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Venlo

Venlo is a city and municipality in southeastern Netherlands, close to the border with Germany. It is situated in the province of Limburg. The municipality of Venlo counted 101,578 inhabitants as of January 2019.

Early history
Roman and Celtic coins have been found in Venlo; it was speculated to have been the settlement known as Sablones on the Roman road connecting Maastricht with Xanten, but the little evidence there is concerning the location of Sablones speaks against this thought while there is no evidence in support of it. Blerick, on the west bank, was known as Blariacum.

Documents from the 9th century mention Venlo as a trade post; it developed into one of the more important ones in the Meuse-Rhine area, receiving city rights in 1343, and becoming a member of the Hanseatic League in 1375. Because of its strategic importance, the city of Venlo was besieged several times. The most significant siege was that of 1702, carried on by Menno van Coehoorn. Consequently, Venlo was incorporated into the Generaliteitslanden of the United Provinces at the Treaty of 1713. After the Napoleonic Wars it became part of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

In 1839-1866 Venlo was not a part of German Confederation, completely surrounded by its territory.

World War II
On 9 November 1939, two British Intelligence Service agents were kidnapped by the Sicherheitsdienst in what became known as the Venlo Incident. The incident was used by the Nazis to link Great Britain to Georg Elser's failed assassination of Hitler at the Bürgerbräukeller the day before and to justify their later invasion of the Netherlands, a neutral country, on 10 May 1940.

Venlo had both a road and a railway bridge over the Meuse (Maas). The city was severely damaged by bombing raids (13 October – 19 November 1944) on the bridges at the end of the war. Allied forces made 13 attempts to destroy the bridges to cut the German supply lines and block a retreat of the German army across the river. These failed, and it was the retreating German troops who in the end blew up the bridges in an attempt to stop the allied advance. Allied forces liberated Venlo from the east, from inside Germany itself.

About 300 people were killed due to those raids. The raids also cost Venlo a major part of its historical buildings. However, some old buildings, such as the city hall (the 'Stadhuis') and the 'Römer' house, survived the war relatively unscathed.

Before the war, Venlo had a small Jewish community. In 1930 there were 86 Jewish people living in Venlo. In the next decade this number rose to about 248, because German Jews were trying to evade the discriminatory laws and growing hate in Germany. 6 years after the end of The Holocaust and the first wave of Jewish immigration to Israel there were 32 Jewish people left in Venlo.

Post-Second World War era
By the late 1990s, drug-related nuisance had become a problem in the centre of Venlo. National and municipal officials launched the Q-4 Project and Tango initiatives that, amongst other measures, included moving the town's largest coffeeshops to the outskirts, where they continue to do business, while the city centre was freed from disturbances.

In 2001, the municipalities of Belfeld and Tegelen were merged into the municipality of Venlo. Tegelen was originally part of the Duchy of Jülich centuries ago, whereas Venlo has a past in the Duchy of Guelders. On 1 January 2010, the municipality of Arcen en Velden, was merged into the municipality of Venlo.

In 2003 Venlo was awarded the title "Greenest city of Europe". Venlo was the host of Floriade 2012, the world's largest horticultural exhibition.

In 2013, Venlo won the prestigious 'Best City Centre of the Netherlands' award. It amazed the jury by all the investments which have been made in the last couple of years in the Maas Boulevard, the railway station, the tunnel in the centre and the Maas bridge.

Culture

 * Theatre "De Maaspoort"
 * Limburg Museum and Art Museum "Museum van Bommel van Dam"
 * Venlo Police Museum
 * Pop venue Grenswerk (formerly Perron 55)
 * Major annual cultural events
 * Carnival called "Vastelaovend" in February/March (Six weeks before Easter)
 * Summer park festivities called "Zomerparkfeest" in August held in and around the main park of Venlo, a four-day podium for a broad audience, including live music, film, dance, art etc.

Education
Venlo, being a city with a 100,000-plus population, is served by a large number of schools both at primary and secondary education levels. In addition, Venlo is a higher-education hub within the southern Netherlands, with several institutes of higher education.

Venlo hosts three institutes of higher education:

 * Fontys University of Applied Sciences (International Campus Venlo)
 * HAS University of Applied Sciences (Venlo branch)
 * Maastricht University Campus Venlo (University College Venlo affiliated to Maastricht University)

Transport
Venlo is connected to Germany by two motorways (Bundesautobahn 40 and Bundesautobahn 61), which connect to Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Cologne and the Ruhr area within one hour.

Venlo railway station is a junction station. It provides regular connections to the Dutch cities of Eindhoven, Roermond and Nijmegen. Furthermore, it provides regular international connections to Germany, via Kaldenkirchen (the first stop in Germany), Viersen and Mönchengladbach to Düsseldorf and Hamm.

Sports
VVV-Venlo is a century-old football club that plays in De Koel Stadium. Founded on 7 February 1903, it is one of the first professional football clubs in the Netherlands. In recent years it has been a yo-yo club, winning the Eerste Divisie in 2009 and 2017 and being promoted to the highest Dutch professional football league, the Eredivisie, as a result.

Economy and infrastructure
The headquarters of multinational printing-equipment firm Océ, today a part of the Japanese firm Canon, is located in Venlo, as is the headquarters of Cimpress, parent company of the Vistaprint brand. Also, the European headquarters of one of the world's largest direct selling companies Amway and the American office supply retailing company Office Depot are located in the city of Venlo. In 2017 also the international onlineshop vidaXL moved its headquarters and warehouse to Venlo.

Greenport Venlo is one of designated five Greenports in the Netherlands. It is the second largest concentration of horticulture in the Netherlands. Seen in conjunction with the neighbouring German region of Niederrhein (Lower Rhine), Greenport Venlo is even the largest in Europe. Together, the Greenport area Venlo and the agro business area "Lower Rhine" in Germany form a region where more than 30 million of people live. This region is a unique and vital international network of business, research, universities and politics. The cooperation revolves around stimulating innovation, creating an attractive working and living environment and integral regional development. The network offers broad chances and future possibilities to analyse, use and further develop the "green market", thus food, fresh and logistics markets. The aim is to provide an impulse for the economy of the region of North Limburg.

International relations
Venlo is twinned with:

Public thinking & public service

 * Gertruid Bolwater (died 1511), legendary Dutch folklore heroine, the Defender of Venlo
 * Erycius Puteanus (1574–1646), humanist and philologist.
 * General Sir Colin Halkett (1774–1856), a British Army officer & Lieutenant Governor of Jersey.
 * Henri Alexis Brialmont (1821–1903), Dutch-born Belgian military engineer.
 * Johan van Lom (1465–1538 or 1539), politician and philanthropist
 * Willem Hubert Nolens (1860–1931), politician and Roman Catholic priest
 * Charles van Rooy (1912–1996), politician, Mayor of Venlo 1952–1957
 * Teun van Dijck (born 1963), politician and saxophonist, restaurateur and civil servant
 * Geert Wilders (born 1963), politician, parliament member since 1998, leader of the PVV
 * Jolande Sap (born 1963), politician and former educator and civil servant

Arts

 * Hubert Goltzius (1526–1583), Renaissance painter, engraver and printer
 * Gerrit Gerritsz Cuyp (c. 1565–1644), Dutch Golden Age painter and master glazier
 * Jan van Cleve (III) (1646–1716), Flemish painter of altarpieces and allegorical scenes
 * Josephus Andreas Fodor (1751–1828), violinist and composer of the Classical era
 * Carel Anton Fodor (1768–1846), pianist, conductor and composer
 * André van den Heuvel (1927 in Tegelen – 2016), actor
 * Paul Cox (1940–2016), Dutch-Australian filmmaker and director
 * Marie-Thérèse Schins (born 1943), German-Dutch journalist, painter and writer
 * Ben Verbong (born 1949 in Tegelen), film director and screenwriter
 * Geert Lap (1951–2017), ceramist and clay minimalist
 * Huub Stapel (born 1954 in Tegelen), actor
 * Ted Noten (born 1956 in Tegelen), conceptual artist
 * Frank Scheffer (born 1956), cinematographer and producer of documentary film
 * James Intveld (born 1959), American musician, singer, songwriter, actor and film director
 * Will Sanders (born 1965), classical horn player, conductor and music school professor
 * Pieter Kuijpers (born 1968 in Tegelen), film director, producer and screenwriter
 * Glenn Corneille (1970–2005), jazz pianist
 * Saskia Linssen (born 1970), model and actress, Playboy Playmate of the Month, June 1991
 * Ronald Goedemondt (born 1975 in Tegelen), comedian
 * Chantal Janzen (born 1979 in Tegelen), actress, singer and TV presenter
 * Boris Titulaer (born 1980), soul singer-songwriter, winner of the second season of the Dutch talent show Idols
 * Lotte Verbeek (born 1982), actress, model and dancer

Science & business

 * Cor Herkströter (born 1937), former chairman of Royal Dutch Shell and the ING Group
 * Chriet Titulaer (1943–2017), astronomer and TV personality
 * Jo van Nunen (1945–2010), engineer and professor of logistics
 * Ernst Homburg (born 1952), chemist and historian
 * Evert Dudok (born 1959), President of EADS Astrium Space Transportation

Sport

 * Bart Carlier (1929–2017), football player with over 340 club caps
 * Jan Klaassens (1931–1983), football player with 707 club caps and 57 national caps
 * Jeu Sprengers (1938 in Tegelen – 2008), chairman of the Royal Dutch Football Association (KNVB) 2002 to 2008
 * Harry Heijnen (1940–2015), football player with over 400 club caps
 * Theo van Vroonhoven (born 1940), field hockey player, competed at the 1960, the 1964 and the 1968 Summer Olympics
 * Carla Beurskens (born 1952 in Tegelen), prominent long-distance runner
 * Jan Versleijen (born 1955), professional football coach, last managed in South Africa
 * Paul van der Sterren (born 1956), chess grandmaster
 * Jos Luhukay (born 1963), football coach and former player
 * Stan Valckx (born 1963 in Arcen en Velden), former professional footballer with 435 club caps
 * David Strijbos (born 1967), former motocross F.I.M. world champion
 * Inge Leurs (born 1975), former cricketer
 * Rick Hoogendorp (born 1975), former football striker with 439 club caps
 * Bernard Hofstede (born 1980 in Tegelen), footballer with 380 club caps
 * Sjors Verdellen (born 1981 in Tegelen), former professional footballer with 394 club caps
 * Jens Janse (born 1986), footballer with 220 club caps
 * Angela Steenbakkers (born 1994), handballer with the Dutch national team
 * Thierry Vermeulen (born 2002), racing driver

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Venray

Venray or Venraij (Venroj) is a municipality and a city in Limburg, the Netherlands.

The municipality of Venray consists of 14 towns over an area of 165 km2, with 43,494 inhabitants as of July 2016. About 30,000 of those inhabitants live in the city of Venray; the other 13,000 live in one of the 13 surrounding towns.

Populated places
• Beek - hamlet

• Blitterswijck - village

• Castenray - village

• Geijsteren

• Heide - village

• Leunen

• Merselo

• Oirlo

• Oostrum

• Smakt

• Venray - town

• Veulen - village

• Vredepeel - village with military base

• Wanssum - village

• Ysselsteyn - village

Mental hospitals
In 1905, the Sint Servatius mental hospital for men was built by the Brothers of Charity. The first patients arrived in 1907. In 1906, the Sint Anna mental hospital for women was built by the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary. The first patients arrived in 1909. In 1969, management of the mental hospitals was transferred to two separate foundations. Both mental hospitals have a continuing impact on Venray from cultural, religious and employment perspectives. Nowadays, both mental hospitals are managed by GGZ Noord- en Midden-Limburg.

Venray also hosts one of 12 mental hospitals in the Netherlands, De Rooyse Wissel, that houses people assigned to mental treatment as a court measure.

St. Peter in Chains Church
The St. Peter ad Vincula church in Venray hosts one of the largest late medieval collections of wooden sculptures that survived the iconoclasm of the protestant reformation in the Netherlands. The church itself was originally built in the 15th century in the gothic style. It was rebuilt after extensive damage following the World War II Battle of Overloon.

World War II
Towards the end of World War II there were several battles in and around Venray, damaging large parts of the center of Venray. These include the Battle of Overloon from 30 September to 18 October 1944, one of the largest tank battles between the Germans and western Allies. Venray town was not liberated until 1945. It has the only German War Cemetery in the Netherlands. 31,598 German soldiers are buried here.

Economy

 * Inalfa: Venray hosts the head-office and a manufacturing plant of Inalfa, a supplier of car roofs to the automotive industry.
 * Flextronics: Venray hosts manufacturing units and logistics centers for Flextronics
 * Herbalife: Venray hosts a European logistics center for Herbalife.
 * ModusLink: Venray hosts a major supply chain location for ModusLink
 * OTTO Work Force: Venray hosts the head-office for OTTO Work Force, a temp agency that predominantly provides Polish expatriate workers.
 * Xerox: Venray hosts a manufacturing plant and European logistics center for Rank Xerox, later Xerox. Nowadays, the European logistics center and a Toner and Photoconductor plant remain. In the 1990s Xerox outsourced manufacturing of copier and printers to Flextronics.
 * Royal Netherlands Air Force: Venray houses De Peel Air Base.

In recent decades Venray has made a transition from manufacturing to a third-party logistics base. As a consequence many warehouses have been built on industrial estates in recent years.

Small and medium enterprises and mental healthcare also continue to play an important role in the local economy. Venray also provides logistics through its Meuse river harbor in Wanssum and A73 motorway.

Nature
The western section of Venray, the villages Vredepeel and Ysselsteyn, was reclaimed from the Peel peat bogs in the early 20th century. Parts of the peat bogs remain and have been transferred to a national park. The western section of Venray is also straddled by part of the Peel-Raam Line, defensive works consisting of a canal and bunkers dating to the World War II period.

Venray, near Geijsteren, also has a forest and sand dune area, that is one of the few locations in the Netherlands that is home to common juniper.

Notable residents

 * Godfrey Henschen (1601–1681) a Belgian Jesuit hagiographer, one of the first Bollandists
 * Harry Peeters (1931–2012), a historian, psychologist and academic
 * Theo van Els (1936–2015) a professor of applied linguistics
 * Louis Sévèke (1964–2005) a Dutch radical left activist, journalist, writer and murder victim
 * Michelle Courtens (born 1981), a singer
 * Koen Heldens (born 1986), mixing engineer

Sport

 * Peter Winnen (born 1957), a cyclist, winner of Alpe d'Huez
 * Edward Linskens (born 1968), a football player
 * Leopold van Asten (born 1976) a Dutch show jumping equestrian, participated at the 2004 Summer Olympics
 * Mark Veens (born 1978), a freestyle swimmer
 * Joey Hanssen (born 1991), a racing driver
 * Mike Teunissen (born 1992) a Dutch racing cyclist
 * Pauliena Rooijakkers (born 1993) a road cyclist

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

title: Venray


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Voerendaal

Voerendaal (Voelender) is a municipality and a town in the southeastern Netherlands.

Population centres
• Barrier

• Colmont

• Craubeek

• Dolberg

• Fromberg

• Heek

• Hellebeuk

• Klimmen

• Koulen

• Kunrade

• Mingersberg

• Opscheumer

• Overheek

• Ransdaal

• Retersbeek

• Termaar

• Termoors

• Ubachsberg

• Voerendaal

• Weustenrade

• Winthagen

Dutch topographic map of the municipality of Voerendaal, June 2015

History
The Romans left the ruins from a Roman villa rustica as a legacy. In 1049 pope Leo IX initiated the Catholic Church - Sint Laurentiuskerk. During medieval times many castles were built: Cortenbach, Haeren, Puth, Rivieren and Terworm. Also castles such as Hoenshuis and Overst Voerendaal. The area was mined for marl (mergel in Dutch) and coal.

Transportation
Railway Station:Klimmen-Ransdaal, Voerendaal

Notable people

 * Roel Brouwers (born 1981) a Dutch former footballer with 289 club caps, lived in Voerendaal while playing for Borussia Monchengladbach

title: Voerendaal


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Weert

Weert (Wieërt ) is a municipality and city in the southeastern Netherlands located in the western part of the province of Limburg. It lies on the Eindhoven–Maastricht railway line, the A2 motorway and it is also astride the Zuid-Willemsvaart canal.

Population centres
• Weert (city):

• * Boshoven (neighbourhood)

• * Leuken (neighbourhood)

• * Groenewoud (neighbourhood)

• * Biest (neighbourhood)

• * Molenakker (neighbourhood)

• * Laarveld (neighbourhood)

• * Moesel (neighbourhood)

• * Graswinkel (neighbourhood)

• * Keent (neighbourhood)

• Altweerterheide (village)

• Laar (village)

• Stramproy (village)

• Swartbroek (village)

• Tungelroy (village)

The city of Weert
Weert received city rights in 1414.

Weert is known for its indoor shopping centre called "De Munt," one of the largest in the south of the Netherlands. The inner city has many squares with cosy restaurants and terraces. Many well-known shopping brands are located in the city of Weert.

Furthermore, Weert is known for its large indoor and outdoor swimming complex known as "De IJzerenman," which includes slides, 5 swimming pools, and a lake.

Languages

 * Dutch in Weert is often spoken with a distinctive Limburgish accent, which should not be confused with the Limburgish language.
 * Limburgish (or Limburgian) is the overlapping term of dialects spoken in the Belgian and Dutch provinces of Limburg. The Weert dialect is only one of many variants of Limburgish.

Transport
Railway station: Weert

Notable residents

 * Willem van Heythuysen (1590s – 1650), cloth merchant
 * Jan van der Croon (1600 – 1665), soldier and military commander
 * Jan Dibbets (born 1941), conceptual artist
 * Jan Koenderink (born 1943) physicist and psychologist
 * Ton van Loon (born 1956), military commander
 * Lucas Hüsgen (born 1960), writer
 * Frans Weekers (born 1967), Dutch Politician
 * Jeroen Lenaers (born 1984) Dutch politician and Member of the European Parliament
 * Kelly Weekers (born 1989) Miss Nederland 2011

Sport

 * Fons Steuten (1938–1991), cyclist
 * Gonnelien Rothenberger (born 1968), equestrian
 * Sjeng Schalken (born 1976), tennis player
 * Manoe Meulen (born 1978), footballer
 * Elbekay Bouchiba (born 1978), footballer
 * Frank van Kouwen (born 1980), footballer
 * Bjorn Hoeben (born 1980), cyclist
 * Olivier Tielemans (born 1984), race car driver
 * Pieter Custers (born 1984), archer
 * Steef Nieuwendaal (born 1986), footballer
 * Lisa Scheenaard (born 1988), rower

Sister cities
Weert is twinned with the following cities:

title: Weert


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Carolingian Renaissance

The Carolingian Renaissance was the first of three medieval renaissances, a period of cultural activity in the Carolingian Empire. Charlemagne's reign led to an intellectual revival beginning in the 8th century and continuing throughout the 9th century, taking inspiration from ancient Roman and Greek culture and the Christian Roman Empire of the fourth century. During this period, there was an increase of literature, writing, visual arts, architecture, music, jurisprudence, liturgical reforms, and scriptural studies. Carolingian schools were effective centers of education, and they served generations of scholars by producing editions and copies of the classics, both Christian and pagan.

The movement occurred mostly during the reigns of Carolingian rulers Charlemagne and Louis the Pious. It was supported by the scholars of the Carolingian court, notably Alcuin of York. Charlemagne's Admonitio generalis (789) and Epistola de litteris colendis served as manifestos. Alcuin wrote on subjects ranging from grammar and biblical exegesis to arithmetic and astronomy. He also collected rare books, which formed the nucleus of the library at York Cathedral. His enthusiasm for learning made him an effective teacher. Alcuin writes: "In the morning, at the height of my powers, I sowed the seed in Britain, now in the evening when my blood is growing cold I am still sowing in France, hoping both will grow, by the grace of God, giving some the honey of the holy scriptures, making others drunk on the old wine of ancient learning"

Another prominent figure in the Carolingian renaissance was Theodulf of Orléans, a refugee from the Umayyad invasion of Spain who became involved in the cultural circle at the imperial court before Charlemagne appointed him bishop of Orléans. Theodulf’s greatest contribution to learning was his scholarly edition of the Vulgate Bible, drawing on manuscripts from Spain, Italy, and Gaul, and even the original Hebrew.

The effects of this cultural revival were mostly limited to a small group of court literati. According to John Contreni, "it had a spectacular effect on education and culture in Francia, a debatable effect on artistic endeavors, and an unmeasurable effect on what mattered most to the Carolingians, the moral regeneration of society". The secular and ecclesiastical leaders of the Carolingian Renaissance made efforts to write better Latin, to copy and preserve patristic and classical texts, and to develop a more legible, classicizing script, with clearly distinct capital and minuscule letters. It was the Carolingian minuscule that Renaissance humanists took to be Roman and employed as humanist minuscule, from which has developed early modern Italic script. They also applied rational ideas to social issues for the first time in centuries, providing a common language and writing style that enabled communication throughout most of Europe.

Background
As Pierre Riché points out, the expression "Carolingian Renaissance" does not imply that Western Europe was barbaric or obscurantist before the Carolingian era. The centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West did not see an abrupt disappearance of the ancient schools. Indeed, from them emerged Martianus Capella, Cassiodorus and Boethius, essential icons of the Roman cultural heritage in the Middle Ages, thanks to which the disciplines of liberal arts were preserved. The 7th century saw the "Isidorian Renaissance" in the Visigothic Kingdom of Hispania in which sciences flourished  and the integration of Christian and pre-Christian thought occurred, while the spread of Irish monastic schools (scriptoria) over Europe laid the groundwork for the Carolingian Renaissance.

There were numerous factors in this cultural expansion, the most obvious of which was that Charlemagne's uniting of most of Western Europe brought about peace and stability, which set the stage for prosperity. This period marked an economic revival in Western Europe, following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. Local economies in the West had degenerated into largely subsistence agriculture by the early seventh century, with towns functioning merely as places of gift-exchange for the elite. By the late seventh century, developed urban settlements had emerged, populated mostly by craftsmen, merchants and boaters and boasting street grids, artisanal production as well as regional and long-distance trade. A prime example of this type of emporium was Dorestad.

The development of the Carolingian economy was fueled by the efficient organization and exploitation of labor on large estates, producing a surplus of primarily grain, wine and salt. In turn, inter-regional trade in these commodities facilitated the expansion of towns. Archaeological data shows the continuation of this upward trend in the early eighth century. The zenith of the early Carolingian economy was reached from 775 to 830, coinciding with the largest surpluses of the period, large-scale building of churches as well as overpopulation and three famines that showed the limits of the system. After a period of disruption from 830 to 850, caused by civil wars and Viking raids, economic development resumed in the 850s, with the emporiums disappearing completely and being replaced by fortified commercial towns.

One of the major causes of the sudden economic growth was the slave trade. Following the rise of the Arab empires, the Arab elites created a major demand for slaves with European slaves particularly prized. As a result of Charlemagne's wars of conquest in Eastern Europe, a steady supply of captured Slavs, Avars, Saxons and Danes reached merchants in Western Europe, who then exported the slaves via Ampurias, Girona and the Pyrenees passes to Muslim Spain and other parts of the Arab world. The market for slaves was so lucrative that it almost immediately transformed the long-distance trade of the European economies. The slave trade enabled the West to re-engage with the Muslim and Eastern Roman empires so that other industries, such as textiles, were able to grow in Europe as well.

Import
Kenneth Clark was of the view that by means of the Carolingian Renaissance, Western civilization survived by the skin of its teeth. However, the use of the term renaissance to describe this period is contested, notably by Lynn Thorndike, due to the majority of changes brought about by this period being confined almost entirely to the clergy, and due to the period lacking the wide-ranging social movements of the later Italian Renaissance. Instead of being a rebirth of new cultural movements, the period was more an attempt to recreate the previous culture of the Roman Empire. The Carolingian Renaissance in retrospect also has some of the character of a false dawn, in that its cultural gains were largely dissipated within a couple of generations, a perception voiced by Walahfrid Strabo (died 849), in his introduction to Einhard's Life of Charlemagne, summing up the generation of renewal: "Charlemagne was able to offer the cultureless and, I might say, almost completely unenlightened territory of the realm which God had entrusted to him, a new enthusiasm for all human knowledge. In its earlier state of barbarousness, his kingdom had been hardly touched at all by any such zeal, but now it opened its eyes to God's illumination. In our own time the thirst for knowledge is disappearing again: the light of wisdom is less and less sought after and is now becoming rare again in most men's minds."

Scholarly efforts
A lack of Latin literacy in eighth-century western Europe caused problems for the Carolingian rulers by severely limiting the number of people capable of serving as court scribes in societies where Latin was valued. Of even greater concern to some rulers was the fact that not all parish priests possessed the skill to read the Vulgate Bible. An additional problem was that the vulgar Latin of the later Western Roman Empire had begun to diverge into the regional dialects, the precursors to today's Romance languages, that were becoming mutually unintelligible and preventing scholars from one part of Europe being able to communicate with persons from another part of Europe.

To address these problems, Charlemagne ordered the creation of schools in a capitulary known as the Charter of Modern Thought, issued in 787. A major part of his program of reform was to attract many of the leading scholars of the Christendom of his day to his court. Among the first called to court were Italians: Peter of Pisa, who from 776 to about 790 instructed Charlemagne in Latin, and from 776 to 787 Paulinus of Aquileia, whom Charlemagne nominated as patriarch of Aquileia in 787. The Lombard Paul the Deacon was brought to court in 782 and remained until 787, when Charles nominated him abbot of Montecassino. Theodulf of Orléans was a Spanish Goth who served at court from 782 to 797 when nominated as bishop of Orléans. Theodulf had been in friendly competition over the standardization of the Vulgate with the chief among the Charlemagne's scholars, Alcuin of York. Alcuin was a Northumbrian monk and deacon who served as head of the Palace School from 782 to 796, except for the years 790 to 793 when he returned to England. After 796, he continued his scholarly work as abbot of St. Martin's Monastery in Tours. Among those to follow Alcuin across the Channel to the Frankish court was Joseph Scottus, an Irishman who left some original biblical commentary and acrostic experiments. After this first generation of non-Frankish scholars, their Frankish pupils, such as Angilbert, would make their own mark.

The later courts of Louis the Pious and Charles the Bald had similar groups of scholars many of whom were of Irish origin. The Irish monk Dicuil attended the former court, and the more famous Irishman John Scotus Eriugena attended the latter becoming head of the Palace School at Aachen.

One of the primary efforts was the creation of a standardized curriculum for use at the recently created schools. Alcuin led this effort and was responsible for the writing of textbooks, creation of word lists, and establishing the trivium and quadrivium as the basis for education.

Another contribution from this period was the development of Carolingian minuscule, a "book-hand" first used at the monasteries of Corbie and Tours that introduced the use of lower-case letters. A standardized version of Latin was also developed that allowed for the coining of new words while retaining the grammatical rules of Classical Latin. This Medieval Latin became a common language of scholarship and allowed administrators and travellers to make themselves understood in various regions of Europe.

The earliest concept of Europe as a distinct cultural region (instead of simply a geographic area) appeared during the Carolingian Renaissance of the 9th century, and included the territories which practiced Western Christianity at the time.

Carolingian workshops produced over 100,000 manuscripts in the 9th century, of which some 6000 to 7000 survive. The Carolingians produced the earliest surviving copies of the works of Cicero, Horace, Martial, Statius, Lucretius, Terence, Julius Caesar, Boethius and Martianus Capella. No copies of the texts of these authors were made in the Latin West in the 7th and 8th centuries.

Reform of Latin pronunciation
According to Roger Wright, the Carolingian Renaissance is responsible for the modern-day pronunciation of Ecclesiastical Latin. Up until that point there had been no conceptual distinction between Latin and Romance; the former was simply regarded as the written form of the latter. For instance in early medieval Spain the word for 'century'—which would have been pronounced */sjeglo/— was properly spelled ⟨saeculum⟩, as it had been for the better part of a millennium. The scribe would not have read aloud ⟨saeculum⟩ as /sɛkulum/ any more than an English speaker today would pronounce ⟨knight⟩ as */knɪxt/ rather than /naɪt/.

Non-native speakers of Latin, however—such as clergy of Anglo-Saxon or Irish origin—appear to have used a rather different pronunciation, presumably attempting to sound out each word according to its spelling. The Carolingian Renaissance in France introduced this artificial pronunciation for the first time to native speakers as well. No longer would, for instance, the word ⟨viridiarium⟩ 'orchard' be read aloud as the equivalent Old French word */verdʒjǽr/. It now had to be pronounced precisely as spelled, with all six syllables: /viridiarium/.

Such a radical change had the effect of rendering Latin sermons completely unintelligible to the general Romance-speaking public, which prompted officials a few years later, at the Council of Tours, to instruct priests to read sermons aloud in the old way, in rusticam romanam linguam or 'plain roman[ce] speech' (while the liturgy retained the new pronunciation to this day).

As there was now no unambiguous way to indicate whether a given text was to be read aloud as Latin or Romance, and native Germanic speakers (such as church singers) numerous in the empire might have struggled to read words in Latin orthography according to Romance orthoepy, various attempts were made in France to devise a new orthography for the latter; among the earliest examples are parts of the Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia. As the Carolingian Reforms spread the 'proper' Latin pronunciation from France to other Romance-speaking areas, local scholars eventually felt the need to create distinct spelling systems for their own vernaculars as well, thereby initiating the literary phase of Medieval Romance. Writing in Romance does not appear to have become widespread until the Renaissance of the Twelfth Century, however.

Carolingian art
Carolingian art spans the roughly hundred-year period from about 800–900. Although brief, it was an influential period. Northern Europe embraced classical Mediterranean Roman art forms for the first time, setting the stage for the rise of Romanesque art and eventually Gothic art in the West. Illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, small-scale sculpture, mosaics, and frescos survive from the period.

Carolingian architecture
Carolingian architecture is the style of North European architecture promoted by Charlemagne. The period of architecture spans the late eighth and ninth centuries until the reign of Otto I in 936, and was a conscious attempt to create a Roman Renaissance, emulating Roman, Early Christian and Byzantine architecture, with its own innovation, resulting in having a unique character. This syncretic architectural style can be exemplified by the first church of St Mark's in Venice, fusing proto-Romanesque and Byzantine influences.

There was a profusion of new clerical and secular buildings constructed during this period, John Contreni calculated that "The little more than eight decades between 768 to 855 alone saw the construction of 27 new cathedrals, 417 monasteries, and 100 royal residences".

Carolingian currency
Around AD 755, Charlemagne's father Pepin the Short reformed the currency of the Frankish Kingdom. A variety of local systems was standardized. Minor mints were closed and royal control over the remaining bigger mints strengthened, increasing purity. In place of the gold Roman and Byzantine solidus then common, he established a system based on a new .940-fine silver penny (denarius; denier) weighing 1/240 of a pound (librum, libra, or lira; livre). (The Carolingian pound seems to have been about 489.5 grams, making each penny about 2 grams.) As the debased solidus was then roughly equivalent to 11 of these pennies, the shilling (solidus; sol) was established at that value, making it 1/22 of the silver pound. This was later adjusted to 12 and 1/20, respectively. During the Carolingian period, however, neither shillings or pounds were minted, being instead used as notional units of account. (For instance, a "shilling" or "solidus" of grain was a measure equivalent to the amount of grain that 12 pennies could purchase.) Despite the purity and quality of the new pennies, however, they were repeatedly rejected by traders throughout the Carolingian period in favor of the gold coins used elsewhere, a situation that led to repeated legislation against such refusal to accept the king's currency.

The Carolingian system was imported to England by Offa of Mercia and other kings, where it formed the basis of English currency until the late 20th century.

title: Carolingian Renaissance


text:
Li-Chen Wang

Li-Chen Wang (born 1935) is an American computer engineer, best known for his Palo Alto Tiny BASIC for Intel 8080-based microcomputers. He was a member of the Homebrew Computer Club and made significant contributions to the software for early microcomputer systems from Tandy Corporation and Cromemco. He made early use of the word copyleft, in Palo Alto Tiny BASIC's distribution notice "@COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED" in June 1976.

Homebrew Computer Club
The Homebrew Computer Club was a hotbed of BASIC development, with members excited by Altair BASIC. Fellow members Steve Wozniak and Tom Pittman would develop their own BASICs (Integer BASIC and 6800 Tiny BASIC respectively). Wang analyzed the Altair BASIC code and contributed edits to Tiny BASIC Extended. Wang published in the newsletter a loader for the 8080, commenting on the Open Letter to Hobbyists: "Altair Basic has a bootstrap loader of twenty or twenty one bytes long. In principle, you can use this bootstrap to load in your own loader which will then load in your program. However, since Mr. Bill Gates claims that he did not get payed [sic] enough and is in the mood of calling people thieves. (See HBCC newsletter '12-1.) I decided to code one myself. What comes out is a bootstrap of sixteen bytes long. This is still too long, maybe our professional experts can make it shorter. For the time being you are welcome to copy mine and I will not call you a thief (this includes Mr. Gates)."

Palo Alto Tiny BASIC
Palo Alto Tiny BASIC was the fourth version of a Tiny BASIC interpreter that appeared in Dr. Dobb's Journal of Computer Calisthenics & Orthodontia, but probably the most influential. It appeared in the May 1976 Vol 1, No. 5 issue, and distinguished itself from other versions of Tiny BASIC through a novel means of abbreviating commands to save memory, and the inclusion of an array variable ("@"). The interpreter occupied 1.77 kilobytes of memory and assumed the use of a Teletype Machine (TTY) for user input/output. An erratum to the original article appeared in the June/July issue of Dr. Dobb's (Vol. 1, No 6). This article also included information on adding additional I/O devices, using code for the VDM video display by Processor Technology as an example.

Wang was one of the first to use word copyleft, in June 1976. In Palo Alto Tiny BASIC's distribution notice, he had written "@COPYLEFT ALL WRONGS RESERVED". Tiny BASIC was not distributed under any formal form of copyleft distribution terms but was presented in a context where source code was being shared and modified. In fact, Wang had earlier contributed edits to Tiny BASIC Extended before writing his own interpreter. He encouraged others to adapt his source code and publish their adaptions, as with Roger Rauskolb's version published in Interface Age.

Wang also wrote a STARTREK program in his Tiny BASIC that appeared in the July 1976 issue of the People's Computer Company Newsletter.

Tandy Corporation
The original prototype TRS-80 Model I that was demonstrated for Charles Tandy to sell the idea ran Li-Chen's BASIC.

Wang's mark also shows up in and on the Exatron Stringy Floppy ROM for the TRS-80 Model I. Embedded Systems columnist Jack Crenshaw calls Wang's Manchester encoding code, achieving 14K read/write speeds, a "work of art."

Cromemco

The first color graphics interface for microcomputers, developed by Cromemco and called the Dazzler, was introduced in 1976 with a demonstration program called "Kaleidoscope" written by Wang. According to BYTE Magazine the program, written in 8080 assembly code, was only 127 bytes long. But this short program stopped traffic on 5th Avenue in New York City.

Stan Veit was the owner of The Computer Mart in New York City. He placed a color television in his store window displaying the colorful, ever-changing kaleidoscopic patterns generated by the Dazzler and Wang's software. According to Veit: “People driving by began to stop and look – they had never seen anything like it before. In a short time the Dazzler had caused a traffic jam on 5th Avenue!” The police had to contact the building landlord and make him disconnect the television.

Wang also developed "3K Control Basic" for Cromemco.

Other contributions
Wang also created WSFN ("Which Stands for Nothing"), a programming language for controlling robots and published by Dr. Dobb's Journal in September 1977.

In 2001 Wang was re-elected for a second term as chair of the Infrared Data Association's Technical and Test committee. In 2004 Wang was employed as Chief Technical Officer at ACTiSYS in Fremont, California, focused on IR/mobile products.

title: Li-Chen Wang


text:
Thorn (letter)

Thorn or þorn (Þ, þ) is a letter in the Old English, Old Norse, Old Swedish and modern Icelandic alphabets, as well as modern transliterations of the Gothic alphabet, Middle Scots, and some dialects of Middle English. It was also used in medieval Scandinavia, but it was later replaced with the digraph th, except in Iceland, where it survives. The letter originated from the rune in the Elder Futhark and was called thorn in the Anglo-Saxon and thorn or thurs in the Scandinavian rune poems. It is similar in appearance to the archaic Greek letter sho (ϸ), although the two are historically unrelated. The only language in which þ is currently in use is Icelandic.

It is pronounced as either a voiceless dental fricative or its voiced counterpart. However, in modern Icelandic, it is pronounced as a laminal voiceless alveolar non-sibilant fricative, similar to th as in the English word thick, or a (usually apical) voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative ,  similar to th as in the English word the. Modern Icelandic usage generally excludes the latter, which is instead represented with the letter eth $⟨Ð, ð⟩$; however, may occur as an allophone of, and written $\langleþ\rangle$, when it appears in an unstressed pronoun or adverb after a voiced sound.

In typography, the lowercase thorn character is unusual in that it has both an ascender and a descender (other examples are the lowercase Cyrillic ф, and, in some [especially italic] fonts, the Latin letters f and ſ ).

Old English
The letter thorn was used for writing Old English very early on, as was ð, called eth. Unlike eth, thorn remained in common use through most of the Middle English period. Both letters were used for the phoneme, sometimes by the same scribe. This sound was regularly realised in Old English as the voiced fricative between voiced sounds, but either letter could be used to write it; the modern use of  in phonetic alphabets is not the same as the Old English orthographic use. A thorn with the ascender crossed (Ꝥ) was a popular abbreviation for the word that.

Middle and Early Modern English
The modern digraph th began to grow in popularity during the 14th century; at the same time, the shape of $⟨Þ⟩$ grew less distinctive, with the letter losing its ascender (becoming similar in appearance to the old wynn ($⟨Ƿ⟩$, $⟨ƿ⟩$), which had fallen out of use by 1300, and to ancient through modern $⟨P⟩$, $⟨p⟩$). By this stage, th was predominant and the use of $⟨Þ⟩$ was largely restricted to certain common words and abbreviations. This was the longest-lived use, though with the arrival of movable type printing, the substitution of $⟨y⟩$ for $⟨Þ⟩$ became ubiquitous, leading to the common "ye", as in 'Ye Olde Curiositie Shoppe'. One major reason for this was that $⟨Y⟩$ existed in the printer's types that were imported from Belgium and the Netherlands, while $⟨Þ⟩$ did not. The word was never pronounced as /j/, as in ⟨yes⟩, though, even when so written. The first printing of the King James Version of the Bible in 1611 used ye for "the" in places such as Job 1:9, John 15:1, and Romans 15:29. It also used yt as an abbreviation for "that", in places such as 2 Corinthians 13:7. All were replaced in later printings by the or that, respectively.

Abbreviations
The following were scribal abbreviations during Middle and Early Modern English using the letter thorn: In later printed texts, given the lack of a sort for the glyph, printers substituted the (visually similar) letter y for the thorn:
 * Middle English the.svg (þͤ) – a Middle English abbreviation for the word the
 * Middle English that.svg (þͭ) – a Middle English abbreviation for the word that
 * Middle English thou.svg (þͧ) – a rare Middle English abbreviation for the word thou (which was written early on as þu or þou)
 * yᷤ – an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word this
 * EME ye.svg (yͤ) – an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word the
 * EME that.svg (yͭ) – an Early Modern English abbreviation for the word that

Modern English
Thorn in the form of a "Y" survives in pseudo-archaic uses, particularly the stock prefix "ye olde". The definite article spelt with "Y" for thorn is often jocularly or mistakenly pronounced ("yee") or mistaken for the archaic nominative case of the second person plural pronoun, "ye", as in "hear ye!".

Icelandic
Icelandic is the only living language to keep the letter thorn (in Icelandic; þ, pronounced þoddn, or þorn ). The letter is the 30th in the Icelandic alphabet, modelled after Old Norse alphabet in the 19th century; it is transliterated to th when it cannot be reproduced and never appears at the end of a word. For example, the name of Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson is anglicised as Hafthor.

Its pronunciation has not varied much, but before the introduction of the eth character, þ was used to represent the sound, as in the word "verþa", which is now spelt verða (meaning "to become") in modern Icelandic or normalized orthography. Þ was originally taken from the runic alphabet and is described in the First Grammatical Treatise from the 12th-century:

Computing codes
Upper and lower case forms of thorn have Unicode encodings:

These Unicode codepoints were inherited from ISO/IEC 8859-1 ("ISO Latin-1") encoding.

Variants
Various forms of thorn were used for medieval scribal abbreviations:
 * was used in the Middle English Ormulum
 * was used in the Middle English Ormulum
 * was used in the Middle English Ormulum
 * was used in the Middle English Ormulum
 * was used in the Middle English Ormulum

title: Thorn (letter)


text:
Thorn, Netherlands

Thorn (Toear or Thoear) is a village in the municipality of Maasgouw, in the Dutch province of Limburg. It lies on the rivers Meuse and Witbeek. It is known as 'the white village' for its white-washed brick houses in the centre of town. It used to be part of the Imperial Abbey of Thorn.

History
First, the region of Thorn was a swamp nearby the Roman road between Maastricht and Nijmegen. But the region had been drained and about 975, Bishop Ansfried of Utrecht founded a Benedictine nunnery. This monastery developed since the 12th century into a secular stift or convent. The principal of the stift was the abbess. She was assisted by a chapter of at most twenty ladies of the highest nobility.

Previously the abbess and the chapter were endowed with religious tasks but, since the 12th century, they served secular matters and formed the government of a truly sovereign miniature principality, a smaller independent state in the German Holy Roman Empire, approximately 250 x 250 metres. Besides Thorn, Ittervoort, Grathem, Baexem, Stramproy, Ell, Haler and Molenbeersel belonged to this principality. After the French invasion in the winter of 1794–95 and the formal abolition in 1797 made an end to the existence of the abbey and the principality of Thorn; Thorn was first part of the department of Meuse-Inférieure, and after the Vienna Congress it became a municipality of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands.

title: Thorn, Netherlands


text:
Talk:Diving (sport)

Unsorted text
There's a place in South America somewhere where people go "cliff diving" from a 30 metre cliff into a natural pool. Anyone know where it is?

 * Perhaps the commenter is thinking of La Quebrada near Acapulco, Mexico on the Pacific coast? (Thu. 8/28/03 17:00PDT)

Re: The dual meaning of "diving." Other western languages also use one word (eg, plonger, bucear) to denote both activities. Speculation: this dual meaning could have originated with Greek, as before the introduction of external air supplies the procedure used by sponge-gatherers in the eastern Med was to take a headlong flying jump off their boat while carrying a heavy rock. Once underwater at their desired depth they released the rock, which was hauled back up on a line, and went about their business as long as their breath held out, then swam for the surface to repeat the procedure. (Thu. 8/28/03 17:15PDT)

---

Could we refer as "jumping" to disambiguate, e.g. "diving" to denote going underwater and "jumping" to denote the above-water part, e.g. if you just want to get the thrill of jumping off the 5m cement tower but not really get all the scuba equipment, etc., to dive under the water.??? Glogger 04:14, 9 Oct 2004 (UTC)

Boys Own
How can this possibly be fair use, assuming it isn't GFDL? Is it public domain? Toby Woodwark 02:14, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)

 * Published late 19th century, so it will be public domain. There's a copy on http://www.publicbookshelf.com/ from which this text was presumably copied. It could really do with rewriting into Wikipedia style though. sjorford 07:48, 28 Jul 2004 (UTC)

OK, I've integrated some of the boys' own stuff into my attempted rewrite. Edit please! Also, someone can nuke this section of the chat. Toby Woodwark 13:48, 2004 Jul 28 (UTC)
 * Leave the links in! Somebody (me, for instance) might find them interesting or useful... Trekphiler 15:38, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Learning how to enter pool without hurting too much
I just learned how to swim recently (as an adult, around the same time I did my doctoral dissertation), but only gently climbed in by ladder, never jumping off the side. More recently I tried off the side (0m) and then the 5m height at Summerville (Toronto); they only have 0m, 5m, and 10m (they took out the flexible spring-loaded apparatus of 1m and 3m long ago because it was deteriorated).

The first time I tried I went head first which I thought might be as streamlined as possible but I could not seem to get my legs straight. I tried 4 times, but bruised, took 20 days for bruises to go away. So I tried feet first, which seemed to hurt less, actually, though it's counter-intuitive. Why would it hurt less to go feet first since there's more parts of the body that get hit? (Main pain seems to be genitals and nose perhaps because they're going the "wrong way" when going feet first.)

Also a lifeguard suggested I try to intertwine my legs in feet first (he called it "impact jump"). Can anyone confirm if this is a standard method of entry? I don't see many of the others going in that way.

I found there was a 1m, 3m, and 5m at the University of Toronto so I tried the 1m and 3m, but seem to have tremendous pain in ears even with 1m. It feels like landing in an airplane, when it descends fast. It doesn't matter head first or feet first, same amount of pain. I added my thoughts on ear plugs to the Wikipedia entry, but maybe someone more experienced than I can confirm if this is correct, e.g. that earplugs should be worn. For some reason, though, my ears never did hurt when I did the 5m at Summerville, but later even just 1m hurt like crazy. Could it be time-varying? (Some days hurt, other days not???). Or maybe it was just that my first few tries were so uncoordinated that I wasn't going deep, even from 5m up.

Thoughts on how to hold nose if going feet first? I added my own empirical findings (using second hand to hold first in), but would also welcome other input on this matter. I see alot of children go feet first without holding their nose. I tried this even from 1m, and was not able to blow out enough to keep water out enough. Is this learned or does it just happen naturally in certain people, e.g. 4 year old children who go off the 5m don't seem to have any problems at all. Maybe it could be explained why children have no problems at all, but adults bruise, have splitting ear aches that last more than 12 hours after impact, etc.. Some more introductory "how to learn" kind of info is what I'd really find useful in the Wikipedia. Glogger

 * I have been competitively swimming for 10 years now. The key to keeping water out of your nose is experience and practice. Actually blowing air out of your nose is not ideal as it uses up your oxygen supply. When you hold your nose as you jump you push all the air out of it. If you don't hold your nose, but hold your breath instead, you should find that, so long as don't invert your head, the water will mostly be kept out of your nose by the air trapped inside it. The Olympic style divers hold their breath during their dives and usually release their air all at once as they swim back up to the surface. As for your ear problems... This is something that varies person to person. It is related to the pressure sensitivity of your ears. This pain is caused by a difference in pressure between the air in your ear canal and the pressure behind your ear drum. There is a way to equalize this by moving your jaw. So, "How to Learn": Place your fore and middle fingers, both hands, on your head just in front of your ears. You should feel the upper-back most part of your jaw. Keeping your fingers there, lower your jaw then jut it forward. This should give you some sense of how your jaw placement affects the volume of your ear canal, and therefor the pressure. You may be able to hear a muffled pop as you do this. That sound is the air pressure equalizing. There is a positioning of the jaw which allows for practically immediate and constant equalization to occur as you go down. This technique is used by abalone divers in Hawaii according to my marine science teacher. As for bruising, I really don't know what more I could tell you. The lifeguard's suggestion to intertwine your legs and feet—I assume this means something similar to crossing your ankles and straightening your legs—was probably because your legs and feet were coming apart as you fell. This could explain the pain in your genitals as there would be nothing breaking the water for them so they would receive the same impact as your feet. As you noted, reducing surface area is a positive thing. If you really want to pursue diving, or even just high jumping, getting a bathing suit which is tight fitting would probably solve the problem of genital pain. Most, if not all, of the divers I know wear a spandex or similar type of suit, even if it is under looser swimming shorts. If you are worried about appearances, these divers I'm referring to are by all accounts normal teenage boys. If they don't feel deterred in their hormonal quest to attract the opposite, then, in my opinion, we shouldn't have qualms about it either. I hope this was of help to you. If you have other questions or want a more detailed response, please feel free to contact me.WAvegetarian 06:05, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

As a competitive diver for 12 years, and the girl in the picture in this article, I feel fairly qualified to comment. When jumping, competitive divers generally don't hold their noses at all. However, when I was teaching adults to jump off platform and they were concerned, I would have them hold their nose with one hand and cross their other arm over their chest to keep everything close to their body and keep them as streamlined as possible. When jumping or diving, you should always go for what you are trying to achieve as hard as possible. Jump as high as you can, it sounds counterintuitive but, the higher you jump, the more control you have. This may help to alleviate some of the "smacking" (hitting the water in unintended positions, generally parallel) problems. If you are going to attempt diving off of the platforms again, try this for your entry. Place one hand out in front of you with your palm facing away. Take your other hand and grap onto your fingers. Pull back gently so that you create a flat surface. This flat surface will hit the water first and break up the surface tension meaning you are less likely to hit your head on the water. Also, go for a medium shallow dive on your first couple of attempts, steeper angle than a racing dive, but not quite straight up and down. Getting straight up and down can be very hard, especially with only a 5m and nothing to build up to it on and may be part of why you were smacking your legs. The keys to diving safely are to go for it and to stay tight. Most injuries occur when people back out in the middle of a dive, or when they allow themselves to get loose. So as you enter the water remember to squeeze your arms against your head, hold your stomach and butt muscles as tight as possible and point your toes, this will help to keep your body in a straight line and minimize the chances of smacking. Good luck. (Megan)

clean up Learning section (explanation)
This section was written by someone who is/was still trying to learn how to dive (jumping off of high things). I feel that it could do with a rewrite from someone who is more knowledgeable about diving (competitor maybe) and would have some tips for people trying to learn as opposed to a collection of various methods tried by someone in the process of self teaching. It seems rather informal and unencyclopedic. I think it could benefit from a bit of a rewrite with more info. I realize that it's considered bad form to tag for clean up and not participate, but I don't really have expertise in the matter as I am a swimmer, not a diver. WAvegetarian 07:01, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Suggested Split
It seems that there are two articles here, on two different subjects--the article is already formatted with this in mind, so an official split should not be hard. One subject is (broadly) swimming underwater; the other is jumping into the water. Further splits might be possible (such as underwater swimming done by humans vs animals; competitive diving vs cliffjumping and such, etc).

In addition, a few other uses of the word diving (or dive, which should redirect here) might be worth mentioning on a disambiguation page:

 * In soccer, faking an injury to fool the ref into calling a foul (or to stall the game) is called diving.
 * "Taking a dive" refers to intentionally throwing a match in sports, usually boxing.
 * Things like "dive bar" and such.
 * Dumpster diving

--EngineerScotty 01:11, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

Might I suggest Renaming it "Springboard Diving and Platform Diving" instead of just diving

--Hanyu Xia 12:30, 30 November 2005

Suggested Split
I like the concept of "Springboard and Platform Diving" as a catagory except that's a pretty long entry title, and it leaves out cliff diving. Perhaps dividing this entry between "Competitive Diving" (or even "Exhibition Diving") and "Underwater Diving" might work, especially with a disambiguation page.

-Rick Obermeyer, 15 December 2005

Diving
Two of us re-wrote diving to conform to the athletic sport of diving. What do you think?

A HUGE improvment! Added text to the link for the USA diving page .Dive614c 04:21, 8 January 2006 (UTC)

Added a page with a 3 level tower image for Diving Platforms and linked it to the Diving page.Dive614c 13 January 2006

What is the name of this "sport"
People dress up like clowns and fall down 10 meters in comical ways ending in a splash of water. Someone might even walk on stilts and act like he falls down accidentally. Usually a group of kids gives ratings for the jumps and the clown with the highest score is declared the winner. Lapinmies 11:57, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

 * Yeah, this would be nice to know. For now the finnish article Pellehypyt points to this article. But I could not find anything about these 'clown divings' here. 85.217.22.47 (talk) 19:22, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

move
This should be moved to something else and turned into a disambiguation page. I wanted to find Diving (football) and I assumed this would be about Scuba diving with a disambiguation link at the top. Jooler 10:32, 24 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I see some anon removed the disambig link at the top about a month ago. I have restored it. Jooler 10:37, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

Learning how to dive?
First time I dove off a diving board was 4 weeks ago; its a really springy board and I've gotten good bouncing high off the end of the board and entering the water "layed out" straight. But today's attempts at flips were painful disasters; I kept landing on my back or side. I tried a pike, and tried tucking into a ball, with no success. Should I just keep at it, will I "get it" eventually? Are there hints? suggestions? Is there a web site listing a set of graduated exercises and dives?

What about risks? Aside from the life-gaurd yelling "no gainers" at some of the divers, what else? Age-related risks? I'm, uhhh, getting old ... linas 03:42, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

 * I recommend finding a qualified coach who will teach and keep you safe. (anon)

 * Uhh; thank you. ... well, that costs money and requires things like "dedication". I work on weekdays; I ride my bike to an outdoor pool on Sundays and would like to keep it simple like that. Driving a car to accomodate to the schedule of a coach at a chlorinated pool is kind-of the opposite of "fun". linas 20:02, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

 * If you are trying flips, I suggest trying them standing first, no bounces. Think about the physics of what you're doing, throwing your arms downward while popping your heels up behind you . . . this creates angular momentum which when you tuck or pike increases to increase your rate of rotation (dumbed down physics, obviously).  I learned them by doing "watermelons" first, getting into a little ball at the end of the board and rolling off.  If you stay in a ball, from 1m or lower you shouldn't get hurt, and you'll get the idea of how it should feel.  For what it's worth, that's me on the front page, so apparently self teaching to a point, including front flips, followed by coaching works.  Good luck, stay safe. (Megan)

Diving techniques
I created an article on diving techniques. (It's a long story involving New Pages patrol and a contested prod.) I know next to nothing about diving, and the article is in a sorry state and could use a lot of help from those knowledgable about the subject. Thanks! --Ginkgo100 talk · e@ 22:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

Cliff diving info?
'Cliff diving' redirects to this page, but there's no actual information on cliff diving here. I'd like to see some, especially on how they survive diving that far into the water; I was under the impression hitting water became much like hitting concrete at those heights...

 * Yes, either the redirect needs to be removed or this article needs to actually address cliff diving (or any form of high diving, for that matter). Jhhays (talk) 01:00, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

 * I had the same problem with "high dive". There's not even use of the phrase "hive dive" in the article. Jason Quinn (talk) 15:11, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * The article currently reads, "Outdoor diving typically takes place from cliffs or other rock formations either into fresh or salt water." This certainly is inadequate and needs to be expanded, but it is incorrect to say that there is no information here. Cnilep (talk) 21:32, 21 January 2010 (UTC)

Also missing is Pellehypyt, literally "clown diving". The jumpers dress like a clown and/or make funny-style jumps. Strange thing here is as it was stated above, that the finnish article goes to this 'Diving' article, yet there is nothing about it. 82.141.93.98 (talk) 23:29, 19 January 2012 (UTC)

With distinction
Anybody think it's worth including competitive springboard prohibits handstand dives, allowed in platform? Trekphiler 15:45, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
 * This is now included in the section "dive groups". DaveApter (talk) 15:22, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Scoring the Dive
I've added a brief definition of DD as it wasn't included on the page, but I am far fro many kind of exspert. Does some one more knowledgeable want to review it. Ideally it needs a fuller explanation, along with the way dives are pre-chosen, perhaps in the Dives Group section. There is alot of good detail here but not enough explanation, on how things work, for those who know nothing of the sport.

Horribly insufficient to the novice reader. Guessing each dive is scored on a 10.0 (10.00, 10.000?) basis. Someone can surely append. Pasadena91 (talk) 22:39, 22 February 2010 (UTC)

Bellyflops and Cannonballs diving competitions.
I know they aren't professional sports... but there are diving competitions for Bellyflops and Cannonballs. Some are even televised on ESPN. Should those be added into the non-professional diving section (along with a description of what they are). Antmusic 22:49, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Speed and Impact?
I'm trying to determine the speed of a diver when he hits the water, and the force they feel when the water decelerates them.

Wikipedia says that air resistance is negligible. Then the diver is falling with an acceleration of 9.8 m/s^2. If he dives off a 10 meter board, then he'll fall 10 meters and reach the water with a speed of 14 m/s. That's 31 MPH.

 * Normally the figures quoted are 22mph from 5m and 35mph from 10m. DaveApter (talk) 15:44, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Say the pool is over three meters deep ( How deep are pro diving pools supposed to be? ). So the diver has 3 meters for the water to slow him down. That means his decelleration is 32.7 m/s^2. That's over three times the force of Gravity. Let's say he has a mass of 70 kg ( 154 lbs weight ). That means the pool water will exert a force of 2290 Newtons, the weight of 230 kg mass.

Are my numbers correct? If so, then geez, a 2290 Newton force doesn't kill the guy?!? Yikes. While I'm asking, does anyone know how fast the diver would decelerate to zero speed if he hit concrete, or how far would he move in the concrete vs the 3 meters he moves in the water?

Thanks Inkan1969 17:06, 27 August 2007 (UTC)

 * I'm not qualified to do those calculations, but I know that 3 meters is far to deep for a 10 meter dive, I'll try to remember over the break to take a look at how deep the minimum is. Another thing you might want to note is that some divers will "plane out" after they hit the water, which extends the distance they travel before hitting the bottom.   Kessen (talk) 21:05, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Depths
A few comments on the above -
 * 1) Most competition pools are 5m deep for 10m platform and 4m deep for 5m platform or 3m springboard.  These are currently the FINA recommended minimum depths.  Some are deeper, eg 6m for the diving pit at Sheffield, England.
 * 2) Diving from 10 and maintaining a downward streamlined position, results in gliding to a stop at about 4.5 - 5m.
 * 3) High standard competition divers rarely go more than about 2.5m below the surface, as they roll in the direction of the dive's rotation. This is a technique to produce a clean entry.
 * 4) Attempting to scoop the trajectory underwater against the rotation is extremely inadvisable as it can cause serious back injuries.
 * 5) Hitting the water flat from 10m brings the diver to rest in about 1 ft. The extreme decelleration causes severe bruising both internal and external, strains to connective tissue securing the organs and possible minor heamorrage to lungs and other tissue. Very painful and distressing, but not life-threatening. DaveApter (talk) 15:58, 16 October 2008 (UTC)
 * We'll I never did find any definate information, but at a pool in Calgary Alberta the diving tank was 5.0m deep. This pool had all of the diving boards and blocks of all sizes at it.
 * We do need someone to research and cite what the diving depths required are sometime, my one example does nothing to better this article, other than give you a little more peace of mind when calculating numbers. Kessen (talk) 16:22, 14 January 2008 (UTC)
 * You can find this information in the FINA handbook - Competitions and Facilities section. It will also be available from your National Swimming governing body (eg the ASA in England).  You will find the recommended depths to be as I stated above.DaveApter (talk) 15:17, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
 * Really? Is that because the water exerts a constant pressure on you when you hit it, and you have a lot more surface area and therefore a lot more force when you hit flat?  And I always thought pro-diving frowned on bellyflopping just because it wasn't aesthetically pleasing. :-) Thanks very much for this info.  Inkan1969 (talk) 21:46, 29 June 2010 (UTC)

As one that performed for several years in high-diving shows, I can assure you that a "crash" from a 10 meter platform can be not just painful, but very serious. One man I worked with suffered a collapsed lung and back injuries, requiring a week in hospital. Regarding pool depth, 3 meters is plenty deep enough, if you're careful. High-divers regularly dive from heights 100 feet into 3 meters of water. 68.145.3.132 (talk) 05:54, 14 November 2008 (UTC) Rick Stevenson

 * The depths quoted above (5m deep for a 10m platform and 4m deep for a 5m platform) are the FINA recommended minimum. They would not generally be reduced as they would leave the pool operators open to negligence accusations and could not be covered by insurance.  Although most experienced high divers could generally dive into 3m safely, this requires skill and application.  The specified depths provide for the laws of physics to bring the diver to a standstill before hitting the bottom of the pool. DaveApter (talk) 20:45, 5 December 2008 (UTC)

Safety
I came across a Google Book that might be useful to this discussion, the URL is http://books.google.com/books?id=WHKvDcGxAqUC&pg=PA63&lpg=PA63&dq=high+school+athletics+risks+diving&source=web&ots=7ENGmWG3VG&sig=mAnC_11x2CQmJBf_l0m3qC-IOb8 Pbutts (talk) 23:46, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

Inaccuracy - sources?
"Masters' Diving events are normally conducted in age-groups of 5 or 10 years"

I highly doubt that the Master's Diving in age-groups of 5 or 10 years. This is very misleading as to me it communicates: "5 or 10 year olds", and I don't think that is what the author is trying to say here.

Also- sources?!

--Zybez (talk) 04:10, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

"Masters' Diving" events are competitions for people over the age of those generally competing seriously in national or international championhips. Most entrants are former competitors who have retired from mainstream contest, but some may be people who take the sport up later in life. The starting point of the age range and the width of the bands is a matter of choice by the organiser, but usually they are from age 25 upwards, and are split into either 5 or 10 year bands; eg 30-39, 40-49 etc, or 30-34, 35-39 etc, depending on the number of competitors. DaveApter (talk) 16:07, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

Name confusion
The dual meaning of diving is really annoying. When you say diving, people think of underwater diving. When sports programs, TV programs, etc. are translated from English to other languages that have differrnt words for the two sports, then diving is mistranslated to underwater diving 99% of the time.

It is probably not the role of Wikipedia to suggest new words for the English language, but Wikipedia should refer to terminology discussions elsewhere and tell if alternative names have been suggested. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 90.184.27.253 (talk) 08:19, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

- In Finnish this sports is called "Uimahyppy", Swim Jump. The underwater diving, with or without apparatus, is called "Sukellus", Diving. Amaeela (talk) 00:24, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

Image meaning

The article explains that this means "no diving". However, according to me, it might as well mean "no jumping head first". What do you think? --Ysangkok (talk) 16:13, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

How can this mean "no diving" when the guy is not even diving? he is JUMPING, this is clearly a "no jumping" sing... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.130.153.0 (talk) 10:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Change the image for "Twisting"
This is a much better picture. Can someone with access please upload this one instead?

http://i53.tinypic.com/2ex7j0n.jpg

the caption would be "Back twister on 10m platform". —Preceding unsigned comment added by LouSchiff (talk • contribs) 01:47, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

 * Only if it's freely-licensed, per our image use policy. Also see Upload. Graham 87 14:43, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

Diving vs Underwater diving
According to Wiktionary 'diving' is both '''2. The sport of jumping head first into water.'''

and '''3. The practice of swimming underwater, especially using a scuba system, and especially for recreation.'''

So underwater diving is either: ''2. underwater jumping into water or 3. underwater swimming underwater''

Neither makes any sense. You cannot jump underwater into water and the other is redundant, since the other meaning of diving already includes underwater in it. In rather same way one could talk about racial racism. 85.217.22.47 (talk) 19:31, 3 June 2011 (UTC)

 * What I don't understand is why this one has been selected as the primary one of these. As someone noted above in section "Name confusion", first thing that comes to mind is the underwater activity. Google image search proves this: "diving" gives 18 underwater and 1 jumping, while "diving sport" gives 16 jumping to water, 1 sky diving and 6 underwater (first page of results in my Firefox). My suggestion would be a disambiguation page "Diving" with entries Diving (underwater) and Diving (jumping), maybe even some other ones. 82.141.66.136 (talk) 22:39, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

Pictures to Commons
Please can you move this picture to Commons: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cliffjumping.jpg Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.8.144.157 (talk) 11:04, 18 July 2011 (UTC)

Armstand Dives
It seems to me that the armstand category is a relatively recent addition to the competitive diving repertory. I was a competitive swimmer in the 80's and I don't ever remember seeing a diver take off from a handstand in actual competition. The first time I saw this in the Olympics I did a double-take. If someone knows the history of this particular category of dive, and when it was first allowed in international competition, inclusion of that information, with some dates, would be an interesting addition to the article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.92.174.105 (talk) 23:34, 6 February 2012 (UTC)
 * You are mistaken - armstand dives have been used in all major diving competitions since at least the 1950's, possibly as far back as the 1930's. Backward Armstand dives and Twisting Armstand dives have only been used for the last 15 years or so. DaveApter (talk) 11:09, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Five-digit dive numbers?
The article currently says For Group 6 – Armstand – the dive number has either three, four or five digits: Three digits for dives without twist and four for dives with twists.

The article then proceeds to explain the three and four digit numbers without referring to a five-digit dive number.

A quick search on Google suggests that there is no such thing as a five-digit dive number. Deebster (talk) 12:47, 17 July 2012 (UTC)

 * Very well spotted! I've removed the offending texthe. According to WikiBlame, it was added way back in June 2007 (!) by 210.18.194.213. Many of that user's other edits were vandalism. Graham 87 02:21, 18 July 2012 (UTC)

Splash diving
In some countries there are (not too serious) diving competitions where the point is to make the biggest splash - not the least. The German Wikipedia even has its own article, Arschbombe. Should this be mentioned here? -- 92.231.118.84 (talk) 21:01, 6 August 2012 (UTC)

history?
What is the history of the modern-style sport? Currently, there is only a picture of a fresco from 470 BC. But I doubt that was competitive diving back then; and even if it was, scoring system cannot have been similar than today. 85.217.38.184 (talk) 00:31, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Just noticed it has been at the Olympics since 1904. Wonder if that was similar to current style? Diving at the Summer Olympics describes it as "fancy high diving". 85.217.38.184 (talk) 00:44, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

And, strangely, there is now high diving at this year's World Champs as a separate competition. What exactly is that? "High diving" redirects to this article but I found no mention about it, other than picture text "Swedish high diver Arvid Spangberg". 212.50.203.198 (talk) 04:45, 11 July 2013 (UTC)
 * High Diving is from 27m, as compared with 10m for the Olympic platform diving. I'll add a paragraph about it. DaveApter (talk) 11:19, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

Very young masters...
The article reads: "Masters' Diving events are normally conducted in age-groups of 5 or 10 years" Are you serious? 85.193.214.212 (talk) 04:38, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
 * It means they're separated by 5 or 10 years (e.g. 60–65 and 65–70 or 60–70 and 70–80). Graham 87 14:57, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I've used your wording and replaced "of" with "separated by". I hope it makes sense. 85.193.214.212 (talk) 21:17, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Sounds good to me. Graham 87 04:04, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 25 October 2018

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: MOVED to Diving (sport) for the time being. Consensus is crystal clear that this is not the primary topic for "diving". The dab will be moved to Diving and a further move request to try to pick a better title for this article may proceed immediately. Regarding the disambiguation page, a WP:DABCONCEPT remains an option to be considered. Red  Slash  07:00, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Diving → Diving (sport) – This is not the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC of the term "diving". It gets only a fraction of the article traffic.|Underwater_diving|Freediving|Diving_(ice_hockey)|Diving_(association_football)|Diving_(song)|Dive_(American_football) Underwater diving - better known as just "diving" - is a similarly important use, and Freediving, a subset of underwater diving, receives more page views than the sport. That suggests that substantial numbers of readers looking for underwater diving are coming here by mistake. Diving should redirect to the dab page, or become its own dab page. Cúchullain t/ c 18:45, 25 October 2018 (UTC) --Relisting. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 02:28, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support Assuming a broad concept article can't be written.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 20:38, 25 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Support – makes sense to me. Graham 87 03:38, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Support some move, but a little unsure about (sport), given Diving (association football) and Diving (ice hockey), which presumably mean Dive (association football) and Dive (ice hockey) aka embellishment. Not sure if Diving (disambiguation) rather than redirect to the massively cluttered Dive dab shouldn't have it's own standalone dab. In ictu oculi (talk) 09:13, 26 October 2018 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Move mechanics and non-competitive to the top, and there's your dabconcept. The sport is just that, graded. Hyperbolick (talk) 14:18, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * My point is that underwater diving, freediving, etc are as significant as “diving into the water” diving, and aren’t (and shouldn’t be) covered here.—Cúchullain t/ c 15:10, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * They proceed from it. Hyperbolick (talk) 15:50, 27 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I disagree that underwater diving, freediving, etc can be reasonably characterized as "diving into water"; they are "diving under water". That is, for these sports/activities, one is already in the water before the diving commences. --В²C ☎ 20:25, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Yeah, it's a totally different sense of the word. In the sport of diving, the action happens going into the water. In scuba and freediving, it happens once you're in.--Cúchullain t/ c 19:26, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

 * Support some move but have the same reservations as IIO about the disambiguator being too ambiguous. How about Diving (into water; competitive sport)? It's a bit unusual but we have wide latitude with parenthetic disambiguation, and this one seems to meet WP:CONCISE and WP:PRECISE quite adequately. Without the "; competitive sport" qualifier, which I thought of first, it doesn't limit scope to the competitive aspect of this sport/activity which is this article's topic. --В²C ☎ 20:25, 1 November 2018 (UTC) strikeout suggestion; see below. --В²C ☎ 22:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Think that would be Platform diving. Hyperbolick (talk) 20:53, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Ah, my bad. I thought the scope of this article was that narrow.  In that case how about just Diving (into water)? --В²C ☎ 22:16, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I wouldn't object to that. I don't think "Diving (sport)" is that unclear, however, and we can always add hatnotes for readers looking for diving in soccer, hockey, etc.--Cúchullain t/ c 19:26, 2 November 2018 (UTC)

 * Diving into water seems better (without parentheses). Flooded  with them hundreds 11:29, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * That would work too.--Cúchullain t/ c 13:00, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Doesn’t that look more like the title of a novel or something? —В²C ☎ 06:13, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * May have been unclear. Diving into water for sport should be at platform diving, currently a not-great redirect to diving platform (physical thing dived from). Hyperbolick (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2018 (UTC)
 * I agree Diving into water seems a bit odd and inconsistent with our standard NCs, what next, Reading a book, Plymouth in Devon?.  Crouch, Swale  ( talk ) 14:20, 6 November 2018 (UTC)

 * Support as it is not an obvious WP:PTOPIC. --B dash (talk) 06:12, 7 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Relisting comment there seems to be consensus supporting some change, either a move or a re-purposing to make this a broad-concept article. I don't see a consensus for any specific move yet.  I will advertise this move at a few WikiProjects. power~enwiki ( π,  ν ) 02:28, 8 November 2018 (UTC)
 * Support. I don't think a DABCONCEPT would be viable at the base title, since the two main senses (into water and under water) are rather disparate. While I agree that diving (sport) is a bit ambiguous, it is currently the only Olympic sport with such title, and I think it is good enough for most purposes. Platform diving, mentioned above, might fit WP:NATURAL, but the catch is that it's only half of the deal – it does not cover springboard diving (but both of those should redirect to diving (sport)). No such user (talk) 10:47, 14 November 2018 (UTC)

 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Famous Divers section
I'm not sure the section on famous divers is adding anything to the article - it's just a sea of blue links to articles. Wouldn't readers be better served by a link to the Category 'Divers by nationality' or similar? Girth Summit  (blether) 18:15, 2 November 2019 (UTC)
 * Good point. I've boldly removed vit ... and also added in the see also link to the category you suggested. Graham 87 03:45, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

title: Talk:Diving (sport)