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Mattachine Society

The Mattachine Society, founded in 1950, was an early national gay rights organization in the United States, preceded by several covert and open organizations, such as Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities, and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups.

At the beginning of gay rights protest, news on Cuban prison work camps for homosexuals inspired Mattachine Society to organize protests at the United Nations and the White House in 1965.

Name
The Mattachine Society was named by Harry Hay at the suggestion of James Gruber, inspired by a French medieval and renaissance masque group he had studied while preparing a course on the history of popular music for a workers' education project. In a 1976 interview with Jonathan Ned Katz, Hay was asked the origin of the name Mattachine. He mentioned the medieval-Renaissance French Sociétés Joyeuses:

"One masque group was known as the 'Société Mattachine.' These societies, lifelong secret fraternities of unmarried townsmen who never performed in public unmasked, were dedicated to going out into the countryside and conducting dances and rituals during the Feast of Fools, at the Vernal Equinox. Sometimes these dance rituals, or masques, were peasant protests against oppression—with the maskers, in the people's name, receiving the brunt of a given lord's vicious retaliation. So we took the name Mattachine because we felt that we 1950s Gays were also a masked people, unknown and anonymous, who might become engaged in morale building and helping ourselves and others, through struggle, to move toward total redress and change."

This French group was named in turn after Mattaccino (or the Anglicized Mattachino), a character in Italian theater. Mattaccino was a kind of court jester, who would speak the truth to the king when nobody else would. The "mattachin" (from Arabic متوجهين, "mask-wearers") were originally Moorish (Hispano-Arab) sword-dancers who wore elaborate, colorful costumes and masks.

The Mattachine Society used so-called harlequin diamonds as their emblem. The design consisted of four diamonds arranged in a pattern to form a larger diamond.

Foundation
Harry Hay conceived the idea of a gay activist group in 1948. After signing a petition for Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, Hay spoke with other gay men at a party about forming a gay support organization for him called "Bachelors for Wallace". Encouraged by the response he received, Hay wrote the organizing principles that night, a document he referred to as "The Call". However, the men who had been interested at the party were less than enthusiastic the following morning. Over the next two years, Hay refined his idea, finally conceiving of an "international... fraternal order" to serve as "a service and welfare organization devoted to the protection and improvement of Society's Androgynous Minority". He planned to call this organization "Bachelors Anonymous" and envisioned it serving a similar function and purpose as Alcoholics Anonymous. Hay met Rudi Gernreich in July 1950. The two became partners, and Hay showed Gernreich The Call. Gernreich, declaring the document "the most dangerous thing [he had] ever read", became an enthusiastic financial supporter of the venture, although he did not lend his name to it (going instead by the initial "R"). Finally on November 11, 1950, Hay, along with Gernreich and friends Dale Jennings and partners Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland, held the first meeting of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, under the name Society of Fools. James Gruber and Konrad Stevens joined the Society in April 1951 and they are generally considered to be original members. Also that month the group changed its name to Mattachine Society, a name suggested by Gruber and chosen by Hay, after Medieval French secret societies of masked men who, through their anonymity, were empowered to criticize ruling monarchs with impunity.

As Hay became more involved in his Mattachine work, he correspondingly became more concerned that his orientation would negatively affect the Communist Party, which like most other organizations at the time was anti-homosexual and did not allow gay people to be members. Hay himself approached party leaders and recommended his own expulsion. The party decided to expel him as a "security risk", but declared him a "Lifelong Friend of the People" in recognition of his previous work for the party. Mattachine was originally organized in similar structure to the Communist Party, with cells, oaths of secrecy and five different levels of membership, each of which required greater levels of involvement and commitment. As the organization grew, the levels were expected to subdivide into new cells, creating both the potential for horizontal and vertical growth. The founding members constituted the so-called "Fifth Order" and from the outset remained anonymous. The primary goals of the society were to

 * 1) "Unify homosexuals isolated from their own kind";
 * 2) "Educate homosexuals and heterosexuals toward an ethical homosexual culture paralleling the cultures of the Negro, Mexican and Jewish peoples";
 * 3) "Lead the more socially conscious homosexual to provide leadership to the whole mass of social variants"; and
 * 4) "Assist gays who are victimized daily as a result of oppression".

Mattachine's membership grew slowly at first but received a major boost in February 1952 when founder Jennings was arrested in a Los Angeles park and charged with lewd behavior. Often, men in Jennings' situation would simply plead guilty to the charge and hope to quietly rebuild their lives. Jennings and the rest of the Fifth Order saw the charges as a means to address the issue of police entrapment of homosexual men. The group began publicizing the case (under the name "Citizens Committee to Outlaw Entrapment") and the publicity it generated brought in financial support and volunteers. Jennings admitted during his trial to being a homosexual but insisted he was not guilty of the specific charge. The jury deadlocked and Mattachine declared victory.

Affiliations
Most of the Mattachine founders were communists. As the Red Scare progressed, the association with communism concerned some members as well as supporters and Hay, a dedicated member of the CPUSA for 15 years, stepped down as the Society's leader. Others were similarly ousted, and the leadership structure became influenced less by communism, replaced by a moderate ideology similar to that espoused by the liberal reformist civil rights organizations that existed for African Americans.

The Mattachine Society existed as a single national organization headquartered first in Los Angeles and then, beginning around 1956, in San Francisco. Outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco, chapters were established in New York; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and other locales. Due to internal disagreements, the national organization disbanded in 1961. The San Francisco national chapter retained the name "Mattachine Society", while the New York chapter became "Mattachine Society of New York, Inc" and was commonly known by its acronym MSNY. Other independent groups using the name Mattachine were formed in Washington, D.C. (Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961), in Chicago (Mattachine Midwest, 1965), and in Buffalo (Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, 1970). In 1963 Congressman John Dowdy introduced a bill which resulted in congressional hearings to revoke the license for solicitation of funds of the Mattachine Society of Washington; the license was not revoked.

A largely amicable split within the national Society in 1952 resulted in a new organization called ONE, Inc. ONE admitted women and, together with Mattachine, provided help to the Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of that group's magazine, The Ladder, in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis were an independent lesbian organization who occasionally worked with the predominantly male Mattachine Society.

The Janus Society grew out of lesbian and gay activists meeting regularly, beginning in 1961, in hopes of forming a Mattachine Society chapter. The group was not officially recognized as such a chapter, however, and so instead named itself the Janus Society of Delaware Valley. In 1964 they renamed themselves the Janus Society of America due to their increasing national visibility.

In January 1962 East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) was established, with its formative membership including the Mattachine Society chapters in New York and Washington D.C., the Janus Society, and the Daughters of Bilitis chapter in New York. ECHO was meant to facilitate cooperation between homophile organizations and outside administrations. In 1964, ECHO secured a $500 settlement from the Manger Hamilton hotel, following the abrupt cancellation of ECHO's conference at the hotel. This out-of-court resolution was presented by Frank Kameny as a clear message to the homophile community – a demonstration that they would not tolerate interference, and any infringements on their rights would be addressed through legal means.

On the eve of January 1, 1965, several homophile organizations in San Francisco, California - including Mattachine, the Daughters of Bilitis, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, and the Society for Individual Rights - held a fund-raising ball for their mutual benefit at California Hall on Polk Street. San Francisco police had agreed not to interfere; however, on the evening of the ball, the police surrounded the building and focused numerous Klieg lights on its entrance. As each of the 600 plus persons entering the ball approached the entrance, the police took their photographs. Police vans were parked in plain view near the entrance to the ball. Evander Smith, a (gay) lawyer for the groups organizing the ball, and gay lawyer Herb Donaldson tried to stop the police from conducting the fourth "inspection" of the evening; both were arrested, along with two heterosexual lawyers - Elliott Leighton and Nancy May - who were supporting the rights of the participants to gather at the ball. But twenty-five of the most prominent lawyers in San Francisco joined the defense team for the four lawyers, and the judge directed the jury to find the four not-guilty before the defense had even had a chance to begin their argumentation when the case came to court. This event has been called "San Francisco's Stonewall" by some historians; the participation of such prominent litigators in the defense of Smith, Donaldson and the other two lawyers marked a turning point in gay rights on the West Coast of the United States.

Decline
Following the Jennings trial, the group expanded rapidly, with founders estimating membership in California by May 1953 at over 2,000 with as many as 100 people joining a typical discussion group. Membership diversified, with more women and people from a broader political spectrum becoming involved. With that growth came concern about the radical left slant of the organization. In particular, Hal Call and others out of San Francisco along with Ken Burns from Los Angeles wanted Mattachine to amend its constitution to clarify its opposition to so-called "subversive elements" and to affirm that members were loyal to the United States and its laws (which declared homosexuality illegal). In an effort to preserve their vision of the organization, the Fifth Order members revealed their identities and resigned their leadership positions at Mattachine's May 1953 convention. With the founders gone, Call, Burns and other like-minded individuals stepped into the leadership void, and Mattachine officially adopted non-confrontation as an organizational policy. Some historians argue that these changes reduced the effectiveness of this newly organized Mattachine and led to a precipitous drop in membership and participation. Other historians contend that the Mattachine Society between 1953 and 1966 was enormously effective as it published a magazine, developed relationships with allies in the fight for homosexual equality, and influenced public opinion on the topic too.

During the 1960s, the various unaffiliated Mattachine Societies, especially the Mattachine Society in San Francisco and MSNY, were among the foremost gay rights groups in the United States, but beginning in the middle 1960s and, especially, following the Stonewall riots of 1969, they began increasingly to be seen as too traditional, and not willing enough to be confrontational. Like the divide that occurred within the Civil Rights Movement, the late 1960s and the 1970s brought a new generation of activists, many of whom felt that the gay rights movement needed to endorse a larger and more radical agenda to address other forms of oppression, the Vietnam War, and the sexual revolution. Several unaffiliated entities that went under the name Mattachine eventually lost support or fell prey to internal division.

In 1973 Hal Call opened the Cinemattachine, a venue showing both Mattachine newsreels and pornographic movies. The Cinemattachine was an extension of the Mattachine Society's Sex Education Film Series and branded as being presented by both The Mattachine Society and The Seven Committee. In 1976 a venue with the name Cinemattachine Los Angeles at the ONE opened. The same screenings as the San Francisco establishment were shown there. Mattachine co-founder Chuck Rowland indicated that he did not feel that Call associating this venue with The Mattachine Society was appropriate.

Legacy
In the Quantum Leap comic book titled Up Against a Stonewall (1992), the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis are mentioned as two groups campaigning for LGBT rights prior to the Stonewall riots.

The 1995 film Stonewall included members of the Mattachine Society of New York among its characters. Mattachine members are seen leafleting, attending meetings and participating in the Annual Reminder picket in Philadelphia. However, the film sets the Reminder earlier in the summer than it really was, predating the June 28 Stonewall riots.

In 2002 Mattachine Midwest was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.

In 2009 the Mattachine Society and its founders became the subjects of the play The Temperamentals by Jon Marans. After workshop performances in 2009, the play opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages in early 2010. The Temperamentals received a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble Cast. Michael Urie, who originated the role of Rudi Gernreich, received a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor.

A new Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. was formed in 2011 and is dedicated to original archival research of LGBT political history.

The Playboy Club, a 2011 television series on NBC, includes a lesbian Playboy Bunny in a lavender marriage with a gay man. The two are members of the Chicago Mattachine chapter.

The Mattachine Steps, also known as the Cove Avenue stairway, is an outdoor staircase in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, dedicated to the Mattachine Society in 2012 in memory of its founder Harry Hay.

In 2015, a gay bar called Bar Mattachine opened in downtown Los Angeles. The podcast "Making Gay History" (season 1, episode 7) is about Mattachine co-founder Chuck Rowland, and another episode is about Mattachine co-founder Harry Hay (season 4, episode 3).

Julius’ bar in Manhattan has held a monthly party called "Mattachine" honoring the early gay rights pioneers.

title: Mattachine Society


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Scenario

In the performing arts, a scenario (, ; ; from Italian, "that which is pinned to the scenery") is a synoptical collage of an event or series of actions and events. In the commedia dell'arte, it was an outline of entrances, exits, and action describing the plot of a play, and was literally pinned to the back of the scenery. It is also known as canovaccio or "that which is pinned to the canvas" of which the scenery was constructed.

Surviving scenarios from the Renaissance contain little other than character names, brief descriptions of action, and references to specific lazzi with no further explanation. It is believed that a scenario formed the basis for a fully improvisational performance, though it is also likely that they were simple reminders of the plot for those members of the cast who were literate. Modern commedia troupes most often make use of a script with varying degrees of additional improvisation.

In the creation of an opera or ballet, a scenario is often developed initially to indicate how the original source, if any, is to be adapted and to summarize the aspects of character, staging, plot, etc. that can be expanded later in a fully developed libretto, or script. This sketch can be helpful in "pitching" the idea to a prospective producer, director or composer.

In the filmmaking of the early 20th century, film scenarios (also called "treatments" or "synopses" ) were short written scripts to provide narrative coherence that had previously been improvised. They could consist of a simple list of scene headings or scene headings with a detailed explication of the action in each scene. At this time in the silent era, scripts had yet to include individual shots or dialogue. These scenario scripts evolved into lengthier continuity scripts, which listed a number of shots within each scene, thus providing continuity to streamline the filmmaking process.

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

title: Scenario


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Lazzi

Lazzi (from the Italian lazzo, a joke or witticism) are stock comedic routines that are associated with commedia dell'arte. Performers, especially those playing the masked Arlecchino, had many examples of this in their repertoire, and would use improvisatory skills to weave them into the plot of dozens of different commedia scenarios. These largely physical sequences could be improvised or preplanned within the performance and were often used to enliven the audience when a scene was dragging, to cover a dropped line or cue, or to delight an expectant audience with the troupe's specialized lazzi.

Lazzi could be completed by a single player (e.g. the Lazzo of the School of Humanity wherein a Zanni character would announce that his sister was running a "school of humanity" from their home because she was a prostitute), a few individuals (e.g. the Lazzo of the Straw wherein a stock character of higher status would pour wine as his servant emptied it through a straw), or the entire troupe (e.g. the Lazzo of Nightfall wherein the entire troupe would stumble onto stage to enact hapless physical sequences as though the room was pitch black). While its placement in the plot was usually fixed during rehearsals, it was acceptable for an actor to unexpectedly utter a predetermined line of dialogue that instructed fellow performers to enact lazzi at any time during the performance. Sometimes lazzi could take place in dances or songs accompanied by onstage stringed musical instruments.

17th and 18th century Italy
Evidence of lazzi 's conventionalization within the Italian commedia dell'arte includes visual iconography, paintings, fragmented writings, and personal manuscripts from prominent 16th and 17th century dramatists and actors. One of the earliest accounts can be found in the work of Flaminio Scala, who listed 30 instances of lazzi, though the word "lazzi" was not yet used. Nearly a century later, Andrea Petrucci described lazzi as a fixture of commedia in The Art of The Rehearsal Performance and Improvisation. In Selva over zibaldone di concetti comic raccolti dal P.D. Placidio, Adriani di Lucca provides a list of lazzi from a manuscript that is one of the few extant and intact accounts of lazzi from 17th and 18th century Italy. The manuscript is currently held at the Library in Perugia. Most recently, Mel Gordon compiled a comprehensive collection of lazzi performed by commedia troupes between 1550 and 1750, and organized the descriptions into twelve categories that include 'acrobatic and mimic' as well as 'violence/sadistic behavior' lazzi.

In addition, visual iconography from the 17th and 18th century depicts elements of lazzi that often portray what would have been considered vulgar physical acts (i.e. a doctor administering an enema as seen in the image), though few of the written accounts describe such content. It has been proposed that the marked lack of documentation may be, in part, an attempt to evade rising censorship by authorities, especially in the case of Parisian Comédie-Italienne under the rule of Louis XIV, who threatened troupes with the revocation of royal subsidies should their material be deemed subversive. In some cases, his censorship resulted in a troupe's expulsion from the country. Others theorize that lazzi often went undocumented so that it could not be imitated by competing troupes, as routines could not be patented. Also, it has been suggested that because of the oral and physical nature of the training, as well as the inbred legacy of performers within the troupe, there was less of a need to have written explanations of lazzi.

Elizabethan and Jacobean England
While the direct influence of Italy's commedia dell'arte on the England's Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre is subject to much debate, verbal and visual lazzi were present in the plays of William Shakespeare. Shakespeare's work implies a familiarity with Italian literature and theatrical practices, though it is not certain that he ever experienced a commedia performance firsthand. It is as likely that Richard Tarlton served as the inspiration for Shakespeare's plays, as well as the lazzi of Italian commedia. Verbal lazzi were used in the form of puns, proverbs, and malapropisms, while instances of physical lazzi were abundant, especially in the work of Shakespeare's clowns, whose improvisations during performances often vexed the playwright.

1920s and modern lazzi
More recent appropriations of lazzi include the 1920s silent films of Charlie Chaplin, the silent/sound films and stage productions of Laurel and Hardy, and Punch and Judy puppet shows. While many similarities exist, a few parallels can be drawn in the use of pratfalls, fright jumps, and physical settings that enable the use of objects to perform the comedy. One popular comparison is Charlie Chaplin's cane to Arlecchino, or the Harlequin's stick when used as a comedic device.

Examples
The following list contains a few examples of 17th and 18th century lazzi that were found in the notes and manuscripts of actors and dramatists. The term "lazzo" refers to lazzi in the singular:
 * Lazzo of the Fly (17th century Italy): servant stock character tells master that there is "not a fly" in his home. Master enters to find it is full of people. Servant insists that there are still "no flies".
 * Lazzo of Water: (17th century Italy): the mistress has fainted. Female servant asks the male servant, usually an Arlecchino or Pulcinella, to fetch water. After splashing many kinds of water on her face, the male servant splashes his own urine on the fainted mistress, and she is revived.
 * Lazzo of Begging (17th century Italy): a servant character/low status stock character pretends to be a beggar by hiding his limbs from passers-by.
 * Lazzo of the School of Humanity (17th century Italy): Arlecchino, or other servant stock character insists that female relative runs a "school of humanity". The female relative is a prostitute.
 * Lazzo of the Barber (17th century Paris): clown/servant stock character shaves male character of higher status and replaces fresh drinking water with the contaminated shave remnants.
 * Lazzo of Eating Oneself (18th century Paris): clown/servant stock character, who is traditionally always hungry, eats himself.
 * Lazzo of the Straw (17th century Paris): a high status character pours wine into a glass while his servant empties the cup through a straw.

title: Lazzi


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Brown

Brown is a color. It can be considered a composite color, but it is mainly a darker shade of orange. In the CMYK color model used in printing and painting, brown is usually made by combining the colors orange and black.

In the RGB color model used to project colors onto television screens and computer monitors, brown combines red and green. The color brown is seen widely in nature, wood, soil, human hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation. Brown is the color of dark wood or rich soil.

According to public opinion surveys in Europe and the United States, brown is the least favorite color of the public; it is often associated with plainness, the rustic, and feces, although it does also have positive associations, including baking, warmth, wildlife, the autumn and music.

Etymology
The term is from Old English brún, in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color. The first recorded use of brown as a color name in English was in 1000. The Common Germanic adjectives *brûnoz and *brûnâ meant both dark colors and a glistening or shining quality, whence burnish. The current meaning developed in Middle English from the 14th century.

Words for the color brown around the world often come from foods or beverages; in the eastern Mediterranean, the word for brown often comes from the color of coffee: in Turkish, the word for brown is kahverengi; in Greek, kafé. In Portuguese, Spanish and French, the word for brown or for a specific shade of brown is derived from the word for chestnut (castanea in Latin). In Southeast Asia, the color name often comes from chocolate: coklat in Malay; tsokolate in Filipino. In Japan, the word chairo means the color of tea.

Ancient history
Brown has been used in art since prehistoric times. Paintings using umber, a natural clay pigment composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide, have been dated to 40,000 BC. Paintings of brown horses and other animals have been found on the walls of the Lascaux cave dating back about 17,300 years. The female figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings have brown skin, painted with umber. Light tan was often used on painted Greek amphorae and vases, either as a background for black figures, or the reverse.

The Ancient Greeks and Romans produced a fine reddish-brown ink, of a color called sepia, made from the ink of a variety of cuttlefish. This ink was used by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and other artists during the Renaissance, and by artists up until the present time.

In Ancient Rome, brown clothing was associated with the lower classes or barbarians. The term for the plebeians, or urban poor, was "pullati", which meant literally "those dressed in brown".

Post-classical history
In the Middle Ages brown robes were worn by monks of the Franciscan order, as a sign of their humility and poverty. Each social class was expected to wear a color suitable to their station; and grey and brown were the colors of the poor. Russet was a coarse homespun cloth made of wool and dyed with woad and madder to give it a subdued grey or brown shade. By the statute of 1363, poor English people were required to wear russet. The medieval poem Piers Plowman describes the virtuous Christian: "And is gladde of a goune of a graye russet As of a tunicle of Tarse or of trye scarlet."

In the Middle Ages, dark brown pigments were rarely used in art; painters and book illuminators artists of that period preferred bright, distinct colors such as red, blue and green rather than dark colors. The umbers were not widely used in Europe before the end of the fifteenth century; The Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) described them as being rather new in his time.

Artists began using far greater use of browns when oil painting arrived in the late fifteenth century. During the Renaissance, artists generally used four different browns; raw umber, the dark brown clay mined from the earth around Umbria, in Italy; raw sienna, a reddish-brown earth mined near Siena, in Tuscany; burnt umber, the Umbrian clay heated until it turned a darker shade, and burnt sienna, heated until it turned a dark reddish brown. In Northern Europe, Jan van Eyck featured rich earth browns in his portraits to set off the brighter colors.

17th and 18th century
The 17th and 18th century saw the greatest use of brown. Caravaggio and Rembrandt Van Rijn used browns to create chiaroscuro effects, where the subject appeared out of the darkness. Rembrandt also added umber to the ground layers of his paintings because it promoted faster drying. Rembrandt also began to use new brown pigment, called Cassel earth or Cologne earth. This was a natural earth color composed of over ninety percent organic matter, such as soil and peat. It was used by Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, and later became commonly known as Van Dyck brown.

19th and 20th century
Brown was generally hated by the French impressionists, who preferred bright, pure colors. The exception among French 19th-century artists was Paul Gauguin, who created luminous brown portraits of the people and landscapes of French Polynesia.

In the late 20th century, brown became a common symbol in western culture for simple, inexpensive, natural and healthy. Bag lunches were carried in plain brown paper bags; packages were wrapped in plain brown paper. Brown bread and brown sugar were viewed as more natural and healthy than white bread and white sugar.

Optics
Brown is a dark orange color, made by combining red, yellow and black. It can be thought of as dark orange, but it can also be made in other ways. In the RGB color model, which uses red, green and blue light in various combinations to make all the colors on computer and television screens, it is made by mixing red and green light.

In terms of the visible spectrum, "brown" refers to long wavelength hues, yellow, orange, or red, in combination with low luminance or saturation. Since brown may cover a wide range of the visible spectrum, composite adjectives are used such as red brown, yellowish brown, dark brown or light brown.

As a color of low intensity, brown is a tertiary color: a mix of the three subtractive primary colors is brown if the cyan content is low. Brown exists as a color perception only in the presence of a brighter color contrast. Yellow, orange, red, or rose objects are still perceived as such if the general illumination level is low, despite reflecting the same amount of red or orange light as a brown object would in normal lighting conditions.

Brown pigments, dyes and inks

 * Raw umber and burnt umber are two of the oldest pigments used by humans. Umber is a brown clay, containing a large amount of iron oxide and between five and twenty percent manganese oxide, which give the color. Its shade varies from a greenish brown to a dark brown. It takes its name from the Italian region of Umbria, where it was formerly mined. The principal source today is the island of Cyprus. Burnt umber is the same pigment which has been roasted (calcined), which turns the pigment darker and more reddish.
 * Raw sienna and burnt sienna are also clay pigments rich in iron oxide, which were mined during the Renaissance around the city of Siena in Tuscany. Sienna contains less than five percent manganese. The natural sienna earth is a dark yellow ochre color; when roasted it becomes a rich reddish brown called burnt sienna.
 * Mummy brown was a pigment used in oil paints made from ground Egyptian mummies.
 * Caput mortuum is a haematite iron oxide pigment, used in painting. The name is also used in reference to mummy brown.
 * Van Dyck brown, known in Europe as Cologne earth or Cassel earth, is another natural earth pigment, that was made up largely of decayed vegetal matter. It made a rich dark brown, and was widely used during the Renaissance to the 19th century It takes its name from the painter Anthony van Dyck, but it was used by many other artists before him. It was highly unstable and unreliable, so its use was abandoned by the 20th century, though the name continues to be used for modern synthetic pigments. The color of Van Dyck brown can be recreated by mixing ivory black with mauve or with Venetian red, or mixing cadmium red with cobalt blue.
 * Mars brown. The names of the earth colors are still used, but very few modern pigments with these names actually contain natural earths; most of their ingredients today are synthetic. Mars brown is typical of these new colors, made with synthetic iron oxide pigments. The new colors have a superior coloring power and opacity, but not the delicate hue as their namesakes.
 * Walnuts have been used to make a brown dye since antiquity. The Roman writer Ovid, in the first century BC described how the Gauls used the juice of the hull or husk inside the shell of the walnut to make a brown dye for wool, or a reddish dye for their hair.
 * The chestnut tree has also been used since ancient times as a source brown dye. The bark of the tree, the leaves and the husk of the nuts have all been used to make dye. The leaves were used to make a beige or yellowish-brown dye, and in the Ottoman Empire the yellow-brown from chestnut leaves was combined with indigo blue to make shades of green.

Brown eyes
With few exceptions, all mammals have brown or darkly-pigmented irises. In humans, brown eyes result from a relatively high concentration of melanin in the stroma of the iris, which causes light of both shorter and longer wavelengths to be absorbed and in many parts of the world, it is nearly the only iris color present. Dark pigment of brown eyes is most common in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Oceania, Africa, Americas, etc. as well as parts of Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. The majority of people in the world overall have dark brown eyes. Brown irises range from highly pigmented, dark brown (almost black) eyes, to very light, almost amber or hazel irises composed partially of lipochrome. of Light or medium-pigmented brown eyes are common in Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India, as well as some parts of the Middle East, and can also be found in populations in East Asia and Southeast Asia, but are proportionally rare. (See eye color).

Brown hair
Brown is the second most common color of human hair, after black. It is caused by higher levels of the natural dark pigment eumelanin, and lower levels of the pale pigment pheomelanin. Brown eumelanin is more common among Europeans, while black eumelanin is more often found in the hair on non-Europeans. A small amount of black eumelanin, in the absence of other pigments, results in grey hair. A small amount of brown eumelanin in the absence of other pigments results in blond hair.

Brown skin
A majority of people in the world have skin that is a shade of brown, from a very light honey brown or a golden brown, to a copper or bronze color, to a coffee color or a dark chocolate brown. Skin color and race are not the same; many people classified as "white" or "black" actually have skin that is a shade of brown. Brown skin is caused by melanin, a natural pigment which is produced within the skin in cells called melanocytes. Skin pigmentation in humans evolved to primarily regulate the amount of ultraviolet radiation penetrating the skin, controlling its biochemical effects.

Natural skin color can darken as a result of tanning due to exposure to sunlight. The leading theory is that skin color adapts to intense sunlight irradiation to provide partial protection against the ultraviolet fraction that produces damage and thus mutations in the DNA of the skin cells. There is a correlation between the geographic distribution of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and the distribution of indigenous skin pigmentation around the world. Darker-skinned populations are found in the regions with the most ultraviolet, closer to the equator, while lighter skinned populations live closer to the poles, with less UVR, though immigration has changed these patterns.

While white and black are commonly used to describe racial groups, brown is rarely used, because it crosses all racial lines. In Brazil, the Portuguese word pardo, which can mean different shades of brown, is used to refer to multiracial people. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) asks people to identify themselves as branco (white), pardo (brown), negro (black), or amarelo (yellow). In 2008 43.8 percent of the population identified themselves as pardo. (See human skin color).

Soil
The thin top layer of the Earth's crust on land is largely made up of soil colored different shades of brown. Good soil is composed of about forty-five percent minerals, twenty-five percent water, twenty-five percent air, and five percent organic material, living and dead. Half the color of soil comes from minerals it contains; soils containing iron turn yellowish or reddish as the iron oxidizes. Manganese, nitrogen and sulfur turn brownish or blackish as they decay naturally.

Rich and fertile soils tend to be darker in color; the deeper brown color of fertile soil comes from the decomposing of the organic matter. Dead leaves and roots become black or brown as they decay. Poorer soils are usually paler brown in color, and contain less water or organic matter.
 * Mollisols are the soil type found under grassland in the Great Plains of America, the Pampas in Argentina and the Russian Steppes. The soil is 60–80 centimeters deep and is rich in nutrients and organic matter.
 * Loess is a type of pale yellow or buff soil, which originated as wind-blown silt. It is very fertile, but is easily eroded by wind or water.
 * Peat is an accumulation of partially decayed vegetation, whose decomposition is slowed by water. Despite its dark brown color, it is infertile, but is useful as a fuel.

Mammals and birds
A large number of mammals and predatory birds have a brown coloration. This sometimes changes seasonally, and sometimes remains the same year-round. This color is likely related to camouflage, since the backdrop of some environments, such as the forest floor, is often brown, and especially in the spring and summertime when animals like the snowshoe hare get brown fur. Most mammals are dichromats and so do not easily distinguish brown fur from green grass.
 * The brown rat or Norwegian rat (Rattus norvegicus) is one of the best known and most common rats.
 * The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America.
 * The ermine (Mustela erminea) has a brown back in summer, or year-round in the southern reaches of its range.

Biology

 * The solid waste excreted by human beings and many other animals is characteristically brown in color due to the presence of bilirubin, a byproduct of destruction of red blood cells.

Brown in culture
Surveys in Europe and the United States showed that brown was the least popular color among respondents. It was the favorite color of only one percent of respondents and the least favorite color of twenty percent of people.

Brown uniforms
Brown has been a popular color for military uniforms since the late 18th century, largely because of its wide availability and low visibility. When the Continental Army was established in 1775 at the outbreak of the American Revolution, the first Continental Congress declared that the official uniform color would be brown, but this was not popular with many militias, whose officers were already wearing blue. In 1778 the Congress asked George Washington to design a new uniform, and in 1779 Washington made the official color of all uniforms blue and buff.

In 1846 the Indian soldiers of the Corps of Guides in British India began to wear a yellowish shade of tan, which became known as khaki from the Urdu word for dust-colored, taken from an earlier Persian word for soil. The color made an excellent natural camouflage, and was adopted by the British Army for their Abyssian Campaign in 1867–1868, and later in the Boer War. It was adopted by the United States Army during the Spanish–American War (1896), and afterwards by the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps.

In the 1920s, brown became the uniform color of the Nazi Party in Germany. The Nazi paramilitary organization the Sturmabteilung (SA) wore brown uniforms and were known as the brownshirts. The color brown was used to represent the Nazi vote on maps of electoral districts in Germany. If someone voted for the Nazis, they were said to be "voting brown". The national headquarters of the Nazi party, in Munich, was called the Brown House. The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was called the Brown Revolution. At Adolf Hitler's Obersalzberg home, the Berghof, he slept in a "bed which was usually covered by a brown quilt embroidered with a huge swastika.

The swastika also appeared on Hitler's brown satin pajamas, embroidered in black against a red background on the pocket. He had a matching brown silk robe." Brown had originally been chosen as a Party color largely for convenience; large numbers of war-surplus brown uniforms from Germany's former colonial forces in Africa were cheaply available in the 1920s. It also suited the working-class and military images that the Party wished to convey.

From the 1930s onwards, the Party's brown uniforms were mass-produced by German clothing firms such as Hugo Boss.

Business
The color brown is said to represent ruggedness when used in advertising.   is the color of the United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company with their trademark brown trucks and uniforms; it was earlier the color of Pullman rail cars of the Pullman Company, and was adopted by UPS both because brown is easy to keep clean, and due to favorable associations of luxury that Pullman brown evoked. UPS has filed two trademarks on the color brown to prevent other shipping companies (and possibly other companies in general) from using the color if it creates "market confusion". In its advertising, UPS refers to itself as "Brown" ("What can Brown do for you?").

Idioms and expressions

 * "To be brown as a berry" (to be deeply suntanned)
 * "To brown bag" a meal (to bring food from home to eat at work or school rather than patronizing an in-house cafeteria or a restaurant)
 * "To experience a brown out" (a partial loss of electricity, less severe than a blackout)
 * Brownfields are abandoned, idled, or under-used industrial and commercial facilities where redevelopment for infill housing is complicated by real or perceived environmental contaminations.
 * '"Brown-nose" is a verb which means to be obsequious. It comes from the term for kissing the posterior of the boss in order to gain advancement.
 * "In a brown study" (melancholy)

Religion

 * In Wicca, brown represents endurance, solidity, grounding, and strength. It is strongly associated with the element of earth.

Sports

 * The Cleveland Browns of the National Football League, take their team name from its founder and long-time coach, Paul Brown, and use brown as a team color.
 * The Hawthorn Football Club of the Australian Football League wears a brown and gold uniform.
 * The San Diego Padres of Major League Baseball utilizes brown as their primary color.
 * FC St. Pauli, a German association football club, typically features brown shirts as its primary kit.
 * Club Atlético Platense in Argentina, typically features brown shirts as its primary kit.
 * The University of Wyoming, Brown University, St. Bonaventure University, and Lehigh University sports teams generally feature this color.

title: Brown


text:
User:The Cunctator/How to build Wikipedia

Be in Charge and Be Humble
To lead an anarchistic project is a paradox--the only way to successfully do so is to act with humility, to question your actions more than you question those of others.

Responses

Understand Bias
The NPOV is an ideal, and should be recognized such. True neutrality is impossible to achieve. Thus, we must remember that every contribution to Wikipedia is biased. Rather than giving up and deleting everything, we instead try to contextualize, and distinguish the sources of knowledge: scientific, historical, inspirational, cultural, etc. Instead of using "POV" and "NPOV" as jargonistic acronyms, discuss instead "point of view" and "neutral point of view".

Responses

Appreciate Idiosyncracy
Consensus is critical to Wikipedia, which means both that people should expect to be mercilessly edited, but also that people shouldn't believe that they are the final arbiters of what is the One True Wikipedia.

The "rules" of Wikipedia (e.g. Wikipedia is not a dictionary) should not be used as reasons to violently delete other people's work. Rather, if you believe in the rules, you should attempt to convert those people to your view. Use words, not force.

Responses

Or, Act Like Perl
Emphasize the connection between code and culture. Celebrate and require documentation and a mission plan.

Be bold in updating pages. Propose new ideas for how to use Wikipedia, from WikiProject to Project Sourceberg.

For anyone who wonders if this can be done, just think for a second about how Perl has developed and grown, nurtured by Larry Wall.

Responses

Make big plans on Wikipedia
If a mailing list is to be used, it should be better incorporated with the Wikipedia interface. This can be technological or cultural; for example, there could be Wikipedia pages which summarize (for current interest and for posterity) mailing list discussions.

Responses

Avoid Cabals
Setting up hierarchies is always a temptation, and is why anarchism never works. A cabal, even an ironic, Usenet-style Cabal (TINC), leads slowly to what could be called class distinctions, unless explicit safeguards in the vein of the Bill of Rights are put into place.

Wikipedia is a noble attempt at a limited anarchistic society, and we must remain vigilant.

Responses

Follow the Spirit and Letter of the GFDL
The GNU Free Documentation License is intended for those who want to build a Jeffersonian intellectual commons. It is not intended for those who want to maintain control over the content through any means other than being demonstrably the authoritative resource.

This means that to follow the spirit the GFDL means that the content of Wikipedia's pages should be considered a public resource which happened to originate on Wikipedia. Perhaps some of the pages would be best served as being primarily worked on by a completely different project; the GFDL ensures that wherever a new project takes credit for their work, Wikipedia also gets credit. Wikipedia should not try to "brand" their work in the way that, for example, DMoz has, which has a very different kind of license.

This does allow bad, selfish, or inconsiderate people and groups to not give credit where credit is due: note how the GNU Project is ignored by Linux partisans, even though the "Linux" operating system (Red Hat Linux, Yellow Dog Linux, etc.) is really an instance of the GNU operating system.

But that's the sacrifice all people who decide to cooperate more than steal make. The GPL and the GFDL are great licenses for people who pretty much just want to share, with just enough protection that other people can't take the knowledge and lock it away.

And I think it's a small sacrifice to make since the benefits are so great.

Responses

Be Respectful but Firm
Some combativeness and dissent helps societies thrive. Many have believed that the preservation of the right to dissent with utter vehemence, even violence, is critical to the legitimacy and health of the state. Whatever the case, dissent should be officially encouraged, even celebrated, by the powers that be.

Politeness too is a worthy goal. But if calls for politeness come from an all-powerful cabal, which can kick you out, delete your work, etc., well, you can determine what to call that. Fortunately, that cabal doesn't exist on Wikipedia.

Responses

Is There Reason to Worry?
See How to destroy Wikipedia.

Wikipedia commentary/Responses to How to Build Wikipedia User:Jimbo Wales/Statement of principles

 * See also : User:The Cunctator


text:
Talk:Pronoun

Error in Notes, "prenominal pronouns"
There is an error in the Notes at the bottom: "^ Not to be confused with prenominal, which means "before the noun". English adjectives are prenominal – the big house — and French adjectives are postnominal — la maison grande." In fact, a limited number of pronouns in French go in front of nouns, and that includes grand/grande. Some French pronouns may go before or after depending on type of meaning, and grand/grande is in this class! https://www.thoughtco.com/introduction-to-french-adjectives-1368789 So a different example of a postnominal pronoun is required in this section. 66.241.130.86 (talk) 19:56, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

 * ✅ – 82.126.185.210 (talk) 09:57, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Replay83.120.231.247 83.120.231.247 (talk) 08:20, 14 January 2024 (UTC)

Pronoun scope in different languages
Different languages have different scope for what "pronoun" means, ranging from the narrow English definition of substituting for a noun to almost as broad as pro-form. For example, Czech pronouns also include many words that are classified as determiners in English. These pronouns can substitute for an adjective. Slovak language had the same pronoun scope as Czech for some time, but its definition of pronouns was later expanded to include words that substitute for adverbs and numerals, which makes Slovak pronouns closer (but not identical) to English pro-forms. As far as I can tell, Polish pronouns are also closer to pro-form than to English pronouns. This variety in pronoun scope could be mentioned at the beginning of the article, but I hesitate to edit, because I am not a linguist. Anyone in support or against? Comments? — Robert Važan (talk) 11:53, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Actually, as I am studying this, I notice that standard Czech has adverbial and numeral pronouns in addition to substantive and adjective ones, just like Slovak. Wiktionaries (both CS and EN) got it wrong. I am now wondering whether there are only two ways to define the pronoun, the narrow English definition and what appears to be a broad Slavic definition (shared by Polish, Czech, and Slovak at least), or whether there are more variations in scope. — Robert Važan (talk) 14:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

This article is problematic; while it's good that it acknowledges the heavy focus on English, there should be information about pronouns crosslinguistically, illustrated with data from both English and other languages. There could be a new page particularly about English pronouns. It's problematic to conflate the grammatical category with pronominal features of English, however. Claire (talk) 20:58, 28 May 2020 (UTC)

Thing is a noun
I'm going to edit the example to bold face "thing" in "Who would say such a thing?" as it is a noun. TFJamMan (talk) 07:41, 15 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Thing is not a pronoun though, and this article is about pronouns and not nouns, so I am reverting your edit. Zacharycmango (talk) 22:28, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Wrong statement regarding pronoun
A pronoun can consist of two words. E.g., "this one". Jdjlpwfj (talk) 09:03, 19 September 2021 (UTC)

Types of pronoun
In detail 2401:4900:3E2C:31DC:2CD2:27FF:FE6D:4B90 (talk) 14:45, 14 October 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Pronoun


text:
Proserpina

Proserpina or Proserpine  is an ancient Roman goddess whose iconography, functions and myths are virtually identical to those of Greek Persephone. Proserpina replaced or was combined with the ancient Roman fertility goddess Libera, whose principal cult was housed in the Aventine temple of the grain-goddess Ceres, along with the wine god Liber.

Each of these three deities occupied their own cella at the temple. Their cults were served or supervised by a male public priesthood. Ceres was by far the senior of the three, one of the dii consentes, Rome's approximate equivalent to the Greek Twelve Olympians. She was identified with Greek Demeter and Liber was identified with Bacchus and Dionysus. Libera is sometimes described as a female version of Liber Pater, concerned with female fertility. Otherwise she is given no clear identity or mythology by Roman sources, and no Greek equivalent. Nothing is known of her native iconography: her name translates as a feminine form of Liber, "the free one". Proserpina's name is a Latinisation of "Persephone", perhaps influenced by the Latin proserpere ("to emerge, to creep forth"), with reference to the growing of grain.

Proserpina was imported from southern Italy as part of an official religious strategy, towards the end of the second Punic war, when antagonism between Rome's lower and upper social classes, crop failures and intermittent famine were thought to be signs of divine wrath, provoked by Roman impiety. The new cult was installed around 205 BC at Ceres' Aventine temple. Ethnically Greek priestesses were recruited to serve Ceres and Proserpina as "Mother and Maiden". This innovation might represent an attempt by Rome's ruling class to please the gods and the plebs; the latter shared strong cultural ties with Italian magna Graeca. The reformed cult was based on the Greek, women-only Thesmophoria, and was promoted as morally desirable for respectable Roman women, both as followers and priestesses. It was almost certainly supervised by Rome's Flamen Cerealis, a male priesthood usually reserved to plebeians. The new cult might have partly subsumed the Aventine temple's older, native cults to Ceres, Liber and Libera, but it also functioned alongside them. Liber played no part in the reformed cult. Ceres, Proserpina/Libera and Liber are known to have received cult in their own right, at their Aventine temple and elsewhere, though details are lacking.

The Roman cult of Mother and Maiden named Proserpina as queen of the underworld, spouse to Rome's king of the underworld, Dis pater, and daughter to Ceres. The cult's functions, framework of myths and roles involved the agricultural cycle, seasonal death and rebirth, dutiful daughterhood and motherly care. They included secret initiations and nocturnal torchlit processions, and cult objects concealed from non-initiates. Proserpina's forcible abduction by the god of the underworld, her mother's search for her, and her eventual but temporary restoration to the world above are the subject of works in Roman and later art and literature. In particular, her seizure by the god of the Underworld – usually described as the Rape of Proserpina, or of Persephone – has offered dramatic subject matter for Renaissance and later sculptors and painters.

Origin of Libera
In early Roman religion, Libera was the female equivalent of Liber Pater, protector of plebeian rights, god of wine, male fertility and liberty, equivalent to Greek Bacchus or Dionysus. Libera was originally an Italic goddess, paired with Liber as an "etymological duality" at some time during Rome's Regal or very early Republican eras. She enters Roman history as part of a so-called Triadic cult alongside Ceres and Liber, in a temple established around 493 BC on the Aventine Hill at state expense, promised by Rome's governing class to the plebs (Rome's citizen-commoners), who had threatened secession. Collectively, these three deities were divine patrons and protectors of Rome's commoner-citizens, and guardians of Rome's senatorial records and written laws, housed at the temple soon after its foundation. Libera might have been offered cult on March 17 during Liber's festival, Liberalia, or at some time during the seven days of Cerealia, held in mid-to-late April; in the latter festival, she would have been subordinate to Ceres; the names of both Liber and Libera were a later addition to Ceres's festival. Otherwise, Libera's functional relationship to her Aventine cult partners is uncertain. She has no known native iconography or mythology.

Libera and Proserpina
Libera was officially identified as Proserpina from 205 BC, when she and Ceres acquired a Romanised form of Greek mystery rite, the ritus graecia cereris. This was part of Rome's religious recrecruitment of deities to serve as divine allies against Carthage, towards the end of the Second Punic War. In the late Republican era, Cicero described Liber and Libera as Ceres' children. At around the same time, Hyginus equated Libera with Greek Ariadne. The older and newer forms of her names, cult, and rites, and their diverse associations, persisted well into the late Imperial era. St. Augustine (354–430 AD) wrote that Libera was a goddess of female fertility, just as Liber was a god of male fertility.

Proserpina
Proserpina was officially introduced to Rome as the daughter of Ceres in the newly Romanised cult of "Mother and Daughter". The cult's origins lay in southern Italy, which was politically allied to Rome but culturally a part of Magna Graecia. The cult was based on the women-only Greek Thesmophoria, which was a part public and part mystery cult to Demeter and Persephone as "Mother and Maiden". It arrived in Rome along with its Greek priestesses, who were granted Roman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention". In his commentary on Virgil, Servius writes that Proserpina's heavenly name is Luna, and her earthly name is Diana.

The exclusively female initiates and priestesses of the new "Greek-style" mysteries of Ceres and Proserpina were expected to uphold Rome's traditional, patrician-dominated social hierarchy and traditional morality. Unmarried girls were expected to emulate the chastity of Proserpina, the maiden; married women were expected to seek to emulate Ceres, the devoted and fruitful Mother. Their rites were intended to secure a good harvest, and increase the fertility of those who partook in the mysteries. Each of the Aventine triad's deities continued to receive cult in their own right. Liber's open, gender-mixed cult and festivals continued, though likely caught up in the suppression of the Bacchanalia some twenty years on. Proserpina's individual cult, and her joint cult with Ceres became widespread throughout the Republic and Empire. A Temple of Proserpina was located in a suburb of Melite, in modern Mtarfa, Malta. The temple's ruins were quarried away between the 17th and 18th centuries; only a few fragments survive.

Myths
The best-known myth surrounding Proserpina is of her abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother Ceres' frantic search for her, and her eventual but temporary restitution to the world above. In Latin literature, several versions are known, all similar in most respects to the myths of Greek Persephone's abduction by the King of the underworld, named variously in Latin sources as Dis or Pluto, and in Greek sources as Hades or Pluto. "Hades" can mean both the hidden Underworld and its king ('the hidden one'), who in early Greek versions of the myth is a dark, unsympathetic figure; Persephone is "Kore" ('the maiden'), taken against her will; in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, her captor is known as Hades; they form a divine couple who rule the underworld together, and receive Eleusinian initiates into some form of better afterlife. Renamed Pluto, the king of the underworld is distanced from his violent abduction of his consort. In 27 BC Vergil presented his own version of the myth, in his Georgics. In the early 1st century AD, Ovid gives two poetic versions: one in Book 5 of his Metamorphoses and another in Book 4 of his Fasti An early 5th century AD Latin version of the same myth is Claudian's De raptu Proserpinae; in most cases, these Latin works identify Proserpina's underworld abductor and later consort as Dis. In Claudian's version, the unprepossessing Dis yearns for the joys of married love and fatherhood, and threatens to make war on the other gods if he remains alone in Erebus. The Fates (Parcae), who determine the destinies of all, arrange a future marriage for Dis, to prevent the outbreak of war. Jupiter orders Venus to bring love to Dis, in fulfillment of the prophecy. Ceres has already sought to conceal the innocent Proserpina by sending her to safety in Sicily, Ceres' earthly home and sanctuary; but Dis comes out from the volcano at Mount Etna in his chariot, seizes Proserpina at the Pergusa Lake near Enna, and takes her down into the underworld. The poem ends at this point.

Proserpina's mother, Ceres, seeks her daughter across the world, but in vain. The sun sinks and darkness falls as Ceres walks the earth, stopping the growth of crops and creating a desert with each step. Jupiter sends Mercury to order Dis to free Proserpina; but Proserpina has melted Dis' hard heart, and eats "several" of the pomegranate seeds he offers her; those who have eaten the food of the dead cannot return to the world of the living. Pluto insists that she had willingly eaten his pomegranate seeds and in return she must stay with him for half the year. Virgil asserts that Proserpina agrees to this, and is reluctant to ascend from the underworld and re-unite with her mother. When Ceres greets her daughter's return to the world of the living, the crops grow, flowers blossom, and in summer all growing crops flourish, to be harvested in Autumn. During the time that Proserpina resides with Pluto, the world goes through winter, when the earth gives no crops. The earth can only be fertile when she is above.

Orpheus and Eurydice
The most extensive myth of Proserpina in Latin is Claudian's (4th century AD). It is closely connected with that of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Virgil's Georgics, Orpheus' beloved wife, Eurydice, died from a snake-bite; Proserpina allowed Orpheus into Hades without losing his life; charmed by his music, she allowed him to lead his wife back to the land of the living, as long as he did not look back during the journey. But Orpheus could not resist a backward glance, so Eurydice was forever lost to him.

In artwork
Proserpina's figure inspired many artistic compositions, eminently in sculpture (Bernini, see The Rape of Proserpina (Bernini) ) in painting (D.G.Rossetti, a fresco by Pomarancio, J. Heintz, Rubens, A. Dürer, Dell'Abbate, Parrish ) and in literature (Goethe's Proserpina and Swinburne's Hymn to Proserpine and The Garden of Proserpine) The statue of the Rape of Prosepina by Pluto that stands in the Great Garden of Dresden, Germany is also referred to as "Time Ravages Beauty". Kate McGarrigle's song about the legend was one of the last things she wrote prior to her death, and received its only performance at her last concert at Royal Albert Hall in December 2009.

title: Proserpina


text:
Juan García Esquivel

Juan García Esquivel (January 20, 1918 – January 3, 2002), often known mononymously as Esquivel!, was a Mexican band leader, pianist, and composer for television and films. He is recognized today as one of the foremost exponents of a sophisticated style of largely instrumental music that combines elements of lounge music and jazz with Latin flavors. Esquivel is sometimes called "The King of Space Age Pop" and "The Busby Berkeley of Cocktail Music", and is considered one of the foremost exponents of a style of late 1950s-early 1960s quirky instrumental pop that became known (in retrospect) as "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music".

Early life
He was born in 1918, in Tampico, Tamaulipas, and his family moved to Mexico City in 1928 where he became a self-taught musician from an early age. In interviews, Esquivel's family members have stated that the young boy started playing piano when he was around 6 years old, to the amazement of older musicians who would gather around him in disbelief and to his own delight exhibiting his musical gifts. They have also stated that Esquivel continued to eschew formal musical training as he grew older, preferring to learn from books and by listening to and playing music instead.

Music
Esquivel played a style of late 1950s-early 1960s quirky instrumental pop known today as lounge music. Esquivel's musical style was highly idiosyncratic, and although elements sound like his contemporaries, many stylistic traits distinguished his music and made it instantly recognizable. These included exotic percussion, wordless vocals, virtuoso piano runs, and exaggerated dynamic shifts. He used many jazz-like elements; however, other than his piano solos, there is no improvisation, and the works are meticulously arranged by Esquivel himself, who considered himself a perfectionist as a composer, performer, and recording artist.

His orchestration employed novel instrumental combinations, such as Chinese bells, mariachi bands, whistling, and numerous percussion instruments, blended with orchestra, mixed chorus, and his own heavily ornamented piano style. Vocal groups were often utilized to sing only nonsense syllables, most famously "zu-zu" and "pow!" A survey of Esquivel's recordings reveals a fondness for glissando, sometimes on a half-valved trumpet, sometimes on a kettle drum, but most frequently on pitched percussion instruments and steel guitars.

Esquivel's use of stereo recording was notable, and he occasionally employed two bands recording simultaneously in separate studios, such as on his album Latin-Esque (1962). That album's song "Mucha Muchacha" makes unusual use of stereo separation, with the chorus and brass rapidly alternating in the left and right audio channels.

He arranged many traditional Mexican songs like "Bésame Mucho", "La Bamba", "El Manisero" (Cuban/Mexican) and "La Bikina"; covered Brazilian songs like "Aquarela do Brasil" (also known simply as "Brazil") by Ary Barroso, "Surfboard" and "Agua de Beber" by Tom Jobim, and composed spicy lounge-like novelties such as "Mini Skirt", "Yeyo", "Latin-Esque", "Mucha Muchacha" and "Whatchamacallit". He was commissioned to compose the music of a Mexican children's TV show Odisea Burbujas. His 1958 album Four Corners of the World featured a fusion of "Latin American music combined with the wonderful melodies of European classical music."

His concerts featured elaborate light shows years before such effects became popular in live music. He performed in Las Vegas on several occasions, often as the opening act for Frank Sinatra. He frequently performed at the Stardust casino lounge circa 1964.

Several compilations of Esquivel's music were issued on compact disc starting with Space Age Bachelor Pad Music in 1994. The first reissues were compiled by Irwin Chusid (who also produced the first CD compilation of Raymond Scott recordings and the premiere release of The Langley Schools Music Project). The success of these releases led to reissues of several of Esquivel's original 1950s-'60s albums.

The last recording on which Esquivel worked was Merry Xmas from the Space-Age Bachelor Pad in 1996, for which he recorded voiceovers on two tracks by the band Combustible Edison; his voiceovers were recorded at home in Mexico by the band's keyboardist Brother Cleve, who also mixed the tracks. This album was a re-release of the six Esquivel recordings that originally appeared on the 1959 RCA Victor LP The Merriest of Christmas Pops, along with four more Esquivel recordings from the late 1950s and 1960s and two new Combustible Edison tracks featuring Esquivel's holiday-themed voiceovers.

The last CD released during his lifetime, See It In Sound (1998), was recorded in 1960 for RCA, but was not released at the time because RCA believed it would not be commercially successful. The album's concept was that Esquivel's music would be combined with sound effects and edited in a way that suggested a visual work such as a film, though without dialog or an explicitly stated narrative. For example, the album includes a version of "Brazil" with an arrangement that makes extensive use of editing and sound effects to suggest a person going in and out of several bars, each bar featuring a band playing a unique arrangement of "Brazil".

Esquivel also worked as composer for Revue Productions/Universal Television. There he scored the TV western series "The Tall Man," and co-wrote, with Stanley Wilson, the Revue/Universal TV logo fanfare.

Music in recent TV and films
Esquivel's recording of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" was used in episode two of Better Call Saul.

His recording of his composition "Mucha Muchacha" was used in the films Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Big Lebowski, The Notorious Bettie Page, Stuart Saves His Family, Nacho Libre and Beavis and Butt-Head Do America.

His recording of his composition "Whatchamacallit" was used in the 2002 film Secretary.

"Mini Skirt" was used as the opening theme for the BBC documentary series Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends and When Louis Met....

Esquivel’s recording of "My Blue Heaven" was used in the trailer for the 2021 film Malibu Road.

In 2022, Esquivel's 1959 recording of "Fantasy" was used by Apple in its "Data Auction" global TV ad campaign, to promote privacy on its iPhone product.

Discography
(12" LP releases, US and Mexico) (CD releases) (Related releases featuring Esquivel's music)
 * Las Tandas de Juan Garcia Esquivel (1957, RCA Victor Mexico)
 * To Love Again (1957, RCA Victor)
 * Cabaret Tragico (April 1958, RCA Victor Mexico)
 * Other Worlds Other Sounds (October 1958, RCA Victor)
 * Four Corners of the World (December 1958, RCA Victor)
 * Exploring New Sounds in Hi-Fi/Stereo (May 1959, RCA Victor)
 * The Ames Brothers: Hello Amigos (1959, RCA Victor)
 * Strings Aflame (August 1959, RCA Victor)
 * The Merriest of Christmas Pops (1959, RCA Victor)
 * Infinity in Sound, Vol. 1 (August 1960, RCA Victor)
 * Infinity in Sound, Vol. 2 (April 1961, RCA Victor)
 * Latin-Esque (1962, RCA Victor)
 * More of Other Worlds Other Sounds (1962, Reprise Records)
 * The Living Strings: In a Mellow Mood (1962, RCA Camden)
 * The Genius of Esquivel (1967, RCA Victor)
 * 1968 Esquivel!! (1968, RCA Mexico)
 * Burbujas  (1979)
 * Odisea Burbujas (1980, Discos America)
 * Vamos al Circo (1981, Discos America)
 * Space-Age Bachelor Pad Music (1994, Bar/None Records)
 * Music From a Sparkling Planet (1995, Bar/None Records)
 * Cabaret Mañana (1996, BMG Entertainment)
 * Merry Xmas from the Space-Age Bachelor Pad (1996, Bar/None Records)
 * See It in Sound (1998, House of Hits Records), recorded 1960, previously unreleased
 * The Sights and Sounds of Esquivel  (2005, Bar/None Records)
 * Esquivel! Remixed (2006, SonyBMG Mexico)
 * Complete 1954–1962 Recordings (2017, New Continent, Europe)
 * The Unforgettable Sounds of Esquivel (Mr. Ho's Orchestrotica, 2010)
 * Perfect Vision: The Esquivel Sound – Metropole Orkest (June 2013, Basta Music)

title: Juan García Esquivel


text:
Nijō

Nijō can refer to:

Places

 * Nijō Street (二条通), one of numbered east–west streets in the ancient capital of Heian-kyō (present-day Kyoto, Japan)
 * Nijō Castle, a castle in Nakagyō-ku, Kyoto
 * Nijō Station (Kyoto), a train station in Nakagyō-ku, Kyoto
 * Nijō, Fukuoka (二丈町), a former town in Fukuoka Prefecture, Japan

People

 * Emperor Nijō (1143–1165), 78th emperor of Japan
 * Nijō family, one of the five regent houses (go-sekke)
 * Nijō Tameuji (1222–1286), also known as Fujiwara no Tameuji, poet and founder of:
 * Nijō poetic school, a conservative school of Japanese waka (poetry)
 * Lady Nijō (1258–c. 1307), Japanese writer, author of The Confessions of Lady Nijo

title: Nijō


text:
1165

Year 1165 (MCLXV) was a common year starting on Friday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * Spring – Emperor Manuel I (Komnenos) makes an alliance with Venice against Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa), who takes an oath at the Diet of Würzburg to support Antipope Paschal III against Pope Alexander III.
 * Andronikos Komnenos, a cousin of Manuel I, escapes from prison at Constantinople. After passing through many dangers, he reaches Kiev and seeks refuge at the court of Prince Yaroslav Osmomysl.

Europe

 * Gerald the Fearless, Portuguese warrior and adventurer, seizes the city Évora by surprise. The same year (or soon after), he takes Cáceres, Trujillo, Montánchez, Moura, Monsaraz and Alconchel from the Almohads.
 * October 15 – Battle of Fahs al-Jullab: Almohads forces defeat Ibn Mardanish, ruler of the Taifa of Murcia. His army is routed at a place called the "merchant field" near Alhama, in the valley of the Guadalentín.
 * Benjamin of Tudela, Spanish Jewish traveler, sets out on his journey from the northeast Iberian Peninsula (modern Spain), in what begins as a pilgrimage to the Holy Land.
 * Otto II (the Rich), margrave of Meissen, grants Leipzig city and market privileges. The city is located at the crossways of the Via Regia and Via Imperii trade routes.

Britain

 * King Owain ap Gruffydd (the Great) of Gwynedd forms an alliance with his nephew Rhys ap Gruffydd, prince of Deheubarth, to challenge English rule. They drive the English forces out of Wales.
 * Battle of Crogen: King Henry II invades Wales, but is defeated and forced to retreat. After Welsh forces under Owain ap Gruffydd inflict an unknown number of casualties on the English army.
 * Henry II's marriage with Queen Eleanor of Aquitaine is effectively ended when she moves back to Aquitaine. Henry begins an affair with Rosamund Clifford.
 * December 9 – King Malcolm IV dies at Jedburgh after a 12-year reign and is succeeded by his brother William I (the Lion) as ruler of Scotland (until 1214).

Asia

 * January 30 – Emperor Go-Shirakawa holds an opening ceremony for the Sanjūsangen-dō, a temple built by Taira no Kiyomori.
 * September 5 – Emperor Nijō abdicates the throne and dies after a 7-year reign. He is succeeded by his 1-year-old son Rokujō as the 79th emperor of Japan.
 * In China the Jin Dynasty (Great Jin) and the Song Dynasty make a lasting peace (until 1205).

Religion

 * Eskil, Danish archbishop of Lund, appoints Fulco as the first Bishop of Estonia, marking the early beginning of the introduction of Christianity to the country. He will visit Estonia for the first time in 1169 or 1170.
 * Hildegard of Bingen, German Benedictine abbess, founds Eibingen Abbey on the opposite bank of the Rhine near Rüdesheim (approximate date).
 * The construction of Liuhe Pagoda (Six Harmonies Pagoda) in Hangzhou, China, is completed during the Song Dynasty.

Births

 * August 21 – Philip II, king of France (d. 1223)
 * Albéric Clément, Marshal of France (d. 1191)
 * Albert of Buxhoeven, bishop of Riga (d. 1229)
 * Blacas III, French knight and troubadour (d. 1237)
 * Conrad III, German cleric and bishop (d. 1224)
 * Han (or Gongshu), Chinese empress (d. 1200)
 * Henry I (the Brave), duke of Brabant (d. 1235)
 * Henry VI, Holy Roman Emperor (d. 1197)
 * Henry the Bearded, High Duke of Poland (d. 1238)
 * Hermann von Salza, German nobleman (d. 1239)
 * Ibn Arabi, Andalusian philosopher (d. 1240)
 * Jean Bodel, French poet and writer (d. 1210)
 * Jean de Montmirail, French nobleman (d. 1217)
 * Joan of England, queen of Sicily (d. 1199)
 * Phillipe de Plessis, French Grand Master (d. 1209)
 * Renaud I (or Reginald), French nobleman (d. 1227)
 * Ruben II (or Roupen), Armenian prince (d. 1170)
 * Shizuka Gozen, Japanese court dancer (d. 1211)
 * Theobald Walter, Norman High Sheriff (d. 1206)
 * Waleran III (or Walram), duke of Limburg (d. 1226)
 * William the Breton, French chronicler (d. 1225)

Deaths

 * January 24 – William of Ypres, Flemish nobleman (b. 1090)
 * February 7 – Stephen of Armenia, Armenian nobleman (b. 1111)
 * March 27 – Awn al-Din ibn Hubayra, Abbasid vizier (b. 1105)
 * April 11
 * Ibn al-Tilmidh, Arab physician and calligrapher (b. 1074)
 * Stephen IV, king of Hungary and Croatia (b. 1133)
 * September 5 – Nijō, emperor of Japan (b. 1143)
 * December 9 – Malcolm IV, king of Scotland (b. 1141)
 * Adalgott II of Disentis, German abbot and bishop
 * Goswin of Anchin, Flemish Benedictine abbot (b. 1086)
 * Gottfried of Admont, German Benedictine abbot
 * Helias de Say (or Hellias), Norman nobleman
 * John FitzGilbert, Marshal of England (b. 1105)
 * Muhammad al-Idrisi, Arab geographer (b. 1100)
 * Rostislav Glebovich, Kievan prince of Minsk
 * Sibylla of Anjou, countess of Flanders (b. 1112)

title: 1165


text:
Rokujō

Rokujō (六条 or 六條) literally means sixth street in Japanese. It can refer to:

People

 * Emperor Rokujō, the 79th Emperor of Japan
 * the Rokujō family, a poetically conservative faction in the Japanese Imperial court
 * Lady Rokujō, a character in the Tale of Genji
 * Miyuki Rokujō, a fictional character in Strawberry Panic!—see List of Strawberry Panic! characters

Places

 * Rokujō Street (六条通), one of east–west streets in the ancient capital of Heian-kyō, present-day Kyoto
 * Rokujō Station, a train station on the JR West Etsumi-Hoku Line in Fukui, Fukui, Japan

title: Rokujō


text:
1176

Year 1176 (MCLXXVI) was a leap year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar, the 1176th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 176th year of the 2nd millennium, the 76th year of 12th century, and the 7th year of the 1170s decade.

Byzantine Empire

 * Summer – Emperor Manuel I (Komnenos) assembles a Byzantine expeditionary force, and marches towards Iconium, the Seljuk capital. Meanwhile, hordes of Seljuk Turks destroy crops and poison water supplies, to make Manuel's march more difficult, and harass the Byzantine army, in order to force it into the Meander Valley. Kilij Arslan II, ruler of the Sultanate of Rum, hears of the expedition, and sends envoys to ask for peace.
 * September 17 – Battle of Myriokephalon: The Seljuk Turks defeat the Byzantine forces led by Manuel I, who are ambushed when moving through a narrow mountain pass near Lake Beyşehir. The Byzantines are dispersed and surrounded. They suffer heavy casualties and their siege equipment is destroyed. Manuel flees in panic and is forced to sign a peace treaty with Kilij Arslan II.

Europe

 * May 29 – Battle of Legnano: The Imperial army (some 5,500 men) led by Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) is defeated by forces of the Lombard League, leading to the pactum Anagnium (the Agreement of Anagni).

Britain

 * Spring – Assize of Northampton: King Henry II establishes the rules for the administration of criminal justice that he has set out in 1166 at Clarendon.
 * Winter – An international bardic festival at Cardigan Castle in Wales. The first recorded eisteddfod.

Egypt

 * Al-Adil I, Ayyubid governor of Egypt, suppresses a revolt by the Christian Copts in the city of Qift, hanging nearly 3,000 of them on the trees near the city.

Levant

 * Spring – Saladin defeats the Zangid forces before Damascus and marries Nur al-Din's widow Asimat. On June 24 he accepts a truce and is recognized as the sovereign over Syria.
 * Summer – Saladin ends his siege of the Ismaili ("Assassins") fortress of Masyaf, which is commanded by Rashid al-Din Sinan.
 * Autumn – William of Montferrat (Longsword) marries the 16-year-old Princess Sibylla, sister of King Baldwin IV (the Leper).
 * Raynald of Châtillon is released and ransomed from prison in Aleppo, together with Joscelin III, the titular count of Edessa.

Asia

 * Unkei, a Japanese sculptor, completes his Dainichi Nyorai (Enjō-ji) statue, now a National Treasure of Japan.

Religion

 * Autumn – Frederick I makes peace with Pope Alexander III and recognizes his legitimacy as pope of the Catholic Church.
 * Sens Cathedral in Burgundy installs an horologe, presumed to be an early form of clock.
 * The Carthusians are approved as a religious order.

Births

 * October 15 – Leopold VI, German nobleman (d. 1230)
 * Agnes of Hohenstaufen, German noblewoman (d. 1204)
 * Al-Mu'azzam Isa, Ayyubid ruler of Damascus (d. 1227)
 * Anna Komnene Angelina, Nicene empress (d. 1212)
 * Fujiwara no Nobuzane, Japanese painter (d. 1265)
 * Hachijō-in Takakura, Japanese waka poet (d. 1248)
 * Henry de Bohun, 1st Earl of Hereford (d. 1220)
 * Hugh de Lacy, 1st Earl of Ulster (approximate date)
 * Maud le Vavasour, English noblewoman (d. 1225)
 * Theresa of Portugal, queen of León (d. 1250)
 * William Longespée, 3rd Earl of Salisbury (d. 1226)

Deaths

 * April 18 – Galdino della Sala, Italian archbishop (b. 1096)
 * April 20 – Richard de Clare, English nobleman (b. 1130)
 * May 8 – David FitzGerald, bishop of St. Davids (b. 1106)
 * May 13 – Matthias I, duke of Lorraine (b. 1119)
 * July 20 – Yoshika, Japanese empress (b. 1141)
 * August 23 – Rokujō, emperor of Japan (b. 1164)
 * September 1 – Maurice FitzGerald, English nobleman
 * September 17
 * Baldwin of Antioch, French nobleman
 * John Kantakouzenos, Byzantine general
 * October 12 – William d'Aubigny, English politician (b. 1109)
 * Ahmad ibn Muhammad Sajawandi, Persian chronicler
 * Chekawa Yeshe Dorje, Tibetan Buddhist monk (b. 1102)
 * Constance of France, French princess (approximate date)
 * Fujiwara no Teishi, Japanese noblewoman (b. 1131)
 * Jaksa Gryfita, Polish nobleman and knight (b. 1120)
 * John Doukas (Komnenos), Byzantine governor (b. 1128)
 * Klængur Þorsteinsson, bishop of Skálholt (b. 1102)
 * Margrethe of Roskilde, Danish noblewoman and saint
 * Michael Aspietes, Byzantine nobleman and general
 * Rosamund Clifford (the Fair), mistress of Henry II
 * Sancha Ponce de Cabrera, Spanish noblewoman
 * Volodar Glebovich, prince of Minsk (approximate date)

title: 1176


text:
Takakura

Takakura (jap. 高倉, lit. "tall storehouse") may refer to:

 * Takakura, elevated Japanese storehouses
 * Emperor Takakura (1161–1181), emperor of Japan
 * Ken Takakura (1931–2014), Japanese actor
 * Miki Takakura (born 1960), Japanese actress
 * Takakura family, a branch of the Japanese Fujiwara clan
 * Takakura (2003, September 12), a game character in Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Life

title: Takakura


text:
1161

Year 1161 (MCLXI) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Byzantine Empire

 * December 24 – The widowed Emperor Manuel I Komnenos marries Maria of Antioch, aged 16, at Hagia Sophia.

Europe

 * February 3 – Battle of Oslo: King Inge I of Norway ("the Hunchback") is defeated and killed while fighting the forces of Haakon II ("the Broadshouldered") who succeeds Inge, with 5-year-old Magnus V as co-ruler, but not without challenges to his sovereignty.
 * late summer/early autumn – Géza II of Hungary and the envoys of Pope Alexander III conclude the Concordat of 1161, by which Géza agrees to support the Pope in exchange for concessions.
 * Magnus Henriksson, pretender to the throne of Sweden, is murdered by Charles VII, who becomes king of Sweden until 1167.
 * An Almoravid offensive against the Kingdom of Portugal reaches the city of Almada, located on the Tagus river.

Asia

 * Jin–Song Wars: The Battle of Tangdao (November 16) and Battle of Caishi (November 26–27) on the Yangtze River, between the Jin dynasty and the Song dynasty in China result in two pivotal Song naval victories.
 * December 15 – Wanyan Liang, Chinese prince of Hailing, is assassinated while on campaign. He is succeeded by Emperor Shizong of Jin (until 1189).

Religion

 * January 5 – Canonization of Edward the Confessor (d. 1066) in England.
 * April 18 – Theobald of Bec, archbishop of Canterbury in England dies after an illness. King Henry II is informed and expresses the wish to have his friend Thomas Becket elected as the successor.
 * after April 18 – Bartholomew is consecrated as bishop of Exeter in England (until 1184).
 * The Cross of Saint Euphrosyne, commissioned by Euphrosyne of Polotsk in Belarus, is created by craftsman Lazar Bohsha. (It goes missing during World War II, and is not recovered subsequently).

Births

 * February 22 – Innocent III, pope of the Catholic Church (d. 1216)
 * September 20 – Takakura, emperor of Japan (d. 1181)
 * Alfonso Téllez de Meneses, Spanish nobleman (d. 1230)
 * Baldwin IV ("the Leper"), king of Jerusalem (d. 1185)
 * Beatrice of Albon, duchess of Burgundy (d. 1228)
 * Belgutei, half-brother of Genghis Khan (d. 1271)
 * Börte, wife of Genghis Khan (approximate date)
 * Constance, duchess of Brittany (approximate date)
 * Da'ud Abu al-Fadl, Ayyubid physician (d. 1242)
 * Eleanor of England, queen of Castile (d. 1214)
 * Guðmundur Arason, Icelandic bishop (d. 1237)
 * Sancho, Count of Provence (or Sanche), Spanish nobleman (d. 1223)
 * Sasaki Yoshikiyo, Japanese nobleman (d. 1242)
 * Satō Tadanobu, Japanese samurai (d. 1186)
 * Tsangpa Gyare, Tibetan Buddhist leader (d. 1211)

Deaths

 * February 3 – Inge I ("the Hunchback"), king of Norway (b. 1135)
 * April 18 – Theobald of Bec, archbishop of Canterbury (b. 1090)
 * May 12 – Fergus of Galloway, Scottish nobleman
 * June 14 – Qinzong, Chinese emperor (b. 1100)
 * September 10 – Tala'i ibn Ruzzik, Fatimid vizier
 * September 11 – Melisende, queen of Jerusalem (b. 1105)
 * October 12 – Henry V, duke of Carinthia (House of Sponheim)
 * October 28 – Imar of Tusculum, French abbot and bishop
 * November 21 – William III, count of Nevers and Auxerre
 * November 23 – Adam of Ebrach, German monk and abbot
 * December 15 – Wanyan Liang, Chinese emperor (b. 1122)
 * Akarius Fitz Bardolph, English nobleman and knight
 * Hu Hong, Chinese scholar and philosopher (b. 1105)
 * Magnus Henriksson, king of Sweden (b. 1130)
 * Rechung Dorje Drakpa, Tibetan Buddhist leader
 * Roger IV, duke of Apulia and Calabria (b. 1152)

title: 1161


text:
1181

Year 1181 (MCLXXXI) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will display the full calendar) of the Julian calendar.

Europe

 * King Philip II (Augustus) annuls all loans made by Jews to Christians, and takes a percentage for himself. A year later, he confiscates all Jewish property and expels the Jews from Paris.
 * Philip II begins a war against Philip of Alsace, count of Flanders, over the Vermandois. He claims the territory for his wife Isabella of Hainault as her dowry. Philip is unwilling to give it up.
 * Henry the Lion, duke of Saxony, submits to Emperor Frederick I (Barbarossa) at an Imperial Diet in Erfurt. He is banished to England and retains only Brunswick among his former lands.
 * King Béla III of Hungary and Croatia goes to war with Venice in an effort to recover Dalmatia. The city of Zadar (located on the Adriatic Sea) accepts Béla's suzerainty.
 * After a series of defeats, the Almohad fleet under the admiral Ahmad al-Siqilli, crushes the Portuguese navy and reasserts its control over the Atlantic Ocean.
 * The word Albigensians is first used by Geoffroy du Breuil of Vigeois, French abbot and chronicler, to describe the inhabitants of Albi in southern France.

Britain

 * King Henry II removes Hugh de Lacy, lord of Meath, from his position as procurator of Ireland, possibly because of his having married the daughter of High King Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair.

Levant

 * Summer – Raynald of Châtillon, lord of Oultrejordain, raids Saladin's territory, reaching as far as Tabuk (modern Saudi Arabia) on the route between Damascus and Mecca. In November, Saladin sends an expedition under his nephew, Farrukh Shah, who invades Oultrejordain. Raynald of Châtillon is forced to withdraw home. Saladin complains to King Baldwin IV of Jerusalem (the Leper) for breaking the treaty (see 1180) and demands compensation.

Asia

 * March 20 – Taira no Kiyomori, Japanese military leader and dictator, dies at Kyoto. He established the first samurai-dominated administrative government in Japan.
 * Jayavarman VII defeats the Chams and assumes control over the Khmer Empire (modern Cambodia).
 * The Yōwa era is marked by famine in Japan, during the period from July 1181 through May 1182.

Religion

 * August 30 – Pope Alexander III dies after a 22-year pontificate at Rome. He is succeeded by the Tuscany-born Lucius III as the 171st pope of the Catholic Church.

Science

 * January – William VIII of Montpellier frees the teaching of medicine from any monopoly in France, an origin of the University of Montpellier.
 * Chinese and Japanese astronomers observe what has come to be understood as supernova SN 1181. One of only eight supernovae in the Milky Way observed in recorded history. It appears in the constellation Cassiopeia and is visible in the night sky for about 185 days. The radio source 3C58 was thought to be the remnant from this event, but opinion is shifting towards the recently discovered nebula Pa 30 (ref : Arxiv 2105.12384).

Births

 * March 22 – Ibn al-Farid, Arab poet and writer (d. 1234)
 * June 21 – Huijong, Korean ruler of Goryeo (d. 1237)
 * Irene Angelina, queen of Germany and Sicily (d. 1208)
 * Marino Morosini, doge of Venice (House of Morosini) (d. 1253)
 * Mathilde of Angoulême, French noblewoman (d. 1233)
 * Xian Zong, Chinese emperor of Western Xia (d. 1226)

Deaths

 * January 30 – Takakura, emperor of Japan (b. 1161)
 * March 16 – Henry I (the Liberal), French nobleman (b. 1127)
 * March 20 – Taira no Kiyomori, Japanese military leader (b. 1118)
 * March 13 – Simon III de Montfort, French nobleman (b. 1117)
 * April 1 – Ulrich II von Treven, patriarch of Aquileia
 * April 5 – Ramon Berenguer III, count of Provence
 * June 30 – Hugh de Kevelioc, English politician (b. 1147)
 * August 30 – Alexander III, pope of the Catholic Church
 * September 27 – Guichard of Pontigny, French archbishop
 * October 4 – Herman II, German nobleman (House of Sponheim)
 * October 23 – Adela of Meissen, queen consort of Denmark
 * November 26 – Roger de Pont L'Évêque, Norman archbishop
 * December 3 – Galgano Guidotti, Italian nobleman (b. 1148)
 * Adam the Welshman, Welsh theologian and bishop (b. 1130)
 * As-Salih Ismail al-Malik, Zangid ruler of Damascus (b. 1163)
 * Lucas (or Luke), archbishop of Esztergom (b. 1120)
 * Serlo of Wilton, English poet and writer (b. 1105)
 * Zhang Shi, Chinese Confucian scholar (b. 1133)

title: 1181