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Erich Kästner

Emil Erich Kästner (23 February 1899 – 29 July 1974) was a German writer, poet, screenwriter and satirist, known primarily for his humorous, socially astute poems and for children's books including Emil and the Detectives and The Parent Trap. He received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1960 for his autobiography Als ich ein kleiner Junge war. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in six separate years.

Dresden (1899–1919)
Kästner was born in Dresden, Saxony, and grew up on Königsbrücker Straße in Dresden's Äußere Neustadt. Close by, the Erich Kästner Museum was subsequently opened in the Villa Augustin that had belonged to Kästner's uncle Franz Augustin.

Kästner's father, Emil Richard Kästner, was a master saddlemaker. His mother, Ida Amalia (née Augustin), had been a maidservant, but in her thirties she trained as a hairstylist in order to supplement her husband's income. Kästner had a particularly close relationship with his mother. When he was living in Leipzig and Berlin, he wrote her fairly intimate letters and postcards almost every day, and overbearing mothers make regular appearances in his writings. It has been rumored that Erich Kästner's natural father was the family's Jewish doctor, Emil Zimmermann (1864–1953), but these rumors have never been substantiated. Kästner wrote about his childhood in his autobiography Als ich ein kleiner Junge war (1957, translated as When I Was a Little Boy). According to Kästner, he did not suffer from being an only child, had many friends, and was not lonely or overindulged.

In 1913, Kästner entered a teacher training school in Dresden. However, he dropped out in 1916 shortly before completing the exams that would have qualified him to teach in state schools. He was drafted into the Royal Saxon Army in 1917 and was trained at a heavy artillery unit in Dresden. Kästner was not sent to the front, but the brutality of the military training he underwent and the death of contemporaries he experienced strongly influenced his later antimilitarism. The merciless drilling he was subjected to by his drill sergeant also caused a lifelong heart condition. Kästner portrays this in his poem Sergeant Waurich.

After the end of the war, Kästner went back to school and passed the Abitur exam with distinction, earning a scholarship from the city of Dresden.

Leipzig (1919–1927)
In the autumn of 1919, Kästner enrolled at the University of Leipzig to study history, philosophy, German studies, and theater. His studies took him to Rostock and Berlin, and in 1925 he received a doctorate for a thesis on Frederick the Great and German literature. He paid for his studies by working as a journalist and critic for a newspaper, the Neue Leipziger Zeitung. However, his increasingly critical reviews, and the "frivolous" publication of his erotic poem "Abendlied des Kammervirtuosen" (Evening Song of the Chamber Virtuoso) with illustrations by Erich Ohser, led to his dismissal in 1927. That same year, he moved to Berlin, although he continued to write for the Neue Leipziger Zeitung under the pseudonym "Berthold Bürger" ("Bert Citizen") as a freelance correspondent. Kästner later used several other pseudonyms, including "Melchior Kurtz", "Peter Flint", and "Robert Neuner".

Berlin (1927–1933)
Kästner's years in Berlin, from 1927 until the end of the Weimar Republic in 1933, were his most productive. He published poems, newspaper columns, articles, and reviews in many of Berlin's important periodicals. He was a regular contributor to dailies such as the Berliner Tageblatt and the Vossische Zeitung, as well as to Die Weltbühne. Hans Sarkowicz and Franz Josef Görtz, the editors of his complete works (1998), list over 350 articles written between 1923 and 1933, but he must have written even more, since many texts are known to have been lost when Kästner's flat burned down during a bombing raid in February 1944.

Kästner published his first book of poems, Herz auf Taille, in 1928, and by 1933 he had published three more collections. His Gebrauchslyrik (Lyrics for Everyday Use) made him one of the leading figure of the Neue Sachlichkeit movement, which focused on using a sobering, distant and objective style to satirise contemporary society.

In the autumn of 1928, he published his best-known children's book, Emil und die Detektive, illustrated by Walter Trier. The owner of the Weltbühne publishing house, Edith Jacobsen, had suggested the idea of writing a detective story to Kästner. The book sold two million copies in Germany alone and has since been translated into 59 languages. The novel was unusual in that, in contrast to most children's literature of the period, it is set in contemporary Berlin and not in a fairy-tale world. Kästner also refrained from overt moralising, letting the characters' actions speak for themselves. Its sequel, Emil und die Drei Zwillinge (1933; Emil and the Three Twins) takes place on the shores of the Baltic. The Emil books may have influenced the creation of other books in the subgenre of literature about child detectives. Emil und die Detektive has been adapted for the cinema five times, three of them in Germany: in 1931, 1935 (UK), 1954, 1964 (USA) and 2001.

Kästner followed this success with Pünktchen und Anton (1931) and Das fliegende Klassenzimmer (1933). Walter Trier's illustration significantly contributed to the books' overwhelming popularity. Das fliegende Klassenzimmer has been adapted for the cinema several times: in 1954 by Kurt Hoffmann, in 1973 by Werner Jacobs and in Das fliegende Klassenzimmer (2003) by Tomy Wigand.

In 1932 Kästner wrote Der 35. Mai (The 35th of May), which is set in a fantasy land entered via a wardrobe and includes futuristic features such as mobile phones.

Gerhard Lamprecht's film version of Emil und die Detektive (1931) was a great success. Kästner, however, was dissatisfied with the screenplay, and that led him to become a screenwriter for the Babelsberg film studios.

Kästner's only major adult novel, Fabian (Roman), was published in 1931. Kästner included rapid cuts and montages in it, in an attempt to mimic cinematic style. Fabian, an unemployed literary expert, experiences the uproariously fast pace of the times as well as the downfall of the Weimar Republic.

From 1927 until 1931, Kästner lived at Prager Straße 17 (today near no. 12) in Berlin–Wilmersdorf and after that, until February 1945, at Roscherstraße 16 in Berlin-Charlottenburg.

Berlin (1933–1945)
Kästner was a pacifist and wrote for children because of his belief in the regenerative powers of youth. He resisted the Nazi regime and was one of the signatories to the Urgent Call for Unity. However, unlike many other authors critical of the dictatorship, Kästner did not go into exile. After the Nazis' rise to power, he visited Merano and Switzerland and met with exiled writers, yet he returned to Berlin, arguing that there he would be better able to chronicle events. It is probable that he also wanted to avoid abandoning his mother. His Necessary Answer to Superfluous Questions (Notwendige Antwort auf überflüssige Fragen) in Kurz und Bündig explains Kästner's position:

I'm a German from Dresden in Saxony My homeland won't let me go I'm like a tree that, grown in Germany, Will likely wither there also.

The Gestapo interrogated Kästner several times, the national writers' guild expelled him, and the Nazis burned his books as "contrary to the German spirit" during the book burnings of 10 May 1933, instigated by Joseph Goebbels. Kästner witnessed the event in person and later wrote about it. He was denied membership of the new Nazi-controlled national writers' guild, Reichsverband deutscher Schriftsteller (RDS), because of what its officials called the "culturally Bolshevist attitude in his writings prior to 1933."

During the Third Reich, Kästner published apolitical novels such as Drei Männer im Schnee (Three Men in the Snow) (1934) in Switzerland. In 1942, he received a special exemption to write the screenplay for Münchhausen, using the pseudonym Berthold Bürger. The film was a prestige project by Ufa Studios to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of its establishment, an enterprise backed by Goebbels.

In 1944, Kästner's home in Berlin was destroyed during a bombing raid. In early 1945, he and others pretended that they had to travel to the rural community of Mayrhofen in Tyrol for location shooting for a (non-existent) film, Das falsche Gesicht (The Wrong Face). The actual purpose of the journey was to avoid the final Soviet assault on Berlin. Kästner had also received a warning that the SS planned to kill him and other Nazi opponents before arrival of the Soviets. He was in Mayrhofen when the war ended. He wrote about this period in a diary published in 1961 under the title Notabene 45. Another edition, closer to Kästner's original notes, was published in 2006 under the title Das Blaue Buch (The Blue Book).

Kästner and the bombing of Dresden
In his diary for 1945, published many years later, Kästner describes his shock at arriving in Dresden shortly after the bombing of the city in World War II (February 1945) and finding it a pile of ruins in which he could recognize none of the streets or landmarks among which he had spent his childhood.

His autobiography Als ich ein kleiner Junge war includes a lament for Dresden (quoted from the English translation, When I Was a Little Boy): "I was born in the most beautiful city in the world. Even if your father, child, was the richest man in the world, he could not take you to see it, because it does not exist any more. ... In a thousand years was her beauty built, in one night was it utterly destroyed."

Munich (1945–1974)
After the end of the war, Kästner moved to Munich, where he became culture editor for the Neue Zeitung and publisher of Pinguin (magazine), a magazine for children and young people. He was also active in literary cabaret, in productions at the Schaubude (1945–1948) and Die kleine Freiheit (after 1951), and in radio. During this time, he wrote a number of skits, songs, audio plays, speeches, and essays about National Socialism, the war years, and the stark realities of life in post-war Germany. Most notable among these works are Marschlied 1945 and Deutsches Ringelspiel. He also continued to write children's books, including Die Konferenz der Tiere (The Animals' Conference), a pacifist satire in which the world's animals unite to successfully force humans to disarm and make peace. This picture book was made into Die Konferenz der Tiere (film) by Curt Linda. Kästner also renewed his collaboration with Edmund Nick, whom he had met in Leipzig in 1929, when Nick, then Head of the Music Department at Radio Silesia, wrote the music for Kästner's radio play Leben in dieser Zeit. Nick, now the Musical Director at the Schaubude, set more than 60 of Kästner's songs to music.

Kästner's optimism in the immediate post-war era gave way to resignation as Germans in the West attempted to normalize their lives following the economic reforms of the early 1950s and the ensuing "economic miracle" ("Wirtschaftswunder"). He became further disillusioned as Chancellor Konrad Adenauer remilitarized West Germany, made it a member of NATO, and rearmed it for possible military conflict with the Warsaw Pact. Kästner remained a pacifist and spoke out at anti-militarist demonstrations against the nuclear weapons armement of West Germany. Later, he also took firm stand against the Vietnam War. Kästner began to publish less and less, partly because of his increasing alcoholism. He did not join any of the post-war literary movements in West Germany, and in the 1950s and 1960s he came to be perceived mainly as an author of children's books.

His novel Fabian was made into a movie in 1980, as were several of his children's books. The most popular of these adaptations are Disney's 1961 American film The Parent Trap starring Hayley Mills and its 1998 remake starring Lindsay Lohan, both based on his novel Das doppelte Lottchen (Lisa and Lottie). In 1960, Kästner received the Hans Christian Andersen Award for Als ich ein kleiner Junge war, his autobiography. The English translation by Florence and Isabel McHugh, published as When I Was a Little Boy in 1959, won the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1961. Kästner received several other awards, including the Filmband in Gold for best screenplay for the German film version of Das doppelte Lottchen (1950), the literary prize of the city of Munich in 1956, and the Georg Büchner Prize in 1957. The government of West Germany honored Kästner with its order of merit, the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit), in 1959. In 1968 he received the Lessing-Ring together with the literary prize of the German Masonic Order.

In 1951, Kästner was elected President of the PEN Center of West Germany, and he remained in office until 1961. In 1965 he became President Emeritus. He was also instrumental in the founding of the Internationale Jugendbibliothek, a library in Munich that collects and preserves children's and youth books from all over the world. In 1953 he was founding member of IBBY (International Board on Books for Young People).

Kästner never married. He wrote his last two children's books, Der kleine Mann and Der kleine Mann und die kleine Miss, for his son Thomas Kästner, who was born in 1957. Kästner frequently read from his works. In the 1920s, he recorded some of his poems of social criticism and in some of the films based on his books he performed as the narrator, as he did for the first audio production of Pünktchen und Anton. Other recordings for Deutsche Grammophon include poems, epigrams, and his version of the folk tale Till Eulenspiegel. He also read in theaters, such as the Cuvilliés Theatre in Munich, and for the radio, for which he read Als ich ein kleiner Junge war and other works.

Kästner died of esophageal cancer on 29 July 1974 in the Neuperlach Hospital in Munich. He was buried in the St. George cemetery in the Bogenhausen district of Munich. Shortly after his death, the Bavarian Academy of Arts established a literary prize in his name. Many streets in Germany and the asteroid 12318 Kästner are named after him.

Works
A list of his works under their German titles, arranged by their German publication dates:
 * Weihnachtslied, chemisch gereinigt, 1927
 * Herz auf Taille, 1928
 * Emil und die Detektive, 1929 (Emil and the Detectives)
 * Lärm im Spiegel 1929
 * Ein Mann gibt Auskunft, 1930
 * Pünktchen und Anton, 1931 (Dot and Anton)
 * Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten, 1931
 * Gesang zwischen den Stühlen, 1932
 * Der 35. Mai, 1932 (The 35th of May, or Conrad's Ride to the South Seas)
 * Emil und die Drei Zwillinge 1935 (Emil and the Three Twins)
 * Das fliegende Klassenzimmer, 1933 (The Flying Classroom)
 * Drei Männer im Schnee, 1934 (Three Men in the Snow)
 * Die verschwundene Miniatur (novel), 1935 (The Missing Miniature)
 * Doktor Erich Kästners Lyrische Hausapotheke, 1936 (Doctor Erich Kästner's Lyrical Medicine Chest)
 * Georg und die Zwischenfälle, (aka Der kleine Grenzverkehr) 1938 (A Salzburg Comedy)
 * Das doppelte Lottchen, 1949 (Lisa and Lottie; republished as The Parent Trap in the United Kingdom and Australia)
 * Die Konferenz der Tiere, 1949 (The Animals' Conference)
 * Die 13 Monate, 1955
 * Als ich ein kleiner Junge war 1957 (When I Was a Little Boy)
 * Das Schwein beim Friseur 1963
 * Der kleine Mann (novel) 1963 (The Little Man)
 * Der kleine Mann und die kleine Miss 1967 (The Little Man and the Little Miss)
 * Mein Onkel Franz 1969
 * Sylvia List (Editor): Das große Erich Kästner Buch, with an introduction by Hermann Kesten, Atrium Verlag, Zürich 2002, ISBN 978-3-85535-945-5.

title: Erich Kästner


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Distinguished Flying Cross

The Distinguished Flying Cross may refer to:

 * Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom), including Commonwealth countries
 * Distinguished Flying Cross (United States)

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

title: Distinguished Flying Cross


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Distinguished Flying Cross (United Kingdom)

The Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) is the third-level military decoration awarded to officers, and since 1993 to other ranks, of the United Kingdom's Royal Air Force and other services, and formerly to officers of other Commonwealth countries, for "an act or acts of valour, courage or devotion to duty whilst flying in active operations against the enemy".

History
The award was established on 3 June 1918, shortly after the formation of the Royal Air Force (RAF), with the Royal Warrant published on 5 December 1919. It was originally awarded to RAF commissioned and warrant officers, including officers in Commonwealth and allied forces. In March 1941 eligibility was extended to Naval Officers of the Fleet Air Arm, and in November 1942 to Army officers, including Royal Artillery officers serving on attachment to the RAF as pilots-cum-artillery observers. Posthumous awards were permitted from 1979.

Since the 1993 review of the honours system as part of the drive to remove distinctions of rank in bravery awards, all ranks of all arms of the Armed Forces have been eligible, and the Distinguished Flying Medal, which had until then been awarded to other ranks, was discontinued. While remaining a reward for "flying in active operations against the enemy", the requirement was changed from "valour, courage or devotion to duty" to "exemplary gallantry".

The DFC had also been awarded by Commonwealth countries but by the 1990s most, including Canada, Australia and New Zealand, had established their own honours systems and no longer recommended British honours.

The DFC now serves as the third-level award for all ranks of the British Armed Forces for exemplary gallantry in active operations against the enemy in the air, not to the standard required to receive the Victoria Cross or the Conspicuous Gallantry Cross. Apart from honorary awards to those serving with allied forces, all awards of the DFC are announced in the London Gazette.

A bar is added to the ribbon for holders of the DFC who received a further award, with a silver rosette worn on the ribbon when worn alone to denote the award of each bar.

Recipients are entitled to use the post-nominal letters "DFC".

Description
The decoration, designed by Edward Carter Preston, is a cross flory, 2.125 in wide. The horizontal and bottom bars are terminated with bumps, the upper bar with a rose. The decoration's face features aeroplane propellers, superimposed on the vertical arms of the cross, and wings on the horizontal arms. In the centre is a laurel wreath around the RAF monogram, surmounted by a heraldic Imperial Crown.

The reverse is plain, except for a central roundel bearing the reigning monarch's cypher and the date '1918'. Originally awarded unnamed, from 1939 the year of issue was engraved on the reverse lower limb of cross, and since 1984 it has been awarded named to the recipient.

The suspender is straight and decorated with laurel wreaths.

The ribbon bar denoting a further award is silver, with the Royal Air Force eagle in its centre. Bars awarded during World War II have the year of award engraved on the reverse.

The 1.25-inch (32 mm) ribbon was originally white with deep purple broad horizontal stripes, but it was changed in 1919 to the current white with purple broad diagonal stripes.

Numbers awarded
From 1918 to 2017 approximately 22,322 Distinguished Flying Crosses and 1,737 bars have been awarded. The figures to 1979 are laid out in the table below, the dates reflecting the relevant entries in the London Gazette: In addition, between 1980 and 2017 approximately 80 DFCs have been earned, including awards for the Falklands and the wars in the Gulf, Iraq and Afghanistan. Additionally, two second-award, and one third-award bars have been awarded.

The above figures include awards to the Dominions: In all, 4,460 DFCs have gone to Canadians, including 256 first bars and six second bars. Of these, 193 crosses and nine first bars were for service with the RAF in World War I. For World War II, 4,018 DFCs with 213 first bars and six second bars were earned by members of the Royal Canadian Air Force, with a further 247 crosses and 34 first bars to Canadians serving with the RAF. From 1918 to 1972 the DFC was awarded to 2,391 Australians, along with 144 first Bars and five second Bars. Over 1,000 DFCs were awarded to New Zealanders during the World War II, with the most recent awards for service in Vietnam. In 1999 the DFC was replaced by the New Zealand Gallantry Decoration.

A total of 1,022 honorary awards have been made to members of allied foreign forces. This comprises 46 crosses and one bar for World War I and 927, along with 34 first and three second bars, for World War II. Eight crosses and two bars were awarded to members of the US Air Force for the Korean War, and one cross to the US Marine Corps during the Iraq War.

Notable awards

 * King Albert I of Belgium, who on many occasions during World War I was flown in a British aircraft to reconnoitre enemy positions.
 * Wing Commander Douglas Rivers Bagnall, DSO, who was also awarded also the American DFC.
 * John Balmer, RAAF pilot
 * Wing Commander Clive Beadon, pilot during World War II
 * Roy Calvert, Royal New Zealand Air Force pilot who was awarded the DFC three times.
 * Major General Levi R. Chase, American flying ace, awarded DFC with bar (WWII and Korea)
 * Major William Chesarek, United States Marine Corps, helicopter pilot who in 2006 rescued a British serviceman during the Iraq War.
 * Flight Lieutenant Pierre Clostermann, French RAF officer, awarded RAF DFC and bar in 1945.
 * Flight Lieutenant Robert Clothier, RCAF, and later a noted Canadian television actor known for the role of "Relic" in The Beachcombers
 * Harry Cobby, flying ace of the Australian Flying Corps who was awarded the DFC three times.
 * Gordon Cochrane, RNZAF pilot who was awarded the DFC three times.
 * Captain Duncan Ronald Gordon Mackay, the last fatality of the First World War.
 * Peter Stanley James, RAF, who in July 1941 took part in a daylight raid on the German battleship Scharnhorst in dock at La Rochelle.
 * Philip Robinson, RAF pilot who was awarded the DFC three times.
 * Squadron Leader George Leonard Johnson, navigator who took part in 'Operation Chastise'.
 * Keith 'Bluey' Truscott, famous footballer and RAAF pilot who was awarded the DFC twice.
 * Arjan Singh, Indian Air Force. He later became Marshal of the Indian Air Force.
 * Mohinder Singh Pujji, Indian Air Force.
 * Group Captain Peter Townsend, CVO, DSO, DFC & bar. An RAF flying ace, courtier and author, he was equerry to King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, and also had a romance with Princess Margaret.
 * Harold Whistler, Royal Flying Corps flying ace who was awarded the DFC three times
 * Wing Commander Robert Stanford Tuck, Royal Air Force flying ace who was awarded the DFC three times
 * Squadron Leader Stuart Mitchell, Royal Air Force, the only tanker pilot to be awarded the DFC to date, for his actions in the Bosnia campaign.
 * Flight Lieutenant Michelle Jayne Goodman, the first female officer to be awarded any British combat gallantry medal.


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Talk:Doha Declaration on the TRIPS agreement and public health

Updated Page
I updated the page to be contemporaneous with the current state of affairs surrounding the DOHA Declaration in its relation to TRIPS (particularly with regards to access to medicines).

I'm somewhat surprised however, to discover that this page is of 'low importance' as it is a multilateral international step towards providing better access to medicine for all, over money considerations and the accepted traditions of intellectual property.

If I may, shall I write a small critique on the importance of the declaration and its hoped-for impact on things such as the African Aids crisis as well as its attempt to help with malaria and TB in Africa? I could support it with the reasoning put forward by the WTO etc.

Sapient Pearwood (talk) 14:29, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

2/06 In The News
Anyone know how this article relates to this current event? I'm a little confused. Schwael 15:05, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

It doesn't. The article is about an internationally agreed declaration. That article is just a joint statement about the Danish cartoon controversy. 221.134.202.220 20:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

I take it nothing much happened "before the end of 2002"?

 * "We instruct the Council for TRIPS to find an expeditious solution to this problem and to report to the General Council before the end of 2002."

To put it bluntly, did they? (It is perhaps one of the web's greatest weaknesses right now that the majority of technologies do not encourage links pointing forward in time.)

I first found an Oxfam America article stating that talks broke down in 2002, but providing no detail or references. Looking a bit further, though, I turned up this set of pages, particularly this one, with plenty of links - but still seeming to end at 2005, and with no clear summary.

Does anyone know of a nice overview of events & decisions since the declaration, or fancy wading through the CPTech stuff to create one? - IMSoP 21:20, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

Circumvention
"member states in circumventing patent rights for better access to essential medicines."

--> As patents are territorial rights, there can be no such a thing as "circumvention". Either there are rights or there are no rights under national law. circumvention is also an inappropriate term for post grant limitations. Arebenti (talk) 09:22, 6 April 2009 (UTC)


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Ira Flatow

Ira Flatow (born March 9, 1949) is a radio and television journalist and author who hosts Public Radio International's popular program Science Friday. On TV, he hosted the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Newton's Apple, a television science program for children and their families. Later he hosted another PBS series, Big Ideas. He has published several books, the most recent titled Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature.

Personal life
Flatow is a native of New York and currently lives in Connecticut. He has been married to realtor Miriam Flatow (née Wagenberg) since 1983 and has three children.

Education
Flatow graduated from State University of New York at Buffalo with a BS in engineering in 1971.

Career
In 1966, Flatow began his career in broadcasting working in television at KHD-21 TV at H. Frank Carey High School in Franklin Square, New York. In 1969, Flatow began working in radio at WBFO, in Buffalo, New York, first as a reporter covering Vietnam anti-war demonstrations and riots and then as news director, 1971. During this time, he was working on an engineering degree at the State University of New York at Buffalo. Flatow's first science stories were created in 1970 during the first Earth Day.

National Public Radio
From 1971 to 1986, he was on staff at NPR serving as a production assistant, associate producer, producer and science correspondent and reported on topics including the Kennedy Space Center, Three Mile Island, HIV/AIDS and the South Pole. From 1991 to 2013 he hosted Science Friday for NPR, which he anchored each Friday afternoon, discussing topics in science and technology.

PRI, Public Radio International
On January 1, 2014, the Science Friday program moved from NPR to PRI (Public Radio International) with Flatow continuing as host.

WNYC Studios
On April 11, 2018, distribution of Science Friday changed hands once more when it went from PRI to WNYC Studios.

Television
From 1982 through 1987 he hosted the Emmy Award-winning PBS science program Newton's Apple, which originated at KTCA in St. Paul, Minnesota. In 1991, Flatow wrote and reported science and technology for CBS News' CBS This Morning. He has discussed cutting-edge science on a number of programs, including the Cablevision program Maximum Science. He hosted the PBS series Big Ideas produced by WNET. His TV credits include science reporter for CBS This Morning, Westinghouse, and cable's CNBC. Flatow wrote, produced and hosted an hour-long documentary about the history of the transistor called Transistorized!, which aired on PBS. He has talked about science on a number TV shows including The Merv Griffin Show, Today, Charlie Rose, and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He has written three books that popularize topics in science and technology: Rainbows, Curveballs, and Other Wonders of the Natural World Explained, They All Laughed... From Light Bulbs to Lasers: The Fascinating Stories Behind the Great Inventions That Have Changed Our Lives, and Present at the Future: From Evolution to Nanotechnology, Candid and Controversial Conversations on Science and Nature.

Flatow is founder and president of the Science Friday Initiative (previously TalkingScience) a non-profit company dedicated to creating radio, TV, and Internet projects aimed at making science user friendly.

In 2009, Flatow had a voice cameo appearance as himself on the CBS sitcom The Big Bang Theory in "The Vengeance Formulation" (season 3, episode 9). In the episode, Flatow interviews Dr. Sheldon Cooper (Jim Parsons) on his research on magnetic monopoles. Flatow was given a co-star credit.

In 2013, Flatow appears as himself in person for another guest-star appearance on The Big Bang Theory, interviewing Dr. Sheldon Cooper and Dr. Leonard Hofstadter on Science Friday about Cooper's failed discovery in "The Discovery Dissipation" (season 7, episode 10).

In 2017, Flatow once again appeared on The Big Bang Theory interviewing Leonard Hofstadter for "Science Friday" (Season 11, Episode 2).

In 2014, Flatow settled a dispute with the federal government over a federal grant from the National Science Foundation. Flatow did not admit any wrongdoing and he and his company settled with the government for a fee of about $146,000. Flatow and ScienceFriday, Inc., were barred from future federal grants for one year, ending in 2015.

Honors and awards

 * Doctor of Humanities, SUNY Buffalo (honorary 2014)
 * Distinguished Visiting Fellow, University of California, Santa Barbara (2014)
 * Doctor of Science Education, Muhlenberg College (honorary 2013)
 * American Humanist Association's Isaac Asimov Science Award (2012)
 * Nierenberg Prize for Science in the Public Interest (2010)
 * Member Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering
 * American Institute of Biological Sciences President's Citation Award (2008)
 * National Science Teachers Association Faraday Science Communicator Award (2007)
 * Alan Houghton Award, Harlem Children Society (2006)
 * National Science Board, Public Service Award (2005)
 * National Technology Leadership Excellence Award (2003)
 * E.A. Wood Science Writing Award (2002)
 * AAAS-Science Journalism Award - Television (2000)
 * Carl Sagan Award for Public Appreciation of Science, Council of Scientific Society Presidents (1999)
 * Women in Communications Matrix Award (1992)
 * AAAS-Westinghouse Science Journalism Award - Radio (1983)
 * AAAS-Westinghouse Science Journalism Award - Television (1983)
 * National Association of Science Writers Science In Society Journalism Award (1981)
 * Ohio State Award (1981)
 * Bronze Cindy Award, Information Film Producers of America (1980)
 * American Psychological Foundation National Media Award (1977)

title: Ira Flatow


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Black Country

The Black Country is an area of England's West Midlands. It is mainly urban, covering most of the Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall Metropolitan Boroughs, with the City of Wolverhampton sometimes included. The towns of Dudley and Tipton are generally considered to be the centre.

The 14 mi road between Wolverhampton and Birmingham was described as "one continuous town" in 1785. The area was one of the Industrial Revolution's birthplaces. Either the 30-foot-thick coal seam close to the surface or the mix of coalworks, cokeworks, ironworks, glassworks, brickworks and steelworks (which produced high levels of soot and air pollution at the time) led to the area's name, which was first recorded in the 1840s.

Extent
The Black Country has no single set of defined boundaries. Some traditionalists define it as "the area where the coal seam comes to the surface – so West Bromwich, Coseley, Oldbury, Blackheath, Cradley Heath, Old Hill, Bilston, Dudley, Tipton, Wednesbury, and parts of Halesowen, Walsall and Smethwick or what used to be known as Warley." There are records from the 18th century of shallow coal mines in Wolverhampton, however. Others have included areas slightly outside the coal field which were associated with heavy industry.

Bilston-born Samuel Griffiths, in his 1876 Griffiths Guide to the Iron Trade of Great Britain, stated "The Black Country commences at Wolverhampton, extends a distance of sixteen miles to Stourbridge, eight miles to West Bromwich, penetrating the northern districts through Willenhall to Bentley, The Birchills, Walsall and Darlaston, Wednesbury, Smethwick and Dudley Port, West Bromwich and Hill Top, Brockmoor, Wordsley and Stourbridge. As the atmosphere becomes purer, we get to the higher ground of Brierley Hill, nevertheless here also, as far as the eye can reach, on all sides, tall chimneys vomit forth great clouds of smoke".

Today the term commonly refers to the majority of the four metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton although it is said that "no two Black Country men or women will agree on where it starts or ends".

Local government

Official use of the name came in 1987 with the Black Country Development Corporation, an urban development corporation covering the metropolitan boroughs of Sandwell and Walsall, which was disbanded in 1998. The Black Country Consortium (founded in 1999) and the Black Country Local Enterprise Partnership (founded in 2011) both define the Black Country as the four metropolitan boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton, an approximate area of 138 mi2.

Cultural and industrial definition
The borders of the Black Country can be defined by using the special cultural and industrial characteristics of the area. Areas around the canals (the cut) which had mines extracting mineral resources and heavy industry refining these are included in this definition. Cultural parameters include unique or characteristic foods such as groaty pudding, grey peas and bacon, faggots, gammon or pork hocks and pork scratchings; Black Country humour; and the Black Country dialect.

Geological definitions
The Black Country Society defines the Black Country's borders as the area on the thirty foot coal seam, regardless the depth of the seam. This definition includes West Bromwich and Oldbury, which had many deep pits, and Smethwick. The thick coal that underlies Smethwick was not mined until the 1870s and Smethwick has retained more Victorian character than most West Midland areas. Sandwell Park Colliery's pit was located in Smethwick and had 'thick coal' as shown in written accounts from 1878 and coal was also heavily mined in Hamstead, further east, whose workings extended well under what is now north Birmingham. Smethwick and Dudley Port were described as "a thousand swarming hives of metallurgical industries" by Samuel Griffiths in 1872.

Another geological definition, the seam outcrop definition, only includes areas where the coal seam is shallow, making the soil black at the surface. Some coal mining areas to the east and west of the geologically defined Black Country are therefore excluded by this definition because the coal here is too deep down and does not outcrop. The seam outcrop definition excludes areas in North Worcestershire and South Staffordshire.

Toponymy
The first recorded use of the term "the Black Country" may be from a toast given by a Mr Simpson, town clerk to Lichfield, addressing a Reformer's meeting on 24 November 1841, published in the Staffordshire Advertiser. He describes going into the "black country" of Staffordshire – Wolverhampton, Bilston and Tipton.

In published literature, the first reference dates from 1846 and occurs in the novel Colton Green: A Tale of the Black Country by the Reverend William Gresley, who was then a prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral. Gresley's opening paragraph starts "On the border of the agricultural part of Staffordshire, just before you enter the dismal region of mines and forges, commonly called the 'Black Country', stands the pretty village of Oakthorpe", "commonly" implying that the term was already in use. He also writes that "the whole country is blackened with smoke by day, and glowing with fires by night", and that "the 'Black Country' ... is about twenty miles in length and five in bredth reaching from north to south".

The phrase was used again, though as a description rather than a proper noun, by the Illustrated London News in an 1849 article on the opening of the South Staffordshire Railway. An 1851 guidebook to the London and North Western Railway included an entire chapter entitled "The Black Country", including an early description: "In this Black Country, including West Bromwich, Dudley, Darlaston, Bilston, Wolverhampton and several minor villages, a perpetual twilight reigns during the day, and during the night fires on all sides light up the dark landscape with a fiery glow. The pleasant green of pastures is almost unknown, the streams, in which no fishes swim, are black and unwholesome; the natural dead flat is often broken by high hills of cinders and spoil from the mines; the few trees are stunted and blasted; no birds are to be seen, except a few smoky sparrows; and for miles on miles a black waste spreads around, where furnaces continually smoke, steam engines thud and hiss, and long chains clank, while blind gin horses walk their doleful round. From time to time you pass a cluster of deserted roofless cottages of dingiest brick, half swallowed up in sinking pits or inclining to every point of the compass, while the timbers point up like the ribs of a half decayed corpse. The majority of the natives of this Tartarian region are in full keeping with the scenery – savages, without the grace of savages, coarsely clad in filthy garments, with no change on weekends or Sundays, they converse in a language belarded with fearful and disgusting oaths, which can scarcely be recognised as the same as that of civilized England." This work was also the first to explicitly distinguish the area from nearby Birmingham, noting that "On certain rare holidays these people wash their faces, clothe themselves in decent garments, and, since the opening of the South Staffordshire Railway, take advantage of cheap excursion trains, go down to Birmingham to amuse themselves and make purchases."

The geologist Joseph Jukes made it clear in 1858 that he felt the meaning of the term was self-explanatory to contemporary visitors, remarking that "It is commonly known in the neighbourhood as the 'Black Country', an epithet the appropriateness of which must be acknowledged by anyone who even passes through it on a railway". Jukes based his Black Country on the seat of the great iron manufacture, which for him was geographically determined by the ironstone tract of the coalfield rather than the thick seam, running from Wolverhampton to Bloxwich, to West Bromwich, to Stourbridge and back to Wolverhampton again. A travelogue published in 1860 made the connection more explicit, calling the name "eminently descriptive, for blackness everywhere prevails; the ground is black, the atmosphere is black, and the underground is honeycombed by mining galleries stretching in utter blackness for many a league". An alternative theory for the meaning of the name is proposed as having been caused by the darkening of the local soil due to the outcropping coal and the seam near the surface.

It was however the American diplomat and travel writer Elihu Burritt who brought the term "the Black Country" into widespread common usage with the third, longest and most important of the travel books he wrote about Britain for American readers, his 1868 work Walks in The Black Country and its Green Borderland. Burritt had been appointed United States consul in Birmingham by Abraham Lincoln in 1864, a role that required him to report regularly on "facts bearing upon the productive capacities, industrial character and natural resources of communities embraced in their Consulate Districts" and as a result travelled widely from his home in Harborne, largely on foot, to explore the local area. Burritt's association with Birmingham dated back 20 years and he was highly sympathetic to the industrial and political culture of the town as well as being a friend to many of its leading citizens, so his portrait of the surrounding area was largely positive. He was the author of the famous early description of the Black Country as "black by day and red by night", adding appreciatively that it "cannot be matched, for vast and varied production, by any other space of equal radius on the surface of the globe". Burritt used the term to refer to a wider area than its common modern usage, however, devoting the first third of the book to Birmingham, which he described as "the capital, manufacturing centre, and growth of the Black Country", and writing "plant, in imagination, one foot of your compass at the Town Hall in Birmingham, and with the other sweep a circle of twenty miles [30 km] radius, and you will have, 'the Black Country" (this area includes Coventry, Kidderminster and Lichfield).

History
A few Black Country places such as Wolverhampton, Bilston and Wednesfield are mentioned in Anglo-Saxon charters and chronicles and the forerunners of a number of Black Country towns and villages such as Cradley, Dudley, Smethwick, and Halesowen are included in the Domesday Book of 1086. At this early date, the area was mostly rural. A monastery was founded in Wolverhampton in the Anglo-Saxon period and a castle and priory was built at Dudley during the period of Norman rule. Another religious house, Premonstratensian Abbey of Halesowen, was founded in the early 13th century. A number of Black Country villages developed into market towns and boroughs in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, notably Dudley, Walsall and Wolverhampton. Coal mining was carried out for several centuries in the Black Country, starting from medieval times, and metalworking was important in the Black Country area as early as the 16th century spurred on by the presence of iron ore and coal in a seam 30 ft thick, the thickest seam in Great Britain, which outcropped in various places. The first recorded blast furnace in the Black Country was built at West Bromwich in the early 1560s. Many people had an agricultural smallholding and supplemented their income by working as nailers or smiths, an example of a phenomenon known to economic historians as proto-industrialisation. In 1583, the accounts of the building of Henry VIII's Nonsuch Palace record that nails were supplied by Reynolde Warde of Dudley at a cost of 11s 4d per thousand. By the 1620s "Within ten miles [16 km] of Dudley Castle there were 20,000 smiths of all sorts".

In the early 17th century, Dud Dudley, a natural son of the Baron of Dudley, experimented with making iron using coal rather than charcoal. Two patents were granted for the process: one in 1621 to Lord Dudley and one in 1638 to Dud Dudley and three others. In his work Metallum Martis, published in 1665, he claimed to have "made Iron to profit with Pit-cole". However, considerable doubt has been cast on this claim by later writers.

An important development in the early 17th century was the introduction of the slitting mill to the Midlands area. In the Black Country, the establishment of this device was associated with Richard Foley, son of a Dudley nailer, who built a slitting mill near Kinver in 1628. The slitting mill made it much simpler to produce nail rods from iron bar.

Another development of the early 17th century was the introduction of glass making to the Stourbridge area. One attraction of the region for glass makers was the local deposits of fireclay, a material suitable for making the pots in which glass was melted.

In 1642 at the start of the Civil War, Charles I failed to capture the two arsenals of Portsmouth and Hull, which although in cities loyal to Parliament were located in counties loyal to him. As he had failed to capture the arsenals, Charles did not possess any supply of swords, pikes, guns, or shot; all these the Black Country could and did provide. From Stourbridge came shot, from Dudley cannon. Numerous small forges which then existed on every brook in the north of Worcestershire turned out successive supplies of sword blades and pike heads. It was said that among the many causes of anger Charles had against Birmingham was that one of the best sword makers of the day, Robert Porter, who manufactured swords in Digbeth, Birmingham, refused at any price to supply swords for "that man of blood" (A Puritan nickname for King Charles), or any of his adherents. As an offset to this sword-cutler and men like him in Birmingham, the Royalists had among their adherents Dud Dudley, now a Colonel in the Royalist army, who had experience in iron making, and who claimed he could turn out "all sorts of bar iron fit for making of muskets, carbines, and iron for great bolts", both more cheaply, more speedily and more excellent than could be done in any other way.

In 1712, a Newcomen Engine was constructed near Dudley and used to pump water from coal mines belonging to Lord Dudley. This is the earliest documented working steam engine.

An important milestone in the establishment of Black Country industry came when John Wilkinson set up an iron works at Bradley near Bilston. In 1757 he started making iron there by coke-smelting rather than using charcoal. His example was followed by others and iron making spread rapidly across the Black Country. Another important development of the 18th century was the construction of canals to link the Black Country mines industries to the rest of the country. Between 1768 and 1772 a canal was constructed by James Brindley starting in Birmingham through the heart of the Black Country and eventually leading to the Staffordshire and Worcestershire Canal.

In the middle of the 18th century, Bilston became well known for the craft of enamelling. Items produced included decorative containers such as patch-boxes, snuff boxes and bonbonnieres.

The iron industry grew during the 19th century, peaking around 1850–1860. In 1863, there were 200 blast furnaces in the Black Country, of which 110 were in blast. Two years later it was recorded that there were 2,116 puddling furnaces, which converted pig-iron into wrought iron, in the Black Country. In 1864 the first Black Country plant capable of producing mild steel by the Bessemer process was constructed at the Old Park Works in Wednesbury. In 1882, another Bessemer-style steel works was constructed at Spring Vale in Bilston by the Staffordshire Steel and Ingot Iron Company, a development followed by the construction of an open-hearth steelworks at the Round Oak works of the Earl of Dudley in Brierley Hill, which produced its first steel in 1894.

By the 19th century or early 20th century, many villages had their characteristic manufacture, but earlier occupations were less concentrated. Some of these concentrations are less ancient than sometimes supposed. For example, chain making in Cradley Heath seems only to have begun in about the 1820s, and the Lye holloware industry is even more recent. Prior to the Industrial Revolution, coal and limestone were worked only on a modest scale for local consumption, but during the Industrial Revolution by the opening of canals, such as the Birmingham Canal Navigations, Stourbridge Canal and the Dudley Canal (the Dudley Canal Line No 1 and the Dudley Tunnel) opened up the mineral wealth of the area to exploitation. Advances in the use of coke for the production of iron enabled iron production (hitherto limited by the supply of charcoal) to expand rapidly.

By Victorian times, the Black Country was one of the most heavily industrialised areas in Britain, and it became known for its pollution, particularly from iron and coal industries and their many associated smaller businesses. Industrialisation led to the expansion of local railways and coal mine lines. The line running from Stourbridge to Walsall via Dudley Port and Wednesbury closed in the 1960s, but the Birmingham to Wolverhampton line via Tipton is still a major transport route.

The anchors and chains for the ill-fated liner RMS Titanic were made in the Black Country at Netherton. Three anchors and accompanying chains were manufactured; and the set weighed in at 100 tons. The centre anchor alone weighed 12 tons and was pulled through Netherton on its journey to the ship by 20 Shire horses. In 1913, the Black Country was the location of arguably one of the most important strikes in British trade union history when the workers employed in the area's steel tube trade came out for two months in a successful demand for a 23 shilling minimum weekly wage for unskilled workers, giving them pay parity with their counterparts in nearby Birmingham. This action commenced on 9 May in Wednesbury, at the Old Patent tube works of John Russell & Co. Ltd., and within weeks upwards of 40,000 workers across the Black Country had joined the dispute. Notable figures in the labour movement, including a key proponent of Syndicalism, Tom Mann, visited the area to support the workers and Jack Beard and Julia Varley of the Workers' Union were active in organising the strike. During this confrontation with employers represented by the Midlands Employers' Federation, a body founded by Dudley Docker, the Asquith Government's armaments programme was jeopardised, especially its procurement of naval equipment and other industrial essentials such as steel tubing, nuts and bolts, destroyer parts, etc. This was of national significance at a time when Britain and Germany were engaged in the Anglo-German naval arms race that preceded the outbreak of the First World War. Following a ballot of the union membership, a settlement of the dispute was reached on 11 July after arbitration by government officials from the Board of Trade led by the Chief Industrial Commissioner Sir George Askwith, 1st Baron Askwith. One of the important consequences of the strike was the growth of organised labour across the Black Country, which was notable because until this point the area's workforce had effectively eschewed trade unionism. The 20th century saw a decline in coal mining in the Black Country, with the last colliery in the region – Baggeridge Colliery near Sedgley – closing on 2 March 1968, marking the end of an era after some 300 years of mass coal mining in the region, though a small number of open cast mines remained in use for a few years afterwards. Other industries thrived, however. Manufacturers like Rubery Owen, Chance Bros, Wilkins and Mitchell, GKN, John Thompson (company) and many more prospered from the post-war boom in Britain, with the West Midlands motor industry being a key driver of the economy. Wages rose faster than the national average, and unemployment remained low into the late 1970s. It was only in the late 1970s and 1980s, as global shocks and political change affected British industry, that the region began to become deindustrialised, with the years 1979-1982 witnessing the closure of large employers such as Bilston Steel Works, Round Oak, Patent Shaft Steelworks, Rubery Owen, Birmid Industries and others in quick succession. The population of the Black Country changed from one of the most prosperous industrial working-class regions in the country, to one of the most deprived.

As the heavy industry that had named the region faded away, in the 1970s a museum, called the Black Country Living Museum started to take shape on derelict land near to Dudley. Today this museum demonstrates Black Country crafts and industry from days gone by and includes many original buildings which have been transported and reconstructed at the site.

Geology and landscape
The history of industry in the Black Country is connected directly to its underlying geology. Much of the region lies upon an exposed coalfield forming the southern part of the South Staffordshire Coalfield where mining has taken place since the Middle Ages. There are, in fact several coal seams, some of which were given names by the miners. The top, thin coal seam is known as Broach Coal. Beneath this lies successively the Thick Coal, Heathen Coal, Stinking Coal, Bottom Coal and Singing Coal seams. Other seams also exist. The Thick Coal seam was also known as the "Thirty Foot" or "Ten Yard" seam and is made up of a number of beds that have come together to form one thick seam. Interspersed with the coal seams are deposits of iron ore and fireclay. The Black Country coal field is bounded on the north by the Bentley Fault, to the north of which lies the Cannock Chase Coalfield. Around the exposed coalfield, separated by geological faults, lies a concealed coalfield where the coal lies at much greater depth. A mine was sunk between 1870 and 1874 over the eastern boundary of the then known coal field in Smethwick and coal was discovered at a depth of over 400 yards. In the last decade of the 19th century, coal was discovered beyond the western boundary fault at Baggeridge at a depth of around 600 yards.

A broken ridge runs across the Black Country in a north-westerly direction through Dudley, Wrens Nest and Sedgley, separating the Black Country into two regions. This ridge forms part of a major watershed of England with streams to the north taking water to the Tame and then via the Trent into the North Sea whilst to the south of the ridge, water flows into the Stour and thence to the Severn and the Bristol Channel.

At Dudley and Wrens Nest, limestone was mined. This rock formation was formed in the Silurian period and contains many fossils. One particular fossilized creature, the trilobite Calymene blumenbachii, was so common that it became known as the "Dudley Bug" or "Dudley Locust" and was incorporated into the coat-of-arms of the County Borough of Dudley.

At a number of places, notably the Rowley Hills and at Barrow Hill, a hard igneous rock is found. The rock, known as dolerite, used to be quarried and used for road construction.

Symbols
In recent years the Black Country has seen the adoption of symbols and emblems with which to represent itself. The first of these to be registered was the Black Country tartan in 2009, designed by Philip Tibbetts from Halesowen.

In 2008 the idea of a flag for the region was first raised. After four years of campaigning a competition was successfully organised with the Black Country Living Museum. This resulted in the adoption of the Flag of the Black Country as designed by Gracie Sheppard of Redhill School in Stourbridge and was registered with the Flag Institute in July 2012.

The flag was unveiled at the museum on 14 July 2012 as part of celebration in honour of the 300th anniversary of the erection of the first Newcomen atmospheric engine. Following this it was agreed by the museum and Black Country society for 14 July to be recognised as Black Country Day to celebrate the area's role in the Industrial Revolution. The day was marked by Department for Communities and Local Government in 2013 and following calls to do more in 2014 more events were planned around the region.

Black Country Day takes place on 14 July each year. Originally in March, the day was later moved to 14 July—the anniversary of the invention of the Newcomen steam engine—and now coincides with a wider series of events throughout the month aimed at promoting Black Country Culture called the Black Country Festival.

The Black Country Anthem was written by James Stevens and is performed by Black Country band The Empty Can. The idea for the anthem was raised in 2013 by James Stevens and Steven Edwards who wanted the region to have an official anthem to accompany the Black Country flag & Black Country Day.

Economy
The heavy industry which once dominated the Black Country has now largely gone. The 20th century saw a decline in coal mining and the industry finally came to an end in 1968 with the closure of Baggeridge Colliery near Sedgley. Clean air legislation has meant that the Black Country is no longer black. The area still maintains some manufacturing, but on a much smaller scale than historically. Chainmaking is still a viable industry in the Cradley Heath area where the majority of the chain for the Ministry of Defence and the Admiralty fleet is made in modern factories.

Much but not all of the area now suffers from high unemployment and parts of it are amongst the most economically deprived communities in the UK. This is particularly true in parts of the metropolitan boroughs of Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton. According to the Government's 2007 Index of Deprivation (ID 2007), Sandwell is the third most deprived authority in the West Midlands region, after Birmingham and Stoke-on-Trent, and the 14th most deprived of the UK's 354 districts. Wolverhampton is the fourth most deprived district in the West Midlands, and the 28th most deprived nationally. Walsall is the fifth most deprived district in the West Midlands region, and the 45th most deprived in the country. Dudley fares better, but still has pockets of deprivation. Overall, Dudley is the 100th most deprived district of the UK, but the second most affluent of the seven metropolitan districts of the West Midlands, with Solihull coming top. It also benefits from tourism due to the popularity of the Black Country Living Museum, Dudley Zoo and Dudley Castle.

As with many urban areas in the UK, there is also a significant ethnic minority population in parts: in Sandwell, 22.6 per cent of the population is from ethnic minorities, and in Wolverhampton the figure is 23.5 per cent. However, in Walsall 84.6 per cent of the population is described as white, while in Dudley 92 per cent of the population is white. Resistance to mass immigration in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s led to the slogan "Keep the Black Country white!".

The Black Country suffered its biggest economic blows in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when unemployment soared largely because of the closure of historic large factories including the Round Oak Steel Works at Brierley Hill and the Patent Shaft steel plant at Wednesbury. Unemployment rose drastically across the country during this period as a result of Conservative Prime Minister Thatcher's economic policies; later, in an implicit acknowledgement of the social problems this had caused, these areas were designated as Enterprise Zones, and some redevelopment occurred. Round Oak and the surrounding farmland was developed as the Merry Hill Shopping Centre and Waterfront commercial and leisure complex, while the Patent Shaft site was developed as an industrial estate.

Unemployment in Brierley Hill peaked at more than 25% – around double the national average at the time – during the first half of the 1980s following the closure of Round Oak Steel Works, giving it one of the worst unemployment rates of any town in Britain. The Merry Hill development between 1985 and 1990 managed to reduce the local area's unemployment dramatically, however.

The Black Country Living Museum in Dudley recreates life in the Black Country in the early 20th century, and is a popular tourist attraction. On 17 February 2012 the museum's collection in its entirety was awarded Designation by Arts Council England (ACE). Designation is a mark of distinction that celebrates unique collections of national and international importance.

The four metropolitan boroughs of the Black Country form part of the Birmingham metropolitan economy, the second largest in the UK.

In 2011, the government announced the creation of the Black Country Enterprise Zone. The zone includes 5 sites in Wolverhampton and 14 in Darlaston. The i54 business park in Wolverhampton is the largest of the 19 sites; its tenants include Jaguar Land Rover. The largest site in Darlaston is that of the former IMI James Bridge Copper Works.

The four boroughs of Dudley, Sandwell, Wolverhampton and Walsall submitted a joint bid in late 2015 to become a UNESCO Global Geopark. The Geopark would increase the area's prospects as a tourism destination thereby supporting the local economy. To this end numerous 'geosites' were subsequently identified, leaflets published and public events organised. As of 2017, UNESCO had given the aspirant geopark its initial backing pending further assessment. Confirmation of the Black Country as a UNESCO Global Geopark was announced on 10 July 2020.

Dialect and accent
The traditional Black Country dialect, known as "Black Country Spake" (as in "Where's our Spake Gone", a 2014–2016 lottery-funded project to preserve and document the dialect) preserves many archaic traits of Early Modern English and even Middle English and can be very confusing for outsiders. Thee, thy and thou are still in use, as is the case in parts of Derbyshire, Yorkshire and Lancashire.

"'Ow bist," or "Ow bist gooin" (How are you/ How are you going), to which typical responses would be "bostin', ah kid" (bostin' means "busting", as in breaking, and is similar in usage to "smashing"; and "ah kid" (our kid) is a term of endearment) or "'bay too bad," or even "bay three bad" ("I be not too bad"/ I'm not too bad).

Ain't is in common use as when "I haven't seen her" becomes "I ain't sid 'er". However, this is often shortened even further to "ay".

Black Country dialect often uses "ar" where other parts of England use "yes" (this is common as far away as Yorkshire). Similarly, the local version of "you" is pronounced.

The local pronunciation includes "goo" (elsewhere "go") or "gewin'" is similar to that elsewhere in the Midlands. It is quite common for broad Black Country speakers to say "'agooin'" where others say "going." A woman is a "wench", a man is a "mon", a nurse is a "nuss" and home is "wum". An apple is an "opple".

Other examples are "code" for the word cold, and "goost" for the word ghost. A sofa becomes a "sofie", and a fag (cigarette), a "fake". Seen becomes "sid". Put together, "Ah just sid a goost, so Ah'm a gooin to sit on mah sofie and 'ave a fake" (I have just seen a ghost, so I am going to sit upon my sofa and have a cigarette)

Food may be called "fittle" (after victuals or "vittles"), so "bostin fittle" is "good food".

One participant in the "Where's our Spake Gone" project related the following: "Day say yom call oos rabbits up ere. I say we day, dey say yow say "Tah rah rabbits". We'm say tah-ra a bit, 'n to dem, it sound like we'm calling dem rabbits." ("They say you call us rabbits there, I said we don't, (but) they say you say "tah rah rabbits". We say "tah rah a bit" (tah rah for a little while) and to them, it sounds like we are calling them rabbits.")

The dialect has local differences, and sounds and phrases differ across the towns; often people can mishear a word or phrase and write it down wrong as in "shut charow up," which actually is "shut ya row up," so one has to be careful when hearing words and phrases.

Depiction in art or literature
From the 19th century onwards, the area gained widespread notoriety for its hellish appearance, a depiction that made its way into the published works of the time. Charles Dickens's novel The Old Curiosity Shop, written in 1841, described how the area's local factory chimneys "Poured out their plague of smoke, obscured the light, and made foul the melancholy air". In 1862, Elihu Burritt, the American Consul in Birmingham, described the region as "black by day and red by night", because of the smoke and grime generated by the intense manufacturing activity and the glow from furnaces at night. Early 20th century representations of the region can be found in the Mercian novels of Francis Brett Young, most notably My Brother Jonathan (1928).

Carol Thompson the curator "The Making of Mordor" at Wolverhampton Art Gallery in the last quarter of 2014 stated that J. R. R. Tolkien's description of the grim region of Mordor "resonates strongly with contemporary accounts of the Black Country", in his famed novel The Lord of the Rings. Indeed, in the Elvish Sindarin language, Mor-Dor means Dark (or Black) Land.

Brewing
The Black Country is notable for its small breweries and brewpubs which continued brewing their own beer alongside the larger breweries which opened in the Industrial Revolution. Small breweries and brewpubs in the Black Country include Bathams in Brierley Hill, Holdens in Woodsetton, Sarah Hughes in Sedgley, Black Country Ales in Lower Gornal and the Old Swan Inn (Ma Pardoe's) in Netherton. They produce light and dark mild ales, as well as malt-accented bitters and seasonal strong ales.

Media
The Black Country is served by the regional television services - BBC West Midlands, ITV Central and Made in Birmingham. Three region wide radio stations that broadcast to the area are BBC Radio WM, Hits Radio Black Country & Shropshire and Greatest Hits Radio Black Country & Shropshire. Both Free Radio (formerly BRMB (Birmingham and Beacon Radio Wolverhampton) and Greatest Hits Radio Black Country and Shropshire (formerly Beacon 303, Radio WABC, Classic Gold Digital, Gold and Free Radio 80s) have broadcast since 1976 from transmitters at Turner's Hill and Sedgley, with the studios which were previously located in Wolverhampton being moved to Oldbury and Birmingham respectively.

The area also has three other radio stations which only officially cover part of the region. Black Country Radio (born from a merger of 102.5 The Bridge and BCCR) who are based in Brierley Hill, and Ambur Radio who broadcast from Walsall.

The Express and Star is one of the region's two daily newspapers, publishing eleven local editions from its Wolverhampton headquarters and its five district offices (for example the Dudley edition is considerably different in content from the Wolverhampton or Stafford editions). It is the biggest selling regional paper in the UK. Incidentally, the Express and Star, traditionally a Black Country paper, has expanded to the point where they sell copies from vendors in Birmingham city centre.

The Black Country Mail – a local edition of the Birmingham Mail – is the region's other daily newspaper. Its regional base is in Walsall town centre.

Established in 1973, from a site in High Street, Cradley Heath, the Black Country Bugle has also contributed to the region's history. It started as a fortnightly publication, but due to its widespread appeal, now appears on a weekly basis. It is now located above the Dudley Archives and Local History Centre on Tipton Road, Dudley.

title: Black Country


text:
Tupi people

The Tupi people, a subdivision of the Tupi-Guarani linguistic families, were one of the largest groups of indigenous peoples in Brazil before its colonization. Scholars believe that while they first settled in the Amazon rainforest, from about 2,900 years ago the Tupi started to migrate southward and gradually occupied the Atlantic coast of Southeast Brazil.

Many Tupi people today are merged with the Guaraní people, forming the Tupi–Guarani languages. Guarani languages are linguistically different from the Tupian languages.

History
The Tupi people inhabited 3/4 of all of Brazil's coast when the Portuguese first arrived there. In 1500, their population was estimated at 1 million people, nearly equal to the population of Portugal at the time. They were divided into tribes, each tribe numbering from 300 to 2,000 people. Some examples of these tribes are: Tupiniquim, Tupinambá, Potiguara, Tabajara, Caetés, Temiminó, Tamoios. The Tupi were adept agriculturalists; they grew cassava, corn, sweet potatoes, beans, peanuts, tobacco, squash, cotton and many others. There was not a unified Tupi identity despite the fact that they spoke a common language.

European colonization
Upon discovering the existence of the Tupi people, it was assumed by Portuguese settlers that they lacked any sort of religion, a belief that began the process of assimilating the Tupi to Christianity. The settlers began erecting villages for the Tupi, known as aldeias, with the intention of more disciplined religious conversion and institutionalization of European customs. Aside from being assimilated, the Tupi were found to be of use to the Portuguese, who required laborers for cultivating and shipping their exports. This use in harvesting resources led to their eventual enslavement and in turn, the spread of fatal European diseases on the plantations they worked at. This combination of factors nearly led to their complete annihilation, with the exception of a few isolated communities. The remnants of these tribes are today confined to indigenous territories or acculturated to some degree into the dominant society.

Cannibalism
According to primary source accounts by primarily European writers, the Tupi were divided into several tribes which would constantly engage in war with each other. In these wars the Tupi would normally try to capture their enemies to kill later in cannibalistic rituals. The warriors captured from other Tupi tribes were eaten as it was believed by them that this would lead to their strength being absorbed and digested; thus, in fear of absorbing weakness, they chose only to sacrifice warriors perceived to be strong and brave. For the Tupi warriors, even when prisoners, it was a great honor to die valiantly during battle or to display courage during the festivities leading to the sacrifice. The Tupi have also been documented to eat the remains of dead relatives as a form of honoring them.

The practice of cannibalism among the Tupi was made famous in Europe by Hans Staden, a German soldier, mariner, and mercenary, traveling to Brazil to seek a fortune, who was captured by the Tupi in 1552. In his account published in 1557, he tells that the Tupi carried him to their village where it was claimed he was to be devoured at the next festivity. There, he allegedly won the friendship of a powerful chief, whom he cured of a disease, and his life was spared.

Cannibalistic rituals among Tupi and other tribes in Brazil decreased steadily after European contact and religious intervention. When Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish conquistador, arrived in Santa Catarina in 1541, for instance, he attempted to ban cannibalistic practices in the name of the King of Spain.

Because our understanding of Tupi cannibalism relies mostly on primary source accounts of primarily European writers, the very existence of cannibalism has been disputed by some in academic circles. William Arens seeks to discredit Staden's and other writers' accounts of cannibalism in his book The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology & Anthropophagy, where he claims that when concerning the Tupinambá, "rather than dealing with an instance of serial documentation of cannibalism, we are more likely confronting only one source of dubious testimony which has been incorporated almost verbatim into the written reports of others claiming to be eyewitnesses".

Most Brazilian scholars, however, attest to the cultural centrality of cannibalism in Tupian culture. Anthropologist Darcy Ribeiro who had deeply studied the historical accounts about the Tupi, reported that the Ka'apor people of the Tupi-Guaraní linguistic and cultural family confirmed that their ancestors had practiced anthropophagical rituals similar to the ones described in the 16th century. Other Brazilian scholars have criticized Arens for what they perceived as historical negationism, and for ignoring important sources (Jesuit letters) and historical and anthropological studies (Viveiros de Castro, Florestan Fernandes, Estevão Pinto, Hélène Clastres), many of them dealing directly with indigenous peoples, that point to the direction of anthropophagy being well established as a social and cultural practice. He was particularly criticized for trying to discredit the association of the Tupi with savagery, not by realizing that the Europeans failed to comprehend the meaning of traditional practices such as cannibalism, but by promptly negating their existence altogether.

Race-mixing and Cunhadismo
Many indigenous peoples were important for the formation of the Brazilian people, but the main group was the Tupi. When the Portuguese explorers arrived in Brazil in the 16th century, the Tupi were the first indigenous group to have contact with them. Soon, a process of mixing between Portuguese settlers and indigenous women started. The Portuguese colonists rarely brought women, making the native women the "breeding matrix of the Brazilian people". When the first Europeans arrived, the phenomenon of "cunhadismo" (from Portuguese cunhado, "brother in law") began to spread by the colony. Cunhadismo was an old native tradition of incorporating strangers to their community. The Natives offered the Portuguese an Indigenous girl as wife. Once he agreed, he formed a bond of kinship with all the Natives of the tribe. Polygyny, a common practice among South American Indigenous people, was quickly adopted by European settlers. This way, a single European man could have dozens of indigenous wives (temericós). Cunhadismo was used as recruitment of labour. The Portuguese could have many temericós and thus a huge number of Indigenous relatives who were induced to work for him, especially to cut pau-brasil and take it to the ships on the coast. In the process, a large mixed-race (mameluco) population was formed, which in fact occupied Brazil. Without the practice of cunhadismo, the Portuguese colonization was impractical. The number of Portuguese men in Brazil was very small and Portuguese women were even fewer in number. The proliferation of mixed-race people in the wombs of indigenous women provided for the occupation of the territory and the consolidation of the Portuguese presence in the region.

Influence in Brazil
Although the Tupi population largely disappeared because of European diseases to which they had no resistance or because of slavery, a large population of maternal Tupi ancestry occupied much of Brazilian territory, taking the ancient traditions to several points of the country. Darcy Ribeiro wrote that the features of the first Brazilians were much more Tupi than Portuguese, and even the language that they spoke was a Tupi-based language, named Nheengatu or Língua Geral, a lingua franca in Brazil until the 18th century. The region of São Paulo was the biggest in the proliferation of Mamelucos, who in the 17th century under the name of Bandeirantes, spread throughout the Brazilian territory, from the Amazon rainforest to the extreme South. They were responsible for the major expansion of the Iberian culture in the interior of Brazil. They acculturated the indigenous tribes who lived in isolation, and took the language of the colonizer, which was not Portuguese yet, but Nheengatu itself, to the most inhospitable corners of the colony. Nheengatu is still spoken in certain regions of the Amazon, although the Tupi-speaking Natives did not live there. The Nheengatu language, as in other regions of the country, was introduced there by Bandeirantes from São Paulo in the 17th century. The way of life of the Old Paulistas could almost be confused with the Natives. Within the family, only Nheengatu was spoken. Agriculture, hunting, fishing and gathering of fruits were also based on indigenous traditions. What differentiated the Old Paulistas from the Tupi was the use of clothes, salt, metal tools, weapons and other European items. When these areas of large Tupi influence started to be integrated into the market economy, Brazilian society gradually started to lose its Tupi characteristics. The Portuguese language became dominant and Língua Geral virtually disappeared. The rustic indigenous techniques of production were replaced by European ones, in order to elevate the capacity of exportation. Brazilian Portuguese absorbed many words from Tupi. Some examples of Portuguese words that came from Tupi are: mingau, mirim, soco, cutucar, tiquinho, perereca, tatu. The names of several local fauna – such as arara ("macaw"), jacaré ("South American alligator"), tucano ("toucan") – and flora – e.g. mandioca ("manioc") and abacaxi ("pineapple") – are also derived from the Tupi language. A number of places and cities in modern Brazil are named in Tupi (Itaquaquecetuba, Pindamonhangaba, Caruaru, Ipanema). Anthroponyms include Ubirajara, Ubiratã, Moema, Jussara, Jurema, Janaína. Tupi surnames do exist, but they do not imply any real Tupi ancestry; rather they were adopted as a manner to display Brazilian nationalism.

The Tupinambá tribe is fictitiously portrayed in Nelson Pereira dos Santos' satirical 1971 film How Tasty Was My Little Frenchman (Como Era Gostoso o Meu Francês). Its name is also adapted by science: Tupinambis is a genus of tegus, arguably the best-known lizards of Brazil.

The large offshore Tupi oil field discovered off the coast of Brazil in 2006 was named in honor of the Tupi people.

The Guaraní are a different native group that inhabits southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia and northern Argentina and speaks the distinct Guaraní languages, but these are in the same language family as Tupi.

Legacy
The Tupi people had a great cultural influence on the countries they inhabited. Innumerable people, streets, neighborhoods, cities, rivers, animals, fruits, plants, football clubs, companies in Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay are named in Guarani.

Tupi-Guarani placenames in other countries:

The Tupi people were present in almost all of South America, excluding Chile.

Venezuela
Cabure, Aracua Ara kua ("the hole of the Ara (bird)"), Cagua, Maracay Mbarakaja'y ("kitten"), Aragua, Taguay, Yaguaratal, Caigua, Carapita, Yaguaracual, Taguapire, Carupano, Yaguaraparo, Carupe, Irapa Yrapa ("all streams"), Tabay Táva'í ("small town"), Uracoa, Aragüita, Tucupita Tuku pytã ("red lobster"), Guarapo, Chaguaramas Jaguaráma ("land of jaguars"), Tuja, Cuyagua, Chivacoa, Urucure Urukure'a ("Burrowing owl"), Mucuragua, Cuara, Tucani Tukã'í ("small toucan"), Jacuque, Churuguara, Tacuato Taguato ("Falcon"), Aguay, Paraguaná Peninsula Paragua na ("crown-like or crown-shaped").
 * (Venezuelan states with Tupi-origin names; Apure Apyre ("Extremity, tip, end or border"), Aragua Ara gua ("The macaws Ara (bird)"), La Guaira Guayraka ("Dolphin"), Yaracuy Jarara kúi ("falling jararaca"))

Guyana
Arakaka, Kariakay Karia'y kaysa ("barrier of the brave") Iguapa Yguapa ("all coves")

French Guiana
Cayenne, the francization of the name Kỹiña ("mean chili pepper")

Suriname
Paramaribo Parama ývo ("down the sea"). (Referring to the Caribbean Sea, since although Suriname is part of the Caribbean, it is near the Amazon Delta, in the South Atlantic Ocean).

Colombia
Buriticá Mburiti ka ("from Mauritia flexuosa"), Ituango, Apía, Ibagué yvakue ("fallen fruit or fruit peel"), Acuata, Arauca, Tibacuy, Mocoa, El Jagua, Iguambi, Itagüí ("from the rocks"), Yacare, Teranguara, Chachagüí, Puente Aranda, Catambuco, Aguayo

Panama
Ipetí ''ypetĩ ("duck's beak")

Nicaragua
El Aguay Aguai ("fruit tree")

Ecuador
Urcuqui, Timbuyacu, Ambuquí, Timbiré

Peru
Aguaytía Aguai'ty ("plantation of aguai"), Curiyaca, Imambari

Bolivia
Yacuiba, Paraimiri, Itaimbeguasu, Tatarenda, Saipurú, Capirenda, Itay, Ibamiragera, Carandaytí, Ipaguasú, Abapó, Timboy, Caraparí, Urubichá, Kuruguakua, Guanay, Yaguarú and Rogagua.

Uruguay
Tacuarembó, Pa'i Sandu, Chapicuy ("worn out"), Sarandí del Yí Sarãndy del Y ("bushes of the Yí"), Balneario Iporá ("beautiful watering place"), El Ombú, Yacuy (Salto), Sarandí del Arapey Sarãndy del Árape'y ("bushes of the daily tasks river"), Sarandí Grande, Ituzaingó and Aiguá

Notable Tupi people

 * Catarina Paraguaçu, 1528—1586
 * Arariboia, founder of Niterói, Brazil
 * Cunhambebe
 * Alex Pereira

title: Tupi people