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Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing and offering of one or more animals, usually as part of a religious ritual or to appease or maintain favour with a deity. Animal sacrifices were common throughout Europe and the Ancient Near East until the spread of Christianity in Late Antiquity, and continue in some cultures or religions today. Human sacrifice, where it existed, was always much rarer.

All or only part of a sacrificial animal may be offered; some cultures, like the ancient and modern Greeks, eat most of the edible parts of the sacrifice in a feast, and burnt the rest as an offering. Others burnt the whole animal offering, called a holocaust. Usually, the best animal or best share of the animal is the one presented for offering.

Animal sacrifice should generally be distinguished from the religiously prescribed methods of ritual slaughter of animals for normal consumption as food.

During the Neolithic Revolution, early humans began to move from hunter-gatherer cultures toward agriculture, leading to the spread of animal domestication. In a theory presented in Homo Necans, mythologist Walter Burkert suggests that the ritual sacrifice of livestock may have developed as a continuation of ancient hunting rituals, as livestock replaced wild game in the food supply.

Prehistory
Ancient Egypt was at the forefront of domestication, and some of the earliest archeological evidence suggesting animal sacrifice comes from Egypt. However, animal sacrifice was not a central practice of Egyptian religion, but was rather a peripherical occurrence that happened away from worshippers. The oldest Egyptian burial sites containing animal remains originate from the Badari culture of Upper Egypt, which flourished between 4400 and 4000 BCE. Sheep and goats were found buried in their own graves at one site, while at another site gazelles were found at the feet of several human burials. At a cemetery uncovered at Hierakonpolis and dated to, the remains of a much wider variety of animals were found, including non-domestic species such as baboons and hippopotami, which may have been sacrificed in honor of powerful former citizens or buried near their former owners. According to Herodotus, later Dynastic Egyptian animal sacrifice became restricted to livestock – sheep, cattle, swine and geese – with sets of rituals and rules to describe each type of sacrifice.

By the end of the Copper Age in, animal sacrifice had become a common practice across many cultures, and appeared to have become more generally restricted to domestic livestock. At Gath, archeological evidence indicates that the Canaanites imported sacrificial sheep and goats from Egypt rather than selecting from their own livestock. At the Monte d'Accoddi in Sardinia, one of the earliest known sacred centers in Europe, evidence of the sacrifice of sheep, cattle and swine has been uncovered by excavations, and it is indicated that ritual sacrifice may have been common across Italy around and afterwards. At the Minoan settlement of Phaistos in ancient Crete, excavations have revealed basins for animal sacrifice dating to the period 2000 to 1700 BCE. However, remains of a young goat were found in Cueva de la Dehesilla (es), a cave in Spain, related to a funerary ritual from the Middle Neolithic period, dated to between 4800 and 4000 BCE.

Ancient Near East
Animal sacrifice was general among the ancient Near Eastern civilizations of Ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia, as well as the Hebrews (covered below). Unlike the Greeks, who had worked out a justification for keeping the best edible parts of the sacrifice for the assembled humans to eat, in these cultures the whole animal was normally placed on the fire by the altar and burned, or sometimes it was buried.

Ancient Greece
Worship in ancient Greek religion typically consisted of sacrificing domestic animals at the altar with hymn and prayer. The altar was outside any temple building, and might not be associated with a temple at all. The animal, which should be perfect of its kind, is decorated with garlands and the like, and led in procession to the altar, a girl with a basket on her head containing the concealed knife leading the way. After various rituals the animal is slaughtered over the altar, as it falls all the women present "must cry out in high, shrill tones". Its blood is collected and poured over the altar. It is butchered on the spot and various internal organs, bones and other inedible parts burnt as the deity's portion of the offering, while the meat is removed to be prepared for the participants to eat; the leading figures tasting it on the spot. The temple usually kept the skin, to sell to tanners. The fact that the humans got more use from the sacrifice than the deity had not escaped the Greeks, and is often the subject of humour in Greek comedy.

The animals used are, in order of preference, bull or ox, cow, sheep (the most common), goat, pig (with piglet the cheapest mammal), and poultry (but rarely other birds or fish). Horses and asses are seen on some vases in the Geometric style, but are very rarely mentioned in literature; they were relatively late introductions to Greece, and it has been suggested that Greek preferences in this matter go very far back. The Greeks liked to believe that the animal was glad to be sacrificed, and interpreted various behaviours as showing this. Divination by examining parts of the sacrificed animal was much less important than in Roman or Etruscan religion, or Near Eastern religions, but was practiced, especially of the liver, and as part of the cult of Apollo. Generally, the Greeks put more faith in observing the behaviour of birds. For a smaller and simpler offering, a grain of incense could be thrown on the sacred fire, and outside the cities farmers made simple sacrificial gifts of plant produce as the "first fruits" were harvested. Although the grand form of sacrifice called the hecatomb (meaning 100 bulls) might in practice only involve a dozen or so, at large festivals the number of cattle sacrificed could run into the hundreds, and the numbers feasting on them well into the thousands. The enormous Hellenistic structures of the Altar of Hieron and Pergamon Altar were built for such occasions.

The evidence of the existence of such practices is clear in some ancient Greek literature, especially in Homer's epics. Throughout the poems, the use of the ritual is apparent at banquets where meat is served, in times of danger or before some important endeavor to gain the favor of the gods. For example, in Homer's Odyssey Eumaeus sacrifices a pig with prayer for his unrecognizable master Odysseus. However, in Homer's Iliad, which partly reflects very early Greek civilization, not every banquet of the princes begins with a sacrifice.

These sacrificial practices, described in these pre-Homeric eras, share commonalities to the 8th century forms of sacrificial rituals. Furthermore, throughout the poem, special banquets are held whenever gods indicated their presence by some sign or success in war. Before setting out for Troy, this type of animal sacrifice is offered. Odysseus offers Zeus a sacrificial ram in vain. The occasions of sacrifice in Homer's epic poems may shed some light onto the view of the gods as members of society, rather than as external entities, indicating social ties. Sacrificial rituals played a major role in forming the relationship between humans and the divine.

It has been suggested that the Chthonic deities, distinguished from Olympic deities by typically being offered the holocaust mode of sacrifice, where the offering is wholly burnt, may be remnants of the native Pre-Hellenic religion and that many of the Olympian deities may come from the Proto-Greeks who overran the southern part of the Balkan Peninsula in the late third millennium BCE.

In the Hellenistic period after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BCE, several new philosophical movements began to question the ethics of animal sacrifice.

Scythians
According to the unique account by the Greek author Herodotus (c. 484), the Scythians sacrificed various kinds of livestock, though the most prestigious offering was considered to be the horse. The pig, on the other hand, was never offered in sacrifice, and apparently the Scythians were loath to keep swine within their lands. Herodotus describes the Scythian manner of sacrifice as follows:

"The victim stands with its fore-feet tied, and the sacrificing priest stands behind the victim, and by pulling the end of the cord he throws the beast down; and as the victim falls, he calls upon the god to whom he is sacrificing, and then at once throws a noose round its neck, and putting a small stick into it he turns it round and so strangles the animal, without either lighting a fire or making any first offering from the victim or pouring any libation over it: and when he has strangled it and flayed off the skin, he proceeds to boil it. [...] Then when the flesh is boiled, the sacrificer takes a first offering of the flesh and of the vital organs and casts it in front of him."

Herodotus goes on to describe the human sacrifice of prisoners, conducted in a different manner.

Ancient Rome

The most potent offering in Ancient Roman religion was animal sacrifice, typically of domesticated animals such as cattle, sheep and pigs. Each was the best specimen of its kind, cleansed, clad in sacrificial regalia and garlanded; the horns of oxen might be gilded. Sacrifice sought the harmonisation of the earthly and divine, so the victim must seem willing to offer its own life on behalf of the community; it must remain calm and be quickly and cleanly dispatched.

Sacrifice to deities of the heavens (di superi, "gods above") was performed in daylight, and under the public gaze. Deities of the upper heavens required white, infertile victims of their own sex: Juno a white heifer (possibly a white cow); Jupiter a white, castrated ox (bos mas) for the annual oath-taking by the consuls. Di superi with strong connections to the earth, such as Mars, Janus, Neptune and various genii – including the Emperor's – were offered fertile victims. After the sacrifice, a banquet was held; in state cults, the images of honoured deities took pride of place on banqueting couches and by means of the sacrificial fire consumed their proper portion (exta, the innards). Rome's officials and priests reclined in order of precedence alongside and ate the meat; lesser citizens may have had to provide their own.

Chthonic gods such as Dis pater, the di inferi ("gods below"), and the collective shades of the departed (di Manes) were given dark, fertile victims in nighttime rituals. Animal sacrifice usually took the form of a holocaust or burnt offering, and there was no shared banquet, as "the living cannot share a meal with the dead". Ceres and other underworld goddesses of fruitfulness were sometimes offered pregnant female animals; Tellus was given a pregnant cow at the Fordicidia festival. Color had a general symbolic value for sacrifices. Demigods and heroes, who belonged to the heavens and the underworld, were sometimes given black-and-white victims. Robigo (or Robigus) was given red dogs and libations of red wine at the Robigalia for the protection of crops from blight and red mildew.

A sacrifice might be made in thanksgiving or as an expiation of a sacrilege or potential sacrilege (piaculum); a piaculum might also be offered as a sort of advance payment; the Arval Brethren, for instance, offered a piaculum before entering their sacred grove with an iron implement, which was forbidden, as well as after. The pig was a common victim for a piaculum.

The same divine agencies who caused disease or harm also had the power to avert it, and so might be placated in advance. Divine consideration might be sought to avoid the inconvenient delays of a journey, or encounters with banditry, piracy and shipwreck, with due gratitude to be rendered on safe arrival or return. In times of great crisis, the Senate could decree collective public rites, in which Rome's citizens, including women and children, moved in procession from one temple to the next, supplicating the gods.

Extraordinary circumstances called for extraordinary sacrifice: in one of the many crises of the Second Punic War, Jupiter Capitolinus was promised every animal born that spring (see ver sacrum), to be rendered after five more years of protection from Hannibal and his allies. The "contract" with Jupiter is exceptionally detailed. All due care would be taken of the animals. If any died or were stolen before the scheduled sacrifice, they would count as already sacrificed, since they had already been consecrated. Normally, if the gods failed to keep their side of the bargain, the offered sacrifice would be withheld. In the imperial period, sacrifice was withheld following Trajan's death because the gods had not kept the Emperor safe for the stipulated period. In Pompeii, the Genius of the living emperor was offered a bull: presumably a standard practise in Imperial cult, though minor offerings (incense and wine) were also made.

The exta were the entrails of a sacrificed animal, comprising in Cicero's enumeration the gall bladder (fel), liver (iecur), heart (cor), and lungs (pulmones). The exta were exposed for litatio (divine approval) as part of Roman liturgy, but were "read" in the context of the disciplina Etrusca. As a product of Roman sacrifice, the exta and blood are reserved for the gods, while the meat (viscera) is shared among human beings in a communal meal. The exta of bovine victims were usually stewed in a pot (olla or aula), while those of sheep or pigs were grilled on skewers. When the deity's portion was cooked, it was sprinkled with mola salsa (ritually prepared salted flour) and wine, then placed in the fire on the altar for the offering; the technical verb for this action was porricere.

Celtic peoples
There is evidence that ancient Celtic people sacrificed animals, almost always livestock or working animals, as part of ancient Celtic religion. The idea seems to have been that ritually transferring a life-force to the Otherworld pleased the gods and established a channel of communication between the worlds. Animal sacrifices could be acts of thanksgiving, appeasement, to ask for good health and fertility, or as a means of divination. It seems that some animals were offered wholly to the gods (by burying or burning), while some were shared between gods and humans (part eaten and part set aside).

Archaeologists have found evidence of animal sacrifice at some Gaulish and British sanctuaries, and at the Irish site Uisneach. Accounts of Celtic animal sacrifice come from Roman and Greek writers. Julius Caesar and Strabo wrote of the Gauls burning animal sacrifices in a large wickerwork figure, known as a wicker man, while Pliny the Elder wrote of druids performing a 'ritual of oak and mistletoe' which involved sacrificing two white bulls.

Some animal sacrifice or ritual slaughter continued among Celtic peoples long after they converted to Christianity. Until the 19th century, on St. Martin's Day (11 November) in rural Ireland a rooster, goose or sheep would be slaughtered and some of its blood sprinkled on the threshold of the house. It was offered to Saint Martin, and was eaten as part of a feast. Bull sacrifices at the time of the Lughnasa festival were recorded as late as the 18th century at Cois Fharraige in Ireland (where they were offered to Crom Dubh) and at Loch Maree in Scotland (where they were offered to Saint Máel Ruba).

Germanic peoples
Animal sacrifice, or blót, was an important ritual in Old Norse religion. The blood was sprinkled on altars, idols and the walls of temples. A blót was made at seasonal festivals as well as at funerals, before battles and perilous journeys, or after the conclusion of business between traders.

In the 11th century, Adam of Bremen wrote that human and animal sacrifices were made at the Temple at Gamla Uppsala in Sweden. He wrote that every ninth year, nine men and nine of every animal were sacrificed and their bodies hung in a sacred grove.

Judaism
In Judaism, the qorban is any of a variety of sacrificial offerings described and commanded in the Torah. The most common usages are animal sacrifice (zevah זֶבַח), zevah shelamim (the peace offering) and olah (the "holocaust" or burnt offering). A qorban was an animal sacrifice, such as a bull, sheep, goat, or a dove that underwent shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter). Sacrifices could also consist of grain, meal, wine, or incense.

The Hebrew Bible says that Yahweh commanded the Israelites to offer offerings and sacrifices on various altars. The sacrifices were only to be offered by the hands of the Kohanim. Before building the Temple in Jerusalem, when the Israelites were in the desert, sacrifices were offered only in the Tabernacle. After building Solomon's Temple, sacrifices were allowed only there. After the Temple was destroyed, sacrifices was resumed when the Second Temple was built until it was also destroyed in 70 CE. After the destruction of the Second Temple sacrifices were prohibited because there was no longer a Temple, the only place allowed by halakha for sacrifices. Offering of sacrifices was briefly reinstated during the Jewish–Roman wars of the second century CE and was continued in certain communities thereafter.

The Samaritans, a group historically related to the Jews, practice animal sacrifice in accordance with the Law of Moses.

Christianity

Christianity has long opposed all forms of animal sacrifice, and the practice's "very possibility ... has been generally rejected as unreasonable and hostile to Christian theology". Most Christian denominations believe that the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ permanently abolished animal sacrifice, primarily based on the teaching in the Epistle to the Hebrews that Jesus was the "Lamb of God" to whom all ancient sacrifices pointed. Most Christian sects believe that the "bloodless" sacrifice of the Eucharist, or Lord's Supper, entirely replaces the Old Testament system of sacrifices. Consequently, animal sacrifice is rarely practiced in Christianity.

A handful of rural Christian communities sacrifice animals (which are then consumed in a feast) as part of worship, especially at Easter. The animal may be brought into the church before being taken out again and killed. Some villages in Greece sacrifice animals to Orthodox saints in a practice known as kourbania. Sacrifice of a lamb, or less commonly a rooster, is a common practice in Armenian Church, and the Tewahedo Church of Ethiopia and Eritrea. This tradition, called matagh, is believed to stem from pre-Christian pagan rituals. Additionally, some Mayans following a form of Folk Catholicism in Mexico today still sacrifice animals in conjunction with church practices, a ritual practiced in past religions before the arrival of the Spaniards.

Islam
Muslims engaged in the Hajj (pilgrimage) are obliged to sacrifice a lamb or a goat or join others in sacrificing a cow or a camel during the celebration of the Eid al-Adha, an Arabic term that means "Feast of Sacrifice", also known as al-Id al-Kabir (Great Feast), or Qurban Bayrami (Sacrifice Feast) in Turkic influenced cultures, Bakar Id (Goat Feast) in Indian subcontinent and Reraya Qurben in Indonesia. Other Muslims not on the Hajj to Mecca also participate in this sacrifice wherever they are, on the 10th day of the 12th lunar month in the Islamic calendar. It is understood as a symbolic re-enactment of Abraham's sacrifice of a ram in place of his son. Meat from this occasion is divided into three parts, one part is kept by the sacrificing family for food, the other gifted to friends and family, and the third given to the poor Muslims. The sacrificed animal is a sheep, goat, cow or camel. The feast follows a communal prayer at a mosque or open air.

The animal sacrifice during the Hajj is a part of nine step pilgrimage ritual. It is, states Campo, preceded by a statement to intention and body purification, inaugural circumambulation of the Kaaba seven times, running between Marwa and Safa hills, encampment at Mina, standing in Arafat, stoning the three Mina satanic pillars with at least forty nine pebbles. Thereafter, animal sacrifice, and this is followed by farewell circumambulation of the Kaaba. The Muslims who are not on Hajj also perform a simplified ritual animal sacrifice. According to Campo, the animal sacrifice at the annual Islamic festival has origins in western Arabia in vogue before Islam. The animal sacrifice, states Philip Stewart, is not required by the Quran, but is based on interpretations of other Islamic texts.

The Eid al-Adha is major annual festival of animal sacrifice in Islam. In Indonesia alone, for example, some 800,000 animals were sacrificed in 2014 by its Muslims on the festival, but the number can be a bit lower or higher depending on the economic conditions. According to Lesley Hazleton, in Turkey about 2,500,000 sheep, cows and goats are sacrificed each year to observe the Islamic festival of animal sacrifice, with a part of the sacrificed animal given to the needy who did not sacrifice an animal. According to The Independent, nearly 10,000,000 animals are sacrificed in Pakistan every year on Eid. Countries such as Saudi Arabia transport nearly a million animals every year for sacrifice to Mina (near Mecca). The sacrificed animals at Id al-Adha, states Clarke Brooke, include the four species considered lawful for the Hajj sacrifice: sheep, goats, camels and cattle, and additionally, cow-like animals initialing the water buffalo, domesticated banteng and yaks. Many are brought in from north Africa and parts of Asia.

Other occasions when Muslims perform animal sacrifice include the 'aqiqa, when a child is seven days old, is shaved and given a name. It is believed that the animal sacrifice binds the child to Islam and offers protection to the child from evil.

Killing of animals by dhabihah is ritual slaughter rather than sacrifice.

Hinduism
Practices of Hindu animal sacrifice are mostly associated with Shaktism, Shaiva Agamas and in currents of folk Hinduism called Kulamarga strongly rooted in local tribal traditions. Animal sacrifices were carried out in ancient times in India. Some later minor Puranas forbid animal sacrifice though the upapurana, Kalika Purana, describes it in detail.

Shaktism traditions
Animal sacrifices are performed mainly at temples following the Shakti school of Hinduism where the female nature of Brahman is worshipped in the form of Kali and Durga. These traditions are followed in parts of eastern states of India at Hindu temples in Assam and West Bengal India and Nepal where goats, chickens and sometimes water buffalos are sacrificed.

Animal sacrifice is a part of Durga puja celebrations during the Navratri in eastern states of India. The goddess is offered sacrificial animal in this ritual in the belief that it stimulates her violent vengeance against the buffalo demon. According to Christopher Fuller, the animal sacrifice practice is rare among Hindus during Navratri, or at other times, outside the Shaktism tradition found in the eastern Indian states of West Bengal, Odisha and Assam. Further, even in these states, the festival season is one where significant animal sacrifices are observed. In some Shakta Hindu communities, the slaying of buffalo demon and victory of Durga is observed with a symbolic sacrifice instead of animal sacrifice.

Animal sacrifice en masse occurs during the three-day-long Gadhimai festival in Nepal. In 2009 it was speculated that more than 250,000 animals were killed while 5 million devotees attended the festival. However, this practise was later banned in 2015.

Rajput traditions
The Rajput of Rajasthan worship their weapons and horses on Navratri, and formerly offered a sacrifice of a goat to a goddess revered as Kuldevi – a practice that continues in some places. The ritual requires slaying of the animal with a single stroke. In the past this ritual was considered a rite of passage into manhood and readiness as a warrior. The Kuldevi among these Rajput communities is a warrior-pativrata guardian goddess, with local legends tracing reverence for her during Rajput-Muslim wars.

The tradition of animal sacrifice is being substituted with vegetarian offerings to the Goddess in temples and households around Banaras in Northern India.

Folk traditions
In some sacred groves of India, particularly in western Maharashtra, animal sacrifice is practiced to pacify female deities that are supposed to rule the groves.

In India, ritual of animal sacrifice is practised in many villages before local deities or certain powerful and terrifying forms of the Devi. In this form of worship, animals, usually goats, are decapitated and the blood is offered to deity often by smearing some of it on a post outside the temple. For instance, Kandhen Budhi is the reigning deity of Kantamal in Boudh district of Orissa, India. Every year, animals like goat and fowl are sacrificed before the deity on the occasion of her annual Yatra/Jatra (festival) held in the month of Aswina (September–October). The main attraction of Kandhen Budhi Yatra is Ghusuri Puja. Ghusuri means a child pig, which is sacrificed to the goddess every three years. Kandhen Budhi is also worshipped at Lather village under Mohangiri GP in Kalahandi district of Orissa, India. (Pasayat, 2009:20–24).

The religious belief of Tabuh Rah, a form of animal sacrifice of Balinese Hinduism includes a religious cockfight where a rooster is used in religious custom by allowing him to fight against another rooster in a religious and spiritual cockfight, a spiritual appeasement exercise of Tabuh Rah. The spilling of blood is necessary as purification to appease the evil spirits, and ritual fights follow an ancient and complex ritual as set out in the sacred lontar manuscripts.

Tantrik traditions
Human sacrifice is also mentioned in Hinduism in the Kalika Purana. Chapters 67 through 78 of the text constitute the Rudhiradhyaya, which discusses bali (animal sacrifice) and of Vamacara Tantrism. The Rudhiradhyaya section is notable for its uncommon discussion of human sacrifice. The text states that a human sacrifice may be performed to please the goddess, but only with the consent of prince before a war or cases of imminent danger. However, it was not until 2014 that the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) started collecting data on human sacrifice. According to the bureau, there were 51 cases of human sacrifice spread across 14 states between 2014 and 2016. An alleged case of human sacrifice was recorded as late as 2020.

Ancient China
During Shang and Zhou Dynasty, the nobles used to practice a complicated and hierarchical sacrificial system and only the king could sacrifice to heaven and earth and the four sacred mountains including Mount Tai including his nine temples for his family. The Dukes sacrificed to the altar of land and grain and to the various rivers and streams and mountains in their territory and their family temples. The common person didn't have a temple but sacrificed to their father or grandfather or relevant family in their apartment or house and could only sacrifice to family because of the burden of the luxurious animals. The noble would sacrifice pigs, goats or sheep, cows, mainly oxen, dogs or wild dogs, and other livestock at different times of the year; in bad years the sacrifices were less.

The ancient kings, Confucius and Confucian scholars framed the sacrificing scale of every strata from the Zhou system, not including human sacrifice, in The Book of Rites. The names of the offering scales from honorable to low are 'Tai-lao'(太牢), 'Shao-lao'(少牢), 'Te-sheng'(特牲), 'Te-shi'(特豕), 'Te-tun'(特豚), 'Yu'(魚), 'La'(臘), 'Dou'(豆) and else. The Tai-lao class, now only practiced in the ceremony of worshipping Huang Di or Confucius, use whole cows, whole goats and whole pigs in Taiwan

It is said Hou ji offered a sacrifice with lamb millet and southern wood and black millet whine with fragrant herbs mainly southern wood.

Modern-day China
Buddhism prohibits all forms of killing, rituals, sacrifices and worship and Taoism generally prohibit killing of animals. In Kaohsiung, Taiwan, animal sacrifices are banned in Taoist temples.

Some animal offerings, such as fowl, pigs, goats, fish, or other livestock, are accepted in some Taoism sects and beliefs in Chinese folk religion. The offerings would be placed at the altar or the temple after being slaughtered. The amount sacrificed is up to the worshippers, who can eat all of the offerings after the rite. In folk religion some regions believe that high-status deities prefer vegetarian food more, while ghosts, low-status gods, and other unknown supernatural spirits like meat. Therefore, whole pigs, whole goats, whole chickens, and whole ducks will be sacrificed in the ghost festival. Some vegetarian believers make dummy pigs or dummy goats from vegetarian food like bread or rice for sacrifice.

Japan
Before Buddhism came to Japan, some Shinto festivals included bear, deer, horse, and green pheasant sacrifice. Iomante (イオマンテ), sometimes written as Iyomante (イヨマンテ), is an Ainu ceremony in which a brown bear is sacrificed.

Traditional Sub-Saharan and Afro-American religions
Animal sacrifice is regularly practiced in traditional African and Afro-American religions.

The U.S. Supreme Court's 1993 decision Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah upheld the right of Santería adherents to practice ritual animal sacrifice in the United States of America. Likewise in Texas in 2009, legal and religious issues that related to animal sacrifice, animal rights and freedom of religion were taken to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in the case of Jose Merced, President Templo Yoruba Omo Orisha Texas, Inc., v. City of Euless. The court ruling that the Merced case of the freedom of exercise of religion was meritorious and prevailing and that Merced was entitled under the Texas Religious Freedom and Restoration Act (TRFRA) to an injunction preventing the city of Euless, Texas from enforcing its ordinances that burdened his religious practices relating to the use of animals (see Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 110.005(a)(2)).

Utux
Atayal, Seediq and Taroko people believe that bad-luck or punishments of 'Utux', which refers to any kind of supernatural spirits or ancestors, would infect the relatives. When a member in relatives has violated a taboo or met with misfortune, a ritual will be held. It must be done in the ritual to sacrifice a pig, which means the misfortune and sin would be washed away by the blood, and apologize to the Utux with gift.

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Mikhail Tal

Mikhail Nekhemyevich Tal (9 November 1936 – 28 June 1992) was a Soviet and Latvian chess player and the eighth World Chess Champion. He is considered a creative genius and is widely regarded as one of the most influential players in chess history. Tal played in an attacking and daring combinatorial style. His play was known above all for improvisation and unpredictability. Vladislav Zubok said of him, "Every game for him was as inimitable and invaluable as a poem".

His nickname was "Misha", a diminutive for Mikhail, and he earned the nickname "The Magician from Riga". Both The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games and Modern Chess Brilliancies include more games by Tal than any other player. He also held the record for the longest unbeaten streak in competitive chess history with 95 games (46 wins, 49 draws) between 23 October 1973 and 16 October 1974, until Ding Liren's streak of 100 games (29 wins, 71 draws) between 9 August 2017 and 11 November 2018. In addition, Tal was a highly regarded chess writer.

Tal died on 28 June 1992 in Moscow, Russia. The Mikhail Tal Memorial chess tournament has been held in Moscow annually since 2006.

Early years
Tal was born in Riga, Latvia, into a Jewish family. According to his friend Gennadi Sosonko, his true father was a family friend identified only as "Uncle Robert"; however, this was vehemently denied by Tal's third wife Angelina. Uncle Robert had been a taxi driver in Paris, French Third Republic, in the 1920s and had lost all his family in World War II. His mother, Ida Grigoryevna, was the eldest of four sisters; Tal frequently visited the Netherlands to see his aunt, Riva, and another of his aunts settled in the United States but visited Riga.

As a child, Tal joined the Riga Palace of Young Pioneers chess club. In 1949, he played Ratmir Kholmov, a young master who had recently competed in the prestigious Chigorin Memorial in 1947, in a simultaneous exhibition. Tal used an imaginative combination to win his game at the age of 13.

Alexander Koblents began tutoring him in 1949, after which Tal's game rapidly improved, and by 1951 he had qualified for the Latvian Championship. In the 1952 Latvian Championship, Tal finished ahead of his trainer. Tal won his first Latvian title in 1953, and was awarded the title of Candidate Master. He became a Soviet Master in 1954 by defeating Vladimir Saigin in a qualifying match. That same year he also scored his first win over a grandmaster when Yuri Averbakh lost on time in a drawn position. Tal graduated in Literature from the University of Latvia, writing a thesis on the satirical works of Ilf and Petrov, and taught school in Riga for a time in his early twenties. He was a member of the Daugava Sports Society, and represented Latvia in internal Soviet team competitions.

In 1959, he married 19-year-old Salli Landau, an actress with the Riga Youth Theatre; they divorced in 1970. In 2003, Landau published a biography in Russian of her late ex-husband.

Soviet champion
Tal made his first significant appearance at the 1956 USSR Chess Championship, sharing 5th–7th place with Lev Polugaevsky and Ratmir Kholmov. Grigory Levenfish called him "the most colourful figure of the championship" and a "great talent" who strived for "sharp and complicated play". However, he was criticised by the media for taking unnecessary risks and having restricted creative views. Tal then went to play on board three at the students' championship in Sweden, scoring 6 out of 7.

He became the youngest player to win the 1957 USSR Chess Championship, at the age of 20. He had not played in enough international tournaments to qualify for the title of Grandmaster, but FIDE decided at its 1957 Congress to waive the normal restrictions and award him the title because of his achievement in winning the Soviet Championship. At that time the Soviet Union was dominant in world chess, and Tal had beaten several of the world's top players to win the tournament.

Tal made three appearances for the USSR at Student Olympiads in 1956–1958, winning three team gold medals and three board gold medals. He won nineteen games, drew eight, and lost none, for 85.2 percent.

He retained the title of champion at the 1958 USSR Chess Championship, and competed in the World Chess Championship 1960 for the first time. He won the 1958 Interzonal tournament at Portorož, Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, then helped the Soviet Union to win the 13th Chess Olympiad, being its fourth consecutive victory in Munich, West Germany.

World Champion
In 1959, Tal won a very strong tournament at Zürich, Switzerland. Following the Interzonal, the top players carried on to the Candidates' Tournament, Yugoslavia, 1959. Tal showed superior form by winning with 20/28 points, ahead of Paul Keres with 18½, followed by Tigran Petrosian, Vasily Smyslov, the sixteen-year-old Bobby Fischer, Svetozar Gligorić, Friðrik Ólafsson, and Pal Benko. Tal's victory was attributed to his dominance over the lower half of the field; whilst scoring only one win and three losses versus Keres, he won all four individual games against Fischer, and took 3½ points out of 4 from each of Gligorić, Olafsson, and Benko. When Benko arrived for his match with Tal, he wore dark glasses in order to avert the gaze of Tal, which could be intimidating. In response and as a joke, Tal wore large sunglasses which he borrowed from a member of the crowd.

In 1960, at the age of 23, Tal defeated the strategically-minded Mikhail Botvinnik in a World Championship match, held in Moscow, by 12½–8½ (six wins, two losses, and thirteen draws), making him the youngest-ever World Champion (a record later broken by Garry Kasparov, who earned the title at 22). Botvinnik, who had never faced Tal before the title match began, won the return match against Tal in 1961, also held in Moscow, by 13–8 (ten wins to five, with six draws). In the period between the matches Botvinnik had thoroughly analysed Tal's style, and turned most of the return match's games into slow wars of maneuver or endgames, rather than the complicated tactical melees which were Tal's happy hunting ground. Tal's chronic kidney problems contributed to his defeat, and his doctors in Riga advised that he should postpone the match for health reasons. Yuri Averbakh claimed that Botvinnik would agree to a postponement only if Tal was certified unfit by Moscow doctors, and that Tal then decided to play. His short reign atop the chess world made him one of the two so-called "winter kings" who interrupted Botvinnik's long reign from 1948 to 1963 (the other was Smyslov, world champion 1957–58).

His highest Elo rating was 2705, achieved in 1980. His highest Historical Chessmetrics Rating was 2799, in September 1960.

Later achievements
Soon after losing the rematch with Botvinnik, Tal won the 1961 Bled supertournament in SFR Yugoslavia, by one point over Fischer, despite losing their individual game, scoring 14½ from nineteen games (+11−1=7) with the world-class players Petrosian, Keres, Gligorić, Efim Geller, and Miguel Najdorf among the other participants.

Tal played in a total of six Candidates' Tournaments and match cycles, though he never again earned the right to play for the world title. In 1962 at Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles, he had serious health problems, having undergone a major operation shortly before the tournament, and had to withdraw three-quarters of the way through, scoring just seven points (+3−10=8) from 21 games. He tied for first place at the 1964 Amsterdam Interzonal to advance to matches. Then in 1965, he lost the final match against Boris Spassky, after defeating Lajos Portisch and Bent Larsen in matches. Exempt from the 1967 Sousse Interzonal in Pahlavi Iran, he lost a 1968 semifinal match against Viktor Korchnoi, after defeating Gligorić.

Poor health caused a slump in his play from late 1968 to late 1969, but he recovered his form after having a kidney removed. He won the 1979 Riga Interzonal with an undefeated score of 14/17, but the next year lost a quarter-final match to Lev Polugaevsky, one of the players to hold a positive score against him. He also played in the 1985 Montpellier (France) Candidates' Tournament, a round-robin of 16 qualifiers, finishing in a tie for fourth and fifth places, and narrowly missing further advancement after drawing a playoff match with Jan Timman, who held the tiebreak advantage from the tournament proper.

From July 1972 to April 1973, Tal played a record 86 consecutive games without a loss (47 wins and 39 draws). Between 23 October 1973 and 16 October 1974, he played 95 consecutive games without a loss (46 wins and 49 draws), shattering his previous record. These were the two longest unbeaten streaks in competitive chess for more than four decades, until Ding Liren broke the record in 2018 with 100 games, although with far fewer wins than either of Tal's streaks (29 wins, 71 draws).

Tal remained a formidable opponent as he got older. He played Anatoly Karpov 22 times, 12 of them during the latter's reign as World Champion, with a record of +0−1=19 in classical games and +1−2=19 overall.

One of Tal's greatest achievements during his later career was an equal first place with Karpov (whom he seconded in a number of tournaments and world championships) in the 1979 Montreal (Canada) "Tournament of Stars", with an unbeaten score of (+6−0=12), the only undefeated player in the field, which also included Spassky, Portisch, Vlastimil Hort, Robert Hübner, Ljubomir Ljubojević, Lubomir Kavalek, Jan Timman and Larsen.

Tal played in 21 Soviet Championships, winning it six times (1957, 1958, 1967, 1972, 1974, 1978). He was also a five-time winner of the International Chess Tournament in Tallinn, Estonian SSR, with victories in 1971, 1973, 1977, 1981, and 1983.

Tal also had successes in blitz chess; in 1970, he took second place to Fischer, who scored 19/22, in a blitz tournament at Herceg Novi, SFR Yugoslavia, ahead of Korchnoi, Petrosian and Smyslov. In 1988, at the age of 51, he won the second official World Blitz Championship (the first was won by Kasparov the previous year in Brussels, Belgium) at Saint John, Canada, ahead of such players as Kasparov, the reigning world champion, and ex-champion Anatoly Karpov. In the final, he defeated Rafael Vaganian by 3½–½.

On 28 May 1992, at the Moscow blitz tournament (which he left the hospital to play), he defeated Kasparov. He died one month later.

Team competitions
In Chess Olympiad play, Mikhail Tal was a member of eight Soviet teams, each of which won team gold medals (1958, 1960, 1962, 1966, 1972, 1974, 1980, and 1982), won 65 games, drew 34, and lost only two games (81.2%). This percentage makes him the player with the best score among those participating in at least four Olympiads. Individually, Tal won seven Olympiad board medals, including five gold (1958, 1962, 1966, 1972, 1974), and two silver (1960, 1982).

Tal also represented the Soviet Union at six European Team Chess Championships (1957, 1961, 1970, 1973, 1977, 1980), winning team gold medals each time, and three board gold medals (1957, 1970, and 1977). He scored 14 wins, 20 draws, and three losses, for 64.9%. Tal played board nine for the USSR in the first match against the Rest of the World team at Belgrade, SFR Yugoslavia in 1970, scoring 2 out of 4. He was on board seven for the USSR in the second match against the Rest of the World team at London, United Kingdom in 1984, scoring 2 out of 3. The USSR won both team matches. He was an Honoured Master of Sport.

From 1950 (when he won the Latvian junior championship) to 1991, Tal won or tied for first in 68 tournaments (see table below). During his 41-year career he played about 2,700 tournament or match games, winning over 65% of them.

Health problems and death
Naturally artistic, witty and impulsive, Tal led a bohemian life of chess playing, heavy drinking and chain smoking. His already fragile health suffered as a result, and he spent a great deal of time in the hospital, including an operation to remove a kidney in 1969. He was also briefly addicted to morphine, prescribed due to intense pain. Tal also drank heavily before tournaments; in a tournament in the Netherlands, Tal and another Soviet grandmaster were tied in the standings, and the results of the next day's final round would determine the victor. The night before these games, the two drank together until four in the morning. Tal was ready to play at 8.30 a.m. and won his game decisively, taking first prize.

On 28 June 1992, Tal died in a Moscow hospital, officially of a hemorrhage in the esophagus. His friend and fellow Soviet grandmaster Gennadi Sosonko reported that "effectively his entire organism had ceased to function."

Tal had the congenital deformity of ectrodactyly in his right hand (visible in some photographs). Despite this, he was a skilled piano player.

Playing style
Tal loved the game in itself and considered that "Chess, first of all, is art." He was known to play numerous blitz games against unknown or relatively weak players purely for the joy of playing.

Tal was known as "The Magician from Riga", and his style of play was very aggressive and involved heavy calculation. His approach over the board was very pragmatic—in that respect, he is one of the heirs of ex-world champion Alexander Alekhine. He often sacrificed in search of activity and initiative which is defined as the ability to make threats to which the opponent must respond. Many masters found it difficult to refute Tal's ideas, looking at how many problems he created, though deeper post-game analysis found flaws in some of his calculations. The famous sixth game of his first world championship match with Botvinnik is typical in that regard: Tal sacrificed a knight with little compensation but prevailed when the unsettled Botvinnik failed to find the correct response. Tal's style of play was so intimidating that James Eade listed Tal as one of the three players whom contemporaries were most afraid of playing against (the others being Capablanca and Fischer). However, while Capablanca and Fischer were feared because of their extreme technical skill, Tal was feared because of the possibility of being on the wrong side of a soon-to-be-famous brilliancy. Although Tal's sacrifices were formidable, his style of play was very risky, contributing to his negative record against world-class defensive players. These included Spassky, Petrosian, Polugaevsky, Korchnoi, Keres, Smyslov, and Stein. (Tal has a positive record against Fischer with his four wins from the 1959 candidates tournament, when Fischer was only 16 years old, but never beat Fischer again.)

Although his playing style at first was scorned by ex-world champion Vasily Smyslov as nothing more than "tricks", Tal convincingly beat many notable grandmasters with his trademark aggression. Prevailing against Tal's aggression required extraordinary ability. It is also notable that he adopted a more sedate and positional style in his later years; for many chess lovers, the apex of Tal's style corresponds with the period (approximately from 1971 to 1979) when he was able to integrate the solidity of classical chess with the imagination of his youth.

Of the current top-level players, the Latvian Alexei Shirov has been most often compared to Tal. In fact, he studied with Tal as a youth. Many other Latvian grandmasters and masters, for instance Alexander Shabalov and Alvis Vītoliņš, have played in a similar vein, causing some to speak of a "Latvian School of Chess".

Tal contributed little to opening theory, despite having a deep knowledge of most systems, the Sicilian and the Ruy Lopez in particular. There are a few openings named after him, however, such as the Tal Variation in the Caro-Kann and in the Sicilian Scheveningen. But his aggressive use of the Modern Benoni, particularly in his early years, led to a complete re-evaluation of this variation. A variation of the Nimzo-Indian Defence also bears his name.

Notable games

 * Tal vs. Alexander Tolush, USSR Championship, Moscow 1957, King's Indian Defence, Sämisch Variation (E81), . In a critical last-round game, Tal spares no fireworks as he scores the win that clinches his first Soviet title.
 * Boris Spassky vs. Tal, USSR Championship, Riga 1958, Nimzo-Indian Defence, Sämisch Variation (E26), . Spassky plays for a win to avoid a playoff for an Interzonal berth, but Tal hangs on by his fingernails before turning the tables in a complex ; with the win, he captures his second straight Soviet title.
 * Tal vs. Vasily Smyslov, Yugoslavia Candidates' Tournament 1959, Caro–Kann Defence (B10), 1–0. A daring piece sacrifice to win a.
 * Robert James Fischer vs. Tal, Belgrade, Candidates' Tournament 1959, Sicilian Defence, Fischer–Sozin Attack (B87), 0–1. Their games from this period are full of interesting tactics.
 * Mikhail Botvinnik vs. Tal, World Championship Match, Moscow 1960, 6th game, King's Indian Defence, Fianchetto Variation, Classical Main line (E69), 0–1. An excellent sample of Tal's style from the first Botvinnik–Tal match. Tal sacrifices a knight for the attack and Botvinnik is unable to find a good defence in the given time; his 25th move is a mistake that spoils his game.
 * István Bilek vs. Tal, Moscow 1967, King's Indian Attack, Spassky Variation (A05), 0–1. A risky is crowned with success, winning a brilliancy prize.
 * Boris Spassky vs. Tal, Tallinn tt 1973, Nimzo-Indian Defence, Leningrad Variation (E30), 0–1. A game fuelled with tactics from its first moves. Black attacks in the and then starts a.
 * Tal vs. Tigran Petrosian, 8th Soviet Team Cup, Moscow 1974, rd 5, Pirc Defence, Classical System, (B08), 1–0. Tal destroys perhaps the greatest defensive player of all time in a.
 * Tal vs. Joel Lautier, Barcelona 1992. In his final tournament before his death at age 55, the Magician from Riga produces one last masterpiece against a Grandmaster from the next generation.

Writings
Tal was a prolific and highly respected chess writer, penning a number of books and serving as editor of the Latvian chess magazine Šahs ("Chess") from 1960 to 1970. His books are renowned for the detailed narrative of his thinking during the games. American Grandmaster Andrew Soltis reviewed his book on the world championship match as "simply the best book written about a world championship match by a contestant. That shouldn't be a surprise because Tal was the finest writer to become world champion." New Zealand Grandmaster Murray Chandler wrote in the introduction to the 1997 reissued algebraic edition of The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal that the book was possibly the best chess book ever written.

One amusing anecdote frequently quoted from Tal's autobiography takes the form of a hypothetical conversation between Tal and a journalist (actually co-author Yakov Damsky). It offers a modest, self-deprecating view of his reputation for unerring calculation at the board:

"It might be inconvenient to interrupt our profound discussion and change the subject slightly, but I would like to know whether extraneous, abstract thoughts ever enter your head while playing a game?

Yes. For example, I will never forget my game with GM Vasiukov on a USSR Championship. We reached a very complicated position where I was intending to sacrifice a knight. The sacrifice was not obvious; there was a large number of possible variations; but when I began to study hard and work through them, I found to my horror that nothing would come of it. Ideas piled up one after another. I would transport a subtle reply by my opponent, which worked in one case, to another situation where it would naturally prove to be quite useless. As a result, my head became filled with a completely chaotic pile of all sorts of moves, and the infamous 'tree of variations', from which the chess trainers recommend that you cut off the small branches, in this case spread with unbelievable rapidity. And then suddenly, for some reason, I remembered the classic couplet by Korney Ivanović Chukovsky:

I do not know from what associations the hippopotamus got into the chess board, but although the spectators were convinced that I was continuing to study the position, I, despite my humanitarian education, was trying at this time to work out: just how WOULD you drag a hippopotamus out of the marsh? I remember how jacks figured in my thoughts, as well as levers, helicopters, and even a rope ladder. After a lengthy consideration I admitted defeat as an engineer, and thought spitefully to myself: 'Well, just let it drown!' And suddenly the hippopotamus disappeared. Went right off the chessboard just as he had come on ... of his own accord! And straightaway the position did not appear to be so complicated. Now I somehow realized that it was not possible to calculate all the variations, and that the knight sacrifice was, by its very nature, purely intuitive. And since it promised an interesting game, I could not refrain from making it.

And the following day, it was with pleasure that I read in the paper how Mikhail Tal, after carefully thinking over the position for 40 minutes, made an accurately calculated piece sacrifice."

Score with some major grandmasters
Only official tournament or match games have been taken into account. '+' corresponds to Tal's wins, '−' to his losses and '=' to draws. Winning records in bold.

 * Mikhail Botvinnik: +12−12=20
 * David Bronstein: +12−8=19
 * 🇺🇸 Bobby Fischer: +4−2=5
 * Efim Geller: +6−6=23
 * 🇷🇺 Anatoly Karpov: +0−1=19
 * 🇷🇺 Garry Kasparov: +1−2=9
 * 🇪🇪 Paul Keres: +4−8=20
 * Viktor Korchnoi: +4−13=27
 * Bent Larsen: +12−7=18
 * Tigran Petrosian: +4−5=35
 * Lev Polugaevsky: +2−8=22
 * 🇭🇺 Lajos Portisch: +9−5=18
 * Vasily Smyslov: +3−4=21
 * Boris Spassky: +6−9=27
 * Leonid Stein: +0−3=15
 * 🇦🇷 Miguel Najdorf: +3−1=5
 * 🇺🇸 Pal Benko: +8−1=3
 * Wolfgang Uhlmann: +4−0=3
 * Borislav Ivkov: +3−1=11
 * Svetozar Gligoric: +10−2=22

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

title: Mikhail Tal


text:
River Liffey

The River Liffey (Irish: An Life, historically An Ruirthe(a)ch) is a river in eastern Ireland that ultimately flows through the centre of Dublin to its mouth within Dublin Bay. Its major tributaries include the River Dodder, the River Poddle and the River Camac. The river supplies much of Dublin's water and supports a range of recreational activities.

Name
Ptolemy's Geography (2nd century AD) described a river, perhaps the Liffey, which he labelled Οβοκα (Oboka). Ultimately this led to the name of the River Avoca in County Wicklow.

The Liffey was previously named An Ruirthech, meaning "fast (or strong) runner". The word Liphe (or Life) referred originally to the name of the plain through which the river ran, but eventually came to refer to the river itself. The word may derive from the same root as Welsh llif (flow, stream), namely Proto-Indo-European lē̆i-4, but Gearóid Mac Eoin has more recently proposed that it may derive from a non-Indo-European word borrowed from the original language spoken in Ireland before the arrival of the Celts. It was also known as the Anna Liffey, possibly from an anglicisation of Abhainn na Life, the Irish phrase that translates into English as "River Liffey". James Joyce embodies the river in Finnegans Wake as "Anna Livia Plurabelle".

Course and system
The Liffey rises in the Liffey Head Bog between the mountains of Kippure 742 m and Tonduff 642 m in the northern section of the Wicklow Mountains, forming from many streamlets near the Sally Gap. It flows for 132 km through counties Wicklow, Kildare and Dublin before entering the Irish Sea at its mouth at the midpoint of Dublin Bay, on a line extending from the Baily lighthouse to the Muglin Rocks. It crosses from County Wicklow into County Kildare at Poulaphouca and from County Kildare into County Dublin at Leixlip, with the greatest part of its length being in Kildare.

The catchment area of the Liffey is 1256 km2. The long term average flow rate of the river is 18.0 m3/s.

Tributaries
The Liffey system includes dozens of smaller rivers and more than 100 named streams. Early tributaries include the Athdown Brook, Shankill River, Ballylow Brook, Brittas River and Woodend Brook. The substantial King's River, which formerly joined the Liffey near Blessington, and may in fact have held the larger flow, now merges in within Poulaphouca Reservoir.

Downstream of Poulaphouca are the Lemonstown Stream, Kilcullen Stream and Pinkeen Stream, followed by the Painestown River (with tributaries including the Morell River), the Rye Water (with tributaries including the Lyreen) at Leixlip, and the Griffeen River and Silleachain Stream in Lucan.

Within Dublin are the various Phoenix Park streams on the left bank, interspersed with right bank tributaries such as the Glenaulin Stream and Creosote Stream.

Within the quays area tributaries include the River Camac, possibly Colman's Brook, the Bradogue River, River Poddle, Stein River and the River Dodder, some of which have numerous tributaries of their own.

In earlier times, the River Tolka was also arguably a tributary of the Liffey or at least shared its mouth, but it now enters Dublin Bay distinctly, some distance to the north.

Dams, reservoirs and falls
There are dams for three ESB hydroelectric power stations along the river, at Poulaphouca, Golden Falls and Leixlip. Major reservoir facilities also exist at Poulaphouca. The Liffey does not feature natural lakes and has few islands.

Significant falls at Poulaphouca and at Golden Falls were flooded by reservoir construction. There remain areas of rapids, including as the river approaches Dublin city.

Settlements
Towns along the river include Blessington, Ballymore Eustace, Kilcullen, Athgarvan, Newbridge, Caragh, Clane, Celbridge, Leixlip and Lucan before the river passes the suburb of Chapelizod and then runs through the city of Dublin all the way to its mouth.

Navigation and uses
The River Liffey in Dublin city has been used for many centuries for trade, from the Viking beginnings of the city up to recent times. It is connected to the River Shannon via the Grand Canal and the Royal Canal. There is no major navigation on the river itself above the East-Link bridge in modern times, but shipping used to enter Dublin city centre, with major docking points up to the St James' Gate area.

Since its construction in 1978, the Talbot Memorial Bridge marks the furthest point up to the Liffey to which tall ships may travel, as all bridges downriver of it are either swingbridges or bascule.

Water supply
Around 60% of the Liffey's flow is abstracted for drinking water and to supply industry. Much of this makes its way back into the river after purification in wastewater treatment plants. Despite a misconception that the Guinness brewery is one such commercial user, the facility uses water piped from the Wicklow Mountains.

Electricity generation
ESB hydroelectric power stations exist along the river, at Poulaphouca, Golden Falls and Leixlip, in addition to a number of minor private installations.

Traffic
A well-known sight on the Liffey up to the 1990s, the Lady Patricia and Miranda Guinness cargo ships were used to export Guinness from the St. James's Gate Brewery.

As of the early 21st century, the only regular traffic on the river within the city is the Liffey Voyage water tour bus service, which runs guided tours along the River Liffey through Dublin City centre. Departing from the boardwalk downstream of the Ha'penny Bridge, the Spirit of the Docklands was built by Westers Mekaniska in Sweden as a 50-passenger water taxi. Its variable ballast tanks (not unlike a submarine) and low air draught mean that at low tide it can float high, but at high tide it can ride low and still pass below the Liffey's bridges.

Downstream of the East-Link bridge, the river is still mainly used for commercial and ferry traffic, with some recreational use also. High speed trips out the mouth of the Liffey were also previously available from Sea Safari.

Recreational use
Upstream from the city, at Chapelizod, the river is used by private, university and Garda rowing clubs.

The Liffey Descent canoeing event, held each year since 1960, covers a 27 km course from Straffan to Islandbridge. The Normal Tidal Limit (NTL) of the river is Islandbridge (weir). The Liffey Swim takes place every year in late August or early September between Watling Bridge and The Custom House. The Islandbridge stretch of river accommodates a number of rowing clubs including Trinity College, UCD, Commercial, Neptune, and the Garda rowing club.

The Liffey is widely used for recreational activities – such as canoeing, rafting, fishing, swimming, significant facilities are at Poulaphouca, Kilcullen, Newbridge, where a seven-acre Liffey Linear Park has been developed, and other facilities are located further downriver at Leixlip and other towns.

History
The earliest stone bridge over the Liffey in Dublin of which there is solid evidence was the Bridge of Dublin, which replaced a wooden bridge, Dubhghall's Bridge, dating to the 11th century, and was in turn replaced – the site is now occupied by Fr. Mathew Bridge). The Bridge of Dublin was built by the Dominicans in 1428, and survived well into the 18th century. This four-arch bridge included various buildings such as a chapel, bakehouse and possibly an inn. Island Bridge (a predecessor of the current bridge) was added in 1577 at the upper tidal extremities of the river between Islandbridge and western Chapelizod.

With the development of commercial Dublin in the 17th century, four new bridges were added in Dublin between 1670 and 1684: Barrack, or Bloody Bridge, (the forerunner of the current Rory O'More Bridge), Essex Bridge (Grattan Bridge), Ormond Bridge (O'Donovan Rossa Bridge) and Arran Bridge. Flooding in December 1801 following 36 hours of rain destroyed the oldest bridge which connected Church Street and Bridge Street. It was replaced with Whitworth Bridge in 1816.

The oldest bridge still standing is Mellows Bridge, (originally Queens Bridge) constructed in 1764 on the site of Arran Bridge, which was destroyed by floods in 1763. The first iron bridge was the Ha'penny Bridge built in 1816. Farmleigh Bridge, also iron, was built around 1872 at the end of a tunnel and connected Farmleigh estate to Palmerstown.

The Millennium Bridge was opened in December 1999, and 21st century additions include Seán O'Casey Bridge (2005), Samuel Beckett Bridge (2009), and Rosie Hackett Bridge (2014).

There are records regarding several bridges in County Kildare. A bridge was built in Kilcullen in 1319. There are also a number of historic private and disused bridges over the Liffey. One such stone bridge, at Harristown Estate in County Kildare, was built for John LaTouche in 1788. This remains in private use and is near the disused Harristown viaduct (over the Liffey) which was on the Sallins Tullow rail line and was last used in 1959.

Present day

Dividing the Northside of Dublin from the Southside, the Liffey is today spanned by numerous bridges, mostly open to vehicular traffic. These include the West-Link Bridge on the M50 motorway, Seán Heuston Bridge and O'Connell Bridge. There are 3 pedestrian bridges in the city: the Millennium Bridge, Seán O'Casey Bridge and the Ha'penny Bridge. 21st century additions include the Samuel Beckett Bridge (2009) and James Joyce Bridge (2003), both designed by Santiago Calatrava.

Crossings further upriver include the Liffey Bridge at Celbridge, "The Bridge at 16" (a 19th-century pedestrian suspension bridge at what is now the K Club), and the Leinster Aqueduct – which carries the Grand Canal over the Liffey at Caragh.

Art works along the river and its quays include the Famine Memorial Statues (near the IFSC) and the World Hunger Stone.

Quays
The song about Seamus Rafferty refers to the "bowsies on the quay"; However, from the late 20th-century there was some renewed development on the quays, with the addition of linear parks and overhanging boardwalks.

There are quays on the north and south banks of the Liffey, extending from the weir at Islandbridge to Ringsend bridge over the river Dodder, just before the East-Link toll bridge.

From west to east, the quays on the north bank are:
 * Bridgewater, Wolfe Tone, Sarsfield, Ellis, Arran, Inns, Ormond Upper, Ormond Lower, Bachelors Walk, Eden, Custom House, and North Wall.

From west to east, the quays on the south bank are:
 * Victoria, Usher's Island, Usher's, Merchants, Wood, Essex, Wellington, Crampton, Aston, Burgh, George's, City, Sir John Rogerson's, and Great Britain.

Annalistic references
In the Annals of Inisfallen for the year 808, an entry reads:
 * AI808.2 A defeat [inflicted] by the Laigin on Áed, son of Niall, at the river of Liphe.

Popular culture references
From Joyce to Radiohead, the Liffey is often referenced in literature and song:

That is the first of a number of references to the Liffey in the Wake: insofar as the book has characters, the female protagonist of the novel, Anna Livia Plurabelle, is herself an allegory of the river.

title: River Liffey


text:
BMW 801

The BMW 801 was a powerful German 41.8 L air-cooled 14-cylinder-radial aircraft engine built by BMW and used in a number of German Luftwaffe aircraft of World War II. Production versions of the twin-row engine generated between 1,560 and 2,000 PS (1,540–1,970 hp, or 1,150–1,470 kW). It was the most produced radial engine of Germany in World War II with more than 61,000 built.

The 801 was originally intended to replace existing radial types in German transport and utility aircraft. At the time, it was widely agreed among European designers that an inline engine was a requirement for high performance designs due to its smaller frontal area and resulting lower drag. Kurt Tank successfully fitted a BMW 801 to a new fighter design he was working on, and as a result the 801 became best known as the power plant for the famous Focke-Wulf Fw 190. The BMW 801 radial also pioneered the use of what would today be designated an engine control unit: its Kommandogerät engine management system took over the operation of several aviation engine management control parameters of the era, allowing proper operation of the engine with just one throttle lever.

Precursor design
In the 1930s, BMW took out a license to build the Pratt & Whitney Hornet engines. By the mid-30s they had introduced an improved version, the BMW 132. The BMW 132 was widely used, most notably on the Junkers Ju 52, which it powered for much of that design's lifetime.

In 1935 the RLM funded prototypes of two much larger radial designs, one from Bramo, the Bramo 329, and another from BMW, the BMW 139. BMW's design used many components from the BMW 132 to create a two-row engine with 14 cylinders, supplying 1,550 PS (1,529 hp, 1,140 kW). After BMW bought Bramo in 1939 both projects were merged into the BMW 801, learning from the problems encountered in both projects.

The BMW 139 was originally intended to be used in roles similar to those of the other German radials, namely bombers and transport aircraft, but midway through the program the Focke-Wulf firm's chief designer, Kurt Tank suggested it for use in the Focke-Wulf Fw 190 fighter project. Radial engines were rare in European designs as they were considered to have too large a frontal area for good streamlining and would not be suitable for high speed aircraft. They were most popular on naval aircraft, where their easier maintenance and improved reliability were highly valued. Efforts to improve these designs led to new cowling designs that reduced the concerns about drag. Tank felt that attention to detail could result in a streamlined radial that would not suffer undue drag, and would be competitive with inlines.

The main concern was providing cooling air over the cylinder heads, which generally required a very large opening at the front of the aircraft. Tank's solution for the BMW 139 was to use an engine-driven fan behind an oversized, flow-through hollow prop-spinner open at the extreme front, blowing air past the engine cylinders, with some of it being drawn through S-shaped ducts over a radiator for oil cooling. However this system proved almost impossible to operate properly with the BMW 139; early prototypes of the Fw 190 demonstrated terrible cooling problems. Although the problems appeared to be fixable, since the engine was already fairly dated in terms of design, in 1938 BMW proposed an entirely new engine designed specifically for fan-cooling that could be brought to production quickly.

801 emerges
The new design was given the name BMW 801 after BMW was given a new block of "109-800" engine numbers by the RLM to use after their merger with Bramo. The 801 retained the 139's older-style single-valve intake and exhaust, while most in-line engines of the era had moved to either three (as Junkers had done) or four valves per cylinder, or in British use for their own radials, sleeve valves. Several minor advances were worked into the design, including the use of sodium-cooled valves and a direct fuel injection system, manufactured by Friedrich Deckel AG of Munich.

The supercharger was rather basic in the early models, using a single-stage two-speed design directly geared to the engine (unlike the DB 601's hydraulically clutched version) which led to rather limited altitude performance, in keeping with its intended medium-altitude usage. One key advancement for the 801 was the Kommandogerät (command-device), a mechanical-hydraulic unit that automatically adjusted engine fuel flow, propeller pitch, supercharger setting, mixture and ignition timing in response to a single throttle lever, dramatically simplifying engine control. The Kommandogerät could be considered to be a precursor to the engine control units used for many vehicles' internal combustion engines of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.

There was a considerable amount of wind tunnel work done on the engine and BMW-designed forward cowling (incorporating the engine's oil cooler) at the Luftfahrtforschungsanstalt (LFA) facility in Völkenrode, leading to the conclusion it was possible to reduce drag equivalent to 150 - 200 hp. It also maximized the use of positive air pressure to aid cooling of cylinders, heads, and other internal parts.

801A and 801B
The first BMW 801As ran in April 1939, only six months after starting work on the design, with production commencing in 1940. The 801B was to be identical to the 801A except for the gearbox, which reversed the direction of the propeller rotation to counterclockwise as seen from behind the engine. The A and B models were intended to be used in pairs on twin-engine designs, cancelling out net torque and making the plane easier to handle. There is no evidence the 801B ever left the prototype stage. The BMW 801A/B engines delivered 1,560 PS (1,539 hp, 1,147 kW) for takeoff. Major applications of the 801A/L engines include multiple variants of the Junkers Ju 88 and Dornier Do 217.

801C and 801L
The BMW 801C was developed for use in single- or multi-engined fighters and included a new hydraulic prop control and various changes intended to improve cooling, including cooling "gills" on the cowling behind the engine in place of the original slots. The 801C was almost exclusively used in early variants of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190A. The BMW 801L was an A model with the hydraulic prop control mechanism introduced with the 801C engine. The C and L models delivered the same power as the original A model.

801D-2 and 801G-2
The 801C was replaced with the BMW 801 D-2 series engines in early 1942, which ran on C2/C3 100 octane fuel instead of the A/B/C/L's B4 87 octane, boosting takeoff power to 1,700 PS (1,677 hp, 1,250 kW). The BMW 801G-2 and H-2 models were D-2 engines modified for use in bomber roles with lower gear ratios for driving larger propellers, clockwise and counterclockwise respectively. As with the 801B engine design, however, the 801H-2 engine did not leave the prototype stage.

The D-2 models were tested with a system for injecting a 50–50 water-methanol mixture known as MW50 into the supercharger primarily for its anti-detonation effect, allowing the use of increased boost pressures. Secondary effects were cooling of the engine and charge cooling. Some performance was gained, but at the cost of engine service life. This was replaced by a system that injected fuel instead of MW50, known as C3-injection, and this was used until 1944. The serious fuel shortage in 1944 forced installation of MW50 instead of C3-injection. With MW50 boosting turned on, takeoff power increased to 2,000 PS (1,470 kW), the C3-injection was initially only permitted for low altitude use and increased take-off power to 1,870 PS. Later C3-injection systems were permitted for low-to-medium altitude use and raised take-off power to more than 1,900 PS.

Supercharger development
With the engine being used in higher-altitude fighter roles, a number of attempts were made to address the limited performance of the original supercharger. The BMW 801E was a modification of the D-2 using different gear ratios, of 6:1 at low speed and 8.3:1 at high speed, that tuned the supercharger for higher altitudes. Although takeoff power was unaffected, cruise power increased over 100 hp (75 kW) and "high power" modes for climb at nearly 1,500 to 1,650 PS; and combat were likewise improved by up to 150 hp (110 kW). The E model was also used as the basis for the BMW 801R, which included a much more complex and powerful two-stage four-speed supercharger, as well as die cast hydronalium cylinder heads, strengthened crankshaft and pistons, and chromed cylinders and exhaust valves; it was anticipated this version would produce over 2000 hp, or over 2600 hp with MW 50 methanol-water injection.

In spite of these improvements, the E model was not widely used. Instead, continued improvements to the basic E model led to the BMW 801F, which dramatically improved performance across the board, with takeoff power increasing to 2,400 hp (1,790 kW), making the 801 the only German aviation engine of an existing type that had a producible subtype that could exceed 1,500 kW from a proven military aircraft powerplant. It was planned to use the F on all late-model Fw 190s, but the war ended before production started.

Importance of continued development
BMW had been required to create priorities for the 14-cylinder production 801 radial, the 18-cylinder BMW 802 and liquid-cooled 28-cylinder BMW 803 radial engines.

The first priority was for the 801 to be developed "to its limits", with the second priority the 802's design and prototype construction, and lastly the complex 803 four-row radial only receiving attention to its design-development.

By contrast, Allied equivalents such as the American Wright Twin Cyclone, and the Soviet Shvetsov ASh-82 radials never needed to be developed beyond 1,500 kW as these nations possessed larger-displacement 18-cylinder radial aviation engines capable of more power.

Turbocharger development
As just one result of the highest level of priority given to the successful 801 design's further development, a number of attempts were made to use turbochargers on the BMW 801 series as well. The first used a modified BMW 801D to create the BMW 801J, delivering 1,810 PS (1,785 hp, 1,331 kW) at takeoff and 1,500 hp (1,103 kW) at 12200 m, an altitude where the D was struggling to produce 630 hp (463 kW). The BMW 801E was likewise modified to create the BMW 801Q, delivering a superb 1,715 hp (1,261 kW) at 12200 m, power ratings no existing Allied radial engine of a similar displacement could match.

The turbocharger was fitted behind the engine at a 30° forward tilt off a vertical axis, possessed hollow turbine blades in the exhaust section, and in a photo from Flight magazine, appears to have intercooler units fitted around the inner circumference of the rear cowl, just behind the rear row of cylinders.

Not many of these engines ever entered production due to high costs, and the various high-altitude designs based on them were forced to turn to other engines, typically the Junkers Jumo 213.

Surviving and operational examples
A sizable number of BMW 801s exist in museums, some on display by themselves, with some 20 of them associated with surviving examples of the Focke-Wulf Fw 190s that they powered in World War II. The first original Fw 190 to be restored to flight condition in the 21st century is the Fw 190A-5 discovered near St. Petersburg, Russia in 1989, bearing Werknummer 151 227 and formerly serving with JG 54, was restored to flight condition along with its original BMW 801 powerplant. As of 2011, it is once again airworthy and located in Seattle, Washington, USA. The sole surviving Ju 388, in the hands of the Udvar-Hazy Center of the Smithsonian, has a pair of complete BMW 801J turbocharged engines still in its nacelles.

There is an 801-ML (801L) on display mounted in a Dornier 217 nacelle, essentially a complete surviving Motoranlage unitized powerplant, at the New England Air Museum, Bradley International Airport, Windsor Locks, CT. Likewise, the Ju 88R-1 night fighter at the Royal Air Force Museum London (see photo above) also has unitized BMW 801 radials installed.

Description
The 801 was a radial engine with two rows of seven cylinders. The cylinders had both bore and stroke of 156 mm, giving a total capacity of 41.8 L, just a bit less than the American Wright Cyclone 14 twin-row radial of some 1,600 to 1,900 hp output. The unit (including mounts) weighed from 1,010 to 1,250 kg and was about 1.29 m (51 in) across, depending on the model.

The BMW 801 was cooled by forced air with the cooling fan made from a magnesium alloy (probably Elektron), 10-bladed in the initial models, but 12-bladed in most engines. The fan rotated at 1.72 times the crankshaft speed (3.17 times the propeller speed). Air from the fan was blown into the center of the engine in front of the propeller gearing housing, and the shape of the housing and the engine itself carried the air to the outside of the cowling and across the cylinders. A set of slots or gills at the rear of the cowling allowed the hot air to escape. This provided effective cooling although at the cost of about 70 PS (69 hp, 51.5 kW) required to drive the fan when the aircraft was at low speed. Above 170 mph, the fan absorbed little power directly as the vacuum effect of the airflow past the air exits provided the needed flow.

The 801 used a relatively complex system, integral to the BMW-designed, matching forward cowling system, to cool the lubricating oil. A ring-shaped oil cooler core was built into the BMW-provided forward cowl, just behind the fan. The outer portion of the oil cooler's core was in contact with the main cowling's sheetmetal, to possibly act as a heat sink. Comprising the BMW-designed forward cowl, in front of the oil cooler was a ring of metal with a C-shaped cross-section, with the outer lip lying just outside the rim of the cowl, and the inner side on the inside of the oil cooler core. Together, the metal ring and cowling formed an S-shaped airflow path, with the oil cooler's core contained between them. Airflow past the gap between the cowl and outer lip of the metal ring produced a vacuum effect that pulled air from the front of the engine outward and forward within the cowl's frontmost inner area just behind the fan, flowing forward across the oil cooler core in a separate airflow path from the rearwards-direction flow that cooled the engine's cylinders, just to provide cooling for the 801's oil. The rate of cooling airflow over the core could be controlled by moving the metal ring slightly forward or aft in order to open or close the gap.

The reasons for this complex system were threefold. One was to eliminate any extra aerodynamic drag that a protruding oil cooler would produce, in this case eliminating the extra drag factor by enclosing it within the engine's forward cowling. The second was to warm the air before it flowed to the oil cooler's circular-shaped core to aid warming the oil during starting. Finally, by placing the oil cooler behind the fan, cooling was provided even while the aircraft was parked. The downside to this design was that the oil cooler was in an extremely vulnerable location, and the metal ring was increasingly armoured as the war progressed.

Engine mounting formats
The design of the BMW 801's cowling was key to its proper cooling, which BMW designed and built themselves and supplied with the engine. The design evolved throughout the war, including an extension to the engine mounts that allowed for larger cooling gills. This factory-supplied cowling also improved the simplicity of engine replacement in the field in more completely "unitizing" a BMW 801 radial engine, with as many of its auxiliary systems as possible being simultaneously replaceable with the engine itself, as opposed to opening or removing a "separate" cowling attached to the fuselage of the aircraft.

Engines were typically delivered from BMW complete in their cowling, ready to be bolted to the front of the aircraft or nacelle, since 1942 as Motoranlage (M) and 1944/1945 as Triebwerksanlage (T). The Motoranlage was the original form of the interchangeable Kraftei, or "power-egg", unitized powerplant installation concept used in many German wartime aircraft. It was most often used with twin and multi-engined designs, with some need for external add-ons. The more comprehensive Triebwerksanlage format for unitization consolidated more of the engine's required accessory systems beyond what the earlier Motoranlage concept could, plus some external mountings, such as an integrally complete exhaust system (including a turbocharger, if fitted as part of the design), as a completely interchangeable unit. Both M and T formats were also used with various inline engines, like the Daimler-Benz DB 603 used for both the inline-engined versions of the Do 217 and the enormous BV 238 flying boat, and the Junkers Jumo 213 powerplants used for later marks of the Ju 88 multirole aircraft.

The M and T unitized engine formats added secondary designator suffixes, which especially for the 801 radial (and perhaps others), did not always match the letter suffix that designated the bare radial engine used for a particular unitized installation, confusing the naming of the 801 engine series' subtypes considerably. These suffix designators initially referred to these complete kits and their "bare" engine counterparts almost interchangeably. The A, B and L models were known (logically) as Motoranlage style MA, MB and ML engines in this form, but the common D-2 was instead known as the MG. As the war wore on the confusion increased, the E model was delivered as the Triebwerksanlage style TG or TH, seemingly suggesting a relation to the G and H engines, but in fact those were delivered as the TL and TP. It is rather common to see the turbocharged versions referred to only with the T for the more completely unitized Triebwerksanlage installations, notably the (most notoriously of all) TJ for the BMW 801J turbocharged radial subtype, and the TQ models, further confusing the issue.

Variants

 * BMW 801 A, C, L (B)
 * 1,560 PS (1,539 hp, 1,147 kW)

 * BMW 801 D-2, Q-2, G-2, (H-2)
 * 1,700 PS (1,677 hp, 1,250 kW)

 * BMW 801 E, S
 * 2,000 PS (1,973 hp, 1,471 kW)

 * BMW 801 F
 * 2,400 PS (2,367 hp, 1,765 kW), development halted by the end of the war

Applications

 * Blohm & Voss BV 141
 * Blohm & Voss BV 144
 * Dornier Do 217
 * Focke-Wulf Fw 190
 * Focke-Wulf Fw 191
 * Heinkel He 277 (as designed for Amerikabomber role)
 * Junkers Ju 88
 * Junkers Ju 188
 * Junkers Ju 288 (as temporary fitment, in place of intended Jumo 222 engines)
 * Junkers Ju 388
 * Junkers Ju 290
 * Junkers Ju 390
 * Messerschmitt Me 264 (replacing original Jumo 211 fitment)

title: BMW 801


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Talk:Victor Korchnoi

 * beep* I've gone and spelt his name wrong! Errk. Viktor Korchnoi it should be. Can anyone correct this - I don't know how to! (I remember doing the same thing with Garry Kasparov vs Gary Kasparov) -- User:Isofarro

Okay, I think I've fixed that. Victor Korchnoi now redirects to Viktor Korchnoi. Sorry about that.

title: Talk:Victor Korchnoi


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Judenburg

Judenburg (Judnbuag) is a historic town in Styria, Austria.

It is the administrative centre of the Murtal district, which was created on 1 January 2012 from the former Judenburg District and former Knittelfeld District. Until 31 December 2011, it was the capital of the Judenburg District.

On 1 January 2015, the adjoining municipalities of Oberweg and Reifling were merged into Judenburg.

Geography
It is located in the Upper Styrian region, on the western end of the Aichfeld basin, stretching along the Mur River from Judenburg down to Knittelfeld in the east. The broad valley is bound by the Niedere Tauern range in the north and the Noric Alps (Lavanttal Alps) in the south.

The municipal area also comprises the cadastral communities of Tiefenbach and Waltersdorf, a former municipality incorporated in 1963.

The municipal area includes the following ten villages (populations as of January 1, 2020):
 * Auerling (129)
 * Feeberg (176)
 * Gasselsdorf (28)
 * Judenburg (8,386)
 * Oberweg (517)
 * Ossach (45)
 * Reifling (57)
 * Ritzersdorf (15)
 * Strettweg (367)
 * Waltersdorf (133)

History
Archaeological findings indicate that the area was settled at least since the days of the Celtic kingdom of Noricum. Judenburg itself was first mentioned in a 1074 staple right deed as mercatum Judinburch, a market town within the estates of Eppenstein Castle, the ancestral seat of the Bavarian Eppensteiner noble family, who ruled as Styrian margraves in the 11th century. The name literally means "Jews' Borough", referring to the town's origin as a trading outpost on the route from the Mur Valley across the Obdach Saddle mountain pass to Carinthia, in which Jews played an important role, being represented in the city's coat of arms.

Upon the extinction of the Eppensteiner dynasty in 1122, the estates passed to the Styrian Otakars and in 1192 to the House of Babenberg, Dukes of Austria since 1156. Judenburg received town privileges in 1224 and the right to collect tolls in 1277. The town grew to an important commercial centre for iron ore mined at nearby Eisenerz, but also for valeriana celtica used in perfumes during the 13th and 14th centuries. Judenburg was even granted a valeriana trade monopoly by the Habsburg emperor Frederick III in 1460. After several pogroms, all Jews were expelled from the Duchy of Styria by order of Emperor Maximilian I in 1496. Following his breakthrough in Italy, General Napoléon Bonaparte made his headquarters at Judenburg and it was there, on the night of 7–8 April 1796, that he signed the Truce of Judenburg with the Austrians.

In the beginning of the 20th century, the town was one of the centres of Austria-Hungary's steel industry and also a garrison city of the Austro-Hungarian Army. From 1910 to 1914 one of the first trolleybusses in Austria connected Judenburg station with the town's centre. Little remains of the former industry today, but Judenburg remains an industrial and trade centre. In May 1918, the city was the site of a failed military mutiny.

In 1938, with the annexation of Austria by Nazi Germany, Judenburg became part of the Third Reich. Due to the presence of the word ("Jew") in the town's name, many possible new names were suggested, including Zirbenstadt (after Zirbe, the German name for the Swiss pine tree) and Adolfsburg (in honor of Adolf Hitler). However, the planned renaming was indefinitely postponed after the outbreak of war and ultimately never happened.

During the Second World War, a subcamp of Mauthausen concentration camp was located nearby, where a displaced persons' reception centre was established after the war. Judenburg was also one of several towns that saw the handover of Cossacks to the Red Army.

Politics
Seats in the municipal assembly (Gemeinderat) as of the 2020 elections:
 * Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ): 13
 * Austrian People's Party (ÖVP): 7
 * Communist Party of Austria (KPÖ): 2
 * The Greens - The Green Alternative (die Grüne): 2
 * Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ): 1

Twin towns - Sister cities
Judenburg is a member of the Douzelage, a unique town twinning association of 24 towns across the European Union. This active town twinning began in 1991 and there are regular events, such as a produce market from each of the other countries and festivals. Discussions regarding membership are also in hand with three further towns (Agros in Cyprus, Škofja Loka in Slovenia, and Tryavna in Bulgaria). • :🇪🇸 Altea, Spain - 1991

• :🇩🇪 Bad Kötzting, Germany - 1991

• :🇮🇹 Bellagio, Italy - 1991

• :🇮🇪 Bundoran, Ireland - 1991

• :🇫🇷 Granville, France - 1991

• : Holstebro, Denmark - 1991

• :🇧🇪 Houffalize, Belgium - 1991

• : Meerssen, the Netherlands - 1991

• :🇱🇺 Niederanven, Luxembourg - 1991

• : Preveza, Greece - 1991

• : Sesimbra, Portugal - 1991

• : Sherborne, United Kingdom - 1991

• :🇫🇮 Karkkila, Finland - 1997

• :🇸🇪 Oxelösund, Sweden - 1998

• :🇦🇹 Judenburg, Austria - 1999

• :🇵🇱 Chojna, Poland - 2004

• :🇭🇺 Kőszeg, Hungary - 2004

• :🇱🇻 Sigulda, Latvia - 2004

• :🇨🇿 Sušice, Czech Republic - 2004

• :🇪🇪 Türi, Estonia - 2004

• :🇸🇰 Zvolen, Slovakia - 2007

• :🇱🇹 Prienai, Lithuania - 2008

• :🇲🇹 Marsaskala, Malta - 2009

• :🇷🇴 Siret, Romania - 2010

Notable people

 * Richard Paltauf (1858–1924), an Austrian pathologist and bacteriologist.
 * Michael Powolny (1871–1954), sculptor, medallist, ceramist, designer and teacher.
 * Walter Pfrimer (1881–1968), politician and Nazi, known for the 1931 Pfrimer Putsch, died locally
 * Maria Cäsar (1920-2017), an Austrian political activist (KPÖ) and resistance activist, lived locally.
 * Jack Unterweger (1950–1994), author and serial killer
 * Christian Muthspiel (born 1962), jazz musician, composer and trombonist
 * Wolfgang Muthspiel (born 1965), jazz guitarist and record label owner.
 * Alf Poier (born 1967), singer-songwriter and stand-up comedian

Sport

 * Harald Bosio (1906–1980), skier
 * Gernot Jurtin (1955–2006), football player, played 373 games and 12 for Austria
 * Herfried Sabitzer (born 1969), football player, played 333 games and 6 for Austria
 * Renate Götschl (born 1975), skier, won silver and bronze medals at the 2002 Winter Olympics
 * Christoph Sumann (born 1976), biathlete, two silver medals at the 2010 Winter Olympics
 * Christian Pfannberger (born 1979), racing cyclist
 * Andreas Zuber (born 1983), racing driver
 * Thomas Krammer (born 1983), football player, played over 380 games
 * Tony Breznik (born 1984), an Austrian bodybuilder.
 * Michael Madl (born 1988), football player, played 322 games
 * Manfred Gollner (born 1990), an Austrian footballer who has played over 290 gamess
 * Stefan Nutz (born 1992), an Austrian professional footballer who has played over 340 games
 * Stefan Posch (born 1997), football player, played 220 games and 30 for Austria

title: Judenburg


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Halland County

Halland County (Hallands län, ) is a county (län) on the western coast of Sweden. It corresponds roughly to the cultural and historical province of Halland. The capital is Halmstad. Prince Julian, the son of Prince Carl Philip, is Duke of Halland.

It borders the counties of Västra Götaland, Jönköping, Kronoberg, Scania and the sea of the Kattegat.

Heraldry
The County of Halland inherited its coat of arms from the province of Halland. When it is shown with a royal crown it represents the County Administrative Board.

Province
Counties mainly serve administrative purposes in Sweden. The culture and history of the area is to be found in its provincial counterpart Halland. The county was designed with virtually the same boundaries as the province. The major exception is a part of Hylte Municipality, which belongs to the province of Småland.

Geography

 * Genevadsån river

Administration
The main aim of the County Administrative Board is to fulfil the goals set in national politics by the Riksdag and the Government, to coordinate the interests and promote the development of the county, to establish regional goals and safeguard the due process of law in the handling of each case. The County Administrative Board is a Government Agency headed by a governor. See List of Halland Governors.

Politics
Region Halland is the local government for Halland County, and is controlled by the regional council and regional board of Halland. The regional council is elected directly by the residents in regional elections held every four years at the same time as municipal and Riksdag elections.

Among the main responsibilities of the Halland Regional Council (Region Halland) are health care and public transit. The right-leaning political parties have held a majority in every election from 1912 until 2014, regaining it in 2018 and losing it again in 2022. However, even when only able to form a minority, the right-wing have controlled the regional board.

Riksdag elections
The table details all Riksdag election results of Halland County since the unicameral era began in 1970. The blocs denote which party would support the Prime Minister or the lead opposition party towards the end of the elected parliament.

Municipalities
Sweden's counties are entities for Sweden's municipalities, responsible for such things as child care, education, street planning, etc. Municipalities in Halland County are, from north to south, with the numbers of inhabitants::

In Halland Province: (2021)
 * Falkenberg: 46,773
 * Halmstad: 104,573
 * Hylte: 10,619
 * Kungsbacka: 85,301
 * Laholm: 26,319
 * Varberg: 66,658

Music groups

 * Gyllene Tider
 * Roxette
 * Isildurs Bane
 * Sonic Syndicate
 * Sabel

Localities in order of size
The five most populous localities of Halland County in 2020:

Foreign background
SCB have collected statistics on backgrounds of residents since 2002. These tables consist of all who have two foreign-born parents or are born abroad themselves. The chart lists election years and the last year on record alone.

title: Halland County