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Mantua

Mantua (Mantova ; Lombard and Mantua) is a comune (municipality) in the Italian region of Lombardy, and capital of the province of the same name.

In 2016, Mantua was designated as the Italian Capital of Culture. In 2017, it was named as the European Capital of Gastronomy, included in the Eastern Lombardy District (together with the cities of Bergamo, Brescia, and Cremona).

In 2008, Mantua's centro storico (old town) and Sabbioneta were declared by UNESCO to be a World Heritage Site. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family has made it one of the main artistic, cultural, and especially musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole. Having one of the most splendid courts of Europe of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and early seventeenth centuries. Mantua is noted for its significant role in the history of opera; the city is also known for its architectural treasures and artifacts, elegant palaces, and the medieval and Renaissance cityscape. It is the city where the composer Monteverdi premiered his opera L'Orfeo and to where Romeo was banished in Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet. It is the nearest town to the birthplace of the Roman poet Virgil, who is commemorated by a statue at the lakeside park "Piazza Virgiliana".

Mantua is surrounded on three sides by artificial lakes, created during the 12th century as the city's defence system. These lakes receive water from the River Mincio, a tributary of the River Po, which descends from Lake Garda. The three lakes are called Lago Superiore, Lago di Mezzo, and Lago Inferiore ("Upper", "Middle", and "Lower" Lakes, respectively). A fourth lake, Lake Pajolo, which once served as a defensive water ring around the city, dried up at the end of the 18th century.

The area and its environs are important not only in naturalistic terms, but also anthropologically and historically; research has highlighted a number of human settlements scattered between Barche di Solferino and Bande di Cavriana, Castellaro and Isolone del Mincio. These dated, without interruption, from Neolithic times (5th–4th millennium BC) to the Bronze Age (2nd–1st millennium BC) and the Gallic phases (2nd–1st centuries BC), and ended with Roman residential settlements, which could be traced to the 3rd century AD.

In 2017, Legambiente ranked Mantua as the best Italian city for the quality of the life and environment.

History
Mantua was an island settlement which was first established about the year 2000 BC on the banks of River Mincio, which flows from Lake Garda to the Adriatic Sea. In the 6th century BC, Mantua was an Etruscan village which, in the Etruscan tradition, was re-founded by Ocnus.

The name may derive from the Etruscan god Mantus. After being conquered by the Cenomani, a Gallic tribe, Mantua was subsequently fought between the first and second Punic wars against the Romans, who attributed its name to Manto, a daughter of Tiresias. This territory was later populated by veteran soldiers of Augustus. Mantua's most famous ancient citizen is the poet Virgil, or Publius Vergilius Maro (Mantua me genuit), who was born in the year 70 BC at a village near the city which is now known as Virgilio.

After the Fall of the Roman Empire
After the fall of the Western Roman Empire at the hands of Odoacer in 476 AD, Mantua was, along with the rest of Italy, conquered by the Ostrogoths. It was retaken by the Eastern Roman Empire in the middle of the 6th century following the Gothic war but was subsequently lost again to the Lombards. They were in turn conquered by Charlemagne in 774, thus incorporating Mantua into the Frankish Empire. Partitions of the empire (due to the Franks' use of partible inheritance) in the Treaties of Verdun and Prüm led to Mantua passing to Middle Francia in 843, then the Kingdom of Italy in 855. In 962 Italy was invaded by King Otto I of Germany, and Mantua thus became a vassal of the newly formed Holy Roman Empire.

In the 11th century, Mantua became a possession of Boniface of Canossa, marquis of Tuscany. The last ruler of that family was the countess Matilda of Canossa (d. 1115), who, according to legend, ordered the construction of the precious Rotonda di San Lorenzo (or St. Lawrence's Roundchurch) in 1082. The Rotonda still exists today and was renovated in 2013.

Free Imperial City of Mantua
After the death of Matilda of Canossa, Mantua became a free commune and strenuously defended itself from the influence of the Holy Roman Empire during the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1198, Alberto Pitentino altered the course of River Mincio, creating what the Mantuans call "the four lakes" to reinforce the city's natural protection. Three of these lakes still remain today and the fourth one, which ran through the centre of town, was reclaimed during the 18th century.

Podesteria Rule
From 1215, the city was ruled under the podesteria of the Guelph poet-statesman Rambertino Buvalelli.

During the struggle between the Guelphs and the Ghibellines, Pinamonte Bonacolsi took advantage of the chaotic situation to seize power of the podesteria in 1273. He was declared the Captain General of the People. The Bonacolsi family ruled Mantua for the next two generations and made it more prosperous and artistically beautiful. On 16 August 1328 Luigi Gonzaga, an official in Bonacolsi's podesteria, and his family staged a public revolt in Mantua and forced a coup d'état on the last Bonacolsi ruler, Rinaldo.

House of Gonzaga
Ludovico Gonzaga, who had been Podestà of Mantua since 1318, was duly elected Capitano del popolo. The Gonzagas built new walls with five gates and renovated the city in the 14th century; however, the political situation did not settle until the third ruler of Gonzaga, Ludovico III Gonzaga, who eliminated his relatives and centralised power to himself. During the Italian Renaissance, the Gonzaga family softened their despotic rule and further raised the level of culture and refinement in Mantua. Mantua became a significant center of Renaissance art and humanism. Marquis Gianfrancesco Gonzaga had brought Vittorino da Feltre to Mantua in 1423 to open his famous humanist school, the Casa Giocosa.

Isabella d'Este, Marchioness of Mantua, married Francesco II Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua in 1490. When she moved to Mantua from Ferrara (she was the daughter of Duke Ercole the ruler of Ferrara) she created her famous studiolo firstly in Castello di San Giorgio for which she commissioned paintings from Mantegna, Perugino and Lorenzo Costa. She later moved her studiolo to the Corte Vecchia and commissioned two paintings from Correggio to join the five from Castello di San Giorgio. It was unusual for a woman to have a studiolo in 15th century Italy given they were regarded as masculine spaces. Isabella was a vociferous collector and such was her reputation that Niccolò da Corregio called her 'la prima donna del mondo'.

Through a payment of 120,000 golden florins in 1433, Gianfrancesco I was appointed Marquis of Mantua by the Emperor Sigismund, whose niece Barbara of Brandenburg married his son, Ludovico. In 1459, Pope Pius II held the Council of Mantua to proclaim a crusade against the Turks. Under Ludovico and his heirs, the famous Renaissance painter Andrea Mantegna worked in Mantua as court painter, producing some of his most outstanding works.

Duchy of Mantua
The first Duke of Mantua was Federico II Gonzaga, who acquired the title from the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1530. Federico commissioned Giulio Romano to build the famous Palazzo Te, on the periphery of the city, and profoundly improved the city. In the late 16th century, Claudio Monteverdi came to Mantua from his native Cremona. He worked for the court of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, first as a singer and violist, then as music director, marrying the court singer Claudia Cattaneo in 1599.

From Gonzaga to Habsburg
In 1627, the direct line of the Gonzaga family came to an end with the vicious and weak Vincenzo II, and Mantua slowly declined under the new rulers, the Gonzaga-Nevers, a cadet French branch of the family. The War of the Mantuan Succession broke out, and in 1630 an Imperial army of 36,000 mercenaries under Matthias Gallas and Johann von Aldringen besieged and sacked Mantua, bringing the plague with them. Ferdinand Carlo IV, an inept ruler, whose only interest was in holding parties and theatrical shows, allied with France in the War of the Spanish Succession. After the French defeat, he took refuge in Venice and carried with him a thousand pictures. At his death in 1708, the Duke of Mantua was declared deposed and his family of Gonzaga lost Mantua forever in favour of the Habsburgs of Austria.

Under Austrian rule, Mantua enjoyed a revival and during this period the Royal Academy of Sciences, Letters and Arts, the Scientific Theatre, and numerous palaces were built.

Napoleonic Wars
In 1786, ten years before Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign of Europe, the Austrian Duchy of Mantua briefly united with the Duchy of Milan until 1791.

On 4 June 1796 during the War of the First Coalition, Mantua was besieged by Napoleon Bonaparte's French army. The first Austrian attempt to break the siege was successful and the siege was abandoned on 1 August. The Austrian army was defeated at the Battle of Castiglione on 5 August and left the area. The French resumed the siege on August 27 and accepted surrender of the city on 2 February 1797. The city was recaptured by the Austrians in the War of the Second Coalition after a siege lasting from 8 April to 28 July 1799.

Later, the city again passed into Napoleon's control and became a part of Napoleon's Kingdom of Italy. In 1810 Andreas Hofer was shot by Porta Giulia, a gate of the town at Borgo di Porto (Cittadella) for leading the insurrection in the County of Tyrol against Napoleon.

Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia
After the brief period of French rule, Mantua returned to Austria in 1814, becoming one of the Quadrilatero fortress cities in northern Italy. Under the Congress of Vienna (1815), Mantua became a province in the Austrian Empire's Kingdom of Lombardy–Venetia. Agitation against Austria, however, culminated in a revolt which lasted from 1851 to 1855, but it was finally suppressed by the Austrian army. One of the most famous episodes of the Italian Risorgimento took place in the valley of the Belfiore, where a group of rebels was hanged by the Austrians.

Unification of Italy
At the Battle of Solferino (Second Italian War of Independence) in 1859, the House of Savoy's Piedmont-Sardinia sided with the French Emperor Napoleon III against the Austrian Empire. Following Austria's defeat, Lombardy was ceded to France, who transferred Lombardy to Piedmont-Sardinia in return for Nice and Savoy.

Mantua, although a constituent province of Lombardy, still remained under the Austrian Empire along with Venetia. In 1866, Prussia-led North German Confederation sided with the newly established, Piedmont-led Kingdom of Italy against the Austrian Empire in the Third Italian War of Independence. The quick defeat of Austria led to its withdrawal of the Kingdom of Venetia (including the capital city, Venice). Mantua reconnected with the region of Lombardy and was incorporated into the Kingdom of Italy.

Monuments and sites of interest

The Gonzagas protected the arts and culture, and were hosts to several important artists such as Leone Battista Alberti, Andrea Mantegna, Giulio Romano, Donatello, Peter Paul Rubens, Pisanello, Domenico Fetti, Luca Fancelli and Nicolò Sebregondi. Though many of the masterworks have been dispersed, the cultural value of Mantua is nonetheless outstanding, with many of Mantua's patrician and ecclesiastical buildings being uniquely important examples of Italian architecture.

Religious architecture and sites

 * Basilica of Sant'Andrea was begun in 1462 according to designs by Leon Battista Alberti but was finished only in the 18th century when was built the massive dome designed by Filippo Juvarra.
 * Duomo (Cathedral of St Peter the Apostle)
 * Rotonda di San Lorenzo
 * Church of San Sebastiano
 * Museo diocesano Francesco Gonzaga, art museum displaying sacred artworks, armor, coins, tapestries, pottery, ancient and contemporary paintings.
 * Santa Paola, church built in the early 15th century by the will of Marchioness Paola Malatesta, wife of Francesco I. Architects such as Luca Fancelli and Giulio Romano collaborated to its construction. It houses the tombs of five members of the Gonzaga family, including those of Paola and of Francesco II.
 * Santa Maria del Gradaro, church built starting from 1256 on the site where, according to the tradition, Saint Longinus was buried. In 1772 it became a store, and was reconsecrated only in the 1950s.

Secular architecture and sites

 * Palazzo Te (1525–1535), semi-rural palace of Giulio Romano (who lived in Mantua in his final years) in the mature Renaissance style, with some hints of a post-Raphaelian mannerism. It was the summer residential villa of Frederick II of Gonzaga. It hosts the Museo Civico (with the donations of Arnoldo Mondadori, one of the most important Italian publishers, and Ugo Sissa, a Mantuan architect who worked in Iraq from where he brought back important Mesopotamian artworks).
 * Palazzo Ducale, famous residence of the Gonzaga family, made up of a number of buildings, courtyards and gardens gathered around the Palazzo del Capitano, the Magna Domus and the Castle of St. George with the Camera degli Sposi, a room frescoed by Andrea Mantegna.
 * Palazzo Vescovile ("Bishops Palace")
 * Palazzo degli Uberti
 * Palazzo d'Arco, a Neoclassical palace erected by the eponymous noble family from Trento starting from 1746. It is home to a museum and painting gallery with works by Bernardino Luini, Alessandro Magnasco, Frans Pourbus the Younger, Anthony van Dyck and a painting cycle by Giuseppe Bazzani.
 * Torre della Gabbia ("Cage Tower")
 * Palazzo del Podestà, Mantua
 * Palazzo della Ragione with the Torre dell'Orologio
 * Palazzo Bonacolsi
 * Palazzo Valenti Gonzaga, an example of Baroque architecture and decoration, with frescoes attributed to Flemish painter Frans Geffels. The façade of the palace was designed by Nicolò Sebregondi.
 * Bibiena Theater, also known as the Teatro Scientifico, designed by Antonio Bibiena in 1767–1769. Inaugurated officially on 3 December 1769 and on 16 January 1770, thirteen-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart played a concert.
 * Casa del Mercato, a frescoed Renaissance building designed by Luca Fancelli in 1462 and later used by Andrea Mantegna.
 * House of Mantegna, facing the church of San Sebastiano. It was built by the eponymous artist starting from 1476, and has plan with a circular internal court included within an external square building. It is now used for temporary exhibitions.

Car
By car, Mantova can be reached on the A4 (Milan-Venice) Highway up to Verona, then the A22 (Brennero-Modena) Highway. Alternatively, the city can be reached from Milan on the State Road 415 (Milan-Cremona) to Cremona and from there State Road 10 (Cremona-Mantova), or from Verona on the State Road 62.

Railway
Mantova railway station, opened in 1873, lies on the train routes of Milan-Codogno-Cremona-Mantua and Verona-Mantua-Modena. The station is a terminus for three regional lines, to Cremona and Milan, to Monselice, and to Verona Porta Nuova and Modena. Trenitalia operates a daily high-speed connection with Rome.

Air
The closest airport is Verona-Villafranca Airport. The direct shuttle bus service running to and from Mantova railway station was canceled on 1 January 2015. Public connection is now provided by the airport bus running to and from Verona Porta Nuova railway station, and the Verona-Mantova railway line.

Bus
Local bus services, urbano (within the city area and suburbs) and interurbano (within the surrounding towns and villages) are provided by APAM.

Miscellaneous

 * An annual survey of Legambiente (an ecologist movement of Italy) in 2005 declared Mantua the most 'liveable' city of the country. The study was based on levels of pollution, quality of life, traffic, and public transport, among other criteria.
 * The body of Saint Longinus, twice recovered and lost, was asserted to have been found once more at Mantua in 1304, together with the Holy Sponge stained with Christ's blood.
 * The composer Claudio Monteverdi was employed by Vincenzo Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, ruler of the Duchy of Mantua, when he wrote the Vespro della Beata Vergine, published in 1610. Vincenzo's son and successor in 1612, Francesco IV Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, summarily sacked Monteverdi, who went on to a more prestigious position at the Basilica of San Marco, Venice.
 * Since 1997 Mantua has hosted the Festivaletteratura, one of the most renowned literary events in Europe.
 * In 2007 the remains of two people, known as the Lovers of Valdaro, were discovered during the construction of a factory. The remains are thought to be between 5000 and 6000 years old. It is speculated that the remains are of two young lovers because the two skeletons appear to be embracing.
 * In May 2012, a deadly earthquake struck Northern Italy, causing damage to some historic buildings in Mantua, including the Palazzo Ducale. After months of repair, the Palazzo reopened its doors in September 2012.
 * The composer Antonio Vivaldi was employed by the Governor of Mantua in the period 1718–1720. Mantua inspired him to write the Four Seasons and has been a city of note in Italy to enjoy the seasonal variations since.

Government
Since local government political reorganization in 1993, Mantua has been governed by the City Council of Mantua. Voters elect directly 33 councilors and the Mayor of Mantua every five years. The current Mayor of Mantua is Mattia Palazzi (PD), elected on 15 June 2015.

Twin towns — sister cities
Mantua is twinned with:

 * 🇫🇷 Charleville-Mézières, France, since 1959
 * 🇫🇷 Nevers, France, since 1959
 * 🇷🇺 Pushkin, Russia, since 1993
 * 🇩🇪 Weingarten, Germany, since 1998
 * 🇺🇸 Madison, U.S., since 2001
 * 🇯🇵 Ōmihachiman, Japan, since 2005
 * 🇷🇴 Oradea, Romania, since 2005

People

 * Andrea Andreani (1540–1623), engraver on wood. He used chiaroscuro.
 * Marcus Antonius Antimachus (c. 1473 – 1552), pioneer of Renaissance Greek language teaching
 * Giovanni Battista Bertani (1516–1576), architect
 * Giacomo Benefatti (1304–1332), Roman Catholic Bishop
 * Constanzo Beschi (1680–1742), a well known Tamil poet. He is known as Vīramāmunivar in Tamil.
 * Saverio Bettinelli (1718–1808), Jesuit writer, polymath, dramatist, polemicist, poet, and literary critic
 * Baldassare Castiglione (1478–1529), count of Casatico, courtier, diplomat, soldier and author
 * Gino Fano (1871–1952), mathematician
 * Matteo Cressoni (born 1984), racing driver
 * Federigo Giambelli (16th & 17th C.), military and civil engineer. He worked in Spain.
 * St. Aloysius Gonzaga (1568–1591), aristocrat and Jesuit
 * Pietro Giovanni Guarneri (1655–1720), violin maker of the Guarneri family. He left Cremona in 1679, eventually establishing himself in Mantua.
 * Learco Guerra (1902–1963), professional road racing cyclist. In 1931 he won the world cycling championship.
 * Alfredo Guzzoni (1877–1965), Italian Army General in World War II
 * Alberto Jori (born 1965), neo-aristotelian philosopher
 * Lovers of Valdaro, a pair of human skeletons dated approx 6,000 years old
 * Claudio Monteverdi (c. 1567 – 1643), composer and violist to the duke of Mantua
 * Tazio Nuvolari (1892–1953), motorcycle and racecar driver
 * Ippolito Nievo (1831–1861), writer, journalist and patriot
 * Elisabetta Picenardi (1428–1468), Italian Roman Catholic, Servite Order professed member
 * Dave Rodgers (born 1963), musician and singer
 * Jean-Louis Preti (Jean-Louis Preti), musician and chess writer
 * Pietro Pomponazzi (1462–1525), Italian philosopher. He is sometimes known by his Latin name, Petrus Pomponatius.
 * Samuel Romanelli (1757–1814), Jewish intellectual and travel writer who published the first modern ethnography of Moroccan Jewry
 * Salamone Rossi (c. 1570 – 1630), Jewish violinist and composer who served as concertmaster of the Mantua court from 1587 until 1628
 * Giuseppe Sarto (1835–1914), appointed Bishop in 1884, before he became Pope Pius X in 1903
 * Stefano Scarampella (1843–1925), violin maker. He left Brescia and moved to Mantua in 1886.
 * Ada Sacchi Simonetta (1874–1944), librarian and women's rights activist
 * Leone de' Sommi (c. 1525 – c. 1590), theater director and writer
 * Sordello or Sordel, a 13th-century Lombard troubadour, born in the municipality of Goito in the province of Mantua
 * Franca Sozzani (1950–2016), editor-in-chief at Vogue Italia
 * Virgil (70 BCE – 19 BCE), a classical Roman poet, born near Mantua

In fiction

 * In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Romeo is punished for killing Tybalt: he is exiled from Verona to Mantua. The plan was for both Romeo and Juliet to escape Verona after Juliet woke up from her fake death, but that never happened, because Romeo died, and she stabbed herself to death.
 * In William Shakespeare's play The Taming of the Shrew, the schoolmaster who pretends to be Lucentio's father, Vincentio, is from Mantua. Hortensio is presented as "Licio, born in Mantua". Another character simply named "Pedant" states that he is from Mantua.
 * Giuseppe Verdi's opera Rigoletto (based on Victor Hugo's play Le roi s'amuse) is set in Mantua. Austro-Hungarian authorities in Venice forced him to move the action from France to Mantua. A medieval building with portico and 15th-century loggia in Mantua is said to be "Rigoletto's house". It was actually the house of the cathedral regulars. It was chosen by the Gonzaga family as the residence of the legendary fool who was then used by Verdi in his opera.

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Town drunk

The town drunk (also called a tavern fool) is a stock character in Anglo-Saxon culture, almost always male, who is drunk more often than exhibiting sobriety.

The town drunk is frequently depicted in a humorous light, often portrayed as a harmless and lovable character whose social failings stem from their excessive consumption of alcohol. However, some portrayals can be more nuanced, exploring the social and personal costs associated with alcoholism.

Uses in fiction
In fiction, the town drunk character serves a number of functions.

The town drunk may serve merely as a moral example and object lesson on the evils of drunkenness. This approach to the character is associated with the temperance movement, and peaked at the start of the twentieth century. The Prohibition film Ten Nights in a Barroom portrays the inevitable fall into destitute drunkenness of a person who dared to take that "Fatal Glass of Beer", the title of another period drama working this vein. A town drunk appears in Our Town by Thornton Wilder. Pap Finn in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn is another example. In modern fiction, which tends to reflect the contemporary influences of the sobriety movement, the town drunk may get sober and set about revitalizing his life.

The town drunk may play the role of the fool as a source of comic relief. "Otis" from The Andy Griffith Show is this type of town drunk, as is the character of Bobby Singer in The CW series Supernatural, as well as many of the denizens of Moe's Tavern from The Simpsons such as Barney Gumble. In 1971's The Andromeda Strain the only adult survivor is a Town Drunk. In Shakespeare's Macbeth, the Porter who appears in Act II, Scene 3, is also a type of "comic relief" drunk who serves to temporarily lighten the mood of the play right after a heinous regicide has taken place.

The town drunk may disrupt public meetings, either for comic effect, or by dispensing what proves to be wisdom in a garbled and comic form. Or, in this incarnation, the character may introduce the hero to some of the worldlier sorts of wisdom, as well as forming a contrast to his truly heroic character. One prototype for this version of the town drunk is supplied by Shakespeare's Falstaff, who appears in both parts of Henry IV and in The Merry Wives of Windsor. Another would be the drunk who appears in Team America: World Police at the low point of the film, where his drunken ramblings inspire the hero to save the world. In the 1722 Danish play Jeppe on the Hill, the eponymous wise fool main character, declares that "everybody says that Jeppe drinks, but nobody asks why Jeppe drinks"

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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Pizzicato

Pizzicato (, ; translated as 'pinched', and sometimes roughly as 'plucked') is a playing technique that involves plucking the strings of a string instrument. The exact technique varies somewhat depending on the type of instrument:

 * On bowed string instruments it is a method of playing by plucking the strings with the fingers, rather than using the bow. This produces a very different sound from bowing, short and percussive rather than sustained.
 * On keyboard string instruments, such as the piano, pizzicato may be employed (although rarely seen in traditional repertoire, this technique has been normalized in contemporary music, with ample examples by George Crumb, Toru Takemitsu, Helmut Lachenmann, and others) as one of the variety of techniques involving direct manipulation of the strings known collectively as "string piano".
 * On the guitar, it is a muted form of plucking, which bears an audible resemblance to pizzicato on a bowed string instrument with its relatively shorter sustain. It is also known (especially in non-classical guitar) as palm muting.

When a string is struck or plucked, including pizzicato, sound waves are generated that do not belong to a harmonic series as when a string is bowed. This complex timbre is called inharmonicity. The inharmonicity of a string depends on its physical characteristics, such as tension, composition, diameter and length. The inharmonicity disappears when strings are bowed because the bow's stick-slip action is periodic, so it drives all of the resonances of the string at exactly harmonic ratios, even if it has to drive them slightly off their natural frequency.

History
The first recognised use of pizzicato in classical music is found in Tobias Hume's Captain Humes Poeticall Musicke (1607), wherein he instructs the viola da gamba player to use pizzicato ('thumpe'). Another early use is found in Claudio Monteverdi's Il combattimento di Tancredi e Clorinda (around 1638), in which the players are instructed to use two fingers of their right hand to pluck the strings. Later, in 1756, Leopold Mozart in his Versuch einer gründlichen Violinschule instructs the player to use the index finger of the right hand. This has remained the most usual way to execute a pizzicato, though sometimes the middle finger is used. The bow is held in the hand at the same time unless there is enough time to put it down and pick it up again between bowed passages.

Uses in various styles of music
In jazz and bluegrass, and the few popular music styles which use double bass (such as French modern chanson, American psychobilly and rockabilly), pizzicato is the usual way to play the double bass. This is unusual for a violin-family instrument, because regardless whether violin-family instruments are being used in jazz (e.g., jazz violin), popular, traditional (e.g., Bluegrass fiddle) or Classical music, they are usually played with the bow for most of a performance. In classical double bass playing, pizzicato is often performed with the bow held in the hand; as such, the string is usually only plucked with a single finger. In contrast, in jazz, bluegrass, and other non-Classical styles, the player is not usually holding a bow and is therefore free to use two or three fingers to pluck the string.

In classical music, however, string instruments are most usually played with the bow, and composers give specific indications to play pizzicato where required. Pieces in classical music that are played entirely pizzicato include:
 * J. S. Bach: the ninth movement of the Magnificat (1723–1733)
 * Johann Strauss II and Josef Strauss: Pizzicato Polka (1869)
 * Edvard Grieg: Act IV – Anitra's Dance in Peer Gynt (1874)
 * Léo Delibes: the "Divertissement: Pizzicati" from Act 3 of the ballet Sylvia (1876)
 * Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: the third movement of the 4th symphony (1877–78)
 * Johann Strauss II: Neue Pizzicato Polka (1892)
 * Helmer Alexandersson: the third movement of his second symphony (1919)
 * Béla Bartók: the fourth movement of the String Quartet No. 4 (1928)
 * Benjamin Britten: the second movement of the Simple Symphony (1934)
 * Leroy Anderson: Jazz Pizzicato (1938) and Plink, Plank, Plunk! (1951)

Antonio Vivaldi, in the "Ah Ch'Infelice Sempre" section of his cantata Cessate, omai cessate, combined both pizzicato and bowed instruments to create a unique sound. He also included pizzicato in the second movement of "Winter" from The Four Seasons.

Notation
In music notation, a composer will normally indicate the performer should use pizzicato with the abbreviation pizz. A return to bowing is indicated by the Italian term arco or bog. A left hand pizzicato is usually indicated by writing a small cross above the note, and a Bartók pizzicato is often indicated by a circle with a small vertical line through the top of it above the note in question or by writing Bartók pizz at the start of the relevant passage.

In classical music, arco playing is the default assumption; thus, if a music notation part starts and no indication is given as to whether the notes are arco or pizz, the player assumes that the notes are bowed.

Practical implications
If a string player has to play pizzicato for a long period of time, the performer may put down the bow. Violinists and violists may also hold the instrument in the "banjo position" (resting horizontally on the lap), and pluck the strings with the thumb of the right hand. This technique is rarely used, and usually only in movements which are pizzicato throughout. A technique similar to this, where the strings are actually strummed like a guitar, is called for in the 4th movement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Capriccio Espagnol (Scena e canto gitano), where the violins, violas, and cellos are instructed to play pizzicato "quasi guitara", the music here consists of three and four-note chords, which are fingered and strummed much like the instrument being imitated.

Other pizzicato techniques
Another colorful pizzicato technique used in the Rimsky-Korsakov piece mentioned above is two-handed pizzicato, indicated by the markings m.s. and m.d. (for mano sinistra, 'left hand', and mano destra, 'right hand'); here, the open E string is plucked alternately in rapid succession by the left and right hands.

One can also use the left hand fingers for pizzicato, either when they are not in use or as they are leaving their previous position. This allows pizzicati in places where there would not normally be time to bring the right hand from or to the bowing position. Use of left-hand pizzicato is relatively uncommon and is most often found in the violin solo repertoire; two famous examples of left-hand pizzicato are Paganini's 24th Caprice and Sarasate's Zigeunerweisen. Left hand pizzicato can also be used while bowed notes are being held, an effect appearing primarily in repertoire of the late 19th century and beyond. Examples of this technique can be found in the works of Wieniawski, Berg (Violin Concerto), Stravinsky (Three Pieces for String Quartet) and many others.

Maurice Delage calls for slurred pizzicati in the cello part of his Quatre poèmes hindous for soprano and chamber orchestra. This is achieved by playing one note, and then stopping a new note on the same string without plucking the string again. This technique (known as "hammering-on" on guitar) is rarely used on bowed instruments.

A further variation is a particularly strong pizzicato where the string is plucked vertically by snapping and rebounds off the fingerboard of the instrument. This is known as snap pizzicato or Bartók pizzicato, after one of the first composers to use it extensively (e.g. in the 4th movement of his Fourth String Quartet, 1928). Gustav Mahler famously employs this kind of pizzicato in the third movement of his Seventh Symphony, in which he provides the cellos and double basses with the footnote "pluck so hard that the strings hit the wood" in bar 401.

On the double bass, this style of snap pizzicato, or "slapping", was used in jazz since the 1920s and later used in rockabilly. Because an unamplified double bass is generally the quietest instrument in a jazz band, many players of the 1920s and 1930s used the slap style, slapping and pulling the strings so that they make a rhythmic "slap" sound against the fingerboard. The slap style cuts through the sound of a band better than simply plucking the strings, and allowed the bass to be more easily heard on early sound recordings, as the recording equipment of that time did not favor low frequencies.

Bartók also made use of pizzicato glissandi, executed by plucking a note and then sliding the stopping finger up or down the string. This technique can be heard in his Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta.

Roman Kim made pizzicatos using his mouth.

title: Pizzicato


text:
Talk:Linda Lovelace

Unclear Pronoun Antecedent
From the first section: "At age 20, she gave birth to her first child, which her mother gave up for adoption."

It is unclear who gave the child up for adoption: was Linda the "mother", or was Linda's mother the "mother"?

This is sloppy writing for a significant detail, but I don't have the time to check with primary sources. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Johnny Mnemonic (talk • contribs) 21:02, 6 January 2015 (UTC)

Activist
Since she had said she was forced to become a pornographic actress, I say we shouldn't define her as one in the first paragraph. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.253.248.27 (talk) 02:39, 6 February 2011 (UTC)

 * Many people are best-known for things done against their will. Deeds can be verified, motives can't. NeoAdamite (talk) 18:29, 21 June 2011 (UTC)

The Other Hollywood
This article keeps quoting this book, but not once does it give page numbers. The tag should not be removed until this major reference issue is addressed. --Tenebrae (talk) 20:58, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

I Made Linda Lovelace Gag
Theres no mention of the david allan coe song "I Made Linda Lovelace Gag". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.187.161.74 (talk) 03:38, 27 February 2011 (UTC)
 * This is an Encyclopedia, not a trivia list.NeoAdamite (talk) 15:01, 6 July 2011 (UTC)
 * This whole article is trivia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.129.224.141 (talk) 01:18, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Why is the reference to Lovelace by DAC removed while the reference to her by Marc with a C is kept ? Oliems (talk) 20:58, 18 December 2016 (UTC)

Cleanup needed, again
Someone has added a large block of information about David Winters, with whom she either had an affair or a marriage (I can't tell which). It says that Winters helped her leave porn, but other than that I don't see anything notable here. Opinions? — Preceding unsigned comment added by NeoAdamite (talk • contribs) 23:06, 6 July 2011 (UTC)

Non-marriage to Traynor
In her 1980 book Odeal, Lovelace states that when she tried to have her marriage to Traynor annulled, no official trace could be found of it ever having taken place. Lovelace thought that the ceremony, apparently conducted by a judge, had been faked. Unless there is more recent evidence to the contrary, I am thinking that this should be mentioned in the article somewhere. HairyWombat 05:07, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Born in the Bronx or in Yonkers?
Right now she was born in the Bronx in the text and in Yonkers in the infobox. One of those is wrong. Calle Widmann (talk) 21:54, 8 February 2014 (UTC)

she never said anything bad about porn
If you read "Ordeal" carefully, you notice that she never says anything bad about pornography, or the porn industry, or the people she worked with, her co-stars, the directors. In fact she says nice things about them and seemed to like hanging out with them. Her entire beef is with Traynor. This should be pointed out. 68.196.1.236 (talk) 12:42, 17 June 2021 (UTC)captcrisis

Biased
This Wikipedia entry seems highly biased against Linda Loveless. I wish contributions would remain more objective. 2601:601:1500:1E90:9820:BFF5:ED27:7E46 (talk) 01:04, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Linda Lovelace


text:
V5

V5, V-5, or V.5 may refer to:

Electronics and software

 * CATIA V5, a multi-platform software suite
 * Hanlin v5 Mini, an electronic book reading device
 * Volari V5, a video card

Military

 * V-5, the United States Navy's Naval Aviation Cadet program during 1935–1968

Music

 * V5 (group), musical group
 * V.5 (mixtape), the tenth mixtape by American rapper Lloyd Banks

Science and technology

 * ITU-T V.5, a withdrawn telecommunication recommendation
 * V$5$, the EKG electrode placed in the fifth intercostal space in the mid-clavicular line
 * V5 interface, a family of telephone network protocols defined by ETSI
 * Middle temporal visual area (MT or V5), a region of extrastriate visual cortex

Automobiles

 * Brilliance V5, a Chinese compact SUV
 * Changan Alsvin V5
 * Chery V5, a Chinese compact MPV
 * FAW Vita V5, a Chinese subcompact sedan
 * GreenWheel V5, a Chinese subcompact electric crossover
 * Mushtaq V5, a Pakistani commercial van
 * Soueast V5, a Chinese compact sedan
 * Kuayue Chana V5, a Chinese microvan

Aviation

 * Bailey V5 paramotor, a British paramotor
 * Royal Aruban Airlines (IATA designator: V5), an airline based in Aruba

Engines

 * V5 engine, a V form engine with five cylinders
 * Bailey V5 engine

title: V5


text:
William Harvey

William Harvey (1 April 1578 – 3 June 1657) was an English physician who made influential contributions in anatomy and physiology. He was the first known physician to describe completely, and in detail, the systemic circulation and properties of blood being pumped to the brain and the rest of the body by the heart, though earlier writers, such as Realdo Colombo, Michael Servetus, and Jacques Dubois, had provided precursors of the theory.

Family
William's father, Thomas Harvey, was a jurat of Folkestone where he served as mayor in 1600. Records and personal descriptions delineate him as an overall calm, diligent, and intelligent man whose sons “... revered, consulted and implicitly trusted in him...” (they) made their father the treasurer of their wealth when they acquired great estates...(He) kept, employed, and improved their gainings to their great advantage." Thomas Harvey's portrait can still be seen in the central panel of a wall of the dining room at Rolls Park, Chigwell, in Essex. William was the eldest of nine children, seven sons and two daughters, of Thomas and his wife Joan Halke.

Notable family connections include Heneage Finch, 1st Earl of Nottingham, who married William's niece Elizabeth Harvey, and the diplomat Sir Daniel Harvey. His great nephew was the naval hero Eliab Harvey, captain of HMS Temeraire.

Early life and the University of Padua
Harvey's initial education was carried out in Folkestone, where he learned Latin. He then entered the King's School (Canterbury). Harvey stayed at the King's School for five years, after which he matriculated at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge in 1593.

Harvey graduated as a Bachelor of Arts from Caius in 1597. He then travelled through France and Germany to Italy, where he entered the University of Padua, in 1599.

During Harvey's years of study there, he developed a relationship with Fabricius and read Fabricius's De Venarum Ostiolis.

Harvey graduated as a Doctor of Medicine at the age of 24 from the University of Padua on 25 April 1602. Harvey had

"'conducted himself so wonderfully well in the examination and had shown such skill, memory and learning that he had far surpassed even the great hopes which his examiners had formed of him.'"

The College of Physicians, marriage and Saint Bartholomew's Hospital
After graduating from Padua, Harvey immediately returned to England, where he obtained the degree of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Cambridge that same year, and became a fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Following this, Harvey established himself in London, joining the Royal College of Physicians on 5 October 1604.

A few weeks after his admission, Harvey married Elizabeth Browne, "daughter of Lancelot Browne Dr. Physic" (a medical doctor). They had no children.

Harvey was elected a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians on 5 June 1607, which earned him the Post-nominal letters FRCP. He then accepted a position at St Bartholomew's Hospital that he was to occupy for almost all the rest of his life. Succeeding Dr Wilkinson on 14 October 1609, he became the Physician in charge at St Bartholomew's Hospital, which enjoined him, "in God's most holy name" to "endeavor yourself to do the best of your knowledge in the profession of physic to the poor then present, or any other of the poor at any time of the week which shall be sent home unto you by the Hospitaller... You shall not, for favor, lucre or gain, appoint or write anything for the poor but such good and wholesome things as you shall think with your best advice will do the poor good, without any affection or respect to be had to the apothecary. And you shall take no gift or reward... for your counsel... This you will promise to do as you shall answer before God... "

Harvey earned around thirty-three pounds a year and lived in a small house in Ludgate, although two houses in West Smithfield were attached as fringe benefits to the post of Physician. At this point, the physician's function consisted of a simple but thorough analysis of patients who were brought to the hospital once a week and the subsequent writing of prescriptions.

Lumleian lecturer
The next important phase of Harvey's life began with his appointment to the office of Lumleian lecturer on 4 August 1615. The Lumleian lectureship, founded by Lord Lumley and Dr. Richard Caldwell in 1582, consisted in giving lectures for a period of seven years, with the purpose of "spreading light" and increasing the general knowledge of anatomy throughout England.

Harvey began his lectures in April 1616. At this time, at the age of thirty-seven, he was described as "a man of lowest stature, round faced; his eyes small, round, very black and full of spirit; his hair as black as a raven and curling". The notes which he used at the time are preserved in the British Museum.

At the beginning of his lectures, Harvey laid down the canons for his guidance:

 * 1) "To show as much as may be at a glance, the whole belly for instance, and afterwards to subdivide the parts according to their positions and relations.
 * 2) To point out what is peculiar to the actual body which is being dissected.
 * 3) To supply only by speech what cannot be shown on your own credit and by authority.
 * 4) To cut up as much as may be in the sight of the audience.
 * 5) To enforce the right opinion by remarks drawn far and near, and to illustrate man by the structure of animals.
 * 6) Not to praise or dispraise other anatomists, for all did well, and there was some excuse even for those who are in error.
 * 7) Not to dispute with others, or attempt to confute them, except by the most obvious retort.
 * 8) To state things briefly and plainly, yet not letting anything pass unmentioned which can be seen.
 * 9) Not to speak of anything which can be as well explained without the body or can be read at home.
 * 10) Not to enter into too much detail, or in too minute dissection, for the time does not permit.
 * 11) To serve three courses according to the glass [i.e. allot a definite time to each part of the body]. In the first day's lectures the abdomen, nasty yet recompensed by its infinite variety. In the second the parlour, [i.e. the thorax]. In the third day's lecture the divine banquet of the brain."

Physician to James I
Harvey continued to participate in the Lumleian lectures while also taking care of his patients at St Bartholomew's Hospital; he thus soon attained an important and fairly lucrative practice, which climaxed with his appointment as 'Physician Extraordinary' to King James I on 3 February 1618. He seems to have similarly served various aristocrats, including Lord Chancellor Bacon. Bacon entirely failed to impress the more practical-minded Harvey, who refused to regard him as a great philosopher. He said of him "He writes philosophy like a Lord Chancellor."

In 1628 he published in Frankfurt his completed treatise on the circulation of the blood, the De Motu Cordis. As a result of negative comments by other physicians Harvey "fell mightily in his practice", but continued advancing his career. He was re-elected 'Censor' of the College of Physicians in 1629, having been elected for the first time in 1613 and the second time in 1625. Eventually, Harvey was also elected Treasurer of the College.

Witchcraft trials
Harvey was a prominent sceptic regarding allegations of witchcraft. He was one of the examiners of four women from Lancashire accused of witchcraft in 1634, and as a consequence of his report, all of them were acquitted. Earlier, in 1632, while travelling with the King to Newmarket, he had been sent to investigate a woman accused of being a witch. Initially, he told her that he was a wizard and had come to discuss the Craft with her, and asked whether she had a familiar. She put down a saucer of milk and called to a toad which came out and drank the milk. He then sent her out to fetch some ale, killed the toad and dissected it, concluding that it was a perfectly ordinary animal and not supernatural in any way. When the woman returned she was naturally very angry and upset, but Harvey eventually silenced her by stating that he was the King's Physician, sent to discover whether she was a witch, and if she were, to have her apprehended.

Excursions abroad, election as physician to Charles I and the English Civil War
At the age of fifty-two, Harvey received commands from the king to accompany the Duke of Lennox during his trip abroad. This voyage – the first after Harvey's return from Padua – lasted three years, taking Harvey through the countries of France and Spain during the Mantuan War and Plague. During this journey he wrote to Viscount Dorchester:

"I can complain that by the way we could scarce see a dog, crow, kite, raven or any other bird, or anything to anatomize, only some few miserable people, the relics of the war and the plague where famine had made anatomies before I came. It is scarce credible in so rich, populous, and plentiful countries as these were that so much misery and desolation, poverty and famine should in so short a time be, as we have seen. I interpret it well that it will be a great motive for all here to have and procure assurance of settled peace. It is time to leave fighting when there is nothing to eat, nothing to be kept, and nothing to be gotten".

Having returned to England in 1632. Harvey accompanied King Charles I wherever he went as 'Physician in Ordinary'. In particular, Charles's hunting expeditions gave Harvey access to many deer carcasses; it was upon them that Harvey made many observations and developed his theories. Harvey returned to Italy in October 1636, dining at the English College, Rome, as a guest of the Jesuits there. It is possible he met Galileo in Florence en route.

During the English Civil War a mob of citizen-soldiers opposed to the King entered Harvey's lodgings, stole his goods, and scattered his papers. The papers consisted of "the records of a large number of dissections ... of diseased bodies, with his observations on the development on insects, and a series of notes on comparative anatomy." During this period, Harvey maintained his position, helped the wounded on several occasions and protected the King's children during the Battle of Edgehill.

The conflicts of the Civil War soon led King Charles to Oxford, with Harvey attending, where the physician was made "Doctor of Physic" in 1642 and later Warden of Merton College in 1645. "In Oxford he (Harvey) very soon settled down to his accustomed pursuits, unmindful of the clatter of arms and of the constant marching and countermarching around him, for the city remained the base of operations until its surrender... "

Harvey's later years, death and burial
The surrender of Oxford in 1645 marks the beginning of Harvey's gradual retirement from public life and duties. Now sixty-eight years old and childless, Harvey had lost three brothers and his wife by this time. He thus decided to return to London, and lived with his brothers Eliab and Daniel at different periods. Having retired from St Bartholomew's Hospital and his various other aforementioned positions, he passed most of this time reading general literature. Several attempts to bring Harvey back into the 'working world' were made, however; here is an excerpt of one of Harvey's answers:

"Would you be the man who should recommend me to quit the peaceful haven where I now pass my life and launch again upon the faithless sea? You know full well what a storm my former lucubrations raised. Much better is it oftentimes to grow wise at home and in private, than by publishing what you have amassed with infinite labour, to stir up tempests that may rob you of peace and quiet for the rest of your days."

Harvey died at Roehampton in the house of his brother Eliab on 3 June 1657. Descriptions of the event seem to show that he died of a cerebral haemorrhage from vessels long injured by gout: it is highly probable that the left middle cerebral artery malfunctioned, leading to a gradual accumulation of blood in the brain which eventually overwhelmed it. There exists a fairly detailed account of what happened on that day. Harvey

"went to speak and found that he had the dead palsy in his tongue; then he saw what was to become of him. He knew there were then no hopes of his recovery, so presently he sends for his young nephews to come up to him. He then made signs (for seized with the dead palsy in his tongue he could not speak) to let him blood his tongue, which did him little or no good, and so ended his days, dying in the evening of the day on which he was stricken, the palsy giving him an easy passport."

His will distributed his material goods and wealth throughout his extended family and also left a substantial amount of money to the Royal College of Physicians.

Harvey was buried in St. Andrew's Church in Hempstead in northern Essex. The funeral procession started on 26 June 1657, leading Harvey to be placed in the 'Harvey Chapel' built by Eliab. The conditions of Harvey's burial are also known: "Harvey was laid in the chapel between the bodies of his two nieces, and like them he was lapt in lead, coffin less". On St. Luke's Day, 18 October 1883, Harvey's remains were reinterred, the leaden case carried from the vault by eight Fellows of the College of Physicians, and deposited in a sarcophagus containing his works and an inscription:

"The body of William Harvey lapt in lead, simply soldered, was laid without shell or enclosure of any kind in the Harvey vault of this Church of Hempstead, Essex, in June 1657. In the course of time the lead enclosing the remains was, from expose and natural decay, so seriously damaged as to endanger its preservation, rendering some repair of it the duty of those interested in the memory of the illustrious discoverer of the circulation of the Blood. The Royal College of Physicians, of which corporate body Harvey was a munificent Benefactor did in the years 1882–1883, by permission of the Representatives of the Harvey family, undertake this duty. In accordance with this determination the leaden mortuary chest containing the remains of Harvey was repaired, and was, as far as possible, restored to its original state... "

De Motu Cordis

Published in 1628 in the city of Frankfurt (host to an annual book fair that Harvey knew would allow immediate dispersion of his work), the 72-page Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus contains the mature account of the circulation of the blood. Opening with a dedication to King Charles I, the quarto has 17 chapters which give a clear and connected account of the action of the heart and the consequent movement of the blood around the body in a circuit. Having only a tiny lens at his disposal, Harvey was not able to reach the adequate pictures that were attained through such microscopes used by Antonie van Leeuwenhoek; thus he had to resort to theory – and not practical evidence – in certain parts of his book. After the first chapter, which simply outlines past ideas and accepted rules regarding the heart and lungs, Harvey moves on to a fundamental premise to his treatise, stating that it was important to study the heart when it was active in order to truly comprehend its true movement; a task which even he found of great difficulty, as he says:

"...I found the task so truly arduous... that I was almost tempted to think... that the movement of the heart was only to be comprehended by God. For I could neither rightly perceive at first when the systole and when the diastole took place by reason of the rapidity of the movement..."

This initial thought led Harvey's ambition and assiduousness to a detailed analysis of the overall structure of the heart (studied with fewer hindrances in cold-blooded animals). After this, Harvey analyses the arteries, showing how their pulsation depends upon the contraction of the left ventricle, while the contraction of the right ventricle propels its charge of blood into the pulmonary artery. Whilst doing this, the physician reiterates the fact that these two ventricles move together almost simultaneously and not independently as had been thought previously by his predecessors. This discovery was made while observing the heart of such animals as the eel and several other types of fish; indeed, the general study of countless animals was of utmost importance to Harvey's research: among the ones already cited, one can add the study of the snail, the invisible shrimp, the chick before its hatching and even the pigeon. A digression to an experiment can be made to this note: using the inactive heart of a dead pigeon and placing upon it a finger wet with saliva, Harvey was able to witness a transitory and yet incontrovertible pulsation. He had just witnessed the heart's ability to recover from fatigue. As early as the 17th century, William Harvey had already discerned the existence of the Ductus arteriosus and explained its relative function. Here he says, "...in embryos, whilst the lungs are in a state of inaction, performing no function, subject to no movement any more than if they had not been present, Nature uses the two ventricles of the heart as if they formed but one for the transmission of the blood." However, the apex of Harvey's work is probably the eighth chapter, in which he deals with the actual quantity of blood passing through the heart from the veins to the arteries. Coming into conflict with Galen's accepted view of the liver as the origin of venous blood, Harvey estimated the capacity of the heart, how much blood is expelled through each pump of the heart, and the number of times the heart beats in a half an hour. All of these estimates were purposefully low, so that people could see the vast amount of blood Galen's theory required the liver to produce. He estimated that the capacity of the heart was 1.5 impfloz, and that every time the heart pumps, $1/undefined$ of that blood is expelled. This led to Harvey's estimate that about 1/6 impfloz of blood went through the heart every time it pumped. The next estimate he used was that the heart beats 1,000 times every half an hour, which gave 10 pounds 6 ounces of blood in a half an hour, and when this number was multiplied by 48 half hours in a day he realised that the liver would have to produce 498 pounds of blood in a day, more than the weight of the whole body.

Having this simple but essential mathematical proportion at hand – which proved the overall impossible aforementioned role of the liver – Harvey went on to prove how the blood circulated in a circle by means of countless experiments initially done on serpents and fish: tying their veins and arteries in separate periods of time, Harvey noticed the modifications which occurred; indeed, as he tied the veins, the heart would become empty, while as he did the same to the arteries, the organ would swell up.

This process was later performed on the human body (in the image on the right): the physician tied a tight ligature onto the upper arm of a person. This would cut off blood flow from the arteries and the veins. When this was done, the arm below the ligature was cool and pale, while above the ligature it was warm and swollen. The ligature was loosened slightly, which allowed blood from the arteries to come into the arm, since arteries are deeper in the flesh than the veins. When this was done, the opposite effect was seen in the lower arm. It was now warm and swollen. The veins were also more visible since now they were full of blood. Harvey then noticed little bumps in the veins, which he realised were the valves of the veins discovered by his teacher, Hieronymus Fabricius. Harvey tried to push blood in the vein down the arm, but to no avail. When he tried to push it up the arm, it moved quite easily. The same effect was seen in other veins of the body, except the veins in the neck. Those veins were different from the others – they did not allow blood to flow up, but only down. This led Harvey to believe that the veins allowed blood to flow to the heart, and the valves maintained the one-way flow.

Contrary to a popular misconception, Harvey did not predict the existence of capillaries. His observations convinced him that direct connection between veins and arteries are unnecessary; he wrote "blood permeates the pores" in the flesh and it is "absorbed and imbibed from every part" by the veins.

Harvey's discovery of the circulation of the blood was based on inference, not direct observation, and was incompatible with the prevailing paradigm at the time. That paradigm held, among other things, that the blood could flow from one side of the heart to the other. Harvey knew that he was facing an uphill battle:

"'But what remains to be said about the quantity and source of the blood which thus passes, is of so novel and unheard-of character that I not only fear injury to myself from the envy of a few, but I tremble lest I have mankind at large for my enemies, so much doth want and custom, that become as another nature, and doctrine once sown and that hath struck deep root, and respect for antiquity, influence all men : still the die is cast, and my trust is in my love of truth, and the candour that inheres in cultivated minds.'"

Harvey's premonitions that his discovery would be met with scepticism, derision, and abuse, were entirely justified. It took twenty years for his theory of the circulation of the blood to be generally accepted.

Views of the circulation of blood before Harvey
At the time of Harvey's publication, Galen had been an influential medical authority for several centuries. Galen believed that blood passed between the ventricles by means of invisible pores. According to Galen's views, the venous system was quite separate from the arterial system, except when they came in contact through the unseen pores. Arabic scholar Ibn al-Nafis had disputed aspects of Galen's views, providing a model that seems to imply a form of pulmonary circulation in his Commentary on Anatomy in Avicenna's Canon (1242). Al-Nafis stated that blood moved from the heart to the lungs, where it mixed with air, and then back to the heart, from which it spread to the rest of the body. Harvey's discoveries inevitably and historically came into conflict with Galen's teachings and the publication of his treatise De Motu Cordis incited considerable controversy within the medical community. Some doctors affirmed they would "rather err with Galen than proclaim the truth with Harvey." Galen incompletely perceived the function of the heart, believing it a "productor of heat", while the function of its affluents, the arteries, was that of cooling the blood as the lungs "...fanned and cooled the heart itself". Galen thought that during dilation the arteries sucked in air, while during their contraction they discharged vapours through pores in the flesh and skin.

Until the 17th century, two separate systems were thought to be involved in blood circulation: the natural system, containing venous blood which had its origin in the liver, and the vital system, containing arterial blood and the 'spirits' which flowed from the heart, distributing heat and life to all parts. Like bellows, it was thought the lungs fanned and cooled this vital blood.

Independently of Ibn Al-Nafis, Michael Servetus identified pulmonary circulation, but this discovery did not reach the public because it was written down for the first time in the Manuscript of Paris in 1546. It was later published in the theological work which caused his execution in 1553, almost all copies of which were destroyed. In: Christianismi Restitutio, Book V, the Aragonese Miguel Servet (Michel de Villeneuve, 1509?–1553) wrote: 'The blood is passed through the pulmonary artery to the pulmonary vein for a lengthy pass through the lungs, during which it becomes red, and gets rid of the sooty fumes by the act of exhalation'. Ideas on circulation of blood were also proposed by the Spanish veterinarian-farrier Francisco de la Reyna in 1546.

Pulmonary circulation was described by Renaldus Columbus, Andrea Cesalpino and Vesalius, before Harvey would provide a refined and complete description of the circulatory system.

On Animal Generation
Harvey's other major work was Exercitationes de generatione animalium (On Animal Generation), published in 1651. He had been working on it for many years but might never have finished it without the encouragement of his friend George Ent.

The book starts with a description of the development of the hen's egg. The major part is theoretical, dealing with Aristotle's theories and the work of the physicians following Galen and up to Fabricius. Finally, he deals with embryogenesis in viviparous animals, especially hinds and does. The treatment is generally Aristotelian and limited by use of a simple magnifying lens.

Needham claims the following achievements for this work.
 * His doctrine of omne vivum ex ovo (all life comes from the egg) was the first definite statement against the idea of spontaneous generation. He denied the possibility of generation from excrement and from mud, and pointed out that even worms have eggs.
 * He identified the citricula as the point in the yolk from which the embryo develops and the blastoderm surrounding the embryo.
 * He dismantled once and for all the Aristotelian (semen-blood) and Epicurean (semen-semen) theories of early embryogeny.
 * He settled the long controversy about which parts of the egg were nutritive and which were formative, by demonstrating the unreality of the distinction.

Legacy

Harvey's whalebone demonstration rod, tipped with silver, resides in the silver room of the museum of the Royal College of Physicians. He used it to point to objects during his lectures.

Several medical buildings and institutions are named after or otherwise commemorate Harvey. The Harveian Society of Edinburgh was founded in 1782 by Dr Andrew Duncan. The Society holds an annual Festival in honour of Harvey where the President of the Society delivers the Harveian Oration, followed by a formal dinner. The venue for the Festival alternates between the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh and the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. The Harveian Society of London is a medical society founded in 1831 based in The Medical Society of London, Chandos Street, in Cavendish Square. The Royal College of Physicians of London holds an annual lecture established by William Harvey in 1656 called the Harveian Oration. The Harvey Club of London was founded in Canada in 1919 and is based in the University of Western Ontario. The Harvey Society, found in 1905, is based in New York City and hosts an annual lecture series on recent advances in biomedical sciences. The main lecture theatre of the School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge is named after William Harvey, who was an alumnus of the institute. William Harvey Research Institute at Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry is a research facility focussing on biochemical pharmacology, orthopaedic diseases, endocrinology, genomics, clinical pharmacology and translational medicine and therapeutics. William Harvey Hospital in Ashford, Kent is named after him. Harvey's hometown of Folkestone, Kent also has a statue of him.

Personality
Harvey was seen as a "...humorous but extremely precise man...", and that he was often so immersed in his own thoughts that he would often suffer from insomnia (cured with a simple walk through the house), and how he was always ready for an open and direct conversation. He also loved the darkness, for it is said that it was there where "...he could best contemplate", thus sometimes hiding out in caves. A heavy drinker of coffee, Harvey would walk out combing his hair every morning full of energy and enthusiastic spirit through the fields. We have also come to understand Harvey's somewhat unorthodox method of dealing with his gout, here cited completely: "...his [Harvey's] cure was thus: he would sit with his legs bare...put them into a pail of water till he was almost dead with cold, then betake himself to his stove, and so 'twas gone".

Works

 * Includes:
 * An anatomical disquisition on the motion of the heart and blood in animals
 * 2 disquisitions addressed to John Riolan, including refutations to objections to the circulation of the blood
 * Anatomical exercises on the generation of animals. To which are added:
 * On Parturition
 * On the uterine membranes and humours
 * On conception
 * Anatomical examination of the body of Thomas Parr
 * Letters
 * Anatomical examination of the body of Thomas Parr
 * Letters

title: William Harvey


text:
Squash

Squash most often refers to:
 * Squash (sport), the high-speed racquet sport also known as squash racquets
 * Squash (plant), the fruit of vines of the genus Cucurbita

Squash may also refer to:

Sports

 * Squash (professional wrestling), an extremely one-sided match in professional wrestling
 * Squash tennis, a game similar to squash but played with equipment more related to that of tennis

Food and beverages

 * Squash (drink), a drink made of concentrated fruit syrup or fructose
 * Tuborg Squash, a Danish orange-flavoured soft drink

Other uses

 * Squash (film), an Academy Award-nominated short film about a squash game
 * SquashFS, a read-only file system
 * SQUASH, Squatters' Action for Secure Homes, an activist group in the United Kingdom

title: Squash


text:
Fulgencio Batista

Fulgencio Batista y Zaldívar (born Rubén Zaldívar; January 16, 1901 – August 6, 1973) was a Cuban military officer and politician who served as the elected president of Cuba from 1940 to 1944 and as a military dictator from 1952 until his overthrow in the Cuban Revolution in 1958.

Batista initially rose to power as part of the 1933 Revolt of the Sergeants, which overthrew the provisional government of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada. Batista then appointed himself chief of the armed forces, with the rank of colonel, and effectively controlled the five-member "pentarchy" that functioned as the collective head of state. He maintained control through a series of puppet presidents until 1940, when he was elected president on a populist platform. He then instated the 1940 Constitution of Cuba and served until 1944. After finishing his term, Batista moved to Florida, returning to Cuba to run for president in 1952. Facing certain electoral defeat, he led a military coup against President Carlos Prío Socarrás that pre-empted the election.

Back in power and receiving financial, military and logistical support from the United States government, Batista suspended the 1940 Constitution and revoked most political liberties, including the right to strike. He then aligned with the wealthiest landowners who owned the largest sugar plantations, and presided over a stagnating economy that widened the gap between rich and poor Cubans. Eventually, it reached the point where most of the sugar industry was in U.S. hands, and foreigners owned 70% of the arable land. As such, Batista's repressive government then began to systematically profit from the exploitation of Cuba's commercial interests, by negotiating lucrative relationships both with the American Mafia, who controlled the drug, gambling, and prostitution businesses in Havana, and with large U.S.-based multinational companies who were awarded lucrative contracts. To quell the growing discontent amongst the populace—which was subsequently displayed through frequent student riots and demonstrations—Batista established tighter censorship of the media, while also utilizing his Bureau for the Repression of Communist Activities secret police to carry out wide-scale violence, torture and public executions. These murders mounted in 1957, as socialist ideas became more influential. People were killed, with estimates ranging from hundreds to a maximum of 20,000, although this high figure is disputed.

These tactics ultimately failed to quell unrest and instead were the catalyst for more widespread resistance. For two years (December 1956 – December 1958) Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement and other rebelling elements led an urban- and rural-based guerrilla uprising against Batista's government, which culminated in his eventual defeat by rebels under the command of Che Guevara at the Battle of Santa Clara on New Year's Day 1959. Batista immediately fled the island with an amassed personal fortune to the Dominican Republic, where strongman and previous military ally Rafael Trujillo held power. Batista eventually found political asylum in António Salazar's Portugal, where he first lived on the island of Madeira and then in Estoril. He was involved in business activities in Spain and was staying there in Guadalmina at the time of his death from a heart attack in 1973.

Early life

Batista was born in the town of Veguita, located in the municipality of Banes, Cuba in 1901 to Belisario Batista Palermo and Carmela Zaldívar González, who had fought in the Cuban War of Independence. He was of Spanish, African, Chinese, and possibly some Taíno descent. Both Batista's parents are believed to have been of mixed race and one may have had Indigenous Caribbean blood. His mother named him Rubén and gave him her last name, Zaldívar. His father did not want to register him as a Batista. In the registration records of the Banes courthouse, he was legally Rubén Zaldívar until 1939, when he tried to register as a presidential candidate under the name Fulgencio Batista. When it was discovered that no birth certificate existed for a "Fulgencio Batista", he had to postpone his candidacy registration and pay 15,000 pesos to the local judge.

Batista was initially educated at a public school in Banes and later attended night classes at an American Quaker school. He left home at age 14, after the death of his mother. Coming from a humble background, he earned a living as a laborer in the cane fields, docks, and railroads. He was a tailor, mechanic, charcoal vendor and fruit peddler. In 1921, he traveled to Havana, and in April joined the army as a private. After learning shorthand and typing, Batista left the army in 1923, working briefly as a teacher of stenography before enlisting in the Guardia Rural (rural police). He transferred back to the army as a corporal, becoming secretary to a regimental colonel. In September 1933, he held the rank of sergeant stenographer and as such acted as the secretary of a group of non-commissioned officers who led a "sergeants' conspiracy" for better conditions and improved prospects of promotion.

1933 coup

In 1933, Batista led an uprising called the Sergeants' Revolt, as part of the coup that overthrew the government of Gerardo Machado. Machado was succeeded by Carlos Manuel de Céspedes y Quesada, who lacked a political coalition that could sustain him and was soon replaced.

A short-lived five-member presidency, known as the Pentarchy of 1933, was established. The Pentarchy included a representative from each anti-Machado faction. Batista was not a member, but controlled Cuba's armed forces. Within days, the representative for the students and professors of the University of Havana, Ramón Grau San Martín, was made president—and Batista became the Army Chief of Staff, with the rank of colonel, effectively putting him in control of the presidency. The majority of the commissioned officer corps were forced to retire or, some speculate, were killed.

Grau remained president for just over 100 days before Batista, conspiring with the U.S. envoy Sumner Welles, forced him to resign in January 1934. Grau was replaced by Carlos Mendieta, and within five days the U.S. recognized Cuba's new government, which lasted eleven months. Batista then became the strongman behind a succession of puppet presidents until he was elected president in 1940. After Mendieta, succeeding governments were led by José Agripino Barnet (five months) and Miguel Mariano Gómez (seven months) before Federico Laredo Brú ruled from December 1936 to October 1940.

Constitutional Presidency (1940–1944)
Batista defeated Grau in the first presidential election (1940) under the new Cuban constitution, and served a four-year term as President of Cuba, the first and to this day only non-white Cuban in that office. Batista was endorsed by the Democratic Socialist Coalition and the original Cuban Communist Party (later known as the Popular Socialist Party), which at the time had little significance and no probability of an electoral victory. This support was primarily due to Batista's early advocacy of strengthening labor laws and his support for labor unions, with which the Communists had close ties, as well as the pro-Allied stance in World War II. In fact, Communists attacked the anti-Batista opposition, saying Grau and others were "fascists" and "reactionaries." During this term in office, Batista carried out major social reforms and established numerous economic regulations and pro-union policies.

Cuba entered World War II on the side of the Allies on December 9, 1941, declaring war on Japan two days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. On December 11, the Batista government declared war on Germany and Italy. In December 1942, after a friendly visit to Washington, Batista said Latin America would applaud if the Declaration by United Nations called for war with Francisco Franco's Spain, calling the regime "fascist".

Post-presidency
In 1944, Batista's handpicked successor, Carlos Saladrigas Zayas, was defeated by Grau. In the final months of his presidency, Batista sought to handicap the incoming Grau administration. In a July 17, 1944, dispatch to the U.S. Secretary of State, U.S. Ambassador Spruille Braden wrote:

"It is becoming increasingly apparent that President Batista intends to discomfit the incoming Administration in every way possible, particularly financially. A systematic raid on the Treasury is in full swing with the result that Dr. Grau will probably find empty coffers when he takes office on October 10. It is blatant that President Batista desires that Dr. Grau San Martin should assume obligations which in fairness and equity should be a matter of settlement by the present Administration."

Shortly after, Batista left Cuba for the United States. "I just felt safer there," he said. He divorced his wife, Elisa Godínez, and married Marta Fernández in 1945. Two of their four children were born in the United States.

For the next eight years, Batista remained in the background, spending time in the Waldorf-Astoria in New York City and a home in Daytona Beach, Florida.

He continued to participate in Cuban politics and was elected to the Cuban Senate in absentia in 1948. Returning to Cuba, he decided to run for president and received permission from President Grau, whereupon he formed the United Action Party. On taking power he founded the Progressive Action Party, but he never regained his former popular support, though the unions supported him until the end.

Military coup and dictatorship (1952–1959)

In 1952, Batista again ran for president. In a three-way race, Roberto Agramonte of the Orthodox Party led in all the polls, followed by Carlos Hevia of the Authentic Party. Batista's United Action coalition was running a distant third.

On March 10, 1952, three months before the elections, Batista, with army backing, staged a coup and seized power. He ousted outgoing President Carlos Prío Socarrás, canceled the elections and took control of the government as a provisional president. The United States recognized his government on March 27. When asked by the U.S. government to analyze Batista's Cuba, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. said:

"The corruption of the Government, the brutality of the police, the government's indifference to the needs of the people for education, medical care, housing, for social justice and economic justice ... is an open invitation to revolution."

Economy of Cuba
Upon his seizure of power, Batista inherited a country that was relatively prosperous for Latin America. According to Batista's government, although a third of Cubans still lived in poverty, Cuba was one of the five most developed countries in the region. In the 1950s, Cuba's gross domestic product (GDP) per capita was roughly equal to that of Italy at the time, although still only a sixth of that of the United States. Moreover, although corruption and inequality were rife under Batista, Cuban industrial workers' wages rose significantly. In 1953, the average Cuban family only had an income of $6.00 a week, 15% to 20% of the labor force was chronically unemployed, and only a third of the homes had running water. Despite this, according to the International Labour Organization, the average industrial salary in Cuba became the world's eighth-highest in 1958, and the average agricultural wage was higher than some European nations (although, according to one sample from 1956 to 1957, agricultural workers could only find employment for an average of 123 days per year while farm owners, rural tenants and sharecroppers worked an average of only 135 days per year).

Relationship with organized crime
"Brothels flourished. A major industry grew up around them; government officials received bribes, policemen collected protection money. Prostitutes could be seen standing in doorways, strolling the streets, or leaning from windows. One report estimated that 11,500 of them worked their trade in Havana. Beyond the outskirts of the capital, beyond the slot machines, was one of the poorest, and most beautiful countries in the Western world."

Throughout the 1950s, Havana served as "a hedonistic playground for the world's elite", producing sizable gambling, prostitution and drug profits for the American mafia, corrupt law-enforcement officials, and their politically elected cronies. In the assessment of the Cuban-American historian Louis Perez, "Havana was then what Las Vegas has become." Relatedly, it is estimated that by the end of the 1950s the city of Havana had 270 brothels. In addition, drugs, be it marijuana or cocaine, were so plentiful at the time that one American magazine in 1950 proclaimed "Narcotics are hardly more difficult to obtain in Cuba than a shot of rum. And only slightly more expensive." As a result, the playwright Arthur Miller described Batista's Cuba in The Nation as "hopelessly corrupt, a Mafia playground, (and) a bordello for Americans and other foreigners."

In a bid to profit from such an environment, Batista established lasting relationships with organized crime, notably with American mobsters Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano, and under his rule Havana became known as "the Latin Las Vegas". Batista and Lansky formed a friendship and business relationship that flourished for a decade. During a stay at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York in the late 1940s, it was mutually agreed that, in return for kickbacks, Batista would give Lansky and the Mafia control of Havana's racetracks and casinos. After World War II, Luciano was paroled from prison on the condition that he permanently return to Sicily. Luciano secretly moved to Cuba, where he worked to resume control over American Mafia operations. Luciano also ran a number of casinos in Cuba with the sanction of Batista, though the American government eventually succeeded in pressuring the Batista government to deport him.

Batista encouraged large-scale gambling in Havana. In 1955, he announced that Cuba would grant a gaming license to anyone who invested US$1 million in a hotel or $200,000 in a new nightclub—and that the government would provide matching public funds for construction, a 10-year tax exemption, and waive duties on imported equipment and furnishings for new hotels. Each casino would pay the government $250,000 for the license, plus a percentage of the profits. The policy omitted background checks, as required for casino operations in the United States, which opened the door for casino investors with illegally obtained funds. Cuban contractors with the right connections made windfalls by importing, duty-free, more materials than needed for new hotels and selling the surplus to others. It was rumored that, besides the $250,000 to obtain a license, an additional "under the table" fee was sometimes required.

Lansky became a prominent figure in Cuba's gambling operations, and exerted influence over Batista's casino policies. The Mafia's Havana Conference was held on December 22, 1946, at the Hotel Nacional de Cuba; this was the first full-scale meeting of American underworld leaders since the Chicago meeting in 1932. Lansky set about cleaning up the games at the Montmartre Club, which soon became the "place to be" in Havana. He also wanted to open a casino in the Hotel Nacional, the most elegant hotel in Havana. Batista endorsed Lansky's idea over the objections of American expatriates such as Ernest Hemingway, and the renovated casino wing opened for business in 1955 with a show by Eartha Kitt. The casino was an immediate success.

As the new hotels, nightclubs, and casinos opened, Batista collected his share of the profits. Nightly, the "bagman" for his wife collected 10% of the profits at Santo Trafficante's casinos, the Sans Souci cabaret, and the casinos in the hotels Sevilla-Biltmore, Commodoro, Deauville, and Capri (partly owned by the actor George Raft). His take from the Lansky casinos—his prized Habana Riviera, the Hotel Nacional, the Montmartre Club, and others—was said to be 30%. Lansky was said to have personally contributed millions of dollars per year to Batista's Swiss bank accounts.

Support of U.S. business and government

"At the beginning of 1959 United States companies owned about 40 percent of the Cuban sugar lands—almost all the cattle ranches—90 percent of the mines and mineral concessions—80 percent of the utilities—practically all the oil industry—and supplied two-thirds of Cuba's imports."

In a manner that antagonized the Cuban people, the U.S. government used its influence to advance the interests of and increase the profits of the private American companies, which "dominated the island's economy". By the late 1950s, U.S. financial interests owned 90% of Cuban mines, 80% of its public utilities, 50% of its railways, 40% of its sugar production and 25% of its bank deposits—some $1 billion in total. According to historian Louis A. Pérez Jr., author of the book On Becoming Cuban, "Daily life had developed into a relentless degradation, with the complicity of political leaders and public officials who operated at the behest of American interests." As a symbol of this relationship, ITT Corporation, an American-owned multinational telephone company, presented Batista with a Golden Telephone, as an "expression of gratitude" for the "excessive telephone rate increase", at least according to Senator John F. Kennedy, that Batista granted at the urging of the U.S. government.

Earl E.T. Smith, former U.S. Ambassador to Cuba, testified to the U.S. Senate in 1960 that, "Until Castro, the U.S. was so overwhelmingly influential in Cuba that the American ambassador was the second most important man, sometimes even more important than the Cuban president." In addition, nearly "all aid" from the U.S. to Batista's government was in the "form of weapons assistance", which "merely strengthened the Batista dictatorship" and "completely failed to advance the economic welfare of the Cuban people". Such actions later "enabled Castro and the Communists to encourage the growing belief that America was indifferent to Cuban aspirations for a decent life."

According to historian and author James S. Olson, the U.S. government essentially became a "co-conspirator" in the arrangement because of Batista's strong opposition to communism, which, in the rhetoric of the Cold War, seemed to maintain business stability and a pro-U.S. posture on the island. Thus, in the view of Olson, "The U.S. government had no difficulty in dealing with him, even if he was a hopeless despot." On October 6, 1960, Senator John F. Kennedy, in the midst of his campaign for the U.S. presidency, decried Batista's relationship with the U.S. government and criticized the Eisenhower administration for supporting him.

Batista, Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution

"I believe that there is no country in the world including any and all the countries under colonial domination, where economic colonization, humiliation and exploitation were worse than in Cuba, in part owing to my country's policies during the Batista regime. I approved the proclamation which Fidel Castro made in the Sierra Maestra, when he justifiably called for justice and especially yearned to rid Cuba of corruption. I will even go further: to some extent it is as though Batista was the incarnation of a number of sins on the part of the United States. Now we shall have to pay for those sins. In the matter of the Batista regime, I am in agreement with the first Cuban revolutionaries. That is perfectly clear."

On July 26, 1953, just over a year after Batista's second coup, a small group of revolutionaries attacked the Moncada Barracks in Santiago. Government forces easily defeated the assault and jailed its leaders, while many others fled the country. The primary leader of the attack, Fidel Castro, was a young attorney who had run for parliament in the canceled 1952 elections. Although Castro was never officially nominated, he felt that Batista's coup had sidetracked what would have been a promising political career for him. In the wake of the Moncada assault, Batista suspended constitutional guarantees and increasingly relied on police tactics in an attempt to "frighten the population through open displays of brutality."

Batista held an election in 1954, running as the candidate of a political coalition that included the Progressive Action Party, the Radical Union Party and the Liberal Party. The opposition divided into abstentionists and electoralists. The abstentionists favored boycotting the elections regardless of the circumstances in which they were held, whereas the electoralists sought certain rights and guarantees to participate. The CIA had predicted that Batista would use any means necessary to ensure he won the election. Batista lived up to their expectations, utilizing fraud and intimidation to secure his presidency. This led most of the other parties to boycott the elections. Former President Ramón Grau San Martín, leading the electoralist factions of the Cuban Revolutionary Party, participated through the political campaign but withdrew from the campaign days before election day, charging that his supporters had been terrorized. Thus Batista was elected president with the support of 45.6% of registered voters. Despite the boycott, Grau received the support of 6.8% of those who voted. The remaining voters abstained.

By late 1955, student riots and anti-Batista demonstrations had become frequent, and unemployment became a problem as graduates entering the workforce could not find jobs. These were dealt with through increasing repression. All youth were seen as suspected revolutionaries. Due to its continued opposition to Batista and the large amount of revolutionary activity taking place on its campus, the University of Havana was temporarily closed on November 30, 1956 (it did not reopen until 1959 under the first revolutionary government). On March 13, 1957, student leader José Antonio Echeverría was killed by police outside Radio Reloj in Havana after announcing that Batista had been killed in a student attack on the Presidential Palace. In reality, Batista survived, and the students of the Federation of University Students (FEU) and the Directorio Revolucionario (DR) who led the attack were killed in the response by the military and police. Castro quickly condemned the attack, since July 26 Movement had not participated in it.

In April 1956, Batista called popular military leader Col. Ramón Barquín back to Cuba from his post as military attaché to the United States. Believing Barquín would support his rule, Batista promoted him to General. However, Barquín's Conspiración de los Puros (Conspiracy of the Pure) was already underway and had already progressed too far. On April 6, 1956, Barquín led hundreds of career officers in a coup attempt, but was frustrated by Lieutenant Ríos Morejón, who betrayed the plan. Barquín was sentenced to solitary confinement for eight years on the Isle of Pines, while some officers were sentenced to death for treason. Many others were allowed to remain in the military without reprimand.

The purge of the officer corps contributed to the inability of the Cuban army to successfully combat Castro and his guerrillas. Batista's police responded to increasing popular unrest by torturing and killing young men in the cities. However, his army was ineffective against the rebels based in the Sierra Maestra and Escambray Mountains. Another possible explanation for the failure to crush the rebellion was offered by author Carlos Alberto Montaner: "Batista does not finish Fidel out of greed ... His is a government of thieves. To have this small guerrilla band in the mountains is to his advantage, so that he can order special defense expenditures that they can steal." Batista's rule became increasingly unpopular among the population, and the Soviet Union began to secretly support Castro. Some of Batista's generals also criticized him in later years, saying that Batista's excessive interference in his generals' military plans to defeat the rebels hampered Army morale and rendered all operations ineffective.

"It is clear that counter-terror became the strategy of the Batista government. It has been estimated that perhaps as many as 20,000 civilians were killed."

In an effort to gather information about Castro's army, Batista's secret police pulled in people for questioning. Many innocent people were tortured by Batista's police, while suspects, including youth, were publicly executed as a warning to others who were considering joining the insurgency. Additionally, "Hundreds of mangled bodies were left hanging from lamp posts or dumped in the streets in a grotesque variation of the Spanish colonial practice of public executions." The brutal behavior backfired and increased support for the guerrillas. In 1958, 45 organizations signed an open letter supporting July 26 Movement, among them national bodies representing lawyers, architects, dentists, accountants, and social workers.

The United States supplied Batista with planes, ships, tanks and the latest technology, such as napalm, which he used against the insurgency. However, in March 1958, the U.S. announced it would stop selling arms to the Cuban government. Soon after, the U.S. imposed an arms embargo, further weakening the government's position, although landowners and others who benefited from the government continued to support Batista.

Elections were scheduled for June 1958, as required by the Constitution, but were delayed until November 1958, when Castro and the revolutionaries called for a general strike and placed several bombs in civilian areas of the country. Three main candidates ran in the elections: Carlos Márquez Sterling of the Party of the Free People, former President Ramón Grau San Martín of the Cuban Revolutionary Party-Authentic, and Andrés Rivero Agüero of the government coalition. According to Carlos Márquez Sterling, all three were threatened by Castro, and several assassination attempts were made on both Ramón Grau San Martín and Carlos Márquez Sterling. On Election Day, estimates on the turnout range from 30 to 50% in the areas where voting took place, which did not include parts of Las Villas and Oriente, which were controlled by Castro. Márquez Sterling also stated that the initial results were favorable to him, but the military ordered the counting to stop as they changed the actual ballots for fraudulent ones. However, Grau San Martín, as he had previously done in the 1954 elections, withdrew his candidacy within a few hours of the election day. Batista declared Rivero Agüero the winner.

The U.S. rejected the results of the elections and announced plans to withhold diplomatic recognition of the Rivero Agüero government. The American ambassador to Cuba Earl Smith informed Agüero that the United States would not give aid and support to his government. Smith also informed Batista that the U.S. believed him incapable of maintaining effective control and that he should retire.

On December 31, 1958, at a New Year's Eve party, Batista told his cabinet and top officials that he was leaving the country and resigned. After seven years, Batista knew his presidency was over, and he fled the island in the early morning. At 3:00 a.m. on January 1, 1959, Batista boarded a plane at Camp Columbia with 40 of his supporters and immediate family members and flew to Ciudad Trujillo in the Dominican Republic. A second plane flew out of Havana later in the night, carrying ministers, officers and the Governor of Havana. Batista took along a personal fortune of more than $300 million that he had amassed through graft and payoffs. Critics accused Batista and his supporters of taking as much as $700 million in fine art and cash with them as they fled into exile.

As news of the fall of Batista's government spread through Havana, The New York Times described jubilant crowds pouring into the streets and automobile horns honking. The black and red flag of the July 26 Movement waved on cars and buildings. The atmosphere was chaotic. On January 8, 1959, Castro and his army rolled victoriously into Havana. Already denied entry to the United States, Batista sought asylum in Mexico, which also refused him. Portugal's leader António Salazar allowed him to settle there on the condition that he completely abstain from politics.

Historians and primary documents estimate between hundreds and 20,000 Cubans were killed under the Batista regime.

However, the 20,000 number is disputed by several historians, which considered it as ‘propaganda’. According to French historian Jeannine Verdès-Leroux:

"[...] Intellectuals and journalists have endlessly hammered home the falsified figure of 20,000 deaths. Castro only spoke, in his report to the 1st Congress of the Cuban Communist Party, of an “incalculable” number of victims. Specialists agree to conclude that the figure of 2,000 deaths is a high maximum."

Marriages and children
Batista married Elisa Godínez y Gómez (1900–1993) on July 10, 1926. They had three children: Mirta Caridad (1927–2010), Elisa Aleida (born 1933), and Fulgencio Rubén Batista Godínez (1933–2007). By all accounts, she was devoted to him and their children throughout their marriage, and their daughter remembered them as a "happy, young couple" until their sudden divorce. Much to her surprise, he divorced her in October 1945 against her will in order to marry his longtime mistress Marta Fernández Miranda (1923–2006).

He married Fernández on November 28, 1945, shortly after his divorce became final, and they had five children: Jorge Luis (born 1942), Roberto Francisco (born 1947), Carlos Manuel (1950–1969), Fulgencio José (born 1953) and Marta María Batista Fernández (born 1957).

After fleeing, Batista had a child born shortly after his death named Mateo C. Batista. His mother removed the Batista from his name as to not raise suspicions.

Extramarital affairs
Batista was an inveterate philanderer who engaged in numerous extramarital affairs throughout his first marriage. He cheated on his first wife with multiple women, and his children eventually became aware of his relationships. His first wife, who supported her husband throughout his political career and found his philandering humiliating, never considered divorce and tolerated his multiple affairs. However, Batista became enamored with the much younger Marta Fernández Miranda, who became his longtime mistress. He filed divorce papers shortly before his first grandchild was born. His first wife and their children were astounded and devastated by the divorce.

In 1935, he fathered an illegitimate daughter, Fermina Lázara Batista Estévez, whom he supported financially.

Death
After he fled to Portugal, Batista lived in Madeira, then later in Estoril. He died of a heart attack on August 6, 1973, at Marbella, Spain.

Marta Fernández Miranda de Batista, Batista's widow, died on October 2, 2006. Roberto Batista, her son, said that she died at her home in West Palm Beach, Florida, US. She had suffered from Alzheimer's disease.

Books written by Batista

 * Estoy con el Pueblo (I am With the People), Havana, 1939
 * Respuesta, Manuel León Sánchez S.C.L., Mexico City, 1960
 * Piedras y leyes (Stones and Laws), Mexico City, 1961
 * Cuba Betrayed, Vantage Press, New York, 1961
 * To Rule is to Foresee, 1962
 * The Growth and Decline of the Cuban Republic, Devin-Adair Company, New York, 1964

title: Fulgencio Batista