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Sabbatai Zevi

Sabbatai Zevi (שַׁבְּתַי צְבִי; Sabetay Sevi; August 1, 1626 – c. September 17, 1676) was an Ottoman Jewish mystic, and ordained rabbi from Smyrna (now İzmir, Turkey). He was likely of Ashkenazi origin. Active throughout the Ottoman Empire, Zevi claimed to be the long-awaited Jewish Messiah and founded the Sabbatean movement.

Upon arriving in Constantinople in February 1666, Sabbatai was imprisoned on the order of the grand vizier Köprülüzade Fazıl Ahmed Pasha. In September of that same year, after being moved from different prisons around the capital to the imperial courts' seat in Adrianople (now Edirne), he was judged on accusations of fomenting sedition. Sabbatai was given the choice of either facing death by some type of ordeal or of converting to Islam by the Grand Vizier representing Sultan Mehmed IV. He seems to have chosen the latter course, donning a turban from that time on. The heads of the Ottoman state then rewarded him with a generous pension for complying with their political and religious plans. About 300 families who followed Zevi also converted to Islam and became known as Dönme.

Subsequently, the Ottomans banished him twice, first to Constantinople, and, when he was heard singing Psalms with Jews, to a small town known today as Ulcinj in present-day Montenegro. He later died in isolation.

Early life and education
Sabbatai Zevi was born in the Ottoman city of Smyrna, supposedly on Tisha B'Av 1626, the Jewish holy day of mourning. In Hebrew Sabbatai means Saturn, and in Jewish tradition "the reign of Sabbatai", the highest planet, was often linked to the advent of the Messiah. Zevi's family were Romaniote Jews from Patras; his father, Mordecai, was a poultry dealer in the Morea. During the war between Turkey and Venice, Smyrna became the center of Levantine trade and Mordecai became the Smyrna agent of an English trading house, achieving some wealth in the process.

In accordance with the prevailing Jewish custom of the time, Sabbatai's father had him study the Talmud. He attended a yeshiva under the rabbi of Smyrna, Joseph Escapa. Studies in halakha, or Jewish law, did not appeal to him, but apparently Zevi did attain proficiency in the Talmud. At the same time, he was fascinated by mysticism and the Kabbalah and was influenced by Isaac Luria. The practical Kabbalah, whose devotees used asceticism to communicate with God and the angels, to predict the future and perform all sorts of miracles, was especially appealing to him. As well as Luria's writings, he read the Zohar and practiced asceticism and purification exercises called tikkunim.

Influence of English millenarianism
During the first half of the 17th century, millenarian ideas about the approach of the messianic time were popular. They included ideas about the redemption of the Jews and their return to the land of Israel, with independent sovereignty. The apocalyptic year was identified by Christian authors as 1666 and millenarianism was widespread in England. This belief was so prevalent that Menasseh Ben Israel, in his letter to Oliver Cromwell and the Rump Parliament, appealed to it as a reason to readmit Jews into England, saying, "[T]he opinions of many Christians and mine do concur herein, that we both believe that the restoring time of our Nation into their native country is very near at hand."

As he was the agent for an English trading house in Smyrna, Sabbatai's father must have had business contact with English people and it is possible that his son learned something about Western millenarian expectations at home. Scholars are still assessing how much influence English and Dutch Calvinist millenarianism had on the messianic movement that developed around Zevi's activities.

Claims to being the expected Jewish Messiah
Along with general messianic beliefs, there was another computation, based on a passage in the Zohar (a famous Jewish mystical text), that Israel would be redeemed by the long-awaited Jewish Messiah in 1648.

In 1648, Sabbatai announced to his followers in Smyrna that he was the anticipated messianic redeemer. To prove this, he started to pronounce the Tetragrammaton, an act which Judaism prohibited to all but the High Priest of Israel in the Temple in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur. For scholars acquainted with rabbinical and Kabbalistic literature, this act was therefore highly symbolic. Sabbatai also claimed that he could fly, but told his followers that he couldn't do so in public because they were 'not worthy enough' to witness such a sight. He also claimed to have visions of God. Sabbatai revealed his claim to being the Messiah early on to Isaac Silveyra and Moses Pinheiro, the latter a brother-in-law of the Italian rabbi and Kabbalist Joseph Ergas.

However, at a mere twenty-two, Sabbatai was still too young to be thought of as an established rabbinic authority; his influence on the local community was limited. Even though he had led the pious life of a mystic in Smyrna for several years, the older, more established rabbinic leadership was suspicious of his activities and the local college of rabbis. Headed by his teacher, Joseph Escapa, they kept a watchful eye on him. When his messianic pretensions became too bold, he and his followers were subjected to an edict of ḥerem, a type of excommunication in Judaism.

In about 1651 (according to others, 1654), the rabbis banished Sabbatai and his disciples from Smyrna. It is uncertain where he went from there, but by 1658, he surfaced in Constantinople. There, he met a preacher, Abraham Yachini a disciple of the Talmudic scholar Joseph Trani, who confirmed his messianic mission. Yachini is said to have forged a manuscript in archaic characters which bore testimony to Sabbatai's claim to being the Messiah. It was entitled The Great Wisdom of Solomon, and began: "I, Abraham, was confined in a cave for forty years, and I wondered greatly that the time of miracles did not arrive. Then was heard a voice proclaiming, 'A son will be born in the Hebrew year 5386 [ the year 1626 CE ] to Mordecai Zevi; and he will be called Shabbethai. He will humble the great dragon; ... he, the true Messiah, will sit upon My throne.'"

In Salonica, Cairo, and Jerusalem
Armed with this document, Sabbatai chose Salonica, at that time a center of Kabbalism, as his base. Proclaiming himself the Messiah or "anointed one," he gained a large following and put on all sorts of mystical events—e.g., the celebration of his marriage as the "One Without End" (the Ein Sof) with the Torah, preparing a solemn festival to which he invited his friends. But the rabbis of Salonica, headed by Rabbi Hiyya Abraham Di Boton, banished him from the city and sources differ as to the route he then took, with Alexandria, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, and Smyrna mentioned as temporary bases. Eventually he settled in Cairo, where he lived for about two years (1660–1662).

There he befriended Raphael Joseph Halabi (of Aleppo), a wealthy and influential Jew who held the high position of mint-master and tax-farmer in Cairo under the Ottoman government. Raphael Joseph led an ascetic life, which included fasting, bathing in cold water, and scourging himself at night, and used his great wealth for charity, supporting poor Talmudists and Kabbalists, fifty of whom reportedly dined at his table regularly. He became a supporter and promoter of Sabbatai's messianic claims.

In about 1663 Sabbatai moved on to Jerusalem where he resumed his former ascetic practice of frequent fasting and other penances. Many saw this as proof of his extraordinary piety. He was said to have a good voice, and attracted large audiences when he sang psalms all night long, or Spanish love-songs to which he gave mystical interpretations. At other times he prayed and cried at the graves of pious men and women or distributed sweetmeats to children on the streets. Gradually he gathered a larger circle of adherents.

At the time the Jewish community in Jerusalem was in dire need of money to pay the heavy taxes levied by the Ottoman government. Known as the favourite of the rich and powerful Raphael Joseph Halabi in Cairo, Sabbatai was chosen to appeal to him for money and support and his success in getting the funds to pay off the Turks raised his prestige. His followers dated his public career from this journey to Cairo.

Marriage to Sarah
Another event that took place during his second stay in Cairo helped spread Sabbatai's fame in the Jewish world. During the Khmelnytsky Uprising in Poland, a young Jewish orphan named Sarah was found by Christians and sent to a convent to be cared for. After ten years, aged about sixteen, she escaped (she claimed through a miracle), and made her way to Amsterdam and then to Livorno where, according to reports, she led a life of prostitution while also conceiving the notion that she would become the bride of the Messiah, whose appearance was thought to be imminent.

When a report of her adventures reached Cairo, Sabbatai claimed that such a consort had been promised to him in a dream because he, as the Messiah, was bound to fall in love with an unchaste woman. He reportedly sent messengers to Livorno to bring Sarah to him, and they were married at Halabi's house. Her beauty and eccentricity reportedly helped him gain new followers. Through her a new romantic and licentious element entered Sabbatai's career. The overturning of her past life was interpreted by Sabbatai's followers as further confirmation of his messiahship, following the biblical story of the prophet Hosea, who had also been commanded to take a "wife of whoredom" as the first symbolic act of his calling.

Nathan of Gaza
With Halabi's financial and political backing, a charming wife, and many additional followers, Sabbatai returned to Jerusalem in triumph. Passing through the city of Gaza, which at the time had an important Jewish community, he met Nathan Benjamin Levi, known since as Nathan of Gaza (נתן העזתי), who became very active in Sabbatai's messianic career, serving as his right-hand man and declaring himself to be the risen Elijah, who, it was predicted, would proclaim the arrival of the Messiah. In 1665, Nathan announced that the Messianic Age would begin in 1666 with the conquest of the world without bloodshed. The Messiah would lead the Ten Lost Tribes back to the Holy Land, "riding on a lion with a seven-headed dragon in its jaws".

The rabbis of Jerusalem viewed Sabbatai's movement with great suspicion, and threatened its followers with excommunication. Acknowledging that Jerusalem was not the best place to carry out his plans, Sabbatai left for his native Smyrna, and Nathan proclaimed that henceforth Gaza rather than Jerusalem would be the sacred city. On his way from Jerusalem to Smyrna, Sabbatai was greeted enthusiastically in Aleppo. In Smyrna, which he reached in the autumn of 1665, great homage was paid to him. After some hesitation, he declared himself to be the expected Messiah during Rosh Hashanah in 1665; his declaration was made in the synagogue, with the blowing of shofars, and shouts of "Long live our King, our Messiah!"

His followers then began to refer to him with the title AMIRAH, a Hebrew acronym for the phrase "Our Lord and King, his Majesty be exalted" (Adoneinu Malkeinu Yarum Hodo).

Proclaimed messiah
Assisted by his wife, Sabbatai became the leader of the community and used his power to crush any opposition. He deposed the existing rabbi of Smyrna, Aaron Lapapa, and appointed Chaim Benveniste in his place. His fame began to extend far and wide. Italy, Germany, and the Netherlands were already centres of his messianic movement, and the Jews of Hamburg and Amsterdam learned of the events in Smyrna from trustworthy Christians. Henry Oldenburg, a distinguished German savant who became the first secretary of the Royal Society, wrote to Baruch Spinoza (Spinozae Epistolae No 33): "All the world here is talking of a rumour of the return of the Israelites ... to their own country. ... Should the news be confirmed, it may bring about a revolution in all things."

Sabbatai's followers soon included many prominent rabbis, such as Isaac Aboab da Fonseca, Moses Raphael de Aguilar, Moshe ben Yonatan Galante, Moses ben Mordecai Zacuto, and Chaim Benveniste. Benjamin Musaphia, an adherent of Spinoza, also became a follower. Meanwhile, fantastic reports circulated and were widely believed. For example, it was said, "In the north of Scotland a ship had appeared with silken sails and ropes, manned by sailors who spoke Hebrew. The flag bore the inscription 'The Twelve Tribes of Israel'." The Jewish community of Avignon, France prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom in the spring of 1666.

Jewish readiness to believe Sabbatai Zevi's messianic claims may largely be explained by the desperate state of European Jewry in the mid-17th century. The bloody pogroms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky during the cossack riots had wiped out an estimated 100,000 Jews in Eastern Europe (about one third of Europe's Jewish population at the time) and destroyed many centres of Jewish learning and communal life. For most of the Jews of Europe, therefore, this was a propitious moment for the messiah to deliver the promised salvation.

Spread of Sabbatai Zevi's influence
Probably with his consent, Sabbatai's adherents planned to abolish many ritualistic observances because, according to a minority opinion in the Talmud, in the messianic time there would no longer be holy obligations. The fast of the Tenth of Tevet became a day of feasting and rejoicing. Samuel Primo, who became Sabbatai's secretary when he went to Smyrna, directed the following circular to all of the Jews in the name of the Messiah:

"The first-begotten Son of God, Shabbethai Tebi, Messiah and Redeemer of the people of Israel, to all the sons of Israel, Peace! Since ye have been deemed worthy to behold the great day and the fulfilment of God's word by the Prophets, your lament and sorrow must be changed into joy, and your fasting into merriment; for ye shall weep no more. Rejoice with song and melody, and change the day formerly spent in sadness and sorrow into a day of jubilee, because I have appeared."

Primo's message was considered blasphemous, as Sabbatai wanted to celebrate his own birthday rather than the holy day. There was outrage and dissension in the communities, while many of the leaders who had been sympathetic to the movement were shocked by such radical innovations. Solomon Algazi, a prominent Talmudist of Smyrna, and other members of the rabbinate who opposed the abolition of the fast, narrowly escaped death at the hands of Sabbatai's followers.

In Constantinople
At the beginning of 1666, Sabbatai left Smyrna for Constantinople (İstanbul in present-day Turkey), possibly forced out by city officials. Since Nathan of Gaza had prophesied that, once in Constantinople, Sabbatai would place the sultan's crown on his own head, the grand vizier, Köprülü Fazıl Ahmet Paşa, ordered his immediate arrest and had him imprisoned, maybe to avoid any doubts as to the power still wielded by the Turkish Sultanate. However, his imprisonment discouraged neither Sabbatai nor his followers. He was treated well in prison, perhaps because of bribes which seems to have strengthened his followers' belief in him. Meanwhile Nathan of Gaza, Abraham Yachini and others circulated fabulous reports about the miraculous deeds "the Messiah" was supposedly performing in the Turkish capital, and the messianic expectations in the Jewish diasporas continued to rise.

At Abydos (Migdal Oz)
After two months' imprisonment in Constantinople, Sabbatai was moved to the state prison-castle at Abydos accompanied by some of his friends. The Sabbataians then renamed the fortress Migdal Oz (Tower [of] Strength). As Sabbatai had arrived on the day preceding Passover, he slew a paschal lamb for himself and his followers, and ate it with its fat, a violation of Jewish Law. He is said to have pronounced over it the benediction: "Blessed be God who hath restored again that which was forbidden."

The immense sums sent to him by his rich followers, the charms of the queenly Sarah, and the cooperation shown by the Turkish officials and others enabled Sabbatai to show off almost royal splendour in the prison at Abydos. Accounts of his life there were exaggerated and spread among Jews in Europe, Asia, and Africa, and in some parts of Europe, Jews began to unroof their houses and prepare for a new "exodus". In almost every synagogue, Sabbatai's initials were posted, and prayers for him were inserted in the following form: "Bless our Lord and King, the holy and righteous Sabbatai Zevi, the Messiah of the God of Jacob." In Hamburg, the council introduced the custom of praying for Sabbatai not only on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath), but also on Monday and Thursday; unbelievers were compelled to remain in the synagogue and join in the prayer with a loud Amen. Sabbatai's picture was printed together with that of King David in most of the prayer-books, along with his Kabbalistic formulas and penances.

Such innovations caused great commotion in some communities. In Moravia excitement reached such a pitch that the government had to intervene, while at Sale, Morocco, the emir ordered a persecution of the Jews. During this period Sabbatai declared the fasts of the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av (his birthday) would henceforth be feast-days, and contemplated converting the Day of Atonement to one of celebration.

Nehemiah ha-Kohen
While Sabbatai was in Abydos prison an incident occurred which ultimately led to his downfall. Polish Jewish communities, hearing of Sabbatai's Messianic claims, sent the Kabbalist Nehemiah Ha-Kohen to interview him in his captivity. Nehemiah reached Abydos, after a journey of three months at the beginning of September, 1666. The meeting did not go well - Nehemiah declared Sabbatai to be an impostor. Some Sabbataians are said to have contemplated murdering Nehemiah as a rival.

Conversion to Islam
Nehemiah, however, escaped to Constantinople, where he pretended to embrace Islam to get an audience with the kaymakam to tell him of Sabbatai's ambitions. The kaymakam informed Sultan Mehmed IV and Sabbatai was removed from Abydos and taken to Adrianople, where the vizier gave him three choices; subject himself to a trial of his divinity in the form of a volley of arrows (should the archers miss, his divinity would be proven); be impaled; or convert to Islam.

On the following day (September 16, 1666) Zevi appeared before the sultan, cast off his Jewish garb and put a Turkish turban on his head, thereby accomplishing his conversion to Islam. Satisfied, the sultan rewarded Sabbatai by conferring on him the title (Mahmed) Effendi, and appointing him as his doorkeeper on a generous salary. Sarah and approximately 300 families among his followers also converted to Islam. Thereafter these new Muslims were known as Dönme. Sabbatai was ordered to take a second wife to confirm his conversion. Some days afterwards, he wrote to the community in Smyrna: "God has made me an Ishmaelite; He commanded, and it was done. The ninth day of my regeneration."

Disillusionment
Sabbatai's conversion devastated his followers, and Muslims and Christians alike ridiculed them. In spite of his apostasy, many of his adherents still clung to their belief in him, claiming that his conversion was a part of the messianic scheme. Those such as Nathan of Gaza and Primo who were interested in maintaining the movement encouraged such belief. In many communities, the Seventeenth of Tammuz and the Ninth of Av were still observed as feast-days in spite of bans and excommunications by the rabbis.

At times Sabbatai assumed the role of a pious Muslim and reviled Judaism; at others he associated with Jews as one of their own faith. In March, 1668, he announced that he had been filled with the Holy Spirit at Passover, and had received a revelation.

Either Sabbatai or one of his followers published a mystical work claiming he was the true Messiah in spite of his conversion and that his goal was to bring thousands of Muslims to Judaism. However, he told the sultan that he was trying to convert Jews to Islam, and the sultan permitted him to associate with other Jews and preach in their synagogues.

Last years
Gradually the Turks tired of Sabbatai's antics, ending his doorkeeper's salary. At the beginning of 1673, the sultan had Zevi exiled to Ulcinj (Dulcigno, Ulkum) where his wife died in 1674. Zevi then married Esther, the daughter of rabbi Joseph Filosoff of Thessaloniki.

Death
In August 1676, Sabbatai wrote to the Jewish community in Berat, Albania, requesting religious books. Shortly thereafter, he died in isolation—according to some accounts, on September 17, 1676, the High Holy Day of Yom Kippur. Upon his death, his widow, brother, and children by his first wife moved to Thessaloniki.

His tomb was believed to have been in Berat at a tekke built in the yard of the Imperial Mosque (Xhamia e Mbretit), where a tomb stood until 1967. Research done in 1985 suggested that he was actually buried in Dulcigno. His biographer, Gershom Scholem, mentioned that his tomb was visited by Dönme pilgrims from Salonika until the early 20th century.

"By the 1680s, the Dönme had congregated in Salonica, the cosmopolitan and majority-Jewish city in Ottoman Greece. For the next 250 years, they would lead an independent communal life—intermarrying, doing business together, maintaining their own shrines, and handing down their secret traditions."

Legacy
By the 19th century, the Dönme had become prominent in the tobacco and textile trades. They established progressive schools and some members became politically active. Some joined the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), the revolutionary party known as the Young Turks. With the major Dönmeh city of Selanik (now Thessaloniki) becoming part of Greece in 1912, Greece expelled the Muslims, including the Dönme, from its territory, with most migrating to Turkey. This was finalized with the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. By the mid-20th century they were becoming highly assimilated.

Although little is known about them, various groups called Dönme continue to follow Sabbatai Zevi today, mostly in Turkey. Estimates of the numbers vary. As of 2016 there are 'perhaps 2,000' believing Dönme still living in Turkey, though this is dwarfed by the numbers of individual with descent from the group. They have been described as presenting themselves as Muslim in public whilst practising their own forms of messianic/mystical Jewish beliefs in private. Some claim that Dönme still play a role in Turkish politics (one of interference), particularly some political parties in Turkey like the MHP. However, others dismiss it as an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

The Dönme eventually split into three sects, each with quite different beliefs, as Ottoman Jewish scholars Abraham Danon, and Joseph Néhama pointed out in French-language Jewish Studies journal articles over a hundred years ago. In the 1930s a comprehensive study on the history of the sects was also published in French by Abraham Galanté. More recently, Professor Cengiz Şişman has published a new study called The Burden of Silence. According to a review published in the Israeli newspaper The Jerusalem Post, the branch known as Karakaş follow Sufi-influenced practices, while the Kapancıs have not been influenced by Islam at all and are now completely secular.

A house in the centre of İzmir close to the Agora has long been associated with Sabbetai Zevi. Having been left in ruins as recently as 2015, it has since been restored to its original style.

title: Sabbatai Zevi


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Jarrow

Jarrow ( or ) is a town in South Tyneside in the county of Tyne and Wear, England. Historically in County Durham, it is on the south bank of the River Tyne, about 3 miles from the east coast. The 2011 census area classed Hebburn and The Boldons as part of the town, it had a population of 43,431. It is home to the southern portal of the Tyne Tunnel and 5 miles east of Newcastle upon Tyne.

In the eighth century, St Paul's Monastery in Jarrow (now Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey) was the home of The Venerable Bede, who is regarded as the greatest Anglo-Saxon scholar and the father of English history. The town is part of the historic County Palatine of Durham. From the middle of the 19th century until 1935, Jarrow was a centre for shipbuilding, and was the starting point of the Jarrow March against unemployment in 1936.

Toponymy
Jarrow's name is first recorded in the 8th century. It derives from the Gyrwe, an Anglian tribe that inhabited the neighbourhood. The Gyrwe's name means "fen dwellers", perhaps in reference to Jarrow Slake (a now-drained wetland that lay at the confluence of the Tyne and the Don). The place-name would normally have developed into Yarrow in modern English, but as with Jesmond, Norman influence resulted in the initial becoming.

Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey

The Monastery of Paul of Tarsus in Jarrow, part of the twin foundation Monkwearmouth–Jarrow Abbey, was once the home of The Venerable Bede, whose most notable works include Ecclesiastical History of the English People and the translation of the Gospel of John into Old English. Along with the abbey at Wearmouth, Jarrow became a centre of learning and had the largest library north of the Alps, primarily due to the widespread travels of Benedict Biscop, its founder. In 794 Jarrow became the second target in England of the Vikings, who had plundered Lindisfarne in 793. The monastery was later dissolved by Henry VIII. The ruins of the monastery are now associated with and partly built into the present-day church of St. Paul, which stands on the site. One wall of the church contains the oldest stained glass window in the world, dating from about AD 600. Just beside the monastery is Jarrow Hall, a working museum dedicated to the life and times of Bede. This incorporates Jarrow Hall, a grade II listed building and significant local landmark.

The world's oldest complete Bible, written in Latin to be presented to the then Pope (Gregory II), was produced at this monastery – the Codex Amiatinus. It is currently safeguarded in the Laurentian Library, Florence, Italy.

Originally three copies of the Bible were commissioned by Ceolfrid in 692. This date has been established as the double monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow secured a grant of additional land to raise the 2000 head of cattle needed to produce the vellum for the Bible's pages. Saint Ceolfrid accompanied one copy (originally intended for Gregory I) on its journey to be presented to Gregory II, but he died en route to Rome. The book later appears in the ninth century in the Abbey of the Saviour, Monte Amiata in Tuscany (hence the description "Amiatinus"), where it remained until 1786 when it passed to the Laurentian Library in Florence.

19th century to present
Jarrow remained a small mid-Tyne town until the introduction of heavy industries such as coal mining and shipbuilding. Charles Mark Palmer established a shipyard – Palmer's Shipbuilding and Iron Company – in 1852 and became the first armour-plate manufacturer in the world. John Bowes, the first iron screw collier, revived the Tyne coal trade, and Palmer's was also responsible for the first modern cargo ship, as well as a number of notable warships. Around 1,000 ships were built at the yard, they also produced small fishing boats to catch eel within the River Tyne, a delicacy at the time. Jarrow Town Hall was erected in Grange Road and officially opened in 1904.

Palmer's employed as much as 80% of the town's working population until its closure in 1933 following purchase by National Shipbuilders Securities Ltd. (NSS). This organisation had been set up by Stanley Baldwin's Conservative government in the 1920s, but the first public statement had been made in 1930 whilst the Labour Party was in office. The aim of NSS was to reduce capacity within the British shipyards. In fact Palmer's yard was relatively efficient and modern, but had serious financial problems. As from 1935, Olympic, the sister ship of RMS Titanic, was partially demolished at Jarrow, being towed in 1937 to Inverkeithing, Scotland for final scrapping.

The Great Depression brought so much hardship to Jarrow that the town was described by Life as "cursed." The closure of the shipyard was responsible for one of the events for which Jarrow is best known. Jarrow is marked in history as the starting point in 1936 of the Jarrow March to London to protest against unemployment in Britain. Jarrow Member of Parliament (MP) Ellen Wilkinson wrote about these events in her book The Town That Was Murdered (1939). Some doubt has been cast by historians as to how effective events such as the Jarrow March actually were but there is some evidence that they stimulated interest in regenerating 'distressed areas'. 1938 saw the establishment of a ship breaking yard and engineering works in the town, followed by the creation of a steelworks in 1939.

The Jarrow rail disaster was a train collision that occurred on the 17 December 1915 at the Bede junction on a North Eastern Railway line. The collision was caused by a signalman's error and seventeen people died in the collision.

The Second World War revived the town's fortunes as the Royal Navy was in need of ships to be built. After 1945 the shipbuilding industries were nationalised. The last shipyard in the town closed in 1980.

In August 2014 a group of mothers from Darlington organised a march from Jarrow to London to oppose the privatisation of the NHS. The march took place in September 2014 and 3,000–5,000 people participated in the event.

Education
Jarrow's needs for secondary education are currently served by Jarrow School, formerly Springfield Comprehensive. Springfield was merged with another of Jarrow's secondary schools, Hedworthfield Comprehensive at Fellgate, following a gradual reduction of the number of new pupils for the yearly intake of 11-year-olds to the point where keeping both schools open was no longer viable. As of 2008 plans to revamp Jarrow School have come into action. Building work was completed in 2009 turning the school into a modern learning facility with Specialist Engineering Status. The head teacher at the school plans to improve the school's grade point average, by improving the learning facilities, costing millions of pounds.

Demography
In 2011, Jarrow had a population of 43,431, compared to 27,526 in 2001. This gives Jarrow a similar population to Wallsend and Whitley Bay. The large increase in population is mainly due to boundary changes. The fact that only 2.9% of Jarrow's population is non White British, makes Jarrow the least ethnically diverse major urban subdivision in Tyneside and less ethnically diverse than its surrounding borough, South Tyneside. Jarrow contains areas such as Fellgate and Hedworth, which border onto Greenbelt in the south of the town, which have very high White British populations. In South Tyneside, 5.0% of the population are non-White British, which is almost double the figure for Jarrow, also the borough has twice the percentage of Asian people compared to this riverside town.

Compared to the rest of the North East of England Jarrow does have an increased rate of unemployment, average unemployment figures in 2013 put the north east at 5.4% as opposed to Jarrow at 6.1%. In September 2016 1,680 people living in Jarrow were in receipt of Job Seekers Allowance or Universal Credit, 370 people aged between 18 and 24 were on receipt of benefits in September 2016 down by 30 from last year, a drop of 7.5%.

Notable people

 * Roger Avon, actor
 * Bede, Benedictine monk and scholar
 * Catherine Cookson, writer
 * Steve Cram, Olympic athlete (the "Jarrow Arrow")
 * Ray Drinkwater, goalkeeper with Queens Park Rangers
 * Christie Elliot, professional footballer with Dundee.
 * Peter Flannery, playwright
 * William Goat, winner of the Victoria Cross for attempting to retrieve the body of a major whilst under attack by hostile cavalry, returning later under heavy fire to complete the task.
 * Stephen Hepburn, politician
 * James Johnston, socialist activist
 * Ray Lugg, professional footballer, born in Jarrow in 1948
 * Jem Mace, famous pugilist died at 6 Princess Street, Jarrow in 1910
 * Aidan McCaffery, former Newcastle United footballer.
 * John Miles, rock musician, singer, songwriter
 * Fergus Montgomery, Conservative MP
 * Charles Mark Palmer, shipbuilder, first mayor of Jarrow
 * Alan Plater, writer
 * Alan Price, musician, born in Washington and brought up in Jarrow
 * Steve Robson, songwriter and record producer
 * David Sharpe, silver medalist at 1992 European Championships over 800 metres
 * Gareth Smith, cricketer
 * Sir Patrick Stewart, actor, spent the majority of his childhood living in Jarrow, although was born in Mirfield, West Riding of Yorkshire.
 * Paul Thompson, rock musician, drummer of Roxy Music
 * Jimmy Thorpe, Sunderland goalkeeper who died helping the club win the 1936 League title
 * Frank Williams, Formula One team manager, was brought up in Jarrow
 * Ellen Wilkinson, Labour MP and Jarrow March organiser.
 * Wee Georgie Wood, music hall star.
 * Dan Neil, Sunderland midfielder.

In popular culture

 * In 1970, Jarrow was the setting of the first in a series of "Spanish Inquisition" sketches in Monty Python's Flying Circus, one of the best-known and quoted sketches by the comedy troupe. An establishing shot of the town shows two nuclear power plant cooling towers in the background and is overlaid with a graphics reading "Jarrow - New Year's Eve 1911" and then "Jarrow - 1912". Another sketch refers to a Jarrow United football team.

Twin towns
Jarrow is twinned with the following towns, under the umbrella of the South Tyneside town-twinning project which saw individual twinning projects brought together in 1974:
 * Flag of Germany.svg Wuppertal in Germany, originally twinned with South Shields in 1951.
 * Flag of France.svg Noisy-le-Sec in France, originally twinned with Hebburn in April 1963.
 * Flag of France.svg Épinay-sur-Seine in France, originally twinned with Jarrow in June 1965.

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

title: Jarrow


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Tyne Tunnel

The Tyne Tunnel is the name given to a pair of two-lane vehicular toll tunnels under the River Tyne in North East England. Originally opened in 1967 and expanded in 2011, the tunnels connect the town of Jarrow on the south bank of the river with North Shields and Wallsend on the northern side. The tunnels are approximately 11 km downstream, to the east of Newcastle upon Tyne. The Tyne Tunnel constitutes a part of the A19 road.

History
A scheme for the construction of a set of three tunnels under the Tyne was put forward by the Durham and Northumberland county councils in 1937. After prolonged negotiations with the Ministry of Transport, the scheme was approved in 1943. The Tyne Tunnel Act 1946, the legislative instrument necessary to enable the construction of the tunnels, received royal assent in 1946. Postwar restrictions on capital expenditure delayed the construction of the vehicular tunnel, but work started on the smaller tunnels for pedestrians and cyclists in 1947.

First Tyne motor vehicle tunnel
The vehicle tunnel is 5500 ft long and has a diameter of 31 ft with a roadbed 24 ft. It was built by Edmund Nuttall Limited and was opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 19 October 1967, but commenced operational use only in 1968, on completion of the northern link roads. It was designed to handle 25,000 vehicles per day. The original toll for cars was 2s 6d (12.5p). On completion of the second Tyne road tunnel, which opened with a single lane in each direction, the original 1967 Tyne Tunnel closed in February 2011 for a complete revamp, which included the installation of a safety corridor throughout its length. Once this work was complete, it reopened in November 2011 as the northbound tunnel, leaving the new tunnel to handle southbound traffic.

Second Tyne motor vehicle tunnel
In March 2004 the Tyne and Wear Integrated Transport Authority launched a scheme to build a second, £139 million tunnel. The tunnel is slightly to the east of the existing tunnel, and the pairing allows each tunnel to serve two lanes of traffic, each travelling in the same direction; the original tunnel had two single lanes of traffic in opposing directions, representing an avoidable risk. The tunnel is 1.6 km in length.

The UK government gave the go-ahead for the scheme in July 2005. Construction work started in spring 2008, with the new tunnel opening to two-lane bi-directional traffic on 25 February 2011, at which point the original tunnel closed for a ten-month refurbishment.

The timeline for the new Tyne Tunnel was as follows: The tunnel was constructed under a private finance initiative 30-year "design–build–finance–operate" contract by Bouygues Construction.
 * Transfer tunnels and staff to concessionaire: 1 February 2008
 * Main work started: Spring 2008
 * New tunnel opened: end of February 2011
 * Existing tunnel closed for refurbishment: end of February 2011
 * Both existing and new tunnel fully operational and open: end of November 2011. Originally this was planned for January 2012; however, both refurbishment of the old tunnel was completed earlier than expected and both tunnels were open by lunchtime on 21 November 2011.

Onshore sections of the new tunnel were built using the cut-and-cover method. Under-river sections of the tunnel were prefabricated, floated into position, immersed into a dredged trench, and covered with rocks. By beginning of November 2009, the land approaches to the tunnel had been excavated, and construction of the tunnel, in four 90 m sections, had been completed nearby. The dredger used to excavate the river section of the tunnel cutting arrived on site on 4 November 2009 to excavate 400,000 cubic metres of sediment, which was used to infill the defunct Tyne Dock, reclaiming 13 acre of land for use by Port of Tyne. Both ends of the tunnel finally met on 26 May 2010.

Safety
The new tunnel is fitted with a fixed fire suppression system which releases a fine mist to contain fires to help motorists leave safely and to prevent damage to the tunnel structure. There is also a separate evacuation corridor which runs adjacent to the main tunnel. The old tunnel, now fully refurbished, includes many of the same safety features.

The New Tyne crossing is claimed to be one of the safest in the UK, thanks to a state-of-the-art active fire suppression system which is now included in its design. It is the first in the UK to be fitted with a water mist active fire suppression system, and will further ensure the safety of thousands of people who will travel through it every day.

The original 1960s-built tunnel was slated as of one of the least safe in Europe in 2000, according to a study. Inspectors visited 25 major tunnels around Europe after fire devastated the Mont Blanc Tunnel under the Alps between France and Italy. The Tyne Tunnel was officially rated as "poor" and languished near the bottom of the European league table. The inspectors found it had no automatic fire alarm system, poor lighting, no laybys or hard shoulder, and an emergency walkway that could be reached only by able-bodied people. They also criticised its smoke extraction system. These deficiencies were addressed during the refurbishment of the original road tunnel in 2011.

Tolls
As of 2024 the toll charge is £2.40 for cars and light vans. Trucks and buses pay £4.80. Motorcycles use the tunnel free and Blue Badge holders can apply for an exemption account. A 10% discount is available to those who pre-pay via the Internet.

In May 2020, the operator of the Tyne Tunnel, TT2, introduced an option to 'pay later'.

In November 2021, the Tyne Tunnel launched open-road-tolling, a cashless system that saw the complete removal of barriers and physical payment booths.

title: Tyne Tunnel


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Foxton Locks

Foxton Locks are ten canal locks consisting of two "staircases" each of five locks, located on the Leicester line of the Grand Union Canal about 3 mi west of the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. They are named after the nearby village of Foxton.

They form the northern terminus of a 20 mi summit level that passes Husbands Bosworth, Crick and ends with the Watford flight

Alongside the locks is the site of the Foxton Inclined Plane, built in 1900 to resolve the operational restrictions imposed by the lock flight. It was not a commercial success and only remained in full-time operation for ten years. It was dismantled in 1926, but a project to re-create it commenced in the 2000s, since the locks remain a bottleneck for boat traffic.

Description
Staircase locks are used where a canal needs to climb a steep hill, and consist of a group of locks where each lock opens directly into the next, that is, where the bottom gates of one lock form the top gates of the next. Foxton Locks are the largest flight of such staircase locks on the English canal system. The locks are equipped with side pounds, with white paddles emptying a lock into a side pound, and red paddles filling the next lock downstream from the pound. This saves water compared to the more common riser staircases, since changing the direction of traffic does not require emptying/filling almost all the locks.

Building work on the locks started in 1810 and took four years. The locks were opened on 1 October 1813.

Little changed until the building of the inclined plane resulted in the reduction in size of some of the side pounds. While the inclined plane was in operation the locks were allowed to fall into decline to an extent and in 1908 the committee released £1,000 to bring the locks back into full (nightly) operation.

In 2008, the locks became part of the European Route of Industrial Heritage, a network which seeks to recognize the most important industrial heritage sites in Europe.

The locks are usually staffed during the cruising season from Easter to October and padlocked outside operating hours. This is done to prevent water shortages due to misuse and to ensure a balance between those wishing to ascend and descend. There can be lengthy delays at busy times but the actual transit should take approximately 45 minutes to one hour to complete; it is made quicker by the fact that the locks are narrow beam and the gates are light.

Tourism
The Grade II* listed locks are a popular tourist attraction and the county council has created a country park at the top. At the bottom, where the junction with the arm to Market Harborough is located, there are two public houses, a shop, trip boat and other facilities. The area is popular with ramblers, interested enthusiasts and similar.

The Foxton Canal Museum is located in the former boiler house for the plane's steam engine. The museum covers the history of the locks and the plane, the lives of the canal workers, and other aspects of the local canal. There is also a collection of Measham pottery. The museum opened in 1989 and is accredited by the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council.

title: Foxton Locks


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Irish Declaration of Independence

The Declaration of Independence (Forógra na Saoirse, Déclaration d'Indépendance) was a document adopted by Dáil Éireann, the revolutionary parliament of the Irish Republic, at its first meeting in the Mansion House, Dublin, on 21 January 1919. It followed from the Sinn Féin election manifesto of December 1918. Texts of the declaration were adopted in three languages: Irish, English and French.

Scope
The Irish Republic claimed jurisdiction over the whole island of Ireland. The declaration made no mention of the independence of the 32-county geographic island, just the independence of the "Irish nation" or "Irish people". It was rivalled by the British administration of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, but as the Irish War of Independence went on, it increased its legitimacy in the eyes of most Irish people. It was taken over by the Irish Free State in 1922, after the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

Under international law, the declaration satisfied the principle of the "declarative theory of statehood," but in 1919 almost all states followed the "constitutive theory of statehood" and therefore did not recognise the Irish Republic.

Ratification of 1916 Proclamation
By the Declaration of Independence, the Dáil ratified the earlier Proclamation of the Irish Republic of Easter 1916. This proclamation had not been adopted by an elected body but merely by the Easter rebels claiming to act in the name of the Irish people. Unlike the proclamation, the Declaration of Independence was followed by the establishment of some de facto political organs. In its crucial line the declaration pronounced that:

"..we, the elected Representatives of the ancient Irish people in National Parliament assembled, do, in the name of the Irish nation, ratify the establishment of the Irish Republic and pledge ourselves and our people to make this declaration effective by every means at our command"

English garrison
"We solemnly declare foreign government in Ireland to be an invasion of our national right which we will never tolerate, and we demand the evacuation of our country by the English Garrison."

Differing meanings were given to the occupying 'English garrison'. This was the closest that the Irish Republic came to declaring war on Britain in January 1919, arguing that an invasion had taken place, and therefore any military action from then on was to remove the invaders. The government in London refused to take this as a declaration of war, considering that it was worded for an Irish audience. When the Irish War of Independence started with some haphazard shootings on the same day at Soloheadbeg, County Tipperary, it was treated by the British as a police matter. The Dáil had no claim to control the Irish Republican Army (IRA) until the latter swore an oath of allegiance to it in August 1920.

700 years
"And Whereas for seven hundred years the Irish people has never ceased to repudiate and has repeatedly protested in arms against foreign usurpation."

This was based on the 'apostolic succession' of revolts against the English and later, British Administrations, placing the last fully free Ireland in the Gaelic world of about the 1160s, before the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland of 1168–71. The declaration saw the wars and revolts of 1594–1603, 1641–50, 1689–91, 1798, 1803, 1848, 1867 and 1916 as a continuing attempt at regaining Irish self-government, with or without links to the crown.

Aim of international recognition
"We claim for our national independence the recognition and support of every free nation in the world, and we proclaim that independence to be a condition precedent to international peace hereafter:"

An important element in the 1918 Sinn Féin election manifesto was to secure recognition at the forthcoming peace conference that would end the World War of 1914 to 1918. President Woodrow Wilson of the United States had suggested that the Versailles Peace Conference would be inclusive and even-handed, but his "Fourteen Points" had called for "equal weight" between parties at arbitration in article 5, and not outright declarations of independence.

In June 1920, a "Draft Treaty between the new Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Republic of Ireland" was circulated in Dublin. E. H. Carr, the historian of early Bolshevism, considered that ".. the negotiations were not taken very seriously on either side." The RSFSR was a pariah state at the time.

title: Irish Declaration of Independence


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Toll

Toll may refer to:

Transportation

 * Toll (fee) a fee charged for the use of a road or waterway
 * Road pricing, the modern practice of charging for road use
 * Road toll (historic), the historic practice of charging for road use
 * Shadow toll, payments made by government to the private sector operator of a road based on the number of vehicles using the road
 * Road toll (Australia and New Zealand), term for road death toll, i.e., the number of deaths caused annually by road accidents

Brands and enterprises

 * Toll Brothers, Horsham Township, Pennsylvania based construction company founded by brothers Robert I. Toll and Bruce E. Toll
 * Toll Collect, a transportation support company in Germany
 * Toll Group, an Australian transportation company
 * Toll Domestic Forwarding, an Australian freight forwarder
 * Toll Ipec, Australian transportation company
 * Toll Resources & Government Logistics

Science

 * Toll (gene), encode members of the Toll-like receptor class of proteins
 * Toll-like receptor, a class of proteins that play a key role in the innate immune system

Technology

 * Toll (telecommunications), refers to connection charges, for instance note Trunk vs. Toll charging and toll-free telephone numbers
 * Toll switching trunk, in telephone communications systems

Other uses

 * Toll, Queensland, a locality in the Charters Towers Region, Australia
 * Funeral toll, the slow, solemn ringing of church bells at funerals
 * Mount Toll, a mountain in Colorado
 * Toll (name), a list of people with the name
 * Toll, the ringing of a bell
 * Tolling (law), a doctrine which allows for the pausing or delaying of the running of the period of time set forth by a statute of limitations

title: Toll


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FAO Schwarz

FAO Schwarz is an American toy brand and retail chain. The company is known for its high-end toys, life-sized stuffed animals, interactive experiences, brand integrations, and games.

FAO Schwarz claims to be the oldest toy retailer in the United States, founded by its namesake, Frederick August Otto Schwarz, in 1862 in Baltimore before moving to New York City, where it has moved between several locations since 1870. The dance-on piano, made famous by the 1988 Tom Hanks film Big, brought international attention to the brand. FAO filed for bankruptcy twice in 2003 before temporarily shuttering the Fifth Avenue location in January 2004. In May 2009, Toys "R" Us Inc. acquired FAO Schwarz, but in 2015, it permanently closed the Fifth Avenue location. ThreeSixty Group then acquired the brand, who opened the new FAO Schwarz location at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in November 2018. In 2019, ThreeSixty opened locations in Chicago, Beijing, London and Dublin.

The "FAO Schwarz" brandname and trademarks are owned by the FAO Schwarz Family Foundation and exclusively licensed to the ThreeSixty Group who own and operate the retail locations.

Early history

FAO Schwarz was founded in 1862 in Baltimore under the name "Toy Bazaar" by German immigrant Frederick August Otto Schwarz.

In 1870, Schwarz opened a New York City location known as the "Schwarz Toy Bazaar" at 765 Broadway, which moved to 42 E. 14th Street in Union Square in 1880 and operated at that location until April 28, 1897, when it took over two vacant store locations at 39 and 41 W. 23rd Street. That year, The New York Times declared Schwarz as "the largest dealer in toys in this city."

Beginning in November 1869, the Schwarz Toy Bazaar held an exhibition of toys that would be available for the Christmas season. In 1896, Schwarz proclaimed the store as the "Original Santa Claus Headquarters" in New York. The FAO Schwarz holiday catalog has been published annually since 1876.

In 1931, the New York City location moved to 745 Fifth Avenue, where it operated for 55 years. In 1963, Parent's Magazine Enterprises purchased FAO Schwarz. The terms of the deal read that it would license the name FAO Schwarz and continue using it for a maximum of five years before dropping the name, while still paying the Schwarz family a royalty on sales. However, the lease was renewed as the owners felt the name was too significant to lose. Part of the price of keeping the name was to keep the royalty agreement, and the Schwarz family set up a foundation to fund opportunities for young people to work in nonprofit with the income the royalties were making. Nine percent of the company remained in the hands of the Schwarz family. The company subsequently sold to W.R. Grace in 1970, and then to toy retailer Franz Carl Weber of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1974.

In 1985, Christiana Companies, a company based in San Diego, California, owned FAO Schwarz for one year. In 1986, Peter Harris, with the help of Philadelphia investment banker Peter Morse, bought the company under Morse Partners Ltd. and moved the toy store across 58th Street to the General Motors Building at 767 Fifth Avenue at 58th Street. FAO Schwarz was sold to Netherlands-based NV Koninklijke Bijenkorf Beheer (later renamed Royal Vendex/KBB NV) in 1990. Throughout the 1990s, new FAO Schwarz stores opened across the United States; by 2000, the company had 40 locations.

Right Start, FAO Inc. and bankruptcy
In 2001, the Calabasas-based toy retailer Right Start, Inc. purchased 23 of the 40 stores, including the Fifth Avenue flagship store, from Royal Vendex for somewhere between $50 million and $60 million.

In 2002, Right Start Inc. changed its corporate name to FAO Inc. operating stores under The Right Start, Zany Brainy and FAO Schwarz names. On December 17, the company projected they would find bankruptcy if its bank did not relax borrowing restrictions. On January 13, 2003, FAO Inc. filed for bankruptcy, but emerged from it three months later in April. The company filed for bankruptcy a second time in December 2003. All 13 remaining FAO Schwarz locations closed in January 2004 as a result of the bankruptcy, with the flagship Fifth Avenue store expected to reopen in July of that year but the others closing permanently. The Fifth Avenue store reopened several months later than planned on Thanksgiving Day 2004, redesigned and renovated to accommodate a growing number of tourists, and the Las Vegas location at The Forum Shops at Caesars ultimately remained open until 2010.

D. E. Shaw & Co.
In February 2004, investment firm D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P., acquired the FAO Schwarz stores in New York and Las Vegas, as well as FAO Schwarz's catalog and internet business. The New York and Las Vegas stores reopened on Thanksgiving Day 2004. In November 2007, FAO Schwarz acquired premium children's clothing company Best & Co., which had plans to expand, but the company ceased business in 2009.

Toys "R" Us, Inc.
In May 2009, Toys "R" Us Inc. acquired FAO Schwarz. In 2009, Toys "R" Us subsequently put temporary FAO Schwarz boutiques in its U.S. Toys "R" Us stores for the holidays, and in October 2010, the concept was expanded into permanent boutiques in Toys "R" Us stores. In addition, FAO Schwarz-branded infant and toddler items are available in all of its Babies "R" Us stores nationwide. The company closed the Las Vegas location in January 2010, followed by its previous flagship New York store.

ThreeSixty Group
In October 2016, ThreeSixty Group, Inc. acquired FAO Schwarz from Toys ‘R’ Us, Inc.

The FAO Schwarz brand is currently the property of the descendants of the founder through the FAO Schwarz Family Foundation but is exclusively operated by ThreeSixty Group. In August 2018, ThreeSixty Group announced plans to open two new FAO Schwarz stores in New York. The one at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in Rockefeller Center opened on November 16, 2018. Public transit access is available at 47-50 Streets Rockefeller Center Station. The second opened at LaGuardia Airport in December 2018.

In October 2018, FAO Schwarz pop-up stores opened at 90 Hudson's Bay Company stores across Canada, just ahead of the Christmas holiday season, to remain open through the holidays. In March 2019 a store opened at Chicago Midway Airport. In 2019, an F.A.O. Schwartz shop opened in Arnotts Department Store in Ireland, replacing their original toy shop.

In November 2021, a store opened in Milan.

In spring 2024, a new location opened in Paris at Galeries Lafayette Haussmann department store.

Brand
FAO Schwarz is known for its large assortment of plush animals and the Piano Dance Mat, a smaller replica of The Walking Piano featured in the Tom Hanks film Big. FAO Schwarz also features limited-quantity luxury items including a drivable, child-size automobile encrusted with over 40,000 crystals and valued at US$25,000.

In addition to its own line of products, FAO Schwarz carries brands including Steiff, the world's oldest German designer of stuffed animals; Melissa & Doug, a leading designer and manufacturer of educational toys; and Build-A-Bear Workshop, a make-your-own experience featuring a selection of exclusive FAO Schwarz stuffed animals and accessories, among other in-store retail partners.

When Kinectimals: Now with Bears! was released, the brand also released an exclusive teddy bear plush with a scan tag.

Logo
Through the years, the FAO Schwarz logo has had versions that included a teddy bear, toy blocks, a toy soldier, rocking horse and an animated clock tower. In 2010, the FAO Schwarz logo was redesigned in colors of red and silver. The new logo emphasized the initials of company founder, Frederick August Otto Schwarz. It also debuted a company mascot, Wit. In 2017, FAO Schwarz hired design studio, Mattson Creative, to rebrand the FAO Schwarz logo and packaging. Mattson Creative also created the store's reopening tagline and hashtag, "Return to Wonder".

In popular culture
In the 1972 short story The Lesson, the store is cast as an instance of immense wealth disparity between classes to a group of poor children.

The New York store was featured in the 1988 Tom Hanks film Big, in which Hanks and Robert Loggia danced "Heart & Soul" and "Chopsticks" on the store's large dance-on piano.

The store's interior was the inspiration for the fictional "Duncan's Toy Chest" featured in the 1992 film Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.

In 1995, the store was featured in Woody Allen's Mighty Aphrodite in the final scene where main characters Lenny and Linda have a chance encounter. It is also featured in Baby Boom (1987) and Big Business (1988), among others.

In the 1999 remake of the musical film Annie, during the song "NYC", the characters Oliver Warbucks, Grace, and Annie join a crowd of people all admiring an impressive Christmas themed window display containing a sign that reads "F.A.O. Schwarz".

In the 2010 film Toy Story 3, when Buzz Lightyear is captured, Lots-o-Huggin' Bear unties him and indirectly references FAO Schwarz in a euphemism: "Oh F-A-O my Schwarz".

In 2011, the store was featured in The Smurfs during a chase scene. Scenes from the movie were shot over five nights in May 2011.

In the 2019 episode of The Simpsons, "Crystal Blue-Haired Persuasion", a healing crystal shop is named "FAO Quartz".

In the 2021 series Hawkeye, the climax of the battle between Kate Bishop and Wilson Fisk occurs in the 30 Rockefeller Plaza location. The actual name of the shop is obscured.

title: FAO Schwarz


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Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)

The Symphony No. 8 in E-flat major by Gustav Mahler is one of the largest-scale choral works in the classical concert repertoire. As it requires huge instrumental and vocal forces it is frequently called the "Symphony of a Thousand", although the work is normally presented with far fewer than a thousand performers and the composer disapproved of the name. The work was composed in a single inspired burst at his Maiernigg villa in southern Austria in the summer of 1906. The last of Mahler's works that was premiered in his lifetime, the symphony was a critical and popular success when he conducted the Munich Philharmonic in its first performance, in Munich, on 12 September 1910.

The fusion of song and symphony had been a characteristic of Mahler's early works. In his "middle" compositional period after 1901, a change of style led him to produce three purely instrumental symphonies. The Eighth, marking the end of the middle period, returns to a combination of orchestra and voice in a symphonic context. The structure of the work is unconventional: instead of the normal framework of several movements, the piece is in two parts ("1." and "2. Teil" ). Part I is based on the Latin text of Veni creator spiritus ("Come, Creator Spirit"), a ninth-century Christian hymn for Pentecost, and Part II is a setting of the words from the closing scene of Goethe's Faust. The two parts are unified by a common idea, that of redemption through the power of love, a unity conveyed through shared musical themes.

Mahler had been convinced from the start of the work's significance; in renouncing the pessimism that had marked much of his music, he offered the Eighth as an expression of confidence in the eternal human spirit. In the period following the composer's death, performances were comparatively rare. However, from the mid-20th century onwards the symphony has been heard regularly in concert halls all over the world, and has been recorded many times. While recognising its wide popularity, modern critics have divided opinions on the work; Theodor W. Adorno, Robert Simpson, and Jonathan Carr found its optimism unconvincing, and considered it artistically and musically inferior to Mahler's other symphonies. Conversely, it has been compared by Deryck Cooke to Ludwig van Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 as a defining human statement for its century.

Background
By the summer of 1906, Mahler had been director of the Vienna Hofoper for nine years. Throughout this time his practice was to leave Vienna at the close of the Hofoper season for a summer retreat, where he could devote himself to composition. Since 1899 this had been at Maiernigg, near the resort town of Maria Wörth in Carinthia, southern Austria, where Mahler built a villa overlooking the Wörthersee. In these restful surroundings Mahler completed his Symphonies No. 4, No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7, his Rückert songs and his song cycle Kindertotenlieder ("Songs on the Death of Children").

Until 1901, Mahler's compositions had been heavily influenced by the German folk-poem collection Des Knaben Wunderhorn ("The Youth's Magic Horn"), which he had first encountered around 1887. The music of Mahler's many Wunderhorn settings is reflected in his Symphonies No. 2, No. 3 and No. 4, which all employ vocal as well as instrumental forces. From about 1901, however, Mahler's music underwent a change in character as he moved into the middle period of his compositional life. Here, the more austere poems of Friedrich Rückert replace the Wunderhorn collection as the primary influence; the songs are less folk-related, and no longer infiltrate the symphonies as extensively as before. During this period Symphonies No. 5, No. 6 and No. 7 were written, all as purely instrumental works, portrayed by Mahler scholar Deryck Cooke as "more stern and forthright ..., more tautly symphonic, with a new granite-like hardness of orchestration".

Mahler arrived at Maiernigg in June 1906 with the draft manuscript of his Seventh Symphony; he intended to spend time revising the orchestration until an idea for a new work should strike. The composer's wife Alma Mahler, in her memoirs, says that for a fortnight Mahler was "haunted by the spectre of failing inspiration"; Mahler's recollection, however, is that on the first day of the vacation he was seized by the creative spirit, and plunged immediately into composition of the work that would become his Eighth Symphony.

Composition
Two notes in Mahler's handwriting dating from June 1906 show that early schemes for the work, which he may not at first have intended as a fully choral symphony, were based on a four-movement structure in which two "hymns" surround an instrumental core. These outlines show that Mahler had fixed on the idea of opening with the Latin hymn, but had not yet settled on the precise form of the rest. The first note is as follows:

 * 1) Hymn: Veni creator
 * 2) Scherzo
 * 3) Adagio: Caritas ("Christian love")
 * 4) Hymn: Die Geburt des Eros ("The birth of Eros")

The second note includes musical sketches for the Veni creator movement, and two bars in B minor which are thought to relate to the Caritas. The four-movement plan is retained in a slightly different form, still without specific indication of the extent of the choral element:

 * 1) Veni creator
 * 2) Caritas
 * 3) Weihnachtsspiele mit dem Kindlein ("Christmas games with the child")
 * 4) Schöpfung durch Eros. Hymne ("Creation through Eros. Hymn")

From Mahler's later comments on the symphony's gestation, it is evident that the four-movement plan was relatively short-lived. He soon replaced the last three movements with a single section, essentially a dramatic cantata, based on the closing scenes of Goethe's Faust, the depiction of an ideal of redemption through eternal womanhood (das Ewige-Weibliche). Mahler had long nurtured an ambition to set the end of the Faust epic to music, "and to set it quite differently from other composers who have made it saccharine and feeble." In comments recorded by his biographer Richard Specht, Mahler makes no mention of the original four-movement plans. He told Specht that having chanced on the Veni creator hymn, he had a sudden vision of the complete work: "I saw the whole piece immediately before my eyes, and only needed to write it down as though it were being dictated to me."

The work was written at a frantic pace—"in record time", according to the musicologist Henry-Louis de La Grange. It was completed in all its essentials by mid-August, even though Mahler had to absent himself for a week to attend the Salzburg Festival. Mahler began composing the Veni creator hymn without waiting for the text to arrive from Vienna. When it did, according to Alma Mahler, "the complete text fitted the music exactly. Intuitively he had composed the music for the full strophes [verses]." Although amendments and alterations were subsequently carried out to the score, there is very little manuscript evidence of the sweeping changes and rewriting that occurred with his earlier symphonies as they were prepared for performance.

With its use of vocal elements throughout, rather than in episodes at or near the end, the work was the first completely choral symphony to be written. Mahler had no doubts about the ground-breaking nature of the symphony, calling it the grandest thing he had ever done, and maintaining that all his previous symphonies were merely preludes to it. "Try to imagine the whole universe beginning to ring and resound. There are no longer human voices, but planets and suns revolving." It was his "gift to the nation ... a great joy-bringer."

Premiere
Mahler made arrangements with the impresario Emil Gutmann for the symphony to be premiered in Munich in the autumn of 1910. He soon regretted this involvement, writing of his fears that Gutmann would turn the performance into "a catastrophic Barnum and Bailey show". Preparations began early in the year, with the selection of choirs from the choral societies of Munich, Leipzig and Vienna. The Munich Zentral-Singschule provided 350 students for the children's choir. Meanwhile, Bruno Walter, Mahler's assistant at the Vienna Hofoper, was responsible for the recruitment and preparation of the eight soloists. Through the spring and summer these forces prepared in their home towns, before assembling in Munich early in September for three full days of final rehearsals under Mahler. His youthful assistant Otto Klemperer remarked later on the many small changes that Mahler made to the score during rehearsal: "He always wanted more clarity, more sound, more dynamic contrast. At one point during rehearsals he turned to us and said, 'If, after my death, something doesn't sound right, then change it. You have not only a right but a duty to do so.'"

For the premiere, fixed for 12 September, Gutmann had hired the newly built Neue Musik-Festhalle, in the Munich International Exhibition grounds near Theresienhöhe (now a branch of the Deutsches Museum). This vast hall had a capacity of 3,200; to assist ticket sales and raise publicity, Gutmann devised the nickname "Symphony of a Thousand", which has remained the symphony's popular subtitle despite Mahler's disapproval. Among the many distinguished figures present at the sold-out premiere were the composers Richard Strauss, Camille Saint-Saëns and Anton Webern; the writers Thomas Mann and Arthur Schnitzler; and the leading theatre director of the day, Max Reinhardt. Also in the audience was the 28-year-old British conductor Leopold Stokowski, who six years later would lead the first United States performance of the symphony.

Up to this time, receptions of Mahler's new symphonies had usually been disappointing. However, the Munich premiere of the Eighth Symphony was an unqualified triumph; as the final chords died away there was a short pause before a huge outbreak of applause which lasted for twenty minutes. Back at his hotel Mahler received a letter from Thomas Mann, which referred to the composer as "the man who, as I believe, expresses the art of our time in its profoundest and most sacred form".

The symphony's duration at its first performance was recorded by the critic-composer Julius Korngold as 85 minutes. This performance was the last time that Mahler conducted a premiere of one of his own works. Eight months after his Munich triumph, he died at the age of 50. His remaining works—Das Lied von der Erde ("The Song of the Earth"), his Symphony No. 9 and the unfinished Symphony No. 10—were all premiered after his death.

Subsequent performances
On the day following the Munich premiere Mahler led the orchestra and choruses in a repeat performance. During the next three years, according to the calculations of Mahler's friend Guido Adler the Eighth Symphony received a further 20 performances across Europe. These included the Dutch premiere, in Amsterdam under Willem Mengelberg on 12 March 1912, and the first Prague performance, given on 20 March 1912 under Mahler's former Vienna Hofoper colleague, Alexander von Zemlinsky. Vienna itself had to wait until 1918 before the symphony was heard there.

In the U.S., Leopold Stokowski persuaded an initially reluctant board of the Philadelphia Orchestra to finance the American premiere, which took place on 2 March 1916. The occasion was a great success; the symphony was played several more times in Philadelphia before the orchestra and choruses travelled to New York, for a series of equally well-received performances at the Metropolitan Opera House.

At the Amsterdam Mahler Festival in May 1920, Mahler's completed symphonies and his major song cycles were presented over nine concerts given by the Concertgebouw Orchestra and choruses, under Mengelberg's direction. The music critic Samuel Langford, who attended the occasion, commented that "we do not leave Amsterdam greatly envying the diet of Mahler first and every other composer afterward, to which Mengelberg is training the music-lovers of that city." The Austrian music historian Oscar Bie, while impressed with the festival as a whole, wrote subsequently that the Eighth was "stronger in effect than in significance, and purer in its voices than in emotion". Langford had commented on the British "not being very eager about Mahler", and the Eighth Symphony was not performed in Britain until 15 April 1930, when Sir Henry Wood presented it with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. The work was played again eight years later by the same forces; among those present in the audience was the youthful composer Benjamin Britten. Impressed by the music, he nevertheless found the performance itself "execrable".

The years after World War II saw a number of notable performances of the Eighth Symphony, including Sir Adrian Boult's broadcast from the Royal Albert Hall on 10 February 1948, the Japanese premiere under Kazuo Yamada in Tokyo in December 1949, and the Australian premiere under Sir Eugene Goossens in 1951. A Carnegie Hall performance under Stokowski in 1950 became the first complete recording of the symphony to be issued. After 1950 the increasing numbers of performances and recordings of the work signified its growing popularity, but not all critics were won over. Theodor W. Adorno found the piece weak, "a giant symbolic shell"; this most affirmative work of Mahler's is, in Adorno's view, his least successful, musically and artistically inferior to his other symphonies. The composer-critic Robert Simpson, usually a champion of Mahler, referred to Part II as "an ocean of shameless kitsch." Mahler biographer Jonathan Carr finds much of the symphony "bland", lacking the tension and resolution present in the composer's other symphonies. Deryck Cooke, on the other hand, compares Mahler's Eighth to Beethoven's Choral (Ninth) Symphony. To Cooke, Mahler's is "the Choral Symphony of the twentieth century: like Beethoven's, but in a different way, it sets before us an ideal [of redemption] which we are as yet far from realising—even perhaps moving away from—but which we can hardly abandon without perishing".

In the late 20th century and into the 21st, the symphony was performed in all parts of the world. A succession of premieres in the Far East culminated in October 2002 in Beijing, when Long Yu led the China Philharmonic Orchestra in the first performance of the work in the People's Republic of China. The Sydney Olympic Arts Festival in August 2000 opened with a performance of the Eighth by the Sydney Symphony Orchestra under its chief conductor Edo de Waart. The popularity of the work, and its heroic scale, meant that it was often used as a set piece on celebratory occasions; on 15 March 2008, Yoav Talmi led 200 instrumentalists and a choir of 800 in a performance in Quebec City, to mark the 400th anniversary of the city's foundation. In London on 16 July 2010 the opening concert of the BBC Proms celebrated the 150th anniversary of Mahler's birth with a performance of the Eighth, with Jiří Bělohlávek conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. This performance was its eighth in the history of the Proms.

Structure and form
The Eighth Symphony's two parts combine the sacred text of the 9th-century Latin hymn Veni creator spiritus with the secular text from the closing passages from Goethe's 19th-century dramatic poem Faust. Despite the evident disparities within this juxtaposition, the work as a whole expresses a single idea, that of redemption through the power of love. The choice of these two texts was not arbitrary; Goethe, a poet whom Mahler revered, believed that Veni creator embodied aspects of his own philosophy, and had translated it into German in 1820. Once inspired by the Veni creator idea, Mahler soon saw the Faust poem as an ideal counterpart to the Latin hymn. The unity between the two parts of the symphony is established, musically, by the extent to which they share thematic material. In particular, the first notes of the Veni creator theme —
 * E♭ → B♭ → A♭:

— dominate the climaxes to each part; at the symphony's culmination, Goethe's glorification of "Eternal Womanhood" is set in the form of a religious chorale.

In composing his score, Mahler temporarily abandoned the more progressive tonal elements which had appeared in his most recent works. The symphony's key is, for Mahler, unusually stable; despite frequent diversions into other keys the music always returns to its central E♭ major. This is the first of his works in which familiar fingerprints—birdsong, military marches, Austrian dances—are almost entirely absent. Although the vast choral and orchestral forces employed suggest a work of monumental sound, according to critic Michael Kennedy "the predominant expression is not of torrents of sound but of the contrasts of subtle tone-colours and the luminous quality of the scoring".

For Part I, most modern commentators accept the sonata-form outline that was discerned by early analysts. The structure of Part II is more difficult to summarise, being an amalgam of many genres. Analysts, including Specht, Cooke and Paul Bekker, have identified Adagio, Scherzo and Finale "movements" within the overall scheme of Part II, though others, including La Grange and Donald Mitchell, find little to sustain this division. The musicologist Ortrun Landmann has suggested that the formal scheme for Part II, after the orchestral introduction, is a sonata plan without the recapitulation, consisting of exposition, development and conclusion.

Part I: Veni creator spiritus
Mitchell describes Part I as resembling a giant motet, and argues that a key to its understanding is to read it as Mahler's attempt to emulate the polyphony of Bach's great motets, specifically Singet dem Herrn ein neues Lied ("Sing to the Lord a new song"). The symphony begins with a single tonic chord in E♭ major, sounded on the organ, before the entry of the massed choirs in a fortissimo invocation: "Veni, veni creator spiritus".

The three note "creator" motif is immediately taken up by the trombones and then the trumpets in a marching theme that will be used as a unifying factor throughout the work.

After their first declamatory statement the two choirs engage in a sung dialogue, which ends with a short transition to an extended lyrical passage, the plea "Imple superna gratia" ("Fill with divine grace").

Here, what Kennedy calls "the unmistakable presence of twentieth-century Mahler" is felt as a solo soprano introduces a meditative theme. She is soon joined by other solo voices as the new theme is explored before the choirs return exuberantly, in an A♭ episode in which the soloists compete with the choral masses.

In the next section, "Infirma nostri corporis / virtute firmans perpeti" ("Our weak frames fortify with thine eternal strength"), the tonic key of E♭ major returns with a variation of the opening theme. The section is interrupted by a short orchestral interlude in which the low bells are sounded, adding a sombre touch to the music. This new, less secure mood is carried through when "Infirma nostri corporis" resumes, this time without the choruses, in a subdued D minor echo of the initial invocation.

At the end of this episode another transition precedes the "unforgettable surge in E major", in which the entire body of choral forces declaims "Accende lumen sensibus" ("Illuminate our senses").

The first children's chorus follows, in a joyful mood, as the music gathers force and pace. This is a passage of great complexity, in the form of a double fugue involving development of many of the preceding themes, with constant changes to the key signature. All forces combine again in the recapitulation of the Veni creator section in shortened form. A quieter passage of recapitulation leads to an orchestral coda before the children's chorus announces the doxology Gloria sit Patri Domino ("Glory be to God the Father").

Thereafter the music moves swiftly and powerfully to its climax, in which an offstage brass ensemble bursts forth with the "Accende" theme while the main orchestra and choruses end on a triumphant rising scale.

Part II: Closing scene from Goethe's Faust
The second part of the symphony follows the narrative of the final stages in Goethe's poem—the journey of Faust's soul, rescued from the clutches of Mephistopheles, on to its final ascent into heaven. Landmann's proposed sonata structure for the movement is based on a division, after an orchestral prelude, into five sections which he identifies musically as an exposition, three development episodes, and a finale.

The long orchestral prelude (166 bars) is in E♭ minor and, in the manner of an operatic overture, anticipates several of the themes which will be heard later in the movement. The exposition begins in near-silence; the scene depicted is that of a rocky, wooded mountainside, the dwelling place of anchorites whose utterances are heard in an atmospheric chorus complete with whispers and echoes.

A solemn baritone solo, the voice of Pater Ecstaticus, ends warmly as the key changes to the major when the trumpets sound the "Accende" theme from Part I. This is followed by a demanding and dramatic aria for bass, the voice of Pater Profundus, who ends his tortured meditation by asking for God's mercy on his thoughts and for enlightenment. The repeated chords in this section are reminiscent of Richard Wagner's Parsifal. The mood lightens with the entry of the angels and blessed boys (women's and children's choruses) bearing the soul of Faust; the music here is perhaps a relic of the "Christmas Games" scherzo envisioned in the abortive four-movement draft plan.

The atmosphere is festive, with triumphant shouts of "Jauchzet auf!" ("Rejoice!") before the exposition ends in a postlude which refers to the "Infirma nostri corporis" music from Part I.

The first phase of development begins as a women's chorus of the younger angels invoke a "happy company of blessed children" who must bear Faust's soul heavenwards. The blessed boys receive the soul gladly; their voices are joined by Doctor Marianus (tenor), who accompanies their chorus before breaking into a rapturous E major paean to the Mater Gloriosa, "Queen and ruler of the world!". As the aria ends, the male voices in the chorus echo the soloist's words to an orchestral background of viola tremolos, in a passage described by La Grange as "emotionally irresistible".

In the second part of the development, the entry of the Mater Gloriosa is signalled in E major by a sustained harmonium chord, with harp arpeggios played over a pianissimo violin melody which La Grange labels the "love" theme.

Thereafter the key changes frequently as a chorus of penitent women petition the Mater for a hearing; this is followed by the solo entreaties of Magna Peccatrix, Mulier Samaritana and Maria Aegyptiaca. In these arias the "love" theme is further explored, and the "scherzo" theme associated with the first appearance of the angels returns. These two motifs predominate in the trio which follows, a request to the Mater on behalf of a fourth penitent, Faust's lover once known as Gretchen, who has come to make her plea for the soul of Faust. After Gretchen's entreaty, a solo of "limpid beauty" in Kennedy's words, an atmosphere of hushed reverence descends. The Mater Gloriosa then sings her only two lines, in the symphony's opening key of E♭ major, permitting Gretchen to lead the soul of Faust into heaven.

The final development episode is a hymnlike tenor solo and chorus, in which Doctor Marianus calls on the penitents to "Gaze aloft".

A short orchestral passage follows, scored for an eccentric chamber group consisting of piccolo, flute, clarinet, harmonium, celesta, piano, harps and a string quartet. This acts as a transition to the finale, the Chorus Mysticus, which begins in E♭ major almost imperceptibly—Mahler's notation here is Wie ein Hauch, "like a breath".

The sound rises in a gradual crescendo, as the solo voices alternately join or contrast with the chorus. As the climax approaches, many themes are reprised: the love theme, Gretchen's song, the "Accende" from Part I. Finally, as the chorus concludes with "The eternal feminine draws us on high", the off-stage brass re-enters with a final salute on the Veni creator motif, to end the symphony with a triumphant flourish.

Orchestra
The symphony is scored for a very large orchestra, in keeping with Mahler's conception of the work as a "new symphonic universe", a synthesis of symphony, cantata, oratorio, motet, and lied in a combination of styles. La Grange comments: "To give expression to his cosmic vision, it was ... necessary to go beyond all previously known limits and dimensions." The orchestral forces required are, however, not as large as those deployed in Arnold Schoenberg's oratorio Gurre-Lieder, completed in 1911. The orchestra consists of:

 * Woodwinds
 * 2 piccolos (1st doubling 5th flute)
 * 4 flutes
 * 4 oboes
 * cor anglais
 * 3 B♭ clarinets
 * E♭ clarinet
 * bass clarinet
 * 4 bassoons
 * contrabassoon
 * Brass
 * 8 horns
 * 8 trumpets (four offstage)
 * 7 trombones (three offstage)
 * tuba
 * Percussion
 * 4 timpani
 * bass drum
 * cymbals
 * triangle
 * tam-tam
 * 2 tuned bells in A and A♭
 * glockenspiel (used only in part II)
 * Keyboards
 * organ
 * celesta (used only in part II)
 * piano (used only in part II)
 * harmonium (used only in part II)
 * Strings
 * mandolin (used only in part II)
 * 2 harps (used only in part II)
 * 1st violins
 * 2nd violins
 * violas
 * cellos
 * double basses

Mahler recommended that in very large halls, the first player in each of the woodwind sections should be doubled and that numbers in the strings should also be augmented. In addition, the piccolos, e-flat clarinet, harps and mandolin, and the first offstage trumpet, should have "several to the part" ("mehrfach besetzt").

Choral and vocal forces

 * 3 soprano solos (3rd used only in part II)
 * 2 alto solos
 * tenor solo
 * baritone solo
 * bass solo
 * 2 SATB choirs
 * children's choir

In Part II the soloists are assigned to dramatic roles represented in Goethe's text, as illustrated in the following table.

La Grange draws attention to the notably high tessitura for the sopranos, for soloists and for choral singers. He characterises the alto solos as brief and unremarkable; however, the tenor solo role in Part II is both extensive and demanding, requiring on several occasions to be heard over the choruses. The wide melodic leaps in the Pater Profundus role present particular challenges to the bass soloist.

Publication
Only one autograph score of Symphony No. 8 is known to exist. Once the property of Alma Mahler, it is held by the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich. In 1906 Mahler signed a contract with the Viennese publishing firm Universal Edition (UE), which thus became the main publisher of all his works. The full orchestral score of the Symphony was published by UE in 1912. A Russian version, published in Moscow by Izdatel'stvo Muzyka in 1976, was republished in the United States by Dover Publications in 1989, with an English text and notes. The International Gustav Mahler Society, founded in 1955, has as its main objective the production of a complete critical edition of all of Mahler's works. As of 2016 its critical edition of the Eighth remains a project for the future.

Recordings
Sir Adrian Boult's 1948 broadcast performance with the BBC Symphony Orchestra was recorded by the BBC, but not issued until 2009 when it was made available in MP3 form. The first commercially issued recording of the complete symphony was performed by the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Eduard Flipse. It was recorded live by Philips at the 1954 Holland Festival. In 1962, the New York Philharmonic conducted by Leonard Bernstein made the first stereo recording of Part I for Columbia Records. This was followed in 1964 by the first stereo recording of the complete symphony, performed by the Utah Symphony conducted by Maurice Abravanel.

Since the symphony was first recorded, at least 70 recordings have been made by many of the world's leading orchestras and singers, mostly during live performances.

title: Symphony No. 8 (Mahler)


text:
Lists of tenants in the World Trade Center (1973–2001)

These are lists of the major tenants of the former World Trade Center in New York City at the time of the attacks in 2001.

 * 1 World Trade Center (North Tower) included the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Marsh & McLennan Companies, Bank of America, Cantor Fitzgerald, Dai-Ichi Kangyo Group, Sidley Austin Brown & Wood, and restaurant Windows on the World.
 * 2 World Trade Center (South Tower) included Verizon, the New York Stock Exchange, Morgan Stanley, Xerox Corporation, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods, Aon Corporation, and Fiduciary Trust Company International.
 * 3 World Trade Center (Marriott World Trade Center) was a hotel, therefore the whole building had one owner, Host Marriott Corporation.
 * 4 World Trade Center included New York Board of Trade, Deutsche Bank, and the Mall at the World Trade Center.
 * 5 World Trade Center included Credit Suisse First Boston and Morgan Stanley.
 * 6 World Trade Center included the United States Department of Commerce, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the United States Department of Labor.
 * 7 World Trade Center included Salomon Smith Barney, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Standard Chartered Bank, and the U.S. Secret Service.


text:
Talk:Lists of tenants in the World Trade Center (1973–2001)

Previous discussion without header
I should emphasise hat the vast majority of work on this page was done by TheCunctator, and other wikipedians, and I just combined two articles and moved stuff around. Martin

Rename
I'd like to rename these articles to the standard list style:

 * World Trade Center tenants -> List of World Trade Center tenants
 * One World Trade Center tenants -> List of tenants in World Trade Center One
 * Two World Trade Center tenants -> List of tenants in World Trade Center Two
 * Seven World Trade Center tenants -> List of tenants in World Trade Center Seven

Any objections? Seabhcán 08:12, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

Linking to the proper 1973-2001 1 WTC list
Currently the 1 WTC tenants link goes to the modern building built after 9/11. Can these links be repaired? The other 1973-2001 WTC tenant links work correctly. 2601:446:600:6CF0:486F:5970:B2B6:1063 (talk) 14:35, 5 April 2022 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:World Trade Center (1973–2001) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 05:36, 18 January 2024 (UTC)


text:
L'Île-Dorval

L'Île-Dorval is a city in southwestern Quebec, Canada. It is coterminous with Dorval Island (Île Dorval), an island in Lake Saint-Louis off the Island of Montreal. It lies a short distance offshore from the city of Dorval and is connected with a seasonal ferry service.

A cottaging spot, it had only 30 permanent residents as of the Canada 2021 Census, making it one of the smallest municipalities in Canada, both in terms of area and population. In the 2001 census the official population had dropped to zero, according to Statistics Canada. However, because not only permanent residents but also property owners are eligible to vote in municipal elections in Quebec, there were 50 registered voters in 2004.

History
In 1691, the fief of Fort La Presentation, which included the island, was acquired by Jean-Baptiste Bouchard (born around 1658), who used to sign his name as Jean-Baptiste Bouchard Dorval. "d'Orval" (French for "of Orval") referred to his father's hometown of Orval in Montigny-Lengrain, France.

Around the middle of the 19th century, the island was acquired by George Simpson, Governor of the Hudson Bay Company, who held an elaborate reception for the Prince of Wales at the island in August 1860.

The formation of the island into a town was the initiative of the Dorval Island Park Company and a group of businessmen who wanted to provide the island with electricity, water, streets, and even a tram to support residential development. On March 5, 1915, Ville d'Ile Dorval was created by separating from the City of Dorval (orthography was adjusted in 1969 to Île-Dorval and in 1987 to L'Île-Dorval). Between 1949 and 1970, a seasonal post office operated there under the English name Dorval Island.

On January 1, 2002, as part of the 2002–2006 municipal reorganization of Montreal, it merged with the city of Montreal to become part of the borough of Dorval–L'Île-Dorval. After a change of government and a 2004 referendum it became independent once again, effective January 1, 2006.

Demographics
In the 2021 Census of Population conducted by Statistics Canada, L'Île-Dorval had a population of $30$ living in $25$ of its $79$ total private dwellings, a change of NaN% from its 2016 population of $5$. With a land area of 0.19 km2, it had a population density of in 2021.

Local government
L'Île-Dorval forms part of the federal electoral district of Dorval—Lachine—LaSalle and has been represented by Anju Dhillon of the Liberal Party since 2015. Provincially, L'Île-Dorval is part of the Marquette electoral district and is represented by Enrico Ciccone of the Quebec Liberal Party since 2018.

List of former mayors:

 * Cecil Leonard Carsley (1915–1933)
 * T. Ingledow (1933–1935)
 * W. D. Walker (1935–1937)
 * H. S. T. Piper (1937–1951)
 * Philipp A. Sargent (1951–1955)
 * F. A. Johnson (1955–1959)
 * Alan Easton (1959–1961)
 * J. Carlyle Gordon (1961–1963)
 * Paul L'Anglais (1963–1965)
 * Yves J. Adams (1965–1966)
 * William Scholes (1966–1968)
 * Carl Nonod (1968–1973)
 * Elliott Emanuel (1973–1980)
 * William Hicks (1980–1985)
 * Peter C. Briant (1985–1992)
 * Gisèle Chapleau (1992–2002, 2006–present)

Transportation
Dorval Island is accessible by a semi-private ferry, operating from May to October, only available to the island's residents and their invited guests.

The island is vehicle free, except for a pickup truck for garbage collection.

title: L'Île-Dorval


text:
Ganzfeld

Ganzfeld (German for "complete field") is a particular phenomenon of visual perception. The term is used most commonly in relationship to:

 * Ganzfeld effect, the psychological result of staring at an actual Ganzfeld
 * Ganzfeld experiment, a technique in parapsychology

title: Ganzfeld


text:
Talk:Battles of Stockach and Engen

Untitled
Why was the battle fought? As part of which war/conflict?

Merger proposal
I think that Battle of Engen should be merged into Battle of Stockach (1800), as they seem to be discussing the same battle. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wm243 (talk • contribs) 22:29, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Neutral : They took place on the same day, but there is about 20 kilometres distance between Engen, Germany and Stockach, and the two battles never merged into one. However, the French victory at Stockach did compel the Austrians at Engen to retreat, so they did affect each other. Some language versions of Wikipedia treat them separately, such as German, French and Russian Wikipedia, but the others treat them together. We can regard them as 'twin battles', such as the Battle of Jena–Auerstedt, although they also are sometimes treated separately. If we do merge them, I propose to use the title 'Battles of Stockach and Engen', plural, with both places in the name. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:16, 21 February 2022 (UTC)
 * Support: You know what? Let's just do it (WP:BOLD). The current Engen article is so small and has only one source, which is unreliable. Telling the story in one article makes for a more comprehensive narrative. I'll use the title I proposed. Cheers, Nederlandse Leeuw (talk) 17:23, 21 February 2022 (UTC)

title: Talk:Battles of Stockach and Engen