, and later Scottish colonists, the Scottish confined to what's now mostly Northern Ireland, the patterns of land ownership in Ireland were altered greatly. The old order of transhumance and open range cattle breeding died out to be replaced by a structure of great landed estates, small tenant farmers with more or less precarious hold on their leases, and a mass of landless labourers. This situation continued up to the end of the 19th century, when the agitation of the Land League began to bring about land reform. In this process of reform, the former tenants and labourers became land owners, with the great estates being broken up into small- and medium-sized farms and smallholdings. The process continued well into the 20th century with the work of the Irish Land Commission. This contrasted with Britain, where many of the big estates were left intact. One consequence of this is the widely recognised cultural phenomenon of "land hunger" amongst the new class of Irish farmer. In general, this means that farming families will do almost anything to retain land ownership within the family unit, with the greatest ambition possible being the acquisition of additional land. Another is that hillwalkers in Ireland today are more constrained than their counterparts in Britain, as it is more difficult to agree rights of way with so many small farmers involved on a given route, rather than with just one landowner.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The majority of the Irish calendar today still reflects the old pagan customs, with later Christian traditions also having significant influences. Christmas in Ireland has several local traditions, some in no way connected with Christianity. On 26 December (St. Stephen's Day), there is a custom of "Wrenboys" who call door to door with an arrangement of assorted material (which changes in different localities) to represent a dead wren "caught in the furze", as their rhyme goes.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The national holiday in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland is Saint Patrick's Day, that falls on the date 17 March and is marked by parades and festivals in cities and towns across the island of Ireland, and by the Irish diaspora around the world. The festival is in remembrance of Saint Patrick, the patron saint of Ireland. Pious legend credits Patrick with the banishing of the snakes from the island, and the legend also credits Patrick with teaching the Irish about the concept of the Trinity by showing people the shamrock, a 3-leaved clover, using it to highlight the Christian belief of 'three divine persons in the one God'.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In Northern Ireland The Twelfth of July, or Orangemen's Day, commemorates William III's victory at the Battle of the Boyne. A public holiday, it is celebrated by Irish Protestants, the vast majority of whom live in Northern Ireland. It is notable for the numerous parades organised by the Orange Order which take place throughout Northern Ireland. These parades are colourful affairs with Orange Banners and sashes on display and include music in the form of traditional songs such as "The Sash" and "Derry's Walls" performed by a mixture of pipe, flute, accordion, and brass marching bands. The Twelfth remains controversial as many in Northern Ireland's large and majority-nationalist Catholic community see the holiday, celebrating a victory over Catholics that ensured the continued establishment of a Protestant Ascendancy, as triumphalist, supremacist, and an assertion of British and Ulster Protestant dominance.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Brigid's Day (1 February, known as Imbolc or Candlemas) also does not have its origins in Christianity, being instead another religious observance superimposed at the beginning of spring. The Brigid's cross made from rushes represents a pre-Christian solar wheel.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Other pre-Christian festivals, whose names survive as Irish month names, are Bealtaine (May), Lúnasa (August) and Samhain (November). The last is still widely observed as Halloween which is celebrated all over the world, including in the United States followed by All Saints' Day, another Christian holiday associated with a traditional one. Important church holidays include Easter, and various Marian observances.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Christianity in the form of both Roman Catholicism and Protestantism is the most widely practised religion in Ireland. Christianity was brought to Ireland during or prior to the 5th century and its early history among the Irish is in particular associated with Saint Patrick, who is generally considered Ireland's patron saint. The Celtic festival of "Samhain", known as Halloween, originated in Ireland and is now celebrated all over the world.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Ireland is a place where religion and religious practice have always been held in high esteem. The majority of people on the island are Roman Catholics; however, there is a significant minority of Protestants who are mostly concentrated in Northern Ireland, where they make up a plurality of the population. The three main Protestant denominations on the island are the Church of Ireland, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and the Methodist Church in Ireland. These are also joined by numerous other smaller denominations including Baptists, several American gospel groups and the Salvation Army. As well as these Protestant Churches, other minority denominations include Eastern Orthodox, Jehovah's Witnesses and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (LDS). In addition to the Christian denominations there are centres for Buddhists, Hindus, Baháʼís, Pagans and for people of the Islamic and Jewish faiths.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In the Republic of Ireland, the last time a census asked people to specify their religion was in 2011. The result was 84.16% Roman Catholic, 2.81% Church of Ireland (Anglican), 1.07% Islam, 0.54% Presbyterian, 0.9% Christian, 0.99% Orthodox, approximately 2.07% other religious groupings and 5.88% identified as having no religion. About 1.59% did not state their religious identity. Amongst the Republic's Roman Catholics, weekly church attendance dropped sharply from 87% in 1981 to 60% in 1998, to 36% in 2016. This remained one of the highest attendance rates in Europe, where the average was 12.8% in 2016. The decline is said to be linked to reports of Catholic Church sexual abuse cases in Ireland.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In Northern Ireland in 2011, the population was 40.8% Roman Catholic, 19.1% Presbyterian, 13.7% Church of Ireland (Anglican), 3% Methodist, 5.8% other Christian, 0.8% other religion and philosophy, 10.1% with no religion and 6.8% religion not stated.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The Leprechaun has been estimated to figure to a large degree in Irish folklore. According to the tales, the leprechaun is a mischievous fairy type creature in emerald green clothing who when not playing tricks spend all their time busily making shoes; the Leprechaun is said to have a pot of gold hidden at the end of the rainbow and if ever captured by a human it has the magical power to grant three wishes in exchange for release. More acknowledged and respected in Ireland are the stories of Fionn mac Cumhaill and his followers, the Fianna, from the Fenian cycle. Legend has it he built the Giant's Causeway as stepping-stones to Scotland; not to get his feet wet, to fight an ugly Scottish giant. He also once scooped up part of Ireland to fling it at a rival, but it missed and landed in the Irish Sea – the clump became the Isle of Man and the pebble became Rockall, the void became Lough Neagh. The Irish king Brian Boru who ended the domination of the so-called High Kingship of Ireland by the Uí Néill, is part of the historical cycle. The Irish princess Iseult is the adulterous lover of Tristan in the Arthurian romance and tragedy Tristan and Iseult. The many legends of ancient Ireland were captured by Lady Gregory in two volumes with forewords by W.B. Yeats. These stories depict the unusual power and status that Celtic women held in ancient times.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Halloween is a traditional and much celebrated holiday in Ireland on the night of 31 October. Supposedly the first evidence of the word halloween is found in a 16th-century Scottish document as a shortening for "All-Hallows-Eve", and according to some historians it has its roots in the gaelic festival Samhain, where the Gaels believed the border between this world and the otherworld became thin, and the dead would revisit the mortal world.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In Ireland, traditional Halloween customs include; Guising – children disguised in costume going from door to door requesting food or coins – which became practice by the late 19th century, turnips hollowed-out and carved with faces to make lanterns, holding parties where games such as apple bobbing are played. Other practices in Ireland include lighting bonfires, and having firework displays. Mass transatlantic Irish and Scottish immigration in the 19th century popularised Halloween in North America.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: For a comparatively small place, the island of Ireland has made a disproportionately large contribution to world literature in all its branches, in both the Irish and English languages. The island's most widely known literary works are undoubtedly in English. Particularly famous examples of such works are those of James Joyce, Bram Stoker, Jonathan Swift, Oscar Wilde and Ireland's four winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature; William Butler Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, Samuel Beckett and Seamus Heaney. Three of the four Nobel prize winners were born in Dublin (Heaney being the exception, having lived in Dublin but being born in County Londonderry), making it the birthplace of more Nobel literary laureates than any other city in the world. The Irish language has the third oldest literature in Europe (after Greek and Latin), the most significant body of written literature (both ancient and recent) of any Celtic language, as well as a strong oral tradition of legends and poetry. Poetry in Irish represents the oldest vernacular poetry in Europe, with the earliest examples dating from the 6th century.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The early history of Irish visual art is generally considered to begin with early carvings found at sites such as Newgrange and is traced through Bronze Age artefacts, particularly ornamental gold objects, and the Celtic brooches and illuminated manuscripts of the "Insular" Early Medieval period. During the course of the 19th and 20th centuries, a strong indigenous tradition of painting emerged, including such figures as John Butler Yeats, William Orpen, Jack Yeats and Louis le Brocquy.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The Irish tradition of folk music and dance is also widely known, and both were redefined in the 1950s. In the middle years of the 20th century, as Irish society was attempting to modernise, traditional Irish music fell out of favour to some extent, especially in urban areas. Young people at this time tended to look to Britain and, particularly, the United States as models of progress and jazz and rock and roll became extremely popular. During the 1960s, and inspired by the American folk music movement, there was a revival of interest in the Irish tradition. This revival was inspired by groups like The Dubliners, the Clancy Brothers and Sweeney's Men and individuals like Seán Ó Riada. The annual Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann is the largest festival of Irish music in Ireland.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Before long, groups and musicians like Horslips, Van Morrison and even Thin Lizzy were incorporating elements of traditional music into a rock idiom to form a unique new sound. During the 1970s and 1980s, the distinction between traditional and rock musicians became blurred, with many individuals regularly crossing over between these styles of playing as a matter of course. This trend can be seen more recently in the work of bands like U2, Snow Patrol, The Cranberries, The Undertones and The Corrs.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Irish and English are the most widely spoken languages in Ireland. English is the most widely spoken language on the island overall, and Irish is spoken as a first language only by a small minority, primarily, though not exclusively, in the government-defined Gaeltacht regions in the Republic. A larger minority speak Irish as a second language, with 40.6% of people in the Republic of Ireland claiming some ability to speak the language in the 2011 census. Article 8 of the Constitution of Ireland states that Irish is the "national" and "first official" language of the Republic of Ireland. English in turn is recognised as the State's "second official language". Hiberno-English, the dialect of English spoken in most of the Republic of Ireland, has been greatly influenced by Irish.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In contrast Northern Ireland, like the rest of the United Kingdom, has no official language. English, however, is the "de facto" official language, and Ulster English is common. In addition, Irish and Ulster Scots have recognition under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, with 8.1% claiming some ability in Ulster Scots and 10.7% in Irish. In addition, the dialect and accent of the people of Northern Ireland is noticeably different from that of the majority in the Republic of Ireland, being influenced by Ulster Scots and Northern Ireland's proximity to Scotland.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Several other languages are spoken on the island, including Shelta, a mixture of Irish, Romani and English, spoken widely by Travellers. Two sign languages have also been developed on the island, Northern Irish Sign Language and Irish Sign Language.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Some other languages have entered Ireland with immigrants – for example, Polish is now the second most widely spoken language in Ireland after English, Irish being the third most commonly spoken language.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: There are many references to food and drink in early Irish literature. Honey seems to have been widely eaten and used in the making of mead. The old stories also contain many references to banquets, although these may well be greatly exaggerated and provide little insight into everyday diet. There are also many references to "fulacht fia", which are archaeological sites commonly believed to have once been used for cooking venison. The "fulacht fia" have holes or troughs in the ground which can be filled with water. Meat can then be cooked by placing hot stones in the trough until the water boils. Many "fulach fia" sites have been identified across the island of Ireland, and some of them appear to have been in use up to the 17th century.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Excavations at the Viking settlement in the Wood Quay area of Dublin have produced a significant amount of information on the diet of the inhabitants of the town. The main animals eaten were cattle, sheep and pigs, with pigs being the most common. This popularity extended down to modern times in Ireland. Poultry and wild geese as well as fish and shellfish were also common, as were a wide range of native berries and nuts, especially hazel. The seeds of knotgrass and goosefoot were widely present and may have been used to make a porridge.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The Tudor conquest of Ireland led to significant changes in the Irish diet, as it introduced a new agro-alimentary system of intensive grain-based agriculture and led to large areas of land being turned over to grain production. The potato was introduced into Ireland in the second half of the 16th century, as a result of the Columbian exchange, initially as a garden crop; it eventually came to serve as the main food field crop of the tenant and labouring classes, which formed a majority of the population. Ireland also grew large quantities of corned beef, though the vast majority of it was exported. The over-reliance on potatoes as a staple crop in Irish cuisine meant that the people of Ireland were vulnerable to poor potato harvests. The Irish Famine of 1740 was the result of extreme cold weather, but the Great Famine of 1845–1849 was caused by potato blight which spread throughout the Irish crop which consisted largely of a single variety, the Lumper. During the famine, approximately one million people died and a million more emigrated elsewhere.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In the 20th century, the usual modern selection of foods common to Western cultures has been adopted in Ireland. Both US fast food culture and continental European dishes have influenced the country, along with other world dishes introduced in a similar fashion to the rest of the Western world. Common meals include pizza, curry, Chinese food, and lately, some west African dishes have been making an appearance. Supermarket shelves now contain ingredients for, among others, traditional, European, American (Mexican/Tex-Mex), Indian, Polish and Chinese dishes.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The proliferation of fast food has led to increasing public health problems including obesity, and one of the highest rates of heart disease in the world. In Ireland, the Full Irish has been particularly cited as being a major source for a higher incidence of cardiac problems, quoted as being a ""heart attack on a plate"". All the ingredients are fried, although more recently the trend is to grill as many of the ingredients as possible.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In tandem with these developments, the last quarter of the century saw the emergence of a new Irish cuisine based on traditional ingredients handled in new ways. This cuisine is based on fresh vegetables, fish, especially salmon and trout, oysters and other shellfish, traditional soda bread, the wide range of hand-made cheeses that are now being made across the country, and, of course, the potato. Traditional dishes, such as the Irish stew, Dublin coddle, the Irish breakfast and potato bread, have enjoyed a resurgence. Schools like the Ballymaloe Cookery School have emerged to cater for the associated increased interest in cooking with traditional ingredients.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Pub culture pervades Irish society, across all cultural divides. The term refers to the Irish habit of frequenting public houses (pubs) or bars. Traditional pub culture is concerned with more than just drinking. Typically pubs are important meeting places, where people can gather and meet their neighbours and friends in a relaxed atmosphere; similar to the café cultures of other countries. Pubs vary widely according to the clientele they serve, and the area they are in. Best known, and loved amongst tourists is the traditional pub, with its traditional Irish music (or "trad music"), tavern-like warmness, and memorabilia filling it. Often such pubs will also serve food, particularly during the day. Many more modern pubs, not necessarily traditional, still emulate these pubs, only perhaps substituting traditional music for a DJ or non-traditional live music.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Many larger pubs in cities eschew such trappings entirely, opting for loud music, and focusing more on the consumption of drinks, which is not a focus of traditional Irish culture. Such venues are popular "pre-clubbing" locations. "Clubbing" has become a popular phenomenon amongst young people in Ireland during the celtic tiger years. Clubs usually vary in terms of the type of music played, and the target audience. Belfast has a unique underground club scene taking place in settings such as churches, zoos, and crematoriums. The underground scene is mainly orchestrated by DJ Christopher McCafferty .


title: Culture of Ireland

text: A significant recent change to pub culture in the Republic of Ireland has been the introduction of a smoking ban, in all workplaces, which includes pubs and restaurants. Ireland was the first country in the world to implement such a ban which was introduced on 29 March 2004. A majority of the population support the ban, including a significant percentage of smokers. Nevertheless, the atmosphere in pubs has changed greatly as a result, and debate continues on whether it has boosted or lowered sales, although this is often blamed on the ever-increasing prices, or whether it is a "good thing" or a "bad thing". A similar ban, under the Smoking (Northern Ireland) Order 2006, came into effect in Northern Ireland on 30 April 2007.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: National and international organisations have labelled Ireland as having a problem with over-consumption of alcohol. In the late 1980s alcohol consumption accounted for nearly 25% of all hospital admissions. While this figure has been decreasing steadily, as of 2007, approximately 13% of overall hospital admissions were alcohol related. In 2003, Ireland had the second-highest per capita alcohol consumption in the world, just below Luxembourg at 13.5 litres (per person 15 or more years old), according to the "OECD Health Data 2009" survey. According to the latest OECD figures, alcohol consumption in Ireland has dropped from 11.5 litres per adult in 2012 to 10.6 litres per adult in 2013. However, research showed that in 2013, 75% of alcohol was consumed as part of a drinking session where the person drank six or more standard units (which equates to three or more pints of beer). This meets the Health Service Executive's definition of binge drinking.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Sport on the island of Ireland is popular and widespread. A wide variety of sports are played throughout the island, with the most popular being Gaelic football, hurling, soccer, rugby union, and golf.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Four sports account for over 80% of event attendance. Gaelic football is the most popular sport in Ireland in terms of match attendance and community involvement, and represents 34% of total sports attendances at events in the Republic of Ireland and abroad, followed by hurling at 23%, soccer at 16% and rugby at 8%. and the All-Ireland Football Final is the most watched event in Ireland's sporting calendar.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Swimming, golf, aerobics, soccer, cycling, Gaelic football, and billiards and snooker, are the sporting activities with the highest levels of playing participation. Other sports with material playing populations, including at school level, include tennis, hockey, pitch and putt, basketball, boxing, cricket and squash.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Soccer is the most popular sport involving national teams. The success of the Ireland team at the 1990 FIFA World Cup saw 500,000 fans in Dublin to welcome the team home. The team's song "Put 'Em Under Pressure" topped the Irish charts for 13 weeks.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In Ireland many sports, such as rugby union, Gaelic football and hurling, are organised in an all-island basis, with a single team representing the island of Ireland in international competitions. Other sports, such as soccer, have separate organising bodies in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Traditionally, those in the North who identify as Irish, predominantly Catholics and nationalists, support the Republic of Ireland team. At the Olympics, a person from Northern Ireland can choose to represent either the "Great Britain" team or the "Ireland" team. Also as Northern Ireland is a Home Nation of the United Kingdom it also sends a Northern Ireland Team to the Commonwealth Games every four years.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In the Republic of Ireland there are several daily newspapers, including the "Irish Independent", "The Irish Examiner", "The Irish Times", "The Star", "The Evening Herald", "Daily Ireland", the "Irish Sun", and the Irish language "Lá Nua". The best selling of these is the Irish Independent, which is published in both tabloid and broadsheet form. "The Irish Times" is Ireland's newspaper of record.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The Sunday market is quite saturated with many British publications. The leading Sunday newspaper in terms of circulation is The "Sunday Independent". Other popular papers include "The Sunday Times", "The Sunday Tribune", "The Sunday Business Post", "Ireland on Sunday" and the "Sunday World".


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In Northern Ireland the three main daily newspapers are The News Letter, which is Unionist in outlook, The Irish News, mainly Nationalist in outlook and the Belfast Telegraph. Also widely available are the Northern Irish versions of the main UK wide daily newspapers and some Scottish dailies such as the Daily Record.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In terms of Sunday papers the Belfast Telegraph is the only one of the three main Northern Irish dailies that has a Sunday publication which is called the Sunday Life. Apart from this all the main UK wide Sunday papers such as The Sun on Sunday are widely available as are some Irish papers such as the Sunday world.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: There are quite a large number of local weekly newspapers both North and South, with most counties and large towns having two or more newspapers. Curiously Dublin remains one of the few places in Ireland without a major local paper since the "Dublin Evening Mail" closed down in the 1960s. In 2004 the "Dublin Daily" was launched, but failed to attract enough readers to make it viable.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: One major criticism of the Republic of Ireland newspaper market is the strong position Independent News & Media has on the market. It controls the "Evening Herald", "Irish Independent", "Sunday Independent", "Sunday World" and "The Star" as well as holding a large stake in the cable company Chorus, and indirectly controlling "The Sunday Tribune". The "Independent" titles are perceived by many Irish republicans as having a pro-British stance. In parallel to this, the "Independent" titles are perceived by many opposition supporters as being pro Fianna Fáil.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The Irish magazine market is one of the world's most competitive, with hundreds of international magazines available in Ireland, ranging from "Time" and "The Economist" to "Hello!" and "Reader's Digest". This means that domestic titles find it very hard to retain readership. Among the best-selling Irish magazines are the "RTÉ Guide", "Ireland's Eye", "Irish Tatler", "VIP", "Phoenix" and "In Dublin".


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The first known radio transmission in Ireland was a call to arms made from the General Post Office in O'Connell Street during the Easter Rising. The first official radio station on the island was 2BE Belfast, which began broadcasting in 1924. This was followed in 1926 by 2RN Dublin and 6CK Cork in 1927. 2BE Belfast later became BBC Radio Ulster and 2RN Dublin became RTÉ. The first commercial radio station in the Republic, Century Radio, came on air in 1989.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: During the 1990s and particularly the early 2000s, dozens of local radio stations have gained licences. This has resulted in a fragmentation of the radio broadcast market. This trend is most noticeable in Dublin where there are now 6 private licensed stations in operation.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Different television stations are available depending on location in Northern Ireland or the Republic of Ireland. In Northern Ireland the main terrestrial television stations are the main UK wide channels BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. Both the BBC and ITV have local regional programing specific to Northern Ireland produced and broadcast through BBC Northern Ireland and UTV.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In terms of Satellite-carried channels in Northern Ireland these are the same as for the rest of the United Kingdom including all Sky channels.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: In the Republic of Ireland some areas first received signal from BBC Wales and then latter from BBC Northern Ireland when it began broadcasting television programmes in 1959 before RTÉ Television opened in 1961. Today the Republic's main terrestrial channels are RTÉ One, RTÉ Two, TV3 which began broadcasting in 1998 and Teilifís na Gaeilge (TnaG), now called TG4 which started its Irish language service in 1996.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: British and satellite-carried international television channels have widespread audiences in the Republic. The BBC and ITV families of channels are available free to air across the Republic and there is widespread availability of the four main UK channels (BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and Channel Four) but only limited coverage from Five. Sky One, E4, and several hundred satellite channels are widely available. Parts of the Republic can access the UK digital TV system "Freeview".


title: Culture of Ireland

text: The Republic of Ireland Film industry has grown rapidly in recent years thanks largely to the promotion of the sector by "Bord Scannán na hÉireann" (The Irish Film Board) and the introduction of generous tax breaks. Some of the most successful Irish films included "Intermission" (2001), "Man About Dog" (2004), "Michael Collins" (1996), "Angela's Ashes" (1999), "My Left Foot" (1989), "The Crying Game" (1992), "In the Name of the Father" (1994) and "The Commitments" (1991). The most successful Irish film directors are Kenneth Branagh, Martin McDonagh, Neil Jordan, John Carney, and Jim Sheridan. Irish actors include Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole, Maureen O'Hara, Brenda Fricker, Michael Gambon, Colm Meaney, Gabriel Byrne, Pierce Brosnan, Liam Neeson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Ciarán Hinds, James Nesbitt, Cillian Murphy, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Saoirse Ronan, Brendan Gleeson, Domhnall Gleeson, Michael Fassbender, Ruth Negga, Jamie Dornan and Colin Farrell.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Ireland has also proved a popular location for shooting films with "The Quiet Man" (1952), "Saving Private Ryan" (1998), "Braveheart" (1995), "King Arthur" (2004) and "P.S. I Love You" (2007) all being shot in Ireland.


title: Culture of Ireland

text: Ireland is well supplied with museums and art galleries and offers, especially during the summer months, a wide range of cultural events. These range from arts festivals to farming events. The most popular of these are the annual Dublin Saint Patrick's Day Festival which attracts on average 500,000 people and the National Ploughing Championships with an attendance in the region of 400,000. There are also a number of Summer Schools on topics from traditional music to literature and the arts.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: Cartoon Cartoons is a collective name used by Cartoon Network for their original animated television series originally aired between 1995 and 2003 and produced in majority by Hanna-Barbera and/or Cartoon Network Studios. Beginning with its inception into cable broadcasting on October 1, 1992, Cartoon Network had focused its programming on reruns of older animated series which it had acquired through its parent company's film library. The Cartoon Cartoons label originated with Fred Seibert's animation anthology series "What a Cartoon!", an animation showcase series featuring pilots of original cartoon ideas submitted by independent animators. "Dexter's Laboratory" was the first such pilot to be greenlit by the network for a full series in 1996. After other pilots were successfully produced into their own series, including "Cow and Chicken", "Johnny Bravo", and "The Powerpuff Girls", the collective Cartoon Cartoons were featured on the network's Friday night programming block, "Cartoon Cartoon Fridays" from 1999 to 2003. Not all CN original series created around this time were officially recognized as Cartoon Cartoons; "Samurai Jack", for example, did not bear the moniker.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: The moniker was retired by the network in 2003, and its last surviving series, "Ed, Edd n Eddy", ended on November 8, 2009, over 10 years after its premiere. Since their heyday, reruns of the Cartoon Cartoons continued to air on "The Cartoon Cartoon Show" (2005–2008) and "Cartoon Planet" (2012–2014). In 2021, the name was resurrected by the network for a new shorts program.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: Cartoon Cartoons first appeared as shorts on animation showcase series "What a Cartoon!" in 1995, under the name of "World Premiere Toons". The series was produced by Hanna-Barbera and Cartoon Network Studios under the direction of Fred Seibert. Seibert had been a guiding force for Nickelodeon (having overseen the creation of Nicktoons shortly prior to his departure) prior to joining Hanna-Barbera and would establish Frederator Studios years later.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: Through "What a Cartoon!", Cartoon Network was able to assess the potential of certain shorts to serve as pilots for spin-off series and signed contracts with their creators to create ongoing series. "Dexter's Laboratory" was the most popular short series according to a vote held in 1995, and became the first Cartoon Cartoon in 1996. The network's previous original shows, "The Moxy Show" and "Space Ghost Coast to Coast", as well as all acquired programming were not retroactively given the Cartoon Cartoons label. Three more series based on shorts debuted in 1997: "Johnny Bravo", "Cow and Chicken", and "I Am Weasel" (the latter two as segments of the same show; "I Am Weasel" was later spun off into a separate show). These are followed by "The Powerpuff Girls" in 1998 and "Ed, Edd n Eddy" in 1999, and concluded with "Mike, Lu & Og" and "Courage the Cowardly Dog" in 1999, creating a lineup of critically acclaimed shows. In 2001, the network received "Time Squad" and "Grim & Evil" (the previous state of "Evil Con Carne" and "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy"). Also in 2001, the show "Samurai Jack" premiered, but was not officially branded as a Cartoon Cartoon despite airing during the various programming blocks. In 2002, "" became a full series after being chosen in the previous year's "Big Pick Weekend". It was also the last original series to officially carry the Cartoon Cartoon branding before being discontinued.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: The Cartoon Cartoon brand was first introduced in July 1997 for the network's "Cartoon Cartoon Weekend" block. From 1999 to 2003, the "Cartoon Cartoon Fridays" block was the network's marquee night for premieres of new episodes and series.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: The Cartoon Cartoons were intended to appeal to a wider audience than the average Saturday-morning cartoon. Linda Simensky, vice president of original animation, reminded adults and teenage girls that the cartoons could appeal to them as well. Kevin Sandler's article on them claimed that these cartoons were both less "bawdy" than their counterparts at Comedy Central and less "socially responsible" than their counterparts at Nickelodeon. Sandler pointed to the whimsical rebelliousness, high rate of exaggeration and self-consciousness of the overall output which each individual series managed.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: In October 2003, the same month the new live-action "Fridays" premiered on the network and the Cartoon Cartoons brand was officially discontinued. Although the Cartoon Cartoon branding was dropped this year, the Cartoon Cartoons bumpers (that appeared before and after episodes of its original series) remained intact until the network's rebrand in June 2004. In November 2004, the block "Cartoon Cartoons: The Top 5" was renamed to simply "The Top 5". CN still kept the Cartoon Cartoons name around in various forms applying to their older series (such as for "The Cartoon Cartoon Show" from 2005 to 2008), but since newer shows such as "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", "Camp Lazlo", and "Ben 10" were stylistically different from previous shows, the moniker was not applied to them.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: However, internationally in places like Asia and Latin America, the moniker continued on until 2007 with shows like "Foster's Home", "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi", "Camp Lazlo", and "My Gym Partner's a Monkey".


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: On April 15, 2021, Cartoon Network announced a new iteration of the Cartoon Cartoons shorts program. On November 24, 2021, the first new Cartoon Cartoons shorts completed production. The first nine shorts include "Accordions Geoffery & Mary Melodica" by Louie Zong (of "The Ghost and Molly McGee" and "We Bare Bears"), "Dang! It's Dracula" by Levon Jihanian (of "Tig n' Seek"), "Hungy Ghost" by Jesse Moynihan (of "Adventure Time"), "Fruit Stand at the End of the World" by Rachel Liu, "Off the Menu" by Shavonne Cherry (of "Ren & Stimpy" and "The Looney Tunes Show"), "Harmony in Despair" by Andrew Dickman (of "Looney Tunes Cartoons"), "Unravel" by Alexis Sugden, "Mouthwash Madness" by Lisa Vandenberg (of "Animaniacs"), and "Scaredy Cat" by JJ Villard (of "King Star King"). On June 7, 2022, More Cartoon Cartoons completed production. The next seven shorts include "The All-Nimal" by Nick Edwards (of "Apple and Onion" and "The Fungies"), "Buttons' Gamezone" by Fernando Puig (of "The Cuphead Show" and "Tig n' Seek"), "Tib Tub, We Need You" by Sean Godsey and Mike Rosenthal, "We Love Jocelyn" (remake of the 2017 short film of the name) by Tracey Laguerre, "Pig in a Wig" by Sam Marin (of "Regular Show"), "The Good Boy Report" (based on the webcomic of the same name) by Kasey Williams (of "Niko and the Sword of Light" and "Harley Quinn") and "Maude Macher and Dom Duck" by Kali Fontecchio (of "The Looney Tunes Show" and "Jellystone!").


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: More shows premiered bearing the Cartoon Cartoons brand, airing throughout the network's schedule and prominently on "Cartoon Cartoon Fridays", which became the marquee night for premieres of new episodes and shows beginning June 11, 1999. On October 3, 2003, the block was rebooted under a hybrid live-action format as "Fridays", hosted by Tommy Snider and Nzinga Blake, the latter of whom was later replaced by Tara Sands. It aired shows outside the Cartoon Cartoon moniker, such as "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", "Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi", "The Life and Times of Juniper Lee", "Camp Lazlo", "My Gym Partner's a Monkey", "Squirrel Boy", and "Class of 3000". The last airing of "Fridays" was on February 23, 2007.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: "Cartoon Cartoons: The Top 5" (simply retitled "The Top 5" in 2004), an hour-long program featuring a countdown of the week's five "best" Cartoon Cartoon episodes from the network's lineup, ran from 2002 to 2008. From 2005 to 2008, the Cartoon Cartoons label was primarily used for "The Cartoon Cartoon Show", a half-hour program featuring episodes of older Cartoon Cartoons that were no longer shown regularly on the network.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: The block "Cartoon Planet" was revived on Cartoon Network from 2012 to 2014, airing in a format similar to "The Cartoon Cartoon Show". It featured Cartoon Cartoons such as "Dexter's Laboratory", "Johnny Bravo", "Cow and Chicken", "I Am Weasel", "The Powerpuff Girls", "Courage the Cowardly Dog", "Ed, Edd n Eddy", "", "The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy", and other original Cartoon Network Studios series such as "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends", "Camp Lazlo", and "Chowder".


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: DC Comics ran an anthology comic based on the Cartoon Cartoon umbrella title, the ongoing series ran from March 2001 to October 2004 for a total of 33 issues.


title: Cartoon Cartoons

text: In the "OK K.O.! Let's Be Heroes" episode "Crossover Nexus", the Cartoon Cartoon logo is shown in the bottom of a wall inside the Cartoon Network headquarters; the Cartoon Cartoon jingle theme song is played when Ben Tennyson ("Ben 10") shape-shifts into different Cartoon Network characters.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: Iron Man, also known as Iron Man: The Animated Series, is an American animated television series based on Marvel Comics' superhero Iron Man. The series aired from 1994 to 1996 in syndication as part of "The Marvel Action Hour", which packaged "Iron Man" with another animated series based on Marvel properties, the "Fantastic Four", with one half-hour episode from each series airing back-to-back. The show was backed by a toy line that featured many armor variants.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: This series of "Iron Man" was among the few television series to be re-recorded in THX. This may have been usual at the time for a motion picture, but it is rare for a television series. Off the heels of the release of the live-action "Iron Man" film in 2008, reruns began airing on the Jetix block on Toon Disney.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: Although only lasting two seasons, "Iron Man" was the subject of a major overhaul between seasons when its production studio was changed. The result was a massively changed premise, tone, and general approach, which left the disparate seasons scarcely recognizable as being two halves of the same series.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: The first season of "Iron Man" featured little more than a "Masters of the Universe"-style battle of "good against evil", as billionaire industrialist Tony Stark battled the evil forces of the world-conquering Mandarin as the armored superhero, Iron Man. In his evil endeavors to steal Stark's technology and Iron Man's armor, the Mandarin led a group of villains consisting of Dreadknight, Blizzard, Blacklash, Grey Gargoyle (when it comes to fighting Iron Man and his team, he has a tendency to accidentally turn his fellow villains to stone), Hypnotia (an exclusive villain whom Dreadknight and Blacklash were rivals for the affections of), Whirlwind, Living Laser, MODOK, Fin Fang Foom, and Justin Hammer. To combat these villains, Iron Man had the help of his own team (based on Force Works, a then-current comic book team which has since faded into obscurity), including Century, War Machine, Scarlet Witch, Hawkeye (replacing U.S. Agent from the comics) and Spider Woman.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: The season consisted mostly of single-episode open-and-shut-case adventures, with two two-part stories late towards the end. Unlike many other Marvel animated series, despite featuring over-the-top titles that paid homage to the early Stan Lee written Marvel comics of the 1960s (for example, "The Grim Reaper Wears a Teflon Coat", and "Rejoice, I am Ultimo, Thy Deliverer"), almost none of the episodes were adaptations of comic book stories, consisting instead of original stories penned by Ron Friedman, occasionally collaborated on by Stan Lee himself. The closest the season came to adapting a comic book tale was in the two-part "The Origin of Iron Man", which recounted a (modified and modernized) version of the character's comic book origin (see below) just before the season concluded.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: This late-run recounting of the title character's origin is symptomatic of what is generally thought of as the season's greatest weakness – despite (or perhaps because of) having such a large cast of characters, very few of the show's heroes and villains were actually developed in any way, leaving viewers unaware of their personal stories and powers. The show is generally held to have been at its best when filling in these origin blanks (MODOK in "Enemy Without, Enemy Within," Iron Man and the Mandarin in their self-titled "The Origin of..." episodes), but these were rare occasions, with virtually every other plot simply consisting of the Mandarin attempting to steal Stark's newest invention and being bested, often through very strange and illogical means (with the nadir perhaps being Iron Man somehow using the energy of a small tape-player to restore his armor to full power in "Silence My Companion, Death My Destination").


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: A small sub-plot in the first season revolves around Mandarin secretly spying on Force Works. It culminates in "The Wedding of Iron Man" when Stark realizes they have been spied on by reviewing events from previous episodes (and explaining how Mandarin's forces always knew where they would be), realising that Mandarin has acquired enough information to potentially deduce the true identity of Iron Man. The entire episode's plot is dedicated to resolving the problem, culminating in Iron Man and his team setting up an elaborate deception where Mandarin sees Iron Man and Tony Stark in the same place with the intention being to convince him that the two men are not the same person (The 'Tony' in the situation was an android).


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: In this first season the subtle keyboard's main theme is created by the legendary progressive rock artist Keith Emerson, most know today for his work on the supergroup Emerson, Lake & Palmer and for his soundtrack for Dario Argento's horror "Inferno".


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: In 1995, Marvel switched "The Marvel Action Hour" to a new animation studio (as previously mentioned, the animation in season 1 was provided by the Rainbow Animation Group, while the animation in season 2 was provided by Koko Enterprises), and with it came new writers (Ron Friedman was replaced by Tom Tataranowicz for season 2) and new music for each sequence, coupled with a new direction for the series. The first season's theme song was replaced in the second season by an intense electric guitar theme (composed by William Kevin Anderson), featuring the repeated refrain of "I am Iron Man!", while showing Tony Stark beating red-hot iron plates into shape with a blacksmith's hammer (possibly to mimic the Black Sabbath song "Iron Man"). Tony Stark's longer hair style in the second season was based upon the artist Mark Bright's depiction of Stark from the late 1980s, which is where most of the episodes from season 2 were based upon. In the first season, the series seemed to follow the look of an early 1990s Marvel comic (specifically, artist Paul Ryan's take on Iron Man).


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: The new story lines spanned multiple episodes and were no longer "open and shut" cases. They formed a linking narrative, featuring themes of duplicity, consequence, and phobias. Also, the stories were no longer centered on the Mandarin, whose rings had been scattered and whose power had been depleted. While the Mandarin did appear in these episodes, his appearances were reduced to cameos in the cliffhangers at the end of the story, as he tried to retrieve each ring.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: Another change was that Force Works was mostly written out of the series, parting ways with Stark after he deceives them in order to work in secret with the Mandarin when Fin Fang Foom and his fellow Dragons were plotting to eliminate Earth. When Stark's counter plan against Justin Hammer, which includes faking his death without the knowledge of his teammates, leads to a disbanding of Force Works, Julia Carpenter and James Rhodes are the only ones who continue to work with Stark. This split would be revisited with Stark's ensuing conflicts with Hawkeye over the course of several episodes.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: Also, War Machine develops a phobia of being trapped inside his armor (also based on a then-current comic storyline), but this is resolved before the final episode. While Rhodes was active as War Machine in season 1, he remained out of armor for the majority of season 2 due to reliving a tragic drowning experience while being trapped underwater in the War Machine armor in the season 2 episode "Fire and Rain". Rhodes eventually overcomes his fear and dons the War Machine armor once again in the episode "Distant Boundaries".


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: Prior to finding his last two rings, the Mandarin claims his eighth ring from MODOK in the episode "Empowered". "Empowered" was the clip show of the season, the purpose being that the Mandarin wanted to learn of Iron Man's recent activities. In the finale, the Mandarin, having regained all of his rings, unleashes a mist using the Heart of Darkness to render everything technological useless. Iron Man reunites with Force Works in order to stop him. The Mandarin unmasks Iron Man before their final showdown ends in his death. More specifically, Iron Man manages to reflect the power of Mandarin's rings, destroying them, and ultimately leaving the Mandarin with amnesia and helpless before a band of mountain bandits who likely killed him. After the death of the Mandarin, MODOK and the rest of Mandarin's henchmen were sent to jail.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: Dorian Harewood reprises his role of War Machine from the solo "Iron Man" animated series in the episode "Helping Hand, Iron Fist". He originally stops Rick Jones from seeing Tony Stark (voiced by Robert Hays, who was also reprising his "Iron Man" role) at Stark Enterprises, but takes him to Stark after Jones explained that he needed Stark's help to find Bruce Banner. He later alerts Stark of the arrival of General Ross, S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Gabriel Jones, and a squad of Hulkbusters. War Machine fights some of the Hulkbusters alongside Jones and Iron Man.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: The pair appear again in 1994's Spider-Man The Animated Series. Iron Man was once again voiced by Robert Hays and a different version of War Machine was voiced by James Avery (reprising their parts from the "Iron Man" animated series around the same period at the time when Dorian Harewood was voicing Tombstone) on "Spider-Man: The Animated Series". They first appeared in the episodes "Venom Returns" and "Carnage" in which Dormammu orders Venom to steal the Time Dilation Accelerator from Stark Enterprises, which is capable of releasing Dormammu from his own far-off dimension. Venom is quickly defeated by Spider-Man and War Machine. However, Venom gets help from Cletus Kasady, his cellmate who has bonded with another symbiote, Carnage. After the Symbiotes steal the machine, War Machine is too wounded to continue fighting, so Iron Man teams up with Spider-Man and stops the Symbiotes and prevent Dormammu from leaving his dimension. Iron Man also makes a cameo in the episode called "The Spot, in which Tony Stark fires Dr. Jonathon Ohn from the Time Dilation Accelerator project because Stark knows the project is dangerous after Carnage almost released Dormammu to Earth using Accelerator machinery. Iron Man later appears in the three-part episode Secret Wars in which the Beyonder creates a war between good and evil to see who is better. In the end, the heroes win and everyone, except for Spider-Man who has to stop the evil Spider-Carnage from destroying all of reality in the following series finale, is sent back to Earth without any memory.


title: Iron Man (TV series)

text: On October 8, 2007, both seasons were released together in a Region 2 three-disc set from Jetix Europe and Maximum Entertainment Ltd. in 2007, when Disney had the rights to the Marvel shows and before they brought the rights back, all before the 2009 take over of Marvel by Disney. The 3 disc set had no features and just included all 26 episodes. UK company Clear Vision Ltd. released two sets exclusive to their website on April 19, 2010. One contains all 26 episodes over 4 discs while the other – which includes the 1960s Iron Man animated series – is a six disc box set entitled "Iron Man: The Ultimate Collection". Buena Vista Home Entertainment released the entire series on Region 4 DVD – which spans 3 separate volumes – on March 30, 2010 and later released the series on Region 1 DVD on May 4, 2010 to coincide with "Iron Man 2", which opened in theaters a few days later, on May 7. The series is available to stream on Disney+, as of the service's launch on November 12, 2019.


title: Taliesin

text: Taliesin ( , ; 6th century AD) was an early Brittonic poet of Sub-Roman Britain whose work has possibly survived in a Middle Welsh manuscript, the "Book of Taliesin". Taliesin was a renowned bard who is believed to have sung at the courts of at least three kings.


title: Taliesin

text: In 1960, Ifor Williams identified eleven of the medieval poems ascribed to Taliesin as possibly originating as early as the sixth century, and so possibly being composed by a historical Taliesin. The bulk of this work praises King Urien of Rheged and his son Owain mab Urien, although several of the poems indicate that Taliesin also served as court bard to King Brochfael Ysgithrog of Powys and his successor Cynan Garwyn, either before or during his time at Urien's court. Some of the events to which the poems refer, such as the Battle of Arfderydd (c. 573), are referred to in other sources. John T. Koch argues that the description of Easter in the praise poem "Yspeil Taliesin" ('The Spoils of Taliesin') indicates that Urien and Taliesin were Christians who adhered to the Latin rather than the Insular observance of Easter. He also suggests that the figure of Taliesin served as a bridge between the worlds of Brittonic Christian Latin literature and the Heroic Age court poets, allowing monastic scribes to cultivate vernacular poetry.


title: Taliesin

text: In legend and medieval Welsh poetry, he is often referred to as "Taliesin Ben Beirdd" ("Taliesin, Chief of Bards" or chief of poets). He is mentioned as one of the five British poets of renown, along with Talhaearn Tad Awen ("Talhaearn Father of the Muse"), Aneirin, Blwchfardd, and Cian Gwenith Gwawd ("Cian Wheat of Song"), in the "Historia Brittonum", and is also mentioned in the collection of poems known as "Y Gododdin". Taliesin was highly regarded in the mid-12th century as the supposed author of a great number of romantic legends.


title: Taliesin

text: According to legend Taliesin was adopted as a child by Elffin, the son of Gwyddno Garanhir, and prophesied the death of Maelgwn Gwynedd from the Yellow Plague. In later stories he became a mythic hero, companion of Bran the Blessed and King Arthur. His legendary biography is found in several late renderings (see below), the earliest surviving narrative being found in a manuscript chronicle of world history written by Elis Gruffydd in the 16th century.


title: Taliesin

text: Details of Taliesin's life are sparse. The first mention of him occurs in the Saxon genealogies appended to four manuscripts of the "Historia Brittonum" from 828AD. The writer names five poets, among them Taliesin, who lived in the time of Ida of Bernicia (fl. mid-6th century) and a British chieftain, (O)utigirn (Modern Welsh Eudeyrn). This information is considered fairly credible, since he is also mentioned by Aneirin, another of the five mentioned poets, who is famed as the author of "Y Gododdin", a series of elegies to the men of the kingdom of Gododdin (now Lothian) who died fighting the Angles at the Battle of Catraeth around 600.


title: Taliesin

text: Taliesin's authorship of several odes to King Urien Rheged (died c. 590) is commonly accepted, and they mention The Eden Valley and an enemy leader, Fflamddwyn, identified as Ida or his son Theodric. The poems refer to victories of Urien at the battles of Argoed Llwyfain, The Ford of Clyde and Gwen Ystrad. Taliesin also sang in praise of Cynan Garwyn, king of Powys. Cynan's predecessor, Brochwel Ysgithrog, is also mentioned in later poems.


title: Taliesin

text: According to legends that first appear in the "Book of Taliesin", Taliesin's early patron was Elffin ap Gwyddno, son of Gwyddno Garanhir, who was a lord of a lost land in Cardigan Bay called Cantre'r Gwaelod. Taliesin defended Elffin and satirised his enemy, the powerful Maelgwn Gwynedd, shortly before the latter died (probably in 547 CE). The Latin-Breton "Life of Iudic-hael" refers to Taliesin visiting the monastery of Gildas at Rhuys in Brittany.


title: Taliesin

text: According to the Welsh Triads Taliesin had a son, Afaon, who was accounted a great warrior who suffered a violent death, probably in Lothian. Taliesin's grave is held in folklore to be near the village of Tre Taliesin near Llangynfelyn called Bedd Taliesin, but this is a Bronze Age burial chamber, and the village of Tre-Taliesin, at the foot of the hill, was actually named after the burial chamber in the 19th century though legend was traced by Edward Lhuyd to the 17th century.


title: Taliesin

text: More detailed traditions of Taliesin's biography arose from about the 11th century, and in "Historia Taliesin" ("The Tale of Taliesin", surviving from the 16th century). In the mid-16th-century, Elis Gruffydd recorded a legendary account of Taliesin that resembles the story of the boyhood of the Irish hero Fionn mac Cumhail and the salmon of wisdom in some respects. The tale was also recorded in a slightly different version by John Jones of Gellilyfdy (c. 1607). This story agrees in many respects with fragmentary accounts in the "Book of Taliesin".


title: Taliesin

text: According to the "Hanes Taliesin", he was originally known as Gwion Bach ap Gwreang. He was a servant of Cerridwen and was made to stir the Cauldron of Inspiration for one year to allow for Cerridwen to complete her potion of inspiration. The potion was initially intended for her son, Morfran, who although was considered frightfully ugly, she loved nonetheless, and felt that if he would not grow in beauty then he should have the gift of the Awen to compensate. Upon completion of this potion, three drops sprang out and landed upon Gwion Bach's thumb. Gwion then placed his thumb in his mouth to soothe his burns resulting in Gwion's enlightenment. Out of fear of what Cerridwen would do to him, Gwion fled and eventually transformed into a piece of grain before being consumed by Cerridwen. However, this resulted in Cerridwen becoming impregnated with the seed and upon giving birth, she could not bring herself to kill the baby Gwion. She instead cast him into the ocean in a large leather bag, where he was found by Elffin, who named him Taliesin.


title: Taliesin

text: According to these texts Taliesin was the foster-son of Elffin ap Gwyddno, who gave him the name Taliesin, meaning "radiant brow", and who later became a king in Ceredigion, Wales. The legend states that he was then raised at his court in Aberdyfi and that at the age of 13, he visited King Maelgwn Gwynedd, Elffin's uncle, and correctly prophesied the manner and imminence of Maelgwn's death. A number of medieval poems attributed to Taliesin allude to the legend but these postdate the historical poet's "floruit" considerably.


title: Taliesin

text: The introduction to Gwyneth Lewis and Rowan Williams's translation of The Book of Taliesin suggests that later Welsh writers came to see Taliesin as a sort of shamanic figure. The poetry ascribed to him in this collection shows how he not only can channel other entities (such as the Awen) in these poems, but that the authors of these poems can in turn channel Taliesin himself in creating the poems that they ascribe to him. This creates a collectivist, rather than individualistic, sense of identity; no human is simply one human, humans are part of nature (rather than opposed to it), and all things in the cosmos can ultimately been seen to be connected through the creative spirit of the Awen.


title: Taliesin

text: The idea that he was a bard at the court of King Arthur dates back at least to the tale of "Culhwch and Olwen", perhaps a product of the 11th century. It is elaborated upon in modern English poetry, such as Tennyson's "Idylls of the King" and Charles Williams's "Taliessin Through Logres". But the historical Taliesin's career can be shown to have fallen in the last half of the 6th century, while historians who argue for Arthur's existence date his victory at Mons Badonicus in the years either side of AD 500; the "Annales Cambriae" offer the date of c. 539 for his death or disappearance in the Battle of Camlann, only a few years earlier than the date of 542 found in the "Historia Regum Britanniae". Taliesin also appears as a companion of Bran the Blessed in this era, by which time he was clearly perceived as a legendary figure who existed in many different times.


title: Taliesin

text: A manuscript in the hand of 18th-century literary forger Iolo Morganwg claimed he was the son of Saint Henwg of Llanhennock; but this is contrary to other tradition. In it he is said to have been educated in the school of Catwg, at Llanfeithin, in Glamorgan, which the historian Gildas also attended. Captured as a youth by Irish pirates while fishing at sea, he is said to have escaped by using a wooden buckler for a boat; he landed at the fishing weir of Elffin, one of the sons of Urien (all medieval Welsh sources, however, make Elffin the son of Gwyddno Garanhir). Urien made him Elffin's instructor, and gave Taliesin an estate. But once introduced to the court of the warrior-chief Taliesin became his foremost bard, followed him in his wars, and wrote of his victories.


title: Taliesin

text: Modern Welsh poet John Davies of Denbighshire (1841–1894) took the bardic name of Taliesin Hiraethog. The American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose mother, Anna Lloyd Jones, was born in Wales, named his Wisconsin home and studio Taliesin and his home and studio near Scottsdale, Arizona Taliesin West.


title: Taliesin

text: Susan Kare, the typographer and graphic designer who developed the first set of fonts for the early Macintosh, created a dingbat font called Taliesin that shipped with the update disk for System 2 in 1985. Taliesin is relatively obscure compared to its more well-known counterpart Cairo, the symbol font that featured Apple's iconic dogcow logo. It is not clear why the font shares a name with the British poet, having been the only one of the set that does not bear the name of a "world class city" (Chicago, San Francisco, Toronto, etc.). As it contains several glyphs of buildings, furniture, and other aspects of architecture, landscaping, and interior design, however, it has been theorized that Taliesin was also named in homage to Frank Lloyd Wright's aforementioned studio and estate of same name.


title: Taliesin

text: As early as the twelfth century bards of the Welsh princes adopted the persona of Taliesin to make prophetic and legendary claims for the source of their inspiration or awen as well as those poems which can be attributed directly to them. So some of the poems in the "Book of Taliesin" have been attributed to bards who saw themselves as working within the tradition of a legendary bard whose poems could be re-worked or re-imagined, giving rise to the prose tale in which some of these poems are embedded. Much of the academic work done on these poems focuses on attempting to separate poems by the original bard and later poets imaginatively taking on his mantle.


title: Taliesin

text: His name was used, spelled as Taliessin, in Alfred, Lord Tennyson's "Idylls of the King". He is a character in Thomas Love Peacock's satirical, romantic 1829 novel "The Misfortunes of Elphin" where he is discovered as a baby floating in a coracle by Elphin (Elfin) who is fishing. In the 1951 novel "", by John Cowper Powys, he is depicted as a politically astute court bard who is accomplished in both cookery and poetry.


title: Taliesin

text: He also makes an appearance in a number of works of modern commercial fiction that blend history and Arthurian legend, including quite a lengthy appearance in Bernard Cornwell's "Warlord Chronicles" and Guy Gavriel Kay's "The Fionavar Tapestry". In Stephen R. Lawhead's "The Pendragon Cycle", he is most notable in the first book, eponymously named "Taliesin", in which he is depicted as Merlin's father. In M. K. Hume's King Arthur trilogy, he's depicted instead as Merlin's firstborn son. He is also a central character in "Moonheart", an urban fantasy novel by Charles de Lint, and appears as the chief bard of the Kingdom of Prydain in the children's novels of Lloyd Alexander which are based on the Welsh "Mabinogion". The historical novel "Radiant Brow – The Epic of Taliesin" by H. Catherine Watling is based on "The Tale of Taliesin" and the poetry contained in "The Book of Taliesin". In the young adult fiction series "The Dark Is Rising Sequence" by British author Susan Cooper, he guides young protagonists Will Stanton and Bran Davies through the Lost Land in the final book, "Silver on the Tree". Taliesin's harp-tuning key makes an appearance in "A String in the Harp" by Nancy Bond, a time-travel story set in Wales. The key gives Peter Morgan, the main protagonist, the ability to see visions of Taliesin's life.


title: Taliesin

text: In Charles Williams' unfinished series of Arthurian poems, found in "Taliessin Through Logres" and "The Region of the Summer Stars", he is the central character, Arthur's bard and Captain of Horse, and the head of a companionship dedicated to Christian Charity in Camelot.


title: Taliesin

text: He is character in Traci Harding's Chosen series starting with The Ancient Future Trilogy where he is an immortal time traveler trying to help the human soul mind evolution advance.


title: Taliesin

text: The Norwegian classical composer Martin Romberg wrote a concerto for alto saxophone and orchestra in eight parts after the tale named "The Tale of Taliesin". The concerto was premiered in 2009 by Akademische Orchestervereinigung Göttingen, with the Norwegian saxophonist Ola Asdahl Rokkones as a soloist. The work has since been published at Éditions Billaudot, Paris and played by Mittelsächsische Philharmonie, The Saint-Petersburg Northern Synfonia Orchestra and Nizhny Novgorod Philharmonic Orchestra, the two latter being conducted by Fabio Mastrangelo.


title: Taliesin

text: In modern music, Deep Purple's second studio album was named "The Book of Taliesyn" in honour of the bard. A track on the album "Softs" by Canterbury prog-rock band Soft Machine is titled "Tale of Taliesin". Paul Roland’s 2006 album "Re-Animator" contains a song about the bard titled "Taliesin". There is a Dungeon synth band from Germany named Taliesin The Bard.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen, officially the Eberhard Karl University of Tübingen (; ), is a public research university located in the city of Tübingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen is one of eleven German Excellence Universities. The University of Tübingen is especially known as a centre for the study of plant biology, medicine, law, archeology, ancient cultures, philosophy, theology, and religious studies as well as more recently as center of excellence for artificial intelligence. The university's noted alumni include presidents, EU Commissioners, and judges of the Federal Constitutional Court. The university is associated with eleven Nobel laureates, especially in the fields of medicine and chemistry.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen was founded in 1477 by Count Eberhard V (Eberhard im Bart, 1445–1496), later the first Duke of Württemberg, a civic and ecclesiastic reformer who established the school after becoming absorbed in the Renaissance revival of learning during his travels to Italy. Its first rector was Johannes Nauclerus.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Its present name was conferred on it in 1769 by Duke Karl Eugen who appended his first name to that of the founder. The university later became the principal university of the kingdom of Württemberg. Today, it is one of nine state universities funded by the German federal state of Baden-Württemberg.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen has a history of innovative thought, particularly in theology, in which the university and the Tübinger Stift are famous to this day. Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), the prime mover in building the German school system and a chief figure in the Protestant Reformation, helped establish its direction. Among Tübingen's eminent students (and/or professors) have been the astronomer Johannes Kepler; the economist Horst Köhler (President of Germany); Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI), poet Friedrich Hölderlin, and the philosophers Friedrich Schelling and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. "The Tübingen Three" refers to Hölderlin, Hegel and Schelling, who were roommates at the Tübinger Stift. Theologian Helmut Thielicke revived postwar Tübingen when he took over a professorship at the reopened theological faculty in 1947, being made administrative head of the university and President of the Chancellor's Conference in 1951.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The university rose to the height of its prominence in the middle of the 19th century with the teachings of poet and civic leader Ludwig Uhland and the Protestant theologian Ferdinand Christian Baur, whose circle, colleagues and students became known as the "Tübingen School", which pioneered the historical-critical analysis of biblical and early Christian texts, an approach generally referred to as "higher criticism". The University of Tübingen also was the first German university to establish a faculty of natural sciences, in 1863. DNA was discovered in 1868 at the University of Tübingen by Friedrich Miescher. Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, the first female Nobel Prize winner in medicine in Germany, also works at Tübingen. The faculty for economics and business was founded in 1817 as the "Staatswissenschaftliche Fakultät" and was the first of its kind in Germany.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Starting with the late 1990s at Tübingen University, the foundation work with mRNA-based substances (e.g. for cancer treatment and vaccines) were laid in the groups of H.-G. Rammensee and G. Jung which led through the Ph.D. work and later research of Ingmar Hoerr eventually to COVID-19 vaccine programs by BioNTech, Moderna and Curevac.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The university played a leading role in efforts to legitimize the policies of the Third Reich as "scientific". Even before the victory of the Nazi Party in the general election in March 1933, there were hardly any Jewish faculty and a few Jewish students. Physicist Hans Bethe was dismissed on 20 April 1933 because of "non-Aryan" origin. Religion professor Traugott Konstantin Oesterreich and the mathematician Erich Kamke were forced to take early retirement, probably in both cases the "non-Aryan" origin of their wives. At least 1158 people were sterilized at the University Hospital.


title: University of Tübingen

text: In 1966, Joseph Ratzinger, who would later become Pope Benedict XVI, was appointed to a chair in dogmatic theology in the Faculty of Catholic Theology at Tübingen, where he was a colleague of Hans Küng.In 1967, Jürgen Moltmann (b. 1926), one of the most influential Protestant theologians of the 20th century, was appointed Professor of Systematic Theology in the Faculty of Protestant Theology. Drafted in 1944 by Nazi Germany, he was an Allied prisoner of war 1945–1948. He was influenced by his colleague and friend Ernst Bloch, the Marxist philosopher.


title: University of Tübingen

text: In 1970, the university was restructured into a series of faculties as independent departments of study and research after the manner of French universities.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The university made the headlines in November 2009 when a group of left-leaning students occupied one of the main lecture halls, the Kupferbau, for several days. The students' goal was to protest tuition fees and maintain that education should be free for everyone.


title: University of Tübingen

text: In May 2010, Tübingen joined the Matariki Network of Universities (MNU) together with Dartmouth College (US), Durham University (UK), Queen's University (Canada), University of Otago (New Zealand), University of Western Australia (Australia) and Uppsala University (Sweden).


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen undertakes a broad range of research projects in various fields. Among the more prominent ones in the natural sciences are the Hertie Institute for Clinical Brain Research, which focuses on general, cognitive and cellular neurology as well as neurodegeneration, and the Centre for Interdisciplinary Clinical Research, which deals primarily with cell biology in diagnostics and therapy of organ system diseases. In the liberal arts, the University of Tübingen is noteworthy for having the only faculty of rhetoric in Germany – the department was founded by Walter Jens, an important intellectual and literary critic. The university also boasts continued pre-eminence in its centuries-old traditions of research in the fields of philosophy, theology and philology. Since at least the nineteenth century, Tübingen has been the home of world-class research in prehistoric studies and the study of antiquity, including the study of the ancient Near East; a particular focus of the research in these areas at the University of Tübingen has been Anatolia, e.g., through the continued excavations of the university at Troy.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen is not a campus university, but is spread throughout the town: Tübingen is one of five classical "university towns" in Germany. The other four are Marburg, Göttingen, Freiburg and Heidelberg. In Tübingen there are four areas with a major concentration of university institutions.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Accommodation provided by the Tübingen Studentenwerk is in several locations throughout the town. The largest of the eleven halls of residence are in the city's northern neighbourhood of "Waldhäuser Ost" (1,700 rooms) and in the city's southeasternmost neighbourhood, "Französisches Viertel" (500 rooms).


title: University of Tübingen

text: Since 2006, the young Museum of the University of Tübingen (MUT) has made it its task to professionalize the 65 sometimes very old, singular teaching, show and research collections of the university from all faculties in terms of collection, curatorial and organizational aspects. In interdisciplinary exhibitions, both the broader public should be provided with insights into the history of science as well as researched in the field of science itself.


title: University of Tübingen

text: In addition, the master's degree program "Museum & Collections" of the MUT, with the participation of six humanities and cultural studies subjects, offers the training of students in the field of exhibitions.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Eight scientific teaching collections – Origins of Art, Pile Dwellings + Celts, Cuneiform, Gods + Tombs, Ancient Art, Ancient Coins, Ancient Sculptures – are open to the public in the Museum Alte Kulturen and in the permanent exhibition WeltKulturen in Hohentübingen Castle. In addition, there are other, partially accessible scientific teaching collections on Hohentübingen: Cradle of Biochemistry (Schlosslabor), BildBestand, Everyday Culture, AntikenBilder, Professor Gallery (partial), Castle Church and TonSteineScherben.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The MUT – and thus the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen – is the only university institution in the world to house artefacts with world heritage status, such as the oldest surviving figurative works of art and musical instruments of humanity, mammoth ivory figures and fragments of bone flutes. These come from the Vogelherdhöhle (Swabian Alb), which has been part of the UNESCO World Heritage "Caves and Ice Age Art in the Swabian Jura" since 2017.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University Library of Tübingen is not just available to those affiliated with the university, but also to the general public. The library provides more than three million individual volumes and more than 7,600 journals. Apart from the main library, more than 80 departmental libraries containing an additional three million volumes are also associated with the university.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The main lending library is located on Wilhelmstraße and consists of several different parts which are connected through corridors and walkways:


title: University of Tübingen

text: The university is governed by three separate bodies sharing different functions and duties. However, some persons serve in more than one body.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The Rectorate is the executive component of the university's governing body. The current rector, Professor Karla Pollmann, is supported by four deputies consisting of three prorectors and one provost. All are also permanent members of the university senate.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The Senate forms the legislative section of governance. Apart from the members of the rectorate, it includes the equal opportunities commissioner, the deans and 20 elected members representing the professors, lecturers, students and non-academic staff. Two advisors represent the university's teaching hospitals.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University Council ("Hochschulrat" or "Universitätsrat") has 13 members, including its president and vice-president as well as five further internal and six external members.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Since 2012, the University of Tübingen has been regarded as one of eleven German Excellence Universities that have been successful in the competition of the German Universities Excellence Initiative. The award brings additional research funds for five years. With three successful research Clusters of Excellence approved by the German Universities Excellence Initiative in 2018, Tübingen is one of the three universities with the highest research output in Germany and leading among universities in South Germany.


title: University of Tübingen

text: According to the funding report of the German Research Foundation (DFG) 2018, which breaks down the grants awarded to German universities from 2014 to 2016, the University of Tübingen was ranked 8th overall, 4th in humanities and social sciences, and 6th in life sciences including medicine. This ranking is based on a selection of best research projects nationwide and thus regarded as an indicator of the quality of research.


title: University of Tübingen

text: In the Times Higher Education World University Ranking (2021), Tübingen was ranked 78th worldwide and 5th nationwide. US News Best Global Universities and QS World University Rankings also ranked Tübingen amongst the top ten universities in Germany overall in 2021.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Traditionally, Tübingen has been particularly strong in the fields of humanities, especially in theology and religious studies, medicine, and law:


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen is the only university in the German-speaking world that teaches rhetoric as an independent subject of study.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Since 2018, the university has been part of a wider artificial intelligence research initiative named Cyber Valley. Cyber Valley has seen investments from multinational companies poured into establishing research centers, research groups, and professorships in the city. The investing organisations and corporations include Google, Amazon, BMW, IAV, Daimler, Porsche, and Bosch. The Cyber Valley initiative has attracted criticism from student groups and activist groups alike, with many protest actions, including building occupations and demonstrations, having taken place decrying both the commercialisation of university research and the involvement of the university with organisations that are engaged in military research.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The university's students make up roughly a third of the total population of Tübingen and the town's culture can seem to be largely dominated by them. As a result there is a slump of activity during university holidays, particularly over the summer when a large number of otherwise regular events are not happening.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Around 30 "Studentenverbindungen", the German type of fraternities, are associated with the university. While famous for their parties, public academic lectures and the yearly "Stocherkahn-Rennen" punting-boat race on the Neckar river, some of them are the subject of ongoing controversy surrounding alleged rightwing policial views, leading to strong criticism from leftist groups. The university itself takes a neutral stance on this issue. However, all of Tübingen's fraternities distance themselves from the fraternities of the Deutsche Burschenschaft, which have been widely criticized as adhering to far-right principles.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Also closely linked to the university are a number of student societies representing mainly the arts and political parties. Most notable are a number of choirs as well as student theatre groups affiliated with the faculty of Modern Languages, some of which perform in foreign languages. "Radio Uniwelle Tübingen" is the university's radio station, airing seven hours of programmes a week produced by students under the supervision of staff employed by the university.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The university also offers gym and sports classes called "Hochschulsport". Since Tübingen has a department of sports science with a broad range of facilities, students of other subjects have the possibility to participate in various kinds of sports courses in teams or as individuals. Furthermore, even exotic sports, such as parachuting or martial arts, are offered. Students may attend courses either for free or at reduced rates. The sports department is located close to the "Wilhelmstraße" area of university buildings and is served by a number of frequent bus routes.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Unlike in some major cities, student discounts are not widely available in Tübingen. Cinemas and the town council's public library in particular do not offer discounts for students, and there are only a handful of restaurants which have reduced lunch deals. However, students may benefit from the "Semesterticket", a heavily discounted public transport season pass offering six months of unlimited travel on trains and buses in the naldo "Verkehrsverbund" transport association for approximately €62.50. The Landestheater Tübingen theatre and all public swimming pools also have discounts for students.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Nightlife in Tübingen is centered on the numerous pubs in the old town along with a number of clubs, most of which dedicate themselves to non-mainstream music. During the semester, the Studentenwerk-owned "Clubhaus" at the centre of the Wilhelmstraße university area hosts the weekly "Clubhausfest" on Thursday nights. This popular, free-entry club night is organized and promoted by student societies and "Fachschaft" student representative bodies and all proceeds go towards their activities in support of students.


title: University of Tübingen

text: The University of Tübingen has a long list of notable alumni and staff. As of 2022, eleven Nobel Laureates, 17 Leibniz Laureates and five Alexander von Humboldt Professorships are affiliated with the university.


title: University of Tübingen

text: Besides several Federal Ministers of Germany and Minister Presidents of German States, politicians associated with the University of Tübingen include six founding fathers of the Federal Republic of Germany, a Chancellor of Germany, two Presidents of Germany, and several European Commissioners.