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(POSTED AFTER PASSWORD KNOWN) Thomas A Anderson (Neo from The Matrix)

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(POSTED AFTER PASSWORD KNOWN) Thomas A Anderson (Neo from The Matrix)

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Neo (born as Thomas A. Anderson, also known as The One, an anagram for Neo) is a fictional character and the protagonist of franchise, created by the Wachowskis. He was portrayed as a cybercriminal and computer programmer by Keanu Reeves in the films, as well as having a cameo in The Animatrix short film Kid's Story. Andrew Bowen provided Neo's voice in The Matrix: Path of Neo. In 2021, Reeves reprised his role in The Matrix Resurrections with what Vulture calls "his signature John Wick look".

In 2008, Neo was selected by as the 68th Greatest Movie Character of All Time... Neo is also an anagram of "one", a reference to his destiny of being The One who would bring peace. There are claims that a nightclub in Chicago inspired the name of the character. Neo is considered to be a superhero.

Thomas A. Anderson was born in Lower Downtown, Capital City, USA on March 11, 1962, according to his criminal record, or September 13, 1971 according to his passport (both seen in the film). His mother was Michelle McGahey (the name of the first film's art director) and his father was John Anderson. He attended Central West Junior High and Owen Patterson High (named after the film's production designer). In high school, he excelled at science, math and computer courses, and displayed an aptitude for literature and history. Although he had disciplinary troubles when he was thirteen to fourteen years old, Anderson went on to become a respected member of the school community through his involvement in football and hockey.

At the start of the series, Neo is one of billions of humans neurally connected to the Matrix, unaware that the world he lives in is a simulated reality.

In his normal life, he is a quiet programmer for the "respectable software company" Meta Cortex; while in private, he is a computer hacker who penetrates computer systems illicitly and steals information under his hacker alias "Neo". He also sells illegal untraceable computer systems and hacking programs along with controlling computer viruses stashed on CDs and diskettes. During his time as a hacker, Anderson has learned about something known only as " The Matrix".

During the years prior to the events of The Matrix, Neo has spent his time trying to find the one man who he thought could tell him what the Matrix was; a supposed terrorist known only as Morpheus. After an encounter with another hacker, Trinity, Anderson is suddenly contacted by Morpheus via a cell phone mailed to his office, but is almost immediately captured by the virtual reality's Agents, led by Agent Smith. After refusing to cooperate with the agents, Neo has an electronic bug implanted within his Matrix-simulated body so that his actions can be tracked and those seeking to make contact from the free world can be traced and destroyed. He is then contacted by Trinity, freed from the bug, and taken to meet Morpheus.

Neo is offered a choice to remain in his everyday life and forget about the Matrix or to learn what the Matrix really is. Choosing to learn what the Matrix really is, he takes a drug (commonly called the " red pill") which is actually a program designed to disrupt his mind's neural connection to the Matrix and make it easier for his real body to be found and awakened in the real world. He wakes up disoriented and alarmed to find himself naked, weak, and hairless in a pod full of what can be assumed to be an artificial amniotic fluid. He also discovers that he is connected to a series of thick cables, by way of a number of plugs that are grafted to his body, including one plugged directly into the base of his skull which is later explained as the means through which his mind was connected to the Matrix. Upon his "birthing" into the real world, he is discovered by a machine which grabs him by the neck and removes all of his plugs and cables before flushing him out of his fluid tank down into the cold sewers below the Earth's surface.

Neo is rescued by Morpheus and his body is healed of the effects of his atrophy incurred while inside the pod. Once Neo regains consciousness and is able to walk, Morpheus tells Neo the truth about the Matrix; that it is a simulated world to which humans are connected, "a prison for your mind", as stated by Morpheus, while unknown to them, their bodies are used as a power source for a race of sentient machines which, ironically, mankind created. He also tells Neo about the One, a human with the power to manipulate the Matrix, who has been foretold to end the war between humans and machines, and says that he believes Neo is The One.

The next day, Neo begins his "training" and becomes knowledgeable in many forms of combat, as well as vehicle and weapons operations, by having various training programs uploaded directly into his brain. He also receives further instruction from Morpheus on subjects such as "freeing his mind" from the restrictions of the Matrix, essentially overcoming the physics engine the Matrix operates on. He is also made aware of the existence of its agents, programs designed by the machines to maintain order and dominance over the human race, created with abilities such as dodging bullets, running at high speeds, jumping great distances, and physically possessing people in the Matrix. If killed, they simply find a new host to overcome.

After several days aboard Morpheus' hovercraft, the Nebuchadnezzar, Neo is taken to meet the Oracle, who has the power of foresight within the simulated world. She tells him that he has the "gift", but appeared to be waiting for something, and that in his present life he is not the one. The Oracle warns him that a situation will arise when he will have to choose between saving his own life or that of Morpheus.

Returning from the Oracle to a landline phone, which serves as the exit for "red pills" to leave the Matrix, the crew of Morpheus's ship is betrayed by Cypher, a "red pill" who is willing to give the agents Morpheus in exchange for the promise of being mentally erased and reconnected permanently to the Matrix as an escape from the real world's bleakness. In the Matrix, SWAT troops kill Mouse. Cypher jacks out, and grabs a real-world lightning gun, injuring Tank and killing Dozer. He kills Apoc and Switch; who remain jacked in, by prematurely terminating their connections. In the Matrix, Smith defeats and captures Morpheus. Neo and Trinity try to jack out but Cypher threatens to unplug them too, however, he is thwarted when Tank recovers, killing Cypher, and helping Neo and Trinity jack out.

Neo learns the Agents seek to hack into Morpheus's brain in order to force him to tell them the access codes to the mainframe computer within humanity's last refuge, the city of Zion. After refusing to sacrifice Morpheus to prevent this, Neo decides to jack in and attack the building where he is being held. He and Trinity proceed to fight their way to the roof level of the building, where they are confronted by agent Jones. Neo unloads two entire magazines on Jones as he dodges each bullet effortlessly. When Jones returns fire, Neo proves capable of dodging bullets himself, fluidly moving in a way only an agent was thought to be capable of, although he is not yet as fast as them, as his leg is grazed by a bullet. Trinity then shoots Jones at point-blank range. Using an armed chopper, Neo and Trinity successfully rescue Morpheus. As Neo has just successfully rescued comrades from a building protected by heavily armed guards and agents (thought to be an unprecedented feat) Tank and Morpheus both believe Neo is indeed the One. Neo tries to tell Morpheus what the Oracle told him, but Morpheus explains that she merely told Neo what he needed to hear; had he believed himself to be the One, he would likely not have attempted the rescue, which was a necessary step to his emergence as the One.

Reaching the landline phone, Morpheus and Trinity return to the real world, but Neo is trapped by agent Smith. Trinity admonishes Neo to run, but he stands his ground, having begun to believe that he may be the One. The two of them draw guns and fire them empty, but are able to effortlessly dodge each other's fire. Neo skillfully engages Smith in hand-to-hand combat, almost seeming to be Smith's equal. In the end Neo is briefly incapacitated and held by Smith as a subway train approaches, but at the last minute, he is able to get free and backflip up onto the platform, leaving Smith to be run over. However, the agent possesses the body of the conductor, and emerges from the train and Neo, realizing that the agents' ability to possess other bodies makes this a fight he cannot win, flees the subway station.

Pursued by Smith and his fellow agents, Neo is able to evade them and reach the location of the landline phone, just to be ambushed and fatally shot in the chest by Smith. Trinity, seeing Neo die in the real world while his mind is still in the Matrix, tells his evidently lifeless body that the Oracle had foretold that she would fall in love with the One. When kissed by Trinity, Neo comes back to life, finally fully emerging as the One. When the agents try to kill him again, Neo simply raises his hand and the bullets freeze in mid-air, then drop harmlessly to the ground. It is then shown that he is able to perceive, interpret and alter the computer code of the Matrix. Completely believing in his new-found powers, he effortlessly fends off agent Smith before forcing himself into the agent's body and destroying it from within. The other two agents quickly flee.

Neo is then seen leaving a message for the machines via phone; a warning that he plans to oppose the machines by freeing as many human minds as possible. He then hangs up and flies into the sky, now having completely made his final metamorphosis into becoming the One.

Approximately six months have passed since the events of the first film, and Neo is now fully confident in his powers as the One, is able to manipulate the artificial world within the Matrix to a tremendous degree. He no longer requires firearms, relying solely on hand-to-hand combat. His ability to influence the coding of the Matrix allows him to stop incoming fire from multiple attackers. Dispensing with the long black trenchcoat and black shirt he wears at the conclusion of The Matrix, Neo now prefers a cassock with a high-rise mandarin collar giving the appearance of a priest or Bishop. He and Trinity are now lovers. Neo seeks more advice from the Oracle, unsure of his purpose, while Zion prepares for a massive attack by the Machines from over 250,000 Sentinels, numbered precisely relative to the population of Zion of 250,000 people. The Oracle directs him on a quest to find the Keymaker, a personified program that has access to numerous backdoors within the system. The Keymaker will be able to lead Neo safely to the Source, the programming heart of the machine world, which contains the programs sustaining the Matrix.

After the Oracle leaves, agent Smith (aka Smith) appears and it is revealed that Neo had separated Smith from the rest of the Matrix code by shattering him, giving him a life independent of the machine's systems and now the two of them share a "connection" to each other. Smith is no longer an agent of the Matrix, but has become more virus-like, he is able to insert his code into other systems, and infect other programs and human minds to make copies of himself. Neo fends off hundreds of these Smiths and escapes. Later, he, Morpheus and Trinity steal the Keymaker from his keeper, the Merovingian. During this time, Neo stays behind to fight off the Merovingian's men and becomes separated from the others, being trapped in the Merovingian's mansion five hundred miles away in the mountains. He flies off to help them and only arrives in time to save Morpheus and the Keymaker from two agents crashing two trucks together.

The Keymaker explains that two power stations elsewhere in the Matrix must be disabled in a short time window to successfully disable the security system of a building where the door to the Source will appear; allowing Neo to reach it. This task is accomplished; but the Keymaker is killed, a hovercraft is destroyed and Trinity is put in jeopardy by the agents of the Matrix; a vision that Neo has seen earlier in his dreams. Entering the door, Neo finds himself confronted by the Architect, a program which created and designed the Matrix and also ensures its constant stability.

The Architect presents Neo with a radically different explanation of his origins and purpose, claiming that Neo is actually the sixth "One". He goes on to say that Zion has been destroyed by the machines five times before; faced with the dilemma of allowing humanity to be destroyed or allowing the machines' preferred status quo to be reconstructed, Neo's five predecessors have helped reload or restart the Matrix, before being allowed to rebuild Zion with a handful of freed humans. The productive output of the Matrix is based upon this repeated cycle of destruction and recreation, to keep the human minds which power it in a stable structure because not every human accepts the simulated reality and if enough of them accumulate, it could lead to a catastrophic system crash of the Matrix and subsequent extinction of both humanity and the Machines. The Oracle is as much part of that self-perpetuating design as the Architect, Neo is told and the prophecy of the One is designed to ensure it runs smoothly each time.

The Architect warns of the annihilation of all human life in and out of the Matrix if he does not enter the Source door to reload the Matrix, but unlike his predecessors, Neo does not enter the door to the Source; he chooses not to believe the Architect's dire warnings of consequences and to save Trinity instead. Returning to the Matrix, he catches Trinity as she falls from an upper-story window of a power plant. She dies of a gunshot wound to the heart that she sustains during the fall, but Neo brings her back to life by reaching into her virtual body, removing the bullet and restarting her heart.

Together, they exit the Matrix and return to the real world. Neo tells Morpheus that the prophecy was merely another system of control and that Zion's destruction is imminent. A group of sentinels begin to converge on their hovercraft, so Neo, and the others are forced to abandon it and flee as it is destroyed. As they flee, Neo suddenly discovers that he can now sense the sentinels and shuts them down telepathically; however, the effort causes him to fall unconscious. He and the crew are rescued by the hovercraft Mjolnir (also known as the Hammer) whose crew is dealing with a mystery in the form of Bane, a crew member from another ship; who is the only survivor of an ill-fated attack by the Zion fleet. Unbeknown to anyone, Bane's mind was destroyed by Smith at some point during the movie's events during which Smith overwrote himself over Bane's avatar, effectively killing Bane and once he was unplugged, he took over Bane's real body.

The Matrix Revolutions begins immediately after the events of the second movie; as a result of his struggle with the sentinels, Neo returns to consciousness finding himself caught in an isolated train station-like limbo only accessible by order of the Merovingian, from which his mind is unable to free itself. It is here that he meets Sati, a young program created without a purpose, who is being smuggled into the Matrix by her parents, also programs in the machine world. Neo remains trapped until he is freed by Trinity (assisted by Morpheus and Seraph). who threatens the Merovingian in a Mexican standoff.

After a final visit to the Oracle, Neo learns that he has powers over the machines which extend beyond the Matrix and that Smith is spreading, threatening to destroy both the Matrix and the real world. Building on the Oracle's previous explanations about the nature of choice, Neo learns that the Architect's assertion that his choice to save Trinity would inherently lead to the extinction of humankind was incorrect; due to his nature as a purely mathematical being rendering him incapable of seeing past choices made by humans as he considers them mere variables in equations. Having told Neo that he now has the power to choose to end the war and defeat Smith, the Oracle then states "everything that has a beginning has an end, Neo" and informs him that in order for true peace to happen, he must travel to the heavily guarded Machine City in the real world and make a truce with the Machines in order to save both races from extinction because of Smith's activities. Soon after Neo leaves, dozens of Smiths come and assimilate Seraph, Sati and the Oracle.

Neo and Trinity are given the Logos, a hovercraft commanded by Morpheus's former lover, Niobe, in what seems to others as a suicidal journey to the Machine City. Meanwhile, captain Roland and the Nebuchadnezzar's surviving crew of Link and Morpheus in the hovercraft Hammer/Mjolnir return to Zion, which is now besieged and losing to the Machines. Neo and Trinity are ambushed by the stowaway Bane/Smith; who blinds Neo with an electric cable, but is killed when Neo discovers an ability to "see" programs and Machines independently without his eyesight. Neo, with Trinity as pilot, guide the Logos past the Machine City's defenses, but in the effort the Logos crash-lands, Trinity sustains fatal injuries and dies.

Neo encounters the Deus Ex Machina, a giant machine construct and the leader of the machines. He offers Smith's defeat and destruction to the Deus in exchange for a truce. The offer is accepted; Neo enters the Matrix to find that Smith has copied himself throughout the simulated world, now truly threatening the safety and stability of the Matrix. One of the copies of Smith, having assimilated the Oracle and obtained as much freedom and control over the virtual world as Neo, faces Neo alone. For a while, the two fight evenly with no real advantage, but ultimately, the tireless Smith begins to wear out Neo and takes control of the fight. Realizing that he cannot win with brute force, Neo allows Smith to assimilate him, which enables the machines to eradicate the Smith virus directly through his body. Unfortunately, the process also kills Neo.

Neo's body is taken away by the machines in the Machine City, while below in Zion, the machines stop their attack and depart in deference to the peace that Neo bartered. The Matrix is rebooted and a beautiful sunrise appears over the horizon, created by Sati in Neo's honor.

Although the fate of Neo was never truly revealed in the MMORPG sequel, The Matrix Online, however, despite this, his influence had a strong impact on several key events throughout the game.

In the beginning, scattered code fragments of Neo's "RSI" (Residual Self Image) were found on the bodies of the impostor agents; who appeared across the Mega City during Chapter 1.1 (later revealed to be sentinels under the command of the general program) when held, these fragments echoed some of the final thoughts of Neo inside the redpill's mind. Each of the three main post-war political organizations inside the Matrix realized the possible significance of these fragments and began fighting amongst themselves to gather as many as they could.

The Oracle reveals a secret society of exiles known only as the Shapers, who are the only ones able to bring the Fragments together in any significant way and that they must be protected from the impostor agents' corruption. The redpills' distrust and organizational differences prove too much for any strong unity, so that a shaper fell into the captivity of the false agents. His power was used to encode some part of the One's being onto them, creating the powerful, pale-skinned "N30 Ag3nts".

In Chapter 1.2, Morpheus states that though the machines never returned Neo's physical remains (Neo's body in the real world) to Zion, they did not "recycle" them; a reference to the first film, in which Morpheus tells Neo that the machines liquefy deceased occupants of the Matrix to provide organic sustenance for its living inhabitants. This would be the driving force behind Morpheus' descent into fanatical terrorism against the system in an attempt to force the machines to reveal Neo's fate; ultimately leading to his assassination.

The subject of Neo then fell to the side lines for other struggles; until the arrival of the Oligarchs in Chapter 9. The original intruder, Halborn, was notably intrigued by the life of the One and was personally shocked about the implications of Neo's ability to affect Machines outside of the simulation had on his search for what he called the "Biological Interface Program".

After Halborn's removal in Chapter 10, little more was questioned; until the revelation of the Trinity project, originally headed by the Oracle, in Chapter 12. It was revealed that both Neo and Trinity were actually the culmination of decades of machine research into translating human DNA perfectly into machine code; allowing them to interface directly with technology without the need for simulated interfaces.

60 years after the events of The Matrix Revolutions, Neo is now a video game designer and the creator of a video game series simply known as The Matrix, which uses Neo's previous memories in the plot. Neo is 57 years old in the Matrix program, but 60 years have passed in the real world, making Neo 97 years old. Neo lives under his real name as Thomas Anderson and although he looks not that old, others see him as a man with an eyepatch and gray hair. His love, Trinity, who lives under the name "Tiffany", is married to a man named Chad and has three children. Neo has a series of existential crises, so his therapist has prescribed him with the blue pills. Neo's boss approaches him with an idea to make a fourth Matrix game. However, the more Neo and his crew make the game, the less blue pills he takes and he eventually stops taking them. One day, a man known as "Morpheus" approaches Neo with the red pill, but agents and a police force storm the building where Neo works in order to kill Morpheus; who is revealed to be a rogue agent who opened his mind and decided to help Neo destroy the Matrix. Morpheus kills several police officers while Neo's boss picks up an officer's gun and once again becomes Agent Smith.

The attack was revealed to be a dream, and Neo was still in his therapist's room. A drunk Neo later goes on top of a rooftop and questions his existence. However, a woman with blue hair and a trench coat appears besides him. The woman introduces herself as Bugs; who tries to reopen his mind through a White Rabbit tattoo. Bugs then shows Neo her crew in an abandoned theater. Morpheus, part of Bugs' group once again offers a blue pill and a red pill to Neo; who takes the red pill. The team then "unplugs" Neo and with the help of a friendly machine; who was hacked, he is revived in the real world inside Bugs' ship, the Mnemosyne.

In the real world, after Morpheus helps Neo regain his memories and fighting style, the Mnemosyne goes to Io, the last human city led by Niobe. Niobe reveals that, when Zion was nearly destroyed by the machines, she and the rest of the inhabitants escaped and made a new city. After sixty years, Niobe does not trust Neo, but lets the Mnemosyne crew destroy the Matrix with the help of Sati, the sentient program who helped Neo in Revolutions. In the Matrix, Neo's therapist; whose name is the Analyst, a program designed to study the human psyche and the new leader of both the Matrix and the machines. He explains that after Neo and Trinity's deaths, he was able to resurrect them to study them. He found that suppressing their memories but keeping them in close proximity to one another made the Matrix more power-efficient and more resistant to the anomalies that caused the previous iterations to fail. However, Neo's liberation destabilized the system and triggered a fail-safe to reboot the Matrix. The Analyst stalled the reboot by convincing his superiors that threatening to kill Trinity would get Neo to voluntarily return to his pod. The Analyst then taunts Neo in the Matrix with bullet time by threatening to kill Trinity with a pistol, and then forces Neo to meet him in a café that he and Trinity had frequented. The crew then uses that opportunity to unplug Trinity. At the café, surrounded by riot officers, Neo distracts the Analyst while the team unplugs Trinity. They successfully unplug her, and Trinity gets her memories back and helps Neo fight the officers. Eventually, Smith fights the two, but gets away. In a final attempt to get rid of Neo and Trinity, the Analyst activates the Swarm, which forces many people to try to kill Bugs' team. The team survives, and when Neo and Trinity are cornered by police helicopters, they then decide to fly, which indeed does happen. The Analyst is defeated, and Neo and Trinity finally rekindle their romance and remake the Matrix in their own way.

Other works

Neo is briefly featured in the webcomic Casey and Andy by Andy Weir, in which he is remotely disintegrated by the fictionalised mad scientist Andy Weir by the latter's hacking of the Matrix, who works on behalf of Agent Bill to kill him in exchange for money.

Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage, and Leonardo DiCaprio were approached for the role. Will Smith, who turned down the role to make Wild Wild West, later said he regretted the decision. Ewan McGregor was said to have been sent the script to the movie, but later turned it down and moved on to do Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Sandra Bullock was asked by the film's producers to star in the film, thus changing the gender of the character to female, only to receive a negative answer by Bullock.

Neo has carried, since his conception, the Matrix's source code known as the Prime Program. This gives him the ability to freely manipulate the simulated reality of the Matrix, similar to the authority a system administrator has over a given system. He manifests these abilities as various superhuman powers.

The power Neo exhibits most often is akin to telekinesis in the Matrix. In that, he seems capable of manipulating any object in the Matrix through will alone. By focusing this ability upon himself, he can fly at amazing speeds and jump great distances. Whilst his speed is never specified, he flies from the Merovingian's mountain manor to the highway "500 miles due south" in a very short time. It can thus be extrapolated that if it took him roughly 10 minutes to fly from the chateau in the mountains to the freeway in the Mega City, he would have to have been flying at around 3,000 mph, or just shy of Mach 4. However, his speed of flight is further exemplified by his ability to escape explosions, and the sonic boom left in his wake has the power to overturn rows of heavy vehicles and reap massive destruction, indicating he can probably fly much faster than Mach 4 when pressed. He has used this ability multiple times to stop several bullets in mid flight, first against the Agents and again against the Merovingian.

In addition to his abilities, Neo possesses superhuman strength and agility, and is near-invulnerable to most attacks. Although his physical endurance is immense, Neo can still be harmed or killed, as evidenced by an injury that Neo suffers while blocking a sword attack with his bare hand. His endurance is also finite: when confronted by masses of Smith clones in the second film, Neo was forced to escape rather than continue fighting though he easily overpowered at least 40 Smith clones and threw about 50 off him, and upon being disconnected from the Matrix, he appeared exhausted and winded. His reflexes are great enough to dodge bullets. Neo's strength and speed level have never been accurately measured; he is known to be capable of Mach 8, at least, and Mach 10 under stress, but his upper limit has never been shown. In the third movie, Neo has reached his (apparent) full strength; he is capable of withstanding a direct physical punch from the Smith enhanced by the Oracle's power, and is also able to hold his own in a prolonged fight (though his endurance is not without limit; he can fight this Smith to a standstill, but not defeat him).

In the real world, like the other rebels, Neo does not display any of the aforementioned abilities. According to the Oracle, "The power of The One extends beyond the Matrix. It reaches from here all the way back to where it came from." Apparently because of his status as The One, he has a direct connection to the Source in the real world, and can therefore affect everything connected to it, including Sentinels, although the first use of this ability overwhelms him and he falls into a coma as his mind somehow plugs into the Matrix without a physical connection. Neo also begins to perceive everything connected to the Source, including the Machine City itself, as silhouettes of golden light. This ability becomes beneficial after he is blinded in the fight against Smith/Bane, thus he is able to see Smith/Bane and kill him.

In The Matrix Resurrections, the resurrected Neo at first doesn't have access to his powers, although he slowly regains them over time, particularly during his fight with Smith. Neo is now able to create powerful telekinetic shockwaves, particularly when touching Trinity, and while he can still stop bullets, it appears to take him more effort. At one point, he telekinetically deflects a missile into a helicopter and shields himself from Smith smashing a porcelain sink down on his head. However, he is unable to fly while trying to escape from the Analyst's forces after reuniting with Trinity or after jumping off of a roof. Instead, Trinity develops the ability to fly and takes them both to safety. Neo appears to have regained his full powers by the end of the movie as he and Trinity fly off together after confronting the Analyst.

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Neo (born as Thomas A. Anderson, also known as The One, an anagram for Neo) is a fictional character and the protagonist of franchise, created by the Wachowskis. He was portrayed as a cybercriminal and computer programmer by Keanu Reeves in the films, as well as having a cameo in The Animatrix short film Kid's Story.

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Leith (; Scottish Gaelic: Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith.

The earliest surviving historical references are in the royal charter authorising the construction of Holyrood Abbey in 1128 in which it is termed Inverlet (Inverleith). After centuries of control by Edinburgh, Leith was made a separate burgh in 1833 only to be merged into Edinburgh in 1920.

Leith is located on the southern coast of the Firth of Forth and lies within the City of Edinburgh Council area; since 2007 it has formed one of 17 multi-member wards of the city.

As the major port serving Edinburgh, Leith has seen many significant events in Scottish history.

The earliest evidence of settlement in Leith comes from several archaeological digs undertaken in The Shore area in the late 20th century. Amongst the finds were medieval wharf edges from the 12th century. This date fits with the earliest documentary evidence of settlement in Leith, the foundation charter of Holyrood Abbey.

Mary of Guelders, the bride of James II, arrived on 18 May 1449 and rested in the Convent of St Anthony. Prominent Leith merchants and shipowners included James Makysone, who supplied tapestry to James IV in 1498 for his new lodging at Stirling Castle and 1503 imported a timber keel from France for building one of the king's ships.

The town was burnt by the Earl of Hertford (on the orders of Henry VIII) in retaliation for the rejection of the Treaty of Greenwich by the Parliament of Scotland in 1543. Mary of Guise ruled Scotland from Leith in 1560 as Regent while her daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots remained in France. Mary of Guise moved the Scottish Court to Leith, to a site that is now Parliament Street, off Coalhill. According to the 18th-century historian William Maitland, her palace was situated on Rotten Row, now Water Street. Artifacts from the demolished residence are held by the National Museum of Scotland, and her sculptured coat of arms, dated 1560, can be seen in South Leith Parish Church. When the large French garrison stationed in Leith was attacked by Scottish Protestant lords, reinforced by troops and artillery sent from England, Mary of Guise was forced to shut herself in Edinburgh Castle. In June 1560, Mary of Guise died, and the Siege of Leith ended with the departure of the French troops in accordance with the Treaty of Leith, also known as the Treaty of Edinburgh.

Two mounds on Leith Links, known as "Giant's Brae" and "Lady Fyfe's Brae", identified as Somerset's Battery and Pelham's Battery respectively, are believed to be artillery mounds created for the siege in April 1560 and are listed as scheduled monuments, but may be natural hillocks. The best documented day of the siege was 7 May 1560, when the English and Scots charged the walls of Leith with ladders that turned out to be too short. John Knox records the delight of Mary of Guise at the failure of the attack, and English sources report 1000 casualties.

Late in 1561, Mary, Queen of Scots, arrived in Leith and, finding no welcoming party to receive her, made a brief stop at the "house of Andro Lamb ... beit the space of ane hour", before being collected and escorted by coach to Holyrood Palace, to begin her ill-fated six-year-long reign.

After the abdication of Mary Queen of Scots in 1567, during the ensuing civil war, troops fighting for James VI of Scotland against his mother's supporters in Edinburgh Castle based themselves in Leith from 1571 to 1573, a period called the "Wars between Leith and Edinburgh". In January 1581 The Shore was the scene of a mock combat, involving an assault on the Pope's Castel Sant'Angelo built on boats, for the marriage of Elizabeth Stuart, 2nd Countess of Moray and James Stewart for the entertainment of guests including James VI. In 1590, James's wife, Anne of Denmark, was lodged in the King's Wark when she arrived.

In 1622 there was conflict between privateer " Dunkirker ships" flying the Spanish flag and ships from the Dutch Republic. King James allowed a Dunkirker to lie at Leith Roads in June 1622, and soldiers from the ship were able to come ashore at Leith. Three Dutch ships, commanded by Willem de Zoete, Lord of Hautain, Admiral of Zeeland, arrived and attacked the Dunkirker through the night. The fighting stopped in the morning when the tide beached the ships. The Scottish authorities requested the fighting stop. The ships were allowed into Leith harbour where artillery from Edinburgh Castle was placed to ensure order.

Leith suffered during the 1645 plague outbreak, with over 50% of the population in the southern district dying. Archaeological excavations in 2016 at St Mary's RC Primary School, by Wardell Armstrong, as part of a planning condition found, a mass grave of 81 bodies from the 1645 plague. The archaeologists surmised that there was extreme fear of dying from this plague, likely Pneumonic, as many of the bodies were hastily buried in their clothes and still had money and other personal items on them, indicating that people did not want to touch the bodies, even to remove money.

In 1650, Leith was a prospective battleground when the Army of the Covenant, led by General David Leslie, threw up an earthen rampart between Calton Hill and Leith to defend the northern approach to Edinburgh against Oliver Cromwell's forces. This rampart became the line of one of Edinburgh's longest streets, Leith Walk. After Cromwell's victory at the Battle of Dunbar in 1650 and subsequent occupation of Scotland, a fort known as Leith Citadel was erected in 1656 to regulate the port traffic. All that remains of the fort today is a vaulted trance in Dock Street which was its main entrance. New industry in Leith included the Leith Sugar House, founded in 1677.

During the American War of Independence the Scot, John Paul Jones, who, with John Barry, is credited as founder of the US Navy, set sail on 14 August 1779 as commodore of a squadron of seven ships with the intention of destroying British commerce in the North Sea. He intended to capture the port of Leith and hold it for ransom, but his plan was thwarted when a gale on 16 September kept him at the mouth of the Firth of Forth. The scare he caused led to the hasty erection of Leith Fort, with a battery of nine guns, designed by James Craig, the architect of Edinburgh's New Town, and built in 1780. A Georgian terrace to the north-east served as officers' quarters, and was known as "London Row" because, being brick-built, it looked more like a London terrace than any in Edinburgh. The fort was in active use until 1955, latterly serving for National Service training. Most of the barracks were demolished to build a Council housing scheme centred on Fort House and enclosed by the old fort walls. The Council development was an award-winning scheme in its day (1955), but the building was demolished in January 2013 and the site has been redeveloped with new low-density housing, again award-winning. A pair of the old fort's gatehouses survive at the southern entrance to the scheme.

From the twelfth century South Leith was part of the parish of Restalrig and had no church of its own. After the Scottish Reformation the principal parish kirk for Leith was South Leith Parish Church, originally constructed in 1483. In June 1811 a census gave the population of South Leith as 15,938; North Leith 4,875. With a procession and ceremony, the foundation stone of the new church for the parish of North Leith was laid on 11 April 1814.

Leith was the port of entry for the visit of King George IV to Scotland, and The Old Ship Hotel and King's Landing was then given its new name, to mark the King's arrival by ship's boat at Leith Shore for this event, and this Monarch was welcomed by the High Constabulary of the Port of Leith (Leith High Constables). A painting of the occasion hung in Leith Town Hall, now Leith Police station.

On 20 May 1806, there was a procession of the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, Baillies, and Council, along with a numerous company of ladies and gentleman, for the opening of the first new Wet Dock, the first of its kind in Scotland. The Fife packet called The Buccleuch was the first to enter the dock, with the civic dignitaries on board, amid discharges of artillery from the Fort and His Majesty's warships in Leith Roads. The foundation stone for the second (middle) wet dock was laid on 14 March 1811, which was completed and opened with due ceremony in 1817 by Lord Provost Arbuthnot. The same year the Trinity House in Kirkgate was erected in Grecian architectural style at an expense of £2500.

In 1809, the Tally Toor, a martello tower was constructed to defend the entrance of the harbour during the Napoleonic Wars. It is now a scheduled monument within the port.

Historically Leith was governed by the Town Council of Edinburgh, with separately organised baillies appointed by various bodies without contact with each other. The result became very unsatisfactory, and half of Leith was provided with no municipal government whatever or any local magistrates. An 1827 Act of Parliament arranged for municipal government and administration of justice in the town, providing watching, paving, cleansing, and lighting, with Edinburgh Council responding to the views of Leith townspeople. In 1833 the Burgh Reform Act made Leith a Parliamentary Burgh, which jointly with Portobello and Musselburgh was represented by one Member of Parliament (MP). On 1 November 1833, Leith became a separate Municipal Burgh, with its own provost, magistrates, and council, and was no longer run by bailies. Historically the Lord Provost of Edinburgh was virtue officii Admiral of the Firth of Forth, the Provost of Leith was Admiral of the port, and his four bailies were admirals-depute.

Emperor Nicholas II of Russia arrived by sea at Leith with his family and suite on Tuesday 22 September 1896. Scottish anarchist Thomas Hastie Bell managed to get in his face to criticise him.

Continued growth meant that Leith and Edinburgh formed a contiguous urban area. Leith was merged with Edinburgh on 1 November 1920 despite a plebiscite in which the people of Leith voted 26,810 to 4,340 against the merger. The population of Leith at the time of the merger was 80,000 representing 20% of the population in around 5% of the city area, reflecting the town's high density. It was Scotland's sixth largest town at the time of the merger.

Until 1923 there was no through tram service between Leith and Edinburgh; at the boundary in Leith Walk it was necessary to change from a Leith tram (electrically powered) to an Edinburgh tram (cable hauled) until the electrification of the Edinburgh Corporation Tramways in the early 1920s.

The docks at Leith underwent severe decline in the post-Second World War period, with the area gaining a reputation for roughness and prostitution, with an official 'tolerance zone' until 2001. In recent years, Leith has undergone significant regeneration and is now a busy port with visits from cruise liners and the home of the Royal Yacht Britannia, the Ocean Terminal shopping centre, and administrative offices for several departments of the Scottish Government. The council and government's 'Leith Project' provided a further economic boost. The shore area of Leith, once unattractive, is now a centre for a range of new pubs and restaurants in charming surroundings. On 6 November 2003, Leith was the location for the MTV Europe Music Awards, with a temporary venue being built next to Ocean Terminal.

Leith was Scotland's leader in several industries for many centuries. Of these the most notable are:

Glass - the Leith Glassworks stood on Baltic Street and dated from 1746. There is also some reference to earlier glass production from 1682 at Leith Citadel. Leith specialised in wine bottles, largely for export to France and Spain. At its peak (c.1770) production was one million bottles per week. The Leith pattern bottle is the parallel-sided, round shouldered, narrow neck bottle now dominant within the wine industry. Around 1770 the company branched into lead crystal glass, mainly for chandeliers. This was under a new company name of the Edinburgh Crystal Company but stood on the same site in Leith (ironically this company has never truly been in "Edinburgh").

Soap - the Anchor Soapworks was established on Water Street around 1680. This largely used whale oil in its production. This survived until around 1930.

Wine and whisky storage - wine storage in Leith dates from at least the early 16th century, notably being connected with the Vaults on Henderson Street from this time. At its peak there were around 100 warehouses storing wine and brandy. In the late 1880s, due to the collapse of wine harvest in Europe, most of these were "converted" for the storage of whisky used in the growing business of whisky blending and bottling. Important in this business were William Sanderson with Vat 69, John Crabbie who also produced green ginger wine, and Macdonald & Muir who later bought the Glenmorangie distillery. Around 85 bonded warehouses stood in Leith in the 1960s. The last bond, on Water Street, closed around 1995. An offshoot to the wine industry were several vinegar works.

Lime juice - Rose's lime juice was founded by Lachlan Rose in Leith on Commercial Street in 1868. This was originally and primarily focussed upon provision of vitamin C to seamen.

Shipbuilding - originally centred on the Water of Leith and limited in scale due to the shallow water, Leith's shipbuilding started to fade as vessels increased in size. Latterly Leith built specialised ship types: tugs, hotel ships, cable-layers etc. Whilst the most notable large shipyard Henry Robb's, closed in 1983 this was technically outlived by a very small shipbuilder on Sheriff Brae (run by the Scottish Co-operative Society) which closed around 1988. The most notable ships built in Leith are the SS Sirius, one of the first steamships to cross the Atlantic, and SS Copenhagen one of the largest rigged ships ever built. Robb's yard also made a great contribution to the RN and MN during the Second World War, building forty-two vessels for the Royal Navy, fourteen merchant ships and refitted and repaired nearly 3,000 ships of the Royal Navy and Merchant Navy. This means that one new ship was launched on an average every six weeks and a ship repaired every day of this long and bloody conflict. The RN list included Flower and Castle Class Corvettes and River, Loch and Bay Class Frigates (see Leith built ships 1939-45).

Lead - Scotland's largest leadworks stood on the corner of Mitchell Street and Constitution Street. Founded around 1760 the operational part worked until the 1970s and the empty buildings stood until the late 1980s. The offices, on Constitution Street, still survive. The company specialised in lead pipes for water supply and lead drainpipes. They also produced lead sheet for roofing and lead shot for weapons.

Sugar refining was developed at the Leith Sugar House by Robert Douglas, an established soap boiler, from 1677.

Whaling - originally focussed on local, and Icelandic waters (the last whale in the Firth of Forth was caught in 1834); by the mid 19th century ships were travelling to the Antarctic. In the early 1900s, the Christian Salvesen company developed significant interests in whaling, initially in the Arctic, and then in the Antarctic. Among their many whaling stations in the South Atlantic, they established and operated from a base on the island of South Georgia, south east of the Falkland Islands at Leith Harbour (named for their base in Scotland). South Georgia later came to fame at the beginning of the Falklands War). The company moved from Leith to the Fettes area of Edinburgh around 1980 and then left Edinburgh altogether in the mid-1990s. The founder, Christian Salvesen is buried in Rosebank Cemetery. Whaling ships from Leith brought the very first penguins to Edinburgh Zoo around 1900.

Fishing - During the 19th century Leith became an important entrepôt for the Scottish herring trade, with exports peaking at 388,899 barrels in 1907.

After decades of industrial decline, deindustrialisation, slum clearance and resultant depopulation in the post-war era, Leith gradually began to enjoy an upturn in fortunes in the late 1980s. Several old industrial sites were developed with modest, affordable housing, while small industrial business units were constructed at Swanfield, Bonnington, Seafield and off Lindsay Road. The Shore developed a clutch of upmarket restaurants, including the first of the chain of Malmaison hotels in a conversion of a seamen's mission, whilst the once industrially-polluted and desolate banks of the Water of Leith were cleaned up and a public walkway opened.

Leith's gradual revival was also helped by the decision of the then Scottish Office to site their new offices in Leith Docks (just north of the old infilled East Dock). The site was chosen as part of a design-and-build competition against other sites at Haymarket and Marionville. It was completed in 1994. The hoped for influx of well-paid civil service jobs failed to have much local impact as most commute to the office, and only a small percentage venture beyond the confines of the office during lunchtimes. It did further foster Leith's growing reputation as a white-collar, small business location. Further large-scale service and tourist development followed, including Ocean Terminal and the permanently moored Royal Yacht Britannia. An extension to the new Edinburgh Tramway system, connecting Ocean Terminal and the Scottish Executive building area by the new Edinburgh Trams by the Port of Leith is now being constructed (2021) with completion due in early 2023. This will connect with Newhaven and eventually form a loop back to central Edinburgh. This new direct link to the city centre will provide a rapid and convenient route which it is hoped will be used by tourists as well as regular commuters.

In 2004 the owner of the docks, Forth Ports, announced plans to eventually close the port and carry out a major redevelopment of the area. The planned development, which was given supplementary planning guidance by The City of Edinburgh Council in 2004, was a small town with up to 17,000 new homes.

One of the areas is Timber Bush which was originally used as a timber market.

Until its amalgamation with Edinburgh in 1920, the southern-most town border was the middle of Pilrig Street.

Expansion in the Georgian era gave rise to streets such as Queen Charlotte Street, named after Charlotte, the consort of George III.

Historically, due its Catholic connections (and French garrison), Leith was one of the last towns to have Catholic sympathies pre-Reformation. Although the preceptory (small monastery) of St Anthony's was destroyed soon after 1560 the other churches were quickly adapted to Protestant use. There was also an Episcopalian meeting house near Kapple's Wynd (later renamed Cables Wynd) from 1688, somewhat inexplicably called the John Knox Church. The church was active from 1688 and was last used by a visit of John Wesley but the huge crowd he drew was too large to fit.

Leith still has several notable historic churches, including North Leith Parish Church and South Leith Parish Church (both of the Church of Scotland), and the Roman Catholic St Mary's Star of the Sea. The area has Sikh and Hindu temples, a Shia imambargah, a Sunni mosque and community centre, a Pentecostal centre and a Ukrainian Greek Catholic church. It also has a former Norwegian church, which is home now to the Leith School of Art.

A regular stage coach service ran between Bernard Street and Edinburgh's Old Town from the mid-18th century. By 1863 this had become a horse-drawn omnibus running every 5 minutes from 9am to 10pm. This was put on tracks sometime around 1880 effectively then becoming a horse-drawn tram. Leith was the first town in Scotland to electrify its tram system (1905). Leith Corporation Tramways were merged into Edinburgh Corporation Tramways as part of the 1920 merger of the two burgh councils. Tram services ran until 1956 and were then replaced by buses due to the contemporary perception of their greater flexibility.

In the mid-nineteenth century the railways came. Leith had one horse-drawn line pre-dating steam-trains, bringing coal from Dalkeith to a station at the north end of Constitution Street, to serve the glassworks there. This dated from the late 18th century. Steam trains arrived in the 1840s, being some of the earliest lines in Britain. When the railways were at their height, Leith had four passenger stations and many goods stations. However, in the 1960s, the Beeching report recommended the closure of almost all of Leith's railway infrastructure. Today, only one freight line that connects to the dock remains in use.

Although there are no longer any passenger rail services serving Leith, two station buildings partially remain:

Leith Central, on the corner of Leith Walk and Duke Street. The station clock, offices and public house (Central Bar) remain.

Leith Citadel, on Commercial Street. The building is now a youth centre.

The SS Sirius (built in Leith) beat the SS Great Western by one day in being the first steamship to cross the Atlantic but, as a much smaller ship, was eclipsed by the press coverage given to the larger ship. Leith offered ferry services to many European ports, including Hamburg and Oslo.

Today, Leith is served by various bus services provided by Lothian Buses. A tram service was due to serve Leith in 2011 by Edinburgh Trams. However, due to construction and funding issues, the section of the line towards Leith was postponed and is now due to open in spring 2023.

Leith has a long history of pioneering social advances, some of which were the first of their kind in Scotland:

All boys were educated for free from 1555 onwards. This was paid for by the local trade guilds. All girls were educated from 1820, a long time after the boys, but a very early example of free education for females (only required by law from 1876). A free hospital service was provided from 1777, paid for by a local tax, with beds sponsored by local shops. Leith had electric street lighting from 1890 and electric trams from 1905 (only Blackpool was earlier in the UK). The first public sewer in Scotland was built in Bernard Street in 1780; this flowed into the Water of Leith.

Leith was formerly a port linked to the trade of the Hanseatic League.

Leith is also home to The Queen's former floating Royal residence, the Royal Yacht Britannia, now a five-star visitor attraction and evening events venue permanently berthed at the Ocean Terminal shopping centre.

Leith was named as the fourth 'coolest neighbourhood in the world' by Time Out in 2021.

The Port of Leith distillery, currently under construction, will soon be the UK's only vertical whisky distillery.

Leith is home to Leith Academy, one of the oldest schools in Scotland, and to the Leith School of Art, which along with Glasgow School of Art is one of only two independent art schools in Scotland.

From 1855 until 1987, Leith Nautical College provided training for Merchant Navy seafarers in Scotland.

Festivals occur throughout the year, including Leith Festival, Leith Late festival, PLU Parents Like Us and the Edinburgh Mela on Leith Links, part of the Edinburgh Festival since 2010. The Leith Gala, now known as Leith Festival Gala Day is an annual event that has taken place since 1907; it was originally a charity event to raise sponsorship for local hospital beds before the National Health came into place. It has developed into the community-based Leith Festival.

Leith houses a notable number of cultural arts studios and small independent businesses, including the Leith Theatre on Ferry Road, Leith School of Art in North Junction Street, WASP Studios by The Shore and Out of the Blue in the former Dalmeny Street drill hall.

Leith FM (later renamed Castle FM) started as a week-long RSL station during the late 1990s, linked to Leith Festival. A few years of annual 28-day broadcasts later, the station bid for and won a permanent community radio licence and broadcast for several years on 98.8 FM and online. In December 2013, Leith Dockers Club locked the station out of its rented premises, due to the "substantial" debt it was owed by the station, and the future of the station is currently in doubt.

Scottish folk rock duo The Proclaimers titled their second album Sunshine on Leith after the town, including the eponymous track. This spawned a musical of the same name that included music from The Proclaimers, which itself had a film adaptation in 2013.

Irvine Welsh had his Channel 4 drama Wedding Belles (2007) filmed in Henderson Street. Welsh's novel Trainspotting and its prequel, concern a group of drug users living in the Leith area in the 1980s.

The BBC drama is set in Leith, with filming locations including the Eastern Cemetery. The show is written by Neil Forsyth, a former Leith resident and stars Mark Bonnar and Jamie Sives both of whom attended Leith Academy.

The BBC Radio 4 drama series McLevy features stories loosely based upon the historical figure James McLevy who operated in Leith crime hotspots amongst other locations in Edinburgh.

United Kingdom census (2011). "Table KS201UK - Ethnic group: All people". National Records of Scotland.

Leith is the home of Hibernian Football Club which is a member of the Scottish Premiership.

Leith Athletic Football Club have been part of Leith's sporting culture since their foundation in 1887 until closure in 1955. Reformed in 1996 they amalgamated with Edinburgh Athletic in 2008 and achieved promotion to the East of Scotland Premier Division in 2011. They host home games at Peffermill 3G.

Leith Links have been used a sports and recreation area over many centuries.

Leith is significant in the historical development of the rules of golf, as the Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers played there before moving to Musselburgh Links and later Muirfield. The official rules of golf, initially formulated at Leith in 1744, were later adopted by the Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. The only difference introduced with those rules (which remain the rules of golf) was the omission of one rule to do with hazards such as trenches.

From at least 1600 until 1816, Leith Races were held on Leith Sands, an area immediately north of the present Links and now built over. They were long regarded as one of Scotland's most important horse race meetings before racing moved to Musselburgh permanently from 1816 onwards.

Leith Links also have one of the longest established cricket pitches in Scotland, from 1820.

The Leith Victoria Swim Centre on Junction Place opened in 1899.

Adam White (1760-1843), served 1833-1839

James Reoch (1768-1845), served 1839-1845

Thomas Hutchison (1796-1852), served 1845-1848

George Adiston McLaren (1801-1881), served 1848-1851

Robert Philip (d.1887), served 1851-1855

James Taylor (1800-1890), served 1855-1860

William Lindsay FRSE (1819-1884), served 1860-1866

James Watt (1806-1881), served 1866-1875

Dr John Henderson (1818-1901), served 1875-1881, instigated the Leith Improvement Plan and creator of Henderson Street

James Pringle FRSE (1822-1886), served 1881-1886

Dr John Henderson (1818-1901), served second term 1886-1887 following Pringle's death in office

Thomas Aitken (1833-1912), served 1887-1893

John Bennet (1820-1902), served 1893-1899

Sir Richard Mackie (1851-1923), served 1899-1908

Malcolm Smith (1856-1935), served 1908-1917

John Allan Lindsay (1865-1942), served 1917-1920, the final Provost of Leith

William Lindsay Alexander (1808-1884), theologian

Thomas Anderson (1819-1874), chemist

John Armstrong (1771-1797), journalist and poet

Adam Archibald (1879-1957), World War I recipient of the Victoria Cross

Hugo Arnot (1749-1786), historian, buried in South Leith churchyard

Andrew Barton (c. 1466 - 1511), privateer, Lord High Admiral of Scotland

Robert Barton (died 1540), brother of the above, privateer and Lord High Treasurer of Scotland

Edith Marian Begbie (1866-1932), militant suffragette and member of the WSPU

Walter Leonard Bell FRSE (1865-1932) surgeon and antiquarian

Eric "Winkle" Brown (1919-2016), test pilot of a record number of aircraft types

James Brown (1907 - unknown), footballer

Paddy Buckley, footballer

John Cheyne, surgeon

John Chisholm (fl. 1560s), keeper of royal artillery at the King's Wark

John Coldstream (1806-1863), physician

Malcolm Ross, musician

James Scarth Combe (1796-1883), surgeon (first to describe pernicious anaemia)

David Cousin (1809-1878), architect

John Crabbie founder of Crabbie's on Great Junction Street

David Craigie (1793-1866) medical author

Prof Ernest Cruickshank FRSE nutritionist, and twin brother, Brigadier Martin Melvin Cruickshank FRSE

Helen Crummy (1920-2011), founder of Craigmillar Festival Society for the local community

Robert James Blair Cunynghame FRSE, physiologist and forensic scientist

Gordon Donaldson, historian

Frank Doran, Labour politician

Handyside Edgar, physician

Sir Tom Farmer, founder of Kwik-Fit and former owner of Hibernian F.C.

Dick Gaughan, folk singer

John Gibson Gibson CB FRSE (1889-1970) physicist and mathematician

Robert Gilchrist (1821-1905), first-class cricketer

Dr George Ritchie Gilruth FRSE (1842-1921) surgeon

Thomas Gladstones, merchant and father of John Gladstone

Tallulah Greive, actress

Leigh Griffiths, footballer

John Hall, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, minister of Leith for a time

Peter Heatly, diver

John Home (1722-1808), poet and dramatist

John Hunter, second Governor of New South Wales

Russell Hunter, actor

James Campbell Irons FRSE (b.1840) legal author and historian, author of The Antiquities of Leith

Robert Jameson (1774-1854), naturalist and mineralogist

William Jameson FRSE (1815-1882), botanist responsible for the promotion of tea-growing in northern India

William Johnston, recipient of the Victoria Cross

Dr George Kellie (1720-1779) surgeon, and his grandson Dr George Kellie FRSE (1781-1829)

Dr Thomas Latta inventor of saline drip

David Lindsay (bishop of Ross), chaplain of James VI of Scotland and Bishop of Ross, buried here

Jack Lowden, Scottish actor

Harold Mahony, Irish tennis player who had a home at Dalmore Lodge in Leith

Sam McCluskie, Labour politician and trade unionist

Andrew Macdonald (poet) born at the foot of Leith Walk

Very Rev Robert MacDonald (1813-1893) minister of North Leith Free Church, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland 1882/83.

Una McLean, actor

Willie Merrilees, lifesaver and distinguished policeman, later Chief Constable of the Lothians and Peebles Constabulary

Alexander Morgan (mathematician) FRSE

James Morton, footballer

Thomas Morton, shipbuilder and inventor (the patent slip)

Erskine Nicol RSA (1825-1904) artist

Eduardo Paolozzi (1924-2005), pop artist and sculptor

Charlie and Craig Reid of folk band The Proclaimers

Very Rev George T. H. Reid, Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland 1973/4

Henry Robb, shipbuilder

J.K. Rowling, author

Clarice Shaw (1883-1946), pioneering woman Labour politician and MP

Margery Sampson (1890-1915) Scotland's first female bell-ringer

James Simpson (1830-1894) architect, creator of the Leith Improvement Scheme

Chris Small, professional snooker player

Neil Smith, geographer

Ralph Stockman (1861-1946) and his younger brother Stewart Stockman (1869-1926)

William Struth (1875-1956), football manager with Rangers FC (1920-1954)

Danny Swanson, footballer with Peterborough United

Derek Trail (born 1946), Scottish former professional footballer

Unicorn Kid (Oliver Sabin, b. 1991), electronic music/chip music composer

Irvine Welsh, author, Trainspotting

Campbell, Alex (1827). The History of Leith, from the Earliest Accounts to the Present Period. Leith: William Reid & Son.

Gilbert, W.M., ed. (1901), Edinburgh in the Nineteenth Century

Grant, James. Old and New Edinburgh. Vol. VI.

Neish, R. O. (2020). They Once Were Shipbuilders Leith-Built Ships Vol. I (Paperback). Dunbeath, Scotland: Whittles Publishing. ISBN 978-184995-443-3.

Neish, R. O. (2021). Leith Shipyards 1918-1939 Leith Built Ships, Vol. II (Paperback). Dunbeath, Scotland: Whittles Publishing. ISBN 978-184995-481-5.

Media related to Leith at Wikimedia Commons

Leith travel guide from Wikivoyage

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Leith (; Scottish Gaelic: Lìte) is a port area in the north of the city of Edinburgh, Scotland, founded at the mouth of the Water of Leith. The earliest surviving historical references are in the royal charter authorising the construction of Holyrood Abbey in 1128 in which it is termed Inverlet (Inverleith).

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4 LINES AND 8 LINES

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Unable to stop down the lens of a standard camera enough to bring the entire gun barrel into focus, Binder created a pinhole camera to solve the problem, and the barrel became crystal clear.

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The gun barrel sequence is a signature device featured in nearly every James Bond film. Shot from the point of view of a presumed assassin, it features James Bond walking, turning, and then shooting directly at camera, causing blood to run down the screen. The visuals are usually accompanied by the " James Bond Theme", written by Monty Norman.

Originally designed by Maurice Binder, the sequence has featured in every James Bond film produced by Eon Productions. While it has retained the same basic elements, it has noticeably evolved throughout the series. It is one of the most immediately recognizable elements of the franchise and is featured heavily in marketing material for the films and their spin-offs.

The British media historian James Chapman suggests that the sequence is a significant part of the James Bond mythos because it "foregrounds the motif of looking, which is central to the spy genre".

In virtually every Eon-produced Bond film, the sequence begins with a white dot blinking across the screen, from left to right. Upon reaching the right edge of the frame, the dot opens up to reveal a gun barrel's interior. From the point of view of an off-screen assassin, the camera follows James Bond as he walks from right to left against a neutral background. Suddenly he becomes aware of being observed and stops at the centre of the screen before he quickly turns to the camera and shoots his gun towards it. A blood-red wash, representing the gunman bleeding, runs down the screen. The gun barrel dissolves to a white dot which moves from side-to-side across the screen and settles in the corner. With a few exceptions, the circle then either shrinks and disappears, fades from white to a circular cutout of the first scene, expanding to reveal the full view of the scene shortly thereafter, or simply fades to black from the final Bond firing pose.

Maurice Binder created the opening titles of the first Bond film, , in 1962. Binder originally planned to employ a camera sighted down the barrel of a .38 calibre gun, but this caused some problems. Unable to stop down the lens of a standard camera enough to bring the entire gun barrel into focus, Binder created a pinhole camera to solve the problem, and the barrel became crystal clear.

Binder described the genesis of the gun barrel sequence in the last interview he recorded before his death in 1991:

That was something I did in a hurry, because I had to get to a meeting with the producers in twenty minutes. I just happened to have little white, price tag stickers and I thought I'd use them as gun shots across the screen. We'd have James Bond walk through and fire, at which point blood comes down onscreen. That was about a twenty-minute storyboard I did, and they said, "This looks great!"

The media historian James Chapman observed that the sequence recalls the gun fired at the audience at the end of The Great Train Robbery (1903).

Because Binder had designed the gun barrel sequence to feature Bond only in silhouette, with a non-widescreen aspect ratio, he used stunt man Bob Simmons, rather than Sean Connery, to film the scene.

Simmons hops slightly as he pivots to assume the firing position and, following the blood wash, the dot becomes smaller and jumps to the lower right-hand corner of the frame before simply vanishing.

In Dr. No, the white dot stops mid-screen and the credit line " Harry Saltzman & Albert R. Broccoli present" appears across the dot. The text is wiped and the dot continues the sequence. The sequence is accompanied by a soundtrack of electronic noises and then numerous notes that sound like they are being plinked from a wind-up jack in the box; the latter is cut short by the gunshot. The "James Bond Theme" then plays very loudly, albeit with the first portion, featuring the theme's plucked electric guitar riff, truncated. The gun barrel sequence in Dr. No segues directly into the credits, a grid matrix of large-scale, bright and rapidly changing coloured circular dots against a black background. This version, without the electronic noises or the Saltzman-Broccoli credit line, was also used in From Russia with Love with more red-coloured blood and Goldfinger which fades into the pre-credit sequence.

For Thunderball, the aspect ratio of the films was changed to a Panavision anamorphic format and so the gun barrel sequence had to be reshot, this time with Sean Connery in the role. It is also the first gun barrel sequence in which the white dot segues to the film's pre-credit sequence, opening up to reveal the entirety of the scene.

Connery wobbles slightly while firing his gun as he adjusts his balance from an unstable position and he bends over to fire. Although the sequence was shot in colour for Thunderball, it is rendered in black and white for You Only Live Twice.

1969 (George Lazenby)

With a new actor, George Lazenby, in the role of James Bond for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), a third sequence had to be filmed. As with Thunderball, the sequence was once again shot in colour.

In this rendering, the white dot stops mid-screen and the credit line "Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli Present" appears, much as it did in Dr. No (albeit spelling out "and" instead of using the ampersand). The James Bond theme keeps playing though. As the barrel begins to move and when it stops centre-screen, Bond is walking to position for around a second before turning and shooting as the camera tracks with him, resulting in a "treadmill" effect. Lazenby is the only Bond who kneels down to fire; this is also the only version where the descending blood completely erases Bond's image, leaving only the red circle. In this version, the gun barrel is awash with prismatic splashes of light.

1971 (Sean Connery)

When Sean Connery returned to the role of Bond for Diamonds Are Forever (1971), the gun barrel sequence filmed for Thunderball was used. As with You Only Live Twice, the sequence was rendered in black and white, but was given a bluish tint. As in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the barrel is awash with prismatic splashes of light, which this time ripple through it. Unlike On Her Majesty's Secret Service, the splashes of light are erased by the descending blood. This was the last time the sequence was rendered in black and white until Casino Royale (2006). It is also the last gun barrel sequence in which Bond wears a hat.

With the introduction of Roger Moore, and the use of a 1.85:1 matted aspect ratio, a fourth sequence was shot. It was used for just two films: Live and Let Die and The Man with the Golden Gun. Moore wears a business suit and, unlike Simmons, Connery and Lazenby, uses both hands instead of one hand to fire his gun, his left hand bracing his gun arm. The gun barrel only moves side-to-side to the left of Bond, without alternating to the right. This is the first gun barrel sequence in which Bond is not wearing a hat. Additional footage of this sequence was shot of Bond shooting with both hands, then walking straight towards the camera with his gun drawn, putting his face into view, as seen in theatrical trailers from Live and Let Die through The Spy Who Loved Me. The dots that start the gun barrel in The Man with the Golden Gun are blue but in subsequent releases the dots are white. It is the last gun barrel sequence until Quantum of Solace where Bond wears a business suit.

The anamorphic format was reinstated for The Spy Who Loved Me, necessitating a fifth version of the sequence. Moore's Bond wears a dinner suit (tuxedo) rather than a business suit and again uses both hands to fire his gun. This rendering would feature in all Moore's subsequent films in the series, for a total of five appearances, the most uses of the same footage to date. In this version of the sequence, unlike previous and later incarnations, the prop gun held by the actor is never actually fired until , as can be determined by the lack of gunsmoke in the freeze-frame. It is also noticeable that the background of this version of the sequence is tinted, rather than the usual white. The tint changes with every Moore film. The Spy Who Loved Me, for example, features an eggshell tinted background whereas the background in has a strong shade of buff. In For Your Eyes Only, once the white dot moves in the middle of the screen, it does not open up to reveal the pre-credits scene, but cuts abruptly. The gun barrel sequence for Moore's final film, A View to a Kill, featured an error in the 2006 Ultimate Edition and subsequent DVD releases of the film. The error was a scanning issue which caused the gun barrel to be cropped off largely along with the opening dots going off of the screen, just like the Brosnan gun barrels. The issue was rectified in one of the latest iTunes releases.

A new gun barrel sequence was shot due to the change in actor from Roger Moore to Timothy Dalton and was used for both of Dalton's films. Dalton walks swiftly with a slight bounce before sharply spinning and firing. Dalton crouches down slightly when he fires. Unlike Moore, Dalton shoots one-handed. John Barry orchestrates the music for the gun barrel in The Living Daylights (1987) but Michael Kamen composes a different orchestration for Licence to Kill (1989). This was the last gun barrel sequence to be designed by Maurice Binder before his death in 1991. The Licence to Kill gun barrel alters the gun barrel of the previous film slightly, showing Dalton's walk and pose as more zoomed in. An alternate gun barrel sequence appears in The Living Daylights trailer.

Following Maurice Binder's death in 1991, Daniel Kleinman became the designer of the Bond opening graphics. Beginning with (1995), the barrel was computer-generated (but still resembles the original images of the barrel itself) emphasising light and shade variations in the rifling spiral as the reflected light shifts with the gun's movement. Like Dalton, Brosnan shoots one-handed. Unlike the previous Bonds, he remains bolt upright as he fires, with his gun arm extended straight at the camera. The blood in this sequence is noticeably darker and falls faster than in previous incarnations; in keeping with this new pace, the main melody line of the James Bond theme is omitted in two of Brosnan's gun barrel sequences, Tomorrow Never Dies and The World Is Not Enough.[citation needed ] In prior versions of the sequence, the white dot would open up to reveal the gun barrel before it reaches the right edge of the screen; in all four of Brosnan's films, however, the dot continues moving right until it disappears off screen. Then the gun barrel scrolls in leftward from off screen. The World Is Not Enough is the first Bond movie where the white dot opens up to reveal Bond, this gun barrel also shows Bond's final pose as uncentered, possibly due to a scanning error.

The teaser trailer for GoldenEye featured its own gun barrel sequence in which Bond, appearing in shadow, quickly shoots away six times the onscreen text "ON ONE MAN", before shooting his seventh shot on the letter "M" into a "7" to only leave "007". Bond walks into the foreground, revealing Brosnan's face and proclaiming "You were expecting someone else?", introducing him as the first actor to play Bond since 1989.

The theatrical trailer for Tomorrow Never Dies featured its own gun barrel sequence in which Bond, in a dinner suit, fires with both hands à la Roger Moore at the six-grooved gun barrel.

In Die Another Day (2002), Lee Tamahori, the film's director requested a CG bullet be added into the sequence, which is seen zooming from Bond's gun at the screen and disappearing, suggesting that Bond has fired straight into his opponent's weapon. This was the last gun barrel sequence until No Time to Die where Bond wears a dinner suit and the last one until Spectre where the sequence opens the film.

The gun barrel sequence was revised again for Daniel Craig's first portrayal of Agent 007 in Casino Royale. Unlike previous instalments, the gun barrel sequence does not open the film as a standalone segment; it is part of the plot. Having seemingly committed the first kill on his way to becoming a Double-O agent, Bond stops to pick up his gun from the floor but his victim, Fisher, who is a henchman of rogue MI6 section chief Dryden, recovers and seizes his own weapon. As Fisher brings his pistol up to shoot Bond in the back, the frame shifts instantly to the gun barrel perspective; Bond spins around to outshoot his opponent.

This sequence differs considerably from previous versions: it is incorporated into the film's narrative; it begins with Bond standing stationary (although he was walking toward the door before stopping and turning); it is not filmed against a blank white void and it includes the person whom Bond shoots. In keeping with the black-and-white theme of the pre-title sequence of the film, it is also the first to be presented in monochrome since Diamonds Are Forever (1971) and the first in which Bond is wearing neither a business suit nor a dinner suit, but is dressed casually. Like Dalton and Brosnan, Craig shoots one-handed.

Furthermore, the computer-generated rifling is microgroove rather than the traditional eight rifling grooves, and the blood comes down the screen quickly, not in a wave, but in rivulets. This is also the first gun barrel sequence without some variation of the "James Bond Theme" as, instead, it is accompanied by the opening bars of the film's theme song, " You Know My Name".

The gun barrel was refilmed and edited for 2008's Quantum of Solace. It reverts to a more traditional style, although the sequence was placed at the end of the film to start the closing credits, due to a final cliffhanger scene being cut by Marc Forster. The sequence represents Bond as a blunt and cold-blooded assassin due to the pace of the scene. For example, the white dot travels across the screen much faster than in previous gun barrel sequences, Daniel Craig moves swiftly into position, noticeably faster than its predecessors, and the blood comes down in a large quick wash. Like Dalton and Brosnan, Craig shoots one-handed. The design of the gun barrel is also more simplistic, with a grey colour to it as well as fewer and more widely spaced grooves. The white circle also spins into the centre of the Q in the title graphic for Quantum of Solace, and in the Q, Bond is shown walking away after firing for the first time in the sequence. The closing credits of the film follow.

Yet another redesigned gun barrel is used for the film (2012). Although director Sam Mendes had originally intended to place the gun barrel at the start of the film, he felt that it would be better placed at the end, as in Quantum of Solace. The film's opening shot instead harks back to the gun barrel, with Bond emerging into a corridor, pointing his gun directly at the camera, accompanied by the first two notes of the "James Bond Theme". Mendes recalled, "I tried very hard to put the gun barrel at the beginning and my intention was always to do that. If you see the film, the film starts with Bond walking down a corridor towards camera and lifting a gun. And of course the gun barrel is him walking, stopping and lifting a gun. When I put the two together, it looked ridiculous!"

Like with Quantum of Solace, the blood is dark red and runs down the frame in rivulets. However, Bond moves across the screen substantially slower (at a similar speed to the pre- Casino Royale sequences). Unlike all previous gun barrel openings, Craig swings both his arms as he walks, resulting in a partial glimpse of his gun before he turns to fire. After the blood runs down the frame, the screen fades to black, before being replaced by a title card with a small gun barrel logo celebrating fifty years of Bond films and the text "James Bond Will Return" underneath. Craig shoots one-handed from the chest.

The gun barrel is placed at the immediate opening of , the first time since Die Another Day that a Bond film has opened with the gun barrel. The gun barrel design is reminiscent of the 2D-style gun barrels designed by Maurice Binder pre-1989, although slightly blurrier, it also resembles the Pierce Brosnan era gun barrels. Daniel Craig moves at an average speed (again swinging both of his arms as he walks, but this time resulting in his gun being made much more prominently visible), before spinning, facing the camera and firing, to which the lighting grows darker: it silhouettes Bond's figure and the blood runs down the screen, looking similar but noticeably slower than in Quantum of Solace and Skyfall. Craig shoots one-handed again from the chest.

The gun barrel appears at the opening of No Time to Die, the final Bond film to feature Daniel Craig. In the International release, the gun barrel begins from the center screen after its transition from the Universal Pictures logo where it moves offscreen to the left before reverting to its traditional dot blinking sequence from left to right. This is omitted from the US release as it starts with the traditional dot blinking sequence. The gun barrel uses the glimmer effect for the first time since 1971, with the design being simpler, similar to that of Quantum of Solace. Craig this time swings his left arm instead of both, with a partial glimpse of his gun, while also walking near the same pace as in Quantum of Solace. After spinning around to the camera, he shoots the gun from his right breastbone, arching slightly to his right. The sequence omits the running blood for the very first time fading to white (possibly foreshadowing Bond's death), and instead zooms into the first scene through the middle. This is also the first gun barrel sequence since Die Another Day where Bond is wearing a dinner suit.

A scene during the climax of the film pays homage to the sequence when Bond enters a cylindrical corridor from the side and quickly spins 90° anti-clockwise in response to a henchman shooting at him, firing towards the camera.

From Dr. No to Diamonds Are Forever, the gun barrel sequences by Bob Simmons, Sean Connery, and George Lazenby feature James Bond in a business suit and trilby. For his first two films, Roger Moore's Bond continues this tradition but without the hat. The following films, from The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) through Die Another Day (2002), feature Bond in black tie, wearing a dinner suit (tuxedo). In Casino Royale, Daniel Craig's James Bond is the first shown wearing a more casual ensemble and an open-necked shirt; his attire reverts to a business suit in Quantum of Solace, which is retained for Skyfall and Spectre. The 007 Legends video game tie-in reverts to the dinner suit. No Time To Die has Bond in a dinner suit.

The gun barrel sequence is traditionally accompanied by an arrangement of the " James Bond Theme", a trademark established in Dr. No.

A slightly different version of the theme has been used in each film, often reflecting the styles and locations featured. Some composers have not used the familiar opening bars that punctuate the appearance of the white dots. Others, while retaining them, have felt free to noticeably alter the usual rendition, e.g. Michael Kamen and Éric Serra, who scored Licence to Kill and GoldenEye respectively. Kamen's orchestration was a symphonic fanfare, while Serra's arrangement is played by synthesiser.

Casino Royale has the only gun barrel sequence which omits the "James Bond Theme" completely, instead featuring the opening bars of " You Know My Name" by Chris Cornell. The "James Bond Theme" returns to accompany the gun barrel sequence in Quantum of Solace, where it continues into the credits. The same goes with Skyfall's gun barrel, though the theme starts before the sequence in the last scene of the film when the new M gives 007 the dossier for his next mission.

The gun barrel sequence is widely used in advertisements and merchandise. References to its circular motif regularly appear in the films' trailers. A version of the sequence is used at the start of the 2012 documentary Everything or Nothing: The Untold Story of 007 which showed each Bond composited together, turning and shooting.

The music videos to the James Bond title themes " A View to a Kill", " The Living Daylights", " Licence to Kill", " GoldenEye", " Tomorrow Never Dies", " Die Another Day" and " Another Way to Die" each feature their own variation of the gun barrel sequence.

Because the gun barrel sequence is copyrighted by Eon, the non-Eon Bond film Never Say Never Again, released by rival Warner Bros., instead employed a frame filled with 007's, with the camera zooming into the one in the middle of the screen. There is, however, a scene in which James Bond and Maximilian Largo play a video game together. The nuclear missile defense shield used in the game resembles a gun barrel.

The sequence is commonly used in James Bond video games and their marketing. GoldenEye 007 for the Nintendo 64 uses the gun barrel sequence in the opening titles. A commercial for The World Is Not Enough parodied the gun-barrel by replacing Bond with a man who resembled Valentin Zukovsky; he was shot at with a machine-gun before diving off-screen. It was used in a commercial for the video game Agent Under Fire asking, "Do you have what it takes to be Bond?", and showing people trying to repeat the shot, but spoiling the try. and Everything or Nothing each use a version similar to the Pierce Brosnan films. From Russia with Love uses the Bob Simmons gun barrel from the film of the same name. In the video game adaptation of Quantum of Solace, the gun barrel resembles the one used for Casino Royale, as the game adapts elements from both films. The 2010 video game Blood Stone does not feature the gun barrel sequence in-game, but an unused animation of it (strongly resembling the Quantum of Solace film version) is viewable in the PC port's game files. Instead, the game has gun barrel motifs in its "focus aim" system and briefly in early trailers. Both versions of the GoldenEye remakes, GoldenEye 007 (2010) for the Wii and its PS3/Xbox counterpart GoldenEye: Reloaded (2011), have no gun barrel featured at all save for the box art and a brief reference in the opening titles. 2012's 007 Legends opens with the gun barrel as the start screen, with a design somewhat akin to that of . I.O Interactive's new title Project 007 uses an original gun barrel design in its marketing, both the teaser image and trailer.

As with any cultural icon, the gun barrel sequence has inspired numerous parodies and takeoffs since its first appearance in 1962. The sequence has been spoofed in films, sitcoms, cartoons and in advertisements, including: Bons Baisers de Hong Kong, Dave Allen at Large, Teen Titans Go!, The Simpsons, SpongeBob SquarePants, , American Dad!, Monty Python's Flying Circus, , Garfield and Friends, Yogi's Treasure Hunt, and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic. WWE wrestler Cesaro's entrance was also similar at one point to that of the James Bond gun barrel sequence.

In the 1986 horror/comedy film Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives, the opening credits show Jason Voorhees, the main antagonist in the series, emulating the gun barrel sequence by walking across the screen in a Bond-like fashion and then turning to face the camera whilst swinging his signature machete, drenching the screen with blood in a similar manner to the original Bond sequences.

In 2021, MI6, which has historically distanced itself from the Bond franchise, released the image of its annual Christmas Card, which that year featured Father Christmas posing with a candy cane against a backdrop reminiscent of the Bond movies' gun barrel sequence.

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The gun barrel sequence is a signature device featured in nearly every James Bond film. Shot from the point of view of a presumed assassin, it features James Bond walking, turning, and then shooting directly at camera, causing blood to run down the screen.

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An advanced persistent threat ( APT) is a stealthy threat actor, typically a nation state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. In recent times, the term may also refer to non-state-sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals.

Such threat actors' motivations are typically political or economic. Every major business sector has recorded instances of cyberattacks by advanced actors with specific goals, whether to steal, spy, or disrupt. These targeted sectors include government, defense, financial services, legal services, industrial, telecoms, consumer goods and many more. Some groups utilize traditional espionage vectors, including social engineering, human intelligence and infiltration to gain access to a physical location to enable network attacks. The purpose of these attacks is to install custom malware (malicious software).

The median "dwell-time", the time an APT attack goes undetected, differs widely between regions. FireEye reported the mean dwell-time for 2018 in the Americas as 71 days, EMEA as 177 days, and APAC as 204 days. Such a long dwell-time allows attackers a significant amount of time to go through the attack cycle, propagate, and achieve their objective.

Definitions of precisely what an APT is can vary, but can be summarized by their named requirements below:

Advanced - Operators behind the threat have a full spectrum of intelligence-gathering techniques at their disposal. These may include commercial and open source computer intrusion technologies and techniques, but may also extend to include the intelligence apparatus of a state. While individual components of the attack may not be considered particularly "advanced" (e.g. malware components generated from commonly available do-it-yourself malware construction kits, or the use of easily procured exploit materials), their operators can typically access and develop more advanced tools as required. They often combine multiple targeting methods, tools, and techniques in order to reach and compromise their target and maintain access to it. Operators may also demonstrate a deliberate focus on operational security that differentiates them from "less advanced" threats.

Persistent - Operators have specific objectives, rather than opportunistically seeking information for financial or other gain. This distinction implies that the attackers are guided by external entities. The targeting is conducted through continuous monitoring and interaction in order to achieve the defined objectives. It does not mean a barrage of constant attacks and malware updates. In fact, a "low-and-slow" approach is usually more successful. If the operator loses access to their target they usually will reattempt access, and most often, successfully. One of the operator's goals is to maintain long-term access to the target, in contrast to threats who only need access to execute a specific task.

Threat - APTs are a threat because they have both capability and intent. APT attacks are executed by coordinated human actions, rather than by mindless and automated pieces of code. The operators have a specific objective and are skilled, motivated, organized and well funded. Actors are not limited to state sponsored groups.

Warnings against targeted, socially-engineered emails dropping trojans to exfiltrate sensitive information were published by UK and US CERT organisations in 2005. This method was used throughout the early 1990s and does not in itself constitute an APT. The term "advanced persistent threat" has been cited as originating from the United States Air Force in 2006 with Colonel Greg Rattray cited as the individual who coined the term.

The Stuxnet computer worm, which targeted the computer hardware of Iran's nuclear program, is one example of an APT attack. In this case, the Iranian government might consider the Stuxnet creators to be an advanced persistent threat.[citation needed ]

Within the computer security community, and increasingly within the media, the term is almost always used in reference to a long-term pattern of sophisticated computer network exploitation aimed at governments, companies, and political activists, and by extension, also to ascribe the A, P and T attributes to the groups behind these attacks. Advanced persistent threat (APT) as a term may be shifting focus to computer-based hacking due to the rising number of occurrences. PC World reported an 81 percent increase from 2010 to 2011 of particularly advanced targeted computer attacks.

Actors in many countries have used cyberspace as a means to gather intelligence on individuals and groups of individuals of interest. The United States Cyber Command is tasked with coordinating the US military's offensive and defensive cyber operations.

Numerous sources have alleged that some APT groups are affiliated with, or are agents of, governments of sovereign states. Businesses holding a large quantity of personally identifiable information are at high risk of being targeted by advanced persistent threats, including:

A Bell Canada study provided deep research into the anatomy of APTs and uncovered widespread presence in Canadian government and critical infrastructure. Attribution was established to Chinese and Russian actors.

Actors behind advanced persistent threats create a growing and changing risk to organizations' financial assets, intellectual property, and reputation by following a continuous process or kill chain:

Target specific organizations for a singular objective

Attempt to gain a foothold in the environment (common tactics include spear phishing emails)

Use the compromised systems as access into the target network

Deploy additional tools that help fulfill the attack objective

Cover tracks to maintain access for future initiatives

The global landscape of APT's from all sources is sometimes referred to in the singular as "the" APT, as are references to the actor behind a specific incident or series of incidents, but the definition of APT includes both actor and method.

In 2013, Mandiant presented results of their research on alleged Chinese attacks using APT method between 2004 and 2013 that followed similar lifecycle:

Initial compromise - performed by use of social engineering and spear phishing, over email, using zero-day viruses. Another popular infection method was planting malware on a website that the victim's employees will be likely to visit.

Establish foothold - plant remote administration software in victim's network, create net backdoors and tunnels allowing stealth access to its infrastructure.

Escalate privileges - use exploits and password cracking to acquire administrator privileges over victim's computer and possibly expand it to Windows domain administrator accounts.

Internal reconnaissance - collect information on surrounding infrastructure, trust relationships, Windows domain structure.

Move laterally - expand control to other workstations, servers and infrastructure elements and perform data harvesting on them.

Maintain presence - ensure continued control over access channels and credentials acquired in previous steps.

Complete mission - exfiltrate stolen data from victim's network.

In incidents analysed by Mandiant, the average period over which the attackers controlled the victim's network was one year, with longest - almost five years. The infiltrations were allegedly performed by Shanghai-based Unit 61398 of People's Liberation Army. Chinese officials have denied any involvement in these attacks.

Previous reports from Secdev had previously discovered and implicated Chinese actors.

There are tens of millions of malware variations, which makes it extremely challenging to protect organizations from APT. While APT activities are stealthy and hard to detect, the command and control network traffic associated with APT can be detected at the network layer level with sophisticated methods. Deep log analyses and log correlation from various sources is of limited usefulness in detecting APT activities. It is challenging to separate noises from legitimate traffic. Traditional security technology and methods have been ineffective in detecting or mitigating APTs. Active cyber defense has yielded greater efficacy in detecting and prosecuting APTs (find, fix, finish) when applying cyber threat intelligence to hunt and adversary pursuit activities. Human-Introduced Cyber Vulnerabilities (HICV) are a weak cyber link that are neither well understood nor mitigated, constituting a significant attack vector.

Since Xi Jinping became General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in 2012, the Ministry of State Security gained more responsibility over cyberespionage vis-à-vis the People's Liberation Army, and currently oversees various APT groups. According to security researcher Timo Steffens "The APT landscape in China is run in a 'whole country' approach, leveraging skills from universities, individual, and private and public sectors."

List of Advanced Persistent Threat Groups

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An advanced persistent threat ( APT) is a stealthy threat actor, typically a nation state or state-sponsored group, which gains unauthorized access to a computer network and remains undetected for an extended period. In recent times, the term may also refer to non-state-sponsored groups conducting large-scale targeted intrusions for specific goals.

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The name "Petya" is a reference to the 1995 James Bond film GoldenEye, wherein Petya is one of the two Soviet weapon satellites which carry a "Goldeneye"—an atomic bomb detonated in low Earth orbit to produce an electromagnetic pulse. A Twitter account that Heise suggested may have belonged to the author of the malware, named "Janus Cybercrime Solutions" after Alec Trevelyan's crime group in GoldenEye, had an avatar with an image of GoldenEye character Boris Grishenko, a Russian hacker and antagonist in the film played by Scottish actor Alan Cumming.

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Petya is a family of encrypting malware that was first discovered in 2016. The malware targets Microsoft Windows-based systems, infecting the master boot record to execute a payload that encrypts a hard drive's file system table and prevents Windows from booting. It subsequently demands that the user make a payment in Bitcoin in order to regain access to the system.

Variants of Petya were first seen in March 2016, which propagated via infected e-mail attachments. In June 2017, a new variant of Petya was used for a global cyberattack, primarily targeting Ukraine. The new variant propagates via the EternalBlue exploit, which is generally believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), and was used earlier in the year by the WannaCry ransomware. Kaspersky Lab referred to this new version as NotPetya to distinguish it from the 2016 variants, due to these differences in operation. In addition, although it purports to be ransomware, this variant was modified so that it is unable to actually revert its own changes. The NotPetya attacks have been blamed on the Russian government, specifically the Sandworm hacking group within the GRU Russian military intelligence organization, by security researchers, Google, and several governments.

Petya was discovered in March 2016; Check Point noted that while it had achieved fewer infections than other ransomware active in early 2016, such as CryptoWall, it contained notable differences in operation that caused it to be "immediately flagged as the next step in ransomware evolution". Another variant of Petya discovered in May 2016 contained a secondary payload used if the malware cannot achieve administrator-level access.

The name "Petya" is a reference to the 1995 film , wherein Petya is one of the two Soviet weapon satellites which carry a "Goldeneye"-an atomic bomb detonated in low Earth orbit to produce an electromagnetic pulse. A Twitter account that suggested may have belonged to the author of the malware, named "Janus Cybercrime Solutions" after Alec Trevelyan's crime group in GoldenEye, had an avatar with an image of GoldenEye character Boris Grishenko, a Russian hacker and antagonist in the film played by Scottish actor Alan Cumming.

On 30 August 2018, a regional court in Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast of Ukraine convicted an unnamed Ukrainian citizen to one year in prison after pleading guilty to having spread a version of Petya online.

On 27 June 2017, a major global cyberattack began (Ukrainian companies were among the first to state they were being attacked), utilizing a new variant of Petya. On that day, Kaspersky Lab reported infections in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, the United Kingdom, and the United States, but that the majority of infections targeted Russia and Ukraine, where more than 80 companies were initially attacked, including the National Bank of Ukraine. ESET estimated on 28 June 2017 that 80% of all infections were in Ukraine, with Germany second hardest hit with about 9%. Russian president Vladimir Putin's press secretary, Dmitry Peskov, stated that the attack had caused no serious damage in Russia. Experts believed this was a politically-motivated attack against Ukraine, since it occurred on the eve of the Ukrainian holiday Constitution Day.

Kaspersky dubbed this variant "NotPetya", as it has major differences in its operations in comparison to earlier variants. McAfee engineer Christiaan Beek stated that this variant was designed to spread quickly, and that it had been targeting "complete energy companies, the power grid, bus stations, gas stations, the airport, and banks".

It was believed that the software update mechanism of M.E.Doc-a Ukrainian tax preparation program that, according to F-Secure analyst Mikko Hyppönen, "appears to be de facto" among companies doing business in the country-had been compromised to spread the malware. Analysis by ESET found that a backdoor had been present in the update system for at least six weeks prior to the attack, describing it as a "thoroughly well-planned and well-executed operation". The developers of M.E.Doc denied that they were entirely responsible for the cyberattack, stating that they too were victims.

On 4 July 2017, Ukraine's cybercrime unit seized the company's servers after detecting "new activity" that it believed would result in "uncontrolled proliferation" of malware. Ukraine police advised M.E.Doc users to stop using the software, as it presumed that the backdoor was still present. Analysis of the seized servers showed that software updates had not been applied since 2013, there was evidence of Russian presence, and an employee's account on the servers had been compromised; the head of the units warned that M.E.Doc could be found criminally responsible for enabling the attack because of its negligence in maintaining the security of their servers.

Petya's payload infects the computer's master boot record (MBR), overwrites the Windows bootloader, and triggers a restart. Upon startup, the payload encrypts the Master File Table of the NTFS file system, and then displays the ransom message demanding a payment made in Bitcoin. Meanwhile, the computer's screen displays a purportedly output by chkdsk, Windows' file system scanner, suggesting that the hard drive's sectors are being repaired.

The original payload required the user to grant it administrative privileges; one variant of Petya was bundled with a second payload, Mischa, which activated if Petya failed to install. Mischa is a more conventional ransomware payload that encrypts user documents, as well as executable files, and does not require administrative privileges to execute. The earlier versions of Petya disguised their payload as a PDF file, attached to an e-mail. United States Computer Emergency Response Team (US-CERT) and National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center (NCCIC) released Malware Initial Findings Report (MIFR) about Petya on 30 June 2017.

The "NotPetya" variant used in the 2017 attack uses EternalBlue, an exploit that takes advantage of a vulnerability in Windows' Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. EternalBlue is generally believed to have been developed by the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA); it was leaked in April 2017 and was also used by WannaCry. The malware harvests passwords (using tweaked build of open-source Mimikatz) and uses other techniques to spread to other computers on the same network, and uses those passwords in conjunction with PSExec to run code on other local computers. Additionally, although it still purports to be ransomware, the encryption routine was modified so that the malware could not technically revert its changes. This characteristic, along with other unusual signs in comparison to WannaCry (including the relatively low unlock fee of US$300, and using a single, fixed Bitcoin wallet to collect ransom payments rather than generating a unique ID for each specific infection for tracking purposes), prompted researchers to speculate that this attack was not intended to be a profit-generating venture, but to damage devices quickly, and ride off the media attention WannaCry received by claiming to be ransomware.

It was found that it may be possible to stop the encryption process if an infected computer is immediately shut down when the fictitious chkdsk screen appears, and a security analyst proposed that creating read-only files named perfc and/or perfc.dat in the Windows installation directory could prevent the payload of the current strain from executing. The email address listed on the ransom screen was suspended by its provider, Posteo, for being a violation of its terms of use. As a result, infected users could not actually send the required payment confirmation to the perpetrator. Additionally, if the computer's filesystem was FAT based, the MFT encryption sequence was skipped, and only the ransomware's message was displayed, allowing data to be recovered trivially.

Microsoft had already released patches for supported versions of Windows in March 2017 to address the EternalBlue vulnerability. This was followed by patches for unsupported versions of Windows (such as Windows XP) in May 2017, in the direct wake of WannaCry. Wired believed that "based on the extent of damage Petya has caused so far, though, it appears that many companies have put off patching, despite the clear and potentially devastating threat of a similar ransomware spread." Some enterprises may consider it too disruptive to install updates on certain systems, either due to possible downtime or compatibility concerns, which can be problematic in some environments.

In a report published by Wired, a White House assessment pegged the total damages brought about by NotPetya to more than $10 billion. This was confirmed by former Homeland Security advisor Tom Bossert, who at the time of the attack was the most senior cybersecurity focused official in the US government.

During the attack initiated on 27 June 2017, the radiation monitoring system at Ukraine's Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant went offline. Several Ukrainian ministries, banks and metro systems were also affected. It is said to have been the most destructive cyberattack ever.

Among those affected elsewhere included British advertising company WPP, Maersk Line, American pharmaceutical company Merck & Co. (internationally doing business as MSD), Russian oil company Rosneft (its oil production was unaffected), multinational law firm DLA Piper, French construction company Saint-Gobain and its retail and subsidiary outlets in Estonia, British consumer goods company Reckitt Benckiser, German personal care company Beiersdorf, German logistics company DHL, United States food company Mondelez International, and American hospital operator Heritage Valley Health System. The Cadbury's Chocolate Factory in Hobart, Tasmania, is the first company in Australia to be affected by Petya. On 28 June 2017, JNPT, India's largest container port, had reportedly been affected, with all operations coming to a standstill. Princeton Community Hospital in rural West Virginia will scrap and replace its entire computer network on its path to recovery.

The business interruption to Maersk, the world's largest container ship and supply vessel operator, was estimated between $200m and $300m in lost revenues.

The business impact on FedEx is estimated to be $400m in 2018, according to the company's 2019 annual report.

Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary-General, pressed the alliance to strengthen its cyber defenses, saying that a cyberattack could trigger the Article 5 principle of collective defense.

Mondelez International's insurance carrier, Zurich American Insurance Company, has refused to pay out a claim for cleaning up damage from a Notpetya infection, on the grounds that Notpetya is an "act of war" that is not covered by the policy. Mondelez sued Zurich American for $100 million in 2018; the suit was settled in 2022 with the terms of the settlement remaining confidential.

Europol said it was aware of and urgently responding to reports of a cyber attack in member states of the European Union. The United States Department of Homeland Security was involved and coordinating with its international and local partners. In a letter to the NSA, Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu asked the agency to collaborate more actively with technology companies to notify them of software vulnerabilities and help them prevent future attacks based on malware created by the NSA. On 15 February 2018, the Trump administration blamed Russia for the attack and warned that there would be "international consequences". The United Kingdom and the Australian government also issued similar statements.

In October 2020 the DOJ named further GRU officers in an indictment. At the same time, the UK government blamed GRU's Sandworm also for attacks on the 2020 Summer Games.

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Petya is a family of encrypting malware that was first discovered in 2016. The malware targets Microsoft Windows-based systems, infecting the master boot record to execute a payload that encrypts a hard drive's file system table and prevents Windows from booting.

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GoldenEye is a 1995 spy film, the seventeenth in the James Bond Series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Martin Campbell, it was the first in the series not to utilize any story elements from the works of novelist Ian Fleming. It was also the first James Bond film not produced by Albert R. Broccoli, following his stepping down from Eon Productions and replacement by his daughter, Barbara Broccoli (along with Michael G. Wilson, although Albert was still involved as a consultant producer; it was his final film project before his death in 1996). The story was conceived and written by Michael France, with later collaboration by other writers. In the film, Bond fights to prevent a rogue ex-MI6 agent ( Sean Bean) from using a satellite weapon against London to cause a global financial meltdown.

The film was released after a six-year hiatus in the series caused by legal disputes, during which Timothy Dalton's contract for the role of James Bond expired and he was replaced by Brosnan. M was also recast, with actress Judi Dench becoming the first woman to portray the character, replacing Robert Brown. The role of Miss Moneypenny was also recast, with Caroline Bliss being replaced by Samantha Bond; Desmond Llewelyn was the only actor to reprise his role, as Q. It was the first Bond film made after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, which provided a background for the plot. Principal photography for GoldenEye took place in the UK, Russia, Monte Carlo and Puerto Rico; it was the inaugural film production to be shot at Leavesden Studios. The first Bond film to use computer-generated imagery (CGI), GoldenEye was also the final film of special effects supervisor Derek Meddings's career, and was dedicated to his memory.

The film accumulated a worldwide gross of over US$350 million, considerably better than Dalton's films, without taking inflation into account. It received positive reviews, with critics viewing Brosnan as a definite improvement over his predecessor. It also received award nominations for Best Special Visual Effects and Best Sound from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

In 1986, MI6 agents James Bond and Alec Trevelyan infiltrate a Soviet chemical weapons facility called Arkangel. While Trevelyan is caught and killed by the facility's commanding officer, Colonel Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, Bond destroys the site and escapes.

Nine years later, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Bond attempts to prevent Xenia Onatopp, a member of the Janus crime syndicate, from stealing a Eurocopter Tiger attack helicopter during a military demonstration in Monte Carlo, but is unsuccessful. Returning to MI6 Headquarters in London, Bond oversees MI6 staff monitoring an incident in Severnaya, Siberia, after the stolen helicopter turns up at a radar facility there. An electromagnetic pulse blast suddenly hits the site, destroying it and Russian fighter aircraft, while knocking out some satellite systems in orbit above.

The newly appointed M assigns Bond to investigate, after it is determined the blast came from a Soviet-era satellite armed with a nuclear electromagnetic pulse space-based weapon, codenamed "GoldenEye". Although Janus is suspected of initiating the attack, Bond suspects Ourumov, now a general, was involved because the weapon system required high-level military access. Travelling to Saint Petersburg, Bond is advised by his CIA contact Jack Wade to meet the former KGB agent turned gangster Valentin Zukovsky and have him arrange a meeting with Janus. Escorted to the meeting by Onatopp, Bond discovers that Janus is led by Trevelyan, who had faked his death at Arkangel. He learns that Trevelyan seeks vengeance for his parents: Lienz Cossacks who were betrayed by the British by being repatriated to the Soviet Union after collaborating with the Axis powers during World War II.

Bond is sedated and trapped in the stolen Tiger alongside Natalya Simonova, a survivor of the Severnaya attack. After escaping the helicopter's destruction, the pair are taken into custody and interrogated by Russian Minister of Defence Dimitri Mishkin. The heated argument between the men leads Natalya to affirm Ourumov's involvement in the use of GoldenEye, and that fellow programmer Boris Grishenko survived along with her and is now working for Janus in operating a second GoldenEye satellite. Before Mishkin can act on the information, Ourumov kills him and captures Natalya. Commandeering a tank, Bond pursues Ourumov to a missile train used by Janus. He kills Ourumov and escapes the train with Natalya before it explodes.

Bond and Natalya travel to Cuba, after Boris is traced to a location within the island's jungles. While flying over the area, the pair are shot down. Onatopp is lowered from a helicopter and attacks them, but Bond destroys the helicopter and kills her. The pair uncover a hidden base beneath a large lake, concealing a satellite dish. Bond is captured while trying to rig the base to explode, and learns from Trevelyan that he intends to use GoldenEye to devastate London to conceal the theft of financial records from the Bank of England. Natalya hacks into the satellite and reprograms it to initiate atmospheric re-entry and thus destroy itself. She is then captured as well. While trying to undo her programming, Boris nervously presses on a pen confiscated from Bond, activating a grenade concealed in the pen by Q Branch. Bond knocks the pen from Boris's hand and into a puddle of chemicals that were spilled during an earlier firefight, causing a chemical explosion that allows Bond and Natalya to escape.

To prevent Boris from regaining control of the satellite, Bond sabotages the dish's antenna by jamming its gears. Trevelyan tries to intercept him, and the ensuing fight between the two culminates in Trevelyan being dangled below the antenna. When Trevelyan asks Bond if he is killing him for England, Bond admits it is for himself, before dropping Trevelyan into the bottom of the dish. The GoldenEye satellite is subsequently destroyed. Natalya soon rescues Bond in a commandeered helicopter, moments before the antenna malfunctions and explodes, destroying the base and killing its personnel, with Trevelyan killed by falling debris and Boris killed by ruptured liquid nitrogen canisters. After landing in a meadow, Bond and Natalya prepare to enjoy some solitude together, but are interrupted by the arrival of Wade and a team of U.S. Marines, who escort them to Guantanamo.

Pierce Brosnan as James Bond (007), an MI6 officer assigned to stop the Janus crime syndicate from acquiring "GoldenEye", a clandestine satellite weapon designed and launched by the Soviets during the Cold War.

Sean Bean as Alec Trevelyan (006), initially another 00 officer and Bond's friend, he fakes his death at Arkhangelsk and then establishes the Janus crime syndicate over the following nine years.

Izabella Scorupco as Natalya Simonova, a programmer at the Severnaya lab. She survives the GoldenEye attack on its own control centre.

Famke Janssen as Xenia Onatopp, a Georgian fighter pilot and Trevelyan's henchwoman. A sadistic lust murderer, she enjoys torturing her enemies by asphyxiating them between her thighs.

Joe Don Baker as Jack Wade, a veteran CIA officer on the same mission as Bond. Baker previously played the villainous Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights.

Robbie Coltrane as Valentin Zukovsky, a Russian gangster and ex-KGB officer through whom Bond arranges a meeting with Janus.

Tchéky Karyo as Dimitri Mishkin, the Russian Defence Minister.

Gottfried John as General Arkady Grigorovich Ourumov, a Hero of the Soviet Union, Commander of Russia's Space Division. He is secretly an agent of Janus who abuses his authority and position to obtain control over the GoldenEye.

Alan Cumming as Boris Grishenko, a geeky computer programmer at Severnaya, later revealed to be an affiliate of Janus.

Michael Kitchen as Bill Tanner, M's chief of staff.

Serena Gordon as Caroline, an MI6 psychological and psychiatric evaluator whom Bond seduces at the beginning of the film

Desmond Llewelyn as Q, the head of Q Branch (research and development division of the British Secret Service).

Samantha Bond as Miss Moneypenny, M's secretary.

Judi Dench as M, the head of MI6 and Bond's superior.

Minnie Driver as Irina, Zukovsky's mistress.

Following the release of Licence to Kill in July 1989, pre-production work for the seventeenth film in the James Bond series, the third to star Timothy Dalton (fulfilling his three-film contract), began in May 1990. A poster for the then-upcoming movie was even featured on the Carlton Hotel during the 1990 Cannes Film Festival. In August, The Sunday Times reported that producer Albert R. Broccoli had parted company with screenwriter Richard Maibaum, who had worked on the scripts of all but three Bond films so far, and director John Glen, responsible for the previous five installments of the series. That same year, Broccoli met with potential directors, which included John Landis, Ted Kotcheff, Roger Spottiswoode, and John Byrum.

Broccoli's stepson Michael G. Wilson contributed a script, and co-producer Alfonse Ruggiero Jr. was hired to rewrite. Production was set to start in 1990 in Hong Kong, for a release in late 1991. A 17-page treatment was dated May 1990 and featured James Bond on a mission in East Asia; Bond must investigate why an unknown entity caused a chemical plant in Scotland to inexplicably explode, as well as a threat ordering the British and Chinese to relinquish their authority over Hong Kong. Bond would be aided by an ex-CIA freelance thief named Connie Webb and a senior spy named Denholm Crisp, with the trail leading towards a corrupt technology magnate called Sir Henry Lee Ching. It also would have featured the Chinese Ministry of State Security.

Wilson and Ruggiero would revise the plotline further in a script dated July 1990. It changed the opening to Bond using a hang-gliding competition as cover to infiltrate a chemical weapons plant, where Bond must fend off against a deadly security robot. The film proper begins at the South China Sea where a British Harrier jet malfunctions, ejects its pilot and starts flying on its own and then crashing into a village in China. MI6 subsequently learns that numerous British military-technology manufacturing plants have been recently broken into and send James Bond to track down the singular burglar. This draft also featured a climax in which the villain survived the destruction of their lair and subsequently attempts to kill Bond.[citation needed ]

In January 1991, the script was further rewritten by William Osborne and William Davies. After the Gulf War, the chemical plant opening from prior script revised, now taking place in Libya. The film then would have focused on a high-tech stealth fighter being stolen by American mobsters, with Bond trying to find it first in Vancouver and then in Las Vegas. The aircraft is subsequently secured by a Hong Kong-based industrialist Sir Henry Ferguson, who wants to use it allow a Chinese military general to stage a nuclear attack and coup d'état against Mainland China, with the general then leaving the industrialist in control of Hong Kong.

Dalton declared in a 2010 interview that the script was ready and "we were talking directors" before the project entered development hell caused by legal problems between Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, parent company of the series' distributor United Artists, and Broccoli's Danjaq, owners of the Bond film rights. In 1990, MGM/UA was to be sold for $1.5 billion to Qintex, an Australian-American financial services company that had begun making television broadcast and entertainment purchases. When Qintex could not provide a $50 million letter of credit, the deal fell apart. Giancarlo Parretti, CEO of a company called Pathé Entertainment (unrelated to the French studio Pathé) quickly moved in to buy MGM/UA for $1.2 billion and merged the companies to create MGM-Pathé Communications. Parretti intended to sell off the distribution rights of the studio's catalogue so he could collect advance payments to finance the buyout. This included international broadcasting rights to the 007 library at cut-rate prices, leading Danjaq to sue, alleging the licensing violated the Bond distribution agreements the company made with United Artists in 1962, while denying Danjaq a share of the profits. Countersuits were filed. When asked what he would do following resolution of the lawsuits, Dalton told Broccoli that it was unlikely that he would continue in the role.

Parretti's behavior led to the bankruptcy of MGM-Pathé, and additional lawsuits eventually resulted in a foreclosure by financial backer Crédit Lyonnais in 1992. The Bond rights lawsuits were settled in December 1992, and the renamed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, now run by a Crédit Lyonnais subsidiary, began to explore further development of Bond 17 with Danjaq in 1993. Dalton was still Broccoli's choice to play Bond, but the star's original seven-year contract with Danjaq expired in 1993. Dalton has stated that the delay of his third film effectively ended the contract in 1990.

In May 1993, MGM announced a seventeenth James Bond film was in pre-production, to be based on a screenplay by Michael France. France studied for his script by travelling to Russia to interview former KGB agents and visit nuclear research laboratories. With Broccoli's health deteriorating (he died seven months after the release of GoldenEye), his daughter Barbara Broccoli described him as taking "a bit of a back seat" in the film's production. Barbara and Michael G. Wilson took the lead roles in production while Albert Broccoli oversaw the production of GoldenEye as a consulting producer, credited as "presenter". Wilson wanted to frame the film in the post-Cold War era and the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, when there were concerns of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Broccoli contacted Dalton to ask again if he would come back and now found him open to the idea.

In August 1993, France had turned in his first draft, and continued to work on the script. In further discussion with Broccoli, Dalton expressed excitement over taking the best elements of his previous two films and combining them as a basis for one final film. Broccoli stressed that, after the long gap without a film, Dalton could not come back and just do a single film but needed to return for multiple films. Despite France's screenplay being completed by January 1994, production was pushed back with no concrete start. In April 1994, Dalton officially resigned from the role. In a 2014 interview, Dalton revealed that he agreed with Broccoli's expectation but could not commit to appearing in four or five more films.

GoldenEye was Pierce Brosnan's first appearance as Bond

Further work was done on the screenplay throughout 1994. France's screenplay introduced the character of "Augustus Trevelyan", Bond's MI6 superior and a defector to Soviet Union, as the main villain. Like in the completed version, his scheme involved an stolen orbital EMP weapon. The first draft consisted of a cold open of an Aston Martin car chase aboard a high-speed train. However, Barbara Broccoli was concerned France's screenplay was still too unstructured and brought in Jeffrey Caine to rewrite it. Caine kept many of France's ideas but added the prologue prior to the credits and rewrote Trevelyan closer to his iteration in the final film. Kevin Wade did a three-week rewrite and Bruce Feirstein added the finishing touches. In the film, the writing credit was shared by Caine and Feirstein, while France was credited with only the story, an arrangement he felt was unfair, particularly as he believed the additions made were not an improvement on his original version. Wade did not receive an official credit, but was acknowledged in the naming of Jack Wade, the CIA character he created.

While the story was not based on a work by Ian Fleming, the title GoldenEye traces its origins to the name of Fleming's Jamaican estate where he wrote the Bond novels. Fleming gave a number of origins for the name of his estate, including Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye and Operation Goldeneye, a contingency plan Fleming himself developed during the Second World War in case of a Nazi invasion through Spain.

Although released only six years after Licence to Kill, world politics had changed dramatically in the interim. GoldenEye was the first James Bond film to be produced after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold War, and there was doubt over the character's relevance in the modern world. Some in the film industry felt it would be "futile" for the Bond series to make a comeback, and that it was best left as "an icon of the past". The producers even thought of new concepts for the series, such as a period piece set in the 1960s, a female 007, or a black James Bond. Ultimately, they chose to return to the basics of the series, not following the sensitive and caring Bond of the Dalton films or the political correctness that started to permeate the decade. The film came to be seen as a successful revitalisation, and it effectively adapted the series for the 1990s. One of GoldenEye's innovations includes the casting of a female M. In the film, the new M quickly establishes her authority, remarking that Bond is a "sexist, misogynist dinosaur" and a "relic of the Cold War". This is an early indication that Bond is portrayed as far less tempestuous than Timothy Dalton's Bond from 1989.

John Woo was approached as the director, and turned down the opportunity, but said he was honoured by the offer. Michael Caton-Jones and Peter Medak were also considered. The producers then chose New Zealander Martin Campbell as the director. Brosnan later described Campbell as "warrior-like in his take on the piece" and that "there was a huge passion there on both our parts".

To replace Dalton, the producers chose Pierce Brosnan, who, after Dalton had initially turned down the role, had been prevented from succeeding Roger Moore in 1986 because of his contract to continue starring in the television series Remington Steele. He was introduced to the public at a press conference at the Regent Palace Hotel on 8 June 1994. Before negotiating with Brosnan, Mel Gibson, Hugh Grant, and Liam Neeson passed on the role. Neeson said that he passed on the role as his then fiancée Natasha Richardson wouldn't marry him if he accepted the role. Broccoli and Campbell met with Ralph Fiennes about taking the part. Paul McGann auditioned the role and was the studio's second choice if Brosnan turned down the role. Brosnan was paid $1.2 million for the film, out of a total budget of $60 million. Judi Dench, an English actress, was cast as M replacing Robert Brown, making this the first film of the series featuring a female M. The decision is widely believed to have been inspired by Stella Rimington having become head of MI5 in 1992.

The character of Alec Trevelyan was originally scripted as "Augustus Trevelyan" and envisaged as an older character and a mentor figure to Bond. Anthony Hopkins and Alan Rickman were reportedly sought for the role but both turned it down. Sean Bean was subsequently cast and the character was rewritten as Bond's peer. The character of Natalya Simionova, originally scripted as "Marina Varoskaya", was supposed to be Paulina Porizkova, but Izabella Scorupco was subsequently cast. The character of Boris Griscenko was originally scripted as "Alexei Makvenio", but Alan Cumming was still in the early cast. The character of Valentin Zukovsky was originally script as Valentin Kosgyn, aka Romaly. The character of General Ourumov was originally named "Illya Borchenko". The character General Pushkin from The Living Daylights appeared in France's initial script but the character was rewritten into Defense Minister Mishkin.

Principal photography for the film began on 16 January 1995 and continued until 2 June. Eon was unable to film at Pinewood Studios, the usual studio for Bond films, because it had been reserved for First Knight. Instead, with little time to find a space which could hold the number of large scale sets needed for production, Eon found an old Rolls-Royce factory at Leavesden Aerodrome in Hertfordshire, which had wide, tall, and open aircraft hangars that were uniquely suited to be converted into stages for a new studio. Eon leased the site for the duration of their shoot, gutted the factory and turned it into stages, workshops and offices, and dubbed it Leavesden Studios. This process is shown on the 2006 DVD's special features.

The Arecibo Observatory was the site of the film's climactic scene

The bungee jump was filmed at the Contra Dam (also known as the Verzasca or Locarno Dam) in Ticino, Switzerland. The casino scenes and the Tiger helicopter's demonstration were shot in Monte Carlo. Reference footage for the tank chase was shot on location in Saint Petersburg and matched to the studio at Leavesden. The climactic scenes on the satellite dish were shot at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The actual MI6 headquarters were used for external views of M's office. Some of the scenes in St. Petersburg were actually shot in London - the Epsom Downs Racecourse doubled as the airport - to reduce expenses and security concerns, as the second unit sent to Russia required bodyguards.

The French Navy provided full use of the frigate La Fayette and their newest helicopter, the Eurocopter Tiger, to the film's production team. The French government also allowed the use of Navy logos as part of the promotional campaign for it. However, the producers had a dispute with the French Ministry of Defence over Brosnan's opposition to French nuclear weapons testing and his involvement with Greenpeace; as a result, the French premiere of the film was cancelled.

The sequences involving the armored train were filmed on the Nene Valley Railway, near Peterborough in England. The train was composed of a British Rail Class 20 diesel-electric locomotive and a pair of Mark 1 coaches, all three heavily disguised to resemble a Soviet armoured train.

GoldenEye's opening title sequence featured a woman destroying the hammer and sickle.

The film was the last one of special effects supervisor Derek Meddings, to whom it was dedicated. Meddings' major contribution was miniatures. It was also the first Bond film to use computer-generated imagery. Among the model effects are most external shots of Severnaya, the scene where Janus' train crashes into the tank, and the lake which hides the satellite dish, since the producers could not find a round lake in Puerto Rico. The climax in the satellite dish used scenes in Arecibo, a model built by Meddings' team and scenes shot with stuntmen in Britain.

Stunt car coordinator Rémy Julienne described the car chase between the Aston Martin DB5 and the Ferrari F355 as between "a perfectly shaped, old and vulnerable vehicle and a racecar." The stunt had to be meticulously planned as the cars are vastly different. Nails had to be attached to the F355 tyres to make it skid, and during one take of the sliding vehicles, the two cars collided.

The largest stunt sequence in the film was the tank chase, which took around six weeks to film, partly on location in St. Petersburg and partly on the old de Havilland runway at Leavesden. According to second-unit director Ian Sharp it was thought up by special effects supervisor Chris Corbould, during a pre-production meeting that lasted only ten minutes. Parts of the tank chase were filmed at the backlot of Leavesden, parts on location in St. Petersburg. The whole chase was storyboarded very carefully, said Sharp. A Russian T-54/T-55 tank, on loan from the East England Military Museum, was modified with the addition of fake explosive reactive armour panels. To avoid destroying the pavement on the city streets of St. Petersburg, the steel off-road tracks of the T-54/55 were replaced with the rubber-shoed tracks from a British Chieftain tank. The T-55 tank used in the film is now on permanent display at Old Buckenham Airfield, where the East England Military Museum is based.

For the confrontation between Bond and Trevelyan inside the antenna cradle, director Campbell decided to take inspiration from Bond's fight with Red Grant in From Russia with Love. Brosnan and Bean did all the stunts themselves, except for one take where one is thrown against the wall. Brosnan injured his hand while filming the extending ladder sequence, making producers delay his scenes and film the ones in Severnaya earlier.

The opening 220 m (720 ft) bungee jump at Arkhangelsk, shot at the Contra Dam in Switzerland and performed by Wayne Michaels, was voted the best movie stunt of all time in a 2002 Sky Movies poll, and set a record for the highest bungee jump off a fixed structure. The ending of the pre-credits sequence with Bond jumping after the aeroplane features Jacques Malnuit riding the motorcycle to the edge and jumping, and B.J. Worth diving after the plane - which was a working aircraft, with Worth adding that part of the difficulty of the stunt was the kerosene striking his face.

The fall of Communism in Russia is the main focus of the opening titles, designed by Daniel Kleinman (who took over from Maurice Binder after his death in 1991). They show the collapse and destruction of several structures associated with the Soviet Union, such as the red star, statues of Communist leaders-notably Joseph Stalin-and the hammer and sickle. In an interview, Kleinman said they were meant to be "a kind of story telling sequence" showing that "what was happening in Communist countries was Communism was falling down". According to producer Michael G. Wilson, some Communist parties protested against "Socialist symbols being destroyed not by governments, but by bikini-clad women", especially certain Indian Communist parties, which threatened to boycott the film.

The film was the first one bound by BMW's three-picture deal, so the producers were offered BMW's latest roadster, the BMW Z3. It was featured in the film months before its release, and a limited edition "007 model" sold out within a day of being available to order. As part of the car's marketing strategy, several Z3's were used to drive journalists from a complimentary meal at the Rainbow Room restaurant to its premiere at the Radio City Music Hall.

For the film, a convertible Z3 is equipped with the usual Q refinements, including a self-destruct feature and Stinger missiles behind the headlights. The Z3 does not have much screen time and none of the gadgets are used, which Martin Campbell attributed to the deal with BMW coming in the last stages of production. The Z3's appearance in the film is thought to be the most successful promotion through product placement in 1995. Ten years later, The Hollywood Reporter listed it as one of the most successful product placements in recent years. The article quoted Mary Lou Galician, head of media analysis and criticism at Arizona State University's Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication, as saying that the news coverage of Bond's switch from Aston Martin to BMW "generated hundreds of millions of dollars of media exposure for the movie and all of its marketing partners."

In addition, all computers in the film were provided by IBM, and in some scenes (such as the pen grenade scene towards the end), the OS/2 Warp splash screen can be seen on computer monitors. During the Q Lab scene, James Bond can be seen using an IBM ThinkPad laptop ignoring Q's instructions on the use of a leather belt modified with a piton gun. This moment was not present in early drafts of the film, but it is understood that director Martin Campbell had 007 fiddling with the keyboard of this computer as a way to show Bond was visibly ignoring the Quartermaster, but also as a way increase IBM's product placement arrangement.

A modified Omega Seamaster Professional Diver 300M wristwatch features as a spy gadget device several times in the film, concealing a cutting laser and detonator remote. This was the first time Bond was shown to be wearing a watch by Omega, and he has since worn Omega watches in every subsequent production.

While the scene of the tank running through a truck full of drinks was storyboarded with a Pepsi truck, Perrier signed in a deal to be featured, providing around 90,000 cans for the scene.

As James Bond entered in the 1990s, hand-painted poster designs were eschewed in favor of cutting-edge photomontage tools, promoting the return of 007 portrayed by Pierce Brosnan. Under the direction of John Parkinson and Gordon Arnell from the marketing department of MGM, many posters were produced for the film designed by Randi Braun and Earl Klasky with photographs taken by John Stoddart, Terry O'Neill, Keith Hamshere and George Withear. In the United States, an advance poster featured a gold-hued close-up on Bond's eyes pointing his Walther PPK handgun towards the viewer. The logo of the film was not displayed, only a tagline: "There is no substitute" and the 007 gun logo, in red. For the international market, a different advance poster was issued on which Pierce Brosnan appeared in black dinner jacket holding his silenced PPK gun, next to a 007 logo and under a different tagline: "You know the name. You know the number". This time, the film's logo was introduced, using the MatrixWide typeface (earlier versions of this logo used a modified FrizQuadrata typography). The theatrical artwork had two variations: both retained the same black background and action scenes collage surrounding the three principals (Pierce Brosnan, Izabella Scorupco and Famke Janssen), but the International poster had James Bond in tuxedo while in the US version only had the secret agent's face emerging from the shadows. The US variant was used for the cover artwork of the film's soundtrack and the box of the Nintendo 64 video game adaptation released in 1997. On a 2015 interview regarding his take on the GoldenEye poster campaign, photographer John Stoddart (who previously worked with Brosnan for a Brioni photoshoot) said his only directive was "Bond, girls and guns"

In July 1995, a teaser trailer for GoldenEye was attached to prints of Roger Donaldson's film after its debut on the syndicated US television program Extra, followed by a more generic theatrical trailer which revealed Bond's confrontation with agent 006. Asked about the inclusion of this spoiler in a 2019 interview, former MGM/UA Vice-president Jeff Kleeman pointed out that he felt "the idea of 006 vs 007 was a selling point". Both trailers were directed by Joe Nimziki.

The theme song, " GoldenEye", was written by Bono and the Edge, and was performed by Tina Turner. As the producers did not collaborate with Bono or the Edge, the film score did not incorporate any of the theme song's melodies, as was the case in previous James Bond films. Swedish group Ace of Base had also written a proposed theme song, but label Arista Records pulled the band out of the project fearing the negative impact in case the film flopped. The song was then rewritten as their single " The Juvenile".

The soundtrack was composed and performed by Éric Serra. Prolific Bond composer John Barry said that despite an offer by Barbara Broccoli, he turned it down. Serra's score has been criticised: Richard von Busack, in , wrote that it was "more appropriate for a ride on an elevator than a ride on a roller coaster", and Filmtracks said Serra "failed completely in his attempt to tie GoldenEye to the franchise's past."

Martin Campbell would later express his disappointment with the score, citing budget constraints and difficulty working with Serra, who became uncooperative when asked to re-score the St. Petersburg tank chase after Campbell rejected his submitted track. John Altman would later provide the music for the sequence, while Serra's original track can still be found on the soundtrack as "A Pleasant Drive in St. Petersburg".

Serra composed and performed a number of synthesiser tracks, including the version of the " James Bond Theme" that plays during the gun barrel sequence, while Altman and David Arch provided the more traditional symphonic music. The end credits song, Serra's "The Experience of Love", was based on a short cue Serra had originally written for Luc Besson's one year earlier.

GoldenEye premiered on 13 November 1995, at the Radio City Music Hall, and went on general release in the United States on 17 November 1995. The UK premiere followed on 21 November at the Odeon Leicester Square, with general release three days later. The film also had the German premiere on 5 December, at which Brosnan was present, at Mathäser-Filmpalast ( de) in Munich, with general release on December 28; and the Swedish premiere on 8 December, attended by Brosnan and Scorupco, at Rigoletto ( sv) in Stockholm, with general release on the same day. The after-party took place at Stockholm's Grand Hôtel. Brosnan boycotted the French premiere to support Greenpeace's protest against the French nuclear testing program.

The film earned over $26 million during its opening across 2,667 cinemas in the United States and Canada. In the United Kingdom, it grossed a record $5.5 million for a non-holiday week from 448 theatres and was the third biggest in history, behind Jurassic Park and Batman Forever. It had the fourth-highest worldwide gross of all films in 1995, and was the most successful Bond film since , taking inflation into account.

GoldenEye posted the largest revenue increase over its predecessor of any Bond film; when adjusted for inflation, it grossed 83% more worldwide than the preceding Bond film, 1989's Licence to Kill.

The film was edited to be guaranteed a PG-13 rating from the MPAA and a 12 rating from the BBFC. The cuts included the visible bullet impact to Trevelyan's head when he is shot in the prologue, several additional deaths during the sequence in which Onatopp guns down the workers at the Severnaya station, more explicit footage and violent behaviour in the Admiral's death, extra footage of Onatopp's death, and Bond knocking her out with a rabbit punch in the car. In 2006, the film was remastered and re-edited for the James Bond Ultimate Edition DVD in which the BBFC cuts were restored, causing the rating to be changed to 15. However, the original MPAA edits still remain.

The critical reception of the film was mostly positive. Film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes holds it at a 80% approval rating with an approval rating of 7.1/10, based on 85 reviews. The website's critics consensus states: "The first and best Pierce Brosnan Bond film, GoldenEye brings the series into a more modern context, and the result is a 007 entry that's high-tech, action-packed, and urbane." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 65 out of 100, based on 19 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A−" on an A+ to F scale.

In the Chicago Sun-Times, Roger Ebert gave the film 3 stars out of 4, and said Brosnan's Bond was "somehow more sensitive, more vulnerable, more psychologically complete" than the previous ones, also commenting on Bond's "loss of innocence" since previous films. James Berardinelli described Brosnan as "a decided improvement over his immediate predecessor" with a "flair for wit to go along with his natural charm", but added that "fully one-quarter of GoldenEye is momentum-killing padding."

Several reviewers lauded M's appraisal of Bond as a "sexist, misogynist dinosaur", with Todd McCarthy in saying the film "breathes fresh creative and commercial life" into the series. John Puccio of DVD Town said that it was "an eye- and ear-pleasing, action-packed entry in the Bond series" and that the film gave Bond "a bit of humanity, too". Ian Nathan of said that it "revamps that indomitable British spirit" and that the Die Hard movies "don't even come close to 007". Tom Sonne of The Sunday Times considered it the best Bond film since The Spy Who Loved Me. Jose Arroyo of Sight & Sound considered the greatest success of it was in modernising the series.

However, the film received several negative reviews. Richard Schickel of wrote that after "a third of a century's hard use", Bond's conventions survived on "wobbly knees", while in Entertainment Weekly, Owen Gleiberman thought the series had "entered a near-terminal state of exhaustion." Kenneth Turan of the Los Angeles Times said that it was "a middle-aged entity anxious to appear trendy at all costs". David Eimer of wrote that "the trademark humour is in short supply" and that "Goldeneye isn't classic Bond by any stretch of the imagination."

Often cited as Pierce Brosnan's best Bond film, GoldenEye's reputation has only improved since its release. It is ranked high in Bond-related lists, as chose it as the fifth-best movie, while Entertainment Weekly ranked it eighth, and Norman Wilner of MSN as ninth. EW also voted Xenia Onatopp as the sixth-most memorable Bond girl, while IGN ranked Natalya as seventh in a similar list. The film enjoys a large and enthusiastic following among Bond fans, especially those who grew up with the GoldenEye 007 video game.

In a 2021 Yahoo survey consisting of 2200 scholars and Bond superfans, GoldenEye was voted as the best Bond film, followed by Daniel Craig's Casino Royale and George Lazenby's On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

The film was nominated for two BAFTAs-Best Sound and Special Visual Effects-in 1996, but lost to Braveheart and , respectively. Éric Serra won a BMI Film Award for the soundtrack, and it also earned nominations for Best Action, Adventure or Thriller Film and Actor at the 22nd Saturn Awards, and Best Fight at the 1996 MTV Movie Awards.

GoldenEye was the second and final Bond film to be adapted to a novel by novelist John Gardner. The book closely follows its storyline, but Gardner added a violent sequence prior to the opening bungee jump in which Bond kills a group of Russian guards, a change that would be retained and expanded upon in the video game GoldenEye 007.

In late 1995, Topps Comics began publishing a three-issue comic book adaptation of the film. The script was adapted by Don McGregor with art by Rick Magyar. The first issue carried a January 1996 cover date. For unknown reasons, Topps cancelled the entire adaptation after the first issue had been published, and to date the adaptation has not been released in its entirety.

Also in 1995, Tiger Electronics released a third-person shooter handheld electronic game in two different variants: a gamepad variant, with a liquid-crystal display (LCD), a cross-shaped push button and two line-shaped ones and four settings buttons on the lower side of the screen, and a "Grip Games" line variant, shaped like a pistol grip, with a trigger used to shoot and other buttons on the rear. The two editions were slightly different.

The film was the basis for GoldenEye 007, a video game for the Nintendo 64 developed by Rare and published by Nintendo. It was praised by critics and in January 2000, readers of the British video game magazine Computer and Video Games listed it in first place in a list of "the hundred greatest video games". In 2003, 's included it as one of their top ten shooters of all time. It is based upon the film, but many of the missions were extended or modified.

A version of Goldeneye was developed as a racing game intended to be released for the Virtual Boy console. However, it was cancelled before release. In 2004, Electronic Arts released GoldenEye: Rogue Agent, the first game of the James Bond series in which the player does not take on the role of Bond. Instead, the protagonist is an aspiring Double-0 agent Jonathan Hunter, known by his codename "GoldenEye", recruited by a villain of the Bond universe, Auric Goldfinger. Except for the appearance of Xenia Onatopp, it was unrelated to the film, and was released to mediocre reviews. It was excoriated by several critics including Eric Qualls for using the name "GoldenEye" as an attempt to ride on the success of Rare's game. In 2010, an independent development team released GoldenEye: Source, a multiplayer only total conversion mod developed using Valve's Source engine.

Nintendo announced a remake of the original GoldenEye 007 at their E3 press conference on 15 June 2010. It is a modernised retelling of the original movie's story, with Daniel Craig playing the role of Bond. Bruce Feirstein returned to write a modernised version of the script, while Nicole Scherzinger covered the theme song. It was developed by Eurocom and published by Activision for the Wii and Nintendo DS and was released in November 2010. Both the DS and Wii versions bear little to no resemblance to the locations and weapons of the original N64 release. In 2011, the game was ported to PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 under the name GoldenEye 007: Reloaded.

The malware Petya (also known as "GoldenEye") is a reference to the film. A Twitter account, suspected by the German newspaper Heise Online to belong to the malware author, used an image of Boris Grishenko as their avatar.

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GoldenEye is a 1995 spy film, the seventeenth in the James Bond Series produced by Eon Productions, and the first to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional MI6 agent James Bond. Directed by Martin Campbell, it was the first in the series not to utilize any story elements from the works of novelist Ian Fleming.

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wide-angle camera on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn’s rings and our planet Earth and its moon in the same frame.

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The GoldenEye was a fictional electro-magnetic orbital weapon developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

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GoldenEye (weapon)

" Creates a pulse or a radiation surge that destroys everything with an electronic circuit."

The GoldenEye was a fictional electro-magnetic orbital weapon developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. GoldenEye was subsequently hijacked by the Janus Syndicate from its Russian control facility at Severnaya, Russia and was instrumental in Alec Trevelyan's vengeful plot to decimate Britain's financial economy. The weapon first appeared in the 1995 James Bond film and also featured in the film's novelisation, 1997 video-game and 2010 re-imagined video-game.

Description

Components

A collection of equipment made up the GoldenEye, each playing an intricate part in the use of the weapon. Firstly, the weapon consisted of two disposable satellites designated "Petya" and "Mischa", each one armed with a nuclear warhead. By detonating the device in the upper atmosphere, a pulse or a radiation surge, is generated; capable of destroying all electronic devices in a 30 mile radius. Consequently, eliminating all forms of electronic communication or retaliation.

In order to activate the the satellites, three keys were needed; two conventional golden keys were used to start the system's targeting network. The third key, a large rectangular cartridge that housed an optical disc and translucent golden gem, was used to read the system's complex access and firing codes. In order to obtain the three keys, an authorization code was needed to unlock the eye shaped vault where they rested. After the cartridge key was loaded into the console, the golden keys needed to be turned with precise synchronization to activate the targeting system. With the target coordinates set, the weapon needed to be manually armed by entering the firing codes. After unlocking yet another compartment, the system would be ready to fire once the trigger switch was turned.

The GoldenEye was kept locked away by the Russian Defense ministry at a supposedly abandoned radar station at Severnaya, in the middle of northern Russia. Deep beneath the control center however, was the GoldenEye's heavily guarded terminal room. Despite being home to the world's most high-tech weapon, the facility itself was rather crude and obsolete. Due to the secretive nature of the weapons program, the staff at the Severnaya station was minimal; among these employees were Boris Grishenko and Natalya Simonova. The facility and most of it's staff ultimately met their end when General Ourumov and Xenia Onatopp infiltrated the base and stole the keys, detonating the first of the satellites over the complex.

A second station was secretly constructed within the heart of the Cuban jungle, it's existence remained hidden even from the entire body of the Russian Defense Council. The location of the duplicate facility was unbeknown to even the Severnaya staff; the only individuals who knew of it's whereabouts were General Ourumov and his Janus associates. The Cuban Station was far more elaborate than Severnaya, possessing a massive antenna dish that dwarfed it's Siberian counterpart. Inside the facility, there was a state-of-the-art terminal room. Adorning the wall of the control room was an enormous video screen that displayed a coordinate world map, as well as other specs of the GoldenEye's designated target.

In order to avoid detection from spy satellites or the naked eye, the antenna dish was capable of being flooded, effectively disguising itself as a mere lake. Trevelyan also managed to keep the compound heavily guarded with a veritable army of his Janus operatives, constantly having them around the perimeter, concentrated within the terminal room, and even having two helicopter gunships patrol the sky above. Along with Trevelyan's forces, the base itself also had it's own built in defense systems, including hidden missile turrets that were capable of swatting down enemy aircraft. The Cuban facility wound up being destroyed as well, this time by Bond himself as he was able to destroy both the central control terminal and sabotage the radar antenna.

Alec Trevelyan's Scheme

During the course of the film, the weapon is hijacked by the Janus crime syndicate. After infiltrating the Severnaya facility, they massacre the technicians and steal the control disk for the weapon. To cover their tracks, they program one of the GoldenEye satellites (Petya) to destroy the complex with an electromagnetic pulse. With the control key and a duplicate control center in Cuba, Alec Trevelyan planned to steal money from the Bank of England before erasing all of its financial records with the remaining GoldenEye, concealing the theft and destroying Britain's economy.

During the final confrontation with Bond, a survivor and programmer from the Severnaya facility, Natalya Simonova, programs the satellite to initiate atmospheric re-entry and destroy itself. Despite Janus employee Boris Grishenko's best efforts to prevent it, the Mischa satellite burns up harmlessly in the Earth's atmosphere during the film's climax.

Alternate Continuities

Nightfire features a multiplayer scenario titled "GoldenEye Strike" which involves two teams scrambling to find both the GoldenEye key and disc, in order to fire the EMP on the opposing team and score points.

The ring which appears on variations of the film's logo is meant to symbolize the center of the antenna cradle at the Cuba facility.

The CD-ROM key was jokingly referred to as "The Fried Egg" by Director Martin Campbell and the rest of the film's crew.

References

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The GoldenEye was a fictional electro-magnetic orbital weapon developed by the Soviet Union during the Cold War. GoldenEye was subsequently hijacked by the Janus Syndicate from its Russian control facility at Severnaya, Russia and was instrumental in Alec Trevelyan's vengeful plot to decimate Britain's financial economy.

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The series focuses on James Bond, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz. The latest novel is With a Mind to Kill by Anthony Horowitz, published in May 2022. Additionally Charlie Higson wrote a series on a young James Bond, and Kate Westbrook wrote three novels based on the diaries of a recurring series character, Moneypenny.

The character-also known by the code number 007 (pronounced "double-oh-seven")-has also been adapted for television, radio, comic strip, video games and film. The films are one of the longest continually running film series and have grossed over US$7.04 billion in total at the box office, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series to date, which started in 1962 with , starring Sean Connery as Bond. As of 2021, there have been twenty-five films in the Eon Productions series. The most recent Bond film, No Time to Die (2021), stars Daniel Craig in his fifth portrayal of Bond; he is the sixth actor to play Bond in the Eon series. There have also been two independent productions of Bond films: Casino Royale (a 1967 spoof starring David Niven) and Never Say Never Again (a 1983 remake of an earlier Eon-produced film, 1965's Thunderball, both starring Connery). In 2015, the series was estimated to be worth $19.9 billion in total (based on box-office grosses, DVD sales and merchandise tie-ins), making James Bond one of the highest-grossing media franchises of all time.

The Bond films are renowned for a number of features, including their soundtracks, with the theme songs having received Academy Award nominations on several occasions, and three wins. Other important elements which run through most of the films include Bond's cars, his guns, and the gadgets with which he is supplied by Q Branch. The films are also noted for Bond's relationships with various women, who are popularly referred to as " Bond girls".

Publication history

Creation and inspiration

Ian Fleming created the fictional character of James Bond as the central figure for his works. Bond is an intelligence officer in the Secret Intelligence Service, commonly known as MI6. Bond is known by his code number, 007, and was a Royal Naval Reserve Commander. Fleming based his fictional creation on a number of individuals he came across during his time in the Naval Intelligence Division and 30 Assault Unit during the Second World War, admitting that Bond "was a compound of all the secret agents and commando types I met during the war". Among those types were his brother, Peter, who had been involved in behind-the-lines operations in Norway and Greece during the war. Aside from Fleming's brother, a number of others also provided some aspects of Bond's make up, including Conrad O'Brien-ffrench, Patrick Dalzel-Job, Bill "Biffy" Dunderdale and Duško Popov.

The name James Bond came from that of the American ornithologist James Bond, a Caribbean bird expert and author of the definitive field guide Birds of the West Indies. Fleming, a keen birdwatcher himself, had a copy of Bond's guide and he later explained to the ornithologist's wife that "It struck me that this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed, and so a second James Bond was born". He further explained that:

When I wrote the first one in 1953, I wanted Bond to be an extremely dull, uninteresting man to whom things happened; I wanted him to be a blunt instrument ... when I was casting around for a name for my protagonist I thought by God, [James Bond] is the dullest name I ever heard.

On another occasion, Fleming said: "I wanted the simplest, dullest, plainest-sounding name I could find, 'James Bond' was much better than something more interesting, like 'Peregrine Carruthers'. Exotic things would happen to and around him, but he would be a neutral figure-an anonymous, blunt instrument wielded by a government department."

Fleming decided that Bond should resemble both American singer Hoagy Carmichael and himself and in Casino Royale, Vesper Lynd remarks, "Bond reminds me rather of Hoagy Carmichael, but there is something cold and ruthless." Likewise, in Moonraker, Special Branch officer Gala Brand thinks that Bond is "certainly good-looking ... Rather like Hoagy Carmichael in a way. That black hair falling down over the right eyebrow. Much the same bones. But there was something a bit cruel in the mouth, and the eyes were cold."

Fleming endowed Bond with many of his own traits, including sharing the same golf handicap, the taste for scrambled eggs, and using the same brand of toiletries. Bond's tastes are also often taken from Fleming's own as was his behaviour, with Bond's love of golf and gambling mirroring Fleming's own. Fleming used his experiences of his career in espionage and all other aspects of his life as inspiration when writing, including using names of school friends, acquaintances, relatives and lovers throughout his books.

It was not until the penultimate novel, You Only Live Twice, that Fleming gave Bond a sense of family background. The book was the first to be written after the release of Dr. No in cinemas, and Sean Connery's depiction of Bond affected Fleming's interpretation of the character, henceforth giving Bond both a dry sense of humour and Scottish antecedents that were not present in the previous stories. In a fictional obituary, purportedly published in , Bond's parents were given as Andrew Bond, from the village of Glencoe, Scotland, and Monique Delacroix, from the canton of Vaud, Switzerland. Fleming did not provide Bond's date of birth, but John Pearson's fictional biography of Bond, James Bond: The Authorized Biography of 007, gives Bond a birth date on 11 November 1920, while a study by John Griswold puts the date at 11 November 1921.

Novels and related works

Ian Fleming novels

Whilst serving in the Naval Intelligence Division, Fleming had planned to become an author and had told a friend, "I am going to write the spy story to end all spy stories." On 17 February 1952, he began writing his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, at his Goldeneye estate in Jamaica, where he wrote all his Bond novels during the months of January and February each year. He started the story shortly before his wedding to his pregnant girlfriend, Ann Charteris, in order to distract himself from his forthcoming nuptials.

After completing the manuscript for Casino Royale, Fleming showed it to his friend (and later editor) William Plomer to read. Plomer liked it and submitted it to the publishers, Jonathan Cape, who did not like it as much. Cape finally published it in 1953 on the recommendation of Fleming's older brother Peter, an established travel writer. Between 1953 and 1966, two years after his death, twelve novels and two short-story collections were published, with the last two books-The Man with the Golden Gun and Octopussy and The Living Daylights-published posthumously. All the books were published in the UK through Jonathan Cape.

Post-Fleming novels

After Fleming's death, a continuation novel, Colonel Sun, was written by Kingsley Amis (as Robert Markham) and published in 1968. Amis had already written a literary study of Fleming's Bond novels in his 1965 work The James Bond Dossier. Although novelisations of two of the Eon Productions Bond films appeared in print, James Bond, The Spy Who Loved Me and James Bond and Moonraker, both written by screenwriter Christopher Wood, the series of novels did not continue until the 1980s. In 1981, the thriller writer John Gardner picked up the series with Licence Renewed. Gardner went on to write sixteen Bond books in total; two of the books he wrote were novelisations of Eon Productions films of the same name: Licence to Kill and . Gardner moved the Bond series into the 1980s, although he retained the ages of the characters as they were when Fleming had left them. In 1996, Gardner retired from writing James Bond books due to ill health.

In 1996, the American author Raymond Benson became the author of the Bond novels. Benson had previously been the author of The James Bond Bedside Companion, first published in 1984. By the time he moved on to other, non-Bond related projects in 2002, Benson had written six Bond novels, three novelisations and three short stories.

After a gap of six years, Sebastian Faulks was commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to write a new Bond novel, which was released on 28 May 2008, the 100th anniversary of Fleming's birth. The book-titled Devil May Care-was published in the UK by Penguin Books and by Doubleday in the US. American writer Jeffery Deaver was then commissioned by Ian Fleming Publications to produce Carte Blanche, which was published on 26 May 2011. The book turned Bond into a post-9/11 agent, independent of MI5 or MI6. On 26 September 2013, by William Boyd, set in 1969, was published. In October 2014, it was announced that Anthony Horowitz was to write a Bond continuation novel. Set in the 1950s two weeks after the events of Goldfinger, it contains material written, but previously unreleased, by Fleming. Trigger Mortis was released on 8 September 2015. Horowitz's second Bond novel, Forever and a Day, tells the origin story of Bond as a 00 agent prior to the events of Casino Royale. The novel, also based on unpublished material from Fleming, was released on 31 May 2018. Horowitz's third Bond novel, With a Mind to Kill, was published on 26 May 2022. Charlie Higson's first adult Bond novel, On His Majesty's Secret Service, was published on 4 May 2023 to celebrate the Coronation of King Charles III and support the National Literacy Trust.

The series of novels was started by Charlie Higson and, between 2005 and 2009, five novels and one short story were published. The first Young Bond novel, was also adapted and released as a graphic novel on 2 October 2008 by Puffin Books. In October 2013 Ian Fleming Publications announced that Stephen Cole would continue the series, with the first edition scheduled to be released in Autumn 2014.

The Moneypenny Diaries

The Moneypenny Diaries are a trilogy of novels chronicling the life of Miss Moneypenny, M's personal secretary. The novels are written by Samantha Weinberg under the pseudonym Kate Westbrook, who is depicted as the book's "editor". The first instalment of the trilogy, subtitled Guardian Angel, was released on 10 October 2005 in the UK. A second volume, subtitled Secret Servant was released on 2 November 2006 in the UK, published by John Murray. A third volume, subtitled Final Fling was released on 1 May 2008.

Adaptations

Television

In 1954, CBS paid Ian Fleming $1,000 ($10,897 in 2022 dollars) to adapt his novel Casino Royale into a one-hour television adventure, "Casino Royale", as part of its series. The episode aired live on 21 October 1954 and starred Barry Nelson as "Card Sense" James Bond and Peter Lorre as Le Chiffre. The novel was adapted for American audiences to show Bond as an American agent working for "Combined Intelligence", while the character Felix Leiter -American in the novel-became British onscreen and was renamed "Clarence Leiter".

In 1973, a BBC documentary Omnibus: The British Hero featured Christopher Cazenove playing a number of such title characters (e.g. Richard Hannay and Bulldog Drummond). The documentary included James Bond in dramatised scenes fromGoldfinger-notably featuring 007 being threatened with the novel's circular saw, rather than the film's laser beam-and Diamonds Are Forever. In 1991, a spin-off TV cartoon series, James Bond Jr., was produced with Corey Burton in the role of Bond's nephew, also called James Bond.

In 1958, the novel Moonraker was adapted for broadcast on South African radio, with Bob Holness providing the voice of Bond. According to The Independent, "listeners across the Union thrilled to Bob's cultured tones as he defeated evil master criminals in search of world domination".

The BBC have adapted five of the Fleming novels for broadcast: in 1990 You Only Live Twice was adapted into a 90-minute radio play for BBC Radio 4 with Michael Jayston playing James Bond. The production was repeated a number of times between 2008 and 2011. On 24 May 2008 BBC Radio 4 broadcast an adaptation of Dr. No. The actor Toby Stephens, who played Bond villain Gustav Graves in the Eon Productions version of Die Another Day, played Bond, while Dr. No was played by David Suchet. Following its success, a second story was adapted and on 3 April 2010 BBC Radio 4 broadcast Goldfinger with Stephens again playing Bond. Sir Ian McKellen was Goldfinger and Stephens' Die Another Day co-star Rosamund Pike played Pussy Galore. The play was adapted from Fleming's novel by Archie Scottney and was directed by Martin Jarvis. In 2012, the novelFrom Russia, with Love was dramatised for Radio 4; it featured a full cast again starring Stephens as Bond. In May 2014 Stephens again played Bond, in On Her Majesty's Secret Service, with Alfred Molina as Blofeld, and Joanna Lumley as Irma Bunt.

In 1957, the Daily Express approached Ian Fleming to adapt his stories into comic strips, offering him £1,500 per novel and a share of takings from syndication. After initial reluctance, Fleming, who felt the strips would lack the quality of his writing, agreed. To aid the Daily Express in illustrating Bond, Fleming commissioned an artist to create a sketch of how he believed James Bond looked. The illustrator, John McLusky, however, felt that Fleming's 007 looked too "outdated" and "pre-war" and changed Bond to give him a more masculine look. The first strip, Casino Royale was published from 7 July 1958 to 13 December 1958 and was written by Anthony Hern and illustrated by John McLusky.

Most of the Bond novels and short stories have since been adapted for illustration, as well as Kingsley Amis's Colonel Sun; the works were written by Henry Gammidge or Jim Lawrence with Yaroslav Horak replacing McClusky as artist in 1966. After the Fleming and Amis material had been adapted, original stories were produced, continuing in the Daily Express and Sunday Express until May 1977.

Several comic book adaptations of the James Bond films have been published through the years: at the time of Dr. No's release in October 1962, a comic book adaptation of the screenplay, written by Norman J. Nodel, was published in Britain as part of the Classics Illustrated anthology series. It was later reprinted in the United States by DC Comics as part of its anthology series, in January 1963. This was the first American comic book appearance of James Bond and is noteworthy for being a relatively rare example of a British comic being reprinted in a fairly high-profile American comic. It was also one of the earliest comics to be censored on racial grounds (some skin tones and dialogue were changed for the American market).

With the release of the 1981 film For Your Eyes Only, Marvel Comics published a two-issue comic book adaptation of the film. When was released in the cinemas in 1983, Marvel published an accompanying comic; Eclipse also produced a one-off comic for Licence to Kill, although Timothy Dalton refused to allow his likeness to be used. New Bond stories were also drawn up and published from 1989 onwards through Marvel, Eclipse Comics, Dark Horse Comics and Dynamite Entertainment.

Eon Productions films

Eon Productions, the company of Canadian Harry Saltzman and American Albert R. "Cubby" Broccoli, released the first cinema adaptation of an Ian Fleming novel, Dr. No (1962), based on the eponymous 1958 novel and featuring Sean Connery as 007. Connery starred in a further four films before leaving the role after You Only Live Twice (1967), which was taken up by George Lazenby for On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969). Lazenby left the role after just one appearance and Connery was brought back for his last Eon-produced film Diamonds Are Forever.

Roger Moore was appointed to the role of 007 for Live and Let Die (1973). He played Bond a further six times over twelve years, before being replaced by Timothy Dalton for two films. After a six-year hiatus, during which a legal wrangle threatened Eon's productions of the Bond films, Irish actor Pierce Brosnan was cast as Bond in (1995); he remained in the role for a total of four films through 2002. In 2006, Daniel Craig was given the role for Casino Royale (2006), which rebooted the series. Craig appeared for a total of five films. The series has grossed well over $7 billion to date, making it the fifth-highest-grossing film series.

Non-Eon films

In 1967, Casino Royale was adapted into a parody Bond film starring David Niven as Sir James Bond and Ursula Andress as Vesper Lynd. Niven had been Fleming's preference for the role of Bond. The result of a court case in the High Court in London in 1963 allowed Kevin McClory to produce a remake of Thunderball titled Never Say Never Again in 1983. The film, produced by Jack Schwartzman's Taliafilm production company and starring Sean Connery as Bond, was not part of the Eon series of Bond films. In 1997, the Sony Corporation acquired all or some of McClory's rights in an undisclosed deal, which were then subsequently acquired by MGM, whilst on 4 December 1997, MGM announced that the company had purchased the rights to Never Say Never Again from Taliafilm. As of 2015, Eon holds the full adaptation rights to all of Fleming's Bond novels.

" cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable."

The " James Bond Theme" was written by Monty Norman and was first orchestrated by the John Barry Orchestra for 1962's Dr. No, although the actual authorship of the music has been a matter of controversy for many years. In 2001, Norman won £30,000 in libel damages from The Sunday Times newspaper, which suggested that Barry was entirely responsible for the composition. The theme, as written by Norman and arranged by Barry, was described by another Bond film composer, David Arnold, as "bebop-swing vibe coupled with that vicious, dark, distorted electric guitar, definitely an instrument of rock 'n' roll ... it represented everything about the character you would want: It was cocky, swaggering, confident, dark, dangerous, suggestive, sexy, unstoppable. And he did it in two minutes." Barry composed the scores for eleven Bond films and had an uncredited contribution to Dr. No with his arrangement of the Bond Theme.

A Bond film staple are the theme songs heard during their title sequences sung by well-known popular singers. Shirley Bassey performed three Bond theme songs, with her 1964 song " Goldfinger" inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008. Several of the songs produced for the films have been nominated for Academy Awards for Original Song, including Paul McCartney's " Live and Let Die", Carly Simon's " Nobody Does It Better", Sheena Easton's " For Your Eyes Only", Adele's " Skyfall", Sam Smith's " Writing's on the Wall", and Billie Eilish's " No Time to Die". Adele won the award at the 85th Academy Awards, Smith won at the 88th Academy Awards, and Eilish won at the 94th Academy Awards. For the non-Eon produced Casino Royale, Burt Bacharach's score included " The Look of Love" (sung by Dusty Springfield), which was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Video games

In 1983, the first Bond video game, developed and published by Parker Brothers, was released for the Atari 2600, Atari 5200, Atari 8-bit family, Commodore 64, and ColecoVision. Since then, there have been numerous video games either based on the films or using original storylines. In 1997, the first-person shooter video game GoldenEye 007 was developed by Rare for the Nintendo 64, based on . The game received highly positive reviews, won the BAFTA Interactive Entertainment Award for UK Developer of the Year in 1998, and sold over eight million copies worldwide, grossing $250 million, making it the third- best-selling Nintendo 64 game. It is frequently cited as one of the greatest video games of all time.

In 1999, Electronic Arts acquired the licence and released Tomorrow Never Dies on 16 December 1999. In October 2000, they released The World Is Not Enough for the Nintendo 64 followed by 007 Racing for the PlayStation on 21 November 2000. In 2003, the company released James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing, which included the likenesses and voices of Pierce Brosnan, Willem Dafoe, Heidi Klum, Judi Dench and John Cleese, amongst others. In November 2005, Electronic Arts released a video game adaptation of 007: From Russia with Love, which involved Sean Connery's image and voice-over for Bond. In 2006, Electronic Arts announced a game based on then-upcoming film Casino Royale: the game was cancelled because it would not be ready by the film's release in November of that year. With MGM losing revenue from lost licensing fees, the franchise was removed from EA to Activision. Activision subsequently released the 007: Quantum of Solace game on 31 October 2008, based on the film of the same name.

A new version of GoldenEye 007 featuring Daniel Craig was released for the Wii and a handheld version for the Nintendo DS in November 2010. A year later a new version was released for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 under the title GoldenEye 007: Reloaded. In October 2012 007 Legends was released, which featured one mission from each of the Bond actors of the Eon Productions' series. In November 2020, IO Interactive announced Project 007, an original James Bond video game, working closely with licensors MGM and Eon Productions.

Role-playing game

From 1983 to 1987, a licensed tabletop role-playing game, James Bond 007: Role-Playing In Her Majesty's Secret Service, was published by Victory Games (a branch of Avalon Hill) and designed by Gerard Christopher Klug. It was the most popular espionage role-playing game for its time. In addition to providing materials for players to create original scenarios, the game also offered players the opportunity to have adventures modelled after many of the Eon Productions film adaptations, albeit with modifications to provide challenges by preventing players from slavishly imitating Bond's actions in the stories.

Guns, vehicles and gadgets

For the first five novels, Fleming armed Bond with a Beretta 418 until he received a letter from a thirty-one-year-old Bond enthusiast and gun expert, Geoffrey Boothroyd, criticising Fleming's choice of firearm for Bond, calling it "a lady's gun-and not a very nice lady at that!" Boothroyd suggested that Bond should swap his Beretta for a 7.65mm Walther PPK and this exchange of arms made it to Dr. No. Boothroyd also gave Fleming advice on the Berns-Martin triple draw shoulder holster and a number of the weapons used by SMERSH and other villains. In thanks, Fleming gave the MI6 Armourer in his novels the name Major Boothroyd and, in Dr. No, M, the Chief of the Secret Intelligence Service, introduces him to Bond as "the greatest small-arms expert in the world". Bond also used a variety of rifles, including the Savage Model 99 in "For Your Eyes Only" and a Winchester .308 target rifle in "The Living Daylights". Other handguns used by Bond in the Fleming books included the Colt Detective Special and a long-barrelled Colt .45 Army Special.

The first Bond film, Dr. No, saw M ordering Bond to leave his Beretta behind and take up the Walther PPK, which Bond used in eighteen films. In Tomorrow Never Dies and the two subsequent films, Bond's main weapon was the Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.

In the early Bond stories Fleming gave Bond a battleship-grey with an Amherst Villiers supercharger. After Bond's car was written off by Hugo Drax in Moonraker, Fleming gave Bond a Mark II Continental Bentley, which he used in the remaining books of the series. During Goldfinger, Bond was issued an Aston Martin DB Mark III with a homing device, which he used to track Goldfinger across France. Bond returned to his Bentley for the subsequent novels.

The Bond of the films has driven a number of cars, including the Aston Martin V8 Vantage, during the 1980s, the V12 Vanquish and DBS during the 2000s, as well as the Lotus Esprit; the BMW Z3, BMW 750iL and the BMW Z8. He has, however, also needed to drive a number of other vehicles, ranging from a Citroën 2CV to a Routemaster Bus, amongst others.

Bond's most famous car is the silver grey Aston Martin DB5, first seen in Goldfinger; it later featured in Thunderball, GoldenEye, Tomorrow Never Dies, Casino Royale, and Spectre. The films have used a number of different Aston Martins for filming and publicity, one of which was sold in January 2006 at an auction in the US for $2.1 million to an unnamed European collector. In 2010, another DB5 used in Goldfinger was sold at auction for $4.6m million (£2.6 million).

Fleming's novels and early screen adaptations presented minimal equipment such as the booby-trapped attaché case in From Russia, with Love, although this situation changed dramatically with the films. However, the effects of the two Eon-produced Bond films Dr. No and From Russia with Love had an effect on the novel The Man with the Golden Gun, through the increased number of devices used in Fleming's final story.

For the film adaptations of Bond, the pre-mission briefing by Q Branch became one of the motifs that ran through the series. Dr. No provided no spy-related gadgets, but a Geiger counter was used; industrial designer Andy Davey observed that the first ever onscreen spy-gadget was the attaché case shown in From Russia with Love, which he described as "a classic 007 product". The gadgets assumed a higher profile in the 1964 film Goldfinger. The film's success encouraged further espionage equipment from Q Branch to be supplied to Bond, although the increased use of technology led to an accusation that Bond was over-reliant on equipment, particularly in the later films.

"If it hadn't been for Q Branch, you'd have been dead long ago!"

-Q, to Bond, Licence to Kill

Davey noted that "Bond's gizmos follow the zeitgeist more closely than any other ... nuance in the films" as they moved from the potential representations of the future in the early films, through to the brand-name obsessions of the later films. It is also noticeable that, although Bond uses a number of pieces of equipment from Q Branch, including the Little Nellie autogyro, a jet pack and the exploding attaché case, the villains are also well-equipped with custom-made devices, including Scaramanga's golden gun, Rosa Klebb's poison-tipped shoes, Oddjob's steel-rimmed bowler hat and Blofeld's communication devices in his agents' vanity case.

Cultural impact

Cinematically, Bond has been a major influence within the spy genre since the release of Dr. No in 1962, with 22 secret agent films released in 1966 alone attempting to capitalise on the Bond franchise's popularity and success. The first parody was the 1964 film Carry On Spying, which shows the villain Dr. Crow being overcome by agents who included James Bind ( Charles Hawtry) and Daphne Honeybutt ( Barbara Windsor). One of the films that reacted against the portrayal of Bond was the Harry Palmer series, whose first film, The Ipcress File, starring Michael Caine, was released in 1965. The eponymous hero is a rough-edged, petty crook turned spy, and was what academic Jeremy Packer called an "anti-Bond", or what Christoph Lindner calls "the thinking man's Bond". The Palmer series were produced by Harry Saltzman, who also used key crew members from the Bond series, including designer Ken Adam, editor Peter R. Hunt and composer John Barry. The four " Matt Helm" films starring Dean Martin (released between 1966 and 1969), the " Flint" series starring James Coburn (comprising two films, one each in 1966 and 1969), while The Man from U.N.C.L.E. also moved onto the cinema screen, with eight films released: all were testaments to Bond's prominence in popular culture. More recently, the Austin Powers series by writer, producer and comedian Mike Myers, and other parodies such as the Johnny English trilogy of films, have also used elements from or parodied the Bond films.

Following the release of the film Dr. No in 1962, the line "Bond ... James Bond", became a catch phrase that entered the lexicon of Western popular culture: writers Cork and Scivally said of the introduction in Dr. No that the "signature introduction would become the most famous and loved film line ever". In 2001, it was voted as the "best-loved one-liner in cinema" by British cinema goers, and in 2005, it was honoured as the 22nd greatest quotation in cinema history by the American Film Institute as part of their 100 Years Series. The 2005 American Film Institute's '100 Years' series recognised the character of James Bond himself as the third greatest film hero. He was also placed at number 11 on a similar list by and as the fifth greatest movie character of all time by Premiere.

The 24 James Bond films produced by Eon are the longest continually running film series of all time, and including the two non Eon produced films, the 26 Bond films have grossed over $7.04 billion in total, making it the sixth-highest-grossing franchise to date. It is estimated that since Dr. No, a quarter of the world's population have seen at least one Bond film. The UK Film Distributors' Association have stated that the importance of the Bond series of films to the British film industry cannot be overstated, as they "form the backbone of the industry".

Television also saw the effect of Bond films, with the NBC series The Man from U.N.C.L.E., which was described as the "first network television imitation" of Bond, largely because Fleming provided advice and ideas on the development of the series, even giving the main character the name Napoleon Solo. Other 1960s television series inspired by Bond include , and .

Considered a British cultural icon, James Bond had become such a symbol of the United Kingdom that the character, played by Craig, appeared in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics as Queen Elizabeth II's escort. From 1968 to 2003, and since 2016, the Cadbury chocolate box Milk Tray has been advertised by the 'Milk Tray Man', a tough James Bond-style figure who undertakes daunting 'raids' to surreptitiously deliver a box of Milk Tray chocolates to a lady. Bond has been commemorated numerous times on a UK postage stamp issued by the Royal Mail, most recently in their March 2020 series to mark the 25th Bond film release.

Throughout the life of the film series, a number of tie-in products have been released. "Bondmania", a term deriving from the adjacent " Beatlemania" and initiated in 1964 following the enormous success of Goldfinger, described the clamour for Bond films and their related products, from soundtrack LPs to children's toys, board games, alarm clocks playing the Bond theme, and 007-branded shirts. In 2018, a James Bond museum opened atop the Austrian Alps. The futuristic museum is constructed on the summit of Gaislachkogl Mountain in Sölden at 10,000 ft (3,048 m) above sea level.

The real MI6 has an ambiguous relationship with Bond. The films may attract job applicants who may be unsuited for espionage, while dissuading more-qualified candidates. While serving as Chief of SIS, Alex Younger said that were Bond to apply for a MI6 job "he would have to change his ways". Younger said, however, that the franchise had "created a powerful brand for MI6 ... Many of our counterparts envy the sheer global recognition of our acronym", and that being depicted to global audiences as a "ubiquitous intelligence presence" was "quite a force multiplier". The Russian Federal Security Service so envied Bond that it created an annual award for fictional depictions of Russian spies.

Public reception

The James Bond franchise enjoys widespread popularity across the world. In 2014, it was estimated that approximately 20% of the world's population has watched at least one Bond film.

In 2012, the polling organisation YouGov conducted a survey of American Bond fans, categorizing responses by age, sex, and political affiliation. All groups selected Sean Connery as their favourite Bond actor. A 2018 poll found that 47% of American adults had seen at least one Bond film, with 27% having seen every film.

Queen Elizabeth II met the first of her six James Bond's, Sean Connery, at the world premiere of You Only Live Twice in 1967, and according to royal biographer Gyles Brandreth: "She really did love all the early James Bond films", preferring the earlier films, "before they got so loud." Several prominent politicians have also been fans of the franchise, including John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, and Kim Jong Il.

Criticisms

The James Bond character and related media have received a number of criticisms and reactions across the political spectrum, and are still highly debated in popular culture studies. Some observers accuse the Bond novels and films of misogyny and sexism. Geographers have considered the role of exotic locations in the movies in the dynamics of the Cold War, with power struggles among blocs playing out in the peripheral areas. Other critics claim that the Bond films reflect imperial nostalgia. In September 2021, No Time to Die director Cary Fukunaga described Sean Connery's version of Bond as 'basically a rapist'.

The franchise has on occasion also been a target of religious criticism. In 1962, Vatican City's official newspaper L'Osservatore Romano condemned the film , referring to it as "a dangerous mixture of violence, vulgarity, sadism and sex". However, in 2012, the newspaper went on to give positive reviews to the film .

Censorship and alterations

Bans and censorship by country

Several James Bond novels, films, and video games have been banned, censored, or altered in several countries.

1957

Dr. No

Francoist Spain

Under Francoist Spain, the final pages of Dr. No were cut entirely, due to sexual references. The censored editions are still sometimes reproduced in Spain today, often unknowingly.

Various

All titles

Soviet Union

All Bond novels were banned during the existence of the Soviet Union. Russian newspaper the Komsomolskaya Pravda condemned the series, describing it as being set in a "nightmarish world where laws are written at the point of a gun, where coercion and rape is considered valour and murder is a funny trick."

Various

All titles

Soviet Union

All Bond films were banned during the existence of the Soviet Union.

1964

Goldfinger

In December 1965, shortly after its release in the country, Israel banned the film Goldfinger, after discovering actor Gert Fröbe's past association with the Nazi Party. The ban was lifted two months later, in February 1966, after the Israel Film Censorship Board found evidence that Fröbe had quit the Nazi Party in 1937. Additionally, the film's producers were believed to have made appeals to Israel to lift the ban, and due to the fact that Israeli public demand to see the popular film was high, the reversal on the ban was made.

2012

Skyfall

People's Republic of China

In 2007, China gave permission for the 2006 film Casino Royale to play uncensored in the nation. It was the first Bond film to gain a release unaltered in the country, followed by Quantum of Solace.

However, Skyfall was released in an edited version, after cutting a torture scene, altering subtitles, and removing references to prostitution in the film.

2015

Spectre

In 2015, Spectre was released censored in India, after the Central Board of Film Certification ordered kissing scenes in the film be trimmed by 50%.

Video games

1997

GoldenEye 007

In 1997, Germany banned the video game GoldenEye 007, with the German Federal Review Board placing it on their List of Media Harmful to Minors. The ban was lifted in 2021.

2023 changes

In February 2023, Ian Fleming Publications (which administers all Fleming's literary works), edited the Bond series as part of a sensitivity review. The April 2023 re-releases of the series are planned to tie into the 70th anniversary of Casino Royale, the first Bond novel. The new editions remove a number of references to race, including some slurs, along with some disparagements of women and homosexuality. They include a disclaimer added at the beginning of each book, reading:

"This book was written at a time when terms and attitudes which might be considered offensive by modern readers were commonplace. A number of updates have been made in this edition, while keeping as close as possible to the original text and the period in which it is set."

The decision was generally met with strong criticism. Numerous Bond fans, news and media outlets, and public commentators condemned the changes as literary censorship. host Whoopi Goldberg expressed her opposition, arguing that offensive historical literature should be left unaltered; while National Review contributors Charles C. W. Cooke and Douglas Murray attacked the changes as excessive political correctness. Fleming biographer Andrew Lycett also opposed the changes, writing that "what an author commits to paper is sacrosanct and shouldn't be altered...The only changes to the text should come from the author."

References

(Subscription or ^ Lycett, Andrew (2004). "Fleming, Ian Lancaster (1908-1964) (subscription needed)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/33168. UK public library membership required.)

^ Singh, Anita (2 October 2014). "James Bond's secret mission: to save Stirling Moss". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022.

^ Furness, Hannah (28 May 2015). "Pussy Galore returns for new James Bond novel Trigger Mortis". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022.

^ "New James Bond Novel Is a Prequel to Fleming's First". The New York Times. 12 February 2018. Archived from the original on 3 January 2022.

1634-1699: ^ McCusker, J. J. (1997). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States: Addenda et Corrigenda (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1700-1799: McCusker, J. J. (1992). How Much Is That in Real Money? A Historical Price Index for Use as a Deflator of Money Values in the Economy of the United States (PDF). American Antiquarian Society. 1800-present:

^ Edlitz, Mark (2019). The Many Lives of James Bond: How the Creators of 007 Have Decoded the Superspy. Lyons Press. p. 148. ISBN 978-1493041565.

^ Robey, Tim (12 January 2011). "Sam Mendes may have problems directing new James Bond movie". The Daily Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022.

^ Shprintz, Janet (29 March 1999). "Big Bond-holder". . Judge Rafeedie ... found that McClory's rights in the "Thunderball" material had reverted to the estate of Fleming

^ "Grammy Hall of Fame Award Archived 2015-07-07 at the Wayback Machine. Grammy.org. Retrieved 28 July 2022

^ Backe, Hans-Joachim. "Narrative Feedback: Computer games, comics, and the James Bond Franchise" (PDF). Ruhr University Bochum. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 April 2012.

^ Crandall, Robert W.; Sidak, J. Gregory. "Video Games: Serious Business for America's Economy" (PDF). Entertainment Software Association. pp. 39-40. Archived from the original (PDF) on 3 February 2013.

^ "The 100 Greatest Games Of All Time". www.empireonline.com. Empire. 2009. Archived from the original on 15 May 2011.

Lawrence Schick (1991). Heroic Worlds: A History and Guide to Role-Playing Games. New York: Prometheus Books. p. 63. ISBN 978-0879756536.

^ "Bond's unsung heroes: Geoffrey Boothroyd, the real Q". The Daily Telegraph. 21 May 2009. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022.

^ Andrew English (28 October 2010). "James Bond Aston Martin DB5 sells for 拢2.6m". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022.

^ Jenkins, Tricia (September 2005). "James Bond's "Pussy" and Anglo-American Cold War Sexuality". The Journal of American Culture. 28 (3): 309-317. doi:10.1111/j.1542-734X.2005.00215.x.

^ Davey, Andy (3 October 2002). "Left to his own devices" (abridged from print copy). Design Week.

^ Moniot, Drew (Summer 1976). "James Bond and America in the Sixties: An Investigation of the Formula Film in Popular Culture". Journal of the University Film Association. University of Illinois Press. 28 (3): 25-33. JSTOR 20687331.

^ Allegretti, Joseph. "James Bond and Matt Helm: The Moral Universe of Literature's Most Famous Spy and His Chief American Rival" (PDF). The Mid-Atlantic Almanack. Mid-Atlantic Popular/American Culture Association. Archived from the original (PDF) on 8 January 2010.

^ "100 years series: 100 heroes and villains" (PDF). AFI 100 Years Series. American Film Industry. Archived from the original (PDF) on 7 August 2011.

^ Dodds, Klaus (2005). "Screening Geopolitics: James Bond and the Early Cold War films (1962-1967)". Geopolitics. 10 (2): 266-289. doi:10.1080/14650040590946584. S2CID 144363319.

^ Grigg, Richard (November 2007). "Vanquishing Evil without the Help of God: The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and a World Come of Age". Journal of Communication & Religion. 30 (2): 308-339.

^ Worland, Rick (Winter 1994). "The Man From U.N.C.L.E. and TV espionage in the 1960s". Journal of Popular Film & Television. 21 (4): 150-162. doi:10.1080/01956051.1994.9943983.

^ "Action & Mystery exhibition inspired by GREAT British icons". Gov.uk. 1 November 2016.

^ "As Cadbury's Milk Tray Man returns, which other TV ad characters are ripe for a makeover?". The Telegraph. Archived from the original on 10 January 2022.

^ TravelTriangle (15 June 2018). "'Die Another Day', As This New James Bond Museum On The Austrian Alps Is Too Good To Be Missed".

^ Lindner, Christoph (2003). The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader. Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6541-5.

^ Comentale, Edward P.; Watt, Stephen; Willman, Skip (2005). Ian Fleming & James Bond: The Cultural Politics of 007. Indiana University Press. ISBN 978-0-253-34523-3.

^ "Why I'm Still Shaken and Stirred by James Bond". Vogue. I understand the criticisms levied at the franchise. Bond is a caveman with an Omega, a misogynist with gadgets, a brute in a tux.

^ Dodds, Klaus (3 July 2014). "Shaking and Stirring James Bond: Age, Gender, and Resilience in Skyfall (2012)". Journal of Popular Film and Television. 42 (3): 116-130. doi:10.1080/01956051.2013.858026. ISSN 0195-6051. S2CID 145499529.

^ Dodds, Klaus (1 July 2005). "Screening Geopolitics: James Bond and the Early Cold War films (1962-1967)". Geopolitics. 10 (2): 266-289. doi:10.1080/14650040590946584. ISSN 1465-0045. S2CID 144363319.

^ Müller, Timo (2015). "The Bonds of Empire: (Post-)Imperial Negotiations in the 007 Film Series". In Buchenau, Barbara; Richter, Virginia (eds.). Post-Empire Imaginaries? Anglophone Literature, History, and the Demise of Empires. Amsterdam: Rodopi. pp. 305-326. doi:10.1163/9789004302280_014. ISBN 978-9004302280.

^ Hasian, Marouf Jr. (20 October 2014). "Skyfall, James Bond's Resurrection, and 21st-Century Anglo-American Imperial Nostalgia". Communication Quarterly. 62 (5): 569-588. doi:10.1080/01463373.2014.949389. ISSN 0146-3373. S2CID 143363641.

^ "Shame, James". The Courier-Journal. Louisville. 18 May 1965. p. 16. Archived from the original on 25 August 2017 - via Newspapers.com.

Connik, Michael (14 September 2007). "James Bond vs. the USSR".

^ Lycett, Andrew (27 February 2023). "I'm Ian Fleming's biographer - there's no way James Bond can be made 'PC'". The Independent.

Bibliography

External links

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The series focuses on James Bond, a fictional British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels and two short-story collections. Since Fleming's death in 1964, eight other authors have written authorised Bond novels or novelisations: Kingsley Amis, Christopher Wood, John Gardner, Raymond Benson, Sebastian Faulks, Jeffery Deaver, William Boyd, and Anthony Horowitz.

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Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1967 American drama film directed by John Huston and based on the 1941 novel of the same name by Carson McCullers. It deals with elements of repressed sexuality, both homosexual and heterosexual, as well as voyeurism and murder. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.

The film tells of six central characters, their failures, obsessions and darkest desires. Set at a U.S. Army post in the South in the late 1940s, it features Major Weldon Penderton and his wife Leonora. Other central characters are Lieutenant Colonel Morris Langdon and his depressed wife Alison, the Langdons' houseboy Anacleto, and Private Ellgee Williams.

Major Penderton assigns Private Williams to clear some foliage at his private officer's quarters instead of his usual duty of maintaining the horses and stables. Penderton's wife Leonora prepares to go horseback riding with Lt. Col. Langdon. Their affair is revealed, as well as Leonora's strong bond with her horse Firebird. Williams is shown to be sympathetic to all the horses in the stable. One day while riding, Langdon, Leonora and Penderton see Williams riding nude and bareback on one of the military horses. Penderton is critical of this to Leonora but his secret interest in the free-spirited Williams is clear.

Leonora and Penderton have an argument that same night, in which Leonora taunts Penderton and strips naked in front of him. Williams watches them from outside the house, and from then on spies on them. He eventually breaks into the house and watches Leonora sleep at night, unbeknownst to Penderton as they have separate bedrooms. As he continues this practice, Williams starts to go through Leonora's belongings, especially her lingerie and perfume.

Penderton takes Firebird and rides wildly into the woods, passing the naked Williams at high speed. Penderton falls off, catching his foot in the stirrup, and is dragged for a distance. In a fit of uncontrollable rage, he viciously beats the horse and begins to sob. Williams appears, still naked, and takes the horse. As Penderton stands mute in the woods, Williams brings the horse back to the stable to tend its wounds. Penderton returns to the house, locked in his room while Leonora hosts a party outside. Upon finding out about her horse's injuries, Leonora interrupts her party and in front of the guests repeatedly strikes her husband in the face with her riding crop. Penderton becomes infatuated with Williams and starts to follow him around the camp.

Alison Langdon mutilated herself while deeply depressed after the death of her newborn infant. Her only bonds now are with her effeminate Filipino houseboy Anacleto and with Capt. Murray Weincheck, a cultured and sensitive soldier who is being harassed out of the army by his superiors. Aware of her husband's adultery, Alison decides to divorce him. However, after witnessing Williams in Leonora's room, she becomes traumatized. When she tries to leave him, Langdon commits her to a sanatorium. Langdon tells Leonora and Penderton that Alison was going insane. Soon, Penderton is informed that Alison died of a heart attack. Anacleto disappears soon after her death.

One night, Penderton looks out his window and sees Williams outside the house. He thinks Williams is coming to see him, but watches the younger man enter his wife Leonora's room instead. Penderton turns on the light to find Williams fondling his wife's underwear and shoots him dead. The film ends with the camera wildly veering back and forth among the dead body, the screaming Leonora, and Penderton. The opening line of the novel and the film is restated: "There is a fort in the South where a few years ago a murder was committed."

Taylor accepted the part on the condition that Montgomery Clift would be cast as well. However, Clift died on July 23, 1966 of a heart attack before production began. The role subsequently went to Brando after both Richard Burton and Lee Marvin turned it down. Some of the film was shot in New York City and on Long Island, where Huston was permitted to use the former Mitchel Field, then in use by Nassau Community College. Many of the interiors and some of the exteriors were filmed in Italy.

The film was originally released with all scenes tinted with a gold filter, with only certain shades of reds (such as a rose) or greens not appearing in or approaching tints or shades of gold. This effect is a reference to the houseboy's drawing of a golden peacock in whose eye the world is a reflection. As this version puzzled audiences, it was withdrawn within one week of release and replaced with a version processed in normal Technicolor. Film critic Roger Ebert wrote:

"Since the film was photographed in full color and the 'fading' was done in post-production, most of the video versions have simply restored the color. That's not what Huston intended, and the thing to do is to use your color adjustment to fade the color to almost but not quite b&w. Does it work? That's for you to decide."

A 2020 two-disc Blu-ray release of the film by Warner Bros. Home Entertainment features both Huston's intended version of the film and the re-color-timed reissued version.

The film received mixed reviews at the time of its release. called it a "pretentious melodrama" but praised Keith's "superb" performance as the "rationalizing and insensitive middle-class hypocrite." described it as a "gallery of grotesques," with the poetry of the novel missing from the film. Its critic wrote: "All that remains praiseworthy is the film's extraordinary photographic technique."

Roger Ebert observed that the film was released without the usual publicity, despite its stellar cast and director: "Was the movie so wretchedly bad that Warner Bros. decided to keep it a secret? Or could it be, perhaps, that it was too good?" Ebert praised the production but noted that some audience members reacted to the film's emotional moments with guffaws and nervous laughter. John Simon wrote: "Yet for all its fidelity to the original, John Huston's film, with a script by Champman Mortimer and Gladys Hill, is a pedestrian, crass, and uninvolving to the point of repellance."

The film received a score of 55% on Rotten Tomatoes from 22 reviews.

The film opened at number one at the US box office. The author of the novel, Carson McCullers, died a fortnight before the premiere.

Still photographs of Brando in character as Major Penderton were used later by the producers of Apocalypse Now. These photos of a younger Brando were displayed in the service record of the character Colonel Walter E. Kurtz.

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Reflections in a Golden Eye (film) - Wikipedia

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Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1967 American drama film directed by John Huston and based on the 1941 novel of the same name by Carson McCullers. It deals with elements of repressed sexuality, both homosexual and heterosexual, as well as voyeurism and murder. The film stars Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.

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Goldeneye is the original name of novelist Ian Fleming's estate on Oracabessa Bay on the northern coastline of Jamaica.

In spite of its obvious proximity to Golden Clouds, Fleming claimed a number of origins for the name Goldeneye, including Carson McCullers's 1941 novel, Reflections in a Golden Eye and Operation Goldeneye, a Second World War era contingency plan Fleming had developed in case of a Nazi invasion of Gibraltar through Spain.

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While working for Britain's Naval Intelligence Division during the Second World War, Fleming was involved in planning Operation Goldeneye and in the planning and oversight of two intelligence units, 30 Assault Unit and T-Force.

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Operation Goldeneye was an Allied stay-behind plan during the Second World War to monitor Spain after a possible alliance between Francisco Franco and the Axis powers, and to undertake sabotage operations. The plan was formed by Commander Ian Fleming of the Naval Intelligence Division (NID). No German takeover of Spain took place, nor an invasion of Gibraltar, and the plan was shelved in 1943. Fleming later used the name for his Jamaican home where he wrote the James Bond stories.

1939 map of the Strait of Gibraltar from The Illustrated London News

The aim of the operation was to ensure that Britain could continue to communicate with Gibraltar if Spain joined, or was invaded by, the Axis powers, and to carry out limited sabotage. In August 1940, Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming of the NID was assigned the responsibility for drawing up the plan. Of particular concern to Fleming was the possible installation of Axis radar equipment and infrared cameras in the Strait of Gibraltar, which would have been a threat to the Navy's Mediterranean strategy and to Allied shipping interests in the Atlantic Ocean.

Under cover of a courier's passport, Fleming travelled to Gibraltar on 16 February 1941. On his arrival, he liaised closely with Alan Hillgarth, the British naval attaché in Madrid. Hillgarth provided much of the background to the plan for the guerrilla campaign and sabotage that would follow German presence on the Iberian peninsula. Fleming's presence in Gibraltar was primarily to set up a secure cipher link between London and the Goldeneye liaison office, the latter under the control of H. L. Greensleeves, an NID agent. A Tangier office was also set up by Fleming to assume the activities of the Gibraltar office should the Germans occupy Gibraltar. During the course of his visit, Fleming also met with William J. Donovan from the American Office of Strategic Services, who was on a fact-finding tour. Fleming returned to London on 26 February 1941.

A precursor to visiting the United States, Fleming discussed Goldeneye with the various intelligence organisations in Lisbon on 20 May 1941 to ensure their smooth coordinated operations. He also undertook an assessment of the facilities and equipment for Goldeneye. He suggested that an Anglo-American Intelligence Committee be set up to coordinate the gathering and evaluating of intelligence from North Africa and the Iberian peninsula.

In 1942 Goldeneye moved into a state of alert prior to the implementation of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of North Africa, to monitor and counter the stepped up surveillance and sabotage activities by the Axis powers who suspected that some type of military action would occur in the Mediterranean area. The 10th Light Flotilla, an elite unit of Italian navy frogmen, would use wrecked ships in Gibraltar to launch attacks on Allied shipping.

The reduced risk of Nazi occupation of Spain brought about the shutdown of Goldeneye in August 1943, along with the associated plan, Operation Tracer.

Fleming's Goldeneye estate, where he wrote all the Bond novels

Fleming later named his Jamaican estate " Goldeneye", and began writing his series of James Bond novels there. The name was also used for the title of the seventeenth James Bond film, starring Pierce Brosnan as Bond.

Notes

References

Bennett, Tony; Woollacott, Janet (2003). "The Moments of Bond". In Lindner, Christoph (ed.). The James Bond Phenomenon: A Critical Reader. Manchester: Manchester University Press. ISBN 978-0-7190-6541-5.

Cabell, Craig (2008). Ian Fleming's Secret War. Barnsley: Pen and Sword Books. ISBN 978-1-84415-773-0.

Haining, Peter (2007). The Mystery of Rommel's Gold: The Search of the Legendary Nazi Treasure. London: Anova Books. ISBN 978-1-84486-053-1.

Lochery, Neill (2011). Lisbon: War in the Shadows of the City of Light, 1939-1945. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 978-1-58648-879-6.

Macintyre, Ben (2008). For Your Eyes Only. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7475-9527-4.

Macintyre, Ben (2010). Operation Mincemeat: The True Spy Story That Changed the Course of World War II. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 978-1-4088-0921-1.

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Operation Goldeneye was an Allied stay-behind plan during the Second World War to monitor Spain after a possible alliance between Francisco Franco and the Axis powers, and to undertake sabotage operations. The plan was formed by Commander Ian Fleming of the Naval Intelligence Division (NID).

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Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1941 novel by American author Carson McCullers.

It first appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1940, serialized in the October-November issues. The book was published by Houghton Mifflin on February 14, 1941, to mostly poor reviews. The book was dedicated to the Swiss journalist, travel writer and novelist Annemarie Schwarzenbach (1908-1942), whom McCullers had met and befriended in the summer of 1940 (after the book was finished).

It was adapted as a 1967 film of the same name, featuring Elizabeth Taylor and Marlon Brando.

McCullers wrote the book in 1939, originally using the title "Army Post". She said the story had germinated when, as an adolescent, she had first stepped into the alien territory of Fort Benning in Georgia. A more direct inspiration came from a chance remark which her husband Reeves (an ex-soldier) made to her about a voyeur who had been arrested at Fort Bragg; a young soldier had been caught peeping inside the married officers' quarters.

McCullers wrote the novel while in Fayetteville, North Carolina, near Fort Bragg. After two months of arduous writing, she finished her manuscript and put it away in a dresser. She later said of it:

I am so immersed in my characters that their motives are my own. When I write about a thief, I become one; when I write about Captain Penderton, I become a homosexual man. I become the characters I write about and I bless the Latin poet Terence who said 'Nothing human is alien to me.'

The novel takes place at an army base in the U.S. state of Georgia. Private Ellgee Williams, a solitary man full of secrets and desires, has served for two years and is assigned to stable duty. After doing yard work at the home of Capt. Penderton, he sees the captain's wife nude and becomes obsessed with her.

Capt. Weldon Penderton and his wife Leonora, who grew up as an Army brat, have a fiery relationship, and she takes many lovers. Leonora's current lover, Major Morris Langdon, lives with his depressed wife Alison and her flamboyant houseboy Anacleto, near the Pendertons.

Capt. Penderton, as a closeted homosexual, realizes that he is physically attracted to Pvt. Williams, but remains unaware of the private's attraction to Leonora.

After its publication in 1941, the novel caused some consternation in Columbus, Georgia and at Fort Benning, where people speculated about the source of McCullers' tale.

According to author Michael Bronski, McCullers tackled the topics of "homosexuality, sadism, voyeurism, and fetishism while exploring the boundaries of eroticism, outsider status and the fragility of normal in the novel."

Anthony Slide, another 21st-century scholar, considers Reflections in a Golden Eye to be one of only four well-known gay novels in the English language in the first half of the 20th century. The other three are Djuna Barnes's , Truman Capote's Other Voices, Other Rooms, and Gore Vidal's The City and the Pillar.

A 1967 film adaptation of Reflections in a Golden Eye was directed by John Huston. It stars Marlon Brando, Elizabeth Taylor, Julie Harris, Brian Keith and Robert Forster.

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Reflections in a Golden Eye (novel) - Wikipedia

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Reflections in a Golden Eye is a 1941 novel by American author Carson McCullers. It first appeared in Harper's Bazaar in 1940, serialized in the October-November issues. The book was published by Houghton Mifflin on February 14, 1941, to mostly poor reviews.

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Ian Lancaster Fleming (28 May 1908 – 12 August 1964) was a British writer, best known for his postwar James Bond series of spy novels. Fleming came from a wealthy family connected to the merchant bank Robert Fleming & Co., and his father was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Henley from 1910 until his death on the Western Front in 1917. Educated at Eton, Sandhurst, and, briefly, the universities of Munich and Geneva, Fleming moved through several jobs before he started writing.

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Eyed by Dusty and Rob

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Roman equivalent is Jupiter

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Zeus

King of the Gods

God of the sky, lightning, thunder, law, and order

Member of the Twelve Olympians

Abode
Mount Olympus

Planet
Jupiter

Symbol

Thunderbolt, eagle, bull, oak

Day

Thursday ( hēméra Diós)

Parents

Cronus and Rhea

Siblings

Hestia, Hades, Hera, Poseidon and Demeter

Consort

Hera, various others

Children

Apollo, Ares, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, Eileithyia, Hebe, Helen of Troy, Heracles, Hermes, Hephaestus, Minos, Persephone, Perseus, the Charites, the Horae, the Muses, the Moirai, various others

Roman equivalent
Jupiter

Zeus is the child of Cronus and Rhea, the youngest of his siblings to be born, though sometimes reckoned the eldest as the others required disgorging from Cronus's stomach. In most traditions, he is married to Hera, by whom he is usually said to have fathered Ares, Eileithyia, Hebe, and Hephaestus. At the oracle of Dodona, his consort was said to be Dione, by whom the states that he fathered Aphrodite. According to the , Zeus' first wife was Metis, by whom he had Athena. Zeus was also infamous for his erotic escapades. These resulted in many divine and heroic offspring, including Apollo, Artemis, Hermes, Persephone, Dionysus, Perseus, Heracles, Helen of Troy, Minos, and the Muses.

He was respected as a sky father who was chief of the gods and assigned roles to the others: "Even the gods who are not his natural children address him as Father, and all the gods rise in his presence." He was equated with many foreign weather gods, permitting Pausanias to observe "That Zeus is king in heaven is a saying common to all men". Zeus' symbols are the thunderbolt, eagle, bull, and oak. In addition to his Indo-European inheritance, the classical "cloud-gatherer" (Greek: Νεφεληγερέτα , Nephelēgereta) also derives certain iconographic traits from the cultures of the ancient Near East, such as the scepter.

Zeus is the Greek continuation of * the name of the Proto-Indo-European god of the daytime sky, also called * ("Sky Father"). The god is known under this name in the Rigveda ( Vedic Sanskrit Dyaus/Dyaus Pita), Latin (compare , from Iuppiter, deriving from the Proto-Indo-European vocative *), deriving from the root * dyeu- ("to shine", and in its many derivatives, "sky, heaven, god"). Albanian Zoj-z is also a cognate of Zeus. In both the Greek and Albanian forms the original cluster *di̯ underwent affrication to *dz. Zeus is the only deity in the Olympic pantheon whose name has such a transparent Indo-European etymology.

Plato, in his Cratylus, gives a folk etymology of Zeus meaning "cause of life always to all things", because of puns between alternate titles of Zeus ( Zen and Dia) with the Greek words for life and "because of". This etymology, along with Plato's entire method of deriving etymologies, is not supported by modern scholarship.

Diodorus Siculus wrote that Zeus was also called Zen, because the humans believed that he was the cause of life (zen). While Lactantius wrote that he was called Zeus and Zen, not because he is the giver of life, but because he was the first who lived of the children of Cronus.

Zeus was called by numerous alternative names or surnames, known as epithets. Some epithets are the surviving names of local gods who were consolidated into the myth of Zeus.

"Cave of Zeus", Mount Ida, Crete

In Hesiod's (c. 730 - 700 BC), Cronus, after castrating his father Uranus, becomes the supreme ruler of the cosmos, and weds his sister Rhea, by whom he begets three daughters and three sons: Hestia, Demeter, Hera, Hades, Poseidon, and lastly, "wise" Zeus, the youngest of the six. He swallows each child as soon as they are born, having received a prophecy from his parents, Gaia and Uranus, that one of his own children is destined to one day overthrow him as he overthrew his father. This causes Rhea "unceasing grief", and upon becoming pregnant with her sixth child, Zeus, she approaches her parents, Gaia and Uranus, seeking a plan to save her child and bring retribution to Cronus. Following her parents' instructions, she travels to Lyctus in Crete, where she gives birth to Zeus, handing the newborn child over to Gaia for her to raise, and Gaia takes him to a cave on Mount Aegaeon. Rhea then gives to Cronus, in the place of a child, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallows, unaware that it is not his son.

While Hesiod gives Lyctus as Zeus's birthplace, he is the only source to do so, and other authors give different locations. The poet Eumelos of Corinth (8th century BC), according to John the Lydian, considered Zeus to have been born in Lydia, while the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (c. 310 - c. 240 BC), in his Hymn to Zeus, says that he was born in Arcadia. Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) seems at one point to give Mount Ida as his birthplace, but later states he is born in Dicte, and the mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD) similarly says he was born in a cave in Dicte.

While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly, other sources provide more detailed accounts. According to Apollodorus, Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus in a cave in Dicte, gives him to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse. They feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amalthea, while the Kouretes guard the cave and beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant's crying. Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to Mount Ida and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes, who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amalthea. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing] a great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus, and relates that when the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the umbilical cord fell away at the river Triton.

Hyginus, in his , relates a version in which Cronus casts Poseidon into the sea and Hades to the Underworld instead of swallowing them. When Zeus is born, Hera (also not swallowed), asks Rhea to give her the young Zeus, and Rhea gives Cronus a stone to swallow. Hera gives him to Amalthea, who hangs his cradle from a tree, where he is not in heaven, on earth or in the sea, meaning that when Cronus later goes looking for Zeus, he is unable to find him. Hyginus also says that Ida, Althaea, and Adrasteia, usually considered the children of Oceanus, are sometimes called the daughters of Melisseus and the nurses of Zeus.

According to a fragment of Epimenides, the nymphs Helike and Kynosura are the young Zeus's nurses. Cronus travels to Crete to look for Zeus, who, to conceal his presence, transforms himself into a snake and his two nurses into bears. According to Musaeus, after Zeus is born, Rhea gives him to Themis. Themis in turn gives him to Amalthea, who owns a she-goat, which nurses the young Zeus.

Antoninus Liberalis, in his Metamorphoses, says that Rhea gives birth to Zeus in a sacred cave in Crete, full of sacred bees, which become the nurses of the infant. While the cave is considered forbidden ground for both mortals and gods, a group of thieves seek to steal honey from it. Upon laying eyes on the swaddling clothes of Zeus, their bronze armour "split[s] away from their bodies", and Zeus would have killed them had it not been for the intervention of the Moirai and Themis; he instead transforms them into various species of birds.

Ascension to Power

1st century BC statue of Zeus[57]

According to the Theogony, after Zeus reaches manhood, Cronus is made to disgorge the five children and the stone "by the stratagems of Gaia, but also by the skills and strength of Zeus", presumably in reverse order, vomiting out the stone first, then each of the five children in the opposite order to swallowing. Zeus then sets up the stone at Delphi, so that it may act as "a sign thenceforth and a marvel to mortal men". Zeus next frees the Cyclopes, who, in return, and out of gratitude, give him his thunderbolt, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Then begins the Titanomachy, the war between the Olympians, led by Zeus, and the Titans, led by Cronus, for control of the universe, with Zeus and the Olympians fighting from Mount Olympus, and the Titans fighting from Mount Othrys. The battle lasts for ten years with no clear victor emerging, until, upon Gaia's advice, Zeus releases the Hundred-Handers, who (similarly to the Cyclopes) were imprisoned beneath the Earth's surface. He gives them nectar and ambrosia and revives their spirits, and they agree to aid him in the war. Zeus then launches his final attack on the Titans, hurling bolts of lightning upon them while the Hundred-Handers attack with barrages of rocks, and the Titans are finally defeated, with Zeus banishing them to Tartarus and assigning the Hundred-Handers the task of acting as their warders.

Apollodorus provides a similar account, saying that, when Zeus reaches adulthood, he enlists the help of the Oceanid Metis, who gives Cronus an emetic, forcing to him to disgorge the stone and Zeus's five siblings. Zeus then fights a similar ten-year war against the Titans, until, upon the prophesying of Gaia, he releases the Cyclopes and Hundred-Handers from Tartarus, first slaying their warder, Campe. The Cyclopes give him his thunderbolt, Poseidon his trident and Hades his helmet of invisibility, and the Titans are defeated and the Hundred-Handers made their guards.

According to the , after the battle with the Titans, Zeus shares the world with his brothers, Poseidon and Hades, by drawing lots: Zeus receives the sky, Poseidon the sea, and Hades the underworld, with the earth and Olympus remaining common ground.

Challenges to Power

Zeus (centre-left) battles against Porphyrion (far-right), detail of the Gigantomachy frieze from the Pergamon Altar, Pergamon Museum, Berlin.

Upon assuming his place as king of the cosmos, Zeus' rule is quickly challenged. The first of these challenges to his power comes from the Giants, who fight the Olympian gods in a battle known as the Gigantomachy. According to Hesiod, the Giants are the offspring of Gaia, born from the drops of blood that fell on the ground when Cronus castrated his father Uranus; there is, however, no mention of a battle between the gods and the Giants in the Theogony. It is Apollodorus who provides the most complete account of the Gigantomachy. He says that Gaia, out of anger at how Zeus had imprisoned her children, the Titans, bore the Giants to Uranus. There comes to the gods a prophecy that the Giants cannot be defeated by the gods on their own, but can be defeated only with the help of a mortal; Gaia, upon hearing of this, seeks a special pharmakon (herb) that will prevent the Giants from being killed. Zeus, however, orders Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to stop shining, and harvests all of the herb himself, before having Athena summon Heracles. In the conflict, Porphyrion, one of the most powerful of the Giants, launches an attack upon Heracles and Hera; Zeus, however, causes Porphyrion to become lustful for Hera, and when he is just about to violate her, Zeus strikes him with his thunderbolt, before Heracles deals the fatal blow with an arrow.

In the Theogony, after Zeus defeats the Titans and banishes them to Tartarus, his rule is challenged by the monster Typhon, a giant serpentine creature who battles Zeus for control of the cosmos. According to Hesiod, Typhon is the offspring of Gaia and Tartarus, described as having a hundred snaky fire-breathing heads. Hesiod says he "would have come to reign over mortals and immortals" had it not been for Zeus noticing the monster and dispatching with him quickly: the two of them meet in a cataclysmic battle, before Zeus defeats him easily with his thunderbolt, and the creature is hurled down to Tartarus. Epimenides presents a different version, in which Typhon makes his way into Zeus's palace while he is sleeping, only for Zeus to wake and kill the monster with a thunderbolt. Aeschylus and Pindar give somewhat similar accounts to Hesiod, in that Zeus overcomes Typhon with relative ease, defeating him with his thunderbolt. Apollodorus, in contrast, provides a more complex narrative. Typhon is, similarly to in Hesiod, the child of Gaia and Tartarus, produced out of anger at Zeus's defeat of the Giants. The monster attacks heaven, and all of the gods, out of fear, transform into animals and flee to Egypt, except for Zeus, who attacks the monster with his thunderbolt and sickle. Typhon is wounded and retreats to Mount Kasios in Syria, where Zeus grapples with him, giving the monster a chance to wrap him in his coils, and rip out the sinews from his hands and feet. Disabled, Zeus is taken by Typhon to the Corycian Cave in Cilicia, where he is guarded by the "she-dragon" Delphyne. Hermes and Aegipan, however, steal back Zeus's sinews, and refit them, reviving him and allowing him to return to the battle, pursuing Typhon, who flees to Mount Nysa; there, Typhon is given "ephemeral fruits" by the Moirai, which reduce his strength. The monster then flees to Thrace, where he hurls mountains at Zeus, which are sent back at him by the god's thunderbolts, before, while fleeing to Sicily, Zeus launches Mount Etna upon him, finally ending him. Nonnus, who gives the longest and most detailed account, presents a narrative similar to Apollodorus, with differences such as that it is instead Cadmus and Pan who recovers Zeus's sinews, by luring Typhon with music and then tricking him.

In the Iliad, Homer tells of another attempted overthrow, in which Hera, Poseidon, and Athena conspire to overpower Zeus and tie him in bonds. It is only because of the Nereid Thetis, who summons Briareus, one of the Hecatoncheires, to Olympus, that the other Olympians abandon their plans (out of fear for Briareus).

Seven wives

Jupiter, disguised as a shepherd, tempts Mnemosyne by Jacob de Wit (1727)

According to Hesiod, Zeus takes Metis, one of the Oceanid daughters of Oceanus and Tethys, as his first wife. However, when she is about to give birth to a daughter, Athena, he swallows her whole upon the advice of Gaia and Uranus, as it had been foretold that after bearing a daughter, she would give birth to a son, who would overthrow him as king of gods and mortals; it is from this position that Metis gives counsel to Zeus. In time, Athena is born, emerging from Zeus's head, but the foretold son never comes forth. Apollodorus presents a similar version, stating that Metis took many forms in attempting to avoid Zeus's embraces, and that it was Gaia alone who warned Zeus of the son who would overthrow him. According to a fragment likely from the Hesiodic corpus, quoted by Chrysippus, it is out of anger at Hera for producing Hephaestus on her own that Zeus has intercourse with Metis, and then swallows her, thereby giving rise to Athena from himself. A scholiast on the , in contrast, states that when Zeus swallows her, Metis is pregnant with Athena not by Zeus himself, but by the Cyclops Brontes. The motif of Zeus swallowing Metis can be seen as a continuation of the succession myth: it is prophesied that a son of Zeus will overthrow him, just as he overthrew his father, but whereas Cronos met his end because he did not swallow the real Zeus, Zeus holds onto his power because he successfully swallows the threat, in the form of the potential mother, and so the "cycle of displacement" is brought to an end. In addition, the myth can be seen as an allegory for Zeus gaining the wisdom of Metis for himself by swallowing her.

In Hesiod's account, Zeus's second wife is Themis, one of the Titan daughters of Uranus and Gaia, with whom he has the Horae, listed as Eunomia, Dike and Eirene, and the three Moirai: Clotho, Lachesis and Atropos. A fragment from Pindar calls Themis Zeus's first wife, and states that she is brought by the Moirai (in this version not her daughters) up to Olympus, where she becomes the bride of Zeus and bears him the Horae. According to Hesiod, Zeus next marries the Oceanid Eurynome, with whom he has the three Charites, namely Aglaea, Euphrosyne and Thalia. Zeus's fourth wife is his sister Demeter, with whom he has Persephone. Zeus's next consort is the Titan Mnemosyne; as described at the beginning of the Theogony, Zeus lies with Mnemosyne in Piera each night for nine nights, producing the nine Muses. His sixth wife is the Titan Leto, who bears him the twins Apollo and Artemis, who, according to the Homeric Hymn to Apollo, are born on the island of Delos. In Hesiod's account, Zeus's seventh and final wife is his sister Hera.

Marriage to Hera

Wedding of Zeus and Hera on an antique fresco from Pompeii

While Hera is Zeus's seventh wife in Hesiod's version, in other accounts she is his first and only wife. In the Theogony, the couple has three children, Ares, Hebe, and Eileithyia. While Hesiod states that Hera produces Hephaestus on her own after Athena is born from Zeus's head, other versions, including Homer, have Hephaestus as a child of Zeus and Hera as well.

Various authors give descriptions of a youthful affair between Zeus and Hera. In the Iliad, the pair are described as having first lay with each other before Cronus is sent to Tartarus, without the knowledge of their parents. A scholiast on the Iliad states that, after Cronus is banished to Tartarus, Oceanus and Tethys give Hera to Zeus in marriage, and only shortly after the two are wed, Hera gives birth to Hephaestus, having lay secretly with Zeus on the island of Samos beforehand; to conceal this act, she claimed that she had produced Hephaestus on her own. According to another scholiast on the Iliad, Callimachus, in his , says that Zeus lay with Hera for three hundred years on the island of Samos.

According to a scholion on Theocritus' Idylls, Zeus, one day seeing Hera walking apart from the other gods, becomes intent on having intercourse with her, and transforms himself into a cuckoo bird, landing on Mount Thornax. He creates a terrible storm, and when Hera arrives at the mountain and sees the bird, which sits on her lap, she takes pity on it, laying her cloak over it. Zeus then transforms back and takes hold of her; when she refuses to have intercourse with him because of their mother, he promises that she will become his wife. Pausanias similarly refers to Zeus transforming himself into a cuckoo to woo Hera, and identifies the location as Mount Thornax.

According to a version from Plutarch, as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica, Hera is raised by a nymph named Macris on the island of Euboea when Zeus kidnaps her, taking her to Mount Cithaeron, where they find a shady hollow, which serves as a "natural bridal chamber". When Macris comes to look for Hera, Cithaeron, the tutelary deity of the mountain, stops her, saying that Zeus is sleeping there with Leto. Photius, in his Bibliotheca, tells us that in Ptolemy Hephaestion's New History, Hera refuses to lay with Zeus, and hides in a cave to avoid him, before an earthborn man named Achilles convinces her to marry Zeus, leading to the pair first sleeping with each other. According to Stephanus of Byzantium, Zeus and Hera first lay together at the city of Hermione, having come there from Crete. Callimachus, in a fragment from his Aetia, also apparently makes reference to the couple's union occurring at Naxos.

Though no complete account of Zeus and Hera's wedding exists, various authors make reference to it. According to a scholiast on Apollonius of Rhodes' Argonautica, Pherecydes states that when Zeus and Hera are being married, Gaia brings a tree which produces golden apples as a wedding gift. Eratosthenes and Hyginus attribute a similar story to Pherecydes, in which Hera is amazed by the gift, and asks for the apples to be planted in the "garden of the gods", nearby to Mount Atlas. Apollodorus specifies them as the golden apples of the Hesperides, and says that Gaia gives them to Zeus after the marriage. According to Diodorus Siculus, the location of the marriage is in the land of the Knossians, nearby to the river Theren, while Lactantius attributes to Varro the statement that the couple are married on the island of Samos.

There exist several stories in which Zeus, receiving advice, is able to reconcile with an angered Hera. According to Pausanias, Hera, angry with her husband, retreats to the island of Euboea, where she was raised, and Zeus, unable to resolve the situation, seeks the advice of Cithaeron, ruler of Plataea, supposedly the most intelligent man on earth. Cithaeron instructs him to fashion a wooden statue and dress it as a bride, and then pretend that he is marrying one "Plataea", a daughter of Asopus. When Hera hears of this, she immediately rushes there, only to discover the ruse upon ripping away the bridal clothing; she is so relieved that the couple are reconciled. According to a version from Plutarch, as recorded by Eusebius in his Praeparatio evangelica, when Hera is angry with her husband, she retreats instead to Cithaeron, and Zeus goes to the earth-born man Alalcomeneus, who suggests he pretend to marry someone else. With the help of Alalcomeneus, Zeus creates a wooden statue from an oak tree, dresses it as a bride, and names it Daidale. When preparations are being made for the wedding, Hera rushes down from Cithaeron, followed by the women of Plataia, and upon discovering the trick, the couple are reconciled, with the matter ending in joy and laughter among all involved.

Zeus carrying away Ganymede (Late Archaic terracotta, 480-470 BC)

After his marriage to Hera, different authors describe Zeus's numerous affairs with various mortal women. In many of these affairs, Zeus transforms himself into an animal, someone else, or some other form. According to a scholion on the Iliad (citing Hesiod and Bacchylides), when Europa is picking flowers with her female companions in a meadow in Phoenicia, Zeus transforms himself into a bull, lures her from the others, and then carries her across the sea to the island of Crete, where he resumes his usual form to sleep with her. In Euripides' , Zeus takes the form of a swan, and after being chased by an eagle, finds shelter in the lap of Leda, subsequently seducing her, while in Euripides' lost play Antiope, Zeus apparently took the form of a satyr to sleep with Antiope. Various authors speak of Zeus raping Callisto, one of the companions of Artemis, doing so in the form of Artemis herself according to Ovid (or, as mentioned by Apollodorus, in the form of Apollo), and Pherecydes relates that Zeus sleeps with Alcmene, the wife of Amphitryon, in the form of her own husband. Several accounts state that Zeus approached the Argive princess Danae in the form of a shower of gold, while according to Ovid he abducts Aegina in the form of a flame.

In accounts of Zeus's affairs, Hera is often depicted as a jealous wife, with there being various stories of her persecuting either the women with whom Zeus sleeps, or their children by him. Several authors relate that Zeus sleeps with Io, a priestess of Hera, who is subsequently turned into a cow, and suffers at Hera's hands: according to Apollodorus, Hera sends a gadfly to sting the cow, driving her all the way to Egypt, where she is finally transformed back into human form. In later accounts of Zeus's affair with Semele, a daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, Hera tricks her into persuading Zeus to grant her any promise. Semele asks him to come to her as he comes to his own wife Hera, and when Zeus upholds this promise, she dies out of fright and is reduced to ashes. According to Callimachus, after Zeus sleeps with Callisto, Hera turns her into a bear, and instructs Artemis to shoot her. In addition, Zeus's son by Alcmene, the hero Heracles, is persecuted continuously throughout his mortal life by Hera, up until his apotheosis.

According to Diodorus Siculus, Alcmene, the mother of Heracles, was the very last mortal woman Zeus ever slept with; following the birth of Heracles, he ceased to beget humans altogether, and fathered no more children.

List of disguises used by Zeus

The following is a list of Zeus's offspring, by various mothers. Beside each offspring, the earliest source to record the parentage is given, along with the century to which the source dates.

Prometheus and conflicts with humans

Summits of Mount Olympus

When the gods met at Mecone to discuss which portions they will receive after a sacrifice, the titan Prometheus decided to trick Zeus so that humans receive the better portions. He sacrificed a large ox, and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, covering it with the ox's grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones with fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose; Zeus chose the pile of bones. This set a precedent for sacrifices, where humans will keep the fat for themselves and burn the bones for the gods.

Zeus, enraged at Prometheus's deception, prohibited the use of fire by humans. Prometheus, however, stole fire from Olympus in a fennel stalk and gave it to humans. This further enraged Zeus, who punished Prometheus by binding him to a cliff, where an eagle constantly ate Prometheus's liver, which regenerated every night. Prometheus was eventually freed from his misery by Heracles.

Now Zeus, angry at humans, decides to give humanity a punishing gift to compensate for the boon they had been given. He commands Hephaestus to mold from earth the first woman, a "beautiful evil" whose descendants would torment the human race. After Hephaestus does so, several other gods contribute to her creation. Hermes names the woman ' Pandora'.

Pandora was given in marriage to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus. Zeus gave her a jar which contained many evils. Pandora opened the jar and released all the evils, which made mankind miserable. Only hope remained inside the jar.

When Zeus was atop Mount Olympus he was appalled by human sacrifice and other signs of human decadence. He decided to wipe out mankind and flooded the world with the help of his brother Poseidon. After the flood, only Deucalion and Pyrrha remained. This flood narrative is a common motif in mythology.

The Chariot of Zeus, from an 1879 Stories from the Greek Tragedians by Alfred Church.

Jupiter and Juno on Mount Ida by James Barry, 1773 (City Art Galleries, Sheffield.)

The is an ancient Greek epic poem attributed to Homer about the Trojan war and the battle over the City of Troy, in which Zeus plays a major part.

Book 2: Zeus sends Agamemnon a dream and is able to partially control his decisions because of the effects of the dream

Book 4: Zeus promises Hera to ultimately destroy the City of Troy at the end of the war

Book 7: Zeus and Poseidon ruin the Achaeans fortress

Book 8: Zeus prohibits the other Gods from fighting each other and has to return to Mount Ida where he can think over his decision that the Greeks will lose the war

Book 14: Zeus is seduced by Hera and becomes distracted while she helps out the Greeks

Book 15: Zeus wakes up and realizes that his own brother, Poseidon has been aiding the Greeks, while also sending Hector and Apollo to help fight the Trojans ensuring that the City of Troy will fall

Book 16: Zeus is upset that he could not help save Sarpedon's life because it would then contradict his previous decisions

Book 17: Zeus is emotionally hurt by the fate of Hector

Book 20: Zeus lets the other Gods lend aid to their respective sides in the war

Book 24: Zeus demands that Achilles release the corpse of Hector to be buried honourably

Other myths

When Hades requested to marry Zeus's daughter, Persephone, Zeus approved and advised Hades to abduct Persephone, as her mother Demeter would not allow her to marry Hades.

In the Orphic "Rhapsodic Theogony" (first century BC/AD), Zeus wanted to marry his mother Rhea. After Rhea refused to marry him, Zeus turned into a snake and raped her. Rhea became pregnant and gave birth to Persephone. Zeus in the form of a snake would mate with his daughter Persephone, which resulted in the birth of Dionysus.

Zeus granted Callirrhoe's prayer that her sons by Alcmaeon, Acarnan and Amphoterus, grow quickly so that they might be able to avenge the death of their father by the hands of Phegeus and his two sons.

Both Zeus and Poseidon wooed Thetis, daughter of Nereus. But when Themis (or Prometheus) prophesied that the son born of Thetis would be mightier than his father, Thetis was married off to the mortal Peleus.

Zeus was afraid that his grandson Asclepius would teach resurrection to humans, so he killed Asclepius with his thunderbolt. This angered Asclepius's father, Apollo, who in turn killed the Cyclopes who had fashioned the thunderbolts of Zeus. Angered at this, Zeus would have imprisoned Apollo in Tartarus. However, at the request of Apollo's mother, Leto, Zeus instead ordered Apollo to serve as a slave to King Admetus of Pherae for a year. According to Diodorus Siculus, Zeus killed Asclepius because of complains from Hades, who was worried that the number of people in the underworld was diminishing because of Asclepius's resurrections.

The winged horse Pegasus carried the thunderbolts of Zeus.

Zeus took pity on Ixion, a man who was guilty of murdering his father-in-law, by purifying him and bringing him to Olympus. However, Ixion started to lust after Hera. Hera complained about this to her husband, and Zeus decided to test Ixion. Zeus fashioned a cloud that resembles Hera ( Nephele) and laid the cloud-Hera in Ixion's bed. Ixion coupled with Nephele, resulting in the birth of Centaurus. Zeus punished Ixion for lusting after Hera by tying him to a wheel that spins forever.

Once, Helios the sun god gave his chariot to his inexperienced son Phaethon to drive. Phaethon could not control his father's steeds so he ended up taking the chariot too high, freezing the earth, or too low, burning everything to the ground. The earth itself prayed to Zeus, and in order to prevent further disaster, Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at Phaethon, killing him and saving the world from further harm. In a satirical work, Dialogues of the Gods by Lucian, Zeus berates Helios for allowing such thing to happen; he returns the damaged chariot to him and warns him that if he dares do that again, he will strike him with one of this thunderbolts.

Roles and epithets

Roman marble colossal head of Zeus, 2nd century AD (British Museum)[272]

Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympian pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes and was featured in many of their local cults. Though the Homeric "cloud collector" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near-Eastern counterparts, he was also the supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity.

Popular conceptions of Zeus differed widely from place to place. Local varieties of Zeus often have little in common with each other except the name. They exercised different areas of authority and were worshiped in different ways; for example, some local cults conceived of Zeus as a chthonic earth-god rather than a god of the sky. These local divinities were gradually consolidated, via conquest and religious syncretism, with the Homeric conception of Zeus. Local or idiosyncratic versions of Zeus were given epithets - surnames or titles which distinguish different conceptions of the god.

These epithets or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority:

Zeus Aegiduchos or Aegiochos: Usually taken as Zeus as the bearer of the Aegis, the divine shield with the head of Medusa across it,[273] although others derive it from "goat" (αἴξ ) and okhē (οχή ) in reference to Zeus' nurse, the divine goat Amalthea.[274][275]

Zeus Agoraeus (Αγοραιος): Zeus as patron of the marketplace (agora) and punisher of dishonest traders.

Zeus Areius (Αρειος): either "warlike" or "the atoning one".

Zeus Horkios: Zeus as keeper of oaths. Exposed liars were made to dedicate a votive statue to Zeus, often at the sanctuary at Olympia

Zeus Olympios (Ολύμπιος): Zeus as king of the gods and patron of the Panhellenic Games at Olympia

Zeus Panhellenios ("Zeus of All the Greeks"): worshipped at Aeacus's temple on Aegina

Zeus Xenios (Ξένιος), Philoxenon, or Hospites: Zeus as the patron of hospitality (xenia) and guests, avenger of wrongs done to strangers

A bust of Zeus.

Additional names and epithets for Zeus are also:

Abrettenus (Ἀβρεττηνός) or Abretanus: surname of Zeus in Mysia

Achad: one of his names in Syria.

Acraeus (Ακραίος): his name at Smyrna. Acraea and Acraeus are also attributes given to various goddesses and gods whose temples were situated upon hills, such as Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Pallas, Artemis, and others

Acrettenus: his name in Mysia.

Adad: one of his names in Syria.

Zeus Adados: A Hellenization of the Canaanite Hadad and Assyrian Adad, particularly his solar cult at Heliopolis

Adultus: from his being invoked by adults, on their marriage.

Apomyius (Απομυιος): Zeus as one who dispels flies

Aphesios (Αφεσιος; "Releasing (Rain)")

Astrapios (ἀστραπαῖός; "Lightninger"): Zeus as a weather god

Atabyrius (Ἀταβύριος): he was worshipped in Rhodes and took his name from the Mount Atabyrus on the island

Eilapinastes (Εἰλαπιναστής, "Feaster"). He was worshipped in Cyprus.

Eleutherios (Ἐλευθέριος, "of freedom"). At Athens after the Battle of Plataea, Athenians built the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. Some writers said that was called "of freedom" because free men built the portico near his shrine, while others because Athenians escaped subjection to the power of Persia and they were free.

(Επιδωτης; "Giver of Good"): an epithet of Zeus at Mantineia and Sparta

Euênemos/ Euanemos (Ευηνεμος; "of Fair Winds", "Giver of Favourable Wind") or Latinized Evenemus/ Evanemus

Zeus Georgos (Ζεὺς Γεωργός, "Zeus the Farmer"): Zeus as god of crops and the harvest, worshipped in Athens

Zeus Helioupolites ("Heliopolite" or "Heliopolitan Zeus"): A Hellenization of the Canaanite Baʿal (probably Hadad) worshipped as a sun god at Heliopolis (modern Baalbek) in Syria

Hetareios (Ἑταιρεῖος, "of fellowship"): According to the , Zeus was called this among the Cretans.

Hyetios (Ὑετιος; "of the Rain")

Hypsistos (Ὕψιστος, "Supreme, Most High")

Zeus Kasios ("Zeus of Mount Kasios" the modern Jebel Aqra) or Latinized Casius: a surname of Zeus, the name may have derived from either sources, one derived from Casion, near Pelusium in Egypt. Another derived from Mount Kasios (Casius), which is the modern Jebel Aqra, is worshipped at a site on the Syrian-Turkish border, a Hellenization of the Canaanite mountain and weather god Baal Zephon

Maimaktês (Μαιμάκτης; "Boisterous", "the Stormy") or Latinized Maemactes, a surname of Zeus, from which the name of the Attic calendar month 'Maimakterion' (Μαιμακτηριών, Latinized Maemacterion) was derived and which that month the Maimakteria was celebrated at Athens.

Zeus Meilichios/ Meilikhios (Μειλίχιος; "Zeus the Easily-Entreated") There was a sanctuary south of the Ilissos river at Athens.

Moiragetes (Μοιραγέτης; "Leader of the Fates", "Guide or Leade of Fate"): Pausanias wrote that this was a surname of Zeus and Apollo at Delphi, because Zeus knew the affairs of men, all that the Fates give them and all that is not destined for them.

Ourios (Οὐριος, "of Favourable Wind"). Ancient writers wrote about a sanctuary at the opening of the Black Sea dedicated to the Zeus Ourios (ἱερὸν τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Οὐρίου). In addition, on the island of Delos a dedication to Zeus Ourios was found. The dedication was made by a citizen of Ascalon, named Damon son of Demetrius, who escaped from pirates.

Panamaros (Πανάμαρος; "of the city of Panamara"): there was an important sanctuary of Zeus Panamaros at the city of Panamara in Caria

Marble eagle from the sanctuary of Zeus Hypsistos, Archaeological Museum of Dion.

Panhellenic cults

Colossal seated Marnas from Gaza portrayed in the style of Zeus. Roman period Marnas[314] was the chief divinity of Gaza (Istanbul Archaeology Museum).

The major center where all Greeks converged to pay honor to their chief god was Olympia. Their quadrennial festival featured the famous Games. There was also an altar to Zeus made not of stone, but of ash, from the accumulated remains of many centuries' worth of animals sacrificed there.

Outside of the major inter- polis sanctuaries, there were no modes of worshipping Zeus precisely shared across the Greek world. Most of the titles listed below, for instance, could be found at any number of Greek temples from Asia Minor to Sicily. Certain modes of ritual were held in common as well: sacrificing a white animal over a raised altar, for instance.

Zeus Velchanos

With one exception, Greeks were unanimous in recognizing the birthplace of Zeus as Crete. Minoan culture contributed many essentials of ancient Greek religion: "by a hundred channels the old civilization emptied itself into the new", Will Durant observed, and Cretan Zeus retained his youthful Minoan features. The local child of the Great Mother, "a small and inferior deity who took the roles of son and consort", whose Minoan name the Greeks Hellenized as Velchanos, was in time assumed as an epithet by Zeus, as transpired at many other sites, and he came to be venerated in Crete as Zeus Velchanos ("boy-Zeus"), often simply the .

In Crete, Zeus was worshipped at a number of caves at Knossos, Ida and Palaikastro. In the Hellenistic period a small sanctuary dedicated to Zeus Velchanos was founded at the Hagia Triada site of an earlier Minoan town. Broadly contemporary coins from Phaistos show the form under which he was worshiped: a youth sits among the branches of a tree, with a cockerel on his knees. On other Cretan coins Velchanos is represented as an eagle and in association with a goddess celebrating a mystic marriage. Inscriptions at Gortyn and Lyttos record a Velchania festival, showing that Velchanios was still widely venerated in Hellenistic Crete.

The stories of Minos and Epimenides suggest that these caves were once used for incubatory divination by kings and priests. The dramatic setting of Plato's Laws is along the pilgrimage-route to one such site, emphasizing archaic Cretan knowledge. On Crete, Zeus was represented in art as a long-haired youth rather than a mature adult and hymned as ho megas kouros, "the great youth". Ivory statuettes of the "Divine Boy" were unearthed near the Labyrinth at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans. With the Kouretes, a band of ecstatic armed dancers, he presided over the rigorous military-athletic training and secret rites of the Cretan .

The myth of the death of Cretan Zeus, localised in numerous mountain sites though only mentioned in a comparatively late source, Callimachus, together with the assertion of Antoninus Liberalis that a fire shone forth annually from the birth-cave the infant shared with a mythic swarm of bees, suggests that Velchanos had been an annual vegetative spirit. The Hellenistic writer Euhemerus apparently proposed a theory that Zeus had actually been a great king of Crete and that posthumously, his glory had slowly turned him into a deity. The works of Euhemerus himself have not survived, but Christian patristic writers took up the suggestion.

Zeus Lykaios

Laurel-wreathed head of Zeus on a gold stater, Lampsacus, c 360-340 BC (Cabinet des Médailles).

The epithet Zeus Lykaios (Λύκαιος; "wolf-Zeus") is assumed by Zeus only in connection with the archaic festival of the Lykaia on the slopes of Mount Lykaion ("Wolf Mountain"), the tallest peak in rustic Arcadia; Zeus had only a formal connection with the rituals and myths of this primitive rite of passage with an ancient threat of cannibalism and the possibility of a werewolf transformation for the ephebes who were the participants. Near the ancient ash-heap where the sacrifices took place was a forbidden precinct in which, allegedly, no shadows were ever cast.

According to Plato, a particular clan would gather on the mountain to make a sacrifice every nine years to Zeus Lykaios, and a single morsel of human entrails would be intermingled with the animal's. Whoever ate the human flesh was said to turn into a wolf, and could only regain human form if he did not eat again of human flesh until the next nine-year cycle had ended. There were games associated with the Lykaia, removed in the fourth century to the first urbanization of Arcadia, Megalopolis; there the major temple was dedicated to Zeus Lykaios.

There is, however, the crucial detail that Lykaios or Lykeios (epithets of Zeus and Apollo) may derive from Proto-Greek *, "light", a noun still attested in compounds such as , "twilight", , "year" (lit. "light's course") etc. This, Cook argues, brings indeed much new 'light' to the matter as Achaeus, the contemporary tragedian of Sophocles, spoke of Zeus Lykaios as "starry-eyed", and this Zeus Lykaios may just be the Arcadian Zeus, son of Aether, described by Cicero. Again under this new signification may be seen Pausanias' descriptions of Lykosoura being 'the first city that ever the sun beheld', and of the altar of Zeus, at the summit of Mount Lykaion, before which stood two columns bearing gilded eagles and 'facing the sun-rise'. Further Cook sees only the tale of Zeus' sacred precinct at Mount Lykaion allowing no shadows referring to Zeus as 'god of light' (Lykaios).

A statue of Zeus in a drawing.

Additional cults

Although etymology indicates that Zeus was originally a sky god, many Greek cities honored a local Zeus who lived underground. Athenians and Sicilians honored Zeus Meilichios (Μειλίχιος; "kindly" or "honeyed") while other cities had Zeus Chthonios ("earthy"), Zeus Katachthonios (Καταχθόνιος; "under-the-earth") and Zeus Plousios ("wealth-bringing"). These deities might be represented as snakes or in human form in visual art, or, for emphasis as both together in one image. They also received offerings of black animal victims sacrificed into sunken pits, as did chthonic deities like Persephone and Demeter, and also the heroes at their tombs. Olympian gods, by contrast, usually received white victims sacrificed upon raised altars.

In some cases, cities were not entirely sure whether the daimon to whom they sacrificed was a hero or an underground Zeus. Thus the shrine at Lebadaea in Boeotia might belong to the hero Trophonius or to Zeus Trephonius ("the nurturing"), depending on whether you believe Pausanias, or Strabo. The hero Amphiaraus was honored as Zeus Amphiaraus at Oropus outside of Thebes, and the Spartans even had a shrine to Zeus Agamemnon. Ancient Molossian kings sacrificed to Zeus Areius (Αρειος). Strabo mention that at Tralles there was the Zeus Larisaeus (Λαρισαιος). In Ithome, they honored the Zeus Ithomatas, they had a sanctuary and a statue of Zeus and also held an annual festival in honour of Zeus which was called Ithomaea (ἰθώμαια).

Hecatomphonia

Hecatomphonia ( Ancient Greek: ἑκατομφόνια), meaning killing of a hundred, from ἑκατόν "a hundred" and φονεύω "to kill". It was a custom of Messenians, at which they offered sacrifice to Zeus when any of them had killed a hundred enemies. Aristomenes have offered three times this sacrifice at the Messenian wars against Sparta.

Non-panhellenic cults

Roman cast terracotta of ram-horned Jupiter Ammon, 1st century AD (Museo Barracco, Rome).

In addition to the Panhellenic titles and conceptions listed above, local cults maintained their own idiosyncratic ideas about the king of gods and men. With the epithet Zeus Aetnaeus he was worshiped on Mount Aetna, where there was a statue of him, and a local festival called the Aetnaea in his honor. Other examples are listed below. As Zeus Aeneius or Zeus Aenesius (Αινησιος), he was worshiped in the island of Cephalonia, where he had a temple on Mount Aenos.

Although most oracle sites were usually dedicated to Apollo, the heroes, or various goddesses like Themis, a few oracular sites were dedicated to Zeus. In addition, some foreign oracles, such as Baʿal's at Heliopolis, were associated with Zeus in Greek or Jupiter in Latin.

The Oracle at Dodona

The cult of Zeus at Dodona in Epirus, where there is evidence of religious activity from the second millennium BC onward, centered on a sacred oak. When the was composed (circa 750 BC), divination was done there by barefoot priests called Selloi, who lay on the ground and observed the rustling of the leaves and branches. By the time Herodotus wrote about Dodona, female priestesses called peleiades ("doves") had replaced the male priests.

Zeus' consort at Dodona was not Hera, but the goddess Dione - whose name is a feminine form of "Zeus". Her status as a titaness suggests to some that she may have been a more powerful pre-Hellenic deity, and perhaps the original occupant of the oracle.

The Oracle at Siwa

The oracle of Ammon at the Siwa Oasis in the Western Desert of Egypt did not lie within the bounds of the Greek world before Alexander's day, but it already loomed large in the Greek mind during the archaic era: Herodotus mentions consultations with Zeus Ammon in his account of the Persian War. Zeus Ammon was especially favored at Sparta, where a temple to him existed by the time of the Peloponnesian War.

After Alexander made a trek into the desert to consult the oracle at Siwa, the figure arose in the Hellenistic imagination of a Libyan Sibyl.

Identifications with other gods

Foreign gods

Evolution of Zeus Nikephoros ("Zeus holding Nike") on Indo-Greek coinage: from the Classical motif of Nike handing the wreath of victory to Zeus himself (left, coin of Heliocles I 145-130 BC), then to a baby elephant (middle, coin of Antialcidas 115-95 BC), and then to the Wheel of the Law, symbol of Buddhism (right, coin of Menander II 90-85 BC).

Zeus as Vajrapāni, the protector of the Buddha. 2nd century, Greco-Buddhist art.[339]

Zeus was identified with the Roman god Jupiter and associated in the syncretic classical imagination (see interpretatio graeca) with various other deities, such as the Egyptian Ammon and the Etruscan Tinia. He, along with Dionysus, absorbed the role of the chief Phrygian god Sabazios in the syncretic deity known in Rome as Sabazius. The Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV Epiphanes erected a statue of Zeus Olympios in the Judean Temple in Jerusalem. Hellenizing Jews referred to this statue as Baal Shamen (in English, Lord of Heaven). Zeus is also identified with the Hindu deity Indra. Not only they are the king of gods, but their weapon - thunder is similar.

Zeus is occasionally conflated with the Hellenic sun god, Helios, who is sometimes either directly referred to as Zeus' eye, or clearly implied as such. Hesiod, for instance, describes Zeus' eye as effectively the sun. This perception is possibly derived from earlier Proto-Indo-European religion, in which the sun is occasionally envisioned as the eye of *Dyḗus Pḥatḗr (see Hvare-khshaeta). Euripides in his now lost tragedy Mysians described Zeus as "sun-eyed", and Helios is said elsewhere to be "the brilliant eye of Zeus, giver of life". In another of Euripides' tragedies, , the chorus refers to Helios as "light born from Zeus."

Although the connection of Helios to Zeus does not seem to have basis in early Greek cult and writings, nevertheless there are many examples of direct identification in later times. The Hellenistic period gave birth to Serapis, a Greco-Egyptian deity conceived as a chthonic avatar of Zeus, whose solar nature is indicated by the sun crown and rays the Greeks depicted him with. Frequent joint dedications to "Zeus-Serapis-Helios" have been found all over the Mediterranean, for example, the Anastasy papyrus (now housed in the British Museum equates Helios to not just Zeus and Serapis but also Mithras, and a series of inscriptions from Trachonitis give evidence of the cult of "Zeus the Unconquered Sun". There is evidence of Zeus being worshipped as a solar god in the Aegean island of Amorgos, based on a lacunose inscription ("Zeus the Sun"), meaning sun elements of Zeus' worship could be as early as the fifth century BC.

The Cretan Zeus Tallaios had solar elements to his cult. "Talos" was the local equivalent of Helios.

Later representations

Philosophy

In Neoplatonism, Zeus' relation to the gods familiar from mythology is taught as the Demiurge or Divine Mind, specifically within Plotinus's work the and the Platonic Theology of Proclus.

Zeus is mentioned in the New Testament twice, first in Acts 14:8-13: When the people living in Lystra saw the Apostle Paul heal a lame man, they considered Paul and his partner Barnabas to be gods, identifying Paul with Hermes and Barnabas with Zeus, even trying to offer them sacrifices with the crowd. Two ancient inscriptions discovered in 1909 near Lystra testify to the worship of these two gods in that city. One of the inscriptions refers to the "priests of Zeus", and the other mentions "Hermes Most Great" and "Zeus the sun-god".

The second occurrence is in Acts 28:11: the name of the ship in which the prisoner Paul set sail from the island of Malta bore the figurehead "Sons of Zeus" aka Castor and Pollux (Dioscuri).

The deuterocanonical book of 2 Maccabees 6:1, 2 talks of King Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), who in his attempt to stamp out the Jewish religion, directed that the temple at Jerusalem be profaned and rededicated to Zeus (Jupiter Olympius).

Genealogy of the Olympians

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Parada, Carlos, Genealogical Guide to Greek Mythology, Jonsered, Paul Åströms Förlag, 1993. ISBN 978-91-7081-062-6.

Pindar, Nemean Odes. Isthmian Odes. Fragments, edited and translated by William H. Race, Loeb Classical Library No. 485, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-674-99534-5. Online version at Harvard University Press.

Pirenne-Delforge, Vinciane, and Gabriella Pironti, The Hera of Zeus, Cambridge University Press, 2022. ISBN 978-1-108-88847-9.

Harry, René, Photius: Bibliothèque. Tome III: Codices 186-222, Collection Budé, Paris, Les Belles Lettres, 1962. ISBN 978-2-25132-222-3. English translation of excerpts by Roger Pearse at Topostext.

Rohde, Erwin, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1925.

Sandbach, F. H., Plutarch, Moralia, Volume XV: Fragments, Loeb Classical Library No. 429, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 1969. ISBN 978-0-674-99473-7. Online version at Harvard University Press.

Salowey, Christina, "The Gigantomachy", in The Oxford Handbook of Heracles, pp. 235-50, edited by Daniel Ogdon, Oxford University Press, 2021. ISBN 978-0-190-65101-5.

Smith, Scott R., and Stephen M. Trzaskoma, Apollodorus' Library and Hyginus' Fabulae: Two Handbooks of Greek Mythology, Hackett Publishing, Indianapolis/Cambridge, 2007. ISBN 978-0-87220-821-6. Google Books.

Strabo, Geography, Editors, H.C. Hamilton, Esq., W. Falconer, M.A., London. George Bell & Sons. 1903. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library

West, M. L. (2003), Greek Epic Fragments: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries BC, Loeb Classical Library No. 497, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press, 2003. ISBN 978-0-674-99605-2. Online version at Harvard University Press.

External links

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Zeus King of the Gods God of the sky, lightning, thunder, law, and order Member of the Twelve Olympians Abode Mount Olympus Planet Jupiter Symbol Thunderbolt, eagle, bull, oak Day Thursday ( hēméra Diós) Parents Cronus and Rhea Siblings Hestia, Hades, Hera, Poseidon and Demeter Consort Hera, various others Children

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A main topic of the book. Halley's Comet returns to Earth in 2061. (Rob left 2061 as an earlier clue)

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ANNO? (Upside down)

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Celebrates the inauguration of the Colosseum between the rule of Vespasian and his son Titus (passed down in 79AD)

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In this photo taken by the Hubble Space Telescope, Hiʻiaka is the object near the top-right, above Haumea (center).

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Namaka is the smaller, inner moon of the trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea. It is named after Nāmaka, the goddess of the sea in Hawaiian mythology and one of the daughters of Haumea.

Namaka was discovered on 30 June 2005 and announced on 29 November 2005. It was nicknamed " Blitzen" by the discovery team before being assigned an official name.

Namaka is only 1.5% as bright as its parent dwarf planet Haumea and is about 0.05% its mass. If it turns out to have a similar albedo, it would be about 170 km in diameter. Photometric observations indicate that its surface is made of water ice. Mutual events between 2009 and 2011 were expected to improve the knowledge of the orbits and masses of the components of the Haumean system, but interpreting those observations was greatly complicated by the unexpected non-tidally locked spin state of Hiʻiaka, the larger moon. Namaka is similar in size to Makemake's moon MK2, despite being smaller. Further observations of Hiʻiaka might allow to determine its rotation period and spin state more precisely, at which point it should be possible to remove its effect from the data obtained in 2009.

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Namaka is the smaller, inner moon of the trans-Neptunian dwarf planet Haumea. It is named after Nāmaka, the goddess of the sea in Hawaiian mythology and one of the daughters of Haumea. Namaka was discovered on 30 June 2005 and announced on 29 November 2005.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maya_numerals

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Rosemary Blaire Leith, Lady Berners-Lee (born in September 1961) is a director of both profit and nonprofit organizations. Leith co-founded the World Wide Web Foundation together with her husband-to-be, Tim Berners-Lee in 2009.

Leith was born in September 1961, in Toronto, Ontario, and studied at Queen's University at Kingston. She moved to London in the late 1980s.

During the dot-com bubble at the end of the twentieth century, Leith co-founded the webzine Flametree with Jayne Buxton, an acquaintance from Queen's who also lived in West London. At this time Leith is quoted as saying: "Women go on the net with a purpose, not to play. They have less free time and are solution-driven. They want well-grounded advice that will help them to get things done."

In 2009 Leith co-founded the World Wide Web Foundation with Tim Berners-Lee, who had invented the web. She is a fellow at Harvard's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society.

Leith is active in a number of arts organisations, advising on strategy and fundraising. She was appointed, with Katrin Henkel, as trustees of the National Gallery in London for a four-year term from March 2016. It was announced in December 2020 that both had had their terms extended for another four years to November 2024, Leith's contributions to various board of directors of arts institutions in London over the previous 20 years being noted.

Directorships include YouGov, an international research and data analytics group.

In June 2021, at Sotheby's, Berners-Lee auctioned the source code from the web as a non-fungible token (NFT). The proceeds, some $5,434,500, were reported to be put towards initiatives by the husband and wife team.

Personal life

She was married to Mark Opzoomer, with whom she had three children. They lived in Fulham, West London.

In 2014 she married Tim Berners-Lee. The wedding was held at the Chapel Royal, St James's Palace.

References

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Rosemary Blaire Leith, Lady Berners-Lee (born in September 1961) is a director of both profit and nonprofit organizations. Leith co-founded the World Wide Web Foundation together with her husband-to-be, Tim Berners-Lee in 2009. Leith was born in September 1961, in Toronto, Ontario, and studied at Queen's University at Kingston.

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Wife of Tim Berners-Lee

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(COULD be a clue)

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Cronus statue below Copernicus painting at the Royal Castle in Warsaw

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Rey/Rex(from other clues) = King
Cronus = King of Titans

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Fiducial marker on the Fiducial marker Wikipedia page

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Fiducial marker on the Fiducial marker Wikipedia page

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Haumea ( Hawaiian: ) is the goddess of fertility and childbirth in Hawaiian mythology. She is the mother of many important deities, such as Pele, Kāne Milohai, Kāmohoaliʻi, Nāmaka, Kapo, and Hiʻiaka, among many others.[citation needed ] Haumea is one of the most important Hawaiian gods, and her worship is among the oldest on the Hawaiian islands. She was finally killed by Kaulu.

With the help of a magic stick called the Makalei, Haumea repeatedly transforms herself from an old woman to a young girl, and returns to her homeland periodically to marry one of her offspring, thus giving birth to continuous generations of humans. Eventually, her identity is found out, which angers her, causing her to leave humanity behind.

Haumea is said to have given humans the ability to give birth naturally. In a story, she visited Muleiula, the daughter of a chieftain who was experiencing painful childbirth, during which she discovered that humans only gave birth by cutting open the mother. Seeing this, Haumea created a potion out of the Kani-ka-wi tree (Spondias dulcis), which allowed the mother to push out the baby naturally.

Haumea is the sister of the gods Kāne and Kanaloa, and sometimes also the wife of Kanaloa. Some traditions identify Haumea with Papahānaumoku, the goddess of the Earth, and wife of the sky god Wākea.

With Kanaloa, Haumea gave birth to the war god Kekaua-kahi, the volcano goddess Pele, as well as Pele's brothers and sisters, including Hi'iaka. Except for Pele, who was born the normal way, her children were born from various parts of her body. From her head, for example, were born Laumiha, Kahaʻula, Kahakauakoko, and Kauakahi.

According to the , a Hawaiian creation chant, Haumea's offspring are:

On September 17, 2008, the International Astronomical Union named the fifth known dwarf planet in the Solar System . The planet's two moons were named after Haumea's daughters: Hiʻiaka, the goddess born from the mouth of Haumea, and Namaka, the water spirit born from Haumea's body.

Craig, Robert D. (2004). Handbook of Polynesian Mythology. ABC-CLIO. p. 128-129. ISBN 1-57607-895-7.

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Haumea ( Hawaiian: ) is the goddess of fertility and childbirth in Hawaiian mythology. She is the mother of many important deities, such as Pele, Kāne Milohai, Kāmohoaliʻi, Nāmaka, Kapo, and Hiʻiaka, among many others.[citation needed ] Haumea is one of the most important Hawaiian gods, and her worship is among the oldest on the Hawaiian islands.

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Rene Descarte's Discourse On The Method was published - potentially just pointing to Rene Descarte

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Rene Descarte's Discourse On The Method was published - potentially just pointing to Rene Descarte

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Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences ( French: Discours de la Méthode Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences) is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637. It is best known as the source of the famous quotation "Je pense, donc je suis" (" I think, therefore I am", or "I am thinking, therefore I exist"), which occurs in Part IV of the work. A similar argument, without this precise wording, is found in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641), and a Latin version of the same statement Cogito, ergo sum is found in Principles of Philosophy (1644).

Discourse on the Method is one of the most influential works in the history of modern philosophy, and important to the development of natural sciences. In this work, Descartes tackles the problem of skepticism, which had previously been studied by other philosophers. While addressing some of his predecessors and contemporaries, Descartes modified their approach to account for a truth he found to be incontrovertible; he started his line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions.

The book was originally published in Leiden, in the Netherlands. Later, it was translated into Latin and published in 1656 in Amsterdam. The book was intended as an introduction to three works: Dioptrique, Météores and Géométrie. La Géométrie contains Descartes's initial concepts that later developed into the Cartesian coordinate system. The text was written and published in French rather than Latin, the latter being the language in which most philosophical and scientific texts were written and published at that time. Most of Descartes' other works were written in Latin.

Together with Meditations on First Philosophy, Principles of Philosophy and Rules for the Direction of the Mind, it forms the base of the epistemology known as Cartesianism.

The book is divided into six parts, described in the author's preface as:

Various considerations touching the Sciences

The principal rules of the Method which the Author has discovered

Certain of the rules of Morals which he has deduced from this Method

The reasonings by which he establishes the existence of God and of the Human Soul

The order of the Physical questions which he has investigated, and, in particular, the explication of the motion of the heart and of some other difficulties pertaining to Medicine, as also the difference between the soul of man and that of the brutes

What the Author believes to be required in order to greater advancement in the investigation of Nature than has yet been made, with the reasons that have induced him to write

Descartes begins by allowing himself some wit:

Good sense is, of all things among men, the most equally distributed; for every one thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that those even who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else, do not usually desire a larger measure of this quality than they already possess.

"...the reading of good books is like a conversation with the best men of past centuries-" (Discourse part I, AT p. 5)

A similar observation can be found in Hobbes, when he writes about human abilities, specifically wisdom and "their own wit": "But this proveth rather that men are in that point equal, than unequal. For there is not ordinarily a greater sign of the equal distribution of anything than that every man is contented with his share," but also in Montaigne, whose formulation indicates that it was a commonplace at the time: "Tis commonly said that the justest portion Nature has given us of her favors is that of sense; for there is no one who is not contented with his share." Descartes continues with a warning:

For to be possessed of a vigorous mind is not enough; the prime requisite is rightly to apply it. The greatest minds, as they are capable of the highest excellences, are open likewise to the greatest aberrations; and those who travel very slowly may yet make far greater progress, provided they keep always to the straight road, than those who, while they run, forsake it.

Descartes describes his disappointment with his education: "[A]s soon as I had finished the entire course of study...I found myself involved in so many doubts and errors, that I was convinced I had advanced no farther...than the discovery at every turn of my own ignorance." He notes his special delight with mathematics, and contrasts its strong foundations to "the disquisitions of the ancient moralists [which are] towering and magnificent palaces with no better foundation than sand and mud."

Descartes was in Germany, attracted thither by the wars in that country, and describes his intent by a "building metaphor" (see also: Neurath's boat). He observes that buildings, cities or nations that have been planned by a single hand are more elegant and commodious than those that have grown organically. He resolves not to build on old foundations, or to lean upon principles which, he had taken on faith in his youth. Descartes seeks to ascertain the true method by which to arrive at the knowledge of whatever lay within the compass of his powers; he presents four precepts:

The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.

The second, to divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution.

The third, to conduct my thoughts in such order that, by commencing with objects the simplest and easiest to know, I might ascend by little and little, and, as it were, step by step, to the knowledge of the more complex; assigning in thought a certain order even to those objects which in their own nature do not stand in a relation of antecedence and sequence.

And the last, in every case to make enumerations so complete, and reviews so general, that I might be assured that nothing was omitted.

Descartes uses the analogy of rebuilding a house from secure foundations, and extends the analogy to the idea of needing a temporary abode while his own house is being rebuilt. The following three maxims were adopted by Descartes so that he could effectively function in the "real world" while experimenting with his method of radical doubt. They formed a rudimentary belief system from which to act before he developed a new system based on the truths he discovered using his method:

The first was to obey the laws and customs of my country, adhering firmly to the faith in which, by the grace of God, I had been educated from my childhood and regulating my conduct in every other matter according to the most moderate opinions, and the farthest removed from extremes, which should happen to be adopted in practice with general consent of the most judicious of those among whom I might be living.

Be as firm and resolute in my actions as I was able.

Endeavor always to conquer myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world, and in general, accustom myself to the persuasion that, except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power; so that when we have done our best in things external to us, our ill-success cannot possibly be failure on our part.

Applying the method to itself, Descartes challenges his own reasoning and reason itself. But Descartes believes three things are not susceptible to doubt and the three support each other to form a stable foundation for the method. He cannot doubt that something has to be there to do the doubting (I think, therefore I am). The method of doubt cannot doubt reason as it is based on reason itself. By reason there exists a God, and God is the guarantor that reason is not misguided. Descartes supplies three different proofs for the existence of God, including what is now referred to as the ontological proof of the existence of God.

Part V: Physics, the heart, and the soul of man and animals

Here he describes how in other writings he discusses the idea of laws of nature, of the sun and stars, the idea of the moon being the cause of ebb and flow, on gravitation, and going on to discuss light and fire.

Describing his work on light, he states:

[I] expounded at considerable length what the nature of that light must be which is found in the sun and the stars, and how thence in an instant of time it traverses the immense spaces of the heavens.

His work on such physico-mechanical laws is, however, projected into a "new world." A theoretical place God created

somewhere in the imaginary spaces [with] matter sufficient to compose ... [a "new world" in which He] ... agitate[d] variously and confusedly the different parts of this matter, so that there resulted a chaos as disordered as the poets ever feigned, and after that did nothing more than lend his ordinary concurrence to nature, and allow her to act in accordance with the laws which he had established.

Descartes does this "to express my judgment regarding ... [his subjects] with greater freedom, without being necessitated to adopt or refute the opinions of the learned".

He goes on to say that he "was not, however, disposed, from these circumstances, to conclude that this world had been created in the manner I described; for it is much more likely that God made it at the first such as it was to be." Despite this admission, it seems that Descartes' project for understanding the world was that of re-creating creation-a cosmological project which aimed, through Descartes' particular brand of experimental method, to show not merely the possibility of such a system, but to suggest that this way of looking at the world-one with (as Descartes saw it) no assumptions about God or nature-provided the only basis upon which he could see knowledge progressing (as he states in Book II).

Thus, in Descartes' work, we can see some of the fundamental assumptions of modern cosmology in evidence-the project of examining the historical construction of the universe through a set of quantitative laws describing interactions which would allow the ordered present to be constructed from a chaotic past.

He goes on to the motion of the blood in the heart and arteries, endorsing the findings of "a physician of England" about the circulation of blood, referring to William Harvey and his work De motu cordis in a marginal note. But then he disagrees strongly about the function of the heart as a pump, ascribing the motive power of the circulation to heat rather than muscular contraction. He describes that these motions seem to be totally independent of what we think, and concludes that our bodies are separate from our souls.

He does not seem to distinguish between mind, spirit and soul, which are identified as our faculty for rational thinking. Hence the term "I think, therefore I am." All three of these words (particularly "mind" and "soul") can be identified by the single French term âme.

Descartes begins by noting, without directly referring to it, the recent trial of Galileo for heresy and the condemnation of heliocentrism; he explains that for these reasons he has been slow to publish.

I remarked, moreover, with respect to experiments, that they become always more necessary the more one is advanced in knowledge; for, at the commencement, it is better to make use only of what is spontaneously presented to our senses. First, I have essayed to find in general the principles, or first causes of all that is or can be in the world.

Secure on these foundation stones, Descartes shows the practical application of "the Method" in Mathematics and the Science.

Skepticism had previously been discussed by philosophers such as Sextus Empiricus, Al-Kindi, Al-Ghazali, Francisco Sánchez and Michel de Montaigne. Descartes started his line of reasoning by doubting everything, so as to assess the world from a fresh perspective, clear of any preconceived notions or influences. This is summarized in the book's first precept to "never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such". This method of pro-foundational skepticism is considered to be the start of modern philosophy.

"The most widely shared thing in the world is good sense, for everyone thinks he is so well provided with it that even those who are the most difficult to satisfy in everything else do not usually desire to have more good sense than they have. It is not likely that everyone is mistaken in this..." (part I, AT p. 1 sq.)

"I know how very liable we are to delusion in what relates to ourselves; and also how much the judgments of our friends are to be suspected when given in our favor." (part I, AT p. 3)

"... I believed that I had already given sufficient time to languages, and likewise to the reading of the writings of the ancients, to their histories and fables. For to hold converse with those of other ages and to travel, are almost the same thing." (part I, AT p. 6)

"Of philosophy I will say nothing, except that when I saw that it had been cultivated for so many ages by the most distinguished men; and that yet there is not a single matter within its sphere which is still not in dispute and nothing, therefore, which is above doubt, I did not presume to anticipate that my success would be greater in it than that of others." (part I, AT p. 8)

"... I entirely abandoned the study of letters, and resolved no longer to seek any other science than the knowledge of myself, or of the great book of the world...." (part I, AT p. 9)

"The first was to include nothing in my judgments than what presented itself to my mind so clearly and distinctly that I had no occasion to doubt it." (part II, AT p. 18)

"... In what regards manners, everyone is so full of his own wisdom, that there might be as many reformers as heads...." (part VI, AT p. 61)

"... And although my speculations greatly please myself, I believe that others have theirs, which perhaps please them still more." (part VI, AT p. 61)

Garber, Daniel. [1998] 2003. "^ The Cogito Argument | Descartes, René Archived 2021-09-15 at the Wayback Machine." In Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by E. Craig. London: Routledge. Retrieved 2017-11-12.

Davis, Philip J., and Reuben Hersh. 1986. ^ Descartes' Dream: The World According to Mathematics. Cambridge, MA: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

^ Descartes, Rene (1960). Discourse on Method and Meditations. Laurence J. Lafleur (trans). New York: The Liberal Arts Press. ISBN 978-0-672-60278-8.

^ Descartes, René (2004) [1637]. A Discourse on Method: Meditations and Principles. Translated by Veitch, John. London: Orion Publishing Group. p. 15. ISBN 9780460874113.

^ W. Bruce Fye: Profiles in Cardiology - René Descartes, Clin. Cardiol. 26, 49-51 (2003), Pdf 58,2 kB.

^ "Three years have now elapsed since I finished the treatise containing all these matters; and I was beginning to revise it, with the view to put it into the hands of a printer, when I learned that persons to whom I greatly defer, and whose authority over my actions is hardly less influential than is my own reason over my thoughts, had condemned a certain doctrine in physics, published a short time previously by another individual to which I will not say that I adhered, but only that, previously to their censure I had observed in it nothing which I could imagine to be prejudicial either to religion or to the state, and nothing therefore which would have prevented me from giving expression to it in writing, if reason had persuaded me of its truth; and this led me to fear lest among my own doctrines likewise some one might be found in which I had departed from the truth, notwithstanding the great care I have always taken not to accord belief to new opinions of which I had not the most certain demonstrations, and not to give expression to aught that might tend to the hurt of any one. This has been sufficient to make me alter my purpose of publishing them; for although the reasons by which I had been induced to take this resolution were very strong, yet my inclination, which has always been hostile to writing books, enabled me immediately to discover other considerations sufficient to excuse me for not undertaking the task."

^ Prioreschi, Plinio (2002). "Al-Kindi, A Precursor of the Scientific Revolution" (PDF). Journal of the International Society for the History of Islamic Medicine (2): 17-20. Archived from the original (PDF) on 30 June 2021.

^ Najm, Sami M. (July-October 1966). "The Place and Function of Doubt in the Philosophies of Descartes and Al-Ghazali". Philosophy East and West. 16 (3-4): 133-141. doi:10.2307/1397536. JSTOR 1397536.

^ Descartes' Life and Works by Kurt Smith, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 2017-11-20

^ Descartes, Rene by Justin Skirry (Nebraska-Wesleyan University), The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ISSN 2161-0002. Retrieved 2017-11-20

Descartes, René (1637). Discours de la méthode pour bien conduire sa raison et chercher la vérité dans les sciences, plus la dioptrique, les météores et la géométrie (in French), BnF Gallica

Discours de la Méthode at Project Gutenberg (édition Victor Cousin, Paris 1824)

Discours de la méthode, par Adam et Tannery, Paris 1902. (academic standard edition of the original text, 1637), Pdf, 80 pages, 362 kB.

Contains Discourse on the Method, slightly modified for easier reading

Free audiobook at librivox.org or at audioofclassics

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Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting One's Reason and of Seeking Truth in the Sciences ( French: Discours de la Méthode Pour bien conduire sa raison, et chercher la vérité dans les sciences) is a philosophical and autobiographical treatise published by René Descartes in 1637.

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The 47-year cycle of Mars: after 47 years – 22 synodic periods of 780 days each – Mars returns to the same position among the stars and is in the same relationship to the Earth and Sun. The ancient Mesopotamians discovered this cycle.

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The 47-year cycle of Mars: after 47 years – 22 synodic periods of 780 days each – Mars returns to the same position among the stars and is in the same relationship to the Earth and Sun. The ancient Mesopotamians discovered this cycle.

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Copernicus is a large crater on Mars, with a diameter close to 300 km. It is located south of the planet's equator in the heavily cratered highlands of Terra Sirenum in the Phaethontis quadrangle at 48.8°S and 191.2°E. Its name was approved in 1973, and it was named after Nicolaus Copernicus.

The impact that formed Copernicus likely occurred more than 3 billion years ago. The crater contains smaller craters within its basin and is particularly notable for gully formations that are presumed to be indicative of past liquid water flows. Many small channels exist in this area; they are further evidence of liquid water. On the basis of their form, aspects, positions, and location amongst and apparent interaction with features thought to be rich in water ice, many researchers believed that the processes carving the gullies involve liquid water. However, this remains a topic of active research. As soon as gullies were discovered, researchers began to image many gullies over and over, looking for possible changes. By 2006, some changes were found. Later, with further analysis it was determined that the changes could have occurred by dry granular flows rather than being driven by flowing water. With continued observations many more changes were found in Gasa Crater and others. With more repeated observations, more and more changes have been found; since the changes occur in the winter and spring, experts are tending to believe that gullies were formed from dry ice. Before-and-after images demonstrated the timing of this activity coincided with seasonal carbon-dioxide frost and temperatures that would not have allowed for liquid water. When dry ice frost changes to a gas, it may lubricate dry material to flow especially on steep slopes. In some years frost, perhaps as thick as 1 meter.

Many areas on Mars experience the passage of giant dust devils. A thin coating of fine bright dust covers most of the Martian surface. When a dust devil goes by it blows away the coating and exposes the underlying dark surface. Dust devils have been seen from the ground and high overhead from orbit. They have even blown the dust off of the solar panels of the two Rovers on Mars, thereby greatly extending their lives. The twin Rovers were designed to last for 3 months, instead they have lasted for years and are still going. Opportunity Rover has lasted over 10 years and is still sending back data as of August 2017. The pattern of the tracks have been shown to change every few months.

Dust devil tracks on floor of Copernicus Crater, as seen by CTX camera (on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter). Note: this is an enlargement of the previous image of the eastern edge of Copernicus.

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Copernicus is a large crater on Mars, with a diameter close to 300 km. It is located south of the planet's equator in the heavily cratered highlands of Terra Sirenum in the Phaethontis quadrangle at 48.8°S and 191.2°E. Its name was approved in 1973, and it was named after Nicolaus Copernicus.

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Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse

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Kepler discovered that the orbit of Mars was an ellipse

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David Bowie's pupils match the different size pupils of this image

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David Bowie's pupils match the different size pupils of this image

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" Let Me Sleep Beside You" is a song written and recorded by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It was recorded on 1 September 1967 at Advision Studios in London and marked the beginning of Bowie's working relationship with producer Tony Visconti, which would last for the rest of Bowie's career. A departure from the pop and music hall-influenced material of Bowie's 1967 self-titled debut album and other singles for Deram Records, the song displays a more rock-oriented sound with a cello arrangement from Visconti. The impressionist lyrics also depart from Bowie's prior works, describing love using the act of sleeping together rather than through emotional attachment. The song was rejected by Deram for release as a single, purportedly due to the risqué title. It remained unreleased until 1970's The World of David Bowie compilation.

Bowie performed "Let Me Sleep Beside You" during his BBC radio session on 20 October 1969, which has seen release on numerous albums. A remixed version was also featured in the 1969 Love You till Tuesday film. Several publications, including The Guardian, Consequence of Sound and , have listed it as one of Bowie's best songs. Bowie later remade the song during the sessions for the project in mid-2000, along with other tracks he wrote and recorded during the mid-1960s, such as " Karma Man". The remake first saw an official release on the three-disc edition of the 2014 compilation Nothing Has Changed and again in 2021 with the entire Toy album, as part of the Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) box set. The remake was positively received.

After the commercial failure of his 1967 self-titled debut album and singles for Deram Records, David Bowie's manager Kenneth Pitt proposed he change producers. Denny Cordell turned an offer down, but suggested his assistant Tony Visconti, a New Yorker who had worked with the Move and Manfred Mann. Bowie and Visconti became immediate friends, which the former attributed in 1976 to their mutual interests in Tibetan Buddhism. Visconti agreed to produce and arrange his next prospective single for Deram, marking the beginning of a working relationship that would last for the rest of Bowie's career. According to biographer Chris O'Leary, Bowie needed a producer who shared similar interests and working methods rather than established producers he had worked with previously, such as Tony Hatch and Mike Vernon.

Composing his next single, Bowie wrote "Let Me Sleep Beside You" using the Rolling Stones' contemporary single " Let's Spend the Night Together" for inspiration. For the B-side, Bowie wrote " Karma Man", which reflected his growing interest in Tibetan Buddhism, similar to "Silly Boy Blue" from his debut album. According to biographer Nicholas Pegg, both tracks were reportedly written after Bowie's desire to write "some top ten rubbish". With Visconti producing and playing bass, the two tracks were recorded on 1 September 1967 at London's Advision Studios. The session took six hours to complete. Personnel hired for the session included guitarist John McLaughlin, who later found fame with the Mahavishnu Orchestra; guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, who previously contributed to David Bowie; drummer Andy White; and Visconti's then-wife Siegrid, who sang backing vocals. Visconti later expressed disappointment in the finished tracks, stating in 1977, "I think these tracks were the reason David was thrown off Deram. They really were terrible."

"Let Me Sleep Beside You" marks a departure from the pop and music hall-influenced material of David Bowie in favour of a more rock-oriented sound. Pegg states that it represented a bridge between the Deram material and the rockier Space Oddity album (1969). The song is primarily in the key of C major, the same key as "Let's Spend the Night Together". Visconti scored a celli arrangement, which O'Leary states gives the track "a sense of lightness and ease" compared to the brass and woodwind-heavy sound of Bowie's previous Deram recordings. Author James Perone compares the arrangement and production to the contemporary sound of the Moody Blues' Days of Future Passed (1967), while Marc Spitz compares it to George Martin's work with the Beatles. The song nevertheless retains various chord changes from his previous releases, while Bowie utilised vocal implications that would become the trademark of his 1970s records; author Peter Doggett particularly highlights the "Would You?" call as anticipating the persona Bowie used on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972).

Lyrically, "Let Me Sleep Beside You" also marks a break from Bowie's previous works, describing the act of sleeping together compared to emotional attachment. Perone writes that the lyrics are more impressionist than before, and anticipated tracks from the artist's 1970s period, including " Be My Wife" (1977). He analyses: "What Bowie effectively does in songs such as 'Let Me Sleep Beside You' and 'Be My Wife' is to express the possibility that love and attachment are sometimes not best defined in stereotypical, cliché ways, but sometimes through the less-frequently expressed, but very real other associated emotional needs."

[That song] might have been influenced by Simon & Garfunkel. I still thought I might have a chance of being a romantic songwriter, which never proved to be my forte.

-David Bowie

Deram's parent company Decca Records rejected "Let Me Sleep Beside You" for release as a single, primarily due to the song's suggestive title; they requested that Bowie change it to "Let Me Be Beside You". The Rolling Stones, also under Decca, were also receiving backlash over the title of "Let's Spend the Night Together" at the time; radio stations refused to play it, and Mick Jagger was forced to change the lyric to "let's spend some time together" for their performance on The Ed Sullivan Show. Additionally, Pegg surmises that Decca were losing faith in Bowie after multiple commercial failures. As such, "Let Me Sleep Beside You" and "Karma Man" remained unreleased until The World of David Bowie compilation, which was issued by Decca on 6 March 1970 to cash-in on Bowie's success with " Space Oddity". Bowie himself approved the tracklisting for the compilation.

After its rejection, Bowie performed "Let Me Sleep Beside You" during his BBC radio session on 20 October 1969; this version saw release on BBC Sessions 1969-1972 (Sampler) (1996), Bowie at the Beeb (2000) and the 2009 reissue of Space Oddity. He was backed by the British band Junior's Eyes for this performance. In his book Starman, biographer Paul Trynka describes this version as "superb", praising the band's performance and arguing that it provided a "tantalizing glimpse" of how superior the material from the era would have sounded if played live. "Let Me Sleep Beside You" was also featured in the 1969 Love You till Tuesday film, where Bowie mimed to a remixed version of the original track while "brandishing a dummy guitar" and impersonating Jagger. A German version, with lyrics translated by Lisa Busch, was prepared for a proposed German-language cut of the film, but was never recorded.

Bowie's original demo of the song, recorded in the summer of 1967, displays a more folk-inspired number with country and western influences. An alternative mix of the Deram recording, featuring a different vocal take on the bridge, has appeared on bootlegs. Meanwhile, a previously unreleased stereo mix of the song was released on the 2010 deluxe edition of David Bowie. "Let Me Sleep Beside You" has since appeared in lists ranking Bowie's best songs by The Guardian (50), Consequence of Sound (68) and (100). The Guardian's Alexis Petridis called the song superior to Bowie's entire debut album and acknowledged the sound as foreshadowing what was to come, while Consequence of Sound's Lior Phillips noted it as the beginning of "one of the most fruitful producer-artist relationships in rock history".

Bowie re-recorded "Let Me Sleep Beside You" during the sessions for the project between July and October 2000, along with other tracks he wrote and recorded in the mid-1960s, including "Karma Man". The lineup consisted of the members of Bowie's then-touring band: guitarist Earl Slick, bassist Gail Ann Dorsey, pianist Mike Garson, musician Mark Plati and drummer Sterling Campbell. With co-production from Bowie and Plati, the band rehearsed the songs at Sear Sound Studios in New York City before recording them as live tracks. Plati stated that he refused to listen to Bowie's original recordings of the tracks, as so to prevent the originals from influencing his playing on the new versions. Overdubs were recorded at New York's Looking Glass Studios.

Toy was initially intended for release in March 2001, before it was shelved by EMI/ Virgin due to financial issues. So, Bowie departed the label and recorded his next album (2002). The remake later saw official release on the three-disc edition of the 2014 compilation Nothing Has Changed. In March 2011, tracks from the Toy sessions, including "Let Me Sleep Beside You", were leaked online, attracting media attention. Ten years later, on 29 September 2021, Warner Music Group announced that Toy would get an official release on 26 November as part of the box set Brilliant Adventure (1992-2001) through ISO and Parlophone.

A separate deluxe edition, titled Toy:Box, was released on 7 January 2022, which contains two new mixes of the song: an "alternative mix" and an "Unplugged and Somewhat Slightly Electric" mix, featuring new guitar parts by Plati and Slick. Reviewing Toy, Petridis called the remake "great", a sentiment echoed by Pegg, who found it "splendid".

According to Chris O'Leary:

Buckley, David (2005) [1999]. Strange Fascination - David Bowie: The Definitive Story. London: Virgin Books. ISBN 978-0-7535-1002-5.

Cann, Kevin (2010). Any Day Now - David Bowie: The London Years: 1947-1974. Croydon, Surrey: Adelita. ISBN 978-0-9552017-7-6.

Doggett, Peter (2012). The Man Who Sold the World: David Bowie and the 1970s. New York City: HarperCollins Publishers. ISBN 978-0-06-202466-4.

O'Leary, Chris (2015). Rebel Rebel: All the Songs of David Bowie from '64 to '76. Winchester: Zero Books. ISBN 978-1-78099-244-0.

O'Leary, Chris (2019). Ashes to Ashes: The Songs of David Bowie 1976-2016. London: Repeater. ISBN 978-1-91224-830-8.

Pegg, Nicholas (2016). The Complete David Bowie (Revised and Updated ed.). London: Titan Books. ISBN 978-1-78565-365-0.

Perone, James E. (2007). The Words and Music of David Bowie. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-275-99245-3.

Trynka, Paul (2011). David Bowie - Starman: The Definitive Biography. New York City: Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 978-0-316-03225-4.

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" Let Me Sleep Beside You" is a song written and recorded by English singer-songwriter David Bowie. It was recorded on 1 September 1967 at Advision Studios in London and marked the beginning of Bowie's working relationship with producer Tony Visconti, which would last for the rest of Bowie's career.

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Mars is the fourth planet and the furthest terrestrial planet from the Sun. The reddish color of its surface is due to finely grained iron(III) oxide dust in the soil, giving it the nickname " the Red Planet". Mars's radius is second smallest among the planets in the Solar System at 3,389.5 km (2,106 mi). The Martian dichotomy is visible on the surface: on average, the terrain on Mars's northern hemisphere is flatter and lower than its southern hemisphere. Mars has a thin atmosphere made primarily of carbon dioxide, and two irregularly shaped natural satellites: Phobos and Deimos.

Geologically, Mars is fairly active, with dust devils sweeping across the landscape and marsquakes (Martian analog to earthquakes) trembling underneath the ground. The surface of Mars hosts a large shield volcano ( Olympus Mons) and one of the largest canyons in the Solar System ( Valles Marineris). Mars's significant orbital eccentricity and axial tilt cause large seasonal changes to the polar ice caps' coverage and temperature swings between −110 °C (−166 °F) to 35 °C (95 °F) on the surface. A Martian solar day ( sol) is equal to 24.5 hours and a Martian solar year is equal to 1.88 Earth years.

Like the other planets in the Solar System, Mars was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago. During the Noachian period from about 4.1 to 3.7 billion years ago, Mars's surface was marked by meteor impacts, valley formation, erosion, and the possible presence of water oceans. The Hesperian period from 3.7 to 3.2-2 billion years ago was dominated by widespread volcanic activity and flooding that carved immense outflow channels. The Amazonian period, which continues to the present, was marked by the wind's influence on geological processes. It is unknown whether life has ever existed on Mars.

Mars is among the brightest objects in Earth's sky, and thus has been known from ancient times. Its high-contrast albedo features make it a common subject for viewing with a telescope. Since the late 20th century, Mars has been explored by uncrewed spacecraft and rovers, with the first flyby by the probe in 1965, the first Mars orbiter by the probe in 1971, and the first landing by in 1976. As of 2023, there are at least 11 active probes orbiting Mars or at the Martian surface. Currently, Mars is an attractive target for the first future interplanetary human missions.

Natural history

Scientists have theorized that during the Solar System's formation, Mars was created as the result of a random process of run-away accretion of material from the protoplanetary disk that orbited the Sun. Mars has many distinctive chemical features caused by its position in the Solar System. Elements with comparatively low boiling points, such as chlorine, phosphorus, and sulfur, are much more common on Mars than on Earth; these elements were probably pushed outward by the young Sun's energetic solar wind.

After the formation of the planets, all were subjected to the so-called " Late Heavy Bombardment". About 60% of the surface of Mars shows a record of impacts from that era, whereas much of the remaining surface is probably underlain by immense impact basins caused by those events. There is evidence of an enormous impact basin in the Northern Hemisphere of Mars, spanning 10,600 by 8,500 kilometres (6,600 by 5,300 mi), or roughly four times the size of the Moon's South Pole - Aitken basin, the largest impact basin yet discovered. This theory suggests that Mars was struck by a Pluto-sized body about four billion years ago. The event, thought to be the cause of the Martian hemispheric dichotomy, created the smooth Borealis basin that covers 40% of the planet.

A 2023 study shows evidence, based on the orbital inclination of Deimos (a small moon of Mars), that Mars may once had a ring system 3.5 billion years to 4 billion years ago. This ring system may have been formed from a moon, 20 times more massive than Phobos, orbiting Mars billions of years ago; and Phobos would be a remnant of that ring.

The geological history of Mars can be split into many periods, but the following are the three primary periods:

Noachian period: Formation of the oldest extant surfaces of Mars, 4.5 to 3.5 billion years ago. Noachian age surfaces are scarred by many large impact craters. The Tharsis bulge, a volcanic upland, is thought to have formed during this period, with extensive flooding by liquid water late in the period. Named after Noachis Terra.

Hesperian period: 3.5 to between 3.3 and 2.9 billion years ago. The Hesperian period is marked by the formation of extensive lava plains. Named after Hesperia Planum.

Amazonian period: between 3.3 and 2.9 billion years ago to the present. Amazonian regions have few meteorite impact craters but are otherwise quite varied. Olympus Mons formed during this period, with lava flows elsewhere on Mars. Named after Amazonis Planitia.

Geological activity is still taking place on Mars. The Athabasca Valles is home to sheet-like lava flows created about 200 mya. Water flows in the grabens called the Cerberus Fossae occurred less than 20 Mya, indicating equally recent volcanic intrusions. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has captured images of avalanches.

Physical characteristics

Mars is approximately half the diameter of Earth, with a surface area only slightly less than the total area of Earth's dry land. Mars is less dense than Earth, having about 15% of Earth's volume and 11% of Earth's mass, resulting in about 38% of Earth's surface gravity. The red-orange appearance of the Martian surface is caused by ferric oxide, or rust. It can look like butterscotch; other common surface colors include golden, brown, tan, and greenish, depending on the minerals present.

Internal structure

Like Earth, Mars has differentiated into a dense metallic core overlaid by less dense materials. Current models of its interior imply a core consisting primarily of iron and nickel with about 16-17% sulfur. This iron(II) sulfide core is thought to be twice as rich in lighter elements as Earth's. The core is surrounded by a silicate mantle that formed many of the tectonic and volcanic features on the planet, but it appears to be dormant. Besides silicon and oxygen, the most abundant elements in the Martian crust are iron, magnesium, aluminium, calcium, and potassium. The average thickness of the planet's crust is about 50 kilometres (31 mi), with a maximum thickness of 125 kilometres (78 mi). By comparison, Earth's crust averages 40 kilometres (25 mi) in thickness.

Mars is seismically active. In 2019, it was reported that InSight (now offline) had detected and recorded over 450 marsquakes and related events. In 2021 it was reported that based on eleven low-frequency marsquakes detected by the InSight lander the core of Mars was indeed liquid and had a radius of about 1830±40 km and a temperature around 1900-2000 K. The Martian core radius is abnormally large, accounting for more than half the radius of Mars and about half the size of Earth's core. To this, it has been suggested that the core contains some amount of lighter elements like oxygen and hydrogen in addition to the iron-nickel alloy and about 15% of sulfur.

The core of Mars is overlaid by the rocky mantle, which does not seem to have a thermally insulating layer analogous to the Earth's lower mantle. The Martian mantle appears to be solid down to the depth of about 500 km, where the low-velocity zone (partially melted asthenosphere) begins. Below the asthenosphere the velocity of seismic waves starts to grow again; and at the depth of about 1050 km lies the boundary of the transition zone extending down to the core.

Further analysis of data from the InSight lander has suggested that Mars has a liquid core. On 25 October 2023, scientists, helped by information from InSight, reported that Mars has a radioactive magma ocean under its crust.

Surface geology

Curiosity's view of Martian soil and boulders after crossing the "Dingo Gap" sand dune

Mars is a terrestrial planet with a surface that consists of minerals containing silicon and oxygen, metals, and other elements that typically make up rock. The Martian surface is primarily composed of tholeiitic basalt, although parts are more silica-rich than typical basalt and may be similar to andesitic rocks on Earth, or silica glass. Regions of low albedo suggest concentrations of plagioclase feldspar, with northern low albedo regions displaying higher than normal concentrations of sheet silicates and high-silicon glass. Parts of the southern highlands include detectable amounts of high-calcium pyroxenes. Localized concentrations of hematite and olivine have been found. Much of the surface is deeply covered by finely grained iron(III) oxide dust.

Although Mars has no evidence of a structured global magnetic field, observations show that parts of the planet's crust have been magnetized, suggesting that alternating polarity reversals of its dipole field have occurred in the past. This paleomagnetism of magnetically susceptible minerals is similar to the alternating bands found on Earth's ocean floors. One theory, published in 1999 and re-examined in October 2005 (with the help of the Mars Global Surveyor), is that these bands suggest plate tectonic activity on Mars four billion years ago, before the planetary dynamo ceased to function and the planet's magnetic field faded.

The lander returned data showing Martian soil to be slightly alkaline and containing elements such as magnesium, sodium, potassium and chlorine. These nutrients are found in soils on Earth. They are necessary for growth of plants. Experiments performed by the lander showed that the Martian soil has a basic pH of 7.7, and contains 0.6% of the salt perchlorate, concentrations that are toxic to humans.

Streaks are common across Mars and new ones appear frequently on steep slopes of craters, troughs, and valleys. The streaks are dark at first and get lighter with age. The streaks can start in a tiny area, then spread out for hundreds of metres. They have been seen to follow the edges of boulders and other obstacles in their path. The commonly accepted theories include that they are dark underlying layers of soil revealed after avalanches of bright dust or dust devils. Several other explanations have been put forward, including those that involve water or even the growth of organisms.

Radiation levels on the surface are on average 0.64 millisieverts of radiation per day, and significantly less than the radiation of 1.84 millisieverts per day or 22 millirads per day during the flight to and from Mars. For comparison the radiation levels in low Earth orbit, where Earth's space stations orbit, are around 0.5 millisieverts of radiation per day. Hellas Planitia has the lowest surface radiation at about 0.342 millisieverts per day, featuring lava tubes southwest of Hadriacus Mons with potentially levels as low as 0.064 millisieverts per day.

Geography and features

A MOLA-based topographic map showing highlands (red and orange) dominating the Southern Hemisphere of Mars, lowlands (blue) the northern. Volcanic plateaus delimit regions of the northern plains, whereas the highlands are punctuated by several large impact basins.

Although better remembered for mapping the Moon, Johann Heinrich Mädler and Wilhelm Beer were the first areographers. They began by establishing that most of Mars's surface features were permanent and by more precisely determining the planet's rotation period. In 1840, Mädler combined ten years of observations and drew the first map of Mars.

Features on Mars are named from a variety of sources. Albedo features are named for classical mythology. Craters larger than roughly 50 km are named for deceased scientists and writers and others who have contributed to the study of Mars. Smaller craters are named for towns and villages of the world with populations of less than 100,000. Large valleys are named for the word "Mars" or "star" in various languages; smaller valleys are named for rivers.

Large albedo features retain many of the older names but are often updated to reflect new knowledge of the nature of the features. For example, Nix Olympica (the snows of Olympus) has become Olympus Mons (Mount Olympus). The surface of Mars as seen from Earth is divided into two kinds of areas, with differing albedo. The paler plains covered with dust and sand rich in reddish iron oxides were once thought of as Martian "continents" and given names like Arabia Terra ( land of Arabia) or Amazonis Planitia ( Amazonian plain). The dark features were thought to be seas, hence their names Mare Erythraeum, Mare Sirenum and Aurorae Sinus. The largest dark feature seen from Earth is Syrtis Major Planum. The permanent northern polar ice cap is named Planum Boreum. The southern cap is called Planum Australe.

Mars's equator is defined by its rotation, but the location of its Prime Meridian was specified, as was Earth's (at Greenwich), by choice of an arbitrary point; Mädler and Beer selected a line for their first maps of Mars in 1830. After the spacecraft provided extensive imagery of Mars in 1972, a small crater (later called Airy-0), located in the Sinus Meridiani ("Middle Bay" or "Meridian Bay"), was chosen by Merton Davies, Harold Masursky, and Gérard de Vaucouleurs for the definition of 0.0° longitude to coincide with the original selection.

Because Mars has no oceans and hence no " sea level", a zero-elevation surface had to be selected as a reference level; this is called the of Mars, analogous to the terrestrial geoid. Zero altitude was defined by the height at which there is 610.5 Pa (6.105 mbar) of atmospheric pressure. This pressure corresponds to the triple point of water, and it is about 0.6% of the sea level surface pressure on Earth (0.006 atm).

For mapping purposes, the United States Geological Survey divides the surface of Mars into thirty cartographic quadrangles, each named for a classical albedo feature it contains. In April 2023, The New York Times reported an updated global map of Mars based on images from the Hope spacecraft. A related, but much more detailed, global Mars map was released by NASA on 16 April 2023.

Picture of the largest volcano on Mars, Olympus Mons. It is approximately 550 km (340 mi) across.

The vast upland region Tharsis contain several extinct volcanoes, which include the shield volcano Olympus Mons ( Mount Olympus). The edifice is over 600 km (370 mi) wide. Because the mountain is so large, with complex structure at its edges, giving a definite height to it is difficult. Its local relief, from the foot of the cliffs which form its northwest margin to its peak, is over 21 km (13 mi), a little over twice the height of Mauna Kea as measured from its base on the ocean floor. The total elevation change from the plains of Amazonis Planitia, over 1,000 km (620 mi) to the northwest, to the summit approaches 26 km (16 mi), roughly three times the height of Mount Everest, which in comparison stands at just over 8.8 kilometres (5.5 mi). Consequently, Olympus Mons is either the tallest or second-tallest mountain in the Solar System; the only known mountain which might be taller is the Rheasilvia peak on the asteroid Vesta, at 20-25 km (12-16 mi).

Impact topography

The dichotomy of Martian topography is striking: northern plains flattened by lava flows contrast with the southern highlands, pitted and cratered by ancient impacts. It is possible that, four billion years ago, the Northern Hemisphere of Mars was struck by an object one-tenth to two-thirds the size of Earth's Moon. If this is the case, the Northern Hemisphere of Mars would be the site of an impact crater 10,600 by 8,500 kilometres (6,600 by 5,300 mi) in size, or roughly the area of Europe, Asia, and Australia combined, surpassing Utopia Planitia and the Moon's South Pole-Aitken basin as the largest impact crater in the Solar System.

Mars is scarred by a number of impact craters: a total of 43,000 craters with a diameter of 5 kilometres (3.1 mi) or greater have been found. The largest exposed crater is Hellas, which is 2,300 kilometres (1,400 mi) wide and 7,000 metres (23,000 ft) deep, and is a light albedo feature clearly visible from Earth. There are other notable impact features, such as Argyre, which is around 1,800 kilometres (1,100 mi) in diameter, and Isidis, which is around 1,500 kilometres (930 mi) in diameter. Due to the smaller mass and size of Mars, the probability of an object colliding with the planet is about half that of Earth. Mars is located closer to the asteroid belt, so it has an increased chance of being struck by materials from that source. Mars is more likely to be struck by short-period comets, i.e., those that lie within the orbit of Jupiter.

Martian craters can have a morphology that suggests the ground became wet after the meteor impacted.

Tectonic sites

Valles Marineris, taken by the Viking 1 probe

The large canyon, Valles Marineris (Latin for " Mariner Valleys", also known as Agathodaemon in the old canal maps), has a length of 4,000 kilometres (2,500 mi) and a depth of up to 7 kilometres (4.3 mi). The length of Valles Marineris is equivalent to the length of Europe and extends across one-fifth the circumference of Mars. By comparison, the Grand Canyon on Earth is only 446 kilometres (277 mi) long and nearly 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) deep. Valles Marineris was formed due to the swelling of the Tharsis area, which caused the crust in the area of Valles Marineris to collapse. In 2012, it was proposed that Valles Marineris is not just a graben, but a plate boundary where 150 kilometres (93 mi) of transverse motion has occurred, making Mars a planet with possibly a two- tectonic plate arrangement.

Holes and caves

Images from the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) aboard NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter have revealed seven possible cave entrances on the flanks of the volcano Arsia Mons. The caves, named after loved ones of their discoverers, are collectively known as the "seven sisters". Cave entrances measure from 100 to 252 metres (328 to 827 ft) wide and they are estimated to be at least 73 to 96 metres (240 to 315 ft) deep. Because light does not reach the floor of most of the caves, they may extend much deeper than these lower estimates and widen below the surface. "Dena" is the only exception; its floor is visible and was measured to be 130 metres (430 ft) deep. The interiors of these caverns may be protected from micrometeoroids, UV radiation, solar flares and high energy particles that bombard the planet's surface.

Atmosphere

Edge-on view of Mars atmosphere by Viking 1 probe

Mars lost its magnetosphere 4 billion years ago, possibly because of numerous asteroid strikes, so the solar wind interacts directly with the Martian ionosphere, lowering the atmospheric density by stripping away atoms from the outer layer. Both Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Express have detected ionised atmospheric particles trailing off into space behind Mars, and this atmospheric loss is being studied by the MAVEN orbiter. Compared to Earth, the atmosphere of Mars is quite rarefied. Atmospheric pressure on the surface today ranges from a low of 30 Pa (0.0044 psi) on Olympus Mons to over 1,155 Pa (0.1675 psi) in Hellas Planitia, with a mean pressure at the surface level of 600 Pa (0.087 psi). The highest atmospheric density on Mars is equal to that found 35 kilometres (22 mi) above Earth's surface. The resulting mean surface pressure is only 0.6% of Earth's 101.3 kPa (14.69 psi). The scale height of the atmosphere is about 10.8 kilometres (6.7 mi), which is higher than Earth's 6 kilometres (3.7 mi), because the surface gravity of Mars is only about 38% of Earth's.

The atmosphere of Mars consists of about 96% carbon dioxide, 1.93% argon and 1.89% nitrogen along with traces of oxygen and water. The atmosphere is quite dusty, containing particulates about 1.5 μm in diameter which give the Martian sky a tawny color when seen from the surface. It may take on a pink hue due to iron oxide particles suspended in it. The concentration of methane in the Martian atmosphere fluctuates from about 0.24 ppb during the northern winter to about 0.65 ppb during the summer. Estimates of its lifetime range from 0.6 to 4 years, so its presence indicates that an active source of the gas must be present. Methane could be produced by non-biological process such as serpentinization involving water, carbon dioxide, and the mineral olivine, which is known to be common on Mars, or by Martian life.

Escaping atmosphere on Mars (carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen) by MAVEN in UV[123]

Compared to Earth, its higher concentration of atmospheric CO 2 and lower surface pressure may be why sound is attenuated more on Mars, where natural sources are rare apart from the wind. Using acoustic recordings collected by the Perseverance rover, researchers concluded that the speed of sound there is approximately 240 m/s for frequencies below 240 Hz, and 250 m/s for those above.

Auroras have been detected on Mars. Because Mars lacks a global magnetic field, the types and distribution of auroras there differ from those on Earth; rather than being mostly restricted to polar regions as is the case on Earth, a Martian aurora can encompass the planet. In September 2017, NASA reported radiation levels on the surface of the planet Mars were temporarily doubled, and were associated with an aurora 25 times brighter than any observed earlier, due to a massive, and unexpected, solar storm in the middle of the month.

Mars without (on left) and with a global dust storm in July 2001 (on right), as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope

Of all the planets in the Solar System, the seasons of Mars are the most Earth-like, due to the similar tilts of the two planets' rotational axes. The lengths of the Martian seasons are about twice those of Earth's because Mars's greater distance from the Sun leads to the Martian year being about two Earth years long. Martian surface temperatures vary from lows of about −110 °C (−166 °F) to highs of up to 35 °C (95 °F) in equatorial summer. The wide range in temperatures is due to the thin atmosphere which cannot store much solar heat, the low atmospheric pressure (about 1% that of the atmosphere of Earth), and the low thermal inertia of Martian soil. The planet is 1.52 times as far from the Sun as Earth, resulting in just 43% of the amount of sunlight.

If Mars had an Earth-like orbit, its seasons would be similar to Earth's because its axial tilt is similar to Earth's. The comparatively large eccentricity of the Martian orbit has a significant effect. Mars is near perihelion when it is summer in the Southern Hemisphere and winter in the north, and near aphelion when it is winter in the Southern Hemisphere and summer in the north. As a result, the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere are more extreme and the seasons in the northern are milder than would otherwise be the case. The summer temperatures in the south can be warmer than the equivalent summer temperatures in the north by up to 30 °C (54 °F).

Mars has the largest dust storms in the Solar System, reaching speeds of over 160 km/h (100 mph). These can vary from a storm over a small area, to gigantic storms that cover the entire planet. They tend to occur when Mars is closest to the Sun, and have been shown to increase global temperature.

The ice-filled Korolev crater near Mars's north pole is estimated to hold about 2,200 km3 (530 cu mi), comparable in volume to the Great Bear Lake.

Water in its liquid form cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, which is less than 1% that of Earth, except at the lowest of elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be made largely of water. The volume of water ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted, would be enough to cover the entire surface of the planet with a depth of 11 metres (36 ft). Large quantities of ice are thought to be trapped within the thick cryosphere of Mars. Radar data from Mars Express and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) show large quantities of ice at both poles, and at middle latitudes. The Phoenix lander directly sampled water ice in shallow Martian soil on 31 July 2008.

Landforms visible on Mars strongly suggest that liquid water has existed on the planet's surface. Huge linear swathes of scoured ground, known as outflow channels, cut across the surface in about 25 places. These are thought to be a record of erosion caused by the catastrophic release of water from subsurface aquifers, though some of these structures have been hypothesized to result from the action of glaciers or lava. One of the larger examples, Ma'adim Vallis, is 700 kilometres (430 mi) long, much greater than the Grand Canyon, with a width of 20 kilometres (12 mi) and a depth of 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) in places. It is thought to have been carved by flowing water early in Mars's history. The youngest of these channels is thought to have formed only a few million years ago.

Elsewhere, particularly on the oldest areas of the Martian surface, finer-scale, dendritic networks of valleys are spread across significant proportions of the landscape. Features of these valleys and their distribution strongly imply that they were carved by runoff resulting from precipitation in early Mars history. Subsurface water flow and groundwater sapping may play important subsidiary roles in some networks, but precipitation was probably the root cause of the incision in almost all cases.

Along craters and canyon walls, there are thousands of features that appear similar to terrestrial gullies. The gullies tend to be in the highlands of the Southern Hemisphere and face the Equator; all are poleward of 30° latitude. A number of authors have suggested that their formation process involves liquid water, probably from melting ice, although others have argued for formation mechanisms involving carbon dioxide frost or the movement of dry dust. No partially degraded gullies have formed by weathering and no superimposed impact craters have been observed, indicating that these are young features, possibly still active. Other geological features, such as deltas and alluvial fans preserved in craters, are further evidence for warmer, wetter conditions at an interval or intervals in earlier Mars history. Such conditions necessarily require the widespread presence of crater lakes across a large proportion of the surface, for which there is independent mineralogical, sedimentological and geomorphological evidence. Further evidence that liquid water once existed on the surface of Mars comes from the detection of specific minerals such as hematite and goethite, both of which sometimes form in the presence of water.

Mars has two permanent polar ice caps. During a pole's winter, it lies in continuous darkness, chilling the surface and causing the deposition of 25-30% of the atmosphere into slabs of ice ( dry ice). When the poles are again exposed to sunlight, the frozen CO 2 sublimes. These seasonal actions transport large amounts of dust and water vapor, giving rise to Earth-like frost and large cirrus clouds. Clouds of water-ice were photographed by the Opportunity rover in 2004.

The caps at both poles consist primarily of water ice. Frozen carbon dioxide accumulates as a comparatively thin layer about one metre thick on the north cap in the northern winter only, whereas the south cap has a permanent dry ice cover about eight metres thick. This permanent dry ice cover at the south pole is peppered by flat floored, shallow, roughly circular pits, which repeat imaging shows are expanding in some places and retreating in others. The northern polar cap has a diameter of about 1,000 kilometres (620 mi), and contains about 1.6 million cubic kilometres (5.7×10 16 cu ft) of ice, which, if spread evenly on the cap, would be 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) thick. (This compares to a volume of 2.85 million cubic kilometres (1.01×10 17 cu ft) for the Greenland ice sheet.) The southern polar cap has a diameter of 350 kilometres (220 mi) and a thickness of 3 kilometres (1.9 mi). The total volume of ice in the south polar cap plus the adjacent layered deposits has been estimated at 1.6 million cubic km. Both polar caps show spiral troughs, which a recent analysis of SHARAD ice penetrating radar has shown are a result of katabatic winds that spiral due to the Coriolis effect.

The seasonal frosting of areas near the southern ice cap results in the formation of transparent 1-metre-thick slabs of dry ice above the ground. With the arrival of spring, sunlight warms the subsurface and pressure from subliming CO 2 builds up under a slab, elevating and ultimately rupturing it. This leads to geyser-like eruptions of CO 2 gas mixed with dark basaltic sand or dust. This process is rapid, observed happening in the space of a few days, weeks or months, a rate of change rather unusual in geology - especially for Mars. The gas rushing underneath a slab to the site of a geyser carves a spiderweb-like pattern of radial channels under the ice, the process being the inverted equivalent of an erosion network formed by water draining through a single plughole.

Observations and findings of water evidence

In 2004, Opportunity detected the mineral jarosite. This forms only in the presence of acidic water, showing that water once existed on Mars. The Spirit rover found concentrated deposits of silica in 2007 that indicated wet conditions in the past, and in December 2011, the mineral gypsum, which also forms in the presence of water, was found on the surface by NASA's Mars rover Opportunity. It is estimated that the amount of water in the upper mantle of Mars, represented by hydroxyl ions contained within Martian minerals, is equal to or greater than that of Earth at 50-300 parts per million of water, which is enough to cover the entire planet to a depth of 200-1,000 metres (660-3,280 ft).

Maps of buried ice on Mars (26 October 2023)

Map of subsurface water ice on Mars (26 October 2023)

On 18 March 2013, NASA reported evidence from instruments on the Curiosity rover of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock. Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 centimetres (24 in), during the rover's traverse from the Bradbury Landing site to the Yellowknife Bay area in the terrain. In September 2015, NASA announced that they had found strong evidence of hydrated brine flows in recurring slope lineae, based on spectrometer readings of the darkened areas of slopes. These streaks flow downhill in Martian summer, when the temperature is above −23 °C, and freeze at lower temperatures. These observations supported earlier hypotheses, based on timing of formation and their rate of growth, that these dark streaks resulted from water flowing just below the surface. However, later work suggested that the lineae may be dry, granular flows instead, with at most a limited role for water in initiating the process. A definitive conclusion about the presence, extent, and role of liquid water on the Martian surface remains elusive.

Researchers suspect much of the low northern plains of the planet were covered with an ocean hundreds of meters deep, though this theory remains controversial. In March 2015, scientists stated that such an ocean might have been the size of Earth's Arctic Ocean. This finding was derived from the ratio of protium to deuterium in the modern Martian atmosphere compared to that ratio on Earth. The amount of Martian deuterium (D/H = 9.3 ± 1.7 10-4) is five to seven times the amount on Earth (D/H = 1.56 10-4), suggesting that ancient Mars had significantly higher levels of water. Results from the Curiosity rover had previously found a high ratio of deuterium in Gale Crater, though not significantly high enough to suggest the former presence of an ocean. Other scientists caution that these results have not been confirmed, and point out that Martian climate models have not yet shown that the planet was warm enough in the past to support bodies of liquid water. Near the northern polar cap is the 81.4 kilometres (50.6 mi) wide Korolev Crater, which the Mars Express orbiter found to be filled with approximately 2,200 cubic kilometres (530 cu mi) of water ice.

In November 2016, NASA reported finding a large amount of underground ice in the Utopia Planitia region. The volume of water detected has been estimated to be equivalent to the volume of water in Lake Superior (which is 12,100 cubic kilometres). During observations from 2018 through 2021, the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter spotted indications of water, probably subsurface ice, in the Valles Marineris canyon system.

Orbit and rotation

Orbit of Mars and other Inner Solar System planets

Mars's average distance from the Sun is roughly 230 million km (143 million mi), and its orbital period is 687 (Earth) days. The solar day (or sol) on Mars is only slightly longer than an Earth day: 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35.244 seconds. A Martian year is equal to 1.8809 Earth years, or 1 year, 320 days, and 18.2 hours.

The axial tilt of Mars is 25.19° relative to its orbital plane, which is similar to the axial tilt of Earth. As a result, Mars has seasons like Earth, though on Mars they are nearly twice as long because its orbital period is that much longer. In the present day epoch, the orientation of the north pole of Mars is close to the star Deneb.

Mars has a relatively pronounced orbital eccentricity of about 0.09; of the seven other planets in the Solar System, only Mercury has a larger orbital eccentricity. It is known that in the past, Mars has had a much more circular orbit. At one point, 1.35 million Earth years ago, Mars had an eccentricity of roughly 0.002, much less than that of Earth today. Mars's cycle of eccentricity is 96,000 Earth years compared to Earth's cycle of 100,000 years.

Mars approaches Earth in a synodic period of 779.94 days. Earth orbits the Sun the closest to Mars's orbit around the Sun, and Mars orbit is the second closest to Earth after the orbit of Venus. Therefore, their closest approaches, the inferior conjunctions, are the second closest for Earth after those with Venus, and the closest for Mars to any other planet. The gravitational potential difference, and thus the delta-v needed to transfer between Mars and Earth is the second lowest for Earth and the lowest for Mars to any other planet, while transfers can possibly be optimized with Venus flybys.

Mars has two relatively small (compared to Earth's) natural moons, Phobos (about 22 kilometres (14 mi) in diameter) and Deimos (about 12 kilometres (7.5 mi) in diameter), which orbit close to the planet. The origin of both moons is unclear, although a popular theory states that they were asteroids captured into Martian orbit.

Both satellites were discovered in 1877 by Asaph Hall and were named after the characters Phobos (the deity of panic and fear) and Deimos (the deity of terror and dread), twins from Greek mythology who accompanied their father Ares, god of war, into battle. Mars was the Roman equivalent to Ares. In modern Greek, the planet retains its ancient name Ares (Aris: Άρης).

From the surface of Mars, the motions of Phobos and Deimos appear different from that of the Earth's satellite, the Moon. Phobos rises in the west, sets in the east, and rises again in just 11 hours. Deimos, being only just outside synchronous orbit - where the orbital period would match the planet's period of rotation - rises as expected in the east, but slowly. Because the orbit of Phobos is below a synchronous altitude, tidal forces from Mars are gradually lowering its orbit. In about 50 million years, it could either crash into Mars's surface or break up into a ring structure around the planet.

The origin of the two satellites is not well understood. Their low albedo and carbonaceous chondrite composition have been regarded as similar to asteroids, supporting a capture theory. The unstable orbit of Phobos would seem to point toward a relatively recent capture. But both have circular orbits near the equator, which is unusual for captured objects, and the required capture dynamics are complex. Accretion early in the history of Mars is plausible, but would not account for a composition resembling asteroids rather than Mars itself, if that is confirmed. Mars may have yet-undiscovered moons, smaller than 50 to 100 metres (160 to 330 ft) in diameter, and a dust ring is predicted to exist between Phobos and Deimos.

A third possibility for their origin as satellites of Mars is the involvement of a third body or a type of impact disruption. More-recent lines of evidence for Phobos having a highly porous interior, and suggesting a composition containing mainly phyllosilicates and other minerals known from Mars, point toward an origin of Phobos from material ejected by an impact on Mars that reaccreted in Martian orbit, similar to the prevailing theory for the origin of Earth's satellite. Although the visible and near-infrared (VNIR) spectra of the moons of Mars resemble those of outer-belt asteroids, the thermal infrared spectra of Phobos are reported to be inconsistent with chondrites of any class. It is also possible that Phobos and Deimos were fragments of an older moon, formed by debris from a large impact on Mars, and then destroyed by a more recent impact upon the satellite.

Human observations and exploration

The history of observations of Mars is marked by oppositions of Mars when the planet is closest to Earth and hence is most easily visible, which occur every couple of years. Even more notable are the perihelic oppositions of Mars, which are distinguished because Mars is close to perihelion, making it even closer to Earth.

Ancient and medieval observations

Galileo Galilei was the first to see Mars via telescope.

The ancient Sumerians named Mars Nergal, the god of war and plague. During Sumerian times, Nergal was a minor deity of little significance, but, during later times, his main cult center was the city of Nineveh. In Mesopotamian texts, Mars is referred to as the "star of judgement of the fate of the dead". The existence of Mars as a wandering object in the night sky was also recorded by the ancient Egyptian astronomers and, by 1534 BCE, they were familiar with the retrograde motion of the planet. By the period of the Neo-Babylonian Empire, the Babylonian astronomers were making regular records of the positions of the planets and systematic observations of their behavior. For Mars, they knew that the planet made 37 synodic periods, or 42 circuits of the zodiac, every 79 years. They invented arithmetic methods for making minor corrections to the predicted positions of the planets. In Ancient Greece, the planet was known as . Commonly, the Greek name for the planet now referred to as Mars, was Ares. It was the Romans who named the planet Mars, for their god of war, often represented by the sword and shield of the planet's namesake.

In the fourth century BCE, Aristotle noted that Mars disappeared behind the Moon during an occultation, indicating that the planet was farther away. Ptolemy, a Greek living in Alexandria, attempted to address the problem of the orbital motion of Mars. Ptolemy's model and his collective work on astronomy was presented in the multi-volume collection later called the (from the Arabic for "greatest"), which became the authoritative treatise on Western astronomy for the next fourteen centuries. Literature from ancient China confirms that Mars was known by Chinese astronomers by no later than the fourth century BCE. In the East Asian cultures, Mars is traditionally referred to as the "fire star" based on the Wuxing system.

During the seventeenth century A.D., Tycho Brahe measured the diurnal parallax of Mars that Johannes Kepler used to make a preliminary calculation of the relative distance to the planet. From Brahe's observations of Mars, Kepler deduced that the planet orbited the Sun not in a circle, but in an ellipse. Moreover, Kepler showed that Mars sped up as it approached the Sun and slowed down as it moved farther away, in a manner that later physicists would explain as a consequence of the conservation of angular momentum. When the telescope became available, the diurnal parallax of Mars was again measured in an effort to determine the Sun-Earth distance. This was first performed by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1672. The early parallax measurements were hampered by the quality of the instruments. The only occultation of Mars by Venus observed was that of 13 October 1590, seen by Michael Maestlin at Heidelberg. In 1610, Mars was viewed by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was first to see it via telescope. The first person to draw a map of Mars that displayed any terrain features was the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens.

Martian "canals"

A 1962 map of Mars published by the U.S. Aeronautical Chart and Information Center, showing canals snaking through the Martian landscape. At the time, the existence canals was still highly controversial as no close-up pictures of Mars had been taken (until Mariner 4's flyby in 1965).

By the 19th century, the resolution of telescopes reached a level sufficient for surface features to be identified. On 5 September 1877, a perihelic opposition to Mars occurred. The Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli used a 22-centimetre (8.7 in) telescope in Milan to help produce the first detailed map of Mars. These maps notably contained features he called canali, which were later shown to be an optical illusion. These canali were supposedly long, straight lines on the surface of Mars, to which he gave names of famous rivers on Earth. His term, which means "channels" or "grooves", was popularly mistranslated in English as "canals".

Influenced by the observations, the orientalist Percival Lowell founded an observatory which had 30- and 45-centimetre (12- and 18-in) telescopes. The observatory was used for the exploration of Mars during the last good opportunity in 1894, and the following less favorable oppositions. He published several books on Mars and life on the planet, which had a great influence on the public. The canali were independently observed by other astronomers, like Henri Joseph Perrotin and Louis Thollon in Nice, using one of the largest telescopes of that time.

The seasonal changes (consisting of the diminishing of the polar caps and the dark areas formed during Martian summers) in combination with the canals led to speculation about life on Mars, and it was a long-held belief that Mars contained vast seas and vegetation. As bigger telescopes were used, fewer long, straight canali were observed. During observations in 1909 by Antoniadi with an 84-centimetre (33 in) telescope, irregular patterns were observed, but no canali were seen.

Robotic exploration

Self-portrait of Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter (left) at Wright Brothers Field, 2021

Dozens of crewless spacecraft, including orbiters, landers, and rovers, have been sent to Mars by the Soviet Union, the United States, Europe, India, the United Arab Emirates, and China to study the planet's surface, climate, and geology. NASA's Mariner 4 was the first spacecraft to visit Mars; launched on 28 November 1964, it made its closest approach to the planet on 15 July 1965. Mariner 4 detected the weak Martian radiation belt, measured at about 0.1% that of Earth, and captured the first images of another planet from deep space.

Once spacecraft visited the planet during NASA's Mariner missions in the 1960s and 1970s, many previous concepts of Mars were radically broken. After the results of the Viking life-detection experiments, the hypothesis of a dead planet was generally accepted. The data from Mariner 9 and Viking allowed better maps of Mars to be made, and the Mars Global Surveyor mission, which launched in 1996 and operated until late 2006, produced complete, extremely detailed maps of the Martian topography, magnetic field and surface minerals. These maps are available online at websites including Google Mars. Both the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Mars Express continued exploring with new instruments and supporting lander missions. NASA provides two online tools: Mars Trek, which provides visualizations of the planet using data from 50 years of exploration, and Experience Curiosity, which simulates traveling on Mars in 3-D with Curiosity.

As of 2023, Mars is host to thirteen functioning spacecraft. Eight are in orbit: 2001 Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, , ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, the Hope orbiter, and the orbiter. Another five are on the surface: the Mars Science Laboratory rover, the Perseverance rover, the helicopter, the lander, and the rover.

Planned missions to Mars include the Rosalind Franklin rover mission, designed to search for evidence of past life, which was intended to be launched in 2018 but has been repeatedly delayed, with a launch date pushed to 2024 at the earliest, with a more likely one sometime in 2028. A current concept for a joint NASA- ESA mission to return samples from Mars would launch in 2026.

Habitability and the search for life

Curiosity rover's robotic arm showing drill in place, February 2013

During the late 19th century, it was widely accepted in the astronomical community that Mars had life-supporting qualities, including the presence of oxygen and water. However, in 1894 W. W. Campbell at Lick Observatory observed the planet and found that "if water vapor or oxygen occur in the atmosphere of Mars it is in quantities too small to be detected by spectroscopes then available". That observation contradicted many of the measurements of the time and was not widely accepted. Campbell and V. M. Slipher repeated the study in 1909 using better instruments, but with the same results. It was not until the findings were confirmed by W. S. Adams in 1925 that the myth of the Earth-like habitability of Mars was finally broken. However, even in the 1960s, articles were published on Martian biology, putting aside explanations other than life for the seasonal changes on Mars. Detailed scenarios for the metabolism and chemical cycles for a functional ecosystem were being published as late as 1962.

The current understanding of planetary habitability - the ability of a world to develop environmental conditions favorable to the emergence of life - favors planets that have liquid water on their surface. Most often this requires the orbit of a planet to lie within the habitable zone, which for the Sun is estimated to extend from within the orbit of Earth to about that of Mars. During perihelion, Mars dips inside this region, but Mars's thin (low-pressure) atmosphere prevents liquid water from existing over large regions for extended periods. The past flow of liquid water demonstrates the planet's potential for habitability. Recent evidence has suggested that any water on the Martian surface may have been too salty and acidic to support regular terrestrial life.

The environmental conditions on Mars are a challenge to sustaining organic life: the planet has little heat transfer across its surface, it has poor insulation against bombardment by the solar wind due to the absence of a magnetosphere and has insufficient atmospheric pressure to retain water in a liquid form (water instead sublimes to a gaseous state). Mars is nearly, or perhaps totally, geologically dead; the end of volcanic activity has apparently stopped the recycling of chemicals and minerals between the surface and interior of the planet.

Scoop of Mars soil by Curiosity, October 2012

In situ investigations have been performed on Mars by the Viking landers, and Opportunity rovers, lander, and Curiosity rover. Evidence suggests that the planet was once significantly more habitable than it is today, but whether living organisms ever existed there remains unknown. The Viking probes of the mid-1970s carried experiments designed to detect microorganisms in Martian soil at their respective landing sites and had positive results, including a temporary increase in production on exposure to water and nutrients. This sign of life was later disputed by scientists, resulting in a continuing debate, with NASA scientist Gilbert Levin asserting that Viking may have found life. Tests conducted by the Phoenix Mars lander have shown that the soil has an alkaline pH and it contains magnesium, sodium, potassium and chloride. The soil nutrients may be able to support life, but life would still have to be shielded from the intense ultraviolet light.

A 2014 analysis of Martian meteorite EETA79001 found chlorate, perchlorate, and nitrate ions in sufficiently high concentrations to suggest that they are widespread on Mars. UV and X-ray radiation would turn chlorate and perchlorate ions into other, highly reactive oxychlorines, indicating that any organic molecules would have to be buried under the surface to survive.

Scientists have proposed that carbonate globules found in meteorite ALH84001, which is thought to have originated from Mars, could be fossilized microbes extant on Mars when the meteorite was blasted from the Martian surface by a meteor strike some 15 million years ago. This proposal has been met with skepticism, and an exclusively inorganic origin for the shapes has been proposed. Small quantities of methane and formaldehyde detected by Mars orbiters are both claimed to be possible evidence for life, as these chemical compounds would quickly break down in the Martian atmosphere. Alternatively, these compounds may instead be replenished by volcanic or other geological means, such as serpentinite. Impact glass, formed by the impact of meteors, which on Earth can preserve signs of life, has also been found on the surface of the impact craters on Mars. Likewise, the glass in impact craters on Mars could have preserved signs of life, if life existed at the site.

Human mission proposals

Several plans for a human mission to Mars have been proposed throughout the 20th and 21st centuries, but none have come to fruition. The NASA Authorization Act of 2017 directed NASA to study the feasibility of a crewed Mars mission in the early 2030s; the resulting report eventually concluded that this would be unfeasible. In addition, in 2021, China was planning to send a crewed Mars mission in 2033. Privately held companies such as SpaceX have also proposed plans to send humans to Mars, with the eventual goal to settle on the planet. The moon Phobos has been proposed as an anchor point for a space elevator.

Viewing from Earth

Mars seen through an 16-inch amateur telescope, at 2020 opposition

The mean apparent magnitude of Mars is +0.71 with a standard deviation of 1.05. Because the orbit of Mars is eccentric, the magnitude at opposition from the Sun can range from about −3.0 to −1.4. The minimum brightness is magnitude +1.86 when the planet is near aphelion and in conjunction with the Sun. At its brightest, Mars (along with Jupiter) is second only to Venus in apparent brightness. Mars usually appears distinctly yellow, orange, or red. When farthest away from Earth, it is more than seven times farther away than when it is closest. Mars is usually close enough for particularly good viewing once or twice at 15-year or 17-year intervals. As Mars approaches opposition, it begins a period of retrograde motion, which means it will appear to move backwards in a looping curve with respect to the background stars. This retrograde motion lasts for about 72 days, and Mars reaches its peak apparent brightness in the middle of this interval.

The point at which Mars's geocentric longitude is 180° different from the Sun's is known as opposition, which is near the time of its closest approach to Earth. The time of opposition can occur as much as 8.5 days away from the closest approach. The distance at close approach varies between about 54 and 103 million km (34 and 64 million mi) due to the planets' elliptical orbits, which causes comparable variation in angular size. The most recent Mars opposition occurred on 8 December 2022, at a distance of about 82 million km (51 million mi). The average time between the successive oppositions of Mars, its synodic period, is 780 days; but the number of days between successive oppositions can range from 764 to 812.

Mars comes into opposition from Earth every 2.1 years. The planets come into opposition near Mars's perihelion in 2003, 2018 and 2035, with the 2020 and 2033 events being particularly close to perihelic opposition. Mars made its closest approach to Earth and maximum apparent brightness in nearly 60,000 years, 55,758,006 km (0.37271925 AU; 34,646,419 mi), magnitude −2.88, on 27 August 2003, at 09:51:13 UTC. This occurred when Mars was one day from opposition and about three days from its perihelion, making it particularly easy to see from Earth. The last time it came so close is estimated to have been on 12 September 57,617 BC, the next time being in 2287. This record approach was only slightly closer than other recent close approaches.

Optical ground-based telescopes are typically limited to resolving features about 300 kilometres (190 mi) across when Earth and Mars are closest because of Earth's atmosphere.

The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, 1897, depicts an invasion of Earth by fictional Martians.

Mars is named after the Roman god of war. This association between Mars and war dates back at least to Babylonian astronomy, in which the planet was named for the god Nergal, deity of war and destruction. It persisted into modern times, as exemplified by Gustav Holst's orchestral suite The Planets, whose famous first movement labels Mars "the bringer of war". The planet's symbol, a circle with a spear pointing out to the upper right, is also used as a symbol for the male gender. The symbol dates from at least the 11th century, though a possible predecessor has been found in the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri.

The idea that Mars was populated by intelligent Martians became widespread in the late 19th century. Schiaparelli's "canali" observations combined with Percival Lowell's books on the subject put forward the standard notion of a planet that was a drying, cooling, dying world with ancient civilizations constructing irrigation works. Many other observations and proclamations by notable personalities added to what has been termed "Mars Fever". High-resolution mapping of the surface of Mars revealed no artifacts of habitation, but pseudoscientific speculation about intelligent life on Mars still continues. Reminiscent of the canali observations, these speculations are based on small scale features perceived in the spacecraft images, such as "pyramids" and the " Face on Mars". In his book , planetary astronomer Carl Sagan wrote: "Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears."

The depiction of Mars in fiction has been stimulated by its dramatic red color and by nineteenth-century scientific speculations that its surface conditions might support not just life but intelligent life. This gave way to many science fiction stories involving these concepts, such as H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds, in which Martians seek to escape their dying planet by invading Earth; Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, in which human explorers accidentally destroy a Martian civilization; as well as Edgar Rice Burroughs's series , C. S. Lewiss novel Out of the Silent Planet (1938), and a number of Robert A. Heinlein stories before the mid-sixties. Since then, depictions of Martians have also extended to animation. A comic figure of an intelligent Martian, Marvin the Martian, appeared in Haredevil Hare (1948) as a character in the Looney Tunes animated cartoons of Warner Brothers, and has continued as part of popular culture to the present. After the Mariner and Viking spacecraft had returned pictures of Mars as a lifeless and canal-less world, these ideas about Mars were abandoned; for many science-fiction authors, the new discoveries initially seemed like a constraint, but eventually the post- Viking knowledge of Mars became itself a source of inspiration for works like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy.

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NASA - Mars in a Minute: Is Mars Really Red? (Transcript) This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain.

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# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mars is the fourth planet and the furthest terrestrial planet from the Sun. The reddish color of its surface is due to finely grained iron(III) oxide dust in the soil, giving it the nickname " the Red Planet". Mars's radius is second smallest among the planets in the Solar System at 3,389.5 km (2,106 mi).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Oval Office is the formal, working office space of the President of the United States. It is located in the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C., part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

The oval-shaped room features three large south-facing windows behind the president's desk and a fireplace at the north end. It has four doors: the east door opens to the Rose Garden; the west door leads to a private study and dining room; the northwest door opens onto the main corridor of the West Wing; and the northeast door opens to the office of the president's secretary.

Presidents generally decorate the office to suit their personal taste, choosing new furniture, new drapery, and designing their own oval-shaped carpet to cover most of the floor. Artwork is selected from the White House's own collection, or borrowed from museums for the president's term in office.

President Theodore Roosevelt built the West Wing in 1902, but his office in the new wing was not oval-shaped. The Taft Oval Office was built as part of the West Wing's 1909 expansion, and was centered in the wing's south façade-similar to the oval rooms in the White House residence, such as the Yellow Oval Room (which had sometimes served as the president's office before the West Wing was built). The Taft Oval served President Taft through President Franklin Roosevelt, but suffered a major fire in 1929, and was demolished in 1933. President Franklin Roosevelt built the modern Oval Office at the corner next to the rose garden in 1934, as part of the wing's reconstruction with an expansion to the West Wing's east facade.

The Oval Office has become associated in Americans' minds with the presidency itself through memorable images, such as a young John F. Kennedy, Jr. peering through the front panel of his father's desk, President Richard Nixon speaking by telephone with the Apollo 11 astronauts during their moonwalk, and Amy Carter bringing her Siamese cat Misty Malarky Ying Yang to brighten her father President Jimmy Carter's day. Several presidents have addressed the nation from the Oval Office on occasion. Examples include Kennedy presenting news of the Cuban Missile Crisis (1962), Nixon announcing his resignation from office (1974), Ronald Reagan following the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster (1986), and George W. Bush in the wake of the September 11 attacks (2001). In 2018, former White House stenographer Beck Dorey-Stein published a memoir about her years working for Obama called From the Corner of the Oval.

Washington's Bow Window

George Washington never occupied the White House. He spent most of his presidency in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, which served as the temporary national capital for 10 years, 1790-1800, while Washington, D.C. was under construction.

In 1790, Washington built a large, two-story, semi-circular addition to the rear of the President's House in Philadelphia, creating a ceremonial space in which the public would meet the president. Standing before the three windows of this Bow Window, he formally received guests for his Tuesday afternoon audiences, delegations from Congress and foreign dignitaries, and the general public at open houses on New Year's Day, the Fourth of July, and his birthday.

Washington received his guests, standing between the windows in his back drawing-room. The company, entering a front room and passing through an unfolding door, made their salutations to the President, and turning off, stood on one side.

President John Adams occupied the Philadelphia mansion beginning in March 1797 and used the Bow Window in the same manner as his predecessor.

Curved foundations of Washington's Bow Window were uncovered during a 2007 archaeological excavation of the President's House site. They are exhibited under glass at the President's House Commemoration, just north of the Liberty Bell Center.

Architect James Hoban visited President Washington in Philadelphia in June 1792 and would have seen the Bow Window. The following month, he was named winner of the design competition for the White House.

The "elliptic salon" at the center of the White House was the outstanding feature of Hoban's original plan. Oval interior space was a Baroque concept that was adopted by Neoclassicism. Oval rooms became common in 18th-century neoclassical architecture.

In November 1800, John Adams became the first president to occupy the White House. He and his successor, President Thomas Jefferson, used Hoban's oval rooms in the same ceremonial manner that Washington had used the Bow Window, standing before the three windows at the south end to receive guests.

During the 19th century, a number of presidents used the White House's second-floor Yellow Oval Room as a private office or library.

The West Wing was the idea of President Theodore Roosevelt, brought about by his wife's opinion that the second floor of the White House, then shared between bedrooms and offices, should be just a domestic space. Completed in 1902, the one-story Executive Office Building was intended to be a temporary structure, for use until a permanent building was erected on that site or elsewhere. Building it to the west of the White House allowed for the removal of a vast, dilapidated set of pre- Civil War greenhouses that had been constructed by President James Buchanan. Roosevelt relocated the offices of the executive branch to the newly constructed wing in 1902. His workspace was a two-room suite of Executive Office and Cabinet Room, that occupied the eastern third of the building. Its furniture, including the president's desk, was designed by architect Charles Follen McKim and executed by A. H. Davenport and Company, of Boston.

President William Howard Taft made the West Wing a permanent building, expanding it southward, doubling its size, and building the first Oval Office. Designed by Nathan C. Wyeth and completed in 1909, the office was centered on the south facade of the building, much as the oval rooms in the White House are. Taft intended it to be the hub of his administration, and, by locating it in the center of the West Wing, he could be more involved with the day-to-day operation of his presidency. The Taft Oval Office had simple Georgian Revival trim, and was likely the most colorful in history; the walls were covered with vibrant seagrass green burlap.

On December 24, 1929, during President Herbert Hoover's administration, a fire severely damaged the West Wing. Hoover used this as an opportunity to create more space, excavating a partial basement for additional offices. He restored the Oval Office, upgrading the quality of trim and installing air-conditioning. He also replaced the furniture, which had undergone no major changes in twenty years.

Dissatisfied with the size and layout of the West Wing, President Franklin D. Roosevelt engaged New York architect Eric Gugler to redesign it in 1933. To create additional space without increasing the apparent size of the building, Gugler excavated a full basement, added a set of subterranean offices under the adjacent lawn, and built an unobtrusive "penthouse" story. The directive to wring the most office space out of the existing building was responsible for its narrow corridors and cramped staff offices. Gugler's most visible addition was the expansion of the building eastward for a new Cabinet Room and Oval Office.

The modern Oval Office was built at the West Wing's southeast corner, offering Roosevelt, who was physically disabled and used a wheelchair, more privacy and easier access to the Residence. He and Gugler devised a room architecturally grander than the previous two rooms, with more robust Georgian details: doors topped with substantial pediments, bookcases set into niches, a deep bracketed cornice, and a ceiling medallion of the Presidential Seal. Rather than a chandelier or ceiling fixture, the room is illuminated by light bulbs hidden within the cornice that "wash" the ceiling in light. In small ways, hints of Art Moderne can be seen, in the sconces flanking the windows and the representation of the eagle in the ceiling medallion. Roosevelt and Gugler worked closely together, often over breakfast, with Gugler sketching the president's ideas. One notion resulting from these sketches that has become fixed in the layout of the room's furniture is that of two high back chairs in front of the fireplace. The public sees this most often with the president seated on the left and a visiting head of state on the right. This allowed Roosevelt to be seated, with his guests at the same level, de-emphasizing his inability to stand. Construction of the modern Oval Office was completed in 1934.

The basic Oval Office furnishings have been a desk in front of the three windows at the south end, a pair of chairs in front of the fireplace at the north end, a pair of sofas, and assorted tables and chairs. The Neoclassical mantel was made for the Taft Oval Office in 1909 and salvaged after the 1929 West Wing fire. A tradition of displaying potted Swedish ivy (Plectranthus verticillatus) atop the mantel goes back to the administration of John F. Kennedy, and the current plants were rooted from the original plant.

A Federal longcase clock, made in Boston by John and Thomas Seymour c. 1795-1805 - commonly known as the Oval Office grandfather clock - was purchased by the White House Historical Association in 1972, and has stood next to the Oval Office's northeast door since 1975.

The carpet of the Oval Office bears the Seal of the President. President Harry S. Truman's oval carpet was the first to incorporate the presidential seal. In Truman's carpet, the seal was represented monochromatically through varying depths of the cut pile. His carpet was used in the Dwight D. Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. Since then, most administrations have created their own rug, working with an interior designer and the Curator of the White House. As part of her overall restoration of the White House, Jacqueline Kennedy had a redecoration of the Oval Office begun on November 21, 1963, when she accompanied President John F. Kennedy on a trip to Texas. The next day, November 22, a new carpet was installed just as the Kennedys were making their way through Dallas and the president was assassinated.

Six desks have been used in the Oval Office by U.S. presidents. The Theodore Roosevelt desk was used by Roosevelt in his (non-oval) office at the southeast corner of the West Wing. Subsequently, it was used in the Oval Office by seven presidents - most recently by Eisenhower.

Also popular is the Resolute Desk, so named because it was made from the timbers of the British frigate HMS Resolute. The ship had been frozen in Arctic ice and abandoned but was later found and freed by American seamen. It was refurbished and presented as a gift from the United States to Queen Victoria in 1856. When the ship was decommissioned from the Royal Navy in 1879, Queen Victoria ordered twin desks made from its timbers, keeping one and presenting the other as a gift to President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1880. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered a kneehole panel with the Presidential Seal added, but work was not completed until after his 1945 death in office. First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy had the desk restored, and she was the first to place it in the Oval Office. Following the 1963 assassination of President Kennedy, the desk toured the country as part of a traveling exhibit for the Kennedy Presidential Library and was then lent to the Smithsonian Institution. President Jimmy Carter brought the desk back to the Oval Office in the 1970s. Since then, presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden have also used it as their Oval Office desk.

When not in use in the Oval Office, a desk is often placed in the adjacent Oval Office Study, in the White House, or is used by the vice president.

Art may be selected from the White House collection or may be borrowed from museums or individuals for the length of an administration.

Most presidents have hung a portrait of George Washington - usually the Rembrandt Peale "Porthole" portrait or the Charles Willson Peale three-quarter-length portrait - over the mantel at the north end of the room. A portrait of Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully hung in Lyndon B. Johnson's office and in Ronald Reagan's, George H. W. Bush's and Bill Clinton's. A portrait of Abraham Lincoln by George Henry Story hung in George W. Bush's office, and continued in Barack Obama's. Three landscapes/cityscapes by minor artists - City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard by George Cooke, Eastport and Passamaquoddy Bay by Victor de Grailly, and The President's House, a copy after William Henry Bartlett - have adorned the walls in multiple administrations. The Avenue in the Rain by Childe Hassam and Working on the Statue of Liberty by Norman Rockwell flanked the Resolute Desk in Bill Clinton's office and did the same in Barack Obama's.

Statuettes, busts, heads, and figurines are frequently displayed in the Oval Office. Abraham Lincoln has been the most common subject, in works by sculptors Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Gutzon Borglum, Adolph Alexander Weinman, Leo Cherne and others. Over time, traditional busts of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Benjamin Franklin have given way to heads of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S. Truman or Dwight Eisenhower. Western bronzes by Frederic Remington have been frequent choices: Lyndon Johnson displayed The Bronco Buster, as did Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Presidents Reagan and Bush added its companion piece, The Rattlesnake. Harry S. Truman displayed Remington's oil painting .

President Harry S. Truman displayed works related to his home state of Missouri, illustrations of biplanes, and models of jet-airplanes. He hung a large photograph of the White House portrait of Franklin D. Roosevelt, under whom he had served as vice president and who died in office in 1945. President Dwight Eisenhower filled the office walls with landscape paintings, as well as a painting of Robert E. Lee. President John F. Kennedy surrounded himself with paintings of naval battles from the War of 1812, photographs of sailboats, and ship models. President Lyndon Johnson installed sconces on either side of the mantel, and added the office's first painting by a woman artist, Franklin D. Roosevelt by Elizabeth Shoumatoff. President Richard Nixon tried three different George Washington portraits over the mantel, and hung a copy of - a photograph of the earth taken from the moon's orbit during the Apollo 8 mission - besides his desk. President Gerald Ford displayed tasteful, conservative works, paintings that remained mostly in place through the administrations of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. President George H. W. Bush added luminist landscapes. President Bill Clinton chose the Childe Hassam and Norman Rockwell paintings mentioned above, along with Waiting for the Hour by William T. Carlton, a genre painting showing African-Americans gathered in anticipation of the Emancipation Proclamation going into effect. President George W. Bush mixed traditional works with paintings by Texas artists and Western sculptures. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, British Prime Minister Tony Blair lent him a bust of Winston Churchill, who had guided Great Britain through World War II. President Barack Obama honored Abraham Lincoln with the portrait by Story, a bust by Augustus Saint-Gaudens, and a copy of the Emancipation Proclamation. Below the proclamation was a bust of Martin Luther King Jr. by Charles Alston, and in the nearby bookcase was a program from the August 28, 1963, March on Washington, at which King gave his " I Have a Dream Speech."

A tradition evolved in the latter part of the twentieth century of each new administration redecorating the office to the president's liking. A new administration usually selects an oval carpet, new drapery, the paintings on the walls, and some furniture. Most incoming presidents continue using the rug of their predecessor until their new one is installed. The retired carpet very often is then moved to the presidential library of the president for whom it was made.

The redecoration of the Oval Office is usually coordinated by the first lady's office in the East Wing, working with an interior designer and the White House curator.

Since the present Oval Office's construction in 1934 during the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt the room has remained mostly unchanged architecturally.[citation needed ] More than any president, Roosevelt left an impression on the room and its use. Doors and window frames have been modified slightly.[citation needed ] A screen door on the east wall was removed after the installation of air conditioning. President Lyndon B. Johnson's row of wire service Teletype machines on the southeast wall required cutting plaster and flooring to accommodate wiring.[citation needed ] The Georgian style plaster ornament has been cleaned to remove accumulated paint, and a series of electrified wall sconces have come and gone.[citation needed ]

Though some presidents have chosen to do day-to-day work in a smaller study just west of the Oval Office, most use the actual Oval Office for work and meetings. Traffic from the large numbers of staff, visitors, and pets over time takes its toll. There have been four sets of flooring in the Oval Office. The original floor was made of cork installed over softwood; however, President Eisenhower was an avid golfer and damaged the floor with his golf spikes. Johnson had the floor replaced in the mid-1960s with wood-grain linoleum. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan had the floor replaced with quarter sawn oak and walnut, in a cross parquet pattern similar in design to Eric Gugler's 1933 sketch, which had never been installed. In August 2005, the floor was replaced again under President George W. Bush, in exactly the same pattern as the Reagan floor.

In the late 1980s, a comprehensive assessment of the entire house, including the Oval Office, was made as part of the National Park Service's Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS). Detailed photographs and measured drawings were made documenting the interior and exterior and showing even slight imperfections. A checklist of materials and methods was generated for future conservation and restoration.

The ratio of the major axis to the minor axis is approximately 21:17 or 1.24.

A panoramic view of the Oval Office, January 26, 2017. President Donald Trump is seated at the Resolute desk.

President

Image

Designer

Furnishings

Artwork/Statues/Pictures

Notes

William Howard Taft
1909-1913

Nathan C. Wyeth, 1909

Marble Neoclassical mantel
Bookcases with glass doors
Lighting fixtures by E. F. Caldwell & Co.[25]
Walls covered in green burlap
Skylight

Theodore Roosevelt desk
Green drapery
Green rug
2 leather " Davenport" sofas
Leather armchairs
Side chairs covered in leather

President Roosevelt's Executive Office, 1904.
President Taft used the desk and furniture from President Roosevelt's office.

Woodrow Wilson
1913-1921

President Wilson rarely used the Oval Office, preferring to work in the Treaty Room.[26]

Warren G. Harding
1921-1923

President Harding died in office on August 2, 1923. This photo, taken on the day of his funeral, shows mourning crepes tied to the desk chair and blotter.

Calvin Coolidge
1923-1929

President Coolidge's first official photograph, taken August 15, 1923.

Herbert Hoover
1929-1933

Before fire:
Theodore Roosevelt desk

After fire:
Hoover desk[27]
Art Moderne-style sconces
6 cane-back armchairs
Upholstered furniture

President Hoover rebuilt the West Wing after the December 24, 1929 fire. He installed air-conditioning and replaced the Oval Office's Colonial-Revival lighting fixtures with Art Moderne ones. He replaced the leather sofas and chairs with upholstered furniture and added the 6 cane-back armchairs that are still used in the modern Oval Office.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
1933-1945

Hoover desk

Note the Art Moderne sconces between the windows of the Hoover Oval Office, in this 1933 photo.

President Roosevelt moved the marble mantel, 2 of the sconces, the rug, drapery, desk, and furniture to the modern Oval Office.

President

Image

Designer

Furnishings

Artwork/Statues/Pictures

Notes

Franklin D. Roosevelt
1933-1945

Eric Gugler, 1934

Marble mantel (from prior Oval Office)
2 sconces (from prior Oval Office)

Hoover desk
Green drapery
Green rug
Arched-back desk chair
Arched-back armchairs (against the wall)
"Lawson" sofa (against the wall)
6 cane-back armchairs

George Washington by Rembrandt Peale

Prints of the Hudson Valley

Ship models

George Washington by Rembrandt Peale

Oval Office replica at Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum.

Harry S. Truman
1945-1953

Theodore Roosevelt desk
Gray drapery
Blue-gray rug with the Presidential Seal
Television set

George Washington by Rembrandt Peale
George Washington by Luis Cadena (gift of Ecuador)[28]
Simón Bolívar by Tito Salas (gift of Venezuela)[29]
José de San Martín, copy after Jean Baptiste Madou (gift of Argentina)
USS Constitution by Gordon Grant
Missouri State Seal plaque

Fired On by Frederic Remington
Equestrian Statue of Andrew Jackson by Charles Keck

Photograph of Portrait of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Frank O. Salisbury

Jet-airplane models

Truman receiving a bust of Simón Bolívar (gift of Venezuela), 1946.

Oval Office replica at Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
1953-1961

Theodore Roosevelt desk
Truman drapery
Truman rug

Landscape paintings

Seated Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum

Seated Lincoln by Gutzon Borglum.

John F. Kennedy
1961-1963

Stéphane Boudin, 1963

Resolute desk
Truman drapery
Truman rug
Rocking chair
2 white sofas (not against the wall)
Round coffee table, with phone attached

Replaced sconces with brass lanterns

See notes.

USS United States vs. HMS Macedonian by Thomas Birch[30]
Paintings of naval battles

Photographs of sailboats

Ship models

First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy restored the Resolute desk.

The Oval Office was undergoing redecoration at the time of Kennedy's assassination. Redecorations included:

White drapery, which was retained by Lyndon B. Johnson.
Red rug, which was removed upon Kennedy's death.[31]

Lyndon B. Johnson
1963-1969

Johnson desk[32]
Truman rug
Kennedy drapery
Cabinet for Teletype
Banquette with three televisions
Kennedy rocking chair
Kennedy sofas
Round coffee table, with phone in drawer
Federal-style tall-case clock

Replaced brass lanterns with brass sconces
Covered floor with wood-grained linoleum

George Washington by Gilbert Stuart
Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully
Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart
Franklin D. Roosevelt by Elizabeth Shoumatoff[33]

The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington
Bust of Lyndon B. Johnson (1966) by Jimilu Mason[34]

Franklin D. Roosevelt by Elizabeth Shoumatoff (on mantel).

Richard Nixon
1969-1974

Wilson desk
Yellow drapery
Royal blue rug

1st. George Washington by Gilbert Stuart
2nd. George Washington by Rembrandt Peale
3rd. George Washington by Charles Willson Peale
The President's House, copy after William Henry Bartlett

Bust of Abraham Lincoln by Leo Cherne
Bird figurines by Edward Marshall Boehm

Earthrise (photograph of the earth from the moon's orbit)

Oval Office replica at Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum.
First Lady Pat Nixon designed the Oval Office's royal blue rug.

Gerald Ford
1974-1977

Wilson desk
Red drapery
Yellow floral rug
2 yellow Queen Anne-style armchairs
2 yellow wing chairs
2 striped sofas
Seymour tall-case clock

Removed the brass sconces

George Washington by Charles Willson Peale
The President's House, copy after William Henry Bartlett
Eastport and Passamaquoddy Bay by Victor de Grailly
City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard by George Cooke
Benjamin Franklin by Charles Willson Peale

Standing Lincoln by Adolph Alexander Weinman
The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington

President Ford first placed the Seymour tall-case clock in the Oval Office.[35]

Jimmy Carter
1977-1981

1977

Resolute desk
Ford drapery
Ford rug

Placed the Ford sofas back-to-back

George Washington by Charles Willson Peale.
The President's House, copy after William Henry Bartlett
Eastport and Passamaquoddy Bay by Victor de Grailly
The City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard by George Cooke

Bust of Benjamin Franklin by Jean-Antoine Houdon
Bust of George Washington by Hiram Powers
Bust of Thomas Jefferson by Jean-Antoine Houdon
The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington
Bust of Harry S. Truman by Charles Keck

Ship model

Oval Office replica at Jimmy Carter Library and Museum.

Ronald Reagan
1981-1989

Ted Graber, 1981[36]
Ted Graber, 1988

Resolute desk
Ford drapery
Ford rug (First Term)
Replaced the wood floor[37]
"Sunbeam" rug (Second Term)

George Washington by Charles Willson Peale.
The President's House, copy after William Henry Bartlett
Eastport and Passamaquoddy Bay by Victor de Grailly
The City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard by George Cooke
Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully

The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington
Rattlesnake by Frederic Remington

Numerous family pictures

Oval Office replica at Ronald Reagan Presidential Library.
First Lady Nancy Reagan designed the rug.[38]

George H. W. Bush
1989-1993

Mark Hampton

C&O desk
Pale blue drapery
Pale blue rug

George Washington by Rembrandt Peale
The President's House, copy after William Henry Bartlett
Rutland Falls, Vermont by Frederic Edwin Church
The Three Tetons by Thomas Moran
Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully

Ship model
Numerous family pictures

Oval Office replica at George Bush Presidential Library.

Bill Clinton
1993-2001

Kaki Hockersmith, 1993

Resolute desk
Yellow drapery
Navy blue rug

George Washington by Rembrandt Peale
The Avenue in the Rain by Childe Hassam
Statue of Liberty by Norman Rockwell
The City of Washington from Beyond the Navy Yard by George Cooke
Waiting for the Hour by William Tolman Carlton
Andrew Jackson by Thomas Sully

The Thinker by Auguste Rodin
The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington
Appeal to the Great Spirit by Cyrus Dallin
Bust of Abraham Lincoln by Robert Berks
Bust of Franklin D. Roosevelt by Jo Davidson

Numerous family pictures

Oval Office replica at William J. Clinton Presidential Library.

George W. Bush
2001-2009

Ken Blasingame, 2001

Resolute desk
Gold drapery
"Sunbeam" rug

Replaced the wood floor

George Washington by Rembrandt Peale.
A Charge to Keep by W. H. D. Koerner[39]
Rio Grande by Tom Lea[40]
Near San Antonio by Julian Onderdonk[41]
Chili Queens at the Alamo by Julian Onderdonk[42]
Cactus Flower by Julian Onderdonk[43]
Abraham Lincoln by George Henry Story

The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington
Rattlesnake by Frederic Remington
Bust of Dwight D. Eisenhower by Nison Tregor
Bust of Abraham Lincoln by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Bust of Winston Churchill by Jacob Epstein (lent by British Prime Minister Tony Blair from the British Government Art Collection)

Numerous family pictures

Oval Office replica at George W. Bush Presidential Center. First Lady Laura Bush designed the "Sunbeam" rug.[44]

Barack Obama
2009-2017

Michael S. Smith, 2010

Resolute desk
Red drapery
Taupe rug with quotes in border
Striped wallpaper

George Washington by Rembrandt Peale
The Avenue in the Rain by Childe Hassam
Statue of Liberty by Norman Rockwell
The Three Tetons by Thomas Moran
Abraham Lincoln by George Henry Story
Cobb's Barns, South Truro by Edward Hopper
Burly Cobb's House, South Truro by Edward Hopper

The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington
Bust of Abraham Lincoln by Augustus Saint-Gaudens
Bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Charles Alston

Copy of the Emancipation Proclamation
Numerous family pictures

The rug's border incorporates quotes from Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Donald Trump
2017- 2021

2017

Resolute desk
Clinton drapery[45][46]
Reagan sunburst rug[47]
Classic White motif wallpaper
G.W. Bush cream-colored sofas[48]
Additional American and presidential flags[49]

Andrew Jackson by Ralph Eleaser Whiteside Earl[50]
Abraham Lincoln by George Henry Story[50]
George Washington by Gilbert Stuart[50]
Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart
Benjamin Franklin after Joseph Duplessis[51]

The Bronco Buster by Frederic Remington
Bust of Abraham Lincoln by Augustus Saint-Gaudens[50]
Bust of Winston Churchill by Jacob Epstein[52]
Bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Charles Alston[53]
Equestrian statue of Andrew Jackson by Clark Mills

Letter from President Nixon[52]
Numerous family pictures
Collection of Challenge coins[54]
Wounded Warrior Project Award
Mini World Cup replica trophy
Trump International Golf Club Championship trophy.

President Trump initially used the Obama striped wallpaper, but replaced it with white & gray brocade wallpaper during renovations made in August 2017.
The World Cup miniature trophy was a gift from the FIFA, presented after the U.S. was announced as host country for the 2026 World Cup.

Joe Biden
2021- present

2021

Resolute desk[46]
Clinton drapery[46]
Clinton navy blue rug[46]
Trump Wallpaper[55]
G.W. Bush cream-colored sofas[55]

Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Frank O. Salisbury[46][56]
Thomas Jefferson by Gilbert Stuart
Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull
Abraham Lincoln by George Henry Story
George Washington by Gilbert Stuart
Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis
The Avenue in the Rain by Childe Hassam[57]

Figural group (horse and Chiricahua Apache rider) by Allan Houser[58][46]
Bust of Martin Luther King Jr. by Charles Alston[46]
Bust of Robert F. Kennedy[46]
Bust of Eleanor Roosevelt[46]
Bust of Cesar Chavez by Paul Suarez [46][59]
Bust of Rosa Parks by Artis Lane[46][60]
Bust of Abraham Lincoln by Augustus Saint-Gaudens[61]
Bust of Harry S.Truman by William J. Williams[61][62]

A moon rock returned from Apollo 17[63]
Numerous family pictures

^ Michael E. Eidenmuller. "The Rhetoric of 9/11: President George W. Bush - Address to the Nation on 9-11-01". Americanrhetoric.com.

Architect ^ Daniel Burnham recommended that it be erected on the opposite side of Pennsylvania Avenue in Lafayette Park, to assure that it would remain a temporary building. Seale, The President's House, p. 664.

^ Brandus, Paul (September 2015). Under This Roof The White House and the Presidency-21 Presidents, 21 Rooms, 21 Inside Stories. Globe Pequot Press / Lyons Press. p. 208. ISBN 978-1-4930-0834-6.

^ "Clinton announces first image of a Black is on display at the White House". . March 14, 2000. Archived from the original on March 23, 2015.

^ Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) No. DC-37, "White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia, DC", 599 photos, 3 color transparencies, 41 measured drawings, 8 data pages, 35 photo caption pages

^ "Mrs. Bush's Remarks for 100th Anniversary of the West Wing Symposium". - White House Historical Association. - November 13, 2002. - | Light from the Sky: A Tom Lea Retrospective, 1907-2001 Archived September 10, 2008, at the Wayback Machine. - Mid-America Arts Alliance. - (Adobe Acrobat *.PDF document). - Retrieved: July 5, 2008 Lent by the El Paso Museum.

Lent by the ^ San Antonio Museum of Art."Julian Onderdonk" from Questroyal Fine Art, LLC.

Cain, Aine, "Trump insisted on hanging bright gold drapes in the Oval Office - here are past presidents' offices for comparison" ^ Business Insider (Feb. 15, 2018) https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-oval-office-white-house-design-2018-1

^ "'That's Cesar Chavez!': Bust of civil rights icon behind President Joe Biden stirs excitement". NBC News.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Oval Office is the formal, working office space of the President of the United States. It is located in the West Wing of the White House, in Washington, D.C., part of the Executive Office of the President of the United States.

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In geometry, a superegg is a solid of revolution obtained by rotating an elongated superellipse with exponent greater than 2 around its longest axis. It is a special case of superellipsoid.

Unlike an elongated ellipsoid, an elongated superegg can stand upright on a flat surface, or on top of another superegg. This is due to its curvature being zero at the tips. The shape was popularized by Danish poet and scientist Piet Hein (1905-1996). Supereggs of various materials, including brass, were sold as novelties or " executive toys" in the 1960s.

The superegg is a superellipsoid whose horizontal cross-sections are circles. It is defined by the inequality

where R is the horizontal radius at the "equator" (the widest part), and h is one half of the height. The exponent p determines the degree of flattening at the tips and equator. Hein's choice was p = 2.5 (the same one he used for the Sergels Torg roundabout), and R/ h = 3/4.

The definition can be changed to have an equality rather than an inequality; this changes the superegg to being a surface of revolution rather than a solid.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In geometry, a superegg is a solid of revolution obtained by rotating an elongated superellipse with exponent greater than 2 around its longest axis. It is a special case of superellipsoid. Unlike an elongated ellipsoid, an elongated superegg can stand upright on a flat surface, or on top of another superegg.

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Sergels torg square and Superegg roundabout

# data[].attributes.subject
Sergels torg square and Superegg roundabout

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Mysterium Cosmographicum (lit. The Cosmographic Mystery, alternately translated as Cosmic Mystery, The Secret of the World, or some variation) is an astronomy book by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, published at Tübingen in 1597 and in a second edition in 1621. Kepler proposed that the distance relationships between the six planets known at that time could be understood in terms of the five Platonic solids, enclosed within a sphere that represented the orbit of Saturn.

This book explains Kepler's cosmological theory, based on the Copernican system, in which the five Platonic solids dictate the structure of the universe and reflect God's plan through geometry. This was virtually the first attempt since Copernicus to say that the theory of heliocentrism is physically true. Thomas Digges had published a defense of Copernicus in an appendix in 1576. According to Kepler's account, he discovered the basis of the model while demonstrating the geometrical relationship between two circles. From this he realized that he had stumbled on a similar ratio to the one between the orbits of Saturn and Jupiter. He wrote, "I believe it was by divine ordinance that I obtained by chance that which previously I could not reach by any pains." But after doing further calculations he realized he could not use two-dimensional polygons to represent all the planets, and instead had to use the five Platonic solids.

Johannes Kepler's first major astronomical work, Mysterium Cosmographicum ( The Cosmographic Mystery), was the second published defence of the Copernican system. Kepler claimed to have had an epiphany on July 19, 1595, while teaching in Graz, demonstrating the periodic conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in the zodiac: he realized that regular polygons bound one inscribed and one circumscribed circle at definite ratios, which, he reasoned, might be the geometrical basis of the universe. After failing to find a unique arrangement of polygons that fit known astronomical observations (even with extra planets added to the system), Kepler began experimenting with 3-dimensional polyhedra. He found that each of the five Platonic solids could be uniquely inscribed and circumscribed by spherical orbs; nesting these solids, each encased in a sphere, within one another would produce six layers, corresponding to the six known planets- Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn. By ordering the solids correctly- octahedron, icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and cube -Kepler found that the spheres correspond to the relative sizes of each planet's path around the Sun, generally varying from astronomical observations by less than 10%. He attributed most of the variances to inaccuracies in measurement.

Kepler also found a formula relating the size of each planet's orbit to the length of its orbital period: from inner to outer planets, the ratio of increase in orbital period is twice the difference in orb radius. However, Kepler later rejected this formula because it was not precise enough.

As he indicated in the title, Kepler thought he had revealed God's geometrical plan for the universe. Much of Kepler's enthusiasm for the Copernican system stemmed from his theological convictions about the connection between the physical and the spiritual; the universe itself was an image of God, with the Sun corresponding to the Father, the stellar sphere to the Son, and the intervening space between to the Holy Spirit. His first manuscript of Mysterium contained an extensive chapter reconciling heliocentrism with biblical passages that seemed to support geocentrism.

With the support of his mentor Michael Maestlin, Kepler received permission from the Tübingen university senate to publish his manuscript, pending removal of the Bible exegesis and the addition of a simpler, more understandable description of the Copernican system as well as Kepler's new ideas. Mysterium was published late in 1596, and Kepler received his copies and began sending them to prominent astronomers and patrons early in 1597; it was not widely read, but it established Kepler's reputation as a highly skilled astronomer. The effusive dedication, to powerful patrons as well as to the men who controlled his position in Graz, also provided a crucial doorway into the patronage system.

Though the details would be modified in light of his later work, Kepler never relinquished the Platonist polyhedral-spherical cosmology of Mysterium Cosmographicum. His subsequent main astronomical works were in some sense only further developments of it, concerned with finding more precise inner and outer dimensions for the spheres by calculating the eccentricities of the planetary orbits within it. In 1621, Kepler published an expanded second edition of Mysterium, half as long again as the first, detailing in footnotes the corrections and improvements he had achieved in the 25 years since its first publication.

Many of Kepler's thoughts about epistemology can be found in his Defense of Tycho against Ursus or Contra Ursum (CU), a work which emerged from a polemical framework, the plagiarism conflict between Nicolaus Raimarus Ursus (1551-1600) and Tycho Brahe: causality and physicalization of astronomical theories, the concept and status of astronomical hypotheses, the polemic "realism-instrumentalism", his criticism of scepticism in general, the epistemological role of history, etc. Jardine has pointed out that it would be sounder to read Kepler's CU more as a work against scepticism than in the context of the modern realism/instrumentalism debate.

On the one hand, "causality" is a notion implying the most general idea of "actual scientific knowledge" which guides and stimulates each investigation. In this sense, Kepler already embarked in his MC on a causal investigation by asking for the cause of the number, the sizes and the "motions" (the speeds) of the heavenly spheres. On the other hand, "causality" implies in Kepler, according to the Aristotelian conception of physical science, the concrete "physical cause", the efficient cause which produces a motion or is responsible for keeping the body in motion. Original to Kepler, however, and typical of his approach is the resoluteness with which he was convinced that the problem of equipollence of the astronomical hypotheses can be resolved and the consequent introduction of the concept of causality into astronomy-traditionally a mathematical science. This approach is already present in his MC, where he, for instance, relates for the first time the distances of the planets to a power which emerges from the Sun and decreases in proportion to the distance of each planet, up to the sphere of the fixed stars.

In response to Mysterium Cosmographicum, the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe (whom Kepler had sent a copy) said that the ideas were intriguing but could only be verified through the observations Brahe himself had been making over the past 30 years. Because he was promised use of these observations by Brahe, Kepler sought him out in the beginning of 1600. Brahe only gave him the data on Mars, but this meeting helped Kepler formulate his laws of planetary motion.

The Mysterium Cosmographicum was featured on the Austrian 10 euro Johannes Kepler silver commemorative coin minted in 2002.

Dreyer, J. L. E., A History of Astronomy from Thales to Kepler, Dover Publications, 1953, pp. 331, 377-379.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Mysterium Cosmographicum (lit. The Cosmographic Mystery , alternately translated as Cosmic Mystery , The Secret of the World , or some variation) is an astronomy book by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler, published at Tübingen in 1597 and in a second edition in 1621.

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For example, the small stellated dodecahedron has 12 pentagram faces with the central pentagonal part hidden inside the solid. The visible parts of each face comprise five isosceles triangles which touch at five points around the pentagon. We could treat these triangles as 60 separate faces to obtain a new, irregular polyhedron which looks outwardly identical.

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In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent (identical in shape and size) regular polygons (all angles congruent and all edges congruent), and the same number of faces meet at each vertex. There are only five such polyhedra:

Geometers have studied the Platonic solids for thousands of years. They are named for the ancient Greek philosopher Plato who hypothesized in one of his dialogues, the , that the classical elements were made of these regular solids.

The Platonic solids have been known since antiquity. It has been suggested that certain carved stone balls created by the late Neolithic people of Scotland represent these shapes; however, these balls have rounded knobs rather than being polyhedral, the numbers of knobs frequently differed from the numbers of vertices of the Platonic solids, there is no ball whose knobs match the 20 vertices of the dodecahedron, and the arrangement of the knobs was not always symmetric.

The ancient Greeks studied the Platonic solids extensively. Some sources (such as Proclus) credit Pythagoras with their discovery. Other evidence suggests that he may have only been familiar with the tetrahedron, cube, and dodecahedron and that the discovery of the octahedron and icosahedron belong to Theaetetus, a contemporary of Plato. In any case, Theaetetus gave a mathematical description of all five and may have been responsible for the first known proof that no other convex regular polyhedra exist.

The Platonic solids are prominent in the philosophy of Plato, their namesake. Plato wrote about them in the dialogue Timaeus c.360 B.C. in which he associated each of the four classical elements ( earth, air, water, and fire) with a regular solid. Earth was associated with the cube, air with the octahedron, water with the icosahedron, and fire with the tetrahedron. There was intuitive justification for these associations: the heat of fire feels sharp and stabbing (like little tetrahedra). Air is made of the octahedron; its minuscule components are so smooth that one can barely feel it. Water, the icosahedron, flows out of one's hand when picked up, as if it is made of tiny little balls. By contrast, a highly nonspherical solid, the hexahedron (cube) represents "earth". These clumsy little solids cause dirt to crumble and break when picked up in stark difference to the smooth flow of water.[citation needed ] Moreover, the cube's being the only regular solid that tessellates Euclidean space was believed to cause the solidity of the Earth.

Of the fifth Platonic solid, the dodecahedron, Plato obscurely remarked, "...the god used [it] for arranging the constellations on the whole heaven". Aristotle added a fifth element, aithēr (aether in Latin, "ether" in English) and postulated that the heavens were made of this element, but he had no interest in matching it with Plato's fifth solid.

Euclid completely mathematically described the Platonic solids in the Elements, the last book (Book XIII) of which is devoted to their properties. Propositions 13-17 in Book XIII describe the construction of the tetrahedron, octahedron, cube, icosahedron, and dodecahedron in that order. For each solid Euclid finds the ratio of the diameter of the circumscribed sphere to the edge length. In Proposition 18 he argues that there are no further convex regular polyhedra. Andreas Speiser has advocated the view that the construction of the 5 regular solids is the chief goal of the deductive system canonized in the Elements. Much of the information in Book XIII is probably derived from the work of Theaetetus.

In the 16th century, the German astronomer Johannes Kepler attempted to relate the five extraterrestrial planets known at that time to the five Platonic solids. In Mysterium Cosmographicum, published in 1596, Kepler proposed a model of the Solar System in which the five solids were set inside one another and separated by a series of inscribed and circumscribed spheres. Kepler proposed that the distance relationships between the six planets known at that time could be understood in terms of the five Platonic solids enclosed within a sphere that represented the orbit of Saturn. The six spheres each corresponded to one of the planets ( Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn). The solids were ordered with the innermost being the octahedron, followed by the icosahedron, dodecahedron, tetrahedron, and finally the cube, thereby dictating the structure of the solar system and the distance relationships between the planets by the Platonic solids. In the end, Kepler's original idea had to be abandoned, but out of his research came his three laws of orbital dynamics, the first of which was that the orbits of planets are ellipses rather than circles, changing the course of physics and astronomy. He also discovered the Kepler solids, which are two nonconvex regular polyhedra.

For Platonic solids centered at the origin, simple Cartesian coordinates of the vertices are given below. The Greek letter φ is used to represent the golden ratio ≈ 1.6180.

The coordinates for the tetrahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron are given in two positions such that each can be deduced from the other: in the case of the tetrahedron, by changing all coordinates of sign ( central symmetry), or, in the other cases, by exchanging two coordinates ( reflection with respect to any of the three diagonal planes).

These coordinates reveal certain relationships between the Platonic solids: the vertices of the tetrahedron represent half of those of the cube, as {4,3} or , one of two sets of 4 vertices in dual positions, as h{4,3} or . Both tetrahedral positions make the compound stellated octahedron.

The coordinates of the icosahedron are related to two alternated sets of coordinates of a nonuniform truncated octahedron, t{3,4} or , also called a snub octahedron, as s{3,4} or , and seen in the compound of two icosahedra.

Eight of the vertices of the dodecahedron are shared with the cube. Completing all orientations leads to the compound of five cubes.

A convex polyhedron is a Platonic solid if and only if

all its faces are congruent convex regular polygons,

none of its faces intersect except at their edges, and

the same number of faces meet at each of its vertices.

Each Platonic solid can therefore be denoted by a symbol { p, q} where

p is the number of edges (or, equivalently, vertices) of each face, and

q is the number of faces (or, equivalently, edges) that meet at each vertex.

The symbol { p, q}, called the Schläfli symbol, gives a combinatorial description of the polyhedron. The Schläfli symbols of the five Platonic solids are given in the table below.

All other combinatorial information about these solids, such as total number of vertices ( V), edges ( E), and faces ( F), can be determined from p and q. Since any edge joins two vertices and has two adjacent faces we must have:

The other relationship between these values is given by Euler's formula:

This can be proved in many ways. Together these three relationships completely determine V, E, and F:

Swapping p and q interchanges F and V while leaving E unchanged. For a geometric interpretation of this property, see § Dual polyhedra.

The elements of a polyhedron can be expressed in a configuration matrix. The rows and columns correspond to vertices, edges, and faces. The diagonal numbers say how many of each element occur in the whole polyhedron. The nondiagonal numbers say how many of the column's element occur in or at the row's element. Dual pairs of polyhedra have their configuration matrices rotated 180 degrees from each other.

The classical result is that only five convex regular polyhedra exist. Two common arguments below demonstrate no more than five Platonic solids can exist, but positively demonstrating the existence of any given solid is a separate question-one that requires an explicit construction.

A vertex needs at least 3 faces, and an angle defect.
A 0° angle defect will fill the Euclidean plane with a regular tiling.
By Descartes' theorem, the number of vertices is 720°/ defect.

The following geometric argument is very similar to the one given by Euclid in the Elements:

Each vertex of the solid must be a vertex for at least three faces.

At each vertex of the solid, the total, among the adjacent faces, of the angles between their respective adjacent sides must be strictly less than 360°. The amount less than 360° is called an angle defect.

Regular polygons of six or more sides have only angles of 120° or more, so the common face must be the triangle, square, or pentagon. For these different shapes of faces the following holds:

Triangular faces

Each vertex of a regular triangle is 60°, so a shape may have 3, 4, or 5 triangles meeting at a vertex; these are the tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron respectively.

Square faces

Each vertex of a square is 90°, so there is only one arrangement possible with three faces at a vertex, the cube.

Pentagonal faces

Each vertex is 108°; again, only one arrangement of three faces at a vertex is possible, the dodecahedron.

Altogether this makes 5 possible Platonic solids.

A purely topological proof can be made using only combinatorial information about the solids. The key is Euler's observation that V − E + F = 2, and the fact that pF = 2 E = qV, where p stands for the number of edges of each face and q for the number of edges meeting at each vertex. Combining these equations one obtains the equation

Simple algebraic manipulation then gives

Since E is strictly positive we must have

Using the fact that p and q must both be at least 3, one can easily see that there are only five possibilities for { p, q}:

There are a number of angles associated with each Platonic solid. The dihedral angle is the interior angle between any two face planes. The dihedral angle, θ, of the solid { p, q} is given by the formula

This is sometimes more conveniently expressed in terms of the tangent by

The quantity h (called the Coxeter number) is 4, 6, 6, 10, and 10 for the tetrahedron, cube, octahedron, dodecahedron, and icosahedron respectively.

The angular deficiency at the vertex of a polyhedron is the difference between the sum of the face-angles at that vertex and 2π. The defect, δ, at any vertex of the Platonic solids { p, q} is

By a theorem of Descartes, this is equal to 4π divided by the number of vertices (i.e. the total defect at all vertices is 4π).

The 3-dimensional analog of a plane angle is a solid angle. The solid angle, Ω, at the vertex of a Platonic solid is given in terms of the dihedral angle by

This follows from the spherical excess formula for a spherical polygon and the fact that the vertex figure of the polyhedron { p, q} is a regular q-gon.

The solid angle of a face subtended from the center of a platonic solid is equal to the solid angle of a full sphere (4π steradians) divided by the number of faces. This is equal to the angular deficiency of its dual.

The various angles associated with the Platonic solids are tabulated below. The numerical values of the solid angles are given in steradians. The constant φ = is the golden ratio.

Radii, area, and volume

Another virtue of regularity is that the Platonic solids all possess three concentric spheres:

The radii of these spheres are called the circumradius, the midradius, and the inradius. These are the distances from the center of the polyhedron to the vertices, edge midpoints, and face centers respectively. The circumradius R and the inradius r of the solid { p, q} with edge length a are given by

where θ is the dihedral angle. The midradius ρ is given by

where h is the quantity used above in the definition of the dihedral angle ( h = 4, 6, 6, 10, or 10). The ratio of the circumradius to the inradius is symmetric in p and q:

The surface area, A, of a Platonic solid { p, q} is easily computed as area of a regular p-gon times the number of faces F. This is:

The volume is computed as F times the volume of the pyramid whose base is a regular p-gon and whose height is the inradius r. That is,

The following table lists the various radii of the Platonic solids together with their surface area and volume. The overall size is fixed by taking the edge length, a, to be equal to 2.

The constants φ and ξ in the above are given by

Among the Platonic solids, either the dodecahedron or the icosahedron may be seen as the best approximation to the sphere. The icosahedron has the largest number of faces and the largest dihedral angle, it hugs its inscribed sphere the most tightly, and its surface area to volume ratio is closest to that of a sphere of the same size (i.e. either the same surface area or the same volume.) The dodecahedron, on the other hand, has the smallest angular defect, the largest vertex solid angle, and it fills out its circumscribed sphere the most.

For an arbitrary point in the space of a Platonic solid with circumradius R, whose distances to the centroid of the Platonic solid and its n vertices are L and respectively, and

For all five Platonic solids, we have

If are the distances from the n vertices of the Platonic solid to any point on its circumscribed sphere, then

A polyhedron P is said to have the Rupert property if a polyhedron of the same or larger size and the same shape as P can pass through a hole in P. All five Platonic solids have this property.

Every polyhedron has a dual (or "polar") polyhedron with faces and vertices interchanged. The dual of every Platonic solid is another Platonic solid, so that we can arrange the five solids into dual pairs.

The tetrahedron is self-dual (i.e. its dual is another tetrahedron).

The cube and the octahedron form a dual pair.

The dodecahedron and the icosahedron form a dual pair.

If a polyhedron has Schläfli symbol { p, q}, then its dual has the symbol { q, p}. Indeed, every combinatorial property of one Platonic solid can be interpreted as another combinatorial property of the dual.

One can construct the dual polyhedron by taking the vertices of the dual to be the centers of the faces of the original figure. Connecting the centers of adjacent faces in the original forms the edges of the dual and thereby interchanges the number of faces and vertices while maintaining the number of edges.

More generally, one can dualize a Platonic solid with respect to a sphere of radius d concentric with the solid. The radii ( R, ρ, r) of a solid and those of its dual ( R*, ρ*, r*) are related by

Dualizing with respect to the midsphere ( d = ρ) is often convenient because the midsphere has the same relationship to both polyhedra. Taking d 2 = Rr yields a dual solid with the same circumradius and inradius (i.e. R* = R and r* = r).

In mathematics, the concept of symmetry is studied with the notion of a mathematical group. Every polyhedron has an associated symmetry group, which is the set of all transformations ( Euclidean isometries) which leave the polyhedron invariant. The order of the symmetry group is the number of symmetries of the polyhedron. One often distinguishes between the full symmetry group, which includes reflections, and the proper symmetry group, which includes only rotations.

The symmetry groups of the Platonic solids are a special class of three-dimensional point groups known as polyhedral groups. The high degree of symmetry of the Platonic solids can be interpreted in a number of ways. Most importantly, the vertices of each solid are all equivalent under the action of the symmetry group, as are the edges and faces. One says the action of the symmetry group is transitive on the vertices, edges, and faces. In fact, this is another way of defining regularity of a polyhedron: a polyhedron is regular if and only if it is vertex-uniform, edge-uniform, and face-uniform.

There are only three symmetry groups associated with the Platonic solids rather than five, since the symmetry group of any polyhedron coincides with that of its dual. This is easily seen by examining the construction of the dual polyhedron. Any symmetry of the original must be a symmetry of the dual and vice versa. The three polyhedral groups are:

The orders of the proper (rotation) groups are 12, 24, and 60 respectively - precisely twice the number of edges in the respective polyhedra. The orders of the full symmetry groups are twice as much again (24, 48, and 120). See (Coxeter 1973) for a derivation of these facts. All Platonic solids except the tetrahedron are centrally symmetric, meaning they are preserved under reflection through the origin.

The following table lists the various symmetry properties of the Platonic solids. The symmetry groups listed are the full groups with the rotation subgroups given in parenthesis (likewise for the number of symmetries). Wythoff's kaleidoscope construction is a method for constructing polyhedra directly from their symmetry groups. They are listed for reference Wythoff's symbol for each of the Platonic solids.

Polyhedron

Schläfli
symbol

Wythoff
symbol

Dual
polyhedron

Symmetry group (reflection, rotation)

Polyhedral

Schön.

Cox.

Orb.

Order

tetrahedron

{3, 3}

3 | 2 3

tetrahedron

Tetrahedral

T d
T

[3,3]
[3,3]+

*332
332

24
12

cube

{4, 3}

3 | 2 4

octahedron

Octahedral

O h
O

[4,3]
[4,3]+

*432
432

48
24

octahedron

{3, 4}

4 | 2 3

cube

dodecahedron

{5, 3}

3 | 2 5

icosahedron

Icosahedral

I h
I

[5,3]
[5,3]+

*532
532

120
60

icosahedron

{3, 5}

5 | 2 3

dodecahedron

The tetrahedron, cube, and octahedron all occur naturally in crystal structures. These by no means exhaust the numbers of possible forms of crystals. However, neither the regular icosahedron nor the regular dodecahedron are amongst them. One of the forms, called the pyritohedron (named for the group of minerals of which it is typical) has twelve pentagonal faces, arranged in the same pattern as the faces of the regular dodecahedron. The faces of the pyritohedron are, however, not regular, so the pyritohedron is also not regular. Allotropes of boron and many boron compounds, such as boron carbide, include discrete B 12 icosahedra within their crystal structures. Carborane acids also have molecular structures approximating regular icosahedra.

In the early 20th century, Ernst Haeckel described (Haeckel, 1904) a number of species of Radiolaria, some of whose skeletons are shaped like various regular polyhedra. Examples include Circoporus octahedrus, Circogonia icosahedra, Lithocubus geometricus and Circorrhegma dodecahedra. The shapes of these creatures should be obvious from their names.

Many viruses, such as the herpes virus, have the shape of a regular icosahedron. Viral structures are built of repeated identical protein subunits and the icosahedron is the easiest shape to assemble using these subunits. A regular polyhedron is used because it can be built from a single basic unit protein used over and over again; this saves space in the viral genome.

In meteorology and climatology, global numerical models of atmospheric flow are of increasing interest which employ geodesic grids that are based on an icosahedron (refined by triangulation) instead of the more commonly used longitude/ latitude grid. This has the advantage of evenly distributed spatial resolution without singularities (i.e. the poles) at the expense of somewhat greater numerical difficulty.

Geometry of space frames is often based on platonic solids. In the MERO system, Platonic solids are used for naming convention of various space frame configurations. For example, O+T refers to a configuration made of one half of octahedron and a tetrahedron.

Several Platonic hydrocarbons have been synthesised, including cubane and dodecahedrane and not tetrahedrane.

Platonic solids are often used to make dice, because dice of these shapes can be made fair. 6-sided dice are very common, but the other numbers are commonly used in role-playing games. Such dice are commonly referred to as d n where n is the number of faces (d8, d20, etc.); see dice notation for more details.

These shapes frequently show up in other games or puzzles. Puzzles similar to a Rubik's Cube come in all five shapes - see magic polyhedra.

For the intermediate material phase called liquid crystals, the existence of such symmetries was first proposed in 1981 by H. Kleinert and K. Maki. In aluminum the icosahedral structure was discovered three years after this by Dan Shechtman, which earned him the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2011.

There exist four regular polyhedra that are not convex, called Kepler-Poinsot polyhedra. These all have icosahedral symmetry and may be obtained as stellations of the dodecahedron and the icosahedron.

The next most regular convex polyhedra after the Platonic solids are the cuboctahedron, which is a rectification of the cube and the octahedron, and the icosidodecahedron, which is a rectification of the dodecahedron and the icosahedron (the rectification of the self-dual tetrahedron is a regular octahedron). These are both quasi-regular, meaning that they are vertex- and edge-uniform and have regular faces, but the faces are not all congruent (coming in two different classes). They form two of the thirteen Archimedean solids, which are the convex uniform polyhedra with polyhedral symmetry. Their duals, the rhombic dodecahedron and rhombic triacontahedron, are edge- and face-transitive, but their faces are not regular and their vertices come in two types each; they are two of the thirteen Catalan solids.

The uniform polyhedra form a much broader class of polyhedra. These figures are vertex-uniform and have one or more types of regular or star polygons for faces. These include all the polyhedra mentioned above together with an infinite set of prisms, an infinite set of antiprisms, and 53 other non-convex forms.

The Johnson solids are convex polyhedra which have regular faces but are not uniform. Among them are five of the eight convex deltahedra, which have identical, regular faces (all equilateral triangles) but are not uniform. (The other three convex deltahedra are the Platonic tetrahedron, octahedron, and icosahedron.)

Platonic

{3,3}

{4,3}

{3,4}

{5,3}

{3,5}

Regular dihedral

{2,2}

{3,2}

{4,2}

{5,2}

{6,2}...

Regular hosohedral

{2,2}

{2,3}

{2,4}

{2,5}

{2,6}...

The three regular tessellations of the plane are closely related to the Platonic solids. Indeed, one can view the Platonic solids as regular tessellations of the sphere. This is done by projecting each solid onto a concentric sphere. The faces project onto regular spherical polygons which exactly cover the sphere. Spherical tilings provide two infinite additional sets of regular tilings, the hosohedra, {2, n} with 2 vertices at the poles, and lune faces, and the dual dihedra, { n,2} with 2 hemispherical faces and regularly spaced vertices on the equator. Such tesselations would be degenerate in true 3D space as polyhedra.

One can show that every regular tessellation of the sphere is characterized by a pair of integers { p, q} with + > . Likewise, a regular tessellation of the plane is characterized by the condition + = . There are three possibilities:

In a similar manner, one can consider regular tessellations of the hyperbolic plane. These are characterized by the condition + < . There is an infinite family of such tessellations.

In more than three dimensions, polyhedra generalize to polytopes, with higher-dimensional convex regular polytopes being the equivalents of the three-dimensional Platonic solids.

In the mid-19th century the Swiss mathematician Ludwig Schläfli discovered the four-dimensional analogues of the Platonic solids, called convex regular 4-polytopes. There are exactly six of these figures; five are analogous to the Platonic solids : 5-cell as {3,3,3}, 16-cell as {3,3,4}, 600-cell as {3,3,5}, tesseract as {4,3,3}, and 120-cell as {5,3,3}, and a sixth one, the self-dual 24-cell, {3,4,3}.

In all dimensions higher than four, there are only three convex regular polytopes: the simplex as {3,3,...,3}, the hypercube as {4,3,...,3}, and the cross-polytope as {3,3,...,4}. In three dimensions, these coincide with the tetrahedron as {3,3}, the cube as {4,3}, and the octahedron as {3,4}.

Gardner (1987): ^ Martin Gardner wrote a popular account of the five solids in his December 1958 Mathematical Games column in Scientific American.

Wildberg (1988): Wildberg discusses the correspondence of the Platonic solids with elements in ^ Timaeus but notes that this correspondence appears to have been forgotten in , which he calls "a long step towards Aristotle's theory", and he points out that Aristotle's ether is above the other four elements rather than on an equal footing with them, making the correspondence less apposite.

^ Coxeter, Regular Polytopes, sec 1.8 Configurations

^ Schrek, D. J. E. (1950), "Prince Rupert's problem and its extension by Pieter Nieuwland", Scripta Mathematica, 16: 73-80 and 261-267

^ Scriba, Christoph J. (1968), "Das Problem des Prinzen Ruprecht von der Pfalz", Praxis der Mathematik (in German), 10 (9): 241-246, MR 0497615

^ Siyu Li, Polly Roy, Alex Travesset, and Roya Zandi (October 2018). "Why large icosahedral viruses need scaffolding proteins". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 115 (43): 10971-10976. Bibcode:2018PNAS..11510971L. doi:10.1073/pnas.1807706115. PMC . PMID 30301797.

^ "The liquid-crystalline blue phases (1989). by Tamar Seideman, Reports on Progress in Physics, Volume 53, Number 6" (PDF).

Atiyah, Michael; Sutcliffe, Paul (2003). "Polyhedra in Physics, Chemistry and Geometry". Milan J. Math. 71: 33-58. arXiv:math-ph/0303071. Bibcode:2003math.ph...3071A. doi:10.1007/s00032-003-0014-1. S2CID 119725110.

Coxeter, H. S. M. (1973). Regular Polytopes (3rd ed.). New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-61480-8.

Euclid (1956). Heath, Thomas L. (ed.). The Thirteen Books of Euclid's Elements, Books 10-13 (2nd unabr. ed.). New York: Dover Publications. ISBN 0-486-60090-4.

Gardner, Martin (1987). The 2nd Scientific American Book of Mathematical Puzzles & Diversions, University of Chicago Press, Chapter 1: The Five Platonic Solids, ISBN 0226282538

Haeckel, Ernst, E. (1904). Kunstformen der Natur. Available as Haeckel, E. (1998); Art forms in nature, Prestel USA. ISBN 3-7913-1990-6.

Kepler. Johannes Strena seu de nive sexangula (On the Six-Cornered Snowflake), 1611 paper by Kepler which discussed the reason for the six-angled shape of the snow crystals and the forms and symmetries in nature. Talks about platonic solids.

Kleinert, Hagen & Maki, K. (1981). "Lattice Textures in Cholesteric Liquid Crystals" (PDF). Fortschritte der Physik. 29 (5): 219-259. Bibcode:1981ForPh..29..219K. doi:10.1002/prop.19810290503.

Lloyd, David Robert (2012). "How old are the Platonic Solids?". BSHM Bulletin: Journal of the British Society for the History of Mathematics. 27 (3): 131-140. doi:10.1080/17498430.2012.670845. S2CID 119544202.

Pugh, Anthony (1976). Polyhedra: A visual approach. California: University of California Press Berkeley. ISBN 0-520-03056-7.

Wildberg, Christian (1988). John Philoponus' Criticism of Aristotle's Theory of Aether. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 11-12. ISBN 9783110104462

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
In geometry, a Platonic solid is a convex, regular polyhedron in three-dimensional Euclidean space. Being a regular polyhedron means that the faces are congruent (identical in shape and size) regular polygons (all angles congruent and all edges congruent), and the same number of faces meet at each vertex.

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A grook ( Danish: gruk) is a form of short aphoristic poem or rhyming aphorism, created by the Danish poet, designer, inventor and scientist Piet Hein, who wrote over 10,000 of them, mostly in Danish. They have been published in Danish in 20 volumes. Each grook has a unique line drawing accompanying the words of the poem and providing additional meaning.

Some say that the name " gruk" is short for "" ( lit. 'laugh & sigh'), but Piet Hein said he felt that the word had come out of thin air. The contemporary " Hunden Grog" ("Grog the Dog") stories by fellow cartoonist Storm P. has, in public opinion, been regarded as an inspiration.

Piet Hein's gruks first started to appear in the daily newspaper "" shortly after the Nazi Occupation in April 1940 under the signature Kumbel Kumbell. The poems were meant as a spirit-building, yet slightly coded form of passive resistance. The grooks are multi-faceted and characterized by irony, paradox, brevity, precise use of language, rhythm and rhyme, and an often satiric nature.

Beginning in the 1960s seven volumes of English translations of 53 grooks each were published and became popular in the U.S. counterculture of the time: Grooks (The MIT Press, 1966), Grooks 2 (Doubleday, 1968), Grooks 3 (Doubleday, 1970), Grooks 4 (Doubleday, 1973), Grooks 5 (Doubleday, 1973), Grooks VI (Borgen's, 1978), and Grooks VII (Borgen's, 1984).

A sampling of grooks:

THE ROAD TO WISDOM

The road to wisdom?-Well, it's plain
and simple to express:
Err
and err
and err again,
but less
and less
and less.

THE ETERNAL TWINS

Taking fun as simply fun
and earnestness in earnest
Shows how thoroughly thou none
of the two discernest.

TO SUM UP

It may be observed, in a general way,
that life would be better, distinctly
If more of the people with nothing to say
were able to say it succinctly.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
A grook ( Danish: gruk ) is a form of short aphoristic poem or rhyming aphorism, created by the Danish poet, designer, inventor and scientist Piet Hein, who wrote over 10,000 of them, mostly in Danish. They have been published in Danish in 20 volumes.

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1 6 3 7

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top left is 7x7
top right is 18x18
bottom right is 11x11
bottom left is 21x21

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Kepler

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Johannes Kepler (;[2] German: [joˈhanəs ˈkɛplɐ, -nɛs -] ⓘ;[3][4] 27 December 1571 – 15 November 1630) was a German astronomer, mathematician, astrologer, natural philosopher and writer on music.[5] He is a key figure in the 17th-century Scientific Revolution, best known for his laws of planetary motion, and his books Astronomia nova, Harmonice Mundi, and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae, influencing among others Isaac Newton, providing one of the foundations for his theory of universal gravitation.[6] The variety and impact of his work made Kepler one of the founders and fathers of modern astronomy, the scientific method, natural and modern science.[7][8][9] He has been described as the “father of science fiction” for his novel Somnium.[10][11]

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Beside You (Van Morrison song) - Wikipedia

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202 456 1111

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2061: Odyssey Three is a science-fiction novel by the British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1987. It is the third book in Clarke's Space Odyssey series. It returns to one of the lead characters of the previous novels, Heywood Floyd, and his adventures from the 2061 return of Halley's Comet to Jupiter's moon Europa.

Clarke had originally intended to write the third book after NASA's Galileo mission to Jupiter had returned its findings in the late 1980s. The probe had been initially scheduled for launch in 1984 but this was delayed, first to 1985 and then to 1986. It was delayed further in wake of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. Deciding not to wait, Clarke took inspiration for his sequel from the return of Halley's Comet. Galileo was eventually launched by Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission in October 1989. It arrived in Jovian orbit almost eight years after the publication of 2061: Odyssey Three.

2061 is set 60 years after the events of 2001: A Space Odyssey and 51 years after those of 2010: Odyssey Two. At the end of the second novel, the enigmatic aliens who built the Monolith had transformed the planet Jupiter into a mini- sun in order to aid the evolution of life on Jupiter's moon Europa. A message was sent to Earth referring to Jupiter's moons:

ALL THESE WORLDS ARE YOURS - EXCEPT EUROPA
ATTEMPT NO LANDING THERE.

The opening chapters of 2061 gradually explain the events that have taken place in the interim years. The new sun, dubbed "Lucifer", has transformed the moons of the former Jupiter: Io has become a volcanic hellhole, Europa an ocean world shrouded by clouds, and Ganymede a temperate world that the human race is colonizing. Large-scale interplanetary travel is now commercially viable with muon-catalyzed fusion-powered spacecraft. Due to the prior message, humanity is wary of sending spacecraft close to Europa despite its fascinating mysteries, including the appearance of a large mountain, dubbed "Mount Zeus", on its surface. On Earth, a period of relative peace has evolved between the United States, Soviet Union and China, although a non-violent revolution has taken place in South Africa (now the United States of Southern Africa or USSA); the white population has fled, taking most of the country's wealth with them and leaving the black population to rebuild the economy, which they do in a matter of weeks thanks to the country's diamond mines.

Dr. Heywood Floyd, the protagonist of 2010, has had an accident and become a permanent resident of an orbital space hospital. His estranged grandson, Chris II, works aboard the spacecraft Galaxy. Now, at the age of 103, Floyd is chosen as one of six "celebrity guests" to travel aboard the privately owned spaceliner Universe for the first-ever human landing on the surface of Halley's Comet as it again nears Earth. The Universe lands on Halley, and the crew explores its surface and its caves.

On Ganymede, Rolf van der Berg, a second-generation Afrikaner refugee, studies data on satellite surveys of Mount Zeus and forms an astonishing thesis about its nature. He communicates his discovery to his uncle Paul Kreuger, and van der Berg is also invited to join the crew of the spacecraft Galaxy for its flyby of Europa. As Galaxy nears Europa, Rosie, a stewardess, attempts to hijack the craft, forcing it to crash into Europa's ocean. Failing in her (unexplained) plan, she commits suicide, and the Galaxy's crew is stranded. Observing the burgeoning aquatic life forms of Europa, the crew pilots Galaxy to an island that they name Haven.

Universe abandons its exploration of Halley to rescue Galaxy. After siphoning water from Halley's vents to refuel, an idea conceived by Universe's navigation officer and advanced by Floyd, Universe heads directly for Europa. During the flight, the celebrity passengers discuss the mystery surrounding Dave Bowman and the monoliths, and whether they would be allowed to land on Europa to rescue Galaxy's crew. Floyd follows a suggestion that he simply try to call Bowman on the radio, and later has a strange dream in which he sees a small monolith floating at the foot of his bed.

On Europa, Van der Berg and Chris Floyd take the shuttle William Tsung (nicknamed Bill Tee) to study Mount Zeus. Near Mount Zeus, van der Berg relays the message " LUCY IS HERE" to his uncle Paul. It is revealed that Van der Berg's hypothesis, now proven true, was that Mount Zeus is one huge diamond, a remnant from the core of the exploded Jupiter. The revelation about Mount Zeus explains how Van der Berg got onto Galaxy and why Rosie tried to hijack it; the rulers of the USSA are concerned and the exiled Afrikaners are interested about what might happen to the world diamond market if a vast mountain of diamond were discovered.

Travelling further, the two men find the wreck of the Chinese spacecraft Tsien (which had crashed on Europa in 2010), which has been completely stripped of its metals, and then find the enormous, 2 km (1.2 mi) long monolith lying on its side at the border between the dayside and nightside, dubbed the "Great Wall". Beneath it is a town of igloo-like dwellings, but the inhabitants are not in sight. There, Chris sees an image of his grandfather, who appears to Chris in the same way that Bowman appeared to Floyd in 2010, and tells him that the Universe is coming.

Universe rescues Galaxy's crew; they are brought to Ganymede, where they watch as Mount Zeus, which has been steadily sinking, finally disappears beneath the Europan surface. Kreuger writes a follow-up article for Nature, stating that Mount Zeus was a mere fragment of Jupiter's diamond material, and that it is almost certain that many more such large pieces of diamond are currently in orbit around Lucifer. Krueger therefore proposes a scouting project to seek diamond in the Lucifer system, for eventual mining.

Floyd, Chris, and van der Berg become close. In a later chapter, another Heywood Floyd, now a disembodied creature of pure consciousness, talks with Dave Bowman. It is revealed that the small monolith duplicated Floyd's consciousness; there are now two Heywood Floyds, one an immortal being who resides with Bowman and HAL inside the Great Wall, another who will live and die without knowing this. Bowman shows Floyd images of his experience of studying the life forms of Jupiter before they were killed in the creation of Lucifer, explaining that the monolith weighed the Jovians against the Europans and decided the latter held more promise. Bowman states that during the diamond meteor impact, the immensely powerful monolith tipped over on its side, and may be damaged. He and HAL believe that when Lucifer begins to fail, the monolith will weigh the Europans against humanity and they have only about a thousand years to prepare for that moment.

In an epilogue, set in 3001, the original monolith discovered on the Moon in 1999 has been placed in the plaza of the ancient United Nations Building. Humans have found more quantities of diamond from the former Jupiter and have used it to create space elevators and an orbital ring connecting them, as suggested by Kreuger. (This idea will later be a central concept in 3001: The Final Odyssey.) Suddenly, Lucifer's light begins to fade and the Monolith reawakens for the first time in a thousand years.

Outside references to scientific literature

Late in the novel (Chapter 56, "Perturbation Theory"), two real scientific articles are explicitly cited by Paul Krueger, van der Berg's uncle. A 1981 article in lends plausibility to 2061's basic premise that other solar system bodies may contain massive quantities of diamond material, and serves as the basis for 2061's premise of a large diamond being discovered on Europa. A 1966 article in examines the feasibility of various materials for the theoretical construction of a space elevator, identifying diamond as the best available known material, and likewise serves as a basis for the space elevators (or towers) which extend from Earth's surface out into space.

The elevators are major pieces of technology in the sequel novel 3001, and settings of much of the latter novel's action. The intervening implication is that over the next millennium, humanity finds other large sources of diamond in the Lucifer-Jupiter system, precipitate which resulted from the transformation of the latter into the former, and mines this diamond material, using it for (previously impossible) construction projects.

Main characters

Dr. Heywood Floyd: Floyd is an elderly man, world-famous for his involvement with the Discovery and Leonov missions. His life has been extended because he has lived off Earth in lower gravity (which simultaneously prevents him from ever returning to Earth itself). Floyd travels with five other celebrities to Halley's Comet during its Earth approach aboard the Universe, a new, state-of-the-art spacecraft financed by the Tsung family.

Christopher Floyd II is Floyd's grandson who hops various space flights and quietly finds work without keeping up with his family, to their dismay. He is second officer of the Galaxy, an older craft also financed by the Tsung family. He is estranged from his grandfather Heywood. One of the novel's themes, therefore, is that the protagonist reconnects with his family after years of estrangement both from them and from Earth.

Rolf van der Berg is a Ganymede-based planetary scientist who develops a shocking theory regarding a structure on Europa. He has the opportunity to confirm his theory that Europa contains a giant diamond, a byproduct of Jupiter's collapse to become the small star Lucifer.

Minor characters

The Floyd Family: Early in the novel, Floyd's now-long-distant old family lives are re-capitulated. Marion, his first wife, had long since been killed in a plane crash, and their two daughters now have families of their own, and are effectively estranged from Floyd. Further, during the events of 2010, Floyd's second wife Caroline and their son Christopher I had learned to forget about him; Caroline took up with another man in Floyd's absence, and Christopher I found his father-figure in this man. Later, Chris I married one Helena, an arrangement of which both Floyd and Caroline had initially disapproved. Despite this, Helena proved to be a good mother to Christopher II.

The Tsung Family: Family of Sir Lawrence Tsung, Chinese tycoon benefactor and shipbuilder, responsible for financing the story's spacecraft, the Cosmos, the Galaxy and the Universe. The Tsung family do not directly feature in the story, apart from being mentioned for their financial backing role, and in general descriptions of geopolitics. Lawrence is inspired to finance the development of spacecraft after reviewing the history of the Tsien disaster, which centers around the dramatic death of Rupert Chang (now identified with his first name in this novel), which had occurred in the previous novel and is retold in the current one. Tsung's wife is one Lady Jasmine; children include William Tsung, Charles Tsung and several unnamed siblings (in all, five brothers and five sisters), each subsequent birth requiring a very large, doubled fee per a modification of China's One-child policy.

The Leonov Crew: It is established very early on that all of the Leonov crew of 2010 have since died, with the lone exceptions of Floyd and Zenia Marchenko, the latter not otherwise figuring in the present story. In particular, it is revealed that Dr. Chandra died in hibernation during the Leonov's return trip, which is attributed to his sadness at losing HAL.

Captain Smith: Captain of the Universe, Smith is a practical, stock captain character, concerned for the safety of his ship, his crew and his passengers.

Yva Merlin, aka Evelyn Miles: A rather mysterious, aged movie star, who is emblazoned on the public consciousness for her earlier roles. Merlin joins the Universe voyage as one of its celebrity passengers.

Dimitri Mihailovich: A classical composer who provides some comic relief, Mihailovich is another of the celebrity passengers. The name and minor character role echo the basic plot function of Dimitri Moisevitch, of the earlier works.

Victor Willis: A pop-science personality with a prodigious beard, Willis is another of the celebrity passengers.

Clifford Greenberg: First man to set foot on Mercury, "Cliff" is another of the celebrity passengers. He later becomes an honorary crew-member and is a more "useful" passenger due to his spaceflight experience.

Margeret M'Bala: An author who popularized and explained the connections between ancient Greek and Roman mythology and now-common astronomical nomenclature, "Maggie M" is another of the celebrity passengers.

George and Jerry: An old gay couple who are two of Floyd's longest and closest friends; they had worked in the arts in earlier life. George and Jerry help to manage Floyd's personal affairs while he is away.

Eric Laplace: Captain of the Galaxy.

Rosie: A stewardess who hijacks the Galaxy. Although her motives are never made perfectly clear, context strongly suggests that Rosie is affiliated with a South African faction of some kind, who have somehow learned of van der Berg's Europan diamond theory and want to make an investigation of their own. Shortly after her introduction, the character is inconsistently named as Rose McMahon or Rose McCullen. Later, the hijacker is identified as one Ruth Mason.

Second Officer Walter Chang: Not to be confused with the Tsien astronaut, Walter Chang is the Galaxy pilot on duty when Rosie hijacks the ship and is charged by Rosie with landing on Europa.

Paul Kreuger: van der Berg's uncle, Kreuger is entrusted with the secret of Europa's diamond deposit early on, and later opines in a letter to Nature on the implications of large quantities of diamond for construction, citing two real scientific papers.

In 2000, reported that MGM and actor/director Tom Hanks were in discussions regarding adapting both 2061: Odyssey Three and 3001: The Final Odyssey into movies, with Hanks reportedly to play Frank Poole in the 3001 film. An update in 2001 stated that there was no further development on the project.

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2061: Odyssey Three is a science-fiction novel by the British writer Arthur C. Clarke, published in 1987. It is the third book in Clarke's Space Odyssey series. It returns to one of the lead characters of the previous novels, Heywood Floyd, and his adventures from the 2061 return of Halley's Comet to Jupiter's moon Europa.

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NUMBERS ABOVE HIS EYE - best - THE_FINALS_Wallpaper_Beside_You_2880x1620

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Diamond ring effect and Bailey's Beads from solar eclipse

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Diamond ring effect and Bailey's Beads from solar eclipse

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The Baily's beads effect or diamond ring effect is a feature of total and annular solar eclipses. As the Moon covers the Sun during a solar eclipse, the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows beads of sunlight to shine through in some places while not in others. The effect is named after Francis Baily, who explained the phenomenon in 1836. The diamond ring effect is seen when only one bead is left, appearing as a shining "diamond" set in a bright ring around the lunar silhouette.

Lunar topography has considerable relief because of the presence of mountains, craters, valleys, and other topographical features. The irregularities of the lunar limb profile (the "edge" of the Moon, as seen from a distance) are known accurately from observations of grazing occultations of stars. Astronomers thus have a fairly good idea which mountains and valleys will cause the beads to appear in advance of the eclipse. While Baily's beads are seen briefly for a few seconds at the center of the eclipse path, their duration is maximized near the edges of the path of the umbra, lasting 1-2 minutes.

After the diamond ring effect has diminished, the subsequent Baily's beads effect and totality phase are safe to view without the solar filters used during the partial phases. By then, less than 0.001% of the Sun's photosphere is visible.

Observers in the path of totality of a solar eclipse see first a gradual covering of the Sun by the lunar silhouette for just a small duration of time from around one minute to four minutes, followed by the diamond ring effect (visible without filters) as the last bit of photosphere disappears. As the burst of light from the ring fades, Baily's beads appear as the last bits of the bright photosphere shine through valleys aligned at the edge of the Moon. As the Baily's beads disappear behind the advancing lunar edge (the beads also reappear at the end of totality), a thin reddish edge called the chromosphere (the Greek chrōma meaning "color") appears. Though the reddish hydrogen radiation is most visible to the unaided eye, the chromosphere also emits thousands of additional spectral lines.

Although Baily is often said to have discovered the cause of the feature which bears his name, Sir Edmond Halley made the first recorded observations of Baily's beads during the solar eclipse of 3 May 1715. Halley described and correctly ascertained the cause of the effect in his "Observations of the late Total Eclipse of the Sun [...]" in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society:

About two Minutes before the Total Immersion, the remaining part of the Sun was reduced to a very fine Horn, whose Extremeties seemed to lose their Acuteness, and to become round like Stars ... which Appearance could proceed from no other Cause but the Inequalities of the Moon's Surface, there being some elevated parts thereof near the Moon's Southern Pole, by whose Interposition part of that exceedingly fine Filament of Light was intercepted.

The term "Baily's beads" then came into use after Baily described the phenomenon to the Royal Astronomical Society in December 1836. Having observed the solar eclipse of 15 May 1836 from Jedburgh in the Scottish Borders, he reported that:

...when the cusps of the sun were about 40 degrees asunder, a row of lucid points, like a string of beads, irregular in size, and distance from each other, suddenly formed around that part of the circumference of the moon that was about to enter on the sun's disc.

Cosmas Damian Asam was probably the earliest realistic painter to depict a total solar eclipse and diamond ring. His painting was finished in 1735.

The Baily's beads phenomenon is seen during the credit opening sequence of the NBC TV show , while the Diamond Ring effect is seen during the credit opening sequence of Star Trek: Voyager, albeit from a fictitious extrasolar body, seen from space.

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The Baily's beads effect or diamond ring effect is a feature of total and annular solar eclipses. As the Moon covers the Sun during a solar eclipse, the rugged topography of the lunar limb allows beads of sunlight to shine through in some places while not in others.

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Piet Hein (16 December 1905 - 17 April 1996) was a Danish polymath (mathematician, inventor, designer, writer and poet), often writing under the Old Norse pseudonym Kumbel, meaning " tombstone". His short poems, known as or grooks ( Danish: gruk), first started to appear in the daily newspaper shortly after the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940 under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell". He also invented the Soma cube and the board game Hex.

Hein, a direct descendant of Piet Pieterszoon Hein, the 17th century Dutch naval hero, was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. He studied at the Institute for Theoretical Physics (later to become the Niels Bohr Institute) of the University of Copenhagen, and Technical University of Denmark. Yale awarded him an honorary doctorate in 1972. He died in his home on Funen, Denmark in 1996.

Piet Hein, who, in his own words, "played mental ping-pong" with Niels Bohr in the inter-War period, found himself confronted with a dilemma when the Germans occupied Denmark. He felt that he had three choices: Do nothing, flee to neutral Sweden or join the Danish resistance movement. As he explained in 1968, "Sweden was out because I am not Swedish, but Danish. I could not remain at home because, if I had, every knock at the door would have sent shivers up my spine. So, I joined the Resistance."

Taking as his first weapon the instrument with which he was most familiar, the pen, he wrote and had published his first " grook" ( Danish: gruk). It passed the censors who did not grasp its real meaning.

CONSOLATION GROOK

Losing one glove
is certainly painful,
but nothing
compared to the pain
of losing one,
throwing away the other,
and finding

the first one again.

The Danes, however, understood its importance and soon it was found as graffiti all around the country. The deeper meaning of the grook was that even if you lose your freedom ("losing one glove"), do not lose your patriotism and self-respect by collaborating with the Nazis ("throwing away the other"), because that sense of having betrayed your country will be more painful when freedom has been found again someday.

In 1959, city planners in Stockholm, Sweden announced a design challenge for a roundabout in their city square Sergels Torg. Piet Hein's winning proposal was based on a superellipse. He went on to use the superellipse in the design of furniture and other artifacts. He also invented a perpetual calendar called the Astro Calendar and marketed housewares based on the superellipse and its three-dimensional analog, the superegg.

He invented the Soma cube and devised the games of Hex, Tangloids, Tower, Polytaire, TacTix, Nimbi, Qrazy Qube, and Pyramystery.

Hein was a close associate of Martin Gardner and his work was frequently featured in Gardner's Mathematical Games column in Scientific American. At the age of 95 Gardner wrote his autobiography and titled it Undiluted Hocus-Pocus. Both the title and the dedication of this book come from one of Hein's grooks.

Piet Hein was married four times and had five sons from his last three marriages.

(1937) married Gunver Holck, divorced

(1942) married Gerda Ruth (Nena) Conheim, divorced
Sons: Juan Alvaro Hein, born 9 January 1943; Andrés Humberto Hein, born 30 December 1943

(1947) married Anne Cathrina (Trine) Krøyer Pedersen, divorced
Son: Lars Hein, born 20 May 1950

(1955) married Gerd Ericsson, who died 3 November 1968
Sons: Jotun Hein, born 19 July 1956; Hugo Piet Hein, born 16 November 1963

Grooks - 20 volumes, originally published between 1940 and 1963, all currently out-of-print.

Grooks 1, Doubleday & Co., 1969.

Grooks 2, Doubleday & Co., 1968.

Grooks 3, Doubleday & Co., 1970.

Grooks 4, Doubleday & Co., 1973.

Grooks 5, Doubleday & Co., 1973.

Grooks 6, Borgens Pocketbooks 154, 1996.

Grooks 7, Borgens Pocketbooks 174, 1984.

Gardner, Martin: Piet Hein's Superellipse. - in Gardner, Martin: Mathematical Carnival. A New Round-Up of Tantalizers and Puzzles from Scientific American. New York: Vintage, 1977, pp. 240-254.

Johan Gielis: Inventing the circle. The geometry of nature. - Antwerpen : Geniaal Press, 2003. - ISBN 90-807756-1-4

"A Poet with a Slide Rule: Piet Hein Bestrides Art and Science," by Jim Hicks, Life Magazine, Vol. 61 No. 16, 10/14/66, pp. 55-66

"Piet Hein Biographical Details", by Nils Aas, tr. by Roger Stevenson. The Papers of the Medford Educational Institute 3.

"To and by Piet Hein on the Occasion of Piet Hein's Election as the Student Organization's Twelfth Honorary Member", tr. by Roger Stevenson. The Papers of the Medford Educational Institute 2.

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Piet Hein (16 December 1905 - 17 April 1996) was a Danish polymath (mathematician, inventor, designer, writer and poet), often writing under the Old Norse pseudonym Kumbel, meaning " tombstone". His short poems, known as or grooks ( Danish: gruk), first started to appear in the daily newspaper shortly after the German occupation of Denmark in April 1940 under the pseudonym "Kumbel Kumbell".

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LIGHT EFFECTS ON HIS LEFT EYE - THE_FINALS_Wallpaper_Beside_You_2880x1620

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is the terminus of the Hareskovbanen radial of the S-train network around , . Farum station is situated 230 metres south of Kumbelhaven. Photo: Dannebrog Spy, CC BY-SA 4.0.

, historically known as Farum Park, is a football stadium, located in , , and is the home ground of FC Nordsjælland. Right to Dream Park is situated 1¼ km west of Kumbelhaven. Photo: Валерий Дед, CC BY 3.0.

is a town on the northeast of the island of Zealand in eastern , 20 km northwest of Copenhagen. Photo: Sir48, CC BY-SA 3.0.

is situated 3½ km east of Kumbelhaven. Photo: Pieceofmetalwork, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Thanks for contributing to our open data sources.

This page is based on OpenStreetMap, Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons.

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is the terminus of the Hareskovbanen radial of the S-train network around , . Farum station is situated 230 metres south of Kumbelhaven. Photo: Dannebrog Spy, CC BY-SA 4.0. , historically known as Farum Park, is a football stadium, located in , , and is the home ground of FC Nordsjælland.

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kumbelhaven ?

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Three unequal lines across the top of the image

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Three unequal lines across the top of the image

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LINES ACROSS THE TOP OF THE IMAGE - THE_FINALS_Wallpaper_Beside_You_2880x1620

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William Neile (7 December 1637 - 24 August 1670) was an English mathematician and founder member of the Royal Society. His major mathematical work, the rectification of the semicubical parabola, was carried out when he was aged nineteen, and was published by John Wallis. By carrying out the determination of arc lengths on a curve given algebraically, in other words by extending to algebraic curves generally with Cartesian geometry a basic concept from differential geometry, it represented a major advance in what would become infinitesimal calculus. His name also appears as Neil.

Neile was born at Bishopsthorpe, the eldest son of Sir Paul Neile MP for Ripon and Newark. His grandfather was Richard Neile, the Archbishop of York. He entered Wadham College, Oxford as a gentleman-commoner in 1652, matriculating in 1655. He was taught by John Wilkins and Seth Ward.

In 1657, he became a student at the Middle Temple. In the same year he gave his exact rectification of the semicubical parabola and communicated his discovery to William Brouncker, Christopher Wren and others connected with Gresham College. His demonstration was published by Wallis in De Cycloide (1659). The general formula for rectification by definite integral was in effect discovered by Hendrik van Heuraet in 1659. In 1673 Wallis asserted that Christiaan Huyghens, who was advancing his own claim to have influenced Heuraet, was also slighting the priority of Neile.

Neile was elected a fellow of the Royal Society on 7 January 1663 and a member of the council on 11 April 1666. He entered the debate on the theory of motion, as a critic of the empiricist stance of other members. His own theory of motion was held up from publication by unfavourable peer review by Wallis, in 1667; a revision was communicated to the society on 29 April 1669. Neile objected to Wren's 1668 work on collision as lacking discussion of causality: he asked for discussion of the nature of momentum. His own work was much influenced by ideas drawn from the of Thomas Hobbes.

He made astronomical observations with instruments erected on the roof of his father's residence, the "Hill House" (later called Waltham Place) at White Waltham in Berkshire, where he died at the age of 32. A white marble monument in the parish church of White Waltham commemorates him and an inscribed slab in the floor marks his burial-place. He belonged to the privy council of King Charles II.

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William Neile (7 December 1637 - 24 August 1670) was an English mathematician and founder member of the Royal Society. His major mathematical work, the rectification of the semicubical parabola, was carried out when he was aged nineteen, and was published by John Wallis.

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1637 Swings asteroid - named after Pol Swings who was credited with the discovery of the Swings bands and the Swings effect using a slit spectrograph

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1637 Swings asteroid - named after Pol Swings who was credited with the discovery of the Swings bands and the Swings effect using a slit spectrograph

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1637 Swings, provisional designation 1936 QO, is a dark asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 50 kilometers in diameter. Discovered by Joseph Hunaerts in 1936, it was named after Belgian astronomer Pol Swings.

Swings was discovered on 28 August 1936, by Belgian astronomer Joseph Hunaerts at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle, Belgium. In the following month, it was independently discovered by astronomer Cyril Jackson at Johannesburg Observatory in South Africa.

The asteroid orbits the Sun in the outer main-belt at a distance of 2.9-3.2 AU once every 5 years and 5 months (1,967 days). Its orbit has an eccentricity of 0.04 and an inclination of 14 ° with respect to the ecliptic. In 1907, Swings was first identified as 1907 YT at Heidelberg Observatory. However, the body's observation arc begins with its official discovery observation at Uccle in 1936.

According to the surveys carried out by the Infrared Astronomical Satellite IRAS and NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer with its subsequent NEOWISE mission, Swings' surface has an albedo of 0.042, and measures 45.15 and 52.99 kilometers in diameter, respectively. It has an absolute magnitude of 10.4.

As of 2017, the body's spectral type, rotation period and shape remain unknown.

This minor planet was named after Pol Swings (1906-1983), a Belgian astrophysicist, astronomer and president of the International Astronomical Union during 1964-1967, who significantly contributed to the understanding of the physics of comets and their spectra. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Center on 20 February 1976 ().

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1637 Swings, provisional designation 1936 QO, is a dark asteroid from the outer region of the asteroid belt, approximately 50 kilometers in diameter. Discovered by Joseph Hunaerts in 1936, it was named after Belgian astronomer Pol Swings. Swings was discovered on 28 August 1936, by Belgian astronomer Joseph Hunaerts at the Royal Observatory of Belgium in Uccle, Belgium.

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Dots in the corners of the image: 1 (top left), 6 (top right), 3 (bottom left), 7 (bottom right)

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Dots in the corners of the image: 1 (top left), 6 (top right), 3 (bottom left), 7 (bottom right)