History.

The concept of taxing income is a modern innovation and presupposes several things: a money economy, reasonably accurate accounts, a common understanding of receipts, expenses and profits, and an orderly society with reliable records.  For most of the history of civilization, these preconditions did not exist, and taxes were based on other factors. Taxes on wealth, social position, and ownership of the means of production (typically land and slaves) were all common. Practices such as tithing, or an offering of first fruits, existed from ancient times, and can be regarded as a precursor of the income tax, but they lacked precision and certainly were not based on a concept of net increase.

Early examples.

The first income tax is generally attributed to Egypt. In the early days of the Roman Republic, public taxes consisted of modest assessments on owned wealth and property. The tax rate under normal circumstances was 1% and sometimes would climb as high as 3% in situations such as war. These modest taxes were levied against land, homes and other real estate, slaves, animals, personal items and monetary wealth. The more a person had in property, the more tax they paid. Taxes were collected from individuals.  In the year 10 AD, Emperor Wang Mang of the Xin Dynasty instituted an unprecedented income tax, at the rate of 10 percent of profits, for professionals and skilled labor. He was overthrown 13 years later in 23 AD and earlier policies were restored during the reestablished Han Dynasty which followed.  One of the first recorded taxes on income was the Saladin tithe introduced by Henry II in 1188 to raise money for the Third Crusade. The tithe demanded that each layperson in England and Wales be taxed one tenth of their personal income and moveable property.

Modern era.

United Kingdom.

The inception date of the modern income tax is typically accepted as 1799, at the suggestion of Henry Beeke, the future Dean of Bristol. This income tax was introduced into Great Britain by Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger in his budget of December 1798, to pay for weapons and equipment for the French Revolutionary War. Pitt's new graduated (progressive) income tax began at a levy of 2 old pence in the pound (1/120) on incomes over £60 (equivalent to £ in ), and increased up to a maximum of 2 shillings in the pound (10%) on incomes of over £200. Pitt hoped that the new income tax would raise £10 million a year, but actual receipts for 1799 totalled only a little over £6 million.  Pitt's income tax was levied from 1799 to 1802, when it was abolished by Henry Addington during the Peace of Amiens. Addington had taken over as prime minister in 1801, after Pitt's resignation over Catholic Emancipation. The income tax was reintroduced by Addington in 1803 when hostilities with France recommenced, but it was again abolished in 1816, one year after the Battle of Waterloo. Opponents of the tax, who thought it should only be used to finance wars, wanted all records of the tax destroyed along with its repeal. Records were publicly burned by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but copies were retained in the basement of the tax court. In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, income tax was reintroduced by Sir Robert Peel by the Income Tax Act 1842. Peel, as a Conservative, had opposed income tax in the 1841 general election, but a growing budget deficit required a new source of funds. The new income tax, based on Addington's model, was imposed on incomes above £150 (equivalent to £ in ). Although this measure was initially intended to be temporary, it soon became a fixture of the British taxation system.  A committee was formed in 1851 under Joseph Hume to investigate the matter, but failed to reach a clear recommendation. Despite the vociferous objection, William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1852, kept the progressive income tax, and extended it to cover the costs of the Crimean War. By the 1860s, the progressive tax had become a grudgingly accepted element of the United Kingdom fiscal system.

United States.

The US federal government imposed the first personal income tax on August 5, 1861, to help pay for its war effort in the American Civil War - (3% of all incomes over US$800) (equivalent to $ in ). This tax was repealed and replaced by another income tax in 1862. It was only in 1894 that the first peacetime income tax was passed through the Wilson-Gorman tariff. The rate was 2% on income over $4000 (equivalent to $ in ), which meant fewer than 10% of households would pay any. The purpose of the income tax was to make up for revenue that would be lost by tariff reductions. The US Supreme Court ruled the income tax unconstitutional, the 10th amendment forbidding any powers not expressed in the US Constitution, and there being no power to impose any other than a direct tax by apportionment.  In 1913, the Sixteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution made the income tax a permanent fixture in the U.S. tax system. In fiscal year 1918, annual internal revenue collections for the first time passed the billion-dollar mark, rising to $5.4 billion by 1920. The amount of income collected via income tax has varied dramatically, from 1% in the early days of US income tax to taxation rates of over 90% during WW2.

Common principles.

While tax rules vary widely, there are certain basic principles common to most income tax systems. Tax systems in Canada, China, Germany, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and the United States, among others, follow most of the principles outlined below. Some tax systems, such as India, may have significant differences from the principles outlined below. Most references below are examples; see specific articles by jurisdiction ("e.g.", Income tax in Australia).

Taxpayers and rates.

Individuals are often taxed at different rates than corporations. Individuals include only human beings. Tax systems in countries other than the USA treat an entity as a corporation only if it is legally organized as a corporation. Estates and trusts are usually subject to special tax provisions. Other taxable entities are generally treated as partnerships. In the US, many kinds of entities may elect to be treated as a corporation or a partnership. Partners of partnerships are treated as having income, deductions, and credits equal to their shares of such partnership items.  Separate taxes are assessed against each taxpayer meeting certain minimum criteria. Many systems allow married individuals to request joint assessment. Many systems allow controlled groups of locally organized corporations to be jointly assessed.  Tax rates vary widely. Some systems impose higher rates on higher amounts of income. Example: Elbonia taxes income below E.10,000 at 20% and other income at 30%. Joe has E.15,000 of income. His tax is E.3,500. Tax rates schedules may vary for individuals based on marital status.

Residents and nonresidents.

Residents are generally taxed differently from nonresidents. Few jurisdictions tax nonresidents other than on specific types of income earned within the jurisdiction. See, "e.g.", the discussion of taxation by the United States of foreign persons. Residents, however, are generally subject to income tax on all worldwide income. A very few countries (notably Singapore and Hong Kong) tax residents only on income earned in or remitted to the country. There may arise a situation where the tax payer has to pay tax in one country where he is tax resident and also pay tax to other country where he is nonresident. This creates the situation of Double taxation which needs assessment of Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement entered by the countries where the tax payer is assessed as resident and nonresident for the same transaction.  Residence is often defined for individuals as presence in the country for more than 183 days. Most countries base residence of entities on either place of organization or place of management and control. The United Kingdom has three levels of residence.

Defining income.

Most systems define income subject to tax broadly for residents, but tax nonresidents only on specific types of income. What is included in income for individuals may differ from what is included for entities. The timing of recognizing income may differ by type of taxpayer or type of income.  Income generally includes most types of receipts that enrich the taxpayer, including compensation for services, gain from sale of goods or other property, interest, dividends, rents, royalties, annuities, pensions, and all manner of other items. Many systems exclude from income part or all of superannuation or other national retirement plan payments. Most tax systems exclude from income health care benefits provided by employers or under national insurance systems.

Deductions allowed.

Nearly all income tax systems permit residents to reduce gross income by business and some other types of deductions. By contrast, nonresidents are generally subject to income tax on the gross amount of income of most types plus the net business income earned within the jurisdiction.  Expenses incurred in a trading, business, rental, or other income producing activity are generally deductible, though there may be limitations on some types of expenses or activities. Business expenses include all manner of costs for the benefit of the activity. An allowance (as a capital allowance or depreciation deduction) is nearly always allowed for recovery of costs of assets used in the activity. Rules on capital allowances vary widely, and often permit recovery of costs more quickly than ratably over the life of the asset.  Most systems allow individuals some sort of notional deductions or an amount subject to zero tax. In addition, many systems allow deduction of some types of personal expenses, such as home mortgage interest or medical expenses.

Business profits.

Only net income from business activities, whether conducted by individuals or entities is taxable, with few exceptions. Many countries require business enterprises to prepare financial statements which must be audited. Tax systems in those countries often define taxable income as income per those financial statements with few, if any, adjustments. A few jurisdictions compute net income as a fixed percentage of gross revenues for some types of businesses, particularly branches of nonresidents.

Credits.

Nearly all systems permit residents a credit for income taxes paid to other jurisdictions of the same sort. Thus, a credit is allowed at the national level for income taxes paid to other countries. Many income tax systems permit other credits of various sorts, and such credits are often unique to the jurisdiction.

Alternative taxes.

Some jurisdictions, particularly the United States and many of its states and Switzerland, impose the higher of regular income tax or an alternative tax. Switzerland and U.S. states generally impose such tax only on corporations and base it on capital or a similar measure.

Administration.

Income tax is generally collected in one of two ways: through withholding of tax at source and/or through payments directly by taxpayers. Nearly all jurisdictions require those paying employees or nonresidents to withhold income tax from such payments. The amount to be withheld is a fixed percentage where the tax itself is at a fixed rate. Alternatively, the amount to be withheld may be determined by the tax administration of the country or by the payer using formulas provided by the tax administration. Payees are generally required to provide to the payer or the government the information needed to make the determinations. Withholding for employees is often referred to as "pay as you earn" (PAYE) or "pay as you go."  Income taxes of workers are often collected by employers under a withholding or pay-as-you-earn tax system. Such collections are not necessarily final amounts of tax, as the worker may be required to aggregate wage income with other income and/or deductions to determine actual tax. Calculation of the tax to be withheld may be done by the government or by employers based on withholding allowances or formulas.  Nearly all systems require those whose proper tax is not fully settled through withholding to self-assess tax and make payments prior to or with final determination of the tax. Self-assessment means the taxpayer must make a computation of tax and submit it to the government. Some countries provide a pre-computed estimate to taxpayers, which the taxpayer can correct as necessary.  The proportion of people who pay their income taxes in full, on time, and voluntarily (that is, without being fined or ordered to pay more by the government) is called the voluntary compliance rate. The voluntary compliance rate is higher in the US than in countries like Germany or Italy. In countries with a sizeable black market, the voluntary compliance rate is very low and may be impossible to properly calculate.

State, provincial, and local.

Income taxes are separately imposed by sub-national jurisdictions in several countries with federal systems. These include Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, where provinces, cantons, or states impose separate taxes. In a few countries, cities also impose income taxes. The system may be integrated (as in Germany) with taxes collected at the federal level. In Quebec and the United States, federal and state systems are independently administered and have differences in determination of taxable income.

Wage-based taxes.

Retirement oriented taxes, such as Social Security or national insurance, also are a type of income tax, though not generally referred to as such. In the US, these taxes generally are imposed at a fixed rate on wages or self-employment earnings up to a maximum amount per year. The tax may be imposed on the employer, the employee, or both, at the same or different rates.  Some jurisdictions also impose a tax collected from employers, to fund unemployment insurance, health care, or similar government outlays.

Economic and policy aspects.

Multiple conflicting theories have been proposed regarding the economic impact of income taxes. Income taxes are widely viewed as a progressive tax (the incidence of tax increases as income increases).  Some studies have suggested that an income tax doesn't have much effect on the numbers of hours worked.

Criticisms.

Tax avoidance strategies and loopholes tend to emerge within income tax codes. They get created when taxpayers find legal methods to avoid paying taxes. Lawmakers then attempt to close the loopholes with additional legislation. That leads to a vicious cycle of ever more complex avoidance strategies and legislation. The vicious cycle tends to benefit large corporations and wealthy individuals that can afford the professional fees that come with ever more sophisticated tax planning, thus challenging the notion that even a marginal income tax system can be properly called progressive.  The higher costs to labour and capital imposed by income tax causes deadweight loss in an economy, being the loss of economic activity from people deciding not to invest capital or use time productively because of the burden that tax would impose on those activities. There is also a loss from individuals and professional advisors devoting time to tax-avoiding behaviour instead of economically-productive activities.

Around the world.

Income taxes are used in most countries around the world. The tax systems vary greatly and can be progressive, proportional, or regressive, depending on the type of tax. Comparison of tax rates around the world is a difficult and somewhat subjective enterprise. Tax laws in most countries are extremely complex, and tax burden falls differently on different groups in each country and sub-national unit. Of course, services provided by governments in return for taxation also vary, making comparisons all the more difficult.  Countries that tax income generally use one of two systems: territorial or residential. In the territorial system, only local income – income from a source inside the country – is taxed. In the residential system, residents of the country are taxed on their worldwide (local and foreign) income, while nonresidents are taxed only on their local income. In addition, a very small number of countries, notably the United States, also tax their nonresident citizens on worldwide income.  Countries with a residential system of taxation usually allow deductions or credits for the tax that residents already pay to other countries on their foreign income. Many countries also sign tax treaties with each other to eliminate or reduce double taxation.  Countries do not necessarily use the same system of taxation for individuals and corporations. For example, France uses a residential system for individuals but a territorial system for corporations, while Singapore does the opposite, and Brunei taxes corporate but not personal income.

Transparency and public disclosure.

Public disclosure of personal income tax filings occurs in Finland, Norway and Sweden (as of the late-2000s and early 2010s).

An income tax is a tax imposed on individuals or entities (taxpayers) that varies with respective income or profits (taxable income). Income tax generally is computed as the product of a tax rate times taxable income. Taxation rates may vary by type or characteristics of the taxpayer.

-{zh-tw:所得税; zh-cn:所得税; zh-hk:入息税;}-(英语:Income Tax,-{zh-cn:香港称「入息-{}-税」,日本、韩国和台湾称「所得-{}-税」; zh-tw:香港称作「入息-{}-税」,中国、日本、韩国和台湾皆称作「所得-{}-税」; zh-hk:中国内地、日本、韩国和台湾皆称作「所得-{}-税」;}-),是税种之一类,按自然人、公司或者法人为扣税单位。世界各地有不同的课税率系统,例如有累进税率(progressive tax)也有单一平税率多种。


Background.

After giving up his post as a policeman in Burma to become a writer, Orwell moved to rooms in Portobello Road, London at the end of 1927 when he was 24. While contributing to various journals, he undertook investigative tramping expeditions in and around London, collecting material for use in "The Spike", his first published essay, and for the latter half of "Down and Out in Paris and London". In spring of 1928 he moved to Paris and lived at 6 Rue du Pot de Fer in the Latin Quarter, a bohemian quarter with a cosmopolitan flavour. American writers like Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald had lived in the same area. Following the Russian Revolution, there was a large Russian emigre community in Paris. Orwell's aunt Nellie Limouzin also lived in Paris and gave him social and, when necessary, financial support. He led an active social life, worked on his novels and had several articles published in avant-garde journals.  Orwell fell seriously ill in March 1929 and shortly afterwards had money stolen from the lodging house. The thief was probably not the young Italian described in "Down and Out". In a later account, he said the theft was the work of a young trollop that he had picked up and brought back with him; it has been submitted that "consideration for his parents' sensibilities would have required the suppression of this misadventure. Whoever reduced Orwell to destitution did him a good turn; his final ten weeks in Paris sowed the seed of his first published book." Whether through necessity or just to collect material, and probably both, he undertook casual work as a dishwasher in restaurants. In August 1929 he sent a copy of "The Spike" to the "Adelphi" magazine in London, and it was accepted for publication. Orwell left Paris in December 1929 and returned to England, going straight home to his parents' house in Southwold. Later he acted as a private tutor to a handicapped child there and also undertook further tramping expeditions, culminating in a stint working in the Kent hop fields in August and September 1931. After this adventure, he ended up in the Tooley Street kip, which he found so unpleasant that he wrote home for money and moved to more comfortable lodgings.

Publication.

Orwell's first version of "Down and Out" was called "A Scullion's Diary". Completed in October 1930, it used only his Paris material. He offered it to Jonathan Cape in the summer of 1931. Cape rejected it in the autumn. A year later he offered "a fatter typescript (the London chapters had been added)" to Faber & Faber, where T. S. Eliot, then an editorial director, also rejected it, stating, "We did find it of very great interest, but I regret to say that it does not appear to me possible as a publishing venture."  It was in the home of Mabel Fierz that Orwell then discarded the typescript. She had, with her husband, a London businessman named Francis, been for a number of years a visitor to Southwold in the summer and was on friendly terms with the Blairs. Fierz at this point took it to a literary agent, Leonard Moore, who "recognised it as a 'natural' for the new house of Gollancz." Victor Gollancz was prepared to publish the work, subject to the removal of bad language and some identifiable names, and offered an advance of £40. The title improvised by Gollancz, "Confessions of a Down and Outer", bothered Orwell. "Would "The Confessions of a Dishwasher" do as well?" he asked Moore. "I would "rather" answer to "dishwasher" than "down & out"." At the last minute, Gollancz shortened the title to "Down and Out in Paris and London". The author, after possibilities including "X," "P.S. Burton" (an alias Orwell had used on tramping expeditions), "Kenneth Miles" and "H. Lewis Allways" had been considered, was renamed "George Orwell." Orwell did not wish to publish under his own name Eric Blair, and Orwell was the name he used from then on for his main works—although many periodical articles were still published under the name Eric Blair. "Down and Out in Paris and London" was published on 9 January 1933 and received favourable reviews from, among others, C. Day Lewis, WH Davies, Compton Mackenzie and JB Priestley. It was subsequently published by Harper & Brothers in New York. Sales were low, however, until December 1940, when Penguin Books printed 55,000 copies for sale at sixpence.  A French translation, which Orwell admired, by RN Raimbault and Gwen Gilbert, entitled "", was published by Éditions Gallimard, on 2 May 1935, with a preface by Panait Istrati and an introduction by Orwell.

Summary.

Chapters I–XXIII (Paris).

The scene-setting opening chapters describe the atmosphere in the Paris quarter and introduce various characters who appear later in the book. From Chapter III to Chapter X, where the narrator obtains a job at "Hotel X," he describes his descent into poverty, often in tragi-comic terms. An Italian compositor forges room keys and steals his savings and his scant income vanishes when the English lessons he is giving stop. He begins at first to sell some of his clothes, and then to pawn his remaining clothes, and then searches for work with a Russian waiter named Boris—work as a porter at Les Halles, work as an English teacher and restaurant work. He recounts his two-day experience without any food and tells of meeting Russian "Communists" who, he later concludes, on their disappearance, must be mere swindlers.  After the various ordeals of unemployment and hunger the narrator obtains a job as a "plongeur" (dishwasher) in the "Hôtel X" near the Place de la Concorde, and begins to work long hours there. In Chapter XIII, he describes the "caste system" of the hotel—"manager-cooks-waiters-plongeurs"—and, in Chapter XIV, its frantic and seemingly chaotic workings. He notes also "the dirt in the Hôtel X.," which became apparent "as soon as one penetrated into the service quarters." He talks of his routine life among the working poor of Paris, slaving and sleeping, and then drinking on Saturday night through the early hours of Sunday morning. In Chapter XVI, he refers briefly to a murder committed "just beneath my window [while he was sleeping... The thing that strikes me in looking back," he says, "is that I was in bed and asleep within three minutes of the murder [...] We were working people, and where was the sense of wasting sleep over a murder?"  Misled by Boris's optimism, the narrator is briefly penniless again after he and Boris quit their hotel jobs in the expectation of work at a new restaurant, the "Auberge de Jehan Cottard," where Boris feels sure he will become a waiter again; at the Hotel X, he had been doing lower-grade work. The "patron" of the Auberge, "an ex-colonel of the Russian Army," seems to have financial difficulties. The narrator is not paid for ten days and is compelled to spend a night on a bench—"It was very uncomfortable—the arm of the seat cuts into your back—and much colder than I had expected"—rather than face his landlady over the outstanding rent.  At the restaurant, the narrator finds himself working "seventeen and a half hours" a day, "almost without a break," and looking back wistfully at his relatively leisured and orderly life at the Hotel X. Boris works even longer: "eighteen hours a day, seven days a week." The narrator claims that "such hours, though not usual, are nothing extraordinary in Paris." He adds  by the way, that the Auberge was not the ordinary cheap eating-house frequented by students and workmen. We did not provide an adequate meal at less than twenty-five francs, and we were picturesque and artistic, which sent up our social standing. There were the indecent pictures in the bar, and the Norman decorations—sham beams on the walls, electric lights done up as candlesticks, "peasant" pottery, even a mounting-block at the door—and the "patron" and the head waiter were Russian officers, and many of the customers titled Russian refugees. In short, we were decidedly chic.  He falls into a routine again and speaks of quite literally fighting for a place on the Paris Métro to reach the "cold, filthy kitchen" by seven. Despite the filth and incompetence, the restaurant turns out to be a success.  The narrative is interspersed with anecdotes recounted by some of the minor characters, such as Valenti, an Italian waiter at Hotel X, and Charlie, "one of the local curiosities," who is "a youth of family and education who had run away from home." In Chapter XXII, the narrator considers the life of a "plongeur":  [A] "plongeur" is one of the slaves of the modern world. Not that there is any need to whine over him, for he is better off than many manual workers, but still, he is no freer than if he were bought and sold. His work is servile and without art; he is paid just enough to keep him alive; his only holiday is the sack [... He has] been trapped by a routine which makes thought impossible. If "plongeurs" thought at all, they would long ago have formed a labour union and gone on strike for better treatment. But they do not think, because they have no leisure for it; their life has made slaves of them.  Because of the stress of the long hours, he mails to a friend, "B," back in London, asking if he could get him a job that allows more than five hours' sleep a night. His friend duly replies, offering a job taking care of a "congenital imbecile," and sends him some money to get his possessions from the pawn. The narrator then quits his job as a "plongeur" and leaves for London.

Chapters XXIV–XXXVIII (London).

The narrator arrives in London expecting to have the job waiting for him. Unfortunately the would-be employers have gone abroad, "patient and all."  Until his employers return, the narrator lives as a tramp, sleeping in an assortment of venues: lodging houses, tramps' hostels or "spikes," and Salvation Army shelters. Because vagrants can not "enter any one spike, or any two London spikes, more than once in a month, on pain of being confined for a week," he is required to keep on the move, with the result that long hours are spent tramping or waiting for hostels to open. Chapters XXV to XXXV describe his various journeys, the different forms of accommodation, a selection of the people he meets, and the tramps' reaction to Christian charity: "Evidently the tramps were not grateful for their free tea. And yet it was excellent [...] I am sure too that it was given in a good spirit, without any intention of humiliating us; so in fairness we ought to have been grateful—still, we were not." Characters in this section of the book include the Irish tramp called Paddy, "a good fellow" whose "ignorance was limitless and appalling," and the pavement artist Bozo, who has a good literary background and was formerly an amateur astronomer, but who has suffered a succession of misfortunes.  The final chapters provide a catalogue of various types of accommodation open to tramps. The narrator offers some general remarks, concluding,  At present I do not feel that I have seen more than the fringe of poverty. Still, I can point to one or two things I have definitely learned by being hard up. I shall never again think that all tramps are drunken scoundrels, nor expect a beggar to be grateful when I give him a penny, nor be surprised if men out of work lack energy, nor subscribe to the Salvation Army, nor pawn my clothes, nor refuse a handbill, nor enjoy a meal at a smart restaurant. That is a beginning.

Fact and fiction.

One of the debates surrounding "Down and Out" is whether it was a piece of factual autobiography or part fiction. Orwell wrote in the Introduction to the 1935 French edition: "I think I can say that I have exaggerated nothing except in so far as all writers exaggerate by selecting. I did not feel that I had to describe events in the exact order in which they happened, but everything I have described did take place at one time or another." In Chapter XXIV, it is "clear that Orwell did distort facts by claiming on his return from Paris he found himself down and out in London and had not 'the slightest notion of how to get a cheap bed'. This of course heightens the tension [...] but the truth is that in Paris he had already written his first substantial essay, "The Spike", describing a night spent in a Notting Hill tramps' hostel. Before his departure from England he had voluntarily lived among tramps for some time."  In "The Road to Wigan Pier", Orwell referred to the tramping experiences described in "Down and Out", writing that "nearly all the incidents described there actually happened, though they have been re-arranged." Some measure of the work's veracity may be gleaned from a marked-up copy, containing sixteen annotations, which Orwell gave to Brenda Salkeld. Of the descent into poverty from Chapter III, he wrote, "Succeeding chapters are not actually autobiography but drawn from what I have seen." Of Chapter VII, however, he wrote, "This all happened;" of Hotel X, "All as exact as I could make it;" and, of the Russian restaurant, "All the following is an entirely accurate description of the restaurant." On the personalities, Orwell's own introduction to the French edition states that the characters are individuals, but are "intended more as representative types."  The luxury hotel in which Orwell worked in the autumn of 1929 was identified as the Crillon by Sonia Orwell, as recounted by Sam White, the London "Evening Standard"'s Paris correspondent in his column for 16 June 1967. The writers Stansky and Abrahams suggested, in their study of Orwell, that it was the Hotel Lotti.

Reactions.

Within a month of publication, Humbert Possenti, "a restaurateur and hotelier of forty years," had written to "The Times" complaining that the book was unfairly disparaging to the restaurant trade. The "Times Literary Supplement" had previously reviewed "Down and Out in Paris and London", describing it as "a vivid picture of an apparently mad world." Orwell responded to the restaurateur's criticism with a letter to the same newspaper: "I do know that in our hotel there were places which no customer could possibly have been allowed to see with any hope of retaining his custom."  In the "Adelphi", C. Day Lewis wrote, "Orwell's book is a tour of the underworld, conducted without hysteria or prejudice [...] a model of clarity and good sense." JB Priestley, in the "Evening Standard", considered it "uncommonly good reading. An excellent book and a valuable social document. The best book of its kind I have read in a long time." Compton Mackenzie wrote of Orwell's "immensely interesting book [...] a genuine human document, which at the same time is written with so much artistic force that, in spite of the squalor and degradation thus unfolded, the result is curiously beautiful with the beauty of an accomplished etching on copper. The account of a casual ward in this country horrifies like some scene of inexplicable misery in Dante."  Following the American publication, James T. Farrell, writing in "The New Republic", called it "genuine, unexaggerated and intelligent," while Herbert Gorman wrote for the "New York Times Book Review", "He possesses a keen eye for character and a rough-and-ready'styleless style' that plunges along and makes the reader see what the author wants him to see." In contrast, the reviewer for "New English Weekly" wrote, "This book [...] is forcefully written and is very readable, yet it fails to carry conviction. We wonder if the author was really down and out. Down certainly, but out?"  Cyril Connolly later wrote, "I don't think "Down and Out in London and Paris" is more than agreeable journalism; it was all better done by his friend Henry Miller. Orwell found his true form a few years later." Orwell agreed with this assessment. Henry Miller's controversial work "Tropic of Cancer" (1934) is based on his own experiences in Paris around the time Orwell was there.  In an essay for the 1971 "The World of George Orwell", Richard Mayne considered the book as typical of something that was true of a great deal of Orwell's later writing: his "relish at revealing behind-the-scenes squalor. He was always taking the lid off things—poverty, parlour Socialism, life in a coal mine, prep-school tyranny, the Empire, the Spanish Civil War, the Russian Revolution, the political misuse of language. He might well have echoed W.H. Auden: "All I have is a voice/To undo the folded lie.""  The narrator's comments on Jews in the book are cited by a journalist for "Haaretz" when considering what he terms "Orwell’s latent anti-Semitism". Some suggest the work may have been Orwell's parody of his own social upbringing and social class, noticing the narrator has both racist and anti-racist outbursts. Another commentator cites the book as evidence that anti-Semitism was much more prevalent in Paris than in London.

Down and Out in Paris and London is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities, which was written deliberately in a non-academic tone. Its target audience was the middle and upper class members of society—those who were more likely to be well educated—and exposes the poverty existing in two prosperous cities: Paris and London. The first part is an account of living in near-destitution in Paris and the experience of casual labour in restaurant kitchens. The second part is a travelogue of life on the road in and around London from the tramp's perspective, with descriptions of the types of hostel accommodation available and some of the characters to be found living on the margins.

《巴黎伦敦落魄记》(英语:"Down and Out in Paris and London")是英国作家乔治·奥威尔首部长篇作品,于1933年出版。此书有两部分,分别围绕两个城市的贫穷地区。第一部分是关于巴黎基层的生活,以及作者在当地餐厅的厨房中当临时工的经历。第二部分则是作者以流浪汉的身份,於伦敦附近探索流浪汉足迹的经历,作者描述了当时的恶劣的住宿环境,还有其他生活在贫穷边缘的人。


Background and early political career.

Zog was born as Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli in Burgajet Castle, near Burrel in the northern part of the Albanian section of the Ottoman Empire, third son to Xhemal Pasha Zogolli, and first son by his second wife Sadije Toptani in 1895. His family was a beylik family of landowners, with feudal authority over the region of Mati. His mother's Toptani family claimed to be descended from the sister of Albania's greatest national hero, the 15th-century general Skanderbeg. He was educated at Galatasaray High School (Lycée Impérial de Galatasaray) in Beyoglu, the capital of the decaying Ottoman Empire, which controlled Albania. Upon his father's death in 1911, Zogolli became governor of Mat, being appointed ahead of his elder half-brother, Xhelal Bey Zogolli.  In 1912, he participated at the Albanian Declaration of Independence as the representative of the Mat District. As a young man during the First World War, Zogolli volunteered on the side of Austria-Hungary. He was detained at Vienna in 1917 and 1918 and in Rome in 1918 and 1919 before returning to Albania in 1919. During his time in Vienna, he grew to enjoy a Western European lifestyle. Upon his return, Zogolli became involved in the political life of the fledgling Albanian government that had been created in the wake of the First World War. His political supporters included many southern feudal landowners called beys, Turkish for "province chieftain" with title variations including Beyg, Begum, Bygjymi. The Bey title refers to the social group to which he belonged, which was also used by noble families in the north, along with merchants, industrialists, and intellectuals. During the early 1920s, Zogolli served as Governor of Shkodër (1920–1921), Minister of the Interior (March–November 1920, 1921–1924), and chief of the Albanian military (1921–1922). His primary rivals were Luigj Gurakuqi and Fan S. Noli. In 1922, Zogolli formally changed his surname from Zogolli to Zogu, which sounds more Albanian.  In 1923, he was shot and wounded in Parliament. A crisis arose in 1924 after the assassination of one of Zogu's industrialist opponents, Avni Rustemi; in the aftermath, a leftist revolt forced Zogu, along with 600 of his allies, into exile in June 1924. He returned to Albania with the backing of Yugoslav forces and Yugoslavia-based General Pyotr Wrangel′s White Russian troops led by Russian Gen Sergei Ulagay and became Prime Minister.

President of Albania.

Zogu was officially elected as the first President of Albania by the Constituent Assembly on 21 January 1925, taking office on 1 February for a seven-year term. Zogu's government followed the European model, though large parts of Albania still maintained a social structure unchanged from the days of Ottoman rule, and most villages were serf plantations run by the Beys. On 28 June 1925, Zogu ceded Sveti Naum to Yugoslavia in exchange for Peshkëpi (Pëshkupat) village and other concessions.  Zogu enacted several major reforms. His principal ally during this period was the Kingdom of Italy, which lent his government funds in exchange for a greater role in Albania's fiscal policy. For the first time since the death of Skanderbeg, Albania began to emerge as a nation, rather than a feudal patchwork of local Beyliks. His administration was marred by disputes with Kosovar leaders, primarily Hasan Prishtina and Bajram Curri.  Under the constitution, Zogu was vested with sweeping executive and legislative powers, including the right to appoint one-third of the upper house. Within the context of the system, he was a virtual dictator. The media were subjected to close censorship, and political opponents were often killed. For all intents and purposes, he held all governing power in the nation.

Albanian king.

On 1 September 1928, Albania was transformed into a kingdom, and President Zogu became Zog I, "King of the Albanians" ("Mbreti i Shqiptarëve" in Albanian). He took as his regnal name his surname rather than his forename since the Islamic name "Ahmet" might have had the effect of isolating him on the European stage. He also initially took the parallel name "Skanderbeg III" (Zogu claimed to be a successor of Skanderbeg through descent through Skanderbeg's sister; "Skanderbeg II" was taken to be Prince Wied, but this fell out of use).  On the same day as he was declared king (he was never technically crowned), he was declared Field Marshal of the Royal Albanian Army. He proclaimed a constitutional monarchy similar to the contemporary regime in Italy, created a strong police force, and instituted the Zogist salute (flat hand over the heart with palm facing downwards). Zog hoarded gold coins and precious stones, which were used to back Albania's first paper currency.  Zog's mother, Sadije, was declared Queen Mother of Albania, and Zog also gave his brother and sisters Royal status as Prince and Princesses Zogu. One of his sisters, Senije (c. 1897–1969), married Prince Shehzade Mehmed Abid Efendi of Turkey, a son of Sultan Abdul Hamid II.  Zog's constitution forbade any Prince of the Royal House from serving as Prime Minister or a member of the Cabinet, and contained provisions for the potential extinction of the Royal Family. Ironically, in light of later events, the constitution also forbade the union of the Albanian throne with that of any other country. Under the Zogist constitution, the King of the Albanians, like the King of the Belgians, ascended the throne and exercised Royal powers only after taking an oath before Parliament; Zog himself swore an oath on the Bible and the Qur'an (the king being Muslim) in an attempt to unify the country. In 1929, King Zog abolished Islamic law in Albania, adopting in its place a civil code based on the Swiss one, as Ataturk's Turkey had done in the same decade. The price for such modernization was high, though. Although nominally a constitutional monarch, in practice Zog retained the dictatorial powers he had enjoyed as president. Thus, in effect, Albania remained a military dictatorship.  In 1938, Zog opened the borders of Albania to Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany.

Life as king.

Although born as an aristocrat and hereditary Bey, King Zog was somewhat ignored by other monarchs in Europe because he was a self-proclaimed monarch who had no links to any other European royal families. Nonetheless, he did have strong connections with Muslim royal families in the Arab World, particularly Egypt, whose ruling dynasty had Albanian origins. As King, he was honoured by the governments of Italy, Luxembourg, Egypt, Yugoslavia, France, Romania, Greece, Belgium, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Austria.  Zog had been engaged to the daughter of Shefqet Bey Verlaci before he became king. Soon after he became king, however, he broke off the engagement. According to traditional customs of blood vengeance prevalent in Albania at the time, Verlaci had the right to kill Zog. The king frequently surrounded himself with a personal guard and avoided public appearances. He also feared that he might be poisoned, so the Mother of the King assumed supervision of the Royal Kitchen.  In April 1938, Zog married Countess Geraldine Apponyi de Nagy-Appony, a Roman Catholic aristocrat who was half-Hungarian and half-American. The ceremony was broadcast throughout Tirana via Radio Tirana that was officially launched by the monarch five months later. Their only child, HRH Crown Prince Leka, was born in Albania on 5 April 1939.

Assassination attempts.

About 600 blood feuds reportedly existed against Zog, and during his reign he reputedly survived more than 55 assassination attempts. One of these occurred inside the corridors of the Albanian Parliament premises on 23 February 1924. Beqir Valteri, originating from the same area as Zog, was waiting for him and opened fire suddenly. Zog was shot twice. Meanwhile, Valteri fled but, surrounded by the militia, took refuge in one of the bathrooms, refusing to surrender and singing patriotic songs. According to the memoirs of Ekrem Vlora, he surrendered after the intervention of Qazim Koculi and Ali Klissura. Zog stepped down briefly from political activity, but promised to forgive Valteri. Valteri, a member of the revolutionary "Bashkimi" ("The union") committee led by Avni Rustemi, was set free by the Court of Tirana after declaring that it was an individual act. Meanwhile, all rumors pointed to the opposition, specifically to Rustemi. Two weeks later Zog and Valteri would meet in private. Soon after, Rustemi would be shot. It was absolutely clear that Zog was behind the attack.  Another attempt occurred on 21 February 1931, while visiting the Vienna State Opera house for a performance of "Pagliacci". The attackers (Aziz Çami and Ndok Gjeloshi) struck whilst Zog was getting into his car. The attempt was organized by "National Union" (), a union of Zog opponents in exile which was formed in Vienna (1925) with the initiative of Ali Këlcyra, Sejfi Vllamasi, Xhemal Bushati etc. Zog was in the company of Minister Eqrem Libohova who was wounded, while Zog's guard Llesh Topallaj was mistaken for Zog by Gjeloshi, who shot him three times in the back of the head. Çami's gun was stuck and did not fire. Zog came out of the event unharmed, thanks also to the prompt intervention of Albanian Consul Zef Serreqi and local police. The Austrian authorities arrested Çami, Gjeloshi, and later Qazim Mulleti, Rexhep Mitrovica, Menduh Angoni, Angjelin Suma, Luigj Shkurti, Sejfi Vllamasi, etc. All the Albanian political "émigrés" in Vienna were subsequently arrested, beside Hasan Prishtina. Most of them were quickly released and expelled from Austria. Gjeloshi was sentenced to 3 years and 6 months of jail, while Çami got 2 years and 6 months.

Relations with Italy.

The fascist government of Benito Mussolini's Italy had supported Zog since early in his presidency; that support had led to increased Italian influence in Albanian affairs. The Italians compelled Zog to refuse to renew the First Treaty of Tirana (1926), although Zog still retained British officers in the Gendarmerie as a counterbalance against the Italians, who had pressured Zog to remove them.  During the worldwide depression of the early 1930s Zog's government became almost completely dependent on Mussolini, to the point that the Albanian national bank had its seat in Rome. Grain had to be imported, many Albanians emigrated, and Italians were allowed to settle in Albania. In 1932 and 1933, Albania was unable to pay the interest on its loans from the Society for the Economic Development of Albania, and the Italians used this as a pretext for further dominance. They demanded that Tirana put Italians in charge of the Gendarmerie, join Italy in a customs union, and grant the Italian Kingdom control of Albania's sugar, telegraph, and electrical monopolies. Finally, Italy called for the Albanian government to establish teaching of the Italian language in all Albanian schools, a demand that was swiftly refused by Zog. In defiance of Italian demands, he ordered the national budget to be slashed by 30 percent, dismissed all Italian military advisers, and nationalized Italian-run Roman Catholic schools in the north of Albania to decrease Italian influence on the population of Albania. In 1934, he tried without success to build ties with France, Germany, and the Balkan states, and Albania drifted back into the Italian orbit.  Two days after the birth of Zog's son and heir apparent, on 7 April 1939 (Good Friday), Mussolini's Italy invaded, facing no significant resistance. The Albanian army was ill-equipped to resist, as it was almost entirely dominated by Italian advisors and officers and was no match for the Italian Army. The Italians were, however, resisted by small elements in the gendarmerie and general population. The Royal Family, realising that their lives were in danger, fled into exile, taking with them a considerable amount of gold from the National Bank of Tirana and Durrës. Since the Royal Family had expected an Italian invasion, the gathering of gold had started in advance. "Oh God, it was so short" were King Zog's last words to Geraldine on Albanian soil. Mussolini declared Albania a protectorate under Italy's King Victor Emmanuel III. While some Albanians continued to resist, "a large part of the population... welcomed the Italians with cheers", according to one contemporary account.

Former heir presumptive.

Prior to the birth of Prince Leka, the position of Heir Presumptive was held by Prince of Kosova (Kosovo) Tati Esad Murad Kryziu, born 24 December 1923 in Tirana, who was the son of the King's sister, Princess Nafije. He became honorary General of the Royal Albanian Army in 1928, at age five. He was made Heir Presumptive with the style of His Highness and title of "Prince of Kosova" ("Princ i Kosovës") in 1931. After the royal house's exile, he moved to France, where he died in August 1993, aged 69.

Life in exile and death.

The royal family fled to Greece, then to Istanbul in Turkey, then fled through Romania, Poland, Latvia, Sweden, Norway, Belgium and Paris in France. They lived a time in France and fled when the Germans invaded. Their escape from France was helped by Ian Fleming. The royal family then settled in England. Their first residence was at The Ritz in London. This was followed in 1941 by a brief stay at Forest Ridge, a house in the South Ascot area of Sunninghill in Berkshire, near where Zog's nieces had been at school in Ascot. In 1941 they moved to Parmoor House, Parmoor, near Frieth in Buckinghamshire, with some staff of the court living in locations around Lane End.  In 1946, Zog and most of his family left England and went to live in Egypt at the behest of King Farouk. In 1951, Zog bought the Knollwood estate in Muttontown, New York, but the sixty-room estate was never occupied and Zog sold the estate in 1955. Farouk was overthrown in 1952, and the family left for France in 1955.  He made his final home in France, where he died at the Foch Hospital, Suresnes, Hauts-de-Seine on 9 April 1961, aged 65, of an undisclosed condition. Zog was said to have regularly consumed 200 cigarettes a day, giving him a possible claim to the dubious title of the world's heaviest smoker in 1929, but had been seriously ill for some time. He was survived by his wife and son, and was initially buried at the cimetière parisien de Thiais, near Paris. On his death, his son Leka was pronounced H.M. King Leka of the Albanians by the exiled Albanian community.  His widow, Geraldine, died of natural causes in 2002 at the age of 87 in a military hospital in Tirana, Albania. The country's communist government abolished the monarchy in 1946, but, even in exile, the royal family insisted that Leka Zogu was Albania's legitimate ruler until his death on 30 November 2011.

Political legacy.

During World War II, three resistance groups were operating in Albania: the nationalists, the royalists and the communists. Some of the Albanian establishment opted for collaboration. The communist partisans refused to co-operate with the other resistance groups and took control of the country. They were able to defeat the Nazi remnants and had full control the country in November 1944.  Zog attempted to reclaim his throne after the war, but the new Communist-dominated government barred Zog from returning soon after it took power, and formally deposed him in 1946. Sponsored by the British and Americans, some forces loyal to Zog attempted to mount invasions and incursions, but most were ambushed due to intelligence sent to the Soviet Union by spy Kim Philby. A referendum in 1997—seven years after the end of Communist rule—proposed to restore the monarchy in the person of Zog's son Leka Zogu who, since 1961, had been styled "Leka I, King of the Albanians". The official but disputed results stated that about two-thirds of voters favoured a continued republican government. Leka, believing the result to be fraudulent, attempted an armed uprising: he was unsuccessful and was forced into exile, although he later returned and lived in Tirana until his death on 30 November 2011. A main street in Tirana was later renamed "Boulevard Zog I" by the Albanian government.

Repatriation to Albania.

In October 2012, the government of Albania decided to bring back the remains of the former king from France, where he died in 1961. Zog's body was exhumed from the Thiais Cemetery, Paris on 15 November 2012. A guard of honour was provided by the French President, in the form of French Legionnaires in ceremonial dress.  Zog's remains were returned in a state ceremony on 17 November 2012, coinciding with celebrations for Albania's independence centennial. The bodies of the king and his family members now lie in the reconstructed royal mausoleum in the capital Tirana. The interment was attended by the government of Albania, including the President and Prime Minister, and senior figures from the Romanian, Montenegrin, Russian and Albanian royal families.

Honours and awards.

In Albania:  From other countries:

Cultural references.

Zog's name was in use by 1972 in the English language palaeontological mnemonic for the names of zonal index fossils in part of the Lower Carboniferous System of Great Britain (namely Cleistopora, which geologists decided to call 'zone k', Zaphrentis, Caninia, Seminula and Dibanophylum): "King Zog caught syphilis and died".  In the James Bond novel "The Man with the Golden Gun", Ian Fleming writes of the villainous Francisco Scaramanga telling his compatriots that the Rastafari of Jamaica "believes it owes allegiance" to the King of Ethiopia, this "King Zog or what-have-you." Fleming had been assigned with the task of escorting Zog when in exile after Albania was annexed by Italy.  In 1983, British author Jack Smithers wrote an amusing thriller about a fictional attempt to recover the treasure of King Zog, and use it to finance the overthrow of the Communist Enver Hoxha regime and restore Zog to the throne. It was called "Combined Forces", as Zog was aided by a combination of John Buchan's Richard Hannay, "Sapper"'s (H.C. McNeile) Bulldog Drummond, and Dornford Yates's Jonah Mansell (and the rest of Berry and Co. besides.). Smithers wrote the pastiche as a tribute to the three thriller writers of the interwar period.  In the animated series Disenchantment (TV series) King Zøg has a reference in the first and only King of Albania.

Zog I (, ; 8 October 18959 April 1961), born Ahmet Muhtar Zogolli, taking the surname Zogu in 1922, was the leader of Albania from 1922 to 1939. He first served as the prime minister of Albania (1922–1924), then as president (1925–1928), and finally as the country's only king (1928–1939).

艾哈迈德·索古(Zog I, Skanderbeg III of the Albanians,,1895年-10月8日-1961年-4月9日)原名艾哈迈德·穆赫塔尔·贝吉·佐戈利(Ahmet Muhtar Bej Zogolli)是阿尔巴尼亚共和国的总统(1925年-1928年期间就职)。后成为阿尔巴尼亚王国的国王(1928年-1939年期间在位),称索古一世(或译佐格一世)、斯坎德培三世。


Density in metric spaces.

An alternative definition of dense set in the case of metric spaces is the following. When the topology of "X" is given by a metric, the closure formula_1 of "A" in "X" is the union of "A" and the set of all limits of sequences of elements in "A" (its "limit points"),  Then "A" is dense in "X" if  If formula_4 is a sequence of dense open sets in a complete metric space, "X", then formula_5 is also dense in "X". This fact is one of the equivalent forms of the Baire category theorem.

Examples.

The real numbers with the usual topology have the rational numbers as a countable dense subset which shows that the cardinality of a dense subset of a topological space may be strictly smaller than the cardinality of the space itself. The irrational numbers are another dense subset which shows that a topological space may have several disjoint dense subsets (in particular, two dense subsets may be each other's complements), and they need not even be of the same cardinality. Perhaps even more surprisingly, both the rationals and the irrationals have empty interiors, showing that dense sets need not contain any nonempty open set.  By the Weierstrass approximation theorem, any given complex-valued continuous function defined on a closed interval ["a", "b"] can be uniformly approximated as closely as desired by a polynomial function. In other words, the polynomial functions are dense in the space C["a", "b"] of continuous complex-valued functions on the interval ["a", "b"], equipped with the supremum norm.  Every metric space is dense in its completion.

Properties.

Every topological space is a dense subset of itself. For a set "X" equipped with the discrete topology the whole space is the only dense set. Every non-empty subset of a set "X" equipped with the trivial topology is dense, and every topology for which every non-empty subset is dense must be trivial.  Denseness is transitive: Given three subsets "A", "B" and "C" of a topological space "X" with such that "A" is dense in "B" and "B" is dense in "C" (in the respective subspace topology) then "A" is also dense in "C".  The image of a dense subset under a surjective continuous function is again dense. The density of a topological space (the least of the cardinalities of its dense subsets) is a topological invariant.  A topological space with a connected dense subset is necessarily connected itself.  Continuous functions into Hausdorff spaces are determined by their values on dense subsets: if two continuous functions into a Hausdorff space "Y" agree on a dense subset of "X" then they agree on all of "X".  For metric spaces there are universal spaces, into which all spaces of given density can be embedded: a metric space of density is isometric to a subspace of, the space of real continuous functions on the product of copies of the unit interval.

Related notions.

A point "x" of a subset "A" of a topological space "X" is called a limit point of "A" (in "X") if every neighbourhood of "x" also contains a point of "A" other than "x" itself, and an isolated point of "A" otherwise. A subset without isolated points is said to be dense-in-itself.  A subset "A" of a topological space "X" is called nowhere dense (in "X") if there is no neighborhood in "X" on which "A" is dense. Equivalently, a subset of a topological space is nowhere dense if and only if the interior of its closure is empty. The interior of the complement of a nowhere dense set is always dense. The complement of a closed nowhere dense set is a dense open set. Given a topological space "X", a subset "A" of "X" that can be expressed as the union of countably many nowhere dense subsets of "X" is called meagre. The rational numbers, while dense in the real numbers, are meagre as a subset of the reals.  A topological space with a countable dense subset is called separable. A topological space is a Baire space if and only if the intersection of countably many dense open sets is always dense. A topological space is called resolvable if it is the union of two disjoint dense subsets. More generally, a topological space is called κ-resolvable if it contains κ pairwise disjoint dense sets.  An embedding of a topological space "X" as a dense subset of a compact space is called a compactification of "X".  A linear operator between topological vector spaces "X" and "Y" is said to be densely defined if its domain is a dense subset of "X" and if its range is contained within "Y". See also continuous linear extension.  A topological space "X" is hyperconnected if and only if every nonempty open set is dense in "X". A topological space is submaximal if and only if every dense subset is open.  If formula_6 is a metric space, then a non-empty subset Y is said to be "ε-dense", if and only if, for every  One can then show that D is dense in formula_6 if and only if it is ε-dense for every formula_9

In topology and related areas of mathematics, a subset "A" of a topological space "X" is called dense (in "X") if every point "x" in "X" either belongs to "A" or is a limit point of "A"; that is, the closure of A is constituting the whole set X. Informally, for every point in "X", the point is either in "A" or arbitrarily "close" to a member of "A" — for instance, the rational numbers are a dense subset of the real numbers because every real number either is a rational number or has a rational number arbitrarily close to it (see Diophantine approximation).

在拓扑学及数学的其它相关领域,给定拓扑空间"X"及其子集"A",如果对于"X"中任一点"x","x"的任一邻域同"A"的交集不为空,则"A"称为在"X"中稠密。直观上,如果"X"中的任一点"x"可以被"A"中的点很好的逼近,则称"A"在"X"中稠密。


Geography.

The province lies in an elevated region, with the Alvand mountains, running from the north west to the south west. These are part of the Zagros mountain range of Iran.  Hamadan enjoys temperate warm summers and relatively cold winters.

Demographics and languages.

Demographics.

Malayer County has a population of 285,272 people, Nahavand County has a population of 178,683 people, Hamadan County has a population of 626,183 people, Kabudrahang County has a population of 137,919 people, Razan County has a population of 111,120 people, Famenin County has a population of 40,541 people, Bahar County has a population of 121,590 people, Asadabad County has a population of 104,566 people & Tuyserkan County has a population of 42,520 people.

Languages.

Counties Languages.

In Hamadan city, 80% of the people identified their language as Persian, 12% Azeri and 8% Luri, Kurdish and Laki.  In the counties of Hamadan province, the Hamadan county (which mainly includes Hamadan city), 70% of the people are Persian, 22% Azeri and 8% Luri, Kurdish and Laki. In Hamadan city, 97% of the people identified their language as Persian and 3% other languages. The population of Nahavand was 184160 (in 1997) with approximately 99% speaking Luri and Laki. The population of Malayer in 1997 was 297062 and approximately 45% speak Persian, 45% Luri and Laki and 10% Azeri. The population of Tooserkan county was 118945 in 1997 and the majority of the population is Luri and Laki. Alongside a minority of Azeri of 22%. In Asadabad county, the population was 110077 (in 1997) and 63% were Persian, 19% Kurdish, 14% Azeri and 4% Luri and Laki. In Kabudarahang, the population in 1997 was 152318 with 90% speaking Azeri, 5% Persian and another 5% Kurdish. In Razan county, the population was 123790 (in 1997) with 99.47% of the residents speaking Azeri and 0.53 speaking Kurdish. In Bahar country was 127600 with 86.3% speaking Azeri, 7.9% speaking Kurdish, 4.5% speaking Persian and 1.3% speaking Luri.

History.

Hamadan province is one of the most ancient parts of Iran and its civilization. Relics of this area confirm this fact. Today's Hamedan is what is left of Ecbatana, the Medes' capital before they formed a union with the Persians. The poet Ferdowsi says that Ecbatana was built by King Jamshid.  According to historical records, there was once a castle in this city by the name of Haft Hessar (Seven Walls) which had a thousand rooms and its grandeur equalled that of the Babylon Tower.  The structures of city are related to "Diya Aku", a King of the Medes from 700 BC. According to Greek records, this territory was called 'Ekbatan' and 'Hegmataneh' by this King, thus transformed into a huge capital.  During the Parthian era, Ctesiphon became capital of Persia, and Hamedan became the summer capital and residence of the Parthian rulers. After the Parthians, the Sassanids constructed their summer palaces in Hamedan as well.  In the year 633 when the war of Nahavand took place and Hamadan came into the hands of the invading Arabs, at times it thrived and at times it declined and witnessed hardships. During the Buwayhids, it suffered plenty of damages. In the 11th century, the Seljuks shifted their capital from Baghdad to Hamadan once again.  The city of Hamadan was always at risk during the rise and fall of powers. It was completely destroyed during the Timurid invasion. But during the Safavid era the city thrived once more. In the 18th century, Hamadan surrendered to the Ottomans, but Hamadan was retaken by Nader Shah Afshari, and under the peace treaty between Iran and the Ottomans it was returned to Iran.  The city of Hamadan lay on the Silk Road and even in recent centuries enjoyed good prospects in commerce and trade being on the main road network in the western region of Iran.  According to local Jewish traditions, the City of Hamedan is mentioned in the Bible, as the capital of Ancient Persia in the days of King Ahasuerus in the Book of Esther. It was then known as Shushan. The Tombs of Mordecai and Esther are located in modern-day Hamadan.

Hamadan today.

Administrative divisions.

The province has a population of over 1,820,000 million. (As of 2008) The province is divided into 8 Shahrestans (≈counties), which in turn are divided into 23 Bakhshs (≈districts) in total. These divisions are shown on the map as well as the center of each county and the neighbor provinces.

Attractions.

The Cultural Heritage of Iran lists 442 sites of historical and cultural significance located in Hamadan, thus making the province a rich one in terms of historical attractions.  Some of the most popular sites are:

Hamadan Province (), is an Iranian province located in the Zagros Mountains. Its center is Hamadan city. The province of Hamadan covers an area of 19,546 km2. In the year 1996, Hamadan province had a population of approximately 1.7 million people; according to the National Census held in 2011 the population of the Province was 1,758,268 people. In 2014 it was placed in Region 4.

哈马丹省(波斯语:استان همدان)是伊朗三十一个省份之一。面积19,547里,在所有省份中排行第23。人口约1,738,700(2005年数据);首府位于哈马丹市。


Plot.

Felix Ungar (Jack Lemmon) checks into a fleabag hotel near Times Square and attempts to kill himself by jumping out of the window, but he fails to open it and pulls a muscle in his back. Limping back on the street he tries to get drunk at a dance bar (The Metropole) and ends up hurting his neck when he throws down a shot. He stands on a bridge, contemplating jumping into the river.  Meanwhile, in the frowzy Upper West Side apartment of divorced sportswriter Oscar Madison (Walter Matthau) on a hot and sticky summer evening, Oscar and his buddies Speed (Larry Haines), Roy (David Sheiner), Vinnie (John Fiedler), and policeman Murray (Herb Edelman) are playing poker and discussing their friend, Felix Ungar, who is unusually late for the game. They also complain about how messy the place is - Oscar at one point offers them brown sandwiches and green sandwiches, not knowing what they are! Murray's wife calls and tells him that Felix is missing. Oscar then calls Felix's wife Frances who says that she and Felix have split up. As they are discussing what to do, and worried that Felix might try to commit suicide, Felix arrives not knowing that his friends already know that his wife has kicked him out of the house.  Felix eventually breaks down crying and his friends try to console him. Oscar then suggests that Felix move in with him, since Oscar has lived alone since he split up with his own wife, Blanche, several months earlier. Felix agrees, and urges Oscar to not be shy about letting him know if he gets on Oscar's nerves.  Within only a week, Oscar is going nuts. Felix is a neurotic, obsessive-compulsive nut, who runs around the apartment cleaning, picking up after Oscar, and berating him for being such a slob. Now the guys complain about how clean the poker game is, even being upset that Felix has washed the cards! He also refuses to have any fun, spending most of his time thinking about Frances. Felix at one point even telephones Oscar at Shea Stadium telling him not to eat any hot dogs at the game, because Felix is preparing franks and beans for dinner; this distraction causes Oscar to miss seeing a rare triple play at the Mets game on which he is reporting. The two men are shown bowling, shooting pool, and walking the city streets. Felix has a sinus attack, making loud obnoxious noises while seated in a coffee shop. Finally, after Felix drives everyone at the weekly poker game crazy, Oscar convinces Felix to lighten up and join him on a double-date with two English girls who live in the building – the Pigeon sisters, Cecily (Monica Evans) and Gwendolyn (Carole Shelley), who actually "coo" when they laugh.  As the date commences, Oscar tries to get Felix to loosen up by leaving him alone for a while in their living room with the two attractive, and somewhat frisky, sisters. Instead, he winds up talking about Frances, and breaks down weeping. When Oscar returns from their kitchen, the Pigeon sisters, one a divorcee, the other widowed, are sobbing as uncontrollably as Felix. Oscar cheers them up and they invite the boys upstairs for what should be a wild night when it's discovered that the dinner Felix has worked so hard to prepare has essentially gone up in flames! Instead, Felix, who realizes that he is still too attached to his wife, refuses to go, opting to "scrub the pots and wash his hair" instead. Oscar joins the sisters in their apartment, but winds up spending the night drinking tea and telling them all about Felix.  Furious about Felix's ruining the date, Oscar resorts to giving Felix the silent treatment and torturing him by messing up the apartment as much as possible. Felix retaliates by just being himself, driving Oscar insane with his endless cleaning and neurotic behavior. Eventually, the tension explodes into an argument that results in Oscar demanding that Felix move out. Felix complies, but leaves Oscar with a major-league guilt trip for having abandoned his still-in-need friend.  Feeling awful about throwing Felix out, and not knowing where he has gone, Oscar assembles his poker buddies to search New York City for Felix in Murray's NYPD police car, which he's not supposed to use for this purpose. After searching for hours, they return to Oscar's apartment to find out that Felix has moved in with the Pigeon sisters. Oscar and Felix apologize to each other, and realize that a bit of each has rubbed off on the other, with each being a better person for it. Felix agrees that next Friday night, he will be at Oscar's apartment for their poker game. The once slobbish Oscar tells his friends to clean up their mess after the poker game is over, ending the film.

Production and casting.

"The Odd Couple" was originally produced for Broadway and the original cast starred Art Carney as Felix and Walter Matthau as Oscar. For the film version, Matthau reprised his role as Oscar, and Felix was portrayed by Jack Lemmon, who had never played the character before. At one point, Frank Sinatra (as Felix) and Jackie Gleason (as Oscar) were reportedly considered for the film version. Dick Van Dyke and Tony Randall were also among those considered for the role of Felix (the latter portrayed him in the TV series). Similarly, Jack Klugman (who aside from the TV series had replaced Matthau on Broadway) and Mickey Rooney were also to play Oscar. Most of the script from the play has been retained, although the setting is expanded: instead of taking place entirely in Oscar's apartment, Simon also added some scenes that take place at various outdoor New York City locations (such as the scene at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York).  Oscar's poker playing cronies were Roy (David Sheiner), Vinnie (John Fiedler), Speed (Larry Haines) and Murray the Cop (Herb Edelman). The film made its debut at Radio City Music Hall in 1968. It was a hit and earned Neil Simon a nomination for the Academy Award for Writing Adapted Screenplay. The film was also nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy and Lemmon and Matthau were both nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.  The scene at Shea Stadium, which also featured Heywood Hale Broun, was filmed right before a real game between the New York Mets and the Pittsburgh Pirates on June 27, 1967. Roberto Clemente was asked to hit into the triple play that Oscar misses, but he refused to do it and Bill Mazeroski took his place.  One of the outdoor scenes in the film involved Felix shopping at Bohack, a Maspeth, Queens-based supermarket chain ubiquitous in the New York City area during the mid-20th century. The last Bohack supermarket closed in 1977.

Theme music.

The award-winning jazz instrumental theme was composed by Neal Hefti. The theme was used throughout the movie's sequel, starring Lemmon and Matthau and released 30 years later, and also adapted for the 1970 TV series and used over the opening credits. The song also has seldom-heard lyrics, written by Sammy Cahn.

Release and reception.

"The Odd Couple" garnered both critical acclaim and box-office success; it opened at New York's Radio City Music Hall on May 2, 1968 and ran there for a record-breaking 14 weeks. It grossed over $44.5 million in the United States, making it the third highest-grossing film of 1968. "The Odd Couple" received universal acclaim from critics, earning a rare 100% "Fresh" rating on the review aggregate website Rotten Tomatoes based on 34 reviews, with a weighted average of 8.11/10.  Roger Ebert gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four and praised the "universally good" performances, though he noted times when "the movie's Broadway origins are painfully evident, as when the players in the poker game are grouped around three sides of the table, but the 'downstage' side is always left bare." Renata Adler of "The New York Times" called the film "a very funny, professional adaptation" of the play although "Mr. Lemmon sometimes overacts." Arthur D. Murphy of "Variety" called it an "excellent film," adding, "Teaming of Lemmon and Matthau has provided each with an outstanding comedy partner." Charles Champlin of the "Los Angeles Times" declared, "My not very fearless forecast is that 'The Odd Couple' will cause more people to do more laughing than any film you are likely to see all year."

Awards and honors.

The film is recognized by American Film Institute in these lists:

TV series.

The film spawned a television series spinoff in 1970, also entitled "The Odd Couple" which ran until 1975. As the series ended, a cartoon version called "The Oddball Couple" ran on ABC. Produced by Depatie-Freleng, it features a sloppy dog and a neat cat.

Sequel.

A sequel, "The Odd Couple II", reunited Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their original roles and was released 30 years later, breaking the record for the length of time between an original movie and a sequel featuring the same cast.

The Odd Couple is a 1968 American Technicolor buddy comedy film in Panavision, written by Neil Simon, based on his 1965 play of the same name, produced by Howard W. Koch and directed by Gene Saks, and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau. It is the story of two divorced men – neurotic neat-freak Felix Ungar and fun-loving slob Oscar Madison – who decide to live together, even though their personalities clash.

《单身公寓》("The Odd Couple") 是1968年美国的一部喜剧电影。编剧是尼尔·西蒙。导演是基因·萨克斯。由杰克·莱蒙和华尔特·马修主演。电影取得了很高的票房,票房达到44500000美元。是1968年票房第四高的电影。后来这部电影又被美国广播公司改编为电视剧,共播出了114集。


Origin.

In the early 20th century, bee populations were being decimated by tracheal mites. This condition, later called "acarine" disease, after the acarine parasitic mite that invaded the bees' tracheal tubes and shortened their lives, was killing off thousands of colonies in the British Isles.  In 1916, only 16 surviving colonies were left in the abbey. All of them were either pure Ligurian (Italian) or of Ligurian origin, hybrids between Ligurian and the English black bee "A. m. mellifera". Brother Adam also imported some more Italian queens. From these, he began to develop what would come to be known as the Buckfast bee.

Heritage.

According to Brother Adam's personal notes, 1915 was "The last season colonies of the former native honeybee (the British strain of "A. m. mellifera") existed in this neighbourhood before its final extermination by the Isle of Wight epidemic, in 1916 only bees of or descended from the Italian Ligurian strain of the "A. m. ligustica" had survived. An isolated mating station was established on Dartmoor in June 1925, prior to this date matings were random. In 1919 a queen, later named as B-1, was raised that "embodied all the desirable qualities of the Ligurian and former Native in an ideal combination"; it is from this queen that the Buckfast bees can trace their ancestry back to.  The following is a list of the subspecies (and strains if stated) that were later included in the Buckfast breeding program by Brother Adam, not all were eventually included into the Buckfast breed: "Buckfast" (B1), "A. m. ligustica" (Ligurian strain; all other strains proved susceptible to Acarine, especially those imported from the U.S. and of an all-golden color), "A. m. mellifera" (Gale's French, Brown Provence, Swedish and Finnish strains; the Irish strain proved itself even more susceptible to Acarine than the British strain), "A. m. cypria", "A. m. carnica", "A. m. cecropia", "A. m. meda" (Iraqi and Iranian strains), "A. m. sahariensis", "A. m. anatoliaca" (Turkish and Armenian strains), "A. m. caucasica", "A. m. lamarckii", "A. m. monticola" (Mt. Elgon strain), "A. m. adami" and "A. m. macedonica" (Mt. Athos strain).  In 1971 other bee breeders began to join the Buckfast breeding program and established their own isolated mating stations, as well as using instrumental insemination, today the breeding of pedigree Buckfast bees is regulated by the "Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers" (G.D.E.B.) in over twenty six countries with numerous breeders.

History.

Its developer Brother Adam was inspired by the survival of the Italian ("A. m. ligustica") × dark bee ("A. m. mellifera") crosses whenever the Isle of Wight disease, later identified as Acarine, reached Buckfast Abbey. To be able to control the matings, he started to use an isolated valley in Dartmoor. With no other bees within range, Brother Adam could maintain their genetic integrity and develop desirable traits. Brother Adam investigated various honey bee subspecies and made many long journeys in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, searching for desirable characteristics within local strains, he also had queens imported to include in his breeding program. The book "In Search of the Best Strains of Bee" tells about his travels in search of genetic building blocks.  Every new bee subspecies or strain was first crossed with the existing Buckfast bees. In many cases, the new desired qualities were passed on to the next generation and the new combination was then made stable with further breeding work. Every crossing with a new type of bee took about 10 years before the desired genes were fixed in the breed. Over 70 years, Brother Adam succeeded in developing a vigorous, healthy and fecund honey bee, which was named the Buckfast bee.  The Buckfast bee is popular among beekeepers and is available from bee breeders in Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom, France and other places. The Buckfast bees' qualities are very favourable, sometimes referred to as "the beekeepers bee". They are non-aggressive and highly productive. Brother Adam, in his book, "Beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey", writes that in 1920 they obtained "an average of no less than 192 lbs [87 kg] surplus per colony and individual yields exceeding 3 cwt [= 336 lbs or 152 kg]." In the 1986 BBC-affiliated documentary, "The Monk and the Honey Bee", more than 400 pounds (181 kg) of honey are reported to have been produced by a single Buckfast colony.

Buckfast breeding program.

The qualities and characteristics desired in the Buckfast bee breeding can be divided into three groups: primary, secondary and tertiary.

Primary.

These are the basic qualities of economic importance and form the primary aim in breeding:

Secondary.

These are of great importance as each contributes its respective share to an intensification of the honey gathering ability of the colony:

Tertiary.

These qualities help to reduce to a minimum the time and effort involved in the seasonal care and attention demanded to ensure maximum production results per colony:

Characteristics.

Performance against other bees.

Compared to "A. m. ligustica" (which the Buckfast bee is most closely related to) it is more industrious, more thrifty, less disposed to swarm and more resistant to disease especially Acarine (tracheal mites). Compared to most subspecies of bees the Buckfast bee collects less propolis, keeps restful in winter, but builds up rapidly at the appropriate time in spring time (in England / northern Europe) and maintains a maximum effective colony strength throughout the summer, enabling full advantage of the honey flow to be taken whenever it sets in. As for temper, the Buckfast bee is unusually docile and will tolerate handling in unfavourable weather. A pure Buckfast bee will swarm, but it is little disposed to do so and, of course, it has a good reputation of an unusual honey-gathering ability.  In a scientific study in Poland from 2009 to 2010, in which the economic traits of pure Buckfast bees and a hybrid cross of "A. m. mellifera" and "A. m. caucasia" were compared, the Buckfast bee was shown to have a larger brood area, greater increase and strength in the build-up to spring, also on the last inspection of the year the Buckfast colonies were observed to be stronger as well. The honey extracted during spring and summer was larger from the Buckfast hives, with the overall honey extracted being 34.45% greater, with less variation between hives when compared to the "A. m. mellifera" x "caucasia" (NB: the crossing of two bee subspecies would have resulted in heterosis, meaning the "A. m. mellifera" x "caucasia" would have obtained better results than if the study had only used a pure subspecies, such as the "A. m. mellifera" or the "A. m. caucasia").  In a similar scientific study, also in Poland, but in field and laboratory conditions, the foraging and hoarding abilities of three colonies were compared, 1) pure Buckfast, 2) a hybrid "A. m. mellifera" (from Norway) x "A. m. caucasia" and 3) a hybrid "A. m. caucasia" x "A. m. carnica". The Buckfast colony collected 2.1% less syrup than the "A. m. caucasia" x "carnica", but stored 24.8% more in stores, showing a greater efficiency in processing and less consumption of the syrup collected. The Buckfasts collected and stored 38.2% more syrup than the "A. m. mellifera" x "caucasia".

Hybrid vigor to maximize yield.

Even though the pure Buckfast bee has a claim to an unusual honey-gathering ability, returns can be maximized through hybrid vigor (heterosis) by crossing pure Buckfast, usually on the paternal side, with other subspecies. However, not all crosses will produce desirable qualities according to Brother Adam, often the swarming tendency is increased so much that it affects the honey yield. The following crosses were found to provide excellent results without increasing the swarming instinct: "A. m. anatoliaca" queen x Buckfast drones; Buckfast queen x "A. m. carnica" or "A. m. cecropia" drones; "A. m. cecropia" queen x Buckfast or "A. m. carnica" drones. But the following was found to maximize the swarming instinct: "A. m. mellifera" or "A. m. intermissa" or "A. m. carnica" queens x Buckfast drones.

Varroa resistance of different Buckfast strains.

In a study conducted by Oddie, Dahle and Neumann a Norwegian originally buckfast strain was discovered to be varroa resistant. In Finland (Lundén Apiaries) and Sweden (Österlund Apiaries) there are buckfast strains confirmed to be varroa resistant by other breeders.

Varroa sensitive hygiene.

A breeding project was begun in the Netherlands in 2014 by Stichting Arista Bee Research, with the goal of producing a "Varroa"-resistant bee, by using Single Drone Insemination to enhance the Varroa Sensitive Hygiene (VSH) behavior. By importing semen in 2013 from VSH colonies in the U.S., they were able to work with Buckfast beekeepers from Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, France and the Netherlands and were able to produce colonies that were completely "Varroa"-resistant without the use of any treatments. Although the genetic base of this Buckfast VSH strain is very narrow, as selection has only been limited to this trait and no resources have been available yet to structurally integrate it into the broader population, it has shown that VSH behavior is present in European high quality Buckfast breeding stock and can be brought to high percentages, the next step in the breeding program will be to further select toward 100% VSH in the entire EU breeding stock. In 2018 it was announced that varroa resistant Buckfast bees (daughters of VSH open mated Queens) would be made available for sale in 2019.

The Buckfast bee is a breed of honey bee, a cross of many subspecies and their strains, developed by Brother Adam (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany), who was in charge of beekeeping from 1919 at Buckfast Abbey in Devon in the United Kingdom. Breeding of the Buckfast bee is now done by breeders throughout Europe belonging to the "Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers" (G.D.E.B.). This organisation maintains a pedigree for Buckfast bees, originating from the time of Brother Adam.

巴克法斯特蜂或布克法斯特蜂(Buckfast bee),英格兰布克法斯特修道院的亚当修士(Brother Adam)培育出抗蜜蜂壁虱病(气管螨)的西方蜜蜂品种,是两个受国际承认的蜜蜂人工培育品系之一。另一个为前苏联蜜蜂科学研究所在 20 世纪下半叶培育成高产抗孢子虫病蜜蜂新品种普利奥科斯基蜂(лриокский)。


Plot.

Lloyd Christmas and Harry Dunne, two kindly but dim-witted men, are best friends and roommates living in Providence, Rhode Island. Lloyd, a chip-toothed limousine driver, immediately falls in love when he meets Mary Swanson, a woman he is driving to the airport. She leaves a briefcase in the terminal; Lloyd, unaware that it contains ransom money for her kidnapped husband, Bobby, and that she was supposed to leave it there for the kidnappers to pick up, retrieves it, thinking he was helping Mary, and tries to return it to her before the kidnappers can get it. Her Aspen-bound plane has already departed, leading to Lloyd running through and falling out of the jetway.  Fired from his job, Lloyd returns to his apartment and learns that Harry has also been fired from his dog-grooming job after delivering dogs late to a show and accidentally getting them dirty. Bobby's kidnappers, Joe "Mental" Mentalino and J. P. Shay, follow Lloyd home from the airport in pursuit of the briefcase. Mistaking the crooks for debt collectors, the duo flee the apartment and return later to find that Mental and Shay have ransacked the apartment and decapitated Harry's parakeet. Lloyd suggests they head to Aspen to find Mary and return the briefcase, hoping she can "plug them into the social pipeline." At first, Harry opposes the idea, but he eventually agrees and the duo leaves the next day.  Mental and Shay catch up to the duo at a motel that night. Posing as a hitchhiker, Mental is picked up by Harry and Lloyd while Shay secretly follows them. During a lunch stop, the duo prank Mental with chili peppers in his burger, not knowing of his ulcer. When Mental reacts adversely, they accidentally kill him with rat poison pills (which he planned to use on them) after mistaking it for his medication. Nearing Colorado, Lloyd takes a wrong turn while distracted and ends up driving all night through Nebraska, while the police waiting on the road to Colorado expect them to show up after finding out about Mental's death. Upon waking up and realizing Lloyd's mishap, Harry gives up on the journey and decides to walk home, but Lloyd later persuades him to continue after trading the van for a minibike.  The two arrive in Aspen, but are unable to locate Mary. After a short scuffle over some gloves that night, the briefcase breaks open and they discover the money; they spend it on a hotel suite, clothes and a Lamborghini Diablo. They learn that Mary and her family are hosting a gala and prepare to attend. At the gala, Harry, attempting to lure Mary over to Lloyd, reluctantly agrees to go skiing with her the next day and lies to Lloyd that he got him a date. The next day, Lloyd finds out Harry lied to him after waiting all day for Mary at the hotel bar.  In retaliation, Lloyd pranks Harry by serving him a coffee laced with laxative, causing Harry to spontaneously defecate in a broken toilet at Mary's house. Lloyd arrives at Mary's house and informs her that he has her briefcase. He takes her to the hotel, shows her the briefcase, and confesses his love after some initial struggle; she rejects him, as she is already married. Nicholas Andre, an old friend of the Swansons and the mastermind behind Bobby's kidnapping, arrives with Shay and, upon learning that Harry and Lloyd had spent all of the ransom money and replaced it with IOUs, takes Lloyd and Mary hostage, as well as Harry when he returns. An argument leads Nicholas to shoot Harry. Before Nicholas can kill them, an FBI team led by Beth Jordon (whom Harry met earlier at a gas station) raids the suite and arrests him and Shay and Harry is revealed to be alive thanks to a bulletproof vest that was strapped on him earlier. Mary and Bobby are reunited. Lloyd, jealous that he can never be with Mary because she is married, fantasizes about shooting Bobby dead.  The next day, Harry and Lloyd are seen walking home. All of the items they bought were confiscated and their moped has broken down. The two unknowingly decline the chance to be oil boys for a group of bikini girls, after which Harry tells Lloyd that they will get their "break" one day. Harry and Lloyd then play a friendly game of tag as they walk back home.

Production.

The Farrelly Brothers had been trying for years to get their first movie made. Director Peter Farrelly's agent encouraged him to make a movie himself, alongside his brother Bobby.  The Farrelly Brothers didn't know who Jim Carrey was, they were only told that he was "The White Guy" on "In Living Color". Only after a screening of Carrey's first major acting role, "", did they realize they had struck gold. Based on the box-office success of Ace Ventura, Carrey was able to negotiate a salary of $7 million for this film.  Jeff Daniels was only paid around $50,000. New Line Cinema originally did not want Daniels in the film, as he was known only for his dramatic work at the time. However, the Farrellys and Carrey wanted Daniels for the part. Although New Line agreed to their demands, Daniels was offered the low salary in the hopes it would discourage him from signing on to the film. Daniels ultimately accepted the role, despite his agent reportedly dissuading him out of fears it would kill his career.  Steve Martin and Martin Short both turned down the role of Lloyd. According to Splitsider, Nicolas Cage and Gary Oldman were the original choices for Harry and Lloyd. Chris Elliott and Rob Lowe were both also considered for the role of Harry.  Carrey's chipped tooth is genuine, resulting from a fight with a classmate in his childhood, but he had since had it capped. He simply had the crown temporarily removed from that tooth to portray Lloyd.

Location.

Scenes taking place in Aspen were filmed in Breckenridge, Colorado and Park City, Utah. The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado was transformed into the "Danbury Hotel" for the filming of the movie. The "Danbury Hotel" bar scene and staircase shot were the shots filmed there. The scenes filmed in the snow were shot at Copper Mountain Resort, Colorado.  Some of the external street scenes were filmed in Salt Lake City, and the airport scene was filmed at Salt Lake City International Airport.  Some scenes from the beginning of the film were shot on location in the Providence, Rhode Island, metropolitan area, including shots of the skyline and The Big Blue Bug; scenes from the beginning of their road trip were shot in locations in Cumberland, Rhode Island.  Parts of the film were also shot in Ogden, Utah and American Fork Canyon.

Soundtrack.

The original soundtrack to the film was released by RCA Records on November 22, 1994. The soundtrack album's first single, "New Age Girl" by Deadeye Dick, was a chart hit, reaching number 27 in the US, while the music video for the Crash Test Dummies' version of "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" featured Jeff Daniels reprising his role of Harry.  The soundtrack album has generally seen positive reception from critics. Joe Bishop of "Vice" named the album his favorite movie soundtrack, while the same site's Cameron Matthews described it as "The official soundtrack is a perfect slice of the mid-'90s sound: bubbly pop rock with jangly chords and just enough grit, or aka the thing you can give your kids when they one day ask you what the '90s were like."  Though not present on the soundtrack, the film famously features Carrey and Daniels singing an a capella version of "Mockingbird" to Mike Starr's character. Also missing on the soundtrack is Apache Indian's "Boom Shack-A-Lak," which accompanies the film's opening sequence, as well as several other songs appearing in the film.  Beck had been approached about including his song "Loser" on the soundtrack, but he refused. He recalled the process, "I remember getting a phone call one day. My manager said, 'There's a film. They want to use 'Loser' as the theme song.' There was a long pause, and he said, 'The name of the film is "Dumb And Dumber".' And I just remember: That sums up what the world thinks of me at this point. I tried to have fun with it, tried to not take it too serious. But at the same time, it was a little disheartening sometimes."

Reception.

Critical response.

Rotten Tomatoes, a review aggregator, reports that 67% of 52 surveyed critics gave the film a positive review; the average rating is 5.9/10. The site's consensus reads: "A relentlessly stupid comedy elevated by its main actors: Jim Carrey goes bonkers and Jeff Daniels carries himself admirably in an against-type performance." On Metacritic, which assigns a rating out of 100 to reviews from film critics, it has a score of 41 based on reviews from 14 critics, which indicates "mixed or average reviews".  Roger Ebert gave the film two of four stars for the hit or miss comedic elements, but praised the performances of Carrey and Daniels, dubbing the former a "true original", and writing that the dead parakeet joke "made me laugh so loudly I embarrassed myself. I just couldn't stop." Stephen Holden of "The New York Times" called Carrey "the new Jerry Lewis", and Peter Stack of the "San Francisco Chronicle" called it "riotous", "rib-splitting", and gave the film praise for being both a crude and slapstick comedy and a "smart comedy" at the same time. Carrey was nominated for a Razzie Award for "Worst New Star".  It has since become a cult film.

Awards.

Although the film did not secure any major American film awards, it was successful at the 1995 MTV Movie Awards. Carrey won for Best Comic Performance, Carrey and Holly (a couple who would later endure a short-lived marriage) won for Best Kiss, and Carrey and Daniels were nominated for Best On-Screen Duo.  In 2000, readers of "Total Film" magazine voted "Dumb and Dumber" the fifth greatest comedy film of all time. The film ranks 445th on "Empire Magazine"s 2008 list of the 500 greatest movies of all time.

Box office.

The film opened at No. 1 in its opening weekend earning $16.4 million. It went on to gross $127,175,374 in the United States, and $247,275,374 worldwide, and topping the holiday season film gross.

Legacy.

Animated series.

In 1995, a Hanna-Barbera-produced animated series aired on ABC, as part of its Saturday morning cartoon lineup; Matt Frewer provided the voice of Lloyd, while Bill Fagerbakke voiced Harry. In the cartoon, Harry and Lloyd have reacquired their van, now named "Otto". The cartoon also features a new character, Kitty, a female pet purple beaver who appears to be smarter than both men. The animated series was written by Bennett Yellin, co-writer of the film. The show was short-lived and was shelved after one season.

Prequel.

In 2003, a prequel was theatrically released, entitled "". The film featured a cast and crew different from the previous film, and the Farrelly brothers had no involvement in the film's production. It was panned by critics, receiving a 10% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It grossed approximately $39.2 million worldwide against a $19 million budget, as opposed to the original film's far greater $247 million worldwide gross against a $17 million budget.

Sequel.

In October 2011, the Farrelly brothers confirmed that they would make a sequel to "Dumb and Dumber". The sequel, titled "Dumb and Dumber To", was shot in the fall of 2013. Carrey and Daniels returned to lead the film, and Bobby and Peter Farrelly returned to direct along with original screenwriter Bennett Yellin, and actors reprising their roles from the first film include Brady Bluhm, who played Billy in (Apartment) 4C, and Cam Neely, who played Sea Bass. "Dumb and Dumber To" was released on November 14, 2014. Compared to the original film, "Dumb and Dumber To" was met with generally negative reviews from critics, although it did well commercially.  Unlike the original film, "Dumb and Dumber To" was not released by Warner Bros. Pictures, but rather by Universal Pictures. Despite Warner Bros. having no involvement in the film, its New Line Cinema division, which produced the first film and the prequel, was still given studio credit from Universal.

Dumb and Dumber is a 1994 American screwball comedy film directed by Peter Farrelly, who co-wrote the screenplay with Bobby Farrelly and Bennett Yellin. Starring Jim Carrey and Jeff Daniels, it tells the story of Lloyd Christmas (Carrey) and Harry Dunne (Daniels), two dumb but well-meaning friends from Providence, Rhode Island, who set out on a cross-country trip to Aspen, Colorado, to return a briefcase full of money to its owner, thinking it was abandoned as a mistake but was actually left as ransom money. Lauren Holly, Karen Duffy, Mike Starr, Charles Rocket, and Teri Garr play supporting roles.

《阿呆与阿瓜》(英语:"Dumb and Dumber")是一部1994年上映的喜剧电影,由法拉利兄弟执导。电影讲述罗伊(金·凯瑞)和哈利(杰夫·丹尼尔斯)两个傻瓜的故事。二人都因鲁莽而失去工作。一次罗伊送梦中情人玛丽去机场,结果发现玛丽的皮箱被她落下了。于是,二人决定驾车去玛丽的目的地。原来,皮箱装着玛丽给绑匪的赎金,不过,二人吉人天相,最终躲过了灾难。这是一部纯粹以荒唐可笑取胜的电影,一切都是为了达到引人发笑的目的。两个男主角都是成年人、但是是幼童的智商,而且在女孩子面前都十分羞涩。影片就是如此让观众重回童年时代的思维。