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Whitehaven

Whitehaven is a town and port on the English north west coast and near to the Lake District National Park in Cumberland, Cumbria, England. It lies by road 38 mi south-west of Carlisle and 45 mi to the north of Barrow-in-Furness. It was the administrative seat of the former Borough of Copeland, and has a town council for the parish of Whitehaven. The population of the town was 23,986 at the 2011 census.

The town's growth was largely due to the exploitation of the extensive coal measures by the Lowther family, driving a growing export of coal through the harbour from the 17th century onwards. It was also a major port for trading with the American colonies, and was, after London, the second busiest port of England by tonnage from 1750 to 1772. This prosperity led to the creation of a Georgian planned town in the 18th century which has left an architectural legacy of over 170 listed buildings. Whitehaven has been designated a "gem town" by the Council for British Archaeology due to the historic quality of the town environment.

Whitehaven was the site of a major chemical industry after World War II, but both that and the coal industry have disappeared, and today the major industry is the nearby Sellafield nuclear complex, which is the largest local employer of labour and has a significant administrative base in the town. Whitehaven includes a number of former villages, estates and suburbs, such as Mirehouse, Woodhouse, Kells and Hensingham, and is served by the Cumbrian coast railway line and the A595 road.

Early history
Although there was a Roman fort at Parton, around 1.2 mi to the north, there is no evidence of a Roman settlement on the site of the present town of Whitehaven.

The area was settled by Irish-Norse Vikings in the 10th century. The area name of Copeland, which includes Whitehaven, indicates that the land was purchased from the Kingdom of Strathclyde, possibly with loot from Ireland.

Following the arrival of the Normans, in about 1120 St Bees Priory was founded by William de Meschin, which was granted a large tract of land from the coast at Whitehaven to the river Keekle, and then south down the River Ehen to the sea. This included the small fishing village of Whitehaven. Following Henry VIII's dissolution of the priory in 1539, ownership of this estate passed through a number of secular landlords until it passed into the hands of the Lowther family in the 17th century.

Whitehaven was a township within the "Preston Quarter" of the parish of St Bees, and the town's churches were chapels-of-ease of St Bees until 1835 when three ecclesiastical districts were created in Whitehaven.

Growth and prosperity
The modern growth of Whitehaven started with the purchase by Sir Christopher Lowther of the Whitehaven estate in 1630 and the subsequent development of the port and the mines. In 1634 he built a stone pier providing shelter and access for shipping, enabling the export of coal from the Cumberland Coalfield, particularly to Ireland. This was a key event in the rapid growth of the town from a small fishing village to an industrial port.

In 1642 the manor of St. Bees was inherited by Sir John Lowther, 2nd Baronet, of Whitehaven (1642–1706), who developed the town of Whitehaven, its coal industry and the trade with Ireland. He oversaw the rise of Whitehaven from a small fishing village (at his birth consisting of some fifty houses and a population of about 250) to a planned town three times the size of Carlisle. At his death the 'port of Whitehaven' had 77 registered vessels, totalling about four thousand tons, and was exporting more than 35,000 tons of coal a year.

Whitehaven's growing prosperity was also based on tobacco. By 1685 there were ships regularly bringing tobacco from the British colonies of Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania in America, and by the early 18th century about 10% of England's tobacco imports passed through Whitehaven. By the middle of the 18th century it was the second or third port in England for tobacco imports. The tobacco was then sold on the domestic market or re-exported, e.g. to Ireland, France and the Netherlands.

However, after the Acts of Union 1707 united England with Scotland, thereby abolishing excise duties between them, the port of Glasgow began to take over Whitehaven's tobacco trade, leading to the later creation of Glasgow's Tobacco Lords. By the second half of the 18th century there was a marked decline in shipping of tobacco via Whitehaven, and by 1820 the Customs Collector did not mention tobacco in his report on Whitehaven. Whitehaven Town Hall, which started life as a private house built for a merchant, was completed in 1710.

Daniel Defoe visited Whitehaven in the 1720s and wrote that the town had "grown up from a small place to be very considerable by the coal trade, that it is now the most eminent port in England for shipping off of coals, except Newcastle and Sunderland and even beyond the last. They have of late fallen into some merchandising also, occasioned by the strange great number of their shipping, and there are now some considerable merchants; but the town is yet but young in trade." To replace the tobacco trade, Whitehaven turned to importing sugar from Barbados, cotton from Antigua and coffee and cocoa from St Lucia. Due to the coal trade Whitehaven was, after London, the second port of England in terms of tonnage of shipping from 1750 to 1772. Even by 1835 Whitehaven was still the fifth placed port, with 443 ships registered, but by the end of the 19th century only 68 vessels were registered. Whitehaven was involved with the transatlantic slave trade, and records show slave ships leaving Whitehaven for voyages to Africa between 1711 and 1767. In 2006, the Copeland Council (Whitehaven's local authority) issued a formal apology for Whitehaven's role in the slave trade.

Scottish-American naval officer John Paul Jones raided the town in 1778 during the American Revolutionary War, burning some merchant ships in the harbour.

During the 19th century the port of Whitehaven was overtaken by Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow, as they had deep-water dock facilities and were closer to large centres of population and industry. The huge development of a national railway network had also reduced Whitehaven's 18th century competitive advantage of having coal extracted very close to a harbour for shipment by sea.

An 1888 legal case, Bush v Whitehaven Port and Town Trustees, was one of a series of legal cases involved in the development of the doctrine of frustration of contract in English law. Bush, the contractor in this case, had contracted to construct a water-main for a "slump sum" [sic]. His tender was submitted in June, and he was "given to understand" that he could begin the work at once, but part of the land was not available until October. This meant the work took place during the winter, when operations are more difficult and more costly. The jury in this case decided that the timing issue substantially affected the contract, and awarded damages to be paid to the contractor.

Coal mining

James Pit is a pit in Whitehaven. The school "St James' Juniors" is on the site of the old pit.

Early mining
The earliest reference to coal mining in the Whitehaven area is in the time of Prior Langton (1256–1282) of St Bees Priory, concerning the coal mines at Arrowthwaite. St Bees Priory was dissolved in 1539, and the lands and mineral rights passed to secular owners. The first of these, Sir Thomas Chaloner, granted leases of land in 1560 for digging coal, and in 1586 he granted St Bees School liberty "to take 40 loads of coal at his coal pits in the parish of St Bees for the use of the school". Such workings were small-scale and near the surface, using adits and bell pits. But the Lowther family later developed and dominated the coal industry in Whitehaven from the mid 17th century to the early 20th century.

The influence of the Lowthers
Sir John Lowther, 2nd Baronet (1642–1706) significantly developed the coal industry and the trade with Ireland. He spent over £11,000 in expanding the Lowther holdings in the area, and considerably improved the drainage of his pits; thus allowing mining at greater depths.

Sir James Lowther, 4th Baronet FRS (1673–1755) continued the work of his father and reputedly became the richest commoner in England. Between 1709 and 1754, over £46,000 was spent to extend the Lowther holdings of land and coal royalties in West Cumberland. By the 1740s Lowther was the dominant exporter at every harbour in the Cumberland coalfield and from the late 17th to the mid-19th centuries this coal represented 6%-7% of all English exports to Ireland; most of the coal burnt in Dublin came from here. However, Lowther was noted for his unscrupulous business practices, and a lease of the coal royalties owned by St Bees School was obtained in 1742 on manifestly unfair terms: an annual rent of £3.50, with no payment per ton raised, for 867 years. The lease was eventually quashed in 1827, with compensation of over £13,000 paid to the school.

Mining under the sea
Sir John, and after him Sir James, had concerns that there were few reserves of economically retrievable coal under dry land. They felt that exploration under the sea was necessary, but this carried the risk of flooding. However, Sir James had two very able managers, the brothers Carlisle and John Spedding, who were willing to explore new technology and techniques. In 1712 John Spedding urged Lowther to consider pumping by steam, and in 1715 he became one of the earliest customers for the newly invented Newcomen engine. Spedding concluded that such an engine would drain a flooded pit in two-thirds the time that horse gins would take, and would do so at a quarter of the cost. Consequently, a small (17-inch diameter cylinder) Engine No. 5, built by Thomas Newcomen and John Calley, was erected. It was so successful that in 1727 Lowther bought an additional pumping engine.

With this proven method of pumping Lowther was able to exploit the coal measures under the sea by sinking a pit at Saltom on land below the cliffs south of the harbour, to a depth of 456 ft (138m). Work began early in 1730, and the pit was officially opened in May 1732 with great celebration. Carlisle Spedding had charge of the design and construction, and successfully sank only the second sub-sea pit in Britain. It was reported that "A shaft twelve foot by ten had been sunk seventy-seven fathoms" (141 metres) "(the deepest a pit had been sunk in any part of Europe) to a three-yard thick coal seam (the Main Band) in twenty-three months, using thirty barrels of gunpowder, and without any loss of life or limb by the workforce'. Saltom Pit ceased working coal in 1848, and is now a Scheduled Ancient Monument (SM 27801) and is the best known surviving example of an 18th-century colliery layout. Evidence of the shaft, horse gin, stable, winding engine house, boiler house and chimney, cottages, cart roads and retaining walls, all survives. Coal excavated from Saltom Pit was raised by horse gin to the surface, then transported by tramway through a tunnel to Ravenhill Pit for lifting to the cliff top. Saltom Pit was used as a central pumping station, draining many of the other local mines via a drift driven in the 1790s, and continued in use long after it had ceased to work coal.

Technical innovation
To counter the considerable danger of methane gas explosion, Carlisle Spedding invented a forerunner to the Davy Lamp, known as the Spedding Wheel or Steel Mill. This used the sparks generated by a flint against a rotating steel wheel to provide light, on the basis the sparks were not quite hot enough to ignite the gas. On occasions it caused explosions or fires but it was a major improvement over the naked flame. Lowther also supported experimental work on firedamp by William Brownrigg, a local doctor and scientist, and he presented papers by Brownrigg at the Royal Society. Brownrigg had gas piped from a nearby pit to his workshop, which provided light and heat, and bladders of the gas were taken to London to be demonstrated at the Royal Society. Brownrigg was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) for this work.

The decline of Lowther influence
After Sir James, there was a succession of Lowthers who inherited the coal interests but did not emulate his close interest. The Lowthers' direct involvement in coal diminished, and in 1888 the mines were leased to the Whitehaven Colliery Company. By 1893 nearly all the coal was being extracted from under the sea, and William pit extended 4 miles out under the Solway. In 1900 the output of the collieries was 536,000 tons. However they became less economic; the company failed in 1933, and the pits were sold to Priestman collieries. They in turn failed in 1935, and the pits were closed for 18 months. Work resumed with help from a Nuffield foundation, and the Cumberland Coal Company was formed, re-opening the pits in 1937. In 1947 the pits came under the nationalised body, the National Coal Board.

Extent of mining
In 300 years over seventy pits were sunk in the Whitehaven area. During this period some five hundred or more people were killed in pit disasters and mining accidents. The largest disaster in the area was in 1910 at Wellington Pit, where 136 miners died. In another disaster in 1947 at William Pit, 104 men were killed. Four separate explosions over the period 1922–1931 at Haig Pit together killed 83. Haig was the last pit to operate in Whitehaven.

Temporary end of coal mining
In 1983, a major geological fault was encountered at Haig pit which increased the difficulty of operation. This, combined with the political situation, and the miners' strike in 1984–85, contributed to problems at the colliery. The workforce attempted to open a new face, but a decision had been taken to close, and after two years of recovery work, Haig finally ceased mining on 31 March 1986. Today there is no mining carried out in Whitehaven though there is a proposal to sink a new mine out under the sea for coking coal. In November 2019 the UK government gave the green light for this mine to go ahead.

Preservation of Saltom pit
In 2007, Copeland Council declared that it could no longer afford to maintain the remaining Saltom Pit buildings, and preserve them from damage by the sea. But after an online campaign by myWhitehaven.net, the council changed their mind. They teamed up with the National Trust to try to save Saltom Pit, and obtained the necessary funding from various sources, including a 50% grant from the European Union. On Monday 8 December 2007, Saltom Pit was reopened as an historic monument. The pit buildings have been conserved and are now part of the 'Whitehaven Coast' project, a scheme to regenerate the coastal area of Whitehaven.

Governance
Whitehaven is within the Whitehaven and Workington constituency. , its Member of Parliament (MP) is Josh MacAlister of the Labour Party, who has held the seat since the 2024 United Kingdom general election.

Before Brexit, it was in the North West England European Parliamentary Constituency.

Prior to the introduction of Cumberland (district), for Local Government purposes it had the following wards in the Borough of Copeland:
 * Whitehaven South
 * Whitehaven Central
 * Kells
 * Hillcrest
 * Corkicle
 * Sneckyeat

The following divisions were included in Cumbria County Council:
 * Bransty
 * Kells and Sandwith
 * Hillcrest and Hensingham
 * Mirehouse

Whitehaven has its own Parish Council, Whitehaven Town Council.

==The harbour==

The existence of a harbour or landing place at Whitehaven can be traced back to 1517, when quay-dues, otherwise known as wharfage, were recorded.

The purchase of the manor of St Bees in 1630 by the Lowther family started the development of Whitehaven harbour primarily to export coal. Sir Christopher Lowther built a stone pier in 1631–1634, and it survives, albeit very modified, as the Old Quay.

By the 1660s the pier was suffering from storm damage and by the 1670s it was considered too small for the growing number of vessels wanting to use it. In 1677 a description refers to "a little pier, in shallow water, built with some wooden piles and stones".

The prospect of a rival pier being built at Parton to the north of Whitehaven galvanised Sir John Lowther into developing the harbour, and by 1679 further work was under way. In the late 17th and 18th century the harbour was extended by ballast walls, moles and piers to become one of the most complex pier harbours in Britain. April 1778 saw the harbour as the first site of an American attack on the British Isles during the American War of Independence.

The port's trade waned rapidly when ports with much larger shipping capacity, such as Bristol and Liverpool, began to take over its main trade. Its peak of prosperity was in the 19th century when West Cumberland experienced a brief boom because haematite found locally was one of the few iron ores that could be used to produce steel by the original Bessemer process. Improvements to the Bessemer process and the development of the open hearth process removed this advantage. In the 20th century, as in most mining communities, the inter-war Great Depression was severe; this was exacerbated for West Cumbria by Irish independence which suddenly placed tariff barriers on its principal export market.

The harbour lost its last commercial cargo handling operation in 1992 when Marchon ceased their phosphate rock import operations. Drivers Jonas and marine consulting engineers Beckett Rankine drew up a new master plan to impound the inner basins of the harbour to create a large marina and fishing harbour, and refocus the town on a renovated harbour.

The harbour has seen much other renovation due to millennium developments, and the rejuvenation project cost an estimated £11.3 million. This has provided 100 more moorings within the marina. Another £5.5 million has been spent on developing a 40 m (130 ft) high crow's nest and a wave light feature that changes colour depending on the tide, together with The Rum Story on Lowther Street, voted Cumbria Tourism's small visitor attraction of the year 2007. A picture of the harbour was used on the front page of the Tate Modern's promotional material for an exhibition of Millennium Projects in 2003. In June 2008, Queen Elizabeth II visited Whitehaven as part of the 300th Anniversary Celebrations. The Queen and Prince Philip then officially re-opened the refurbished Beacon museum at the harbour; 10,000 people attended the event.

Town planning
Whitehaven was, with Falmouth, the first post-medieval new planned town in England. It is the most complete example of planned Georgian architecture in Europe and there are over 170 listed buildings. Whitehaven's planned layout was with streets in a right-angled grid which it is thought was imitated by the new towns of the American Colonies, with which there were strong trade links.

Although Sir Christopher Lowther initially purchased Whitehaven it was his son, Sir John Lowther, 2nd Baronet, who was responsible for its growth and development. Sir John acquired a market charter in 1660 for the town, but the urban expansion did not start until the 1680s when he laid out a spacious rectangular grid of streets to the north east of the existing tiny hamlet.

Sir John specified that the houses were "to be three storeys high, not less than 28 feet from the street level to the square of the side walls, the windows of the first and second storeys to be transomed and the same, together with the doors to be of hewn stone." Ample provision was made for gardens.

One block was left vacant for a new church and in 1694 another site was given for a Presbyterian chapel. Most of the streets were relatively narrow, about ten yards, but the principal thoroughfare, Lowther Street, which ran through the town centre from the Lowther family residence to the waterfront, was 16 yards wide. The old St Nicholas chapel was demolished in 1693 to make way for Lowther Street, and its materials used to build a new school.

Whitehaven Castle was built in 1769 for Sir John Lowther as his private residence at the end of Lowther Street, replacing an earlier building destroyed by fire. In 1924, the Earl of Lonsdale sold Whitehaven Castle to Herbert Wilson Walker, a local industrialist. Walker donated the building to the people of West Cumberland, along with £20,000 to convert it into a hospital to replace the old Whitehaven Infirmary at Howgill Street, which was established in 1830.

Railways
Whitehaven is on the Cumbrian Coast Line which runs from Carlisle to Barrow-in-Furness. The town has two railway stations: Whitehaven (Bransty) and Corkickle, joined by a tunnel underneath the town.

Coming of the public railway
The first railway to reach Whitehaven was the Whitehaven Junction Railway (WJR) in 1847 from Maryport, which terminated at the Bransty Row station and allowed rail access to Carlisle and Newcastle upon Tyne. On the southern side of the town, the first section of the Whitehaven and Furness Junction Railway (W&FJR) opened on 1 June 1849 from a terminus at Whitehaven (Preston Street) to Ravenglass, and thereafter gradually in stages until Barrow in Furness and ultimately Carnforth were reached. This gave access to the south onto the main West Coast line, and later became the main line of the Furness Railway. The two lines were separated by the town centre, and a tramway was constructed through the market place allowing goods wagons to be horse-drawn from Preston Street to the harbour, but there was still no through route for passenger trains. In 1852, a tunnel 1333 yd long was built under the town, and in 1854 the W&FJR passenger trains ran through to the Bransty station from a new station at Corkickle. Preston Street became a goods-only station and served as the main goods depot for the town.

Industrial networks
As in other colliery areas, horse-drawn tramways and then locomotive-powered railways were used extensively to move coal. The first steam locomotive made an early appearance in 1816, to a design similar to the noted Steam Elephant built by William Chapman of Newcastle. However this pioneering engine was not too successful and was converted to a pumping and winding engine. Nonetheless, the harbour and collieries eventually developed an extensive network of industrial railways within the constraints of the steep valley sides and the coast. The system had two roped inclines. The Howgill incline connected Ladysmith pit on the steep north-western side of the valley to Wellington pit at the harbour, and operated to the 1970s, and on the south of the town the Corkickle incline, known locally as "The Brake", was built in 1881 from the Furness Railway main line to Croft Pit. This closed in 1931 but was reopened in May 1955 to serve Marchon Products' chemical factory. The Brake closed for good on 31 October 1986, when it was the last commercial roped incline in Britain. It was 525 yd in length with gradients of between 1 in 5.2 and 1 in 6.6.

Engineering
The nearby Lowca engineering works began to produce locomotives in 1843, including the first Crampton locomotives, which became the fastest locomotives of the day; one was reported to have reached 62 mph. Over the life of the works, some 260 locomotives were produced – mainly for industrial lines. The works entered shipbuilding in 1842–3, producing Lowca, the first iron ship launched in Cumberland.

Marchon chemical complex
In 1941, Fred Marzillier and Frank Schon relocated Marchon Products Ltd from London to Whitehaven, which was a special development area, after their offices were destroyed by German bombing. At Whitehaven they started manufacturing firelighters, then in 1943 they moved production to the site of the Ladysmith pit coke ovens at Kells, where they formed a sister company, "Solway Chemicals", to produce liquid fertilisers and foaming agents. At the end of the war, a number of chemists and engineers were released after the closure of the Royal Ordnance Factories at Drigg and Sellafield. This helped drive the pioneering expansion into detergent bases to include some of the first soap-substitutes to reach the UK market.

The new detergents were a big success, as soap was in short supply after the war; however the original reason for moving to Whitehaven, remoteness from Europe, was now a serious handicap as the site was remote from raw materials. The answer was to manufacture as much processed raw material as possible on the site. New plants were built for the production of fatty alcohols in a pioneering process; tripolyphosphate was produced on site using phosphate rock from Casablanca imported via the harbour; and sulphuric acid was produced using anhydrite from the specially-created Sandwith mine adjacent to the factory. Production diversified further into specialist additives and chemicals, and continued to expand to become the town's largest employer, with 2,300 employees.

In 1955 the companies were taken over by Albright and Wilson, and they in turn were taken over by the French company, Rhodia, in 1999. The decline of this site had started in the late 1980s, and finally in 2005 the site was closed down after a number of production processes had been terminated over the years.

Sekers Fabrics
To help counter the 50% unemployment in the area, John Adams, of the West Cumberland Industrial Development Company, invited Miki Sekers and his cousin, Tomi de Gara to establish the West Cumberland Silk Mills at Hensingham, Whitehaven in 1938. The intention was to manufacture high quality silk and rayon fabrics for the fashion trade, but during World War II they mainly produced parachute nylon. After the war, it became Sekers Fabrics and reverted to its original purpose. It supplied material to the great fashion houses such as Edward Molyneux and Bianca Mosca in London and Christian Dior, Pierre Cardin and Givenchy in Paris. At the same time it supplied luxury-style dress materials within the purchasing power of most home dressmakers working in nylon.

The company was awarded the Duke of Edinburgh prize for elegant design in 1962, 1965 and 1973, and a Royal warrant was awarded as suppliers of furnishing fabric to Her Majesty the Queen. In 1964, they established a large showroom at 190-192 Sloane Street, London.

Miki Sekers was appointed an MBE in 1955 for services to the fashion industry, and was knighted in 1965 for services to the arts.

The Whitehaven silk mill closed in 2006.

Cumberland Curled Hair Ltd
In 1945, Kurt Oppenheim, a 26-year-old refugee from Nazi Germany, bought the abandoned Whitehaven Brewery site on Inkerman Terrace and began using it to prove both a home for the family and a factory to house the production of curled hair. Curled hair was used as the a part of the filling for bed mattresses, railway and carriage seating, car and domestic upholstery and when rubberised it was used in flooring. Oppenheim's family had been in the curled hair manufacturing business for many generations in Kassel, Germany and had factories in Kassel and Basel, Switzerland but after the war there was little left of the business, and it offered no assistance to Kurt who started in Whitehaven on a small amount of borrowed funds. The product was manufactured from horse and cow hair sourced from China and Argentina. Hair was cleansed, spun into rope (on machinery mainly produced in continental Europe) and then the rope was broken up to produce the hair with a spring like curl in it. This bulky product was bagged and sent off to customers all over the UK. With the introduction of synthetic upholstery fillings in the late 1950s and early 1960s, the UK curled hair business began to contract and Cumberland Curled Hair consolidated the industry by buying up competitors that were closing down and moved their production to Whitehaven. The business expanded into a factory in Hensingham industrial area and brought employment to about eighty people of the town.

The new foam business was called Cheri Foam. By the mid-1960s, the space requirements outgrew the factory in Hensingham and only the offices were kept in the original Tower Brewery in Whitehaven, whilst production of curled hair and flexile urethane foam was moved to an 11-acre site with two large aircraft hangars at Silloth Airfield.

Rugby League
Whitehaven is a rugby league stronghold, its team Whitehaven R.L.F.C. play in the second tier of the British rugby league system. Their mascot is a lion called "Pride".

Other teams include;
 * Kells A.R.L.F.C. play in the National Conference League Premier Division.
 * Hensingham ARLFC are an Amateur Rugby league based in Whitehaven. Founded in 1900 It wasn't until 1920 that the Club changed its allegiances to Rugby League. Hensingham is one of the oldest rugby clubs in the country. They play their rugby in the National Conference League Division 3.
 * There are several Whitehaven-based teams playing in the amateur Cumberland League.
 * Whitehaven's female amateur R.L.F.C is named the "Wildcats".

Other sports
Whitehaven F.C. currently play in the West Lancashire Football League.

Whitehaven Cricket Club play in the Cumbria Cricket League and jointly share their pitch "The Playground" with Whitehaven RUFC.

"Jam eater"
The term "jam eater" is often used by the people of neighbouring Workington to refer to the people of Whitehaven, or more generally to people from West Cumbria. When the Financial Times ran a lighthearted article on famous feuds in September 2008, featuring this, the local Whitehaven News published its own complementary feature, reporting that: "The common view is that the term is insulting because it implies people could not afford to buy meat for their sandwiches, so they had to eat jam instead."

The original article had summed up the situation in terms of the long-term rivalry between Whitehaven and nearby Workington: "Legend has it that one town's miners had jam on their sandwiches and the other did not, but no one agrees on which town it was or whether they did it because they were snobs or peasants." A reader from Maryport, a few miles further up the Cumbria coast (which, as occasionally mentioned in discussions on the topic, used to have a jam factory) reported that he had understood the term originally referred to people from Whitehaven, and this was echoed in the comments on the Whitehaven News article, suggesting that a former distinction between the Whitehaven "jam eaters" and Workington "high siders" had gradually been lost in the trading of insults across the rugby pitch.

Maritime Festival
Whitehaven has also played host to a Maritime Festival, which started in 1999 and was held every two years, and then annually (the last being in 2013) attracting an estimated 350,000 people to the small town.

Attractions included tall ships, air displays which included the Red Arrows and various modern and old planes, street entertainment and firework displays. At the 2003, 2005 and 2007 festivals the local Sea Cadets were very much in evidence, conducting the traditional Evening Colours ceremony each evening aboard one of the visiting tall ships, and also taking part in the festival's official closing ceremony during the late Sunday afternoon each year.

The 2005 festival also marked the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, in which Whitehaven had been designated Cumbria's official commemoration celebration. Up to 1,000 veterans and ex-service personnel took part in the parade from the town's Castle Park to the harbour side, led by members of three military bands. Services were held on the harbour side, and aircraft from the Royal Air Force provided a tribute display above the harbour.

The Maritime Festivals were founded by Gerard Richardson and organised by the Whitehaven Festival Company, made up of a board of volunteers, who organised 17 major events between 1999 and 2015. The company was closed in 2016. They organised the Queen's visit to Whitehaven in June 2008, followed by the Status Quo gig in August of that year. The company staged two events in August 2009. The first was the redesigned festival (known for this year as the Whitehaven Food Festival, although it did still feature tall ships) which offered the usual wide variety of attractions, both around the southern half of the harbour and at St. Nicholas' Church, on 8–9 August. The second event, the following week, was the Here and Now Gig (a music concert with 1980's pop icons). For the June 2010 festival, which was similar in format to 2009, the music performances (Status Quo, N-Dubz and Katherine Jenkins) were moved to the harbour area.

The 2011 festival (featuring Razorlight plus several 1980s acts including Madness) continued the successful culinary theme, with the return of Jean-Christophe Novelli and other favourites. In 2012 the date of the festival was changed to the first weekend in June, to make it part of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee celebration (with a red, white and blue themed firework display).

Local media
Local news and television programmes are provided by BBC North East and Cumbria and ITV Border. Television signals are received from the local relay transmitter.

Whitehaven's local radio stations are BBC Radio Cumbria on 104.1 FM, Greatest Hits Radio Cumbria & South West Scotland on 103.4 FM and Hospital Radio Haven, a community based radio that broadcast from the West Cumberland Hospital in the town.

The Whitehaven News is the town's local newspaper.

June 2010 shootings
On 2 June 2010, Whitehaven became a focus in the international media in relation to gun laws in the United Kingdom, following a killing spree targeting people living in the western area of the county. After killing his twin brother in Lamplugh, and his family solicitor in Frizington, taxi driver Derrick Bird began the spree in Whitehaven, shooting several people on the streets and at the taxi rank where he worked, killing 12.

Digital switchover trial
On 20 July 2006, Broadcasting Minister Shaun Woodward and Industry Minister Margaret Hodge announced that Whitehaven would be the pilot site for the switchover to digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom. The selection of a pilot site followed on from trial switchovers held in Ferryside and Bolton.

The switchover began when BBC Two was switched off at 0200 on 17 October 2007. This was followed by the remaining analogue channels at 0200, on 14 November 2007. As a result of the switchover, all televisions in the Whitehaven area had to have a digital terrestrial receiver (Freeview) or digital satellite alternative (Freesat, Sky, etc.) The switchover in the Whitehaven area was not entirely successful: in nearby Eskdale, poor signal quality left viewers with blank television screens and the digital switchover was supposed to give over 40 channels but certain areas received fewer than 20.

Notable people
In alphabetical order:
 * Abraham Acton, VC (1893–1915), British Army recipient of the Victoria Cross in World War I
 * Kyle Amor (born 1987), an Ireland international rugby league footballer
 * John Beck (b. 29 July 1961), keyboard player for It Bites
 * John Benson (died 1798), clockmaker
 * Dame Edith Mary Brown (1864–1956), doctor who founded the first medical training facility for women in Asia
 * William Brownrigg (1711–1800), doctor and scientist
 * Scott Carson (born 1985), footballer
 * Jordan Clark (born 1990), cricketer
 * Craig Cook (born1987), speedway rider
 * Stuart Cummings (born 1960), rugby league referee
 * Shepherd Dawson FRSE (1880-1935), author and psychologist
 * Malcolm Eccles (born 1969), businessman
 * Jonny Edgar (born 2004), Formula 3 racing driver
 * Mildred Gale (1671–1701), paternal grandmother of George Washington, lived in Whitehaven and is buried in the graveyard of St Nicholas's Church.
 * Dean Henderson (born 1997), Premier League footballer with Crystal Palace
 * Brian Higgins (born 1959), record producer
 * Dick Huddart (1936–2021), rugby league player
 * Milton Huddart (1960–2015), rugby league player
 * John Paul Jones (1747–1792), slave trader and father of the American Navy, began his career in Whitehaven and returned in 1778 aboard the Ranger. He led a naval raid on the town in 1778 in the American War of Independence.
 * Brad Kavanagh (born 1992), actor
 * Jack Lawson (1881–1965), Lord Lawson of Beamish, British trade unionist and Labour politician
 * Guy Lovell (born 1969), cricketer
 * Jane Pearson (1735-1816), was a Quaker minister based here for 42 years.
 * Matthew Postlethwaite (born 1991), actor
 * Gerard Richardson MBE (born 1962), founder of the International Maritime Festival, author and businessman
 * John "Sol" Roper (1936–2015), professional rugby league footballer and coach
 * Robert Salmon, (1775–1844), maritime artist
 * Frank Schon, Baron Schon (1912–1995), co-founder of Marchon Chemicals
 * Miki Sekers (1910–1972), co-founder of Sekers Fabrics
 * Jackie Sewell (1927–2016), footballer
 * Adam Summerfield (born 1990), professional ice hockey player for Manchester Phoenix
 * Jonathan Swift (1667–1745), claimed an over-fond nurse kidnapped and brought him to Whitehaven for three years in his infancy.
 * William Thomson (1819–1890), Archbishop of York in 1862–1890
 * Charlie Woods (born 1941), footballer (Cleator Moor Celtic, Newcastle United, Crystal Palace and Ipswich Town), coach and football scout. Woods became a football coach and scout working alongside England football manager Bobby Robson throughout most of Robson's career including England.
 * William Wordsworth (1770–1850), Poet Laureate from 1843 to 1850, frequently visited Whitehaven

Twin cities

 * Kozloduy, Bulgaria

title: Whitehaven


text:
Special-purpose local-option sales tax

A special-purpose local-option sales tax (SPLOST) is a financing method for funding capital outlay projects in the U.S. state of Georgia. It is an optional 1% sales tax levied by any county for the purpose of funding the building of parks, schools, roads, and other public facilities. The revenue generated cannot be used towards operating expenses or most maintenance projects.

Capital outlay projects
Capital outlay projects are defined as major projects of a permanent, long-lived nature, such as land and structures. Among the projects explicitly included are road, street, bridges, police cars, fire trucks, ambulances and garbage trucks. Georgia law allows counties and municipalities complete discretion over the types of projects selected for SPLOST funding.

While funds cannot be used for most maintenance, SPLOST law explicitly allows the expenditure of funds for maintenance and repair of roads, streets and bridges.

Procedure
Georgia's state sales tax is currently 4% (groceries and prescription drugs exempted), with the counties allowed to add up to 2% more for SPLOST.

A SPLOST is passed by a county commission, usually with the agreement of its city councils, and voted up or down by residents in a referendum, usually during the next scheduled election. A SPLOST only lasts five years, and always begins and ends with a full calendar quarter. At that time, if the funds are still needed, it must be voted upon again. All expenditures of SPLOST funds must be in compliance with Article VIII, Section VI, Paragraph IV of the Georgia Constitution, and Official Code of Georgia Annotated (O.C.G.A.) Section 48-8-115. Each SPLOST must define the projects on which the money is to be used, hence the designation of a "special purpose" tax. If enough money is raised before the full term of the tax, it may be ended at the end of an earlier calendar quarter.

Counties and school systems are required to provide an independent accountants' report, examining the way the funds were allocated and attesting to the fact that the system receiving funds managed those funds appropriately. School taxes are not technically considered a SPLOST, but are essentially managed the same way, with referendum dates and lists of projects to be funded being approved by county (and if applicable, city) school boards instead of county commissions and city councils.

Types of SPLOST

 * One SPLOST (1%) may be used to increase the homestead exemption for property taxes (sometimes called a HOST, or homestead-option sales tax).
 * A SPLOST is not required to exempt groceries (and almost none do), but still cannot be applied to prescriptions.
 * Cities are normally not allowed to levy sales taxes, they instead share proportionately with their county, according to how much was collected within respective city limits and unincorporated areas. Cities can have a separate tax if the county does not participate.  Early on, in the 1970s, Dalton had its own tax.  The county (Whitfield) sued and won the right to take over the tax.
 * Since 2004, Atlanta charges a city sales tax of 1% to separate and repair its old sewers and storm drains. This does not count against the 3% cap on SPLOST/LOST/HOST taxes, and was sometimes called a MOST (municipal-option sales tax).
 * Like the sewer tax, the MARTA sales tax is separate and not considered a SPLOST.
 * The state has been divided into twelve regions, which each voted on a TSPLOST for transportation needs in July 2012. This also does not count against the 3% cap on SPLOST/LOST/HOST taxes.

Transportation SPLOST
Authorized by the 2010 Transportation Investment Act, the 2012 TSPLOST or T-SPLOST referendum was held on July 31 after well-attended advance voting and early voting, and failed in nine of the 12 regions across the state. This includes the metro Atlanta region, where it failed by a wide margin of 37% to 63% overall, and failed in each of the ten counties, despite an advertising campaign that cost eight million dollars, funded mostly by local businesses, and controversially by some community improvement districts. It was largely opposed by those who are against any tax for any reason, and those who felt that having just half of the projects being improvements to the region's severely-limited rapid transit was still too much, although there is no other funding for expanding transit options while the gas tax and county SPLOSTs already go toward roads. It was also opposed by the Sierra Club for putting so much more toward roads that will simply fill up again, as well as by the NAACP since it is a regressive tax that would have also applied to basic necessities like groceries, and would have singled-out MARTA as the only agency that would be blocked from receiving operating funds.

Former Governor Nathan Deal said there will be no re-vote, and no increase in the taxes on gasoline (which are constitutionally prohibited from going to transportation alternatives), even though such taxes are borne by the drivers actually creating the traffic (a user fee).

The three regions which voted for the tax are all in middle Georgia, including Columbus and Augusta. Still causing controversy is the fact that local government in the other nine regions will now be required to put up 30% matching funds for projects for the next two years instead of the typical 10% to 15%.

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

title: Special-purpose local-option sales tax


text:
Kūkai

Kūkai (空海; 27 July 774 – 22 April 835 ), born Saeki no Mao (佐伯 眞魚), posthumously called Kōbō Daishi (弘法大師), was a Japanese Buddhist monk, calligrapher, and poet who founded the esoteric Shingon school of Buddhism. He travelled to China, where he studied Tangmi (Chinese Vajrayana Buddhism) under the monk Huiguo. Upon returning to Japan, he founded Shingon—the Japanese branch of Vajrayana Buddhism. With the blessing of several Emperors, Kūkai was able to preach Shingon teachings and found Shingon temples. Like other influential monks, Kūkai oversaw public works and constructions. Mount Kōya was chosen by him as a holy site, and he spent his later years there until his death in 835 C.E.

Because of his importance in Japanese Buddhism, Kūkai is associated with many stories and legends. One such legend attribute the invention of the kana syllabary to Kūkai, with which the Japanese language is written to this day (in combination with kanji), as well as the Iroha poem, which helped to standardise and popularise kana.

Shingon followers usually refer to Kūkai by the honorific title of Odaishi-sama (お大師様), and the religious name of Henjō Kongō (遍照金剛).

Early years

Kūkai was born in 774 in the precinct of Zentsū-ji temple, in Sanuki province on the island of Shikoku. His family were members of the aristocratic Saeki family, a branch of the ancient Ōtomo clan. In modern scholarship, his first name is generally believed to be Mao ("True Fish"), although one source records his birth name as Tōtomono ("Precious One"). Kūkai was born in a period of important political changes with Emperor Kanmu (r. 781–806) seeking to consolidate his power and to extend his realm, taking measures which included moving the capital of Japan from Nara ultimately to Heian (modern-day Kyoto).

Little more is known about Kūkai's childhood. At the age of fifteen, he began to receive instruction in the Chinese classics under the guidance of his maternal uncle. During this time, the Saeki-Ōtomo clan suffered government persecution due to allegations that the clan chief, Ōtomo Yakamochi, was responsible for the assassination of his rival Fujiwara no Tanetsugu. The family fortunes had fallen by 791 when Kūkai journeyed to Nara, the capital at the time, to study at the government university, the Daigakuryō (大学寮). Graduates were typically chosen for prestigious positions as bureaucrats. Biographies of Kūkai suggest that he became disillusioned with his Confucian studies, but developed a strong interest in Buddhist studies instead.

Around the age of 22, Kūkai was introduced to Buddhist practice involving chanting the mantra of Kokūzō (Sanskrit: Ākāśagarbha), the bodhisattva of the void. During this period, Kūkai frequently sought out isolated mountain regions where he chanted the Ākāśagarbha mantra relentlessly. At age 24 he published his first major literary work, Sangō Shiiki, in which he quotes from an extensive list of sources, including the classics of Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism. The Nara temples, with their extensive libraries, possessed these texts.

During this period in Japanese history, the central government closely regulated Buddhism through the Sōgō (僧綱) and enforced its policies, based on the ritsuryō legal code. Ascetics and independent monks, like Kūkai, were frequently banned and lived outside the law, but still wandered the countryside or from temple to temple.

During this period of private Buddhist practice, Kūkai had a dream, in which a man appeared and told Kūkai that the Mahavairocana Tantra is the scripture which contained the doctrine Kūkai was seeking. Though Kūkai soon managed to obtain a copy of this sutra which had only recently become available in Japan, he immediately encountered difficulty. Much of the sutra was in untranslated Sanskrit written in the Siddhaṃ script. Kūkai found the translated portion of the sutra was very cryptic. Because Kūkai could find no one who could elucidate the text for him, he resolved to go to China to study the text there. Ryuichi Abe suggests that the Mahavairocana Tantra bridged the gap between his interest in the practice of religious exercises and the doctrinal knowledge acquired through his studies.

Travel and study in China
In 804, Kūkai took part in a government-sponsored expedition to China, led by Fujiwara no Kadanomaro, in order to learn more about the Mahavairocana Tantra. Scholars are unsure why Kūkai was selected to take part in an official mission to China, given his background as a private monk who was not sponsored by the state. Theories include family connections within the Saeki-Ōtomo clan, or connections through fellow clergy or a member of the Fujiwara clan.

The expedition included four ships, with Kūkai on the first ship, while another famous monk, Saichō was on the second ship. During a storm, the third ship turned back, while the fourth ship was lost at sea. Kūkai's ship arrived weeks later in the province of Fujian and its passengers were initially denied entry to the port while the ship was impounded. Kūkai, being literate in Chinese, wrote a letter to the governor of the province explaining their situation. The governor allowed the ship to dock, and the party was asked to proceed to the capital of Chang'an (present day Xi'an), the capital of the Tang dynasty.

After further delays, the Tang court granted Kūkai a place in Ximing Temple, where his study of Chinese Buddhism began in earnest. He also studied Sanskrit with the Gandharan pandit Prajñā (734–810?), who had been educated at the Indian Buddhist university at Nalanda.

It was in 805 that Kūkai finally met the monk Huiguo (746–805) the man who would initiate him into Chinese Esoteric Buddhism (Tangmi) at Chang'an's Qinglong Monastery (青龍寺). Huiguo came from an illustrious lineage of Buddhist masters, famed especially for translating Sanskrit texts into Chinese, including the Mahavairocana Tantra. Kūkai describes their first meeting: "Accompanied by Jiming, Tansheng, and several other Dharma masters from the Ximing monastery, I went to visit him [Huiguo] and was granted an audience. As soon as he saw me, the abbot smiled, and said with delight, "since learning of your arrival, I have waited anxiously. How excellent, how excellent that we have met today at last! My life is ending soon, and yet I have no more disciples to whom to transmit the Dharma. Prepare without delay the offerings of incense and flowers for your entry into the abhisheka mandala"."

Huiguo immediately bestowed upon Kūkai the first level abhisheka (esoteric initiation). Whereas Kūkai had expected to spend 20 years studying in China, in a few short months he was to receive the final initiation, and become a master of the esoteric lineage. Huiguo was said to have described teaching Kūkai as like "pouring water from one vase into another". Huiguo died shortly afterwards, but not before instructing Kūkai to return to Japan and spread the esoteric teachings there, assuring him that other disciples would carry on his work in China.

Kūkai arrived back in Japan in 806 as the eighth Patriarch of Esoteric Buddhism, having learnt Sanskrit and its Siddhaṃ script, studied Indian Buddhism, as well as having studied the arts of Chinese calligraphy and poetry, all with recognized masters. He also arrived with a large number of texts, many of which were new to Japan and were esoteric in character, as well as several texts on the Sanskrit language and the Siddhaṃ script.

However, in Kūkai's absence Emperor Kanmu had died and was replaced by Emperor Heizei who exhibited no great enthusiasm for Buddhism. Kūkai's return from China was eclipsed by Saichō, the founder of the Tendai school, who found favor with the court during this time. Saichō had already had esoteric rites officially recognised by the court as an integral part of Tendai, and had already performed the abhisheka, or initiatory ritual, for the court by the time Kūkai returned to Japan. Later, with Emperor Kanmu's death, Saichō's fortunes began to wane.

Saichō requested, in 812, that Kūkai give him the introductory initiation, which Kūkai agreed to do. He also granted a second-level initiation upon Saichō, but refused to bestow the final initiation (which would have qualified Saichō as a master of esoteric Buddhism) because Saichō had not completed the required studies, leading to a falling out between the two that was not resolved; this feud later extended to the Shingon and Tendai sects.

Little is known about Kūkai's movements until 809 when the court finally responded to Kūkai's report on his studies, which also contained an inventory of the texts and other objects he had brought with him, and a petition for state support to establish the new esoteric Buddhism in Japan. That document, the Catalogue of Imported Items, is the first attempt by Kūkai to distinguish the new form of Buddhism from that already practiced in Japan. The court's response was an order to reside in Takao-san temple (modern Jingo-ji) in the suburbs of Kyoto. This was to be Kūkai's headquarters for the next 14 years. The year 809 also saw the retirement of Emperor Heizei due to illness and the succession of the Emperor Saga, who supported Kūkai and exchanged poems and other gifts.

Emerging from obscurity
In 810, Kūkai emerged as a public figure when he was appointed administrative head of Tōdai-ji, the central temple in Nara, and head of the Sōgō (僧綱).

Shortly after his enthronement, Emperor Saga became seriously ill, and while he was recovering, Emperor Heizei fomented a rebellion, which had to be put down by force. Kūkai petitioned the Emperor to allow him to carry out certain esoteric rituals which were said to "enable a king to vanquish the seven calamities, to maintain the four seasons in harmony, to protect the nation and family, and to give comfort to himself and others". The petition was granted. Prior to this, the government relied on the monks from the traditional schools in Nara to perform rituals, such as chanting the Golden Light Sutra to bolster the government, but this event marked a new reliance on the esoteric tradition to fulfill this role.

With the public initiation ceremonies for Saichō and others at Takao-san temple in 812, Kūkai became the acknowledged master of esoteric Buddhism in Japan. He set about organizing his disciples into an order – making them responsible for administration, maintenance and construction at the temple, as well as for monastic discipline. In 813 Kūkai outlined his aims and practices in the document called The admonishments of Konin. It was also during this period at Takaosan that he completed many of the seminal works of the Shingon School:

 * Attaining Enlightenment in This Very Existence
 * The Meaning of Sound, Word, Reality
 * Meanings of the Word Hūm

All of these were written in 817. Records show that Kūkai was also busy writing poetry, conducting rituals, and writing epitaphs and memorials on request. His popularity at the court only increased, and spread.

Meanwhile, Kukai's new esoteric teachings and literature drew scrutiny from a noted scholar-monk of the time named Tokuitsu, who traded letters back and forth in 815 asking for clarification. The dialogue between them proved constructive and helped to give Kūkai more credibility, while the Nara Schools took greater interest in esoteric practice.

Mount Kōya
In 816, Emperor Saga accepted Kūkai's request to establish a mountain retreat at Mount Kōya as a retreat from worldly affairs. The ground was officially consecrated in the middle of 819 with rituals lasting seven days. He could not stay, however, as he had received an imperial order to act as advisor to the secretary of state, and he therefore entrusted the project to a senior disciple. As many surviving letters to patrons attest, fund-raising for the project now began to take up much of Kūkai's time, and financial difficulties were a persistent concern; indeed, the project was not fully realised until after Kūkai's death in 835.

Kūkai's vision was that Mt. Kōya was to become a representation of the Mandala of the Two Realms that form the basis of Shingon Buddhism: the central plateau as the Womb Realm mandala, with the peaks surrounding the area as petals of a lotus; and located in the centre of this would be the Diamond Realm mandala in the form of a temple which he named Kongōbu-ji ("Diamond Peak Temple"). At the center of the temple complex sits an enormous statue of Vairocana, who is the personification of Ultimate Reality.

Public works
In 821, Kūkai took on a civil engineering task, that of restoring Manno Reservoir, which is still the largest irrigation reservoir in Japan. His leadership enabled the previously floundering project to be completed smoothly, and is now the source of some of the many legendary stories which surround his figure. In 822 Kūkai performed an initiation ceremony for the ex-emperor Heizei. In the same year Saichō died.

Tō-ji Period
When Emperor Kanmu had moved the capital in 784, he had not permitted the powerful Buddhists from the temples of Nara to follow him. He did commission two new temples: Tō-ji (Eastern Temple) and Sai-ji (Western Temple) which flanked the road at southern entrance to the city, protecting the capital from evil influences. However, after nearly thirty years the temples were still not completed. In 823 the soon-to-retire Emperor Saga asked Kūkai, experienced in public works projects, to take over Tō-ji and finish the building project. Saga gave Kūkai free rein, enabling him to make Tō-ji the first Esoteric Buddhist centre in Kyoto, and also giving him a base much closer to the court, and its power.

The new emperor, Emperor Junna (r. 823–833) was also well disposed towards Kūkai. In response to a request from the emperor, Kūkai, along with other Japanese Buddhist leaders, submitted a document which set out the beliefs, practices and important texts of his form of Buddhism. In his imperial decree granting approval of Kūkai's outline of esoteric Buddhism, Junna uses the term Shingon-shū (真言宗) for the first time. An imperial decree gave Kūkai exclusive use of Tō-ji for the Shingon School, which set a new precedent in an environment where previously temples had been open to all forms of Buddhism. It also allowed him to retain 50 monks at the temple and train them in Shingon. This was the final step in establishing Shingon as an independent Buddhist movement, with a solid institutional basis with state authorization. Shingon had become legitimate.

In 824, Kūkai was officially appointed to the temple construction project. In that year he founded Zenpuku-ji, the second oldest temple of the Edo (Tokyo) region. In 824 he was also appointed to the Office of Priestly Affairs. The Office consisted of four positions, with the Supreme Priest being an honorary position which was often vacant. The effective head of the Sōgō was the Daisōzu (大僧都). Kūkai's appointment was to the position of Shōsōzu (小僧都). In addition there was a Risshi (律師) who was responsible for the monastic code of discipline. At Tō-ji, in addition to the main hall (kondō) and some minor buildings on the site, Kūkai added the lecture hall in 825 which was specifically designed along Shingon Buddhist principles, which included the making of 14 Buddha images. Also in 825, Kūkai was invited to become tutor to the crown prince. Then in 826 he initiated the construction of a large pagoda at Tō-ji which was not completed in his lifetime (the present pagoda was built in 1644 by the third Tokugawa Shogun, Tokugawa Iemitsu). In 827 Kūkai was promoted to be Daisōzu in which capacity he presided over state rituals, the emperor and the imperial family.

The year 828 saw Kūkai open his School of Arts and Sciences (Shugei Shuchi-in). The school was a private institution open to all regardless of social rank. This was in contrast to the only other school in the capital which was only open to members of the aristocracy. The school taught Taoism and Confucianism, in addition to Buddhism, and provided free meals to the pupils. The latter was essential because the poor could not afford to live and attend the school without it. The school closed ten years after Kūkai's death, when it was sold in order to purchase some rice fields for supporting monastic affairs.

Final years
Kūkai completed his magnum opus, The Jūjūshinron (十住心論) in 830. Because of its great length, it has yet to have been fully translated into any language. A simplified summary, Hizō Hōyaku (秘蔵宝鑰) followed soon after. The first signs of the illness that would eventually lead to Kūkai's death appeared in 831. He sought to retire, but the emperor would not accept his resignation and instead gave him sick leave. Toward the end of 832, Kūkai went back to Mt. Kōya and spent most of his remaining life there. In 834, he petitioned the court to establish a Shingon chapel in the palace for the purpose of conducting rituals that would ensure the health of the state. This request was granted and Shingon ritual became incorporated into the official court calendar of events. In 835, just two months before his death, Kūkai was finally granted permission to annually ordain three Shingon monks at Mt. Kōya – the number of new ordainees being still strictly controlled by the state. This meant that Kōya had gone from being a private institution to a state-sponsored one.

With the end approaching, he stopped taking food and water, and spent much of his time absorbed in meditation. At midnight on the 21st day of the third month (835), he died at the age of 62. Emperor Ninmyō (r. 833–50) sent a message of condolence to Mount Kōya, expressing his regret that he could not attend the cremation due to the time lag in communication caused by Mount Kōya's isolation. However, Kūkai was not given the traditional cremation, but instead, in accordance with his will, was entombed on the eastern peak of Mount Kōya. "When, some time after, the tomb was opened, Kōbō-Daishi was found as if still sleeping, with complexion unchanged and hair grown a bit longer."

Legend has it that Kūkai has not died, but entered into an eternal samadhi (meditative trance) and is still alive on Mount Kōya, awaiting the appearance of Maitreya, the Buddha of the future.

Kūkai devotion and mantra
In modern Shingon, Kūkai is seen as a bodhisattva that one can pray and have devotion towards, similar to how the historical figure Padmasambhava became a figure of devotion in Tibet. Pilgrimages and devotional events focused around Kūkai remain a key part of the Shingon faith. The most important Kūkai pilgrimage route is the Shikoku Pilgrimage (四国遍路, Shikoku Henro).

Kūkai's mausoleum (the "Gobyo") at Mount Kōya is at Okunoin (奥の院) temple and it is the main site for devotion to Kūkai. Offerings and prayers to Kūkai are made around the year at this site. He is believed by the faithful to still be alive, having entered a deep samadhi (meditative absorption) until the arrival of the next Buddha Maitreya. There is also a large graveyard at this site, as many individuals throughout Japanese Buddhist history have wished to be buried near Kūkai.

Kūkai also has a popular mantra which is recited in Shingon religious services. It is called the Hōgō (treasure name) and is: namu daishi henjō kongō

南 無 大 師 遍 照 金 剛 The mantra means "homage (namu) great teacher (daishi) henjō kongō (Vairocana vajra, Kūkai's secret tantric name). It could be rendered in Sanskrit as namo mahāguru vairocana vajra. The modern form of the Hōgō was widely used at least by the Muromachi period (1336 - 1573). It may have been created by the Shingon priest Dōhan (道範, 1178-1252) and is found in his Himitsu nenbutsu shō.

Stories and legends
Kūkai's prominence in Japanese Buddhism has spawned numerous stories and legends about him. When searching for a place on Mount Kōya to build a temple, Kūkai was said to have been welcomed by two Shinto deities of the mountain—the male Kariba, and the female Niu. Kariba was said to have appeared as a hunter, and guided Kūkai through the mountains with the help of a white dog and a black dog. Later, both Kariba and Niu were interpreted as manifestations of the Buddha Vairocana, the central figure in Shingon Buddhism and subject of Kūkai's lifelong interest.

Another legend tells the story of Emon Saburō, the wealthiest man in Shikoku. One day, a mendicant monk came to his house, seeking alms. Emon refused, broke the pilgrim's begging bowl, and chased him away. After this, his eight sons fell ill and died. Emon realized that Kūkai was the affronted pilgrim and set out to seek his forgiveness. Having traveled round the island twenty times clockwise in vain, he undertook the route in reverse. Finally, he collapsed exhausted and on his deathbed. Kūkai appeared to grant absolution. Emon requested that he be reborn into a wealthy family in Matsuyama so that he might restore a neglected temple. Dying, he clasped a stone. Shortly afterwards a baby was born with his hand grasped tightly around a stone inscribed "Emon Saburō is reborn." When the baby grew up, he used his wealth to restore the Ishite-ji (石手寺), in which there is an inscription from 1567 recounting the tale.

According to one legend, male same-sex love was introduced into Japan by Kūkai. Historians however, point that this is probably not true, since Kūkai was an enthusiastic follower of monastic regulations. Nonetheless, the legend served to "affirm same-sex relation between men and boys in 17th century Japan."

In popular culture
Kūkai (空海) a film from 1984 directed by Junya Sato. Kūkai is played by Kin'ya Kitaōji and Saichō is played by Gō Katō.

The 1991 drama film Mandala (Chinese: 曼荼羅; Japanese: 若き日の弘法大師・空海), a China-Japan co-production, was based on Kūkai's travels in China. The film stars Toshiyuki Nagashima as Kūkai, also co-starring Junko Sakurada and Zhang Fengyi as Huiguo.

The 2017 fantasy film Legend of the Demon Cat stars Shōta Sometani as Kūkai.

Additional sources

 * Clipston, Janice (2000). Sokushin-jōbutsu-gi: Attaining Enlightenment in This Very Existence, Buddhist Studies Reviews 17 (2), 207-220
 * Giebel, Rolf W.; Todaro, Dale A.; trans. (2004). Shingon texts, Berkeley, Calif.: Numata Center for Buddhist Translation and Research
 * Hakeda Yoshito. 1972. Kūkai – Major Works. New York, USA: Columbia University Press.
 * Inagaki Hisao (1972). "Kukai's Sokushin-Jobutsu-Gi" (Principle of Attaining Buddhahood with the Present Body), Asia Major (New Series) 17 (2), 190-215
 * Skilton, A. 1994. A Concise History of Buddhism. Birmingham: Windhorse Publications.
 * Wayman, A and Tajima, R. 1998 The Enlightenment of Vairocana. Delhi: Motilal Barnasidass [includes Study of the Vairocanābhisambodhitantra (Wayman) and Study of the Mahāvairocana-Sūtra (Tajima)].
 * White, Kenneth R. 2005. The Role of Bodhicitta in Buddhist Enlightenment. New York: The Edwin Mellen Press (includes Bodhicitta-śāstra, Benkenmitsu-nikyōron, Sanmaya-kaijō)

title: Kūkai


text:
UGA

UGA or Uga may refer to:

People

 * Elisa Uga, an Italian fencer

Characters

 * Uga (mascot), the live English Bulldog mascot of University of Georgia athletics

Places

 * Uga (Lanzarote), a village in Yaiza municipality in the province of Las Palmas, Lanzarote
 * Uga, Nigeria, a town in Anambra, Nigeria
 * Uqah or Uga, a village in Azerbaijan
 * IATA airport code for Bulgan Airport, Bulgan Province, Mongolia

Organizations, groups, companies

 * United Game Artists, a second-party developer of computer and video games for SEGA
 * United Golf Association was a group of African-American professional golfers who operated a separate series of professional golf tournaments for Blacks during the era of racial segregation
 * Air Uganda (ICAO airline code: UGA; IATA airline code: U7)

Universities

 * University of Georgia, a public research university located in Athens, Georgia, United States
 * Université Grenoble Alpes, a French public research university located in Grenoble, France

Computing

 * User Global Area, part of the System Global Area in Oracle database software
 * UXGA or UGA, Ultra Graphics Array

Science

 * UGA ("opal" or "umber"), a stop codon within genetic code
 * Uga (genus), a genus in subfamily Haltichellinae
 * Universal geometric algebra
 * The ISO 639-3 code for the Ugaritic language

title: UGA


text:
Humphrey Carpenter

Humphrey William Bouverie Carpenter (29 April 1946 – 4 January 2005) was an English biographer, writer, and radio broadcaster. He is known especially for his biographies of J. R. R. Tolkien and other members of the literary society the Inklings. He won a Mythopoeic Award for his book The Inklings in 1982.

Early life
Carpenter was born (and lived almost all of his life, and died) in the city of Oxford, England. His father was Harry Carpenter, Bishop of Oxford. His mother was Urith Monica Trevelyan, who had training in the Fröbel teaching method. As a child, he lived in the Warden's Lodgings at Keble College, Oxford, where his father served as warden until his appointment as Bishop of Oxford. He was educated at the Dragon School, Oxford and Marlborough College. He returned to Oxford to read English at Keble College.

Broadcasting
Carpenter began his broadcasting career at BBC Radio Oxford as a presenter and producer where he met Mari Prichard (whose father was Caradog Prichard, the Welsh novelist and poet); they married in 1973. They jointly produced A Thames Companion in 1975. He played a role in launching Radio 3's arts discussion programme Night Waves and acted as a regular presenter of other programmes on the network including Radio 3's afternoon drivetime programme In Tune and, until it was discontinued, its Sunday request programme Listeners' Choice. Until his death, he presented the BBC Radio 4 biography series Great Lives recorded in Bristol. The last edition recorded before his death featured an interview with the singer Eddi Reader about the poet Robert Burns, the major focus of her creative work. BBC Radio 4 broadcast this programme on New Year's Eve, 2004.

Jazz music and children's drama
Carpenter was an amateur jazz musician who played the piano, the saxophone, and the double-bass, the last instrument professionally in a dance band in the 1970s. In 1983, he formed a 1930s style jazz band, Vile Bodies, which for many years enjoyed a residency at the Ritz Hotel in London. He also founded the Mushy Pea Theatre Group, a children's drama group based in Oxford, which premiered his Mr Majeika: The Musical in 1991 and Babes, a musical about Hollywood child stars.

Children's books
His Mr Majeika series of children's books were adapted for television. The Joshers: Or London to Birmingham with Albert and Victoria (1977) is a children's adventure book, similar in style to The Railway Children and based on the adventure of taking a working narrowboat up the Grand Union Canal from London to Birmingham.

Non-fiction works
His biographies included J. R. R. Tolkien: A Biography (1977; also editing of The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien), The Inklings: CS Lewis, JRR Tolkien, Charles Williams and their Friends (1978; winner of the 1978 Somerset Maugham Award), W. H. Auden (1981), Ezra Pound (1988; winner of the Duff Cooper Memorial Prize), Evelyn Waugh (1989), Benjamin Britten (1992), Robert Runcie (1997), Dennis Potter, and Spike Milligan (2004). He authored Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s (1987); his last book was The Seven Lives of John Murray (2008) about John Murray and the publishing house of Albemarle Street, was published posthumously.

He wrote histories of BBC Radio 3, the British satire boom of the 1960s, Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s (2002), and a centennial history of the Oxford University Dramatic Society in 1985. His encyclopaedic work, The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (1984), written jointly with his wife, Mari Prichard, has become a standard reference source.

Death
Humphrey Carpenter died in 2005 of heart failure, compounded by the Parkinson's disease from which he had suffered for several years. He was buried in Wolvercote Cemetery in Oxford, also the final resting place of J. R. R. Tolkien. A commemorative stained-glass window was installed in St Margaret's Institute, Polstead Road, honouring Carpenter's many accomplishments.

Selected list of works

 * A Thames Companion (with Mari Prichard; Oxford Illustrated, 1975)
 * The Joshers; or London to Birmingham with Albert and Victoria: A Story of the Canals (George Allen & Unwin, 1977)
 * J. R. R. Tolkien. A Biography (HarperCollins, 1977)
 * The Inklings: C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and Their Friends (George Allen & Unwin, 1978)
 * Jesus (Past Masters Series; Oxford University Press, 1980)
 * W. H. Auden. A Biography (George Allen & Unwin, 1981)
 * The Letters of J. R. R. Tolkien (editor; George Allen & Unwin, 1981)
 * The Oxford Companion to Children's Literature (with Mari Prichard; Oxford University Press, 1984)
 * O.U.D.S.: A Centenary History of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (Oxford University Press, 1985)
 * Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children's Literature (George Allen & Unwin, 1985)
 * Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s (Unwin Hyman, 1987)
 * A Serious Character: Ezra Pound (Faber & Faber, 1988)
 * The Brideshead Generation: Evelyn Waugh and His Friends (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989)
 * Benjamin Britten. A Biography (Faber & Faber, 1992)
 * Shakespeare, Without the Boring Bits (Viking Children's Books, 1994)
 * The Puffin Book of Classic Children's Stories (Viking Children's Books, 1996)
 * Robert Runcie: The Reluctant Archbishop (Hodder & Stoughton, 1996)
 * The Envy of the World: Fifty Years of the BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1996)
 * Dennis Potter. The Authorized Biography (Faber & Faber, 1998)
 * That Was Satire That Was: Beyond the Fringe, the Establishment Club, Private Eye and That Was the Week That Was (Gollancz, 2000)
 * (US edition) A Great, Silly Grin: The British Satire Boom of the 1960s (PublicAffairs, 2002)
 * The Angry Young Men: A Literary Comedy of the 1950s (Allen Lane, 2002)
 * Spike Milligan. The Biography (Hodder & Stoughton, 2003)
 * The Seven Lives of John Murray: The Story of a Publishing Dynasty (John Murray, 2008)

title: Humphrey Carpenter


text:
Witch-hazel

Witch-hazels or witch hazels (Hamamelis) are a genus of flowering plants in the family Hamamelidaceae, with three species in North America (H. ovalis, H. virginiana, and H. vernalis), and one each in Japan (H. japonica) and China (H. mollis). The North American species are occasionally called winterbloom.

Growth
The witch-hazels are deciduous shrubs or (rarely) small trees growing to 3 to 7.5 m tall, even more rarely to 12 m tall. The leaves are alternately arranged, oval, 5 to 15 cm long, and 2.5 to 10 cm wide, with a smooth or wavy margin. The genus name, Hamamelis, means "together with fruit", referring to the simultaneous occurrence of flowers with the maturing fruit from the previous year. H. virginiana blooms in September–November while the other species bloom from January–March. Each flower has four slender strap-shaped petals 1 to 2 cm long, pale to dark yellow, orange, or red. The fruit is a two-part capsule 1 cm long, containing a single 0.6 cm glossy black seed in each of the two parts; the capsule splits explosively at maturity in the autumn about eight months after flowering, ejecting the seeds with sufficient force to fly for distances of up to 12 ft, thus another alternative name "snapping hazel".

Etymology
The name witch in witch-hazel has its origins in Middle English wiche, from the Old English wice, meaning "pliant" or "bendable", and is not related to the word witch meaning a practitioner of magic. Jacob George Strutt's 1822 book, Sylva Britannica attests that "Wych Hazel" was used in England as a synonym for wych elm, the entirely unrelated Ulmus glabra; The use of the twigs as divining rods, just as hazel twigs were used in England, may also have, by folk etymology, influenced the "witch" part of the name.

Species
Five species are recognized:
 * Hamamelis japonica Siebold & Zucc. – Japanese witch-hazel
 * Hamamelis mollis Oliv. – Chinese witch hazel
 * Hamamelis ovalis S.W.Leonard – big-leaf witch-hazel
 * Hamamelis vernalis Sarg. – Ozark witchhazel
 * Hamamelis virginiana L. – common witch-hazel or American witch-hazel

Hamamelis mexicana is sometimes considered a species, though Kew's Plants of the World Online considers it a variety of H. virginiana.

The Persian ironwood, a closely related tree formerly treated as Hamamelis persica, is now given a genus of its own, as Parrotia persica, as it differs in the flowers having just sepals and no petals. Other closely allied genera are Parrotiopsis, Fothergilla, and Sycopsis (see under Hamamelidaceae). Witch-hazels are not closely related to the true Corylus hazels, though they have a few superficially similar characteristics which may cause one to believe that they are - their leaves are a similar shape, and turn a similar shade of yellow in autumn.

Cultivation
They are popular ornamental plants, grown for their clusters of rich yellow to orange-red flowers, which begin to expand in the autumn as or slightly before the leaves fall and continue throughout the winter.

Garden shrubs
Hamamelis virginiana was introduced into English gardens by Peter Collinson, who maintained correspondence with plant hunters in the American colonies. It is rarely seen in the nursery trade except for woodland/wildlife restoration projects and native plant enthusiasts. Much more common is H. mollis, which has bright yellow flowers that bloom in late winter instead of the yellow blossoms of H. virginiana which tend to be lost among the plant's fall foliage. The plant-hunter Charles Maries collected for Veitch Nurseries in the Chinese district of Jiujiang in 1879. It languished in nursery rows for years until it was noticed, propagated, and put on the market in 1902.

Numerous cultivars have been selected for use as garden shrubs, many of them derived from the hybrid H. × intermedia Rehder (H. japonica × H. mollis). Jelena and Robert de Belder of Arboretum Kalmthout, selecting for red cultivars, found three: the first, with bronze flowers, was named 'Jelena'; the next, with red flowers, was named 'Diane' (the name of their daughter); the last, with deep red flowers, was called 'Livia' (the name of their granddaughter).

Phytochemicals and hamamelis water
The main phytochemicals in witch-hazel leaves are polyphenols, including 3–10% tannins, flavonoids, and up to 0.5% essential oil, while the bark has a higher tannin content. Hamamelis water, also called white hazel or witch hazel water prepared from a steam-distillation process using leaves, bark or twigs, is a clear, colorless liquid containing 13–15% ethanol having the odor of the essential oil, but with no tannins present. Essential oil components, such as carvacrol and eugenol, may be present.

As an ingredient and topical agent, witch-hazel water is regulated in the United States as an over-the-counter drug for external use only to soothe minor skin irritations. Hamamelis (witch-hazel) water is diluted using water in a 1:3 preparation, and is not intended for oral use which may cause nausea, vomiting, or constipation.

Topical ointment
Witch-hazel may be sold as a semisolid ointment, cream, gel, or salve for topical use, and due to its astringent and antiseptic properties, has long been used to treat various skin conditions like acne. The ointment may ease discomfort from post-partum vaginal soreness and hemorrhoids. It is commonly used to treat diaper rash in infants, and may reduce symptoms of inflammation from minor skin injuries. A 2012 review (updated in October 2020) found little evidence of effectiveness from local cooling treatments (including witch-hazel pads) applied to the perineum following childbirth to relieve pain.

Folk medicine
The leaves and bark of the North American witch-hazel, Hamamelis virginiana, were used in folk medicine, herbalism, and skincare decoctions by Native Americans. Extracts of witch-hazel have been claimed to be effective for psoriasis and eczema,  to prevent dehydration of skin, and for insect bites, poison ivy, and razor burn. There is limited clinical evidence to support witch-hazel as an effective treatment for any of these conditions. Prepared by distillation, the essential oil of witch-hazel has such a small proportion of tannins or other polyphenols that it is unlikely to have any therapeutic effect, and may cause contact dermatitis when used topically. It might be useful in treating hemorrhoids and relieving some of its symptoms, although more research is needed.

In 2017, one manufacturer of skin care products containing witch-hazel was warned by the Food and Drug Administration for making unsubstantiated health claims and for not providing evidence the products were safe.

History of medical use
Native Americans of what became New England boiled witch-hazel stems and applied the resulting liquid to sore muscles, cuts, insect bites, piles, inflammations and even tumors. Early Puritan settlers in New England learned about witch-hazel from the Native peoples, but its use did not become widely established in the United States until the 19th century. A missionary, Dr. Charles Hawes, adopted the process of steam distillation of witch-hazel twigs, creating a "Hawes Extract" product sold in Essex, Connecticut, in 1846, by druggist and chemist Alvan Whittemore. Hawes' process was further refined by Thomas Newton Dickinson Sr., who is credited with starting the commercial production of witch-hazel extract, also in Essex, Connecticut, in 1866, and eventually establishing nine production sites in eastern Connecticut during the 20th century. Following his death, his two sons, Thomas N. Dickinson Jr., of Mystic, Connecticut, and Everett E. Dickinson of Essex, each inherited parts of the family business and continued the manufacture of witch-hazel extract, operating competing "Dickinson's" businesses that their descendants continued until 1997 when the manufacturing operations from both companies were consolidated at the American Distilling plant in East Hampton, CT.

title: Witch-hazel


text:
VAC

VAC or Vac may refer to:

Arts and entertainment

 * Variety Artists Club of New Zealand
 * Velvet Acid Christ, an industrial band
 * Video Appeals Committee, appeals board against BBFC video classifications in the UK
 * Visual Arts Centre, now part of La Trobe Institute, Bendigo, Australia
 * Zambia National Visual Arts Council

Business

 * ValueAct Capital, American investment company
 * Valve Amplification Company, audio component manufacturer
 * Vologda Air Company, a Russian airline

Government

 * Veterans Affairs Canada, a federal department
 * Veterans Affairs Council, a cabinet-level organization in Taiwan
 * Voter Authority Certificate, type of voter identification in the UK

Health

 * Vaccinate Alaska Coalition
 * Vacuum assisted closure wound therapy

Sport

 * Vác-Újbuda LTC, a football club based in Vác, Hungary
 * Vívó és Atlétikai Club, a defunct Hungarian sports club

Technology

 * Valve Anti-Cheat, an anti-cheat tool for video games
 * Vergence-accommodation conflict, a visual phenomenon associated with the use of stereoscopic devices
 * Virtual Audio Cable, software to transfer audio

Other uses

 * Vác, a city in Hungary
 * Roman Catholic Diocese of Vác
 * -vac, toponymic suffix in Serbia and Croatia for "town"
 * V Amphibious Corps, of World War II US Marine Corps
 * Vāc, Sanskrit for "speech", also a Vedic goddess
 * Pacific Central Station, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, station code

title: VAC


text:
Talk:Cipramil

merge & redirect to Citalopram maybe

title: Talk:Cipramil


text:
VDC

VDC may refer to:

Military

 * Volunteer Defence Corps (Australia)
 * Volunteer Defense Corps (Thailand)

Technology

 * Vehicle Dynamics Control, a means of increasing vehicle stability through a combination of throttle restriction and braking
 * Voltage direct current, a contraction often found in electronics when specifying voltage in a mixed AC/DC environment
 * Video display controller, a computer graphics chip
 * Virtual design and construction, modeling software and techniques to design and evaluate possible construction processes
 * Virtual DataCine, a digital image processing technique for converting motion picture film to video

Other uses

 * Valletta Design Cluster, a culture and creativity centre in Malta
 * Valve Developer Community, the official wiki for developers of games and mods based on the computer game Half-Life 2
 * Velocity : Design : Comfort, the 2nd studio album by Sweet Trip
 * Vietnam Day Committee, an anti-war group formed at Berkeley, California in 1965 by activist Jerry Rubin
 * Violations Documentation Center in Syria, a Syrian organisation documenting deaths, detentions, missing persons and kidnappings due to the Syrian civil war
 * Vitória da Conquista Airport (IATA airport code VDC), Vitória da Conquista, Brazil
 * Virtual Digital Cable, a defunct media and technology company that delivered television to desktop computers and mobile devices
 * Virtual Dining Concepts, American company specializing in virtual restaurants

title: VDC


text:
Talk:Mind the gap

In the News
http://www.metro.co.uk/news/article.html?in_article_id=113816&in_page_id=34

An news story about a guy who failed to mind the gap, and his parents wanting to remove the gap.. —Preceding unsigned comment added by SkippyUK (talk • contribs) 11:28, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Announcements
Hasn't the announcement changed from:

'Stand clear of the doors, please'

to:

'Stand clear of the closing doors'?

(Alternatively: sta clee of the clopthie doo)

Slightly less polite, but perhaps they felt the additional explanation was required?

Let's not also forget the 'Mind the gap between the train and the platform edge' announcement - obviously intended for those who couldn't work that out themselves!

Mauls 22:20, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

 * Alot of the announcements vary between underground lines. Some of them have 'Stand clear, of the closing doors' whereas others have 'Stand clear of the doors, please'. MichaelKeefe 09:06, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The Tyne and Wear Metro recently changed their announcement from "stand clear of the doors, please" to a more abrupt "doors closing". It was rumoured that this change was made as a political correctness measure to appease disability discrimination groups - after all, if you're confined to a wheelchair, you can't exactly *stand* clear of the doors... 217.155.20.163 03:03, 20 November 2005 (UTC)
 * Isn't the New York Subway similar? Kilo-Lima|(talk) 20:29, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

lt1967 the 1967 stock has an announcement is Stand clear of the closing doors. 218.102.110.210 01:43, 31 August 2007 (UTC) Victoria1967/2009

Subway?
Most of this article is about London Underground, in the UK - in which country "subway" does *not* usually mean an underground railway. Is this really the best link to use? 86.149.2.48 02:57, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

 * I agree, i've changed the text to 'public transit' as that's how it is described in the London Underground article. If anyone has any further suggestions, feel free to implement them as i think there's probably a better way to put this. MichaelKeefe 09:04, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

 * "Transit" is American too, and rarely used in the UK (except in other contexts such as "in transit"). Londoners would usually say "public transport" in preference to the American forms "public transit" or "public transportation". However, I can't think of an accurate British alternative for "rapid transit", so I'll leave it for now. I don't know how a professional transport planner in the UK would refer to the system. Mtford 01:25, 30 August 2007 (UTC)

Related?
The American variant "Watch your step"? --Danielsan1701 14:02, 10 July 2007 (UTC)

Diagram
It would be nice to have a diagram or photo of a strait car at a curved platform. Also, what is the maximum gap anywhere in the Tube system? —Ben FrantzDale 16:33, 20 September 2007 (UTC)
 * ✅ — added photo at Bank Underground station. It's around 1 ft (30 cm). cmɢʟee⎆τaʟκ 15:16, 13 April 2014 (UTC)

Baroque Cycle
In the last line of p. 481 of The System of the World (novel), Neal Stephenson has a character (in 1714) warn "Mind the Gap" in disembarking from boat to pier. Could he know something, rather than just tweaking the reader's nose? --Jerzy•t 21:49, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Star Wars connection
In the October 17 episode of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, "Destroy Malevolence," there's an Easter Egg connection to this article. Watch the episode yourself (it will be posted on the Internet in full soon), and/or read the video commentary. Should there be a pop culture section of this article that would include things like this? --Bassaf (talk) 13:23, 20 October 2008 (UTC)

hey guys i'm confused about something in this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw-oYvlElv4 the voice sounds a bit differant to the video in the article now i think both of these are the 1968 versions so why the differance? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.164.173.171 (talk) 08:37, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Recording technology
The article claims that solid-state memory was used for audio recording in 1968, which is very dubious because solid-state memory was very expensive at that time, and economically infeasible for audio recordings. It is likely that a magnetic recording of some kind was initially used, and only replaced with solid-state memory a number of years later. Can anybody find WP:RS regarding the true history? Reify-tech (talk) 17:40, 25 May 2014 (UTC)

Solid-state is very, very unlikely for the time. Perhaps the confusion is over a continuous-tape system being employed? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 51.7.0.10 (talk) 23:07, 22 August 2016 (UTC)

No reliable sources but this reddit comment of all things suggests solid state wasn't until after the kings cross fire in 1987:

https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/ecjvfz/til_that_a_man_named_oswald_can_be_heard_only_at/fbcwnr6/

After 87 it claims it was EEPROM.©Geni (talk) 13:30, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

 * Which is impossible as EEPROM hadn't been invented in 1968. Notmewolve (talk) 11:20, 23 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Geni wrote After 87 it claims it was EEPROM, and since 1987 is later than 1968, it's not impossible. -- Red rose64 🌹 (talk) 12:39, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

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A recent variation seen on posters
"Watch your step when minding the gap." (They must think we are literal babies.) Equinox ◑ 10:26, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

title: Talk:Mind the gap