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Mashhad

Mashhad is the second-most-populous city in Iran, located in the relatively remote north-east of the country about 900 km from Tehran. In the Central District of Mashhad County, it serves as the capital of Razavi Khorasan Province, the county, and the district. It has a population of about 3,400,000 (2016 census), which includes the areas of Mashhad Taman and Torqabeh.

The city was governed by different ethnic groups over the course of its history. Mashhad was previously a small village, which by the 9th century had been known as Sanabad, and which was located—along with Tus and other villages—on the ancient Silk Road connecting them with Merv to the east. Mashhad would eventually outgrow all its surrounding villages. It gained its current name meaning "place of martyrdom" in reference to the Imam Reza shrine, where the eighth Shia Imam, Ali al-Rida, is buried. The Abbasid caliph Harun al-Rashid is also buried within the same shrine. The shrine is an important place of pilgrimage, visited by 25 millions each year in what is often described as "the holiest city in Iran".

Mashhad later also became associated with Ferdowsi, the Persian poet and author of the Shahnameh, who was born in Tus (with many institutions in Mashhad named after him). Mashhad enjoyed relative prosperity in the Mongol period, and continued to grow. Between 1736 and 1796, Mashhad became the capital of Afsharid Iran which was ruled by the Afsharid dynasty founded by Nader Shah, whose tomb is located in the city. In the modern era, Mashhad continued to expand and became the hometown of some of the most significant literary figures and artists of modern Iran, such as the poet Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, and the traditional Iranian singer and composer Mohammad-Reza Shajarian. On 30 October 2009 (the anniversary of Imam Reza's martyrdom), Iran's then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared Mashhad to be "Iran's spiritual capital".

Etymology and early history
Ancient Greek sources mention the passage and residence of Alexander the Great in this land, which was called "Susia" (Σούσια), in 330 BC. The map of Tabula Peutingeriana, which dates back to the early Roman era, names this city on the west of Merv, Alexandria, instead of Susia. Pliny the Elder, says there is a city in the middle of Parthia, near Arsace and Nisiaea, called "Alexandropolis" after its founder. Many Muslim historians, from the 10th to the 16th century AD, attribute the founding of "Sanabad" (the old name of the city) to Alexander.

Also in the Shia hadith sources, which the narrators connect to the 7th to 9th centuries AD, there are quotations that Imam Ridha and Harun al-Rashid are buried in a city founded by "the righteous servant, the two-horned one", which is an Islamic title commonly attributed to Alexander the Great.

The older name of Mashhad is Sanabad (سناباد Sanâbâd). It was eventually renamed to Mashhad during the Safavid Empire. The name Mashhad comes from Arabic, meaning a Mazar (mausoleum). It is also known as the place where Ali ar-Ridha (Persian, Imam Reza), the eighth Imam of Shia Muslims, died (according to the Shias, was martyred). Reza's shrine was placed there.

The ancient Parthian city of Patigrabanâ, mentioned in the Behistun inscription (520 BC) of the Achaemenid Emperor Darius the Great, may have been located at the Mashhad.

At the beginning of the 9th century (3rd century AH), Mashhad was a small city called Sanabad, which was situated 24 km away from Tus. There was a summer palace of Humayd ibn Qahtaba, the governor of Khurasan. In 808, when Harun al-Rashid, Abbasid caliph, was passing through to quell the insurrection of Rafi ibn al-Layth in Transoxania, he became ill and died. He was buried under the palace of Humayd ibn Qahtaba. Thus the Dar al-Imarah was known as the Mausoleum of Haruniyyeh. In 818, Ali al-Ridha was martyred by al-Ma'mun and was buried beside the grave of Harun. Although Mashhad owns the cultural heritage of Tus (including its figures like Nizam al-Mulk, Al-Ghazali, Ahmad Ghazali, Ferdowsi, Asadi Tusi, and Shaykh Tusi), earlier Arab geographers have correctly identified Mashhad and Tus as two separate cities that are now located about 19 km from each other.

Mongolian invasion: Ilkhanids
Although some believe that after this event, the city was called Mashhad al-Ridha (the place of martyrdom of al-Ridha), it seems that Mashhad, as a place-name, first appears in al-Maqdisi, i.e., in the last third of the 10th century. About the middle of the 14th century, the traveller Ibn Battuta uses the expression "town of Mashhad al-Rida". Towards the end of the Middle Ages, the name Nuqan, which is still found on coins in the first half of the 14th century under the Il-Khanids, seems to have been gradually replaced by al-Mashhad or Mashhad. Shias began to make pilgrimages to his grave. By the end of the 9th century, a dome was built above the grave, and many other buildings and bazaars sprang up around it. Over the course of more than a millennium, it has been destroyed and rebuilt several times. In 1161, however, the Seljuks seized the city, but they spared the sacred area their pillaging. Mashad al-Ridha was not considered a "great" city until Mongol raids in 1220, which caused the destruction of many large cities in Khurasan but leaving Mashhad relatively intact in the hands of Mongolian commanders because of the cemetery of Ali Al-Rezza and Harun al-Rashid (the latter was stolen). Thus the survivors of the massacres migrated to Mashhad. When the Arab traveller Ibn Battuta visited the town in 1333, he reported that it was a large town with abundant fruit trees, streams and mills. A great dome of elegant construction surmounts the noble mausoleum, the walls being decorated with colored tiles. The most well-known dish cooked in Mashhad, "sholeh Mashhadi" (شله مشهدی) or "Sholeh", dates back to the era of the Mongolian invasion when it is thought to be cooked with any food available (the main ingredients are meat, grains and abundant spices) and be a Mongolian word.

Timurid Empire
It seems that the importance of Sanabad-Mashhad continually increased with the growing fame of its sanctuary and the decline of Tus, which received its death-blow in 1389 from Miran Shah, a son of Timur. When the Mongol noble who governed the place rebelled and attempted to make himself independent, Miran Shah was sent against him by his father. Tus was stormed after a siege of several months, sacked and left a heap of ruins; 10,000 inhabitants were massacred. Those who escaped the holocaust settled in the shelter of the 'Alid sanctuary. Tus was henceforth abandoned and Mashhad took its place as the capital of the district.

Later on, during the reign of the Timurid Shahrukh Mirza, Mashhad became one of the main cities of the realm. In 1418, his wife Goharshad funded the construction of an outstanding mosque beside the shrine, which is known as the Goharshad Mosque. The mosque remains relatively intact to this date, its great size an indicator to the status the city held in the 15th century.

Safavid Empire
Ismail I, founder of the Safavid Empire, conquered Mashhad after the death of Husayn Bayqarah and the decline of the Timurid dynasty. He was later captured by the Uzbeks during the reign of Shah Abbas I. In the 16th century the town suffered considerably from the repeated raids of the Özbegs (Uzbeks). In 1507, it was taken by the troops of the Shaybani or Shabani Khan. After two decades, Shah Tahmasp I succeeded in repelling the enemy from the town again in 1528. But in 1544, the Özbegs again succeeded in entering the town and plundering and murdering there. The year 1589 was a disastrous one for Mashhad. The Shaybanid 'Abd al-Mu'min after a four months' siege forced the town to surrender. Shah Abbas I, who lived in Mashhad from 1585 until his official ascent of the throne in Qazwin in 1587, was not able to retake Mashhad from the Özbegs until 1598. Mashhad was retaken by the Shah Abbas after a long and hard struggle, defeating the Uzbeks in a great battle near Herat as well as managing to drive them beyond the Oxus River. Abbas the Great wanted to encourage Iranians to go to Mashhad for pilgrimage. He is said to have walked from Isfahan to Mashhad. During the Safavid era, Mashhad gained even more religious recognition, becoming the most important city of Greater Khorasan, as several madrasah and other structures were built beside the Imam Reza shrine. Besides its religious significance, Mashhad has played an important political role as well. The Safavid dynasty has been criticized in a book (Red Shi'sm vs. Black Shi'ism) on the perceived dual aspects of the Shi'a religion throughout history) as a period in which although the dynasty didn't form the idea of Black Shi'ism, but this idea was formed after the defeat of Shah Ismail against the Ottoman leader Sultan Yavuz Selim. Black Shi'ism is a product of the post-Safavid period.

Afsharid Empire
Mashad saw its greatest glory under Nader Shah, ruler of Iran from 1736 to 1747, and also a great benefactor of the shrine of Imam Reza, who made the city his capital. Nearly the whole eastern part of the kingdom of Nadir Shah passed to foreign rulers in this period of Persian impotence under the rule of the vigorous Ahmad Shah Durrani of the Afghan Durrani Empire. Ahmad defeated the Persians and took Mashhad after an eight-month siege in 1753. Ahmad Shah and his successor Timur Shah left Shah Rukh in possession of Khurasan as their vassal, making Khurasan a kind of buffer state between them and Persia. As the city's real rulers, however, both these Durrani rulers struck coins in Mashhad. Otherwise, the reign of the blind Shah Rukh, which with repeated short interruptions lasted for nearly half a century, passed without any events of special note. It was only after the death of Timur Shah (1792) that Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar, the founder of the Qajar dynasty, succeeded in taking Shah Rukh's domains and putting him to death in 1795, thus ending the separation of Khurasan from the rest of Persia.

Qajar Empire
Some believe that Mashhad was ruled by Shahrukh Afshar and remained the capital of the Afsharid dynasty during Zand dynasty until Agha Mohammad Khan Qajar conquered the then larger region of Khorasan in 1796.

1912 Imam Reza shrine bombardment
In 1911 Yusuf Khan of Herat was declared independent in Mashhad as Muhammad Ali Shah and brought together a large group of reactionaries opposed to the revolution, and keep stirring for some time. This gave Russia the excuse to intervene and 29 March 1912 bombed the city; this bombing killed several people and pilgrims; action against a Muslim shrine caused a great shock to all Islamic countries. On 29 March 1912, the sanctuary of Imam Reza was bombed by the Russian artillery fire, causing some damage, including to the golden dome, resulting in a widespread and persisting resentment in the Shiite Muslim world as well as British India. This bombing was orchestrated by Prince Aristid Mikhailovich Dabizha (a Moldovan who was the Russian Consul in Mashhad) and General Radko (a Bulgarian who was commander of the Russian Cossacks in the city). Yusuf Khan ended up captured by the Persians and was executed.

Modernization under Reza Shah
The modern development of the city accelerated under Reza Shah (1925-1941). Shah Reza Hospital (currently Imam Reza Hospital, affiliated with the Basij organization) was founded in 1934; the sugar factory of Abkuh in 1935; and the Mashhad University of Medical Sciences in 1939. The city's first power station was installed in 1936, and in 1939, the first urban transport service began with two buses. In this year the first population census was performed, with a result of 76,471 inhabitants.

1935 Imam Reza shrine rebellion
In 1935, a backlash against the modernizing, anti-religious policies of Reza Pahlavi erupted in the Mashhad shrine. Responding to a cleric who denounced the Shah's heretical innovations, corruption, and heavy consumer taxes, many bazaars and villagers took refuge in the shrine, chanted slogans such as "The Shah is a new Yazid." For four days local police and army refused to violate the shrine and the standoff was ended when troops from Azerbaijan arrived and broke into the shrine, killing dozens and injuring hundreds, and marking a final rupture between Shi'ite clergy and the Shah. According to some Mashhadi historians, the Goharshad Mosque uprising, which took place in 1935, is an uprising against Reza Shah's decree banning all veils (headscarf and chador) on 8 January 1936.

1941–1979 reforms
Mashhad experienced population growth after the Anglo-Soviet invasion of Iran in 1941 because of relative insecurity in rural areas, the 1948 drought, and the establishment of Mashhad University in 1949. At the same time, public transport vehicles increased to 77 buses and 200 taxis and the railway link with the capital, Tehran, was established in 1957. The 1956 census reflected a population of 241,989 people. The increase in population continued in the following years thanks to the increase in Iranian oil revenues, the decline of the feudal social model, the agrarian reform of 1963, the founding of the city's airport, the creation of new factories and the development of the health system. In 1966, the population reached 409,616 inhabitants, and 667,770 in 1976. The extension of the city was expanded from 16 to 33 km2. In 1965 an important urban renewal development project for the surroundings of the shrine of Imam Reza was proposed by the Iranian architect and urban designer Dariush Borbor to replace the dilapidated slum conditions which surrounded the historic monuments. The project was officially approved in 1968. In 1977 the surrounding areas were demolished to make way for the implementation of this project. To relocate the demolished businesses, a new bazaar was designed and constructed in Meydan-e Ab square (in Persian, "میدان آب") by Dariush Borbor. After the revolution, the urban renewal project was abandoned.

1994 Imam Reza shrine bombing
On 20 June 1994, a bomb exploded in a prayer hall of the shrine of the Imam Reza. The bomb that killed at least 25 people on 20 June in Mashhad exploded on Ashura. The Baloch terrorist, Ramzi Yousef, a Sunni Muslim turned Wahhabi, one of the main perpetrators of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was found to be behind the plot.

Geography
The city is located at 36.20º North latitude and 59.35º East longitude, in the valley of the Kashafrud River near Turkmenistan, between the two mountain ranges of Binalood and Hezar Masjed Mountains. The city benefits from the proximity of the mountains, having cool winters, pleasant springs, and mild summers. It is only about 250 km from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

The city is the administrative center of Mashhad County (or the Shahrestan of Mashhad) as well as the somewhat smaller district (Bakhsh) of Mashhad. The city itself, excluding parts of the surrounding Bakhsh and Shahrestan, is divided into 13 smaller administrative units, with a total population of more than 3 million.

Climate
Mashhad features a cold semi-arid climate (Köppen BSk) with hot summers and cold winters. The city only sees about 250 mm of precipitation per year, some of which occasionally falls in the form of snow. Mashhad also has wetter and drier periods with the bulk of the annual precipitation falling between the months of December and May. Summers are typically hot and dry, with high temperatures sometimes exceeding 33 °C. Winters are typically cool to cold and somewhat damper, with overnight lows routinely dropping below freezing. Mashhad enjoys on average just above 2900 hours of sunshine per year.

Snow cover is observed in 21.1 days annually, with only 3.8 days in which the snow depth exceeds 10 cm.

The highest recorded temperature was 43.8 °C on 6 July 1998 and the lowest recorded temperature was -28 °C on 3 February 1972.

Population
At the time of the 2006 National Census, the city's population was 2,410,800 in 621,697 households. The following census in 2011 counted 2,766,258 people in 804,391 households. The 2016 census measured the population of the city as 3,001,184 people in 914,146 households.

Ethnic groups
The vast majority of Mashhadi people are ethnic Persians, who form the majority of the city's population. Other ethnic groups include Kurdish and Turkmen people who have emigrated recently to the city from the North Khorasan province. There is also a significant community of non-Arabic speakers of Arabian descent who have retained a distinct Arabian culture, cuisine and religious practices.

There are also over 20 million pilgrims who visit the city every year.

Religion
Today, the holy shrine and its museum hold one of the most extensive cultural and artistic treasuries of Iran, in particular manuscript books and paintings. Several important theological schools are associated with the shrine of the Eighth Imam.

The second-largest holy city in the world, Mashhad attracts more than 20 million tourists and pilgrims every year, many of whom come to pay homage to the Imam Reza shrine (the eighth Shi'ite Imam). It has been a magnet for travellers since medieval times. Thus, even as those who complete the pilgrimage to Mecca receive the title of Haji, those who make the pilgrimage to Mashhad—and especially to the Imam Reza shrine—are known as Mashtee, a term employed also of its inhabitants. As an important problem, the duration when new passengers stay in Mashhad has been considerably reduced to 2 days nowadays and they prefer to finish their trip immediately after doing pilgrimage and shopping in the markets. There are about 3000–5000 unauthorized residential units in Mashhad, which, as a unique statistic worldwide, has caused various problems in the city.

Although mainly inhabited by Muslims, there were in the past some religious minorities in Mashhad, mainly Jews who were forcibly converted to Islam in 1839 after the Allahdad incident took place for Mashhadi Jews in 1839. They became known as Jadid al-Islam ("Newcomers in Islam"). On the outside, they adapted to the Islamic way of life, but often secretly kept their faith and traditions.

Economy

Mashhad is Iran's second largest automobile production hub. The city's economy is based mainly on dry fruits, salted nuts, saffron, Iranian sweets like gaz and sohaan, precious stones like agates, turquoise, intricately designed silver jewelry studded with rubies and emeralds, eighteen carat gold jewelry, perfumes, religious souvenirs, trench coats, scarves, termeh, carpets, and rugs.

According to the writings and documents, the oldest existing carpet attributed to the city belongs to the reign of Shah Abbas (Abbas I of Persia). Also, there is a type of carpet, classified as Mashhad Turkbâf, which, as its name suggests, is woven by hand with Turkish knots by craftsmen who emigrated from Tabriz to Mashhad in the nineteenth century. Among other major industries in the city are the nutrition, clothing, leather, textiles, chemical, steel, metallic, and non-metallic mineral industries, construction materials factories, & the handicraft industry.

With more than 55% of all the hotels in Iran, Mashhad is the hub of tourism in the country. Religious shrines are the most powerful attractions for foreign travelers; every year, 20 to 30 million pilgrims from Iran and more than 2 million pilgrims and tourists from elsewhere around the world come to Mashhad. Mashhad is one of the main producers of leather products in the region.

Unemployment, poverty, drug addiction, theft, and sexual exploitation are the most important social problems of the city.

The divorce rate in Mashhad had increased by 35 percent by 2014. Khorasan and Mashhad ranked the second in violence across the country in 2013.

Astan Quds Razavi
At the same time, the city has kept its character as a goal of pilgrimage, dominated by the strength of the economic and political authority of the Astan Quds Razavi, the administration of the Shrine waqf, probably the most important in the Muslim world and the largest active bonyad in Iran. The Astan Quds Razavi is a major player in the economy of the city of Mashhad. The land occupied by the shrine has grown fourfold since 1979 according to the head of the foundation's international relations department. The Shrine of Imam Reza is vaster than Vatican City. The foundation owns most of the real estate in Mashhad and rents out shop space to bazaaris and hoteliers. The main resource of the institution is endowments, estimated to have annual revenue of $210 billion. Ahmad Marvi is the current Custodian of Astan Quds Razavi.

Padideh Shandiz
Padideh Shandiz International Tourism Development Company, an Iranian private joint-stock holding company, behaves like a public company by selling stocks despite being a joint-stock in the field of restaurants, tourism and construction, with a football club (Padideh F.C.; formerly named Azadegan League club Mes Sarcheshmeh). In January 2015, the company was accused of a "fraud" worth $34.3 billion, which is one eighth of Iran budget.

Credit institutions
Several credit institutions have been established in Mashhad, including Samenolhojaj (مؤسسه مالی و اعتباری ثامن الحجج), Samenola'emmeh (مؤسسه اعتباری ثامن) and Melal (formerly Askariye, مؤسسه اعتباری عسکریه). The depositors of the first institution have faced problem in receiving cash from the institution.

Others
The city's International Exhibition Center is the second most active exhibition center after Tehran, which due to proximity to Central Asian countries hosts dozens of international exhibitions each year. Companies such as Smart-innovators in Mashhad are pioneers in electrical and computer technology.

Language
The language mainly spoken in Mashhad is Persian with a variating Mashhadi accent, which can at times, prove itself as a sort of dialect. The Mashhadi Persian dialect is somewhat different from the standard Persian dialect in some of its tones and stresses. Today, the Mashhadi dialect is rarely spoken by young people of Mashhad; most of them perceive it as a humiliation. This is thought to be related to the non-positive performance of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB).

Religious seminaries
Long a center of secular and religious learning, Mashhad has been a center for the Islamic arts and sciences, as well as piety and pilgrimage. Mashhad was an educational centre, with a considerable number of Islamic schools (madrasas, the majority of them, however, dating from the later Safavid period. Mashhad Hawza (Persian: حوزه علمیه مشهد) is one of the largest seminaries of traditional Islamic school of higher learning in Mashhad, which was headed by Abbas Vaez-Tabasi (who was Chairman of the Astan Quds Razavi board from 1979) after the revolution, and in which Iranian politician and clerics such as Ali Khamenei, Ahmad Alamolhoda, Abolghasem Khazali, Mohammad Reyshahri, Morteza Motahhari, Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, and Madmoud Halabi (the founder of Hojjatieh and Mohammad Hadi Abd-e Khodaee learned Islamic studies). The number of seminary schools in Mashhad is now thirty nine and there are an estimated 2,300 seminarians in the city.

The Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, named after the great Iranian poet, is located here and is regarded as the third institution in attracting foreign students, mainly from Lebanon, Syria, Yemen, Bahrain, Central Asian republics. The Madrassa of Ayatollah Al-Khoei, originally built in the seventeenth century and recently replaced with modern facilities, is the city's foremost traditional centre for religious learning. The Razavi University of Islamic Sciences, founded in 1984, stands at the centre of town, within the shrine complex. The prestige of traditional religious education at Mashhad attracts students, known as Talabeh, or "Mollah" internationally. Mashhad is also home to one of the oldest libraries of the Middle-East called the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi with a history of over six centuries. There are some six million historical documents in the foundation's central library. A museum is also home to over 70,000 rare manuscripts from various historical eras. The Astan Quds Razavi Central Museum, which is part of the Astan-e Quds Razavi Complex, contains Islamic art and historical artifacts. In 1976, a new edifice was designed and constructed by the well-known Iranian architect Dariush Borbor to house the museum and the ancient manuscripts.

In 1569 (977 H), 'Imad al-Din Mas'ud Shirazi, a physician at the Mashhad hospital, wrote the earliest Islamic treatise on syphilis, one influenced by European medical thought. Kashmar rug is a type of Persian rug indigenous to this region.

Mashhad active galleries include: Mirak Gallery, Parse Gallery, Rezvan Gallery, Soroush Gallery, and the Narvan Gallery.

During the recent years, Mashhad has been a clerical base to monitor the affairs and decisions of state. In 2015, Mashhad's clerics publicly criticized the performance of concert in Mashhad, which led to the order of cancellation of concerts in the city by Ali Jannati, the minister of culture, and then his resignation on 19 October 2016.

Newspapers
There are two influential newspapers in Mashhad, Khorasan (خراسان) and Qods (قدس), which have been considered "conservative newspapers". They are two Mashhad-based daily published by and representing the views of their current and old owners: Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs and Astan Quds Razavi, respectively.

Capital of Islamic culture
The Islamic Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization named Mashhad 2017's "cultural capital of the Muslim world" in Asia on 24 January 2017. Several international events, especially entrepreneurs networking event entitled Entrepreneurs Show 2017, was organized by CODE International in collaboration with Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Khorasan Science and Technology Park, and city district government of Mashhad.

Social harm
Mashhad is one of the most populous cities in Iran. The city of Mashhad, despite the many job capacities it has created for different groups of people, is also suffering from various social harms. Among the most important social challenges of this city, we can mention the increase in unemployment, traffic, poverty and prostitution.

Main sites
Apart from Imam Reza shrine, there are a number of large parks, the tombs of historical celebrities in nearby Tus and Nishapur, the tomb of Nader Shah and Koohsangi park. The Koohestan Park-e-Shadi Complex includes a zoo, where many wild animals are kept and which attracts many visitors to Mashhad. It is also home to the Mashhad Airbase (formerly Imam Reza airbase), jointly a military installation housing Mirage aircraft, and a civilian international airport. Khurshid castle, Vakil Abad Park, Miniature Park, Professor Bazima Science Park, Astan Quds Razavi Museum, Keshti Dome, Harunieh Dome, Bird Garden, Anthropology Museum or Mehdi Qolibek Bath, Mellat Park, Naderi Museum and Bread Museum They are among other sightseeing centers of Mashhad. Some points of interest lie outside the city: the tomb of Khajeh Morad, along the road to Tehran; the tomb of Khajeh Rabi' located 6 km north of the city where there are some inscriptions by the renowned Safavid calligrapher Reza Abbasi; and the tomb of Khajeh Abasalt, a distance of 20 km from Mashhad along the road to Neishabur (the three were all disciples of Imam Reza).

Among the other sights are the tomb of the poet Ferdowsi in Tus, 24 km distance, and the summer resorts at Torghabeh, Torogh, Akhlamad, Zoshk, and Shandiz.

The Shah Public Bath, built during the Safavid era in 1648, is an outstanding example of the architecture of that period. It was recently restored, and is to be turned into a museum.

Airport
Mashhad is served by the Mashhad International Airport, which handles domestic flights to Iranian cities and international flights, mostly to neighbouring Arab countries. The airport is the country's second busiest after Tehran Mehrabad Airport and above Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport.

It is connected to 57 destinations and has frequent flights to 30 cities within Iran and 27 destinations in the Central Asia, the Middle East, East Asia and Europe.

The airport has been under a US$45.7 ml vast expansion project which has been finished by opening a new Haj Terminal with 10,000 m area on 24 May 2010 and followed by opening a new international terminal with 30000 m2 area with a new parking building, a new custom storage and cargo terminal, new safety and fire fighting buildings and upgrades to taxiways and equipment. Another USD26.5 ml development project for construction of new hangar for aircraft repair facilities and expansion of the west side of the domestic terminal is underway using a BOT contract with the private sector.

Rail

Mashhad railway station has Local, Regional, InterRegio, and InterRegio-Express services. The station is owned by IRI Railways and has daily services from most parts of the country, plus two suburban services. The building was designed by Heydar Ghiai. Mashhad is connected to three major rail lines: Tehran-Mashhad, Mashhad-Bafq (running south), and Mashhad-Sarakhs at the border with Turkmenistan. Some freight trains continue from Sarakhs towards Uzbekistan and to Kazakhstan, but have to change bogies because of the difference in Rail gauge. Cargo and passenger rail services are provided or operated by RAJA Rail Transportation Co., Joopar Co., and Fadak Trains Co.

A new service from Nakhchivan, Azerbaijan, to Mashhad, Iran, was launched in December 2016.

Railway & Subway
Mashhad Urban Railway Corporation (MURCO) is constructing metro and light rail system for the city of Mashhad which includes four lines with 84.5 km length. Mashhad Urban Railway Operation Company (MUROC) is responsible for the operation of the lines. The LRT line has been operational since 21 February 2011 with 19.5 km length and 22 stations and is connected to Mashhad International Airport from early 2016. The total length of line 1 is 24 kilometers and has 24 stations. the current headway in peak hours is 4.5 minutes. The second line which is a metro line with 14.5 km length and 13 stations. line 2 construction is going to finish in early 2020. The first phase of line 2 with 8 kilometers and 7 stations is started on 21 February 2017. On 20 March two stations were added to the network in test operational mode and the first interchange station was added to the network. On 7 May 2018, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani took part in the inauguration ceremony of the first Mashhad Urban Railway interchange station, "Shariati", which connects line 1 and 2. in 27 July shahid Kaveh station operation began and the length of the operational part of line 2 reached to 13.5 kilometers. On 18 November 2019 Alandasht station Began operative. Currently, line 2 operates every day with 13.5 km and 11 stations from 6 am to 10 pm, and the current headway is 10 minutes. Currently Mashhad Urban Railway Operation Company (MUROC) operates 2 lines with 37.5 kilometers length and 35 stations. Tunnel excavation of line 3 has begun and more than 14 kilometers of tunnel excavation is done using two Tunnel Boring Machines and operation of the first phase of line 3 is expected to start in 2021. Tunnel Excavation of line 4 is going to start in summer 2019.

Road
Road 95 links Mashhad south to Torbat-e Heydarieh and Birjand. Road 44 goes west towards Shahrud and Tehran. Road 22 travels northwest towards Bojnurd. Ashgabat in Turkmenistan is 220 km away and is accessible via Road 22 (AH78).

Astan Quds
Astan Quds which controls the shrine- the tourism driver- is a wealthy tax exempt religious/political organization. It is recommended to reduce poverty in city a Bazaar be opened by poor people in a courtyard.

Members of Parliament
Mashhad's current members of parliament are described as politicians with fundamentalist conservative tendencies, who are mostly the members of Front of Islamic Revolution Stability, an Iranian principlist political group. They were elected to the Parliament on 26 February 2016.

Members of Assembly of Experts
Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi and Ahmad Alamolhoda are two members of the Iranian Assembly of Experts from Mashhad. Hashemi Shahroudi is currently First Vice-chairman of the Iranian Assembly of Experts. He was the Head of Iran's Judiciary from 1999 until 2009 who upon accepting his position, appointed Saeed Mortazavi, a well known fundamentalist and controversial figure during President Mahmud Ahmadinejad's reelection, prosecutor general of Iran. He was supported by Mashhad's reformists as the candidate of the Fifth Assembly on 26 February 2016.

City Council and mayor
In 2013, an Iranian principlist political group, Front of Islamic Revolution Stability (which is partly made up of former ministers of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi), gained a landslide victory in Mashhad City Council, which on 23 September 2013, elected Seyed Sowlat Mortazavi as mayor, who was former governor of the province of South Khorasan and the city of Birjand. The municipality's budget amounted to 9600 billion Toman in 2015.

Universities and colleges
Universities
 * Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
 * Ferdowsi University of Mashhad – International Campus
 * Golbahar University of Science and New Technology
 * Imam Reza International University
 * Islamic Azad University of Khorasan – Golbahar International Campus
 * Islamic Azad University of Mashhad
 * Khayyam University
 * Payame Noor University of Mashhad
 * Razavi University of Islamic Sciences
 * Sama Technical and Vocational Training Center (Islamic Azad University of Mashhad)
 * Sport Sciences Research Institute of Iran
 * Sama Technical and Vocational Training Center (Islamic Azad University of Mashhad)
 * Sport Sciences Research Institute of Iran

Colleges
 * Al Mustafa International University
 * Arman Razavi Girls Institute of Higher Education
 * Asrar Institute of Higher Education
 * Attar Institute of Higher Education
 * Bahar Institute of Higher Education
 * Binalood Institute of Higher Education
 * Cultural Heritage, Hand Crafts, and Tourism Higher Education Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Eqbal Lahoori Institute of Higher Education
 * Hakim Toos Institute of Higher Education
 * Hekmat Razavi Institute of Higher Education
 * Iranian Academic Center for Education, Culture and Research, Mashhad Branch (Jahad Daneshgahi of Mashhad)
 * Jahad Keshavarzi Higher Education Center of Khorasan Razavi (Shahid Hashemi Nejad)
 * Kavian Institute of Higher Education
 * Kharazmi Azad Institute of Higher Education of Khorasan
 * Khavaran Institute of Higher Education
 * Kheradgarayan Motahar Institute of higher education
 * Khorasan Institute of Higher Education
 * Khorasan Razavi Judiciary Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Khorasan Razavi Municipalities' Institute of Research, Education, and Consultation of (University of Science and Technology)
 * Mashhad Aviation Industry Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Mashhad Aviation Training Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Mashhad Culture and Art Center 1 (University of Science and Technology)
 * Mashhad Koran Reciters Society
 * Mashhad Prisons Organization Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Mashhad Tax center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Navvab Higher Clerical School
 * Part Tyre Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Red Crescent Society of Khorasan Razavi (University of Science and Technology)
 * Salman Institute of Higher Education
 * Samen Teacher Training Center of Mashhad (Farhangian University)
 * Samen Training Center of Mashhad (Technical and Vocational University)
 * Sanabad Golbahar Institute of Higher Education
 * Shahid Beheshti Teacher Training College (Farhangian University)
 * Shahid Hashemi Nejad Teacher Training College (Farhangian University)
 * Shandiz Institute of Higher Education
 * Khorasan Razavi Taavon Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Tabaran Institute of Higher Education
 * Toos Institute of Higher Education
 * Toos Porcelain Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Khorasan Water and Electricity Industry Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Workers' House; Mashhad Branch (University of Science and Technology)
 * Toos Institute of Higher Education
 * Toos Porcelain Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Khorasan Water and Electricity Industry Center (University of Science and Technology)
 * Workers' House; Mashhad Branch (University of Science and Technology)
 * Workers' House; Mashhad Branch (University of Science and Technology)

Other sports
City was host to 2009 Junior World Championships in sitting volleyball where Iran's junior team won Gold.

Wrestling is one of the most popular sports in this city. Pahlevani and zoorkhaneh rituals have a special place in Mashhad and is one of the most important zoorkhaneh in Iran in Mashhad.

Mashhad cycling track was introduced in 2011 as the most equipped cycling track in Iran; Car racing track, motorcycle track and motocross track, three skating rinks, ski track and equestrian track in Mashhad are other sports tracks in Mashhad. The first golf course in Iran is located in the Samen complex of Mashhad.

Mashhad as capital of Iran and independent Khorasan
The following Shahanshahs had Mashhad as their capital:

 * Kianid Dynasty
 * Malek Mahmoud Sistani 1722–1726
 * Afsharid dynasty
 * Nader Shah
 * Adil Shah
 * Ebrahim Afshar
 * Shahrukh Afshar
 * Nadir Mirza of Khorasan
 * Safavid dynasty
 * Soleyman II
 * Autonomous Government of Khorasan
 * Colonel Mohammad Taghi Khan Pessyan

Artists

 * 25band, both singers born in Mashhad; Pop Group formed in 2010
 * Abdi Behravanfar, born June 1975 in Mashhad; an Iranian singer, guitar player and singer-songwriter
 * Ali "Dubfire" Shirazinia, born 19 April 1971; musician/dj (co-founder of Deep Dish)
 * Amir Ghavidel, March 1947 – November 2009; an Iranian director and script writer
 * Anoushirvan Arjmand, Iranian actor
 * Borzoo Arjmand, born 1975 in Mashhad; Iranian cinema, theatre and television actor
 * Dariush Arjmand, Iranian actor
 * Darya Dadvar, born 1971 in Mashhad; an accomplished Iranian soprano soloist and composer
 * Hamed Behdad, born 17 November 1973 in Mashhad; Iranian actor
 * Hamid Motebassem, born 1958 in Mashhad; Iranian musician and tar and setar player
 * Hosein Eblis is considered one of pioneers of "Persian Rap" along with Hichkas and Reza Pishro.
 * Homayoun Shajarian, Mohammad-Reza Shajarian's son, born 21 May 1975; renowned Persian classical music vocalist, as well as a Tombak and Kamancheh player
 * Iran Darroudi, born 2 September 1936 in Mashhad; Iranian artist
 * Javad Jalali, born 30 May 1977 in Mashhad; Iranian photographer and cinematographer
 * Mahdi Bemani Naeini, born 3 November 1968; Iranian film director, cinematographer, TV cameraman and photographer
 * Marshall Manesh, born 16 August 1950 in Mashhad; Iranian-American actor
 * Mitra Hajjar, born 4 February 1977; Iranian actress
 * Mohammad-Reza Shajarian, born 23 September 1940 in Mashhad; internationally and critically acclaimed Persian traditional singer, composer and Master (Ostad) of Persian music
 * Mohsen Namjoo, born 1976 in Torbat-e-Jaam; Iranian singer-songwriter, author, musician and setar player
 * Navid Negahban, born 2 June 1968 in Mashhad; Iranian-American actor
 * Noureddin Zarrinkelk, born 1937 in Mashhad; renowned Iranian animator, concept artist, editor, graphic designer, illustrator, layout artist, photographer, script writer and sculptor
 * Ovanes Ohanian, ?–1961 Tehran; Armenian-Iranian filmmaker who established the first film school in Iran
 * Pouran Jinchi, born 1959 in Mashhad; Iranian-American artist
 * Rafi Pitts, born 1967 in Mashhad; internationally acclaimed Iranian film director
 * Reza Attaran, born 31 March 1968 in Mashhad; Iranian actor and director
 * Reza Kianian, born 17 July 1951 in Mashhad; Iranian actor
 * Shahin Ebrahimzadeh-Pezeshki, born 1958 in Mashhad; Persian textile and costume art historian, historian of tribal costumes, textile artist, author, researcher and curator

Entrepreneurs

 * Anousheh Ansari, born 12 September 1966; the Iranian-American co-founder and chairman of Prodea Systems, Inc., and a spaceflight participant with the Russian space program
 * Hossein Sabet, Iranian businessman and Persian carpet dealer who owns Sabet International Trading Co.
 * Mahmoud Khayami, born 1930 in Mashhad, Iran; Iranian born industrialist and philanthropist, of French nationality

Sports

 * Abbas Chamanyan, Iranian football coach, manager and former player
 * Abbas Golmakani, World's wrestling champion during the 1950s
 * Abolfazl Safavi, Iran professional football player for Aboumoslem team in Takhte Jamshid League. He was later executed in prison by the Iranian regime in 1982 for his affiliation with Iranian opposition, the MEK.
 * Ali Baghbanbashi, athlete
 * Alireza Vahedi Nikbakht, born 30 June 1980 in Mashhad; Iranian professional football player
 * Amir Ghaseminejad, judoka
 * Amir Reza Khadem, born 10 February 1970 in Mashhad, wrestler
 * Amir Tavakkolian, wrestler
 * Farbod Farman, basketballer
 * Farhad Zarif, born 3 March 1983, volleyballer
 * Ghodrat Bahadori, Iranian futsaler/indoor soccer player
 * Hamed Afagh, basketballer
 * Hamid Reza Mobarez, swimmer
 * Hasan Kamranifar, Iranian football referee
 * Heshmat Mohajerani, born January 1936 in Mashhad, Iran; Iranian football coach, manager and former player
 * Hossein Badamaki, Iranian professional football player
 * Hossein Ghadam, Iran professional football player for Aboumoslem team
 * Hossein Sokhandan, Iranian football referee
 * Hossein Tayyebi, Iranian futsaler/indoor soccer player
 * Javad Mahjoub, judoka
 * Khodadad Azizi, born 22 June 1971 in Mashhad, Iran; retired professional football striker
 * Kia Zolgharnain, Iranian-American former futsaler/indoor soccer player Kourosh Khani, racing driver
 * Mahdi Javid, Iranian futsaler/indoor soccer player
 * Majid Khodaei, wrestler
 * Maryam Sedarati, athlete. Iran record holder in women high jump for three decades.
 * Masoud Haji Akhondzadeh, judoka
 * Mohammad Khadem, wrestler
 * Mohammad Mansouri, Iranian professional football player
 * Mohsen Ghahramani, Iranian football referee
 * Mohsen Torki, Iranian football referee
 * Rasoul Khadem, born 17 February 1972 in Mashhad; wrestler
 * Reza Enayati, Iranian professional football player
 * Reza Ghoochannejhad, Iranian-Dutch professional football player
 * Rouzbeh Arghavan, basketballer

Religious and political figures

 * Abbas Vaez-Tabasi, 25 June 1935 – 4 March 2016; Grand Imam and Chairman of the Astan Quds Razavi board
 * Abdolreza Rahmani Fazli, born 1959 in Shirvan; Interior Minister of President Hassan Rouhani
 * Abu Muslim Khorasani, c. 700–755; Abu Muslim Abd al-Rahman ibn Muslim al-Khorasani, Abbasid general of Persian origin
 * Al-Ghazali, 1058–1111; Islamic theologian, jurist, philosopher, cosmologist, psychologist and mystic of Persian origin
 * Al-Hurr al-Aamili, Shia scholar and muhaddith
 * Ali al-Sistani, born approximately August 4, 1930; Twelver Shi'a marja residing in Iraq since 1951
 * Ebrahim Raisi, (1960-2024), 8th President of Iran
 * Goharshad Begum, Persian noble and wife of Shāh Rukh, the emperor of the Timurid dynasty of Herāt
 * Hadi Khamenei, b. 1947; mid-ranking cleric who is a member of the reformist Association of Combatant Clerics
 * Hassan Ghazizadeh Hashemi, born 21 March 1959 in Fariman; Minister of Health and Medical Education of President Hassan Rouhani
 * Hassan Rahimpour Azghadi, Conservative political strategist and television personality in the Islamic Republic of Iran
 * Hossein Vahid Khorasani, born in 1921; Iranian Twelver Shi'a Marja
 * Mohammad-Ali Abtahi, born January 27, 1958; former Vice President of Iran and a close associate of former reformist President Khatami
 * Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, born 23 August 1961 in Torghabeh, near Mashhad; the former Mayor of Tehran and current Speaker of Parliament
 * Mohammad-Kazem Khorasani, 1839–1911; Twelver Shi'a Marja, Persian (Iranian) politician, philosopher and reformer
 * Morteza Motahhari, 31 January 1919 in Fariman – 1 May 1979; an Iranian cleric, philosopher, lecturer and politician
 * Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, born February 1201 in Tūs, Khorasan – 26 June 1274 in al-Kāżimiyyah, near Baghdad; Persian of the Ismaili and subsequently Twelver Shī'ah Islamic belief
 * Nizam al-Mulk, 1018 – 14 October 1092; celebrated Persian scholar and vizier of the Seljuq Empire
 * Saeed Jalili, born 1965 in Mashhad; Iranian politician and the former present secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council
 * Seyed Hassan Firuzabadi, current major general, Islamic Republic of Iran
 * Seyyed Ali Khamenei, born 17 July 1939; former president and current supreme leader of Iran
 * Shahrukh (Timurid dynasty), August 20, 1377 – March 12, 1447; ruler of the eastern portion of the empire established by the Central Asian warlord Timur (Tamerlane)
 * Shaykh Tusi, 385–460 A.H.; prominent Persian scholar of the Shi'a Twelver Islamic belief
 * Sheikh Ali Tehrani, brother-in-law of Seyyed Ali Khamenei, currently living in Iran. He is one of the oppositions of current Iranian government.

Pahlavic politicians

 * Abdolhossein Teymourtash, prominent Iraninan statesman and first minister of justice under the Pahlavis
 * Amirteymour Kalali, prominent Iraninan statesman
 * Manouchehr Eghbal, 14 October 1909 – 25 November 1977; a Prime Minister of Iran

Science & scientists

 * Abū al-Wafā' Būzjānī, 10 June 940 – 1 July 998; Persian mathematician and astronomer
 * Abū Ja'far al-Khāzin, 900–971; Persian astronomer and mathematician from Khorasan
 * Jābir ibn Hayyān, c. 721 in Tus – c. 815 in Kufa; prominent polymath, a chemist and alchemist, astronomer and astrologer, engineer, geographer, philosopher, physicist and pharmacist and physician
 * Nasir al-Din al-Tusi, born February 1201 in Tūs, Khorasan – 26 June 1274 in al-Kāżimiyyah near Baghdad; Persian of the Ismaili and subsequently Twelver Shī'ah Islamic belief
 * Sharaf al-Dīn al-Ṭūsī, 1135–1213; Persian mathematician and astronomer of the Islamic Golden Age (during the Middle Ages)
 * Mohsen Baqerzada, publisher and manager of Toos publication

Writers and literati

 * Abolfazl Beyhaqi, 995–1077; a Persian historian and author
 * Ali Akbar Fayyaz, a renowned historian of early Islam and literary critic, founder of the School of Letters and Humanities at the Ferdowsi University of Mashhad
 * Abu-Mansur Daqiqi, 935/942–976/980
 * Abusa'id Abolkhayr, 7 December 967 – 12 January 1049 / Muharram ul Haram 1, 357 – Sha'aban 4, 440 AH; a Persian Sufi who contributed extensively to the evolution of Sufi tradition
 * Anvari, 1126–1189; one of the greatest Persian poets
 * Asadi Tusi, born in Tus, Iranian province of Khorasan, died in 1072 in Tabriz, Iran; Persian poet of Iranian national epics
 * Ferdowsi, 935–1020 in Tus; a Persian poet
 * Mehdi Akhavan-Sales, 1928, Mashhad, Iran – 1990, Tehran, Iran; a Persian poet
 * Mohammad Mokhtari (writer), Iranian writer who was murdered on the outskirts of Tehran in the course of the Chain Murders of Iran
 * Mohammad-Taghi Bahar, 6 November 1884, Mashhad, Iran – 22 April 1951, Tehran, Iran

Twin towns – sister cities
Mashhad is twinned with:

 * 🇵🇰 Karachi, Pakistan
 * 🇮🇶 Karbala, Iraq
 * 🇲🇾 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
 * 🇵🇰 Lahore, Pakistan
 * 🇦🇫 Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan
 * 🇮🇶 Najaf, Iraq
 * 🇨🇳 Ürümqi, China

Active

 * 🇰🇬 Kyrgyzstan (1996–)
 * 🇵🇰 Pakistan (1975–)
 * 🇹🇷 Turkey (1919–?,1930–?, 2014–)
 * 🇹🇲 Turkmenistan (1995–)

Former

 * (1889–1975)
 * Russian Empire (1889–1917)
 * USSR (1917–1937, 1941–1979)
 * Republic of China (1912–1949) (1941–?)
 * (1949–1979)
 * 🇵🇱 Poland
 * West Germany (c. 1984)
 * (1995–2009)
 * (2004–2016)
 * West Germany (c. 1984)
 * (1995–2009)
 * (2004–2016)
 * (2004–2016)

title: Mashhad


text:
GameLine

GameLine was a dialup game distribution service for the Atari 2600, developed and operated by Control Video Corporation (CVC, now AOL). Subscribers could install the proprietary modem and storage cartridge in their home game console, accessing the GameLine service to download games over a telephone line. GameLine had an exclusive selection of games, and its pioneering business model eventually gave rise to America Online. Despite being ahead of its time, it wasn't very popular, possibly due to its price of $60 for the hardware, $15 for the membership fee, and $1 per game, which you could only keep for a week.

In 1983, cable pioneer William von Meister was looking for a way to use his modem transmission technology, which was previously acquired in ill-fated attempts of sending music to cable companies. Legal issues caused cable providers to step away from the service, leaving Von Meister with a delivery tool and no content.

He then converted his variable speed adaptive modem technology to download games from central servers to individual households. This allowed users to dial a system and, for a fee, download games to their GameLine modules. The game would typically work for 5-10 plays, after which the user would have to connect to GameLine again and pay for another download.

The "Master Module" has 8 KB of RAM and a 1,200 Bps modem, and physically resembles an oversized silver Atari cartridge. It has a phone jack on the side that was used to link the Master Module with the CVC computers. The module is able to transmit with pulse or tone dialing, allowing the unit to be versatile in the field. The games available on the GameLine service were all from third-party gamemakers, the largest of which was Imagic. CVC tried, but failed to obtain licensing agreements from the largest game makers, such as Atari, Activision, Coleco, Mattel, and Parker Brothers.

Membership benefits
When a user registered with the service, they were given a PIN. This PIN was used to log into the central CVC computer and download the requested games. One of the benefits of registering was that users were given free games on their birthday.

GameLine provided players an opportunity to compete in contests with selected games, where they could upload a high score. Prizes would be awarded to regional (and supposedly national) champions. One such regional prize was a GameLine windbreaker.

Each subscriber to GameLine also received a professionally printed magazine titled GameLiner. GameLiner consists of information about new games added to the service, questions and answers, advice on better gameplay, and a list of all currently available games on GameLine.

Discontinuation
GameLine was originally envisioned to provide not just games, but also news (NewsLine), stock quotes (StockLine), sports reporting and scores (SportLine), electronic mail (MailLine), online banking (BankLine), online forums (OpinionLine), and a wide variety of information including airline schedules, horoscopes, and classified ads (InfoLine). GameLine ceased operations before any of these expanded services were offered, though StockLine and SportsLine were reportedly near complete implementation.

Control Video Corporation was one of many smaller companies that went bust in the video game crash of 1983.

Legacy
Even though the GameLine was discontinued, the investors and founding members of CVC went on to start a new company that would continue to use the technological infrastructure they had built. The company, named Quantum Computer Services, was created by Steve Case, among others. This company created a service named Quantum Link which linked together Commodore 64 and Commodore 128 users offering many of the expanded services originally envisioned for GameLine. Quantum Computer Services eventually became America Online in October 1991, which became extremely successful during the 1990s, and eventually took over Time Warner in 2001, but was spun off a few years later. Though the company still technically exists, support for the GameLine does not.

The game titled Save The Whales was exclusive to the GameLine and although it was never released on a cartridge, a prototype was found in early 2002.

Game list
GameLine offered the following games: • Airlock

• Alien

• Atlantis

• Bank Heist

• Bermuda Triangle

• Boing

• Bugs

• Cakewalk

• China Syndrome

• Coconuts

• Commando Raid

• Cosmic Ark

• Cosmic Creeps

• Cosmic Swarm

• Cross Force

• Crypts of Chaos

• Deadly Duck

• Demolition Herby

• Demon Attack

• Dragonfire

• The Earth Dies Screaming

• Eggomania

• Encounter at L-5

• Entombed

• Fantastic Voyage

• Fast Food

• Fire Fighter

• Flash Gordon

• Frankenstein's Monster

• Gangster Alley

• Gopher

• Guardian

• Infiltrate

• Jawbreaker

• King Kong

• Lost Luggage

• M. A. D.

• Marauder

• M*A*S*H

• Megaforce

• Mines of Minos

• Moonsweeper

• Name This Game

• Nexar

• Nightmare

• No Escape

• Picnic

• Piece O' Cake

• Planet Patrol

• Polaris

• Porky's

• Raft Rider

• Ram It

• Revenge of the Beefsteak Tomatoes

• Riddle of the Sphinx

• Room of Doom

• Save the Whales

• Shark Attack

• Shootin' Gallery

• Sneak & Peek

• Solar Storm

• Space Cavern

• Space Jockey

• Spacemaster X-7

• Squeeze Box

• Sssnake

• Stargunner

• Star Voyager

• Tape Worm

• Threshold

• Towering Inferno

• Trick Shot

• Turmoil

• Warplock

• Word Zapper

• Worm War I

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

title: GameLine


text:
Eastern freshwater cod

The eastern freshwater cod (Maccullochella ikei), also known as the eastern cod or Clarence River cod, is a large predatory freshwater fish of the genus Maccullochella and the family Percichthyidae, that occur in the coastal Clarence River system of north-eastern New South Wales. Eastern freshwater cod are closely related to the Murray cod of the Murray-Darling River system, and are considered an icon of the Clarence River system.

A long-lived, slow-growing species, eastern freshwater cod are threatened by poaching [i.e. illegal take], habitat degradation, catastrophic natural events such as bushfires, and inbreeding from low genetic diversity. They are currently classified as endangered and protected by law from human exploitation of any kind.

Range
Eastern freshwater cod are native to the Clarence River system in northern New South Wales, Australia. The Clarence River system is an extensive East Coast drainage with many tributaries of differing size. By Australian standards, the Clarence River and its major tributaries the Mann and Nymboida Rivers are extremely large rivers with extremely large flow volumes.

Eastern freshwater cod originally occurred in great abundance throughout the system, to significant altitudes. Though reportedly M. ikei were never found above the large falls in some headwaters, the uppermost reaches of many tributaries feature in this species' range.

The indigenous cod population of the Richmond River system (Richmond River cod), now extinct, are believed to have been a sub-population of eastern freshwater cod. The Richmond River has been restocked with fingerlings (juvenile fish) produced from Clarence River cod, but no evidence of breeding has been found.

A closely related freshwater cod was historically common in the Brisbane River system, however the exact taxonomic status of the now-extinct Brisbane River cod is not known.

Appearance and size
The eastern freshwater cod is a small to medium-sized grouper-like fish with a deep, elongated body that is round in cross section and a broad, scooped head, and a large mouth lined with pads of very small needle-like teeth. The jaws are equal, or the lower jaw may protrude slightly. The eyes are slightly larger and more prominent than in Murray cod.

The spiny dorsal fin is moderate in height and is partially separated by a notch from the high, rounded soft dorsal fin. Soft dorsal, anal, and caudal (tail) fins are all large and rounded, and are dusky grey or black with distinct white edges. The large, rounded pectoral fins are usually similar in colour to flanks. The pelvic fins are large and angular, set forward of the pectoral fins, and are usually a translucent greyish-white colour, tending toward opacity in large fish. The leading greyish-white coloured rays on the pelvic fins split into two trailing filaments. These filaments are significantly longer than in Murray cod.

Eastern freshwater cod are vary from cream or greyish-white to yellow on their ventral (“belly”) surfaces. Their backs and flanks are usually an intense yellow or gold in colour, overlain with a dense pattern of black to very dark green mottling. The effect is a marbled appearance sometimes reminiscent of a leopard's markings. Colouration does vary considerably however and eastern freshwater cod from dark, heavily shaded habitats can be very dark or almost black in colour.

Eastern freshwater cod were historically recorded reaching sizes well over 1 metre in length and up to 48 kg in weight, but today are commonly less than 60 cm in length and less than 5 kg in weight. Large fish are rare today.

Origins
Eastern freshwater cod are a species of cod that is descended from the Murray cod, Maccullochella peelii, present in tributaries of the Murray-Darling Basin on the western side of the Great Dividing Range. Murray cod entered an east coast river system, likely the Clarence, via a natural event somewhere between 0.62 and 1.62 million years ago (mean estimate 1.1 mya), as estimated by DNA divergence rates. Subsequent isolation from Murray cod populations, the founder effect, genetic drift, and natural selection lead to allopatric speciation.

In addition to eastern freshwater cod of the Clarence River system, cod are/were to be found in several other coastal river systems. In total, at the time of European settlement of the Australia in the 18th century, naturally occurring cod were present and abundant in four East Coast river systems:

 * Clarence River system, northern New South Wales (eastern freshwater cod, Maccullochella ikei)
 * Richmond River system, northern New South Wales (Richmond River cod, Maccullochella ikei)
 * Brisbane River system and its Logan-Albert and Coomera River sub-systems, southern Queensland (Brisbane River cod, Maccullochella sp.)
 * Mary River system, central Queensland (Mary River cod, Maccullochella mariensis)

Several genetic studies have found that eastern freshwater cod, in the southernmost of these four rivers, and Mary River cod, in the northernmost of these four rivers, are more closely related to each other than to Murray cod. This suggests that Murray cod only managed to cross into east coast river systems once. It is not clear which of the four river systems was the original entry point, but geomorphological evidence suggests the headwaters of the Clarence River. The mechanism by which Murray cod crossed the Great Dividing Range are considered to be either river capture, where the headwaters of an easterly-flowing coastal river cuts back (in the erosional sense) and intercepts and "captures" the headwaters (and fish fauna) of a previously westerly flowing stream, or a "wet divide", where extreme flooding or a very wet climatic phase created swamps in a topographic low point that effectively connected the headwaters of western flowing and eastern flowing streams.

After crossing the Great Dividing Range, drops in sea level during glacial periods (ice ages) and/or "lateral" river capture events linked these four coastal rivers at times, allowing freshwater cod to gain access to these rivers and colonise them. The mean estimate for genetic separation of Mary River cod and eastern freshwater cod is only 300,000 years.

DNA analysis reveals eastern freshwater cod of the Clarence River system went through one or more population bottlenecks before European settlement. This was likely due to a sequence of catastrophic drought, whole-of-catchment-scale bushfire and severe, widespread ash-induced fish kills, similar to those which occurred in 1936 (see below). Eastern freshwater cod numbers recovered from these pre-European bottleneck events, and the fish were abundant by the time of European settlement, but the species appears to have lost some genetic diversity. Further, very significant losses in genetic diversity occurred when European settlers caused catastrophic declines, and to a lesser extent by recent stockings of hatchery fish with low genetic diversity.

Habitat and diet
Eastern freshwater cod are found in clear-flowing rivers and streams with rocky beds and deep holes within the Clarence River system, to significant altitudes. They inhabit all sizes of rivers and streams. Eastern freshwater cod are territorial and aggressive. The bulk of their diet is based on crustaceans (the large, clawed Macrobrachium shrimp and the small, clawless Paratya shrimp) and other fish, but they are powerful opportunistic predators and are also known to take insects (e.g. cicadas), frogs, snakes, lizards, birds, and small mammals.

Lifecycle
Growth is highly variable in eastern freshwater cod, but overall is slower than in Murray cod. The oldest specimen yet aged was only 14 years old, but this likely reflects limited sampling and many decades of overfishing and poaching that have led to the loss of most large individuals. There is little doubt the species has the potential to reach or exceed the maximum age recorded in Murray cod (48 years).

Eastern freshwater cod are sexually mature at 4 to 5 years old, and at sizes as small as 700 g, the latter being markedly smaller than in Murray cod. This appears to be an evolved adaptation to the rocky, low-nutrient, and often quite small waterways in which they found. The trout cod, a Maccullochella cod, once found in comparable habitats in the Murray-Darling system, displays a similar trait.

Eastern freshwater cod spawn in early spring when water temperatures exceed 16 °C, using rock structures as sites for the adhesive eggs. Most other aspects of their spawning, including the guarding of eggs and newly hatched larvae by the male fish, are similar to Murray cod. The breeding season is 8–10 weeks long. Males clean and protect nesting sites until females enter and a complex spawning ritual is performed. The males then protect the eggs until hatching, and continue to defend the larvae for 12–14 days until they disperse.

While specifically targeting this protected species is prohibited, it is also important for anglers to avoid any accidental captures of eastern freshwater cod in winter when they are developing their roe (eggs), or in early spring when spawning is occurring, as research indicates this results in resorbed roe or abandoned nests, respectively, and a failed spawning effort. (The eggs in abandoned nests are rapidly consumed by shrimp, turtles and small fish.) A total fishing closure is in effect on the Mann and Nymboida Rivers and their tributaries between August and October each year specifically to prevent this.

Conservation status
Following heavy declines in numbers and distribution, the eastern freshwater cod is currently classified as endangered by the IUCN.

Population decline
Early records show that eastern freshwater cod were extremely abundant in the all parts of the Clarence River system at the time of European settlement. They were so abundant that they were caught "on demand" for diners at one riverside hotel, and were reportedly even used as pig feed, as were the related Mary River Cod.

A number of factors have led to the decline of eastern freshwater cod. One factor was decades of pronounced overfishing, including with lines, nets, explosives, and spears. As a very slow-growing top predator with low fecundity, eastern freshwater cod are even more vulnerable to overfishing than Murray cod.

Another factor were several huge bushfires (on the scale of the entire catchment) in the 1920s and 1930s, but particularly a bushfire in late 1936. These caused severe and widespread ash-induced fish kills in the first rainfall events post-fire.

Habitat degradation and siltation brought on by poor farming practices (such as clearing riverbank vegetation and allowing stock to trample river banks) has also destroyed many eastern freshwater cod habitats. Some of these practices leading to land degradation are still continuing.

Mining pollution
Tin mining and dredging/sluicing for tin caused serious and widespread pollution of the Clarence River system in the late 19th century/early 20th century, with dozens of newspaper reports suggesting it reached its worst extent in the mid-late 1930s. These reports detail numerous pollution events characterised by milk-coloured stinking water, stained river rocks, cattle refusing to drink river water, and hundreds or thousands of dead fish per event. An article in The Daily Examiner from 11 October 1935 states that pollution was "causing alarm amongst fishermen, stockowners and people interested in preserving the Clarence and its tributaries as tourist attractions", and that farmers had trouble in getting their stock to drink from the polluted water. It includes statements from fishermen who describe fish "dead in thousands".

This tin mining pollution caused many severe fish kills and was probably a key factor in the extirpation of eastern freshwater cod from large tracts of the Clarence River system in the 1930s.

Conservation actions
The above factors, which have in the past led to the extinction of the Richmond River cod and the Brisbane River cod and the endangerment of the Mary River cod, have reduced the eastern freshwater cod from an abundant fish found in all parts of the Clarence River system to an endangered fish absent from most parts of it. It survives only in limited, remote parts of the Nymboida/Mann and Guy Fawkes/Sara sections. The latter population is now at risk of severe inbreeding depression and is in need of "genetic rescue" via translocation of genetically differing fish from the former, more diverse population. Currently there are no management plans to undertake such translocations.

Eastern freshwater cod were recognised as a potentially separate and endangered species of cod in 1984, and were declared a protected species in that year. Subsequent research confirmed this finding. While a high level of poaching is still taking place, legal protection has played a large role in finally allowing the species to commence a limited natural recovery.

A restocking programme was undertaken by the government of New South Wales in 1984-1989, but was then closed and contracted to a private operation, which produced and stocked fingerlings until the late 1990s. The eastern freshwater cod stocking programme was suspended after genetic research indicated the fingerlings being produced had lower than desirable levels of genetic diversity. No eastern freshwater cod are currently being bred or stocked.

Concern has been expressed over the future of eastern freshwater cod stocks in the Clarence River system after the NSW Fisheries department allowed a stocking of Australian bass fingerlings from a completely different bioregion to proceed. The fingerlings were contaminated with and introduced the banded grunter (Amniataba percoides), an aggressive small native fish, to the lower reaches of the river. It is feared that banded grunter may yet invade the main freshwater reaches of the Clarence River system, with possibly devastating impacts on eastern freshwater cod.

Species description and etymology
The Eastern freshwater cod was first formally described in 1986 by Stuart J. Rowland with the type locality given as the confluence of the Nymboida River with the Mann River in New South Wales. Rowland gave it the specific name ikei in honour of his father Isaac "Ike" Morgan Rowland who was an angler and who enjoyed catching freshwater cod.

title: Eastern freshwater cod


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User:Flavoredthunder

Artist | Designer lives in Los Angeles California

title: User:Flavoredthunder


text:
User talk:Flavoredthunder

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

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Dori | Talk 06:32, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

title: User talk:Flavoredthunder


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User talk:Davidjobson

Hello, welcome to Wikipedia. Here are some useful links in case you haven't already found them:

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Dori | Talk 06:32, Dec 18, 2003 (UTC)

Sleeping language?
What's a sleeping language? As opposed to an extinct language - saw you changed this on the Dell Hymes page. Bruxism 23:06, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Proposed deletion of One law for all

The article One law for all has been proposed for deletion  because of the following concern:
 * Very scrappy article of doubtful notability.

While all contributions to Wikipedia are appreciated, content or articles may be deleted for any of several reasons.

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Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised. Removing will stop the proposed deletion process, but other deletion processes exist. In particular, the speedy deletion process can result in deletion without discussion, and articles for deletion allows discussion to reach consensus for deletion. PatGallacher (talk) 16:52, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

title: User talk:Davidjobson


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Archery at the 1976 Summer Olympics

At the 1976 Summer Olympics two archery events were contested. It was the second iteration of the modern archery competition in the Olympics, following the same format as in the 1972 Summer Olympics. The two events were men's individual and women's individual, and the competition in each event consisted of a double FITA round. Archers shot a total of 288 arrows at 4 different distances (90, 70, 50, and 30 meters for men; 70, 60, 50, and 30 metres for women).

Medal summary
The United States repeated its sweep of the two gold medals. Japan and Italy claimed their first archery medals in the men's competition. The Soviet Union took the silver and bronze medals in the women's competition, adding to the bronze they had earned four years earlier.

title: Archery at the 1976 Summer Olympics


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Tom of Finland

Touko Valio Laaksonen (8 May 1920 – 7 November 1991), known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.

Early life
Laaksonen was born on 8 May 1920 and raised by a middle-class family in Kaarina, a town in southwestern Finland, near the city of Turku. Both of his parents Suoma and Edwin Laaksonen were schoolteachers at the grammar school that served Kaarina. The family lived in the school building's attached living quarters.

He went to school in Turku and in 1939, at the age of 19, he moved to Helsinki to study advertising. In his spare time he also started drawing erotic images for his own pleasure, based on images of male laborers he had seen from an early age. At first he kept these drawings hidden, but then destroyed them "at least by the time I went to serve the army." The country became embroiled in the Winter War with the Soviet Union, and then became formally involved in World War II, and he was conscripted in February 1940 into the Finnish Army. He served as an anti-aircraft officer, holding the rank of second lieutenant. He later attributed his fetishistic interest in uniformed men to encounters with men in army uniform, especially soldiers of the German Wehrmacht serving in Finland at that time. "In my drawings I have no political statements to make, no ideology. I am thinking only about the picture itself. The whole Nazi philosophy, the racism and all that, is hateful to me, but of course I drew them anyway—they had the sexiest uniforms!" After the war, in 1945, he returned to studies.

Laaksonen's artwork of this period compared to later works is considered more romantic and softer with "gentle-featured shapes and forms". The men featured were middle-class, as opposed to the sailors, bikers, lumberjacks, construction workers, and other members of stereotypically hypermasculine working class groups that feature in his later work. Another key difference is the lack of dramatic compositions, self-assertive poses, muscular bodies, and "detached exotic settings" that his later work embodied.

Career
In 1956 Laaksonen submitted drawings to the influential American magazine Physique Pictorial, which premiered the images in the 1957 Spring issue under the pseudonym Tom, as it resembled his given name Touko. In the Winter issue later that year, editor Bob Mizer coined the credit Tom of Finland. One of his pieces was featured on the Spring 1957 cover, depicting two log drivers at work with a third man watching them. Pulled from the Finnish mythology of lumberjacks representing strong masculinity, Laaksonen emphasized and privileged "homoerotic potentiality [...] relocating it in a gay context", a strategy repeated throughout his career.

The post-World War II era saw the rise of the biker subculture as rejecting "the reorganization and normalization of life after the war, with its conformist, settled lifestyle." Biker subculture was both marginal and oppositional, and provided postwar gay men with a stylized masculinity that included rebelliousness and danger. This was in contrast to the then-prevailing stereotypes of the gay man as effeminate (sissy), as seen in vaudeville and films going back to the first years of the industry. Laaksonen was influenced by images of bikers as well as artwork of George Quaintance and Etienne, among others, that he cited as his precursors, "disseminated to gay readership through homoerotic physique magazines" starting in 1950. Laaksonen's drawings of bikers and leathermen capitalized on the leather and denim outfits which differentiated those men from mainstream culture and suggested they were untamed, physical, and self-empowered. This in contrast with the mainstream, medically and psychologically sad and sensitive young gay man who is passive. Laaksonen's drawings of this time "can be seen as consolidating an array of factors, styles and discourses already existing in the 1950s gay subcultures," which may have led to them being widely distributed and popularized within those cultures. Starting his professional career in 1958 as a creative executive in renowned marketing agency, McCann Helsinki, further encouraged his creativity.

U.S. censorship codes (1950s–1960s)
Laaksonen's style and content in the late 1950s and early 1960s was partly influenced by the U.S. censorship codes that restricted depiction of "overt homosexual acts". His work was published in the beefcake genre that began in the 1930s and predominantly featured photographs of attractive, muscular young men in athletic poses often shown demonstrating exercises. Their primary market was gay men, but because of the conservative and homophobic social culture of the era, gay pornography was illegal and the publications were typically presented as dedicated to physical fitness and health. They were often the only connection that closeted men had to their sexuality. By this time, however, Laaksonen was rendering private commissions, so more explicit work was produced but remained unpublished. Aside from his work at the advertising agency, Laaksonen operated a small mail-order business, distributing reproductions of his artwork around the world by post, though he did not generate much income this way.

In the 1962 case of MANual Enterprises v. Day the United States Supreme Court ruled that nude male photographs were not inherently obscene. Softcore gay pornography magazines and films featuring fully nude models, some of them tumescent, quickly appeared and the pretense of being about exercise and fitness was dropped as controls on pornography were reduced. By the end of the 1960s the market for beefcake magazines collapsed. Laaksonen was able to publish his more overtly homoerotic work and it changed the context with "new possibilities and conventions for displaying frontal male nudity in magazines and movies." Laaksonen reacted by publishing more explicit drawings and stylized his figures' fantastical aspects with exaggerated physical aspects, particularly their genitals and muscles. In the late 1960s he developed Kake, a character appearing in an ongoing series of comics, which debuted in 1968.

Gay mainstream appeal (1970s–1991)
With the decriminalization of male nudity, gay pornography became more mainstream in gay cultures, and Laaksonen's work along with it. By 1973, he was publishing erotic comic books and making inroads to the mainstream art world with exhibitions. In 1973 he gave up his full-time job at the Helsinki office of advertising agency McCann. "Since then I've lived in jeans and lived on my drawings," is how he described the lifestyle transition which occurred during this period.

By the mid-1970s he was also emphasizing a photorealistic style, making aspects of the drawings appear more photographic. Many of his drawings are based on photographs, but none are exact reproductions of them. The photographic inspiration is used, on the one hand, to create lifelike, almost moving images, with convincing and active postures and gestures while Laaksonen exaggerates physical features and presents his ideal of masculine beauty and sexual allure, combining realism with fantasy. In Daddy and the Muscle Academy – The Art, Life, and Times of Tom of Finland examples of photographs and the drawings based upon them are shown side by side. Although he considered the photographs to be merely reference tools for his drawings, contemporary art students have seen them as complete works of art that stand on their own.

In 1979, Laaksonen, with businessman and friend Durk Dehner, co-founded the Tom of Finland Company to preserve the copyright on his art, which had been widely pirated. Tom was introduced to Dehner by his pen pal and fellow erotic artist Dom Orejudos. In 1984 the Tom of Finland Foundation was established to collect, preserve, and exhibit homoerotic artwork. Although Laaksonen was quite successful at this point, with his biography on the best-seller list, and Benedikt Taschen, the world's largest art book publisher reprinting and expanding a monograph of his works, he was most proud of the Foundation. The scope of the organization expanded to erotic works of all types, sponsored contests, exhibits, and started the groundwork for a museum of erotic art.

Laaksonen developed a "wonderfully rich relationship" with Bill Schmeling during the 1980s when they lived in Los Angeles; the two men set up artist salons in their homes and shared artistic practices as well as life experiences. Schmeling cited Laaksonen as having considerably influenced his artistic style.

Death
Laaksonen was diagnosed with emphysema in 1988. Eventually the disease and medication caused his hands to tremble, leading him to switch media from pencil to pastel. He died in 1991 of an emphysema-induced stroke.

Private life
Laaksonen's life partner was the dancer Veli "Nipa" Mäkinen with whom he shared his life for 28 years, until Mäkinen's death in 1981.

Reception
When examining the reception of Laaksonen's art, it is impossible to separate it from its original purpose. His "dirty drawings", as he himself called them, served primarily as gay erotica, intended to arouse the viewer. As described by Rob Meijer, owner of a leathershop and art gallery in Amsterdam, "These works are not conversation pieces, they're masturbation pieces." Many of his drawings were published in publications like Physique Pictorial, or were advertisements and murals for bath houses, leather bars and clubs, which were erotically charged or explicitly sexual spaces.

They also contributed to the spread of a new gay masculinity and confidence. In oral histories, for example, the works of Laaksonen are repeatedly described as influential for one's own sexual biography. Many men identified with his characters, who were pictured as masculine, virile and often blue-collar, thus defeating homophobic stereotypes of effeminacy. Kate Wolf writes that "Tom of Finland helped pave the way to gay liberation".

Laaksonen's drawings were particularly popular in the flourishing leather subculture of the 1950s to 1970s. Tom's drawings were central to the development and dissemination of a more unified gay leather aesthetic, resulting in the so-called "clone look" of the 1970s and 1980s. "Tom's work wasn't pornography. It was salvation."

- Robert J. Pierce During his lifetime and beyond, Laaksonen's work has drawn both admiration and disdain from different quarters of the artistic community. Laaksonen developed a friendship with gay photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, whose work depicting sado-masochism and fetish iconography was also subject to controversy.

A controversial theme in his drawings was the erotic treatment of men in Nazi uniforms. They form a small part of his overall work, but the typically flattering visual treatment of these characters has led some viewers to infer sympathy or affinity for Nazism, and they have been omitted from most recent anthologies of his work. Later in his career Laaksonen disavowed this work and was at pains to dissociate himself and his work from fascist or racist ideologies. He also depicted a significant number of black men in his drawings, with no overt racial or political message in the context in which they appear; although they bear some commonality with racist caricatures of the "hypersexual" black male, these traits are shared by Laaksonen's white characters as well.

Sheila Jeffreys offers a radical feminist critique of Laaksonen's work in her 2003 book Unpacking Queer Politics.

Art critics have mixed views about Laaksonen's work. His detailed drawing technique has led to him being described as a "master with a pencil", while in contrast a reviewer for Dutch newspaper Het Parool described his work as "illustrative but without expressivity".

There is considerable argument over whether his depiction of "supermen" (male characters with huge sexual organs and muscles) is facile and distasteful, or whether there is a deeper complexity in the work which plays with and subverts those stereotypes. For example, some critics have noted instances of apparent tenderness between traditionally tough, masculine characters, or playful smiles in sado-masochistic scenes.

Further, Laaksonen has been criticised for his depiction of sexual violence in the Kake cartoon, "Postal Rape" in which a postal worker is sexually assaulted. This has been described as contributing to the normalisation of sexual violence, of which the LGBTQIA+ community is particularly at risk.

Writing for Artforum, Kevin Killian said that seeing Tom of Finland originals "produces a strong respect for his nimble, witty creation".

Cultural impact and legacy
In 2006, historian Jack Fritscher wrote: "If there is a gay Mount Rushmore of four great pioneer pop artists, the faces would be Chuck Arnett, Etienne, A. Jay, and Tom of Finland."Laaksonen's artwork inspired numerous other artists to explore explicit sexuality in their own art, and some (like MATT ) dedicated works of art in his memory.

In 2019, the Los Angeles Times reported: "Tom’s cocksure leather look — a breakout sultry aesthetic dating to the 1950s — captured the early attention of artists such as Robert Mapplethorpe, Raymond Pettibon and Mike Kelley. It also influenced fashion and music: designers Jean-Paul Gaultier and Thierry Mugler and Queen’s Freddie Mercury. Today, Finland embraces its artist-son as a national hero, one backed by plenty of online merch — as diverse as sex toys and holiday ornaments. Tom’s bevy of built rogues, always affable and forever awash in unapologetic lust, has indeed aged well."

Tom of Finland Company
Laaksonen and Dehner established the Tom of Finland Company in 1978 to oversee the publication of Laaksonen's work and to combat copyright infringement. In 1995, Tom of Finland Clothing Company introduced a fashion line based on his works, which covers a wide array of looks besides the typified cutoff-jeans-and-jacket style of his drawings. The fashion line balances the original homoeroticism of the drawings with mainstream fashion culture, and their runway shows occur in many of the venues during the same times as other fashion companies.

Tom of Finland Foundation
Laaksonen and Dehner founded the nonprofit Tom of Finland Foundation (ToFF) in 1984 to preserve Laaksonen's catalog of work. After several years, they broadened ToFF's mission to "offer a safe haven for all erotic art." ToFF holds the world's largest collection of Laaksonen art (about 1,500 works) as well as one of the world's largest collections of erotic art (more than 100,000 images of materials). ToFF produces an annual competition for emerging artists to exhibit their work for publicity and awards. The foundation also hosts social events to fundraise and provide opportunity for like-minded fans of erotic art to meet, including the annual, two-day Tom of Finland Art and Culture Festival.

ToFF's Erotic Artist Hall of Fame recognizes exemplary erotic artists including H. R. Giger, Bill Schmeling, and Rex.

ToFF derives some income from its public programming and by licensing Laaksonen's images and name for commercial use, but it depends on donations and membership dues. ToFF is a separate entity distinct from the Tom of Finland Company, from which it receives financial support.

TOM House
ToFF is headquartered at TOM House, a home in Echo Park, Los Angeles owned by Dehner at which Laaksonen lived for about a decade in his final years and where he created about 800 artworks (20% of his body of work). Laaksonen stayed for six-months at a time due to the restrictions on his visa. His bedroom has been preserved in much the same state as when he resided there before his 1991 death. The 14-room home is filled with erotic art (even the ceilings are covered in it). Other amenities include a basement dungeon (open by invitation only) and a "Pleasure Park" of sloped terraces and sitting areas in the backyard.

ToFF offers tours of the house by appointment. The home also hosts public events, including nude life drawing sessions. The Los Angeles City Council designated the house a Historic-Cultural Monument in 2016.

Art and exhibitions
In 2009, Laaksonen was inducted into the Leather Hall of Fame. Some of his original works are at the Leather Archives & Museum in Chicago.

New York's Museum of Modern Art has acquired several examples of Laaksonen's artwork for its permanent collection. In 2006, MoMA in New York accepted five Tom of Finland drawings as part of a much larger gift from The Judith Rothschild Foundation. The trustee of The Judith Rothschild Foundation, Harvey S. Shipley Miller, said, "Tom of Finland is one of the five most influential artists of the twentieth century. As an artist he was superb, as an influence he was transcendent." Hudson, of Feature Inc., New York, placed Tom of Finland's work in the collections of Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art and Art Institute of Chicago. His work is also in the public Collections of: The Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), Los Angeles, USA; Wäinö Aaltonen Museum of Art; Turku, Finland; University of California Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley (California), USA; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, USA; Kiasma, Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA; and Tom of Finland Foundation, Los Angeles, USA.

In 1999, an exhibition took place at the Institut Culturel Finlandais (Finnish Cultural Centre) in Paris.

In 2011 there was a large retrospective exhibition of Laaksonen's artwork in Turku, Finland. The exhibition was one of the official events in Turku's European Capital of Culture programme.

In 2012, Kulturhuset presented a retrospective, Tom of Finland, in Stockholm, Sweden; and Tom of Finland's work was in the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation's We the People in New York City, USA.

In 2013, MOCA presented Bob Mizer & Tom of Finland in Los Angeles, USA. The artist's work was also seen in HAPPY BIRTHDAY Galerie Perrotin – 25 years in Lille, France; Leslie Lohman Museum's Rare and Raw in New York City, USA; and the Institute of Contemporary Art's Keep Your Timber Limber (Works on Paper) in London, England.

In 2015, Artists Space presented the exhibition "Tom of Finland: The Pleasure of Play" in New York City, USA. The exhibition was also presented in Kunsthalle Helsinki in 2016, complemented with additional material such as photos from family albums.

In 2020, as part of the 100th birthday celebrations, "Tom of Finland: Love and Liberation" at London's House of Illustration showed 40 originals with ephemera emphasizing fashion as an aspect of his work.

Film
In 1991, Filmitakomo and Yleisradio produced a documentary film, Daddy and the Muscle Academy, directed by Ilppo Pohjola. By the late 1980s, Laaksonen was well known in the gay world, but his "pneumatically muscled, meticulously rendered monster-donged icons of masculinity" received mainstream attention when the film – which includes hundreds of images of his work along with interviews – was released theatrically in Finland, won a Finnish Jussi Award in 1992, and was shown at film festivals and film art houses worldwide. While praising the artwork's quality one critic noted the film's lauding of Laaksonen as a gay pride icon while ignoring his work's "resemblance to both S & M pornography and Fascist art" which she tied to Laaksonen's early sexual experiences with German soldiers during World War II.

Filmmaker Wes Hurley credits Tom of Finland as an influence in his work, including his short Peter and the Wolf and his cult comedy musical Waxie Moon in Fallen Jewel.

Variety announced in 2013 that Finnish director Dome Karukoski was set to make a biopic of Laaksonen, entitled Tom of Finland. Helsinki-filmi produced it and secured exclusive rights. The film, released in February 2017 in Finland, is the first biopic of the artist.

Stamps
In September 2014 the Finnish postal service, Itella Posti, published a set of three first class stamps featuring drawings by Laaksonen and in association with the stamps' release exhibited some of his correspondence at the Finnish Postal Museum. Two of the stamps include portions of an illustration of a nude man sitting between the legs of another man dressed as a police officer; the other depicts nude buttocks with a man's face included between the thighs. The stamp set exceeded Posti's expectations, with pre-orders from 178 countries, making it the best-selling stamp set in the service's history.

Videography

 * Ilppo Pohjola (author): Kari Paljakka and Alvaro Pardo (producers): Daddy and the Muscle Academy: Tom of Finland. Filmitakomo & YLE, Finland 1991. (Duration of Feature: 58 Minutes. Also features frames of Laaksonen's graphic art.)

title: Tom of Finland


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Competency evaluation (language)

In applied linguistics and educational psychology, competency evaluation is a means for teachers to determine the ability of their students in other ways besides the standardized test.

Usually this includes portfolio assessment. In language testing, it may also include student interviews and checklists (e.g., on a scale from 1 to 5 the student or teacher rates his or her ability to do such tasks as introducing one's family).

While various governments in Europe and Canada often employ competency evaluation to evaluate bilingual abilities of public employees, it has only recently begun to receive attention from the United States where large testing corporations have dominated language evaluation with financially lucrative performance tests such as the TOEFL, MCAT and SAT tests. In psychology, competency can be evaluation to cover civil affairs, such as competency to handle personal finances, and competency to handle personal affairs (such as signing contracts).

title: Competency evaluation (language)


text:
USS Richard B. Russell

USS Richard B. Russell (SSN-687), a Sturgeon-class submarine attack submarine, has been the only ship of the United States Navy to be named for Richard B. Russell, Jr. (1897–1971), United States Senator from Georgia (1933–1971).

Construction and commissioning
The contract for Richard B. Russell's construction was awarded on 25 July 1969 and her keel was laid down 19 October 1971 by Newport News Shipbuilding at Newport News, Virginia, authenticated by Mrs. Ina Russell Stacey, sister and official hostess for Senator Russell. Richard B. Russell was launched at Newport News on 12 January 1974, sponsored by Mrs. Leila Elizabeth (Betty) Talmadge (née Shingler), wife of Herman E. Talmadge (1913–2002), U.S. Senator from Georgia (1957–1981), and commissioned on 16 August 1975.

Service history
In August 1977, Richard B. Russell was fitted with a large housing attached to her hull just aft of her sail, containing a tethered antenna buoy that was under development. The housing, called a "bustle" (and particularly the "Russell bustle"), gave her a unique profile and her nickname became "Dickey "B"." Later submarine classes would have their antenna buoy housings built into their hull fairings.

One point of interest about the fitting of the bustle came about as it was being installed. A crane was used to lift the bustle for the installation process. The crane used had insufficient capacity to lift the bustle. The bustle went into the water, and the crane was pulled onto its side. Two people were pinned under the crane until another barge-mounted crane was brought in to lift the bustle from the water, and right the other crane.

In 1978, Richard B. Russell completed a three-month deployment in the North Atlantic Ocean for which she received a Navy Unit Commendation and an Expeditionary Medal.

In 1980, Richard B. Russell completed a five-month deployment in the Mediterranean Sea. In 1981 she completed a deployment in the North Atlantic Ocean for which she received a Meritorious Unit Commendation and an Expeditionary Medal.

The Richard B. Russell was used in covert operations, gathering intelligence on Soviet naval movements.

In 1982, Richard B. Russell went through the Panama Canal and arrived at Mare Island Naval Shipyard in Vallejo, California, for an extended overhaul. During her time at Mare Island, it was decided that she would become a special projects submarine. After a short period of post-overhaul testing and sea trials, she underwent extensive ocean engineering modifications prior to commencing operations as a unit of Submarine Development Group 1. As a member of Sub Dev Group 1, she spearheaded a testing program for submarine rescue technology.

Richard B. Russell's role as a fast attack submarine as well as a development and testing platform earned her the Presidential Unit Citation, the highest award any naval unit can be given. She also earned six Navy Unit Commendations, and seven Battle Effectiveness Awards (formerly the Battle Efficiency Award), commonly known as the Battle "E", during her career.

Richard B. Russell was placed in reserve while still in commission on 1 July 1993.

Decommissioning and disposal
Richard B. Russell was both decommissioned and stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 24 June 1994. She was stored at Bremerton, Washington, until 1 October 2001, when she entered the Nuclear-Powered Ship and Submarine Recycling Program at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton for scrapping. Her scrapping was completed on 3 January 2003.

title: USS Richard B. Russell