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Jury nullification

Jury nullification, also known in the United Kingdom as jury equity or a perverse verdict,  is when the jury in a criminal trial gives a verdict of not guilty even though they think a defendant has broken the law. The jury's reasons may include the belief that the law itself is unjust, that the prosecutor has misapplied the law in the defendant's case, that the punishment for breaking the law is too harsh, or general frustrations with the criminal justice system. Some juries have also refused to convict due to their own prejudices in favor of the defendant. Such verdicts are possible because a jury has an absolute right to return any verdict it chooses.

Nullification is not an official part of criminal procedure, but is the logical consequence of two rules governing the systems in which it exists:
 * 1) Jurors cannot be punished for passing an incorrect verdict.
 * 2) In many jurisdictions, a defendant who is acquitted cannot be tried a second time for the same offence.

A jury verdict that is contrary to the letter of the law pertains only to the particular case before it. However, if a pattern of acquittals develops in response to repeated attempts to prosecute a particular offence, this can have the de facto effect of invalidating the law. Such a pattern may indicate public opposition to an unwanted legislative enactment. It may also happen that a jury convicts a defendant even if no law was broken, although such a conviction may be overturned on appeal. Nullification can also occur in civil trials, but (unlike in criminal trials) if the jury renders a not liable verdict that is clearly at odds with the evidence, the judge can issue a judgment notwithstanding the verdict, or order a new trial.

Background

In the past, it was feared that a single judge or panel of government officials might be unduly influenced to follow established legal practice, even when that practice had drifted from its origins. In most modern Western legal systems, judges often instruct juries to act only as "finders of fact", whose role it is to determine the veracity of the evidence presented, the weight accorded to the evidence, to apply that evidence to the law as explained by the judge, and to reach a verdict; but not to question the law itself. Similarly, juries are routinely cautioned by courts and some attorneys not to allow sympathy for a party or other affected persons to compromise the fair and dispassionate evaluation of evidence. These instructions are criticized by advocates of jury nullification. Some commonly cited historical examples of jury nullification involve jurors refusing to convict persons accused of violating the Fugitive Slave Act by assisting runaway slaves or being fugitive slaves themselves, and refusal of American colonial juries to convict a defendant under English law.

Jury nullification is the source of much debate. Some maintain that it is an important safeguard of last resort against wrongful imprisonment and government tyranny. Some view it as a violation of the right to a jury trial, which undermines the law; whereas others, such as those members of Congress who voted to impeach Supreme Court Justice Samuel Chase for instructing a jury against nullification, view a jury as a body charged with judging both law and fact. Some view it as a violation of the oath sworn by jurors. In the United States, some view the requirement that jurors take an oath to be unlawful in itself, while still others view the oath's reference to "deliverance" to require nullification of unjust law: "will well and truly try and a true deliverance make between the United States and the defendant at the bar, and a true verdict render according to the evidence, so help [me] God".

Some fear that nullification could be used to permit violence against socially unpopular factions. They point to the danger that a jury may choose to convict a defendant who has not broken the letter of the law. However, judges retain the rights both to decide sentences and to disregard juries' guilty verdicts, acting as a check against malicious juries. Jury nullification may also occur in civil suits, in which the verdict is generally a finding of liability or lack of liability (rather than a finding of guilty or not guilty).

The main ethical issue involved in jury nullification is the tension between democratic self-government and integrity. The argument has been raised that prosecutors are not allowed to seek jury nullification, and therefore defendants should not be allowed to seek it either. However, for a prosecutor to nullify a law in this context would require negating the presumption of innocence. (For this reason, prosecutorial nullification is typically defined as declining to prosecute.)

Nevertheless, there is little doubt as to the ability of a jury to nullify the law. Today, there are several issues raised by jury nullification, such as:
 * 1) whether juries can or should be instructed or informed of their power to nullify.
 * 2) whether a judge may remove jurors "for cause" when they refuse to apply the law as instructed.
 * 3) whether a judge may punish a juror for practicing jury nullification.
 * 4) whether all legal arguments, except perhaps on motions in limine to exclude evidence, should be made in the presence of the jury.

In some cases in the United States, a stealth juror will attempt to get on a jury in order to nullify the law. Some lawyers use a shadow defense to expose the jury to information that would otherwise be inadmissible, hoping that evidence will trigger a nullification.

Common law precedent
The early history of juries supports the recognition of the de facto power of nullification. By the 12th century, common law courts in England began using juries for more than administrative duties. Juries were composed primarily of "laymen" from the local community and provided a somewhat efficient means of dispute resolution with the benefit of supplying legitimacy.

The general power of juries to decide on verdicts was recognised in the English Magna Carta of 1215, which put into words existing practices:

"No free man shall be captured, and or imprisoned, or disseised of his freehold, and or of his liberties, or of his free customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or in any way destroyed, nor will we proceed against him by force or proceed against him by arms, but by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land.

For a trivial offence, a free man shall be fined only in proportion to the degree of his offence, and for a serious offence correspondingly, but not so heavily as to deprive him of his livelihood. In the same way, a merchant shall be spared his merchandise, and a husbandman the implements of his husbandry, if they fall upon the mercy of a royal court. None of these fines shall be imposed except by the assessment on oath of reputable men of the neighbourhood."

Largely, the earliest juries returned verdicts in accordance with the wishes of the judge or the Crown. This was achieved either by "packing the jury" or by "writs of attaint". Juries were packed by hand-selecting or by bribing the jury so as to return the desired verdict. That was a common tactic in cases involving treason or sedition. In addition, the writ of attaint allowed a judge to retry the case in front of a second jury when the judge believed the first jury returned a "false verdict". If the second jury returned a different verdict, that verdict was imposed, and the first jury was imprisoned or fined.

That history is marked by a number of notable exceptions, several of which claim rights commonly recognized as fundamental in modern Democratic societies, such as freedom of speech and of the press, and freedom of religious practice. In 1554, a jury acquitted Sir Nicholas Throckmorton but was severely punished by the court. Almost a century later, in 1649, in the first known attempt to argue for jury nullification, a jury likewise acquitted John Lilburne for his part in inciting a rebellion against Oliver Cromwell's regime. Lilburne had been charged with seditious libel for the publication of articles critical of the government; the jury were instructed to give a verdict only on whether the text was published, and to leave the issue of libel to the judge, while Lilburne argued the jury should give a general verdict and should judge whether the law's restraint on speech against the government was just. The theoretician and politician Eduard Bernstein wrote of Lilburne's trial:

"His contention that the constitution of the Court was contrary to the fundamental laws of the country was unheeded, and his claim that the jury was legally entitled to judge not only as to matters of fact but also as to the application of the law itself, as the Judges represented only 'Norman intruders', whom the jury might here ignore in reaching a verdict, was described by an enraged judge as 'damnable, blasphemous heresy'. This view was not shared by the jury, which, after three days' hearing, acquitted Lilburne—who had defended himself as skillfully as any lawyer could have done—to the great horror of the Judges and the chagrin of the majority of the Council of State. The Judges were so astonished at the verdict of the jury that they had to repeat their question before they would believe their ears, but the public which crowded the judgment hall, on the announcement of the verdict, broke out into cheers so loud and long as, according to the unanimous testimony of contemporary reporters, had never before been heard in the Guildhall. The cheering and waving of caps continued for over half an hour, while the Judges sat, turning white and red in turns, and spread thence to the masses in London and the suburbs. At night bonfires were lighted, and even during the following days the event was the occasion of joyful demonstrations."

In 1653, Lilburne was on trial again and asked the jury to acquit him if it found the death penalty "unconscionably severe" in proportion to the crime he had committed. The jury found Lilburne "not guilty of any crime worthy of death".

In 1670, a petit jury refused to convict William Penn of unlawful assembly for religious practice not associated with the Church of England. The judge held the jury in contempt of court, which was ruled inappropriate by the Court of Common Pleas in Bushel's Case.

In 1681, a grand jury refused to indict the Earl of Shaftesbury. In 1688, a jury acquitted the Seven Bishops of the Church of England of seditious libel. Juries continued, even in non-criminal cases, to act in defiance of the Crown. In 1763 and 1765, juries awarded £4,000 to John Wilkes and £300 to John Entick in separate suits for trespass against the Crown's messengers. In both cases, messengers had been sent by Lord Halifax to seize allegedly-libellous papers.

In Scotland, jury nullification had the profound effect of introducing the three-verdict system including the option of "not proven", which remains in Scotland to this day. In 1728, Carnegie of Finhaven accidentally killed the Earl of Strathmore. As the defendant had undoubtedly killed the Earl, the law, as it then stood, required the jury merely to look at the facts and to pass a verdict of "proven" or "not proven", depending on whether it believed that the facts proved the defendant had killed the Earl. If the jury brought in a "proven" verdict, that would lead to Carnegie's hanging though he had not intended any harm to the Earl. To avert that injustice, the jury decided to assert what it believed to be its "ancient right" to judge the whole case, not just the facts, and rendered the verdict of "not guilty". Over time, juries have tended to favour the "not guilty" verdict over "not proven" and so the interpretation has changed. The "not guilty" verdict has become the normal verdict when a jury is convinced of innocence, and the "not proven" verdict is used only if the jury is not certain of innocence or guilt.

The standard jury trial practice in the United States during the Founding Era and for several decades afterward was to argue all issues of law in the presence of the jury so that it heard the same arguments as the bench in reaching its rulings on motions. That is evidenced by such decisions as the 1839 case Stettinius, which held, "The defense can argue law to the jury before the court gives instructions." Later, judges began to demand the parties submit motions in writing, often before the jury was empaneled, to be argued and decided without the jury being present. The transition began with motions in limine to exclude evidence on which it was felt the jury should not hear the argument because it would be informed of the evidence to be excluded. Later, that was expanded to include all legal argument and so that today, the earlier practice of arguing law before the jury has been largely forgotten, and judges even declare mistrials or overturn verdicts if legal arguments are made to the jury.

Germany
In 1921, the Armenian genocide survivor, Soghomon Tehlirian, assassinated Talaat Pasha, who was considered the main architect of the genocide, in Berlin. Although Tehlirian's lawyers did not contest that their client had killed Talat, the jury (Germany used jury trials until 1924) returned a verdict of not guilty.

Canada
Although extremely rare, jury nullification occurs in Canada. As the prosecution has powers to appeal the resulting acquittal, it lacks the finality found in the United States. However, the Crown cannot appeal on grounds of an unreasonable acquittal although it can appeal on errors of law. In R. v. Latimer, 2001 SCC 1, the Supreme Court discussed jury nullification and indicated that it is a duty of the presiding justice to try to prevent it from occurring.

Perhaps the most famous cases of jury nullification in Canada were the various trials of Henry Morgentaler, who openly operated a private abortion clinic in violation of the Criminal Code. Repeated attempts at prosecuting Morgentaler resulted in acquittals at jury trials in the 1970s and the 1980s. In the 1988 Supreme Court case, R. v. Morgentaler, 1988 SCR 30, a nullification was appealed all the way to the country's highest court, which struck down the law in question. In obiter dicta, Chief Justice Dickson wrote:

"The contrary principle contended for by Mr. Manning, that a jury may be encouraged to ignore a law it does not like, could lead to gross inequities. One accused could be convicted by a jury who supported the existing law, while another person indicted for the same offence could be acquitted by a jury who, with reformist zeal, wished to express disapproval of the same law. Moreover, a jury could decide that although the law pointed to a conviction, the jury would simply refuse to apply the law to an accused for whom it had sympathy. Alternatively, a jury who feels antipathy towards an accused might convict despite a law which points to acquittal. To give a harsh, but I think telling example, a jury fueled by the passions of racism could be told that they need not apply the law against murder to a white man who had killed a black man. Such a possibility need only be stated to reveal the potentially frightening implications of Mr. Manning's assertions....

It is no doubt true that juries have a de facto power to disregard the law as stated to the jury by the judge. We cannot enter the jury room. The jury is never called upon to explain the reasons which lie behind a verdict. It may even be true that in some limited circumstances the private decision of a jury to refuse to apply the law will constitute, in the words of a Law Reform Commission of Canada working paper, "the citizen's ultimate protection against oppressive laws and the oppressive enforcement of the law" (Law Reform Commission of Canada, Working Paper 27, The Jury in Criminal Trials (1980)). But recognizing this reality is a far cry from suggesting that counsel may encourage a jury to ignore a law they do not support or to tell a jury that it has a right to do so."

The Supreme Court in 2006 issued a decision, R. v. Krieger, 2006 SCC 47, which confirmed that juries in Canada have the power to refuse to apply the law when their consciences require that they do so. The decision stated that "juries are not entitled as a matter of right to refuse to apply the law—but they do have the power to do so when their consciences permit of no other course".

England and Wales
By the late 17th century, the court's power to punish juries was removed in Bushel's Case involving a juror on the case against William Penn. Penn and William Mead had been arrested in 1670 for illegally preaching a Quaker sermon and disturbing the peace, but four jurors, led by Edward Bushell, refused to find them guilty. Instead of dismissing the jury, the judge sent them back for further deliberations. Despite the judge demanding a guilty verdict, the jury now unanimously found Penn guilty of preaching but acquitted him on the charge of disturbing the peace and acquitted Mead of all charges. The jury was then subsequently kept for three days without "meat, drink, fire and tobacco" to force it to bring in a guilty verdict. When it failed to do so, the judge ended the trial. As punishment, the judge ordered the jurors imprisoned until they paid a fine to the court.

Four jurors refused to pay the fine, and after several months, Bushell sought a writ of habeas corpus. Chief Justice Vaughan, sitting on the Court of Common Pleas, discharged the writ, released them, called the power to punish a jury "absurd" and forbade judges from punishing jurors for returning a verdict the judge disagreed with. That series of events is considered a significant milestone in the history of jury nullification. The "courage and endurance" of the jury is celebrated in a plaque displayed in the Central Criminal Court (the Old Bailey) in London.

In a criminal libel case, R. v. Shipley (1784), 4 Dougl. 73, 99 E.R. 774, at p. 824, Lord Mansfield, sitting as a judge in the case, disparaged the practice of jury nullification:

"So the jury who usurp the judicature of law, though they happen to be right, are themselves wrong, because they are right by chance only, and have not taken the constitutional way of deciding the question. It is the duty of the Judge, in all cases of general justice, to tell the jury how to do right, though they have it in their power to do wrong, which is a matter entirely between God and their own consciences.

To be free is to live under a government by law.... Miserable is the condition of individuals, dangerous is the condition of the State, if there is no certain law, or, which is the same thing, no certain administration of law, to protect individuals, or to guard the State.

...

In opposition to this, what is contended for? – That the law shall be, in every particular cause, what any twelve men, who shall happen to be the jury, shall be inclined to think; liable to no review, and subject to no control, under all the prejudices of the popular cry of the day, and under all the bias of interest in this town, where thousands, more or less, are concerned in the publication of newspapers, paragraphs, and pamphlets. Under such an administration of law, no man could tell, no counsel could advise, whether a paper was or was not punishable [for publishing a libel]."

A 2016 study exploring the history of juror punishment in England and Wales after Bushel's Case found no clear examples of jurors being punished solely for returning the "wrong" verdict. The closest that a jury came to that was in 1917, when a jury acquitted two teenage boys of arson. The boys had confessed at their pre-trial hearing but entered pleas of not guilty at their trial. Home Office civil servants suspected the difference between the pleas could be explained by the difference between the boys' admitting that they had caused the fire and their denial that they had done so maliciously. The trial judge did not consider that possibility or was not satisfied with it. On receiving the jury's verdict, he told them that "you have been absolutely regardless of your oath. These men have pleaded guilty, and the evidence is of the clearest possible nature. You are none of you fit to serve on a Jury, but you will remain here until the end of the Sessions".

The foreman, George Lathan, considered that a form of punishment for the jury, as the jurors were not going to be permitted to serve on any more juries but were nonetheless required to keep attending court or face contempt proceedings, which Lathan considered a tacit form of imprisonment. Officials in the Lord Chancellor's Office noted that while the judge's conduct "was ill-judged and arbitrary, he did not, so far as I can see, do any act which would justify the Lord Chancellor in removing him from the Bench". Home Office officials wrote to the judge, advising him that his actions "would be impossible for the Home Secretary to defend as constitutional or right", and after several days, the jurors were relieved of their duties. Home Office minutes suggest they did not think that kind of informal punishment of jurors who had returned the "wrong" verdict to be unheard of.

In 1982, during the Falklands War, the Royal Navy sank the Argentine cruiser, General Belgrano. Three years later a civil servant, Clive Ponting, leaked two government documents concerning the sinking of the cruiser to a Member of Parliament (Tam Dalyell) and was subsequently charged with breaching section 2 of the Official Secrets Act 1911. The prosecution in the case demanded that the jury convict Ponting, as he had clearly contravened the Act by leaking official information about the sinking of the Belgrano during the Falklands War. His main defence was that it was in the public interest that the information be made available. The judge, Sir Anthony McCowan, "indicated that the jury should convict him", and had ruled that "the public interest is what the government of the day says it is". However, the jury acquitted him, much to the consternation of the government.

In 2001, two people were charged with conspiracy to cause criminal damage to a Trident submarine in a Barrow-in-Furness shipyard. Though the two admitted their intention to trash the submarine, the two said they were planning to do so due to nuclear bombs being immoral and illegal. The judge told the juries that such ideals were not a defence against the charge. The jury brought a verdict of not guilty on these two anti-nuclear protesters.

In 2021, six activists associated with the environmental protest organisation Extinction Rebellion were tried for causing criminal damage to the British headquarters of the multinational oil company Royal Dutch Shell. The judge told the jury that there was 'no defence in law' for the protestors' actions, which according to the prosecutor had caused 'significant damage' to the building, but the activists were acquitted.

In 2023, Insulate Britain members Giovanna Lewis and Amy Pritchard were jailed for seven weeks after defying the judge's ban on informing the jury of the reasons for their actions. In charging them with contempt, the judge referred to an earlier case where another environmental activist was sentenced to eight weeks in prison for the same reason. Following juries acquitting activists, dozens of people have been threatened with arrest for displaying signs that remind jurors of their right to make decisions based on conscience.

In 2024, a motion brought by government lawyers to prosecute the activist Trudi Warner for holding a placard stating the right to jury nullification was thrown out by a High Court judge on the basis that there was a well-established principle in law of jury equity and Warner had not broken any law. Warner's placard had directly referenced the wording on the plaque on the outside of the Old Bailey.

United States
In the United States, jury nullification first appeared just before the American Revolutionary War, when colonial juries frequently exercised their nullification power, principally in maritime cases and cases implicating free speech. Jury nullification became so common that many British prosecutors gave up trying maritime cases since conviction seemed hopeless. Before the American Civil War, juries sometimes refused to convict for violations of the Fugitive Slave Act. Later, during Prohibition, juries often nullified alcohol control laws. That resistance may have contributed to the adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment, which repealed Prohibition and the Eighteenth Amendment.

In a well-known example of jury nullification, at the end of Wild Bill Hickok's trial for the manslaughter of Davis Tutt in 1865, Judge Sempronius Boyd gave the jury two instructions. He first instructed the jury that a conviction was its only option under the law. He then instructed them that they could apply the unwritten law of the "fair fight" and acquit. Hickok was acquitted; the verdict was not popular with the public.

There have been contemporary instances of activists being arrested for informing jurists of their right of jury nullification in front of court houses, with subsequent rulings that arresting people for this activity is unconstitutional.

Fugitive Slave Act
Juries across the North acquitted defendants who had clearly breached the Fugitive Slave Act in the 1850s. Part of the Compromise of 1850, it had been passed to mollify Southern slaveowners, who were otherwise threatening to secede from the Union.

Secretary of State Daniel Webster was a key supporter of the law as expressed in his famous "Seventh of March" speech. He wanted high-profile convictions, but the jury nullifications ruined his presidential aspirations and his last-ditch efforts to find a compromise between North and South. Webster led the prosecution when defendants were accused of rescuing Shadrach Minkins in 1851 from Boston officials who intended to return Minkins to his owner. The juries convicted none of the men. Webster tried to enforce a law that was extremely unpopular in the North, and his Whig Party passed over him again when it chose a presidential nominee in 1852.

After Civil War
White defendants accused of crimes against black people and other minorities were often acquitted by all-white juries, especially in the South, even in the face of irrefutable evidence. An example is the trial of Roy Bryant and J. W. Milam.

21st century
In the 21st century, many discussions of jury nullification center on drug laws, which some consider unjust in principle or because they are seen to discriminate against certain groups. A jury nullification advocacy group estimates that 3–4% of all jury trials involve nullification, and a recent rise in hung juries is seen by some as being indirect evidence that juries have begun to consider the validity or the fairness of the laws themselves.

Judicial opinion
In the 1895 case of Sparf v. United States, written by Associate Justice John Marshall Harlan, the US Supreme Court held 5-4 that a trial judge has no responsibility to inform the jury of the right to nullify laws. That decision, often cited, has led to a common practice by US judges to penalize anyone who attempts to present a nullification argument to jurors and to declare a mistrial if such argument has been presented to them. In some states, jurors are likely to be struck from the panel during voir dire if they do not agree to accept as correct the rulings and instructions of the law as provided by the judge.

In later rulings the courts continued to prohibit informing juries about jury nullification. In a 1969, Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decision, U.S. v. Moylan, 417 F.2d 1002 (4th Cir.1969), the Court affirmed the concept of jury nullification, but upheld the power of a court to refuse to permit an instruction to the jury to this effect. In 1972, in United States v. Dougherty, 473 F.2d 1113, the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit issued a ruling similar to Moylan that affirmed the de facto power of a jury to nullify the law but upheld the denial of the defense's chance to instruct the jury about the power to nullify.

In 1988, the Sixth Circuit upheld a jury instruction: "There is no such thing as valid jury nullification." In United States v. Thomas (1997), the Second Circuit ruled that jurors can be removed if there is evidence that they intend to nullify the law. The Supreme Court has not recently confronted the issue of jury nullification.

In 2017, a jury was instructed: "You cannot substitute your sense of justice, whatever that means, for your duty to follow the law, whether you agree with it or not. It is not for you to determine whether the law is just or whether the law is unjust. That cannot be your task. There is no such thing as valid jury nullification. You would violate your oath and the law if you willfully brought a verdict contrary to the law given to you in this case." The Ninth Circuit upheld the first three sentences of the jury's instruction and overruled the remainder but deemed that instruction a harmless error and affirmed the conviction.

State laws
In 2002, South Dakota voters rejected by a 78% margin a state constitutional amendment to permit criminal defendants to argue for jury nullification.

On June 18, 2012, New Hampshire passed a law explicitly allowing defense attorneys to inform juries about jury nullification. On October 24, 2014, the New Hampshire Supreme Court effectively nullified the law and held that the wording of the statute does not allow defense attorneys to tell juries they can nullify a law.

The Maryland State Constitution, Declaration of Rights, states that "in the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction." Nevertheless, the Maryland Courts jury service brochure states that "it is your duty to accept what the judge is saying about the law, and how it is to be applied to the case."

title: Jury nullification


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André de Lorde

André de Latour, comte de Lorde (1869–1942) was a French playwright, the main author of the Grand Guignol plays from 1901 to 1926. His evening career was as a dramatist of terror; during daytimes he worked as a librarian in the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal. He wrote 150 plays, all of them devoted mainly to the exploitation of terror and insanity, and a few novels. For plays the subject matter of which concerned mental illness he sometimes collaborated with psychologist Alfred Binet, the developer of IQ testing.

During the 1920s de Lorde was elected "Prince of Fear" (Prince de la Terreur) by his peers.

Filmography

 * The Lonely Villa, directed by D. W. Griffith (1909, short film, based on the play Au Telephone)
 * The System of Doctor Goudron, directed by Maurice Tourneur (1913, short film, based on the play Le Système du docteur Goudron et du professeur Plume)
 * , directed by Jacques Grétillat (1920, based on the play La Double Existence du docteur Morart)
 * Le Château de la mort lente, directed by Émile-Bernard Donatien (1925, based on the play Le Château de la mort lente)
 * , directed by Marc Allégret (1931, short film, based on the play Attaque nocturne)
 * , directed by Maurice Tourneur (1934, short film, based on the play L'Homme mystérieux)
 * , directed by (1933, based on the play Bagnes d'enfants)

Screenwriter

 * Figures de cire, directed by Maurice Tourneur (1914, short film)
 * , directed by (1920)
 * , directed by Michel Bernheim (1936)

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

title: André de Lorde


text:
Bielefeld

Bielefeld is a city in the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region in the north-east of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. With a population of 341,755, it is also the most populous city in the administrative region (Regierungsbezirk) of Detmold and the 18th largest city in Germany.

The historical centre of the city is situated north of the Teutoburg Forest line of hills, but modern Bielefeld also incorporates boroughs on the opposite side and on the hills. The city is situated on the Hermannsweg, a hiking trail which runs for 156 km along the length of the Teutoburg Forest.

Bielefeld is home to a significant number of internationally operating companies, including Dr. Oetker, DMG Mori (former Gildemeister), Möller Group, Goldbeck and Schüco. It has a university and several technical colleges (Fachhochschulen). Bielefeld is also known for the Bethel Institution.

History
Founded in 1214 by Count Hermann IV of Ravensberg to guard a pass crossing the Teutoburg Forest, Bielefeld was the "city of linen" as a minor member of the Hanseatic League, known for bleachfields into the 19th century. Bielefeld was part of the Kingdom of Westphalia when it was created in 1807. In 1815 it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Prussia following the defeat of France and the Congress of Vienna.

After the Cologne-Minden railway opened in 1849, the Bozi brothers constructed the first large mechanised spinning mill in 1851. The Ravensberg Spinning Mill was built from 1854 to 1857, and metal works began to open in the 1860s.

Founded in 1867 as a Bielefeld sewing machine repair company, Dürkoppwerke AG employed 1,665 people in 1892; it used Waffenamt code "WaA547" from 1938 to 1939 as the Dürkopp-Werke, and merged with other Bielefeld companies to form Dürkopp Adler AG in 1990.

Between 1904 and 1930, Bielefeld grew, opening a rebuilt railway station, a municipal theatre, and finally, the Rudolf-Oetker-Halle concert hall, renowned for its excellent acoustics. The Dürkopp car was produced 1898–1927. After printing emergency money (Notgeld) in 1923 during the inflation in the Weimar Republic, Bielefeld was one of several towns that printed very attractive and highly collectable banknotes with designs on silk, linen and velvet. These pieces were issued by the Bielefeld Stadtsparkasse (town's savings bank) and were sent all around the world in the early 1920s. These pieces are known as Stoffgeld – that is, money made from fabric.

The town's synagogue was burned in 1938 during the Kristallnacht pogrom carried out against Jewish population. In 1944, Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses of the USAAF bombed the gas works at Bielefeld on 20 September and the marshaling yard on 30 September; Bielefeld was bombed again on 7 October and the RAF bombed the town on the night of 4/5 December. On 17 January 1945, B-17s bombed the nearby Paderborn marshalling yard, and the railway viaduct in the suburb of Schildesche. On 14 March the RAF bombed the viaduct again, wrecking it. This was the first use of the RAF's 10 tonne Grand Slam bomb. American troops entered the city in April 1945.

Due to the presence of a number of barracks built during the 1930s and its location next to the main East-West Autobahn in northern Germany, after World War II Bielefeld became a headquarters town for the fighting command of the British Army of the Rhine – BAOR (the administrative and strategic headquarters were at Rheindahlen near the Dutch border). Until the 1980s there was a large British presence in the barracks housing the headquarters of the British First Corps and support units, as well as schools, NAAFI shops, officers' and sergeants' messes and several estates of married quarters. The British presence was heavily scaled back after the reunification of Germany and most of the infrastructure has disappeared.

In 1973 the first villages on the south side of the Teutoburg Forest were incorporated.

Starting in 1994, the city has been featured in the humorous Bielefeld conspiracy which satirises conspiracy theories by claiming that Bielefeld does not exist.

Subdivisions
Bielefeld is subdivided into the following ten (10) districts:

 * Bielefeld-Mitte (downtown)
 * Brackwede
 * Dornberg
 * Gadderbaum
 * Heepen
 * Jöllenbeck
 * Schildesche
 * Senne
 * Sennestadt
 * Stieghorst

Climate
Bielefeld has an oceanic climate (Cfb). The average annual high temperature is 14 °C, the annual low temperature is 6 °C, and the annual precipitation is 483 mm.

Industry and education
Bielefeld was a linen-producing town, and in the early 1920s the Town's Savings Bank (Stadtsparkasse) issued money made of linen, silk and velvet. These items were known as 'stoffgeld'.

In addition to the manufacture of home appliances and various heavy industries, Bielefeld companies include Dr. Oetker (food manufacturing), Möller Group (leather products and plastics), Seidensticker (clothing and textiles) and Bethel Institution with 17.000 employees.

Bielefeld University was founded in 1969. The first professors included the well-known German sociologist Niklas Luhmann. Other institutions of higher education include the Theological Seminary Bethel (Kirchliche Hochschule Bethel) and the Bielefeld University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Bielefeld), which offers 21 courses in 8 different departments (agriculture and engineering are in Minden) and has been internationally recognized for its photography school.

Mayor
The current Mayor of Bielefeld is Pit Clausen of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), who was elected in 2009 and re-elected in 2014 and 2020. The most recent mayoral election was held on 13 September 2020, with a runoff held on 27 September, and the results were as follows:

! rowspan=2 colspan=2| Candidate ! rowspan=2| Party ! colspan=2| First round ! colspan=2| Second round ! Votes ! % ! Votes ! % ! colspan=3| Valid votes ! 135,765 ! 99.4 ! 103,049 ! 99.4 ! colspan=3| Invalid votes ! 812 ! 0.6 ! 612 ! 0.6 ! colspan=3| Total ! 136,577 ! 100.0 ! 103,661 ! 100.0 ! colspan=3| Electorate/voter turnout ! 254,778 ! 53.6 ! 254,757 ! 40.7
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Pit Clausen
 * align=left| Social Democratic Party
 * 53,836
 * 39.7
 * 57,803
 * 56.1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Ralf Nettelstroth
 * align=left| Christian Democratic Union
 * 39,782
 * 29.3
 * 45,246
 * 43.9
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Kerstin Haarmann
 * align=left| Alliance 90/The Greens
 * 16,903
 * 12.5
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Jan Maik Schlifter
 * align=left| Free Democratic Party
 * 6,984
 * 5.1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Onur Ocak
 * align=left| The Left
 * 5,503
 * 4.1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Florian Sander
 * align=left| Alternative for Germany
 * 4,708
 * 3.5
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Lena Oberbäumer
 * align=left| Die PARTEI
 * 2,799
 * 2.1
 * align=left| Rainer Ludwig
 * align=left| League of Free Citizens
 * 1,612
 * 1.2
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Gordana Rammert
 * align=left| Pirate Party Germany
 * 1,206
 * 0.9
 * align=left| Sami Elias
 * align=left| Alliance for Innovation and Justice
 * 1,204
 * 0.9
 * align=left| Michael Gugat
 * align=left| Local Democracy in Bielefeld
 * 958
 * 0.7
 * 1,206
 * 0.9
 * align=left| Sami Elias
 * align=left| Alliance for Innovation and Justice
 * 1,204
 * 0.9
 * align=left| Michael Gugat
 * align=left| Local Democracy in Bielefeld
 * 958
 * 0.7
 * align=left| Michael Gugat
 * align=left| Local Democracy in Bielefeld
 * 958
 * 0.7
 * colspan=7| Source: State Returning Officer
 * }
 * }

City council
The Bielefeld city council governs the city alongside the Mayor. The most recent city council election was held on 13 September 2020, and the results were as follows:

! colspan=2| Party ! Votes ! % ! +/- ! Seats ! +/- ! colspan=2| Valid votes ! 135,166 ! 99.0 ! ! ! ! colspan=2| Invalid votes ! 1,319 ! 1.0 ! ! ! ! colspan=2| Total ! 136,485 ! 100.0 ! ! 66 ! ±0 ! colspan=2| Electorate/voter turnout ! 254,778 ! 53.6 ! 2.6 ! !
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Christian Democratic Union (CDU)
 * 37,503
 * 27.7
 * 2.5
 * 18
 * 2
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Social Democratic Party (SPD)
 * 33,716
 * 24.9
 * 5.9
 * 16
 * 4
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Alliance 90/The Greens (Grüne)
 * 30,166
 * 22.3
 * 6.4
 * 15
 * 4
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Free Democratic Party (FDP)
 * 9,529
 * 7.0
 * 4.1
 * 5
 * 3
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| The Left (Die Linke)
 * 8,278
 * 6.1
 * 1.2
 * 4
 * 1
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Alternative for Germany (AfD)
 * 4,630
 * 3.4
 * New
 * 2
 * New
 * bgcolor=|
 * align=left| Die PARTEI (PARTEI)
 * 3,936
 * 2.9
 * New
 * 2
 * New
 * align=left| League of Free Citizens (BfB)
 * 2,161
 * 1.6
 * 6.9
 * 1
 * 5
 * align=left| Close to the Citizens (Bürgernähe)
 * 1,662
 * 1.2
 * 0.3
 * 1
 * ±0
 * align=left| Alliance for Innovation and Justice (BIG)
 * 1,339
 * 1.0
 * New
 * 1
 * New
 * align=left| Local Democracy in Bielefeld (LiB)
 * 1,284
 * 0.9
 * New
 * 1
 * New
 * colspan=7 bgcolor=lightgrey|
 * align=left| Independent Citizens' Forum (UBF)
 * 505
 * 0.4
 * New
 * 0
 * New
 * align=left| Citizens' Movement for Civil Courage (BBZ)
 * 444
 * 0.3
 * New
 * 0
 * New
 * align=left| Independent Jürgen Zilke
 * 13
 * 0.0
 * New
 * 0
 * New
 * align=left| Independent Citizens' Forum (UBF)
 * 505
 * 0.4
 * New
 * 0
 * New
 * align=left| Citizens' Movement for Civil Courage (BBZ)
 * 444
 * 0.3
 * New
 * 0
 * New
 * align=left| Independent Jürgen Zilke
 * 13
 * 0.0
 * New
 * 0
 * New
 * 0.0
 * New
 * 0
 * New
 * colspan=7| Source: State Returning Officer
 * }
 * }

Transport
Two major autobahns, the A 2 and A 33, intersect in the south east of Bielefeld. The Ostwestfalendamm expressway connects the two parts of the city, naturally divided by the Teutoburg Forest. Bielefeld Hauptbahnhof, the main railway station of Bielefeld, is on the Hamm–Minden railway and is part of the German ICE high-speed railroad system. The main station for intercity bus services is Brackwede station.

Bielefeld has a small airstrip, Flugplatz Bielefeld, in the Senne district but is mainly served by the three larger airports nearby, Paderborn Lippstadt Airport, Münster Osnabrück Airport and Hannover Airport.

Bielefeld boasts a well-developed public transport system, served mainly by the companies moBiel (formerly Stadtwerke Bielefeld – Verkehrsbetriebe) and "BVO". The Bielefeld Stadtbahn has four major lines and regional trains connect different parts of the city with nearby counties. Buses also run throughout the area.

Main sights
Sparrenburg Castle is Bielefeld's characteristic landmark. It was built between 1240 and 1250 by Count Ludwig von Ravensberg. The 37 m tower and the catacombs of the castle are open to the public.

The Old City Hall (Altes Rathaus) was built in 1904 and still serves the same function. Its façade reflects the so-called Weserrenaissance and features elements of various architectural styles, including Gothic and Renaissance. Though the mayor still holds office in the Old City Hall, most of the city's administration is housed in the adjacent New City Hall (Neues Rathaus).

The City Theatre (Stadttheater) is part of the same architectural ensemble as the Old City Hall, also built in 1904. It has a notable Jugendstil façade, is Bielefeld's largest theatre and home of the Bielefeld Opera. Another theatre (Theater am Alten Markt) resides in the former town hall building on the Old Market Square (Alter Markt), which also contains a row of restored 16th and 17th-century townhouses with noteworthy late Gothic and Weser Renaissance style façades (Bürgerhäuser am Alten Markt).

The oldest city church is Altstädter Nicolaikirche. It is a Gothic hall church with a height of 81.5 m. It was founded in 1236 by the Bishop of Paderborn, and enlarged at the beginning of the 14th century. The church was damaged in World War II and later rebuilt. Three times a day, a carillon can be heard. The most valuable treasure of this church is a carved altar from Antwerp, decorated with 250 figures. A small museum housed within illustrates the history of the church up to World War II.

The largest church is the Neustädter Marienkirche, a Gothic hall church dating back to 1293, completed 1512. It stands 78 m tall and has a length of 52 m. Historically speaking, this building is considered to be the most precious possession of the town. It was the starting point of the Protestant Reformation in Bielefeld in 1553. A valuable wing-altar with 13 pictures, known as the Marienaltar is also kept inside. The baroque spires were destroyed in World War II and later replaced by two unusually-shaped "Gothic" clocktowers. The altarpiece of the Bielefeld church Neustädter Marienkirche from around 1400 is among the most prominent masterpieces of artwork of the German Middle Ages. Two of the altarpieces, The Flagellation and The Crucifixion are now in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Bielefeld is also the seat of the two largest Protestant social welfare establishments (Diakonie) in Europe, the Bethel Institution and the Evangelisches Johanneswerk.

Other important cultural sights of the region are the art museum (Kunsthalle), the Rudolf-Oetker-Halle concert hall, and the city's municipal botanical garden (Botanischer Garten Bielefeld). Bielefeld is home to the widely known Bielefelder Kinderchor, founded in 1932 by Friedrich Oberschelp as the first mixed children's choir in Germany. It became famous for its recordings and concerts of traditional German Christmas carols, filling the Rudolf-Oetker-Halle several times each season. Foreign tours have taken the choir to many European countries, and also the U.S. and Japan.

On Hünenburg there is an observation tower, next to a 164 m radio tower.

Sport
Bielefeld is home to the professional football team DSC Arminia Bielefeld. Currently a member of 3. Liga in the 2023-24 season, the club plays at the SchücoArena stadium in the west of the town centre.

Bielefeld is home to the Radrennbahn Bielefeld bike racing track.

Born before 1900

 * Johann Christoph Hoffbauer (1766–1827), philosopher
 * Christian Friedrich Nasse (1778–1851), psychiatrist
 * August Krönig (1822–1879), chemist and physicist
 * Friedrich von Bodelschwingh, Senior (1831–1910), second boss of the "Evangelischen Heil- und Pflegeanstalt für Epileptische" (Protestant Sanatorium for Epileptics) (1874 renamed into "Bethel")
 * Wilhelmine Lohmann (1872-?), German teacher, social worker, and temperance leader
 * Friedrich von Bodelschwingh (1877–1946) (named after F. v. Bodelschwingh Senior), Protestant theologian, third boss of the von Bodelschwinghsche Anstalten (later renamed into von Bodelschwinghsche Stiftungen)
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau (1888–1931), German film director
 * Hermann Stenner (1891–1914), early Expressionist painter

Born 1900–1950

 * Erich Consemüller (1902–1957), Bauhaus-trained architect and photographer
 * Heinz Klingenberg (1905–1959), actor
 * Horst Wessel (1907–1930), SA leader, author of the Horst-Wessel-Song
 * Hermann Paul Müller (1909–1975), racing driver
 * Veronica Carstens (1923–2012), medical doctor, wife of Karl Carstens
 * Hajo Meyer (1924–2014), German-Dutch physicist and author
 * Werner Lueg (1931–2014), athlete
 * Rüdiger Nehberg (1935–2020), survival expert and activist for human rights
 * Christian Tümpel (1937–2009), art historian
 * Klaus Hildebrand (born 1941), historian
 * Klaus Kobusch (born 1941), cyclist
 * Hannes Wader (born 1942), musician and songwriter
 * Bernhard Schlink (born 1944), professor of jurisprudence and author
 * Ulrich Wessel (1946–1975), member of the Red Army Faction
 * Aleida Assmann (born 1947), anglist, egyptologist and literary and cultural scientist
 * Irmgard Möller (born 1947), member of the Red Army faction
 * Johannes Friedrich (born 1948), Lutheran Protestant theologian
 * Hans-Werner Sinn (born 1948), economist and president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research

Born 1951 and later

 * Richard Oetker (born 1951), entrepreneur Dr. Oetker
 * Michael Diekmann (born 1954), chief executive officer of Allianz SE
 * Annette Groth (born 1954), politician (The Left)
 * Erich Marks (born 1954), educator
 * Christina Rau (born 1956), political scientist and widow of the Federal President Johannes Rau
 * Klaus Tscheuschner (born 1956), Lord Mayor of the City of Flensburg
 * Rolf Kanies (born 1957), film and theater actor
 * Karoline Linnert (born 1958), politician (The Greens)
 * Ingolf Lück (born 1958), actor, synchronizer, presenter, comedian and director
 * Hartmut Ostrowski (born 1958), chief executive officer of Bertelsmann AG
 * Ralf Ehrenbrink (born 1960), versatility rider
 * Hartmut Schick (born 1960), musicologist
 * Olaf Hampel (born 1965), bob driver
 * Anja Feldmann (born 1966), computer scientist
 * Oliver Welke (born 1966), author, comedian, sports journalist and moderator
 * Ruediger Heining (born 1968), agricultural scientist and economist
 * Ingo Niermann (born 1969), writer, journalist and artist
 * Ingo Oschmann (born 1969), comedian, entertainer and magician
 * Nina George (born 1973), writer and journalist
 * Florian Panzner (born 1976), actor
 * Lisa Middelhauve (born 1980), metal singer
 * Lena Goeßling (born 1986), women's association football player for Germany women's national football team and VfL Wolfsburg (women)
 * Aylin Tezel (born 1983), German actress
 * Mieke Kröger (born 1993), cyclist

Twin towns – sister cities
Bielefeld is twinned with:

 * 🇫🇷 Concarneau, France

 * 🇳🇮 Estelí, Nicaragua
 * 🇮🇱 Nahariya, Israel
 * 🏴 Rochdale, England, United Kingdom
 * 🇵🇱 Rzeszów, Poland
 * 🇷🇺 Veliky Novgorod, Russia

title: Bielefeld


text:
John Abbott College

John Abbott College (French: Collège John Abbott) is an English-language public college located in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, Quebec, Canada, near the western tip of the Island of Montreal. John Abbott College is one of eight English public colleges in Quebec. The college primarily serves the Greater Montreal Region. The CEGEP shares grounds with McGill University's Macdonald Campus.

History
The college was accredited in 1970 and opened the next year. It is housed in early 20th-century buildings on a 1600 acre campus shared with McGill University's Macdonald College. The college is named after John Abbott, prime minister, and former mayor of Montreal who owned a country estate in nearby Senneville. He is most remembered for his role in the Pacific Scandal, the political corruption case which brought down the government of Sir John A. Macdonald in 1873.

The college originally planned to build a new campus in Pointe-Claire next to Fairview Shopping Centre. It "temporarily" moved into buildings on the Macdonald College campus that had been vacated the previous year by McGill's Faculty of Education when it moved to its downtown campus. Additional temporary facilities were rented on Hymus Boulevard in Kirkland, known as the Kirkland Campus. A shuttle bus connected the two campuses. In 1973, the college decided to consolidate the college in Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue by constructing a new building (subsequently named the Casgrain Centre) and renovating the existing buildings. The Kirkland Campus closed in December 1979, and the construction and renovations in Sainte-Anne were completed in 1981. It remained the last college in Quebec to be renting its campus until 2002, when it bought its buildings from the University. McGill University still owns and operates the majority of the land on campus.

Campus
Housed in century-old renovated buildings in historic Sainte-Anne-de-Bellevue, the college has long been recognized as a prominent landmark in Montreal's West Island community. Characterized by tiled roofs and red brick buildings, the college is situated on the shores of Lake Saint-Louis. With its distinctive architecture, trees and rolling green lawns in a charming semi-rural setting, the college's campus has earned a reputation for being one of the most beautiful in the public system. There are a total of ten buildings on campus, all of which are connected to each other in some fashion (with the exception of Brittain Hall).

Brittain Hall
Brittain Hall houses the Continuing Education centre of the college and honours the memory of Dr. W. H. Brittain, former Vice Principal of Macdonald College. It was a men's residence until 1981. Most of the building remains closed due to severe damage caused by a fire in 1981.

Casgrain Centre
The Casgrain Centre houses the sports complex, as well as the theatre and art studios of the college, and is named in honour of Thérèse Casgrain, a Canadian senator who was an advocate for the women's suffrage movement. The Casgrain building also houses a café, a large student lounge, and the student Agora, an indoor multi-use area for hosting trade fairs, musical performances, movie screenings, exhibitions, and other student-related events and activities.

Herzberg building
The Herzberg building is the central building on campus, housing classrooms and labs for a variety of subjects. The building is also home to essential student services, such as the college library, the Oval coffeehouse, offices for various clubs, the Print Services office, as well as offices for both the director general and the academic dean. Herzberg also houses the Agora, a large open space used for presentations, career fairs and some ceremonies. Other student services located in the Herzberg building include the Indigenous Student Resource Centre, Academic Advising, Counselling Services, the Student Employment Centre, Financial Assistance office, Health and Wellness Centre, the Learning Centre, Legal Advisory Services, Registrar's office, the Access Centre, Student Activities and the University and Career Information Centre. The building is named in honour of Gerhard Herzberg, a pioneering German Canadian physicist and physical chemist who won the Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1971.

Hochelaga building
The Hochelaga building houses classrooms for a variety of courses, including history, economics, political science, humanities, philosophy, religion, psychology and sociology, as well as program-specific courses for business administration, commerce, correctional intervention, information and library technologies, and police technology programs. The building was given the native name for the city of Montreal, in honour of Canada's Indigenous people.

Penfield building
The Penfield building houses classrooms for English, creative arts, French, foreign language and geography courses. It also houses a number of professional programs, including the computer science, engineering technologies, Paramedic care and publication design and hypermedia technology. The building houses an auditorium, as well as the offices of the Student Union (SUJAC) and the John Abbott College Faculty Association (JACFA). The Pedagogical Computer Centre (PCC) is located on the third floor of the building, home to labs with the necessary materials to conduct courses requiring student computer use. The building is named after Dr. Wilder Graves Penfield, a famous American-born Canadian neurosurgeon.

Anne-Marie Edward Science building
Opened in 2012, the Anne-Marie Edward Science Building is the location of the Science and Health Technologies departments. It is located between Herzberg and Stewart buildings. The AME building is distinctly modern when compared to the rest of the campus. By comparison, Herzberg has a total of 5 floors, including the basement, while AME has a total of 6 floors. The building contains 33 laboratories and 11 classrooms, along with over 50 staff offices. The building is solely reserved for the school's biology, biopharmaceutical, chemistry, nursing, physics, and prehospital emergency care departments. The building's name commemorates Polytechnique victim and John Abbott College alumna Anne-Marie Edward.

Stewart Hall
Stewart Hall is home to a small number of classrooms, the college bookstore, the college cafeteria, as well as administrative offices and the college boardroom. The building honours the memory of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Stewart, benefactors to Macdonald College.

Stewart East
Connected to the eastern side of the Stewart Apartments, Stewart East is home to classrooms for the dental hygiene program and the college's own dental clinic.

Jones Building
The Jones building was once accessible via the Hochelaga building. However, changes have resulted in the building only being accessible from outdoors. The second floor contains offices used by the football program.

Programs
Pre-university programs usually consist of four semesters (2 years), while career programs usually consist of six (3 years).

Composition
Over 6000 students are enrolled in the Day Division and about 2100 are in the Continuing Education Division. The college primarily serves the western end of the Montreal metropolitan area, although it also has students from other parts of Quebec, the rest of Canada and approximately one hundred international students.

Stewart Apartments
The Stewart Apartments are co-educational residences for full-time students attending John Abbott College. They are the only student residences in the Montreal area that are directly operated by a public English-language college.

Student Union
The Student Union of John Abbott College (SUJAC) promotes and defends students' rights and interests. SUJAC is the official liaison between the students and the college, representing students on committees, organizing student events, and overseeing the allocation of certain student fees for the various clubs that operate throughout the college. SUJAC works on behalf of students and informs them on relevant issues and college matters. The president of SUJAC for the 2020-2021 Academic Year is Emily Thom. The VP Internal of SUJAC this year is Théophile Bourgeois. The VP Academic is Samuel Wong. The VP External is Jonathan Sztainberg. The VP Finance is Molly Gunyon. The VP Communications is John Bedirian.

Student life
The college community offers a variety of extracurricular activities and clubs. The college operates its own radio station, CSKY radio, giving students the opportunity to explore the world of broadcasting. The student newspaper Bandersnatch has been published biweekly since the college's establishment in 1971. John Abbott College Model United Nations Club (JACMUN) hosts an annual Model United Nations conference in the spring, which has been personally recognized by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as a salient effort to promote political awareness and participation amongst youth.

Athletics
The Casgrain Sport Centre is the home to the John Abbott College Islanders and Lady Islanders who compete in basketball, volleyball, lacrosse, baseball, soccer, rugby, swimming, football, tennis, cross country running and hockey.

The baseball team The Islanders finished second in the 2006 Canadian Intercollegiate Baseball Association's Northern Conference. The men's soccer team John Abbott College Islanders won the semi-finals of the 2000 provincial championship in overtime. The football team won the 2019 Bol D'Or, a thrilling win played during a snow storm. This was the program's first championship since winning the 2002 Bol D'Or. The football program has made 3 straight Bol D'Or appearances and has made it to at least the semi-finals since 2013.

Media events

 * John Abbott College students and twins Catherine and Isabelle Bourassa appeared in Playboy's March 1999 college edition.
 * In the 8th season of The Amazing Race, teams had to travel to the McGill portion of the campus to engage in curling at Glenfinnan Rink.
 * The movie Satan's School for Girls (2000) was shot at the college.
 * A five-minute scene was filmed on campus for the feature film Bon Cop, Bad Cop (2006) near the Stewart Hall entrance and inside the lobby of the Herzberg building.
 * Most of the interior and exterior shots of the high school in the movie The Secret (2007), starring David Duchovny, were filmed on campus.
 * The Spike series "Blue Mountain State" was filmed on campus.
 * "Punisher: War Zone" filmed some pyrotechnic stunts in the Britain Hall building.
 * Big Wolf on Campus used outside shots of the school.
 * The movie Race(2016) used outside and inside shots of the school.
 * Pet Sematary used outside shots of the school.

Notable alumni
Notable staff
 * Anjali Nayar, filmmaker and journalist
 * Chris Milo, Canadian football player
 * Donovan King, actor
 * Elliott Price, radio personality and sports broadcaster
 * Geof Isherwood, comic book illustrator
 * Glen Murray, Mayor of Winnipeg
 * Geoffrey Kelley, politician
 * Jade Hassouné, Actor
 * Annie Ittoshat, Anglican bishop
 * L. P. Ladouceur, NFL football player, Dallas Cowboys
 * Mark Kelley, CBC reporter
 * Michael Soles, CFL fullback
 * René Bazinet, actor
 * Rene Paredes, CFL kicker, Calgary Stampeders
 * Ruth Taylor, poet
 * Sam Roberts, musician
 * Serban Ghenea, multi-Grammy Award winning mixing engineer
 * Steve Anthony, television personality, voice-over artist
 * Frances Donald, economist
 * David Solway
 * Edeet Ravel
 * George Springate
 * Trevor W. Payne
 * Ruth Taylor
 * Neil Cameron

title: John Abbott College


text:
1975 Cricket World Cup

The 1975 Cricket World Cup (officially called the Prudential Cup '75) was the inaugural men's Cricket World Cup, and the first major tournament in the history of One Day International (ODI) cricket. Organised by the International Cricket Conference (ICC), it took place in England between 7 June and 21 June 1975.

The tournament was sponsored by Prudential Assurance Company and had eight participating countries: the six Test-playing teams of the time – Australia, England, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, the West Indies – and the two leading Associate nations at the time – Sri Lanka and East Africa. The teams were divided into two groups of four, with each team playing each other in their group once; the top two from each group qualified for the semi-finals, with the winners of these matches meeting in the final. Each match consisted of 60 overs per team and was played in traditional white clothing and with red balls; all were played and ended in daylight.

England and New Zealand finished as the top two teams in Group A, while the West Indies finished top of the Group B table ahead of Australia as the four teams qualified through to the semi-finals. After Australia defeated England and the West Indies defeated New Zealand in the semi-finals, the West Indies which came into the tournament as favourites, defeated Australia in the final at Lord's by 17 runs to become the first World Cup winners. New Zealand batsman, Glenn Turner was the top run-scorer for the tournament with 333 runs, whilst Australian bowler Gary Gilmour was the top wicket-taker with 11 wickets despite only playing in the final two matches.

Background
The first multilateral cricket competition at international level was the 1912 Triangular Tournament in England. This was played between the three test nations at the time – England, Australia and South Africa. The concept was later dropped because of inclement weather and a lack of public interest. The first one-day match to occur was in 1962 when four English county cricket teams filled in a gap to play in a limited overs knockout competition. It was won by Northamptonshire who defeated Leicestershire by five wickets.

The limited-over format had been used in what sponsors marketed as a 'World Cricket Cup' in England in 1966 and 1967, contested between England, a Rest of the World XI, and a touring team (the West Indies in 1966 and Pakistan in 1967). The marketing of the event was clearly influenced by the hosting of the 1966 FIFA World Cup in the same country. The 1966 'World Cricket Cup' was won by England, that in 1967 by the Rest of the World. A report in the Cricketer implied that the last such match in this "Triangular Tournament", between Pakistan and the Rest of the World was neither well-attended nor taken entirely seriously: "It was a pity that a larger crowd was not present ... Sobers took the Cup and the World Xl took the gold medals. They must have enjoyed their holiday".

It was not until 1971 that the first official One Day International (ODI) took place at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) as a replacement for the third test of the 1970–71 Ashes series between Australia and England. This was due to a deluge of rain that had affected the match for the first three days of the test. The match was a forty over match with each over being eight deliveries. After England made 190 from 39.4 overs, Australia chased the target at a steady rate to secure the match with 42 balls remaining. Two years later at Lord's during the 1973 Women's Cricket World Cup, plans were made for a men's tournament to take place in 1975. The tournament was planned to involve all the Test nations at the time in two group stages with the top two in each group qualifying for the knockout stage with the final at Lord's.

Format
The format of the 1975 Cricket World Cup had the eight teams split into two groups of four, with each team playing the others in their group once. Each match was played over 60 overs per side with group stage matches scheduled to take place between 7 and 14 June. Each match was played entirely during day, with a cut off time of 7.30 pm. Three days were allocated to each match with each able to be continued if they were halted for rain or bad light.

The top two teams from each group advanced to the semi-finals on 18 June, with the winners qualifying for the final at Lord's on 21 June.

Participants
Eight teams were invited to compete at the World Cup: the six full members of the International Cricket Conference (ICC), and two other sides – Sri Lanka and East Africa. South Africa was not allowed to complete due to the sporting boycott of the country which took place during apartheid era, the ICC having placed a moratorium on tours of the country in 1970.

Before the competition began the teams were split into two groups. The ICC made the decision to place the two teams which were not Test playing countries in separate groups. They also decided to place England and Australia in separate groups and to do the same with India and Pakistan.

Venues

Six grounds were used to host matches during the tournament. The announcement of venues began on 26 July 1973 when the ICC announced that the tournament would be played, with Lord's as the venue for the final. The remaining venues were announced on 5 November 1974, with the scheduling for the tournament announced alongside that for the five county cricket tournaments that would take place during the 1975 season.

Other than Lord's, which hosted only one group stage match, and The Oval which hosted three, each of the grounds was used for two matches during the group stage. Headingley and The Oval were the grounds chosen for the two semi-finals.

Squads
Before the competition began each team named a squad of 14 players.

Preparations
Heading into the first Cricket World Cup, the Ladbrokes betting agency had the West Indies as the favourites at 9–4. This was followed by England at 11–4 with Pakistan and Australia in third and fourth respectively. East Africa was last in the betting odds at 1500–1. Before the tournament, most of the teams played in warm-up matches against English county sides to get used to the English conditions with most of the national teams getting wins. Only East Africa, Sri Lanka and India lost at least one warm-up match before the tournament. Australia played in Canada, losing to Eastern Canada and drawing with Toronto, before heading to England.

Eight days before the World Cup, the ICC declared in a unanimous decision that any of the balls that went over a batsman's head would be called wide due to the fast short-pitched bowling.

Summary
The opening round of matches took place on 7 June with four matches being played. The match at Lord's saw England deliver the highest score by a team in the 60 over match with 334 runs being scored. Dennis Amiss top scored for the English with 137 from 147 balls helped by Keith Fletcher and Chris Old who each recorded a half-century. In response, Sunil Gavaskar batted through the entire innings for only 36 runs in which Gulabrai Ramchand thought that he was doing some batting practice. Australia opened their campaign with a win against Pakistan at Headingley with a 73-run victory. This was due to Dennis Lillee's five-wicket haul which brought Pakistan's hope of a win crashing down as they collapsed from 181 for four to be all out for 205. Earlier, Ross Edwards top scored for Australia with 80 as he aided the Australians in getting 94 runs from the last 13 overs to bring Australia to 278 for seven from their 60 overs. The other two matches saw easy wins for the West Indies and New Zealand. For Glenn Turner, he occupied the crease during the whole New Zealand innings as he top scored with 171 as New Zealand won by 181 runs over East Africa. The West Indies took a nine-wicket victory over Sri Lanka who became the first team to score under 100 runs in a One Day International.

Despite missing two players due to operation – Asif Iqbal – and examinations – Imran Khan – Pakistan was not fazed by the missing players in the second round of games with the team scoring 266 for seven from their 60 overs with standing captain Majid Khan top scoring for Pakistan with 60. In response, the West Indies fell to 166 for eight which included a period of three wickets for only 10 runs as Bernard Julien, Clive Lloyd and Keith Boyce all losing their wickets. But the last wicket pair of Deryck Murray and Andy Roberts stole the match away as the West Indies won by a wicket off the final over. The other match in Group B saw Australia claim their second victory, but it was not all smooth with the Australian captain Ian Chappell remarking in an interview that the English media was trying to unsettle Australia's plans due to the Jeff Thomson no-ball problem with Chappell saying: "I've seen this sort of thing before in England". On the field, Alan Turner scored a century as Australia ended with 328 with Sri Lanka falling 52 runs short as John Mason from The Daily Telegraph stated that they might not have many new admirers with their short ball stuff sending two Sri Lankan batsman to hospital. Group A saw two convincing wins to England and India. At Trent Bridge, Keith Fletcher top scored for England with 131 as he guided the English to their second victory and going to the lead of the group table with an 80-run win over New Zealand. The other match in Group A saw 720 spectators observe India record a 10-wicket victory with Madan Lal taking three wickets for India in which East Africa fell only 120.

With the match sold out four days in advance, the West Indies took on Australia to see who would finish top of Group B. With the ball swinging in the air, the pair of Rod Marsh and Ross Edwards guided Australia to 192 with a 99-run partnership for the sixth wicket after Australia fell to 61/5. In response, the West Indies went on to take a seven-wicket victory with Alvin Kallicharran top scoring with 78, which included a period of 31 runs of nine Dennis Lillee deliveries as the West Indies finished top of Group B. Pakistan ended their tournament with a 192-run victory over Sri Lanka at Trent Bridge with half centuries to Zaheer Abbas, Majid Khan and Sadiq Mohammad. In Group A, New Zealand sealed their spot in the semi-finals with a four-wicket victory over India off the back of a century from Glenn Turner as he hit twelve fours on his way to an unbeaten innings of 114. The other match in Group A saw England clinch a 196-run victory over East Africa; England scored 290/5 from their 60 overs off the back of a 158-run opening partnership between Dennis Amiss and Barry Wood before a bowling attack led by John Snow (taking 4 for 11 from his 12 overs) ran through the East Africans, who were bowled out for 94 in 52.3 overs. Only Ramesh Sethi offered much resistance, lasting for 32 overs to score 30.

Knockout stage
The knockout stage of the Cricket World Cup consisted of two single-elimination rounds leading to a final. If the match was delayed due to rain there were two reserve days to play out the match.

Semi-finals
The first semi-final was between England and Australia at Headingley. For Australia, their one change in bringing in Gary Gilmour for Ashley Mallett proved critical in booking Australia's spot into the final. This was due to the grassy pitch that both captains would criticise after the match. After Australia elected to field first, Gilmour took six wickets for 14 runs as he had England at 37 for seven after he bowled his 12 overs. Mike Denness attempted to bring England back but would lose his wicket as England fell for 93. In the run-chase, Australia collapsed to 39 for six before Gilmour partnered with Doug Walters as they chased the remaining runs to earn Australia a berth in the final.

The second semi-final was between the West Indies and New Zealand at The Oval. Batting first, New Zealand reached 92 for only one loss at the lunch break. After lunch though, they collapsed to 158 with Geoff Howarth top scoring for New Zealand with 51, while Bernard Julien was the top wicket taker with four wickets. In the run chase, a 125-run second wicket partnership between Alvin Kallicharran (top scoring with 72) and Gordon Greenidge (55 runs) laid the foundation for a five-wicket victory with Richard Collinge being the only bowler to be troublesome for the West Indies with figures of three for 28 runs from his twelve overs.

Final
The final match on 21 June was sold out three days beforehand. With the West Indies being favourites for the match, they were asked by Ian Chappell to bat first and would go on to score 291 for eight wickets from 60 overs. After being given a second chance from a Ross Edwards dropped chance at mid-wicket, Clive Lloyd went on to top score for the West Indies with 102. Gary Gilmour was the best of the Australian bowlers with five wickets for 48 runs. In response, Ian Chappell scored a half-century to set up the foundation for Australia before three run-outs from the hands of Viv Richards put the pressure on Australia as they collapsed to 233 for nine. A final-wicket partnership of 41 from Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson brought Australia within 18 runs of victory. But a fifth run-out of the innings saw Australia bowled out for 274 and would see the West Indies win by 17 runs, claiming the first men's World Cup.

Statistics
Glenn Turner of New Zealand ended the tournament as the leading run scorer for the 1975 edition with his 333 runs coming in four games which included an unbeaten 171 against East Africa, which was also the highest score of the tournament. In second place was English player Dennis Amiss with Pakistan's Majid Khan rounding out the top three. Australian player Gary Gilmour was the tournament's leading wicket taker with 11 wickets from his two games, which included the best tournament figures in the semi-finals when he took six wickets for 14 against England. Bernard Julien and Keith Boyce (both from the West Indies) finished in second place, both getting 10 wickets for the tournament.

Most runs

 * Source: CricInfo

Most wickets

 * Source: CricInfo

title: 1975 Cricket World Cup


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BT Tower

The BT Tower is a grade II listed communications tower in Fitzrovia, London, England, owned by BT Group. It was also known as the GPO Tower and the Post Office Tower. It was later officially renamed the Telecom Tower. The main structure is 581 ft high, with a further section of aerial rigging bringing the total height to 620 ft.

Upon completion in 1964, it overtook the Millbank Tower as the tallest structure in London until 1980, when it was overtaken by the NatWest Tower. It was opened in 1965 by Prime Minister Harold Wilson. A 360° coloured LED screen near the top of the tower displays news across central London.

In February 2024, BT Group announced the sale of the tower to MCR Hotels, who plan to turn it into a hotel. BT will retain ownership for a few years until the tower has been vacated.

Commissioning and construction
The tower was commissioned by the General Post Office (GPO). Its primary purpose was to support the microwave aerials then used to carry telecommunications traffic from London to the rest of the country, as part of the General Post Office microwave network. It was to be built by end of 1963, and cost 1.5m, on Howland Street.

It replaced a much shorter steel lattice tower which had been built on the roof of the neighbouring Museum telephone exchange in the late 1940s to provide a television link between London and Birmingham. The taller structure was required to protect the radio links' "line of sight" against some of the tall buildings in London then in the planning stage. These links were routed via other GPO microwave stations at Harrow Weald, Bagshot, Kelvedon Hatch and Fairseat, and to places like the London Air Traffic Control Centre at West Drayton. The tower was designed by the architects of the Ministry of Public Building and Works: the chief architects were Eric Bedford and G. R. Yeats. Typical for its time, the building is concrete clad in glass. The narrow cylindrical shape was chosen because of the requirements of the communications aerials: the building will shift no more than 25 cm in wind speeds of up to 150 km/h (95 mph). Initially, the first 16 floors were for technical equipment and power. Above that was a 35 m section for the microwave aerials, and above that were six floors of suites, kitchens, technical equipment, a revolving restaurant, and finally a cantilevered steel lattice tower. To prevent heat build-up, the glass cladding was of a special tint. The construction cost was £2.5 million.

Construction began in June 1961; owing to the building's height and its having a tower crane jib across the top virtually throughout the whole construction period, it gradually became a very prominent landmark that could be seen from almost anywhere in London. A question was raised in Parliament in August 1963 about the crane. Reginald Bennett MP asked the Minister of Public Buildings and Works, Geoffrey Rippon, how, when the crane on the top of the new Tower had fulfilled its purpose, he proposed to remove it. Rippon replied: "This is a matter for the contractors. The problem does not have to be solved for about a year but there appears to be no danger of the crane having to be left in situ." Construction reached 475 ft by August 1963. There were around 20,000 steel erectors in the UK, with a death rate of 30-40 a year. The revolving restaurant was prefabricated by Ransomes and Rapiers of Ipswich. The steel lattice was made by Tubewrights Ltd of the Kirkby Industrial Estate (established in 1952, after it moved from Newport in Monmouthshire), owned by Stewart's & Lloyd's.

The tower was topped out on 15 July 1964, by Conservative MP for Norwich South, Geoffrey Rippon. It was officially opened by the then Prime Minister Harold Wilson on 8 October 1965. The main contractor was Peter Lind & Company. The company was founded in 1915 by Danish Peter Lind (he died aged 66 in Surrey in December 1966), headquartered on Watling Street in Cannock.

The tower was originally designed to be just 111 m high; its foundations are sunk down through 53 m of London clay, and are formed of a concrete raft 27 m square, 1 m thick, reinforced with six layers of cables, on top of which sits a reinforced concrete pyramid.

The stainless steel clad windows were made by Henry Hope & Sons, of Halford Works, Smethwick.

Opening and use
The tower was officially opened to the public on 19 May 1966, by Postmaster General Tony Benn (then known as Anthony Wedgwood Benn) and Billy Butlin, with HM Queen Elizabeth II having visited on 17 May 1966.

As well as the communications equipment and office space, there were viewing galleries, a souvenir shop and a revolving restaurant on the 34th floor; this was called The Top of the Tower, and operated by Butlins. It made one revolution every 23 minutes. Butlins were given the lease to restaurant in November 1963; it would open by the end of 1965. The section above the microwave dishes had two observation floors, a tea bar, a revolving restaurant, a cocktail bar, and above that a kitchen. At the top was a pulley room and above that the left motor room and ventilation plant. There were sixteen equipment floors between 115ft and 355ft. The restaurant was called 'Top of the Tower', where meals were about £4.

In its first year the Tower hosted just under one million visitors and over 100,000 diners ate in the restaurant.

A set of two stamps, designed by Clive Abbott (born 1933), 3d and 1/3, was issued on 8 October 1965 for the new tower, which had followed a set of stamps in the previous month for the 25th anniversary of the Battle of Britain. The stamps also featured Nash Terrace.

1971 bombing
A bomb exploded in the roof of the men's toilets at the Top of the Tower restaurant at 04:30 on 31 October 1971, the blast damaged buildings and cars up to 400 yds away. Responsibility for the bomb was claimed by members of the Angry Brigade, a far-left anarchist collective. A call was also made by a person claiming to be the Kilburn Battalion of the IRA. That act resulted in the tower being largely closed to the general public.

The restaurant was closed to the public for security reasons a matter of months after the bombing in 1971. In 1980, Butlins' lease expired. Public access to the building ceased in 1981.

The tower is sometimes used for corporate events, such as a children's Christmas party in December, BBC's telethon Children in Need (Children in Need 2010 was hosted from the tower), and other special events; even though it is closed, the tower retains its revolving floor, providing a full panorama over London and the surrounding area.

Races up the tower
The first documented race up the tower's stairs was on 18 April 1968, between University College London and Edinburgh University; it was won by an Edinburgh runner in 4 minutes, 46 seconds.

In 1969, eight university teams competed, with John Pearson from Manchester University winning in a time of 5 minutes, 6 seconds.

Communications
The first microwave link would be to Norwich on 1 January 1965. The Met Office put their weather radar on the top. Much of the telecommunications equipment made by GEC of Coventry.

Secrecy
Due to its importance to the national communications network, information about the tower was designated an official secret. In 1978, the journalist Duncan Campbell was tried for collecting information about secret locations, and during the trial the judge ordered that the sites could not be identified by name; the tower could only be referred to as 'Location 23'.

It is often said that the tower did not appear on Ordnance Survey maps, despite being a 177 m tall structure in the middle of central London that was open to the public for about 15 years. However, this is incorrect; the 1:25,000 (published 1971) and 1:10,000 (published 1981) Ordnance Survey maps show the tower. It is also shown in the London A–Z street atlas from 1984.

In February 1993, the MP Kate Hoey used the tower as an example of trivial information being kept officially secret, and joked that she hoped parliamentary privilege allowed her to confirm that the tower existed and to state its street address.

21st century
The tower is still in use, and is the site of a major UK communications hub. Microwave links have been replaced by subterranean optical fibre links for most mainstream purposes, but the former are still in use at the tower. The second floor of the base of the tower contains the TV Network Switching Centre which carries broadcasting traffic and relays signals between television broadcasters, production companies, advertisers, international satellite services and uplink companies. The outside broadcast control is located above the former revolving restaurant, with the kitchens on floor 35.

A renovation in the early 2000s introduced a 360° coloured lighting display at the top of the tower. Seven colours were programmed to vary constantly at night and intended to appear as a rotating globe to reflect BT's "connected world" corporate styling. The coloured lights give the tower a conspicuous presence on the London skyline at night.

In October 2009, a 360° full-colour LED-based display system was installed at the top of the tower, to replace the previous colour projection system. The new display, referred to by BT as the "Information Band", is wrapped around the 36th and 37th floors of the tower, 167 m up, and comprises 529,750 LEDs arranged in 177 vertical strips, spaced around the tower. The display was the largest of its type in the world, occupying an area of 280 m2 and with a circumference of 59 m. The display is switched off at 10:30pm each day. On 31 October 2009, the screen began displaying a countdown of the number of days until the start of the London Olympics in 2012. In April 2019, the display spent almost a day displaying a Windows 7 error message.

In October 2009, The Times reported that the revolving restaurant would be reopened in time for the 2012 London Olympics. However, in December 2010, it was further announced that the plans to reopen had now been "quietly dropped", with no explanation of the decision. For the tower's 50th anniversary, the 34th floor was opened for three days from 3 to 5 October 2015 to 2,400 winners of a lottery.

The BT Tower was given Grade II listed building status in 2003. Several of the defunct antennae attached to the building were protected by this listing, meaning they could not be removed unless the appropriate listed building consent was granted. Permission for the removal of the defunct antennae was approved in 2011 on safety grounds, as they were in a bad state of repair and the fixings were no longer secure. The last of the antennae was removed in December 2011, leaving the core of the tower visible.

Entry to the building is by two high-speed lifts, which travel at a top speed of 1400 feet per minute (7 m/s) and reach the top of the building in under 30 seconds. The original equipment was installed by the Express Lift Company of Northampton, but it has since been replaced by new elevators manufactured by ThyssenKrupp. Due to the confined space in the tower's core, removing the motors of the old lifts involved creating an access hole in the cast iron shaft wall, and then cutting the 3-ton winch machines into pieces and bringing them down in one of the functioning lifts. In the 1960s an Act of Parliament was passed to vary fire regulations, allowing the building to be evacuated by using the lifts – unlike other buildings of the time.

In 2006, the tower began to be used for short-term air-quality observations by the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and this has continued in a more permanent form as BT Tower Observatory, an urban atmospheric pollution observatory to help monitor air quality in the capital. The aim is to measure pollutant levels above ground level to determine their source. One area of investigation is the long-range transport of fine particles from outside the city.

On 21 February 2024, BT Group announced the sale of BT Tower to MCR Hotels, who plan to preserve the tower as a hotel.

In popular culture
The tower has appeared in various novels, films, and television shows including Smashing Time, The Bourne Ultimatum, Doctor Who, V for Vendetta, and Danger Mouse. It is toppled by a giant kitten in the 1971 The Goodies episode "Kitten Kong", a parody of King Kong.

title: BT Tower